[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you really start to tell the human story, what is it that this solution or this platform is able to do for human beings? How does this impact people's work, their purpose, their mission, their visions? That's when you start to resonate with folks on an emotional level. So I would say that, yeah, injecting some of that creativity into cybersecurity, on the marketing side, on the sales side, even on the practitioner side, I think we would be a lot better off if we brought more creativity to our work.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: This is KVCAT as a primary target for ransomware campaigns, security and testing and performance risk and compliance. You can actually automate that, take that data and use it.
Joining me today is Chris Cochrane, co founder and chief creative officer from Hacker Valley Media and advisory CISO from Huntress. And today we're discussing creativity in cybersecurity. So, Chris, thanks for joining and welcome. I'm a big fan of you. Big fan of your show. I love the content that you produce and your team produces. So it's wonderful to have you on my show today.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Hey, I'm a big fan of you, Carissa. Glad to be here.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: So you and I caught up a few weeks ago. We sort of swapped some ideas and spoke about the industry. So let's start off with maybe the creative side of cyber, which is what you and I both share our love for. We're starting to see some changes now in the market with how people are creating content, et cetera. So let's just explore this a bit more. What does this mean to you?
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah, so there was a study done by NASA way back when where they were looking at creativity and child development. They wanted to find, how do we find the most creative, most brilliant people out there? And they tested a bunch of very young school children, and they tested on the 90 eigth percentile for creative genius. They tested those same folks throughout their lives, and by the time they hit their 30s, they were in the bottom 2%. And what that tells you is that we are all created with this creative bug, this creative gene, but it seems like life kind of programs it out of us. I think that storytelling and being creative is one of those lost arts when it comes to humanity. And I've always been fascinated with those people that are creating and doing and pushing the envelope for things that don't exist yet. And so I feel that creativity and cybersecurity is one of those things that it doesn't really come to mind when you first think about it, like, oh, wow, this is a really technical career field. In cybersecurity, a lot about bits and bytes, but if you really take a look across the landscape of cybersecurity, there's a lot of creativity that comes into it. And so being able to push that narrative, being able to push storytelling and cybersecurity has been one of my goals.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah, and you're right. And a lot of people that I speak to as well, like, oh, but I'm not creative, KB. So you just do your thing.
How do we change that mindset? Because, I mean, look at the work that you and I do. There is an element of creativity there. So do you think that could be deterrent for people coming into the industry? Because they're like, no, it's a bit technical, a bit boring. Like, I don't want to go into that field, but that's fundamentally not true. But there's just this perception of our industry that maybe it's a little dry.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I started podcasting. One of the reasons I started producing web series and things like that is because I wanted to show that cybersecurity has this plethora of vibrant colors and ideas and diverse ways of thinking and different stories. Right. I do feel like when people first hear about cybersecurity, they think, oh, I'm going to have to be a coder or I'm going to have to be a security analyst. But I mean, there are so many different facets of cybersecurity, and me being this creative, trapped in the body of a technologist, I've always wanted to let that creative, and I just slowly but surely found ways to put that out into the world. And so, yeah, I would say that things are a little bit dry. If you look at the big level marketing for a lot of cybersecurity companies, it doesn't resonate. It doesn't resonate with cybersecurity practitioners. It doesn't resonate with leaders because they are just talking about the features and functions of their solutions. But if you really start to tell the human story, what is it that this solution or this platform is able to do for human beings? How does this impact people's work, their purpose, their mission, their visions? That's when you start to resonate with folks on an emotional level. So I would say that, yeah, injecting some of that creativity into cybersecurity on the marketing side, on the sales side, even on the practitioner side, I think we would be a lot better off if we brought more creativity to our work.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: So you mentioned before Chris around, you want to see people push the envelope. So would you say when you started Hacker Valley media, et cetera, would you say that you were pushing the envelope?
