UnHacked

Justin: 00:15

Welcome everybody to episode 37 of Unhacked. Guys, Unhacked is a bit of a deliberate misnomer. Truth is 97% of breaches, we're supposed to call those attacks now if we're gonna be politically correct or whatever. 97% of them could have been prevented if we're following basic cybersecurity measures, best practices, industry standards, whatever we call them. Now, Brian, you'll remember we found out on a previous episode, trolling Reddit that, an IT and MSP owner got on there, and he's like, I have no idea what the hell these best practices are.

Justin: 00:46

Yeah. So, like, if we don't know it, how in the hell is a a business owner gonna understand what they need to do to prevent? But here's the situation. Okay? I'm a business owner, and I'm responsible for everything.

Justin: 00:59

Literally everything. Yeah. I get a dozen calls a day from vendors. All of them are trying to sell me the easy button, the magic pill, the thing that's going to get me out of jail for free, across the board. Now in cybersecurity in particular, as a normal business owner, I have no idea what they're talking about.

Justin: 01:16

It's a completely different language. And we've broken that down from a different comment that I stole off a Reddit. I like Reddit. But the but the

Bryan: 01:24

That makes one of us.

Justin: 01:26

There's it's a dumpster fire. It's a good place to go get information. Here's the thing, though. As a business owner, if I get this wrong, I'm in trouble. I can lose everything.

Justin: 01:36

I can lose my data, my intellectual property. I can lose the trust that I've built up with my clients, my, customers, my patients, whatever we call them, whatever industry we're in. I can lose everything in my bank account. You know, and if if that's not enough, then now we've got the lawyers sniffing around trying to throw class action lawsuits on us after we've been breached. So it's, like, it's a war zone.

Justin: 02:01

It really is. It's terrible, but that is what we're here for. We're here to talk to the business owners who are overwhelmed, overworked, and help them sort through the just nightmare of recommendations that they're getting. Boil it down to what are those best practices. What is the 97%?

Justin: 02:19

The things that we can do to, like, undo or not undo. That's the point. We can't undo it, but to prevent basically all the all the attacks. And then, you know, if somebody wants to get in bad enough, they're going to, so we still have to close that 3% gap. We do that with a good cybersecurity insurance policy, and then regular policies and procedures that we follow.

Justin: 02:39

So that's what we're here for. That's what we're all about. I am Justin Shelley, CEO of Phoenix IT Advisors. We do most of our work in Dallas, Texas, and then we have a little bit going on out in Elko, Nevada up in, Northern Utah and then some other places out West. I'm here as always with my good friend, Brian LaChapelle.

Justin: 02:58

Brian, tell us what you do, who you do it for.

Bryan: 03:01

Alright. Well, similar to Justin, I also help business owners with IT. My name is Brian LaChapelle with b four networks, based out of Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. And we help small businesses get rid of the headaches that come with managing IT, securely. And I like to say that we help, business owners and businesses in general go through the journey of, being unsecure all the way to being as secure as they possibly can.

Justin: 03:29

Alright. Alright. Then we're also here with Mario, our other good friend Mario? Shit. Mario's in all this week.

Justin: 03:35

Actions. Alright. Mario's off. I don't know. He's he's preaching the good word somewhere.

Justin: 03:41

He's at an event, preaching cybersecurity. So we're gonna give him a pass this week, but, we have a special guest. This week, I am excited to introduce Christian Espinosa. Now, Christian, I've heard rumors that you are the smartest person in the room. True or false?

Christian: 03:58

False.

Justin: 03:59

Okay. Well, at least it's the title of one of your books. Like, you know, if if you could get in a room of people and and say, hey. Raise your hand if you've ever written a book. Not very many hands are gonna go up.

Justin: 04:09

So, Christian, if that was it, if you had just written one book and by the way, we're gonna get more detailed into that title, so don't worry about my stupid smart ass comment there. You know, of of who's written books, it's it's not very many. So if that was it, if you just written a book, that would be pretty impressive. But you've written another book, the in between. Now this is a, oh, life in the micro.

Justin: 04:31

I've gotta get the whole title. In between life in the micro, which at at a minimum is audio version. Do you have a a physical book as well?

Christian: 04:40

Yes. I have a

Justin: 04:41

That probably came out first. Now you've got the audio. I have downloaded the audio. I've started listening to it. I'm not far enough in to really comment, but definitely excited to hear more.

Justin: 04:51

So not only have you written a book, you've written two books. You've built and sold a successful cybersecurity company called Alpine Security. You founded you currently lead the Blue Goat Cyber for medical devices. You protect medical devices. Now this is one that we have not really discussed here on the podcast, but you get a pacemaker put in.

Justin: 05:09

Somebody hacks your pacemaker, end of life. Where where no. Because that's not enough. You've got a podcast going along with that. You are a white hat hacker.

Justin: 05:22

Now I don't know about you, Brian, but this might be worth a separate episode where we dig into white hat hacking, what that means

Bryan: 05:28

Absolutely.

Justin: 05:29

The benefits. You're a keynote speaker. I mean, maybe you'll break you know, you talk to us about some of the places you've spoken. Heavy metal connoisseur. Now tell me, Christian, what is your favorite band?

Justin: 05:40

I've gotta know.

Christian: 05:43

It used to be Nightwish, but I think it's Arch Enemy now.

Justin: 05:47

Oh, I don't even know what those are. So I guess I am not a heavy metal connoisseur. It turns

Christian: 05:51

out I like I like I like Metallica as well.

Justin: 05:53

Whew. That's a name I know. That's a woman name. I would go with ACDC as my top Yeah. Rock band.

Justin: 06:00

I don't know that they're really heavy metal, though. So that's Yeah.

Christian: 06:02

They're more

Justin: 06:03

rock. Yeah. Yeah. And and if we went if we moved into more modern, something that the youngsters these days would understand, it would be disturbed. They're probably my most recent favorite band.

Justin: 06:15

Still, I don't know that they really fit the true heavy metal category, but, anyways, I I am a lover of rock. We'll say that. I guess you've been skydiving. You've been diving underneath the water. Sky a dive master, that's somebody I you you teach people to dive.

Justin: 06:32

Is that correct?

Christian: 06:33

Correct. Yeah.

Justin: 06:34

Okay. Okay. Well, maybe we'll have to talk about that someday because that's another thing I always wanted to do. You scaled two of the seven summits. What the hell?

Justin: 06:42

Do you mind telling us which of the two you've scaled?

Christian: 06:45

I've done Kilimanjaro, which is in Africa, and Mount Elbrus, which is in Russia. It's the highest peak in Europe.

Justin: 06:54

Damn. Very cool. Okay. Crazy. I mean, these are these are in the category of Everest.

Justin: 07:01

Right? And I I don't know anything about climbing, but I did watch the documentary on Everest, and it took away any need I ever have to try this out. I mean, the the Sherpa, the guy in charge, the one leading the pack, spoiler alert, he died. Not interested, but Hopefully you've done that. Now here's here's where I I do get a little excited, though, Kristen.

