MEL #018 | From Reluctant Engineer to Empowered Entrepreneur through Communication Mastery with Neil Thompson

THOMPSON (00:00)

Be helpful. The world would be so much better if people focused on being helpful as opposed to what others could do for them.

ADAMS (00:33)

In this episode, I speak with Neil Thompson, founder of Teach the Geek, where he works with technical professionals so they can present more effectively, especially in front of non-technical audiences.

Neil entered engineering because his father told him to pursue it, not out of personal passion. After earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering and briefly starting a PhD, he pivoted into medical device development and eventually launched his business.

In our leadership segment, Neil talks about how he was thrown into a project lead role without formal authority and had to learn how to influence a cross-functional team. Through structured communication, building relationships with functional managers, and focusing on helpfulness and clarity, he became an effective leader without direct power. Neil urges aspiring engineering leaders to follow their own motivations rather than external expectations. He stresses the importance of planning career transitions carefully, building supportive communities, being willing to invest in yourself and maintaining a strong focus on communication skills.

I actually met Neil when he invited me to be on his podcast a few months ago. we talked about why I think communication skills are critical for technical leaders, my step-by-step approach to designing, developing and delivering presentations, and how I use AI to prepare for Q &A.

You can check out that conversation on episode 345 of the Teach the Geek podcast. I’ll put a link in the show notes.

Without further delay, here is my conversation with Neil Thompson.

ADAMS (01:58)

Hi Neil, welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership. All right, I’m thrilled to have you here. Can you start just by telling us how you got into engineering as a career field?

THOMPSON (02:03)

Thanks for having me.

became an engineer because my father told me to.

ADAMS (02:12)

That’s nice, that’s short and sweet.

THOMPSON (02:13)

It’s the absolute truth. And it’s something I used to lie about because I was embarrassed by it. Because oftentimes when you ask people that question, they have a pretty good story about it. Maybe they played with Legos when they were a kid, or maybe they were part of robotics club when they were in high school. I don’t really remember playing with Legos as a kid, really. And there was no robotics club at my high school. When I finished high school, my father said, do engineering. And I said, OK. so I did. I really didn’t have any other plans as to what I wanted to do. knew he likely would have wanted me to go to university and study something because I have an older sister and she did that. And so I just assumed that I would have to do the same thing. And for some reason, he told me to do engineering and I her to do engineering. I’m not exactly sure. I’m not sure why he told me. It’s not as if he was an engineer himself because he wasn’t. But he said engineering. I said, OK. And four years later, I had an engineering degree.

ADAMS (03:06)

Yeah, I am curious, so do you have any engineering in your family at all? do you have any sense for where that recommendation came from?

THOMPSON (03:17)

I think I have an uncle who’s an engineer, but on my mother’s side, not even on my father’s side. I don’t even know if it came from there. Although, if I were to guess, the reason was engineers tend to have more stable jobs. I guess it’s easier to get a job having an engineering degree. And maybe that was the reason, maybe just job security. But I suppose I don’t know. I never asked them.

ADAMS (03:39)

And then, so you started out in materials engineering and then went to bioengineering. Can you just talk about maybe the choices about which type of engineering to pursue?

THOMPSON (03:48)

I did materials engineering because I didn’t get into the program that I initially applied for. It was a program called engineering science and was essentially a mix of all the different engineering disciplines, but it was a very competitive program. I was wait-listed for it. And I was told that if you wanted to start, I wanted to start, I could go into the other programs. One was mining engineering and the other one was materials engineering. And I thought, well, maybe materials was more versatile. So that’s why I picked that.

And then when it comes to bioengineering, again, my father said, do that. So I did bioengineering. To this day, I don’t really know why he picked that. Maybe he’s watching something on TV about medical devices and thought it was cool. And he said, do that. So bioengineering it is.

