Tequila with Rebecca Cahak

Good afternoon, Adam.

How are you doing today?

I'm great, Joe. How are you doing?

Everything is wonderful. I'm sure not quite as wonderful as in Staten Island, but we're doing okay here in Jersey.

Well, I'm glad I gave you that information before the podcast so I won't say it on the podcast about how we're doing here in Staten Island.

Yeah, that was pretty gnarly. We'll keep that one to ourselves for now. This is a family-friendly show. Anyway, onto nicer stuff. So we are lucky enough to have a guest today. And as we've talked about in the past, one area, constituency, whatever, that is woefully and shamefully underrepresented in information security is women. Again, we've talked about it before, but we're a little constrained in how much perspective we can bring to it. Because as you know, I'm not a woman, nor are you. Nor do we identify as women, nor would anyone take us seriously if we said we did. So we solved that by getting a real woman as a guest, but also someone who is very active in this field and brings us a lot of perspective. So let's welcome Rebecca Kayak. Rebecca, welcome.

Thank you so much, guys. I'm really happy to be here with you.

Great to have you.

Yeah, yeah. And you know what, what you sort of teed up there at the beginning is very true. Being a woman in cyber, it's lonely. There's not a lot of women. You can just about any organization that you go to, I mean, the leadership, women leaders, you can count on one hand, sometimes only one finger. You know anytime we have any sort of you know sales kickoffs or we have any sort of You know shows Whatever it is, you know, the the line for the women's room is nothing And the men are just piled up high so It's it's lonely, but I do believe That the tide will change that we will see more women. I mean will it be substantial? You know if I had to put a number on it today maybe 10% women.

I'd say that's even generous, but anyway.

I was thinking more like seven or eight, but I don't know everybody, but.

If I remember correctly, and I just posted today and somebody said, there's no way it's true. On the Security Cocktail Hour LinkedIn page, we posted a story where someone said it was 24% women represented in cybersecurity, I believe, which I don't believe is accurate, but don't take my word for it. Call me out if it's wrong, but I think it's what the story said.

I would say that that number is probably more closely related to technology as an industry. I don't think it's specific to cyber.

Won't we? Yeah, I have to agree with you on that. And I started drinking already, so I might've gotten it wrong.

I was just gonna say, so normally, my normal tequila is Casamigos Reposado. My husband drank the last of it. I didn't realize that we were out, so I've gone to my trusty Glase Azul, which is also a Reposado. And yeah, yeah, love me some tequila. And this fun bottle, if you've never experienced this, we first learned about it in Mexico, you can ring it.

Ooh.

That I've never seen.

Nice little trick. Nice little trick.

That's gotta be funny after a few rounds.

Yeah. I would not give it to somebody at a bar and stand out, and they'd probably use it as a weapon.

Absolutely. I wouldn't put myself... I wouldn't pat it past me to use it if I needed to.

Well, I got to tell you, I went out and got a bottle of Casamigos, which I don't normally drink. I'm just not a big tequila drinker. And I even had a George Clooney joke teed up. I said, oh, I was going to refuse to plug it unless you acknowledge that Frank Sinatra was the true Danny Ocean. But anyway, I guess it's a moot point.

Wow, you have a lot of high expectations.

Hey, this is New Jersey. We worry about these things here. You know, cheers.

Cheers, guys. Cheers. Don't you have to shake Sinatra's hand to be part of the club?

That's going to be a little tough, unfortunately. I meant in the past.

If you're shaking his hand now, you got some serious problems.

It still sounds like we're talking about the family here. I think we should probably be careful.

