Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast

Season One Recap

• Cybersecurity Mentors • Season 1 • Episode 19

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In this episode, we recap season one. We talk about lessons learned during our first season of the podcast, each of our favorite episodes, the top downloaded episodes of the year, reveal the countries that listen to us the most, and tease our season two plans for 2025, including exciting new collaborations that are in the works.

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Steve:

Could you teach me First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature ruled on your son, not the mind.

John:

I know what you're trying to do.

Steve:

I'm trying to free your mind, neo, but I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it. What? Is the most inspiring thing I ever said to you don't be an idiot changed my life. Welcome to the final episode of the cyber security mentors podcast for the year 2024. What a journey it's been. Thank you for being with us as we explored cyber security mentoring and everything else in between yeah, can you believe it?

John:

I know people are like wait a minute, the year's not over yet. Well, we gotta, we gotta prepare, yeah, for next season. This is like season one and it was, it was. It's been an adventure, it's been great. We've really learned a ton. We're gonna walk down memory lane here, talk about some of our favorite episodes.

Steve:

Um, some lessons learned, maybe big takeaways all that good stuff yeah, I'm excited we have some some exciting news to share for 2025. Some some awesome partnerships we're excited about. We're going to talk about some more, but uh, yeah, let's, let's start off with. How has, um, uh, I guess just starting a podcast been for you, john?

John:

Yeah, no, I mean, mean, I I've listened to podcasts a long time at, you know, as as far as when they became popular. So I'd always been a fan of listening to podcasts and I'd always tell steve about hey, I listened to this episode, I listened to this thing, you know, listen to that thing. And he rolled his eyes and be like man, I don't listen to podcasts, but no, I definitely got a lot from them. I've always enjoyed it because, like, I'd be driving somewhere and I could turn it on and I just I'm not. I don't listen to a lot of music in the car. You know, I I like to listen to audio books and or podcasts.

John:

So I've been thinking about it for a while and I think that it just kind of came together as like let's, let's do this thing, like we, we can, we have a lot to share. I believe in a lot that, that we can talk to people and bring people in, and, and it's really I think the best thing about it is it makes you you're creating something that you can share with other people, right. You get to create, and whenever you put that out there, it can be nerve wracking. And is anybody going to like this. Is there anybody going to listen to me? But it is. It's just fun to just make something right as versus your normal everyday firefighting and just the regular job that you might have. It just mixes it up a bit and it gives you something that you got to give back.

Steve:

Put it that way yeah, no, I agree with you 100 and I'll be honest, I wasn't 100 sold on the idea when john came to me and pitched it, um, but you know it has been awesome, it really has. I've really enjoyed all the episodes. I've enjoyed all the people that we've gotten to talk to, all of our old interns and friends that we've gotten to reconnect making those episodes. So that's been really cool and just being able to share some wisdom, man, just share some information that you know we're living and breathing it. You know we're in cybersecurity, we're working cybersecurity. We've been in cybersecurity for many, many, many years and sometimes you forget the simple things that you know. Someone starting off some of these questions that you have just forgotten about, or just live your day not even noticing those things, and for someone just starting off their career, that's gold yeah it's been really, really cool to to share that with everyone yeah, I think so too.

John:

I think that, like, it was fun to find people to go and and pick and try to reach out to different people some, some people that we reached out to that I thought there's no way we're going to get them on an episode and have the time to do an interview because they're so busy.

John:

But I was just like, screw it, let's try it, you have to lose, yeah, and I and I, being, you know, in cybersecurity for this long, I don't know everything, but I have a lot of to pull from to ask good questions I think you know we both do and being able to relate to some things, but just generally being curious, like, hey, I really am curious, like what was it like for you? And to get to where you are Right, because everybody's got a story. So that's, that's what's been, what's been fun. But well, we're going to talk about a few things. One is the top episodes.

Steve:

I'm excited to share what top episodes are yeah, so how many episodes do we have total for this?

