What Do You Love?
Can doing the things that make you happy lead to success?
Have you ever gone through a period in your life where you feel like you just keep plugging away and you’re trying to live up to everyone’s standards, and even though you thought you did, somehow it just wasn’t good enough?
There’s this bar you have to hit and so you hit it and then they raise the bar. Or maybe they didn’t raise the bar; It’s just that hitting that bar didn’t do you any good or make any difference in your life. Maybe things even got worse.
I spoke at a conference last year where the audience rated me 5 out of 5. This surprised me given other talks going at the same time by amazing presenters with similar topics. I was so happy.
But instead of that great score leading to more work from that organization I ended up getting less. When I asked about it I was told that not too many people replied and those scores didn’t matter. They said it was the topic, not me. However, I used my own slides and they were completely different than the slides they wanted me to use. At the end of both presentations I gave to different groups of people, the audience clapped.
Some things are out of your control. Oh well. It happens. Even to people you might think have really “made it.” Someone just told me I was “famous” and I said, “no I’m not.” I’m just a nerd in my house trying to help people with some security problems.
It’s funny how some people see you and are in awe and these other people are holding you up to impossible standards and even when you meet them it’s not good enough.
Life is too short for all of that.
It’s in those times I have to remind myself why I do what I do and what I really care about. I’ve really been disappointed by some people throughout my career and each time it happens, I think it makes me shrink farther and farther into my protective turtle shell. I want to get away from everything. And it probably makes things worse for me like some self-fulfilling prophecy — but I honestly just can’t help it. I don’t want to “play the game” as someone once told me. So I lose out on things compared to the people who do and that’s just how it is.
And it got me thinking about what really matters and what I really love. And the parts of my life that are really good because a lot of it is. It’s really easy to focus on the negative and forget about the positive but if you look around there are probably some good things in your life — things you love. Focus on that.
I thought I should apply to RSA this year as I haven’t for two years and when I found out I was only an alternate I was a bit relieved actually. Two out of three isn’t bad. And it’s so expensive to go. I think I’m still going to give that talk but I’m going to post it as a video I take from my house probably. If they ask me to go later it will probably be too expensive. And I’m not that excited to travel as I used to be.
It’s funny. I used to travel all around the world and was gone every other week from my home when I started my business in 2018. I didn’t travel as much as some people but I taught classes all over the United States. I’ve been to all 50 states and the way I got to West Virginia was by teaching a security class in the state. I also gave multiple presentations in Canada including Vancouver, Quebec City, and Ottawa and conferences in London and Australia.
I was supposed to go to India, Poland and Germany the next year. I was super excited about those trips. But that all came to a halt when covid hit. And now the world is very different.
Once I stopped flying around and one thing led to another and I got married, I realized — I’d just rather just be at home. I did all that running around to promote my business but I’m just kind of tired of all that now. I want to stay home with my puppy and hubby.
The other thing was, the travel was exhausting. I would always try to go the day before so I had time to rest. I have an autoimmune disease and I think it makes me more susceptible to illness. I seemed to get sick every time I stepped onto a plane unless I got there early and loaded up on Airborne.
Then I got very sick when I went to Australia — it may have even been an early case of covid but who knows. I just kept thinking I’ve never had anything like this and I couldn’t seem to get better for about two weeks. I remember there was a man from Asia coughing and sneezing on the plane on the way there and pretty sure he was the one who got me sick.
So I mostly just want to stay home now.
Can I still be successful if I’m not jetting all over the world?
There are also these other things you do in life because you think you must. You must follow the rules. You must bend to the will of society or be an outcast. You must schmooze the right people and do all the things to succeed in Corporate America as I’ve explained before and in this book I’m re-listening to.
I randomly said the name of this book in a conversation recently, and it got me to thinking that my subconscious mind was telling me something. I should read it (or listen to it) again:
It has been a great reminder of who I am and what I want to be doing — and where I don’t fit in.
I find that people on social media like to throw out advice constantly and try to tell you who you should be, but I think you should be yourself — the person that works for you. And that’s what that book is all about. There are different ways to be successful.
And although sometimes life can be scary, like, am I going to get that next customer? And if I don’t do that then what will happen? Will it all fall apart? Can I make it without those peoples’ blessing?
Sometimes you have to take a risk. And when I get nervous about things (which is often as I’ve had very stressful business experiences in my second business) I step back and tell myself it’s all going to work out. Just keep doing your thing.
If you look at my resume and bio you’ll see that I have a ton of experience. I may not be the best security person on the planet in every area (no one is because the field is too broad) but I sure have a lot more security knowledge than most people about cybersecurity. I might even have more than some security people after getting the GSE when it was still a two day, hands-on in-person test. But who knows. I also have a lot of software engineering and cloud experience. I’m diving really deep in to AWS right now.
So, bottom line is, I have something to offer the people who wish to hire me for the services listed on my website and the world is a really big place. There must be enough work to go around to keep everyone busy — especially in security where they keep saying there aren’t enough people, right?
So why struggle with things that aren’t really working out and focus on the things you love that make you happy and make you more money? Makes sense, right? But it’s scary to make a change isn’t it?
I’ve been helping a lot of huge companies and organizations through various channels. For example: The World Bank, the FAA, the Department of Interior, organizations in the Canadian government, and various large retail, insurance, banking and oil and gas companies, just to name a few.
