Summer of CCNA LIVE Launch Party

Oo. Ooh. Good morning. Good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are turning in or turning in tuning in from. Get my words right here. Welcome to the summer of CCNA program here from Network Chuck Academy. My name is Zach Hill and I'm going to be hosting you guys today and we will be joined by the legendary Network Chuck and Jeremy Chorah in just a few moments here. But I do want to let you guys know that if you want to join us for in the community, chat with us and have a good time, we encourage you to sign up with us over on Discord. If you haven't done that yet, please go over to uh the link that we will share in the chat. We have it shown on the screen here and you guys can join the community and hang out with us. So without uh any further ado, I would love to welcome Network Chuck and Jeremy to the live stream. How are you gentlemen doing today? We are doing awesome. Chuck, how are you doing? Uh doing great. Just got back from Japan. We're ready to start the summer CCNA. Um I'm really really excited. Yeah, I know you guys are excited. I'm excited. The whole team is excited. I I have a cat joining here me here as well. I know he's excited as well, but I know the whole chat is excited as well. So, if you guys have questions for us, we will be doing some Q&A towards the end. So, please save all your questions until then. But I do want to let Jeremy and Chuck get started here because they have a lot of information to share with you. So, again, please go ahead register for the Discord server if you haven't yet. And if you haven't registered for the summer of CCNA program, we will put a link in the chat for that as well so you guys can sign up. There is a free option so that you can follow along, but there is also an exclusive premium option where you guys will get daily access to Jeremy and Chuck for our daily check-ins. And you cannot beat that. So if you want to connect with Jeremy and Chuck every single day as you're going through your summer of CCNA journey, definitely consider signing up for the summer of CCNA program. So, I want to let you guys go ahead and get started there. Thank you guys so much for taking the time to share your knowledge with everybody, with our whole community. I can't wait to get started. Me neither. I feel like this has been um like an epic adventure going. Um and I'm I'm excited to tell you more about how we got there. But I will say I'm very proud of Chuck. I thought I thought for sure when uh he was like, "I'm coming from back to from Japan on Friday." I'm like, "You're so not going to make this." I'm like, "You're going to be like time lag." I mean, it's a 16 hour time difference in Japan. You live live there for three months. And you're still smiling, man. You seem I'm I'm impressed. Yeah. Um I This is like my probably 10th cup of coffee today. I've got some reserves right here just in case. I don't recommend doing this to anyone, but this is exciting. Like the summer of CCNA, um the CCNA, I've been talking about it for a long time. Um it's the best certification out there, and I think it's going to change some lives. So, of course, I'm going to show up for this, Jeremy. I can't believe you doubted me. I I doubted you. I doubted you until the minute of, my friend. Let's get started. Uh there are so many comments. I was It was funny when we uh made sure all the connections were working. Um earlier today I I was like I'm just going to keep that I'll I'll keep up with all of the um the people that are are uh chatting in and I'm just like watching it's like d I'm like I I can't even read it. It's coming in so fast. So thank you guys for for jumping in. I really want some network chug coffee. That's the one comment that I've seen a couple times. So So there we go. Jeremy people are jumping in right now going what the heck is this all about? Because we have people joining constantly. And just real quick, this is the summer of CCNA. This is where we're doing a we're essentially giving away our CCNA course for free to walk along with me and Jeremy um through the months of now to August. And I have never seen this happen before. Like this is pretty crazy. So if you want to join for free right now, please join us. We're going to be doing live streams like this twice a month. And then we'll also be doing daily Q&As's helping the people who really want to dive deep and go for the premium option. We're going to be right there with you guys every single day, which is it's a lot and I've never seen anyone do this before, so it's going to be kind of crazy. But anyways, Jeremy, sorry I interrupted you. Take it away. No, I I think it's it's right on. And I want to you can see the agenda on the screen. I won't read it to you because we're going to be going through all of it, but I do want everyone to know how on how how did this come about? Um, and in in short, let me like Chuck and I as we've we've been building uh Network Chuck Academy together. Um, and actually, you know what? Why don't you rewind a little bit? Um, because I I think with an audience as big as what we're talking to right now, a lot of folks might not even know how we are connected. They might not even know who I am. Um, or anything like that now that now that I think of it. Um, so, so let me let me step uh and and Chuck, maybe we just kind of uh go on the fly. I wasn't even thinking of this, but I I got to know Chuck when Chuck didn't have a beard. Uh, it was that that long ago. Uh, where I was teaching at CBTNuggets. Uh somehow, I don't know how, the random perusings of the YouTube verse, I came across uh Chuck um on YouTube. He had sub 10,000 subscribers. Saw him. He was working at an IT company. I saw this video that he recorded and and I was like, "This guy's got something." I I like the way I like the way he sounds. I like his his cadence. Just everything about him. So, I reached out. I I found you. I I searched for you on Twitter back it was called Twitter back then and and I found you sent you a DM. Um that's where I think your side of the story starts, Chuck. Yeah. So, uh Jeremy sends me this DM and I was immediately starruck. I lost it. I'm like I I took the phone. I go I showed my wife. Look at this. Look who just sent me a message. So, you're probably wondering who is this guy? Because um Jeremy, you've been out of the game for a minute um but you're back in now. But back in my day, I'm talking 2013 when I was getting my start in it, when I was studying networking, Jeremy was and is now still the guy to learn CCNA from. I mean, so good. The training was so insane that people bootlegged it. Like, it was a Hollywood movie. It was insane. Um I remember it was on CBT nuggets. It was pretty expensive for my taste. So I I will admit it. I did bootleg it. And I watched Jeremy learning my CCNA. I watched him learning my CCNA voice. Started my CCMP. Never finished. Be quiet audience. Um but Jeremy, when I watched his training, it got me excited to learn it. Like it was like watching TV. It was ridiculous. And um and honestly, I would not be here right now um if I hadn't watched Jeremy. And in fact, if you when you start watching the summer of CCNA series, you'll notice that Jeremy and I have a similar way of teaching. Um, it won't feel very different because I learned a lot from him uh in getting my start. So, when he reached out to me, he sent me that DM. I lost it. And I think it was shortly after that you asked me to jump on a call with you and then we we talked and you were like, "Hey, you want to come join CBT Nuggets?" And I'm like, "Uh, no." Like, I can't do that. That's crazy. Uh, but long story short, I did. And I don't know how deep you want to go into our winding path. Yeah. Well, I think that's where we'll we'll uh we'll go to the fast version, which is Chuck jumped on at CBTNuggets and continued on his YouTube channel. Uh, at that point in my my journey, I had been teaching. I I started teaching when I was 19 years old, 1998, if you can if you can believe that. Um, and so I was like, I think I'm ready to try something new. I want to do the stuff I teach. So Chuck ventured off to create a YouTube channel. I ventured off to create a managed service provider via um and and off we went on our separate separate journeys. Obviously, Chuck was uh wildly successful with his YouTube channel. Uh I was successful in building an MSP. It's up to about 40 people now. it's serving multiple states and it's for the most part um uh we've got a leadership team there that is is phenomenal and I don't have to be involved in a lot of the day-to-day. So along that journey uh Chuck was was continuing to grow gave me a call and was like dude you want to do something together like I'm just we I just remembered you were like I'm in the shower. So this is but but we don't even go there. we'll just stop. Uh but so so long story short, uh he's like, "You want to build an academy?" And I'm like, "Yeah, but let's do something really unique." And here we are. Uh let's so so we create we built a CCNA course at the end of uh last year. And thank you, Zach. Uh and that that's that's where the slide came from. So we released it and immediately thousands of people went and signed up for it. And I was pulling the stats. I'm like, "Okay, how's it going?" And what we found it is out of thousands of people and after we ran it for a couple months, three finished it. Everyone else was kind of dropping off along the ways. I'm like, okay, that's like 0.001. Like it was like I'm