Maril Vernon: 0:15

Welcome back to another episode of The Cyber Queens. We are your hosts, Maril, Erika, and Nathalie. I'm Maril, resident offensive and hacking expert.

Erika Eakins: 0:25

I'm Erika Eakins, technical salesperson in the cyber field.

Nathalie Baker: 0:31

And I'm Nathalie Baker, blue team extraordinaire.

Maril Vernon: 0:34

Today we are talking about a topic that is near and dear to everybody's hearts, and everybody has been looking for it and everybody's been like, "When is this episode dropping?" And here it is. We are finally going to talk about personal branding and the importance that it plays in driving your cyber security career. Especially speaking of someone who came into this industry with no certifications, no technical know-how and no background. How was I able to propel myself so far, so quickly? It is personal branding. I'm gonna try not to dominate this episode. I'm gonna tell my queens they can smack me if I just start dominating too much, back away, I wanna hear from them first. It's what I stand for. Personal branding to you guys. What does it mean and why is it important?

Nathalie Baker: 1:19

Before you even brought this episode up, Maril, I had like literally had zero clue what personal branding actually was. I thought that was just a reputation that you built for yourself.

And it is, but it's more: 1:29

what are people saying when you're not around? And really understanding that, was a game changer for me. What are people actually gonna say when I'm not in the room? Are people even talking about me when I'm not in the room? And that in itself is personal branding. It can be mistaken a lot of times for reputation, but your reputation is more so your work ethic related versus personal branding is what you want people to remember about you.

Erika Eakins: 1:58

So for me, being in sales, personal branding is, you know in the beginning of my career, I thought it was: what company I was attached to, what I did for them, what I sold, and things like that. But as I got further into my career, it really was like Nathalie said, "What do they say about you when you're not in the room?" I have a lot to say on this topic as well, so you guys feel free to smack me. For me, being a female in the cyber field, I came in the industry in 2011. Honestly, at that time when I lived in Chicago, there wasn't a lot of female reps in the cyber field, and they basically think that you sleep your way to the top or sleep with somebody to get in. And I'll talk about that a little bit more, but that is also a brand. If you wanna be that girl that gets in with her legs, that's on you, but that's not what it should be about.

Nathalie Baker: 2:48

Honestly I really thought Maril was like the celebrity for the longest time. I didn't even know she was a regular person. I thought she was some celebrity, and it's just because she has such strong personal branding. For the longest time I was like, "Look at that girl. She's so awesome. Oh my God, I wish I could be her."

Maril Vernon: 3:08

It's the thing though, you can! Anybody can do it. You tell me, I've done a great job making my brand approachable. Way to suck, Maril Renee. No, but brands are so hard to quantify. People are like, "What is it? Why do I need one? How do you even use it, if you have one?" And you hear branding thrown around"Oh, that's part of my brand," or, "No, that's not in my brand." And the brand is", or, "Yeah, that's a brand, that's a vibe." But how do you even understand what a brand is? And it's exactly what they've said. Your personal brand is basically what people know of you, and what they associate with being what you stand for. So like my brand is, obviously, I'm someone who loves fashion and I love being fashion forward, and I love doing super jazzy looks and stuff, but my brand isn't just to look good all the time. My brand is that's part of who I am, but also this is part of who I am. Like InfoSec T-shirts and athletic shorts is generally how you'll see me and that doesn't seem like your brand. I'm like, "It is. My brand is just authentic. It has come as you are." It is not to push yourself to be one or the other. I have chosen to embrace certain aspects and expand my brand. You can't just lock someone into a brand automatically. But brands are powerful. If you don't think they are, Nathalie literally came to me and thought I would be a great addition to this podcast, as a concept, because of what she knew about me from what I put out online. She didn't know me personally, she'd never spoken to me, but she was like,"Based on what you put forth and based on what I know about you and what others know about you and say about you, I think I would enjoy working with you. And that's what it is. It's a tool.

