Powerful Storytelling When AI Flattens Cybersecurity Marketing - Brian Reed, CMO @ Corsha

Andrew Monaghan (00:01.244)
Well, Brian, welcome to the podcast.

Brian Reed (00:05.678)
Good morning. It's great to see you.

Andrew Monaghan (00:08.207)
Yeah, likewise. this I'm really looking forward to this. We're tackling a I think an important subject right now around how companies, how marketing teams inside cybersecur co cybersecurity companies are using AI, what it means. the kind of big big topic around it. It's not just what tactics we're doing, it's really much more about the level that we should be thinking about, what it really means for how we market, how we compete, how we position ourselves.

So I think it's a a very apt conversation right now. I'm gonna kick it off like this though, Brian. So I I was looking at some of the things that you've been posting on LinkedIn and something stood out for me. You said in response to someone else that AI creates content and humans create meaning. What are you getting at there?

Brian Reed (00:58.35)
It's a it's a great question. So I I have been, you know, a fan of AI, got started early when the GPT started showing up. Was in a machine learning business a way long time ago, but let's talk about the last three years or so. And AI is kind of that rising tide rises all votes, right? So we can leverage AI in order to produce lots of content, slice and dice content and so on and so forth. And so it's been a boon from a productivity perspective.

But kind of the ugly underbelly of the rise of AI and AI-driven content is really mass sameness. Basically, you have the same models processing the same kind of information. You get a lot of sameness coming out the other end. And so, you know, our audiences are often drowning in massive amounts of content. So the tide rises all boats, but they're all drowning in content, and it all sounds the same. Right. And so

As we go back to it, I think, you know, you had a prior speaker a little while back, the CMO Volumio, where you talked about authenticity. And the reality is humans are the ones that create meaning. Humans are the ones that create connection. Right? So while AI-powered content is out there, we really need to continue to refocus on and react to or respond to the fact of AI sameness or AI flattening marketing with focusing on the human experience. And humans bring context and meaning.

And humans bring storytelling into the conversation. And today's world and going forward is going to be about authentic storytelling and engagement at a human-to-human level, whether it's digital like you and I are or face to face in in the live world. that's really what's going to differentiate and drive success for businesses and brands.

Andrew Monaghan (02:43.213)
I think that these days you'd be crazy as a as a marketer, as a salesperson, not to be using some sort of AI in your process on on the marketing side, something on the content side. So how do you use the tools that are s s so good right now, but you still have that human connection? How do you add that in? 'Cause it's tempting, I guess, for people not to do that, judging by what's out there right now.

Brian Reed (03:06.274)
Yeah, I think I think it's a couple of different things, right? So I kind of think of there's this like golden triangle, right? So you have AI can be your content assistant, AI can be your content variation engine. but humans and community bring stories together in order to make it work, right? So if you start, for example, by being in the community collecting stories, you might collect them through recording and run them through AI, but however you collect those stories in the community.

That starts giving you the authentic human feel, right? you may have storytellers in your company or your organization. They could be like DevRelations people, they could be your CEO or CTO, they could be other authorities in the marketplace, right? What stories do they have to share? What authentic levels of feedback do they have to share? So you can start collecting and building, collecting these stories from community.

Building stories from within your business and from the community. And then you can use AI to amplify them. You can AI use AI to slice them up, for example, like take long-form video content and cut it into pieces. So think of AI as like an assistant in helping you with the human storytelling in finding new ways to leverage it or amplify it or even capture and understand it.

Andrew Monaghan (04:22.753)
What you're talking about there is one level of storytelling, which is, you know, the human stories, what people are doing with our products and what's in in their mind. There's also the narrative art to, you know, when we're thinking about a company and, you know, really what they're trying to portray out there. how do you think about the difference between those two and how can how to connect them?

Brian Reed (04:41.902)
Yeah, well I think I think part of I think I do think the job of marketing is storytelling. I also think the job of sales is storytelling. For sales storytelling, it's about framing solutions in a way that you can ephetically help a customer address a problem and achieve their outcomes, right? On the marketing side, your storytelling for what does your brand mean? How does it participate in the community? what values does it bring to the table? How does it help your audience address things? Right.

