Episode 3 with Mel Reyes

Narator:

Welcome to Cyber 909, 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 Cyber 909, episode three with Mel Reyes.

Den:

Okay folks, welcome to, I think what'll be our third episode of Cyber909. It's our new podcast where we talk about some cyber stuff, but ideally there's enough cyber podcasts around these days. So shit, I think we want to cover other stuff. There's leadership, there's coaching, there's burnout, there's big bubbly personalities like our guest today. So I want to get straight into it. We have a fascinating character who I recently met, and then since then I'm like, shit, do I need to be like Mel? I could dress nicer like Mel. I dunno. Anyway, hey, we've got Mel Ray. Mel, why don't you jump in and introduce yourself to the audience if they don't know you already. I guess,

Mel:

Dan, I've just got to warn you. No, absolutely do not want to be like me. Trust me, we can get into that offline, but thank you so much. I appreciate these kind of conversations. One, unscripted, I think we have a general scope of where we're at. So to me, I've spent the last 30 years as I love to tell everyone, living through the dramas and traumas of it and security, managing teams, being the practitioner, all these other wonderful things. I spent the last five plus years actually really more 10 years going through massive transformations internally, externally, training and otherwise. And I love being able to share all the nuggets of how I lost my hair and all of the gut punches and everything else that I've lived her.

Den:

I was going to say, I'm there with you on the hair, you can't really see it. The front of my hair goes up to hide the fact that the back is really not still hanging around. And by the way, I wrote down four words, and this is the amount of prep that we've done. I think for this, I wrote down leadership, brand security, and pr. I think for me, those things actually, when I think of our conversations so far, I kind of think, well man, you, you've got skills and experience and wisdom in these four areas, and I love on LinkedIn you say you had a recovering CSO stroke, CIO. In your mind, let's just jump into those executive roles right now. I seem to see a lot of people saying, I'm between work, I'm not working right now. I don't want to work right now. I mean, what do you think the state of affairs is with that whole C suite, especially the IT security space?

Mel:

Great question. As I look at my career, you would think it would be kind of ips and dips, but when you're in IT roles or cybersecurity roles where you constantly have to deliver, it's almost like a top line flat line. There's no bottom that you think vacation is rest, but even on vacation, you can't really take a vacation. If you're a consultant like I used to be off and on, you're never taking vacation because when you're on vacation, you're just thinking about every hour. You're not billing. So you're always in this high stress level component of everything. Now take into account the last four plus years in cybersecurity, you're just at beyond max capacity to be able to do what you need to do. You've got organizations that say, oh, you only need this many resources, but you're at this capacity. So one of the biggest pieces that I found really in the last couple of years is the direction of that high level stress that everybody becomes comfortable with

Mel:

And

Mel:

Absorbs. And there's a lot of different research around this. A couple of great colleagues of mine have written papers and their dissertations on this. When you start to exhibit the PTSD aspects of the first responder type of activities, the incident management, the forensics, the constant battle of trying to be proactive but reactive, all these other wonderful terms you hear in cybersecurity. That's why when somebody either gets fired or quits, they don't want to do a damn thing.

Why? Because they have to recover mentally, physically, and emotionally because it truly is those three things that get impacted. But because we've got demands, we've got to put food on the table, we've got to put our kids through college, we've got to pay the mortgage, the rent, the cars, we have to put ourselves in that struggle. And we also like the challenge. We think we're championing that hopeful moment where everything will settle down. Well, every incident is going to keep coming up. So when I say at the end of last year, I parted ways with the last company I was with, my blood pressure dropped like 20 points. I got better sleep. I was able to focus not because of the demands of the job, it was the demands of the title, the lack of resources, the demands on budgeting, the training, all of the pieces. While I was doing all of those other words, you were talking about how to promote myself, how to do things, how to actually get out there and help people. At my age, my biggest goal is how do I help educate and elevate others so it doesn't take them 30 years to figure out what it took me 30 years to figure out.

That's where I'm at.

