I am absolutely terrified of public speaking, and IMO not very good at it. I never apply to give talks, but I always seem to get invited to give talks or be on panels or podcasts a few times a year anyway.

Every time it is days of anxiety trying to figure out how I am going to communicate the security ideas I want people to adopt in a way that may land this time, because I am convinced it could reduce a lot of harm if I am successful.

I never say no though because for whatever reason someone respected my work enough to invite me, and maybe this time I can convince even one org to make the changes to their security posture that are going to prevent the data or assets of the users that trusted them from being stolen.

After each event is days of kicking myself for all the things I should not have said, or should have said but failed to. All the ways I could have been more effective.

When zero people have any questions or feedback after, my brain tells me in a loop that nothing I said landed, and it is devastating. Did I get in a plane and go through so much effort only to confuse people and scare them further away from doing things that actually are pretty easy?

One time after a security panel at a big conference a single person came up to me after who told me what they agreed with, what they want to learn more about, and why. That person is my co-founder now.

Talk to speakers if you connected with what they said or reach out to them after. You may be the source of validation they need to keep trying.