John:

season, so I think the last one was number 17, so this will be number 18 okay which is pretty good, for we started in march. Yeah, yeah, we stayed pretty steady, yeah, for this year. So we've been. We've been pretty steady. Um, sometimes we had longer lapses than others, but generally we've been steady. But yeah, so 18 episodes, that's a solid first season, I think if that was netflix, I'd give it two thumbs up.

John:

Yeah, yeah, it's a good season, I know, and generally they're an hour long, right. So some podcasts they're 30 minutes, 20 minutes and they're done. And usually what I like about podcasts is you get to get into the weeds of the conversation right In 30 minutes. It's hard to pull out some of the good wisdom from a conversation because you're just getting. Even with an hour. Sometimes I'm like man, we could have gone longer, like with Dave Kennedy. I think we could have done two hours easy and he could have kept going and talking the whole time and we really wouldn't get a chance to talk.

Steve:

But no, it was good. No, he was great.

John:

Yeah, yeah.

Steve:

We had a lot of other questions that we had on our list that we didn't even get to yeah, so yeah, absolutely we could have gone for a lot longer yeah, but first what?

John:

let me ask you what? What do you think was your favorite episode or takeaway from season one?

Steve:

man. So my biggest takeaway again, I just and I just said a couple minutes ago um, how little things. That again we kind of just live and breathe and that's just those things that we do every day that someone trying to get into cyber security or just even trying to get a better idea of what cybersecurity would be like, that information to them is priceless.

John:

And.

Steve:

I'm so happy and glad that I can be a part of this team with you, john, that we can share some wisdom and just answer some of those questions, and I guess my biggest takeaway is just how valuable that information is for some, that others might just be like oh, it's just a normal day for me.

John:

Yeah, for real. Sometimes I wish that I could bring people in when we're working through an incident or working through something, or I'm just doing something like man. This is one of those opportunities that I wish I could just be like, hey, come here, watch this, or hey, let me walk through. I could just be like, hey, come here, watch this, or hey, let me walk through. You just sit there and be a fly on the wall as we walk through this thing, because there's so much you could learn just by observing and seeing some of those things. So, being able to kind of open that up and share as much as we can we can't share everything, but as much as we can back with people, I think it really does it takes away some of the mystery of what is it like to be a?

Steve:

cybersecurity professional. Yeah, I agree, I agree, my favorite episode. So it's tough, right, because I really truly enjoyed meeting a lot of new people that I had never met before that I was talking to. I also enjoyed reconnecting with a lot of friends and just interns. But I have to say, because of the topic and because of the back and forth and just the aftermath, it was the boot camp episode that we did about whether or not boot camps are worth it in 2024. Yeah that probably is my favorite episode.

John:

Yeah, that that was a good one, and you have, you know that's one that's near and dear to you because you've got some experience with it. I think that one is probably our most controversial. If we have one that was controversial. You went to a bootcamp and you're like, no, this was great for me. Or no, I do relate, or yes, I do relate, to feel like feeling like this wasn't a good investment. Um, maybe one side of the other.

Steve:

Yeah, so I've actually had people after the episode uh aired and went live. Um, it was funny. It was just funny how the world works sometimes. Um just got to connect with someone who was thinking about getting to cybersecurity and they were looking at the easiest ways to do it. They didn't want to go the traditional four year route and, um, they couldn't find a, a like a two-year program that they liked or that they could, they could afford. But they were looking at um a boot camp and it was because of the um job guarantee and I was and they were asking for my opinion.

Steve:

They're like hey, and I was like you know what, man, let me, let me shoot you this episode send you this take a listen to that and then, if you have any follow-up questions, let me know yeah so yeah, that was that was, that was good speaking of that, I sent you an article yesterday.

John:

I think about somebody, I think about somebody.

Steve:

I think it was somebody getting sued because of the promise that they had made. We're not going to say who it was. Yeah, we're not going to say who it was. But it is a boot camp that was being sued because they over-promised and under-delivered.

