Build the Network Engine Every Cybersecurity Pro Needs

Today we're 46,000 be 47,000 people in the network. Uh you know we've got 400 plus companies that are members of us. We're working with 32 universities and colleges working with federal government. We're working with provincial governments. We're doing you know some of the some significant thought leadership in the country on things like AI and our state of cyber security. We're doing we run Canadian cybercurity jobs.com. It's the only dedicated cyber security job portal. We're running all these different programs and we're about to launch a whole bunch of new ones. Now, how did that happen? Right? I think that's really what it comes down to. So, on this screen, what I did because I decided that, hey, if I'm giving a

session like this, let's reuse it. So, I built an app. Why not, right? Might as well build an app, put your knowledge in it, and then we can add to it. And there's a lot of people smarter than me that can keep adding to it and make it a community resource, and you can go and use it. Now, the app that you're going to see today is is not an app that keeps any information on you. There's no login. It's just you use the app, you print out or save whatever you need to do, and you can come back and reload it and then print it out. So, there's no privacy information. There's nothing in

there. Okay? So, and and just pull it in there. So really what we're, you know, you'll see a little bit, but you know, we'll go into this but relationships determine who gets invited, right? I mean, you can, you can apply to thousands of jobs, you can write to hundreds and hundreds of potential customers and you're going to get no activity, right? And and the reason is they have to trust you. You have to build a relationship with them. And yes, skills are important. Don't get me wrong, skills are very important, but on top of that, if you don't have a relationship or you don't develop relationships or people don't feel that they can trust you, they're not going to

do business with you, okay? And and that's very, you know, and I know some people come from outside new other countries and it doesn't work that way, but that's how it works here in Canada. You need to develop relationships and it takes time and you're not going to get everything built overnight. And what I'm saying is it's building your network is something you're going to do for the rest of your life, okay? It's not just do it to get a job because you're going to lose that job, okay? And you're going to have to rely on your network again. And if you haven't maintained your network or you haven't built it again, it's it's it's not going to be there

when you need it. Okay? So, it's really really important that you keep building it, keep nurturing it. And we'll talk more about that. So, there's a couple things. One is you need to define your goal. You got to be really clear about what your goal is. And it could be a macro goal or it could be a micro goal, but that's important. You have to have so we're gonna and it could be start a business and this is the area I'm starting my business in or I need a job and the job is going to be as a sock analyst. Let's just say that's what it is. You got to be specific. If you're not specific,

it's going to be very difficult to build your network around that. Now, of course, if you look at what I've been able to do with CCN, we've built it in maybe a hundred different areas by this time. And we built it with CEO CISOs, we built it in healthcare, we built it in, you know, in in OT, we're building it in national defense. We're doing a GRC. We're so we've been able to do that over time, but we didn't try to attempt that from day one, right? Because it's it's just too much. It's too overwhelming and you don't get a focus and you don't build something that creates momentum. Okay? So, define your goal. Then I'm

telling you, you should map your network in LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn right now. It is the most powerful networking tool there is. You may not like it. It's starting to get a little, you know, bit too much like Facebook. Um, and the algorithms are weird. Okay. Yeah, they are. They're not like they used to be. But LinkedIn is still the best place to generate leads. It is amazing to generate leads. And I'm going to share a few tips with you today to see how you can use that to your advantage. So please, you know, obviously if it doesn't fit your market, don't use LinkedIn. You can use something else. You know, maybe there's a better platform that you can use. But for 95%

of you, it's going to be LinkedIn. Okay? That's where the business professionals are. And then you got to take action. And we're going to create a 90-day plan. And what I'm telling you tonight is, you know, use what you think is beneficial to you. I think you should go all all through it. But some of these things are not going to work for everybody, okay? Because they're not your style or maybe you just won't do it or you won't repeat it. And that's okay. Like I go in and pull the best of different processes all the time that fit my mentality. And I think that's important for everybody here. But start with something. So, like I said, you can create a

session on here. You can save it, download it to PDF. You'll even have an AI assessment, okay? But then you can reload it so that no personal information goes on there. There's no personal information. You're not putting your name in here. You're not putting emails. You're not putting anything. Okay? Um, so let's get started. And it has a countdown. So, the first thing I tell people is you got to build your networking engine. Don't build a network without building something you're putting in it. You got to figure out how are you going to manage your network. You know, like LinkedIn is just a whole bunch of names basically. Yeah, it tells you where they are, but it doesn't give

you any additional direction. It doesn't create a log of who you've communicated with. It's not easy to find. You get messages on LinkedIn, you're completely lost after a couple of weeks because there's hundreds of them and you don't know which one is recent and which one is old and you know, people get lost, especially people like, you know, I have 30,000 I think on LinkedIn. So, I'm maxed out on it. So there's no way you can keep track of LinkedIn after a while. So build your networking engine. So let's talk about the networking flywheel. And I call it the flywheel. Um and you can see there's pictures in here. There's places you can go and see

what they actually are. There's actually videos embedded in here. But basically what you're trying to do is attract the people that you want to interact with. That could be clients. That can be your network. You want to engage with them. Okay? And we'll talk more about how you engage. And then you're going to delight them. Okay? So, you're not just going to go like, "Hey, give me a job." I get, you know, like I probably get about 20 requests a day saying, "I need a job. What am I going to do with that? I don't know you. I don't know your skill set. You haven't told me anything about yourself. Why should I care?" Right? I want to

care about you. Seriously, like that's really what it comes down to. If I'm gonna hire you or if I'm gonna hire you as a contractor working for me, I want to care about the person I'm hiring. I want to know something about you that you're going to tell me that's going to make me go, "Huh, that's really interesting. This person went out of the way to tell me something about themselves or about what they can do that makes me feel like I want to work with them." Okay, so that's for jobs. That's for business. Okay, very very very important, right? So attract, engage, delight, repeat. So now you're basically, you know, choose your core networking platform. So

you can actually follow along here if you want. You can tick these boxes off. It's going to give you a full PDF at the end. It's going to give you an AI assessment and you can save it in the future and do that. So you know, obviously I would say, hey, yeah, let's save LinkedIn. you know, your I have a personal website, so I'm going to use my personal website. Um, you know, you might be using GitHub, right? Great place to keep some of your projects. Um, there could be others. You know, I'll I'll I'll definitely say, "Hey, let's let's get Surf on there." And I'll share more about Surf in a bit because Surf is

your your your your top tool, okay? I'm going to tell you that if you don't once you start using Surf, your life is going to change, >> okay? as long as you do the other things we're talking about to help you, and that's growing your business or growing your career or just influencing. Now, don't tell your friends because they might find the jobs ahead of you. No, I'm just kidding. All right, industry forums, podcasts, you kind of understand. I'm I'm kind of giving you some some tops here. What industry or ecosystem do you want to network in? So, this is really, really important. Most people say, "I just want a job." Well, good luck. I want to start

a business. What business? You know, what what are you going to do? Are you going to be selling widgets, ice cream? Uh, you know, what are you selling? And I think it's really, really important that you define it. And if it's a sock job, define it. You can have two or three. Don't go too broad. If you go too broad, it just makes it way too difficult. Okay? Be passionate. If you're passionate about one specific area in your career, in your business, go for it. And what I mean for that is like okay if it's sock and you know where you want to be in that role and you've got the background and everything else focus on sock and find the

companies right and we'll talk about that find the company find the individuals find the network build your network day after day after day after day get in top touch with the associations that's how you do it you have to be very goal oriented I'll give you an example one of the things I used to do is when I was in my crazy stage I used to run a lot of marathons and triathlons be like really focused and I would have an extremely engaged like plan right my whole week would set out you know what I would eat where I would sleep when I would train all those things because you know I'm very com I

was very competitive back then and when you do that you're all I was also telling people I'm going to do this and here's the goal I'm going after and if you tell your friends and your family about what you're trying to achieve you've committed to it and once you commit to something you have moral obligation of some sort to actually go and do it, right? It's it's it's something that if you can commit to and tell some friends, you don't have to tell the world, right? Some people go out and say, "I'm doing this." Okay, great. But you you can tell your couple of friends, you can tell a couple people in your family that this is your goal.

And by doing that, you're actually reinforcing everything in your being and everything you're doing in daily practice to achieve those things. And I think that's really, really important. Okay? And it might not be something you're used to doing. You can just write it on a piece of paper. You can put it on your fridge. You can do whatever you want, but just do something that changes your mindset from saying, "Oh, hey, I'm going to do this." But then you're not, you know, really fully committed. It's like waking up in the morning and going for a run or going for that walk or, you know, not eating that pizza tonight, so I didn't eat the pizza. Um, so you're

really focusing on on achieving certain things. And then once you've done that, so you know, write these things down and let's say that and then define your attract channels. Okay, so where am I going to find these these things, right? That professional, your network, your your LinkedIn portfolio, your posts, your insights. How are you going to share what you do that you're good at? I mean, it could be attending an event like this. You could just be participating in an event like this. You don't have to push the limits and go like I'm going to go out and speak like you can go say I'm going to be at besides I'm going to attend you know another event somewhere

I'm going to make myself uncomfortable by going to speak to that person across the room. Um it's whatever is within your ability to do and your commitment level at that moment in time. Okay. Not everybody's ready to you know to to do all these things. And I'll guarantee you when I first started my career, I would go to a conference and I would be in that corner. I'm an introvert. Most people say I'm not an introvert. I'm not I'm a business extrovert, but I'm an introvert. Okay? So, it takes a lot for me to be able to go out and speak to someone I've never met before. And it used to be really, really hard.

And then I taught myself some tricks to do that. So, all of you have to do the same thing. You have to find create your comfort zone. So where will people discover your work you and your work? Is it LinkedIn? Where is it? So where's your audience? Right? So if your audience or sock, they're going to be on LinkedIn. They're also going to be in some different types of forums. They're going to be on different types of LinkedIn forums. They may be on, you know, search them out. They might be on Discord. They might be on on on different types of channels. You have to identify all those channels and write them down. And I think that's super

super important. And then you got to create how am I going to display my work and my abilities in this network. Know you probably some of you that know me will probably oh well you you know pity and cyber security aren't just publishing seeing things all the time right and it's true because we're getting our message out there about the things that we can actually do for the community or we're actually doing on a report or we're looking for thought leaders or we're you know speaking somewhere or whatever else. You're getting your brand out there. You're talking about who you are. you're talking about the things you can do. You can do it in a muted way, but

that's super super critical. Okay. Then you're going to find your engagement tools, right? So, how are you are you going to use LinkedIn messaging and email? Are you going to use email? You know, how are you going to do your emails? Are you going to make sure that you know you've got a they're professional? Right? They need to be clear. Um are you going to do are you use can you use a CRM system? If you're a business, you're going to be using a CRM system, client relationship management, could be HubSpot, could be Salesforce. Now, if you're just doing it from a career perspective, maybe you're using a Google sheet, maybe you're using Excel. It doesn't matter. It's you need

to have a system to be able to manage your communications, your job searches, and everything else or you're going to lose track. Contract tracking tools, surf. So, I'm going to talk about bit bit more about surf surf in a while. Um, I'll go through the actual example of how we would actually use it. And maybe I should do that now because I think it's a great example. Let's see if it takes us there. Okay. So, this is Surf where you can download it. Okay. Um, and Surf is free unless you upgrade. Okay. And sometimes you'll find it uh it's called Leadjet sometimes as well. Surf Leadjet. And I'm going to show you how it works in two seconds.

