Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign welcome to the Victory Podcast.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Hey victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victory Show. If this is the first time you're joining us, I'm Rachel League with Bestseller by Design. Our founder, Travis Cody is the bestselling author of 16 books, and we've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own bestselling books as well. Through that journey, we've discovered a fascinating pattern most businesses really struggle to break past the seven figure revenue mark. On this show, I sit down with some of the world's most successful CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they use to scale way past that mark so you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business strategies. Starting now. Today's guest is Kevin Johnson. He's the CEO and founder of Secure Ideas, a consulting firm specializing in security testing and training. With over 30 years of experience in cyber security, Kevin has helped protect Fortune 100 companies, women agencies, and the global organizations through penetration testing, incident response, and security architecture. He is a global board member at owasp, a longtime faculty member at IONS Research, and a former senior instructor and course author at SANS Institute. Kevin is also the creator and contributor to multiple open source security projects including Samurai, wtf, Laudanum, Yokoso, and the Base project for snort. A passionate advocate for education and information sharing, Kevin frequently keynotes and speaks at top security conferences such as rsa, defcon, and Black Hat. Kevin, welcome to the show. He's a someone passionate about a particular topic, which we love.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: That works. That works.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: So tell us, you've been working in cyber security for many decades. What first drew you to it? Cybersecurity. This whole space.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: I think honestly the answer of I'm a nerd is the right answer. I graduated high school and I got a job and the job back then was writing software and running their network and one thing led to another and here I am too many years later doing what I do. But I've always loved technology, so it really was a natural path out of high school, right? And I know I'm supposed to encourage college and all that kind of stuff, whatever, but for me, that was just where I went. My twin brother and I liked computers. We got involved, we messed around with stuff and then we. I figured out I could do it for a living.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Tell me about what did that look like when you were early on playing around with tech and what was the first project that really got you hooked?
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Well, Back when I started. Had to. You had to write a lot of the software you wanted. You couldn't just. There wasn't an Internet that, like, we see it today. There wasn't. You know, you didn't go to the. The. You didn't go to a website and download software. You had to build it, you had to write it. And so it's actually funny. I just recently found one of the first books I had gotten way back when it was called the Computer Olympics. I think it was published in 84, 85, something like that. And it had code. Literally lines of code, pages of code, and you sat and you typed it in, and then you ran the software. And as boring and awful and tedious as that that sounds, it just hooked me, right? Like, the. The idea that I could write something and the computer would do it, and if it didn't do it, I could figure out why. Right. Like, the troubleshooting was really the part I, like, still do. It's actually what got me into what I do today is troubleshooting systems. And how they ran naturally makes it so that you can figure out how to break them. And so, you know, the. We talk about penetration testing and stuff like that. You know, in the simplest of terms, job is professional hacker. Right. We. We break into businesses, whether it's their computers, their applications, or even their buildings, and we break in and we figure out what we can do, what we can steal with permission, and then we tell them how we did it. Here's what we were able to do, here's why we were able to do it, and here's how you fix that. So it just became, I can troubleshoot something. Well, if I can troubleshoot it, I can figure out how to break it. So it changed.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: I love that, Zach. Sounds like a lot of fun.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: It can be.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that transition from writing the code and your very early career into wanting to start your own consulting company. And you know what really inspires secure ideas?
[00:04:38] Speaker A: It's actually really simple. I was going from job. I say job to job. You know, I work at a place for a few years and then get a new job. And I did a little bit of everything when it comes to computers, whether it was writing code or building networks or installing software. Right. Whatever that was. And I ended up getting a job up here in. I say up here in Jacksonville. I moved from South Florida to Jacksonville and got a job at Blue Cross Florida. And that was when I got exposed to the professional side of cybersecurity up until then, when you're messing around with stuff, you're trying to make it secure, you're trying to make it work, whatever.