John:

Yep. So there you go. Yep For me. I think you probably could guess my favorite episode and this was the guy that I really was surprised to get him on the podcast and to have the time to interview him. He was awesome. I mean, really because of not only his stuff, but that episode really made me more of a fan of Matthew Dix and the storytelling stuff, and even since then I've gone and done a talk about storytelling and cyber security. So I'm definitely a believer, but I just think he killed it and he just did a great job of just keeping it entertaining and he told it, I don't know a dozen stories, many stories, little stories, but still um so many that kept people out. I would say more than likely kept people engaged and interested and entertained. So that was really cool to me, um, just being able to have that chance and and I fanboyed a little bit, yeah, I mean I was like hey, let me ask you these things and, yeah, I knew I knew some of the insider information people probably didn't know, um, but I helped.

John:

I think it helped bring out some of the things that that were interesting about his books and his topics.

John:

So that was cool and my takeaway, I think, just how it just kind of reaffirmed to me how good it is to be able to help people Right, and this is one way, because we can't all be beside somebody but how cool it is to get feedback and to hear people say, hey, man, we love, I loved your podcast, I love listening to it and and then even just being able to, from the podcast, get to meet people and some, most of them virtually or on the phone, um, but at least being able to like oh hey, you know, I'd love to get some advice from you on something, which that is is, for me, a great thing.

John:

I think it's a great thing for us to be able to do is a little bit of mentor, a little bit of coaching that you can do one-on-one. Then you can really help some. I feel like that's when you can level up the, the amount you can help somebody, because then you know more about their story and what they, what they're trying to do and what their goals are and having I've had more chances to do that because of the podcast um than previously, because we're you know we're promoting this, getting the word out there and happy to meet people, so that was a big takeaway. It was just like this is a good thing. I think people enjoy it but get value from it, and that's what we're about.

Steve:

Yeah, absolutely. I have to agree with you on the storytelling episode, I think so someone listening to this for the first time, trying to get into cybersecurity, may wonder well, why is? Why was this even a topic of discussion? Why is this even important? And I think we did a pretty good job explaining why in the actual video or in the podcast episode. But you'd be surprised how that can not only help you in cybersecurity but just in general, like in your life, in your day-to-day life, how being able to tell a good story can help you tremendously. So for me, I I that that I also enjoyed it and I've taken things that we talked about there and tried to implement. Now I can't say I've been good at it or the best, but you know, trying to start is is is good. So that's kind of where I'm at. So hopefully others took a lot from it as well.

John:

Yeah, so um next topic that we had was the the top or the most listened to or and or watched episodes yeah, so what?

Steve:

what were our top ones for this season?

John:

so number one I think you know this one is networking is king, your pet, your path to success in cybersecurity. So why do you think that was number one?

Steve:

Because it's so true, man, it's so true. I did a leadership training Thanks, john, for nominating me and yeah, the biggest takeaway from that was relationships are currency. So just building relationships, networking with people I mean that even for me like being able to get to meet you and, you know, become good friends and and be able to work together for many years. Just knowing the right people sometimes help can just bring down barriers, man.

John:

Yeah, I think that when I hear people complain about they're not getting callbacks or they're not getting the interviews, I think this is, to me, a big key. If you're not doing this or you're not doing enough of this, then that's what you should focus on. It's not just what you know, it is who you know.

Steve:

It is, it is yeah.

John:

Yeah, for sure. And we we see it all the time, so that's it's makes sense to us.

Steve:

Yeah, and if you haven't heard this episode, you should go back and listen to it, cause we specifically talk about how you can get out there and network even if you're starting in cybersecurity.

John:

Yeah, and I think we even just kind of we did like a scratch the surface version of it. It's good, there's more to to that, and that was even an hour long, I think. So we, we tried to get into the details as much as we could, but you, you just always be networking. That was the one you know. You just always be networking. That was the one that we talk about. Just always be networking all the time.

John:

And I've heard people tell me like, well, if I'm not looking for a job, why should I network? It's like you don't know. You don't know, yeah, and it may not be looking for a job, but it could just be. Somebody has your back. You've gotten information. You're sharing information. You're helping somebody gotten information. You're sharing information. You're helping somebody. I think one thing that I heard too that I think is a good phrase is um, if you help people get what they want, then it'll help you get what you want right. So the more people you can help reach their goals, then you'd be surprised how much that helps you reach your goals. Yeah, absolutely so. That was number one.

