Exploring Imposter Syndrome through Experience, Education, and Gatekeeping with Lesley Carhart

This is Trust Me, I'm Certified, brought to you by GX Certifications, a podcast exploring how to conquer an imposter syndrome. I'm your host, Jason Nicola, and on this episode we're joined by Leslie Cardhart Principle Industrial Incident Responder at Dragos. Despite achieving success and relative fame in the info sector, Leslie remains one of the more accessible and consistently positive figures that we have in the industry. In this conversation we explore imposter syndrome, the ways that it can affect your career, and some mechanisms for coping when you're struggling with it, in addition to lots of other tips and stories from Leslie's background. So with that said, please enjoy our first episode and in the interview that I really had a lot of fun recording. We hope you like it. So Leslie, it's an absolute pleasure to have you here with us. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, so you do a ton of work around career building and a lot around enabling the community. But before we dig into some of that stuff, when did you start getting interested in technology? What do you consider your origin story in this area? My origin story, oh gosh, see mine is so atypical, it's very stereotypical and really a lot of people have, there's a billion ways to get into security, but mine was the very prototypical story of I was a little kid, you know, like seven or eight, and I grew up in a farm. And there wasn't a whole lot around at the time, and you know, not a lot of people to talk to and stuff, and my dad bought a computer when I was tiny to do like accounting and bookkeeping for the farm. My choices were go keep myself entertained with that computer or go pull weeds in the farm, and I realized really quickly that, well, I don't have anything against farming, I would rather not do that for the rest of my life. An easy choice. I mean, it's not for everybody, but for me, that was the choice. So at the time, it was really cool. And I really, I feel badly for kids today because, you know, they get exposed to tablets and things that are super locked down and they don't have the exposure I had to, like, my math textbook at the time had basic programs in it, you know, and you buy your magazines, like your popular electronics or something, and it would have like hobby programming method. And at the time, you really had to build anything you wanted into a computer because what was there was so limited, so architectural that you really had to learn how to build your own stuff and make the computers do what you wanted. Yeah. So you have this computer, your dad's farm, and you're kind of just hacking away at it and figuring things out. At what point did it become more than just you by yourself trying to figure out how to bend this computer to your will? When I was about 14, I got, I was friends with all the nerds. You know, that's what you do when you're married. One of my friends came to me and said, there's this company that's hiring interns or hiring intern programmers. You know how to program, right? And so I went there and I interviewed and this was a dot-com boom, you know, it's different now. You know, at the time, if you knew how to use a computer and write some code, you could get a job. And I definitely wouldn't say it's like that for programmers to date. This was a wild bust. And yeah, they hired me on. I said, as a cold fusion and sequel developer at the time, and I was a kid working, writing code for, you know, kid job prices. But it was a great exposure to corporate life and computer science and working in IT. So I've been doing this for a very long time. So being so young was that kind of nerve-wracking where you just excited to be there or, you know, did it make you feel a little bit like you're playing with the belt. You're invincible when you're a teenager, you know? You know everything when you're a teenager, since it's you joined. And you know, it wasn't bad, it was a cool culture to be a part of, you know, 90s IT culture and hacking culture was just, it was such a blast. Everybody was hopeful for the future. I think that was really kind of a heyday, even though it was a wild west because everybody thought that the sky was the limit, you know, where we would go. We weren't thinking about all these consequences we have today, ethical consequences and, you know, social, social and political consequences of the internet and technology and social media that we have today. It was, it was, let's go see what this wonderful new thing can do. Yeah, and the hacker and kind of tech community around Chicago is that, is that how you first started to get exposed to some of those ideals and how did you start to build yourself out just as a community member in the earlier days? Well, there was always a wonderful hacking community and tech community in the Chicago area. It's always been a good center for a very friendly community and a good group of folks. And a lot of people who want to help each other succeed, it's changed a lot, but it's always been good people. Right. So eventually you move on and you were in the armed services right in your hair force. Yeah. Air Force. You know, after, after the dot com bubble