like it's it's a amazing course, but I'm like the times have changed. We don't just need information anymore. We live in an AI age. And that's where we came up with this crazy idea. And this is Wildchuck was in Japan. we're talking and I threw this out there. Honestly, I was kind of like, I don't know, want to just like meet with people every day and like build some accountability and build a community. And he's and like just do this for like months. And he's like, I'm I'm in if if you're in. And I'm like, no, you you forgot how this happened. Actually, I brought it up first and you already had the idea on your agenda. We had the idea at the same time. There it is. There it is. No shower involved at all. And it was like bam. uh our minds are like, "Yeah, let's do it." So, here we are. Like, everything is live. We're going to be and and that's that's So, what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Because just information, just videos, just going through a course, it's just not enough. Like, that's that's nowadays just like table stakes. And we're like, "Okay, let's up the game. We're in this. We want to help you along. We want to build a community and we want to see you be successful." So, and actually that's where I'm I'm going to turn my attention to uh the CCNA itself. Um, and what we designed around this. Um, we were aiming when we were on the phone with Chuck in Japan, I was like, "Let's aim for a thousand." I'm like, "Let's aim big." And, and he's like, "Yeah, let's get a thousand people going." And at the end of the day, we pulled the stats last week and I'm like, "Chuck, there's 35,000. It's up to 35,500 people signed up for this course." And we're both like, so our original target was a thousand. And so, so that's where I I evolved it down at the bottom. I'm like, we want a thousand people to get the CCNA and you're probably going to blow that away because I guarantee you this is going to be so much more effective. But like Chuck said, we're like, let's offer this for free. Let's make we're going to unlock the course. But the challenge that we were we were finding is like if you get anything for free, I mean, you take any study free in the human brain is just like, oh, it's it's not a thing. So, we're like, how do we build accountability into this? And so, that's where for the free folks, we made it a rolling two weeks. So, it's kind of like you get a membership to a gym, right? Free free gym as long as you keep coming. But if you stop coming, you'll lose it. And and in this case, you won't lose the access. You'll just get behind and you can't can't reach it. Uh so so that that's where we're like, okay, we'll build that in. But for the monthly folks, that's where we're saying, okay, you're going to get the content always on access and you're going to get access to the labs. Um the labs is where we had to invest quite a bit. We had to buy some servers. Matter of fact, that's one of the things we're scaling as we speak. Um again, we expected a thousand 35,000. We're like, okay, we need to we need to elastify uh our infrastructure. So we're adding more servers and things like that. And so so monthly folks you get access to the labs and then we said okay there are pe there and and obviously all the content on network chuck academy and no yeah someone said it's not free no content is free but the labs where we have to pay money for people to access it yeah we have to charge or else or else we we all go bankrupt. Um, so, so yes, the content is free. The ongoing access is to where it's just um, uh, on a rolling two week, that's free. The labs themselves, that's not free. Um, the one-year access is where we're saying, okay, this is the folks that are like, I don't want access to all the content on the academy. I just want to be successful in the CCNA. And so that's where we said, "Okay, for that one-time purchase, you're going to get the summer of CCNA content." And I think I think, and again, this is where we're like, "Uh, what?" Just like the title said, um, Chuck, I think we decided even this morning as we saw some of the questions, we're going to provide people access to that content for life. Like, as long as that content is available on the academy, um, if you buy the one year of access, it's not one year, it's it's lifetime access. The thing that is one year is the labs because it's actually running real servers, real VMs, and you gain a whole VM every single time you click on one of those labs. And so we have to continually continue to keep those running. Um, but you also get, this is the one where we get the daily connection. So, um, Chuck, I think every day right now, we're planning to meet with people. I know you're central time. I'm Arizona time. We are our own time zone. Um, it's 2 pm my time, which is Pacific right now. 4 PM Central. Yeah. 5:00 PM Eastern. Yeah. 4 PM for me. Yeah. Yep. That's that's where we're where we're at right now. But we might shift around because I know there's people around the globe that are doing it or we might keep that the same. So we're gonna we're starting off with uh with that. Um so why now I'm going to say why CCNA? Um Chuck, why CCNA for you? What what was the big deal? So for me when when I got my CCNA um it was a choice for me to become a network admin or a uh a system administrator. I was on the help desk and I saw kind of two paths networking. I saw this guy like working in the terminal. It looked really cool. Had a cool vibe. Um very matrixy. So I'm like h let me see what he's doing. And when I started studying for my CCNA it just it lit a fire under me. Like networking if you've never actually done networking like got into it tried to do a few things. It's really fun. It may not seem fun from the outside, but it's incredibly fun once you learn a few things and get your hands dirty on it. Now, the CCNA is the Cisco Certified Networking Associate. Mouthful, I know. Um and it is very Cisco ccentric but people have been using it for a long time as a means to get your foundation for anything networking which means that for most people when they're getting started in IT and they want to go down any path whether it's cloud um you may want to be a hacker cyber security whatever you want to be ethical hacker by the way don't even think about that good hackers whatever path you want to go down the CCNA has always kind of been one of those steps to learn the foundations of networking now because it's been positioned that Hey, everybody wants you to have the CCNA. The CCNA is the gold standard in certifications. It's been that way for a very long time. So, if you have that certification on your resume and you're trying to get started in IT, you look really, really good. Yes, there are other certifications. Yes, they can look good. The CCNA has always been that one that people go, "Oh, this person, they spent some time learning it. They can probably do some things. Let's let's bring them on." Like, they they can actually learn and grow and and get into stuff. like you have to know your stuff to get your CCNA. Um, so the reason we chose this now to do the summer of CCNA is we know this certification once you get this if you're trying to get into it, it can change your life. Like I can vouch for that. It did for me. I've seen it do the same thing for many others. That's why we're doing this. And I'm so so excited to get this started for you guys. Um, and it's just crazy though. The same guy, Jeremy Char right here, who taught me networking, the same guy who got me excited and and is the reason I'm doing this is now going to be teaching you guys. I'm like, this is incredible. So, Jeremy, I hope that answers the question of why CCNA. Yeah. And and the beauty the reason I I brought up the little tip of the iceberg image is because it also touches so many network topics like you learn the foundations of routing and OPF and BGP and RIP and you learn the foundation of switching and port security and spanning tree protocol and cam tables and all that. like you learn the foundation of all those which I say removes the fear like you you you remember the first time and maybe you maybe you haven't even gone there yet but you just say the word Linux people are like up I'm out like as soon as I touch Linux it's a completely foreign world if if you've done nothing but Windows or even Mac a lot of times unless you get into the command line right and so there's this like I'm going to blow something up as soon as you're sitting at that blinking cursor but if somebody comes in and is like dude Linux is just a bunch of text files. It's all it is. It's you just go edit some text file and and it's like oh it starts to remove the fear of like I can I can get into these things. Likewise, networks are global. Every business it I mean you'll have a business that's Microsoft 365. You'll have another one that's Google Workspace. That one's Slack. That one's Teams. That one's Zoom. Like they're going to have a variety of stuff, but they all have a network and they all have Cisco's fingerprints all over it. I mean, if you follow me on social, you know, I love Ubiquiti. Why? It's cool. It's cheap. It's it's it's it's it's cool and it's cheap, you know, like th those two things. But if as you play with Ubiquiti, it's like, oh, it's Cisco like it's everything is Cisco like. So, if you learn Cisco, it's kind of like, oh, okay, that okay, it's just it's kind of it's kind of like that. And it's the only certification. We just are going through this at at uh the