Steve:

Yeah, are we doing top three, or what?

John:

Let's do top three. Okay, we'll do top four, because the fourth is the easy one. The second one is currently the Recruiters Playbook, with our interview with Joe Hudson.

Steve:

Yeah, that was a good one too.

John:

Yeah, I think with that one. If I'm scrolling through our list and I'm looking for a job, I think he he really hits.

John:

He's got a great perspective on being a recruiter yeah previously and has great inside information on what it's like from their side, right, yeah, and how you can find a good recruiter. Because we've all, in one way or another, probably worked with the recruiter and I think that, um, you know some, some good, some bad, probably, and I think, hearing his perspective on it, it's just kind of the, the shortcut version of you know how to get around all the, the, the hard lessons that you might have to learn working with a recruiter. Here's how you can shortcut that process to find a good one, to work with them, to be effective, to not to build that relationship really and it's networking again, but you're building that relationship yeah, absolutely.

Steve:

I think if you uh pair that with the live coaching session we did with Adam, where we review the resume and stuff, I think those two can help somebody for sure.

John:

Yeah, that's a great point. I think that, going through his resume, you did a great job. This is very good. Thank you, sir. I think that's really useful because if you're in that boat and you're trying to figure it out I mean you network, you figure out how to write a good resume and you figure out how to work with recruiters I mean those are powerful. Hey, what more do you need? Seriously, yeah, seriously. So that was a really good one. Joe was great and it was good for him to come on. I was grateful for him. It took a while to finally get it lined up, but he's definitely on our wavelength just trying to help people.

Steve:

Yeah, absolutely Great guy.

John:

Yeah. The third one, which it was cool to see that this is number three near and dear to our hearts is Sock Analysts. This Is the Way.

Steve:

Yes, what do?

John:

you think about that one?

Steve:

No, I thought that was great too. I mean, honestly, you and I can talk about SOC, soc analysts, I mean for ever and ever. I mean, this is what we live and breathe, right. But yeah, I'm glad that's in the top three for sure, cause that is an area that, again, we're very passionate about. It's stuff that we see every day when we're, when we're in our full-time jobs, we're helping interns, right.

Steve:

Get into the into um, getting cybersecurity, getting trained up on tools and, you know, getting ready to go out to the workforce. So it's yeah, absolutely.

John:

Yeah, I mean. To me the SOC is the tip of the spear. It's where you know you're fighting directly with adversaries and you're having to be ready, be on point when things go down. You've got to be good to go and ready to go toe to toe. So it's you know. We both came up, you know, with the SOC and being managers of the SOC. It's really a good. We love it, you know, I love it, and I love being able to still jump in, even as a CISO. I bet most CISOs don't do this.

Steve:

No, I don't think so.

John:

Yeah, yeah, and I love I mean. You know, I think I'm more of a help than a hindrance most of the time no, no, you are yeah, sometimes I might be like maybe I just need to shut up here and let them run the show. When I do, I do really let them run the show. But but you know, if I can help out or if I have some insight into something or just a perspective on something, then I'm happy to be there, just to help them shortcut, like the thought process of what could the possibilities be.

Steve:

I think it's good because it's always a like, a like, a teaching moment, right, or even us, even I like, when we're jumping in there, some of our more technical guys are taking the lead. They're actually going through the logs, looking through things, um, and I'm picking up stuff, know from them and when you're in there to kind of.

Steve:

I think one of the biggest things that I have to give you kudos for is you don't lose sight of the big picture and you just help communicate that to the rest of the team, which is what a leader should do. Um, because you know a lot of the technical guys may just go down a rabbit hole trying to. You know they're. They're good at what they do, but we have to remember hey, this is just one piece of a bigger thing, and I think you know I think it's good when you're in there.