Justin: 07:23

You've done 24 Ironman triathlons. Unreal. I don't wanna brag, but I've done five marathons, and I used to think that made me the shit. Right? 1% of the population has ever done a marathon.

Justin: 07:36

26.2 miles, and I'm like, man, I'm I'm something. And I'm actually getting ready to do my sixth one this year. Nice. Then I see yours, 24. So, guys, if you don't know what an Ironman is, it's a marathon.

Justin: 07:48

That's a part of it. That's a third of it. And then you've gotta swim 2.4 miles. I I don't know how to swim. I can barely if I dive off the diving board, I can doggy paddle to the side.

Justin: 07:57

That's it. I'm not making it 2.4 miles. And then you gotta ride, and I don't know which order they go in, but you've gotta ride a bike for a 12 miles. So, this makes marathoning look like child's place. So, Christian, Jesus Christ, when are you gonna do something with your life?

Justin: 08:12

That is my question, my burning question.

Christian: 08:14

Working on it. I'm still working on it.

Justin: 08:16

Okay. Alright. Well, we'll we'll give you a pass on that, and then maybe we'll do another follow-up episode when you've actually gotten off the couch and done something. Joking aside, let's get serious. Let's talk about cybersecurity.

Justin: 08:30

Because like I said, this is it's a real issue. It's something that I mean, if we're being honest, nobody really wants to talk about. You got enough problems running a business. It's kinda like buying insurance. Like, yeah, you have to do it, but can we just do it and be done and and walk away?

Justin: 08:44

But you said something that caught my attention. You said that we are losing the cyber war. Now as a soldier in the war, or whatever title I'd give myself, I didn't like to hear that. We're losing. And then, but you you gave a little bit of hope when you said the root cause and the new solution.

Justin: 09:01

So I'm gonna punt to you, Christian, and I want you to just like, let's talk high level first, and then we're gonna dive in and break this stuff down. We're talking to the overwhelmed, the overworked, the I I don't wanna say undereducated, but definitely not the cybersecurity specialized business owner. What do we need to tell them to help them win this war and stop losing it? Because the truth is we are. You look at the news all day every day.

Justin: 09:24

Somebody's getting breached. Somebody's losing everything. Somebody's going out of business. So, Christian, what is the good news for today?

Christian: 09:32

Well, the good news is there are some relatively simple things you can do to really minimize the risk of someone attacking your environment.

Justin: 09:40

Okay.

Christian: 09:42

And you know those things are often ignored. Nobody considers cybersecurity until it's too

Justin: 09:46

late. Correct.

Christian: 09:47

And as a small business owner, I think it's extremely important to consider cybersecurity because most businesses go out of business after a cybersecurity, you know, data breach.

Bryan: 10:01

Correct.

Justin: 10:01

Yeah. Do you have to happen to have the statistics on that?

Christian: 10:05

I think it's eighty eighty something percent.

Justin: 10:07

Kinda what I've heard too is that, you know, when if if you get hit, it's it's just the the odds of coming back and kinda like we talk about the the title of this podcast, you're not getting unhacked. You can recover. Like, some people do. They recover. They stay in business, but you do it with a damaged reputation.

Justin: 10:23

You do it with a lot less money than you had when you started out. You do it with new friends in the, legal profession, and and the government. Right? You got new friends in the government too. It's just Yeah.

Justin: 10:33

It's not a good situation. So, I mean, we don't wanna get there. So what do I do as a business owner to make sure that I'm not this guy?

Christian: 10:43

Well, I think something you have to do is put cybersecurity on your road map. And one of the problems we have is cybersecurity professionals are not the best communicators. And and they don't understand what it's like to run a small business. So they'll tell you you have to do 100 things in order to be secure. The reality is all those 100 things should be prioritized by which gives you the biggest bang for the buck.

Christian: 11:12

And from my experience, if you do, like, five of those things very well versus a hundred horribly, you'll be much more secure.

Justin: 11:21

Yeah. Alright. I'm gonna jump Oh, go ahead.

Bryan: 11:23

Would it be safe to say then because I like the word journey. Would it be safe to say that if you when you say prioritized, like, maybe, you know, in the first quarter, we handle these five things and get really good at them, and then we move on to another couple things while keeping those five things in place. And then every every quarter, we just keep adding a little bit more, hence the name, you know, going through the journey of cybersecurity versus, you know, hey. You're not doing these hundred things. You're a bad guy.

Christian: 11:51

Yeah. I like that term journey. Typically, when I've done consulting in the past for small businesses, we we set up a road map that did just that. Each quarter they would master one thing, next quarter master the next thing and just keep adding to that because it doesn't make sense to do everything, especially if you're a startup, you're not that mature with your other business processes. There's still a way to expect you to be secure or sorry, mature in cybersecurity.

Bryan: 12:21

Yeah. I I heard, Robert Herjavec, on a recent, video clip, and he was saying how some people over plan, and they do like, they're trying to scale. And instead of, worrying about the immediate and the near future, they're they're they're trying to scale for the next five years, and and they don't have the budget and or the finances or the resources to do the full scaling, and they end up flopping and losing money and not being able to to sustain their business practices. I think it's the same in cybersecurity in a way. Would you would you agree that if you try to do too much, you just don't have the the the ability to get great at it all, and then you end up not being able to spend the money that you need to focus on the right areas?

Christian: 13:00

Yeah. A %. And, you know, a small business owner should talk to a cybersecurity, a trusted advisor early on and they can help steer directions for what kind of systems to use, what the risks are with those systems, how to secure, you know, your Google workspace or whatever you're using. You know, I think it's if you do something early on, you can help prevent a lot of these problems. And then there's ways to mitigate the risk as well.

Christian: 13:30

So, yeah, it's it's it's often ignored, though, until there's an issue.

Bryan: 13:36

No one has the budget until after the fact.

Justin: 13:38

Oh, isn't that the truth? It's like you can No.

Christian: 13:40

They either have a budget or they're out of business, basically. Right? It's one of those two.

Justin: 13:44

Sometimes that budget is court ordered. Let so let's this is an interesting point, and we usually break this down from the perspective of a business owner. Like, I I'm a business owner. I don't have the money, the the resources, the attention, the time in my day to do all of this stuff at once, and so we're gonna break it down into pieces. But if we're just gonna be transparent about our industry, we also don't.

Justin: 14:05

Right? Like and I mean, if I pick up a new client and their their security is a mess, I could go in there and I could recommend everything. In fact, I could even sell them everything. But then do we really have the capacity to deliver that all at once and do it right and do it well? So, you know, even even from our perspective, and, Brian, Christian, tell me if you disagree with this, we do have to pick the most important things, the most basic, the most you know, the ones that give you the biggest bang for the buck and start there and get that done and do it well.

Justin: 14:34

Do it right. And then we can talk about a a more mature stack. Is that is that accurate? You guys have any thoughts on that?

Christian: 14:40

I think I agree. I I I think it's mostly accurate, but I I think it depends on the lens you're coming through. So if you're like a firewall provider, you're you're gonna try to sell them a firewall no matter what, even if they don't even need it.

Justin: 14:53

Correct.