Den:

That's great. And I think, yeah, I look at it like the, well, God, the demands, it's funny. So budgets and no money and less money and more or less money. And every year it seems like they're like, okay, you're the cso. Protect us, make sure we're safe. And then at the end of the day, I've said this a few times on stage, I love to jump on the little conference stage now and again and poke fun and make shit out of the whole industry. And I'm like, one thing, no, CEO gives a shit about security. Stop with the bullshit. Stop with the nonsense. All they really care about is that they're not in the news. Our job, other than the regulatory compliance shit, which you have to do, our job is keep the company out the news and the less resources you get every year means that the whole defense in depth thing, you might get to focus on one or two things and you can do those really well.

But then all the other stuff is just half asked best we can do. And I used to coin this term that Adobe, when I ran enterprise security, there was good enough, but we need to get things to good enough because we're not given the money to get them better than good enough. And every cost center, the thing is it security tends to be cost centers. They're not making money unless, for me at Banyan, I was part of the go-to market as well because we were a security company and my teams had done this zero trustee thing a few times before. So we felt good about ourselves. So other than that, the cost center, you're not seen as valuable to the business really.

So burnout I think is after Covid, I met so many people that frankly didn't give a shit any longer. They're just like, I want to spend time with my family. I want to spend time in nature. I want to do things for me. And I think I used to talk about work-life balance, and I'm going back 15 years ago, I talked about work-life balance, maybe longer. I don't think I practiced it very well, but I certainly tried to promote it within my team and people thought I was crazy because we were running, as you said, we're running lights on services, all identity stacks, servers, load balancers. I mean, you name it, my team was doing it and you're always on. And then I'll close with this one, A thankless task I think is what you're alluding to. You get shit when it doesn't work and for some reason you get shit when it works. But the shit you get when it works is all about budget or projects not being done quick enough and it's like, well, you get what you pay for I guess now.

Mel:

Yes,

Den:

In your new life, Mel. So in your new life, why don't you explain, Hey, what's the new life? I like the thought of you're advising people avoid the mistakes that you made. Why don't you share what that entails?

Mel:

It entails a lot of me having to reframe conversations that I have because I just said this to a couple of folks in the last couple of days. I am literally the worst salesperson. It's why I've never become a field CISO or field CIO to sell products or anything else. I could have been a billionaire at this point if I did that, but only because of the technical and the implementations that being able to relate to what the company is going for, not because I'm a sales guy. So one of the biggest pieces for me is as I was going through and as I'm still going through this, is how do I showcase the grittiness of the last 30 years in a way that I can make it as generic as possible across different roles? Because while my sweet spot would be CISOs and CIOs and their practitioners and everybody else in between, it really translates to core leadership skills, ability to be able to read and see people identify that. And then from a tactical standpoint is how to be nimble and thrifty when you don't have the budgets, when you don't have the pieces. So

Mel:

Finding

Mel:

The right partners, how to build those relationships, how to get them to become design partners, how to find the right startups, how to really find those alternating methods of doing that. But then on top of that, having run, I mean at least 150 person scaled agile quarterly deliverables in one company and then working with Fortune five and working with startups that couldn't even afford to pay the Amazon bill. I've gotten to the point where I can see and sense what an organization needs in order to be successful. So with things like EOS and a lot of the other operating systems like business operating systems and being able to create those quarterly deliverables, there's a massive piece that everybody doesn't understand is if the CEO, the board or otherwise don't care about security, don't care about it, they just want function, they want to go to market, they want all these other pieces.

You really have to have that organizational structure. And that's where I decided to fit in the things that I had to deal with as a CIS admin developer, DBA, dah dah, managing the teams and then shifting over to all the domains around cybersecurity. It's the same as anything else. You need a vision. You need people that can translate that vision, motivate the teams in that team's language, whether it's marketing, IT, security, and then really be creative enough to get them to elevate their skills with whatever you're handed. I tell people, you're going to say, Hey, Mel, I'd love to hire you to build a Taj Mahal. I'm like, let's do it. And then they say, here's a toothpick, a stick of gum and a paper clip. I'm like, let's get started. Whatever. You're going to give me what you're going to get. You're going to get a miniaturized origami version of the Tatma Hall with whatever you give me, or you're going to get something that's a little bit more scaled.