And took a training class, met a guy named Mike Poor. He ran a consulting firm. And by that point, I was. I was running the base project and some other things. And. And the class I took from Mike, they actually taught my software in the class, which was a little weird, right? I did not know that. When I went into the class, you know, day one of the class, I get the books, and I'm like, hey, wait a minute. This is weird. Mike took me and some other students to dinner and. And literally just said, hey, Kevin, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, well, I want to be you. I want to teach, I want to consult, I want to. I want to do all this kind of stuff. And he was like, okay, well, here's how you do it. And he and I sat down, we talked about some stuff. And to be clear, the path I took back then really isn't the same path today, so. But it was basically take these three certification tests, learn this stuff, and then let me know, and that's what I did. And I took the three tests, I passed them, and Mike hired me, worked with him for a few years. And then, honestly, I. I left that company to work at bank of America. And when I did that transition, the question was, hey, can you do stuff on the side? And I said, yeah, I can. I talked to my new boss. I found out I could. There was. Turned out they had gotten an exception with HR to let me, but. And that's how Secure Ideas started. I was doing stuff on the side. We're now. Next month will be 15 years. We have about 30 employees. And there are days I wake up and I'm not exactly sure how we ended up where we ended up, but I like it.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: What do you think led to them giving you an exception? Because that's a really special thing, to be able to balance having stable cash flow and then also work on a passion project that's now bloomed into a whole nother career path for you?
[00:06:57] Speaker A: I don't like answering that question because I feel conceited answering the question. I was recruited to the bank because of not only my skill set, but the. The word is probably notoriety in the field. I'm in the cybersecurity field in penetration testing. You know, I built a lot of the curriculum other people are trained on. I. I was involved in a lot of projects and in the right place at the Right.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Time.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: And so I was pretty well known and still am in the field. And so they wanted me to help build a program at the bank. And so it. That gave me a little bit more ability to say, hey, I want to be able to do this other thing than. Than normally. So I don't want, like, it's not. Well, I'm so special, you know, I'm. I'm special, I guess.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great. It sounds like you were really skilled at your area of expertise, and they sought that out and that gave you the negotiating leverage. Tell me a little bit. You mentioned Mike, your mentor and first boss. What was it about his career path that made you say, I want to do that?
[00:07:59] Speaker A: It's not the career path. It's what you get to do in the job. So I'm a. I'm a very firm believer that. And I believe this for any industry. But. But I'll talk about cybersecurity, is that as a person in the field who knows something, it doesn't mean you have to know everything. You don't have to be the best, but if you know something, you have a. An ethical responsibility to share that knowledge with other people. The phrase we always hear is, we stand on the shoulder of giants. I am where I am today because there were people who came before me who knew stuff and built stuff and shared that knowledge. I believe there's a second half to that phrase that we often ignore. And that second half is, you know, it's, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and we are the shoulders others will stand upon, right? If. If we do what we do correctly, we are lifting up and.
And supporting, you know, for the lack of a better term, the next generation of people that do this. Look, I'm 52 years old. I'm probably not going to be hacking stuff for another 30 years, right?
@ some point, somebody else has to step up and do what I'm doing, and if I don't support that. And so when I looked at Mike, Mike embodied that in his job, still does, right? Teaches people, explains things, builds tools, and lets other people have them so that they can use them. He is blunt, one of the best examples of somebody who builds up everybody around them. And so sitting in the classroom with him teaching, I realized that's what I wanted to do. I didn't want to just work in corporate America. And let me be clear, I work in corporate America, but I. Right. I didn't want to just be a drudge going to a cubicle and doing my job and Maybe being awesome at it, maybe sucking at it, but just doing that day to day. I wanted to be able to help other people get there. And so that was it. Also a little bit of it was also the idea that as a consultant in the, in the type of consulting that we do, most of our projects last less than a month. We're not, we're not doing multi year engagements where you're working with the same customer. I mean we work with customers year after year after year, but it's not on the same project, it's not attacking the same thing. And so the variety of what I get to do is very, very much a driver for doing it.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: So tell us a little bit about how that pouring into others and lifting others up shaped the early team at Secure Ideas. And when did you even start to bring people on?
