Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast
In this podcast we discuss mentoring in cybersecurity, information for those that are looking to get into cybersecurity, and tips for those that are looking to advance their careers.
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Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast
How to Reset Your Cybersecurity Learning Plan (And Stop Wasting Time)
If you feel like you’ve been studying cybersecurity but not actually making progress, this episode is for you.
In Season 6 Episode 2 of The Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast, Steve and John break down how to reset your cybersecurity learning plan and stop wasting time on the wrong things. Whether you took a break, jumped between too many topics, or followed advice that didn’t fit your goals, this episode will help you refocus.
We walk through how to honestly assess where you are, how to choose one clear cybersecurity path instead of trying to learn everything, and how to build a realistic learning plan that fits your background and schedule. We also call out common mistakes we’re seeing in 2026—like over-consuming content, chasing tools without fundamentals, and copying someone else’s roadmap.
This episode is about clarity, direction, and momentum—without starting over from zero.
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Every little thing that you pick up along the way. Don't assume that that's throwaway or something you don't need in the future. Like all of it is collection, all of it matters, all of it is useful. Even if you didn't finish, it's still useful, right? You just gotta keep building.
SPEAKER_01:Then learn fly. Nature rules on your son, not the mind.
SPEAKER_02:I know what you're trying to do. I'm trying to free your mind, Nia. 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. Changing my life.
SPEAKER_03:So this week we're gonna get a little bit more tactical and we're gonna talk about you know, we've got scattered learning, we got pause progress, we have too many tabs open. We started so many things and haven't finished any of it. We're gonna fix that. Now, let's remember that this isn't about deleting the progress that you made in 2025, but it's about refocusing it so that in 2026 we can continue to move forward and get to that finish line. So we're gonna talk about a number of different things in this episode, but we're gonna start it off with some of the myths of starting over after you've taken a long pause or just put things in the back burner.
SPEAKER_00:So, John, what do you think? Yeah, I think that it's easy to um take the progress that you made last year, the you know, the last few years, and not count it toward your overall goal, or to just think, well, because I didn't get a job, or because I didn't um finish that track or because I didn't finish the cert, then I need to start over. I need to to just clean the slate, start from square one. And you know, and I don't think that's the case. I think that every little bit, every small win that you achieve, it's funny how all that stuff adds up over time. Like there's little things that you'll learn that you may not even use for years, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's where okay, that's useful because you know I learned this one thing or I practice this one tool, whatever it comes into play later that you didn't even think it was ever going to be useful. Um, but all like really that's that's my whole career is just a jack of all trades path that I look back now and think, like, man, all this stuff has helped lead me to where I am today. And it's been little bitty things, like little bitty scatters here, deep dive in certain things, but mostly spread out across different domains and different skills and different knowledge bases that a good example is like databases, right? Like in my last job, I was kind of a database default database administrator. Uh, you didn't want me to be your database administrator, but they didn't have anybody else, right? So I had to figure it out. I had to learn how to do it. I had, you know, and I and I wasn't as good as a real DBA, but I was good enough to keep keep the ship afloat, keep it running, um, make it work. I learned a lot about querying databases and how to use those and how databases are structured and all that good stuff. But today, I mean, I haven't done that in I mean 20 years almost, maybe eight, at least 18 years. Um, but that little bit of experience that I got, I got really it's something for me to build from that when I go talk to a database administrator, I'm not gonna be like them, I'm not gonna be as good as they are, but I can use that experience to at least be understanding of what their world is like, right? And those little bitty, that's one thing that's unique about security because it is cross-domain. Everything needs security. It's it makes security very unique. There's not many things that are like that. Like every it touches everything, right? It's like the Lion King, everything the sun touches is ours, right? It's like really security touches everything. So that's why I think being multidisciplined or or uh jack of all trades is useful because that little bit of skill that you learn can be helpful in those conversations or in that situation, or somebody asks you a question, like, hey, you know, what what should we do for this situation where we need to do security for this database? And you know, maybe you don't get into the weeds of the actual buttons to push, but overall you have an understanding of it. So every little bit of piece of experience, every little thing that you pick up along the way, don't assume that that's throwaway or something you don't need in the future. Like all of it is collection, all of it matters, all of it is useful. Even if you didn't finish, it's still useful, right? You just got to keep building.