ADAMS (04:34)

And once you got into engineering, mean, did you like it? Did you find that there were things that were of interest to you? Or was it very much that kind of pragmatic sort of, which by the way is what I did. I took a very pragmatic approach of, okay, I’m here, I’m gonna finish it now and looks like job prospects are pretty good. So, I’ll figure out if I like it later. So I’m just curious what your experience sort of going through the curriculum and.

And did you find aspects of it that you ended up being really passionate about or not so much?

THOMPSON (05:02)

I wasn’t, I was not passionate about any of it really. mean, be very honest, but I went through the four years and then I did a master’s. even started a PhD program. I didn’t finish that one. I got a year through of the PhD program, but ultimately I did it because my father said I should and I trusted his judgment. I suppose as I said, he thought that there was job prospects there and you can get paid pretty well as an engineer. And that’s basically what it was.

I can’t really remember any of the courses I took. I thought, this is really interesting. What I thought was, I want this to be over with so I can move on to the next course.

ADAMS (05:37)

I appreciate the honesty. I mean, I actually don’t think that you’re an outlier in this approach of kind of just deciding to just get through it and figuring out once you come through the other side,

I mean, there’s a lot of good things about having an engineering degree even if you don’t end up being super passionate about the specifics of this very dry curriculum that we have to go through. So tell me a little bit about what you did go on to get a master’s degree and then what did you do after that?

THOMPSON (06:08)

I got the master’s degree. And as I said, I started a PhD program in biomedical engineering. I finished a year of it. And I realized I don’t want to do this. With an undergraduate and a master’s degree, you have a sense of how long it’s going to take. Undergrad, it’ll take likely four years. The master’s, it’ll take two. But with a doctorate, it’ll take as long as it takes. You have to develop something that’s novel and

You have a committee that you have to speak with and an advisor, and they’re very much involved with telling you when you’re done too. So you could very well be there four years, five years, six years. It goes as long as it goes, and you have very little control over it really. I didn’t want to be in that position anymore. I started undergraduate at 18. Now in this first year of this PhD program, I’m 24, just turning 25. So this is like seven years later.

And I’m thinking, all the people that I went to school with undergrad, they’re living their lives now. They’re buying cars, they’re buying condos, they’re going on vacations, and I’m going nowhere. I’m going to the lab. I have a scooter. I don’t even have a car. The scooter couldn’t only go 30 miles an hour at the most. I had to drive it in the bicycle lane because I didn’t want to dram up traffic.

ADAMS (07:25)

Yeah

THOMPSON (07:26)

You know, they’re going they’re eating good food. I’ll be eating beans and rice I know all the tall the beads black beads I got my protein from the sure wasn’t from any steak. I’ll tell you

Yeah, I’m living this life and this is not even something I chose to do. It’s something my father said to do. But I mean at that point, 25 years old, I’m trying to think, you know what? This is time for you to actually choose something for yourself as opposed to what someone else chose for you. So I dropped out of the PhD program. This was back in 2005. So wow, that’s 20 years ago now. Wow. That’s the 20 year anniversary of me dropping out of that program, I’m sure.

My father’s still upset about it. He’ll have to get over it. ⁓ So after I dropped out of that program, I had to figure out what I was going to do. Actually, I moved back into his condo. He wasn’t too happy about that. I was staying in his spare room and I was applying for jobs. And you know what’s so funny? I almost went back.

ADAMS (08:22)

That’s right, he’ll get over it.

THOMPSON (08:40)

It was, was, I didn’t even, when I moved back with my father, I didn’t even unpack my things because I thought, okay, I have a, I have an undergraduate in engineering, I have a master’s in engineering, and I think I can get a job as quickly, you know, with all this, with all these degrees. But that wasn’t the case. A month went by, then two months, then three months, then four. And that fifth month, my father said, well, it looks like you’re not going to get a job. You might as well go back to school. So I actually applied to go back. But luckily, in that seventh month,

I got a job as a research associate at a small medical device company, a startup in the Boston area. And I was like, thank God, I have to go back. So that’s what I did. I worked as a research associate at that company for a little under two years. And then I got a job as a product development engineer at a larger medical device company in the San Diego area where I now live. I moved there about 17, maybe 18 years ago at this point. Yeah, 18 years ago now.