And so many of us have like a community activity that we're we're participating in either by joining a community or forming a community. But when we get into the actual act of storytelling, right, what are the stories that are repeatable? And who are the heroes and the stories, right? The brain is naturally wired to capture and remember stories. And there's the classic frame of story where you have the villain and the hero and the challenge and all the rest, right? Remember the hero is the user buyer.

the hero or the people in the community who are talking about gaining these great outcomes by doing certain things. Your product's not the hero, your sales rep isn't the hero, your company isn't the hero. The hero is the people who's receiving the story or telling the story. And then you help work through that story cycle and help people sort of understand how to be successful there. if you want a good example of of a of a tool that you can use or a resource is where's the book right there.

storytelling, story brand, building a story brand, right? And story brand two are two great book resources that talk about the hero is your customer, the hero is your user, not your product, not your company, not your employees. And how do you capture that in a way? And that's why people like case studies. That's why people like, you know,

fireside chats or panels where people are sharing their stories and their experiences in an authentic way.

Andrew Monaghan (06:40.904)
Yeah, a huge fan of Donald Miller's story brand. The you know he wrote the rap book you mentioned.

One of things that he says is that people always get confused about who the hero of the story is. And I I see that a lot in my work, right? Salespeople telling stories will say, we, we, we, we did this, we solved this, we you know, t changed this company's whole cybersecurity program all around, you know, we we we what other mistakes do people make when they're trying to implement a s like a story culture or storytelling environment inside the company?

Brian Reed (07:13.164)
Yeah, I th I think it's couple things. the the first one is what is the simplest story you can fit on a business card that all your employees can tell? Notice I said business card. It needs to be that small. And I don't mean two point fine, right? Business card, index card, what have you. Like, we kill ourselves and our audience with these big complicated stories. When it really can't exactly.

Andrew Monaghan (07:36.541)
Full of full of wacky words and buzzwords and all sorts of stuff, right?

Brian Reed (07:40.569)
So the first one is you need something really simple, right? Usually it can be outcome or kind of pain leading in in kind of where you start, right? And the villain is a situation. The villain is a challenge you have, right? And then the hero is the person you're talking to. The other thing is, so if the front of the card is the company story, the back of the card should have one to three really great customer stories you can tell, right?

So, and it turns out the front of the card could be driven by a by a major customer or a pattern in the market, right? But it needs to be really, really simple, really easy to repeat, no 50 cent words, no marketing ease, right? Don't over rotate, right? I think that's that's the first thing. and to go with that, then of course is practice, right? So what are you doing to reinforce everybody's ability to tell that story, right? Really great companies, you know, when you look at Built to Last or or other really great companies,

Typically everybody knows the parting line. Everybody, everybody is on that same mission, rowing the same direction, having the ability to articulate who the company is, why it's there, what its meaning is, or what its what its goals are. I think the the second thing is to remind what you just said is remind your sales team that it's not we, it's us and them. Right. And so how do you, when you do sales enablement and training, when you create materials, how do you

work on help them work on their vocabulary and give them lots of little case study examples or use cases that they can use in the context of, you know, we have customers who do blank. We have customers that face these challenges, right? And and they achieve these outcomes by the way, leveraging my products and services. Right. And so that's some some structuring. So the sales enablement team, product marketing team, should be focused on the the we and you and them stories.

not the we only stories and the me stories, right? In terms of doing that. the last thing I'll put out there is is that one of the best ways to start a sales conversation is with a story.

Brian Reed (09:43.746)
Right. So how how are you how is your sales team trained and do they practice by starting with stories?

Andrew Monaghan (09:50.201)
So how would you start a sales conversation with a story? Give us an example.

Brian Reed (09:55.939)
Thanks for having me in today. You know, I just thought I'd give a quick start with a story of a customer I visited last week. we've been working with Company X for about a year. They came to us because their problem was perimeter attacks that they couldn't figure out how these guys were getting in. You know, we work with them, but in order to achieve da-da-da-da kind of you're off and running. Now, today I'd like to talk about how we can help you in a similar way. Boom. Right.

And and what that comes straight out of your case studies, you have an opening slide that's a story, right? That's much better than our agenda today is four blank. and you know, if if you look at like presentation best practices of who are killer speakers that nail it, they almost always start with a story. Story about themselves, story about something in the market. Sometimes they don't even introduce themselves, right? They'll just kind of go right at it. Like,

Andrew Monaghan (10:50.124)
Yeah. That that's that's really interesting. So I I've I've been a fan of take someone like Malcolm Gladwell, you take Nier Ayal, who's just released a great book recently. When they're starting a whole chapter about a new concept, they start the chapter with a story every single time.