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. I agree a hundred percent with that. And there is a difference with starting over and needing a refresher, right? So let's say you were studying for your security plus beginning of 2025 and midway before the summer started, life happened and you had to stop. And now you're starting again in 2026. I mean, it's been some time and it is okay to get a refresher, but I wouldn't consider that, oh, I'm starting over from zero because there is still knowledge that you reviewed, that you learned, that's stuck with you. So you're not starting from zero, right? So there's no need to trash any of that progress. All we're doing is recycling it if you if you want to see it that way, and just continue, just picking up and continue to move forward. So, one of the things we talked about in the last episode was trying to figure out where you are starting from now. You've you've done some work, you've learned some of the material. Well, where are you now? Where's your new starting point? And how we do that, and how we said we were gonna do that, was by kind of doing an audit of your knowledge, doing kind of listing out everything that you've started, finished, things that you you uh have some progress in, and then kind of refocusing your your end goal and shifting and pivoting with what you have. Do I still find GRC interesting? Is that still where I want to go after doing a little bit of more research and learning some stuff? Or have I shifted my focus to be a little bit more technical and maybe be a sock analyst? Or maybe, I don't know, maybe you know, red team is really where your passion is, and that is where now you want to you take your career, right? It just kind of depends where things are now, if life has changed for you, if your your finish line has changed for you. So we want to identify those gaps that maybe you have that are preventing you from getting to your finish line, so we can focus on those here for this year and in 2026. Any thoughts on that, John?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, basically do uh, I guess I would say a gap assessment using, you know, how do you how do you do a gap assessment? You you do an inventory of what you've got, what you've done, and you do a a focus on where you want to go, and we're gonna talk about that next, picking a direction, but you're starting with what you what you have, what you've done, where what courses you took, what you listened to, what you studied. You gotta start with what you where you are, so you can see what the difference is between where you want to go, right? So you just do the comparison between the two. Here's what I did. I took this course, I studied this, I got some hands-on with this tool, I practiced this, um, whatever. But just try to try to go through and make that inventory. It's kind of a look back through the year and past. Hey, here's the stuff I've done for my career. And then now, as we talk about picking a direction, you can see, all right, cool. Here's what here's what I've done. Now let's see what I need to do to shore up and focus on the next thing.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. So the next thing we have here is pick a direction. So decide where your finish line is, what you would like to do. Now, this is for everyone, right? If you are brand new to cybersecurity, if you're in cybersecurity and you're trying to level up, move up the corporate ladder, change positions, you know, it doesn't matter. You still need to pick a direction. Pick where you want to take your career and where you see yourself in the future or where you would like to see yourself in the future and work towards that. We've heard people say cybersecurity is massive. There's just so much you can do within cybersecurity. So you have to pick a lane. You have to pick something that really interests you so you can build on that and get some traction and get going. Because if you do a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit over there, oh, the what's the new hot topic? AI, let me focus on that. Oh, what's next? Cloud. If you just keep jumping around, yes, you will gain some knowledge about different topics, but it will feel like you're not really getting anywhere. So, especially if you're starting, you want to just pick a lane, pick something, stay within that lane to get your foot in the door, get you that first job. And then from there, you can start exploring even more to see where else you want to jump into. But that that's just you know my recommendation at the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, um, we were talking before this about not having New Year's resolutions, having a resolution, a singular resolution. Um, and this is similar, like keep it simple, keep it focused. Even within the blue team sock, I want to work in a sock, I want to be a sock analyst, I want to be a security analyst. You should even fix put focus on that path, but then narrow that down even further to okay, within the that domain, I've picked a lane, within that lane, what am I gonna focus on? You know, is it uh an incident response focus secure a sim tool or sim tools? Um, but narrowing that down to we've picked a direction now you you definitely that's the first step because if you're trying to study for a GRC and you're trying to study for being a SOC, those are just they're just separate, they're just different, right? They're different and you you will spread yourself too thin. So pick a thing and focus on that thing, and then simplify it even further, you know, and it get it to as simple as possible, right? Simplify it to you can't simplify it anymore. Okay, I've gone from SOC to SIM tools, and then from there to Splunk. And even from there to just learning how to query and Splunk, learning the query language, like get it down to as small as possible so that you know what you're gonna focus on, and then you build on that. It's just building, building from that skill set, expanding. Okay, now I've learned how to the query language works. Now let me go learn how to alerting works and that tool, or the next thing in that tool, right? And you don't have to be a black belt in the tool, but you want to be comfortable enough that you've made progress in that whatever that focus area is, so that you you feel good. Like I'm I I can look back at this and say, Yeah, you know, I feel pretty good. Now, what's the next domain in that lane? Right? Oh, EDR. Okay, I'm gonna focus on endpoint detection. That's all I'm gonna focus on, and make progress in that and move the needle to get better at it. And then once I feel pretty good, maybe you spend a month on that. Spend a month on that. That's perfect. You pick the next thing, move into the the next topic, right? So it's just a way to keep it not overcomplicated, not overwhelming, and focusing as specific as you can.