So as well been ever since I worked in medical devices as a product development engineer for a number of years. And the whole speaking thing came from me having to give presentations in front of management at that job, not being all that great at it. And I got a lot better at it over time because I saw the benefit of doing so. And I would often sit in on some of the other engineers who had to give presentations. And I realized I’m not alone in this whole not being very good at giving presentations thing. And I think.

A lot of us, struggle with putting our technical expertise in a way that non-technical people can understand. And that’s something I came to realize. As I said, I got better at it over time. So when I started Teach the Geek, it was really to help people like myself, people that come from those technical fields with their presentation skills so that they’re better at it and not, they weren’t wet in the bed giving presentations like I did initially.

ADAMS (10:28)

Yeah, I, you know, I mean, and you’re right, and it’s something that we do struggle with. And I’m curious, like, what do you find is some of the common challenges that the technical folks that you work with have with public speaking? Are there some common themes that you’re encountering?

THOMPSON (10:44)

Yeah, I think a big one is them believing that other people will just understand what they’re talking about because they understand it so well. And what we need to realize is that we weren’t always technical people. I I told you about the degree that I got, my father told me to get it, the masters I got because my father told me to get it, the PhD that I started because my father told me to get it. All these, all the schooling that I went through.

ADAMS (11:07)

Right.

THOMPSON (11:12)

and then getting jobs in various places and using the technical expertise to my advantage in those roles. But that wasn’t the case always. I wasn’t always a technical person. So now I know all this technical knowledge and I just assume that, well, I know it so well, other people should know it too. What’s the holdup? But what we need to understand is they don’t have the same background we do. Why would they understand all this technical jargon that we’re using?

Haven’t we ever been in a situation where we’ve been in the audience and someone is using a bunch of words we don’t know? I suspect we have, and yet we want to get up on a stage and then use a whole bunch of words that we just assume other people know. It’s pretty hypocritical if you think about it. So ultimately, think a lot of us, forget that we weren’t always technical. if we were to put a presentation together, we really need to think about that person, the person that we were before we were the technical person.

What kind of presentation could we have understood back then? And I don’t think a lot of us really think about that much. And then I think a lot of us also, they just think that public speaking isn’t their job. It’s for somebody else to do. I’m here to do a technical role in any speaking. Can somebody else do it? But ultimately, it’s in our best interest to do it because we’re the ones with that expertise. mean, why would you want to pass that on to somebody else to talk about? Because they may very well, well, mess it up.

There’s actually an example I can think of. Last summer, was at a conference. was a technical conference. And one of the presentations that I attended was done by a business development person of a company. Well, I mentioned, it’s a technical conference. It’s a bunch of engineers in the audience. After the presentation, that person got a whole lot of technical questions that he could not answer. So I felt really bad for him. Luckily, there were two engineers from his company in the audience and they were answering the questions from their seats. So I remember thinking to myself, why didn’t one of them give the presentation? The technical conference, it’s mostly engineers in the audience. It would have made sense for one of them to do it, but I guess maybe they didn’t think it was their job. So there they are sitting in the audience answering questions. So ultimately, I think what we really, as technical people, need to understand is that we really don’t want to outsource our technical expertise to other people. It really would be, it would behoove everyone for us to be just better at communicating it so that other people who aren’t technical can understand. And then, as I said earlier, we also need to remember that we weren’t always technical people. We got this expertise over time and we just need to have some understanding for the people, especially the non-technical people in the audience, that they’re not going to have the same understanding and to speak to in a way that they can understand.