But the most important thing is to be able to be creative about it. But not everybody can do that in the weeds and they're in panic mode and they're in execution mode. So to me, it's being able to take all these experiences and say, what is your North Star? What are your goals? How do you define that? Do you have cultural agreement that everybody has the same values? Then you break it down and you keep breaking it down and you just treat it, whether it's EOS, scaled, agile or whatever process you want to use. You break it down into those deliverables. Every group needs to know what their quarterly deliverables are, whether it's securing, whether it's reducing risk, whether it's implementing it, operation efficiencies, marketing efficiencies, product efficiencies, whatever that is, whatever your market is. And again, being in manufacturing, we had to look at efficiencies there, and not just technical for it or security, but a lot of e-commerce, a lot of machinery and functionality metrics and resource loading and things like that. So if you're not putting all of that together under one umbrella correctly, or with the best measurements, not over measuring, you don't need 800 KPIs and OKRs, but with the right measurements to make sure that you're delivering. Then from an organizational standpoint, I don't care how secure you think you are, I don't care whether the CEO of the board do or don't care about security, I don't care if you're a security company and you don't care about security, you're just going to continuously expend so much energy for so little result.

Den:

Yeah, and it's funny because I look at the amount of executive leaders that I've crossed paths with over the years, and I'd say there's a couple of things. One is sometimes what you just explained there, they don't get, and then the whole translation of this is a strategy, this is how we get there. And so some of them don't get the business or the strategic side of leadership, but then some of them actually, they're just not good people leaders either. They have no right. They don't recognize in our role, building careers is a great part of our role. It's actually a privilege to be able to work with teams and grow careers. Now I'm going to, so you, you've shared a lot of the positive sides of life. If you can recollect, what's the most common leadership mistake that you continually stumble on, and what's your advice to people that make that mistake?

Mel:

So there's two that I constantly have to break people out of their habits and to help them reframe. If you're looking at a leader who is trying to figure out why they're exhausted, why their teams aren't delivering this, that, and the other, there's an issue on the leadership side. One, they're still a practitioner. Two, they micromanage three, they don't know how to delegate, keep the list going. So they haven't taken the assertive effort to figure out what they could do differently because they think everybody else isn't delivering. That's one. Two, the right mix and the right culture on the teams is really important. I'm not talking about are you a cultural fit, right? That's a whole nother conversation on bro networks and having folks who are skewed over to one side. So it's group thinking, I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about making sure that you've got people in your organization that are truly vested in their own growth, as well as that matching what the company's growth is, right? The pandemic brought up the exact, I mean, it just clear the field breath, tabula. Everybody who hated their job, hated their commute, hated their boss, said, screw you. I'm going to Montana and I'm going to be a lumberjack

And I'm going to move to X, Y, Z, and I'm going to do whatever the hell I want. Why? Because they came to the realization they didn't have to do that. Now, during this time, and I love saying this, and I'm going to throw this one in here, even though it's not needed during this time, I was baffled, baffled by the explosion of empathy and EQ and everything else, which don't get me wrong, absolutely need it. Some people need to be trained, get all that. But I was bewildered. I was like, why is there so much hype on eq? I was like, didn't you care about your teams before?

Didn't you understand that? These are the people whose lives, they depend on you for a paycheck and you really need to nurture them. So I'm like, I've been doing this shit for over a decade, caring about my teams and what they want, what their growth is, sizing them into the right role versus what they were hired in. So those are the things that I see on that side is not being able to identify where the talent wants to be versus where they are. So trying to get people to say, is that really what you want to do? Or do you want to be an underwater basket weaver? Where's the real goal for you? Does that match your organization? And how do we get you out of there? Or how do we get you within your organization to move into the right position? And from that leadership standpoint, those soft skills, whatever you want to call them, right? Holy mother of whoa, really, it's taking you this long to figure out that you're not a great manager or leader because you are so ingrained with your own pressures and your own views that you can't see the smoke. That's what I get people through.