Right. And almost to the point where it's maybe a little bit too much, right? You know you're onto a new concept because there's a story starts off the the section. But it really captures you, right? It draws you in as opposed to leading with the research, which is boring as anything. I guess in the sales world, the equivalent is, well, we're the leading company of whatever, whatever, whatever, and we do this amazing stuff and we've got this much of funding and you know, gazillion intelligent PhD founders and all the rest of it, right?

Brian Reed (11:33.711)
Well I think and and I think, you know, you the key to this, and and you know, Malcolm picked that up al along with many others, is that the brain is wired to remember stories. You know, for for millennia, generation after generation, there was no written word and even there was very low language, right? But stories were how history was passed, stories were how people learned, stories were how you carried on tradition, right?

And even today, we as parents, for example, I have a new grandchild, we sing songs. Well, a lot of the songs we're singing to the kid are life skills, right? And so that storytelling is a natural way to bond with somebody and help them remember what you're trying to get them to either remember or understand about you. And wouldn't you rather have someone remember a story about how you help people like them solve a problem than them remember you got funded last week?

Andrew Monaghan (12:26.571)
Right.

Exactly. I know d Don Miller in Story Branding talks about, you know, when someone asks you what you do, a great way to start the answer is you know how when. Right? You know how when you're faced with this thing with a problem pla da. That's how we help people like you out, right? It's a great way to kinda relate. You kinda make the story about them and and do that. So I I think it's always a good way to do it. But let's go back to the the the kind of premise, right? So we're in this world where we're perhaps over rotating on using AI to help us produce content.

We've got this idea of storytelling, of making it real for people is so powerful. But where do the two meet, right? How how could we use the LLMs out there, the tools at our disposal to make our stories better or make them more repeatable or wherever it might be? Where's it where's the intersection?

Brian Reed (13:13.794)
Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things. One is one is that I'm a collector of stories, right? So I will run stories that I capture through LLMs to look for patterns, right? Or to sharpen them up. so that's super helpful, right? In the same way you can use an LLM to analyze big buckets of data to identify things, right? You can capture a whole bunch of stories. So for example, if you've got a you know, call system like a gong or one of those, obviously there's a whole lot of stuff you can collect.

I will often say, would you mind if I record this conversation just so I can make sure I heard you correctly? Most people will say yes, right? I'm not going to republish it. This is more, I want to really engage in a conversation with you. So I'm going record it. Now I'm going to use an AI tool to go through the recording. I'll go through their exact words, but also meaning and subtext and how is this related to other stories I've heard and all rest. so that's one way to use it, is kind of on the capture side. another way to use it in beyond the pattern side is.

How to take story elements and put them together in a unique way. Right. So I've done some really interesting things where I'm like, here's a scattering of 10 stories. There's some pattern in here I'm not finding. Or they all say something about this, but it seems like they're missing this, or it seems like there are other ways to do this. Right. And that's where it's like a story partner. So it's not writing the story.

It's helping you iterate through unique perspectives. It's helping you find other words. I love actually using the GPTs to help me with title tuning, right? Keyword tuning, section tuning, title tuning, some things like that, right? Where I've got a pretty good thesaurus in my brain, but my goodness, do they have a really big thesaurus in their brain? Right. So I'll say, give me five typical titles and give me five really unusual titles.

and sometimes stuff will pop out that's like, my God, what a what a golden word that is. And and how do I use the golden word, right? What just a side note, one of the other things it does really good, help me with an acronym. So take this mumbo jumbo and help me restructure a story into an acronym that I can use. Really good at that. the so then you're moving down the freight train. Now it's like, how can I capture and re amplify? Give me more examples of how I can tell the story in different places or give me different artifacts, you know, based based on a

Brian Reed (15:34.057)
a given story set. Again, so a lot of these tools are like iterative. I'm either processing the raw stories, I'm finding ways to improve the stories. I'm looking for patterns in stories. I'm looking to create reusable elements from the stories. I'm building the catalog, right? And then the last thing really is I build agents that are storytellers. So I have a couple of different agents that we we traditionally would have thought of them as personas. So like in my world of OT security today,

Where we do industrial cybersecurity. So think about like physical plants and you're securing production lines. And they might be making, you know, high value things like a car, semiconductors, you know, and in an you know, a dust-free environment, you know, all kinds of different things. which also projects into like smart factories, smart buildings, and other kinds of things. And so, you know, most of the people in OT are like engineers, like big, you know, big strapping guys that work in these engineering lines.

