Episode 11 with Tyler Farrar

Narator:

Welcome to Cyber909, your source for wit and wisdom in cybersecurity and beyond. On this podcast, your host, veteran chief security officer and Cyber Aficionado Den Jones taps his vast network to bring you guests, stories, opinions, predictions, and analysis you won't get anywhere else. Join us for Cyber909, episode 12 with Mel Reyes.

Den:

Hey folks. So welcome to another episode of Cyber909. The podcast is somewhat cyber related, but we'd rather focus on what I'll always call the softer side of life. Everything from coaching to how do we survive the stress, the burnout, how do we thrive as opposed to just survive? And how do we help lift each other up? Because it's a small community and it's not about who's the best, it's about can we all be better together? So I've got an amazing guest. We had Mel on episode three. We got such great feedback, and then Mel and I have stayed in touch and there's a couple of things that have resonated that we didn't even get a chance to talk about in the last show. So we want to jump into some fun topics on this show. Mel, welcome to the show. Why don't you introduce yourself for the audience.

Mel:

Thank you for having me on again, Dan, I had such a great time just even trying to go back and listen to some of it was kind of funny and I appreciate it. I tell everyone I'm a recovering CIO and say, so. I've been basically around the block for a few decades, have lived through the dramas and traumas, and I'm now trying to take all of those learnings, plus all the development that I had to do in order, to your point, survive, to then hopefully thrive, to really build out the kind of environments that people should be living and working in. So I'm honored to be here. I love our conversations offline and that last interview, so thank you.

Den:

Brilliant. I think it is interesting when you go through our journey as practitioners, the times where you'll meet other people and you'll have those conversations and a couple of things that stick with you. And you and I have had a couple of those and I'm like, holy shit man. It is funny because, and we're going to talk a little bit about this. We threw it together. So I've got my little notes in the window. If you see me gaze into the side, it's just because my brain doesn't remember 54 things all at once any longer. I'm going to start off with a quote, and then I'm going to ask you to respond to the quote and then jump in and share just a couple of little stories or events that you think might resonate. Now, I didn't prep you for this, so I said I'm going to have some quotes. I know you've seen the quotes, but I don't know which, you don't probably know which one I'm going to resonate or pull out of the air. So the one that resonates with me, right? Ships are safe at harbor, but that's not what they're built for. What does that make you think of?

Mel:

So just to preface all this, I saw the block of text in the document, but I didn't actually read these. It's interesting. So if I'm going to receive that one, it's a little bit of, for me, I immediately started to relate it to a lot of what you might see with Tim Grover or maybe even a Robins, right? We all have abilities, ability to learn, ability to function, ability to do things. We think that we've got this plan in our life. Well, you got to go to school, then you got to get married, then you got to do this. And then at some point this path comes through where you either continue doing that, you continue growing and learning and doing, or you just kind of flat, no offense, flatline into a career and a path, and you're like, you get the incrementals and you're happy. And I'm not discounting anyone who's happy in that scenario, but in reality, we can all do so much, all of these things.

And why do people run Ironmans, right? The ultra marathons? Because they can, because they put their focus on it, because that's something that they wanted as a north star. And I talk about that a lot. Now, if you've created, if you have the knowledge, the skills, the training, it could be tactical, it could be anything. And then you just sit on it to do that one function. To me, you're at Bay, right? You're not really looking out for, you're not the Magellan, you're not the Columbus. And don't get me started on the negative diatribes and bullshit around that. I'm a Taino Indian from Puerto Rico, so don't get me started on Columbus. But they set out on a journey. They pushed the limits. They did more and bigger because they had a vision, they had the idea, they knew how to sail. They could have just sailed down to India.

They could have sailed down to Africa, they could have done other stuff that they were doing anyway for trade, but they went beyond that. So to me, if you've got the muscle mass and you're not really using it to do something, volunteer, build homes, whatever, then guess what? You might want to think about doing something more than just working out. If you've got the brain capacity and the ability to be able to teach people and level 'em up, volunteer, do something else within your organization or otherwise. So to me, when people become stagnant, complacent, or otherwise, I want to push them. I'm like, hold on, did you just tell me that you did 1, 2, 3, 4, and five? Why aren't you at this level doing this? And then I get what I call the om moments, the open mouth wounds. They're like, huh, huh. And I'm like, yeah, let's get you there. Let's get you in the mindset of how do we create that. So to me, maybe not a hundred percent related to the core meaning of that, but that would be what I would say is you've got best ship on the planet, you've got the rudders, you've got everything going, but you're not using them.

Get out there and use your skills, your passion, your energy. The one last thing I'll drop on this one, I used to joke around with my teams, I still say this to when they're like, well, how the hell are we supposed to do this? I'm like, sleep is optional. I'm working on three hours of sleep. I've got three cups of coffee in me. Could you tell that I'm working on three hours of sleep? No, because here, I'm present, I'm managing. I want to make sure, will I crash later on? Yeah, probably. Will I need maybe a nap? Sure, will I get it? I don't know. But we get push ourselves to do more bigger and better. Did I binge watch a medium and a bunch of other stuff that I was rewatching over this weekend? Absolutely. I needed my body, my brain to relax, right?

Den:

Yeah.

Mel:

So yes, I'm not just always, I'm not running an Ironman anytime soon. But I did push myself this year to do a few other things. To me, the kind of mindset you want, growth mindset, advancement mindset, give back mindset, something that more than just what you think is a level, right? You've got baseline go above that.