Den:

And that for me is crazy because I look at it, I would talk to people on the team and say, right, okay, so let's play this forward. Imagine you're in your deathbed, you're like late eighties, however long you're going to live, and you're looking back in your life, what regrets do you have? Because that's the thing that you need to play it back because you're sitting there going, okay, but I didn't spend enough time with my family. I didn't go scuba diving. I should have done that. I regretted not moving to Spain when I wanted. These regrets are things that nobody thinks about until they're on their deathbed. So I always say to people, it's like, yeah, let's think of this. Think about that, and then, okay, if those are things that you want to accomplish in your life and you regret not doing, what are you doing in your career or job that enables you to live your life the way you want to live your life?

Because at the end of it, I don't do any of this corporate nonsense because I like the bloody companies. Some of the companies I've worked for have been great, but some of the managers have been dicks, and I'm like, I'm not working for the boss, or, I've had great, conversely, I've had great managers that I would work for again, and I look at it like I want to go through my life, bringing people's careers up, helping elevate everybody and being respectful to people. But then most importantly, this is my life. So from a selfish perspective, I need to think about me, my family, my kids, my friends, and then all the other stuff just needs to happen so I can get some money to live the life that I want to live.

Mel:

You're opening up

Den:

That

Mel:

Pandora's box here. Dan, you're open to this. We don't have enough time to cover this, but I'm going to try to make this quick. Number one, what you just talked about is what I walk people through, what I preach, what I've posted in the last three to four years. What is your legacy going to be?

Mel:

Yeah.

Mel:

When somebody is going through at your funeral afterwards, what do you want them to say about you, number one. Number two, no reg regrets. If I hear anyone, whether it's friends, colleagues, clients say, woulda, shoulda. Have I just start warming up my backhand and I want to slap 'em into the next coast? The second you said I really should have could. Is it still too late or can you do it now? That's one. So what you're just explaining was what I went through in 2019, not to discredit the company, it was where I needed to be versus where the company was ready to be.

I was under tons of pressure. I spent 30, 25 years at that point, almost 30 years in the industry, working hard, delivering billions of dollars, billions of dollars in revenue and everything else, but I still wasn't able to figure out how to elevate myself. So I spent the last 10 years trying to figure that out. I spent the last five years saying, it's not where I'm physically located, it's not at the job, and it's not at the title or the role that I'm doing. So that's why in 2019, I decided, and you talked about branding, you talked about, I said, how do I motivate myself? How do I take all this learning, all this reading I've been doing for a year or two or three or four, and I created what I called Quest for the West. I made it a purposeful component to move out to the west coast from the east coast of New York.

Then I created my, just like I did with all my projects, all of my teams, all of the things I do around the household, what do I need to do to break that down? So that's why if you look up the hashtag Quest for the West on LinkedIn, you're going to find articles from three, four years ago and you're going to find posts, motivating posts and everything else. It's how I was able to, during the pandemic, run a multi-billion dollar deliverable program at a company downsize to one third of the space, the things we had and land in California in July, 2020, hitting all of the goals ahead of schedule, getting my daughters matriculated, building out a whole new network, and then quitting in September, 2020. So I didn't have an East Coast job without having a job to land on. Why did I do all that? Because I was at that point, I was at that apex, at that peak where I was saying, no matter what else I try, I'm not going to get to be where I know I need to be.

Mel:

And

Mel:

That's why I started doing everything that I did. And when you talk about finding those motivators, oh shit, when you know you're, and I'm going to be open and honest, when you're crying yourself for 48 to 72 hours every weekend watching the end of Netflix, you just can't. Don't know what else to fucking do. That's what I mean by when you've exhausted every means, you think you're doing everything and you're still not getting or advancing where you want to be. You don't have the vacations. You never went to Spain, you didn't see a real Madrid play, you didn't see a Liverpool play. All these dreams that you've had, you never went to Greece. Guess

Mel:

That's

Mel:

Where you have to realize if those are your goals, then you need to set those goals and work back from that, not try to climb to those.

Den:

Yeah, and so, man, you touched on a few things. The quest for the west thing, I'll make sure we add that into the show notes. I think that's bloody brilliant. But this is the one thing. So throughout my whole career, I've been a bit of a visualization person. Somebody told me about the secret documentary years ago, and I think regardless on your spiritual belief or your spiritual quest or whatever you want to call that, one of the things for me, if you don't focus on what you want and if you don't shoot for the moon, and I used to tell people, but I'm focused on getting a Ferrari because if I missed a shot, I'll end up with a Mercedes and I'm still fucking happy. But if I shoot for a Mercedes, I'm going to get maybe a Ford and maybe a Ford's not the car I want.

