 So we got Billy Boatwright. He probably doesn't even need an introduction. So well known around here but he's uh he's been with us for so long with Iris with uh social engineering. What are you bringing here? I think he's unbreakable. We really love Billy and all all the effort he's been putting in helping us with uh with our social engineering village. I really came through um he took what he learned as a bartender and uh really apply it to uh information uh security and especially with social engineering. So we're going to give our attention to him. Swing away. How to conquer imposter syndrome. Thank you guys. Okay now this talk isn't about how to handle imposter syndrome or deal with it. It's how to conquer it and eliminate it. So I'm Billy. You can find me Fuzzy Logic on Twitter. Social operator on Instagram. And that was me nine days ago for my hundred nineteen fourth surgery with my doctor, some anesthesiologist, and my nurse Courtney who always puts on my favorite band in the OR before they knock me out. So first little background in nineteen seventy eight, Drs. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Ims first introduced the term imposter phenomenon. Now a phenomenon in a syndrome are very different. And I think I should change my talk the title. But most people refer to it as imposter syndrome. So I'm just going to stick with that. The research examined the phenomenon as an individual experience of self perceived intellectual phoniness. And individual individual times, self doubt and feelings of phoniness can be triggered by all sorts of different things. And another reason why phenomenon was a better choice of words is because at its core it's just a reaction to an event. And so while the effects of imposter phenomenon sort of mimic some of the symptoms of depression and anxiety, imposter phenomenon is not classified as a mental disorder. Obviously feelings of phoniness can really have an impact on people's ability to operate in their whatever they're doing in their daily lives. So here's a quote written from an article by Sandy Robindron. It's estimated that nearly 70% of people will experience signs or symptoms of imposter syndrome. So how is this talk different? Easy. I've never felt imposter syndrome. Now this isn't because I have bullet proof, bullet proof self esteem or I'm the best at everything I do. Because that were the case, I'd have been giving a different speech last month at my baseball hall of fame induction. Okay, now I'm going to share three stories. The first will call it my origin story. The next two will be stories of examples where I could let self doubt keep me from performing. And then I'll also share numerous ways that the vicious circle of self doubt can be broken. The story begins like many of mine on a baseball field in 1989. I'm adorable, aren't I? This is during my first year of Little League and it's fitting that they took a picture of me wearing a glove and not holding a bat because I failed miserably at the plate that year. Do you have any baseball fans at the ground? What's a good batting average? What's a good batting average? 300. So a good batting average in baseball is a 30% success rate. There was mine. You don't need to be a baseball fan to know that zero is not good. I was a failure at the plate. Scratch that. I can't even call myself a failure because I didn't even try. I was too afraid to swim the bat. I watched every pitch go by. I either walked or I shook out. That's it. But like many 10 year old baseball fans, I collected baseball cards. And I got a pack of cards that had some all time grades with quotes attributed to them. And on one of these cards was 17 words that would change my life forever. If you're good enough to have a bat in your hands, you're good enough to swing it. I'm going to repeat that. If you're good enough to have a bat in your hands, you're good enough to swing it. I thought, you know, the babe is right. I went out the next year and improved my batting average simply because of that. I was put in a position to perform. So I might as well perform. And over the next decade during my playing career, I would say those 17 words before every at bat, every down in football, whatever. So that I never doubted that I would perform. Wasn't always successful, but I always performed. But the real world is a lot more subjective. Sports is a very binary environment. You win, you lose, you're good enough, or you're not. Even at my very best in baseball, I was always successful 40% of the time. But I still had this competitive drive. So I needed to find a job that still had some competitive leanings. Lucky enough, I found that in flair bartending. Okay, well, I'll tell the story. I had a really cool picture that my friend Vaje took. Anyway, fast forward to 2001. And I'm auditioning for a job at Caesar's Palace. And in the room auditioning with me is this guy named Christian Del Pesh. I had a picture of him juggling four bottles. He's a world champion. 