Den:

I like how you use the Columbus analogy, the sailing around the world. When we're talking about a ship in harbor, I think of it along those lines. I mean, there is the whole, it's easy to do the easy thing. It's hard to take the risk. And I think of the ship leaving the harbor is you taking that risk. And the way you explained it there is, yeah, I can do my job and I can do my job for 20 years, and that's cool and all, but if you really want, and I think it takes all sorts of people to make the planet work and to make your company. So not everybody can be the Columbus of the world, but you do need, and I think in leadership more importantly, you need someone that says, I have the vision. I know the North Star, as you mentioned, the North star. So North Star, I have the vision. I know how to communicate the vision and hey, team, we're in this boat together and this ship is going to sail to whatever.

I love that. And it's interesting for me because I also think of, and this is why the analogy is funny for me, I also think of your leadership career as a journey that you're always on. You're always sailing around the world and you're always learning new things as you do. You're always being challenged and things that challenge you hopefully help you grow. And ideally, you're bringing others up through as well, because at some point you're not going to be the one captaining that ship and maybe there's more ships. So I love that. And one of the things that you and I talked about was insane focus, right? So we talked about things like vision boards, we talked about techniques that people use. And it's funny because this isn't a den and Mel bullshit that we woke up yesterday and said, Hey, everyone should do this, right? I mean, there's documentaries, there's people like Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra and Jay, she, there's a bunch of people who are, I would say, life coaches and they're trying to bring others along in the journey. Now are they monetizing this ship? Yeah, sure. But I still think it doesn't detract away from some of their key messages. So when you coach people on the focus piece of things and the vision board stuff, why do you feel that's important? And can you share some stories of success that your clients have had there?

Mel:

Yeah, there's so much, I still even want to say on the first piece, but I studies the scientific, the motivational, the musical, the religious components around how you can create a passion or a flow or North Star have been here for years. You mentioned a couple of incredible folks just recently, Mel Robbins, who's an industry leader, and what she does interviewed Dr. Doty. I must have listened to the shortened version of that snippet interview like 10 times because it gave you exactly the things that all of these other players are doing in order for you to adjust your mindset and to continue pushing. Now, here's the thing. People will look at how I do what I do, and they're like, Mel, do you have a focus? Aren't you supposed to be the one who champions this tactic or level in order to get people? I'm like, yeah, that's cute.

But guess what? As I've worked with client after client, after client, everybody has a different way to receive things. And I talk about NLP with clients. I talk about a lot of different things. Neurolinguistic programming, not natural language, right? Neurolinguistic programming. And are you visual? Are you auditory? Are you esthetic? Are you a mix? Where are you? How can you relate? Do you write? Do you listen? Do you read? Do you see, well, how do you learn? How do you ingest? And then what I do is I work with everybody to say, what is it you're trying to do? Are you just trying to get calm and go through maybe a small bump in your career? Are you really shooting for a north far? Are you just in a toxic work relationship that's translating to other things? And then I recommend, after I've kind of done that quick, read that analysis, then I recommend things.

So I have PQ assessments, I've got global disc assessments, I've got Myers-Briggs via, I've got all the different assessments. I don't have, you go through all of 'em. I have you go through the one that I think is going to benefit you the most. So we can start a conversation around how to reframe, and this is going to be part of the book that I'm writing, but it's a whole different conversation on how do you reframe your current mindset to the mindset that's going to help you, but also really leverage all of your existing experiences. I'm not going to teach you anything new outside of how to see what you're doing, how you're doing it. And I just posted this a couple of weeks ago, the whole definition of insanity. That's what drove me to get to where I am. I was like, I know I'm doing, and this is literally on my website, it's everywhere where I post. I'm like, I know I'm doing the right things. I heard it on a podcast with X, Y, Z, and I heard it. Why isn't it working for me?

So I had to go through that challenge in the last decade plus to figure out, okay, I got to stop banging my head on the wall. That's not going to knock down the wall. I got to figure out a different way to do that. So with each client and each colleague, each mentee mentee to me is just somebody I'm helping. I go through the same process, and that's why I won't talk about the five vs holistically, but the decades of doing this with different teams, different cultures and everything else, I was like, I keep talking about the same shit and it's a progression of these. And I'm like, well, why don't I just put, and I've never seen this put in the way that I do it in any other framework at any other piece. I've gotten tons of benefit from all those other programs.

But I was like, well, I tell you what, I bet I could walk you through this in an hour, four hours or a day. And you might leave there going, holy crap, would've never seen it this way. Want to know why? I know that's going to happen for a lot of people. I've already done it with clients. I get a read and I'm like, oh, you're at level three and you need to go back to level one to rehash this so that we can restart, or you're doing great, 1, 2, 3, but we need to work on your four and five, and then that's your north star moving forward. So to me, it's really easy. Why? And I say these words with a passion that I cannot express enough when I say these words, it may be triggering to some, but I believe them wholeheartedly because I know what I grew up with and what I had to deal with and what I had to undo.

When I talk about drama and trauma, some folks have beyond extreme components that are more than what I could ever help 'em with, but knowing how we work, the hope that we hold onto things. I just had this conversation with a colleague last night, the hope we have on to, maybe it'll get better. Maybe I'll get that promotion. Maybe they'll see me for who I, all of these pieces become a drain. You have to live through the drama and the trauma of chair throwing executives and all this other stuff, and you feel like you have to accept it because you need the benefits. You need this. Well, there's different ways to think about, one, how to survive for the time being, but also how to take the risk. And this now goes back to the first question, how to take the risk to say, I've had enough.

I get the fuck out, and how am I going to do that? And then work the program that way. The reason I talked about risk, you talked about journey. I talk about quests that lead to it through your journey, right? In 2019, I want to say it very short. I always say this story long, 2018 to 19, I wasn't in the right place, wasn't in the right mindset. I made a plan. I said, I'm moving to California. I called it Quest for the West. I said, by this 2019, I said, by next year I'm going to be in California. July, 2020, I landed in California. Think about the timing. I set a goal, I created a vision. I created everything that I need to do, and then I executed why massive action, focus, and hunger. I needed to do it. And when I say I'm going to do something, there's an extremely high probability, there's a five nines probability I'm going to do it. So I didn't give a shit that the pandemic was happening. I didn't give a shit that two months later, I quit my job. I pushed myself to do it. Took the biggest risk of the unknown, took the biggest risk of how am I going to finance my family? How am I going to build a career? And guess what best decision I've ever made? Could have been the worst, but I took the risk. And then because I stayed focused, I stayed passionate and I kept going through it. That to me is the piece that I'm like, I love this. Now I can do what I need to do and want to do, which is even bigger than need.

