Bronwen Hudson on Founder-Led Growth and Authentic Thought Leadership

Overview:

In this episode, Kerry Guard welcomes Bronwen Hudson to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. They reflect on Cybersecurity Marketing Con, discussing key takeaways, the evolution of founder-led growth, and the importance of authentic content in a crowded digital landscape. Bronwen shares insights on leveraging social media for brand building, fostering genuine connections, and balancing personal and company narratives. Tune in for actionable strategies, candid humor, and a fresh perspective on the future of marketing in 2025.

Transcript:

Kerry Guard 0:03

Kerry. Hello, I'm Kerry Guard, and welcome back to Tea Time with tech marketing leaders. Welcome back to the final episode of 2025 2024 I'm already ahead of myself. 2024 Oh, man, I have a show for you. We just came back from cybersecurity marketing con, and we are going to unpack all of the things with our very own, our very own, Bronwyn Hudson, I'm so excited to have her on the show and to be able to explore how it went with her before we get there. A little bit about Bronwyn, in case you don't know her, but I'm sure you all know her by now, and if you don't, let's fix that effective immediately. Bronwyn is a driven, positive thinker, writer and content creator with a passion for technology. She loves sharing stories and making complex topics accessible to a broad audience. Her career has taken her from sustainable sustainability internships to cyber security and from just dissertations to social media and maybe back again. Who knows, in terms of superpowers. She understands complex material quickly. She can make anything exciting and bring people together. Ah, so good. Bronwyn, welcome to the show. Thank

Bronwen Hudson 1:09

you so much. I've never heard my bio read aloud by someone else before. It's kind of nice, like that was new perspective for me. Yeah, you wrote that. It's like, really good at some point, yeah, oh,

Kerry Guard 1:22

I love it. I love it. That is a very high level top summary of what you do, but more importantly is how you got there. So what's your story?

Bronwen Hudson 1:31

Yeah, thanks. So I have a graduate degree in linguistics, and I think that I usually start my story with that kind of situation, because it's an indicator that I'm a big old nerd. You know, if you've made it to grad school and you're like in linguistics, yeah, you like words, you like technical material, you're really into research, you're not afraid of it, that kind of stuff. And then shortly after that, I had moved around a lot as a as a child and a young adult, and just carried on moving around a lot, and then started doing social media content and management, and also technical writing, so blogs, white papers, that kind of stuff in cybersecurity. And that fit so well with me, because my real secret, deep dark, silently, deep dark, it's very light. I love to learn. And so coming up in technical writing was such a blessing, because, you know, yeah, I would get assigned blog topics that I had no idea what they were really about, I would have the chance to go research a topic and then distill it down for a different audience. So that was how I sort of came up in cyber security, learning about all the all the tech along the way, and then ended up doing sort of more full time social media management and content creation. And a lot of the marketing skills that I gained along the way were from other aspects of my life. So when I started roller skating in 2020 I was like, I have to record this process somehow. So I started making videos. So that's where I have all of my like, video creation knowledge and stuff, and like the back end of Instagram is how I that's how I learned. Was just like, self taught from passion projects. And I'm really happy in cyber I feel like it's a it's an awesome field to be in, as I'm sure you would agree, like so many smart people, so many interesting, truly cutting edge pieces of technology, a lot of a lot of things that make the headlines. So it feels like a very contemporary field to be in. And I'm always learning. I'm always learning which is exactly what I want to be doing. So, yeah, happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Amazing.

Kerry Guard 3:21

Yeah. Cyber is always, is always changing. So it's trying to stay ahead. I I'm very curious around your you talked about researching and how important that is to you, and having done it most of your career, all of your career. How has AI changed the way you research? Has it changed the way you reach

Bronwen Hudson 3:41

oh my gosh, such an interesting topic. Holy moly. Man. I was okay. So I was just looking at some, like, meeting notes from a meeting that I was in yesterday, and they were AI generated meeting notes. And I was like, Oh my God, these meeting notes are fantastic. Wow. Can't believe it. What great technology. What leaps and bounds. I didn't have to summarize anything like, well, amazing. So I want to preface this by saying that like, I also like AI tools, but my majority opinion is kind of in the opposite direction. I think that we have bold head first into a field of the unknown and a lot of the uncited and unsourced, and I don't know, I have a lot of lot of fears and a lot of reservations about how we're using AI, and especially when it comes to content creation, that's where my opinion really goes off into the deep end. When it comes to research. It's I think that it's a tough one. I think that if you're feeding resources into an AI of whatever kind, so you know what you've put into it, you can trust more what you get out because you know what you've actually put in with, like the mainstream ones, like if you're just asking chat GPT for five stats about the coolest philosophers in the world, or something and it then they don't cite their sources. You don't know where that information is coming from. You don't know who's created it. You don't know the types of bias that have been encoded. It so I, I tend not to use a lot of AI tools up front for my research, because I'd like to trust my own brain as well. Like being able to use critical thinking when you approach AI is, is really the that's the core of the message, isn't it? Like, just don't disengage. You know?

Kerry Guard 5:18

Yes, I, I love that. I mean, when we were growing up, when we were taught to research, right and double check our sources and cite them and all of that, I think that comes back into play. We have to go back to those basics and remember and that, I think there needs to be another layer of it too that we didn't need before, which is trusting the source. Yeah,

Bronwen Hudson 5:38

yeah, totally Yeah, not just knowing what the source is, but then validating that source what, what actually is that? Who wrote it? When was it written, being able to race your data back, definitely. Yeah.

