This podcast episode delves into the multifaceted nature of branding and communication within the realm of cybersecurity, emphasizing that cybersecurity is no longer merely an IT concern but rather a societal issue that necessitates a broader perspective. We engage with George, a distinguished podcast host and community leader, who shares his insights on the importance of understanding human behavior in building effective cybersecurity communities. The discussion highlights the significance of storytelling in branding, illuminating the necessity for organizations to connect with their audience on a deeper level to convey their value propositions effectively. Furthermore, we explore the role of communication in fostering relationships and creating meaningful interactions within the industry, underlining the importance of listening and adapting to the needs of others. Ultimately, this episode serves as a compelling reminder that successful branding and community building in cybersecurity hinge on authenticity, understanding, and effective communication strategies.

In this episode, Joe Carson speaks with George Kamide about the evolving landscape of cybersecurity, emphasizing the importance of community building, branding, and effective communication. They discuss how cybersecurity is no longer just an IT issue but a societal one, and how understanding user experience is crucial for success. The conversation also highlights the role of podcasts in educating the cybersecurity community and the challenges of building meaningful connections in a digital world.

Takeaways

• Cybersecurity is a societal problem, not just an IT issue.
• Branding is essential for standing out in a crowded market.
• Understanding user experience is critical for product success.
• Podcasts can provide valuable education and insights in cybersecurity.
• Building communities takes time and effort without immediate ROI.
• Effective communication is key to conveying value propositions.
• Listening to customers is more important than broadcasting solutions.
• Time is the most valuable resource we have.
• Engagement on social media should be curated and positive.
• Building relationships requires giving before asking.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Cybersecurity and Community Building

02:25 The Importance of Branding in Cybersecurity

08:54 User Experience and Customer Understanding

19:36 The Role of Podcasts in Cybersecurity Education

22:42 Building Communities and Navigating Social Media

The discourse presented within this podcast episode encompasses a profound exploration of the evolving landscape of cybersecurity and the critical importance of community building within this domain. The dialogue initiates with the host, Joe Carson, articulating his enthusiasm for engaging with leading figures in cybersecurity, wherein he aims to disseminate invaluable insights and best practices aimed at augmenting individual and organizational success in the field. The guest speaker, George, who boasts extensive experience in the cybersecurity sector, elucidates his unconventional journey into the industry, which was catalyzed by a background in anthropology and marketing, ultimately leading to his current role as the head of community at the CISO Society. This narrative serves as a testament to the multifaceted nature of cybersecurity, illustrating that it transcends traditional IT confines and necessitates a broader societal perspective. A salient theme that emerges throughout the dialogue is the imperative of effective communication in fostering robust cybersecurity communities. Both Carson and George emphasize the necessity of understanding the audience's needs and perspectives, underscoring that the success of any cybersecurity initiative hinges upon the establishment of meaningful connections and a dialogue rooted in mutual understanding and collaboration. George articulates the dangers of adopting a one-sided communication approach, which often leads to a disconnect between providers and practitioners. Instead, he advocates for a listening-first strategy that prioritizes the cultivation of relationships, ensuring that the communication is not merely a broadcast of solutions, but a collaborative dialogue aimed at addressing real-world challenges faced by practitioners. Furthermore, the episode delves into branding within the cybersecurity space, positing that brand identity is not merely a superficial concern but a fundamental element that influences perception and engagement. George provides insightful perspectives on how brands can differentiate themselves in a crowded market through authenticity and a clear articulation of their value propositions. By leveraging storytelling and a deep understanding of the audience's pain points, brands can foster trust and credibility, which are paramount in a sector often plagued by skepticism. The episode ultimately culminates in a call to action for listeners to engage in proactive community building and to embrace a mindset centered on empathy, collaboration, and continuous learning as they navigate the complexities of cybersecurity.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to another podcast.

I'm the host of the show, Joe Carson, and it's a pleasure to be back with you all.

I really enjoy this time that I get to spend every week recording podcasts and talking to amazing people and really helping bring ideas, thought leadership and best practices and tips about how to make your journey and to make a future and career a successful one in cybersecurity.