[00:04:51] Speaker A: I wouldn't say I was pushing the envelope in the beginning. I would say that there were a lot of happy accidents. There were a lot of things that I did wrong, and I would learn from it, and some things I would do right accidentally. But I would say that once I kind of got a little bit of confidence in being able to tell stories and being able to ask questions or produce content, then I started to push my own personal envelope, which was, we first started with audio, just doing audio only podcasts. And then, hey, if we're going to do video, our video has to be on par with our audio. And so we had to look for additional help there. What is the best equipment that I can use? Who are some of the folks that are doing the work that I'm not doing right. So we brought on a director, Ian Van Allen. What are the other aspects of creation that we had no idea about? Right. Colorists, color grading. When it comes to videos, I mean, editors are worth their weight in gold because they're the ones that really bring the vision of a piece of content to life. And so I would say that's where I started really pushing the envelope. Now I'm getting to a point where I'm not even just doing cybersecurity content. I'm pushing into other realms. Right. I've been writing short screenplays for the past six months, and I've submitted a couple for some competitions. My very first one I ever submitted got an honorable mention, which was really cool. But now I'm telling other stories. Right. I just want to capture these different moments, elicit some type of emotion, but it always has a technology spin to it.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. And like I said, I do love what you're doing. Would you say, and I speak probably from my own experience, that, and maybe it's because I'm in a different part of the world than what you are, and Australia is renowned to be more of a reserve market. Would you say that you sort of rattled people a little bit? Because when you think about it, the stuff that people like you and I do, that wasn't really around even five, six years ago, only the like, that's only when I just started doing this. But, okay, let's go back a decade. None of this stuff was really around. So do you think that the work that you're doing sort of got people a little bit upset or rattled them a bit, or maybe they felt like, oh, no, the market's really moving now to the storytelling and this creativity side of it. Do you have any thoughts?
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. If you're going to do anything that's worth doing, a lot of times that's going to rattle some cages. And, I mean, there are folks that are really stuck in the past and are like, hey, this is not what we do in cybersecurity. But I don't subscribe to the, hey, this is the way we've always done things. I'm always looking forward, how do we do things differently? How do we do things better? How do we make a bigger impact? How do we scale better? So, yeah, definitely shook some cages there. We're creating content utilizing LinkedIn the way that I do. Because when I started leveraging LinkedIn, it was largely a place where people stored their resume and made some connections. But I started to leverage it almost like an Instagram. I started to leverage it almost like a Facebook documenting my journey. Where am I going? Who am I meeting? What are the ideas that I have? What are the questions that I have? And so there were a lot of people that, hey, what are you doing with LinkedIn? This is supposed to be for where people put their resume. But I looked at it very differently. And funny enough, it seemed like everybody else started kind of marching to be to that same drum. They started leveraging LinkedIn as a place to put content. Then they even started bringing more creator tools for LinkedIn folks like live streams and being able to do audio meetups. And they even have a creator mode where you can push newsletters and different things like that. So it was almost like I was a little bit ahead of my time. I'm sure I had quite a few haters when I started leveraging LinkedIn through content the way that I did. But obviously it seemed like I was on something because they started to open up that aperture a bit more.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And I totally can resonate with that story as well. So going back to doing things differently. So we're an industry that's very, in inverted commas, cutting edge, and very technology savvy and forward facing, and always thinking about the next thing. It does seem that we're a little bit behind on the marketing, the content side of things. So it just doesn't seem to add up. Because, again, for an industry that is so cutting edge, we're not that cutting edge when it comes to how we tell the stories. Why do you think that is?
[00:09:10] Speaker A: I would say because there is a bit of a separation. There's a delta between the marketing practitioner and the cybersecurity practitioner. Usually they aren't one and the same. Usually you have someone that has a marketing background. Sure, they might have done marketing in cybersecurity before, but that's still their background. That's their bread and butter, that's what they do. And then on the cybersecurity side, you have people that are very technically savvy, but they don't know how to tell a story. And sometimes there's a loss in translation when that cybersecurity practitioner is talking to the marketing person and it just doesn't convey as well. I would say that's one of the things that has been really helpful for me, is having that 20 years of being a cybersecurity practitioner and then being obsessed with marketing, social neuroscience, content creation, storytelling for the past five years. So then I'm able to kind of combine these things together. And so when I'm working with other marketers, I can convey exactly what makes sense to them, but then I'm also talking to the practitioners and I'm able to understand them. It's a bit of a translation. I spent probably 15 of the 20 years of my career in threat intelligence, and that's just the ability to translate information to different parties. Right. And so I've had a lot of practice with that, and I would say that's probably one of the biggest issues, is that they're just two separate things. I think the more that we can integrate them together, the better and the more resonant that message is going to be for the community.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: Yeah, totally understand. So would you say that gap is closing now?