Okay, this little tool will enable you to grow your contacts in your network like this. Okay, so um you can find that in the app, but I'm going to go to LinkedIn right now. Do I have LinkedIn? Let's just put one in there. Hopefully the network is good. All right. So, let's just go to the main feed and let's just find someone here. So, Ashif, I know Ashif, we're connected. Of course, I'm probably connected to most people on this. Um, but if you go to Aie, um, you'll see that here he is at Mobia. He works in OT, right? Um, I don't know if I have him. So you see my little see something new that popped on

my screen. It's called Surf. So it's a little tool. Once you put Surf onto your system, it'll actually integrate with LinkedIn. Okay? And what it does is you have the ability to find anybody's email. Okay? And it'll also find phone numbers. Now, I want to say something first. Do not misuse this tool. Okay? I don't go around spamming people, okay? You are not to go spamming people. So, you have to look at everything we're going to talk about tonight about how you actually go out and talk to people and how you communicate people. Don't go tell them, "I want a job or you're going to be blacklisted, right?" Um, you need to really have an

appropriate approach if you're reaching out for business or anything else. But what it does is when you start having this information, you can see that I can put this information directly into my HubSpot. you can put it directly into Google Docs. Okay? So, you can align this with a Google Docs document and you don't have to spend any money. Okay? So, you can link it. Now, if you're buying the free version of this, not expensive, but buy the free version, if you just get the free version of it, I think you're limited to a hundred free reachouts a month. It's not it's it's a good, but it's it's not a lot. Now, if you spend,

I think it's $25 a month. And if you're in job search or building a business, like $25 a month is the best thing to ever do. Um, you're going to be able to do hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. And I got credits I'm not even using. So, I've got so many credits I can't even use them anymore because I don't have time because I'm too too busy to do many things. But what it does is it allows you to bring all this information in. And Surf in itself is is a huge management tool. So, you have the ability to do a lot of other things like find other people that are like that person using this tool. So you're going

to be able to click on once you learn how to use it. It's not difficult. You're going to have the ability to actually bring your network to another level. Okay. So it allows you to scale in a way that you never you've never been able to scale before. And it actually even has built-in templates. So when you reach out to someone, you can actually build your templates. You can create a message that you can send in on LinkedIn so that it's professional. Okay? So, you're rebuilding your templates and you're sending them out for job search or building your business. Um, so it's it's it's a phenomenal tool. Um, and there are other tools like this, but I did my research

and this is the tool that I love. And um, other tools just have not worked for me as well. And maybe some people in this room are using other tools. Anybody using a tool similar to this that's as good or better? Yeah. What's it called? SalesQL. Okay. And do you enjoy that tool? >> Okay. So, see there are other tools and it all depends how you're using it and how you integrate it. So, mine integrates with a lot of other programs that I have. So, I integrate it into my my CRM. I integrate it into a lot of my apps. I integrate it into a lot of different things that I'm using. So, however you're going to use your tools

is really going to determine, you know, what's the best tool out there. Um, but this tool is easy to use. It's flexible and it's not expensive. So, for me, it works really well. But you're, you know, you can look into other tools as well. And it allows you to do, like I said, a ton of things. And you can even identify the type of contacts, right? So, I I've set up my categories here. So, you can set up your categories the way you want. It could be for different types of jobs. It could be for a sock, it could be for an OT, or maybe it's a customer that's related to, I don't know, maybe they're

interested in one product of yours and you're looking in you've got five products. So, you can identify your product streams and then tie your customers and your contacts into your product streams. Okay, any questions? I'm gonna I'm gonna take the pause because there's lots of stuff I've been kind of throwing at you. Yeah. >> S ur. And you sometimes find it on the internet. Surf Leadjet. It used to be called Leadjet. So Surf Leadjet is this one. >> Any other questions? >> Yeah. >> No, no, of course. >> So surf. So you're looking at somebody's LinkedIn extracting the email and phone number from info that's already in LinkedIn or going off and doing search. No, you

you'll see. I'll run a se a separate search here just just so everybody sees what how what it does. >> Screen. >> Oh, >> so I'm not seeing it here. >> Oh, you're not Well, you're not seeing surf. You mean >> I'm not seeing that screen. >> Oh, okay. It's a little What? Um, okay. So, how do I have to reshare? >> You have the stream on your app. Uh probably going to not know what you're doing. >> You can share your screen if you prefer like the whole screen. >> Uh this one. >> Okay. >> Right. And then share and my screen. We'll bring it back. Understand and proceed. >> Can be the entire screen if you prefer.

So whenever you switch back and forth showing up. >> Um >> yeah, it's probably best. >> Yeah. And then share. There we go. I'll bring it back. Okay. Okay. I'm go back to the LinkedIn. >> Yeah, you can go back to So everybody, everything you have on your streaming is being straight. >> Perfect. All right. So, we're going to go to an example here. Just someone I'm not connected to. Time here.

>> As you can tell, I'm mostly connected. Donald Trump. >> Yeah. Whoops. I Oh, okay. A lot of people here. Here we go. So, Will Butler, I don't know who Will Butler is. Uh, here we go. He's GTM infrastructure architects in Boston. So, what I'm going to do is here we are in Surf and I'll show you how it works is you basically, you know, add as a contact and you'll see that it'll actually u, you know, it's asking me a title. I'll just say as a founder because it has multiple titles on LinkedIn. So now it's going to start doing its magic. Okay. So it's what it does is it searches all of these

different applications that are email databases across the world and it checks about 15 or 20 of them. Um and it's looking for the information and then it pulls it in. Right? So there it did. It found it. Right? It found it. It's giving us a little symbol. Maybe maybe there's a problem with that email. Now it's rare. It's about 95% accurate. Um there's about a 5% error rate that I've noticed in Surf. Um and usually it's because you know they they've done something really really different with their email architecture and and this is this is common right? So like in the old days, right, when I used to search for emails, you would search using Google or you use

a bullion search and you would be able to say, "Hey, I want to find, you know, Jared Grant at C3SA and it would give me all it would tell me what most people at that company their email, you know, structure was. So it would say first name dot, you know, last name at, you know, C3SA." Um, and that's how we would find people and reach out to them just like this tool, but it would take a lot longer. Um so sometimes what companies do and there's some really smart companies out there and I always say when I used to work in HR I'd say you know it you should really really work on this and change the whole email

structure in your company so that it's not common so that you would do something like you know like uh Jim.B at uh you know uh C3SA at uh I don't know 3.4 four or something some something weird. So that nobody could figure it out and and you give up. You just give up, right? So there's some companies that have done a really good job at this. If you try and find like emails using this for Microsoft, like you're not going to find it, okay? Because Microsoft has done something to their systems where they scramble these these emails. Um and that's really really smart actually because it just takes most of the noise out of the way.

Now most companies don't do that. They structure their emails either f.lastamet last name dot, you know, whatever. Um, years and years ago when I did my first networking company, we were able to get pretty much everybody's email like that because everybody had their directories open, right? So, everybody had their directories open. You can go in, as an example, the government of Canada had an open directory. We could just basically go download all emails. I mean, it was that easy, right? Um, so I've always said that you need to, you know, create a structure that it's really hard for people to just get access to it. Um, so does that did that answer your question? Sorry, did that

answer your question? Any any other questions about the use of the tool? Yeah, >> sorry. going to come down here so I can

mention that in >> my question is um what helps you go that drives your goals because I believe bring customers to you and help you. So that was It it it's interesting, right? I think um I think I just matured. I mean, I I don't have a specific answer to that. I think when I was when I was younger, um I was a slow developer, you know? I I just know like I was a late I'm a late bloomer in a lot of ways in a sense of how I became a business person and other things. I think when I first started, I had kind of like blinders on. Like everybody's different. everybody matures at a different in a different way in

their life. And and I think for me, I was kind of like, you know, very much a get my work done kind of person. And then when I realized at some point that if my career was to go anywhere, I had to really, you know, just blow it up. Uh because everybody was taking everybody was taking credit for the work I was doing as an example, right? And and I think that you realize at some point you have to be out there, you have to try new things, you have to be um and you just take a leap of faith. And I think those first few leaps of faith give you the confidence and then you just go go

crazy, right? So like when I first started at Nortell as an example, I remember I was, you know, in a you know, fairly, you know, fairly junior role, I would say, you know, um wasn't like super senior and I remember someone saying like, you know, like, oh, and I just called up the president of one of our units in Dallas, Texas, because he was on my customer list. I going like, why are you calling like William? Like you can't call William. I'm going like, why not? He's one of my customers. I want to find out what he needs. So I had developed the confidence to just call the president and you know I think the

next week I was in Dallas meeting because I had taken the initiative to just do that and that builds confidence I think but I think sometimes you're going to fall flat on your face. I mean that's just the reality right um sometimes we fail but you're also going to be able to be very successful and that's going to give you the confidence to take those risks. So I think everybody I always tell people to take take chances because if you don't take chances the opportunities are just going to go by and someone else is going to take them. Uh and you know move move fairly fast as well because I mean especially in our age now with AI and

everything else that's taking place things are moving super fast. Um you know if you don't move like I think that's the biggest problem right now. If you look at, you know, like if I was working, you know, if I was a leader in the government, I'd be really worried because I'd be going like, how can I make this move faster because it's a huge machine and you you've got, you know, AI coming in and you've got all these decisions you have to make to be able to adapt. And how do you do that? I mean, I would be like really really scared. I really would be. Um, in my role, I I get to make decisions. I get

to move very fast. I get, you know, to to fail or or succeed. And, you know, sometimes you fail. Um, but, you know, once you get the confidence, you're going to succeed most of the time. It's just an odds game. It's it's it's it's odd. It's it's basically saying, you know, most of the time you're going to be right. And it's you just have to go with your feelings. Does that does that help? >> Yeah. It it's just it's just a different it's and I it was never always like this, right? So I think everybody has the opportunity to to be who they want to be and I just didn't I didn't say I want to be like this and just became who

I am. Um and I think you just grow with it. So building your network is is that it's about creating those engagements with people and and providing value to them. So that's really where we're going with a lot more of this. So I'll get back on track. sure I have it here. So, okay. So, showed you Surf. Use it. Okay. Seriously, or something similar. Um, how are you going to track your conversations and your follow-up? If you're using Surf, you can track a lot of those conversations you start having back into the Google or an Excel spreadsheet or CRM for business. Um, make sure, this is really critical. we talked about at the beginning and I know

it's a lot of detail, but make sure you've got a way to capture information. What is going to be your system, okay? To identify, attract, and engage, and repeat. Okay? You need to have a system in place. You need to figure out what your moving pieces are and make sure they're going to be flexible in this new age of AI because everything is changing. If you're stuck with a platform that can't shift, you know, um it's really, really tough. And if you're building a business, uh, it's even more important. Don't get stuck on the legacy platform. Don't get stuck in and you're get stuck for a year. Everything is monthto month. Everything changes so fast now that you

need a core platform, but then everything else has to move very quickly within it. Um, so make sure that whatever you're putting in place is going to be able to, you know, change to to the new and adapt to new things. Things are changing fast. So delight. So, let let's talk a little bit more about, you know, your initial conversations uh with people. Um, if it's in this room tonight or anywhere, just just be yourself and create value. That's it. You know, I mean, it's about getting people to trust you, getting people to be comfortable around you. And you do that by being real. Like, you got to share who you are. you don't share

everything about yourself. There are some people that go way too far. Um, just just share a little bit about, you know, what makes you who you are and, you know, why you're excited about cyber security or the business you're about to start. And I think that's really the the key. And then from there, um, you're going to create value. What is it you're going to give back, right? What are you going to give back to the community? What are you going to give to this employer? What are you going to create with this business that you're trying to work with? They have to see the value in what you're providing. You're sending out a resume. You got to

create value. You got to create a value proposition. Okay? Don't just say, "I want that job." Tell them why you want that job and tell them a bit about yourself. Okay? So things from collaborating on projects, publishing resources, like one of the things that we do at CCN is we try to make everybody's work out there. We try to bring people's voices to the table. I, you know, go out and say, I see somebody interesting out in Calgary. And I'll say, "Wow, you're doing pen testing out there. It looks really interesting. Why don't we just jump on a call to see if it's something we can do an article on?" Um, it's it's it's how

you reach out to involve more people. How do you involve them in your network and what you're trying to do and create and then people will start believing in what you're doing and what you're trying to do? And it could be very simple. It could just be I you know I I love cyber security and people start reacting to that. It could be you know Jared when he you know he's involved in Bides and how he's getting involved in BIES. It could be you know you're starting a business and people start believing in your product and um they start more they start referring more people to your business. So you have to have something that's core

and how will you create continue providing value to the people you meet, right? So you could be sharing a relevant article with them. You could say, you know, you meet someone today and you go, I really found this article that I think would resonate with you. Um people appreciate that. Like not enough people do those simple things of saying I met you and I'm going to follow up, you know, share something with you. Um, you know, it's it's like we're so glued to technology now we forget that we're human beings and we have needs and our needs are basically to feel respected and heard. You hear what I said? You know, I talked about I don't know OT

technology and you said, "Oh, I found this great article technology. I sent it to you." I mean, that would be something that if I someone did that to me, I Oh, wow. I for that person, right? Um because they did something that was different. It's the same thing with a customer. A customer will actually care about you a lot more if you do a followup to something you said you were going to do, you know. So, make sure you do those kinds of little things that are really important. So, define your goal. You must serve a specific outcome. What are you working towards? What type of network are you building? We talked about this. So, we

did a lot of this already. Find a job, expand your business, clients. Go through this process. You know, you'll have the opportunity to do it. Your 90-day goal. What is your 90-day goal? Is it to some people will say maybe find a job, but let's not jump to that right away. Let's say, you know, build my network in the top industry by 100 people, 100 new people, and that's going to drive me to my goal. And maybe you will find a job in less than 100 days, but your goal is not to find a job. It's find 100 new connections that drive you to your goal. Okay? So again, the building blocks, identify strategic people, right? Define the

value you can offer. Start the conversation. build a relationship, create opportunities to collaborate and expand through introductions. So you need to identify who are the people that can help you. So today all of you in this room already have a network. Okay? And you go really maybe um there are some people that can help you already. And so first thing you're going to do is build that network. You're going to create the core of that network and say, "Okay, these are the people that I know really well. These are the people that they know and here's the outside circle." And then you can start creating your network and then you continue building that work from there.