Bryan: 14:53

And a

Christian: 14:53

lot of small business business owners will buy a firewall because it's advertised. It'll solve all your problems. But that's we know that's not true. But but so they'll say you have to have the firewall, and it'll do everything for you. Or you have to have this this, anti spam device or whatever, versus the number one thing you should do is, like, understand your own environment and patch your systems to make sure they're configured properly.

Justin: 15:18

You know,

Christian: 15:18

that would prevent mostly attacks, but that that is rarely talked about if you're trying to sell a firewall. That's an example.

Justin: 15:24

That's right. It's a great example because it actually just came up for me recently. I have a client which is and this is, like, a nightmare situation where I am in a joint responsibility for cybersecurity with another vendor. And I'm not gonna get into why. It's it's it's a real thing.

Justin: 15:41

It happens, and there's nothing that any of us can do about it. So they've got a situation where they need equipment to be replaced. They need to be done now. The equipment is failing. It's taking down their network.

Justin: 15:53

And when I when I went to them, I approached them. I said, hey. Here's what we need to do. We've we've known about this for two years. Like, it's time to just pull the trigger.

Justin: 16:01

We gotta get it done. They said, yes. Let's do it. Then all of a sudden, well, we don't understand why we need that. We have this other vendor who's supposed to be doing all this for us.

Justin: 16:13

And, Christian, they were when I said, I hey. Let me let me talk to this other vendor. We're gonna put our heads together. Let's make sure we're not overselling you because we never wanna do that. And the other vendor is providing a firewall.

Justin: 16:26

That was it. That was it. That's their entire Yeah. Other than software, they also you know, they they have some software that they sell them. So, you're right.

Justin: 16:35

It it does depend on the perspective we're coming from. But it really doesn't just illustrate the problem that business owners have where they are talking to different people in a language they don't know and understand, and everybody's telling them something different. So Yeah. What's what's a guy to do? What's a business owner to do in this situation?

Christian: 16:53

I think they need to take ownership and learn a little bit about cybersecurity. So they're not fooled or tricked by all these vendors trying to sell them, you know, endpoint protection, which is a big one, and get them on a subscription. And I'm not saying that you don't need employee protection, but, you know, I think you have to make informed decisions. Just like when someone's trying to sell me as a business owner lead generation services.

Justin: 17:14

Oh my god. Those are everywhere. Yeah. And they don't work.

Christian: 17:19

I tried one. I've tried a couple, and they did not work a %. But I really get phone calls or emails every day about those. So Yes. I had to educate myself on how the lead gen works and what I should do myself.

Christian: 17:31

So I think it's the same concept with cybersecurity. It's just I think it's overly complicated. And when someone hears the word cybersecurity, a business owner, they just sort of tune out. Correct. And I think I think and I wrote about this in my first book.

Christian: 17:46

As an industry, we've done a horrible job with all this, like, extra vernacular, this language, talking over people's heads, making it super complicated. And I think we've done this because cybersecurity people wanna be, quote, smart. So we have our own language. It looks like we're smart, but we can't communicate with a business owner, effectively. And that's, you know, where I think the big gap is in cybersecurity.

Justin: 18:09

Okay. So that's a perfect segue into the title of your book that I intentionally twisted. So you I'm like, hey. You think you're the smartest person in the room, which is the exact opposite of what that book was about. Right?

Justin: 18:22

So, do you wanna talk a little bit about that book and what it is? What what's your core message there?

Christian: 18:29

My core message is in order to be a good communicator and collaborator, you need to put your ego aside. In cybersecurity, most people get their significance by being smarter than other people, like intellectually smarter and your ego does what it can to protect that. So if I'm talking to someone, like a client, if I talk over their head and they don't understand it, my ego is saying, look how smart I am. They don't even know what I'm talking about, which is which is the problem because if the client doesn't know what you're talking about about how to fix the vulnerability or about what those top five things are that they should be doing, then they're not gonna do it and they're just gonna tune out. Right.

Christian: 19:15

And we hear this in cybersecurity all the time. Like, people say, well, I didn't get the budget. And typically it's because they talk all this technical lingo when they're asking a board of directors for a budget versus just explaining it in terms that make sense for the business. So it's really putting the ego aside, and trying not to be the smartest person in the room and understanding, like, the lens the person you're communicating with is seeing the world through, which is not the same lens as you, obviously.

Justin: 19:46

No. And I I actually love that concept of, you know, and it we've heard this. We we should not be the smartest person in the room because then it or what's it saying? You know, if you're the smartest person in the room, find a different room. You're the wrong person.

Bryan: 20:01

Yeah.

Justin: 20:01

And and I have said before that the primary reason that I do this podcast is because I'm trying to get smarter. I do not consider myself the smartest person in the world of cybersecurity, but I absolutely do want to interface with those people. Right. Right? And that's that's why we've got Brian here today.

Justin: 20:18

Yeah. You're

Bryan: 20:20

in the wrong room.

Justin: 20:24

We have fun here.

Bryan: 20:25

I'm good, but I'm not the best.

Justin: 20:27

But I mean, it's we we do have to be upping our game all the time. And and, Kristen, you make a phenomenal point, though. If if we cannot articulate what it is, why it matters, what solve what problem it solves, to business owners, then we're doing them a disservice. We're we're we're in fact, we're not just not helping them. We're actually making it.

Justin: 20:48

I mean, how many people have we talked to about cybersecurity and their eyes glass over? Right? They just they just aren't interested. But I love your point also that we have to as business owners, we are in fact responsible for everything, and therefore, we better have a basic knowledge of everything. We don't have to be used for dinner.

Christian: 21:07

The podcast software that, didn't you?

Justin: 21:08

Yeah. Yep.

Christian: 21:09

So why why exclude cybersecurity?

Justin: 21:12

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. Okay.

Justin: 21:16

You have a framework in your book that you call the seven step secure methodology. Why don't we that is specifically referring to cybersecurity, correct? Or is it more broad? Is it is it about everything life in general?

Christian: 21:32

It's more broad. It's about life in general and really developing emotional intelligence and self leadership.

Justin: 21:38

Okay. So let's let's go ahead and go there because I think, you know, as I as I read through this, I picked up a lot of things that do apply exactly to what we're talking about here. And my favorite honestly is mindset. I think Brian's is gonna be your last one. Is it Kai san?

Justin: 21:53

Is that how you say that?

Bryan: 21:55

Kai san. Yeah. That's definitely my that's my favorite.

Justin: 21:57

So so, Christian, would you mind breaking down your your seven step process and, you know, kind of bring it back home to to cybersecurity even though it it is about everything?

Christian: 22:09

Yeah. The seven steps I developed with my first cybersecurity company, Alpine Security, like 99% of my problems in the company were because my staff, which are highly rationally intelligent, they didn't have any emotional intelligence. So they would talk over clients heads, not communicate well. So I did a lot of work with my team to develop emotional intelligence. And what worked became those seven steps.

Christian: 22:37

The first step is awareness. I think we all need to have awareness. And a lot of us don't understand that from an awareness perspective, we're very predictable. And I talk about neuro linguistic programming quite a bit in my book. But from an awareness perspective, if we have a stimulus, a program runs in our brain and we respond.