Yeah, it is.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: I think it is getting a lot better. You have a lot of people that are really focused on creation. They're really focused on creativity, putting out content, doing things like you're doing with your shows. I would say that the more people are starting to do that stuff, the more it's going to be accepted, the higher we're going to raise that threshold of what quality is, and it's just going to be better for everyone, because now we're going to be able to not only explain what we do in cybersecurity to the people that we work with, the other business units, the other C suite, the board members, we're going to be able to communicate this stuff to the general public, we're going to be able to communicate this stuff to kids and the elderly. We're going to be able to communicate this to people of various neurological constructs. Right. There's so many different ways that you can communicate to different demographics. And I think through creativity, through storytelling, we'll be able to get that message across.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: So have you ever noticed when you go to a conference and I don't know about you, but I walk around a lot of the companies, their logo looks the same, the colors, even their name is very similar, and then their messaging is like the same. Have you noticed that?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that happens a lot. And that's because a lot of folks, when they start a company, they probably don't have that many, if any, marketing folks in their wheelhouse. They might not have any brand folks. And so you have a lot of technologists, you have engineers that are like, all right, I can come up with a logo or I could come up with the messaging, and that's what's going to kind of leave you on uninterested ears. But I would say that once you start to realize that there is levels to this game of branding, there is levels to marketing, there is levels to sales, for all intents and purposes, then you understand, like, okay, wow, if I step up my branding, if I start to think about what are my values, what is my message and who is my audience? Okay, cool, I got a handle on that. So what are the colors that are going to best appeal to that demographic? What does the colors mean to my brand? Right. If I'm bright and vibrant and powerful, maybe I use reds or yellows or greens. Maybe if I want to be more delicate or I want to be more graceful, maybe I use pink or purple or blue. Right. There's just different ways to look at what that company means and how you convey that messaging to the audience that you're trying to speak to.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yeah, most definitely. And one of the things that's been probably really apparent to me over the last six years of doing this has been perhaps people and less so nowadays. I'm talking in the earlier days when this stuff wasn't really around, did you ever feel that maybe people not talk down, you look down upon marketing and branding, et cetera, as a whole industry, maybe not like to you specifically, but just generally, I sort of got that as what people were sort of saying that they didn't value it as much. And it is powerful. And some of the biggest brands in the world, they spend their entire existence working on their marketing and their branding. And I know it's also about product development and capability, et cetera, but we're focusing on the marketing and branding in this interview. But I've just seen, over time, perhaps people not value it as much. Have you come across that yourself?
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I have seen that quite a bit. And honestly, it's not even just marketing, it's not just the sales. Honestly, I've seen. And this isn't even only for cybersecurity practitioners. I'm sure this happens in industries all the way around the world, but we tend to have this myopic view of what a cybersecurity practitioner is. And anyone that's outside of that realm, we kind of look down on them from time to time. This isn't a stance that I take. This is just a stance that I've seen other people take. So, for instance, I've seen a lot of hate and insults thrown at people that are recruiters, right? Because recruiters, they're just going based off of what the hiring manager says, and then they'll put up a job posting and it might be weird, it might be wrong, it might say, wait, we're looking for an entry level person that has five years of experience in a CISSp. I wouldn't necessarily look at that recruiter and say that they're dumb or they're stupid or they don't know what they're doing. That recruiter is looking for many jobs. They're not just looking for cybersecurity. They're also looking at the business and they're looking at finance, they're looking at executive assistance, they're looking across the board at very different things. The same goes for cybersecurity practitioners looking at marketers or people that are focused on more of the soft skills or more of the creative skills. Just because we don't speak the same language doesn't mean that we don't have our place in the workforce. It doesn't mean that we don't have a place as a teammate. For someone that's more technical, I would say that the more diversity of thought that you have on a team, the better you're going to be able to solve these problems. So when we start to get that feeling like, oh, they don't know the bits and bytes well, help educate them, teach them the things that they might need to know to make their job better, and they might be able to teach you something that you don't know to make you better in your job. So I would say that that happens quite a bit, but I think the more people open up to different ways of thinking, different ways of doing things, the better off we're all going to be at the end of the day.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: I do hear what you're saying on the recruiter front, I had seen a lot of that. I was even on LinkedIn the other day. I was scrolling through, and then a very senior sizo, not in my country, in yours, they went off their nuts about something someone had done. And all these field jobs are. I'm just like, that's not really what a leader does. What are you talking about?