Kerry Guard 5:52

It seems like, while it saved us time, it may have over complicated things a little bit, because now we have to do double due diligence.

Bronwen Hudson 5:59

Definitely, definitely. So, yeah, so like for things like meeting notes, I'm like, great. This actually saved me time. This was a task I was going to do anyway, and it made it faster. Super in for that, super in for that, but not the intellectual compromise that people, I think, make. Sometimes I don't want to do that. Yeah,

Kerry Guard 6:17

I'm sorry I'm tangenting here people, but I gotta, I gotta keep rolling with this AI conversation, because we're here now. I will pull us back to center, I Pinky swear. But I want to know from a writing standpoint and linguistics standpoint of how you're I think we both agreed when we were in person, one of the biggest challenges with AI is that nothing's new. So how are you approaching it from a content standpoint with your brand of, like, creating content in a way that's saying something new definitely feels really hard to do right now.

Bronwen Hudson 6:48

I totally hear you, yeah, and so, so much to dig in here, right? Like, because when we talk about thought leadership, we talk about influencers, we talk about, like, I think those are kind of all overlapping topics when it comes to AI as well. So my personal opinion, and I saw this on LinkedIn, and I really wish I could credit the person who I hadn't read really seen write it down. I'm so sorry. Please tag yourself if, if this was you. But I saw this sort of like quip, basically, that said, you know, if you can't be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it? And I really like that. That really resonates with me, like, if you're someone who's just creating content so that you get views, so that you get more followers, so that you're participating, part of me as a social media manager, like I get it content is hard, but that's not actually the kind of content that I really care about. The content that I really care about comes from your brain, because you synthesized your thoughts, you took you took on the information and you you digested it in your own human brain, and you come up with new thoughts. That's thought leadership. That's original. You know what I mean? Like, that's the whole point is, is originality there? And so obviously, with with a lot of, like, AI models, or, you know, generative chat materials that we have. Even if they can create new stuff, they're pulling from a body of work in a different way that a human brain is. It's often using patterns, because that's how those are, those AI models are built. That's like, I think the linguistic understanding, which also might come in. I'm just kind of realizing now, I've been projects. I've been part of projects where I was basically creating the model from the linguistic point of view. So, like, when you have a sentence and you want to be able to build more sentences like it, you have to be able to understand what the parts of speech are, how they fit together, how the grammar of our language actually works, and then have that sort of usually first, like, native speaker, kind of intuition about, oh, that sounds funny, but then be able to explain why it sounds funny. And so when chat GPT, like first came out, and there's so many things on LinkedIn right now about people being like, Oh, if you use the rocket, you know, emoji, or if you use an M dash, or if you use the phrase in today's digital landscape, those are all like red flags that your content has come from chat GPT, which isn't necessarily true, but it isn't, I don't meet me too 100% and we'll use it without contribution. But I think the point there is that it is a pattern. It's it's producing things that are actually often quite recognizable, and because that's how we built the model, that's what we wanted. So overall, not a huge fan, because I like human thought. I want to hear from a person.

Kerry Guard 9:36

I think it's I sort of chuckled off to the side when you said the first part because thought leadership, it's so no duh that you would say something different. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, before I dovetail us off of this into our conversation. I do want to just close out, oh, Trevor van Warden, I have to, gotta call that one Trevor. Grateful to see you. Oh, better late than never, sir, better late than never. We appreciate you before we dovetail into the heart of our conversation today. I do want to know where you are right now in terms of the challenge you're facing. You know what feels hard and in your way that you know you wish you had, you know could just pick up and, like, move over here.

Bronwen Hudson 10:21

Wow, that is such a good question. Apart from, like, whatever chest infection I have going on right now that i If I could just move that to, like, never, that would be wonderful. I mean, to be honest with you, a lot of the content stuff has been very much on my mind, because a lot of the, I think what people are missing out on a little bit is that original thought and thought in general, takes time. And we're definitely in a in a time of our lives where rapidity is valued and being the first is really valued. And I don't know, I would love to reprioritize that, right? I would love to be able to say, like, No, I would so much rather you spend like, six hours writing a blog with your own brain involved and really saying something that matters to you and something that's important than spending 30 seconds putting in a prompt into chat GPT and posting it on LinkedIn. No shade, that's not, I'm not saying that because of anyone's content. That's a personal kind of approach as well. Like, I wish I had more time to prioritize with, yeah, thought leadership, you know, like this. This actually feels like an awesome opportunity, because we're two humans talking to each other in some ways. Maybe this is thought leadership. You know what I you know what I mean, absolutely,

Kerry Guard 11:35

oh, it totally is. I That's why I love doing it, because I think it's finally, it's like one of the only places where you can and I think when I look back on cybersecurity marketing con, I feel like the panels were probably my favorites because they felt the most actionable, because you could dig deeper and ask questions and go on a journey versus having a presentation delivered to you, sure, and while people did a really good job allowing for questions at the end to make it more actionable, it still felt a little too high level. And so I think it is these conversations that are going to be the thought leadership of the future that help us be able to say things that we had we don't hear as often as we probably should, because people want the click bait at the end of the day. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah,

Bronwen Hudson 12:27

yeah, it does feel unfortunate, but that feels the unfortunate reality. But I also know, like honestly, especially in the cyber marketing society group, we have a lot of people who don't feel that way. We have a lot of people who really, really care and who want to be creating stuff that's valuable and creative and funny and inclusive. Like, we have a lot of good people in this industry and in this sort of like sub industry, this niche that we're in is fabulous. We have, we have a solid group who, I think a lot of us feel that way, that we like we get that strategy exists. We want the how, and we want the timeline, and we want the stories of how someone else did it, so that we can then, like, piggyback off of those and be creative ourselves. Yeah, totally agree.