So I am joined by somebody who's an inspiration to me, an amazing person in the industry.

So welcome to the episode.

Today we have George.

George, would you give the audience a background about who you are, what you do, and also how did you get into the industry?

Yeah.

So who am I?

I am a podcast host over at Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks with another George who is a ciso.

I've worked on the vendor marketing side and presently head of community at the CISO Society.

And I very much came into cyber through a side door.

I've been working with computers since I was very young.

Took coding classes at my parents behest when I was seven.

But I came in through marketing and sort of discovered.

My college degree was in anthropology and I discovered there are ways to kind of apply that to understand how practitioners think and buy, and then moved out of marketing into community building and have never looked back.

Fantastic.

I mean, that's, it's all, I think a lot of people today, you know, there's the very traditionalists who came through IT and support, but I'm finding that, you know, cybersecurity is no longer an IT problem.

It's, it's a, it's a society problem.

And I really, you know, I think Miko's.

His quote last year, which I always think is one of the greatest quotes of last year, which was that we're no longer protecting IT systems, we're protecting the digital society, which is what I think.

That's why the field has expanded so much to.

You've got psychologists coming into it, you've got communication specialists.

And I think this is what I really want to get to for today's episode was really focusing in, on around building communities, looking at, you know, securing brands, looking at people's, even personal brands and organizations, brands.

Also, what's the best practices of communication?

Because sometimes when I go to events, I see good communication, I see poor communication, which sometimes is quite shocking.

What's your, you've been in the kind of business of building communities and you do amazing podcast episodes and shows and bringing people together.

What's some of the best practices, what inspired you to really get involved in building cybersecurity communities?

Yeah, I think it's wanting to listen and learn.

Right.

And there are two approaches.

Like, I have the solution and I'm just going to broadcast that to the world takes a certain kind of arrogance and hubris.

Sometimes a little, little bit of that is necessary to get like a startup off the ground, you know, given all the odds are against you.

But I think you can either evolve and pedal back to listening or you can stay in that mode.

And I think that's problematic if you, if you stay in that mode.

And so I've just always been a people observer and whether that was informal anthropology or in organizational anthropology, I just want to sort of see those patterns of behavior and just.

Why do, why do they say that versus this or why do they think that way or behave that way versus how we think they behave and talk?

Absolutely.

That's one of the things that, you know, for me, one of my favorite pastimes is just to sit in a coffee shop and, yes, sip of my coffee and just watch.

Sometimes people go by and we get into, sometimes we get into making assumptions about, you know, that person's background or what did they do or.

Yes, but we, we do that from, you know, the appearance, but we don't really care.

We're missing a lot of times the context and I think that's in the cybersecurity.

What sometimes when we talk about branding and a lot of times is that we see the main kind of like, you know, the thing that's put out there.

But sometimes we don't understand the context.

How important is, you know, when we think about security, how important is branding?

You spend a lot of time, you know, working and branding area, how important is it and what some of the, you know, things that you can do wrong and what some of the best practices to get it right.

Yeah, I think brand is how you're going to stand out.

But it's definitely a means to an end.

It can't be the end unto itself because then it's just sort of like razzle dazzle and jazz hands and it's not really functionally doing anything.

But you know, my good friends at Torque, for example, which is the automation platform, Don, the CMO over there really was clear with the leadership when they were trying to recruit him.

Like, we're going to have to stand out because if we're sort of like, we use blue and orange and sort of all the same colors and we just look like everyone else.

Like, you end up Burning a lot of your capital, trying to stand out.

But if you can come out of the gate strong with something that stands out now, torque, you know, to their credit, also has the engineering to back it up.

So you can't just be razzle dazzle and not have anything.

But when it comes to branding, I think a lot of founders don't think of that first.

Right.

The common mistake I see is I'm going to get my first round of funding and then I'm going to go hire a CRO and they're going to bring in their crack team of enterprise sellers.

And you know, those enterprise sellers have these deep Rolodexes and they're just going to call into their accounts.

This works 0% of the time.