ADAMS (13:51)

Yeah, I really like that example because it illustrates something that I have also experienced or observed so this business development person, they were at the technical conference. They gave probably a not super technical presentation. But it was…interesting enough, it was clear enough, it had enough layperson language in it for the technical questions to immediately come after that, right? And so what I try to tell people is that you first have to strip out the jargon and make it approachable to a wide audience, and then the technical questions will come. They have to understand enough about what you’re saying to then even be able to ask intelligent technical questions. And if you start at a really high level of subject matter expertise, oftentimes you alienate your audience and they don’t understand. And so they don’t even get to ask questions because you’ve lost them along the way. And so sometimes when I frame it that way, it actually helps the technical people realize

it’s not that I’m, you’re not giving up the technical stuff. I mean, you are still the technical expert. You will have plenty of opportunity to dive into, into your subject matter expertise. But if you start there and your audience isn’t there with you, then you’re never even going to get to talk about the detailed technical stuff that you really want to focus on because you lost people. it sounds like that sort of, in this case, it was the opposite. You had the business development person and he or she couldn’t answer the technical questions when you have a subject matter expert who can also frame it in a more lay person’s way and answer the technical questions, you become a much more well-rounded and much more, I think, valuable asset as well when you can do both of those things.

THOMPSON (15:38)

You become way more versatile to the organization you work for. And then maybe then you get considered for other opportunities within your organization as opposed to just being that engineer who sits in front of this computer all day.

ADAMS (15:50)

Yeah, exactly. 100%. So another thing that I’m thinking of, you know, that technical folks don’t really get a lot of is business development and entrepreneurship. So I’m curious from your own experience, because you have your own business, Teach the Geek, I’m curious how you developed the skills that you use to actually start your own business

THOMPSON (16:10)

There was really a lot of trial and error at first. But then I hired somebody to help me in developing the platform. And that didn’t actually go as I had hoped. Perhaps I should have done more vetting of this person. But I was paying them for 18 months to help me develop my brand and develop the platform. And some of the things worked out really well. And I think some of the things I really could have done later. Like for instance, I wrote a book.

And I think a book is really helpful in showing thought leadership and showing expertise. But I think I could have held off on writing that book. I wrote it pretty early on, once I started Teach the Geek. And I just think that I could have held off on it. I could have developed a bit more so that the book could have been perhaps a bit more impactful.

But she had really said that she was really harping on the fact that you need to have a book to show, to improve the brand and to show the expertise. And I was just listening to what she had to say because I’d never been in this position before. I’d been an engineer up until that point working at companies. And I hired her for her expertise. So I figured I’d be foolish not to listen to what she had to say. But now looking back on it, was a lot that perhaps that I could have figured out on my own perhaps, or maybe even talking to other people that had done what I had done already. This person was a marketing and a branding expert, but perhaps I could have spoken to other entrepreneurs who would start their own businesses and asked them, what are the things that really need to be done now? What can be put off to later? What can be delegated to others? I didn’t do any of that. I just hired this person and figured, and thought that they knew everything, but they didn’t know everything. And I didn’t know any everything.

So we have a couple of people who don’t know where everything is. Trying to figure everything out. that’s really where I was. ultimately, it all worked out. And as I said, a lot of trial and error. And then I eventually did get in touch with other people who had started their own businesses and asked questions and offered value whenever I could. just getting around other people who are doing what you’re doing is really helpful in moving a business forward.

ADAMS (18:20)

Yeah, I think that’s important about building this community or building a network of people that have been through it and you can collaborate with. And so I definitely would recommend that to people if you’re wanting to try something new to tap into a network, find a community of like-minded people who have had similar experiences and then tap into that. And also be prepared to pay for expertise too. I I think that that’s true. think oftentimes a lot of folks are sometimes hesitant to pay for expertise. They’re hoping that they can just sort of get it through word of mouth or just read books or things like that. there is a place for that. There is a place for.

getting free information, there’s a place for doing your own research and stuff like that. But there’s also a place for hiring expertise to kind of help you do things. And so it can be a challenge to weigh those different pros and cons, but I wouldn’t suggest that people exclude that. And I’ll be honest, when I left corporate and got into this business of leadership coaching and development, I was actually surprised at how many people fully expected their companies.

to pay for 100 % of their professional development. In many cases, the thought never crossed their mind to pay out of pocket for the kind of work that I do, the kind of work that you do, the kind of work that a lot of different people do. I do think that there is a place for, yeah, if you’re working inside of a company and they have a great learning and development platform, that’s great. Leverage it, utilize it, and be prepared to identify skills that you need to develop and be willing to invest in yourself as well as having your company invest in you.