Yes. Well, let's move on to security. So anyway, yes, it is true. Well, actually, Rebecca, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Because you are not just a women in security pundit. You have been in the industry for a

I have, I have, I have, I have. Um, so I am, um, I live in Austin, Texas and I went to school, um, um, at what now is called Texas state university. And when I moved to Austin, so that's a little town about 30 miles South called San Marcos, Texas. And when I moved to Austin, um, I worked for a, a company where I sold fax machines. That was my first year out of college. And then my second job, I sold office furniture. And both times, what is now Dell Technologies, back then it was just called Dell. Dell Technologies was my customer for both of those companies. And so I got to know the purchasing manager really well. And one day I was in her office and she was like, why are you not working for us? And I was like, I never even thought about it. And she's like, I'm gonna get you an interview. Two weeks later, I was in a training class. So, I really did the bulk of my technology work very early days of Dell. I started with them back in 94 and I did sales, sales leadership, and I also did a stint in product group marketing with those guys. And then when I left Dell, I joined the channel side of the business. And so then Dell was my partner that I managed the partnership with Dell. And I did that for many, many years. So I felt like I was in the Dell ecosystem for about like 25 years between both of those together. And then when I moved into that channel space, I met an incredible leader, Abigail Maines, who's currently the CRO with Hidden Layer. And boy, I just really, really liked her leadership. She's just, she's really cool. She's really, really, she's smart. My God, she's brilliant. She's so, like she gets it. And when you work for somebody who gets it, they understand all of the ins and outs and all of the little nuances. You really wanna stick around with that person. So I've actually gone with her to four different companies.

And- That's what Adam always says about me, it on me.

So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. So, so what you don't know, um, Rebecca is that Joe inherited the group that I was in. And what Joe used to tell every single person at the company we worked at, I normally don't mention company names. Joe says, yeah, I inherited Adam. I didn't hire him. I was the only one.

I didn't hire myself. But I kept you around, what a compliment.

I mean, you're like a stepkid, you know? I have a stepson and I love him like I birthed him.

So let me give you a plug for you. At that company that I met you at, you were the go-to person for that vendor. You were the go-to person. And I highly admired you and I really appreciated all your help. I know sometimes your hands were tied, but you gave me the honest answers and I really appreciate it. Which is, I'm kind of surprised that you're still, you're on our podcast after working with me at that other company as my vendor. But I still thank you for coming on.

You gave it that bad of a time, Adam?

Wow. That's an incredible accolade. And I have to tell you, that is always my goal. My goal at anything that I do is I always want to be brutally honest. I mean, because sometimes I can make things happen. And my brand, I'm also known for that. And I can almost always make something work. But again, when I have the right leadership who gets it and they understand what a true partner means, oh man, it's beautiful. It's beautiful because then we really do, you know, I add value to what you're doing and you add value to what I'm doing and it's just very simpatico. So thank you. That is always what I strive to be and I appreciate that. That's very kind of you.

And I guess the good news, and it's no problem, because you definitely earned it. And the good news is with Joe, Joe woke up one day, said, Adam, you want to do a podcast? I'm like, OK. So I love Joe. Joe, if I could work for Joe again, it might be hard now, because I'm very happy where I am. But I would work for Joe again. So I'm so happy that we're all coming together. I'm ready to start singing kumbaya and roasting marshmallows.

Well, you are working for me again. Adam thinks he's a partner in this. That's true. I'm kidding. We are partners. Anyway, but also, I mean, and again, we really don't know each other, but I think you also moved from Dell, kind of the traditional space. I think you also made a very strategic move into kind of the new world. Yes, yes, yes.

Because, you know, you've got to be more than a one-hit wonder, right? you know, you've got to kind of expand your horizons a little bit. So I have added quite a few other, you know, GSIs and technology partners, you know, into my tool belt. And it has been wonderful. And I've learned so much about myself even, like, how do I Shorten that cycle of getting to know people and like sometimes it's just you know Like I came out to meet Adam in person and and and I was even you know I was super lucky to get to meet his wife too and like, you know, and that's again That's that's that's my brand. That's the that's the difference that you're gonna get with me. I Is that I love my partners and I have so much loyalty And I'm completely devoted To making the world easy. And so that's that's that's what I enjoy to do I feel I almost feel like you know It's like you kind of you find your calling kind of thing and I was just like this is what I was meant to do well, that's great because you know, I mean, you know, we've been kind of