Because, you know, if you're an enterprise seller at a big Series D or even a public company, those clients are probably not going to take the risk of buying your Series A, you know, early stage startup.

Also, they don't know who you are.

So the sellers are ill equipped to succeed.

They're just forced to like do these volume plays of pounding the phones and have you heard of X, Y, Z?

No, I haven't.

Oh, well, in this 30 seconds, let me try to jam down your throat.

So that's that broadcast mode versus listening and I think taking the time to build a brand and a message so that when the sales team does come in, they have something to work with.

So that is a step that's missed.

And I think it's because a lot of technical founders think branding is, I don't know, they sort of sneer at it like it's marketing, but really it's just an attention mechanism.

If we want to use the parlance of AI today.

Right.

It is like, how are you going to get somebody's attention in that first 30 seconds and just enough to hold them so that you can then begin to have a conversation with them.

Absolutely.

And sometimes it does.

To your point, you do need to be bold.

If I think of some of the companies that I thought was in Estonia, there was the company Transferwise, which is now called Wise.

He always thought that their branding was very edgy and bold.

They, they really stood out there and they took risks, you know, and doing it a lot of times.

But sometimes those risks, you know, for good or bad, it made them visible and that was the approach they took.

They took the, you know, you know that, you know, if, if I'm getting visible, it's good, you know, it's.

Even if it was perceived as bad, eventually it just Made people notice.

And that was something that was very, very, you know, I thought, well, that's, that's impressive.

And it taught me a bit of a lesson into sometimes you need to go out there in order to capture that attention well.

And I think there's some aversion to that because people don't quite understand what is entailed in branding.

But like, if you look at the boldest brands, whether it's like Liquid Death, which captured the water category in the US or like even Red Bull with their sort of outlandish events, there's still sort of a story that's being told.

And that's the story you have to think of and start to develop.

Especially if you're developing a solution, you need to have a story like, what problem is this addressing?

What business risk is it solving?

And if you can't tell that story.

And I will say technical founders, great at starting technology.

Absolutely horrific storytellers, mostly because they're not trained to.

Right.

They're in the weeds of their code and their development cycles and they love the features and the widgets and ooh, we added this thing.

But that's not what your buyer cares about.

And it's a really hard lesson to learn that all the things that you care about is not necessarily the stuff that your buyer cares about.

And being able to like flip that switch or understand that role reversal is critical to success.

Absolutely.

I think it's.

That's one of the most important parts of branding, I think, is telling that story, you know, and that journey and sometimes also putting.

Years ago, one of the things I find was when I was creating products, I was in at the time, security for large financial and foreign exchange money market system.

It was like I was struggling to understand about why people were asking for certain features, moving things certain ways.

So for me, I actually put myself, I became a certified foreign exchange money markets trader to put myself and go onto the trading floor to understand about why, why they were making decisions and why they were asking for certain features.

And I think that what that gets you into is understanding about what problems you're really solving and what motivates people.

And at the end of the day, I always find that yes, you can deliver the greatest technology, but unless you're making a person's life on their daily basis improved, it's.

It's not going to sway the decision unless you're really making a difference in somebody's day job.

When you think about a lot of security buyers, it's all about is either you're Helping reduce costs or you're helping make their lives better, which.

Making their lives better has a reflection also reduced costs as well.

So you're absolutely spot on.

Like, yes, I was just before this recording, I was talking to a friend because I hit on this analogy in my head on the way home from dropping my kids off at school, which was, you know, I have always been an admirer of BMW.

I have not had the privilege of owning one, but I like the engineering, you know, I like the engines.

And the first time I ever got in one, and I don't remember the year, but it was older than it is now, so not a lot of the CarPlay, Smart Digital, whatever.

I was so spectacularly disappointed by the interior because it was clear that they put all of their thought into the outside.

And.

But what is the experience of the end user?

I don't, I don't experience the engine.

I'm in the car.

Right.

So that aesthetic experience has to be easy to use.

And the little knob they had in the middle that like, does all the things is like super frustrating.