SPEAKER_03:And it's funny you mentioned that because there's there's a coup uh a few other things that we're gonna talk about, about just some some kind of mistakes to avoid in 2026. But to go back about picking your direction, you know, and and this here is tailored more towards people who are just starting. There are three common starter paths that we've kind of seen. And there's more, but these are kind of three that we're gonna highlight here in this in this podcast episode. These three have 73% of all of the entry-level jobs in cybersecurity. They align to these three different things that we're gonna talk about. So, number one is the SOC or Blue Team. So that is kind of one path. The second path is GRC, and the third is cloud and identity. So, within those three different paths, 73% of all entry cybersecurity jobs align with one or two or multiple of those paths. So if you are asking yourself, well, I don't even know where to go, I'm not really sure what I want to do. If you pick any of those three, you'll be in a good position to get started. Now, you may start with one, say you start with SOC or Blue Team, start doing some learning, and then realize this is really not for me. This is not what I thought it was. It's okay to jump over to cloud identity or even GRC and give that a try until you find something that you're like, okay, yeah, this is it for me. And then we can, you know, that's the lane that you pick, and then that's where you keep moving forward. So at the very beginning, it's good to, you know, if you're unsure, to try some stuff here or there, but we need to get to that lane. We need to pick that lane and we need to stick with it, and that's where we need to go to get you to your finish line and help you make as much progress as possible.
SPEAKER_00:One thing to add, and the identity is part of that, is IT as you're starting, like is your starting block, put it that way. So we've we've coached people, we've we're talking to people, and their first starting is just to get some IT experience as the building block to get to cybersecurity, right? So identity is kind of in that in that wheelhouse where you might just be creating users, managing users, adding users to groups, etc. But that also might be like before you even get to cyber IT stuff, right? Support, help desk, whatever, as your building block to get into these other three.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you're right. Thank thanks for pointing that out, John. We have here like these three three different questions that can kind of help you. Do you like patterns, puzzles, and alerts? You know, if those are things that you like, maybe sock work might be might might interest you. If you like documentation, frameworks, keeping things in order, keeping things tidy, meetings, maybe GRC is the thing for you. You know, if you like more automation, you're already know some uh information when it comes to the cloud environments or just systems in general, or like John was saying, permissions, creating accounts, that kind of thing, then maybe the cloud and identity areas is for you. But again, those are just some simple questions. Those are simple things that, you know, if you find those interesting, maybe consider giving, you know, SOC, GRC, cloud a try. You know, very simple stuff there. All right. So our next section, we want to talk about resetting your learning plan. We talked about this in the first episode, and we're talking about it again here in the second episode because this is really one of the key factors of success. If you don't have a good plan, you're already 50% on your way to failure. You need to have a plan. And you need to make sure that it's a plan that you believe in. It is a plan that's going to get you to the finish line that you want and you are working for. And we just need to make sure it's a solid plan. So, how, how, how could we do that, John?
