Speaker 1: 0:00

I don't think I did a very good job of putting things in a way that people could actually understand, Having all this technical expertise, and I noticed that a lot of the other engineers they weren't all that much better at it than I was. So basically my why is to help people like me just get better at giving presentations, Because oftentimes the people who are great at communicating are the ones who get the opportunities.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hey everyone, this is Mike Roberts, creator of the Apprenticeship Playbook, and you're tuned in to the Skills First podcast. In today's world, skills First, hiring is revolutionizing the job market and on this show I sit down with trailblazers who are rethinking hiring practices and embracing experiential learning, as well as the people impacted. Follow along as we dive into tips, innovative ideas and proven strategies to help you navigate and thrive in the evolving landscape of modern apprenticeships. Can you tell us what your name is and what is it that you do?

Speaker 1: 0:58

My name is Neil Thompson and I am the founder of Teach the Geek. I work with technical professionals so they can present more effectively, especially in front of non-technical audiences.

Speaker 2: 1:09

Nice. So tell me where do you live? I live in San Diego, Nice. We got a lot of San Diego folks, but I always want to make sure that the audience knows. Sometimes we deal with folks that are not in Southern California. Tell me, what were you doing before you started this phenomenal organization that you have?

Speaker 1: 1:25

I worked for several years as a product development engineer in the medical device industry, more specifically, spinal implants.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Yes, and we've had lots of conversations Very interesting we don't have time in the Snackballs podcast to go deep on this but very interesting work that you've shared with me about the bones and grafting and all that kind of really cool stuff, Amazing stuff. Tell me what was one of the biggest challenges in your journey to become a founder of an organization that supports people in STEM?

Speaker 1: 1:54

It was knowing the right things to do.

Speaker 1: 1:57

I made a whole lot of mistakes early on, and I took advice from people that I probably shouldn't have taken advice from.

Speaker 1: 2:03

I developed an online course and I called it Teach the Geek to Speak, and it was geared towards people like myself, people in the STEM fields, and when I first put it out, I didn't really have much of a plan as to how to promote and to sell it, and so I hired a sales and marketing consultant to help me develop the plan, but everything she suggested I do didn't work, one of which was having a webinar on Facebook, and I had misgivings about it from the beginning, but because I didn't have that experience, I trusted her judgment. I wasn't even on Facebook, and yet I'm going to be doing a webinar on Facebook, so I did this webinar on Facebook. To this day, I have no clue who was there that actually listened to that webinar. What I do know is by the end of it, when I was talking about the offer of Teach the Geek to speak, everybody had logged off. No one bought anything, so it was all a waste of time, and I paid that person some pretty good money.

Speaker 2: 3:01

Yeah, yeah, I bet there's no shortage of people that are trying to promote themselves as marketers and sales people of the product. So, yeah, I feel you it's rough. Tell me what is your? Why, like, why do you do the work that you're doing right now?

Speaker 1: 3:17

Because I see I saw the benefit of getting better at giving presentations. That really was the motivation for starting Teach the Geek. When I worked as an engineer, at my second job I had to give presentations in front of senior management on a monthly basis and those first few presentations were absolutely horrendous. I did not know it was possible to sweat that profusely from one's body while awake. But there I was doing exactly that and the problem with it ultimately was I don't think I did a very good job at putting things in a way that people could actually understand, having all this technical expertise, and I noticed that a lot of the other engineers they weren't all that much better at it than I was. So basically, my why is to help people like me just get better at giving presentations, because oftentimes the people who are great at communicating are the ones who get the opportunities.

Speaker 2: 4:06

Yeah, I feel you, and that storytelling seems to resonate more and more as I get deeper into my experience running a nonprofit. That I know one of our shortcomings or at least my shortcoming is I am just not that storyteller yet and it's hard for us to really get that message and public awareness about the work that we're doing when you don't have the CEO, the founder, able to clearly articulate that, that story. Get that messaging. I feel you. It is definitely a need for super technical people to be able to really break it down and make it appealing for people to pay attention, stay focused right and get the gist of things. How has STEM made an impact on you? How about professionally as well as personally?

Speaker 1: 4:48

Professionally. It got me to doing what I'm doing, although I will say that my interest in STEM there really wasn't one initially. I became an engineer because my father said I should. It wasn't because I thought to be an engineer when I was coming out of high school. I really didn't know much about it and I grew up in a pretty strict home and I just did what I was told. It's ironic that I became an engineer when, because when you often when you think of engineers, you think of problem solvers. But before you have a problem or before you solve anything, you have to know what the problem is. But I never really asked anything about problems, so I never really anything to solve. So the fact that I ended up being an engineer of all things is actually rather ironic, but the it. I don't regret it, though. It worked out really well and I've enjoyed my time working in medical devices, so it's definitely not something that I regret. And then, personally, it's really what the children's book is. Really, when I think about personally, I think about my children's book, and it's that it's called. Ask uncle neil, why is my hair curly? It's about my nephew asking me why his hair is the way it is, and I use science to answer the question.