Christian: 23:00

That's our behavior. So if our behavior is not serving us, it's important to install another program, basically. An example of this in my company, I had one guy, every time somebody asked him a question, he got defensive and didn't respond very well. That was his default program. So instead of doing that We've

Justin: 23:20

done that before.

Christian: 23:22

Yeah. We I think a lot of us have done this. Right? So instead of doing that though, he could maybe say, okay, someone's asking a question. Maybe I can get curious instead of defensive and articulate, like, to the person, like, why they're asking the question, understand more where they're coming from.

Christian: 23:38

So that that's awareness. If our behavior is not serving us, we need to change that behavior by doing install a new program, which you have to believe in step two, which is mindset that our brains are not hardwired. We could learn new things. Our brains have neuroplasticity. So in step two mindset, it's important to have a growth mindset.

Christian: 24:01

A growth mindset means we can learn new things, we can learn new behaviors, we can evolve. And if we have a fixed mindset, which is the opposite, that means we think we're just the way we are. We can't change. You hear a lot of people say, that's just the way I am. That's just who I am.

Christian: 24:18

That is a fixed mindset, and that tells you that that person is only only gonna get in life more of what they've already gotten. They're not evolving. Step three is acknowledgment. As a leader, I think it's important to acknowledge people. And one of the things I struggle with was acknowledging myself.

Christian: 24:39

We talked about Ironman earlier. I remember in 02/2005, I stood under the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, and I had never done an Ironman at that point. I just was interested in it. And I told myself there's a picture of me under the the the finish line. I told myself, one day I'll do this freaking race.

Christian: 24:57

Ten years later, in 2015, I did the race. I crossed it as a as a finisher.

Justin: 25:01

Nice.

Christian: 25:02

And I never took a second to acknowledge myself. I thought I'm actually thinking about the next big thing to accomplish. And I realized if I can't acknowledge myself for something that took me ten years to do, I'm probably doing a crappy job acknowledging my team or my clients or my spouse, or, you know, my family or anybody around me. So I had to really work on that.

Justin: 25:26

I now tell me if this fits because in in my language, I I talk about celebrating the small victories in life. You know, we can and it that's what I think of when you talk about standing under the Ironman. You'd you're gonna do it some days. Ten years later, like, that's a long time. You planned.

Justin: 25:42

You worked. You you did a lot of work to get there, and you did it. And and what I'm hearing you say is you didn't just stop and celebrate that moment. Is that right? And that's and that's a huge achievement.

Christian: 25:54

I do not. No.

Justin: 25:56

And and I think that there's there's we can do that throughout, like, all day every day. We can find the well, like, what's the best thing we did today? Because it's easy to think shit. I didn't do this. I didn't do that.

Justin: 26:05

I I got a a checklist this long, a mile long, that I didn't get half of it done. I didn't even get a third of it done. You know? But but taking a second just to celebrate those things that we did do is huge.

Bryan: 26:18

Yeah. And and and celebrating the things that our teams are doing is is

Justin: 26:22

one of

Bryan: 26:22

the most important things. Yeah. I think that's what correct me if I'm wrong. You're you're talking about Christian. Like, we internally at b four networks, every morning, we'll hand out, the goat.

Bryan: 26:31

And it's it's who in the previous day has exemplified the most in getting better or or trying to make ourselves, our teammates, and our clients 1% better and and and have improved something or or made, improvements to themselves. And we celebrate that every day, and it's the person who wins it then decides who gets it tomorrow. And, and that's how we've handled acknowledgment. Is that what your your, methodology talks about, is is acknowledging others and their their their wins?

Christian: 27:01

Yeah. Exactly. I mean, everybody wants to feel appreciated and understood.

Justin: 27:06

Yeah.

Christian: 27:06

It's easy to say we didn't do enough. We did it. We only got halfway through our list, but we also did half of our list. Right? Right.

Justin: 27:13

Right. So I

Christian: 27:14

I think that's important. In my company now, we do a daily update in Slack, and I have in there where someone can give a shout out to somebody else. Like Nice.

Justin: 27:24

Is a

Christian: 27:24

way to acknowledge some what some what somebody contributed to a project or, you know, to to morale or whatever.

Bryan: 27:31

I love that. Yep. That's awesome.

Justin: 27:33

And and, honestly, we can take this to, you know, bringing it back to cybersecurity because there is a never ending and ever evolving list of things that we're supposed to do to protect our businesses. It can get really defeating if we don't take a minute to look at the things that we do have in place. You know? Are we do we at least have two factor authentication set up everywhere? You know, that's something that we can celebrate.

Justin: 27:55

That's a big one. Do we have proper? And I I don't wanna get into culture yet because I wanna come back to that. We're gonna circle back to mindset. But, you know, have we established if if we do nothing else, have we established a good culture around cybersecurity in our business?

Justin: 28:10

That would be something worthy of celebrating, you know, and acknowledging. So, okay. So not to derail you too much. We've been through awareness, mindset acknowledgement. What else do we have in this methodology?

Christian: 28:21

Yeah. I I think it's worth touching on acknowledgment one more time because you want to acknowledge the behavior you want more of.

Justin: 28:29

Yes.

Christian: 28:29

And I wrote about this in my book and there was a there is a pool with a wet floor. There is two signs. One sign says caution, don't slip. One sign says caution, walk carefully. And guess which resulted in more people slipping?

Christian: 28:47

The one that said don't slip. So we get more of what we focus on. So and like you said, in cybersecurity, it is a very challenging job. If there's a hundred vulnerabilities, if we miss one, the criminal can break into our environment and then compromise everything. And often all we do is focus on that one thing we missed versus the 99 things we got right.

Christian: 29:11

Yeah. And that's where that's where acknowledgment comes into play as well because it's it's easy, to always focus on the one thing you got wrong. There's always something gonna It's

Justin: 29:19

how our brains are wired, honestly. Right? Like, we are designed as humans to look for danger, to look for risk, to look for problems that could kill us, and focus on those things. But it can it can work to our detriment if we aren't just taking a minute to appreciate the things we've already done, because that's what gives in my world, anyways, that's what gives me the motivation to then keep charging forward. Because if I don't have those little celebrations, like, I'm out.

Justin: 29:44

If I if I do an Ironman and, you know, I'm I'm not happy about the the outcome and I don't take a minute to acknowledge that, I'm sure as hell not doing how many more did you do after that? 23 more of them. So at some point, I'm guessing you did acknowledge, you did celebrate, and and decide that that payoff was worth going and and doing at least a few more of those. Yeah. Okay.

Justin: 30:10

Alright. Anything else on acknowledgment?

Christian: 30:13

No. I think I think that's a good overview. There's much more about it in my book, obviously. The next step is communication. It's a massive topic.

Christian: 30:23

But one of the things I always tie it back to is one of the NLP presuppositions which is the meaning of communication is the response you get. So what that does is shifts the ownership back to you to change how you communicate if you're not getting the budget, if your clients aren't understanding, if your spouse gets upset, you know, the ownership is back on you. It's very easy to blame the other person, or they're they're just not smart enough. That's why they didn't understand it. Or she just doesn't get me.