Kerry Guard 13:15

You have to be strategic in having sort of an overarching vision and mission of like, what you would accomplish. But like, where I'm starting to steer towards and away from is having a plan and more of a list of what do we need to get done and who's going to do it, and let's just get after it. Because I do think we sometimes sit too long in the strategy, and then nothing happens, and then we've lost time to iterate. So I agree that we should have a vision of where we want to go, Yeah, but the how, like we're, we are, I feel like the how is getting so lost these days. I feel like everybody on LinkedIn is spouting the strategy of it all, but nobody's talking to you, to everything we're saying. How do you get there? So let's talk about, yeah, first, before we before we dive into the founder led piece, I would love to know, like, what were your primary takeaways from cyber security, cyber marketing con?

Bronwen Hudson 14:12

So I loved the panels like you. I actually really appreciated I got to sneak into one of the CMO like track panels, and that room was packed like that was one of the most well attended sessions I was at. And, yeah, honestly, very similar thoughts to you, more of a conversation happening on stage, which feels more like an more like an opportunity to listen in on someone's conversation, as opposed to listen to the thoughts they've already digested. Totally more audience participation that felt great, too. And that was like CMOS, who were at very different stages in their careers and who had been who were very different personalities as well. And I love just like watching the sort of interaction between them, because not only were their strategies different and had they been different, but clearly their type. Of execution were different as well. They'd worked in startups, they'd worked in big companies, they'd worked in corporate stuff, like the really wide variety of experience. I loved hearing that. And actually, the one that is really stuck with me is Joel benches nerd who talks good shout out. The very first session of the conference. It was on Sunday, so it wasn't that there weren't that there weren't that many people like in the building yet, but it was a fantastic session. Like, so do you know Joel? I feel like you do. Okay, so he's such a smart guy to begin with. He's so funny. He's got this, you know? He's walking around with that lunch box that says human organ on it. Like, the

Kerry Guard 15:37

pictures were fantastic from that. So good, super engaging

Bronwen Hudson 15:42

speaker. He made it a really engaging workshop. He had people put in post it, notes and stickers. We all had our own index cards. I've still got the prompt cards that he was using for the session. Really just like, solid stuff that has, that has been in my brain since that session, which I think is a really good indicator that, like, that was valuable, because I'm still thinking about it. And the session basically is about how to how to rethink your your messaging, whether it's like the big website messaging or the you know, key things that are woven in, finding your company's values and how to actually describe them, getting away from like, all of the jargon and actually being clear, like so much valuable stuff. So Joel, I think your session was my favorite. That's what I'll say, yeah, yes,

Kerry Guard 16:26

to action. What's the one thing you're going to implement today? From that, like, what you said, you sort of rolling around your brain in terms of taking action on it. What's something you're implementing?

Bronwen Hudson 16:35

Yeah. So I'm about to start on a website project with my company. We're going to be doing some, some revamp in 2025 and a lot of it has been just a really helpful both strategy and actionable, like, how to implement the strategy, because the questions that are in his his message deck, they they allow you to think in a new, refreshing way. And, Joel, I gotta hand it to you. Like, I'm not even you know, if you want to hit me with 50 bucks on Venmo. Like, you know? Like, let me know. But this is not a, this is not even a push for, for Joel stuff. I think it's incredibly valuable. Like, here, let me just read one, because now I'm holding it and gesturing wildly, okay, oh, that's cool. Okay, so he, Joel, I'm just gonna, like, spill all of your secrets. So he's got these cool decks that have heart and a brain and a burger, meaning your gut. So this is a gut card, so you might ask yourself, or your team, or your CMO, or whoever is, like working on, like reframing this messaging, talking about yourself is weird. What can you get someone else to say about you? So it's like providing a question that allows you to flip your perspective right, instead of like me. What am I saying about my company? What would a customer actually say about me? What did they value about the service that I'm providing? Which is like, the most valuable perspective that you could get right is from the person bought from you, that kind of thing. Anyway. That's awesome. Loved it. Loved it. Gonna be using a lot of reframing for the website stuff. Yeah. Thank

Kerry Guard 18:00

you, Joel, thank you for some actionable insight to like, make stuff happen. Yes, yes to that. I really enjoyed the CMO track as well. It was, I felt like all the personalities up there were totally dynamic and different, and it was really helpful to see how they think it's it's so different, right? Because they're thinking more around how to be the bridge between the team and the board, of like, how to make a case for things. And I feel like you don't always get to your, you know, being on the ground, you don't get to see what they're up against. And I just felt like that insight was so helpful. So I really enjoyed that one as well. Let's talk about your panel. You did a thing. You had fancy Yeah, you were up on stage, you had a microphone. You were asked. This a good question. So what was your I obviously know what your panel was about, but for folks listening, give us the lay of the land. What were you what was the panel about, and how did you come up with the idea for it?