Speaker 1: 5:54

And the motivation for writing that book was rather personal. I want to see more kids become, or stay curious. I think kids initially or just inherently are curious. But sometimes you might be like me, a kid who had parents who just said do as I say. But unfortunately that doesn't help in developing the innovators of tomorrow, because you can't grow up in this strict environment where you just do as you're told and then you become an adult and then are told to innovate. You have no experience in doing it because the curiosity was never fostered. So that's the main reason I wrote the book. It's for children up to ages eight years old. And then also I want those kids to know that there are no careers that are off limits to them especially black children't do. But I want them to have the confidence from a young age to know that even though there are those naysayers, they can ignore them and go for what they want.

Speaker 2: 6:57

Yeah, absolutely, and a lot of the way you grew up.

Speaker 2: 7:00

I had a very similar upbringing in terms of very strict my parents instilled upon me early on that I was a huge disappointment to them because I was not good at school and because I didn't show the effort in the things that they thought were really important at the time and that took me a little while to heal all those wounds and get to the point where today I can think, like you do, a little bit more clearly about how do we pay it forward to the next generation and make sure they feel inspired to do, you know, careers that make them feel like they're adding value and they belong, and a sense of science can be an interesting field and can be one that they can be in awe and inspired by and stay in that mentality of like constant innovation and ideas and trying things and experimenting and like that could be a successful thing and it shouldn't be just like shoved away and pushed down because we all grew up and we're tend to take less risks as we get older.

Speaker 2: 7:58

I'm curious what's the last? You're a curious person. What's the last new thing that you learned?

Speaker 1: 8:03

last new thing that I learned, let's see. Oh, I learned that to keep bots or to at least, if you're on linkedin and you want to be alerted as to whether it's a bot that's that is contacting you through a message, you put something before your name, so now I have a dot before my name, so if I ever get a message that says dot neil, I know it's from a bot yeah, I've seen a few people use that strategy and I think smarter bots are gonna learn to look for a letter and try and trim that thing off.

Speaker 2: 8:39

But I think it's gonna work for a little while. I think the less sophisticated bots will be distracted by that. Who's someone that you would love that you either look up to or you'd like to give a shout out to? Living or dead, let's do living. I think that's more interesting.

Speaker 1: 8:54

I want to give a shout out to Luis Martinez, the founder of we the Plug I really and Christiana Russell, the COO of we the Plug. I really like what they're doing here in the San Diego area of really pushing the importance of Black entrepreneurs to embrace entrepreneurship, and they're providing them with the resources to do so. I attended one of their events maybe a month or so ago it couldn't have been that long ago. It was a wonderful event. They had a fireside chat that I thought was rather interesting and it was a great place to network with other people and just be around other like-minded people who see the benefit of embracing this innovation economy and becoming entrepreneurs. So kudos to them.

Speaker 2: 9:35

Yeah, shout out to Christiana and Luis. I know them very well as well and would again agree that they are some amazing humans. And yeah, we the plug doing amazing stuff, all right. Last and most important question what's your favorite snack?

Speaker 1: 9:50

My favorite snack are donuts, and it's a problem because I like them a lot but they don't like me as much, so I try to stay away from them. But every now and then I'll hit up a Dunkin' Donuts and get a maple bar and then a toasted coconut donut.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Nice. And man, you mentioned Dunkin'. There's not a lot of Dunk of Duncan here. Are you originally from San Diego or are you from somewhere else? I'm from somewhere else.

Speaker 1: 10:22

Well, I learned about Duncan when I lived on the East Coast in Austin, and there pretty much every other block there's a Duncan. I remember when I first started working I didn't have a car. I actually had to save up for one. I used to walk to work every day and it was a couple of miles each way and I passed at least four Dunkin's on the way to and from work.

Speaker 2: 10:36

Yeah, so for those in Southern California we're just starting to get that. I grew up in the Boston area too, when I was, when I was a kid, it is I think it's more prevalent than Starbucks is out here. Sometimes in San Diego there's a Starbucks. In the crossing street there's a Starbucks, but it's even more prevalent on the East Coast Dunkin's everywhere. So I'm glad we have them here in San Diego now because the coffee is like liquid crack. Don't get me started on Dunkin'. Anyways, thanks so much, neil. Appreciate you coming on the program.

Speaker 2: 11:05

Thanks for having me, Mike you've been listening to skills first, the apprenticeship playbook podcast. By the way, if this is valuable to you, don't be lame. Share the game. This is how we know you love it. If you're a thinking about changing how you hire, please share it so we know this type of stuff is what you want.