Mel:

I love this.

Den:

I

Mel:

Love the segue. Let me jump in because, so this is perfect segue. So last year I kind of knew that there was going to be a separation between the company I was in. I had got 'em through iso, I got 'em to go public, all these wonderful things. And I was like, you know what? I've elevated my teams. I've done what it is. I sense that there's going to be a departure whether willingly or unwillingly. And beginning of last year, I said, what is my new tagline? What's my new goal? I won't tell you what the original one is, what the top title is. I'll tell you what the subtitle is and you'll see it posted across the, so I said, what goal could I set that's so high saw audacious, so insane that people are going to look at me and be like, well, what are you talking about?

So the subheading is intergalactic world domination, because I could have said, I want to be this. I want to run my own company. I want to make this amount of money. There is a dollar amount that I tied tied to that on revenue, this, that and the other, but I didn't want to set a, I want to be better than Grant Cardone, or I want to be better than so-and-so and no. I was like, no, no, no, no. I know me. I know where I went, but there wasn't a goal that I wanted to actually save. I'm like, I want to shoot so fucking high that wherever I land is going to be great

Mel:

Because

Mel:

I'm going to keep pushing until I'm face down, passed out or six feet under and I call it out so I can make sure that everything I'm doing is what I want to do, where I want to do it with the people I want to do it. And it just keep driving towards that. So you can look up intergalactic world domination on LinkedIn. It's not a hashtag, it's just the full word, but there's a couple of sprinkling of the original theme that I created, and it is a hashtag. And I said to myself, what do I want? And I kept saying to myself, I want to go next level. I want to go next level. I want to really go next level. So I actually, I have a playlist on Spotify with this. It is my workout playlist. I said the main theme last year that I created at the very beginning of the year was Next level. Shit.

So damn high. It's so next level that no one would believe that I was able to do it. And that's the goal that I wanted to set. That's the kind of motivation I want people to use to say, I'll tell you right now, my dream car right now, I don't need a home for it. I can use a canopy for this is a Maserati Grand Tours convertible. Why? Because after working all week and working my ass off and traveling, I just want to go up and down the PCH, go up a few miles. I live 15 minutes away from Malibu. I want to go up a few miles, park the car, put my feet in the sand and just enjoy the water. Then get back in the car, drive up another 10 miles, park the car, put my feet in the sand, take a couple pictures, enjoy the waters, get back in the car, maybe come back, maybe go further up. That's what I want to do on a weekend. Read a book, relax, do something. But I want to do it in that car. Why? Because that's an aspiration for me. So when you talk about setting goals, I have a vision board. I have read the Secret multiple times. I have two or three copies of it. I have read Untethered Soul.

I have a whole bookshelf of recommended readings on my site, on my Goodreads. It's how I get to really try to help people depending on their framing, where they're at and what they do. But these are the things that I use and I've digested to help me. And I will tell you right now, I am manifesting so much in my life, don't get me wrong. I'm my own worst client. I've got to draw up all of those things that I learned and say, Nope, got to snap out of it. Got to do this. So absolutely, what is your legacy? What are you shooting for? And now I'm going to drop the hammer on this one. It was supposed to come out this past weekend, but it's going to come out on the 10th. I contributed a chapter to a book series. The first book that's coming out the series is called Human Empowerment. The first book that's coming out

Mel:

Is

Mel:

On passion and mindset. Now, I will tell you, you triggered the biggest landmine on the planet. You said exactly what the title of my chapter is, moving from Selfless to Selfish. Now, for anybody who hates the word selfish, just substitute it for self-care. But the chapter that I wrote is one of the most authentic and genuine chapters of learning where I came from, where I'm at, and what motivates me from a purpose and mindset standpoint. And that to me is when you can't take care of yourself, put your fucking mask on before you get everybody else. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody in the way that you should be able to do.