MSP right now where it's win-win. If you get this C, companies are looking for you because if they hire you, they get discounts on the gear that they buy. Sometime I mean this is a problem. It's a known problem. Cisco has it. As you get higher certifications, like I've gone all the way to CCIE and as you get that certification, people will hire you even though you don't actually work there. I know plenty of guys that are like this. They make, you know, 50 $60,000 a year, which I know sounds crazy, and they don't even work there. They just sign their their CCIE number there, get their full benefits, and they go do something else because that company resells enough equipment from Cisco that they're like, "Hey, we show that guy on staff. We can't afford them full-time." But I mean, so it's a huge win-win um to get a CCNA. people are looking for you just like you're looking at at the uh the tech. And so that's why one of the things that we plan to do in this and this is in the daily live streams because there's just so much to say about this. It's career pathing. Now Chuck, I don't know if you have you seen the comment I I've seen it on my channel where people are like, "I've got a CCNA or I got a CCNP, but I can't find a job." Yeah. It's um I've seen that a lot. Uh and while the CCNA is extremely valuable, which is why we're doing this, there is more things you have to do. There's more skills that you you have to know how to interview. You have to know how to look for a good job. You have to have some soft skills. Like there's a lot of things that surround knowing it. You have to know a bit more than that to find that job. And for a lot of people, it's like I don't I don't know where to find that. Is there a certification for doing that? I don't know. So that's why me and Jeremy are not only going through the CCNA and teaching you the skills you need to actually do the work, but how do you land that job? How do you how do you run an interview? How do you polish up a resume? And especially in the days of AI, like how do you how do you actually get in front of somebody? Like how do you do that? AI is screening screening everything. And and it what's that's one of the things that we're planning on doing in a lot of the daily is like, okay guys, here's our story. Like a lot of people when I tell them I started teaching at 19 years old, uh they're like, "Oh, prodigy." Oh, like like but but part of what I'm going to go through in a lot of the daily meetups is what my work life story looked like. Like I went to normal school. I went to Arizona State University under a computer science degree. I was normal. I went I worked at Office Max and Staples. And then I went from there to work at Costco until they put me in the bakery. I was like, "Oh, well, I don't want to work in the bakery." So, I quit and I went to Pizza Hut. And I realized I didn't like pizza either. But the reason I'm going to these places is because I'm going to ASU under a computer science degree, hating it. Like, like I I I loathe coding so much. And I can tell you why when we get into the story, but I loathed it so much that I came home, I told my parents, I was like, I'm not cut out for computers. like I thought I thought this was this was what I wanted to do and I don't and I'm gonna go work at Pizza Hut. And then I found out I I'm not cut out for pizza either. But but at the same time like that work life story is how so many people end up going and and I and it's the the challenge is you go talk to a guidance counselor or something like that and they're going to present flows like this and I mean fill in college degree, fill in whatever you want for that CCNA. like, "Oh, yeah. You get your CCNA, then you're going to end up uh getting a network admin, and then you go after your CCNP. You get that, and then you're a C like, of course, you're like, "Oh, this is it's like the Mandalorian. This is the way." Oh, I just remembered fourth of There we go. Um, this is right. It is not the way. Like, this is how most journeys go. I mean, Chuck, I'm I'm guessing yours did not I'm guessing it's not like I got my CCNA. I became a network admin. Well, I was actually already a junior network admin when I got my CCNA. Um, but yeah, it there wasn't like I never actually got my CCMP and I actually realized I didn't even need it. Um, I quickly just realized, oh, I can jump into cloud, I can jump into security, I can jump into actually what I ended up doing the most was jumping into voice architecture and I went down a completely different route route. So, yeah, the path you're going to take will be way different than the standard CCNA, CCMP. Um, it's it's a winding road and really it's all about just seeing what you enjoy and also seeing the opportunity around you because you may you may be like dead set like I want to become a network admin but maybe they the company that you're at doesn't need one. Maybe they need a system admin or a cloud admin. Go for that. Go for the opportunity. Go for that. Yeah. And that and that's the thing is is that's why we want to talk through like you can see over on the right hand side in the daily conversations I want to tell you stories about like what does it mean to be a network admin. Like what's funny is I recorded a video and I know some of you listening to me right now heard it where where I'm like I am actually not a network admin. You would not want to hire me as your network admin. Um because I'm crazy. Like I'm like I'm like have you ever watched my videos? like like I'm like, "Okay, let's try like like I'm I'm fantastic at being able to communicate how these things work and connect and all of that, but you don't want me running a network that's stable, reliable, and consistent because it's not going to be stable. I'm going to be like, oo, we can try." And I'm like, "Well, outage window just, you know, like because I've done it. I've proved it to myself. I am insane." And Chuck is even more insane than me at times. I've seen him do some nutty stuff. And so, but that but that's the thing is people are like, "Okay, well, if I'm not going to be a network admin, then what am I going to be?" And that's what we want to talk about. There are like the CCNA is the ultimate universal like you can do so many things that you might not even think about. And so that's like as we're going through um I'm I'm also bringing along he's actually listening to this call right now. Uh Anthony Garon. Uh Anthony has come out of the technology space. He's actually helping us build a lot of what we're doing at NetworkChuck Academy. He's a known author and he's done a ton of work developing people. He's interviewed, he's brought on hundreds of of people. Uh used to work for Pearson running a software development team there. So you're going to hear him on the call. And that's when Chuck and I were uh uh having a lot of these conversations like I think we can do this. It's just it is amazing the people that showed up at at just the right time. Anthony is one of those people. Um Zach is one of those people. We'll talk about Zach and and actually you saw Zach at the beginning. We'll talk more about Zach in just a second. But we want to talk about careers and we want to talk about where you can go with a lot of the CCNA foundations that are laid for you. And real quick, just a little pit stop here. If you're just joining in right now and you're like, "What the heck is going on? Who's this guy talking on Network Chuck's channel? What the heck is happening?" We're talking about the summer of CCNA. It's a crazy thing we're doing right now where we're doing something that doesn't even make sense. We're giving away the best CCNA course I've ever seen. We're giving it away for free, which is weird, but we believe in it so much and we believe in the power of how it's going to change people's lives that we're like, "We have to do this." especially now in this time where AI is distracting. Like it's powerful and it's it's changing things, but also that's not going to replace you needing to know it and networking. You still need to know that it's going to make you awesome. So, we're like, you know what? Let's let's take a summer. Let's tell people forget AI for a moment. Just like it's always going to be there. It's always going to be changing, but if you know networking, if you know the foundation of pretty much every IT career, that's going to help you. So, Summer CCNA, join right now for free. It's free. Like, seriously, you get access to all the courses. You'll get access to me and Jeremy doing live streams twice a month. And if you're really crazy, which I hope you are, um there is a paid option that will give you access to me and Jeremy every single day. We're going to have at least a 30-minute session answering questions, guiding you through this process of learning the CCNA, which honestly, if you do this by yourself, it can be hard. Which is why a lot of people will collect courses that they buy on Udemy. they'll start. I mean, how many people have some Udemy courses you've never finished? I mean, I've got a bunch. Buy a lot. I have Udemy courses I've never even started. Like, I'm like, "Oh, that looks like a good course." And I buy it and then I'm like, "Oh, Chad G." Like, I'm and I I completely and I log back in. I'm like, "Oh, yeah." But it's already out of date. So, yeah. So, we we didn't want this to be just like a oh, fun course. I might get to that. No, no, no. Let's actually let's do this. We're going to help you. We're