Christian: 31:00

You know, that that doesn't that doesn't work, though. So So the ownership needs to ship back to you and in cybersecurity, this is a massive problem. We always just say, Oh, the clients don't get it. They're stupid. I mean, there's even memes about this stuff, right?

Christian: 31:14

But I'm like, the client's a freaking doctor. Do you know how to perform heart surgery? What if they tell you all about how to perform heart surgery? You're probably not going to get it either. Right?

Christian: 31:24

But cybersecurity people don't think of it that way because, like I said, they want to be the smartest person in the room and make other people feel feel small, unfortunately. That that is I I know I'm generalizing, but that has been my overarching experience with cybersecurity professionals.

Justin: 31:39

No. I think you're I think you nailed it. Like, we do blame clients and prospects in this industry. I hear it all the time. And and in fact, when, you know, in in marketing, we go and we describe our demographic and our psychographic.

Justin: 31:53

And one of the things I hear frequently is they value technology. Well and and then the counter that technology. The complaint is they just don't value technology. They don't value what we do.

Bryan: 32:04

It's like, oh, they don't

Justin: 32:05

know what the hell you do.

Bryan: 32:06

So they value what technology can do for them. The result. Exactly. Result of what they're Absolutely.

Justin: 32:12

Absolutely. So this is a failure to communicate. Right?

Bryan: 32:15

Right. And failure to communicate what like, most, at least as my experience, most IP professionals are going in saying, if you don't have backups, you're gonna lose your data. And really what they're trying to say is, if you lose your data, here's the ramifications on your business. Loss of revenue, loss of client, loss of clients, potential clients being angry with you, not being able to fulfill your obligations to your your your your clients, so on and so forth. Right?

Bryan: 32:41

What are the impacts to them, not you lose your data? The data doesn't matter to them. The the end result of what they need the data for matters to them.

Justin: 32:48

%. So you you do this already, Brian, so I'm not calling you up, but I'm going to say that the precursor to what you just said is to know if that really is a problem for them. Right. Yeah. A lot of times we try to sell solutions to problems that they either don't have or don't care about.

Justin: 33:03

Exactly.

Bryan: 33:04

So Yeah.

Christian: 33:04

That's why you have to look at the world through their lens and articulate Absolutely. Change your communication based on that. Right.

Bryan: 33:10

Yeah. And that that all starts with asking a pile of questions and and not not selling, but but asking questions to understand what it is they're they need and what it is that is important to them and then using that information to then talk about how by not doing what they need to do in in the world of cybersecurity, how that will impact what matters to them versus what matters to me. Right.

Christian: 33:36

Yep. %. I I think curiosity is like like losing traction anymore. Like, people aren't curious about other people, Harley. It seems like

Bryan: 33:45

Yeah.

Christian: 33:45

But if if you're gonna if you're curious and you ask those questions, you'll understand, oh, this is how how they feel about this. So this is how I can position my solution, and this is what they really need. You know? It requires you to ask

Bryan: 33:57

the other question. Again.

Justin: 34:00

Couples therapy. Oh, no kidding.

Bryan: 34:04

I've never been there, so

Justin: 34:04

I don't know what you're talking about. But, anyways, the the curiosity to take that a step further, it's more and and when I said it, I'm gonna call myself out because when I said it, we have to ask those questions first. It was a curiosity of how do I sell them what I want them to buy or and that came out wrong. But, like, kind of that's what we do. Right?

Justin: 34:22

It it's a curiosity of how do I tailor my, whatever I'm selling them to meet their needs, but it really isn't, at least it doesn't come naturally, a true curiosity for who they are, what they want, what their perspective is, and and really joining them in that world and in their mindset, in their world. We do a lot of times try to ask questions in order to persuade them to a different way of thinking. Sometimes that's the right answer, but I do think it's it's a deep dive first to really truly understand, what the problem is and and what the fear is behind it. What, you know, what are we solving? Right?

Christian: 35:02

Yeah. A %.

Bryan: 35:05

Alright.

Christian: 35:06

Yeah. The next step is monotasking, which is the antithesis of multitasking.

Bryan: 35:14

Wait a

Justin: 35:14

minute. Nobody gets a trophy for that though. Everybody gets trophies for multitasking. Come on, Christian. Josh (3one 30:

Christian: 35:18

I don't give out trophies for multitasking. In fact, if someone puts their great multitasker on a resume, I immediately say,

Justin: 35:25

I'm not- Josh

Christian: 35:25

(3one 30: Dealing this person.

Justin: 35:26

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

Justin: 35:27

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

Justin: 35:27

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

Justin: 35:27

I know. I know. I know. I know.

Christian: 35:27

I know. I

Justin: 35:29

Yeah. And not getting nothing done, right?

Christian: 35:32

Yeah. So, monotasking solves two things. It makes you productive, much more productive, the multitasking. And it improves your relationships because if you're present with somebody, you're not thinking about something, you're not on your phone, you're gonna have a better relationship with them. And that goes back to the communication as well.

Christian: 35:50

These things all tie together. For me with monotasking, I put hour chunks of time on my calendar, sometimes an hour and a half, where during that time, that's the only thing I do. I don't like, if I'm gonna work on my next book, I don't check my phone. I don't check Slack for the hour. That's all I do.

Christian: 36:08

And I can get way much more done by monotasking than by bouncing back and forth between task.

Bryan: 36:16

And then

Christian: 36:17

and then, like, at at dinner, if I'm going to dinner with my spouse, we don't sit there on our cell phones. We actually are present and have a, you know, nice evening. But then if I look around the restaurant, I see couples there and they're both just on their phones. So I'm thinking that's probably not a very pleasant experience for them because if someone picks up their phone and they're not listening, oftentimes I will just stop talking.

Bryan: 36:43

Wait. What?

Justin: 36:44

Exactly, Justin. Sorry.

Christian: 36:46

I almost did. I was like, okay. I'm not gonna talk anymore. But I know I know you're just messing around. Yeah.

Bryan: 36:53

I saw I saw a video once. It was, it was a guy, who was, like, there was a text overlay, and it said, you know, whenever whenever my wife and I are on the phone at the same time at a restaurant, I sometimes put my phone down and hide it and then just look like I'm the the the, the husband that's neglected. He just is there, like, looking around, like

Justin: 37:14

See, I'll start sending them messages.

Bryan: 37:16

I'll text

Justin: 37:18

them or, you know, tag them in Facebook or whatever.

Bryan: 37:20

Like Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: 37:22

Oh, yeah. We're on a date. I forgot.

Christian: 37:24

Well, it's it's so we live in a very distraction filled world now.

Justin: 37:27

So We do. Yeah.

Christian: 37:28

Being able to focus on something is, very challenging. But multitasking, is also very anxiety producing because you feel like

Justin: 37:37

Oh, god.

Christian: 37:37

You're at the whim of everyone else's demand. You have to respond to everything at once. Yeah. And rarely is something critical.

Bryan: 37:45

You know?

Justin: 37:45

I'll be honest. If I if I really need to focus on a task, I have to get clear away from my computer and get out a pen and paper. Mhmm. Because I can, you know, I can close Outlook. I can close every application on my computer, but I'm still gonna get messages beeping like Teams.