burst, I, you know, it was kind of like what now? Right. And it's like this is, it sounds kind of cool. Let's, let's go see how airplanes work, you know, so I went and I enlisted as a avionics technician taking a part aircraft radio to GPS and early days of GPS and stuff. It was really cool. So with your exposure to other areas of engineering and technology, did was there ever a sway to move you further toward that stuff? Or did you kind of have a running theme the entire time that, you know, computers are kind of my thing. I'm committed to that and I'm doing other things to expose myself to new areas and to grow, but have you been consistently committed to computers and technology as a career throughout? It's all technology. And it's, I've always actually naturally been a more of a circuits and wires person than a programming person. Oh, okay. I think people's brains are, are protected a little bit differently, different people are wired differently. And I've always been much more on the side of circuits and wires and everything's processed at a low level than at the higher level like object oriented programming thinking. And it's fine to do either, but that just fit naturally. I have a electronics degree and an avionics degree as well as network engineering. That's kind of more the way that I work. So it all, in my brain, it all fits together in my brain, I see the big picture and, you know, it doesn't matter whether it's a computer that's running avionics or it's a computer that's running smart devices or, you know, it's just, it's all circuits. So you mentioned that you studied networking and at that point coming out of that, you were in the armed services and you have a degree with a formal education and you, you know, are a very precocious child that learned to code early on and, and at a, oh, I was a horrible child, but I guess that was precocious. Yeah. I actually think about those kinds of things sometimes as I, as I have a young son and as I start to see him demonstrate the same kinds of curiosity and stubbornness and just real wonder at how things might work and then frustration at not being able to figure things out entirely and communicate it just like it must have been very difficult to put up with me when I was a child. Yeah, my dad is an old school hacker, you know, he was a guy building his own TVs out in the garage. Yeah. We had constant worries growing up. He installed a switch that was like seven feet tall on the ceiling to, to shut off the phone line to my room. So that was before the days of, you know, wife I filtering. Right. And I'd be, you know, doing whatever on the, on the phone line and he'd come up and he'd switch it off and I couldn't reach it without getting some boxes. Oh, man, that's funny. And then, you know, on, on the computer side of things, he'd learn how to lock down, you know, executables as he could in dots and then I'd figure out a way around it, it was, uh, it's amazing that we didn't kill each other. It's fun and funny, but it's great experience, too. Sure. Absolutely. Um, so by the, by the time that you're ready to join the professional world as an adult, um, you have a lot of experience, a way more experienced than most people do at that point because some of your background, did you feel that you were just really confident to step into your first role? Were you super assured or was there some trepidation as you started to move into the professional world? Nobody who knows a small amount of things, nobody who's seen the big picture is confident. They know a lot. Right. And when you learn in IT and insecurity, if you have any sense at all, what you should be learning is all the things you don't know, um, and, uh, still that happens to me today, even, you know, I, somebody, somebody throws some brand and power shell problem at me and I'm like, will you guys? Right. I, I, I have done that recently, like, you know, and it's, it's, you, you never feel totally assured that you know everything, no matter how long you've been in security. If you have any, any good sense and you have a real understanding of how big and complicated the problem is. Sure. Yeah. That's such a great point. If, you know, if you have your wits about you and, and you're going about things the right way, then, then sometimes the, the increase in experience is actually more of a notification that, wow, there's so much more to learn there, there are so much skills that I still have let you feel. Which is great. It's great. I don't want to spend the next 30 years of my working life, you know, being bored, not having anything else. For sure. Yeah. I don't think there's any risk of that here, but no, not in this field, definitely. You learn some, there's, and there's jobs out there like that that don't change a lot. Right. And you learn everything. You just do the motions for your 60 years, you know, let's see, it's crazy, you know? Yeah. And there are lots of roles and lots of places where we read those kinds of people that are more steady, but one of the things that, that I'm really passionate about and it sounds like you are, too, is, is finding people who have those same kinds of intangible skills that are maybe misplaced or, or underserved or just haven't had some of the opportunities yet, because if