Den:

And I mean, I tend to think, Mel, yeah, you and I have had that conversation, and I think had you not made the move, you'd sit there with a lot of regret. And I think the worst thing that anyone can do in their life is say, I wish I'd done that thing. Now, if you're sitting there right now listening to this saying, I wish I'd done that thing last year, and you were too scared to do it. That's the analogy of the boat being in the harbor and too scared to leave the harbor. And I think the reality is in life is you have to figure out ways to say, I still want that vision to be realized. And you still then come up with a plan. Now,

I kind of look at things like I think it's always important to get the vision. I have a vision board that has the things that I want in my life. And every morning when I'm on my computer, I have it in the top left, and I see things from my personal life to my business life, everything else. And it's not like I'm praying and hope that shit's going to happen. What it is is me focusing every morning for a few minutes on what do I need to do to get a step closer to the reality of those things. So I mean, hey, you can pray all you want for shit, but the last I checked, that doesn't make anything necessarily happen. I could sit here

Mel:

Yet. Well, let me pause you on that one for a second because I'm actually going to, this is why we were doing this today, because you're kicking up that positive hornet's nest for me.

So I have a vision board that I created about four or five years ago. The things that I wanted, I'm going to keep saying that very purposely in that direction, not what I needed, but what I wanted, and what I started to figure out with through all the learnings and all the other pieces that I'd done before, is there is a Dr. Doty, I'm just going to say it 500 times, right? You got to find the Mel Robbins, Dr. Doty video. There is scientific proof on not only the energies and the components on the psychological components around. Some people hate vision boards. They're like, well, I'm not going to do artsy fartsy cut, and mine is digital. I'd love the people who have pin boards and everything else. Mine is digital. Some people don't like talking about gratitude. Some people don't like talking about vulnerability, right?

That's cute. Guess what? You don't like talking about vulnerability? You don't like talking about gratitude? I tell you what, Hey, let's talk about your wins. Every one of my clients and every one of my colleagues knows that I talk about wins. Why? There's no stigmatism. If I said, Hey, well give me some wins, but if you know 80 or 90% of the people that are out there, if I said, Hey, what are you grateful for? You're like, oh, he's one of those, right? Yes, I, I've got my incense burning here. I've got my sage, I've got, but I don't need to bring that to you. That's me, right? You tell me you're into that, then fine. We do that. We talk about gratitude, but I talk about wins. Why? I want you to experience the things that I've been experiencing. And when you talk about a vision board, it's about your why, right? Why are you doing what you do? Why do you get up at five in the morning or eight in the morning? Why are you up to three in the morning? Because those are the things you want.

You don't have pay rent on your vision board. Those are the things you need. You don't have finish that degree. Maybe you do, but maybe you don't because it's kind of something you need for career advancement. What you want. It's a Maserati grant to reasonable convertible that's on my vision board. How the hell am I going to get it? I don't know where the hell I'm going to put it. I don't know. But that's what I want. I will figure out the rest of it. And this is what I tell people. I'm like, say yes. Figure it out afterwards. So there's other things on my vision board. That article that I posted was on literally this. I had been, oh God, I may get emotional here, because this was one of those where I had to pull myself away from the vision to the execution. But I was given the opportunity to be part of a cohort that would be presenting at the biggest cybersecurity conference in Spain for two days. They would cover the cost for the two days, but they also had connections with the Real Madrid and Barcelona folks. And I could have been on the pitch near the pitch at that game for the El Classico in Spain, what's on my vision board, Spain and Real Madrid.

So I'm like, oh my God. But guess what? Financially, timing and everything else, I could not afford the stretch of being there for a week, week and a half. I could afford it from a timing or a financial. So within a few days or a week, I had to bow out. Here's this one massive, massive life-changing thing that I wanted. But I knew that if I pushed myself to actually go for that, I would actually probably suffer from not enjoying it. I'd be worrying about the logistics of something I'm missing back home or the monies that I was expending. So I was just like, you know what? I want to do that when I'm comfortable doing that. So guess what? Next year, now that I have an inlet to the repeat of this, oh yeah, oh, it's happening next year. But what happened as I sat here thinking about, I just bailed out on, and next week they're all going to be in Spain, I just went into crunch.

I'm like, okay, okay. I'm going to channel that negativity and channel that energy, which is what I do. One of my characters, or was originally Ryu, and I don't know if anybody knows Street Fighter, but he shoots that Fireball that he just kind of warps up. Boom. So I just said, okay, I'm going to throw it out there. I reached out to, I started reconnecting with everyone following up on proposals. I was drafting a whole new course that I was doing, and I was like, I'm on. This was Monday into Wednesday, the week before. By Friday, I landed a new client. By Tuesday, I landed a new client. By Wednesday, I landed a new client. And by Thursday, the week of the conference, the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the conference, because it rolled into over the weekend, I landed another client. I had a bunch of other clients. Had I not been here pushing, following up and doing, I would've lost four significant clients.

Den:

So

Mel:

Now I'm priming myself to be ready for next year and to be ready for the holidays. And the most important thing, the engagements are incredible. So sometimes you just have to kind of pull it back, and sometimes you got to take a risk, and that's when, but knowing now, now I've got an even bigger goal. Now I have an outlet of the how I'm going to get to my why. I want to do these things. I'm on fire.