Justin: 38:01

Teams will get through that, like, unless you go in and mute it. You can take a lot of steps.

Christian: 38:05

Gotta close Teams too, you know.

Bryan: 38:07

Close Teams.

Justin: 38:07

Well, you can't just close it. You have to go in and put do not disturb on it because it runs in the background.

Bryan: 38:11

Oh, yeah.

Justin: 38:12

I'll still get little messages popping up even if I've closed the application. And then you have to remember to mute your phone, and then you have to remember to disable your smartwatch because I can mute my phone, and then my stupid watch steep keeps going off. It's like, Jesus Christ. Leave me alone.

Christian: 38:25

You cannot get away from multitasking. This is like it's impossible almost. It sounds

Bryan: 38:29

like You need one button to turn everything off or

Justin: 38:32

Me too.

Bryan: 38:32

Yeah. I even put a I put a sign, like a like a cone outside my door, like, that basically tells

Justin: 38:38

me to, like,

Bryan: 38:38

don't disturb and and, that way. Yeah. And then I'm I have the ability to mute everything in fairly quickly on my computer.

Justin: 38:44

Well, we wonder why we have so much anxiety and ADHD and, you know, need for some of these medications in this world. It's like Yeah. I mean, we can't get away from it. So, yeah, that's that's huge. And I think, honestly, Christian, that's probably one of the, I don't know, least discussed or, you know, the the unsung hero.

Justin: 39:04

This this topic right here is something we should probably focus on more.

Bryan: 39:09

So

Christian: 39:09

Yes. Very good. I know you said you use pen and paper, something I do. Mhmm. I'll shut everything off even if it's running the background.

Christian: 39:16

I'll turn the background off, but I I will listen to binaural beats. They're at a certain frequency

Justin: 39:22

Mhmm.

Christian: 39:23

Which I found actually helps me focus. There's some specifically on how to focus.

Justin: 39:28

So you

Christian: 39:29

just put it on, you know, put it put it on with your heads your headphones, and, it actually at least for me, it actually works.

Justin: 39:36

I'm I'm writing that one down. I need all the help I can get here. I have undiagnosed ADHD, and it's not, it's not pleasant. It's not a minor case of it. It's bad.

Justin: 39:47

So

Bryan: 39:48

Self diagnosed, you mean? Well, yeah. Yeah.

Justin: 39:53

Alright. So, monotasking, huge, huge thing there. And, next, we've got empathy. Let's talk about empathy.

Christian: 40:01

Yeah. The next step is empathy. I think in today's society people find it hard to be empathetic because you see everybody is a different faction. So cybersecurity people see themselves as the geeks. They see management as management.

Christian: 40:23

They see the salespeople as salespeople. Doctors see themselves as doctors and patients as patients. We have pro gun, anti gun, Democrats, Republican. But the bottom line is when you don't see someone as a fellow human being, you see them as that other faction.

Justin: 40:41

Right.

Christian: 40:41

The empathy kind of goes out the window. And I wrote about this in my in the first book, and I also touched upon in my second book. A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with blood clots.

Justin: 40:54

I

Christian: 40:54

had six in my left leg and then I almost didn't make it.

Justin: 40:58

Oh, damn.

Christian: 40:58

And I I had like I said, we've I've done 24 Ironmans. I literally just just done, like, 120 burpees the day before I went to the hospital. My my legs started hurting, so I went to hospital, with the coaching and of a friend of mine. A coke coaxing, not coaching, because I don't like hospitals. But when the doctor told me, I said, what does this mean?

Christian: 41:22

Because I don't know anything about blood clots. He said it means I could have a stroke or die at any moment.

Justin: 41:27

And I

Christian: 41:27

was there by myself. My nearest family member was in Denver. I was in St. Louis. I started, like, kind of freaking out.

Christian: 41:33

I think, man, my life might be over. I was, like, images of my life are going through my head. It's like, did I take risk? Did I live a good life? You know, did I matter?

Christian: 41:42

And, you know, I started crying, like, silently crying. The doctor noticed me, and he said something that I'll never forget. He said it kind of dismissed away, like, oh, don't worry. I see this all the time. That's what he told me.

Christian: 41:58

And I immediately snapped out of my feeling sorry for myself state because it kinda pissed me off. And I'm like, you know what? I don't see this all the time. This is a first for me. Oh, yeah.

Christian: 42:10

So I think he was trying to be a pathetic, but, again, he was looking at from I'm the doctor. This is a patient versus this is a fellow human being I just gave some pretty crappy news to. You know, if I looked at it through that lens, it would have been a different scenario.

Justin: 42:24

Let me throw some different words and tell me how this would have landed with you. I'm your doctor. And I said, Christian, don't worry. I solve this problem all the time. Would that have been a better message?

Christian: 42:34

I would have liked the of course. Yeah.

Justin: 42:36

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're back to communication. Right?

Justin: 42:39

But it's like, we can present this stuff in so many different ways. And, yeah, what he did was kind of isolate you. Right? Mhmm. Yeah.

Justin: 42:50

I see. When I

Bryan: 42:52

meet with clients, I always have to remind myself that, you know, I sell IT services every day. I transition companies to our services every month. But this might be the first time they've ever bought this type of service or they've ever had to make this transition, And it's scary for them. Like changing IT providers is probably one of the scariest things a business owner can do because we literally have the keys to the castle. Right.

Justin: 43:19

And

Bryan: 43:19

so this isn't a small thing for them. This is a huge thing for them. Right? It's it's their entire business that they're putting in our hands. And so I don't think a lot of IT providers recognize just how big of a move it is to make that change, and they don't have the empathy that comes that's needed to make sure that they understand that.

Justin: 43:37

Plus you have to

Christian: 43:37

you have to help them with that change because if you have the empathy because, you know, like, they're probably thinking, like, what if I make the wrong decision?

Bryan: 43:45

Mhmm.

Justin: 43:45

Right?

Christian: 43:45

And how do you how do you help them understand it, you know, that they are making the right decision? That that's where this this stuff ties together. Right?

Bryan: 43:53

Yeah. I actually tell them that. I'm like, hey, this is this is scary. I understand you're probably thinking in the back of your head like I'm gonna make a wrong decision. I'm gonna I'm gonna mess this up.

Bryan: 44:02

Everybody's gonna look at me like I'm I'm an idiot for making this decision and, you know, that could be pretty stressful. And then I offer them, like, obviously, like, here. Here's our we we have a thirty ninety day money back guarantee. So if you made the wrong decision, you can back out. No harm, no foul, get your money all back, that kind of thing, just to put their mind at ease.

Bryan: 44:19

Right? Because I know once they work with us, they'll never they'll never think that. But before, they don't know. They have no idea who I am and and whether I'm gonna hold true to my word.

Justin: 44:29

Yeah. So I'm I'm curious, Christian. Did was the doctor able to kinda salvage that situation? Or I mean

Bryan: 44:35

Good point.

Justin: 44:36

How did that go?