you can, if you can find those people that are really passionate about growing and want to learn new things and continually push their boundaries, then that we are in a field where you can have a lot of success. If you just get the right opportunity. Yeah. If you have the right climate and also, if the people around you understand, and something that I've really realized is important over the last two years, it's, I've become, you know, it's gotten into more senior roles, more leadership roles is you have to be in a culture that also understands how you learn and how you think that team dynamic stuff is really important to help you grow. So important. Sure. That's a great point. So coming into the technology, you know, before the birth of the dot com bubble and then becoming a cyber security professional, kind of at both of those stages, it's, there's a lot of new ground, right? And they're, especially as you start to talk about women and minorities there, there weren't as many models for success and people that look like you or sound like you or come from where you come from that, that can kind of show you the way. Did you have any, but I've never had that in my career, really, I've never had a woman or non-binary mentor. I've had some mentors later in my career, but really, I had to go it alone early in my career. It was a, you could find a lot of people who wanted to talk about things. You could find people who wanted to explain how things work because people like to talk about things that they know, but as far as, like, okay, so this is what you should do next. No, I didn't starting out and part of that was, you know, you had to work really hard early on in this field to be accepted as one of the geeks. And it's gotten better, like, but in the '90s and the early 2000s, man, like, and it wasn't just, you know, IT and working in the field. It was like being a Star Trek fan or being a science fiction literature fan or liking, liking gadgets, liking, you know, RC planes, things like that, like, you showed up to those places people made assumptions about you by looking at you. They made assumptions that you didn't have deep technical knowledge, that you hadn't been doing this since you were a kid, that you didn't have the fundamentals found. And you had to get in there really quick and start, you know, being assertive and being a way and proving that you were one of the guys in any subculture. It's the way human brains are wired, okay, like, we have, it's easier as a concept in anthropology called the other, you know, and we tend to see the group of people who are like us and whether that's, you know, subculture, culture, politics, religion, our gender, you know, we see people who are like us and those are our people and then there's these other people. And that's where these kinds of biases come from. We see somebody who doesn't put in our backs and we're like, they must not be like us, you know, and then we start having problems. So definitely being assertive and being out there and improving that I knew my stuff was really important. And it's a lot harder to find mentorship when people are like, you're not like me. I don't know how to handle you because you aren't. Right. And it's one of the reasons that I think having those models is so important because the reverse of that is that, you know, if you don't see anybody like you that has gone the path that you would like to go, then it is easy, especially for some personality types to maybe adopt that and limit themselves from areas that they don't see others, who they can relate to kind of breaking into. Yeah. Oh, sure. And if I could encourage people to do one thing is try to think outside at least of the box that you see and this goes all directions, this goes for everybody when you see a group of people and they don't look like you understand that you might have similarities outside of the visual things, you know, like they don't have to look like you. It's what's going inside in their brains and their lives. And you don't know any of that by just looking at somebody, doesn't matter how they address, it doesn't matter, you know, their gender, it doesn't matter, their ethnicity, you know, you don't know what's going inside on inside their brain. You can't make those assumptions like we are a community made up of a diverse group of human beings. Yeah. And that's the important thing, it's who you are, it's who you are and what you're bringing to the field and your interest in it that matters. Yeah, it seems like the answer to so many of our problems is just to sit down and talk to people and kind of get into the weeds even though we as a species do our best to avoid that. Look, focus on the similarities and the benefits that the diversity can bring, you know. You might share a lot of things and then the things that you don't share, the differences that you have only make us stronger, you know, only make you better, they only help you learn more and they help the community grow, the community of practice and the social community grow. Right. So it sounds like early on you identified that even in some of these subcultures, I have to prove my chops and we're going to do that by knowing my stuff and sounding confident and being assertive. Were there times when, you