going to be alongside you and hopefully this the community we have is going to be enough to go, you know what, I'm going to I'm going to commit myself now. So, be committed with us. Join right now. Anyways, um that's our check-in. Jeremy, take over now. Yeah. Yeah. No, no problem. And and I want to um bring up the the agenda. If you take a look at the screen right now, uh this is just a screenshot of the plan that you get, the study plan. Everybody gets this when you sign up for summer of CCNA. You might even be looking at it right now. What we're planning on doing, as you can see on the screen, is every single day is broken up into here's what you're you're looking at. We're actually starting with what we're calling skill zero, or Chuck, you call it day zero. This is actually a whole pack of videos that that Chuck recorded uh years ago, but it's the foundation. It's like what is a switch? What is a network? What is a router? What is Wi-Fi? What is fiber? what is like he goes through a lot of like the core foundation stuff and when Chuck says we're going to be meeting with you every day that's what it means like Monday well we're here right now Monday we're meeting with you uh tomorrow Tuesday same time we're meeting with you but now we're going to start talking about the stuff that you talked about yesterday like what is a switch what is a router we're going to splice in some of the career pathing we're putting together the the standard agenda that we're going to go through as like okay here's some questions that we saw come up in the community. Let's answer some of those great ones live because everybody has the same kind of questions. So, that's that's the plan. That's what that's what we're doing. Um there's a question on the screen. Are we answering that? I I want to answer that. I think it's more of just like he's excited and we are too. Okay. Awesome. Yes. Um so, so that's that's um Yes. I mean, like the the just the the flurry of questions that are coming in and comments on the side. Um, it's it's awesome. I Yes, I will dive into some of those. So, let me give you a sense of what this looks like. This is the course player. So, what what the lessons are, if you look right here, this is uh skill zero, lesson zero. What is a network? And right, what you're looking at in the screen cap right here, it says, "What is a switch?" So, what we've done, and I want to make sure everybody's clear on this, we've taken Chuck's video or my video, like they'll see a ton of stuff from me in this course as well. We actually run it through a lot of AI. We and then we bring it to our editors that take the text and format it to where you read essentially a lot of the same content in a condensed version that Chuck and I talk about. As you know, with Chuck on some of his videos might be an hour. Well, we might condense that to like, okay, here's absolutely the key things to know, but it's going to be in Chuck's voice written here on the screen. So you can see it it it we wanted it to be easy and fun to read and that's that's the beauty of what we put together. We put in fun little pictures and all that. So I So the key thing I want you to walk away with is the text in the lesson is like you just got the cliffnotes of the video. So if you get behind and you're like ah I just I I I don't have time to watch the video. It's okay. You can just read the text and as long as you're like okay I I get it. I get it. because this course I mean there's 200 videos in the course um a lot of them will build on each other right and so some of them will cover some of the topics from before and add just a little bit and add just a little bit so you might look at the text and be like okay okay I think I got it or let me just jump to that video so that that part of that video so I can see what's there so at the bottom of the lesson not shown here is the actual video itself so this this first set of lessons that you'll see you'll have a chuck video click on play I already saw one question come in. Um, they said, "I saw Bosan uh is is a sponsor of some of these videos." Yes, that's because Chuck is a YouTuber at heart. Um, and yes, Bosan is there. No, but that to directly answer some of the questions I've already seen in the community. No, you don't have to sign up for Bosan. Uh, yes, we have um we have practice exams in the course itself. So, you'll be answering questions. Is Bosan a good vendor? Absolutely. Bosan has been around since I was first teaching. They they've been around a long time. Chuck, you've used Bosan. They're awesome. They make great practice exams and by no way are we steering them you away. But I just want want you to know that the summer of CCNA package is literally everything that you need. Yeah. And the uh the fact that we have that that summary, the cliff notes is killer because a lot of times learning is going to be multimodal, right? like you're going to watch a video, but then just to make those concepts just stick to your brain, it helps to read what you just watched. Also, to echo Jeremy, you're not going to remember what you watched on day one on day five. You're just not. So, being able to go back through and go, "Okay, oh yeah, okay, it's all clicking now. I just I just read day one again and I I feel ready to go to day six." Like, doing that is extremely helpful. So, we're really we're trying to build a course that is full. like you're gonna feel like I get this. I I feel like everything I need is right here. And that's that's the goal. Yep. And that's where I want to show you what week one is. You are in week one right now. Monday through Wednesday, if you look at the agenda, I'm and this is what we're going to do literally at the beginning of every week. We're going to be like, okay, here's what's happening this week. Uh Monday through Wednesday is network fundamentals. As I mentioned, that's that's welcome to day zero with Chuck. Thursday we're going to introduce Packet Tracer and that is where a lot of uh the material that I've created for the course begins. Um Packet Tracer, if you haven't heard of it, is a free utility that Cisco has released. It used to be part of their their academy and behind a a a closed door. They released it now for everybody. Um it is it is a good way. I'm not going to say a great way and I'll explain why, but it is a good way if you've got nothing else to get into the world of Cisco. PacketRacer is good and I'll explain that more when we talk about the labs Friday of this week. That's where you're going to get into the Castle Ryzen RFP. Um, let me let me let me say it this way. First off, what is an RFP? because I I want to make sure everybody on this call is like I haven't heard that before. When you start getting into the world of consulting, RFPs are like the normal thing. Like let's say I'm running a company. I saw somebody uh you'll appreciate this. I'm running a chocolatecovered toothpick company. I'm making chocolate covered toothpicks. Um and and I'm like, okay, I want an IT team to come in and take care of my network. I will create an RFP. Stands for request for proposal. It's pretty much saying here's my company. I run a chocolate covered toothpick company. We're national. We've we give chocolate covered toothpicks to everybody in the world. Um, and 50 offices and all that. And I'm like, here's all the requirements, right? And you put that out there. And all the companies, the consultants out there, they all bid on the RFP. They're like, I can do that. I can do it in this number of days. Here's the cost. And so the company then says, okay, I'm going to go with that group. Right? So, this new CCNA is built around an RFP. Now, you get Jeremy involved in in uh creativity. Chuck is like, "Why don't we use Network Chug coffee?" And I was like, "No, I have a better idea." Nowadays, we use Network Chug. We fought on this for like a a few calls. We're like, and I just still went back and forth. But the funny thing is Chuck won, but he only won after I won for this one. So I I I called it Castle Rise and Coffee. So I came up with this story because I tell my kids stories all the time. I'm like, "Okay, there's a nuclear holocaust. Everybody's dead except a few." You'll read the story. Um but but in short, Castle Ryzen came up with a coffee elixir that protects people from radiation. And so now they are the one store left that is now expanding globally with what's left of the globe. Everybody has to come to Castle Horizon to get their coffee. Um, and so it's it's awesome. And so we're nerds. That that's really what we're saying. And uh I think we're in good company. But I I think what what Jeremy is saying is that we're we're making this real world. Like if you've never heard the term RFP, this is your like lesson one. Like here here's what it is. This is real world stuff you're going to encounter that you don't really learn in just like basic CCNA content. like we're actually going to be teaching you how to do the things. You're going to be looking at what a real world scenario looks like. And that's one of the hardest things I struggled with when I got my CCNA was like, okay, cool. I know the concepts, but I got into the real world. I'm like, oh my gosh, now what? Uh um when I look at my textbook, like I didn't know what to do. So, we're trying to make that as practical as possible to where you step into the workplace, you're like, "Oh yeah, I I've seen an RFP. I know I know how to build it. I I know how to do all these things because I I've already