[00:16:21] Speaker A: No.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: So then it's like, then they complain about, oh, we can't get people into the field. But it's like, well, why would you want to get into the field when someone's just going to ostracize you, talk down to you, make you feel not welcome, make you feel like a thool. So I look at it from both sides, and I was a little bit rattled by that. To be like, how can you be a leader at a company and this is the way you're operating? You did this whole article about how silly someone was. So to me, it just seems counterintuitive.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's not the way to lead at all. You shouldn't be little people. I mean, if I saw a leader posting something like that and I was looking for a job, you better believe I'm going to be headed the opposite direction. So we got to have some grace. We got to have some empathy when it comes to other people. We have to create learning environments so people can feel free to fail and innovate and try things and ask questions. Because if we feel like we're going to just talk down to everybody that makes a mistake every time someone asks a question that we deem less than notable, then we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot at the end of the day.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: So where do you think this mindset sort of stems from? Because I've seen this even in my own career historically, studying as a practitioner myself, even going out and doing my own thing originally, just like people talking down, et cetera, had to really earn my stripes. But I do still see it rampant in the market on LinkedIn. People just not giving someone a chance and just really going out of their tree about something that really is trivial at the end of the day, it's like, why don't you spend the time to actually help someone rather than writing a rant post? Because it doesn't generate the right type of camaraderie that we're looking for in this space. So I'm just curious, where do you think this mindset comes from?
[00:18:04] Speaker A: I would say, and this isn't going to be everyone but I would say from my observations that I feel like a lot of people in cybersecurity are usually misfits of one way or another. We're really technical, we might be a little nerdy, we might be a little geeky. And so we probably are counted out in a lot of ways as we're going up through school, when we go to college, and then we start to find our home, we start to find our confidence in technology. So then we almost kind of take this approach, like, ha, now I have something of value and this is what I'm going to put out into the world. And so by them putting other people down, they start to make themselves feel better about having this knowledge, about having this confidence, and it just makes them feel better that, hey, oh, I can talk down to somebody else now, but honestly, that's really the wrong way to look at it, really. You should take that confidence and be the leader that you didn't have coming up, be that person, that shoulder to cry on or that support system that someone else doesn't have, and bring them up rather than push them down to make yourself feel better. Because honestly, believe if you really focus on other people's legacies, if you focus on supporting other people, you're going to get much more life fulfillment, you're going to get much more job fulfillment out of that scenario than if you're putting other people down.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is, like you mentioned before, if you were looking for a job and you sourced that post, you would go the other way. So I don't know whether we've just shot ourselves in the foot, because there's a lot of those posts out there. And, I mean, look, it depends on the day, the time, what someone said. I like to say more people are positive than they are negative, but those negative nellies still exist. So do you think that over time, this will change? And of course, you're always going to have negative people in the world, no matter what industry you're in. But would you say from your 20 years in the space, you've started to see a shift towards the mindset of people change?
[00:19:58] Speaker A: I think so. I think the more people we get into cybersecurity, the different mindsets, the different ways of thinking we're going to have, and it's just going to be easier, more inclusive, it's going to be easier for us to kind of gel together. So I think just by nature of the length that cybersecurity has been around, it's going to continue to improve and get better. But I would say that we still have a long way to go where we're searching and getting the right people from the right places in the right spots, looking for talent in places we haven't looked before. Right. We always talk about this gap. We always talk about this skills gap, this personnel gap. But, I mean, I did a show technically divided in that very first episode, we talked about, hey, do we have a gap in cybersecurity, or is it something else? And the conclusion we came to was that there isn't a gap. It's a disconnect. There are plenty of people that have talent that we could use inside of cybersecurity, but it might not be traditional cybersecurity experience. So being able to look at those folks, being able to look at different communities and bring folks in, I think, is going to make it really easy for us to get talent into this great field of cybersecurity and technology. And honestly, that's the way to do it.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: So let's talk about storytelling. Tell me everything that you like about it, how you go about storytelling. Just lay your mind out when I ask you that question.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'll give a bit of a personal story, and it's really what highlighted for me, like, what am I here to do in this world?
