Chris Cochran:
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.

Karissa Breen:
This is Katie Joining me today is Chris Cochrane, cofounder 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.

Chris Cochran:
Hey. I’m a big fan of you, Carissa. Glad to be here.

Karissa Breen:
So you and I caught up a few weeks ago. We sort of swapped some ideas and spoke about the industry. So let’s, you know, let’s start off with maybe the creative side of cyber, which is what you and I both share a love for. So we’re starting to see some changes now in the market with how people are creating content, etcetera. So let’s just explore us a bit more. What does this mean to you?

Chris Cochran:
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 schoolchildren, and they tested on the 98 percentile for creative genius. They tested those same folks throughout their lives. And by the time they hit their thirties, they’re 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 kinda 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 do and pushing the envelope for things that don’t exist yet.

Chris Cochran:
And so I feel that creativity in cybersecurity is one of those things that it doesn’t really come to mind when you first think about it. Like, oh, wow. It’s 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.

Karissa Breen:
Yeah. And you’re right. A lot of people that I speak to as well, like, oh, but I’m not creative, KB, so, like, you just do your thing. So so how do we change that mindset? Because, I mean, like, look at the work that you and I do. Like, it is an element of creativity there. So do you think that could be deterrent for people coming into the industry? Because they’re like, oh, it’s a bit technical, a bit boring. Like, I don’t wanna 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.

Chris Cochran:
Oh, absolutely. And and 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 I do feel like when people first hear about cybersecurity, they think, oh, I’m gonna have to be a coder or I’m gonna have to be a security analyst, but, I mean, there are so many different facets of cybersecurity. And me being this creative track 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.

Chris Cochran:
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 I think we would be a lot better off if we brought more creativity to our work.

Karissa Breen:
So you mentioned before, Chris, around you wanna see people push the envelope. So would you say when you started Hackavelli Media, etcetera, would you say that you were pushing the envelope?

Chris Cochran:
I wouldn’t say I was pushing the envelope in the beginning. I would say that there are a lot of happy accidents. There were a lot of things that I did wrong, and and I would learn from it and some things I would do right accidentally. But I would say that once I kinda 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 podcast. And then, hey. If we’re gonna do video, our 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 the folks that are doing the work that I’m not doing? Right? So he brought on a a director, Ian Van Allen. What are the other aspects of creation that we had no idea about? Right? Colorist, color grading when it comes to videos.

Chris Cochran:
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 start 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 I’m I’ve been writing short screenplays for the past 6 months, and I’ve submitted a couple for some competitions. My very first one I ever submitted got an honorable mention, which is really cool. But now I’m I’m telling other stories. Right? I just wanna capture these different moments, You elicit some type of emotion, but it always has a technology spin to it.

Karissa Breen:
Yeah. I love that. And like I said, I 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, like, that wasn’t really around even 5, 6 years ago, like, only at the start. 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.

Karissa Breen:
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. Like, the market’s really moving out of the storytelling and this creativity side of it. Do you have any thoughts?

Chris Cochran:
Yeah. Absolutely. If you’re gonna do anything that’s worth doing, a lot of times that’s gonna rattle some cages. And, I mean, there are folks that there are folks that are really stuck in the past, and they’re like, hey. This is not what we do in cybersecurity, but I’m not I’m, 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 when creating content, utilizing LinkedIn the way that I do.

Chris Cochran:
Because when I started leveraging LinkedIn, it was largely a place where people store their resume and and made some connections. But I started to leverage it almost like an Instagram. I started to leverage it almost like a Facebook, letting 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 kinda marching to this the beat of 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 and they even have a creator mode where you can push newsletters and different things like that.

Chris Cochran:
So it was almost like I was a little bit ahead of my time. I’m sure I had a a quite quite a few haters when I started leveraging LinkedIn through content the way that I did. But, obviously, it seemed like I was on to something because I started to open up that aperture a bit more.

