From First Talk to 89 Episodes a Year: The Cyber Creator Journey with Phillip Wylie

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
You're listening to the CyberWire Network powered by N2K. Welcome to the Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing podcast, where we explore the hottest topics in cyber marketing, interview experts, and help you become a better cybersecurity marketer.

**Gianna Whitver** (0:31)
Hi, everyone.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:32)
Welcome, welcome, welcome.

**Gianna Whitver** (0:33)
Phillip, thank you so much for being on. You are one of the people that I look up to in this industry. You are such an influential person. You do so many things. You are a cybersecurity evangelist. You have a podcast and have done other podcasts. You do speaking. Before we start asking a little bit more about working with you and creators and all of that, tell us, how did you get to be Phillip Wylie?

**Phillip Wylie** (0:56)
Sure. So if you want the scenic route, actually, the interesting story goes way back until to my pro wrestling days. When I graduated high school, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for a living. I was a power lifter and my high school friends said, hey, you should be a pro wrestler. So I went to wrestling school, did that for a few years. Really couldn't, I got married and needed more stable income, health insurance, and really you didn't get that from pro wrestling, and there wasn't enough work at the time, especially when you're first starting out to be able to support a family.
So I ended up working a bunch of different jobs, ended up going to trade school, learned AutoCAD, became a CAD drafter, and this is where I found out about IT. It was a more interesting area than drafting for me, so I taught myself how to build computers, took a Novell NetWare certification course, got my first job, and worked as a system administrator for about six years. Moved in to cybersecurity in 2004, started out on the defensive side, and then in 2012, I got laid off, went to work as a pentester in a consulting role, where I launched my career, and that was the area of cybersecurity I was most passionate about. And then, I guess about 2000, 2022, I started moving more into the roles with evangelism. And what got me into evangelism was in 2018, I started teaching at Dallas College.
And I kind of started turning my focus to helping others, which was a huge help for me. So, I was teaching at the college. I started The Pwn School Project, which I was running two meetings a month, which in 2020, during the pandemic, went to one meeting a month, started back up in person in 2021, and rebranded as a DEFCON group. I stepped down from that group a couple of years ago.
But what happened is, I got more busy over the years. And during the time teaching and starting The Pwn School Project, I became a blood crowd ambassador. Because one of the things, a lot of my students and people that I mentored, because prior to teaching, people would come to me asking how to start a job, you know, career as a pentester. So I shared a lot of information. Then I got into teaching. And I started The Pwn School Project to offer education to those that maybe couldn't afford to go to college or they didn't have the prerequisites to get enrolled in the college. And so that's kind of where I started there. And so I became a Bug Crowd Ambassador. They launched the program. And I thought, I'm always encouraging students to do bug bounties to get started in pentesting. So I became a Bug Crowd Ambassador, got to meet with the Bug Crowd team. I really hit it off with marketing, the marketing team there. I went to my friend.

**Gianna Whitver** (3:37)
We have some of the marketing team here.

**Phillip Wylie** (3:38)
Yeah, I noticed that Jordan, and I got to see Jordan at your conference back in December. But that was a really good motivator for me. They interviewed me during Black Hat Def Con. They're interviewing some of the researchers. And then the CEO, and then at the time, Michael Schultz that was over marketing then, they asked me at B-Side San Francisco and RSA back in 2029 if I would host a podcast series. And I started hosting podcast, I mean, not a podcast, but actually webinar series. So I did a webinar series for them, did two different series, and then I eventually started podcasting for myself. Prior to that experience, I would have never done something like that. But what I'd learned from that experience, and this is kind of an interesting thing, is actually one of the speakers that was at your conference, Evan Dornbusch. Evan and I have known each other for several years. And we met for the first time at this community college conference in 2019