know, you may be second-guest yourself or there was enough of, there was enough of going against a grain and trying to, you know, beat back some objects in your path that, you know, even just a little voice in the back of your head that would start to say, well, maybe this isn't for you? Yeah. So being somebody or not is marrying, it's exhausting. When you have to be part of the group, when you have to be one of those guys, like, yeah, there's a lot of, I hate this, is quote unquote, guy things that I like, you know, I like, I like, um, marksmanship and like, hunting and I like, you know, the technology stuff and science fiction and all that, all that jazz, I love that stuff. I really do. But then there's other stuff like football and, you know, golf and stuff and I don't care about it. But, you know, and just like the, the seedier side of the guy culture and there's these judgment calls that you had to make at the time, you know, like, I am in this community and they're saying really important things that I need to learn about technology. And if I say, stop making these jokes about sometimes really horrible things, um, if I say, if I speak up, they're going to, I'm not going to be one of the group anymore. I'm going to suddenly be that other and they're, they're going to ostracize me and then I'm going to lose my access to that community that's educating me on this field. Um, you, you make a choice there. You have to make a decision. It's, do I, do I hope to make a dent in this person by getting in a debate with them and get kicked out of the group? Is that the ethical thing to do? Is that the right thing to do? Is losing my access to this group and my ability to move further in this career? Or, um, do I keep my mouth shut and not say anything about this horrible, uh, culture or, you know, activity or something that's going to harm somebody else, um, it's a constant set of decisions like that when you're, when you're getting into a culture that isn't yours or a group of people that isn't, um, exactly like you, um, and, and I don't think a lot of people realize that people are making those decisions all the time. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's an important part of the conversation that gets lost in the shuffle, especially from people who maybe don't put as much credence in the need for advancement of, um, um, you know, any minority culture and, um, it's, it's gatekeeping is largely what it is because you have to overcome and make a lot of these decisions and deal with uncomfortable situations that other people just don't have to. I mean, it's, it's, it's not necessarily things that every white male likes, you know, like a, a great example is like, and I know you've been in this field for a long time too. So back in the late 90s, early 2000s, the big thing, it, security conferences and security events was like going to strip clubs and, uh, yeah, and I think that every guy wants to do that. It's like a bravado thing. So, you know, it's kind of awkward to be taken there as a professional event and just awkwardly sit there and, and have beverages. Right. Well, well, some of the guys are having a good time like and having that being a, a, the gate to get into like a meeting the next day or being part of the community like, that's, that's difficult. And to some people that is much, much more offensive and difficult to deal with for religious reasons or for cultural reasons or for personal reasons. Right. And I mean, what, why do you have to do that? Why, why is that necessary? Really? I know it's like a bravado or macho thing, but there are a billion other places you could meet. Why, why did they feel like that was necessary unless it wasn't intentional gatekeeper? Right. Like, man. Sure. So, at what point would you say your career started to shift into a cyber security specific focus? Um, I moved into a sock after a while, um, it took a while. I really wanted to do digital forensic. That was my thing. I, I had loved, and again, I'm a circuits and wife person. So like hard drive forensics and ran forensics like was something that fascinated me for a long time. And just the investigation of this really cool and done man. I tried so hard for years and years and there weren't many jobs at the time in that, in that field. And, uh, I couldn't find anybody who would even have a conversation with me in terms of entrepreneurship. Like, so eventually the only way I found to get hands on with forensic software was becoming a sock analyst. And, uh, that's, that's what it is. Cool. So, at what point would you say your career really started to take a turn? Like, so, so now you're really well known and you're, um, one thing that I appreciate is you're, you're well known for continually being positive despite the fact that that you've had a lot of success and get a lot of recognition. I think there are lots of examples of, um, of that not being the case, uh, I appreciate that. At what point would you say, you know, you broke in and you, and you started working in forensics and then there starts to develop this entire field around cybersecurity and you get these niches like deeper and offensive security and these kinds of things. Um, you started to grow and become somebody who's known in the industry