Karissa Breen:
Yeah. 100%. And it totally can resonate with that story as well. So going back to doing things differently, so we’re an industry that’s very inverticals, 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?

Chris Cochran:
I would say because there’s 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.

Chris Cochran:
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 5 years. So then I’m able to kinda 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’d 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 2 separate things.

Chris Cochran:
I think the more that we can integrate them together, the better, and the more resonant that message is gonna be for the community.

Karissa Breen:
Yeah. Totally understand. So would you say that gap is closing now, or or do you think yeah. It is.

Chris Cochran:
I I 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 gonna raise that threshold of what quality is. And it’s just gonna be better for everyone because now we’re gonna 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 gonna be able to communicate this stuff to the general public. We’re gonna be able to communicate this stuff to kids and the elderly. We’re gonna be able to communicate this to people of various neurological constructs.

Chris Cochran:
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.

Karissa Breen:
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?

Chris Cochran:
Oh, yeah. That 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 if any, marketing folks in their their wheelhouse. They might not have any brand folks. And so you have a lot of technologists. You have engineers that are like, alright. I can come up with a logo, or I could come up with the messaging, and that’s what’s going to kinda left 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’s a there is levels to marketing.

Chris Cochran:
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.

Chris Cochran:
Right? There’s just 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.

Karissa Breen:
Yeah. Most definitely. And one of the things that’s been probably really apparent to me over the last 6 years of doing this has been, perhaps people and, like, less so nowadays. I’m talking in the earlier days when this stuff wasn’t really around. Did you ever feel that many people not talk down, you look down upon marketing and branding, etcetera, like, 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 and I know it’s also about product development and capability, etcetera, but we’re focusing on the marketing and branding in this interview.

Karissa Breen:
But I’ve just seen over time, perhaps people will not value it as much. Have you come across that yourself?

Chris Cochran:
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 is probably 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 kinda look down on them from time to time. This isn’t a stance that I take.

Chris Cochran:
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 said, 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 5 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 or they don’t know what they’re doing. That recruiter is looking for many jobs.

Chris Cochran:
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 gonna be able to solve these problems.

Chris Cochran:
So when we start to get that feeling like, oh, they don’t know the bits and bites, 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 gonna be at the end of the day.

Karissa Breen:
I do hear what you’re saying on the recruiter file. I have seen a lot of that. I was in even on LinkedIn the other day, I was scrolling through, and then a very senior size o, not in my country, in yours, they went off their nuts about something someone had done. And all these people jumped on, I’m just like, that’s not really what a leader does. What are you talking about? No. So then it’s like then they complain about, oh, we can’t get people into the field. But it’s like, why would you wanna 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 fool. So I I 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, like, article about how silly someone was.

Karissa Breen:
So to me, it just seems counterintuitive.

Chris Cochran:
Yeah. That’s not the way to lead at all. You you shouldn’t be little people. I mean, if if I saw, a leader posting something like that and I was looking for a job, you better believe I’m gonna be headed the the opposite direction. So we we gotta have some grace. We gotta 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 and ask questions. Because if we feel like we’re gonna just talk down to everybody that makes a mistake, every time someone asks a question that we deem, less than notable, then we’re gonna shoot ourselves in the foot at the end of the day.

Karissa Breen:
So where do you think this mindset sort of stems from? Because I’ve seen this even in my own career. I’m historically studying as a practitioner myself, even going out and doing my own thing originally, just like people talking down, etcetera. I had to really earn my stripes, but I do still see it rampant in the market on LinkedIn. People just, like, not giving someone a chance and just really, like, 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?

Chris Cochran:
I would say and and this isn’t gonna 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 kinda take this approach like, Now I have something of value, and this is what I’m gonna 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.

Chris Cochran:
Oh, I can talk down to somebody else now. But, honestly, you know, 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 that shoulder to cry on or 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 I honestly believe if you really focus on other people’s legacies, Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it’s just it is like you mentioned before, if you’re putting other people down,

Karissa Breen:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it’s just it is like you mentioned before, if you were looking for a job and you sourced that post, like, you would go the other way. So I don’t know whether we 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 these those negative Nellies still exist. So do you think that over time, this will change? And, of course, you’re always gonna have negative people in the world no matter what industry you’re in. But would you Mhmm.