I have seen a lot of tech that looks amazing and solves real problems, but they haven't sat in the seat of their customer and figured out, like, what is the UI ux.

It's a point that Ross Halyuk has brought up a lot.

So I think like your first hire, when you get design partners and you started converting them into customers is you have to find the world's best customer success person.

And not customer success, like upsell them on new features because you're probably too early for that.

But they're like you, they have to.

Ideally they can shadow some customers.

They just got to get like, really deep and like in the weeds with them and understand, like, well, I know you're a design partner, so you're willing to kind of muscle through some things, but like, can we reduce the number of clicks from like five to one or like, would you rather, you know, write to our API or.

I don't know.

But like, you got to figure that stuff out because that will help you expand to other use cases.

But you have to sit in their shoes.

Absolutely.

When you think of talking about cars from a design perspective.

And then you have the Porsche, which is also which the same concept the Porsche took, the concept of having as few clicks to get to that actually setting as possible.

So rather than having where the BMW has one knob that actually controls everything, the ports have hundreds of knobs, but it's reduced, it's the reduce click.

And.

And even I Always laugh.

Because one of the ideologies of the Estonian society, digital society, was as few clicks as possible in order to get you to do something.

And they took it from a service.

A service approach, which I always thought was quite interesting, is that it's all about what service you're delivering in the end and how to do it with as few steps as possible.

So if you take it as, you know, you've got that BMW with the one knob, has hundreds, maybe thousands of settings to basically many knobs.

But it does mean that when you get into that user experience, it has to be very intuitive, very close to what they're used to.

Things have to be in the place, what is familiar for people rather than, you know, you getting into a vehicle or using a software.

It has to be something that very familiar look and feel to what you're used to so you don't have to learn how to drive a new car again.

And also, you know, it's the same thing is that if I go from software A to software B, the experience is very similar.

So it should be intuitive and simple, you know, for us to, to capture and understand how to use it.

Yeah, And I also think it's about.

You said communication, but I.

So there's communicating experience, there's communicating brand, there's also like communicating your value proposition.

So you and I, I think, talked last rsa.

If you're on the floor and you see the big jargony language, next gen, AI RE0, whatever the hell, like, that's cool for the marketing team and it might make someone pause.

But if somebody comes up and they see your demo and they're actually interested in it, they're going to be interested because it's.

They see that it's going to solve a problem in their organization.

When they're walking through the expo hall and they run into their colleague from a different company, some peer, they're going to be like, oh, have you seen any.

I've seen this conversation.

They're like, have you seen anything cool?

They're going to say like, oh, yeah, I was talking to this one vendor, I think their name is.

Yeah, I mean, good luck if they remember your name.

And I really think they can help me automate some workflows where we've been seeing, you know, some bottlenecks.

That's the way they talk.

So I'm always asking marketers, are you equipping your sales team to speak in a language that will allow your prospects and your customers to sell for you?

In other words, tell that story for you because they're not going to memorize whatever jargony placard you have on your booth.

They can't.

It's like a cognitive overload.

So I just think communication means a lot of things, and I think we're not really thinking about how to do it very well.

Absolutely.

And even for.

For those big trade shows, I find that a lot of times they're not staffing it with the technical people, they're stuffing it with marketing.

That ties it to.

To the.

To the buzzwords.

Because I play the buzzword bingo at all of the Expo events and I do the walk and I see, okay, are they using all of the fancy buzzwords that were sometimes just restating the same thing in the latest.

Basically, you know, color or fleshy kind of, you know, button and noise.

And as I go through and I see something and then I start asking questions and I've got my standard set of questions about trying to understand is it.

Is it something that's just fluff that's basically put out there because maybe their investors or their, you know, their teams say we need to be having the same message or there's actually any substance behind it.

And that's why, you know, when I'm, When I'm getting to somebody who is technical or they can explain it in a way so they're not just doing that typically, basically, here's the.

Here's the value and here's the message that we've been told to say.

When they start giving me.

And they tend to be more familiar with the user stories with basically walking you through, and then they'll explain, you know, what's happening behind the background.