Den:

First of all, do you still have it on the vision board? And then, yeah.

Mel:

Oh, hell yes.

Den:

Yeah. And then secondly, I didn't follow vision boards. I mean, I watched the documentary, the Secret, or somebody read the book and stuff, and then my friend had an accident, and one of his friends said, oh, you should read the book. You're the Placebo by Dr. George Dispenza. And I'm not a reader, but I listened to the audio book twice actually. And I thought, holy shit, this is the secret documentary for me was a bit airy fairy. It's like, oh, just imagine it. But what the spans had done was he jumped straight into these studies with scientists, Stanford or whatever, Berkeley and all these other places, and they start to actually measure the electrical readings around your body. They go into EKGs and stuff. I mean, it is fantastic. The research that they'd done, and even the readings that they were taking while someone was going through a meditation and meditative state, and now roll this back to thousands of years ago, several different religions, and it can be anything from Buddhism to Christianity, they all have references to this kind of stuff.

So without us becoming religious crazies, the reality is when you visualize something and you show gratitude for the thing and the emotion for the thing, the thing becomes real. Now, it doesn't mean that you're sitting meditating in a sense suddenly just going to appear. Like you say, you have to then take that and say, I need to think about plans and activities and stuff and stuff. So for me personally, hey, I'm building a business right now. I always envisioned our business having offices at a time where we're all working from home. I build this company. And for me now, we're not there yet. We're not even, we are not even close. We're four months old. We're not close to that shit. But I envision a couple of years from now, we're going to have offices. And the interesting thing for me is if you really focus intently on building this empire, this big thing, I'm like, well, why can't that happen?

You see? Because most people get to the, that's too grandiose. And why would we deserve that? Or why my days at Adobe, I used to always do that. All the projects, all the work we do, I would come up with timelines that people would be like, that'll never happen. No. Deployed zero Trust in Adobe, and we've done it in seven months from absolutely nothing, A POC hodgepodge shit together. Cisco, we've done it in five months. People take years to do shit like this. And we're sitting there and we're like, no, we'll do it in five months.

Mel:

I love this. The fact that we're only doing this for about an hour is really pissing me off, but well, I'm going to have to have another follow up on this so I don't live to disprove people who are in that space. Well, how are you going to do that? That's impossible. I'm not good enough for that. I don't know how to do that. That's cute. You do, you boo.

Because

The first foundational piece that I had to break through and I help clients through is the views of what you can and can't do. The limiting beliefs, the shackles, all of the shit. Get it out of your head

Once you can realize, yeah, you know what, I guess. And there's things that we as men don't even know how to possibly survive, where women do. I'll give you a prime example. Childbirth. We would be dead to the world if we had to give birth to children. So when I talk to folks about the level of endurance or pain or anything else, I focus on, listen, number one, I know you can do shit already. I can tell that you were either this or the stories you tell me or whatever. If you come in with a, yeah, I was this and this and this. I'm like, alright, then you're going to need a different mindset. I'm going to need to put you in the gym to start ramping you up to doing more. But we have all gone through certain things. When you start talking about how to get somebody to reframe what they've done and how they've done it, to say, by the way, I picture myself, and I'm going to go do this.

I picture myself in that Maserati grander reasonable convertible with the beige brown interior leather and black exterior. I'm going to go to a Maserati dealer and I'm going to ask them if they can take a picture of me sitting in that seat so that I can add that to my vision board, not just the car. I want me in the car. Now, why am I saying that the part of, and Dr. Dispenza is phenomenal books like Becoming Supernatural, breaking the Habit of Being You. I mean, just you're in the right space, but you have to be ready to receive that kind of message and listen to it, and then also absorb it into how you want. A lot of people aren't, and I get it, but when you can actually picture yourself and when you say, this is Dr. Dote, I'm going to say it a hundred more times. This is what he said, I am driving a Maserati grant down the PCH.

You write it, you say it, you think it, and guess what? You start to develop the energy and the connections internally. I will get into the specifics. I'll probably screw it up on the exact science around it. But here's the thing. I don't have it yet, but I'm going to continue to say that I do that. I am driving that I have a million dollars in the bank, that I have this, that I have, that I found X, Y, Z. I've already done it. When I say I've already done it, your brain starts to put a different energy out, a different focus and a different excitement out. And guess what happens? And I say this and people don't get it, and people are going to be listening to this, and they're going to be like, Mel, you're full of shit, Mel. I knew I shouldn't have talked to you, blah, blah, blah. When you put out a certain energy, guess what happens? You're either going to push away the people that don't get it, don't feel it, don't love it or whatever. But guess what? Also's going to happen. You're going to draw the right energy back.

The ones that are receptive to that, the ones who are feeling it, the ones who are motivated by it, and guess what? I am not some snake oil fucking salesperson, right? I'm not trying to pitch you some program. I have no programs right now that I'm pitching, right? All I'm pitching is real life kind of reframing of what and how you do things. Because what I had to do,

I had to believe in myself. I had to believe in the things that I want. When don't know, I know my why. I'm figuring out the how and it's going to happen in my mind. It's already happened. I'm already, and by the way, I've done this visualization for the last four years. I end this call. I have some time. I get in my Maserati Grand Milk convertible. It's beautiful out. I have the top down. I drive 15 minutes to Malibu Beach. I can ha even in traffic, right? I drive to Malibu Beach, I drive up the coast, I park the car, I take my shoes off. I go in the sand. I just sit there. I enjoy it. I get back in the car. I drive up a little bit further on the PCH, I park the car, I put my feet in the sand, and I enjoy the beach. That's what I want to do because I've earned it. I've earned the right to say I can drive down the PCH in a Maserati grand reasonable convertible, possibly at high speeds. I can neither confirm nor deny that, but that would be because I see myself, I've seen myself do that in my visualization in the work that I've done and everything else. And guess what? I can't wait to reference this video

Den:

When

Mel:

I'm in doing that, and I'm posting pictures doing that. I don't know when.