John:

Yeah, I think that's a good point. Thank you for that. I think that just being able to have been part of so many of these it helps me think about that ultimate goal of what we're trying to do here, because it is easy to go down the like let's find out more, find out more, find out more and and we can always do that well, we can do that later. Um, because I but I also drive for the why and how. Right, like, why did this, why did this happen, how did this happen? That's usually my big drive push is like we need to find out as much as we can, quickly as we can, as quick as we can, on how this happened and why it happened, so that we can make sure it's not going to happen again. So I think that's that's probably my biggest, you know, uh, biggest benefit of me being there is just being able to help us focus on that, which is which is fun too. I really enjoy being able to be part of that yeah, so, yeah.

John:

So I think there's more well, I think, on the sock one. I think that could be to me. I think we want to do more of those in season two. So you know, if you, if anybody listeners, if you want to chime in, um, you can leave us a comment, um, if you're watching this on youtube, you can drop a comment here if you would like more content around what we're talking about so far. But I think sock analysts, I think, or sock skills in general, is a good one for us to cover, maybe in season two.

John:

So yeah uh, if you want to give us some feedback, that would be great. We'd love to hear it. And, um, I think it would be.

John:

I think it would be good because we can really dive into more details there yeah, I agree absolutely yeah, the fourth one is um the beginning, so our very first episode yeah yeah, that was good, so I don't know if it's in the top four, because people listen to it and then they stop, or they start with the most recent and then they scroll to the beginning. Okay, let me see how this started.

Steve:

Yeah, let me see if I'm actually going to like this guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy, john.

John:

How'd they get going? I do like the title of the episode. Coming up with titles is sometimes challenging, yeah, but I think it was a good title too.

Steve:

But, um, yeah, so the beginning, very first one man, yeah, I remember, I remember the very first one. Yeah, yeah, we were like we said we're gonna do it, let's do it. Yeah, let's dive right in. Yeah, we didn't know what we're going to do it.

John:

let's do it. Yeah, let's dive right in. Yeah, we didn't know what we were doing. We still don't know what we're doing. We're figuring it out.

Steve:

We're still learning.

John:

Yeah, awesome man, I was going to share two location stuff. I can go ahead and do that since I'm in here. Yeah, where are people watching from top places or interesting places? So number one kind of makes sense the United States. But we have a strong number two from Canada.

Steve:

We've talked about Canada before yeah, france in the north, yeah, winter's coming.

John:

They're. Number two, and I've talked to a guy that lived in Canada. I was like, hey, how did you hear about us? He's like I was just searching through podcasts and came across yours, so that's really cool. Number three, the United Kingdom, which is cool. I actually thought about us interviewing people in different locations too. So if you want to nominate somebody from anywhere around the world that you think it would be cool for us to talk to, I think that would be really fun to just get different perspectives.

John:

I'd love to interview somebody from Canada. I'd love to interview somebody from United Kingdom um Australia, any of these locations anywhere. Really, yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, I'm down to talk to anybody. I think it would be great.

Steve:

Um, so, us, canada, united Kingdom, um so us, canada, united kingdom, and then australia is number four, and then singapore, which I thought was interesting.

John:

Yeah, singapore, yeah, it's hitting up there very cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. We're hurt, we're struggling in south america, so we've, we've got a little bit. We don't have a lot in south america, so all Spread the word to your South American friends, anybody, if you know anybody, hey, hey, we'll do. Come on, check us out.

Steve:

Might be able to do an episode or two in Spanish for all my South American brothers. There you go, there you go. I'll just send it to C? C.

John:

C.

Steve:

That's all you need to say, John.

John:

Yeah, um. So north america is the top, europe is number two, asia is number three, africa is number four, which is cool, and oceania is number five. So I mentioned australia. There's also new zealand new zealand in here. Um, I'll just go through the top 10 here slovenia, which is neat. Mexico okay, so mexico coming in strong, and then netherlands, all right very cool, very cool.

John:

I mean it's one of the coolest things is to drop an episode down and I'll watch to see especially new locations. It'll let you know, like this place is a new location that hasn't downloaded something before and um, that's pretty cool just to see, like, where I'll go look some of these. I'll go look them up. I'm like I don't even know where this is, um, like dortmund, north rhine westfalia. I don't know where that is, but okay, yeah, I have to go, I'll have to go look these up yeah, exactly, they only, may only listen one time.

John:

They're like these people.

Steve:

Shout out I can only understand, yeah, people listening.

