Occasionally, members of the site fail the exam. Their and our own reactions can teach us a lot. But what have you truly lost if you do fail?

I have failed at quite a few things in my life.

Failed my police entrance exam first time
Failed my CCNA
Failed my police promotion exam
Failed my CCIE lab
Failed my first driving test
Failed at my first marriage
Failed with my third company

But looking back, I learned a lot and to be honest I am a far better person for my failures.

‘Success is a poor teacher’ Robert Kiyosaki.

We are programmed at school that failure is bad. We are punished with poor grades, detentions, social stigma and so on. This system is designed to train us all to be happy little workers. To be trained to confirm, do what we are told and like it.

If you are failing at something then you are learning. If you stop learning you might as well give up on life.

I’m glad I failed at all the above things. It helped me either redouble my efforts or realize that I didn’t really want it after all. I have no interest in becoming a CCIE at all. It doesn’t fit in with my life goals.

When I see a comment on the forum saying ‘I’ve wasted my money, I failed the exam today. What a waste.’ I think that is the wrong way to look at it.

If I fail anything I keep it to myself, I don’t want to engage in a pity party. If I need some tips on how to pass next time then I will ask for those instead.

If you fail your exam you have learned about your weak areas. Better in the exam than on live network. You have learned that your hands on speed needs work. You have learned about stress and anxiety and that you need to learn some relaxation techniques.

The Japanese have a saying ‘Fall down seven times, stand up eight.’ If you keep going towards your goals then you are successful. If you quit then you are a failure.

Our dual CCIE Farai Tafa failed his CCNA five times. That must be some sort of record. Now he walks into the network at Cadburys or Pepsi and everyone stands back and watches.

If you fail get over it. Learn what needs to be learned and carry on.

Paul Browning

This is a bit of a sticky one and there are pitfalls but
here is what I recommend when studying for the CCNA but
wanting more info on a topic.

I heartily recommend reading Farai’s CCNP notes if you
are reading up on a CCNA level subject but would like to
add a little ‘meat’ to my notes. You can do this for all
sorts of subjects including:

Routing basics
Routing protocols
DHCP
VLANs
STP

That is, once we have the CCNP SWITCH notes up. It is good
to see the bigger picture before you come back to the CCNA
level required for the exam. If you can get to grips with
at least some of the concepts then coming back will make
CCNA notes seem a lot easier.

There is also a ‘no mans land’ which is somewhere between
where the CCNA leaves off and the CCNP begins. You can
bridge the gap by reading around a topic.

Remember also that it may help to read another persons
concepts on a subject matter. They will have different
experience to me and have dealt with different scenarios
as well.

Warning

The mistake I see many students make is getting drawn into
off topic subjects or getting bogged down with BGP when to
be honest, you don’t need to know this stuff for the CCNA
exam. Great that you want to know more but if this quest
for knowledge delays your exam date or worse, causes you
to suffer from paralysis by analysis then be very careful
about your extracurricular reading.
Paul Browning

I started the first weekend Cisco training course format in the UK back in 2002. It was all going well until some other guys saw what I was doing and decided to copy me – badly.

I am all for competition by the way. I don’t have the sole rights to teach Cisco courses. In fact, anybody can set themselves up teaching Cisco courses. All you need is a room, routers and a website and off you go. In fact many did just that.

After about four years in business I saw one guy copy exactly what I did. He even copied what I was saying on my site. Same course format, same guarantee and same proposition. I heard from some of his students after they had been and was told it was a letdown.

Classrooms stuffed full of students. Cisco press manuals instead of self produced notes. No after course support (even though it was promised). Poor quality instruction. Little time with the instructor.

The list goes on.

The guy who copied me was copied by others, or they were copying me again, who can say? Suddenly there were about five ‘Original Home of Cisco Training’ companies out there. All promising what I was:

Free support before and after the course Come back for free No sharing equipment Expert trainers

Along with all the other ‘we are the best’ and ‘we care’ crap. They even made snide comments about other training companies.