done it." So anyways, Jeremy, keep going. Yeah. No, and and that's that's where this approach came from. I was a CCIE. I had gone all the way with Cisco, flew out to San Jose, completed the practical lab, and that's when I started an MSP and I felt like a fraud. Seriously. I I had done all this and then I I was at the first customer and they're like, "Okay, well, what do we need?" And I'm like, "What do you need? What what do you like?" I found myself and I this is where I'm like completely transparent with you guys. I had a CCIE and I'm googling at home. I'm like, what does a warehouse need to build a network? Because when you learn certification, it's awesome, but it's like, okay, here's the config. Here's the command. Okay, that's broken. I can fix it. But when I come in and and they're like, what do I need? I'm like, I don't know what you need. And it it like it was it took me a couple years to really be like, okay, okay, this is how and that was the story of Jeremy building an MSP, which I'll share with you along the the longer term journey. But that's why I was like, when we built this new CCNA, I want to make it real. I want you guys to know what it's like in a business, not just, okay, memorize these commands. If you see this on the test, the answer's B, enable, right? Like I'm I'm like, no, let's let's go bigger. And so on Friday, and I'm gonna I'm gonna click back on this on Friday, that's where you'll see the RFP. You'll get access to the whole thing. I think we're actually going to be releasing a little of the access early so you can review it in advance, but you'll be able to see like this is going to be everything that we're building. It's essentially everything that's covered in CCNA. Now, let me talk about labs. Um, there are actually three types of labs that you'll have access to. First off, everybody has access to Packet Tracer, and that's people that are signed up for free. That's people that are signed up paid. Um, Packet Tracer, like I said before, is good. Um, it is um Cisco's simulator where you can literally drag and drop icons on a on a map and then you can double click those. You can run connections on this map and it's iOS like. The reason I say it's good and you'll actually see it in the course because I used Packet Tracer because I wanted people that are taking the course to be able to be like, "Okay, I can do this." The challenge with Packet Tracer is there's it's a simulator. So, there's scenarios that you'll set up where you're like, I don't know what it what I'm doing wrong and it's not working. And I ran into that probably I'd say six or seven times as we created this new CCNA course. And I was like, "This is brutal." Because if you're just learning CCNA and you're like, "Okay, is it me? Do I not know this or is this a bug in the software?" And if you're constantly going back and forth and you're like, "Okay, okay, okay, I closed packet tracer and started back up and it works. Oh, hang on. It's not working." Like, that's that's the challenge with the simulator is you're you're just going to run into that kind of stuff. Um, and that's that's Packet Tracer. And Chuck and I sat down and I'm like, "Dude, can we create our own labs?" And we did. Is is a thing that is hard to do, which is why you don't see a lot of this anywhere. So, go ahead. This is pretty crazy. Yeah. And actually, of course, I talked too long and it timed out on the side. What we what we Oh, there we go. I've got it. Um, I'm going to bring it over here. This is actually uh one of the labs from the academy. This is this is type number three down here at the bottom. Um it's called Cisco Modeling Labs Real Labs. So we worked with Cisco. They they worked with us on getting modeling labs integrated into this thing uh to where we've got this lab guide which aligns with the RFP. So it's like okay, we're tracking devices down. So you're the Castle Ryzen senior engineer. You're doing your initial investigation. Okay, you've got a di Oh, this is uh there is no diagram because it's a tracking. The diagram would give it away. You're tracking devices uh down. So, you bring up the interactive console. You're on a switch and it's so this is this is actually integrated. Hang on, let me show you. This is integrated into the course. Um so, so um this is as you're going the course, it's like, okay, now you're you're you need to go find out where that device is connected and it's the real iOS. It's emulated, not simulated. So there are no bugs. There are no bugs. Cisco is perfect. It's their real. So show IP interface brief. You can take a look and be like, "Oh, okay. We've got these device. Okay, let's do a show CDP neighbor." Um, switch six. Show CDP neighbor detail. Um, okay. I can see what connections they have uh going on there. Okay, let me hop over to switch six. Switch six. So, so you're literally working on the device trying to solve the lab objectives. Um, these are wh Let me come back here. These are the real iOS modeling labs. And there are literally I think it's either 75 or 78. 78 of them. If there's 75, don't hold me to that. Throughout the course, 75 to 78 of these real iOS labs. And it's right in your browser, too. Like that's what's crazy. Like you're not you're not installing anything. You're not having to like go through a bunch of hoops. You just click on go and you're just in a Cisco environment. And this comes from like me and Jeremy back when we had to learn we had to go find devices on eBay and then figure out how to build this network ourselves just to learn the basic of like how to set up the network which is hard. It's like egg before chicken situation. It's it's uh so this is crazy. Um and by the way um we can't forget to say this Jeremy but uh we had early bird pricing and that's still active for today. So if you want to jump in to the premium where you can get access to the labs and me and Jeremy every day early bird pricing is still effective today. It's uh 175, which is 30% off the normal price, but it ends today. So, jump on that. Yeah, thank you for that, Chuck. I still forget. You're like the guy who's like, I've got Well, yeah, I'm blabbing on about cool labs and you're just like, oh yeah, yes, that is true. And I want to make sure you guys get that. Literally 175 bucks. That's it. And Chuck and I are going to meet with you for nearly four months every day. I was We were We were talking with Zach. Uh oh. Dude, I don't think people realize Oh, are we are we losing everything? I lost you for a second, but you're back. I'm back. Okay, Zach. Things talking conversations. They're catching back up. We were talking to Zach and he's like, "Dude, I don't think you know just how much value you're giving people. You guys like you and Chuck are meeting with them every day." He goes, "Are you sure you want to do this?" I'm like, like he's putting doubt in my mind. I'm like, "Chuck, what do we sign up for?" And Chuck's like, "Yeah, no, I think we can we can do this." I'm like, "We can do this." And so, like, for 175 bucks, four months access, full labs, community, we're engaged in the community like like Chuck and I are in like anyway, I haven't I will complete a sentence, but I want to show the other type of lab first. Hang on. And while he's pull that up real quick, I do want to say that um if you are not even wanting to really get your CCNA, like maybe that's not your goal, but you know you need to learn networking. You feel there's a gap in your knowledge, like just do this. Like you you don't have to take your CCNA, but you do need this knowledge to be very successful in it. So don't feel like you're like, oh, I'm not going to get my CCNA. Just jump in. Enjoy the community. enjoy um actually learning something and doing something real and not just playing with AI again because AI is still again AI is still going to be there and if you're just tuning in this is our summer CCNA our crazy thing. I know I saw someone say hey look it's marketing Chuck whatever whatever no that's the thing is we're just we're trying to we're trying to tell you just how cool this is. So this is the other kind of lab. So, I showed you the the the number three, the real IOS. But the thing is is when you're first learning Cisco, the full IOS is daunting. So, we have literally this is this is one of the folks on the network chug team. His name is Eric Pope. You will get to know him. He is one of the coolest guys ever. He literally built these labs for us. They are I call them perfect practice labs to where it's like, okay, you've got a switch here. It's like, okay, first thing you need to do, you need to brand the hardware. Oh, okay. So, uh, let me let me get in, uh, brand the hardware. I would assume that'd be like I need to give it a host name. Host name Jeremy. Uh, hint the hit the enter key. Okay, good. Uh, and oh, hang down. Brand the hardware. Now I get I I need a hint. Show next. Okay. Oh, configure the message of the day banner with unauthorized access ends badly. All right. config t uh banner when you don't know what you're doing. I know I I I just pulled one of these labs at random and here we go. Uh so I'm gonna say unauthorized access ends badly. Let's copy that. Uh paste it in here as plain text. Uh and we'll put a pound symbol after it. And boom. Just like that. So so you can see uh that's that's the task. We've now branded the hardware uh work from switch. Oh, I haven't you get the idea. Uh, I came up with Jeremy as a host name. Switch one. Exit. Oh, nope. I named it wrong. Host