Right. And so we have what we call the crusty OT security storyteller agent. And it's basically an agent I built where I collected a lot of the kind of the crusty type people. And I don't mean to be offensive in any shape or form. They have 40 years, been doing it 40 years, seen everything. Marketing is ugly. I hate vendors, like whatever, like that. And I run stories through that. I run content through that and everything else. And it's really good at coming back with, yeah, I think this will offend them, or maybe you should change this word, or

No, they're not going to read this or no, they're not going to believe this story. and that's also super helpful, right? And I think a lot of people are doing sort of agent-based personas. Just take the to the next level and say, well, how do I use storytelling with these agent-based personas? And what can I do either in in writing and capturing my stories or validating my stories with those folks? As well as can I feed those agents not just persona stuff, but actual stories they've told you.

Andrew Monaghan (17:24.761)
And that in that mode you're not using it as a content mill, you're using it as an advisory, I guess, right? It's your it's your expert who's helping you get even better with what you're doing.

Brian Reed (17:30.476)
Exactly.

Brian Reed (17:34.523)
Exactly. Shar sharpening, it's like sharpening the saw, sharpening the pencil. I tend to think of it that way. I don't use it to idea ideate stories. You want to find stories in the real world anywhere you possibly can. It can help you iterate, refine. Maybe you you know, a lot of really good books and movies are like the amalgamation of four or five stories kind of smashed together to create a new unique story. And, you know, that can be part of where you get to. Like your company's story might not be a single story, it might be a collection of stories that come together in a unique way.

Andrew Monaghan (18:02.37)
One of things I think that this relates to for companies is the fact that we're in this world where there's about four thousand cybersecurity vendors, not including resellers and all the MSPs and things like that, right? So it's very confusing for people. and yet

I I think it drives behavior. You look at obviously there's big names recently who've done really well standing out in the crowd in different ways. And there's those that have tried but have somehow failed a little bit. You know, they just haven't quite got it right. I remember even like five, ten years ago, if you did something gimmicky at at at RSA, people will make fun of you about it rather than trying to embrace it. But then you see, you know, I think last week and or a couple of weeks ago in in London at InfoSec, Island had a apparently a great booth with all about I think a

theme about transportation or something and people seem to love it, right? I kinda feel like if that was ten years ago people would be called gimmicky or something. So what's what's that where's the line between, you know, trying to stand out and it's just doesn't quite hit in terms of this gimmicky and then you try to stand out and people just kinda embrace it.

Brian Reed (19:05.766)
I think it's kind of interesting. I think that if we if we use the trade show model, and you know, a lot of us have been doing this for a zillion years, cyber is full of trade shows, like all kinds of trade shows, like InfoSec and Black Hat and RSA. And then there's maybe your industry specific ones, whether you're in like identity or you're in storage, you know, whatever. clearly there's all kinds of cloud cyber things out there. You have like the analyst events and so forth. And so I think that.

You know, AI and even non-AI, just design in general, have gotten to this massive level of sameness, right? So you can go to RSA and Black Hat every year, and most people will tell the same story. Like AI, this, AI native that, AI driven this, AI powered that. And there are all variations of things like that that have gone on every year. And all you have to do is see like five or six booths when you walk on the show floor and you're like, yep, that's the keyword that's going to be in 90% of the booths, right? So then in in that sea of sameness.

in many instances, people work really hard to be like, okay, it's black or it's Nissan neon or it's got, you know, big LED screens or whatever. And certainly some of that matters, but then you get these real wild standouts. And I love to talk about Wiz, right? So Wiz was kind of the anti-tech company in many ways online and in the in the digital in the physical world. And if you ever saw their their boosts, they were like, you know, candy stores and all of that. And that uniqueness.