SPEAKER_00:I'm sure people right now are thinking, well, how do I have a plan? How do I how do I make that plan, right? Well, you know, basically you're picking your path, just like we said. And from there, here's what we talk about all the time that I still think about and have used throughout my career. And we use that as we help people build their plans, but you go look at what the job descriptions are asking for, right? You look at a stock analyst and be like, all right, what's a junior level, mid very entry-level stock analyst as best best as possible, right? Those are like unicorns. There are they really entry level, but find the lowest level entry level if you have no experience, and you go look at the job description. Now, as we talked about in the last episode, their wish list, they're not gonna have everything, you're not you're never gonna find, you're never gonna find the perfect candidate, but there's still a way to use it to look at what people are asking and looking for. They want this skill, they want that, they want you to have this, they want you to do that, right? And of course, you can use AI to help you decipher those and say, hey, using these job descriptions, help me build out a roadmap of what I need to work on to get it to be ready to apply for these positions or ready enough. And that's simple, it's easy, literally. Like you can go pull 10 job descriptions and use that, pull that data, combine it, look at what the combined domains are, and you know, and and we could tell you, but really that's how you know that's because what they're saying they need for their position, and then just use that to kind of decipher it and break it into the simplest blocks that you can for that position. And it could be certs, it could be it's gonna be certs of some sort, it's gonna be skills and tools of another sort. Um, ideally, some experience, right? They always, you know, everybody wants to have experience, but that's okay. But how do you then you're gonna basically pull that all together and say, all right, now what am I missing? This is where the gap assessment comes in. Here's what you've done. Here's what I'm missing from what I pulled from these job descriptions. What where's the gap? Identify that that gap, write them down. Okay, I'm missing this, I'm missing this, I got a little bit of experience and this skill, I don't have enough to talk about in an interview. And everything, the way you think about it, should be hey, if I got asked a question about this on an interview, or if I was asked to demonstrate it in an interview, where am I on this on the one to five scale? Five, I I could kill it. If they I could go show it right now, I feel confident. One is I got nothing. I could I could tell you what I know what it is, I've heard the name before, or maybe you hit you it's not even something you know. So you're trying to move the needle to the five as close as possible on the things that the big things. And when you look at those job descriptions, you look at you know, must-haves and nice to haves. You know, the must-haves will be where you should focus uh on the things that they're saying. You must have this or must be able to do this or must be proficient in that. Um, and so you you use that as your gap of salary. Write those things down. Then we go back to what we said in the last section. You pick a thing. This is going to be my focus. And I think even on our roadmaps, we might have got a lot of little we we try to give everybody like the here's the big plan. But I think we should even simplify more and say, all right, all you're going to do until you get to this proficiency is focus on this this specific topic. Keep it simple. It's going to get boring for a little bit, and maybe you have a backup in case it gets really boring. But generally, like, hey, you not forever, do a month, cycle it out, right? Do a month focus. Then cycle to the next thing that's the top priority that you have a gap in. Um, but come back, right? So yeah, just having that focus and that that that um very specific thing of the action plan of like these are the gaps I'm missing. Here's what I've done so far, here's my proficiency level. That's another thing you could do is in your first levels of the things that you have on these job descriptions, put down your proficiency level. All right, I'm a one on this, I'm a three on this, I'm a four on this, I'm a one on this, right? And then that also helps you gauge like where you need to focus. Um, all my ones. Let's start with the ones and get those up to a three, then move to the the next focus, right? So I don't know if that's what you had in mind, Stephen, but that just came to mind. I was like, that to me makes sense.