THOMPSON (20:01)

Yeah, I mean, when I first started Teach the Geek, it was based on an online course that I developed called Teach the Geek to Speak. was a public speaking course that was geared towards technical professionals to help them practice and deliver any presentation they had to give. And initially I was selling it to people. But as you mentioned, a lot of people are used to their organizations paying for everything. So I figured, why am I going to the people? I might as as go to the organizations.

That’s what I eventually started doing actually during the pandemic was instead of out, instead of my outreach being towards individuals who are technical people, it’s to the L and D departments, to the HR departments of organizations to see if what I do would teach the geek would be of interest to their organizations, developing speaker training programs for their technical staff. Because I know that I, as I, as I mentioned, I had to give presentations in front of management. wasn’t all that great at it, but I had to seek my own resources to get better at it.

If organizations offered their own resources for their staff, I figured the staff would be more likely to take advantage of it, get better at these presentations and they improve and then the organization benefits from these technical staff improving with their presentation skills.

ADAMS (21:14)

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, Neil, can you give me an example of when you had to use leadership skills?

THOMPSON (21:31)

Sure. mean, initially it started off even before Teach the Geek. It was when I was working as a product development engineer. That first, that, well, it’s actually the second job that I took when I moved to the San Diego area as a product development engineer. I thought that I was going to be working a job that was very similar to the one that I just left as a research associate, doing work in a lab, writing up reports and protocols and reports. But it was a few months into that job that I was told I was going to be a project lead.

Well, what’s a project lead? A project lead, apparently at that company was the person who took on the role of a project manager because the company was too cheap to hire project managers. So there are one of those. And I mentioned I had to give presentations in front of management. I that’s a project manager job. But there I was as the engineer having to give these presentations. And I also had to lead the team. It was a team made up of myself, a marketing person, a manufacturing person, quality person, a regulatory affairs person.

It’s really interesting being a project lead because you have all this responsibility, but you have none of the authority. So these people don’t report to you. They’re in their own departments, but yet you need them to complete certain tasks so that the project can move forward. So making that happen was something that I had to learn. In fact, I ended up getting, I ended up doing project management courses to figure out the best way to do that. In fact, it was one of my colleagues, another engineer, who suggested that we do a project management boot camp. So a bunch of us engineers actually did it. And then at the end of the boot camp, we were told about a project management certificate that the university offered. So myself and the person who suggested we do the boot camp, we went through the certificate program.

And actually we were the only two that did it. All the other engineers that did the boot camp and they were done. But me and this other guy, we actually went through the whole program and learning about the best way to manage projects. And that was really helpful. And then at the end of that certificate, I was told about the PMP, the Project Management Professional Credential. And I decided, well, I came all this way and did it as a certificate. Let me just get this PMP. And actually I was the only one that did that. Even the person that suggested we do the boot camp as a certificate.

Never!

ADAMS (23:42)

So how many people did the boot camp? So you went from like how many to one? Like at the end you’re the loner.

THOMPSON (23:47)

There was like 10 of us who the boot camp. Two of us did the certificate and I got my PMP. Okay. And again, I don’t know if this is a theme, but it’s always somebody telling me what to, I should be doing. My father’s saying I should do it. Here’s my colleague that said should do this boot camp. What ideas do I have?

Yeah, but yeah, that was really helpful and just learning the skills to better manage people because I wasn’t a people manager, I was an individual contributor. Yet here I was as this project manager having to lead this team with, as I said, all the responsibility but under the authority. And that was definitely helpful going through that process.