Den:

And that's the thing for me when I say selfish, like you said, it's not that I don't care about anybody else, but if you are not in a good emotional physical state, then how can you take care of anybody else? How can you be? And leadership, leadership is usually about rallying the troops. And then you need to rally the troops in an optimistic way. You can't have a pessimistic leader if you've got that. You're fucked. Now,

One thing that you mentioned, by the way, I was taking a couple of notes there. I love this. When I started 9 0 9, I was in a very similar position and I just turned around to people and I was like, I am going to build an empire. I am going to rival Optiv defies the big four. I don't give a fuck. I will do it. Yes. And then what's really more important about it, and going back to the whole vision board and all that stuff, is I've done that for years and got to a position where everything that I have chased. Now, it doesn't mean that you pray and you hope it bloody arrives. You got to really put some thought and effort and focus into

Mel:

It.

Den:

And a couple of words I'm going to use, and then I want to jump into a topic about brand, but gratitude is a huge thing for me. If you are not grateful for what you have, then you end up focusing on what you don't have. And that is a vital mistake in humans. The other thing is on the whole reading and stuff, one of my friends was in a tragic accident and stuff, and he's in recovery, but I have a vision board and I have like, oh, him being great and him being perfect. But during this process, one of our friends recommended a book called You Are The Placebo, and it's a Dr. Deza book. And it was really fascinating. And then I got into other books of the same ilk, which is all about your ability to heal yourself, your ability to manifest natural.

Mel:

I'm there with you, brother,

Den:

And they're all fascinating books. And if you subscribe to it or not, the one thing I say to people is, if you don't subscribe to it, well what's the harm in trying it? Because learning unhappy or learning about it. But the problem is so many people are going round in circles in their little rut and then they'll dismiss some other ideology. And I'm like, don't bloody dismiss something when you're still going round in circles of shit anyway. What have you got to lose? That's like someone saying they want to leave the company they're in, but they don't apply for a job or put their foot forward. So yeah, I'm a big believer. Now, here's the thing, brand, you stand out to me as someone who is conscious and manages their brand. I learned this through a great woman, Victoria. She was a coach in our team, and she told us and taught us all about brand, being conscious about your brand, your personal brand, your team brand. So what do you do that helps your brand and helps nurture that?

Mel:

So I wish we had another hour to talk about what you just talked about, but let's just hop right into brand. So really simply, my goal in the last five to 10 years is to try to figure out, number one, what was I doing wrong? Why am I not getting promoted? Why am I not being recognized? I had to do a lot of adjustments on how I delivered my tone, all these other pieces. I did a lot of corrective components, joined Toastmasters 20 plus years ago to try to figure out how to give speeches, how to never really kept a consistent rhythm of it, but I've been in at least three or four different groups. So I was doing a lot of learning and a lot of trying to figure that out. And what I realized was, and I'm going to call this out, I was living what I will call safely call, but not what I'll normally call it. And this executive presence that was out there that didn't fit my personality, my upbringing. Now you're like, well melt. What do you mean by that? Well, I was born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York, and now I live in California. And I proudly, predominantly put that on my website, on my About section. Why? Because I want you to understand where I'm coming from.

When you read the chapter on moving from selfless to selfish, you're going to get some nitty gritty shit about how I grew up and what created this mindset, and then also what I needed to do to reframe, which is a whole nother topic. So when I come into conversations, let's say 10 years ago, I was trying to make sure that I was at a well paced and I wasn't highly caffeinated. I wasn't agitating and dah, dah, dah. And as I was going through this, I said to myself, I'm not being genuine to myself. And I started to realize I was code switching based on conversations. And there's a couple of great videos that I love to show people on code switching, one person going into the office and greeting four people, everyone very differently based on that other person's personality or race or otherwise. So I realized, I said to myself, I said, okay, I'm putting a lot of energy into this kind of siloed.