is, was that something that's difficult for you, was difficult for you to deal with? Was it just kind of a natural thing or, um, was it a little maybe weird to you? Um, in terms of like, just, just having people listen to what I had to say, it was, I don't know why people do that. Oh my gosh. You know, I've been doing this for a while and I know a few things and, uh, I like to share them and, um, I try to be positive. I definitely try to because there's a lot of negativity in our field and, um, and, and we, God, we're not putting out house fires, we're, we're sitting in front of keyboards for pizza, um, um, I don't think you can take anything that we do that seriously. Right. It's really important to you politically in a lot of cases, but again, we're not out there, you know, with, with buckets and hoses, you know, it's, uh, you can't, you can't take yourself too seriously in this field. And I think that a lot of people get a lot of attention, um, really start to think that they're, they're rock stars and the best things in sliced bread and, yeah, it's one of my least favorite terms in, in business, overall, and then, and, and security specifically is that I'm just a person, you know, I mean, if I can help people do better, um, that, that's great. If I can help the community move forward, I'd like to make a mark on it somehow that, that would be really nice. Right. Um, I'd like to see the next generation not deal with some of the problems we've dealt with. Um, hopefully by the time we get two generations down the line when his XP is gone, but it won't be, um, you know, I, I, I, uh, it's always a little awkward for me to have people come up to me and tell me they've, they've been following me and they're super excited to meet me and, oh my goodness, it's just, it's a little overwhelming, yeah, but, uh, I'm glad to have made some debt on something in the world. I think that's all that we can do as humans is try to leap a little better than we came in. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I said this earlier in our interact, but if you know anything about the field, if you really have taken the time to understand what security is and what computer science is, if you're not feeling some imposter center someday, like, but then you really should be, you know, so it's, it's just a, our field changes by the minute, it changes by the minute, there is, there is new vulnerabilities, there's new tactics from adversaries, there's new problems that we have to face, you know, socially and politically and, um, the, what we, what our job is, the, the little blurb for our job position are in general for cybersecurity changes by the minute. Yes. And if, if that doesn't make you feel some imposter syndrome, I mean, I don't know what to tell you. We all feel it. Right. Like, I mean, I, like I said, I run into weird questions about security or blogs on, on niches that I'm not really involved with every day and like, oh my god, like, here's this whole other field that I don't know a lot about and, uh, I don't know when I'm going to have time to learn more about it. Um, and I'm very lucky to work with a lot of really, really brilliant people in, in niches that are not my niches, especially, you know, like advanced red teaming stuff, exploit development and it's like, oh, man, I, I wish that there was 50 hours in the day and I didn't have to sleep, but I could just, I could just study more of this stuff. Right. So for, for me, being a sands instructor and, and trying to present more and, and be out in the community and, and even in my day job talking to, you know, lots of important companies and that kind of thing, sometimes getting into a mode where you're just like, do I belong with this group and is this the right opportunity for me? And, and when I talk to others about it, that's one of the most common repercussions of imposter syndrome that I find is people gatekeep themselves from new opportunities, whether it's seeing a job posting that, that they'd really love to go for, but they see that it says, you know, you need to have five to ten years experience and, and they don't have that yet or, um, looking at a community group and seeing some of the people that are involved and, and deciding, well, that group's not for me because I'm just getting started. Um, do you hear a lot of those same things if people kind of keeping themselves from opportunities just because they're, they're unsure of whether or not they, they have the chops? So, so anti- Leslie secrets for, for young people getting into this field, we've all been rejected. Yeah. People, um, applied for jobs and, uh, got rejected and it's been terribly disappointing and we, we don't know why, um, but, um, and, and community groups too, we've, we've all gone to a conference or gone to a meetup where the people were toxic, right? And they were just really implicit to deal with where they just didn't want us there. It was their group, but they didn't want us there. And that rejection will happen, right? So one of the things that, um, I really enjoy about your story and some of the things that you talk about is you are interested in so many different things. Um, I think it's, it's probably rare to find a, a woman that works in cybersecurity that was in the military