Bronwen Hudson 18:56

So I think, I think this was the first year at cyber marketing con that we had a CEO slash founder, like summit day. And I'm actually not sure how many sessions within that track there were on the lens day, because I was so focused on my own. But it was, it was a total privilege, because being able to have CEOs and founders in the room, it's, it's like that idea of, sort of like trickle down, because those are the people who might have budget decisions. They might be the thought leaders, like leaders or influencers themselves, like, that's such a different perspective if they've come from founding the company, or, you know, being at the top of a company in that kind of hierarchical way. So I've been in social for long enough now that people think for some reason I'm an expert at it. So I think I was just tapped to moderate the panel because I really like LinkedIn. I like talking to people on LinkedIn, and I have strategies for how to build following. Is and that, you know, I have a strategy mindset too, but being able to talk to founders about how they've done it, why they've done it, what they get out of it, that's the real that's the takeaways there. Like, sure, if you have 25,000 followers, people are like, Oh, cool. We'd like to partner with you for something. But, but the questions of, like, Why do you have those people. How'd you get them in the first place? Do you like talking with them? What is the utility of a LinkedIn? Following are kind of the questions that people who maybe want to found their own company, or they want to build them in, you know, a brand, and in some capacity, that's the kind of questions that they were asking. So I wanted to be able to ask those founders and CEOs those questions directly. And one of my favorite things about this panel, that kind of like came together thanks to Gianna, was that it was primary, primarily women on the panel. It was Olivia rose, who's the founder of the rose CISO group, Grace cheat, who's the COO and founder at Pulse dive cyber, which is like a threat intel feed. Super cool. I can definitely link to these people as well. Let's do that for sure. Jules acafore, who couldn't, actually, she didn't end up making it to the to the panel, which is a huge bummer. But she's a lawyer and is the founder of revolution cyber. And then also my boss, Aaron Pritz, who is the CEO and founder of reveal risk, which is the company that I'm currently with, and I loved that my boss was the was the token man on the panel. It was really refreshing to have a panel of like, women founders. That's so awesome. Cyber,

Kerry Guard 21:37

in

Bronwen Hudson 21:37

cyber, yeah. Badass, yeah, totally

Kerry Guard 21:42

it was like, I didn't even realize that until I stepped into the room and saw it, and I was just like, yes, yes. And there was one woman, I don't know which woman it was. She was on the end closest to you. She had so much sass, I just totally enjoyed it. She was talking about, one of the questions you asked was around like, what drives them to be on LinkedIn and to go for it? And she totally dropped like, the elephant in the room was, like, ego feels good, man.

Bronwen Hudson 22:13

Isn't that refreshing honesty as well? Because that's totally valid. If social media makes you feel good, that's a great reason to be on social media. Totally, Yes,

Kerry Guard 22:22

totally. It helps you keep going too. Yeah. Good honor. I always say to founders that they are the first marketers. You are marketing and sales.

Bronwen Hudson 22:35

Absolutely. Great point, great point and move and like often the conversation was about like, moving away from founder led sales. But let's not forget, let's not forget, if you're gonna

Kerry Guard 22:46

start there

Unknown Speaker 22:48

sales, it's so just start there. And there's

Kerry Guard 22:51

a certain clout with that. Do you find that Trevor always sort of pushes me in this way? He's like, you're a founder, leading to that, I'm like, I don't know what that means. And he's like, he because he's, he's on the sales side, right? So he had, he's coming at it from a very different perspective. So I have to wonder, like, is it easier to get in the room from, based on the panel and your experience as as a found has having a founder title or CEO title versus sales title?

Bronwen Hudson 23:17

Okay? Definitely easier to get in the room, right? I mean, any any executive like C suite title, gonna be easier to get in the room in general, founder, I feel like, carries a little less clout, because it doesn't have necessarily an indicator of how successful the thing you founded was or is. But I have a lot of respect for people who are founders, identify as founders, and are kind of leaning into that, because I think it kind of it resonates in a little bit of the same way as the previous AI conversation. Like you did something, you created something, you put a line in the sand, and you were like, this is, this is what I'm doing right here. I'm going to put my time and my energy, and I'm going to build this thing. Huge respect, huge respect for anyone doing that, whether it's a podcast or a castle or a company like that's impressive. All the above, yeah, all of the above, exactly.

Kerry Guard 24:13

You built castle, and you put a name on it, and then you start a podcast to get people into your castle. It's great. I'm

Bronwen Hudson 24:19

available for that. I'm pretty sure we could find a place in the UK. It was like an empty castle. We could do that, right? Absolutely,

Kerry Guard 24:25

absolutely. I'm here for that. In terms of some of the questions you asked, What were let's, let's run through them real quick, and then I'd love to know some surprises, like, what sort of caught you off guard, like, what didn't you see come in and you're like, oh yes to that? Totally

Bronwen Hudson 24:43

Yeah. So overall, the panel topic was a was a chance to be able to talk to CEOs and founders about opportunity creation on social media and reflecting on that as I was, I, you know, was creating my sort of, you know, list of questions. I was like, How can I, you know, get all the good. Thoughts in here. It's like, what, what opportunities are we actually talking about? So that was sort of one of my my first questions was about, like, what opportunities actually have come through social media? And I realize we're primarily talking about LinkedIn, but I'll say social media, because obviously depends what platform you're on. But and when

Kerry Guard 25:17

you say opportunities, are you talking about sales, deals, essentially, or conversations. What do you mean by opportunities? Yeah,

Bronwen Hudson 25:23

that was my first that was my first question to the panelists too. It's like, what are the opportunities that have come up? Is it primarily sales? Is it that you have an audience for your thought leadership and then you're getting more hits on your website? Are you hiring? Are you like recruiting through LinkedIn? Like, there's a lot of types of opportunity that you might be able to pursue, and there was a real variety in the answers as well. So Olivia obviously like bosses out with the with the ego and and she likes it. So there's, there's an aspect there of building an audience of people who might buy from her or who might use her services, but also find her an inspirational person. They like what she's saying. They like her content. And so the opportunity there is connection. You're finding people who want to listen to you and that you probably want to listen to as well. That's That's an opportunity, I think, in the world of marketing and sales, we're more often talking about, did someone click through on your profile and then go to the white paper that you posted about, and then your website, and they booked a demo, and now they're buying from you.