[00:10:33] Speaker A: So when I started security as it was just a couple of us working on it, doing stuff on the side, once we realized it was, it was actually going to pay the bills, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, like, like you pointed out and it is absolutely accurate. I was in a very lucky position that I had a day job that paid my bills, that gave me insurance that, that handled all that stuff. And so I was able to take on stuff and work it as kind of a hobby project. But after a couple months I realized two and a half months is how long I lasted at the bank. And I realized this was really good. And there were some changes at the bank. They had done some reorgs and the new management had come in over my team, they had rearranged some stuff and the new management over my team didn't want me to do what they had hired me for. And so they were going to train me to do completely different. And it was not something I wanted to do. And so I left and we started looking. Then it probably took another two months before we hired the first person. And that was a big step there was in this field. Companies like mine that build up and hire people and build a team are as common as sole proprietor consulting organizations that have one or two people that are running it and then they, they work with partnerships and stuff like that instead of employees. And so it literally was a conversation. We sat down and we said, which, which direction do we want to go? And I can't tell you why we went the direction of hiring people. But, but I, if I, if I'm, if I'm being completely open about it, it probably was. We were getting jobs offered to us that required staff and it looked Better to take the job than to reject the job, right? And so I, I'd like to pretend that we had a massive business plan and really thought it through and like, oh yeah, this is how we're going to go. But I bet you if I'm, if I'm really being honest, it was a matter of that's a really good contract and to get it we have to hire somebody. Let's hire somebody. So not a lot of forethought into this. I'm not a business person, I am a nerd that has accidentally succeeded over 15 years.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Well, I think that's excellent validation of that. What you were doing early on really was adding a lot of value with the pull from the market in terms of the demand and that forcing you to scale maybe faster than you had anticipated. And so as you were building out your team to be able to accept these contracts, how did you think about maintaining quality and consistency as you scaled your business?
[00:13:03] Speaker A: That's actually a big deal for us, right? And I think that's a big deal for every company. But because of the fact that what we are doing touches such sensitive stuff, I mean, let's be blunt, right?
If you hire a company to perform a penetration test, the likelihood is we're going to access really sensitive data. We're going to show you things that you aren't going to be happy to find out, right? Nobody, nobody likes being told their baby is ugly. And the reality is babies are ugly. I know we're supposed to think they're adorable and they're cute, but when they're newborn, they don't have kneecaps, their skull isn't connected. They're squishy humans, right? And we tell new parents. And by the way, I have two kids and they know I believe that I say this all the time. So we tell brand new parents that their baby is adorable. Like, you look at this squishy human and you're like, oh my gosh, they have your eyes. They look just like your grandmother. That's crud, right? They look like squishy dolls and they grow into beautiful children. Or not. Right? And, and that's my job with what people have built, right? Like we go into organizations and they have it. Let's, let's use an example. I'm working with an organization.
They had built their primary application over a nine year period. This, this is a true story and obviously I'm going to anonymize who it is, right? But they had worked for nine years to build their primary application and they Were very, very proud of this application. Look at what we built. This is amazing, right? And. And they had a reason that they hired us. And we were the very first time they had ever had somebody look at the security of the system.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Wow. After nine years.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Right? And so I, I was one of the consultants that went in, one of the pen testers, and it took about 30 minutes for me and my coworker to figure out how to steal all. I think it was 9 million people's data right through the app. It was a very simple flaw, very simple vulnerability. And it took us about half an hour to find it. Now, we, we then spent three or four more days really tearing this thing apart and found a whole bunch of other stuff. But. But in less than an hour, in a half an hour, we have completely undermined the build of this system. Right? And now I have to go back to their staff and say, wow, what you built is awesome. But. And here's all the data I stole. And here's this information, and this is bad, and here's why it's bad. And here's this very fundamental error that you made, and you made it nine years ago and then built a system on top of this fundamental error, and I get to tell you, you suck. Now, I don't say it that way, right, but that's how they're going to take it. Nobody likes hearing me. I don't. Right. And so when we started hiring, this was all related to your question. I swear, when we started hiring, that was one of the things that we have to look at, right? Like, okay, let's say I'm hiring you. You're Rachel, you're a nerd. You want to be a pen tester. I'm going to evaluate whether I can help you hire you. I need to not just make sure that you have the technical chops to do what we do, because that's important. If you don't have the technical chops, that's what we do. But I also have to verify that you have. And I. And I hate the phrase soft skills because it sounds like they aren't important, that they're not critical or that they're not difficult to have. Bluntly, as a nerd, I find the soft skills to be much harder. I'm not nice to people. I try to be nice to people, right? I, I pretend to be a good guy. I. But I have to verify that the person I'm hiring is not going to go into an organization, tell them they suck, make them mad, hurt their feelings. I'll give you a different example. I was working with a payroll company that works with small businesses and we found a pretty significant problem in their system. And we're doing a debrief meeting. So we're in, we're in the meeting with their staff, their developers, and there's this one guy sitting there. Did I tell you? I don't, I'm not really good with names and people, right.