Karissa Breen:
Say from your 20 years in the space, you’ve started to see a shift towards the mindset of people change?

Chris Cochran:
I think so. I think the more people we get into cybersecurity, the different mindsets, the different ways of thinking we’re gonna have, and it’s just gonna be easier, more inclusive. It’s gonna be easier for us to kinda gel together. So I think just by nature of the length that cybersecurity has been around, it’s gonna continue to improve and get better. But I would say that we still have a long way to go, or or we’re searching and 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 the skills gap, this personnel gap. But, I mean, I did a show technically divided in that very first episode where we talked about, hey.

Chris Cochran:
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 gonna 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. So let’s

Karissa Breen:
talk about storytelling. Tell me everything that you like about it, what how you go about storytelling. Just raise your mind at when I ask you that question.

Chris Cochran:
Yeah. So I I’ll give a bit of a a personal story, and, it’s really what highlighted for me, like, what am I here to do in this world? I I have my wife. My in laws lived with me for about 10 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 was he kept missing steps, like, in his mind that things just were a little off.

Chris Cochran:
And I thought, would I think it’d be great a great time to, like, sit him down and just cut on a mic. Not not a big production, but just cut on a mic and just ask him some stories. And so I asked him about a a lot of his stories. He saw 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 3 days later, he ended up in the hospital with some breathing issues, and he had already had heart issues.

Chris Cochran:
He had cancer, and and so there was a lot of things that he was dealing with. And, he would never tell those stories again. I caught him, like, at the exact moment that he could tell those stories, and he was never able to tell those stories again. He would die 2 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 added it up together, and I was able to send that 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 wanna 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 wanna 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.

Karissa Breen:
Well, I’m sorry to hear about your father-in-law. That’s that’s awful. But I what the thing that you did do was, yeah, pull that all together because you are right. Those are the things that people will be left with. So how did you how did you sort of start to come up with that and then piece it all together? Was it just that that you thought, well, I wanna 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.

Chris Cochran:
Oh, yeah.

Karissa Breen:
So where did that how did Jason get to that I idea of pulling it all together?

Chris Cochran:
I would say that, 1st and foremost, because we’ve gotten a we’ve been really blessed to have time with him and be living with us for a long time, but he hasn’t been able to spend as much time with his other grandkids. Right? I have 3 daughters, but he has 2 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 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 kinda polish it, put it together, and give it to the rest of the family. So it was our our last little tandem thing together that we did.

Karissa Breen:
Wow. That’s incredible. And that 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 start up, for example. How do they start to tell that story? And 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 gonna judge me, and all the things we sort of listed off already start to come to people’s mind around. They might feel judged, for example.

Karissa Breen:
But how do you get past that?

Chris Cochran:
Yeah. I mean, that’s gonna 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. 1st, 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. You know, that was pretty good.

Chris Cochran:
Maybe I’m gonna start a newsletter, and so you start to piece things together. That was great. Maybe I’m gonna go on other people’s podcast and tell our story. That went well. Oh, maybe we should start our own podcast. And so you put a 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 a YouTube channel and because YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine on the world.

Chris Cochran:
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 was this of value? Or if you’re asking questions, ask questions of your people and use that for your content. But just iteratively improve, try to get as much feedback as you you can, and just never give up.

Chris Cochran:
Right? We podfabe. Something we used to talk about all the time is where people would quit after 7 episodes. Don’t give up. Continue to make content. Even if you transition from doing a podcast to doing a book or you do a 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.

Karissa Breen:
Podfade. I’ve never actually heard of that before, but I like it. And that was actually gonna be my next question on I’ve been doing this for a while, so have you people saying, oh, well, I did one post and nothing happened. So it’s like, well, you gotta be consistent. So how to 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.