It's like the additive used to be: 4:40

it's not what you know, it's who you know. Now, it's not even that. It's what do other people know about you?

Erika Eakins: 4:49

I wanna add to that, you could have a personal brand and a professional brand that are two separate things.

Maril Vernon: 4:55

Yep. Erika's got a professional brand of being a pretty big baddie, up in a man's world. We all do. But like my personal brand is that I'm very caring and very loyal and very empathetic and very build you up, and I'll be your hype girl. Most people wouldn't associate us with being in the two same bodies, but I choose to segregate my brands. I don't do the body building stuff on LinkedIn, and people who know me from the competitive world, don't know anything about what I do professionally or my professional brand. So can you have multiple brands? To answer that question, yes, you can have multiple brands. Can you segregate them and choose how you market them on different platforms? Yes, absolutely. I need you all to understand something right now. The fact that you choose not to believe in a brand or not to acknowledge your brand or not to water your brand doesn't mean you don't have one. Everybody's got one, and if you're not out there telling people what it is, they're gonna decide what it is for you. And that is a very dangerous place to be. You've just given away 80% of your personal PR power.

Erika Eakins: 5:48

Yes. Well, for salespeople, this is super important and it's important on the technical side as well. Like I said earlier, you don't want them to think that you're sleeping your way into customer accounts. You don't want to get that reputation. I've built a brand for myself, the hiring managers come to me to find me, to hire me, even when I'm not looking. And a lot of people can do that. But I've also built a brand with my customers. They know that I have their back anytime. They know that I work for them, and I go to bat for them. The company I work for, I do follow the rules. I'm very ethical. I don't lie. There's a lot of salespeople that lie. I tell the truth, even if it's gonna lose me money. So that makes customers follow me. That makes hiring managers come and get me. I also put a brand out there that marketing people love me because I can get in there into my territory, do what I gotta do, and build it. I'm known for being what they call a builder. I'm not a farmer in the sales field. But my personal brand, people think I'm a personal trainer, because I don't compete anymore, but I'm a bodybuilder. I post everything about fitness on my personal pages. My social medias that are personal have different names because I don't wanna associate my LinkedIn and professional life. So when people think that I just sit around and work out all day, but they actually see me doing all these fun things, because sometimes I will post on my personal page, so "Oh my gosh, I thought you were just a personal trainer." I'm like, "that is actually a career, so shame on you for saying that." Love y'all personal trainers, but I don't associate the two. You don't have to do that, you could do both. You could mesh them together.

Maril Vernon: 7:21

But because of the brand you've built, I know that what I would say about you is, we should go buy that thing from Erika. Why, is her company particularly great?" Don't know crap about her company. What I do know though, is that Erika is not gonna BS us. She's not gonna upsell us, and she's not gonna tell us we need something that we don't. If she doesn't think she's the best solution, she's gonna probably go tell us where we can find it. And anyone that Erika recommends to me, I would work with that person because they come from you. That's a brand, that is reinforcing.

Erika Eakins: 7:46

But I also wanna add sometimes, the brand you choose, it will look like it's hurting you. Like I have a reputation of being very ethical and I tell customers like, "This is not the right solution for you." It gets me in trouble with my employer because they're like,"Why are you pushing a deal away?" But it can hurt me, like financially. I won't close a deal if I tell a customer this is not for you and it's really not. I'm not gonna sell it to them because then they're gonna have buyers remorse That does exist in the professional world.

Nathalie Baker: 8:14

Yes it does.

Erika Eakins: 8:14

So when people know they work with me, they know what they're getting.

Nathalie Baker: 8:18

Yeah, and your personal brand doesn't have to be static. It can evolve over time. My personal brand like two years ago was nothing in comparison to what I realized you actually had to put into a brand. Because it's a lot of work to put into a brand, but you can evolve it over time. Maril, I know you said you were completely against being associated with being a woman in cyber for a long time. And then, now look at us.