Now, make sure it's specific to your goal. Okay? So, it's not everybody that you know your your mom might not be able to help you find a cyber security job, right? Um but maybe she can. Um but the reality is you need to be very specific and tie the people around you around that goal and then build out from there. So these processes are all there. Um if there's a sub industry um you know set your goals here um LinkedIn as your networking hub we talked about that what's your focus is it city regional or global and you can go from there. Um and then basically you know doing a reality check you know understand your existing network before

you build audit that we just talked about who do you have any current mentors if you don't have any current mentors always be on the lookout for those individuals and sometimes they're already there and you don't know it okay these are really really important if I look back on my career I'll say that some of the mentors are probably the most important things I ever had um and they sometimes came in very interesting ways some of them were my clients Right. Um, so one individual that's helped me tremendously since I started the CCN was Michael Argast, CEO of Cobalt in Vancouver, and he gave me some phenomenal advice. And I just reached out and asked him. That was it. And he's

every time I have a big problem, I just call him and say, "Michael, uh, you got two minutes." And after I have two-minute call with him, I feel like, wow, wasted lift off my back. Right? So, you need people like that. And sometimes they're not like true mentors where they're mentoring you for long periods of time. True mentors don't have to be that way. Mentors can be someone that just nugget when you need it. And I think people always look for mentors help them, you know, find that job help them find some breakthrough. No, look at mentors as people in your life that can give you that little boost when you need it level up. And um you know, I've had

probably five or six of them in my career. And some of them taught me some really tough lessons meaning that maybe I thought I was pretty good and I wasn't right. And I that's really important. Uh look for the people that are not just going to give you the hey great look for the people who are actually going to tell you that you know what you're not you're not that great and give a little pitch and say you know you got to work on these things. So I think that's that's absolutely critical that you identify those types of individuals. Your peers peers are awesome because you can actually talk to about and um I think that's really

really important. You're not feeling like you're, you know, you're spilling the beans. Um you're not feeling like uh, you know, you're you're you're going above your boss's head. just having a conversation with someone you can feel comfortable with um and get some information from um to help grow your career. Industry connectors, look for them. You know, Jarrett's one, right? Everybody call Jarrett. Uh JF, uh you know, people that are that are actually involved in providing value. Reach out to them. That's that's what they're trying to do. Now, they can't do everything, right? Like I have to turn down people all the time because I sometimes I got 30 people in the day that'll reach out to me and say can you

help me do this help me do that and I go okay there I don't know if I can be there and there tomorrow right because it's just you have to make decisions and not everybody's going to be happy with that but they need to understand so I think you know I think that's really important look for connectors look for people that going to help you and when you reach out to these you know and one of the things that we didn't talk We'll talk about it um is you're going to be reaching out to people that can help you. But when you're reaching out to find a job as an example, let's just say jobs right now and you know you're

reaching out to a recruiter. The majority of them are not going to get back to you talk to you, right? Not give you any feedback. But you know, you're going to have about maybe 5% of them that will. I used to I used to reach back out reached out to me if they did it the right way. they said, you know, this is what I'm looking for. This is a nice story. This is what I care about. I'd reach out to them and say, hey, yeah, let's converation. Talk about things or I can give you some feedback. But 95% are going to say no. Look at that 5%. And the same thing hiring managers. So here's for those job

seekers. Okay, here's one tip. Big tip for me is go to the recruiter, apply to those jobs on all those job board, but then I pass them as well. Go to the hiring man. Okay? And some of the hiring managers aren't going to like this is how you do it. Use a tool like surf. You identify through LinkedIn who those hiring managers are and you reach out to them because those hiring managers are going to care if you do it the right way. They're actually going to look at you and say, "Oh, this person found a way to reach out to me. I know who I am." Pretty smart. Secondly, they did some research on my company and they're

reaching out to me in a way that's actually professional without being pushy, right? and 10 15% or likely know the first thing you're gonna do you're going to send your resume to HR and they're going to go like HR I think take a deeper look into this person right so you're going to get an accelerated ride job opportunity right another 5% are actually going to pick up the phone or reach out to you and say hey I want to I want to talk to you or maybe they'll give you some advice and then 20% of them are Uh yeah, not even Blink Island, right? But you're you're playing an odds game here. You're playing the odds. It's the same thing in

business. You're reaching out to clients. When I'm reaching out to clients, I'm telling them what you know, I might just say something, hey, let's just get on a call and just talk about, you know, your business. And uh that's kind of my calling card. Talk about their business. You know, they usually know who I am usually, not always, but just talk about their business. And then usually the conversation will fall in oh how can you help me right but you don't have to start with that right so the key is make sure that you've got clear purpose and for job seekers definitely reach out to hiring man there's a few percentage that will be oh

you know go talk to HR it's okay you're gonna hear and you're going to get some people to say that's not my job or whatever but don't worry about that the reality is you're inreing ing your any any questions on that?

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. I mean, and you know, it's partly part part of what you have to do as well if you're doing this is building your network because they also look at your network sometimes, right? Part of the thing that I've noticed a lot, especially, and again, I'm not dissing the younger u, you know, generation, but a lot of them don't develop their LinkedIn profile. So, you know, most hiring managers, a lot of hiring managers look at people's LinkedIn profiles. They still do. They really do. So, you're going to look at your LinkedIn profile. They want to see if you're, you know, you're somewhat connected, you're somewhat, you know, building out your career. They want to

see how serious you are. Especially in the technology field. And recruiters all use LinkedIn. They all use it. Not saying it's it's great or whatever. It's just they all use it because it's great for lead generation. And you can do some follow-ups. Um, so build out your LinkedIn networks. Like, you know, I still see people that have 150 people. I'm like, come on, guys. Like, you gota you got to build it out, right? build out your network. It's it's it's not that it's it's just something you have to do right now. It doesn't mean that in five years you're going to be doing it. Means right now that that it is important and you should be

leveraging it for your lead generation and for building your profile. So every day go out and build it. And yes, you're gonna get a lot of people that ignore you and you know, use this tool to write to some of them directly and then link in with them because some of them won't link in with you until you do that first connection, right? They won't know who you are. They're like, "Who is this person?" Um, so yes, you can use LinkedIn and most of you are limited because you're on you're not on a LinkedIn premium plan. So you're limited to I don't know how much it is now. Is it a hundred a week or 100 callouts? So

at some point it's going to tell you you can't reach out to more people because you've already tried you've used your maximum. So that's why you use emails. That's why you post. That's why you try to drive attention to yourself in one way, shape or you know in a positive way um to get people connected to you and the decision makers you know you know and the communities you're part of. Um and if you're trying to find um communities I put this link here. Uh we I think it was at the last bides I got asked that question by someone in the audience when I presented it was do you have an app that tells us who the

Canadian communities are. I said no we don't. So we built one. Okay. So that you can go in there and click on that browse CCN community hub and you can see the different communities that are out there AI cyber technology business in different cities across Canada. And that's just to help you be part of different communities because some communities aren't for you. some communities might have a better feel for you or maybe they're they're what they're trying to do is is a better fit for you. So that tool is there to build get get you into a couple of different communities because you should be involved in when you're job seeking as many as you can. It's just another

way to increase your odds and I know it's painful. Um and job searching is not easy. Building a business is not easy either. It's not for the faint of heart, right? Because your first year is like it's all you know, heavy slogging. You're not making a lot of money in that first year unless you've got an amazing product already. Um, so it's a lot of work and a lot of commitment. So, don't be afraid of it. Um, and the one advice I would give you, you know, I um, and I'll use an example, and I hope people don't mind if I use his name. I had someone that joined my community. It was a second year, and some of you will

know, you definitely know. Um, and I always use this example, uh, Ishmael Roberto, Roberto Panino. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Ishmael Roberto Panino, but uh, he he is an amazing guy. Um, and you know, he reached out to our community, I don't know, maybe the first year and he was very, you know, he was looking for work in cyber security. I think he was at the catalyst at the time. He graduated, but nobody would hire him. and um you know he's uh and you know I I would say that probably be very being very direct agism was part of it as well like he's not super young fellow and I don't think companies were

looking to hire him because of age and I'll be honest about that um so it made it very difficult and so I started working with him and helping him as much as I can um and you know and just giving him tips and and he was the most grateful person I've ever bumped into all the hard luck this person has had, how difficult it was, how much rejection he had. And he was still the happiest person out there and always saying thank you and always being super professional. And that in itself is huge. It is probably the most important thing I will tell you in this session today. be very purposeful, happy and and happy for the

support you get. Always be thankful for any advice or support you get. Even if you don't agree with it, Ishmael was amazing. Like seriously, he would go out of his way to provide you with access or tips or anything, anything he could do. And you know, it took a while, but I was a reference on his his his uh his reference that got his job. He been hired at Telus and he's, you know, one of their cyber security awareness experts and yeah, it's phenomenal. This is phenomenal, right? And he's so happy and so grateful for all the help he's received from everybody, not just me, everybody in his career that's ever helped, he's the same

way. And I would tell you that that just that mindset is the first most important thing you can bring to the table if you're starting a business or looking for work or creating relationships. So that's that's really really important. And the other thing I would say is that um you know never never be desperate. Okay. What I mean by that is if you are talking to you're in a you know you're in a you're in a job interview and you sound desperate and you you are desperate. You want that job. You need that job. You need the money. You want to start working. you want to move on from, you know, being in school. And and

if you sound desperate, employers know it. You feel it. There's there's a tenseness. There's a It's the same thing like when someone's trying to sell you something and they're a little, you know, just kind of pushy a little bit and you're kind of feeling like, "Hey, that whoa." You know, you're not going to buy from that person. You're going to buy from someone that has a vision, that's comfortable with who they are and the product they're selling. You might not buy today. you might buy in the future and that's okay. You know, I never thought I'd sell anything because I'm not really someone that likes to sell, but I've gotten comfortable doing it because all I'm doing is talking

about what I love. So, if you're talking about what you love, that's not selling. You're just It's just easy. So, do the things that you love. Do the talk about the things that you love. Work in the areas that you love. And you're going to be the same way. You're going to approach business, your clients, job searches the same way. Not saying it's easy. We all have bad days. We all hard times, but those kinds of approaches are the key. Okay. That any any questions on that? Because it sounds kind of soft, but it's really really important. Anything? No. Yeah. You've received about a million letters, right? >> Yeah. >> How important is >> very important? I don't know if it has

to come in a cover letter. Um but um because I mean I have to open it. Um if I have to open it. No. Um I think it's you know if it's in the email I'm happy with that too, right? Just a general introduction. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. I I think it's I think personalization is super important because I you know the resume just gets you in the door. Resume gets you an interview. That's all it does. Put the stuff in there that gets you an interview. That's all you want. Don't put anything in there that you think is going to avoid create a problem for you to get an interview. You're just maximizing your chance is to get an

interview. That's all recruiters use it for and hiring managers use it for. So the personalization is the the kicker because people want to care about you. they they they want to actually have something in that cover letter that makes them go, "Oh, yeah. I think I'm going to dig a little further. I'm not just going to, you know, bypass the resume." Because a lot of hiring managers won't even look at the resume. You see a form letter and they go like, you know, um recruiters, they use tools, right? So, you chat GPT, they're using uh ResumeX, they're using all their ATS's, you know, and and I I do blame recruiters, you know? Um I not because

now unfortunately the volume is huge but one of the things that we always do and I still do that's why I like retain search is because you actually read everything you get and you're you're actually involved with less resumes and you're more in depth with the candidates and finding that perfect match, right? Um recruiters tend to use a lot of these tools to weed everything out. So you're weeding out good candidates. It's just a reality. You're weeding out good candidates that might not have done a perfect resume, might not have done a perfect cover letter, right? they didn't didn't follow a process. And and really this whole thing about finding a job or even finding business is a process. Um