Den:

Hey, we'll need to have you back on the show from the Maserati while you're driving. We'll get a GoPro. We'll strap it onto the wind machine test.

Mel:

I'm open to Maserati sponsoring me to do this, by the way, right? I am not a vendor. I don't sell out to vendors except maybe Maserati.

Den:

Yeah, no. Maybe on this one occasion. So the couple of things I want to come back to, one is gratitude. So I have a firm belief. Well, it's two things. One is anything big that's happened in my life, my adult life, I insanely focused on buying my first house, buying my second house, buying my third house, troubles in my personal life. I insanely focused on even those. And yeah, those just got worse and worse. That's what I focused on rebuilding my life and where I am now. I focused on that insanely, and I visualize that stuff. I am an optimist. So I think when you're an optimist, you inherently walk around your life with a level of gratitude. I'm very grateful for what I have. I'm grateful for what I'm about to have because I visualize what I'm going to have. But I'm also very grateful because I remember where it came from, and I came from a broken family.

My mom was holding the shit together for us. Really. My mom was paying the way. We didn't have a lot of money. Money for me as a teenager was very scarce. I was out working all these stupid jobs when I was 12 all the way through. So I look at it like, holy shit, this Scottish kid that left school with nothing that doesn't have a degree. And I'm here. I've run some of the best teams and some of the best companies. I've been privileged to build an amazing network. I've had great coaches over the years, and now sometimes people think I can be their coach or I can give them advice, and I'm like, holy shit. And I actually had one of my team members in Adobe years ago, he was doing his MBA, and he came back from class one night the next day, and he said, didn't you talk about this thing?

And I can't remember what it was, but he was like, but you don't do your MBL. I was learning this last night in the MBA class, but you've never done an MBA. And I'm like, no. But he was like, but where did you learn that? And I said, when I was at college, I was working in kitchens as a cook, and I learned it was about profit and loss and margin and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Because the head chef was working with me. He was letting me see it, and I was learning this stuff. So I'm like, it's called life. I've been lucky. Amen. Lucky enough to go out my way and work my ass off. And the things that you learn by doing these extra different things, I don't care whether it's volunteering. We done the Adobe Executive Shadow program for up and coming women in tech, and they would shadow executives. Do you not think as an executive, I would not learn. I learned stuff through that program as much as the women that were signed up. So I think you can learn stuff all the way through. I got another quote for you, 80%,

Mel:

Wait, wait, hold on. No, no, no. You can't be dropping that shit on me. And then segue into something immediately. So the things that you just talked about, by the way, absolutely relatable. Same scenario in growing up. I mean, that's also in that post from two weeks ago, and the things that you talked about with Dr. Hardy's, the gap in the game where you were to where are now versus what you don't have all the living in that negative space. It's unfair, this, that, and the other. It's like, that's great. That's cute, Dan, I'm going to tell you, you're here right now. What can you do? Now? Screw, I was going to curse. Sorry, screw what happened to you. Learn from what happened to you, and now what can you do, right? You said, oh, I missed something last week. And that was it. If you at any point in your life have to say, would've, should have, could have. Stop yourself and say, I'm going to fucking do it now. I'm going to do it next week. That's it. It's done. It's over. If you miss the boat, like the conference, fine next year. That's one. Two, you talked about the gap in the game, Dr. Hardy, you can get the book or the audio book that gets you into the understanding of stop thinking about what you don't have. Think about where you were to where are now,

Then say, now I want to continue doing that and moving forward. That's one. And then there was another piece that you threw out there. Oh, darn. Oh, like personal MBA. I actually went to school for business and decided to flip over to computers, but I recommend the personal MBA to anyone who wants that cross-functional understanding of certain things. You don't have to go to get an MBA personally. That's a whole nother educational thing that I'll talk about with other people. But there's so many different resources out there. All you need to do is start to get into the right mindset. Accept the fact that I kind of need to do better or I want to do better, and then put that energy and that focus to it. But that gap in the gate, that whole storyline, you just change one or two words. That's exactly what we went through, the work component of it and what you learned from what I call the school of hard knocks, having to work while you're in school living, being homeless at 19, barely being sustainable before that.

Those are the things that teach us, and that's what I talk about, the dramas and the traumas, having the things that I don't even want to get into so deep, but that's what we learned from. That's what builds our endurance. That's the stuff that, and I got one colleague of mine who says, I never want to go back to that. Now I know. Now I know what I learned from that, and I never want to go back to that. So I'm going to keep moving forward. I'm going to say, what can I do right now to move forward, right? Homeless, whole family, homeless, this, that, the other. And we get into these conversations. I'm like, I've been there, brother. I see you. I hear you.

Let's

Keep moving forward. And that's the kind of stuff where you can't leverage the negative space in these anchors to bring you down. You're just like, you know what? I get where I was at that time. I get where I am right now. Am I sustainable? Am I this? Guess what? I get it. But I can't live in that. I need to live in that positive mindset. I have to say, okay? And I will tell you right now, there's family history of things that I deal with that I have to medically and otherwise that I have to really fight through. Guess what I do? I try my hardest. And then I say, okay, what can I do? What little thing, what big thing? What do I need to do? When you get into that mindset, and then you start adding on all of the things, this podcast, another book, another this, then you start to get an avalanche of look. Oh, I'm starting to feel it. I'm starting to get it. I'm starting to get it. And it's all very specific to you. So I love this.