John:

Yes, for sure. But that is a really cool thing is to be able to get the word out. I mean normally, Right, You're only going to meet so many people locally and even if you do conferences, it's still going to be within that. You know, probably the United States, Right? So being able to connect with people across the world and share these things across the world. You know cybersecurity it's different, but it's the same across the board. Right, it's different in different verticals, like higher ed and government and private industry, but it's really still the same thing. It's still the fundamentals, it's still protecting your people and the organizations and your data. So it all relates and I think you know we have a little bit to share that can help help everybody. Absolutely. A little bonus just just throwing this in here, Cause I've got it is top application is spotify that listens to us, or uses spotify for us to listen to our episodes. Apple podcast is right behind there, and then web browser I guess you're listening to the on the website pocketcasts and overcast.

Steve:

Okay, so cool.

John:

Yeah, just some insider info for inside listeners how this podcast thing works but yeah, no, I mean that that's kind of the the down low on the episode statistics and top episodes. So I think it's always interesting. I try not to watch it too much because it can be like you're like, okay, what's, how's this episode going? Is it going up? Oh yeah, how's it compared to other episodes? That's what's interesting too is you can kind of watch um an episode to see how it tracks and trends interesting with another one. So, yeah, it's useful all right.

Steve:

Yeah, I guess we'll have to play with the, with the go live times and days, maybe to see what's best for our listeners yeah, now we're gonna play with it some more.

John:

Um what other? What are any other things that come to mind for lessons learned, for doing this season?

Steve:

um, just that. Starting a podcast is not easy, but it's very fun. Yeah, if there are any of you out there who've been thinking about it, do it, just start.

John:

Yeah.

Steve:

You don't even need a whole setup, just a laptop computer. Just give it a shot and go for it.

John:

Yeah, really. Yeah, for real. Yeah, even if you only get a few people at first, that's okay. Like ours is. Podcasts are slow, you know, and we're doing more youtube and audio podcasts, really just doing both at one time, but it's a slow build, you know, and it's not an overnight thing, um, but that's okay. You know, hopefully you've got listeners that are on your, on your wavelength and they're interested in what you're interested in, um, and you kind of find your audience right and that's that's the cool part about it. So it's not for everybody. Some people want the quick hits, they want the tick tock version.

John:

Yeah but that's okay yeah. There's there's a place for that too.

Steve:

Yeah, At least for me. So, um, so, you know, just making that comment, it's because it's not easy, right? We have full-time jobs, we have our real lives and you know we're taking time, you know, out of our lives to. You know, sit down for an hour or two and just give some advice. You know, just give some advice to people, the things that maybe we wish we would have had when we were getting started. That's really what we're trying to do, yeah, so hopefully everyone listening has gotten you know a thing or two that has helped them and continues to come back and listen because we have more advice to give, more cool people to interview.

John:

So yeah, you know, and I've talked about this before, I didn't have, coming in through my career, a traditional mentor, but I did have mentors that didn't know who I was, right, it might've been from another podcast or a book or something else, but I would, you know, listen to them. I'd read stuff that they put out and it helped me on my path for sure. So, even though we might not be able to mentor you directly, right, hopefully this is a way for us to mentor you and or also connect the others that we bring in to be a mentor to also give advice that you might not hear. If you know, you may not, you may never meet that person, right, but just being able to virtually help, guide, and really it's about lessons learned. It's not like we're some guru on the mountain, it's just like because we're still figuring things out every day. It's really just like, hey, yeah, come, come here, let me, let me tell you something, right?

Steve:

let me show you something, let me tell you something.

John:

Yeah, yeah, yeah let me help you out here. This is what I did wrong yeah yeah for sure.

Steve:

So let's talk about the big things that are coming for 2025.

John:

Yes, very exciting. Um, really, you know, we've, in one of our episodes, which used to be our top episode for a long time oh yeah, it used to be, and I think you'll, I think it'll come back. It comes in waves, it'll like come up and then it slows down a little bit. Then people hear about it from different ways and then it comes back again. Yeah, but with um, our episode that we did with jerry osher, um, he's got a unique last name, but you gotta make sure it's osher, uh, but he uh, but he, you know, he's great and we've connected with him and I recently did and went and spoke at his conference and we were just chatting with him about, hey, how can we collaborate and connect and be able to help each other out? Right, because it's it's not a competition there's, there's just collaborators, right, that they're doing things, and he's doing things that are great.

