From Small Town to Big Tech Success with Janetta Dunbar | Episode 002

Episode Information Show Notes Episode Summary: In this episode of Career Downloads, Manuel Martinez sits down with Janetta Dunbar, a multi-talented professional with a diverse background. Janetta shares her inspiring journey from growing up near Fort Worth, Texas, to becoming a successful entrepreneur and tech professional in Las Vegas. With experiences ranging from serving in the Army to working as a TV technical director, Janetta provides valuable insights into career transitions, the importance of networking, and overcoming challenges in the tech industry. Host: Manuel Martinez Guest: Janetta Dunbar Key Topics: – Early life and education. – College experiences and switching declared majors. – Navigating career changes and expectations. – Starting a family and a home business. – Getting back into tech after learning about new technologies – Career transitions and growth – Personal insights and advice Memorable Quotes: “You quit before you quit, right? A lot of times, you quit in your head before you actually leave.” “Networking is huge. Schools don’t teach the power of it, but it’s often who you know that gets you in the door.” “I got a call from a recruiter who told me I was grossly underpaid.” Connect with Us: – Visit Career Downloads at https://www.careerdownloads.com – Join our community on YouTube, X/Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn & Facebook. Tune in next week for another episode of Career Downloads where we explore more inspiring career journeys and professional growth stories. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review. Transcription Manuel: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Career Downloads. I have a very special guest today. So this is Janetta Dunbar, and I’m going to give you a quick introduction on her. So she is a wife, a mother, an athlete, an entrepreneur. She was a TV technical director, and she’s also an Army veteran. Apart from that, she was probably the first one that taught Beyonce how to break the internet. So with that, I have Janetta Dunbar. Janetta: Hi. Hey, Manny. Manuel: So I appreciate you. Janetta: Good to hang with you, man. Manuel: Yeah, it’s been a while. So we haven’t seen each other in person in a while. Janetta: Yeah, maybe a year or something. Manuel: It’s probably, yeah. Janetta: No, no, December. It was Christmas time. Manuel: Okay. Yeah. So it’s only been a few months. Janetta: Yeah. Manuel: It just feels like longer. Janetta: Yeah. Manuel: So I’m very excited to kind of have you on here and dig into your career, your background, skills that you’ve picked up. So I know some of them, but I’m sure they’re just like in the conversation we had probably about a week ago, I learned additional things that I didn’t know. So I’m pretty excited. So to start off, just kind of give me a general idea of kind of where you grew up. Janetta: Ah, I grew up in Texas. Yes. Fort Worth. So I was about 30 minutes from Dallas. Manuel: Okay. Janetta: So it was a medium-sized town, but the area I grew up, everybody kind of knew everybody. And the parents of the kids who went to the high school there, their grandparents went to high school there, that kind of thing, it’s kind of small town-y. Manuel: Small town-y. Janetta: Yeah. Manuel: Got it. And then eventually, obviously, you moved out of there and did keep up with the generational town. Janetta: Nah, no, no. Manuel: That’s not for you. Janetta: Well, you know, in my opinion, right, Texas people are special. They think Texas is everything. And so did I. I grew up that way. And I never thought I would leave, but then my dad got a job. He was a carpenter. Manuel: Okay. Janetta: And Texas is a right to work state and up here, there’s union in Vegas. There’s union. So when I was a freshman in college, I was at the University of North Texas. That summer, after my freshman year, my parents decided to move to Vegas. So I transferred to UNLV that summer of my freshman year right before my sophomore year of college. And that’s how we ended up leaving. And it was honestly the first time I had been somewhere other than Texas for an extended period of time. And it opened my eyes. There’s a story I have. Coming up, we had, you know, the counselor’s office in high school and how they have the college catalogs, right? Well, the colleges you can go to. I don’t remember one school that wasn’t in Texas in the counselor’s office. It was that like Texas centric. So when I moved here and saw my parents like ascend rather quickly, I realized that Texas wasn’t, you know, the best place to be for everybody. You know what I’m saying? Manuel: Yeah. No, that makes sense, right? Because you’re limited to your exposure, right, in that environment. Janetta: Big time. Manuel: Wow. Janetta: Yeah. Manuel: And that’s curious. I mean, it’s very interesting because I know that Texas is a big state and there’s a lot of colleges, but I would think that, because even when they go here, they teach you or they expose you to UNLV, UNR, right, like our two big universities here in Nevada. But you also get exposure to like, hey, there’s this one in California, there’s Arizona and not like that in Texas. Janetta: No. Manuel: It’s very interesting. Janetta: I don’t ever, a lot of them, my relatives and stuff, they’d never see themselves leaving. They thought my parents were nuts for leaving. [Laughter] It’s crazy, but it’s true. And now I say, I’ll never move back. Manuel: Never move back. Janetta: No. It never changes. You know? I go home and I’m kind of sad because I don’t see any kind of, at least in my circles, forward movement and, you know, I’m all about like, what’s next? And they really, you know, the people in my circle. They really don’t have curiosity like that. Right. So, yeah. It just makes me want to leave. [Laughter] Manuel: So when you transferred over here to UNLV, what did you go to school for? Like, what was your, what was your idea of like, your career path? Janetta: So I was a civil engineering major at UNT, was the name of the school, but they didn’t have civil engineering at the time at UNLV. The closest thing they had was like architecture related engineering. So I just went into that thinking, that’s what I wanted to do. Manuel: Okay. Janetta: Yeah. Just in general, I thought that’s what I wanted. But then I took a pre-cal. I didn’t take calculus in high school and I barely passed it. I got a D on a scale. So I really got a, probably a F, but the teacher was nice. He graded on a curve and I passed, but I was like, because I would have to go to calculus three and I was like, no, that’s not happening. So I bounced around. I was a marketing major. I like sports. So I was a sports injury major. So like personal trainer type person that like gets your ankles wrapped up before games and stuff like that. I thought maybe that’s interesting. Then I realized you got to learn a lot about bones and there’s a lot of bones in your body. So I was like, nah, that ain’t for me. [Laughter] So eventually I got to my junior year and I had one core class left that I had avoided. And I had all these different, you know, cores and different like ancillary classes that you can kind of fill in, you know, make it work. And then I was running out of time and the last class, that core class that I had to take was public speaking and I avoided it like the plague. Manuel: Really? Janetta: Yes. I loved it. I took it and I loved it. The next semester I became a communications major and that’s how I ended up in mass media. So I was only a communications major the last year and a half of my degree. I ended up with like 160 credits and only needed 120 to graduate because I changed my [Laughter] major so many times. So yeah, that’s how I ended up with my communication degree. Manuel: Interesting. Janetta: Yeah. Manuel: So the one thing that you thought like, hey, I want nothing to do with this. Janetta: Yep. Manuel: Interesting. Janetta: Life be like that though. Manuel: Yeah. So then you got your degree in communications and then what did you think was going to happen after that? Like what did you envision yourself going into the career, obviously into the communications field? Janetta: Right. Manuel: Doing what? Janetta: A television production in particular, like the behind the scenes. In school we had projects where we would very similar to here where you set up cameras. There’s talent. I didn’t want to be the talent. There were some people in that major who wanted to be journalists and interview people like you. And then there were people like me who don’t want to be in front of the camera. I want to be behind the camera, very technical editing, things like that, putting stories together and kind of making them flow. So that’s what I thought I wanted to do. But like a lot of things I think when you’re young, you think ideally things are going to go a certain way and they don’t, right? So I ultimately ended up at ESPN Zone. You remember at New York, New York, there was ESPN Zone and it was a restaurant. But then they had all these TVs everywhere, like 150 or something. And there was something called Production Assistance there. And our job was to program all the TVs. So depending on what event was happening that day, the main screens, the big, huge screens had particular sports on them. And then the littler screens had less popular sports like lacrosse or something like that. So you had to kind of decide based on your own knowledge like what sports or what events were going to be the most popular that day. So like this NFL playoffs or NBA playoffs, th...