SPEAKER_03:No, yeah, no, no, no. That's good. I mean, you know, we've it's kind of repetitive. We talked a little bit about this last episode and we're talking about it again, but because it's very important, it is very, very important to for you to have a plan, not only a good plan, but a plan that you believe in, right? Because you are not going to want to follow a plan you don't believe in, you don't like. Like that is, you know, you're just gonna be wasting your time. So, and a way for you to help you create this plan is what we've basically been talking about. I mean, what John said about the position descriptions, that's gold. Um, I would say, you know, now, you know, even us, we get on YouTube and there's certain cybersecurity uh uh people that we follow on YouTube, that we follow on X, on LinkedIn, whatever. I mean, they now share videos of like, hey, this is what a SOC analyst does, or this is some of the things a cloud engineer should know, right? You can find a lot of that stuff online as well. That is that is good. It's coming from reliable sources. So definitely use that as well to kind of help you create your plan. Again, I mentioned this last season. If you have a plan that you like that you feel strongly about, but you just want a second set of eyes to take a look at it, reach out to us. We'd be happy to take a look at it and give you some feedback. But if you have other people in your circle, in your community who are in the field, who are working, maybe your brother-in-law or maybe a friend that you met uh from your jujitsu gym or something that's in cybersecurity, they're doing what you want to do, you know, maybe have them take a look at it too. You know, just hey, I'm trying to get to this level. This is kind of a plan I set up. Do you mind just taking a look, give me some feedback, right? If you need that extra kind of validation to make sure that what you are doing is gonna get you to where you want to go. But yeah, by taking these simple steps, figuring out what interests you, choosing a lane, going out and doing some research about what it takes to get that job, um, that alone should be more than enough to kind of help you create a plan. Now, there's a bunch of resources out there, right? If you've like John was saying, well, if you want to work in the SOC, you have to know what a sim tool is and how to use it. Well, there's a ton of sim solutions out there. So you get to pick one. Once you pick one, there's a ton of videos and just content out there, some for free, some as paid for, that go as deep as as simple as setting this up to using it, to writing queries, to who knows what. So there's just so much information out there that you can use to your benefit after you have a direction, after you know, hey, this is a direction I'm going. And in order to get to my finish line, I have to understand what a sim solution is, what it does, how it works, how to set one up, how to work within one. And then you can kind of start, you know, kind of going down that path. But yeah, I mean, it's it's very important to have a plan. But not only that, but a plan you believe in. It's really what we're trying to get through to you guys. That's that's the importance.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think that the the where you believe in it, if you look at what people are looking for for the hiring, then it's the to me, it's the backup of like, well, this is what they're asking for, right? You know, you're not you shouldn't be focusing on things that they're not asking for, they're not looking for. And and there'd be variations based off industry, based off of region, whatever. There are gonna be variations, but generally they're the same, you know? A sock analyst is not that different. You may have different tools, may have different things you have to do, but it's generally the same. But if you that's your proof is is in my opinion, of like, well, they're asking for this, then and you look at you do a sample set, do your research, pull as many as you can resume-wise, and look at what they're looking for and look for the commonalities. That's what they're looking for. But building your network, right? Like reaching out to people, like Steve said, always be networking, reach out to folks that are in those jobs or are hiring managers, like we've talked about before, say, hey, here's what I'm trying to build my plan. I'm trying to build and make sure this is validated. This is what I'm gonna study, this is what I'm gonna work on. Um, this is what I see job descriptions are asking for. You know, you as a hiring manager, does this match what you would like to see in this person in this role? That's an easy question. Like, unless they're just annoying and they don't want to talk to people or they don't really communicate on over LinkedIn, like that's a that's a that's a softball. Oh, yeah, that's a good plan. Boom. You've got some feedback. Boom, maybe you've got a domino for the building that relationship with somebody may not be somebody that we would work for, but it's somebody you could use as like accountability, as a as a network partner, as a whatever, right? Somebody that's in the industry in the industry. So you know, use your network, use those job descriptions that are out there to help you validate what you should be studying. So what like like Steve said, once you have that list, now you know where to focus and put your effort.