Could have been seen as as silly. but I think it really stood out. And if you saw Wiz next to Cisco, IBM, Oracle, you know, whatever like that, you they were clearly the different ones, right? And what does that do? The difference drives attention. To me, Wiz is a great example of storytelling. Like that booth that they created was telling a story and encouraging you to come participate in the story. It's one of the few times I've ever seen a conga line of people doing selfies in a booth. Like,

Literally selfies in a booth, right? And so you you kind of see that. And so, you know, at at what was it RSA a year or two ago, somebody showed up with the the puppy mill thing. So they had like a puppy zone and buzz on the floor. Did you see the puppies? What do you mean puppies? Yeah, they have puppies on the show floor, right? It is a gimmicky, maybe.

Brian Reed (21:19.544)
But if we go back to storytelling, the the brand, I don't remember who it was that did the puppies and and others may have done that. And and the whiz with the candy store or the seven eleven kind of thing they had. those are very different memorable stories that get buzz going and and get people to pay attention, right? And the puppies in the candy store, I'm sure, were cheaper than the, you know, ten thousand square feet of LED screens that that some others might have bought. So I do think

If we think about it as storytelling, and if it's congruent with how what your business is already doing, it's just an experience, right? And human experience, human storytelling, human experience is still what differentiates. It's what locks in the mind. It's what I want to seek to find. The the the eyes naturally find what's unique in a room. And that's part of what that does.

Andrew Monaghan (22:06.398)
You know what's interesting though. you you mentioned the the the the booth with the puppies. I remember the booth with the puppies, but like you I don't remember who the company was. But I remember what

you the Wiz booth was like. I remember what the the Island booth was like. I remember the the ones that truly I think try and embody the narrative, as opposed to maybe just add it on as a bit I don't know, it feels a bit gimmicky, goats or those goat yoga or puppies or whatever it might be. It's like, cool, you know, everyone has fun, but you know, it it maybe it just doesn't connect quite as well is probably what I'm thinking.

Brian Reed (22:41.464)
Yeah, I'm I'm with you. I think that that because like Wiz and Island were naturally congruent with the brand positioning and the stories they're already telling in the world, they all just lined up, right? It's more it's more assimilar to what I know about them or think about them, right? In the same way you might have a view of a car or a drink or some kind of food, right? And I think that you know, funny thing, just as a side note, you may have seen the Pizza Huts coming back in the US.

It's coming back because of the in-store experience people remember when they were kids, right? So it's less about delivering pizza now. It's about, you know, sort of going and having that old-fashioned experience in the store. And so one of the keys to storytelling that we're teasing out is that it needs to be congruent always. Like you have your brand essence and and all of that. Make sure your storytelling fits in the way that that naturally fits your brand.

Puppies don't necessarily fit your brand unless you're like, I don't know, sneak with the dog logo or something, right? Or data dog. I guess data dog, if they did the puppies, would make sense because it's dog and you know, like that. so you definitely want I actually think companies should work hard to be human and unique, but it also needs to be congruent with the rest of their branding, the rest of their storytelling and everything else, and not just sort of a one-time event.

Andrew Monaghan (24:01.668)
It feels like to me that the

the Israeli based companies, the Cyberstarks, the Y L companies have really embraced that idea, right? And there's two or three, you know, companies they go to in Tel Aviv, Atrio and H Hello and these are real proper branding agencies that really kinda get how to work with tech companies and make the narrative, you know, c congruent and come alive. It feels like to me, maybe you might disagree with us that we've got a lot to learn maybe for the the US based, let's say, companies where still there's a lot of, you know

someone called it to me, striped to me Series A blue was was what they saw on websites with all the buzzwords kinda chucked in there, right? It feels like we've got some some something to learn there.

Brian Reed (24:45.132)
I think we go through waves of branding and storytelling, right, over the decades, right? So I think all the way back to so part of my manifesto is AI's flattening marketing cue the rise of madmen. Right. And madmen back in the fifties was post war boom United States, many, many manufacturers growing and they're selling on technical features like how many different washers and dryers can there be? How many different cigarettes can there be, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And Mad Men was really the story about the rot modern rise of marketing, which was really around unique storytelling through through advertising and brand. And, you know, I think that over the years, there have been different concentrations of success in different price places, like the Germans, the Brits, some of the Asian work from the modern Asian Tigers. there's a whole culture following around Japanese and you know.

manga and characters and and things like that. And, you know, I I definitely think there's some uniqueness coming through in in the work coming out of Israel and and some organizations. I think there's always this interesting thing. If you're going to go hire a brand or a design agency, do you want to hire them because they have experience in your market or not? Is it actually smart to think about maybe I want to go pick a consumer branding company because they're going to bring different ideas that don't all look the same.