Karissa Breen:
Nothing works on the first go, and it’s gonna take time to build up your audience as 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 12 months. And I even said to people, come back to me in 5 years, do something each day, and then tell me where you’re at.

Chris Cochran:
Oh, yeah.

Karissa Breen:
And no one does that other than probably you at this point.

Chris Cochran:
They tend to give up. And, I mean 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 gonna 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.

Chris Cochran:
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 gonna continue to do it way longer than someone else’s. Like, oof, this is hard, and I’m not that into it. So I’m gonna go ahead and give it up.

Chris Cochran:
But if this is something that’s it just sings, it just gets you singing, then that’s something that is is you’re gonna put the time in. You’re gonna beat your head against those challenges, and you’re just gonna continue to get better. So find that thing that sings to you, and the rest is easy.

Karissa Breen:
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, go do a podcast. Ticking the box. But when I listen to it back, it just sounds like they don’t wanna 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.

Karissa Breen:
I see a lot of that. So how do we find the balance between, yes, of course, this is the way content’s going, etcetera, then sometime 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 gotta 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, in your tone, your voice, your everything.

Chris Cochran:
Absolutely. You 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 gonna do a podcast because everyone else said I’m gonna do a podcast. It’s not gonna 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.

Chris Cochran:
Maybe you start a podcast, and you’re like, oh, okay. Wow. This is kinda 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’re you don’t do podcasts. Maybe you don’t like speaking off the cuff.

Chris Cochran:
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.

Karissa Breen:
So 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 cybersecurity product services, they’re expensive. It’s not like, am I gonna 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 in saying, oh, I can’t give you exact number, but this is what I can tell you. I’m finding that question seems highly irrelevant only because these deals won’t get done of, okay. Well, I’ve listened to Chris, and then straight away, I’m gonna buy what Chris does. It may take a whole year. It may take 6 months.

Karissa Breen:
So the attribution side of thing 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.

Chris Cochran:
No. I agree a 100%. They’ve done research to say that in order to move somebody from awareness to a considerate a person for your solution, you need to spend about 7 hours or 11 different touches with them. If you think that one single podcast message is gonna be it and like, oh, they’re gonna wanna sign up for a demo and they’re gonna wanna jump to a POC. I think that’s a little shortsighted. So really thinking about the long game. The 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 you even if you were to say, okay, I’m gonna sponsor this podcast that gets 2,000,000 listens, maybe it’s not in your demographic.

Chris Cochran:
Maybe there’s point 0 1% of the folks that are listening to that podcast that are gonna buy even be in a position to buy your stuff. But if you find someone that’s like, okay, wow, This person only has a 1,000 downloads per episode, but it’s exactly in our target market, and we’re gonna 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 gotta 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 how you 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.

Karissa Breen:
Yeah. I totally agree. And you’re right. 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, like, 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.

Karissa Breen:
So they’re number 1 CRM company, probably globally. Right? They are still out here marketing. They did 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.

Karissa Breen:
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 gotta keep that market share, you always have to be advertising and marketing. The same way McDonald’s does, the same way Pepsi 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 3 episodes with you, and, like, where’s their deals or whatever. And it’s like, well, it doesn’t work like that. So it’s what what are you what are your thoughts then 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.

Karissa Breen:
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 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 probably get more impressions, but that leads to 0 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?

Chris Cochran:
Yeah. I would say for for that, anyone, 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 a tiered approach. I would say owning your own content is the best thing you can do. Own 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 kinda build that up. But I would say that the person that invests in content, because content scales.

Chris Cochran:
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 days. They’re on the demo floor, and then it’s gone like that. But if you invest in content can be evergreen.

Chris Cochran:
Content could bring you leads. You can 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 gonna 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 a long an hour long podcast, chop it up into 20 different pieces, and now you have 3 months worth of content for social media. The person that really invests in content is gonna win this game.