John:

He actually inspired us to, you know, seeing his success and seeing how he was getting the word out inspired us to do this and actually, look, yeah, you know, jerry can do this, right, not that he's nothing, right, but he can do we could do it, yeah, um, and so, although he's a workhorse and he's doing way more than I ever want to do. Right, he's like every, he's every day. Um, yeah, but yeah, we were chatting with him and just talking about how we could connect and how we could help each other, and he mentioned how he's got this simply cyber media group. Um, yeah, and he's building. He's building the empire, yeah, pretty much yeah, what was your take on that?

Steve:

no, no, I mean first you know, I want to say you know he's, he's definitely a hard-working man. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, what was your take on that? No, no, I mean first you know. I want to say you know he's definitely a hardworking man, for sure, and you see it, you know, if you join his live sessions every morning where he's talking about the cybersecurity news, like you could tell like he enjoys what he does, he's all about it.

Steve:

He does a really good job and, yeah, he's building his little empire, which it's awesome, and yeah and yeah no, when you know, when we first started talking, you know there were other ideas that were thrown out there at potential collaborations. But I think I think this could be. This could be an awesome, awesome opportunity for us and for our listeners and and also for on the other side, on the simply Cyber side, just to collaborate and be able to spread the word man I mean, because we're really just trying to help people right.

Steve:

We're trying to help people and we're trying to get in front of more people so that they can listen to our wisdom and maybe learn a thing or two. So, yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, and I, you know, learn a thing or two. So, yeah, I'm I'm excited, yeah.

John:

And I think he you know he's he's great, he's great to talk to, he's very easy to work with. I think he will be easy to work with, and so we're just exploring partnerships. Um, it'll be exciting to announce season two, and I mean we're kind of semiouncing it now, but it's not the official announcement. We're going to come out with an official announcement. We're planning, we're talking through content, we're talking through ideas. Yeah, but it will. It will be exciting and it will be able for us to get more reach, more people through his platform.

John:

Right, he just he has a huge footprint. He's got a lot of people that connect with him and and I met them a lot of them at this conference recently and they're all great people. They're all just trying to either get into cyber or help other people or to level up in cyber. That's exactly kind of what our mission is there. So I think they're all going to connect well with us, and they already do. Some of them are also our people too, so it was great for them to to come meet us too. So, yeah, I'm excited. It's going to be interesting. It's going to be. It is, um, it'll be great to see how this thing changes and evolves to the season two, the next level yeah, no, always, always, always looking forward, always improving, always getting better.

John:

So yeah, yeah, I know, I mean think about when we first started, I had no idea. Now we even have thumbnails for our YouTube videos.

Steve:

I know, man oh my God, who does those? I know they should get a raise.

John:

They do look good. They do look good.

Steve:

I'm like let's just get it out there, man, let's get it out there that's another thing about uh uh, the whole uh uh podcast thing in youtube now now. So now also submitting the, the videos on youtube is great right, yeah, there's a lot of work that goes to this yeah, there's a lot of work, john kept nagging at me like hey man, you got to pull your weight. I'll make a thumbnail.

John:

You did a good job. You did a good job. Um, yeah, I think we had him here. Questions for listeners is a great chance for people. If you would like to see something from from this season to this partnership um, you know what it might look like this this is your opportunity to chime in, send us some feedback. Um, there's a couple. There's a couple of different ways you can do that. Right, you can, and we usually have these in our show notes. One of them is this text message thing, and I've talked about before. That's a bit confusing. You can't we can't talk to you through this text message, right, it's very cool because we literally get these messages on our phone. It's like, oh, so-and-so messaged me, but it doesn't give us your number. It's just like this grayed out, I think it's like you see the last four of the phone number or something. It's really cool because it's fast and you can see right away, but we don't get to have a conversation. So that is one way you can do it. There's nothing wrong with it.