Andrew Monaghan (25:59.085)
Mm.

Brian Reed (26:08.556)
you know, as as compared to to others. That's always kind of an interesting thing, I think, I think for us in B2B Tech to think about is do I want to go bring a really unique company? Right. And so, and might that come from something more consumer because there's a whole more of an edge the consumer, right? But you know, in the US we've had some crazy ones too, like Torque. Torque's doing monster trucks and monster drinks and all kinds of stuff, right? So

And that they kind of they kind of intended to be unique and different, but that one really took a life of its own, right? If you're if those aren't familiar with Torque, they they sponsor monster trucks and hold monster truck rallies and all kinds of stuff. And their their graphic and design is very unique and different, but that's enabled them to stand out and grow very quickly in the sea of sameness in their market.

Andrew Monaghan (26:56.841)
I imagine though, you talk about I I love the idea of going to a consumer branding company. you know, pick the hot standout products in the last two or three years that have launched and figure out who's behind them and, you know, see if you can engage with them. I like the idea of what the CMO at Torque was doing as well, you know

Got a lot of buzz going in industry. But I always think, you know, if you're if you're there as the CMO at a company and you're in a space with, you know, 45 other companies and you got a first-time founder, how do you how do you instill the confidence in the founder to actually back this type of stuff? Because this is not the easy thing to do, right? It's not the easy, yeah, just do what do that stuff with more emails and let's try and get some roundtables going or sponsor some lunches or dinners. It's not that, it's very different.

So I'm kind of curious how, you know, any advice you have for companies that that would do want to make that switch, how do they have the confidence to go do it?

Brian Reed (27:53.135)
Well, I I remember back in the nineties. So I was in database, database middleware, data warehousing, client server, all of that. And we had deals with almost all the database vendors except for one. And we were working with an agency and we debated very heavily about a couple of things to do. And

We thought about should we buy billboards on 101, you know, to get their attention. And there was, you know, a bidding battle for billboards and one on one. And at that point, all the relational database vendors were on 101 between San Francisco and Palo Alto and and South Bay. And eventually we wound up wrapping, which wasn't a thing you could do then. So we had to figure out how to do it, wrapping a coffee truck. And the coffee truck visited many of these development, you know, software development companies.

And the coffee truck eventually got us a deal. Now I remember the look on the CEO's face when we proposed to do it. And he's like, You gotta be kidding me. And what's it gonna cost? Whatever. And the cost wasn't really outrageous. I mean, compared to like you could do like four Wall Street Journal ads for the same cost as doing this. But it's more like it wasn't really silly. It seemed like a waste of money, you know, kind of in in a word. so I think some of it really is helping a helping a founder see themselves in the why.

Why are you doing it? What's their position in it? being willing to take all the liability on your own shoulders. Right. Like I'm like, if this really fails, then I guess I'll eat dirt. Right. and don't go too far. Right. So try small and and grow into it. Right. What's a small way you can do a little bit of it? I know I have some CMO friends who did Super Bowl ads.

And you might say, my God, where did they come up with $10 million? No, they did a targeted Super Bowl ad in like two cities. And they used the bought through the local networks who get their own local airtime. And for way less than $10 million, they got their ads on in two cities and then they got a bunch of viral buzz off of them. Right. So, but that also de risked it because it was only two cities. It was only two small groups. And if it's really bad, you know, then you can can kind of ignore it. So

Brian Reed (30:10.07)
I do think in the interview process you need to kind of work with the CEO founder and and the board to kind of understand the characteristics you you are as a marketer and what you would bring to the table and how you would see things evolve. I think having a rich conversation around, you know, sameness versus uniqueness, and where uniqueness comes from and di you know, distinction comes from can be part of it. and I think like in the Wiz case and and you know, some of the other

Israeli companies, for example, there was mutual agreement of going a direction, a unique direction, right? Torque as well. he interviewed specifically that he wanted to do unique things, as as I understand. And so those those I think are think are part of it.