But none of them had worked for Cisco as I had. None had written their own Cisco manual and none had been in business more than a matter of months.

Commodities

When a thing comes down to a commodity then the only factor left to compete on is price. If it comes to this then you will always lose because there is always somebody who is prepared to charge less than you do. Even if this means they are running courses at a loss.

At the moment there is a price war going on in the UK for Cisco courses. Good for you but bad for business.

Cheap or Good?

They say that you can either have something cheap or good but not both. I do believe in getting the best value for money you can but at some point you will have to decide what end result you want. When I handed my old company over to Stuart Juggins I knew it was in good hands because Stuart had over 15 years hands on IT experience and had just passed his CCIE.

He wasn’t a trainer in fact. He had done a little but he was 97% a Cisco consultant designing and installing IP networks for the UK government.

There are not many companies run by CCIEs I can tell you. The other companies copying us were in my opinion letting their students down. They were not really experienced IT consultants as they claimed and some were actually run by CCNA’s!!

Course Tips

Here are a few tips if you want to research a course.

Find a company who can run courses up to CCIE level. If they can’t do that then they can’t teach below to any level of proficiency I feel.

Speak to former students who attended and ask their honest opinion.

Sit in during a class and see what they do.

Check out their manuals. Are they easy to understand or are they fobbing you off with Cisco press or Lammle?

Ask on forums if anyone attended the course and what they thought of it.

Talk is Cheap

It frustrates me when I see the rhetoric on many of the training web sites. ‘We are the best’ ‘we give you the best course’ ‘we care.’ When you speak to their former students the truth is that none of the above is true.

Paul Browning

I get sent some questions which sometimes shock or at least surprise me. Here is the latest one:

‘Hey Paul – Looks like I have a clear 12 months. What is the fastet way I can get the CCNA – CCNP and maybe CCIE done?’

“Ach mein Gott! – definition – Translating from German literally as “Oh my God!”

In fact, it reminds me of my favourite Einstein quote:

‘A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?’

This guy has probably bought the ‘six pack abs in six days course’ as well. Or maybe the ‘speed seduction course’ where you can hynotize women into falling in love with you in ten minutes.

This is the quick fix market where every day, suckers are parted from their cash. They want to bypass the hard work and just get the result. Why train five years for a black belt when you can buy one off the internet? I suppose because when it comes to a fight, you will get your ass kicked if you haven’t done the training.

Back to the CCIE in 12 months.

Hmmm…let me see. CCNA to CCIE in 12 months eh? You would be looking at 8-10 hours per day, several intensive boot camps, probably fly to China for one of those ‘just like the real lab’ courses.

That should do the trick. It will cost about $40k but what the heck. You get a CCIE at the end of it right?

There are ccies and there are CCIEs. The ccie has the number but when push comes to shove they have trained to pass a lab. That is all. They don’t really understand the bigger picture and are often pulled off a customers site and replaced (just ask Farai).

A CCIE has usually been in the industry for a while and has taken the exam to cement what they already have known and been doing for a long time. They will review subjects so they understand what is going on rather than just configuring it. They understand the impact of what they are doing on the entire network infrastructure rather than the ten devices they are configuring.

Paul Browning

I remember opening my first CCNA manual and thinking to
myself ‘What the @#$*.’ It was like hieroglyphics to me.
It doesn’t help with pretty much every CCNA manual being
written by geeks for geeks but still.

I didn’t get my hands on a live router until my first day
at Cisco in 2002. Up to that time, you could pass on
theory alone. Let’s get one thing straight, configuring
routers and switches is not easy. I’ve met the programmers
at Cisco. They are another life form altogether, trust me.
They sit there speaking Linux to each other all day long
and making jokes about recursive lookups. Great fun.

The only way to get good is to do more and more labs. No,
not less. MORE. Do them till you puke. Every day learn
something new. Only a fool spends their study time doing
stuff they can already do.