that, you know, is, uh, that does martial arts and, and a lot of the things that you're interested in so, um, I, I think that having lots of different interests and finding small success in, in many different areas can be a real confidence builder and help to do things like, uh, like combat feelings of imposter syndrome when they do happen. Has that been your experience? Have you made a conscious effort to try to, to be varied in your interests or is it just, you know, a natural occurrence of your personality? Oh, well, I mean, I have the personal, like, I, I would like to be like a doctor and a lawyer and an astronaut and like, I want to learn everything, but, um, you know, it's really important to be. It's for work like balance, too. You need to be well rounded and have a, if, be it a human being, um, there's a lot of people in our field who think that to succeed, they have to work 12 hours a day in security and nothing else. And I, I mean, people like that sometimes in job interviews and it's like, I try to get them to talk about their, their other hobbies and in tangential stuff and it's like, I build experts, and that's okay, but, um, that human being should be able to do a lot of different things, um, as well as like survive and take care of themselves and, and be a well-rounded conversationalist, um, you should have outlets. Um, it's just, it's just good for your, your mental health and wellness. Um, you should have things that help you walk away from security for a little while, um, even if they're tangential things like electronics, you know, you know, hackers based stuff, etc. craft projects, but you, you need to have things that help you decompress and stay healthy and stay balanced, um, and, and that's again become, become, eat, when I said, I said earlier when you're young, you're invincible, you know, when you become a little bit older after you've been invincible for a while, you realize that you're not invincible. Yeah. And you need to do things to, to make yourself a healthy person and step away from your work sometimes, um, and, you know, just, you only live once too, and, and if you want to do things other than security in your life, well, get out there and do them because, uh, your life goes fast. Yeah, sure does. Um, something else that, uh, that I think really plays into being able to build out your confidence and, and combat feelings of imposter syndrome is, is training and, um, going in, and not only getting some of the actionable skills and, and getting credentials that, you know, when you look at what you've accomplished can make you feel good about things, but for me, being in a room with, um, you know, uh, bigger companies and accomplish people and, and really smart instructors and, and just getting out and having the experience and feeling like, hey, I can keep up and, and, and I can do good work even with people that I, that I respect and that, that I know are strong in the field has been a, a real asset. I know that you've done a lot of training and have produced resources on certification study and that kind of thing as, as that process has been helpful to you, not just in building your skills, but in more confidence building and, and your ability to continue to push yourself out there into the world. I think that formal education is great. Um, I think that there's definitely other avenues, um, if it doesn't work for people or if it's not financially additional, but, I mean, there, there's a lot of things you gain from being in a classroom situation, um, or doing, you know, formal, organized training, um, that you don't necessarily gain from self-study and they're not necessarily the technical details. Um, I've always been one of those people who does say that college is a great route to get into security because, I mean, it doesn't work for everybody. There's definitely other avenues, but certifications, college classes, you get things out of them that are separate from, you know, just the stuff in the page and they're things like, what's the instructor teaching style? So when you teach a class, Jason, you probably teach it differently than the other people teach that certification. Sure. Um, you, you take pauses at different places, you explain things differently, you might explain problems from a different direction or a different perspective, um, or sharing your work, your real life experience in stories, um, and, uh, you're helping people grasp things from a different direction and you're also teaching them how to teach because everybody who teaches or instructs, and I teach, I teach courses as well, certification courses to my employer, and everything that I know is, as a teacher, I've never gone to a formal course on teaching. Right. Everything I know about teaching, I've learned from watching, watching other instructors in college and in certification courses. So you're getting that too. You're learning how to express and convey ideas to other people. Right. You're learning how to organize your time, you're learning how to plan for an exam, you know, um, and, uh, get your ideas on paper and sort them out in a coherent way. So you're not just getting the, the certification contents, which are great, but you're also learning a bunch of other skills as well. So I'm, I'm