so if you master the process, your odds go up, right? So that's why I'm saying network, create your own advantage on top of that. But the cover letter is to me it's basically an opportunity to say three things really is one is here's what I know about your company and here's how I can help. Okay, here's here's what I know about either the work or the company and here's how I can help you. And two, here's why I want to help you. You know, what makes me different than, you know, Joe and Susan and Daniel and everybody else. I need to stand out. I need to say something about myself. And and usually it's it's not super personal. It's it's just

something that brings it out. Um, and I think you everybody has their own special thing. You know, I I can't tell you what yours is or what yours is. I think everybody has something in who they are and what they bring to the table that's a little different. Um, some people don't want to don't want to share it and that's okay. But if you can share a little bit about you, then you're going to have huge success. I had a I do a lot of coaching calls, a lot of mentoring calls, and I had one a couple weeks ago, and this gentleman said, "I've never told anybody this at all, and I won't say what we talked about,

but he shared with me something that basically was basically preventing him from being successful, or he thought was preventing him from being successful, but I swung it the other way and said, "This is what's going to make you successful." But, you know, this individual came from a culture where you don't talk about some of these things when you're reaching out for employment opportunities. And I think it was exactly the opposite. You know, you know, if he would have shared a bit more about, you know, what he actually did, you know, from a work perspective and some of the physical challenges that he had gone through. This is this is actually you're going on, this is an

amazing candidate. Like this person's lived something that nobody else has ever done before. And all of a sudden, he brings a skill set as well. So, you're gonna you're gonna you're going to feel something, you know? I mean, hiring managers are people, too. And they're, you know, they're they're not only looking at technical skills. They actually want to work with people they care about and they want their team to work with people that they actually care about. You don't you don't want some, you know, I've worked some of these people that you you just can't even stand in the office, right? You're oh my god, why did this person get hired? Why are they here? You know, they're just

they're making me feel miserable all day and and you're going like, why? Right? And and and it's it's it's very small number, but it creates a lot of mayhem in an office. And um I think that's why a lot of you know leaders um really look at they they talk about culture but you're really looking at people that just they're they're kind people like like I my my philosophy in Canadian cyber security because I only work with kind people. I I will not work with people that don't that aren't kind. I I won't do it. Why would I like what I turn down clients because I don't want to work with them because if they're not

fun to work with they're not kind to work with my staff. Like why would I do it? like it's miserable. Like it's like I and I'm not saying that you won't have to work with miserable people when you're starting your career or where you're at in business. You might have to, but I'm saying that you wouldn't want to, right? So hopefully that helped in a cover letter, but the covering letter is a place where Yeah, I do expect to see something come through. >> Yeah, please.

direct.

>> Yeah.

>> Do you Now, are you talking government managers? >> Well, yeah. >> Public sector is a little different, right? So, I mean, public sector I mean I'm not saying it's a bad thing because they're people and and people are influenced by who they interact with. So, I'm not saying all hiring managers are going to like it. Some hiring managers go we're not hiring, you know, like go to HR and that we have a process and here's the process and you got to follow this process. And that's there is a process in in in the public, you know, in the public sphere. Um, I started my career there. I I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't work it. But but having said

that, I still think you can reach out now. It's the way you reach out, right? I mean, you have to be so professional in regards to how you do it and and you're not, you know, you're you're providing value back. And if you're providing value back in the way you communicate with someone, people are They might just say, "Hey, yeah, I know." Or maybe they'll send it to HR. But I would always always go to the hiring manager because you know why? It's not just I'm trying to find a job. I'm trying to build my network. This is this is my whole approach. My whole approach has been I'm always building my network, right? I'm always building my network

because that creates value for not only me but for the people I'm interacting with. You know, when I came into this room today, of course, I'm going to go around and talk to people because you want to find out what what do people want, right? You're trying to find out what are what are people trying to get out of this session. So, you're networking with them, but you're you're trying to help them. You're trying to figure out what is it they're trying to to achieve and you want to create a link. So even that hiring manager in the government that you know may not have a job or or may not want to talk to me,

I'm still to create a relationship with because maybe it's a year from now, maybe it's six months, maybe it's two years from now, maybe I'm going to start my own business and I'm going to do business with them. You you would be amazed at the relationship I started and then two or three years later you've got you've got an opportunity to work with them. It's like, wow. You know, it's just like it's just baffles you sometimes that you know, someone you worked with or reached out to because you were looking for a job, you're now working with as a business. They may not remember, but I remember, right? Because you're you're you're you're always creating relation. You

really do. And I think more and more and important this is really really important that in the age we're in right now where everything is AIdriven um where everything is not sure if it's true or not relationships and trust are more important than anything else. So the communities that you're a part of like this like besides Canadian cyber security network all of those things that you know have real people in them can build trust can build something that you can feel comfortable with versus this online stuff that you're not even sure if the person is real or not anymore. And I think trust is becoming I call it the new currency. I call trust the new currency. Um, and it's always

been very important, but more so now in this age of deep fakes and everything else that's taking place around AI. I mean, wow. I was talking to someone today, I got to tell this story, but I was talking to an expert, Get Real Security. It's a company out in Florida, and they were telling me about um these deep fakes uh where it was three individuals um can't remember where they were from. Um they were applying to thousands and thousands of jobs. Okay. So, basically through AI and deep fake and um they would get all these jobs and they would be able to, you know, either work at them on contract or get other people to work for them

because they were using this deep fake technology and there were like hundreds and hundreds of these jobs. Now, they would get fired after a month because there was no activity. It was remote activity. It was basically they just moving their mouse. People could see, you know, like whatever. But is basically they were getting a month's free salary before they were fired or found out. But they were doing this with hundreds and hundreds of jobs. Think about that. Like wow. Like super creative but for the wrong reasons. But it just goes to show that the technology these days is creating a lot of that mistrust even with employers. Um and they have to deal with all these robot

emails or robot CVs that are coming in now too, right? Um, so employers have to deal with, you know, is that a real person or not? Um, is that a real, you know, is that a true CV or not? Is that a true, you know, uh, transcript or not? So, there's a lot of things that are creating mistrust. So, developing those relationships with people is going to make huge difference. And the same thing on the business side, okay? Because is is that a real person? Like I open up my Zoom with this guy from real and he's going like, "Oh, is that really you?" Right? first question he's asking me is is that really you or is that somebody

else? Um, so yeah, it's it's becoming a problem. Tom, did you have a question? >> Yeah, I I am a real

nonprofit. >> Yeah. >> And so I got scan, you scan, I scan. Everybody's into that. >> Yeah. But then I find I want to make a little note like I'm walking away from that person rememberec for that is there >> there there's a place where you can put notes >> but it's not it's not uh it's only if you're a real a first connect with them right and then you can add a few notes but it's uh surf does that surf allows you to additional information um >> on my phone >> yeah you can do it on your phone >> yeah yeah it's it's enabled on both so it's just it's just an internet kind

overlay. Um, >> yeah. So, I mean, look, LinkedIn has, you know, I mean, LinkedIn has never really evolved that much. I think they want to leave it that way. Um, it has enormous capabilities. It just never went to that next level, right? Um, so I I think I'm not sure why uh because it has all the capability to become something even bigger and people would probably pay for it if it allowed them to do a few things like we're talking about. Um, but I don't think it's in their in their plans. Is there another question? >> Yes.

American

articles on talking about gener AI and everything but would this be the new concept of big company large in the future as dentist pro >> yeah I mean I think it's always been there right I mean we that concept is kind of behavioral based hiring right so it's it's always been about you know like understanding how someone can actually do something if I'm going to ask you a question say okay well you said you built this how did you build it tell me the process of how you built this and go into the details um you know it's it's much better than a resume because a resume doesn't anything. I mean a resume is piece of paper u

behavioral based or you know project based or you know seeing something you actually built from scratch that's on GitHub and that I know is yours and then I want you to explain how you built it on top of that is much stronger than anything else you provide me on paper. Right? But then the people I'm going to that know you that I actually can verify you with is even more powerful. Right? So, like as an as someone that's been in the recruiting business for for many years and this is just common practice, right? So, especially as you get into more senior ranks, you might give me three references, but I'm going to follow up with everybody that's

connected to you, okay? Because I have this wide network and I'm going to go like, "Oh, oh, Danielle, you know, like you worked with John before. I just I want to know your your thoughts." It's it's not a reference check. It's just a personal, you know, interaction with Danielle. Uh, so we don't we don't tend to follow all the rules. I mean, some recruiters do, but I don't because we're we're we're responsible to our client that we're hiring this person for. So, we're going to check the whole network. I'm going to check everybody you're connected with almost, right? To make sure that, you know, you're you're you're who you are and you've done all this stuff. Now, when you're early on in

your career, it's it's a little less that, you know, we're still going to check your Facebook. We're going to check everything. I'm going to check everything. It's like, you know, you're going out on a date on, I don't know, use whatever, Tinder, whatever else. You're going to check out that person, right? So, you're doing the same thing when you're you're you're you're doing recruiting. You're checking everything. You're trying to find every source out there on everybody. I mean, when I have a meeting, you believe me, man. I check that person out from, you know, one one end to the other. Uh because I want to know everything because that's my angle. You know, I'm going in and I'm saying,

"Okay, well, this is what you do. I know what your business is now. Tell me more about this. Tell me more." I'm not going to start from scratch. tell me about your business and you're like, I I checked out your business. I know what it is. Here's what it is. Am I wrong? No. So, you're doing your research just like you should be doing when you're doing a uh, you know, an interview. Um, you know, don't go in there cold. You're calling a manager. You're sending something out to hire a manager. You got to do all your research. It's the way it is. Uh, I don't go into any meeting without doing my full research.

>> Yeah. >> Sure. 50 recruiting types and some of the students will walk up the hiring manager technical and that's the same student go to the HR people and say I don't have any kind >> yeah you need as many things as you can like I mean that's why I say like you work on some projects, work, you know, have your, if you have a website, get your website. If you've got written works, get them all together in one place. And it's so easy now, right? I mean, to me now, you, you know, like look, I did, you know, this app like it's just like nothing now with coding, right? Now, I'm not putting any personal

information on here, but even if you were to put, you know, some information about your work, you don't have to put your email, you don't put your address or anything like that. You can build something like that in in a couple like four hours and you can have all your links in there. You can have all your GitHub tied to it and that's what you're providing to your hiring manager. I mean, isn't that impressive? You can you can actually do your UIUX on it. You can do everything. It's like learn, you know, push yourself beyond, you know, what you're doing and and do do something like that. Now all of a sudden you've got a U page and you can do it in

minutes. tie the right just just don't tie you know private private information onto it. Um it's not secure. Um so it's it's extremely easy. I mean I I build these apps like I you know if I need something like we're doing one we're doing an event and uh presenting at the next generation advanced manufacturing and we're doing a checklist for small companies mid-size companies on cyber security uh readiness for the market like for global and accessing markets national defense and all that stuff. And we built we built an app using it and we did it in a couple of hours and they're going to be able to use it and get a questionnaire out of it, a checklist

that they can actually, you know, use to do their work and it's reusable. So I think if we can do that, you guys can do it because, you know, I'm not like some master coder or anything like that. I'm just doing new things, learning new things, right? And and I think you all have to challenge yourself to do something like that for if you're finding work or looking you're building your business. Um you know if you don't know how to do it then you know maybe one of the next things you do at a bides here is show how you do that. It's it's that easy to build one of those applications and to layer it all in and

uh I think there's so many tools out there right now that I would have you know when I've been young when I was young I would go like oh my god you know I used to have to type and I was not a good typer. I'm talking old typewriters, too. >> Yeah. So, um, got amazing tools now.