I need to refrain from doing what I would do, say what I would say. And don't get me wrong, I was a jokester and a lot of times I was able to be free with a lot of the different groups, but at the same time, I was not being true to myself. So when you see me flailing on an interview like this where I'm agreeing with you, who the hell does that? I do want to know why. Because I want to want to know why? Because that's what I do. Who the hell curses in the middle of three times in the middle of an interview? I do want to know why, because I'm emotional. I'm passionate and I love it. Who shows up to conferences doing the most extreme shit I do. And I do that specifically to set the bar so ludicrously high in how I want to show up that maybe it helps somebody kind of nudge their way a little bit further into what they want to show up as. So when I talk about code switching, no, no, this is how you get me as a coach. This is how you get me as an employee. This is how you get me as a leader. This is how you get me in an interview. Every interview I've done in the last whatever, how many years? It's pretty damn close to this one. Now I'm a little bit more jaded now and a little bit more open, but this is how I want to show up.

Mel:

This

Mel:

Is how I want to motivate. So when I talk about that and then building a brand, you need to be true to yourself, right? Your integrity, what you bring to the table. So if you're code switching and context switching and doing all these other wonderful things and not showcasing, yeah, no, no, I am me. I'm showing up. I'm showing out. I'm going to dress the way I want. And I love one of these leaders that I met out here a bunch of years ago. We went to a great dinner. This is a best example. We went to a great dinner that was hosted by one of the groups. I mean, just topnotch best food you could find, right? Everybody there is in their suits. And my colleague comes in, he's like, well, yeah, it was just meeting with the FBI and we've got a bunch of incidents, this, that and the other, and he looks me up and down.

Now, I'm not in a suit. I'm wearing my semi casual. This is kind of what I wear when I'm going out and about. I've got my canvas shoes, my linen pants, my linen shirt, and a white hoodie, and he looks me up and down. He goes, nice of you to show up in your pajamas. And I said, I'm as comfortable as shit. So guess what? I'm still an executive leader with experience and everything else. I don't need to put on a suit to showcase that. So executive presence, I'd want to shatter that. I've been looking to write an article to shatter the core roots of executive presence and definition. Want to know why? I want to show up the way I want to show up my way? Hoodie is now to me, one of my trademark pieces. I must've gotten rid of a ton because they get dirty and stain easily, but I have about five or six of them upstairs.

Why did I decide to do what I did with RSA with Blackhead and otherwise and get these really highly visual suits? Because somebody said no. Somebody said to me and said, Mel, you're going to be working with executives and coaching and you might want to wear suits. I said, what? You know what? You're right. So what did I do the first day of Black hat, I wore a pink three piece suit. What did I do the second day of black hat? I wore a bright orange three piece suit. What did I do the third day of black hat? I wore a baby blue three piece suit. There you go. I wore a suit. Check the compliance box.

Den:

I know.

Mel:

So to me, that's how I want it to show up. And the validation that I've gotten from people, the ability for them to step out of their norms and really elevate themselves all day long, and that to me, I'm going to attract whoever is receptive to that. And I think goodness, to high heaven and hell, I'm going to push away people who cannot accept that. Why? Because I'm going to track the universe that I want to follow me to join me, to celebrate with me. And if you don't like it, get the hell out.

Den:

Yeah. I remember when we met each other, I think it was Black Cat and we were in Vegas CSO Society social mixer thing. And I just remember, man, this guy looks sharply dressed bright. It's invigorating. And I was just like, I want to get to know Mel a bit more, right? Like this is a soul I can vibe with. And I love that in the industry because, and for me, it's funny because our last conversation other week, I was just saying you, I was like, yeah, I've been told I should have more color in my life because all my clothes were, I mean, this shirt I've had for a long time, so it's not like a new shirt, but this whole blacks and grays and that cool look that I was going for. Then I'm like, man, this is a year of being a little bit more out there where people recognize me or I celebrate color in my life.