Maril Vernon: 8:44

Yeah,

Nathalie Baker: 8:45

Sorry.

Maril Vernon: 8:45

No it's like what Erika said. I didn't wanna lean into that feminine aspect on podcasts and stuff. People would be like, "What's your opinion as a female in cyber on blah, blah, blah, or blah blah blah." And I was like why is it a female's opinion and not just a qualified cyber professional's opinion?" I didn't wanna lean into that at all, because I had to come in and start fighting my way. Nathalie and I come from a military background. We're used to playing in a man's world. That's fine. I completely leaned into the match you on your expertise level, to gain their respect. So actually my first brand ever, working at my first insurance company, a lot of the developers came in to visit HQ and they're like, "Oh man, we can't wait to talk to that new guy in the security department.""Yeah, Maril.""Yeah. He's awesome.""Oh, he's killing it.""Yeah." And I'm like, "Oh, I'm sorry Maril?" They're like, "Yeah." I'm like, "that's me." So "But you're a girl.""Yeah, I'm Maril." So based purely on my work and how I communicate via email and like our interactions, they thought I was a guy. They thought I was one of them. And I liked that. That honestly told me I was doing it correctly. I have now I will say learned a very delicate balance on how to lean into my femininity, and be the person walking around Defcon in a hot pink suit. And be all the things that I am, that I wanna be, and not be intimidated by it or make it feel like it waters down my expertise at all. But I did build that first brand, first. You're absolutely right. It's okay to let brands go and evolve them into something new. A lot of people are so afraid"this has been so successful. It's worked for me so good for three years." And I'm like, "it won't though for much longer. Brands need to evolve or they will die." Look at Nike. Nike used to stand for one thing, and now they've grown. Like, when you think of Nike, you think of giving back to the community, helping kids in underprivileged neighborhoods get the sports gear they need to go to finals and stuff. You know that as a brand, you're not just buying really high quality athleisure wear or athletic wear. You're buying a brand that gives back and helps build the world up and make it a bit better. And that makes you feel good as a consumer. So them or someone else, that might be the determining factor. That's a brand, that's branding.

Nathalie Baker: 10:41

Yeah, when I first started, I refused to let people know that I was a veteran, because I didn't ever wanna be hired for just being a veteran. Because that will get you a job a lot of places, but that's never why I wanted to be hired. I wanna be hired because I was smart.

Maril Vernon: 10:55

#diversityhire.

Nathalie Baker: 10:56

Yeah, I did not wanna be that. It's so funny because like on my LinkedIn, unless you really dig in and really look at my resume or really look at my past jobs, you're not gonna realize that I'm even a veteran. It's not out there. But a lot of my stories do come from the time when I was in the military. Cause I learned so much in that year at Fort Hood that like, it's natural. And usually when people find out, they're like, "Oh my God, you were a veteran." And I'm like, "Yeah, I was."

Maril Vernon: 11:26

It's like with me, people go, "Oh my God, you're at Californian?" And I'm like, "Yeah." They're like, "Oh, I almost liked you." I'm like, "Why? That's not part of anything of who I am." I don't lean into that brand at all.

Erika Eakins: 11:36

Well, I get sourced a lot, and these managers are crazy for telling me this, that, "Oh, we're looking for a woman to add to the team." They're saying they're looking for a diversity hire, but putting it in different words. You are not supposed to say stuff like that because that's discriminatory. Honestly, just these companies are trying to figure their way out through all this DNI, but nobody cared about it before, they kind of did a little bit. Then COVID and everything happened and it's like, "oh, all of a sudden we care about diversity." You don't want that brand where you just say, Okay, yeah, I'm, maybe you do, but yeah, I'll take the job just because I'm a woman. Then not be respected. I've had that, I've fought my way through this career since 2011, and it took me a long time to get to the brand that I made for myself. I will be darned if somebody is gonna take that away from me just for hiring me because I am a female, no thank you.