ADAMS (24:24)

Yeah, I you raise a very, I think a very common, oftentimes maybe the first leadership role that an engineer might have is what you’re talking about, which is leading a project. And very much so and influencing without authority type of role, which…

For me, looking back is harder. It’s much easier to just in my mind to just be like, you I have this role power. people, mean, not, I’m not saying everybody falls in line all the time or that everybody is always on board with everything. I’m not saying that, but there is just this amount. There’s a little bit more ease of getting people to do things when you have direct authority over them, which is not the case in a project leadership role. So I…

I am curious, were there any specific strategies that you found to work especially well for you when you were in this project lead slash project manager role?

THOMPSON (25:19)

Regular meetings helped and having those meetings be structured so that everyone had an opportunity to say where they were in whatever tasks that they were doing and what blockers they had, what hurdles they had in getting tasks done. So we could at least brainstorm amongst us as to how they can overcome those hurdles. That I think was really helpful. And having good communication with their managers I think was helpful too because

And their functional managers, they’re the ones that are telling these people what they need to be working on. And here I am with this project, asking them to do tasks that are related to the project. having this, having being in lockstep with that functional manager so that they give their direct report the time and the resources to do their part of the project, I think was really helpful too.

ADAMS (26:05)

And tactically, how did you establish those relationships with the functional managers? mean, did you have any, did you have meeting, one-on-one meetings with them or just keeping them, know, CCing them on reports or how did you keep them abreast of what you were actually working on?

THOMPSON (26:18)

Luckily, the company was, it wasn’t a super huge company. So it was easy to just get some time with them just to keep them up to date as to what was happening and what I would need from their direct report. So I think that was really helpful. I suspect it might have been perhaps more challenging if the company was larger, but that wasn’t the case for me.

ADAMS (26:38)

Okay, yeah. I agree. think having those relationships are really important and it sounds like it was something that they were open to and made space for, made time for, even if it wasn’t necessarily formally embedded in the structure. Anything else that you would say about navigating this leadership, this leadership role of influencing people without authority?

THOMPSON (26:59)

Be helpful. The world would be so much better if people focused on being helpful as opposed to what others could do for them. And even going back to the working with the, keeping the functional managers abreast, there would be instances where they may need something from me that wasn’t even related to the project. And if I was, if it was possible for me to do it, I would, because I figured that would develop goodwill amongst them.

So in the event that I would ask them for something, I’d be more likely to get a yes and a no.

ADAMS (27:28)

Yeah, I agree. it’s an underutilized relationship building slash persuasion tactic, Anything else?

THOMPSON (27:35)

Well, mean, when it comes to being a good leader, I actually wrote about this because I was thinking about what does make a good leader. I think being clear is helpful. trying to eliminate as much ambiguity as possible, making sure that people truly understand what you need from them. I think that’s great. And listening, I think it’s not good. I think it’s an excellent skill that a leader should have as well.

There are, as I said, we used to have meetings with the team and they would talk about what they’re working on and it was for the project. And if you were just focused on, this done? Is this done? this done? As opposed to, well, if it isn’t done, why and what can we do to have it, to get it done as opposed to, oh, it’s not done, figure it out. mean, just being a good listener, I think could be helpful in leadership as well. So certainly when you speak, be clear. And then when others,

Speak to you, listen actively.

ADAMS (28:41)

Okay, Neil, what advice would you give to engineers who want to move into leadership roles?

THOMPSON (28:46)

Do so because you think that it is something that you want to do. Don’t do it because someone else told you to. Basically, don’t be like me.

ADAMS (28:54)

You say that yet here you are a successful business owner who is really, you know, filling a need in for people that I care about, you care about as well for technical people. I don’t say as I would not accept as a blanket statement, don’t be like Neil, but I understand your point about really, I think, you know, understanding your why and being motivated and thinking, maybe thinking through what you really care about, right?

THOMPSON (29:20)

Well, don’t be like the old me, I suppose.