Den:

And one thing, and Mel, and this is crazy for you and I, right? Because 40 minutes in, and we still want another four hours. So there was a couple of things. Oh, shit, I was about to talk about this other quote, and then I got totally distracted. So let me say the quote. So 80% of the success in any job is based on your ability to deal with people when you're working with leaders. And I always think of leadership as you're only as good as the people you surround yourself with, the team you build, recognize your deficiencies, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The whole deal with people thing, especially in technology, because not most technologists I know that are genius. Technologists are not always the best people. People,

Mel:

Yes. Oh, Pandora's Box. There are going to be a lot of haters on this one. So I may have to bring this back to the source story. Born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York, lived off. And this is part of a lot of things that I publish out there. So this isn't some new revelation. I'm not trying to draw tissues or anything raised on public assistance. Single mother raising three boys by herself. To your point. Now I know because I'm the youngest of seven, I saw a lot of things that older folks, older brothers were doing this, that and the other. And I was an observer, and it developed for me and ability to be able to see people, emotions, triggers or anything else. So I've continued to understand now that all of the experiences that I've had from very young to very old helped me do what I do.

So when I started to become a programmer and I started to become a scrum master or an engineer or an architect, I could see people and I could kind of leverage and I can motivate, and I just didn't know why. I didn't know why there was a draw and why I could really get through these things. I started to develop some of the skills by marrying some of the things that I like from other people, how they lead, how they present, and pacing yourself and all these other wonderful things. Okay? That wasn't me. But I started to learn. I started to, and then what I realized, and this is the revelation that I hate. This is where people are going to really hate me, is it? And cybersecurity leaders are very technical. They're SC on the global disk. It's time, it's schedule, it's logistical, it's scientific, it's multilayered.

It's this. That's cute. That's great. I love you for that. But guess what? There are people behind that. Now, I had this a decade or two ago where I would leverage the passions of people. I would what I call size people. I'm like, I get you're a programmer right now, but you are one hell of an architect when it comes to X, Y, Z. Would you consider doing more of that, right? Because then if I can restructure the team, then I can bring in a junior person and they're like, are you kidding me? I love that. So I rightsize and I kind of found people's passions. Well, I listened to people. I asked them what they wanted. Crazy talk, right, Dan? Because not every leader does that.

Den:

Everybody's

Mel:

About KPIs and OKRs.

Den:

Well, guess

Mel:

What? This revelation came through in the last five to so years. Five to 10 years. Wow, you really should focus on eq. That's crazy. So when these books started to come out just before the pandemic and then really hit during the pandemic, I was, no offense to all of you authors and your stories and your passion around that. I was like, wait a minute. You have to teach people to care. I have to buy your book so I can learn how to care. It wasn't my space. I'd be like, holy crap. So eq, understanding and people cybersecurity. What's the number one problem with the security instance? The people, the teams, the people. All of these things are about people. So I don't care if you've got the best tech stack on the planet one wrong, I accept that two A and a whole industry is shut down. So for me, when I talk about the leadership development, a lot of that is I have a client right now who I'm literally running through the ringer on emotional eq, positive intelligence, everything. They came to me and they're like, I need help. And I was like, yep, you should do. That's why I talked to you seven months ago and you finally engaged with me. Then I was like, guess what? We have seven months of catchup to do. You ready? And they were ready. And they're doing phenomenal.

And they're identifying the triggers, they're identifying the pieces, and then we're slowly on building that. But you have to be able to accept the fact that you need that help. If you can't guess what, you're never going to actually advance because it actually does create a bliss and that energy that you're receiving and that you're giving. And for me, I'll take that all day long over any O-K-R-K-P-I sales driven initiative and the loyalty that you build in the teams when you're actually helping them and they're helping you. It's phenomenal crazy talk that I actually have to get paid to teach people this.

Den:

Well, I was thinking, yeah, I mean, at a brand coach that's worked with our teams over the years, she was amazing woman that worked at Adobe and stuff, or she was a contractor consultant, but I brought her in many times with a lot of our teams because really the brand and who you are and how you behave and how you communicate, I mean, such a huge percentage of our success is based on our ability to communicate and interact with others. So that's why for me, that quote, 80% blah, blah, shoot it. Shit. Yeah, I don't disagree. Now I got a couple of ones. As you were saying stuff there I was scribbling down a few notes like, oh shit. Here's the gem, right? So you talk about bad experiences of the mindset that a bad experience is there to serve a lesson for us, it's the ability for us to say, and there's an old fable where the farmer in Japan is, and this is before the second World war, the farmer in Japan, and all of a sudden the horse runs away.

All the people in the town are like, oh, that's so bad. But then it comes back the next day with another horse friend and this is a stallion. And they're like, oh God, you're so lucky. And the wild stallion's now being trained by the sun. The sun falls and breaks his leg. And then they're like, oh God, you're so unlucky. Then the next day, the army come through to conscript all the young men, but because for a war that most of them were never going to come back from, but because he had broke his leg, he couldn't go. And now everybody's like, you're so lucky. And I think that really resonated with me because I'm just a case. I always believe that at our worst moments, there are things that we can learn and take away. And that for me, that's a huge one. So where's your take on that nonsense?

Mel:

Oh my God, are you tapping into my devices? I literally, I'm, I'm doing some coaching training and I've done this one before, but I'm working through some other pieces. They literally brought that story up again. I love that story. It's absolutely true. Here's the thing in the moment, I was actually bringing myself back to those moments when I was a young kid and the mindset that I had then when I was a teenager and the mindset I had then to really showcase to you that I'm like, I'm actually refe those emotions, those negative emotions that I had then, but you are 1000000%, right? Had it not been for any of those things, I would not be able to do what I do now. So they are learning opportunities, but to get to that mindset of how do I translate the dramas and traumas and experiences and negative and downing and medicated states that I had to be in or anything else, how do I translate those into, I received them, they happened.