SPEAKER_03:I completely agree. And we've done previous videos. I mean, if if you're a longtime follower, you you you know this, we've done stuff that focuses specifically on SOC. Like, hey, these are some of the tools you need to learn if you want to be a SOC analyst. Hey, these are some of the things you need to do if you want to be a SOC analyst or you want to get an entry-level job in cybersecurity. We haven't done too much when it comes to GRC and too much to cloud, but maybe that's something we can explore, John, for our listeners if they're interested. So leave us a comment if you're interested in something like that for us to dive deeper in. But there's a lot of free resources and free training and just free examples that we've covered in some of our previous episodes that are still valid. I mean, these are still things that matter, specifically for a stock analyst, uh blue team position. So, yeah, just you know, go back and review if you would like, or just reach out to us and you know, we can give you some feedback and some information as well. Um, so moving on, we're gonna talk about what not to do this time, right? Things that you should stay clear from and try to avoid in 2026 to hopefully keep you on track and maybe not derail you or sidetrack you in 2025. One of the biggest things that we talked about already, but I truly believe in is having a focus. Stop jumping around from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. That's that's not good. We need to pick one thing, focus, and move forward on that one thing and stop jumping around.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I think you said it perfectly. I don't I think we've harped on that this whole this whole episode. Yeah, just simplify, simplify, get it down to specific focus items that you can make progress in. Don't I think here's the trap, and I get it because I can get bored easily, right? And be like, all right, uh this is I've done this for weeks now, and I'm ready to move on to something else, right? And that's okay. That is okay to move to a different thing. Just don't move completely to another lane, don't move to another certificate, like don't completely jump out of your wheelhouse of the thing you're focused on, right? You can shift in the domain in that focus area to other skills or other topics in that area, right? But just don't completely abandon this whole thing to jump to the other thing, right? It's okay to shift, but then if you need to come back, but you gotta you gotta be able to self-evaluate and say, all right, I've studied let's use Security Onion as an example because it's a complicated tool. And one of our guys is has been playing with it for a while. And you know, there's a lot to that, and you can focus on that, but once you get to a certain level, it's probably good to jump to something else, and it could be something completely out of network security monitoring, or it could be still no network monitoring uh umbrella, but it's a different tool, right? And then that could also help support you back to Security Onion. But if you went and jumped into programming or scripting, that's really out of that same domain and the pillar, really the pillar, and it's gonna take away from your focus so that when you come back to the network security monitoring, you go, okay, I gotta re- I gotta kind of rebuild on this and refresh what I was learning. Right. So it's okay to kind of move when you but make some solid progress first, I guess is the the point, is like get some progress under your belt that you feel good about before you shift a little bit, a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:What I mentioned at the beginning about maybe dipping your toe in in all three of those different lanes to see which one is your favorite, that is okay. But what we don't want is for you to get into the habit of just following whatever's hot and not really focusing on something because you're just gonna stay at that level all the time. You're just gonna be jumping around everywhere and not really get anywhere with that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, if you look at the your assessment of what you need to focus on, of what the items are, and the thing that you see that seems cool that you want to go play with is not in that list, then that's a good check of like, well, it's not in my list. It's not on my plan. I probably shouldn't do it right now.
SPEAKER_03:That's the key word too, right now. We're not saying just forget about that and never go back to it. But again, what we are trying to encourage is focusing on a lane that interests you and keep moving forward so you get to your finish line. And when I say finish line, to me, I'm kind of focusing more on people who are getting started, who are trying to get into the world of cybersecurity. After you get your foot in the door and you are in your first cybersecurity position, things change after that. We just need a little bit more focus and structure to get you there at the very beginning, right? Because we don't want you to waste time and waste effort on things that don't really matter right now. Because again, the main goal and the focus is to get your foot in the door and get you to your first entry-level job. After that, it's completely different. You can go explore everything in the under the sun if you want to, but you're already in. You're already in the club, you're already in cybersecurity at that point. So things change, the rules change. But for now, to get you from zero to hero, we have to be very strict, we have to be very focused, and we can't be wasting time and effort.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because you're gonna burn out and you're gonna lose your momentum. And that's what you know could have happened this last year is you got too spread out. You jumped around because it seemed cool, but then you lost your progress. You lost your you stopped your progress on you didn't lose it, but you stopped it in the one focus. So, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:All right. We're still under what not to do this time around. And you mentioned this earlier, John. Don't just blindly copy someone else's roadmap. You know, we we've been harping on this whole episode. Make sure the roadmap is somewhat tailored to you. Everybody's different, everybody's coming from uh a different starting point, everybody has done different training, different certifications, different everything. So you just want to make sure that if you are going to use maybe a roadmap that was created for someone or just a general roadmap, that you do take the time to change it up to fit you. And then if you're happy with that roadmap and you want to keep moving forward after you make those changes to tailor it to you specifically and your end goal, then by all means, go forth and conquer.