Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to protect it all, where Aaron Crow expands the conversation beyond just ot delving into the interconnected worlds of it and ot cybersecurity.
Get ready for essential strategies and insights.
Here's your host, Aaron Crow.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Awesome. Hey, welcome, Neil. Why don't you introduce yourself? I'll introduce myself. We're kind of putting this on multiple platforms, so kind of depending on the audience, just kind of give everybody an introduction to who we are and.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Yeah. So excited to do this with you, buddy.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah, man.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: For anyone who doesn't know me, my name is Neil Conlon, and I'm at this very interesting intersection in my own life and journey.
What I mean by that, not to sound so, like, philosophical there.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: But I.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Realized recently that all through my entire professional career, I've been focused on providing safety and security for others.
And I think I do that because I grew up in a very challenging household, and parents divorced at a young age, and a bunch of different things going on, lots of movements.
And so I had to develop my own instincts. And I, fundamentally, for a very long time in my life, only trusted myself and my instincts, and so I developed very strong instinct skills.
And, you know, since I grew up, you know, in this challenging household and was forced to develop these instincts of how I trust things. Um, I've created a whole entire journey throughout my life about creating safety and security for others. And that manifested itself in joining the Marine Corps and serving a bunch of years, protecting the country, defending the country.
It then turned into me going into financial services and working in financial services for years and providing financial experience and technology experience.
Then I grew into technology really hefty and realized, like, tech is going to be a thing, and went deep into the world of technology, and then that led me into the world of cybersecurity, which obviously is providing protection for people digitally.
And then it led me down the path of sales into learning how to develop relationships, again, another trust and safety and security thing. And then ultimately after that, it led me into the world of coaching, where I became really, really focused on developing safety and security around mindset and around community and brotherhood and partnership. And ultimately, that led me to this amazing relationship that I have with you now, where we're doing all these amazing things and bringing that to people.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah, man.
It's amazing how different but similar our stories are, right. You know, obviously, I was not. I did not serve in the Marine Corps or any of the special or any, you know, any of the military service, but very similar kind of upbringing. Right. You know, my parents were together.
I didn't go through divorce, but still, like, had their own challenges from, you know, everybody has their. Their story and how they grew up and, you know, how it impacted them. But for me, it was, you know, technology was always really good. I was always, you know, super smart in school and math and sciences and all these different things, and technology really just clicked with me. So I've always kind of been in technology, but similar to you, like, I also got into real estate. I had my real estate license, and I ran a real estate brokerage, and I did bank owned foreclosures, and I bought and flipped houses, and I did real estate investing, and I started getting into the sales side of that, and then I started doing, like, some public speaking. And so I was really trying to find ways to be, you know, kind of enhance my career beyond just, you know, yeah, I could. I'm smart from a technology perspective, but I'd learned pretty, pretty soon or pretty quick on in my career that there was a ceiling I would hit. I could only grow so much by being the smartest firewall guy or network guy or server guy because I was competing on the same level as other people that could have had more experience than me or whatever by having these other soft skills, by being a public speaker, by being able to have these conversations, by being able to go up and do all these other softer skills, which really are sales. I never called myself a salesman, but I was doing sales without the sales title, and it showed up in, you know, I was a CTO, and part of my role as a CTO in a small company was sales. Right? I was going in front of customers and pitching these ideas and showing the technology. I had to be good at the tech, but also had to be good at the sales side, like. And it became this different thing. And part of that is because, like you, I had this journey on, you know, men's masterminds and professional and self and with my relationship with my wife and all these different things. You know, I say this