Kerry Guard 26:22

Where's the pipeline? Where's your pipeline? Totally, which

Bronwen Hudson 26:25

is, which is, it absolutely exists, right? When we talk about all the things of like, you know, the funnel and multi touch attribution, social is a huge part of that. And sometimes it's hard to identify, because the number of times that someone has like, you know, stocked your LinkedIn, or, like, looked at, looked back at that article that you wrote, or, like, you know, I don't know, there's so many things that you can do on LinkedIn to find out information about people and their product or the service or whatever it is. So that's creepy at all. I promise it's not. It's not. Well, it can be, I guess I should say, but most of the time it's not. And please don't do it if it's creepy. So yeah, that was the kind of main question, was like, what are the type of opportunities? And my boss, Aaron, I think one of the things that he's really experienced through LinkedIn is is both connection and hiring, because that's how you meet good people. They you, maybe you have a conversation, and four years later, after you've met in person a couple of times they they're someone you want to hire, or they have someone that they think would be a good fit for you like. So finding hiring through connection is totally valid, too. And then Grace had a fantastic answer. So Grace is someone who she's so smart and she's very technical, and a lot of the stuff that she posts about isn't actually necessarily about pulse dive and like product updates that they're doing. She more keeps it to basically like market research, is how she termed it. So she's keeping her community alive, because those are the people that actually care about the work that she does, and hearing it from a person, as opposed to a brand page, has huge value, right? Like, if you're getting it from a brand page, then you don't know who's written it could have been me. Could have been a marketer who doesn't like to know what they're talking about. Ai. Could have been AI. But when it's coming from the founders page, it feels so much better, because you're like, oh, this person is the literal expert on their own product. They're the one who is telling me the closest to the truth that I can get about what this is. So I loved Grace's approach to that, because identifying LinkedIn as great market research is very intelligent, and then also being honest that the people that she wants to connect with are experts in the field as well. They're people that she can learn from in the same way. And she mentioned Reddit in the same kind of capacity, like, you know, there are so many great subreddits where excellent, high level conversations, technical conversations, are happening. They don't have anything to do with sales. They might someday. That's like the marketer and sales hope, yes, that you're building pipeline. But the real value is in the technical conversation. So shout out to grace. Love that, yes.

Kerry Guard 29:01

And actually, I mean, I think that that's really what I use LinkedIn for, right? And even the podcast, right? It's not, uh, I love building relationships, and the connection is wonderful, and it keeps my ear to the ground. I feel like I'm ahead in terms of, like, what's coming down the pike from a marketing perspective, because I'm hearing and starting to put the pieces together around what people are talking about and what's important to about and what's important to them. So yes, to that, I think it's important. I love this conversation and this question, because I think the key takeaway there is that ding, ding, ding, it's not pipeline. The opportunity for social and LinkedIn and founder LED is not it is thought leadership. It's top of funnel. It's engagement. It's building an audience. It's exactly, it's not initial attributed pipeline,

Bronwen Hudson 29:51

because, of course, it sounds right, yeah, no, but

Kerry Guard 29:54

it's so hard to make a case for it, I feel like people are really struggling with like, what, how are you going to. Convince your founder, right, who is a very busy person outside of marketing and sales, to do this thing when they can't see the revenue attributed to it. That's why I thought it was so interesting and awesome for Rose. Just be like, it's ego. I love it. I love being out there. I love making connections. I love that people are recognizing me. And that's what for her, like, you need that individualized incentive to keep going, because it's not sales and pipeline

Bronwen Hudson 30:28

totally. Man, that is such you're you're still right. And, like, one of the main conversations I felt was happening kind of like under the radar at cyber marketing con, but that we all know it's like a, you know, an obvious reality is people don't like being sold to. Like, that is, it's, it's a truth. No one likes being sold to, especially when someone's cold calling you and and kind of, you know, getting in there. And so when you do the opposite, you say something like, I'm not trying to sell you on this. I need help. Or I'm not trying to sell you on this. Here's what I found out. This is like cutting edge threat research that I'm sharing immediately. It gives you, yeah, it gives you fodder. And it's definitely a credibility push. Let's be real as well. And it's also an indicator that you're not just trying to make money. You're trying to help people in the industry. You're gonna build connections, you're trying to do all that other good stuff that I feel like is that it's a particularly salient thing in cyber too, because people are nerdy, people are smart, they can see through that stuff so quickly.

Kerry Guard 31:34

Yeah, and there's so many people who

Bronwen Hudson 31:36

are trying to sell to them directly that they're like, more sick of it than ever. Probably, yeah,

Kerry Guard 31:44

yes. Trevor saying it, the word sell in as any sentence is an automatic reject, yeah, yeah. We burn that bridge. We burn that bridge. And I think coming up, you know, everybody keeps saying you have to bring value and you have to be helpful. And I feel like, really, but what does that mean? Because I don't think, I don't think it's white papers, but you tell me, yeah,

Bronwen Hudson 32:07

I mean, well, man, oh, I think I have a mixed opinion on that, because I feel like a white paper can be really good sometimes, if,

Kerry Guard 32:15

if it's done well, right?