If you have been studying for more than 3 months solid and
not passed your exam here is why:

1. You haven’t been studying 2 hours per day consistently.
That is all. 2 hours maybe but you saved them up till the
weekend and did 10. 2 hours but you checked your e-mail
five times and updated your Twitter status twice. You send
three texts, got four snacks and let your wife nag you that
she ‘never sees you’ for ten minutes.

This is 95% of why you haven’t passed. If the above doesn’t
apply and you have been giving it 100% then you are one of
the 5%.

2. You have a blockage. Just like a turd which won’t come
out. You are backed up. Here are the symptoms:

• Read for hours but stuff never seems to sink in.
• Bought every book, exam, video and tool but still nothing.
• Followed system X and method Y but still stuck.
• Asked for help and got expert advice but still no.

For this 5% I could personally come round their house
every night for a month and coach them and they still
wouldn’t pass. They are just like the dog, chasing it’s
tail until it falls over exhausted. Here is why.

They are still blocked up. I’m afraid that this all comes
down to beliefs. Beliefs influence behaviors. This is
massive and why many people, despite appearing to do all
the right things are still fat, broke, unqualified or
single.

The blockage is all the subconscious crap given to us by
parents and other influential people as we grew up. It
hit us aged 5,6 or 7 and it stays for life unless we do
something to get rid of it all such as counseling,
hypnotherapy, NLP etc.

Until it is sorted the person will go in circles,
sometimes for years. I have friends doing it still. They
sabotage their finances, relationships, career or
whatever. I suggest they speak to somebody to get help but
they either tell me they don’t have a problem or don’t need
any help. They might wake up hung-over at 11 in the morning
and have a drink but they don’t have a problem. Yeah right.

Here is what happened when I finally got unblocked.

Made money

• Lost weight
• Passed exams
  Met my wife
• Bought my dream house
• Wrote books
• Build my company
• blah blah

I don’t recommend two years of lying on a couch crying that
our dad never said he loved us. Just get to the root of
what the blockage is, clear out and move on.

Heck, you may even realize that when it comes down to it,
you don’t even want to pass your CCNA. Nothing wrong with
that. I quit studying for the CCIE years ago. I really
can’t be bothered with it. I know I could pass it if I
applied myself but it holds no interest to me at all.

On that note. If you are in the UK or don’t mind calling
the UK the only person I can recommend is my good friend
Tony Somers.

http://tonysomers.com/

Paul Browning

On the way to our goals there are many diversions which can throw us off. Some are external such as:

Family
Nagging wife/girlfriend
Time consuming job
etc

They all have to be handed delicately of course but if you explain why you are studying now and the benefits then you should be okay.

The most insidious are the internal ones. These are the ones which I see IT people (informational people) get hung up on. Here are some real life examples of people I can see are pissing valuable hours away on self generated rubbish:

Who decided which commands get dashes in the IOS?

Can I get away with cables 101 meters instead of 100?

I’ve been stuck for weeks trying to token ring working.

I’ve been playing around with this old 827 router…

Can I configure my router to forward all broadcasts?

Sure, one day, somehow, maybe – you might need to get the answer to that. Meanwhile days have turned into weeks into months. You still haven’t passed your exam and your kids and wife have given up on you ever passing.

IT is a MASSIVE area and you can find yourself going down any number of blind alleys if you are not careful.

I even have people almost screaming at me, justifying why it is important that you know all the unclassified Cisco IOS commands or how to get into Rommon mode for a 1601 router. The truth is that if it came to it, you could easily Google the answer and move on. If you needed to get some weird problem fixed then you can get the answer so why bother stewing over it now when you could be studying?

What is your core reason for joining the site and buying books, routers, videos etc? I know you want to pass your exam but what difference will it make to your career and your family’s lifestyle?