ADAMS (29:22)

Yeah,

There you go. Perfect. Okay.

THOMPSON (29:23)

The whole idea for teaching he came for me was because someone else told me yes, certainly the new me Yeah, you follow him. I suppose that only leave him alone

ADAMS (29:32)

I mean, I am curious about how did you decide to make that leap, make that leap from working in industry, working in a traditional job to going out on your own. And especially for you, given what you said about a lot of these previous decisions were based on what your father told you or colleagues might have suggested to you. you’ve always been open to inputs from others and then something happened and now you took the input from yourself and you talk a little bit about how that happened.

THOMPSON (30:04)

Well, I think it came down to me not wanting to be told what to do anymore. I basically wanted to get rid of that old me. I saw, I certainly saw, and I mentioned, I saw the benefit of myself getting better at giving presentations and public speaking generally. And I thought, well, other engineers or other technical people could benefit from this. So what can I do to develop something that could help these people? And that’s where the idea for Teach the Geek came. But the…

I guess the motivation to actually start it and go off on my own had to do with, well, this was another job that I was working after the job working as a project lead. I was, well, I was doing a very similar work there and I was working there for about two, maybe three years. And I ended up leaving that job because of a black child’s hair.

ADAMS (30:53)

Mm-hmm say more about that

THOMPSON (30:55)

So I had a boss who adopted a black girl. So she was a baby when she adopted, when they adopted him and his wife adopted her. I saw an article online about adopted parents adopting black children and the issues that they have with their hair, especially if the parents aren’t black themselves. He was Indian and his wife was white.

So they probably have no idea what to do with that type of hair. They have no experience with it. So I saw this article online. I thought it could be beneficial to them. So I sent it to them. And thinking I was going to get a thank you, I did not get a thank you. No, no, were very offended about the fact that I sent them this article. And I just remember, I remember my boss at the time, the email he sent me back, he said in it, and I’m paraphrasing,

wish you’d put as much effort into your work as you did in sending me this article. Wow. Yeah. So I remember this was back in 2014. I remember reading that over and over again and I just thought to myself, you know what? This whole teach the geek thing, let’s make it happen now. So I responded back. Sorry for sending that article, but today will be my last day. So I left my company phone on my desk. I left all the company paraphernalia there.

And I left and I never returned. And so that was the start of me figuring out what I was going to do next and Teach the Geek was it. so there were a few things that I did maybe before then, but ultimately I formalized Teach the Geek a few years later, but that really was the catalyst.

ADAMS (32:28)

Wow, yeah. So a big kind of big life shift for you and how did you handle that? I mean, in terms of this big change, were you excited about it? It sounds like you were already starting to think about Teach the Geek and so was really maybe it was sort of the impetus to go from maybe it being a side hustle to a full-time hustle or something like that. I’m not exactly sure, but I’m just curious the transition and how…how that went for you and if there were any advice you would give maybe for somebody who is transitioning careers. There’s actually probably quite a bit of that right now happening in, given the current environment.

THOMPSON (33:07)

I would suggest that somebody, if they want to make that transition, make it more smooth. Because as I said, it was pretty, it was abrupt. was abrupt. so, if you’re going to do something like that, to make that transition, plan it out better. Well, plan it actually. I wasn’t planning on quitting that day. So yeah, definitely plan, have a certain amount of runway in your bank accounts to float you while you figure things out so you don’t end up on the street. That’s helpful too. And as I said earlier, getting in touch with other people, other entrepreneurs who doing something similar. So you don’t have to figure everything out. can get feedback and advice from other people. Again, like I said, be helpful to others because you don’t want to be that person who’s always just looking to pick people’s brains. You want to be able to bring them something that they can use too.

It’s just, yeah, there’s a bunch of things that he certainly can do, but ultimately, have a plan.

ADAMS (34:05)

Have a plan, indeed. Well, Neil, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.

THOMPSON (34:10)

Thanks for having me again.