Bronwen Hudson 32:19

Also a great question, also a great question. I feel like that's double edged sword. Wow. So for social, the value creation is is always a more than a two way street, because when you have any size of audience, when you speak to your audience, you're hopefully providing different types of value to different people, but more often than not, you're speaking directly to an ICP. I don't really like saying that, but more like that, if you're speaking in a technical language, let's like, like, take grace, for example, the types of conversations that she can have are with a group of people who already know what she's talking about, or who are interested in knowing more about what she's talking about, but if you provide thought leadership that's more about like sales and marketing or like business led growth stuff like that, you're talking to a slightly different audience, right? And being aware of that is absolutely going to be a factor in what your opportunity creation is and looks like your different goals there. But also, I think I'm getting stuck on the idea of like, value creation, because I'm like, sorry, what's the opposite of that? It's just blather. It's empty nonsense. So like, Yeah, I

Kerry Guard 33:39

think that's what LinkedIn is filled with these days. So that's why I'm coming back to I love how your founders are. I think that's the beauty of founders, versus asking marketing or sales to be the ones out there talking about this stuff, because they are the ones who are coming to the table with real insight of how to talk in the industry about how to help their audience, because they, they, at one point, were the audience exactly built the thing because they wanted the thing. 100% 100%

Bronwen Hudson 34:11

um, were you in Elliot session about Reddit? By any chance? No,

Kerry Guard 34:15

my business partner was so and he, he talked a little bit about it for did you go to that one? I

Bronwen Hudson 34:19

was only in it for like, five minutes, because I had something that overlapped. But I was chatting with him a little bit. And I think one of his LinkedIn posts, Elijah, maybe we can find that one too. He basically was, like, the main takeaway is, like, stop talking and listen. Like, show up and listen. And I think that is a really, that's a really good advice for a ton of people. Yes, at first, yeah,

Kerry Guard 34:41

if you don't have anything intentional and deep and thoughtful to say, I feel like we got it. There's so many times I've written a post and then deleted it. Oh yeah, I probably have deleted more posts than I've actually written because I was like, this doesn't add any value to any of

Bronwen Hudson 34:58

this, okay, but I. I will out myself and say, Okay, first of all, same, I definitely delete a lot of drafts. And I think that is a very smart thing to do in general. Like, not every thought needs to make it to the internet. That's good advice for anyone on the internet. But also, I have to out myself and say, Man, I post a lot of blather. Man, I'm like here for the lulls as well,

Kerry Guard 35:21

like, but that's not, that's not empty. Like, we all need some we need entertainment in our lives, and levity Absolutely. And when done well and done in a way that create, like, you've built yourself a little bit of a brand in that way, of like, how we know you right, because we want to look at your stuff, because it brings levity to the moment. And so I, I think there is moments for that blather, but it's still you're there's still intentional, intentionality behind in the way that you're doing it. So there might be short and sweet, but it's not, it's not empty leadership. It like there was a post today about how somebody upgraded to the latest chat GPT on like the oh one or whatever, and how produced the best thing ever. And I was like, what does that mean? Best thing ever, like that is so empty it doesn't tell me anything. Like, okay, you can put in a longer prompt, and it gives you the best thing ever

Bronwen Hudson 36:22

for forever prove it and totally and what, exactly and what,

Kerry Guard 36:28

yeah, totally doubt that. Trevor, I doubt it was the best thing ever, but it was. It's just that kind of stuff that's out there that's dragging me up a wall of like, I appreciate you being in the moment and wanting to post that, but it's okay that if you

Bronwen Hudson 36:41

wanted to lead that. Yeah, right. Ever, wow. The bar seems low. If that's the best thing ever, I hope you

Kerry Guard 36:52

have more joy in your life. I think, I think you're onto something in terms of what you're talking about, Bronwyn, in terms of writing, of like, I think if people can do both, where you use chatgpt to an extent of whether it's thought, starters getting your outline going, doing a bit of research, double checking your resources, obviously, and then writing it, you're like, the one thing that I can't use chatgpt to is they can't write for me because it cannot get My tone. It never sounds like me. And so I, I just gave I tried it a couple times, and I totally gave up. And so I, I think the people who can find the balance of using it for the mundane note taking tools to find and save time to using it as that thought partner, but who have their own thoughts and opinions outside of what's already been created are the ones who are going to win in the long run. And I think those are going to be really hard people to find in in the grand scheme of things. Unfortunately, I feel like they're going to get lost in the sauce. I'm a little, I'm a little worried about that. I

Bronwen Hudson 37:53

totally, totally agree. Unfortunately, I've read so many stats too. Like, even, even before chat GPT was on the market that, like, you know, this is a made up stat, obviously, but like, 95% of the quantum The Internet is going to be aI generated by 3030, no, 2035, or whatever. Like stats like that, where you're like, that is maybe slightly concerning, like, because, to me, it's, it's concerning because people get lost in the sauce, because the quality is going to lose to quantity. So if one, because I get it too from a content creation perspective, if you're a team of one like I am finding ways to scale your content is incredibly important. Trying to find ways to make your product or your service findable is really hard. You have to beat out so much noise and the belief that you can do so by creating quality, original thought leadership. I have it in my heart, but I can. I would definitely take the pushback. If someone was like, that's a pipe dream. You're going to get lost. You're going to get just beat out by the noise like I, I, I agree in some ways, we have to have a dual strategy of like SEO and maybe AI content creation, and making it easy and scalable for a team of one, and also still relying on our founders, our technical leaders, to be able to produce the material as well. Yeah, maybe it's a two pronged approach as as per usual, it's not, it's not either. It's both, yeah,

Kerry Guard 39:25

yes. And let's go back to the founders. I love what you're talking about in terms of the content they're they need to create. Are they just posting? What is the content they're creating, and how are they, you know, breaking through the noise?