20, 30 times over. What was I doing in the same room with him? Well, they called me for the audition. So I might as well get behind that bar and put on a show. Even though he was better, even though his C game beats my A game, I knew they called me. I might as well perform. I'm a whole bar staff. So didn't matter that he was so much better than me. I might as well perform. And then next, next story is Defcon 19 and the SCCTF. How many of you guys watch calls? Watch the calls for the CTF? I was still a bartender at Defcon 19. I applied it to the contest. I got selected. How many of you would think that you weren't good enough to be in that booth? But I knew I submitted my application. Chris selected me. So I might as well get in that booth and perform and make the calls. Real glass bottles he's juggling there. I was never as good as him. And even though we worked together for years at different bars on the strip, while he collected world championship after world championship, and I quietly finished ninth or tenth in the finals. And so when I was in the booth, I just thought back to those 17 words from Babe Ruth. I'm in there. I might as well perform. Now, I had a terrible strategy. I tried to get every flag. I didn't play the game well of trying to get iron point flags multiple times. I had the list and tried to check them all off. But now I'd like to talk a little bit about why here's so much about imposter syndrome in this industry. Hero worship. Now, hero worship is defined as excessive admiration for someone. And hero worship is nothing new. It is existed from millennia, from the tales of Achilles to the Kardashians. Now, as I was taught as a kid to never worship the people I wanted to perform like, because I didn't really know them. However, I've always been drawn to emulate the skills of others. When I was a kid playing baseball, I didn't just want to be a pro ball player. I wanted to be king graffiti junior. Okay, when I was a player bartender, there were certain styles of guys that I wanted to copy, so I copied their styles. Now, in the age of social media, we're given unprecedented access to people's lives. And because of this access, we think we know people better. Now, this access is just an illusion, because it's so controlled and filtered by the people we're following. Okay, I post a tweet after every surgery with the number and oh, that I'm still undefeated. And that's all you'll know about my surgery. You won't know about all the little things that went on, or the recovery was rougher. You just know I lived, because I control it. You know, and if that inspires you, awesome. But it's still an illusion. It's still controlled by me. And additionally, this access is less than the barrier to fame to as low as ever. Daniel Borson observed this in 1962 when he wrote, we lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous, but are famous because they are great. And so now, using state-of-the-art social media technology, I'd like to unveil my social engineering top eight. Well, it's actually a top seven, because I was never tricky enough to get rid of tall. So now you might ask, Billy, why those seven? What about so and so? First, this is my top seven. You can make your own top seven, or top ten, or Mount Rushmore, whatever. Now, interestingly, I've never worked with any of these people. They're all there because of marketing, self-promotion, book sales, TV shows, podcasts, black cat classes, conference talks. And now you might also notice, because of the previous slide, I don't call them my heroes. Because I think too often we take people's professional proficiencies and attribute them to all parts of their lives. Like I said, there's too much hero worship. I don't want to call them heroes because I want to find out after this talk. I don't want somebody to come up to me and go, hey, you had Rachel Toback on there, and she kicks puppies. Just kidding. I know she doesn't. She adopts them. It's adorable. Okay, but I'm also not afraid to put them all in a bit of a pedestal. I do view them as or their skill set as role models. And I know we're all human, but their success is drive me to be better. And I understand also that their greatness was not bestowed upon them. Everything they've achieved, they've earned. And I think if they were honest, they would admit to the hard work it took. And just because I don't have the same exact successes as those of my top seven, it doesn't make me an imposter. I'm not an imposter because I'm not as good as I think they are. Now you see, I may never be able to walk through walls like Eidensee or Jason Street or Code like Dick Kennedy because trust me, the social engineering toolkit would look like this if I were writing it. But none of that will stop me from performing when it's my time to perform. Now I'm sure all of you know these names, but if you don't, leave the slide up, take a picture of it, go give them another 100 or so followers on Twitter. So