Andrew Monaghan (30:53.116)
So lesson there is you

Choose the company first, choose the founder first and make sure you're you're aligned to you know you're both aligned on what needs to be done. I kind of think about this a little bit, Brian, you you there's four thousand vendors. I mean, I hate to say it, but there's a very, very high degree of probability that your company's not gonna break out, right? So what have you got to lose? You know, it's like you know you sit there and be comfortable and not feel like you're, you know, breaking any any rocks or whatever, or you go out there and try and make it make a splash.

Brian Reed (31:15.468)
Well

Some of it.

Brian Reed (31:22.776)
Well, some of it is some of it is is is the unusual way you do something still relevant to your audience? Is it still relevant to what you do? Going back to the puppy thing. Like if I'm not data dog, does the puppy thing work? Right. the second thing is is will your audience v value or find it interesting? Right. And I think some of these things are also kind of like humor and comedy. Comedy is challenging. Like choosing

To do something unique like whiz is kind of fun, but it's not pure comedy. If you really try to get on the comedy path like writing a comic strip or or something like that, you gotta be really careful with that too, because you might wind up offending certain people. Notice how many comics offend certain groups of people in the in the nature of how comedy works. And I think all of this is about every business is about taking risks somewhere, whether it's raising capital or something else. It's

It's you want to take a risk to do something unique. And then how do you constrain that risk? And how do you constrain the blast radius when you try something new and unique and different and make sure it fits kind of your audience, your company ethos, and things like that, right? And you know, not everybody's gonna do Red Bull gives you wings and the amazing things that Red Bull has done and and the crazy risks that they take every day. but you could still have, you know, become a Snapple or something that's, you know, got a got a cult following.

Andrew Monaghan (32:44.642)
One way to stand out is in in narrative. it gets it lets you connect better or have your prospects connect better with you. Another way is community because you know, I think it's I think the idea that

you know, founder might latch onto is yeah, it'd be nice to have our own community, have our prospects and our customers in a community. But it feels like all is a lot tougher to build than people might make might think it is. I'm wondering what you think the role of community is, maybe in conjunction with with narrative and with authenticity authenticity.

Brian Reed (33:16.748)
Yeah, think I've got a I've got a post I'm gonna be publishing in a little while that talks about, you know, community. I've had a lot of people ask me, you know, and and spoken at conferences about community and community building and community participation. So we kind of th tend to think about there's three kinds of community out there, right? So the first community is something that already exists, right? So it's community of practice. and it's it's hopefully already got its active mechanisms, right? the second one is then

and that the first one's a big community, like people who are doing internet, you know, people who are building Java, for example. And I was there at the birth of Java, and that was a wild ride. I mean, Sun got it started, but the Java community just kind of took over and Sun kind of held on for dear life, as it were, and and helped shape it. But to a large extent, the community really drove it. Silicon Valley drove the Java growth you know really hard. the second one is a smaller community of practice. Like I'm in OT security. It's a small community. There's a few thousand people, right? The third one is build your own.

Build your own is really, really, really, really hard. and so most organizations, you know, dream of having their own bespoke community. Maybe there's a community of CISOs or a community of users or whatever. And I think we should think about, yeah, user group is a good idea, but be careful about trying to build a community independent of your user group that's your own. where community can be really successful is where the world changes. And you have people looking for new.

news, information, and training. Java's a great example. The Java community grew because people were starting to build internet browser apps and Java showed up and you kind of had the Microsoft stack, you had the pure HTML, and you had the Java stack. And people were seeking, you know, what is this stuff? What's the tech? How can I, you know, build web apps? How can I build, you know, new software and what have you? And the community just grew up and and some really great things happened.

In the the DevOps and DevSecOps evolution, where I had another opportunity on community, the community of practice was DevOps engineers, developers, and security teams trying to figure out how to deliver software faster in a repeatable way. We had new CI CD platforms and other technologies that were making that happen. And so around that, you know, the the there's a group that Derek Weeks and and Mark Miller and and I happened to be a part of it.

Brian Reed (35:38.553)
Formed something called all day DevOps. It was 24 hours of online community presentations and trainings from practitioners in the community. And, you know, Mark and Derek got the forum set up to do it. First year there was maybe a thousand people. Second year there was like 5,000. Third year was like 25,000. Fourth year was like 80,000. and it grew because, in the same way Java grew, it grew because people needed to learn.