name. See, Chuck, this is where we should have practiced these things beforehand, but I don't. It's okay. Live stuff is better. They get to see you troubleshoot. And this trouble as you go, right? So, so these are the ones that allow you to go through and actually do exactly that because again, the full iOS getting access to it when you're first like, "Okay, what is a router again?" It's a lot. Okay. So, Discord, uh, I am This is where my age will show. Th This is So, if I won Castle Ryzen, Chuck, you won Discord. Why don't you talk to people about Discord? So, when me and Jeremy Spurs started talking about the CCNA and doing this course, uh, one thing that we were both passionate about is the community aspect because it's hard to do things by yourself. you just it's you shouldn't do things by yourself. And when you combine learning it with community, that's when you really have good good success. And it's not just learning. It's every step after that. It's when you to have good success in it. It's all about who you know. It really is. And you're knocking out both of those right now. You're going to be learning CCNA and you're going to be in community. And it's not just people learning. Like in this community will be people that know networking well. People who are network engineers for very well-known companies. you're you're going to be surrounded by people who have already walked the path you're going down. That's really important. You're going to have mentors for you. Not to mention me and Jeremy will be in there, too. So, Discord, if you're new to Discord, um it's a community. It's it's it's like Slack and corporate. Um it's a community where you can get in there and just chat with people. You have message board. You get a whole thing. If you're a gamer, you already know about Discord, but this is just for IT nerds to get in there and learn how to do networking. Um, not we were we gonna have Zach come in here and kind of go over the details for us. Oh, that's right. Thank you. Yeah. Zack. Chello. I'm here. Yeah, I have arrived. Hello. Good to be here, y'all. Uh, I love your all the excitement that you guys have. Like, it gets me all jacked up and ready to go. So, I know all of our students are are jacked up and ready as well. But yes, Discord is going to be uh the official community uh I guess uh application that we'll use um for the Network Chuck Academy. So with Discord, you're not just going to be accessing it for the summer of CCNA. Anytime you enroll with uh a course on Network Chuck Academy, we're going to be utilizing Discord to help support you and help support your journey as well. So, if you have questions and you need help with things uh with any of your classes or courses that you take or just trying to figure out your way through your IT career, Discord is going to be the perfect resource for that. And and thank you, Jeremy, for for pulling it up there. Um it it's, you know, free for everybody to join, you can come and hang out and then when you do enroll in summer CCNA, uh you'll get access to the uh exclusive summer CCNA channel. And if you sign up for the premium access where you get access to to Chuck and Jeremy every single day, you'll get access to a private uh Discord area uh so that we can hang out and you know help you out further along your journey. So I'm really excited to be uh bringing Discord uh into this whole piece of things and and bringing the community together. And I want Excuse me. Sorry. I want to h give a huge shout out to uh Captain. Yeah, I am. Man, it's exciting though. I'm super excited for this. I can't wait to watch people learn and go through this journey uh and take their next steps in their career. Uh but a huge shout out to Captain Blacket uh for for helping out with the Discord community and you know everybody else who's been joining as well and participating and and just being a part of it. Uh the whole purpose of this is for us to just come together and have support, have a a you know like-minded group of people that we can connect with, interact with, get advice from, you know, gain that guidance and just you know have a good time and and be nerds together, right? Like that's really what it's all about. Let's be nerds and hang out. So join us on Discord and and Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Real quick, if you're watching this, you're like, I don't need my CCNA. I already have my CCNA. join. Like, you need to jump in and help out. Like, jump in and be a mentor for people or just jump in and nerd out with us. Like, this this is gonna be a cool summer. Like, I'm so excited for this. So, if you're if you're just like, "Ah, I'm on the fence. I don't know." Just join. Just do it. Check it out. Pay it forward. That's what we need to do. Seriously. Like, and you you'll find that just doing that will not only give you that warm fuzzy feeling. There's always that. But also, you're going to be teaching yourself again. you're gonna be solidifying those skills and it's just going to make you better. If if anything, you're gonna become a better teacher and and a a better person, just mentoring the next generation. So, just join, help us out. It'd be fun. I want to see you there. Yeah, there's a very practical thing to that and that'll be some of the things that we're talking about on the live streams is networking of like forming network connections. And just like uh Chuck was saying earlier, it's not what you know, it's who you know. It's fun to say little cliches like that, but it's hard. Like the the funny when when we get into I mean, Zach, Chuck, we're all going to tell our stories on these uh live streams. Um I when when I first started teaching, I took a personality test. My personality is actually as far left on the introvert side as you can go. I had no idea. like networking was like totally uncomfortable. When I was teaching my first classes, I would literally step up there and my voice would be shaking. Like it's it's it's a skill that you can learn and that's what we're going to be talking about in the live streams which are open to everybody and the daily connections. And when I say everybody, the people that have signed up for free and the people that are are members of the course, um the live streams will go to everybody. Uh, but that's I I also want to make sure I mention please enroll. We have people that have signed up for for free, but they haven't actually clicked enroll in the in the course yet. There there's one more step like lit literally there's 35,000 people that have signed up for summer of CCNA. 10,000 of them have signed up and haven't clicked the enroll button. 10,000 people. So that's why I'm like hit hit the button. Um so so everybody in there uh will be there and so we are going to be there live. We're going to be talking about uh IT professions. I'm going to tell you the story of Rex. Um Rex is someone who became an internal student uh in in getting certifications. He got so many certifications but never got a job because there was a disconnect between uh getting the C and actually becoming career ready. We're going to talk about soft skills. Um, which also is a term that it's funny. I Chuck, you and I use these terms so often, but I think like as I've I've talked to a lot of people, they're like soft skills. Is that like a cert that you get? And it's not. It's soft skills is is what makes you marketable. You are going to be marketing yourself to businesses that are wanting to hire you. You can come in with a whole bunch of certs and a whole bunch of college degrees and a whole bunch of I call them marks on your resume of like I've got this and I can do this and I can do this. But if you lack soft skills like the ability to actually say here's things that I've done in the past. Here's how I can lead a team. here's how I can I would communicate with an upset customer if if they were really mad that the network went down and our SLA was this and like those are all soft skills and those are the things like schools do not teach you they they do not teach you those kind of things they're like learn information that's someone just said I wish there was a course on soft skills in the comments and that's what we're doing with this we're going to be walking you through these soft skills uh because I I I saw people when I was on the help desk And I I realized that there were soft skills I needed and I acquired those to be able to succeed and and move up in my career. But I saw other guys who didn't invest in those skills who just didn't didn't do it, didn't have it, and they stayed where they were. It wasn't that they weren't smart enough. It wasn't that they didn't study and get certifications. There's just that call it an X factor, whatever it is, just knowing how to kind of market yourself and knowing how to do things that just help you. We're going to help you guys with that. Yeah. Yeah. that it it will help you get unstuck. It'll help you market yourself. I I literally just one week ago I was I was presenting it in front of a whole group of people and I made a statement and there was a guy who got mad at me. I was I said coming to work every day and doing your job means you will probably never get promoted. And he was like what do you mean I'm doing my job? That that and I'm like that's right. From the business's perspective, you're doing your job, but what are you doing to show how much more value you're giving? Like, like a lot of that is the soft skills. And that's also where we want to dive a