story a lot, but, you know, I used to be 350 pounds. Like, I was massively overweight. I was unhappy in work, I was unhappy in my. In my marriage. And it wasn't my wife's problem. It was. There was a lot of problems that I had to deal with myself. And as I started dealing with those things, I started getting happier and better in business, and I started getting better in all of these areas. As I started taking care of myself mindset and how I approach things, everything started improving. Does that mean it was a you know, it was magical or. No, I still had to do the work. I still have to go out and do the things. But it was amazing how that mindset shift changed from, you know, I'm miserable in my job and poor, poor, pitiful me to, okay, if I don't like something, go change it. Like, go do something about that. Right? And that's. That's. That's where we. We cross paths in this. This. This mindset and mastermind and self improvement world. And I think we. We'd known each other online, digitally for, what, probably a year or so, or maybe a little more, and then we. We saw each other. I think you saw me at RSA, which is, obviously cybersecurity conference, and then again at Black Hat, we're like, okay, this isn't too much of a coincidence. We see each other. We're. We're posting on each other's stuff all the time, and then we see each other. Wait, you're a cyber guy and I'm a set? Like, this is too much of a coincidence. And then I think the first time we actually met was at black hat in person, and we went to a rooftop bar and had a tequila shot and talked all night. And ever since then, we talk, you know, constantly, so.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, here's the thing. Is. Is, like, what comes up for me in a big piece of the work that you and I have done, both separately and together now they've done each other for a couple of years, is, like, one of my mentors said this to me a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. And you hear me say it all time. It's like, man, everything happens at the speed of trust, you know, like, and that sounds great and sounds like a good meme, and it sounds like a good instagram video, but it really is true, you know? Like, and I think one of the things that, you know, you currently live in Texas with your family. You know, I'm packing up literally as we speak and getting ready to move out of my house and move to Texas in a couple months. And it's.
We live in this world now in 2024, where, you know, people struggle with trusting the ingredients on the food, right? So. So, literally at the foundation, you know, there's. There's problems, right? People struggle to trust politics in any way, shape, or form, you know, and the misuse of words is hard to trust.
You know, people struggle to trust the news. People struggle to trust facts versus truth. And. And then we don't. We wonder why we're struggling in so many other elements of our lives.
Right. And, you know, something that just comes up really relevant to me to segue into, you know, our events that are coming up, it's very, very interesting. You know, we've had this physical security challenge, assassination attempt that's happened. Regardless of how you're politically feel about it. It was a physical challenge, physical security challenge. Stuff like that should not be able to happen.
Then literally, a day and a half, two days later, we have this global infrastructure, it outage, that literally shuts down somewhere between 40 and 60% of the planet for three days. And that's only the things that they're reporting.
Right. And so I think what's interesting about the world of cybersecurity, especially, is the fact that it used to be a bunch of geeks and a bunch of nerdy people and the classic, like, hoodie hacker thing with blue and green lights going, and. And. And if you're not watching the video, Aaron has blue and green lights behind him, and it says geek squad, right?
[00:09:46] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:09:47] Speaker C: But now we have this thing where it's one thing if there was an assassination attempt on somebody and it didn't affect the public. It's another thing if we had a cybersecurity thing that didn't affect the general public. Both of those events severely impacted the general public over a 48 hours period. Like, people's flights were canceled. You know, my girlfriend was at the airport the next morning, and I called her at 03:00 in the morning, and I was like, are you okay? And she was like, why wouldn't I be okay? And she. Her flight was delayed, and she was like, how do you know my flight's delayed? I'm like, because people are calling me and telling me, did you see what's going on in the world? And what's interesting about that is the response after those events, politically, are from both sides. And again, this is not a political thing, but the word they use is that we must unite. We must unite. And I've been stuck on this for a couple days, because the only time in history, the only time in history that any of our society has ever been able to actually unite globally, Asia, Europe, wherever, any period of time, we only unite under two conditions, God and war.