>> You said it's Chrome, but you're if you have to do it again. Oh, >> yeah. Yeah. Oh. So I need to go full screen. >> Yeah. Full screen. >> No, I did that already. >> Go to share. >> Yeah. >> Uh oh. Click on share. I understand. >> Yeah, I did that. >> And then entire screen. >> Ah, >> and select that one. >> Yep. Click on it and then share. Perfect. All right. All right. So, uh, again, we're just doing that reality. Where's your strongest net? Where's your network strongest? Where's the weakest based on what you're trying to achieve? Again, don't forget um LinkedIn, right? So, your LinkedIn connections, your peers, that's the action plan. Just going to

continue to the next one. The target network design, right? Uh, key roles that influence your goal. This is really important. So, if I'm building my business, right, and I'm looking at saying, okay, I want to build, I don't know, let's say national defense. We're we're building out on the national defense side. Who are the what are the roles that I need to approach as a business, okay, in this case, to create a network that's going to be influential, right? So, okay, they're going to be people like people in procurement, right? So keep keep people that are playing roles in procurement. Um it could be uh CEOs of private companies as example that are you know working at Talis or working at

different companies like that. So you look at first of all you look at all the companies that are potentially involved in national defense and some of it is related to government departments some of them are uh provincial and then you're looking at all of the defense industry and all the associated defense industries. So it could be drone manufacturing, it could be all those kinds of things. And then basically you're listing all those names and then you're going on to LinkedIn and identifying people that have the right roles in those companies you want to approach. Okay. So now you're looking at what are the titles that I need to reach out to in what size of company to be

able to achieve my goal. So that's a little bit more tricky and because every company uses their own titles, every company uses their own kind of, you know, way of of identifying people in their company and they're different across industries. So I'll go back to an example. As I'm building out, you know, cyber security companies, usually in Canada, if I'm reaching out to people to get companies to work with us, I'm looking for three things. I'm looking for country managers, right? You're looking for the country managers for that company in Canada. You're looking for the person that's in charge of field marketing because they're going to have the marketing budget, right? And you're looking for the VP usually of sales

because they have influence on how they spend their money um in regards to potentially investing with us. So those are usually the three key roles. Now, sometimes it can change based on the size of the company. The reason it's important to identify these roles is for everybody it's different. Okay. And if you're looking for, I don't know, a pentesting job, well, you're going to have to identify what are those roles and those titles for you to approach in the company and how you grow your network. Could be pentesting, you know, could be a red teamer. It could be there's a right, it could be a whole pile of different names and you can ask chat GPT what those are and say, what

are the different titles that people use for this different thing? And then you look for them on LinkedIn. You tie it to the company. You reach back. Okay. you go, hey, canawwide pent testing this industry boom boom boom cyber security or AI or whatever your focus is. And then you you identify those individuals and those are the ones you try to connect with. Okay, so it's it's basically just a a funnel, right? Or the flywheel that we talked about, which you're just identifying the people company first, industry titles, okay? And then you connect with them. Then when you connect with them, you got to tell them something that's valuable enough that they want to actually be in

touch with you. Then they want to meet with you. Then they actually want to interact with you. Then they want to invite you to do something. Right? Takes time. So I gave an example today. I said, uh, I'm going to speak in two weeks at the Net Diligence Conference. So, Net Diligence Conference is, and I'm don't want to insult anybody in here if anybody's an insurance or a lawyer, but they're all insurance brokers. They're all lawyers. Um, they're all reinsurance brokers, which is they they insure the insurance companies. Okay, so that's really interesting. Um, but you know, that's not my crowd, right? Um, so this is my third year going to this conference and the first two years I

think I was telling Andrew, um, I felt really uncomfortable, you know, because everybody's in suits. I wear a suit, but I mean I can wear suits. They're all in suits. They're all, uh, they all know each other. 600 people in a room, they all know each other, you know, because they've all worked together for 20 years. And they talk a different language. They're not talking, you know, cyber security. They're talking like insurance and you know cyber breaches through you know legal channels and different things and I'm going like whoa. So the first two years I was like sitting in that corner. I felt like I was sitting in that corner. I was still participating but I had I was really struggling and

this year because of the relationships I've developed and the work that we've done I was invited to speak at right. So, I'm actually speaking with the insurance guys and the lawyers. It's pretty scary stuff. But it just goes to show that if you build your network, okay, and you build your your network, your brand, your influence, you get out of the corner and you speak to people and you make the right connections, you're going to achieve your goals. Okay? You're going to achieve your goal. It might take time. So, not all like Rome wasn't built in a day, as they say. It takes time. Some of them are harder than others to crack. And I think that's

what's really important here is that, you know, whatever you're trying to achieve, whatever goal you're trying to achieve, you can achieve it. You got to put your mind to it. You know, it's like when I like, you know, I gave the example about marathons, but you know, when I was like, I don't know, 42, I I ruptured my Achilles. My Achilles was like had to get sewn back on, right? So, it's like I was on a cast for six months and I ended up, you know, ballooning. I was like probably about 260 pounds and just because I all I can do was eat. Um, and no exercise. So, after that happened, I actually um Okay. Um, so I actually, you know,

ballooned and, you know, and useless and I basically couldn't walk like this. So, I started I started running. It's actually when I started running again and I would go down the trail and I would hobble and after about I don't know two or three months, two or three weeks maybe. I started stretching that tendon enough that I was able to actually start, you know, running a little bit. I was really out of shape and then I ran my first 10K and I ran that first marathon and everything else. But I started telling people about my goals. I'm going to run that 5K. I'm trying to go after, you know, under 22 minutes and then it was like under 20

minutes and it was like we're going to go for 18, we're going to go for 17, right? So, I was getting really competitive in the marathon the same thing. But the whole point is you defined your goal, you communicated your goal and you set a plan to achieve it. You can do that for anything, okay? Anything. Nothing is limited here. I don't believe in limitations. You just have to set your goal and not be afraid of it. and you're everybody's in a different part of their career. It's it's a case of just setting your mind, setting your goal and achieving it. And if that's finding a job, you know, I have another example of great

job. It was someone I I worked with a York University student, three of them on a project and I mentored all three of them and u they all have jobs now. Um took a while. Um they were some challenges. Um, one of them had a super amazing, you know, outlook on the job because she was so open, so happy, so helpful. Second individual, actually, the two of them, they were both very hard to break through on. And then I had to kind of after mentoring for a while and on a project they didn't do so well on, I had to say, "Look, this is not working out. Let's take a break." And one of them

reached out to me again afterwards. and said, you know, like I've really rethought everything you said and I want to work with you again. I want to, you know, get some coaching. And uh so he's just landed a job as well. And I'm so happy for him because it changes. It's a case of changing outlooks. It's it's not about it's not just about your technical skills. It's about you as a person accepting who you are and accepting your limitations, but also accepting that you are a lot stronger than you are. It really is. And and you know, I know I feel like I'm preaching, but that's the way that's the way I've lived my life

for the last, you know, 20 years, you know, because like I said before that I was kind of like, you know, struggling a little bit like everybody else does at some point in their life. There was a question

Sorry, I'm just gonna come back a little.

>> Yeah. >> My question relates to someone that just moved. >> Yeah. And most of the time when I go online responsibility and all that stuff being new to that area the imposttor syndrome in that person that's what I want to ask question relating to how um maybe um remove it in order to maybe you want to apply for a job you already see like one two three four One, two, three. Maybe it's only two out of eight >> that you can do. You mean that you have the skills to do? >> At the end of the day, just >> Yeah. I think I think most most job descriptions that are out there are asking for the world. Like they really

are, right? They're way above and beyond anything that a normal person can do. They're always asking for someone that's like the perfect unicorn. And I think, you know, in some cases, I'm not saying that companies aren't looking for that person. Sometimes they are, and they're very, very, very, very, very strict. And that's the company. That's the way they do it. Um, but they're going to wait a long time and maybe they won't find that person and maybe they're not that serious about hiring that person in the first place. Now, for a lot of other companies, you know, if they get seven out of 10, they're going to be happy. At some point, they're going to realize

they can't find the unicorn and the unicorn's not moving from, you know, big company and they're going to hire that person. So I think you know one of the things that I've heard a lot of is yeah you you get the imposter syndrome you don't feel comfortable you don't think you should apply but I'm I'm I'm a believer that you know you should still apply just because you don't have the specific skill set in some cases doesn't mean you have you don't have the competencies to deliver on um and I think that yeah maybe you're going to need some training maybe you need some upgrading on some things why shouldn't the company invest in you if they think

they have the right person so there's nothing wrong with trying as as long as it's you know I mean it's a stretch but you can't have a massive stretch right you don't hit all 10 and you're getting like seven I' I'd apply for it and and I think there's still going to be some companies that are going to realize it now maybe when they first post it maybe it's not going to happen because they're waiting for the unicorn u but that unicorn is not usually going to show up um you know there's not you know unicorns are quite happy out there and they're in their job somewhere and you know they're uh they're not they're not

moving moving or if they're moving, they're making their own moves. They're not apply. They're not going to a job. They're going to have a network. They're going to have a network of people that that want to hire them already. So, those jobs never even make it onto the uh onto the the job post. Like my jobs, like I do searches, I I don't post them. I just find the people, right? So, I mean, people reach out to me and say, "Hey, can you find me a job?" And they go, "I only do retained search." Well, the retained search is for the customer. Customer wants somebody. I go out and find them, right? I don't look for

someone and say I can fit you into this job. That's very very rare. I can recommend you. So I do that a lot. I'll say hey you know I see someone that's hiring for that. I'll recommend you or I'll send you the job. I do that a lot. But I don't I don't recruit people for a job. I recruit them myself. Right. So I think the case is that yeah I would still apply and and I think the key there is that and I think it's even I think you know the philosophy of it is a lot of people have that imposter syndrome but I think if you start talking in a community like this most

people have that that feeling you know nobody feels like nobody feels 100%. like I'm going to walk into that same conference in a couple of weeks and I'm gonna feel, you know, a little little jittery, right? Uh because they're they're different than most of the people I interact with. And it's not that I don't belong, it's that I feel like I don't belong, right? And and because of that, they probably feel like I don't belong, right? Because you send out your own vibes. We talked about this this whole thing about, you know, pushing too hard for a job, being desperate. But when you're in a meeting like that with people you're not comfortable with, you're there's a

little bit of that energy that's going out. So, I think you just gota you just got to go with it. I you know, more and more now my approach is just go introduce me. Like, hey, what's going to happen? You're gonna have a few people that are going to be rude to you. Like, seriously, that's that's about that's about the worst that can happen. Um, so what, right? You're never going to see them again. Most probably. So, you know, feel make yourself uncomfortable. Go talk to people and if they end up being unkind, just walk away. >> Yeah. >> I think the question of confidence comes with heaviness. Sometimes people are really afraid to try. Mhm.

>> I think it's better to try and share than being afraid of trying >> because if you keep waiting for to be fully confident that time might not come. >> Yeah. I don't know if that's the case for some people because sometimes you see some busy persons like maybe I can try this but the other side of you is telling you what if you try and fail. So that confidence you were saying that 10 10 out of 10 is not there but maybe seven if you you feel like you hit the seven you can try >> right >> yeah and I think so I mean everybody's going to be uncom I'm uncomfortable in a lot of situations I don't think you know

maybe I'll achieve it and you set goals that are pretty you know you stretch you put stretch goals right you do things that you go I'll try and do this this year and and and you're still not always confident you're going to do it but you know I I think has maybe it's you know for me and I'll give you my example like I said I matured I feel like I matured later as you get older you've you've you've tried these things before so you know what works and what doesn't so most of the time when you have a gut feel like when I have a gut feel it's going to work right yeah I'll fail still but it's

going to work most of the time because you have the the past you have all the the experience of what fails like you know I've had My first company failed, right? And it was just because the timing was way off. I was way ahead of the market, right? And when you learn that lesson, it's painful. You go, "Oh my god, you know, I love that thing." You know, I just was so happy doing it and you just realize the timing sucked. It just you're way ahead of it. I mean, at the time I was doing it, you know, it was a service company. This is a long time ago. And people are going to the venture capital

going is that hardware or is that software? Neither. People didn't know what a service company was back then. It was all hardware and software. If you weren't doing that, nobody's giving you money. Um, so you learn those tough lessons and you you remember them. Um, and and when you're running a business, it's the same thing. You have so much to learn that you're going to fail sometimes when you're doing it the first few times. Nobody hits a home run, you know, the first time. It's rare. Uh, because you're going to make big mistakes along the way. And the same thing for job searching. You're going to make mistakes. So, don't be afraid of mistakes, you I think I think I think

it's about trying. Um, so same thing like with with AI now and everything else. Just try things. Play with it, you know, see see what your limitations are. Yeah. >> All right, everybody. Uh, I hope everybody had a bit of a break because that was good. Two things I wanted to mention because I don't think everybody knew is one thing you do want to do is you do want to copy that that link because that link is everything that I talked about and a lot more. Okay? So, it gives you the whole worksheet to do everything that you need to. Like I said, you may not want to do everything. It's entirely up to you, but it gives

you all the steps. It'll tell you your progress, and there's tools in there. There's communities in there. There's all kinds of things. It provides you with a PDF workday plan, 90-day plan once you've completed it. And it also provides you with an AI assessment. Okay? So, it'll give you an AI assessment saying, "Here are the things you've done well. here are some things you might still need to do. Okay? And if I if you can give me your feedback as well, if there you see things that are missing because I'm sure I didn't do a perfect job. I didn't because I built this like for this session. Um I will add more to it so we can help more