I am working my butt off to provide for my family, pay for the twins when they come and ensure we have a decent standard of living. I grew up living in a cramped two bedroom house when there were six of us. I don’t have time for pet projects. I’m up at 0530 and have two companies to work on, keep my fitness up, eat healthily and be done by 1800 so I can play with my little girl for an hour, bath her and put her to bed.

You can easily get to the end of the day and have had the appearance of being busy but were you really effective? Who do you think will be hired first – they guy who can do all the core stuff a Cisco engineer needs to do or the guy who knows all the weird and wonderful fixed for problems which may never happen.

Stay on track. 2 hours per day on the theory, labs, cram guide and exams. Fart around with the other stuff if you have a geeky side AFTER the exam.

Paul Browning

If you are working in IT then to be honest, you shouldn’t
be paying for your own subscription. If you boss is too
tight to invest a few bucks in work related learning then
you need to find another company.

Here I chat about a few strategies to get work to pay for
your site membership.

Setting the Groundwork

As an employee your company will be hoping to squeeze as
much work out of you without any complaints on your part.
If the time comes when somebody can do your job as well or
better than you for less then you are history (as per my
job at Cisco along with thousands of other good engineers).

If your company begin to struggle financially then you
will be told your job is at risk. They see you as a massive
overhead so you are basically expendable.

Don’t take it personally. This is the modern working world
where ‘job for life’ is an oxymoron. You can expect to
move every 5-7 years. My friend was made redundant at Cisco
and worked for a security company who went bust, he got
another job as a security engineer and the company went
bust as did the next one.

Your mission as an employee is to do the best job you can
and learn as much as possible while preparing yourself for
the next job. Only an idiot sits around not studying,
praying their job will last forever.

In return for your loyalty and hard work, the company is
expected to invest a little money in you so you can do
your job to a high level. This is their IT infrastructure
after all, you are not there to clean the toilet.

Step 1

You need to build a case for them investing a few dollars
into your education. If you are already working on the
network then this should be fairly easy. You are working
on tens of thousands or millions of dollars of equipment
and you should be trained to do the job. Much of the
foundation Cisco exams cover basic networking concepts
also so again, you can state that this is important
knowledge.

Write down a list of how they will benefit by helping
you get trained. You need to include features plus
benefits (in brackets):

Faster fault finding (less downtime/loss of income)
Improved traffic flow (so more gets done)
Better return on investment in IT (make more money)
Ability to run Voice over IP (massive savings)
Improved network security (less risk of being hacked)

You need to grow the list yourself but it will go into
building a business case for your company sponsoring you.

Step 2 – Be worth sponsoring.

Do you know any of these types of employee:

Turns up late
Complains all the time
Goes sick regularly
Only happy on a Friday
Never volunteers for anything
and so on…

Even if you are working in a job you hate, you need to
make the most out of it. It is only temporary so you might
as well learn all you can before you move on. A company is
far more likely to invest in a person who they feel will
be a good investment for them.

Step 3 – Find the Money

Find out if there is a training budget and find out who
has it. You could ask HR if your company is big enough to
have a HR department.

Ask if there is a training budget set aside for employees
and who has it. Does each department manager have their
own budget or is it held centrally. Find out how big it
is if possible and very important – find out who has had
it spent on them in the past and how much.

Step 4 – Make it Easy to Get a Yes

If you make it hard then you are less likely to get your
request approved. Find out if you need to have any forms
filled in. Find out what evidence they need or criteria
before they decide and get it all done. Don’t leave it to
your boss to do because he or she is already too busy.

In the next article I will cover how to position your
request so it gets approved.

By this time all the studying has been done. Only you will
know if you have put enough effort it or have let yourself
down by skipping study sessions and making excuses.

Here are a few ideas for you to keep in mind on the day
before your exam.

1. Ensure you know exactly where the testing centre is. I
actually made this mistake once. I had tested several times
but on the day I turned up, they had moved their entrance
to the other side of the building.