And yet these political affiliates are using these words, trying to get a certain feeling out of people, and yet we're supposed to trust them. And so I think what we've been able to do over the past couple years from running our first event together, you know, at the rig offshore, which was taking, you know, a bunch of guys 30 plus miles, you know, to trust us enough to go 30 miles offshore. We had multiple, you know, for three days at the rig, we had multiple things that didn't go as planned for that event, but trust kind of brought us through it. And then, you know, the beginning of this year, doing the hundred man fly in in Austin, Texas. And now that brings us to our next event series, you know, which is a place that. Which is being held at a place that we think is amazing, which is the staccato ranch that you've introduced me to.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Yeah, man. Yeah. So, so what is this, this new event? Right? And this one is a little different as well, because we're focusing this event on cybersecurity. Right? So we're doing that bridge between the cyber and the physical, you know, again, both of us working in cybersecurity as one of the things that we do, amongst other. Many other things. But that cybersecurity world is super important. And those. The difference between cyber physical and cyber digital, there's especially in a lot of the things that I do in operational technology, in OT, those lines are fairly blurred. Like, I impact a digital thing, and it impacts a physical thing in the real world. Right? So, again, the crowdstrike incident that we just saw, you know, shutting down airports, et cetera, like, we're starting to see more and more correlation and causation on those cyber and physical environments where, you know, we're impacting the real world. We're shutting down grids, we're shutting down transfer. Same thing in the Olympics, it wasn't a cyber event. But in the Olympics, the day of the first day opening ceremonies, there was an arson. They started a fire on the train going to the opening ceremony to shut down that environment. Like, people are, there's little things that you could do. There's physical attacks on transmission substations in North Carolina last year. The list just goes on and on and on. I literally had a podcast this week about the Crowdstrike incident. So this event is to bring together something different. Right. So we go to conferences. You and I are going to be at black hat next week. Yeah, we're doing these things. This is going to be different than that. Right. So it's going to be bringing together cyber executives in a space that a. We can work on more than just the tech, the geeky stuff that I have behind me in. In my office here, but also that camaraderie that. That networking, and put it into a place where we can, we can break down those barriers, right? We can, you know, you said it earlier, and I love this, and we use it all the time now is, is we trust. You know, we, we move at the speed of trust, right? So the more that we get to know each other, the faster we can grow. And I know, you know, Charlie and I went to Charlie's, my son Charlie and I went to staccato ranch yesterday, actually. And during that time, we had a couple of guys that were there, and they were fairly new to shooting. Now, these, these are guys, these are expert level or black belt jujitsu guys. They're jiu jitsu competitors. Like, they're training with the best in the world. Like, and I'm a white belt in jiu jitsu. Charlie just got his yellow belt this past week. But Charlie, my 15 year old, noticed as we were coming home, he's like, dad, you know what was really cool today? He said, I'm taking classes, and I'm getting in, you know, one on one instruction with, with this person that is a black belt. And he's teaching me all this stuff for my competition that's coming up. And he's really good at Jiu jitsu. But when he, when he went out there, he wasn't as good at shooting. He was a fairly new shooter. He goes, I'm 15. And I was able to show him and Give him InstructioN on something that I'm good at that he's not.
[00:15:14] Speaker C: MM HMM.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: And so that, that's the whole premise of this, THIs concept of THis, this event that we're doing is have more than just talk tech, right? We're not just going to talk ones and zeros. We're not just going to talk, you know, which products do we like and which, what are, what's our budget problems on, you know, getting cybersecurity programs implemented? And, you know, where are we having problems with phishing and, and, you know, denial of service attacks and malware and backups and all the different tech stuff. Like, we can talk about that stuff and we will talk about that stuff, but it's more than that. It's also building relationships with other cisos. It's building relationships with vendors, and it's not a sales pitch. Right. We are going to have vendors on site, but the whole point of them is to have conversation and dialogue. We're going to have a fireside chat. We're going to have a lunch and learn. We're going to do a factory tour. So why don't you, let's take a step back really quick, and why don't you just give us the elevator pitch of what this thing is and what it is that people can expect as an attendee of this event?
[00:16:13] Speaker C: Yeah, and I think you hit on a really interesting point, especially in this world now, where, like, there's this big, huge transformational event happening, I think, in the world of cybersecurity in itself, but it's in technology.
Along with all these AI tool and platforms coming into fruition, you're going to see this big consolidation happening.
A lot of the hard skills that probably were very, very valuable for a long time very quickly being eroded because there's an AI tool that can do the thing. Now with that, what's happened is there's been all kinds of layoffs and the structures have changed. So there is, you know, that one of the most valuable things I think that people will look to me for when they're on the enterprise side of cybersecurity is that I've become a trusted partner over the. Over the time that I've done this work. So people will call me, and people, cisos and board members will call me and say, hey, can you look at this contract? Can you do this thing? Can you give me some advice?