Maril Vernon: 12:29

You know what I will say though, being a female, being a veteran, being a female veteran. That is an unfair advantage that we have. I will encourage someone to lean into that. But I will say, do you need to get a leg in the door? Are you being met with opposition? You might hate the environment, hate the team, hate the leadership. Use it as a stepping stone, use it as a means to an end, learn everything you can and further your own career. And the next time, you don't need to lean on that. But that is an unfair advantage that we have. We do fill a demographic box. It might feel horrible on the inside at first, but I say lean into all the advantages that you have because no one else is gonna give you any. And then if you wanna fight the uphill battle like we did, then do it. That's a very millennial thing to do. But I'm gonna tell you, bringing it back to Gen Z, we all were willing to do that as millennials. We were gonna put the grit and the time in the trenches, so that you respect us on the other side. Gen Z, Gen Z is not. They're just gonna automatically see that you don't have diversity going on, and they're gonna be turned off as a result. Then you're gonna have a really big talent pool problem.

Erika Eakins: 13:33

Not saying don't use your gender or even your orientation or your pronouns, but you don't want to get that reputation, because reputation does tie into brand. That, "oh, you just expect to be hired because you know you're X, Y, Z." It's fine to use it. I'm sure that's what got me my very first sales job in cyber when I came with no experience. So fine, okay, I probably did use the female card. They didn't say anything, but whatever. I wouldn't get that as a part of your brand "I expect to be hired cause I'm X, Y, Z."

Maril Vernon: 14:05

Making it your brand and making it a strategy are very different. I leaned into it. I was like, "Hi, female on-scene. And they were the ones who called me the boppy, millennial chick in security. And I'm like, "You know what? Fine. But I'm just not gonna play into that at all. I'm just gonna still be better than you." So that people will be like, "it doesn't matter that she's a chick, doesn't matter that she's millennial. It just matters that she's over there doing her job and you're over here not doing your job." So even if you use it as your leg in with HR, make sure you can still back it up with all the skills and the reinforcing markers that you need on the job in your brand or you'll be the diversity hire forever. Speaking of evolving brands, someone else who's really good at evolving their brand, especially in cyber, was Alyssa Knight. She was a foremost hacker. She's someone who's put out a lot of content, given a lot back to the community, and she has recently decided that she's moving away from that brand and going into the film production brand, which is great. Everyone's like, "You're an idiot. Why would you give up your brand? You've got such a following." It's like, because she's peaked. She's done all the things she's wanted to do. She accomplished all the things that she wanted, and it's okay to leave that behind and start something new.

I myself, old brand: 15:03

breaking into cyber security fast, cheap or, free. Because I was a single parentwho had no budget, no time, didn't have 10 years to start learning and to try and accelerate myself. I wanted to get there and I wanted to get there now. So I was telling people how I did it faster, better. Don't need to be an expert in Python, don't need all this stuff. Just go get a Sec+, and propel yourself, and do the things. Now my brand and my platform is shifting more to that manager, VP level of audience, and my message is changing and I'm not advising people so much on how to break in anymore. Like I said, I did it three years ago. My knowledge is deprecated. There are folks doing it better than me. What I am talking about now, is driving your own career and propelling yourself to those next levels, as I have done. And the tools you can use. One of them is personal branding, and it comes full circle. Let your brand evolve. We'll all be here. We'll all be happy you did it, I promise.

Nathalie Baker: 15:58

And I remember when we were building The Cyber Queens brand specifically, like Maril, the first question you asked is,"What's gonna make us different?"

Erika Eakins: 16:05

Yes.

Nathalie Baker: 16:05

"What sets us apart from everybody else?" And that's such an important question. What do I want people to know about me, that's gonna set me apart from everybody else? That's personal branding. That's probably one of the most beneficial questions I think you've ever asked me was, what is gonna make us so different? Then we started talking personal brand and I was like, "what makes me different?"