But what I really loved most in my business, was helping the companies who hired me for penetration tests and security assessments — and most of them were startups and small companies, though one client is one of the largest in a particular telecommunications niche and I also helped one of the largest energy companies in the world with a penetration test.
The thing I like most is helping companies who really appreciate you — with no score card or “ratings”. The score card is that the company pays the bills and hires you year after year for an assessment or refers you to others because you helped them find and fix security problems on their systems.
That’s what I love.
I like answering questions when I get questions about things I actually know. For a while I was getting questions assigned to me that weren’t really my area of expertise. I still got good “ratings.” I usually get scores of 9’s and 10’s on my consulting calls regardless of the topic. However, what if I actually get questions in my areas of expertise? Then I can do even better, right?
I just want to focus on the areas where I can really help — and those are the things I write about on this blog. You can now schedule a call directly with me through my website so that service is accessible to more small and medium-sized businesses. I will still help any IANS clients who request me on a call as well if it’s something I’ve written about on this blog.
I just changed my website a bit if you haven’t checked it out lately to focus more on what I want to be doing. The more I focus on a few things better I can perform those services.
I did a lot of training when I first started my business, but honestly training is exhausting and it was not what I really wanted to do. It just looked like the only option initially. The more I do it, the more difficult I see it really is to provide secruity training that really makes a difference. It’s very hard to create class labs — labs that work. Those can be full-on software products. It’s insanely difficult to keep information up to date when dealing with cloud services.
As a one person operation with a few people helping me write and test the labs I just decided it wasn’t what I want to be doing full time — and to do it really, really well you need to do it full time and have enough staff to support it. Even then, it’s hard if you don’t have the very best instructors. I didn’t want to build a training platform. I have other interests.
Rather than create a software product just to help you learn a few things that will be outdated in 10 minutes, I’d rather help you find the things that are a security problem in your environment — right now — and get them fixed. I’m talking about things that might cause or facilitate a data breach not just terminology or passing compliance audits or inventorying all your systems. And along with my reports I can provide some real-time, real-world training by explaining security concepts and helping you fix security problems long term, not just in this round of testing.
Honestly, training pays. A lot. And it pays a lot more as an independent person than it does through a training organization. I made more in the first quarter I stopped teaching for a large company than I made the entire prior year.
But I just had to step back and realize that it’s not really what I want to do or focus on. I love to teach people and help people but not like that. I can give short term presentations. I also have some ideas about helping kids in the future but not for a lot of money — and not as a teacher in a classroom exactly. It would be a side project I’ve got in the back of my mind. Someday.
For now, however, I have to see if this latest change to my business works out. But it’s really what I want to do. I want to focus on penetration tests and security assessments, and I want the services to be accessible to smaller companies. Bigger companies are of course free to hire me as well, but I would love to help more startups, small, and medium sized businesses. That’s why I started offering some more reasonably priced introductory services on my website.
The other thing I love is writing software to help me with my penetration testing and security assessments. I’ve been working on a project on this blog for over a year and finally having time to bring it to fruition. I’ve been explaining to people what it takes to build a security deployment system along the way and there’s so, so, so much more to cover. But the software itself is getting to the point where it is usable and I love that. More to come if you’ve been following along on the blog. So I just keep plugging away on that with any downtime I have.
I also have some ideas about making some new connections. Although I don’t want to travel as much, I do like meeting and working with people in person, so I’ll be trying to do that more.
Those are the things I love and what I really want to do.
Will I be successful? I don’t know, but I’m going to try to make some changes and be more laser-focused on what I really want to be doing.
There’s another thing I absolutely love. I get comments and messages from people telling me they read my blog and it is helping them. Some of them take my requests to cloud vendors for changes. Some of them are students and some are early in their cybersecurity, cloud security, and programming careers. Others have been in security for a long time.
I love, love, love when I can help someone that way. One day, when I was having a very bad day, a comment from a young woman who reads my blog brought tears to my eyes. I am so happy to help anyone else who is trying to learn and make their way in cybersecurity. I don’t think I’m the best person to be a mentor as I’ve written about before, but hopefully I can write something to help people along in another way. As I said above we all have to find our own path and what works for us.
I hope that not only the technical stories but my other stories will help people who struggled with the same things I have over the course of my career. You are not alone. Not everyone is the same and we can all make our own way. No matter how many setbacks you face, just keep going. That’s what I do.
I did something else I really love today. Just walking around with my hubby and my dog — anywhere. There’s so much history around Savannah and so much beautiful scenery. It’s very different from the mountains and Puget Sound but beautiful to me all the same. We found a new park with a pretty lake, played around in a dog park, and had a drink at a local brewery on the way home.
And today, life is good.
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Teri Radichel | © 2nd Sight Lab 2024
About Teri Radichel:
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⭐️ Author: Cybersecurity Books
⭐️ Presentations: Presentations by Teri Radichel
⭐️ Recognition: SANS Award, AWS Security Hero, IANS Faculty
⭐️ Certifications: SANS ~ GSE 240
⭐️ Education: BA Business, Master of Software Engineering, Master of Infosec
⭐️ Company: Penetration Tests, Assessments, Phone Consulting ~ 2nd Sight LabNeed Help With Cybersecurity, Cloud, or Application Security?
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