And I've been predominantly a salesperson on the cyber side, which is unheard of in a lot of circles. So a big piece of this event is really, it's created trusted partnerships with people in a space where things are evolving very, very quickly and changing. And I think predominantly, you would like to think that we could live in a world where, as a decision maker, you can become, not be reactive, but be proactive. But now the last two events that have just happened, the assassination attempt and the global it outage, there's no way you could be proactive for those things. Now, you have to be preemptive. And the way you do that is through community and partnership and having the right plans in place. So a big piece of this whole entire event is, look, you know, we're hosting at Staccato Ranch, which is in Florence, Texas, just outside of Austin, and it is about getting a bunch of cybersecurity people together.
Like you said, a couple of vendors, you know, they're going to get some talk time, but we're not going to have anybody pitching anybody. But it really is about having down and dirty trusted conversations. It's eye contact. It's put, you know, having meaningful conversations. It is doing it in a safe environment. If you're a expert shooter who shoots, shoots often this is a premium experience for you to hone your skills even more. If you've never even shot a pistol and you've always been like, I've never felt safe enough to do that. I don't know somebody that can help me with that. This is going to be the premium experience for you to sit there and do something that you've never done in your life. And everybody remembers their first time doing something. Everybody really remembers the first time doing something with people that they like and care about. And that's exactly what we want to do during this series of events. So that's going to be pistol shooting, both indoor and outdoor.
It's going to be a premium experience at Staccato Ranch, you know, in their, their boardroom with really high end food to eat during the day and really great, meaningful, intentional conversations. And then it's going to be even, you know, shotgun with, with clays for anybody wants to participate with that. I, and then really have, walking away from that, being like, that was a really, really great, great day and a really good use of my time. Versus, and you and I have both been to these series of events where you go to these big vendor centric conferences. You walk around, you get a bunch of information you spent and you spent. I'm saying that twice on purpose, an entire day. You know, you might have gotten a couple business cards, you might have followed up, they might have followed up with you, and then it went mute, which ultimately means you spent a day and you didn't get any value out of it. And I think you and I both as leaders, have become so value driven. Like, we value our time so exponentially that the only thing we want to do with people is deliver high value time, because our time is equally as valuable as yours. And it's up to us, as the creators of this experience to deliver that value to the day so that you walk away and be like, today was a great day.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Yeah, man. And that's, that's the key. That value driven piece, right, is this is not, you know, we've, we've had people feed you, giving us feedback and saying, oh, wow, that's, that's really cool. Or this is not a. Just a showing up at a, at a range and shooting. Shooting a gun, right? This is not that, right. The facilities are next level. Like, you've probably. I've never been to a range anywhere near like this. Like, this is purpose built. They have 800 acres. This is designed and built specifically to be the best of the best in absolutely every way. This will be the nicest indoor range you've ever seen. The nicest outdoor range you've ever seen. Like, the nicest everything that you've ever seen. Um, and beyond that, this is not just a bunch of people showing up. Yes, there's going to be guns there. Yes, there's going to be ammo there. But this is going to be instructor led. Like, the. This is going to be. When you. When you leave this, you are going to leave. I don't care. And you, you said in the beginning, I don't care what level of shooter you are. When you leave this, you will have learned something from a shooting perspective. I will be more competent. I'll be more accurate. Like, I'll be able to do whatever the thing is that I'm looking to do more of. Even if I'm a first time shooter, I will feel more confident as a shooter. When you leave again, no matter what your level, we'll have guys there that are former special forces guys. I guarantee you they will learn while they're there and come out of this with, wow, okay, I'm better at this because I was here today. We're also going to have that same level of expectation out of the cyber side. Like, the talks, like, going through the factory tour looking, and we're not just taking a tour to say, oh, this is cool. Yes, you're going to. That's. It's going to be cool to see where they build Sukato firearms and where the. Where the bullets are made and how it's manufactured and all that kind of stuff. But we'll also be looking at it from a cyber perspective, from a, hey, do you have manufacturing? Like, how do you look at this? And, like, where is the risk profiles along this? Like, and we'll be able to talk about all of those things. And then also the lunch and learn and the vendor talks and the fireside chat, like, all those things are designed to have. When we walk away, what did. How did we get better? Right? And you and I talk about this a lot. You know, it's the whole concept of kill your clone every 24 hours. A clone is creative. You and you have 24 hours to be at 1% better so that when you fight your clone, at the end of the next day, one of you is going to win. And if you don't improve, he wins. Right? So I have to get better every day. So when I look at my time in a morning and I wake up or. And I'm planning, what am I going to do today? I'm looking at all those activities. Is this going to make me better? Right. It's the reason why you and I aren't just sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day long. Right? It's. It's. We're intentional about the things that we do in the activities. That does not say that we don't ever watch Netflix. That's not what I mean. What I mean is that we're intentional about our time and we're intentional about, if I'm doing that, that means I've already checked the boxes of the other things that I wanted to get done and I had time left over, and that's okay. Right. But the intention of this day is to be super value driven, way beyond anything that we're going to get in multiple days at larger conferences. This is all one day. It's on a Friday. You show up in the morning, you leave in the afternoon, and you're done. Like, you don't have to bring anything with you other than yourself and your openness to both be. Be willing to learn on the cyber and the shooting and the physical side, as well as connect and be open to have conversations. And if you come in with that mindset and openness, you will.