I really should never be in front of people. I am awful. Okay? So I'm in this room and there's this guy that if I paid a little bit more attention, I think I would have noticed that people kind of deferred to him. But that involves paying attention to people's emotions and stuff like that. And I suck at that. I've not been diagnosed with anything, but I'm sure I trigger some spectrum thing. And so we go through this entire presentation and I show them like, okay, we found this, we found this. This is bad, this was good. But it's this over here. We go through the whole thing and at the end of this, you know, 45 minute, hour long briefing, the dude that I mentioned says, I got, I got one question. Like, yeah, cool. I, I got one answer. And he goes, we're a company, we work with small businesses. You're the owner of a small business.
After having seen what you saw, you know, this time, would you use our software? And without even realizing it, I laughed and said, oh God, no.
Which by the way, is not the right response. But it's made worse that this guy was actually the founder of the organization and was the original architect and developer of the software they were selling. Right? So not only was this the guy that basically wrote my checks, signed my checks, but he's also the guy that built the ugly baby.
And I, right. So when I hire people, I have to make sure that they're not going to laugh at the founder of an organization and say, oh God, no. Right? And so this is what we, we have to deal with. And so as we, we, our hiring process, our growth process, Jason, my business partner and I both, we do a lot of work at making sure talk about that stuff that we always, we matter of fact, we're, we're taking the whole company down to Orlando to go through a Disney Institute course on quality service. Right? Customer service. Because while we're nerds, customer service is really what we do, right? And so that's the stuff we have to look at. I think I babbled a bunch of stuff at you. And in answer to your question, no.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: I mean, it totally makes sense. It sounds like one, perhaps painful learning illuminated an area that maybe wasn't a strong suit of yours, and so you hired for that. I think that makes a lot of sense and is a smart way to scale. And I love hearing how you're taking the team down to do a sort of leadership customer service type course at the Disney Institute. I mean, they're known for customer service, and I think investing in your team is something that they'll probably really value. When did you decide that you needed something like that or you felt like it was going to be valuable for your team?
[00:19:59] Speaker A: So it's, again, probably not the best plan.
Right. During COVID I am a little bit of a Disney fanatic. I love them. I. I go all the time. I'm in Florida, so it's easy, right. You drive down, it's done. But I'd always heard good things about their training. I hate to say it, but. But. And I hate to say it because I do training. Like, I sell trainings, but that's an expensive thing with not a real good way up front to know whether you're buying the right training. And I'm sure we've all taken bad classes, even if it, you know, you've had that teacher that you looked at and went, you don't even understand what you're talking about. I don't. Right. And so while I heard good things, it was always like, it's a little expensive to try to deal with that. And not just the expense of the class, but the expense of the travel and all this kind of stuff. During COVID Disney Institute actually put some of their courses online in a short format.
And Jason and I both took them and we felt like they had given us some good stuff. And then we tried to. We tried to communicate what we wanted to accomplish. And what Jason and I realized was that while we are good at, if I may say so myself, we're good at what we do, we're good at that. We're not necessarily the best at communicating what other people think or how to do things. And so we took a small subset down in January to take the course. And when we took the long form course, we realized how. And I hate, I feel like this is an ad for Disney Institute. It's not what this is. But when we took the long form course, we realized how great the interactivity was with the facilitator or the stuff. And bluntly, we said to them, hey, what does it take to do a private one of these? And they said, Lots of money. And so we, we sat down, we looked at it, and we decided that this was a good opportunity for us to do. Not just, hey, everybody, let's understand how customer service works. What we want to get out of this because has grown quite significantly the last few years, but not only that, but also ba. You know, we're a, we're a remote workforce. We have an office in Jacksonville, but most people don't live anywhere near it. Right. The, the vast majority of our staff are remote. And even the people who live in Jacksonville, I mean, I'm not in the office right now. I. Right. We work from home, we work remotely. And so this is an opportunity not just to have a training class, but also to have a team building exercise. So we're, we're literally, we're bringing everybody together. Every in the company's gonna go, we're, we're doing a dinner and then the class the next day. And then we, we've actually bought tickets for everybody to go into Epcot after hours.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: So fun.