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. The last one that we have here is don't go it alone. Um, as we've talked about communities, having an accountability partner, having study buddy, having something. Um, join our community and you know, we'll hook you up, help you meet people that are like-minded, like path, on the same journey. Um, that's what we're doing with our group coaching too, is having a group of people together that you're you're talking about your struggles, you're talking about where you are. And you know what the good thing about those communities, especially if you get together on a call, is everybody goes around and talks about where they are, what they've done, what what how the last week looks. And if you do that every time you meet and you're like, I didn't really do anything, you know, you're gonna have that social pressure. You're gonna be like, they're gonna be like, dude, what's going on with you? You know, lady, what's what's up? Um, so having that group of people or at least a person that's gonna, you're gonna report in and say, what you should do is like, this is what my plan is, this is what my goals are, here's what I'm gonna focus on. And then when you get together again or you chat with that person, you're like, hey, all right, my focus was on this tool or on this skill, and they ask you about it, well, how's it been going? And you're like, oh, well, I jumped to this cool thing I saw on YouTube, or I didn't really make progress on it. Why didn't you make progress? Right. So those things help add to the just you putting yourself in a situation that you don't want people to ask you and you're like, well, I suck. I didn't make any progress on this again for a month. If you haven't made progress in a month, then something's something's going on. Now, you know, if it's a life event, okay. But if it's like I just didn't because whatever reason, then you know, you're gonna feel a little bit of that. And I think having more than one makes it even more, right? If you have five people, six people, ten people, and you know they're all like, oh, okay, there's some of that competitiveness that comes into it. Like, I'm gonna make sure next time I'm gonna, here's my list, here's what I did, right? So having that community is a big deal.
SPEAKER_03:I completely agree. There was an article you shared with me, John, before we jumped on to the podcast that talked about the eight secrets that uh you you need to follow or understand so that your New Year's resolution is successful. And one of their those is use peer pressure. You know, surround yourself with people, you know, that you want to be around, people that are already in the level of success or want to reach the same level of success that you do, and that will rub off on you, right? And if you're around these people that are like-minded, who are working towards a same or similar goal, and you are there and you are seeing how, hey, John, oh, John's John's always on it, man. John is like reaching above and beyond, and oh, this other guy, Steve, like he's on it too. Like that motivates you. You don't want to be the weakest link of a group. I mean, you don't. I mean, that's just the human nature, right? You don't want to be the last person picked to play dodgeball on the field. So you will also up your game. I mean, if you are surrounded by these people who are motivated, they're getting after it, they're knowledgeable, I mean, they're smart, they're working hard to reach their finish line, that will rub off on you and you will make the time, you will put in the effort because you don't want John and Steve and Joe Schmoe over here to show you up. No, you want to be at the same level, if not even better. And that's where that competitiveness comes in that John mentioned, because we're all human beings and there's little competitiveness in everybody. Some people have a little bit more than others, but there's just a little bit in everyone. So use that to your advantage. And that's where having a community that you know you're you're comfortable in, you feel safe to share and open up and you know, just really use each other to help motivate one another. That's gold. And that is a huge, huge plus. If you have that, great. If you don't, please find one. The community is a must when it comes to building your cybersecurity career in 2026. All right, guys. Well, that is it for this episode. Again, you know, we we are here to help, not just by sharing our thoughts and our opinions, but if you want some one-on-one feedback, reach out to us. We do still offer those free consultations. 30 minutes, you get either one of us or both of us for 30 minutes, and we'd be happy to talk about anything we are here to help. Also, leave comments, whether it's on the podcast or whether on YouTube. If you have any questions, if there's topics that you want us to touch on, we'd be happy to take a look and answer any questions you may have.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Check out our community, our new group that you can be a part of as we move from Discord, move from the newsletter to combine our focus area to work and share with you guys and girls. Join there. And then from there, if you want to get more in-depth, we have options. We have our coaching options with the group coaching, where it is like us in a Zoom call with a small group of people, and you're gonna get the accountability from us and others, and we're gonna push you and you're gonna build that relationship with your network, build your network and be able to keep moving, making progress, making goals by getting you know feedback and guidance from our experiences that that you know we've had over the years to help you reach your goals in 2026.
SPEAKER_03:So, with that, that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. And until next time, thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: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.
SPEAKER_03:Have questions, topic ideas, or want to share your cybersecurity journey? Join our school community, the Cybersecurity Mentors, where you don't have to do this alone. Connect with us there and on YouTube. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time, I'm John Hoyt. And I'm Steve Higgeretta. Thank you for listening.