Maril Vernon: 16:30

Yeah, it translates. And then I also asked you,"what are your core values?" I said, "What do you stand for?" Because you need to exude those in your delivery of everything you do or you're not being true to your own brand. Like you could have a brand, and you're not even being true to it. So yeah, we came in and we did a lot of that visual branding and that rhetorical branding work. We deep dove into our audience and the questions and the values they have and how we can speak to those. Yeah we did, we branded the goodness out of it.

Erika Eakins: 16:57

Bless your heart.

Nathalie Baker: 16:59

That helped on the the personal branding side, at least for me, because I didn't even know where to start. Where do I start at with a personal brand? You came in and you were like what do you want to do that's gonna make you different from every other person or every other podcast out there?" And I was like what makes me different from every other cyber security professional out there?" And I kinda use that to help me build my own personal brand more.

Erika Eakins: 17:22

Yes. And you can evolve your brand. Once you figure out, you get into cyber and you're a SOC analyst and you love that. You can identify and start building your brand based off of where you wanna go in your career. That's what I'm doing. I'm a salesperson, and I'm technical, but I still have a path to be a CRO, which is a Chief Revenue Officer. So I want all of sales and marketing to run up to me. Well, unless they have a CMO, the marketing will go up to marketing. But I wanna, be responsible for growing the company, bringing in that profit, that revenue. And that's something that I am on path to do. I've had to actually shift my brand, professionally a little bit, because now that I've achieved, being what they call an enterprise account manager, which is large accounts. The next step for me is frontline management, senior and then CRO. Is it gonna be with a company or am I gonna do it myself? I don't know yet, but it's helping me revamp my brand and growing my brand because now I have to think bigger.

Maril Vernon: 18:18

Yeah, and you never abandoned your brands. You never left sales, you were sales, you were driving the sales path, but then you cupped in a little bit of technical and now that you're a technical sales go to, now you're cupping a little bit of leadership. And now that you're a technical sales leader, rather than just being a sales leader or a marketing leader, you're all these things combined now. Because you brought those into your brand and made it the form that you stand on.

Erika Eakins: 18:41

The other thing that I realized, a lot of the CROs that I see in the industry, and it's not all of them, but a lot of them are not technical. They just are sales and marketing, and that's fine if you're a CRO, but you gotta understand cyber. I remember working for a company, they brought on a VP who was, he was from the other side of information technology, which data, servers, all that data center crap that I don't like. Then he comes to run an entire region, the VP of the West for a cyber company, and he knew nothing. Was he a good VP? Yes, but he was not, he had no clue what we were really doing. And that's not bad, but I don't wanna be in that position.

Maril Vernon: 19:20

You're gonna have a brand when you walk into the meeting room, they're gonna be like, "Thank God the technical leader is here. She understands us. She's gonna hear what we're saying and know how to help us improve upon it. Thank God." Yeah, agree. Places to start. We are coming up on being two-thirds done with this episode already, because we could talk about branding all day. Tips to build a personal brand. I've got a lot of content out there about this already. You can definitely search for it on LinkedIn or Twitter or, I have various blogs out there on Medium as well. I'm trying to make it in one place where people can go find it when I reference it months from now. But definitely some tips to get started and I would love to know your ladies' thoughts as well. For me, it's to have a goal because without a goal you don't know. Your goal is your message. And if you don't know what your message is, you don't know who would consume your message or start with who. Who do you wanna get to? And what is a message they care about? If the demographic means more to you than the message, and you just wanna speak to and inspire someone specifically, you'll find something that they wanna hear and that can drive to figure out how they wanna consume it. Then once you know that, you know how to brand your message so that your ideal audience will lean into it more.