What did I learn from them? What do I avoid moving forward? What did I learn that heat map look like as I'm coming through and be like, oh no, pull it back. That's not going to happen. I'm not going to go over there. And it's the survival piece component that you leverage on that. But it's like I learned something from it. It's hard to do and explain in a call like this, which is why I just went all negative, then people would relate. But if you can figure out how Desmond Tutu has a book on forgiveness, you're like, what? Forgiveness. Guess what are the most revolutionary things to be able to help you deal with those type of scenarios that you can't let go? It takes a lot of work,

But it's scientifically proven, right? So when you talk about, it's funny, I want to bring this up. Melissa Smith, I haven't been able to connect with you on LinkedIn, but she was my first official full-time job boss. And I remember I was a hustler. I was networking, I was doing all kinds of things. I was working on sun systems and everything else. And I remember hitting that first experience of a corporate raise, and she was phenomenal. She was a phenomenal leader. And I sat across the desk in her office. I was like, Melissa, I don't get it. I've been working hard, whatever. It was like 2%, one and a half, whatever it was, I was like, I don't get it. I could have sworn would've been like 10% or more. And all of these issues that we keep having and I keep resolving, and she was a sage, right?

She's like, Mel, just look at all of these issues they you have as opportunities. And that was the first time I had ever heard that. I'm a 20 some odd year old punk who just hustled his way out of college, this, that, and the other. Working hustle, dropping cables, doing networking programming. I was learning HTML. I was learning more coding. And she just staged. She floated because how she led, she's like, it's an opportunity. This is where you were. This is what you learned, and now we need to take and move forward on that. And she created a pace and everything else. Everything is an opportunity. It sounds shitty, it sounds stupid. Everybody else, everything is an opportunity to learn good, bad, or indifferent. It's an opportunity for you to learn experience. That's why at one point I was issuing graduation certificates that I was creating for people on LinkedIn.

Call School of Hard Knocks. If you don't chime in, if you want one, right? Why? Because we've all gone through the things that we know we've gone through. If you've had a blissful life, God bless you, thank you. You do you. But guess what? There are situations in your life, in most people's lives that are so extreme. I will tell you, I've got some folks who almost every other time I talk to them, I cry because I feel their pain and I understand where they're at. You're absolutely right. Everything that you can imagine for yourself that triggers you, that's the time when you say, what did I learn from that? What can I learn from that? How do I forgive someone? And that's a whole nother segment on forgiving. Oh,

Den:

Shit. Shit. Yeah, this is, I got,

Oh, you touched on a few things there, Mr. Mel. Okay, time to shine. I was just saying, I think you hit the nail on the head with your old boss, because one of the things I used to tell my team, we used to, I mean, man, I've done a lot of jobs in Adobe over the years. And one of the times I was running all the servers, run the server team. I had the directory services, I had the server team, I had lab services and the server space. We had four and a half thousand plus servers. And some of them were loved more than others, but guaranteed every day one would go down, some shit would hit the fan. And I used to tell my team, whether it's three in the morning or whatever, this is the time for us to look good.

Whatever happened, happened, let that slide. We can go back and we can figure out the why and do the retrospective and the bullshit postmortem and stuff, but let's shine now because we can prove to people how good we are. We can be calm, we can be collected, we can be in a call at three in the morning. It can be a 10 hour call if you're in a breach. Anyone that's ever been through a breach, you'll understand that as well, that you're in the breach. You can point fingers at the dude that clicked the link, or fuck whatever, man. It doesn't matter. It happened. Now the other thing that I was going to mention is about baggage, emotional baggage. I've had this conversation with family, I've had it with colleagues, I've had it in my personal life with relationships. And when you go through life, every bad thing that happens is almost like you're just putting it in the bag.

You're putting it in the bag, and you're maybe beating yourself up, like your relative passed away and you're beating yourself up because you never visited them enough and whatever the baggage is. But you keep putting it in. Well, the problem is you go through life, the bags become so heavy, your emotional baggage becomes too heavy for you to have a productive, functional, happy life. And what I tell people is, Hey, look, you have to figure out ways to come to peace. And let's say someone wronged me and I feel fucking pissed off really just to the core, and I do have a few of them even still, but the reality is do you think they're pissed off? Do you think it's dragging them down? Probably not. So the only one that's suffering, the only one that's still suffering is me. So I tell people, I'm like, why are you suffering for something the other person doesn't give a fuck about? Let it go. Let it go. Amen. Let your life thrive. Now, I've been through like you personal stuff in my life where I'm like, man, I got to figure out a way to get my brain round this stuff without imploding. How do I do that?

I think it was Tony Robbins, I think, done a podcast on emotional health. This was before, yeah. So this was before Covid and I listened to it, and what he said was really cool. Imagine you're looking down on yourself and it's the third person and third party, and you're giving that person advice on how to handle that situation. If it wasn't you, what advice would you give? Now that's like you, in your coaching space, it's easier for you to go in to a client and maybe you're telling them shit that they already know, but it's easier because you can be subjective. You're not as emotionally pulled in. So for me, that one baggage thing, oh, I'm all over that shit.

Mel:

We need another six hours. But, so I'm going to make this quick. I know we're, we're running tight. So the emotional baggage that you talk about, I call them shackles. So think about it. If you're fairly strong and emotionally or otherwise, somebody tries to shock you with one thing, you can rip it off the floor, you can try to work your way out of it. You can break your leg to chew off your foot and keep moving along. But we keep adding more and more shackles. Then it's your knee, and then it's your thigh, and then it's your arm, then it's your neck, and you can't break out of that. So when I talk to people about baggage, again, there's different degrees to this, and I'm a psychologist. I'm not a therapist, but I can identify when it's way too much more for me. But when I talk to people, I tell them right up front with any conversation, I'm like, I'm going to sound like Captain obvious, but I need you to hear the words so that they resonate in your brain with the delivery that I'm trying to give you. And if I repeat them, I need you to hear the words.