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: And do this. And then we've rented the conference room for the next day. This way, more information than you probably care about, but. Right. And then what we're gonna do is, so we're taking the one day class, then we're doing the team building. Let's ride rides. Right? Like, who doesn't want to get on a roller coaster with all their coworkers? And then the next day we've rented the conference room to basically sit down as a company and say, okay, here's what we learned yesterday. Let's walk through it together, let's flesh it out, and let's see what our next steps are with the hope that we can do this type of team building, build out that thing. And bluntly, in our field, customer service is a differentiator. Right. Too many pen test firms, penetration testing firms, they've gone down the I'm a nerd, I don't have to talk to you route. And whereas we have always done the opposite. We want to share it, we want to knowledge transfer, all that kind of stuff. And so that's what made us do it again. Long answer to a very simple question.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Well, I love the enthusiasm, and I think what it conveys to me is a real commitment to investing in your people. And I know you've said a couple of times, we didn't really have a big business plan, but it's clear that you have some idea deep down about the growth and wanting to set a solid foundation that comes from investing in your current team to set up the future team members for success. And I think that's something that a lot of companies talk about, is valuing their people, investing in their people. But it sounds like it's been really critical to your scaling success is making sure not only to have the right hires to start, but continuing to help shape and grow your employees and their skill sets, even when the ROI is maybe not as defined as you would hope.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: With this, bluntly, I've always ascribed to the idea that, you know, you either train your people and run the risk of them leaving, or you don't train the people and they stay. So I'm a very firm believer, Jason is as well, that our job as leaders, as managers, as owners, is to enable every one of our staff to get to where they want to get to.
If we've done that, we've tried to do that our entire time we've been here is we think about what we liked about previous managers, what we hated about previous managers, and we try to be the first and not the second. And so we, We. We want our team. As a matter of fact, right now, Jason and I are, you know, we're companies 15 years old. Jason and I aren't young guys anymore. We're now looking at what does the transition mean? What does. What does it look like at, you know, a year from now, five years from now, whatever that is. And one of the things we're evaluating is whether or not it works to just sell the company to the employees. And if you built a company on crappy people that you didn't invest in, then you're just kind of throwing them to the wind, and that's not what we want to do.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: So again, I'm hearing vision. You can call yourself maybe a visionary, not a business person, if that. That feels more fitting. But it's clear that there's a thoughtful approach to all the steps that you take.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: We try.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: How has retention been given? You mentioned investing in people you know, they may or may not leave.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I think we're. We're decent in our field. We're about the same. We have a lot of people that have been with us for a long time, and we have new. Like I said, we grew up rapidly over the last few years. Last five years have really been our biggest growth. And so there's been one of the problems that we've had. And I. I'm not sure whether I would count this as a retention problem or as a hiring problem. One of the problems that we have had is most people don't understand what it takes to be a consultant. And not everybody is made to be a consultant. And that's not a negative about the person. That's not a, that's not a skill set thing. Right. Like there are people, I worked with them when I at Blue Cross, when I was at American Express, when I was at Alamo. All jobs that are on my LinkedIn profile. So we're not talking customers, we're talking previous employers. There are people who thrive in that. I'm in a cubicle, I work with a team, I've got a two year project, I'm working on, whatever that is. And they love that. And that's cool. That not for me. And so we have had some times where we've hired people and they aren't necessarily made for consulting. They think they are or they hope they are and then we try to help them get to where they need to be. So. Yeah, yeah. So most, yeah, I'd say most of our people either stay here or we help transition them to the next step in their career, whether it's starting their own. You know, we've had a number of consultants that have left us and started their own business, which is awesome. I love it when I see that. Or people who have moved up. You know, we, we have a career path at Secure Ideas up into management. And now that we're bigger. Right. We've seen that path work.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Yeah. It's so interesting to hear a cybersecurity company so much focused on people and not being your differentiator. And I think that's a really unique piece of probably why you've been successful in scaling not only in the approach to customer service, but internally with your team and having that internal expertise grow over time. And I think that's pretty differentiated from what you typically hear. And how did you discover that that was what was going to help you stand out from the rest of the companies in the space?