people. Okay. So it's just kind of like I wanted to build something that we can reuse. And then the second thing is um one of the things I mentioned is if you're part of a group on LinkedIn, you're part of the Canadian Cyber Security Network group or something like that. One of the advantages you have is that you once you're part of a group and a lot of people don't know this is you can actually communicate with the people in that group. Okay, so like this is a huge advantage, right? It means unless they've blocked it, you know, unless they have they've gone through their LinkedIn, you know, competency thing and they blocked some things, you can

communicate with anybody in that group. Now, again, don't hound them. Don't, you know, don't do crazy things or you're just going to get blocked. You're going to get, you know, told that, you know, from at LinkedIn that, you know, you shouldn't be on it. Um, but you can connect with people in a group. So, there's a huge advantage in being part of groups on LinkedIn because you can actually communicate. Um, you don't need to be first to first connection, okay? If you're part of a group, you're part of a group. So, again, something you can use. There's little things like that that are really, really helpful. But definitely take advantage of this app. We'll make it better. It's there. Um,

it's available. Um, I'll probably put it under the CCN domain at some point. Right now, it's just under the app domain. So, we'll we'll continue here. Um, you know, obviously it says things like discover the community, discover events. We also have on uh the Canadian Cyber Security Network site that's uh all the events in Canada for cyber security or IT or business. Doesn't have them all, but we put there's a lot of them on there. There's about 150 or so I think for the year. Um so that means you can find events you can go to. Some of them are no charge. Some of them are webinars. Uh some of them are uh conferences. Um so please please look at

that. See what's going on in your city or going on in cities you're going to. um companies can also self self-s serve on that platform so they can go in and put their events. So we try to do it so that you know we're not doing all the heavy lifting all the time. We don't have time to do all that, right? So we do some of that heavy lifting and then we let companies do that. Um so anytime there's an event or a company or something in your company, people can put it on there and it's just a self-s serve for the community. Okay. So a good way to to content find stuff. again mentors, collaborators, skip through

this uh obviously on the LinkedIn that you know a great thing to do and I'm sure people are doing this you're using the LinkedIn people also viewed um it's right there on the right hand side tells you that you know the other people in that company that maybe you should be interacting with uh leverage that it gives you kind of a sneak guide um doesn't always work it's kind of strange sometimes how it works but um it's much better to focus on companies and then find the leads you need in there Um, so I'm just going to skip through here. Uh, positioning. Okay, so this is important. This is the step that we were talking

about. We haven't gone in, but clarifying the value you bring to others. Okay, so again, everybody has a unique value and unique values. Um, and I think that's where people need to find sometimes, you know, when I was younger, I had no clue what it was, right? Um, and maybe I wasn't doing enough, you know, soularching or maybe I didn't have the guidance or maybe whatever. But you need to find out what that is and you put it on paper and it could be could be something very specific. It could be you're just an amazing you know amazing hacker and you're you're doing all this great stuff on Hack the Box and all those other platforms and you're one of

the leaders and uh people will value that and you know they're going to see that skill set and what you've done and what you've accomplished. You could be a great coder. You could be you could be many many things and I think the key is finding out what that is. Some people I was talking to someone someone that says they were in marketing. Okay. Well, what makes you good at marketing, right? What are the things that you can bring? You know, are you good at SEO? Are you good in lead generation? What are the aspects that you're good at um that can be leveraged by a company? So, you need to put that into some some words.

Don't leverage a leverage AI. If you're not comfortable in writing yourself, look at AI, make sure that it's well, and then then put your own tone to it. Okay? So, don't just use the AI stuff. Okay. Makes a lot of mistakes, by the way. But if you're just using it for a statement, it will give you a decent statement. Then rework it. Okay? It's it helps a lot. You know, you're going to avoid spelling mistakes. You avoid grammar mistakes. Now, you can still spell check it. Look for, you know, you got to give some guidance to the AI systems, but definitely leverage it for these kinds of things. It's going to make you it's going to accelerate

everything you're doing. Who do you help, right? Um how how does it help you? Be specific about your audience. who are you helping with the skills that you have? I think that's again really really important. Same thing if you're doing a business, what problem do you solve? Right? What problem are you solving to to help this company or your clients? Um be very very clear about that. Again, very short, concise statements are always best. You can always add more to it. Proof of credibility, you know, what supports your expertise, experience, project, publications, we talked about that. If I was looking for a job today, I would definitely leverage a project like you know like the vibe coding like lovable

and all those projects. I would go on there and say here are all the things that I do and I would tie every piece of advice that I have from you know uh you know my uh my my projects uh my you know experience the tools that I use the writings that I've done blogs anything and I would put them all in one place under beautiful UIUX format and man you got like you're way ahead of everybody else sending a resume like it's phenomenal what you can do these days and like with no money spent or couple of dollars spent and um you're going to have it for life and you're going to keep adding and building to it

in seconds. It's like, wow. It's like, you know, I used to have to type a resume, you know, and then I have to do a cover letter and then I had to, you know, figure out like, okay, who, you know, I'm gonna have to apply, you know, mail it in. I had to do all these things when I was young. It's crazy. Now, create it all in about a couple of hours on a on a platform. Um, still leverage it. Yeah. earlier just like a statement. >> Yeah. >> Um one time I did an interview for a company and I was telling the company, "Oh, these are my skills. This is what I can do. This is it. This is it." She was

like, "Okay, but what can you do for my company? What can you do? What can you do?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah. I'm really good at this. I do this with passion. I can do this all day. So I was like, so um I told them for example, if you have like a project or you have um a company you deal with like u they're late on the project and you're calling them they say oh it's um I'm two weeks away and you call two weeks ago two weeks and they're not done. I'm really good at that. So I told her that and she said okay yeah okay and then um we continued with the interview I was able

to be different because when she uh told me that I was able to be more comfortable with >> and then when I was working for the company so one time so I was working by myself and my colleague was working and I heard the phone like okay so um so uh because she's calling to I know about a product but they don't know where the product is. So I was like asking myself what do you mean you know where a product is? You're supposed to know the last place it was here. Right. >> Right. >> So you should be able to say okay it should be around BC or you know around that area. I was like you should know.

So I I had >> nice >> it's my secret. >> But but I think but I think what you're saying is key right. I mean it's like uh it's clarifying your value and and I think the more concrete you can be the better and the great thing about it is that with these platforms as an example is you can put it all in one place because people are always going to you know we have we were talking about you know um people want to kind of validate your skills because I mean you know nobody trusts your skills anymore until you you know did you really do that you AI talking or you know whatever. So

people are going to want to validate your skills. So you're going to want to be able to show them examples. Now they're still going to need to dig into that because I mean AI could have created what you're creating, right? So it's it's kind of like uh you're going to need to back it up. You need to be able to back up what you've done because I mean that's really where everything's going. They're going to want to go, okay, well show me, right? Um you're going to be you're going to need to be validated a lot more than you used to be. Um and I think that's really really important. So the credibility you build

through your network gets you way past all of these other steps because you're already, you know, that much higher in the standings because of the people you know and the people that you've actually been able to reference as you get into this opportunity. You know, if you can go like, hey, you know, like you're you're talking to this person like more and more like I'm always talking to someone now and I'm going like, oh yeah, oh, you know this person. the conversation goes off into another direction. And it's it's always like that now. And we're doing it, you know, I'm doing it 10 times a day, 20 times a day where you're having a conversation

and I know someone and they know the same person and all of a sudden it's like uh they're off to the races, right? Um so it's um it's it's definitely important that you do that, but use the tools like whatever tools you're comfortable with, use them. uh just make sure that they paint a true picture of who you are because credibility is the number one thing that takes a long time to build really easy to destroy. Okay, so signal certifications obviously I mean not that I'm a believer that you need certifications and everything you can do a job without certifications. Some people are I've met some of the best pentesters in the world have zero

certifications, zero training, all selftaught. Um there are some people that are able to do it. Um now having said that education, certifications, they're fantastic. But do you does everybody need it to be successful? No. And do employers all want those? A lot of them are asking for them, but a lot of employers actually look way beyond that. They're looking for innate skills, right? So all kinds of things there, lots of tips. Uh your networking introduction, how are you going to introduce yourself? Well, introduce yourself as you, you know, with credibility and just the way you are as a person. Don't try to be someone you're not. Now, make sure that the writing is doesn't have any errors, the grammar,

all that kind of stuff. Get chat GPT to check it out. But and then have a friend and have some people like validate it. Like don't be shy about getting feedback. Actually ask people. They'll tell you like but but make sure you have some people on there. They're going to be critical as well. Okay. Because you want people to give you feedback. I I get it. I mean like I sent some stuff out today for the presentation I'm doing the workshop I'm doing in that dil or not conference. We're doing a workshop. I sent it out to some people to get some feedback. And I'm sure I'm gonna get some feedback because I sent it to some

people that are really, really, really tough. So, um, I expect that I'm gonna have a lot of work to do tomorrow and have to rework this presentation. And that's okay. Uh, because their input's going to make me help. So, do the same thing when you're doing something like a network introduction, you know, like how are you going to introduce yourself to people? And that introduction is going to change depending on who you're writing it to. It's not always the same, okay? because you're going to write something about that person or that company or about yourself that you know will potentially get you more visibility and give you the opportunity to you know create a better relationship with that

person. But don't overthink it. Just do something that is going to be memorable. So there's, you know, examples obviously, you know, u here just to give you some guidance. Um, update your LinkedIn profile. So this is a big one. I still see a lot of LinkedIn profiles that are just brutal, you know, I mean, and one of the first things is, you know, as a recruiter, when you go to a LinkedIn profile, you know, the first thing you see when you're doing a search is the titles at the top, right? So you're seeing, you know, the couple of lines at the top and some people like put nothing in there or they put something that's completely

irrelevant and if I don't see anything, it's gone. like it's like I don't even open that profile because why am I going to click on a profile I don't see anything about or you got to try and make it like I understand like people not putting their picture and I understand people like not putting their title not putting but once you don't have like what your goal is or your your title is or something what no matter what it is like try to fill out your profile so that it actually looks like it's a finished profile because as a recruiter like if you go and look at a list of LinkedIn people. I don't know.

We take a look right now. Maybe just get an example here. I'll just do a quick search. Let's do uh I don't know. Uh let's do a stock analyst list. Just pop it up here. I can't see. So, let's see if there's some that you know aren't people right. Let's look. Uh, location, Canada. Bring up some results. So, we got a bunch here. Um, it's okay to not obviously put your full name. That's fine. U, but in some cases, in these cases, they look pretty finished, but a lot of people don't have a title. And we're like, why wouldn't you put a title or put something about yourself? Because when they don't have anything, and I they're pretty complete here. um

you have no view as to who they are. And there's a lot of these like go through some pages and you'll see that a lot of people don't put they don't complete their profile and they have no statements about what they want. Be very explicit about what you want because that's what people are looking for. As a recruiter, I'm looking, okay, what does this person want to do? They're applying for a sock analyst position, but they're not advertising a sock analyst position. I'm scratching my head a bit, right? uh they say they want I don't know do something completely different. So, make sure that whatever you're presenting is, you know, what you're trying to attract,

right? Again, I'll refer back to the people that are still in a dating game, right? Uh you're if you're if you're positioning yourself completely wrong in the marketplace, well, you're attracting the wrong people. So, it's the same thing in the job market. You want to you want to be able to put a profile in there in LinkedIn that employers or people that are going to be wanting to hire you are going to want to click on. Okay. So, sounds very simple, but it's really important u to do that because you'll be skipped otherwise. Um, so here's some tips, right? We talked about it. LinkedIn profile headline summary clearly explain your published sites. You speak at events if

you can. If you don't, even as a small event, like if you have an opportunity to speak at B sites, take it, right? because it's it's practice and it's an it's an easy audience. You guys are an easy audience, I hope. Um, you know, you're you're going to you're going to have people that are that are feeling the same way. They're they're they're trying to build their career. They're trying to build their business. So, they're going to be very helpful for you. That's what the community is all about. So, you know, put yourself out there. And I think, you know, the more you do it, the better the easier it gets. Um, so there's a whole bunch of

things here. There's, like I said, it'll score you. Um, so I think it's important visibility ideas, uh, CTF writeups, uh, CVE disclosures. There's lots of things you can do and and that's part of the things that we're we're offering at at CCN. I'm sure Bides besides office the same thing. They offer volunteer opportunities. Uh, we have a whole bunch of volunteer opportunities. Sometimes we have too many volunteers, but sometimes we tap into those volunteers for different projects. Uh we were just working with uh Kquila and I'm trying to remember her name Monsuma that are both here in Ottawa uh to help us with the events um guide. So they helped us do that, right? So I mean that's amazing