Erika Eakins: 20:25

I personally had to figure out what I liked to do with my career first, because I came into cyber when I was almost 30. I was in my late twenties, which wasn't old, but I still didn't know what I loved. Once I identified what I loved, then I was able to build my brand. Then I set goals short term, long term, and tweak things as I go. So for me, my advice is find what you really love to do, or something that's part of what you love to do, and then build your brand. That might sound like something obvious, but you could be in a job that you hate and wanting to do something else because you're not building that structure. Yeah, I

Nathalie Baker: 21:03

personally also would agree, like every time that I've kind of shifted positions I've had to rebuild the brand and I didn't even realize I was building a brand until recently. And it's really funny cuz I've gotten into some interviews and they're like what do you wanna do? And I'm like, I don't even know, like good question. I don't know what I wanna do next. Like always have that next step ready. Always have that next step ready of what you'd like to do. All I could say was like, I wanna learn more. That's all. I really knew the difference between what I was doing and what I wanted to do. And so you're like good question. Here's what I'd like to do. Here's I wanna learn more. I wanna be able to be proficient in a new technology. That kind of ordeal. And that really helped me do some soul searching. Cause a lot of it came from doing the soul searching, knowing what my next goal is, what my next step could be and then driving my brand from that.. Maril Vernon: Yeah. And that's so great because like I have the same problem. I identify with that a lot. Nathalie, when I got into college, I enrolled in a bunch of courses that just looked fun and my dad was like, How much of this helps you accomplish a major? I was like, I don't know, probably none of it. I don't know what my major is. He's like, "Then we need to start over." I wanna work on everything. I wanna learn it all. I wanna do GRC and privacy and offensive, and CTI. I like all these things. And everyone's like, "You need to pick one though, and get good at that first." I'm like, "Good advice, sage. I should probably do that." So I also wanna do the things, but because of that, I had to backwards plan. I had to, again, where do I wanna be and what is the best way to get there? Or how did someone else get there and how can I improve upon that and do it faster or with less effort or with less money? Sorry I spoke to branding a product or branding a message, but branding yourself, can come from your own personal goal. If my goal was to get into cyber security at one point and to make people believe that I was a capable professional with no know-how. I did, I just started saying,"This is what I'm learning today and this is how it's going. This is where I failed. This is where I messed up. This is a meeting I had today." And everyone's like,"I identify with that. I've been that person in that meeting. I get that. I've been through that struggle." And suddenly as you get better, you become someone people recognize for knowing a certain thing a lot better. Additionally, how these two ladies met: comments of a LinkedIn post. You need to be networking in comments like, if you love someone's content, be in all the comments. Don't just leave your own"yeah, that's so great. Loved that message." Look for something someone said in response and have a little discussion, have a debate. Then they'll be like, I had one person say, "Wow, you and I are in the same comments of all the same posts. Maybe we should be cyber besties." I was like, "Maybe we should." And now this person is a CEO of his own company and he's one of my best cyber friends. So your genuine connections will come from that. And then he's over here sitting here saying, "oh, we need a keynote speaker for the SANS Cloud Summit. I'm thinking of Maril." Those opportunities are coming to you when you're not even there to advocate for yourself. This is how personal branding works. But don't fall for a pitfall. Don't just network above you like, "Oh, I wanna be a VP, so I'm just gonna talk to VPs." Network laterally. Network with other people at your level who are learning what you're learning and doing what you're doing and as they, as someone goes to them., they'll say, "Oh yeah, I do it with this person and we do it with this person, and we all do it together." You'll get brought along, you'll be another resource people can go to. I just can't describe enough how valuable it is. It makes you more authentic that way too, because then you're not just tagging along, it's you're being brought along.

Maril Vernon: 24:30

Value added discussion.

Nathalie Baker: 24:32

Exactly. Yeah."Oh, so and so knows this, and this. Let's bring her in, or let's bring him into the conversation, because they could be really helpful in this situation." It's not just you being like, "Oh, here I am. Let's also talk together now," just being the tag along. You're not the third party anymore. You're not the third wheel. Maril Vernon: You're not I agree." You have your own stance.