And for me, maybe they're also willing to listen to what you have to say because there's like the.

I have the technical pitch for all people, but, like, your environment is and needs are going to be different than the next person's.

The next person's.

The next person's.

Right?

Absolutely.

That was one of the things that they will ask more questions than I do.

There you go.

Yes.

And when.

When somebody's asking me questions, that means is that, oh, they want to make sure that they're actually, you know, even customizing that story.

That actually means.

Makes me feel that they're adding more value.

They're sometimes teaching me and what's going to help me in my day job as well.

So when they start asking questions.

Absolutely.

That thing it tends to be, for me is I know I'm talking to somebody who is the right person.

So let's let me just drill there for a little.

They, if they're asking questions, it's because they have confidence in the story.

They haven't memorized a pitch.

It's when they only have the pitch to lean on as a crutch that you get kind of the breathless, well, let me just get it all out in two minutes and hope you stand here long enough to hear it.

All right.

Yes.

But I just remember the elevator pitch.

And then afterwards you're like now I have nothing else to actually.

But if they, they have a stronger foundation as to like what is the solution's overall value proposal.

Like they have an understanding of practitioners needs or wants.

Like I think they, they feel more comfortable.

I also have this, I don't know, it's not a theory but this observation that of all industries cybersecurity trade shows have the highest data loss problem and that is you have that great conversation and you walk away feeling like I feel warm and fuzzy about this company.

I should remember to follow up.

And then you get distracted.

What happens on the back end is you're just a single data point that's going to get jammed into a spreadsheet that's going to get passed on to someone, not the person you talk to.

They have, they've lost all that context.

Every step of the way, more and more context just collapses until you are just Joseph Carson.

This scan number insert to automated workflow here.

And this is a point where I think like technology is not doing us a favor.

If you remember trade shows from like the early 90s, like you would, I would get your business card, I would probably write something on the back of it like follow, Follow up in Q4 about x, y, Z.

And then I would have that note.

And so we have to kind of like create a way that we don't lose the context all the way out because your warm and fuzzies will disappear the moment the 24 year old BDR just like cold calls you about whatever and you're like who is this again?

Like you as a human are trying.

To remember and you probably have a best two weeks post event to really take the next step because after that.

Yeah.

And wouldn't it be great if it were the person you talk to and they could reference something in the conversation.

Absolutely.

Just as you said that I'm actually sitting here, I've got a desk full of business cards with notes written in the back of them.

There you go.

That's still from, from a recent event that I still have the process high.

Fidelity High fidelity data.

Keep it absolutely.

And it means that absolutely from that you remember the person, you have a much more understanding about the problem of the conversation you discussed.

But I agree, I think it was a two week time frame.

If you don't capture that, then the value of that data starts to decline quickly because then you start forgetting some of the main conversation or main kind of problems that they were.

The questions that were being asked during that.

I want to get also, you know, for me, I think one of the things I like to be done is, you know, besides the elevator pitches and communications and the branding and stuff, I like to be educated.

I like to be learning something that, you know, that I, that I, you know, something new, something and different, something that helps me excel.

I do think that, you know, a lot of the way that forms like, such as podcasts are a great way of delivering those education.

So how important role?

I mean, you've, you've been involved in podcasts and, and I get a lot of inspiration and go to you for, for, for suggestions and, and how to improve.

What's the important role that podcasts have in cybersecurity and how can they drive awareness?

What's, what's some of the big differences they can make?

And you also have the, the bare knuckles and brass tech podcast, which is fascinating.

So I think you have to pick your battles.

You know, early days we didn't think that we could get one guest per week, so we said we would do a guest every other week and then every other week we'd sort of do like a roundup of stories in cyber that week.

It turns out when we listen to the audience that they did want more guests.

And it turns out like we don't have the wherewithal to compete with like a dark reading or, you know, hacker news.

Like, we're not a news organization, so like, let's stop trying to be a news organization.

Right.

And so to that end, I think podcasts are very useful to provide education by either platforming new voices, new ideas, which is what I'm all about, or also just digging in deep.

Right.