My wife, my in laws lived with me for about ten years, and my father in law, we were really close. I got to do a lot of bucket list items with him. I was able to take him to pebble beach. We used to go to movies all the time. We would hang out, watch kung fu flicks and things like that and just have a really good time. And he ended up being one of my closest friends of my entire life. And I remember last summer, I noticed that he kept missing steps, like, in his mind, things just were a little off. And I thought, I think it'd be great, a great time to sit him down and just cut on a mic. Not a big production, but just cut on a mic and just ask him some stories. And so I asked him about a lot of his stories. So he talked about being a dad. He talked about being a husband. He talked about being a son. He talked about being just a person in the world. And, I mean, it was some really touching stories. And three days later, he ended up in the hospital with some breathing issues, and he had already had heart issues. He had cancer. And so there was a lot of things that he was dealing with, and he would never tell those stories again. I caught him at the exact moment that he could tell those stories, and he was never able to tell those stories again. He would die two months later. But I was able to edit that up and piece it together for the family members that weren't able to be here when he was passing and would probably never hear those stories again. But I edited it up together, and I was able to send it out to different family members, and that'll be something that they cherish for the rest of their lives. And so what I found is that I want to capture human moments, and capturing human moments is all about storytelling, whether that's through interviews and asking questions, through a podcast or shooting a video or writing a screenplay. I think that the more people capture these moments that evoke emotion or inspiration or whatever you want to call it, I think that's what storytelling is at the end of the day, and that's what I'm pushing for in my life and in my career.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Well, I'm sorry to hear about your father in law. That's awful. But the thing that you did do was pull that all together, because you are right. Those are the things that people will be left with. So how did you sort of start to come up with that and then piece it all together? Was it just that you thought, well, he's obviously saying really great things that are off the cuff, that are not sort of staged or anything like that, because sometimes, as you know, when you put a microphone or a camera in someone's face, their whole Persona changes.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: So how did you sort of get to that idea of pulling it all together?
[00:24:00] Speaker A: I would say that, first and foremost because we've been really blessed to have time with him, and he lived with us for a long time, but he hasn't been able to spend as much time with his other grandkids. Right. I have three daughters, but he has two other granddaughters that he hasn't had as much time with. So I wanted something for them. I wanted something for his son. There are things that he said on that track that I don't think he's ever been able to say to his son. And so I think that meant a lot to his son. There were things that even my wife had never heard before, and so I thought that this is probably the best gift that he could have given everyone on his way out. And so I was able to kind of polish it, put it together, and give it to the rest of the family. So it was our last little tandem thing together that we did.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Wow. That's incredible. And that's really cool and really creative. I like that. So with that example in mind, how would people sort of create this for their own company? If you look at, let's look at a cybersecurity startup, for example, how did I start to tell that story?
Because, I mean, the startups that I've worked with over the years or people that I speak to, they're like, oh, I just don't want to, I'm afraid, and someone's going to judge me. And all the things we've sort of listed off already start to come to people's mind around. They might feel judged, for example. But how do you get past that?
[00:25:22] Speaker A: That's going to happen no matter what you do. You could be the best creator in the world and still get judged by people. But I would say that start small, start doing little things. Just build your confidence first. If you're an organization, realize who you are as a company. Who are your people? Who are your values or what are your values? What are the things that you care about? What is your experience? What are the stories that you already have? And then who are you trying to speak to, right? If you're trying to empathize with a specific Persona in cybersecurity, think about their problems. What is their life like? Have that extra layer of empathy to understand how do we communicate the stuff that we know, the stuff that we care about to those folks? And I mean, honestly, you could start as small as a simple post on social media, and then you're like, hey, that was pretty good. Maybe I'm going to start a newsletter. And so you start to piece things together. That was great. Maybe I'm going to go on other people's podcasts and tell our story. That went well. Oh, maybe we should start our own podcast. And so you put in a plan for how do you become that thought leader in whatever it is that you care about? And then maybe you go further, oh, maybe we should do a YouTube channel because YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the world, and so we want people to be able to find us on YouTube. So you start doing YouTube content, then you say, oh, maybe we should do a little mini documentary that really encapsulates our values, our people, the problem that we're trying to solve in a very human way. I mean, there's like an escalation to all of this content creation. But honestly, if you just start with some posts and start to get that feedback, that iterative feedback, hey, was this of value? Or if you're asking questions, ask questions of your people and use that for your content, but just iteratively improved. Try to get as much feedback as you can and just never give up. Right. We pod fade. Something we used to talk about all the time is where people would quit after seven episodes. Don't give up. Continue to make content. Even if you transition from doing a podcast to doing a book, or you go from doing a book to videos, or maybe you're doing something else, just never stop creating. Just find your medium, find your message, find your audience, and just keep going.