[00:27:53] Speaker A: It's how I want to be treated. It wasn't a differentiator when we did it. It was a how do you want to be treated? This is how I want to be treated. It's, it's. I remember back in probably 2011, I was talking to a guy that I knew, had known him for a while, he had taken some classes from me when I was at Sam's and we were talking about hiring him and we ended up not hiring him. He got a job that he thought would be better for him and I think it was. That sounded rude. I don't mean it that way. And we were talking to him about the job, and he. We were good friends. And he said to me, kevin, I, you know, the. Feel awkward asking this. And I said, okay, what do you need to know? And he said, you know, I'm. I'm a little bit older than you are. And I'm like, okay. And I'm like, you know, I'm not allowed to ask you your age. And he's like, yeah, but you know how old I am. We've known each other long enough. You know, my age. And I'm like, okay. And he goes, I don't know if I can take a job at a startup that, you know, I don't have benefits and health insurance and a 401k, because I have all that right now. And. And I stopped and I laughed. And then I realized he wasn't kidding. And I said to him, I'm not going to say his name. I said, hey, dude, why would you think we don't have health insurance? Why would you think we don't have a 401k? He's like, well, you're a company that's like, less than a year old. Like, those are expenses. I'm like, dude, I also am an adult with two kids and, right? I need health insurance and a 401k and all that kind of stuff. And it like, blew this guy's mind because he was like, well, like, how are you doing that? I'm like, well, you gotta do it. Like, you can't right too often. And like I said, it was a. Would I take a job that didn't have these benefits? And I'm not saying we got the best benefits. I think we've got pretty damn good benefits. But it's like, would I take a job if the guy offering me the job said, hey, we'll give you a paycheck, but you're on your own for all the other stuff. And the answer is no. It's the same thing with everything else. Would I take a job that wasn't willing to train me? Would I take a job that wouldn't focus on people? And this is made even easier to come up with because we don't have a product, we don't sell a widget, we sell a service that is only possible because of the staff we hire, so that, in fact, makes them the most important part of this business, right? And so if I don't invest in them, if I don't pay attention to what they're trying to do, or at least try, like I said, I'm not a great person. I, I do my best, then I'm pretty much not going to be able to do what I need to do.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Well, I don't know you personally, but the amount of time that you spend on this call, talking about how much you've been investing in and paying attention to your employees and as. As well, sort of putting yourself in the seat of your customers, I think shows a business prowess and maybe that you're not as mean of a person as you. You claim to be.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Talk to some of the people that I've given reports to. Hell yeah.
Or talk to. I do expert witness work and talk to the other side.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Right, right. Well, I, I think. I really appreciate that you, in everything you do, it sounds like your success is also built on the fact that you think about others, put others first, and then you build solutions and workplaces that others want to be a part of. So tell us, what's next for Secure Ideas?
[00:31:03] Speaker A: We're. We're still growing. Matter of fact, we're hiring right now. We're. And that is not an invitation for a whole bunch of people to send me resumes.
I, we pretty much hire based on recommendation. We don't, we don't put out job wrecks. But it is a case of knowing somebody. I hate to say that, but, but we're hiring, we're growing, we're doubling down and focusing on our consulting. And like, I, Jason and I are in the process of figuring out what is next, whether that's selling to some other firm or figuring out some way to. To sell to the employees. And then that's.
I'm hoping the secure ideas has another 15.
I like, I like what, what we've built.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: So with all this reflection on what's next, tell me, what does Victory mean to you today?
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good question. I think that what Victory means to me is continuing to be able to produce. I mean, I hate. I feel like this is such a market.
But continuing to produce helpful results for our customers while encouraging and building up our employees. You know, we, we are in a field that is changing every day. We're in a. And not that other fields aren't. I'm just, you know, we are in a field that we have to be on top of the latest attack, the latest vulnerability, the latest technology. And that's a lot of work. Bluntly, that is a lot of work for everybody in and outside of their job. So for me, Victory is seeing a group of people that, that the customer comes back and says, man, that was great. Let's do this again. And the people who are doing it enjoy what they do.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: So if you could go back and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Trust in yourself. You're better than you think. I know for a fact that my self confidence has undermined many of the things I have tried to do. There have been a lot of choices we've made because. Because of that. And I would. That is the one thing I would change.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Yourself. Make choices out of confidence and optimism, not fear.
Well, Kevin, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. It was a pleasure.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Thank you.
