Ryan Talbert finished college with a degree in business and no job. Well, he’d had a job in plumbing, but he didn’t like it. He started waiting tables, but as he told his mom, he didn’t want to be in a restaurant ‘til three in the morning wondering just what he was going to do with his business degree — and his life.

So he decided to phone a friend, a guy who, six months after they’d graduated together, “got this really awesome job, you know, creating websites for this big-name company.” When Ryan asked him how he did it, the friend answered, “Udemy.” Specifically, he said the Webdev Bootcamp by Colt Steele. “Check it out.”

Ryan did, and soon he fell in love with coding. And not just coding, but the way learning about it made him feel.

“The idea that I could just reinvent myself overnight through these online courses, and get a job in the field with no prior experience — it was addicting.”

To be sure, it wasn’t the last course Ryan took. And now he’s that guy, the one enthusiastically recommending Udemy to his friends. “You can learn so many skills,” he says, “and it can really change your life.” He now loves the company he works for, and not just because he doesn’t have to work until three in the morning under a cloud of existential dread. Instead, he actually gets to sleep at night, knowing he’ll get to “wake up every morning and build cool stuff.”