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: PoDfaDE I've never actually heard of that before, but I like it. And that was actually going to be my next question on I've been doing this for a while, so people saying, oh, well, I did one post and nothing happened. So it's like, well, you got to be consistent. I've been trying to tell people this for years. Some people do listen, but I would say majority of people give up. They run out of steam or can be bothered. Didn't work. Nothing works on the first go, and it's going to take time to build up your audience. So what advice then, would you have for someone to be like, you need to stick it out. I say at least a minimum of twelve months. And I even say to people, come back to me in five years, do something each day and then tell me where you're at. No one does that other than probably you at this point.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: They tend to give up, and that's okay because maybe that particular medium wasn't for them. Maybe it was the subject matter that wasn't for them. Find that thing that no matter what, you're going to continue to do day in and day out because you love it. You're not doing it for the likes, you're not doing it for the comments, you're not doing it for the shares, you're doing it because you genuinely like it. I talk about passion and purpose a lot, and there's a book that I absolutely love, which is be so good they can't ignore you by Cal Newport. But what he does is he debunks the passion hypothesis. He's like, oh, it's not about passion. It's about how much time you put into your field and how good you get at it, and then you start to bring on some of that job satisfaction. But honestly, I think it's a bit of both, because if you have passion about something, you're going to continue to do it way longer than someone else. That's like, oof, this is hard. And I'm not that into it, so I'm going to go ahead and give it up. But if it's something that just sings, it just gets you singing, then that's something that you're going to put the time in, you're going to beat your head against those challenges, and you're just going to continue to get better. So find that thing that sings to you and the rest is easy.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's a great point because you are right. And I think some of the things that I've observed in the market is people thinking, okay, well, yeah, got to do a podcast tick in the box. But when I listen to it back, it just sounds like they don't want to be there. It sounds like they don't really care. They haven't put effort into producing the show, asking the right questions, actually listening to people, I see a lot of that. So how do we find the balance between, yes, of course, this is the way content's going, et cetera. Then sometimes it just feels a little bit contrived, it feels a little bit fabricated in. We're just doing the podcasting tick in the box because that's what marketing people like Chris and KB said we've got to do. But again, we don't really care that much about it because it really shows. If you don't really care, it comes across in your questions and your tone, your voice, everything.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: Absolutely.
You have to find the thing that is going to enable you to be your authentic self and your best self. If you're, oh, I'm just going to do a podcast. Because everyone else said, I'm going to do a podcast. It's not going to go off great. Find that medium, dabble, just tinker with different things, see what speaks to you, and then start to iterate, get a little better. Maybe you start a podcast and you're like, okay, wow, this is kind of interesting. I can keep this going. Then you start editing yourself, then you start marketing yourself, and then now you've built all these rare and valuable skills to create content. Maybe you don't do podcasts. Maybe you don't like speaking off the cuff. You'd rather write. Maybe you create a blog, right? Blogs are still big. Newsletters are still big. So just find that medium, that way of you documenting your life and your experiences and the questions that you have. And I don't think you can go wrong, but you just have to find that medium for yourself.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: The other question I have as well, Chris, is let's come back to marketers. So internal marketers. Now, you and I both know that security product services, they're expensive. It's not like, am I going to buy Pepsi or Coke? So sometimes when I'm speaking to marketing, people are like, okay, KB, let's run this thing. But then what's my Roi? And I'm always very honest with people and saying, I can't give you exact number, but this is what I can tell you. But I'm finding that question seems highly irrelevant. Only because these deals won't get done off. Okay, well, I've listened to Chris, and then straight away I'm going to buy what Chris does. It may take a whole year, it may take six months. So the attribution side of things is broken simply because people are looking at content from wherever. So it's really hard to narrow it down to back in the day it was, oh, I saw the advertisement in the newspaper, so I knew specifically where that person came from, whereas now it's fragmented. So what are your thoughts then on that? Because this is something that I think the market absolutely needs to go down this path. But maybe they're asking the wrong questions.