I have full confidence that everybody that comes in with that openness will leave. Hey, this was value add for me.
[00:24:27] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I mean, I don't want to beat a dead horse here on this topic, but. But I want to say one of my early mentors who ran amazing experiences and where he really planted a lot of the seeds about me wanting to run events for people, said it best when he said, look, there's three pillars to running an amazing event. Number one is you gotta have an epic location. And Staccato Ranch is an epic, purpose driven. Everybody there is committed to building a culture of an epic environment in place. And so the culture is there for that. It's epic location. The second piece of it is you need amazing content. You have to have amazing content. And the depth and breadth of the content that we're talking about demonstrating and sharing with people, along with what other folks are going to bring to the table, is going to be valuable, valuable content. That's going to make you really think about what it is that you want to be doing for the rest of the year and forward. And then the third piece of it is really, is the community. And if you have amazing community and you get people who, on a Friday, want to go to an amazing location and listen to great content, and they're seeking relationships that are going to support them in valuable relationships, my friend. We've crossed all three of those boxes off in a very, very meaningful way. And you should want to be at this experience because that's the value that we're going to deliver.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Absolutely, man. Yeah, it's exciting. Again, it's going to be all the top level stuff, food, guns, networking, connection. You know, the folks that are going to be there are going to be next level. There's also going to be a lot of cool stuff. There'll be swag. There's going to be a giveaway.
You know, you're going to get discount codes to, if you want to join Staccato, like, there's a lot of benefits to this event beyond just the things that we're doing.
And we're super excited to be partnering with Staccato Ranch in this and really excited. I mean, they're an amazing organization that are really, you know, they do a lot of veteran owned company. They're really focused on hiring vets and obviously that's near and dear to our heart on that perspective.
Definitely sign up. We'll have the links in the show notes for all the details. Signing up if you're interested in sponsorship. We do have some open sponsorship opportunities available. They are filling up quickly, though. The same thing on the CISO and cyber exec side.
We already have quite a few folks that have signed up and are on the line to sign up.
The other thing to note is we are planning to do this. We've already scheduled, we've gotten enough interest. We've already scheduled our next one with a soft launch in Q one of 2025. So there will be another one of these coming up with a more regular cadence.
So definitely, you know, hurry up and sign up if you want to get in on this one. But there will be another one coming in the Q one of 2025.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Yeah, man, I'm excited to do this with you. Excited for the folks we got coming and the, and the, and the sponsors we have. So it's going to be a great event.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Yeah, man. Awesome. Everybody sign up. Check the link, reach out with any questions. Neil and I are happy to jump on a call from a sponsorship perspective or, or from an attendee perspective, but yeah, it's a great opportunity. Again, it's around Austin, Texas, Takato Ranch. Look it up on their website. It's an amazing place.
[00:28:04] Speaker C: We'll see you there.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on protect it all, where we explore the crossroads of it and Ot cybersecurity.
Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to stay ahead in this ever evolving field. Until next time.