I don't give a shit. But the interesting thing, when I was a kid growing up in my career, I remember working at a bank. I was doing contracting at a bank in Scotland, and I remember Friday was dressed down day. So normally you wore a full suit and a tie and all the shit. So I go in on the Friday, but I don't wear my tie. I just had my tie in my pocket. And I go in there and my boss is like, where's your tie? And I'm like, but it's dress down day. It's casual Friday. And he is like, not for it. I'm like, what? That fucking makes us smart. Does the tie in the suit really? Is that you thing or is that a me thing? I think it's the societal pressure of the industry you're in to determine that they think you're smarter because you're going to wear your suit banking industry or the IT accountant, all that shit, they're all like suits. But I don't think my brain suddenly grew five times bigger the minute I put that suit on. So yeah, don't

Mel:

Get me wrong, wearing the right suit or the right clothes does help you exude confidence and a presence and can build an immediate visual kind of connection. I'm at a point now where I've got 35 years of experience. Just have a conversation with me. You want to get technical. Let's talk about technical. You want to talk about segmentation, let's talk about segmentation. You want to talk about how do you optimize something? Let's talk about that. But if you're judging me on what I wear

Mel:

To

Mel:

Build that presence, yeah, don't get me. I have a couple of custom suits that I absolutely love. Why? Because I was able to pick every nook and cranny of what I wanted in them, but they're very standard. I've got a gray one, I've got a blue one, I've got a different blue one. But what do I do? I add a little color, I add a colorful pocket square, I add a pinned peacock feather. The shoes that I wear are different. So there's things you can do. You just add a little bit of spice, a little bit of color. Now, what I will also say, and I was this close to doing it at InfoSec world last week, I brought with me so close, I brought with me an Ascot so close to wearing it, so close to wearing it, but I didn't, didn't feel like for me it was that day or those days were right. I've come in with different shoes. A shoe is a shoe except when you can pull it together with the rest of your outfit and stand out a little bit. So you don't have to have a monstrously crazy wardrobe. You can have accents that just define who you are, how you want to show up, and that's all that matters.

Den:

And you touched on one thing, right? The visual element of who you are and what your brand is is vitally important. But I think you've got to feel comfortable about your brand and what you wear, and that's what you hit on before rather than the society dictating, thank you, what you should wear. Because I think, and certainly in our industry, it doesn't make us any more intelligent. And now if anything, it makes people feel like, oh, maybe you're more of an executive because you dress like an executive. I'm like, well, that's fucking silly. Because at the end of the day, an executive should be measured on other things. Like how smart are we? How can we lead to teams? How do we understand the business? How do we get results? How creative are we? What's our legacy? So for me, all of that stuff, fun. I tell you one thing, we're already blown through that clock. I'm looking at the clock. I'm like, oh shit, this is too easy for us to shoot the shit for so long. So Mel, I'd love to close out with you leaving the audience with one piece, one takeaway, one little nugget that from this conversation, what would be the one thing you want everyone to remember?

Mel:

There's a couple things that you actually mentioned that I want to make sure that everybody understands. Where you are now to where you were is what you should be focusing on, where you were, where you're now, and then what you want. That's one what you want, not what you need, what you want. That north star, that's one, two, everything that you want isn't going to come to you. If you're sitting on a couch, is it going to come to you? If you're crying in the bed, you know what it's going to take. And I say this all the time, all the great leaders and all the great motivators say it. And you said it, you paraphrase it slightly. But it's massive action, not just action. It's massive action. Get off your ass, read the books, go for that run. Go do whatever it is that you think you want to do. Massive action. So you want to promote yourself more, promote yourself more. You want to do more work, but guess what? Do it for yourself, for your self care. Selfish. That's what I want to leave everybody with is get off your ass and do the things you want to do.

Den:

Excellent, Mel. Hey, I appreciate your time, man. And I'd love, I think a couple of things. Love to have your back on the show. I think we could shoot the shit on the manifest. There's world leaders, Tony Robbins Springs to mind,

Mel:

And Millette, Mel Robbins, Richard Simmons, absolutely. All of them.

Den:

All of these guys.

Mel:

Dr. Dispenza, all of us. Yes.

Den:

So I think we could shoot the shit for just an hour just on this whole topic and the realities of what experiences have we had in our lives that help us believe in this thing, because I think that's a great conversation for the future, man, Mel. Hey, thank you very much. Get that topless Maserati and go up the Pacific Coast Highway. And one time when I'm down in la, my daughter's down there at Northridge, so I'd love to swing by and we could catch up and grab a drink and park. Absolutely, man.

Mel:

Looking forward to it. Thank you for this opportunity. Dan. Thank you for letting me be me. Be open, be genuine, and be authentic. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks,

Den:

Mel.

Narator:

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