A half an hour is quite a bit of time to devote to something and it can spark an interest that will lead to like, oh, I want to read more about that.

So I've always found podcasts very useful as either a thought starter or it's just exposing me to new ideas.

Absolutely.

And I think that's, for me, it has the same kind of.

It all started that when Covid started, I wasn't getting to talk to the friends and wasn't getting to talk to peers.

And those are the conversations that were always inspiring and always kind of insightful for me, when you're walking around the conference halls and you bump into someone like yourself and you have that conversation, I thought that, you know, if somebody was listening to that, they would get inspiration.

They get, you know, great ideas because you're always thinking about what, what problems, what, what's the latest things, what's, you know, challenges have you seen?

And it always drives that kind of creativity as well and learning from it.

So what are some of.

When you go through this, what do you think are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to the community?

Because even in social, I try to stay connected on a lot of the social, you know, threads that's going on.

And there's a lot of positive and negative.

And that's, for me, is always a struggle, is that I like more of the positive side of things.

But you do see the negative side.

Yeah, I mean, I think so.

When you.

Building a community is long and slow and deliberate and intentional.

So brands that are like, oh, we're going to start a CISO community, or we're going to start a practitioner community, just know, like, tell your CEO and set that expectation.

There's like no ROI out of that.

Right?

Like, there's no, like, clear attribution of we started the community, therefore we get this.

And so just know that level of effort.

But also, communities out there, they already exist, right?

They're on Reddit, they're in discord, they're wherever.

And you can think about how to interface with those communities.

But as it pertains to social, I advocate for a lot of the controls, the unfollows, the mutes.

Like, I have a very curated feed.

If it's nonsense or negative for the sake of clicks or whatever, I just kill it.

Like, I'm unfollowing that person.

I just don't have time for that because there are great ideas out there.

Right.

And I would rather just be exposed to those and limit my time to them.

But I think over time, you can begin to build these relationships.

Like, I think I reached out to you years ago because you had posted something about NLP and I wanted to talk about that.

That's how we got connected.

And then later, only later, did I discover you're also connected to Danny.

Right.

Cyber is very small.

And then suddenly you realize that a lot of people know a lot of people, and then we begin to run into each other at events.

But you just have to be like, really open to that.

And I think also on social, I've always advocated you should give like at least four times before you ask for something.

Right.

You can get hit up for all sorts of stuff.

I really feel sorry for the cats who come at me and be like, hey, can you get me a job?

I was like, that's not how this works, man.

I have gotten many friends jobs and it's the greatest thrill, but they're friends, they're like, I don't know you from Adam.

Like what?

I only have but so many hours in the day, and I think that's an unfair expectation to put on somebody.

Right.

So I would just give before you receive.

Just like we said, listen before you.

Absolutely.

It's also going to really get to understand more before asking for something as well.

Kind of, you know, build that relationship, build, give value, actually make sure that you're just not basically trying to get some.

I think I was this conversation I've had with Danny in the past as well, was around a lot of the marketing kind of challenges that people have is that you gotta, you gotta give something to earn that time.

Time is earned.

It's not something that you simply just give, you know, somebody asking for 10 minutes or 30 minutes of someone's time.

It has to be something of, you know, the value.

And you have to earn that time before you even get it.

And I get, I the same.

I get so many requests on social media.

You have 10, you know, 10 minutes for a quick call for this.

I want to, I want to give you a pitch.

And I'm like, but that's not the first thing you asked for.

Yes.

So, yes, our, our lives are how we spend our time.

Right.

And so 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, like life is just a bunch of 10 minute increments strung together.

So like, if, if it was just like you listening to pitches like, that would be your life.

Which is, what kind of life is that, you know?

Absolutely.

So I will say the, you know, there's a lesson I learned is that we all talk about, you know, what is the most valuable thing in this world?

It is time.

Time is the essence.

Is, is, is.

You know, we can talk about cryptocurrencies and we can talk about data and oil and everything else, but the fundamental thing is that everyone on this earth, we have, you know.

Yeah, spoiler alert.

None of us get out alive.