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: No, I agree 100%. They've done research to say that in order to move somebody from awareness to considerate person, for your solution, you need to spend about 7 hours or eleven different touches with them. If you think that one single podcast message is going to be it and like up, they're going to want to sign up for a demo and they're going to want to jump to a POC, I think that's a little short sighted. So really thinking about the long game first, thinking about what value do you produce or does the person that you're leveraging for their content produce? And how does that deal with your target audience? Right? Because sometimes, even if you were to say, okay, I'm going to sponsor this podcast that gets 2 million listens, maybe it's not in your demographic, maybe there's 0.1% of the folks that are listening to that podcast that are going to even be in a position to buy your stuff. But if you find someone that's like, okay, wow, this person only has 1000 downloads per episode, but it's exactly in our target market and we're going to sponsor this show for the rest of the year. Now you're starting to get somewhere because now you're starting to build a relationship through these tertiary agreements. So I would say that you got to think about the long game. A lot of people think about the short game like, hey, how do I get deals? How do I get demos today? But if you start to think about it like, how do I build a relationship with a community? Then you start to think much more long term. That's when it starts to matter how many hours you get in front of these folks. And then you start thinking about how do we get this message across and how do we help these folks in the best way possible.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree. And you're like, you need to run these things for a longer campaign. You can't just do one off thing. If it was that easy, then you and I wouldn't probably still be out here working. Right? So, okay, so then the other thing is, company that did this really well was Salesforce. So their number one CRM company, probably globally, right? They are still out here marketing. They ran this massive campaign, I think last year. They're on billboards, they're on buses, they're at bus stops, they're on digital, they're doing advertising, they're doing media stuff, and that's salesforce. So if they're still out here doing it, spending a lot of money on this stuff, and they've already got massive market share, but they've got to keep that market share. You always have to be advertising and marketing the same way McDonald's does, the same way Pepsi and Coke does. And so then it sort of perplexes me that cybersecurity companies sit back and go, oh, well, I don't have to do that thing. Oh, well, Chris, we did three episodes with you and where's our deals? Or whatever, and it's like, well, it doesn't work. Like, are you, what are your thoughts on how this market's going to shift? And if it was that easy, then of course things wouldn't be as competitive. And I think that you need to do all of the things in an integrated way. I think events are still powerful, but what type of events? Because there's so many of them now. So I think that, what are your sentiments then on that? You have to be consistent. You have to show up in the right places then as well. Because to your point earlier, for example, sure, you can go and advertise with a large multimedia mainstream media company, but 95% of these people are probably not cybersecurity people. So yeah, you're probably going to get more impressions, but that leads to zero. Rather than finding a more niche audience, whether it's yours, whether it's mine, that people actually are listening there. That's where the benefit is. And I just don't know if people have seen that this is the way forward. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say for that any brand that invests in content and really puts a concerted effort into developing that is going to win versus someone who doesn't invest in the content. I would say that there's kind of like a tiered approach. I would say owning your own content is the best thing you can do. Own your narrative, own your market, own your messaging, figure out a way to get your message across to the people that you care about. Then the next level is borrowing someone, right? Borrowing your show or borrowing one of our shows, that's the next thing you could do to kind of build that up. But I would say that the person that invests in content, because content scales. Sure, we could do all these different events until the cows come home. Conferences don't really scale that well. I mean, they scale a little bit because you're able to meet a whole bunch of people at one time, but with a point in time conference, you have the week, you might have a couple of days, they're on the demo floor, and then it's gone like that. But if you invest in content can be evergreen. Content could bring you leads. You could have a single video that continuously brings you leads every single year because you run a little campaign behind that video every year. I mean, content is really what's going to help anyone reach the people that they need to reach. And now you have things like artificial intelligence that are helping people with creation. That's just another tool in the tool belt of a creator to enable you to make content at scale. To be able to take something that might have been an hour long podcast, chop it up into 20 different pieces, and now you have three months worth of content for social media. The person that really invests in content is going to win this game.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: And I think people are starting to move there. And again, going back to my earlier point, I'm seeing people the right intention, but the execution, they just not nailed it. And it's probably because they're in their own echo chamber. They're probably saying, okay, I got to get on video, but something about it doesn't feel authentic. So how do you recommend people? And it's hard, especially if you're working in a very large corporation and you've got certain guidelines that you have to adhere to. How do you sort of still get break through that authenticity? Because it is hard and it's easier for you, people like you and I, whereas we don't have someone breathing down an X saying, well, why are you doing it that way? That's not what we agreed on from a brand perspective. So it's probably easier for us to do it than for someone else. So do you have any thoughts on that?