Steve:

Just don't expect me to answer back, because I can't, unfortunately that would be better, that would be best a good option if you're trying to throw in some ideas of like, hey, touch on this topic or yeah, hey, you should interview this person. Like that would be, a good place to do that.

John:

Yeah, yeah yeah, that would be great too. Um, and the other ways are discord. We do have a discord server. I'll make sure I throw the link in here too and it's it's getting there. It's. It's a lot to manage and maintain a discord server that we don't have all the time in the world, but but, if you want to reach us and have an actual, like text conversation, yeah, back and forth, it's easy because I can message you through that platform easy back and forth, and I've done that and then jumped into a phone call, even with people from from discord. Um, so that's, that's one way. Um, the other way is through comments, right, like on youtube, you can leave a comment, you can leave a. You can leave a comment on the podcast platform, whatever you're listening on, go in there like subscribe.

John:

Give us some ratings, right maybe and I think, yeah, I think the best thing about the ratings, especially on youtube platforms, is it if people are searching, which a lot of people I talk to, that's how they found us. Is they just searched cybersecurity or hacker or something like that in the YouTube platform?

Steve:

and it came up.

John:

So if you give us a good rating, hopefully you like us, right? Yeah, if you give us a good rating, then it helps more people find us. That's the big benefit of that. And then on YouTube excuse me, it just helps the algorithm, right? So if you comment and you like it, then other people, when they're scrolling through their, their feeds, they might see it pop up because they're into cybersecurity stuff and our video has also gotten some attention. So that's that's always helpful. And then the last thing is our email list. And then the last thing is our email list, which we're, you know, using as, like a way, it's kind of like a vip of cyber security mentors podcast, because I will share stuff in there and we'll share stuff in there. That's like the behind the scenes or hear this thing happen today that I wouldn't necessarily share through discord or on a comment.

John:

and YouTube, right, it's more VIP, I would say, even though it's free, you know, you don't have to pay anything but it's, and I've also gotten interacted with people through the email list, where people will send questions in and we'll respond back and uh and be able to have this conversation. So, man, there's so many ways that you can connect with us.

Steve:

You forgot one, john. Oh, what did I forget? We have a LinkedIn page, that's true.

John:

We have a LinkedIn page.

Steve:

For all of you that are on LinkedIn you want to leave us a comment, send us a message. You can do it through there as well.

John:

You can follow us, you can follow it. Usually in there we will post the episodes and just reshare like clips from the episodes and things like that, just to get the word out. Um, so yeah, and we got all the ways.

Steve:

All the ways, yes, yes yes, so reach out to us yeah yeah, reach out to us for anything, if you have questions, if you need some advice, if you have suggestions for topics. Um, yeah, we, we'd love to hear from you. And yeah, let's keep this adventure going. Let's do it. Season two, let's go. Yeah, man, I'm excited. I'm excited A lot of good things to come. But yeah, I mean, I guess, as we close out the year, just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to all our listeners, to all our guests, our new friends, our old friends we reconnected with. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey with us. We're excited for how how our very first season went and we're excited for our future seasons to come, absolutely.

John:

Thank you, thank you, thank you. We couldn't do this without you If you didn't listen to us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We couldn't do this without you if you didn't listen to us. I mean, we still talk, we talk all the time, but it's cooler if you, if you chime in and you're part of it, and we feel like we're giving back to others.

Steve:

That's the cool part yeah absolutely all right.

John:

Well with that, john. Yeah, until next year.

Steve:

That's a wrap. That's a wrap for season one.

John:

It's a wrap season one, we're out awesome, thank you. Yep, thank you for tuning one.

Steve:

It's a wrap. Season one, we're out Awesome. Thank you, yep. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the Cybersecurity Mentors podcast.

John:

Remember to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you get all the episodes. Join us next time as we continue to unlock the secrets of cybersecurity mentorship.

Steve:

Do you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover, or do you want to share your journey? Join us on Discord at Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast and follow us on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time. I'm John Hoyt and I'm Steve Higuretta. Thank you for listening.