I got in there in time but was already flustered and on
edge. Not good.

Make sure you have change for the car park also. I had to
run around like a headless chicken one time as I had only
taken notes with me.

2. Cram or not to cram. Up to you this one, I always like
to flick through notes or do practice exams on the day
before the exam. I jot down a few things if they have been
forgotten.

Now is not the time to be learning major subjects such as
how STP works. Too late. Just refresh your memory about
key learning points.

3. Ensure you have your testing ID and personal ID. I once
turned up to take a test and they were not expecting me. I
had booked the exam and got the correct day and time but
my booking had slipped through the system somehow.

I had left my confirmation papers back at home so had to
log into my hotmail and get it printed off to prove I had
booked it! Take yours with you as well as photo ID and any
other forms of ID you have been asked to supply.

3. Get a good night’s sleep. Avoid coffee, coke or other
caffeinated beverages. Avoid alcohol completely and avoid
large meals late in the evening. You want to wake up
feeling refreshed and ready to give your best performance.

4. Avoid discussing the exam with any negative or nervous
people. Never ever begin any discussion with anyone about
how nervous you feel or the fact that you don’t feel
ready. Never ever do this as it forms a negative spiral
which could make it come true.

If anybody knows you have the exam just laugh it off
saying ‘I’m going to give it my best shot, it is only an
exam after all, my life doesn’t depend on it.’

5. The day before, as I said. Avoid digging into any deep
study. Just review some cram notes and some exams and make
a few notes about any important facts you may have missed.

I have already told you that you should be getting 95% or
higher well before you take the real exam.

Lastly – this isn’t the most important day of your life so
don’t sweat it. I’ve failed the CCNA, dual CCIE Farai Tafa
failed five times. So what.

Also, I almost forgot. Make sure you are reviewing the
hypno audio twice per day.

http://www.howtonetwork.net/products/item18.cfm

 

Positioning Your Membership

We have already discussed the fact that you should be a
person worth paying for in the first place. You need to
work out what benefit there is to your company to paying
for your training as well.

In this article we will look at how to give yourself the
best chances of getting a ‘yes.’

Step 1

Choose a time when your boss is happy.

First thing Monday morning is not a good idea. My old
boss always seemed to be in the best mood on a Friday
afternoon. He was light headed at the prospect of the
coming weekend and far more likely to be open to helping
others.

Step 2

Arrange a meeting.

Get about ten minutes of your bosses exclusive time. Don’t
Walk up to him at his desk because the phone will ring or
other people will butt into your conversation or even
eavesdrop.

During the meeting you want to demonstrate the benefits to
sponsoring your training. Make out a case on financial
terms and also how it will make life easier for him. We
all have a lazy side so if it means less work or
headaches for your boss then all the better.

Try to get a decision there and then. You may need a
code from him for finance or if the company is smaller
then you could just hand him the receipt and be done with
it.

Step 3

Give alternatives.

Most Cisco training courses will cost a lot of money and
you will be away from work for quite some time. Give him
or her the option of the pricy and time away from work
course for $5000 or the year long membership to the site
which is only a fraction of the cost.

The idea is that you make it easy for your manager to
say ‘yes.’ If you over complicate matters or talk too
much then your chances of getting sponsored begin to
diminish.

Show your boss screen shots from the site or give them
a quick tour. Show then the photos of successful students
and how it has worked well for others.

YES

If you get approval then either give them the receipt if
you have joined already or take the approval to finance
and have them join on your behalf while you are there.
Tell them it only takes a minutes.

NO

If they refuse then ask reasons why and then make one of
two decisions. Either leave, for a company who is willing
to invest in their employees or invest in the site
yourself, pass the exam and then look for work elsewhere.

Success is the best form of revenge.

Best of luck.

Paul Browning

If you were given one month to pass your exam or you were going to lose your house, your job and your family what would you do differently? What would you start doing and what would you stop doing?

Prize for the best answer.