Karissa Breen:
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 they just not nailed it. And it’s probably because they’re in their own echo chamber. They’re probably saying, okay. I gotta 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 that authenticity? Because it is hard, and it’s easy for you people like you and I, whereas we don’t have someone breathing down our neck saying, well, why are you doing it that way? That’s not what we agreed on from a brand perspective.

Karissa Breen:
So it’s probably easier for us to do it than for someone else. So do you have any thoughts on that?

Chris Cochran:
Yeah. I would say, of course, you wanna 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 gonna push these posts to your social media account. It there people are gonna realize that, yeah, you’re just pushing the the corporate social media, you know, posts, out to everyone. But if you start to put your own spin on it while still staying in 1 in the parameters, it’s not gonna make anyone angry. But you bring your own experiences. You bring your own story.

Chris Cochran:
You you bring your own personality to it. That’s what’s gonna start to resonate with other people. That’s what’s gonna hit home. I get people that reach out to me maybe on a weekly basis, and they’re saying, hey. I wanna create content, but I don’t wanna sound like everyone else. I don’t wanna do what everyone else is doing. You just bring your own self to the content. If you and I talked about the same thing.

Chris Cochran:
Let’s say that you and I were gonna 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 of different vocabulary. So if you and I put out an hour long piece of content based on one article, it’s gonna be 2 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 gonna be for your audience. Yeah.

Karissa Breen:
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 gonna have a different view, and there is 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 people like yourself.

Karissa Breen:
So how how can people start thinking, well, I’ve just gotta be my gotta be myself. So, for example, I I do more hard hitting journalism on my show. That probably doesn’t resonate with everyone. I wanna you know, I ask hard questions because I wanna get answers, but not if that’s not everyone’s style. So, you know, is there anything specific that people can take away on, okay, looking at Chris, for example, don’t wanna necessarily replicate Chris, but how can people start to have their own piece of themselves that they inject into their content?

Chris Cochran:
I mean, there’s a degree of fake it till you make it when you’re doing anything. Right? When I started writing screenplays, you know, I 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, like, what good looks like from that creative perspective. I would say that’s one thing that that people should do is they should know that it’s okay to borrow. Right? I think there’s a book. I I have it around here somewhere, but it was something to the effect of, like, the best artists steal. And that that’s very true. Right? There’s a book called, save the cat, that talks about the different types of movies.

Chris Cochran:
And in the book, there’s, like, 12 different types for all intents and purposes. And you could put just about any movie you could think of in these 12 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 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 you push the envelope, there’s an audience for that.

Chris Cochran:
There there’s an audience that’s that finds that refreshing. Yes. I this is exactly what I wanna hear. I wanna hear realness. Carissa, she doesn’t pull any punches. I wanna hear the realness in this interview. And some people might say, oh, wow. She pushed the envelope too hard.

Chris Cochran:
Yes. Too deep of a question. And there’s always gonna be people that kinda look at it like like that, but there’s always gonna be that audience for the stuff that you’re trying to create.

Karissa Breen:
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 wanna put it? Where do you see what we’re doing in the market moving forward even the next 12 months?

Chris Cochran:
Yeah. I would say that we’re going to be making more content. I would say we’re gonna right now, there’s a lot of folks that are doing things like webinars, and they’re doing conferences, and they’re doing, like, little QC explainer videos, which is completely fine. It’s better than what we were doing before, but I think you’re gonna start to see more mini documentaries. You’re gonna start to see more web series. You’re gonna start to see fiction pieces of content that come out from cybersecurity brands and technology brands across the board. I think there’s we’re just gonna 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.

Chris Cochran:
Who knows? But I think that we’re gonna start to see some of that stuff, and those are the gonna 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.

Karissa Breen:
So, Chris, is there any sort of closing comments or final thoughts you’d like to leave our audience with today?

Chris Cochran:
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.

Chris Cochran:
I think the more creative juices we have in the world, the better world’s going to be more creative juices. We have in cybersecurity, the better cybersecurity is gonna be. So I would say flex those muscles and do as much as you can.