definitely an advocate of both, and I think that they're both beneficial. Right. If you can't afford them, there's other options or if they're not something that works for your perspective and your mind, that's, that's fine. Sure. So you mentioned that early on, you didn't really have a mentor and, um, it might have been nice to have one. You've grown into someone who really provides a, um, a lot of, even indirect mentorship by sharing your experiences and, and putting a lot of resources out there in the world. Um, how has that experience of not having a mentor and kind of having to work through some doubts and, and build your career on your own? How has that colored the way that you try to be involved with the community now as somebody who's kind of come out of the other side? It broke my heart. It made me, it made me really mad, you know, it's, uh, it's, uh, I, I desperately wanted to get into friends, it's much earlier. I desperately wanted to learn more about, like, differ topics and, uh, I, I really wanted that mentorship. Like, I wanted somebody to talk to about these things that fascinated me and, uh, I couldn't find that. I don't want anybody else to feel that way. I don't want anybody else to be out there and, and, and going, uh, I don't know how, I guess, I'm going to give up now. Um, I don't give up because I'm stubborn, but, um, you know, like other people too give up because of these, you know, gatekeeping things, these, the, the, the unconscious, both things that people do with the culture and, uh, and they give up and they, they decide not to go any further because they feel like they're, they're never going to be accepted in the group or they don't know enough or they're never going to know enough and I, I, I, I hope I can save some of those people, like, it's a, it's a big industry and there's a lot of fields and there's a lot of different ways you can go about working in them. So, well, I think you're one of the best examples of trying to provide those positive messages and, and really, not only focus on the, the technical component, which we're all interested in, but, um, in things like how to build your career and how to interview well and how to, how to, you know, construct your resume so that you can get new opportunities and kind of pushing people beyond their comfort zone. So, uh, with that experience and kind of your place in that area, what words of encouragement would you offer to listeners that are maybe thinking, you know, I want to get in a cybersecurity or I'm working help desk or, or I'm trying to build my career and I'm, I'm just not feeling like, like it's for me or, um, or there are opportunities out there that I can get. What would you offer to those people? Find something that fascinates you, go out there and watch videos from conferences or read articles and whatever medium you prefer, listen to podcasts and find some little tidbit in there that really, really just cooks your bacon, you're like, this is, this is really, really cool and, uh, you know, and focus on that for a while. Go read into it more, go down your YouTube rabbit holes or, you know, um, start, start reading up on it. It's been up a virtual machine at home, start poking at things, find something that makes you sit there when you could be watching Netflix at night or, you know, out with your friends at the bar, you want to stay home and read more about this thing or listen to more podcasts about this thing. And it could be, you know, like an incident in the news or cybersecurity incident or it could be a vulnerability or it could be a historical story about, you know, a piece of malware and how it impacted, you know, or how it was built, you know, whatever area of cybersecurity interests you, find that thing that really, really makes you want to sit there and learn more. And then, you know, once you've really read into that, hey, that's your thing. You can explain that to other people. Go give a little talk at your local community group or, you know, if you're not comfortable with that, you know, write a little blog or something. It's okay if it's old news. If you explain it in an interesting and formative way and it's, it's useful for people who are also in your position. So it's really a matter of when you're up against the odds and you're like, I don't, I don't know if I know enough, I don't think you're gonna accept me, find something that makes you want to fight. That's a great point. And also, I'm definitely stealing the term, find something that cooks your bacon. I think that's, that needs to be on a t-shirt, if it's not on a t-shirt already. Well, thank you so much for joining us, I was like, it was great chatting and, and I really appreciate it. You too, thanks for having me. That was Leslie Cahart, Principal Industrial Incident Responder at Dragos. Thanks to all of you for joining us for our first full episode. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit gac.org/podcast to sign up for alerts about the show. We'll see you in about two weeks for our next full episode with Chris Cochran, threat intel weed and Netflix to chat about building confidence and experience you can lean on during an incident and throughout your career overall. So thanks again and we'll see you all soon. [Music]