Andrew Monaghan (35:59.294)
Wow.

Brian Reed (36:06.166)
And people wanted to share the new things that they were learning, right? So if you're thinking about community in your world, first thing to think about is is there already an established community I can come and be a very participant actor in? In my last company, I was very active in OWASP for for application security. already existed. How do we plug in and and help? for DevSecOps, it was ADDO and there's you other community things. For Java, it was the Java, Java community, so on and so forth. So how do you how do you come

You either find an existing community and you attach to it, or you look for a major transition going on in market, like AI is a major transition in market, and then you try to help foster a community. And your job isn't to be the community owner. Your job is to be the cultivator, right? Your company and your brand can help cultivate the community. And it's never about lead gen. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever is community about lead gen. It's brand building and giving to get.

Andrew Monaghan (37:05.075)
So the the the people in the community don't wanna feel that they're they're the fodder, right? They wanna feel that they're getting value and not there's there's not gonna be an email next week from some S Dr saying, I saw you in the community, right?

Brian Reed (37:15.85)
Exactly right. Exactly right. You know, and it and it if you have like if you're in the dev world and you have dev rel people, right, they're in the community, they're teaching, they're showing, they're sharing, they're providing tools, whatever, right? That builds your brand, that builds your visibility. Communities grow where people give, and and they're healthy when new new people come in and are welcomed, and they see the value and those people grow in their skills and they become givers, right? And the whole thing cycles.

Right. And and that's I think really, really where we need to think about it. So if you're if you're if you're thinking about community, first one is is there an established one you can attach to and really give to get? And then the second one is is there some ch massive change going in the market where you can facilitate, coordinate, enable community development of knowledge sharing? And then the third one is is the highest risk one is is there actually a community you can build yourself that you're own?

Andrew Monaghan (38:07.849)
feel with all those there's there's a significant investment or commitment from the company because it's not something you do in a few months, right? It's it's gotta be a long term play. How do you how do you advise people that that's the way to get going, that's the way to think about that's how to justify this to the CFO or the CEO is the right thing to do.

Brian Reed (38:25.09)
Yeah, I think today we don't argue about whether we should have a website. Right. Like every business has a website and every business has a social media team. So if we just sort of think about marketing standards of practice, right? So community should just be a standard of practice in marketing. And you know, CMU needs to help the C suite understand that. They may need to work with them individually one on one.

to help them understand it. They need to show examples of it, show examples of other companies being successful through it, right? Explain the economics of community, right? Community spending, let's just say you hire two dev rails, and then you produce content and you spend a million dollars a year and you're hiding a million dollar company. That can be a really cheap investment for lead gen. It's not lead gen.

It's you're helping grow and embrace in the community so that when people are actively looking to solve a problem you solve, they put you on the shortlist because they've seen you in the community. Right. So I've also had people ask me, where do you get the budget from? Take it out of lead gen. If if you don't have new budget, figure out how to rebalance your lead gen money or your demand gen money so that you can still do community work.

Andrew Monaghan (39:38.096)
Well, Brian, it feels like we're at a a unique moment right now because the excitement of what AI can do for us is still there. I mean, there's people got black eyes, maybe not doing it quite right. But there is this resurgence about, you know, the humanity side of it all. Like the, you know, at the end of the day, we're still human beings trying to communicate with other human beings and we reach out our needs and desires and you know, hopefully we're helping our our customers and our prospects, you know, meet theirs. So it's really fascinating just to hear about, you know, how do we bring the human back to AI and really accelerate what we're doing.

stand out right because I think there's real opportunity you see for companies to stand out just by going back to good old human principles and core beliefs. So I appreciate you joining us today to talk about that.

Brian Reed (40:20.142)
Thank very much for having me. You can find me on LinkedIn and I'm posting fairly regularly on AI and storytelling. So look

Andrew Monaghan (40:27.045)
Yeah, I'll put I'll put Brian's LinkedIn in the in the show notes and I'll make sure when we put the the clipside and a little recipe, I'll make sure that's attached to as well. So Brian, thanks for joining us.

Brian Reed (40:37.839)
Thanks for having me today.