[00:37:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say, of course you want to be in alignment with brand voice, but there is a degree of authenticity, right. If you have people that are in your company and you're like, hey, just use this software that's going to push these posts to your social media account, people are going to realize that, yeah, you're just pushing the corporate social media posts out to everyone. But if you start to put your own spin on it while still staying in the parameters, it's not going to make anyone angry. But you bring your own experiences, you bring your own story, you bring your own personality to it. That's what's going to start to resonate with other people. That's what's going to hit home. I get people that reach out to me, maybe on a weekly basis, and they're saying, hey, I want to create content, but I don't want to sound like everyone else. I don't want to do what everyone else is doing. You just bring your own self to the content. If you and I talked about the same thing, let's say that you and I were going to talk about an article that came out from Forbes about creativity. It will be very different because you have different experiences than I do. You have a different way of thinking, you have different philosophies, you have different terminologies, a different vocabulary. So if you and I put out an hour long piece of content based on one article, it's going to be two very different pieces of content. And that's what people have to realize about creating content. The more you inject of yourself, the more authentic you are. When you're creating that content, the more different and the more authentic and the more resonant it's going to be for your audience.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's so true. And that's what I try to tell people. Like your experiences, your background is completely different, so it doesn't really matter because someone's like, oh, but you've already spoken about that topic before on your podcast or something. It doesn't matter. You're going to have a different view. And there's never been an interview that I've conducted in my life that's been the exact same, nowhere near the same. People may have the same sentiments, but it's not the same, not even their phraseology. And you're right. Do you think that as well, that maybe people draw inspiration from others? I don't know, people like yourself. So how can people start thinking, well, I've just got to be myself. So, for example, I do more hard hitting journalism on my show that probably doesn't resonate with everyone. I ask hard questions because I want to get answers, but that's not everyone's, you know, is there anything specific that people can take away on? Okay, looking at Chris, for example, don't want to necessarily replicate Chris, but how can people start to have that own piece of themselves that they inject into their content?
[00:40:20] Speaker A: I mean, there's a degree of fake it till you make it when you're doing anything. Right. When I started writing, know, I started to almost emulate what a screenwriter would do. And then you start to get comfortable in your own process. You start to get a better understanding of what good looks like from that creative perspective. I would say that's one thing that people should do, is they should know that it's okay to borrow. Right. I think there's a book, I have it around here somewhere, but it was something to the effect of, the best artists steal. And that's very true. Right. There's a book called Save the Cat that talks about the different types of movies. And in the book, there's, like, twelve different types, for all intents and purposes. And you could put just about any movie you could think of in these twelve different types. But then when you look at how formulaic Hollywood can be when it comes to making movies, you're like, wow, is this really the formula? This is exactly the gameplay that everyone is going into. And, yeah, I mean, this is exactly the model that works. And so everyone borrows from everyone. There are very few completely original ideas that aren't connected to anything else. And so I think that's completely fine. And then, like you were saying about, you ask harder hitting questions and you push the envelope. There's an audience for that. There's an audience that finds that refreshing. Yes. This is exactly what I want to hear. I want to hear realness. Carissa, she doesn't pull any punches. I want to hear the realness in this interview. And some people might say, oh, wow, she pushes the envelope too hard. She asks too deep of a question. And there's always going to be people that kind of look at it like that, but there's always going to be that audience for the stuff that you're trying to create.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: So what about moving forward? Where do you sort of see our industry with media, cybersecurity, these two worlds sort of colliding coming together, however you want to put it. Where do you see what we're doing and the market moving forward, even the next twelve months?
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say that we're going to be making more content. I would say right now there's a lot of folks that are doing things like webinars and they're doing conferences and are doing like little QC explainer videos, which is completely fine. It's better than what we were doing before. But I think you're going to start to see more mini documentaries, you're going to start to see more web series, you're going to start to see fiction pieces of content that come out from cybersecurity brands and technology brands across the board. I think we're just going to continue to push and who knows, there might be a feature film eventually that's sponsored by a cybersecurity brand that really sort of highlights the world of cybersecurity, or maybe the world of incident response or threat hunting, who knows? But I think that we're going to start to see some of that stuff and those are going to be the pieces of content that goes to festivals and wins awards and things like that. But I think it's right around the corner.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: So, Chris, is there any sort of closing comments or final thoughts you'd like to leave our audience with today?
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say flex those creative muscles. Just do your best to tell your own story. Tell the story of others. Dabble in different ways of being creative. It's a muscle that it's not gone, it's just inactive. So start to flex those muscles. Reach out to other people that are also creating and work together. Have an accountability partner. I think the more creative juices we have in the world, the better world's going to be. The more creative juices we have in cybersecurity, the better cybersecurity is going to be. So I would say flex those muscles and do as much as you can.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: This is KBcast, the voice of cyber. Thanks for tuning in. For more industry leading news and thought provoking articles, visit KBI Media to get access today.
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