because we gave them credit for it and they did some >> Msumi. Yeah. >> Yeah. So they you know they helped with the project. They volunteered on the project and we were able to use their skills and it's it's phenomenal because it helps the whole community, right? So, uh, feel free to volunteer in different communities like that. So, there's outreach best practices here. Uh, put them all in there for you guys. Your your mentor outreach messaging. Uh, CCN does have a mentor, uh, program, so uh, we're always looking for mentors and and mentees. Um, so there's an opportunity there. A lot of other programs have it as well. So, take advantage of those things. uh peer connection message, you know,

here are all the messages you can develop. Again, what I suggest is do these, then check them out with your peers, get some critical feedback. Don't just send them out. Okay? Uh feel free like some of you like and I think it's like these kind like the meetups anytime you can get into a community group and just talk about it. Say, does this work? Does this resonate? because you know and get some hiring managers in there to give you some like you know I mean like Jared hires a lot of people in this room are are hiring managers they have an opportunity to potentially give you some feedback like Tom is here he's you know he's always looking for people

um we had someone here from CSSE we have there's people that were here today and that are here that could give you some employer feedback okay >> I'm retired now there he is I was looking for volunteers Yes. >> Yeah. >> So again, you know, we're talking about the relationship strategy. Um you're always you need to maintain those intentionally meaning that you know if you're developing a relationship with someone, you got to feed it as an example like you know I mean like what Jarrett like you know we we've had probably since last year three or four meetings. Yeah. couple of lunches and and that's how you develop a relationship, right? You you build on it and then do that

with everybody like like I think Tom the first time we just the first time we met was like over coffee with a couple people from your team and we stayed in touch and I interviewed you and stuff. So you you you you feed opportunities, you look at opportunities, you create a collaboration that actually works for both people. Um both people have to have something out of it. Um, so you can't always be taking, you can't always be giving and and that's really really important. It's same thing with Danielle. Like Danielle and I have been working together since last year, right? Um, so you know, we're doing lots of different types of things and a lot of

it is it's not like it's it's not like it's money generating. It's stuff that we're doing that's helping each other and hopefully for the for the for the good of the community and hopefully it does pay off at some point. But I think it's it's those kinds of things that we invest in. Same thing I'm doing with net diligence. Same thing I'm doing with a lot of individuals where I don't expect anything back in return. It's it's not the way I function. I function in a way that I give and I hope that people that I'm working with are going to give back. It's it's and maybe they don't give back for three years. I'll give you one example. There's um a

CEO that I started working with about four years ago. He'd never worked in Canada. You know, he started a company here in Canada. that's an OT company and um he reached out to me wanting help on building his company. He just was really struggling with how to build a company in Canada and he had worked in Dubai, he had worked in Germany, he had worked in India and uh you know brilliant smart guy business was very successful and he kept you know he asked for help and I helped him for a couple years. I kept helping him, giving him some tips, introducing me to some people. And then it was last year, he reached out to me

and says, you know, it's my turn to give back. He says, you know, we're going to sponsor, you know, the DOT project. Uh, you're in Toronto next week. I'm taking you out to lunch. I'm taking you out to dinner. You know, you're going to meet my family. It was like, and I said, you don't have to do that. Like, it wasn't about that. But, but then you create a friendship and you create a relationship that goes way beyond. And people recognize that. They recognize that you're actually genuine. And I think that's really really important. I use that word quite a bit. Uh genuine meaning that you're not you are who you are. And and you know there it's not

perfect like you know I mean I'm people will tell me all my whole life you're like such a big personality right? I'm going like it's I can't do anything about it. It's just who I am. I I'm passionate. I talk about who I am and some people take it the wrong way, but it's who I am. And you know, I've just given up on trying to explain it. Um, and I think everybody has their own you and I don't think you should hide it. When people say you should be different, I think they want you to be different for them, not for you because it's not who you are. No, we're not we're not perfect.

I'm not saying we don't have to work on what what's what we're we're not good at, but and you know, we're not always right. That's for sure. But I think be you and be genuine and I think people will relate to you much better. Um, you know, I've got another good friend. he's on my board and you know uh he uh you know he's very clear and he's he's a great guy and he was always talking about when he first came to Canada he had this massive accent and it really made him feel like he couldn't be you know successful um that people wouldn't take him seriously and uh just this past year he uh I'm trying to remember the uh

what's that the big uh you know the everybody wants to speak um this >> TED talks. >> TED talks. Yeah. Yeah. TED talks. So he actually did a TED talk on his accent and how he it's basically defined him, right? And as a person now and how he feels so comfortable that he has this accent because it actually makes him different than everybody else and it makes him stand out and he's been very successful because of it. And I think there's there's a lot of I think a lot of people see their faults as as a weakness, but it's actually a strength. Um, so I think, you know, we we all need to reassess who we are and be more genuine about who

we are and it represents us really well in the job market and in our careers. It's it's our own baggage, right? We all have baggage. Um, so I think that's important. Um, and then you know like don't just go out there just talked about don't just go out there about you know seeking help for yourself. help others and and it doesn't mean that you're in a position you can help a lot of people, you know, when you're starting off your career. Um, but try to find a way to do it in one way, shape or form. It could be really simple. It could be like it could be just you could you could help to

volunteer somewhere that someone helped you. You could, you know, uh, write some kind words. It doesn't have to be much. It's just it's, you know, like people, you know, it's it's this thing, right? People think they need to give you a gift. Who cares? I can buy myself a gift if I want, right? I mean, I don't want a gift. I I I I want people to be genuine. I want people to just say thank you and be real. Um, and you know, I think that is enough for me. I don't I don't really care about gifts. Never have. Um, so I think it's it's more about that kind of feeling that you're getting something

really real with that person because I mean, you know, going out and spending 50 bucks or so what, you know, uh, I'm not going to be impressed by it, so don't buy me a gift. Just be real and tell me something that actually true. Um, so be prepared to help other people. Um, and you know, find we we talked about communities to participate in uh because they're all going to have potential clients, potential employers. Um, apply the five wheel. So, all these examples are here. There's links. Um, there's, you know, when you're meeting people, how you define the relationship, where did you meet this person, where could you realistically meet them? So, I think there's this there's this whole thing,

too, of trying to define where you meet people meet. And I think that's really really important. So go out of your way to go to some meetings or to go to some events. There's a lot of free things out there and I think sometimes you'd be surprised who you may bump into that can actually provide you with a an opportunity. I mean I I take the train a lot. Sometimes I'm on the train and just happen to be sitting beside someone that becomes a client. It's just like what, right? Um or you bump into someone that knows somebody that you know and all of a sudden it creates another relationship. So I think you need to

leverage those kinds of opportunities. You never know when they're going to show up. And it's not like you're hard selling. You're never hard selling. Okay? Talk from your heart. Be real. Be passionate. And people will gravitate to what you're saying. Uh again, just some quick questions. You know, what what is one natural reason to connect with them? Those kinds of things. We've got a couple of videos here and made some some links and some comments. Um you can see the flywheel example down below. um you can see how to use it. So I created those things in there for you. We'll go through them. Uh tools to build, right? So you got the the flywheel, uh obviously how you use

LinkedIn more better. Um identifying potential connections. So actually there's this worksheet here in regards to how you do it. It'll all be saved in the PDF and all be saved in the tools at the bottom. So I'll let you guys use that. Um and then it also go through these because it's all the same. And then all of these are ex examples and tools you can open each one of them. So the tools that you can use the AI research all that stuff is all embedded in here. Um so you've got all the tools you can open them up. Prospecting tools everything from surf to everything else is in here. Um so it gives you a lot of

uh things that you can use but I won't go through that. Um and then this one here is the 90-day working uh action plan. So you're you're developing that. Okay. So what are the key actions you're going to take? What are the momentum? What are the key actions? What is this growth? Um and then ba basically the detailed action categories um what you going to do. So you'll get all those from the link and then you know different tools so that and then you put some KPIs. I'm a big believer that you put some metrics. Don't make it complicated. Make it simple. simple goals, simple metrics, because if you can measure, then you know your results.

I never went into training or doing a race without having a target and having actual metrics. I knew exactly when I was racing. I knew exactly what my body weight had to be. I knew exactly what my fat percentage, my water concentration, everything. Because when you're that competitive and you're trying to do better, you know all your metrics. And when your race day came along, they had to be right there. Um, so yeah, it's it's a little crazy because you're a little you get a little intent, but it's the same thing when you're job searching or building a business. You're looking at metrics, you know, what are your sales? What are you what's your profitability? Um, you know, how many

how many sales calls have you made? Uh, how many people have you converted? You know, whatever metrics you are for your business, customer satisfaction. Same thing for jobs, you know, how many how many jobs have you applied to? How many people have reached back to you? What's your success rate? How many interviews? Um any job offers? Feedback, you know, what's the feedback? Feedback's I always ask that question. Did you get any feedback during your interviews? And if you didn't get any feedback, please, please ask for feedback. Now, having said that, some people won't give you feedback because they're too worried about giving you feedback. Now having said that really good recruiters will give you feedback and good potential

business partners will give you feedback as well. So when I don't get you know um an opportunity I'm going to ask why are you not interested in doing business I want to know why. Is it pricing? Is it is it related to my approach? Is it related to timing? Is it because they don't have budget? What's the reason? uh because you want to understand it so you can make some changes in your product or in your approach. Um so I think it's really really important to ask and it's the only way to change what you need to change. So, you need to ask for feedback. And if you're not getting any feedback, why don't you do some mock interviews with

some people, you know, I um my our uh my wife's daughter because I got remarried and um her boyfriend both went were going to med school. Okay. So, the first year they struggling to get in. Okay. because it's very difficult especially when you're from out of a province and you move to a new province which is BC and u you have to be able to meet the standard of that school and they mostly hire people from that part of that province and all kinds of rules it's really weird so they were brilliant some of the best grades ever but they weren't good at doing interviews and it's very tough these interviews um so what did we do I interview I drilled

them. I'm I'm going to do an interview. So, we did interview after interview interview on camera and I wanted to show the weaknesses. I wanted to show how they maybe didn't they weren't smiling. Maybe they were hesitating on something or maybe they made some no body language or too much body language or because people don't always feel comfortable in interviews. You feel very different in an interview. So, I think it's really really good practice to get that kind of feedback. Um because in real life you can be really calm but in an interview things change. Um you know you get a little hot, you're getting a little uncomfortable, you're worried about that first question, did I dress right? You

know all these questions are are are are hitting you. Um, so do some interviews with people and and you want the people to be tough on you because a lot of people won't tell you the truth and I think that's really really important and and they both got into uh med school different places but um and they're one's a doctor, one's finishing his PhD before he goes to become a doctor. Um, so I think they've been successful, but you know, it's it's it's a lot of work and they were very disappointed when they didn't get in in that first year. And I think it's it's uh it's the same thing for for everybody. You're going to

go through disappointments. Um, so ask for the people around you to help you and and support you. And look at all the people in this room. I'm sure there's tons of people that would get together and just, you know, and and JP here, uh, JF, I should say, on camera here. Yeah, JF, >> he's got the camera, you know. Maybe uh do some interviews. I I'll come I'll come back and do some interviews. I'm I'm a tough one, though. Believe me. Um so, >> been a good good exercise with someone. >> Yeah. >> To do it for five minutes. >> Yeah. No, it's it's it's great. You want to do it right now? >> Me, but maybe somebody

>> does someone in the audience want to do an interview?

live. >> Okay. >> You get to practice. >> You get to practice. You get to come in front with me.

I am. >> What kind of What kind of work are you looking for? >> So, I'm looking forward analyst position right now. >> Awesome. >> You guys go a little bit more. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Towards the end of that uh that thing there. >> Yeah. >> All right. So, say your name was again. Sorry. >> My name is Yousef. >> Yousef. >> Yousef. Okay. Yousef. So, so wonderful. We're gonna start right here. I'm gonna be like formal. >> Oh, we need a mic. >> Oh.

