Chapter One
Dare to Dream: Believe No Matter What

"When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."

- G. K. Chesterton

Introduction

According to Investopedia, and I agree, the American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society in which upward mobility is possible for everyone. It's a well-known fact that the American Dream is alive and real, and I'm living proof. As a first-generation Korean American with only an eighth-grade education and no college degree, I became a systems engineer at a Fortune 100 company. This is a miracle because, for most of my life, I didn't even know how to use a computer. Seriously, I didn't have a clue.

Clearly, opportunity is everywhere, and when I got my first taste of technology, I knew it was the future. It doesn't matter if you're in the United States or somewhere else in the world, the information technology (IT) sector is booming. For some perspective: In 1999, there were about 1 million devices connected to the Internet.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing exponentially, and ASL Holdings found that there will be 75.44 billion IoT-connected devices worldwide by 2025 (https://aslh.co.uk). That means the number of IoT-connected devices has increased over 75,000 times since 1999!

Source: www.cyberseek.org/heatmap.html

That's great, but guess what's tagging along? Cybercrime. It's climbing faster than ever. To throw some numbers at you, in 2021 the United States alone saw damages north of $1 trillion from malicious actors. Industry expert Steve Morgan, editor-in-chief at Cyber Magazine, states this could hit a staggering $10 trillion globally by 2025 (https://cybersecurityventures.com/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016). What does this tell us?

We need cyber warriors, and the IT workforce has ever-growing opportunities for skilled workers.

But amidst so much potential and before diving straight into chasing your dreams, there are some things you need to prioritize. First and foremost is gratitude. That's right. To harness the American Dream, and any opportunities for that matter, gratitude is key. Gratitude keeps you grounded and driven. It's the anchor that helps you make the most of these opportunities. You also need the right mindset and to know how to set good habits, creating rituals that give you a rock-solid foundation to build your dream on.

After laying that foundation, I'll give you my highly proven blueprint for manifestation. When you combine gratitude, mindset, habits, and the ability to manifest, everything in your personal and professional life will benefit. True success professionally is how much your personal life is benefited. We work to live, not live to work. That's why your career should work for you and not the other way around. Nailing a positive mindset, building healthy habits, and being able to create your dream work and personal life is what you'll get immediately. And that's just the beginning!

Later in this book, I'll give you nine industry secrets that show you how to dive into and grab IT opportunities with both hands. These chapters are filled with information that will change your life and show you what's possible. But you're first going to learn to appreciate the power of being thankful. Being grateful for where you are and what's to come is the fuel you need for this ride. Buckle up, because with gratitude and determination, you're going places!

My Story

In the fall of 1978, I was born to a single mother on Jindo Island, South Korea. My biological father went into the Korean Army since it's mandatory to join and serve for two years. But when he left, she was stuck on an island with no electricity or real opportunity. When she saw little kids running around naked and playing in the dirt, she couldn't imagine raising me there. So, she decided to go back to Seoul. While only she knows the whole story, she didn't tell anyone she was leaving-she grabbed me, caught the ferry, and got out of there as soon as she could.

She went to work at her mother's restaurant, raising me alongside her family. After working at the restaurant for two years, she met a man who came regularly to my grandmother's restaurant. One day, someone was swinging me around in a circle. As fate would have it, my shoulder dislocated and my soon-to-be American dad, who was a medic in the U.S. Army, popped my arm back in its socket. Naturally, he became an instant hero to my grandmother and my mom. Next thing you know, within a year, he and my mom got married. Because of that, I was able to come to the states at just three years old.

We briefly lived in New Jersey, and I got naturalized as an American citizen. We stayed for just one year and then my dad was stationed back in South Korea. Just like that, I ended up back where I was from, but now as an American citizen! This allowed me to go through Department of Defense schools up to fifth grade on the Army post. Then, for the sixth through eighth grades, I entered a Christian school. I wasn't the most well-behaved young man, and I got expelled after just one month of high school. While I don't recommend the same for most people, I never finished high school. Naturally, it didn't take long for me to get into some really bad crowds, going so far as to get initiated into a gang.

Then, when I was 16, I discovered music and became completely fascinated. I was quickly brought into the nightclub scene, and it didn't take me long to meet my first mentor, a famous disc jockey (DJ) in Seoul. I would hang out with him and go to all his clubs and see him spin. He got me an audition at a club called Hackers (there's some foreshadowing at its finest) when I was just 16 years old. That world became my life.

I got into the K-pop scene, rapped for a rock band, did a tour at 17 years old for six months, and then landed my own music deal! It was a wild few years. I was on TV shows and really started to make a name for myself. However, after we created a full album along with a female vocalist, our manager scammed us and sold our songs to a more famous K-pop band. I was devastated. But even after that, I so badly wanted to be a world-famous DJ; that was still my dream because up until then, I hadn't found anything more promising.

My first huge identity shift in life was going from wanting to be a gangster to discovering music. Music got me out of those environments and into something I was passionate about. But after that didn't work out, I was about to be 18 years old. Therefore, I had to get a job on the military base to get a visa and stay in the country. I worked all kinds of odd jobs at a hotel, from bagging groceries to bussing tables, being a door attendant, and maintenance clerk-you name it. Holding on to my first big dream, I was still doing music on the side.

At that time, my home was a 120-square-foot room in the mountains of Seoul. I was making the equivalent of $5.45 per hour, and in 1999, I made just $6,000 for the entire year. Right after my 19th birthday, my girlfriend and I got married. Within months, I got the news that she was pregnant-a moment that shocked some sense into me because I had no idea how I was going to take care of our baby.

At this stage of my life, the values I had already established, like loyalty, the ability to dream big, and, most importantly, to believe in my dreams, made all the difference. Also, being a provider and a protector was what I knew I just had to do. However, I had no money or promising opportunities. My parents recommended that I go to college or join the military. My first thought was, "Oh, no, that's the last thing I want to do!" But thinking about our newborn baby coming into this world, I had to do something big, especially since I didn't know if my visa was going to be extended otherwise. Going the artistic and musical path started to seem like a less promising option, especially after getting scammed. Worries started to creep in, and I had to do something quickly.

My dad recommended choosing the U.S. Air Force because, at that time, they were as high tech as it got. You have to understand, this was before the dotcom boom. Companies like Yahoo! and MSN and the Internet itself were just coming fully mainstream. Plus, everyone thought the world was going to end in 2000 with the Y2K bug, and the Matrix movie just came out. These were some epic times to say the least, where technology was beginning to break through.

Watching the first Matrix movie and seeing the IT professionals in the management information systems (MIS) department at my hotel is what ignited my enthusiasm for technology. The behind-the-scenes world of blinking lights and tinted windows made me wildly curious. After getting a job as a maintenance clerk, I bought and got my hands on my first PC. The wealth of information on the Internet was mind-blowing, and I found myself on Yahoo!, searching how to become a "hacker" (remember that first club I auditioned in?).

Experimenting with my PC, I frequently crashed it from tinkering at the kernel level and deep within the operating system. I did a deep-dive into technology, completely geeking out because I knew this was the...