little bit in a lot of the daily interactions into self-identity. That isn't like I need a better word for that, but it's like what do you love to do? I have seen and I I went through a little of this myself where you're really good at doing this and you're like okay what's my next career move and you're like well I guess it's a manager I need to become a manager I need to become a VP of D and and I've seen so many people get into that and it's like I hate management like they they like but they're like but I thought that was what I was supposed to do because you go from this to a manager that means you're and knowing what's with uh Simba, Lion King. Know yourself, Simba. Right? Like know yourself. And that's part of what we want to add to this is like how do you know who you are and what kind of things make you come alive because that's what you need to lean into and and that's that's where we're going to go into a lot of the career paths. Zach, you have a thought. I know you do. Yeah, absolutely. So, we're getting a lot of questions and this is perfect timing for this of what's the biggest difference between the $30, you know, subscription and the $175 upgrade. And it really boils down to you get exclusive access to the Discord. You get exclusive access to a Discord channel there. And you're getting that daily check-in access to Chuck and Jeremy, myself, and other members of the Network Chuck Academy team as well. So that's where we do get to spend more time and working on soft skills and answering those questions, providing uh you know career guidance and help and things like that. So if you guys are considering or debating do I want the subscription one, do I want to actually do you know sign up for the premium plan, the premium plan you're getting that exclusive access to us and getting those that soft skill help that you know we want to help you with. So yeah, you know, it's funny, Zach, just as you you popped up there, you've literally built an entire course on soft skills at some of your work history. True. I have. Yeah, I have a whole course dedicated uh to it on TCM security and that's it's free to join for y'all. It's a little bit older and outdated. So that's where uh you know, it's like three years old now. So now we're looking at okay, 2026, what's different? What's changed? And I'm looking at developing a whole brand new course for that for y'all so that you guys do have the soft skills that you need in the current age if you will right things have changed dramatically in the last three years even since I you know first dropped that course so how has AI changed everything right that's you know a ton like that's a topic that we will definitely you know touch on talk about and and dive into so you know we can help you guys feel a lot better about it there will be so much so much good stuff go ahead Chuck sorry that's something we live every day you like we're we see the AI headlines. We know what's going on. Like we're we know and we want to help you through that because it is scary and you wake up and you're like I'm starting my IT career but everyone's telling me it's going away. No, it's not. But things are changing. So, let's talk about that. Um I did see a question earlier. Um if someone was debating on joining the premium because they won't have access to or they won't be able to make all the live streams. We will be making those available after as well. So that that will all be available. I'm not sure as exactly how soon after it'll be available, but everything that we are doing here will be available to you. Yeah, anytime we do a live stream that's on YouTube, you guys should get instant access to that almost, you know, right after the live stream uh completes. It might take a little bit, you know, up to an hour or two or something for YouTube to do all its rendering, but you should be able to access these almost immediately after uh we do a live stream. And by the way, I saw a question earlier asking who's Zach? And if you don't know Zach, I mean, come on. Zach is IT career questions. He is himself a YouTuber. And actually, Zach and I go way back. We started out live streaming together. And he's been helping people get into IT for a long time, starting their cyber security careers and guiding people through advice on the A+, CCNA, what have you. So, he's been doing this for a very long time. And Jeremy and I are extremely blessed to have him on board. And you guys are are blessed because of this, too. Zach is killer. He is so cool. Yeah, it is. I've just gotten to know Zach this last week. That's when he started. Literally like this whole thing just came together. And Zach, I gotta say it to you while we're live. It has been so cool to have you on board. Such the right guy. Such the right time. Um anyway, love let me let me let me say this. Um, I do want to make sure that uh you guys know we aimed to bring a thousand people to get their CCNA and we got 35,000 people signed up. It's actually even more than that now. And we're like, we love this. This is like like the energy that Chuck and I have. It's like we would have been cool with a thousand, but it's like multiply that by 35. If you're like, you guys are like all over the place. It's like because we got 35,000 people signed up that that are all going to go through this. We want to build something awesome, but I I want to make make sure you guys like, thank you for your patience. Uh you may run into things that's like, oh, where's that link again? We're like, ah, we didn't add it there. And so so please know that we are we are um I mean the the system is solid, but we just didn't realize there'd be this many people. So we're building up support. We're building up uh the teams to support this. And that's why the community became a huge part of how we can make this go. Um, so your game plan, we're we're reaching the Actually, shoot, we just shot right past the end of the hour. That's all right. Um, game game plan for week one. Um, one, keep up with the daily content. Our aim was to try and feed an hour a day. And so it is Monday through Friday. I know a lot of the specifics I saw Anthony uh mentioned in the in the chat. It is Monday through Friday that we built the schedule. So you have weekends off, but that also tells you that if you miss a day or two, you have the weekends that you can you can catch up and and stay in line with everything that we're doing. The daily live streams are going to keep pace with that schedule. So Chuck and I tomorrow will be talking about the concepts and the stuff that you are looking at today. Um, this week get connected in our Discord community. Go in there, introduce yourself. I think I I think I uh showed you uh right here just even while we're talking right now the intros are just flying through. I mean look at this. Look at the time stamps like 206 207 207 208 20 just down and down and down. People are from all over the world are jumping in. Come in just say a quick hello introduce yourself and post a certification or career-based question because Chuck and I are looking at those. we're we're uh looking at the the uh people that are paying for the subscription in the community um so that we can filter down the questions because otherwise we we just can't keep up. Um and we'll answer a ton of those live. And also this Friday I'll be walking you through in the videos getting Packet Tracer installed. So obviously have that installed. That'll be your first lab environment uh on your computer. Um, so I do want to make sure I mentioned uh Discord. When you get in there, you'll you'll see this introduction area. You'll see a welcome. It took it's Chuck. This is where I This was my first true time in Discord. I logged in. I'm like I went I went into the introductions. I'm like, "Hey everybody, I'm Jeremy. So excited to be doing this with you." And then I'm like, "This this is kind of lame." and like like all all you've got. And then I was like, "Oh, there's there's a welcome there. There's instructions in there." Like I went a couple days. I'm like, we just introduce ourselves. You actually go in there and you click a little what do you call them, Chuck? The little icons. Oh, like the emojis. The emojis. Yeah. You click an emoji and all of a sudden everything I'm like, I open the doors. It's like it's like the old role playing games where it's like, oh, that's the secret button I had to push and then the doors open. So, if you only see introductions, read the directions. Zach's bringing up. He's like, "Here, have some cloud share me." I know. I sharing the wrong screen. So, uh on Discord, there's this get rolls channel. So, as soon as you uh log into Discord here, you should see get rolls here on the left. Um please note that uh because I have admin access, I see a bunch of things. You guys won't see all of these things on the left, so don't be overwhelmed by it. All you need to do is go over to get rolls and smash the book icon and then you'll get access to the summer of CCNA program over here on your lefthand side. So once you do that, you should be good to go. And then if you signed up for premium access, you'll get an email about instructions on how we get you set up with premium access in Discord as well. I'm so glad to hear one of the people comment that uh Discord needs a course in itself. I'm like, it so does. I'm like, I thought this was for gamers and it's simple and and it's not. There's Yeah, don't let it scare you, though. Like, it's it's a bit of a learning curve, but