Exactly.

We all know how the story ends, so.

So we have to make as much valuable out.

And for me, if somebody's educating Me on something or adding me knowledge.

Yes, I will give my time for that.

If it's, if it's some conversation that for me really can intrigues ideas and new thoughts.

Absolutely.

That's something for me that ties back to brand and being bold.

Right?

Like are you going to come out with a white paper quote unquote, that has no research value but is really just a circular way of pointing back to your solution.

Like one, who's got time to read that thing?

And then two, right, like, what's the.

Why.

Why would I give you my time if it's not compelling but if it like stands out visually?

And then it like, this is an interesting format.

I've actually started telling people like how do you get your information?

And they might say like, oh, I listen to podcasts or I listen to audiobooks.

I'm like, so why are you making things like a flat white PDF?

I was like, do you read those things?

And they're like, no.

And I was like, so why do you think anyone else does?

Right.

So anyway, it's, I just like it goes back to this idea of if you're really paying attention to how you are interacting with communication information, it should inform how you then take that out.

I don't really understand like, well, that's what B2B has always done.

Like that's not a very great explanation.

Oh, just because it's the way we've done it in the past doesn't mean it's the most best way going forward.

And I look at how I consume information.

There's a lot of, through podcasts, a lot through webinars because the webinar gives you a bit more interactivity.

Sometimes you can get a demo in there from a visual perspective.

And I also audiobooks because I travel so much that audiobooks has been a great way to, for me to, to, to learn something that's.

And I know typically within an hour within the audiobook whether I'm like I'm going to finish it or not.

Because you know, if, if a lot of the beginning is a lot of fluff, then I'm not going to have the interest of continuing down.

And that's where you know, audiobooks, you know that of the Lazarus heist results, you know, the tracers in the dark.

Fantastic.

It was just capturing those storytelling of 2.0.

It is a bigger story that they're telling.

And even Joseph Cox's latest one, to remember the one about the non phone which was also a party.

There's, I mean there's like Right.

There's no shortage of content, so find a way to stand out.

You know, whether that's getting your customers to record a testimonial rather than just like sticking a print block of text somewhere.

I think it would be much more compelling to see one of your customers hear them talking in the camera or just talking in their own words about their use case or whatever is very.

And also it allows, you know, when you have that, you can get into a bit of an idea about how passionate and how true and how directed they are about it.

You know, they become that, that little difference from a text to something of actually somebody getting up and taking the time does make a big difference.

So what, what resources?

How do you stay up to date?

How, what we pass each other at events now again, I see a lot of the podcasts that you publish.

What's.

What's your way of staying up to date?

What resources?

Or can you point some of the audience to the places that you can look for information?

Yeah, absolutely.

I spend so much time in cyber like daily.

Sort of up to date tech news a lot obviously on AI, But AI is very hard to curate.

That's not just like the, you know, buzz but, you know, critical, critical voices in AI.

So I find a lot of those resources on LinkedIn.

But I listen to a lot of podcasts, read a lot of magazines, old school books.

Also the advantage of books is that they're not strip mining your data for advertising.

So absolutely, yeah, there's that.

And then in terms of other resources that we're producing, just mostly find me on LinkedIn.

I don't really have time to be anywhere else.

And then bare knuckles and brass tacks is available everywhere.

Absolutely.

And like to make sure they get the links back to the podcast and to yourself on social for sure.

On our show notes as well.

It's been fantastic having you on.

I've really enjoyed and fun conversation.

It's always great and it's definitely your inspiration for me and other people who create content.

So it's always great listening to you.

What's the best way to.

I guess LinkedIn is the best way to stay connected with you.

Yeah, just find me there because I can't be anywhere else.

So that's good.

George, awesome.

Look forward to seeing you at a conference or an event near future.

Otherwise, you know, finding some time to sync up and connect again.

So for the audience again, make sure that, you know, subscribe, connect with me.

If you have any feedback, anything you would like to hear in the future, I'm always willing to listen.

So everyone stay safe, take care, and to the next time in the future, all the best.

Thank you.