Christian: 44:38

After he said that, he just kinda half drive responded to him. He, didn't say much more and walked away. So no. No. No.

Christian: 44:47

No.

Justin: 44:48

He just left in a panic.

Christian: 44:50

He just left me sitting there saying, well, I think you said, well, nurse will be with you shortly. That was it. You know?

Justin: 44:56

So safe to assume this problem has been resolved. You've you've found a way to, not worry about dying every minute of every day?

Christian: 45:05

Yeah. I took blood thinners for a year and decided to screw that and stop taking blood thinners and get all my blood work done and get a Doppler ultrasound on my leg to make sure there's no more clots and, just reclaim my health.

Bryan: 45:17

Nice.

Christian: 45:17

So I'm not taking blood thinners. I've reclaimed my health after, you know, a year of depression, sitting on the couch doing nothing because I was told I couldn't I couldn't run. I couldn't

Justin: 45:27

Oh, really?

Christian: 45:27

I couldn't fly. I couldn't sit in the hot tub. I I couldn't anything I wanted to do that I used to do, I I couldn't do anymore.

Justin: 45:34

Oh my god. I was

Christian: 45:36

like, I gotta figure a way out of this scenario. At first, I was grateful for being alive, but then I felt paged.

Justin: 45:41

And, like Yeah. Because are you really alive at that point? You know? It's like, I'm here. I'm drawing breath.

Justin: 45:45

But

Christian: 45:46

You're existing, but not, you

Justin: 45:47

know Yeah.

Christian: 45:48

Yeah. Surviving, not thriving as some people would say. Yeah.

Justin: 45:51

Correct. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Empathy is a big one.

Justin: 45:56

This I'm I'm just I threw a little note in here for myself. One thing that I observed, I'm curious what you guys observed, but when, you know, customer service has always been something that we talk about in business. You've got variations on the customer is always right. That can be good or bad. It can almost turn into abusive situations.

Justin: 46:14

But, I think generally speaking, businesses had some genuine empathy concern for their customers, their clients, their patients until COVID hit. I saw a huge drop off of empathy when we shut this planet off for a year or two years or whatever it was. What do you guys think about that?

Christian: 46:37

I I agree a % because you're we're taught to to socially distance ourselves from everybody and and wear a mask and yeah. I I agree. And I I think I don't think we've quite recovered from that either.

Justin: 46:50

No. I yeah. I I still just see a general lack of give a shit in in business, you know. And I mean, as stupid as going to fast food drive through, you know. Mhmm.

Justin: 47:02

Like, I've had them not even look up. They breach their hand out the window for my card, and they're looking the other direction talking to somebody else. They take my card. They drop it, handing it back to me. I mean, it's just like, where is this, human connection that that I think we all need?

Bryan: 47:17

So That's probably going back to monotasking, though. Right? They're trying to do multiple things

Justin: 47:21

at the

Bryan: 47:21

same time, and it it's making you feel like they don't give a crap about you and who you are. But Right.

Christian: 47:27

And you're you're forced to give them a tip now too.

Justin: 47:29

Oh my god.

Bryan: 47:30

I know. Like my best experiences at a drive thru is when they look me dead in the eye, and they're like, have a great day. And I'm like, jeez. Like, I could tell they're actually talking to me. They're not just saying a script.

Bryan: 47:40

Right? Or maybe they are, and I just don't like things. But, you know, like it's yeah.

Justin: 47:45

Alright. So I think we gotta get that one back. That's that's, yeah, empathy's empathy's big and, but Not as

Bryan: 47:52

good as that last one. That last one is my favorite.

Justin: 47:55

I was just gonna say, now we're gonna bring this home for Brian. Christian, you don't know this, but every every week, Brian signs off talking about this. So

Christian: 48:04

Does he

Bryan: 48:04

Yeah. Yeah. So better. Do the motto in the office.

Justin: 48:07

We're gonna do this a little bit different. Brian, I want you to talk about that. And then, Christian, I want you to, to bring that point home. Brian Sure. Take away Kaizen.

Bryan: 48:17

Kaizen. Yeah. So it's, I I can't remember what, what, background that that word comes from. I think it's Japanese. Mhmm.

Bryan: 48:24

And, but it's essentially the art of continuous improvement. I'm a big fan of it. Internally, we have a, like an internal motto is is or an internal why is, you know, helping our ourselves, our our peers, our customers, and the communities we live in become 1% better, becoming their greatest of all time. Not becoming the greatest of all time, becoming their own greatest of all time. So, you know, for the last year, I've been, you know, exercising.

Bryan: 48:54

Lots lots and lots of weight, you know, learning all sorts of new new things by listening to podcasts, listening to to, also or reading all sorts of books. And and I've we've taken that I don't wanna say I because it's the entire the entire group. We've taken that as sort of our, underlining why in the business as to what why we exist, and we exist to help other people, in our communities and and the businesses around us. And the way that we do that is just by looking for ways to get a little bit better, and we're never gonna become perfect. We're never gonna be the best because there's always gonna be somebody out there who's slightly better than you.

Bryan: 49:34

And we're not worried about them. We're not worried about, you know, like other people in our competition and what they're doing. What can we do to help each other and help our peers just become 1% better? What process can I tweak? What can I learn from where I failed yesterday and get better today?

Bryan: 49:50

And and I'm obviously happy, to hear Christian, talk about a little bit about, Kaizen from the context of his book. So I'm gonna shut up now, pass the floor over to Christian who's who's our welcome to guest here.

Christian: 50:05

Well, thanks, Brian. I think you have a great, philosophy And for the context of my book and what I'm trying to emphasize with Kaizen is progress is incremental and a lot of people think with any of these steps like monotasking that it's a light switch. I'm going to master it one day and then if they don't, they give up. So when you adopt the philosophy of Kaizen, that means you understand it's a journey And as long as you're making those small improvements, like you mentioned, Brian, that's that's what matters. Yeah.

Christian: 50:42

And you may actually get worse at something before you get better. Like Tiger Woods, when he was learning his golf swing because he was trying to get better, he actually got worse for a while before he got him better. But he he kept thinking, hold on to vision. Like, as long as I'm making these steps, I'm gonna get better. Right?

Christian: 50:58

So it's it gives you the courage to take the first step. A lot of people are afraid to take the first step because they think they have to master something all at once. But mastery is like this destination that you never quite reach. You know, it's it's a journey that matters and Kaizen gives you that confidence to take the first step and to stick with

Bryan: 51:19

it. I like I like the analogy used that, you know, sometimes you might have to get worse to get better. And, I like to use the example of, listen, if I'm cleaning my closet, I gotta make a hell of a mess in my my bedroom in order to clean that. Everything's gotta come out. Now it's a disaster, and I have ADHD, so it stays a disaster for a lot longer than it should.

Bryan: 51:38

But then then you incrementally, like, put everything back in, and and you and now all of a sudden at the end of the whole thing, you're better. But you did have to take a few steps backwards to get that that better result. But you had the vision and the foresight to know, like, hey, this is the end result, and and it's gonna take small increments to get there.

Justin: 51:55

You know, as we And there is

Bryan: 51:56

no end. Sorry. There is no end result. It's just, like, it's it's Right. An ongoing thing.