I mentioned earlier that the real world is very subjective. Now I want to take a look at two things that involve this village and DEF CON as a whole, CTFs and CFPs. So as objective as Chris has tried to make the SCCTF over the years, it's still relying on targeting people. And each of us, our susceptibility to suggestion can change day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. And we don't know what that person on the phone just went through. Maybe it's a normal Friday or maybe they've already mentally checked out because they're headed out early for a three-day weekend. Another way to illustrate the subjectivity of the SCCTF in real world is who's more successful? The person that gets 10 callers to go to a URL or the one caller that gets every flag. Well, in the game, it's the 10 URL visits because that's the highest point flag. In real life, getting one person to go to a URL could compromise the company. So to me, they're both a success. Also, I see imposter syndrome mentioned a lot around CFPs and this one makes me so sad. Many of you have ever seen a tweet that went something like this. I'm speaking at DEF CON and I can't believe they picked me. I'm such a fraud. Yeah? No, you're not. You submitted a CFP. The CFP committee was intrigued so they selected you. Let's go back to those 17 words from Babe Ruth and adjust them a little for all the speaker's feeling symptoms of imposter syndrome. If you're good enough to be on that stage, you're good enough to give your talk, period, end of story. They want you there who might as well perform right now because I submitted a CFP and got selected. I may never be as amazing as some of the speakers that I could listen to read a phone book on a DEF CON stage like Devin Olam or Chris Nickerson. Okay? But once again, I'm not an imposter because I'm not as good as I think those guys are. So here's some things that I'd hope you take away from this talk. What would Babe Ruth do? Well, I've shown the quote enough. He'd swing. Okay, next, avoid hero worship. Have your role models, your idols, whatever you want to call them. Just don't worship them. Let them help drive you. I want each name I've mentioned in this talk to be 10 times more successful because that will continue to drive me to work harder. Next, get involved. My first two DEF CONs 16 and 17 were very quiet. I didn't know where I wanted to be yet because I'm still a bartender. I didn't know where my skill set fit in. It fits in here in this village. And with the recent boom in villages over the years, there's a place for you to just get involved. Heck, come tomorrow. Sign up for Mission SE Impossible. My boy, watch it one last year. Okay? Find out when they're taking submissions for the SCCTF and have 14 friends through mutual suffering. Take a class. I took Chris's first Black Hat class. I have 25 friends that I've seen every year at DEF CON for the last seven years because we bonded over a week of suffering through his class. Volunteer for our local B sites. That was another thing I did. You know, just get involved. Finally, find a quick external power-up. So a couple hours ago, I was changing in my car and listening to my pre-doc playlist. It has four songs in there to get me pumped up. Or I'm a big fan of Jocko Willink. A little Jocko Pick me up or get you going. And as I mentioned earlier, imposter syndrome is just a reaction. So let your initial response be to just outperform those feelings of self-doubt. So to summarize, if you're good enough to be in a position to perform some task, speaking, teaching, writing, pen testing, podcasting, whatever your current task is, you're good enough to do it. You might not always be successful, but you're good enough to perform. And I'll put this line up one more time for anyone that wants to take a picture of it as a reminder of how I and you too can avoid the vicious circle of self-doubt and conquer imposter syndrome. Thank you. There's my contact information again if anybody wants it. Does anybody have any questions? So the question is, if I start to fan boy or hero worship, simply put, are they a god? No? Then I don't worship them. I'll hold them up if I respect their work or that, but I realize they're all just humans. So I'm not going to worship them. Any other questions? Well, because I don't worship them, I've met people that I've heard stories about, and I'm not worshiping the person. I want to emulate the skill set. You know, I use the absurd example of Rachel kicking puppies to, she's a three-time second-place finisher. I want to be that good one day. Her kicking puppies doesn't change the fact that she's got skills. Yeah, but if I worshipped her, I'd go. She's a terrible person. She's really not, so. But that's why I use that example. Any other questions? Okay, thank you. Oh, sorry. Badger pride by Pennywise. The Warriors code by Dropkick Murphy's. Tougher Than Leather, Run DMC, and all original Bone Thugs in Harmony. Thank you, everybody.