Yousef, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. >> Thanks for coming for the interview. >> Appreciate it. >> Yeah. So, tell me about a bit about yourself. >> Um, so I just wrapped up um my cyber security analyst program um about two months ago. >> Okay. >> I'm currently I currently work at a computer repair shop. So, I work with like uh refurbish computers. Um just updating them. Um I also work on um computer repairs as well. I'm in the middle of um getting a couple certifications. >> Okay. >> Um and I'm looking to like break into this uh new field. >> What What are the certifications you're trying to get right now? So I currently

so I have my um W uh my ASWish Amazon um and my computer A+ but I'm still working on my network security plus um my network plus and security plus and Linux as well. >> Okay. And how how well did you do in your programs at school? >> Um I did I did fairly well. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So what were the grades? I'm just curious as to it was like 80 average. Okay. >> Roughly 80s to 90s. Okay. And and why do you think you'd be a good fit for a company? >> Um so I'm pretty adaptable. I like I dedicated the a couple a year and a bit like up and new skills and um this is

like a really interesting field that um I find like amazing and challenging. >> Um which is something I always love I always like a new challenge. >> Okay. Um, and yeah, no, I I I'm looking to break this field because I find it very interesting and I enjoy working on >> Have you done any AI projects to to Nate? Have you worked with AI and can you tell me a bit about that? >> Um, I cannot say I've worked on AI projects um or so that I probably still have to do a little work on. >> Um, but I'm opening open to learning. >> Okay. And if I if I talk to people that really know you well, what would they

say about you? What would be the things I would say that I'm hardwork that I um really enjoy like compressive criticism and enjoy like meeting like um working on uh meeting expectations and you know have a positive can do attitude. So yeah. >> Okay. Perfect. Well, very nice to meet you. >> Nice to meet you too. >> Good job. Good job. did a good you did a good job, you know, and and the only thing I would say is that uh you know uh you were getting a little uh little uncomfortable. There a couple times you got uncomfortable and that's normal. I don't think it was anything bad. I think you know you can react feeling a little tension. I think

as long as you and he was, you know, kind of going with it. Um you know when I asked you the AI question, I think you could have answered it a little differently. Um but I think that's a tough one. like you were honest, but I think you could also kind of mentioned, you know, like, hey, yeah, I have a significant interest in this area and I want to develop it a bit more. But I think I think overall you did really well and I think your body language is good. We're both standing and you were like facing me and you're looking at me. So I think actually you did a good job. So are you are you finding So I'll ask

the question. Are you getting any feedback during interviews?

comp. >> Okay. >> Oh yeah, I have been giving out cover letters and resumes and stuff. But um I think um like you mentioning that even like that checklist I think will really like set the game because competition is really tough right now. So >> yeah I yeah you gota look at every advantage but no I think it did well. So, like I said, I think the more interviews you do, the less you get nervous and uh you know, so I think it's just practice. It's just practice. And I think you did well. So, just do do more interviews, right? I mean, and that's why I said I think it's important for people to match up and feel comfortable

because even that little sign of nervousness can make people feel a little, >> you know, they just kind of like the hiring manager feels a little low. Why is this person nervous? You start you start reading into things and it doesn't mean it's true. It just means it's just another little tidbit that potentially a hiring manager will go, "Oh, this person versus this person." >> I feel like, >> right, >> how how do you get over like that nervousness? Like because I I definitely did feel it. Like how do And like it does happen sometimes. Like how do you get over like that nervousness? >> Practice. >> Yeah. >> It's just practice. It's like getting in

front of a group like you guys, right? You got to figure out if you're going to get just go with the flow. You make a mistake. You can't you you have to just feel comfortable. And I think the more you do it, the more comfortable you are. Like I stopped public speaking for years. I I stopped like I didn't do it for years. And I'm just starting to get back into it. Um you know, when I was younger, when I was in my 20s or my 30s, I used to go up all the time. And I was a lot more comfortable back then than I was now. I had a lot less knowledge, but I

was a lot more comfortable back then. I was like, you know, like um maybe too much. But it takes practice, you know, because you're you're you know, you get to a point where you don't need paper. You don't need to think about it. You just just normal communication. It's just a conversation. You know, I do podcast as an example. And I ask one question, then I just let the conversation roll. So that conversation, that first question leads to that answer from that person. And then that answer goes to my next question. the next question and the next question. I don't look at any questions after I ask my first question because it's a natural flow. It's a conversation and and I

think it's just you get to a point where you get comfortable just doing it now. It's almost like an interview for me, right? So I'm I'm basically interviewing a person and just asking questions around cyber security be talking about you know quantum technology or I could be talking about AI or I could be talking about socks or whatever but it doesn't really matter because I know all the techn I'm not an expert in any of those areas but I understand all the technologies and I also understand all the business language right so you just get to a point where you feel comfortable so practice so you know I really tell especially people that are uncomfortable with interviews do them

with the group like this get three, four people together just to do interviews. But make sure there's someone in that room. That's really critical. Um because, you know, again, going to one of my friends, one of my adviserss, I was, you know, he invited me to his house. I stayed overnight there and uh we were going to a show the next day and uh I could hear him talking to customers and um he doing he was doing a customer interview and I gave him some feedback after because I said like, "Want to do a second? Sorry, I I don't want to intervene in your conversation. If you want to keep going, you want to do a

second? >> No, no, >> no, no, not right now. Uh, maybe a bit, but but yeah, the the the point was on that is that I gave him feedback right after he came out of it because I said, you know, one of the things you were doing is you you were talking too fast. He was trying to get his message, his business message out so much because he knew he had limited time. you got half an hour with the customer and you're trying to get your message out, but he wasn't giving the customer enough time to talk. The customers, they're going to have questions. They're going to have things that and you got to give him that space for them to be able

to ask that question. And he was kind of like jamming everything in. And you know, he's he's really good at what he does and he's technically brilliant. Um, but you know, that little bit of advice he accepted, he was very open to it. Um, and I think that's really important. You know, you have to be open to the advice that people will give you. Doesn't mean they're always right, but I think that's how you build your skills. Yes. >> So, what would you what advice would you give like the top five things that you should prepare for in to get you to an interview? Like what are recruiters looking for? What would make the differentiation between you and

everybody else? I I think it has a lot to do. Well, a couple of things. One is just the research. So, always research a company you're going into and have some things that you're ready to talk about, right? Second, that you're going to be ready to talk about how you actually did the stuff that you say you can do, right? So, you got to be able to back it up with real examples and and and show how you actually, you know, did something at a past job or you did something on a project or how you would do something if you learned something. Um, so I think those are the two basic ones. The third one is to be genuine, is

to come in and actually be you. Um, and and to project that. So that means that when you're you're you're you're comfortable, you're you're you're talking to those those individuals, if it's one person or two person, three persons in the room, sometimes they they switch it up and you're having a conversation with them. And I would say that just by doing that, just by having that ability to, you know, feel confident without being overconfident, um, I think we'll we'll be a great ground setter. So I think those three things are the are the beginning of it. I would say the next one is to be able to, you know, again, it comes back with the third one, which is, you know,

sometimes like show some show some personality. It's almost like you >> they can remember you >> smile a bit, you know, like you know, like I I've had interviews with people that are so glum, you know, they're they're just they don't smile. They don't give you any visibility as to who they are. So it's not like do you want to work with that person like seriously like you, you know? No, seriously. So, it's it's have a bit of no I'm not saying smile all the time like you don't want, you know, like smiley person um because you feel like they're deranged or something, but the reality is you want someone that you can feel comfortable with. So, they

got to show some personality. So, I'd say that's probably number four. Um and then I think, you know, again, um I would want them to be very comfortable with like you being a kind person and a good person. Um because I think that's important to employers as well. they want to work with someone that they can feel that they could trust. Um, so I think, you know, if you work on those things, those will help dramatically. Um, and then you back it up when you leave and you're following up with them and you're doing the things that you need to do and you're gracious even if you don't get the job. So, you know, going back to Ishmail, my friend Ishmail

because I use him for everything like do take that approach. taking, you know, head up, heads up, you know, like very very, you know, always professional, always the high-end route. Um, no matter how, you know, you know, maybe you feel like you've been mistreated or you didn't get the feedback or, you know, you didn't get the job and maybe you think you should have because in some cases, you weren't going to get that job in the first place. You know, they already had someone in line. You know, it's true. they they already have someone in mind or they're, you know, they they they've already made their selection because, you know, friend of Suzie is coming in and they're hiring a

friend of Susie. You know, seriously, it happens all the time. Um, so I'm just saying that those are the kinds of things that happen. So, you just be, you know, professional. Yeah. Any other questions? Good. So, um, set your KPIs. Um, and then you know, basically, uh, when you get to the next page, which I think is pretty much that one, um, you got you're going to have a plan completely built out here, and it's going to actually show you the contacts you've developed, the actions, and the milestones you've done. So, this little tree will all be have those nice little leaves on it. Um, it will actually, and then you're going to have an AI strategy report that gets

generated. So, it will actually tell you the things you're doing right, some of the things you still need to work on. And then at the bottom of it, you're going to be able to see obviously the completion checklist for all the different steps. Um, it's going to print it out to you in a PDF. You're going to have a self-evaluation score and you're going to have a peer review because I'm asking for you guys to do peer reviews on it. Um, and then you're going to be able to um see all the progress in the different areas and you're going to be able to download your your your work so that if you didn't complete it, you're

able to re-upload it the next time you come here. and continue. Okay, so it's not gonna it's going to allow you to just take a break if you want because it's a lot of work um to build it and then you're going to be able to download the checklist as well. Okay, so it's it's kind of built so that you don't have to put any personal information in here. Um you can put all the information to build your plan, use what you want and then basically, you know, carry on if you want and then it can be used by other people in the community. So we can make changes to it. So it's not perfect.

I'm not saying it's perfect. There's things that are missing or could be clearer. Maybe they can be more examples. I've tried to, if you've noticed, uh, go back a few steps here, but there's these little light bulbs everywhere. Those little light bulbs give you advice at every one of them. Okay? So, I've built it in so that there's advice at each of those to provide you with information at every step. Okay? So, um, that's basically the the the the tool. Um, I'm happy to answer any questions you have on both building a business or building a uh um, you know, your career. Any other questions at all from anybody? >> Yeah, >> it's not really

security, but maybe you can recommend some communities for data science professionals where um, they can offer mentorship. Yeah, it's it's um I where I would probably go I mean it's a good place to look would be some of the uh um women in cyber security. It doesn't have to be cyber security but you STEM. So I would look at the STEM uh groups. Um there's quite a few of them. I don't know. I think they're part of the groups that we have in our community list. So if you look at that I think it's on page two. Um I think you can go and access that list. I think it's there. It's either two or three. But yeah, you can pull you

can pull that that tool out. I think we've got about 150 or 160 organizations and there are some that very much focus on that. Um I think that would be a good start. Um but there's probably chapters even here in Ottawa. I does anybody know of any of the data data networking? Is it you know you didn't say data networking. You said >> data science. >> Data science. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there are. Does anybody know of any? I'm sure there are though. Um, if you send me your email, I'll find one for you because I'm sure I'm connected to them and I'm connected to a lot of the groups that are working on that and a

lot of the STEM groups are involved in that. So, any other questions? >> This is Yeah, >> using what? Sorry. >> Okay.

>> And then they sort of question the email. >> No. Um there's no I mean the information is is public. So all that information that those tools gather are public information. So, you might have trouble finding that public information. Uh, but it's all public. It's all done through the these these tools that have access to it or found the information at some point on the internet. Um, so there's no privacy issues. Now, if you misuse the tool in the sense of how you communicate with them, um, or you reach out for reasons that are, you know, not ethical reasons, then yes, obviously you'd be in trouble. Um, but I think if you're using it for the right reasons, there's no re

I've never had an issue. And um if you don't abuse a tool then it's not a problem. If you abuse a tool in any way, shape or form on any social platform it it it will become an issue, right? So I think that's something that you know uh one of the key tenants is be be ethical in your behavior and approach people with with a value proposition versus just approaching them to spam them or look for a job or whatever. You know, I mean, I get, unfortunately, most of us get spammed an awful lot uh for for things that are crazy. I mean, the one that I hate the most is, you know, you know how many awards I won this year? I

think I've won about 50 awards, but I have to pay for them all. So, I haven't won any of them because they all ask for five or $10,000 for these awards. So, I wonder how the people that winning all these awards are getting these awards. I don't know. It's there's something wrong there, right? There's something with the industry that basically is giving out awards, but you have to pay for them. I keep scratching my head, but that's why CCN does not give out awards because I don't believe in communities building out awards because you're usually giving out awards to people in your own communities. So, um it's not it's not, you know, usually a great way

to do things. I'd rather recognize people just personally uh versus trying to recognize them for that. But yeah, there's there's a lot of spamming going out there. There's a lot of people misusing data. Um, so I think that uh yeah, just use it ethically. So, um, thank you guys. You guys have been a wonderful audience. Feel free to reach out for me. Make sure you get that address. Uh, feel free to become a member of the Canadian Cyber Security Network. Uh, we're going to be doing some things. Uh, thank you so much to Jared and Jay up here. Uh, they've been wonderful.

THANK you and be safe.