Bryan: 52:00

Right? Because I'll probably pull things out of the closet and then, you know, now I gotta put them back in. And with IT, you know, there's no such thing as done with cybersecurity. The bad guys aren't gonna be like, oh, Brian, put a firewall in. Dang it.

Bryan: 52:12

Nah. I may as well move to the next client. No. They're going like, how else could I get in? How can I improve?

Bryan: 52:15

How can I get better at at becoming a better criminal? And, it's it it it so it's a cat and mouse game. Right? They're always Mhmm. Getting 1% better, and we gotta be 1% better too.

Justin: 52:26

And hopefully, we we beat them to the punch. Yeah. And and, you know, we've we've talked about this before. We all have our own versions of this, but, you know, this is how I approach compliance. I you know, I whatever with my clients, whichever version of the of compliance we're going to adopt, I have it broken down into pieces, and we start with the absolute basics in quarter one.

Justin: 52:49

In quarter two, we're gonna just, you know, hit the next, you know, move move to different technologies, different protections, and then we move move into a process of hardening those, you know, once once we do have the basics in place and and reevaluating because they change. You know, every framework has a a revision to it. You know? It's CMMC version one and CMMC version two. We've got CIS eight, then we got CIS 8.1.

Justin: 53:13

You know? It's just like it's always changing. And so this we do have to continuously improve. I think also and this is kind of off topic maybe, but we're coming off of the first of the year where we're Right. As humans, we wanna get better, and and we look for these landmarks, these milestones, or whatever that we can use as, like, I'm not gonna I'm gonna drink myself stupid today, but tomorrow, because it's January 1, I'm stopping.

Justin: 53:37

I'm never gonna drink again, or I'm I'm gonna hit my diet. I'm gonna eat that apple pie right now, the whole thing myself. But January 1, that's it. I'm never gonna eat another apple pie again for the rest of rest of my life. Never works.

Justin: 53:48

Never works. But, you know, I mentioned I'm gonna humble brag a minute. I am trying to get back into running marathons. I've ran five. It's been several years.

Justin: 53:56

I'm out of shape. And so I did set a goal for myself. It wasn't necessarily a New Year's resolution, but it did coincide with the beginning of the year. I'm I'm training for Chicago, which is in October. So I've got quite a bit of time to do it, but, you know, if if and, Christian, this will shock you, but, if you wanna train for a marathon, you have to run a lot of miles.

Justin: 54:17

So,

Christian: 54:19

it starts with, like, the the first step, though. Right?

Justin: 54:22

Well and, you know, there's a there's a program that I love. It's called couch to five k Yeah. Which which takes, you know, the proverbial couch sitter potato chip eater TV watch and never done anything to, getting up and just taking a few steps, you know, and it it is. It's just like a few minutes, and it's not even a run. It's just go out and walk.

Justin: 54:41

And then you go out and you walk, and then you run for a second, and then you walk, and then you run for a second, and then you walk, and then you run for a second, and then you walk, and then you run for a second, and then you walk. You know, and you just make these gradual continual improvements. So along with this marathon goal, I also have there's a program called, it's called Run the Edge as the organization, but they every year, they take that the number. So it's 2,025 year or sorry. 2,025 miles in 2025.

Justin: 55:07

Oh, wow. And so by the end of the year, I I should have completed 2,025 miles. Now I I don't love this is too many details. You can walk and you can run. You can actually do a lot of other things, which I don't love.

Justin: 55:18

But, so it's a combination. And when I started this, the first thing I did is, like, I divide it. I do some math, and I'm like, well, that's six miles a day every day for three hundred and sixty five days. That was my target, and then I got real. I'm like, that's stupid.

Justin: 55:33

Hey. I'm not gonna do that. B. If I do, I'm going to injure out. % chance I'm gonna injure, and I won't be able to complete it.

Justin: 55:40

And so then I built a plan that starts off very mild, very easy, you know, 15 miles this week, and then we increase by 10%, and we build to a higher weekly mileage that will get me to the end goal, by the end of the end of the year. So, you know, whether it's Ironmans, marathons, you know, within your business, cybersecurity, this is a concept that I think is if if we don't do this, the human brain is going to fight against us, and we're not gonna get anything done. Agreed?

Christian: 56:11

That's agreed.

Justin: 56:13

So I mean, the I I don't know if this is a save your best for last, but I definitely think it applies that way.

Bryan: 56:21

Alright. Argument's here.

Justin: 56:24

Christian, tell me, I think I think we've touched on most oh, and we are we're we're out of time, guys. Jeez. I got so so excited about that that I ran us right out of time. So, let's just take a minute. Thank you.

Justin: 56:37

Thank you first of all for being here. Really, really appreciate your time. I know you're busy. You've got a lot going on. I I do like to wrap these up with a key takeaway.

Justin: 56:47

So, Brian, I'm gonna go first to you, and then, Christian, if you'll just take a second and, you know, number one advice you have to give the audience. And then I'm gonna go ahead and wrap things up and we will be done for the week. Brian, go.

Bryan: 57:00

I think my key takeaway is just those that seven step secure methodology is really, it's really resonated with me. And, I guess to the listening audience, if, if you want somebody who will be your guide in your journey, to, helping you with your technology, whether that is to improve your operational efficiency using technology or securing your environment from all the bad guys that are out there. Give me a shout. I'm happy to to work with you, and, treat your treat treat it as a journey going through and making sure all these are done. And, if you're looking for someone to help you out with that, I'm your guy.

Justin: 57:44

Alright. Christian.

Christian: 57:46

I would say as a business as a business owner, it's important to take ownership over cybersecurity just like you have to take ownership over sales or marketing or accounting and find a firm that as Brian alluded to will guide you and you're the hero of the story where they'll help you, and you can communicate with them well. There there are lots of firms out there. It may take a little bit of effort, but a firm that's trying to be the hero and talk over your head and tell you how smart they are is not really who you wanna work with.

Justin: 58:18

Absolutely. And my takeaway, we didn't get to it actually. We ran out of time. I'm a culture guy. I I really wanted to dive in more to culture because and all of this fits plays into building the right culture.

Justin: 58:29

But we we have to lead our team in a way that we are all fighting the same battle the same way at the same time. And I really do believe that that, you know, kind of plays back into the title of the root cause. It's us, the solution. It's us. Right?

Justin: 58:43

Is that is that fair, Christian?

Christian: 58:45

Yes.

Bryan: 58:46

Alright, guys. We're gonna wrap for

Justin: 58:48

this week. Unhacked.live is where you will find the recording, the social media links, and all of our contact information. That said, Christian Espinosa dot com is how you will find Christian directly. So look him up. He's got courses on his website.

Justin: 59:01

You can take, tons of information, keynote speaker, the whole show. Look Christian up. Give him a call, and and, let him help you out with whatever you've got going on in your life because he seems to have done just about everything. Christian, thank you. Thank you.

Justin: 59:13

Thank you for being here. Really enjoyed this, and hopefully we can stay in touch. Brian, as always, thank you guys. Take care. We'll see you next week.