when you get in there, it'll it'll come naturally. You'll be using it naturally before you know it. So, um Discord is is very fun and it's going to be the place where you'll I think you'll find the most amount of value from this. It's the community. Honestly, the the training is going to be awesome. You're going to learn CCNA and you're going to get your hands uh dirty actually doing real things. The community is where things happen. and it's where your career is going to grow or start and grow. So, I want to see you in there. Me and Jeremy going to be in there. Zach's going to be in there. It's going to be fun. And just so you guys know, when we go to the Q&A sections for all of our live streams, we are going to be taking priority on all of the Discord uh questions that come up. So, if you do want to participate and get your question answered, I would strongly recommend you guys joining Discord so you can do that. Good. Well, this is it. We've we've gone through everything. Chuck, Zach, did you see any other questions as we were I mean just it's it's scrolling through. Any other questions that you wanted to bring up before we wrap up this session? Oh, I do have one. Uh is actually hold on. Yeah, sorry. I was just pulling this one up here because that's a kind of a common question that we're getting. So, will the course be open for only one day for free users? This is especially important. Uh, for example, if I'm busy, cannot access today's course, can I come back to uh uh tomorrow to access both the day's content? Yes, Jeremy Chuck, you guys want to Yes. The So, the free users get a rolling two weeks. So, yes, we didn't want to keep it that tight. Um, so you actually have two weeks of content that will roll. So, right now, today, you've unlocked week one. Next week, you'll keep week one and you'll get week two, right? So, you'll have that by week three. week one disappears, week two and three are there. Does that make sense? So, kind of kind of rolls rolls its way along. So, if you miss a day, if you miss four days, if you miss five days, you can still catch up. And that's that's where I'm like, please make sure you you keep pace because you don't want to get past that point where it rolls past like, oh, I just took a couple weeks off. Well, then you're you're stuck, right? So, so yes, you uh you will have grace periods of two weeks. Any other questions that you saw? Chuck, you wanted to bring up something? Yeah, someone asked, "How many cups of coffee will I need a day?" I need at least five. Um, but you can you can work it with four. Just got to be careful. You got to balance. You got to time it throughout the day. I'm on like three, so I'm up I'm have to up my numbers. I guess I did see a question about uh can I convert to premium at any time throughout the course? Yes, you can. Yes, you can. you can jump right in. Go to premium if you realize, oh wow, I've been missing out on the daily stuff and I can't get to the labs. Yes, go ahead and jump in. Um yes, and actually there there's um I'm now now I'm looking at the question. I'm like there's a lot of good ones in there. Uh the labs, someone's saying, "How do I get to the labs?" Packet Tracer you're going to install yourself on Friday, right? But the other labs, they're going to be available in it's not it's it's not the content from week two, it's week three. So, when you get to week three, they are literally integrated with the course. Do I still have that up here? Uh, no, I don't. It's close. But when you're in the course, you'll you'll have the lesson and then right after lesson, it's like, okay, there's your labs and you just click it and it pops up in the course. Uh, the real the real iOS. So, so you won't have to go finding them. The course walks you through it. Likewise, um, and Chuck, I'm actually curious of your perspective on this. Someone said, "What's the difference between this and network plus?" Do you have an opinion on that? Yes, I do. So, Network Plus, if you don't know what that is, it's from CompTIA. It's their vendor neutralert, and it's a big one. It it takes a minute to actually study for it. Um, it's a solid certification, so if you get it, it has value. The problem I have with the network plus is that it's really lacking on the practical knowledge. It's going to teach you some networking concepts, but it's not going to be as hands-on as you might need to jump into your career. So, normally when people ask me, okay, I want to learn networking. Do I go to network plus or CCNA? I'm going to say CCNA because it gives you more hands-on. It does skewed more towards Cisco and people complain about that. But then I'm like, but everyone uses Cisco. Like Jeremy was saying earlier, literally every vendor kind of peaked at Cisco's playbook and goes, "Oh, yeah, let's do that." So that's just how networking is. So CCNA is going to give you a lot more practical knowledge. And then the other benefit, and we've already talked on this, it's the gold standard. Like if you put Network Plus on your resume or you put CCNA, CCNA is going to win every time. If you go to the job boards right now, go to Indeed or LinkedIn, you search for CCNA in jobs, there's going to be a lot more jobs that come up. So yeah, CCNA just overall is more valuable. Um, I do want to hop on one more question, Jeremy, before we move on. I saw someone say, "Okay, what prerequisite knowledge do I need to jump into this? Like do I need to know some things before jumping into CCNA?" I would say you you can just jump in with us. Like it will definitely help to know a bit of uh basic computer knowledge, IT knowledge, but I think you can just jump in and and tag along with us. Especially with us doing the Q&A sessions and live streams and jumping into community, you can catch up to the CCNA uh CCNA knowledge. Uh what's your opinion on that, Jeremy? I was watching the questions. My my Are you asking what my opinion is on Network Plus or or was there a different question? Yeah, on uh Yeah, man. You weren't even paying attention. I'm just kidding. No, I there was such someone asked I'm a woman. Do I have to grow a beard? I'm like I'm just cracking up at these questions. So, so I know the question was um what's the prerequisite knowledge to jump into this? What do they need to know to jump into CCNA? Can they be a complete beginner? Do they already have to have A+ for example? What do you think? Good question. Um, so the A+ doesn't hurt, but you can jump into the world of networking without like so I always say there's three foundations that you want to get and we'll again a lot of this we'll talk about more, but it's A+. You want to have that. It's the foundation of technology. It's the foundation of it. Like that's a computer, that's an operating system, that's memory. Um, but if you if you have a sense of of computers, smartphones, Wi-Fi, like that kind of like you can jump into the world of CCNA. Now, and that's where I'll I'll emphasize if you are like zero, like I I work at a restaurant. Um, I've never used technology in my life. A+ might be the better off uh angle to go because you just need to get a sense of the universe that you walked into. And A+ is kind of that universe place. When it comes to network plus versus CCA, I am all CCNA because network plus I always I'm always like it's it's like when I when I teach my boys to like I'm like hey you see all these sprinkler lines that we need to run in the backyard they're like yeah I'm like so yeah they they all connect together. It's kind of how it works. They're kind of like oh okay I get it. And like I'm but until I'm like, "Dude, get yourself some like a little knife. We're going to cut through this PVC. We're gonna we're going to put the, you know, the the purple stuff, the blue stuff sticking it." They're like, "Oh, now I get it." Like there's such a depth and a richness. And that's what you get with the CCNA is it's like, "Oh, okay." Like, "I got the OSI model, but now I really get the OSI model because I've done it right. You can't do the OSI model, but you get the idea. And I would say like if you're on the fence, join for free. Um and just see see if if you can keep up and that that's fine. You don't this we're doing this now. Summer CCNA it's happening now. You can jump into the community right now. I wouldn't I would just jump in to see if you're ready and not blow away this chance because this this is a pretty cool opportunity. I would have killed for this back in 2013. 2013 me would be like wait what? I get to talk with these people. I get to talk with Jeremy Char and ask him questions because for me when I was learning it was just click play and I got everything I I could get right there. If I can ask him questions that's a whole different ballgame. This this is amazing. So anyways, what are the questions we got here? Um I got one I got to answer for Discord access for everybody. So I'm going to pull this up here. here. It's a generalized question here, but they if you send in your form uh to get access to the premium channels in Discord, it might take up to 24 hours for your role to get approved uh and added. So, just wait it out another couple hours. Uh at the end of the night tonight, I'm going to be going through that list and adding everybody to their roles. So, just bear with us there. Uh you'll get added in in no time flat. So, don't worry about it. Yep. Yep. And I'm all Yeah. I'm just I'm watch these are all So many questions…

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