Bronwen Hudson 39:41

Totally, yeah. So I asked, on the panel, I asked the founders basically about what their strategies were, or, like, how they do it, right? Like, because, because beating the blank page is a really hard thing. You might feel like you have a bajillion ideas up here, but no ability to get them out onto paper or into a video or whatever. So Grace, Aaron. Aaron and Olivia are all writers, for sure, a lot of their posts are text driven. Aaron has done some video stuff. I think I've seen some videos with Olivia as well. She's a great speaker, and grace is a fantastic, incredibly well spoken person as well. But on the reg, a lot of their posts are text based. So I'll speak to Aaron, because I think it's really funny the way he does it, for some reason, one of the like, most reliable times I will get him to write things down from his brain is when he's on an airplane. It's like some something that he has where it's like all the other weird distractions are gone, and he'll, man, he'll just go, he'll just punch out 1000s of words, and then I'm like, great, you basically just wrote me a white paper like, and then I can run with that. Yeah, exactly. Do the editing. We can chop it into posts, we can repackage it for a bajillion different things, and then I feel like I have a direct line into his brain. I've been able to access the information because he's done a thought dump, and then I, as the marketing lead, as the content creator, can kind of run with that.

Kerry Guard 41:06

Do you give him a prompt or anything like, how does he sort of get started he's on an airplane? Or does he just go, like, is there, is there a connection between like, what the market needs and where his thought process is? Or does he does he just know that and just, he could just knock it out? Great

Bronwen Hudson 41:19

question. So in when I first started, he told me that that was like a habit of his. And I was like, awesome. Love that for you. And now we have so much more of a rapport and, like an ability for me to ask and to give him prompts. So yeah, actually, just this, this path for cyber, my friend con, he was like, hey, what do you want me to write about on my flight? And I was like, we need some GRC material. Here's like, two questions you can answer, and sure enough, I now have a document with like, 3000 words of GRC material. It was so great. So yeah, I think yeah. And like establishing this is maybe unsolicited advice for other marketers who have the opportunity to work with a CEO, or the opportunity to work with someone who's whose brain they want to access. I think there's a couple ways to do that. Prompts are great, like pinning them down and being like, here answer these questions for me, great start that's for writing, but it's also excellent for video. If you can get a person on video and just even in five minutes and 10 minutes, like put put a meeting on the calendar, steal 10 minutes and ask them three main questions, steal a transcript, cut the video up into multiple clips. Like it's a great way of generating content, but also, like accessing your your founder or your top dog's brain, that's really good stuff. That's

Kerry Guard 42:34

fantastic. Didn't your boss do a crazy video series with Al Jen, was that a thing?

Bronwen Hudson 42:42

Sure? Was, sure was, yeah, that was actually a video that he and his son wrote a script for. So they did a Gen Alpha slang marketing pitch. It is so cringy in, like, the best way, because as millennial, as a millennial, I'm like, oh my god, we can't we use the word skippity on a cyber marketing panel. I am deeply uncomfortable with this saying skip it toilet, not knowing what that means. Oh, my God, so uncomfortable. I'm sweating immediately, such a bad feeling. But it's also, I really enjoyed it. Aaron is someone who's not afraid of using humor in his marketing, and literally, yeah, totally using, like, working with his with his kids, to create something that's new and fun. And also it's a it's a great video. Like, we had a lot of views on it. It was really cool. So,

Kerry Guard 43:40

yeah, yeah. Shout out. Yeah, that's brand building right there. That is, yeah. What's the balance between brand building? I find this really difficult for myself, of like, how much of the How much do I want to build in relation to me versus the brand itself? I think that's a struggle with founders of if I become the thing, and people don't actually associate me with the company that am I losing out there? Or is it all good? It's all gravy, it's all it all works together?

Bronwen Hudson 44:07

That's a excellent question. I think overall, it's probably all gravy. But the one thing that I feel is like better than that, or like a better strategy too, is to talk about your people, because a lot of companies like once, once you are thinking about the founder, it's like, oh, that's a single person, or maybe, like, two people, or three people who have co founded a thing, and then there's like, the product or the service the company in relation to those. But the company isn't just this abstract thing that's doing its own. It's not just functioning by itself. Yeah, we have employees who are doing the work, who are creating the product, who are working on it, who are producing material as well, working with clients, liaising with the community. Those are your those are your thoughts as well. Your employees are the are the people who actually like, who bring it to life. You know, you can have a founder who's just like, you know, waving a flag in the sand and being like. Come get my thing. I created it, but the people who are actually implementing it, using it, selling it, whatever it might be, those are your, that's that's your, like, internal bridge, and that's the bridge.

Kerry Guard 45:11

Totally bridge, yep. Oh, such a good reminder. Such a good reminder. My team is definitely the heart of who we are and what we do 100% I mean, people stay with us for years because we've just built such a wonderful community. And I such a good reminder of, like, why we're here. It is my driver. My people are my driver, for sure. So yes, to that final takeaway hit me. What was like, the one thing from the panel where you were like, if I'm walking away with nothing, I'm walking away with this

Bronwen Hudson 45:47

dang one, big one, huh?