Erika Eakins: 24:55

You can't be afraid to reach out to people. If you're a security engineer, you're early in and you see some CISO, Chief Information Security Officer that inspires you and you're wondering if you should reach out because they're not gonna care about you. Do it, do it on LinkedIn, send 'em an email because you're not face to face, so you get that fear factor out of your way. I network every day and I do it, stuff that doesn't even have to do with cyber. Just because I will always have somebody that knows me here and there and what they're saying about me because it's they, Most people work and if those people have a job, they have a boss, they have a IT department, they have a cyber security team. So no matter what I do, I'm involved with everything. As a salesperson, it's easy for me. I could just reach out to somebody and I'm not scared. I'll walk up to somebody at a conference and not be scared. But if it's something that you have social anxiety or you're just not ready, a message or e-mail.

Maril Vernon: 25:50

Imposter syndrome.

Erika Eakins: 25:52

Or yeah, that. Just use the technical things available to you, email, texting, whatever, and introduce yourself. You'll be surprised.

Maril Vernon: 26:01

And you can come to us. Any one of us are happy to hug you. You can say, "Maril, I see that you're connected to Amber, or Erika is, will you give me an intro? I think we could collab." I'm like, "Abso-freaking-lutely!" We're here for you.

Erika Eakins: 26:12

Yep. That's how we are.

Nathalie Baker: 26:13

I would also say the important part of it, is building a relationship with the person that you're reaching out to. Like you don't wanna just be like how are you gonna help me?" Because if you're just like,"How you're gonna help me?" They're also like, "what's my return on investment as well? What's my personal gain from this?" If you reach out and you actually build a relationship and you're like,"Would you mind getting a coffee or something, a virtual coffee, or doing virtual drinks at some point?"That's going to lean a lot better for you because now you're just starting a natural conversation and then you're like, "I would love to learn from you. I'd love for you to be my mentor, or for you to help me navigate what I'm navigating right now." And that is going to just, again, just stay authentic to being who you are, but really lean into building the relationships rather than just selling yourself to a CEO or a CIO or CISO.

Maril Vernon: 27:01

And that goes for job referrals too. Do not just cold message me and say"Hi, please refer me for this job." If I know nothing about you and nothing about your job performance and what you stand for; if I don't know your brand is null, does not exist, I'm not gonna refer you for anything because I'm sticking my brand on having referred you. So I only refer people who've taken the time to start a genuine conversation with me and I can actually speak to the type of employee or expert that they are.

Erika Eakins: 27:26

And if you need help with this, reach out to any of us, but I will help you because I do this all day when I'm trying to break into accounts. I never message somebody through LinkedIn or whatever and say, "Hey, I'm Erika with blah, blah, blah." I work my way into it, like we have been talking about. I can help you break some of that ice because you don't wanna go straight in. Because they're not gonna respond to you. So I could help you with some tips and tricks. I can't guarantee any services. I'm not a service provider with resumes, but I will help you try to start a conversation with somebody.

Maril Vernon: 27:55

Yeah. The slimy way Erika could do her job is, "Hi Maril, are you in the cloud? Most companies are, Have you taken a look at how we can help you be in the cloud?" And I'm like, "Ew." I would literally never engage with that ever . But Erika and yeah, Erin has said is just we're all here. I'm here for advice. I'm here. And then later when you're like, Hey, do we need one of these? I don't know. I can take a look. I can see if you need one of these things. But it's relationships. Yeah it's 80% relationships, you guys and 20% actual business. Like when I close a collab, We literally spend most of the time hanging out and just getting to know each other and just like vibing on certain topics. And at the end I'm like, "So do you wanna do a blog together? Absolutely. I'm like, Cool. I'll e-mail you. Done." And that's the only business that happened. Most of it's not business-based.