Speaker 4:

If

Mel:

I stop you in the middle of you saying something, it's probably because you shouldn't be saying that thing, because the thing you just said is what you're going to believe. And I go through these exercises with folks and I mean, I've stopped people cold. I'm like, stop. No, no, no, no, no. Reframe that. Why? Because if you keep in that, well, they freaking suck. And I don't know what that back it up. If you stay in that negative mindset, and I just pulled up a neuroscience piece just today or yesterday, and I bookmark it. That's why I was looking over here. One of the folks, what's his name? Hold on, I got to give this one to you. This one is actually pretty interesting. Jeffrey Finnan, who's a neuroscientist, talked about 17 seconds, right? And I can send you the link afterwards,

He talked about 17 seconds in that positive state versus 17 seconds in a negative state, right? The 17 seconds you spend will then generate another 17 seconds of positivity or negativity. So you stub your toe in the morning, you start to curse, then you get in the car. Then what are you looking for?

So much fucking traffic. And then there's another fender bender. Then you get into the office, there's no coffee, and you're like, okay, guess what? You're going to be in that space and you're going to continue to stay in that space. Now you stub your toe, you laugh, you crack up, you send text to your family like, who the hell moved this? So I'm going to stub my toe again. And then you get into the car and you just, people are people. Cars are cars. Traffic is traffic. Guess what? Put on something that's going to bring you to a great state. Put reiki on. Put classical music on. Put your Thrasher playlist on. Put an audiobook on. Get into the space where you know I'm going to be stuck in traffic for an hour. Accept it, release it, let it go. Stay in a positive state. Do something positive. Keep doing that. Get into the office. There's no coffee. Start making jokes. Alright, I quit. There's no coffee, right? Live in a positive front because guess what? 17 seconds plus 17 seconds, plus 17 seconds, 68 seconds, an hour a day. And that energy that you're going to create for yourself does not drain you. Does not pull you down. There's no baggage. Let it the fuck go.

And when you said that, I immediately in my head, I use this clip a lot. Let it go. Let it go. Think that song when you're like, and I, now I'm going to quote a title of a book that I'm going to tell you. I read this book, I saw the book, and again, one of my colleagues is the one I really, really wanted him to move on. But Jody Berry hunt, look her up on LinkedIn, look her up. She wrote this book and I will tell you, so I think she's A-C-B-T-D-B-T therapist. So she's got the credentials to be able to actually say sad kind of things. She wrote a book, which this is the first time I'm going to publicly support this book outside of just my year end book recap. It's called Move on Motherfucker. Now, I normally am not attracted to books that use, I curse a lot, but I'm normally not attracted to the get your Shit done, blah, blah, blah books. I've read a couple of them. They're cute. This one has the backing in my mind in my coaching or anything else that I ever want to do and recommending to someone because it's not what you're saying to someone else, it's what you're saying to yourself.

Speaker 4:

So

Mel:

She talks about leveraging C-B-T-D-B-T and other techniques in her therapies, but she started to realize when she started to use telling people, by the way, when you're in that state, tell yourself, move on, mf, let it go. It was working over and over and over and over again. So grab the book, grab the audio, book grab. It's actually a really great read. And she uses case after case after case after case, right? To me, that's the kind of stuff that I need. I need that tangible case study proof. She delivers the message well. And just imagine you who may not curse. Maybe you're God-fearing person and you don't curse. Imagine you saying it yourself. And I won't say it fully. I was quoting the title. Then move on. Mf.

Den:

Yeah, move on,

Mel:

Move on, move on. So again, I'm dropping books like it's hot on this one.

Den:

And as we wrap up, we'll include links and links and links in our show notes. I'd love to include a lot of this. And it's funny because the thing about competition against our previous self compared to others, I kind of look at this as we've spoken today, right? It's like everybody around us is all busy doing their thing. When you judge yourself, I tell people, judge yourself based on the previous you not what other people have. Be grateful for what you've got and be grateful for your journey. And you're not in competition with anybody else but yourself.

Mel:

Amen.

Den:

And the other quote, not in my little document, but something I've said my whole life, it is what it is. What what's for you won't go by you if it's meant to be. It's meant to be. And then when you accept how life rolls, you learn to roll with life. That's the best shit we got, Mel. That's the best we got until next time and death.

Mel:

I'm not even going to rebut that. I'm just going to receive that. Accept it. And thank you for bringing this too light. I a hundred percent agree with your closing comments. Thank you.

Den:

So Coach Mel, I love having you on the show. We're going to have to do this again because you and I can blow through an hour on this stuff. And what's funny is our notes before the thing, I probably only used two of the quotes that I liked. We talked about a couple of the other authors and life coaches and stuff, the whole bullet points of what are we even going to talk about today. I don't think I even looked at that shit once.

Mel:

It's I love rifting with you to, I love it. Give again. I love this because one, you see it, I'm showing up as genuine as hell, right? Most people that are in what I'm trying to do and trying to do successfully are, I love them and I appreciate them, but I'm just as real as I can be. You're just as real as you are. So that's why we connect. That's why somebody could talk about, say, Hey Dan, can you talk about underwater basket weaving? And we could be here an hour, right? So I love,

Den:

I can't basket weave, but I think that's the one thing, dude, you and I we're trying transparent as shit. There's no errors. And Gracie's people either love us or they hate us. We do cater a little bit, but we don't really care that much. Amen. Hey, Mel, appreciate you, brother. Thank you. Have a great week. Thank you brother. And yeah, we can't wait for this. Appreciate you. Have a

Mel:

Great holiday break and enjoy.

Den:

I know. Thanks man. Be good. Thank you.

Narator:

Thanks for listening to Cyber909. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and don't miss an episode of your Source for Wit and Wisdom in cybersecurity.

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