Kerry Guard 45:52

Or underlying or something that hit you,

Bronwen Hudson 45:58

I think that. Okay, I sound a little trite in the beginning, but bear with me, because when founders go about building an audience, Oh, I like that. Joel, a lot. So good, really good. When founders go about creating an audience, so like not for their brand, just for themselves. That's community creation, in my opinion, wherever you're building it, it's finding people who care about the same thing that you do, who value the way that you're saying it, and who are going to who value the product or service that you're providing, and being able to bring your personality to that is the value of founder led growth, right? It's like you can bring your personal brand. You can do things like be ego driven, or create Gen Alpha funny marketing videos. You can do those things you don't have to feel, you know, confined by by brand and by corporate. You know parameters that you that may not really be there, but when it's just you and it's your brand, then you can stand up for yourself and in various ways, which is, I think, just another way of saying what Joel just mentioned in the comments, it's people to people, that is the connection that will always be the opportunity. Whether you're looking for new friends or you're looking for people who are going to spend a million dollars on your service? It's people to people. That's who's signing a check, that's who sending you a Christmas letter, that's, it's, it's literally people. And so the way to do that is to be yourself on on social media.

Kerry Guard 47:36

Yes, oh my gosh, yes. I love that. So I agree. I had somebody on my show earlier this year who said something very similar, Simon Chu, who I love. He was spot on ages ago. And I think the founder led growth motion is the founder led Yeah, founder led motion of it all is definitely that aspect. Last question for you, even though I kind of want to end there, but I have a follow up, but I can't help myself, how do you transition out of this? So like, it can't be founder led forever

Bronwen Hudson 48:12

true, or can it Yeah? Or can it Yeah? I think that founder, founder. Social media profiles will always be valuable. And the founders that I had a chance to talk to on that panel have big audiences already. They've all got over 20,000 followers or something. And as a marketer, when you see those kind of numbers, you're like, ooh, value. I have the audience already. That's a that's a captive group of people that will see these posts when I put them out, super valuable. But I will say that what I've noticed about brand pages is people are not listening to brand pages nearly as much anymore. The ones that have really stood out are the ones that have managed to jump on the humor or like unhinged train or doing crazy stuff, like everything from like Duolingo to Wendy's, like crazy stuff on Tiktok, there's a lot of brand pages that have a lot of craziness and that maybe are promoting that product, but they're not doing it's not nearly the same as the stuff that you'd see in cyber it's not it's not related in the same way. So the brand page, I think, serves as the place where people can go to get value. That is like a white paper, because they know that this is the kind of stuff that's been that a lot of time has been spent on it, creating something that is of value to practitioners. That's that's what we're going for there on that one. But with founders, the opportunities that are related to people, whether it's like direct sales or hiring, those are still going to be people to people. So it's like, yes, that will have value forever, maybe not in the way that you actually have, like a direct that, that bottom part of the the pipeline of the funnel, but there's like, the whole funnel is valuable. Every part of the funnel is valuable. Bother to create stuff for every part of the funnel. You know, I. Yeah, yeah, that's my takeaway. I

Kerry Guard 50:02

love it. I could keep going. I could be here all day with you. I have so many more thoughts and questions, and maybe we just have to have a follow up show. Catch the surface, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I The you keep bringing up the funnel, and I want to, like, dive in. And we can't. We don't have enough time that would be a whole show in and of itself. It's gonna be great. Look forward to for all of us before we go, Bronwyn, where can people find you? They wanna learn more about your company. They wanna learn more about you. Where you at?

Bronwen Hudson 50:30

Hell yeah. So definitely find me on LinkedIn. Bronwyn Hudson, especially if you are a woman or a queer person in cyber and you want some tips on entering the field, succeeding in the field. Please slide into my DMs. I'm always available to help people get into here. I have resources for you. I can tell you my story. I can direct you to how to be a freelancer. I've been I've been done that too. So please connect with me, and then I'm working for reveal risk. We are a cyber security boutique cyber security consultancy and services company. We do everything from third party risk management to maturity assessments. Please check it out. I'm so well aligned with all of the service offerings that reveal risk. I really believe in what we're doing, and my team is incredible. It has been so easy to talk about reveal risk in this kind of setting, and I don't feel like I'm Hawking a product, because my team is incredibly talented and smart people. So if you need those services, please come check us out. Thanks.

Kerry Guard 51:27

So good, so good. Before we go, last question for you, it's the end of the year. We are we're on the brink of a new year, 2025 what's currently bringing you joy? Or what are you looking forward to that's going to bring you joy?

Bronwen Hudson 51:43

Oh, man, 1000 million bajillion things, everything from my job, I play roller derby. I'm looking forward to the 2025, season. It's going to be fantastic. I have to admit, I'm already looking forward to spring. I'm one of those people who's like, if we could just skip through February, and March, I would go down with that January can stay, because we can do a little bit of it, but February and March will just bypass so a new summer and spring season, and then I think I'll be in the UK in May for a friend's wedding. So I'm definitely looking forward to that. Maybe we can chat for,

Kerry Guard 52:16

oh yes, that is happening. That is 100% happening. Maybe we'll do the show live. No, that would be oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I now have great joy, and I'm looking forward

Bronwen Hudson 52:27

to that cute.

Kerry Guard 52:31

Oh my gosh. I'm so grateful to you, Bronwyn, thank you for closing out 2024 with me. What I was oh so great to meet you in person, and I get to do it again. Let's do it. Let's do it. Thank you so much. Thank you to our audience, our listeners. I appreciate you for hanging out with us in 2024 clearly, we got things coming for 2025 this is a preview. Get ready if you'd like this episode, please like, subscribe and share. This episode is brought to you by mkg marketing, the digital marketing agency that helps brands get found via SEO and digital ads. And if you'd like to be a guest, DM me. I'd love to have you and and music myths and mastering done by my tea time sidekick, Elijah drowns. Thank you all so much. See you next year. You

Bronwen Hudson 53:24

I was chair vote me.