Erika Eakins: 28:37

The rapport. We're coming up to time. We do have to do final takeaways. I'm so sorry. We all want this episode to go on forever. So we'll do you two ladies first, final takeaways for the audience, whether you be in cyber or not on personal branding.

Nathalie Baker: 28:53

For me it's being authentic and knowing what you want to portray. That's really the biggest thing you can do and how you're gonna tie that in. Personally, I like to tie a little bit of personal into my business brand because it just makes me more authentic, and I think that doing that helps you further along your brand and your message.

Erika Eakins: 29:15

That's great. My final takeaway is if you start building a brand, you get lost, you don't know what to do. Take a step back, rethink about it, and if you start it and then you decide to change it as you're doing it, that's okay too. Failure actually does equal success. There's failure that doesn't, but you are only gonna be successful if you've tried and failed at some point. Some of the richest people in the world, Elon Musk. He's failed a hundred million times, I'm sure. So just think about what you want, know what you want and how to get there and utilize your network. Don't be afraid to talk to people, but at the same time, don't go and say, "Hey, I'm work. We need to connect. You're a CISO. I wanna be a CISO, help me out." Because you're just gonna be deleted and blocked.

Maril Vernon: 30:00

Another big one for me is authenticity. Like Nathalie said, cannot emphasize enough, you need to be authentic. If you stutter, if you hate being on camera, if you're nervous, if you have children, like you need to embrace all of that. I guarantee you there is a niche that identifies and will consume your message because you're being honest about it. Don't be someone you're not. It will show right away. My genuine takeaway is gonna be, the easiest way to grow your brand and your audience is to take someone else's audience and make it your audience. Like the more of a genuine relationship we have and the more we interact online and people see like our InfoSec bestie-ship growing, like it will say, "Maril commented on this. Maril likes this. Maril shared this post on your behalf." And now my entire 20,000 follower audience is seeing your message and you didn't even have to work for them. So this is the one of the most effective ways that brands and businesses and people build these things and scale them. My other piece of advice is gonna be if you're lost, if you're nervous, if it's not working and you don't know why. If you don't know where to go next, get a brand coach. I have a brand coach. You only have a brand coach. We, The Cyber Queens, also have a growth and mentorship coach. We have someone helping us figure this out and navigate it for the first time. So there's no need to struggle alone. There are plenty of people who will break down the gates, share all their secrets, tell you exactly how they did it. We are three of them. So don't struggle on your own and don't waste tons of years like doing trial and error. Just go find someone and talk to that person, build a relationship with them, and ask them how they did it. They'll help you.

Erika Eakins: 31:31

I do wanna add one thing to that before we wrap up. Don't fall for the "I'll buy your followers, I'll do your Instagram." Some of them are legit, but it's a brand coach. Do not pay for followers or like somebody that's messaging you, telling you that they're gonna grow it. I keep getting tons of messages from people that wanna grow The Cyber Queens, because I put co-founder in my title. And they are like, "Get more sales, get this." And I'm like, "I don't even know these people. No." And then they're like, "I was hoping for a response." And I'm like you're not gonna get a response. You're trying to, solicit something that I do my can do myself."

Maril Vernon: 32:03

The platforms will punish you if you buy followers. They can tell when most of your followers are bots and like it's an engagement algorithm thing that I've explained over and over, and I'll do it all later episode if you guys need me to or on a LinkedIn live, but like the algorithm will punish you if you buy followers. They can tell who's engaged and who's not. So don't do it. Please. Okay, That's it. We love you. Thank you so much for sticking around with us and learning about some personal branding. If you think we should do a part two or if you didn't get enough or if you have some questions, we're happy to do a follow up episode. But we won't know that unless you tell us in the comments. Or you can subscribe to our newsletter and hang out with us in our inbox. I think we have five people who do it now, so we'll definitely learn who you are. That's a sweet branding place to be at, just saying. If you like our content please like, share and subscribe with your friends. We would love to be able to help more people. So we, The Cyber Queens love you and we'll see you next week.