Adam and I kind of come from the other side of the table, you know, the purchasing side, you know, being, uh, you know, security managers and everything, whether it's security or anything else, it's, you know, the vendors that, you know, I have the best relationships with are the best business relationships. So the ones who I have the best relationships with, you know, and I don't just mean we're, we're friends or buddies or anything, but you know, you really get to know each other and you get to know, um, you know, they get to know you and what you need. They're not going to. call you every time they have some new silly thing they're pushing. You really get a relationship there and a respect and like each other too, because who wants to work with people who are just unpleasant to be frank.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, and, and, and Adam sort of alluded to it, you know, we had a lot of things going on between the two companies that we were both representing. Um, and not all of it was pleasant. Right. But you know, we still, we managed to get through every single day. I'm still feeling like we were on the same team and you know, that was amazing.

Yeah. We definitely had a common drive. Um, and you're right. Some of the, the, the issues were difficult. But we both had the same thing in mind, taking care of the client, taking care of the customer to ensure we gave the best possible solution. Because at the end of the day, I always say this, right? Yeah, we want to represent our companies, whether passion or prejudice. But at the same time, It's us, we're the brand that we're selling as well in addition to the company that we represent. So when we move on to another company and we deal with the same people possibly again, we want them to know that we have that integrity and we do the best we can to ensure that they get in the best possible quality. or product, you know, that sounds great. Yeah.

Yeah. Product, level of service, level of attention. Yeah. Yeah. All of that. So.

Which is why we're here together again, because we all respect each other. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, okay. So then, um, I mentioned to you guys, the, the, the leader that I sort of glommed onto, um, Abigail mains. Um, so what we, what we were doing was every company that we were at, uh, we were starting a women's organization. Right. And again, it, you know, it was small, sometimes it was 12 women. Sometimes, you know, I think at its height, maybe, you know, like 25, 30 women kind of thing. Every single company we were recreating the wheel and we decided one day let's stop recreating the wheel Let's just create the one being it stays with us everywhere. We go. We just fold the other people in And and that's how we founded fierce. So that was back in 2020 and during the pandemic It was one of those, you know A lot of a lot of really good things came out of the pandemic and you know, obviously for us That's how we feel about it. So fierce stands for Females and in every in every role changes everything and

I'm sorry, I have to ask you, this has been bothering me. That acronym is just fantastic. How long did it take you to come up with that?

Excuse me. I need a little tequila shot here.

There you go. That's right. See, there we are. You're in the spirit of the show already.

Very medicinal. So, you know what? Actually, it didn't take long. We liked the word fierce. First, we sort of just did a brainstorm of, what are the words that in your mind sort of signify who we are and what we're trying to accomplish? And it was one of the words. So once we found the word, then it was like, OK, then can we make it mean something? So then we just started to sort of play around with it. And it literally just sort of rolled. And it was like, wow. That was kind of cool. And that's when we decided, okay, we're really going to keep this. We're really going to take this and do something else with it beyond just whatever organization we happen to be employed at the time.

Awesome. Well, that's a good name too. As long as you don't get a cease and desist from that project runway guy, you know, you should be cool. I love it.

You should totally be fine. And then when we went in to create our logos, we sort of looked at, you know, a couple of different storyboards and one of them had a picture of a panther. And then what's interesting about a panther is depending on where you're from, the panther could have a lot of names. It could be a puma. It could be a panther. You know, like a jaguar. And it could be many colors. And then we thought, oh man, that also is amazing because that's what women are. Like we have so many different titles, right? We're moms. We're wives. We are employees. Sometimes we're the, you know, the entrepreneur. Sometimes we are, you know, your carpool. You're the maid. You're the chef. You know, you're all of these different things. You wear all of these different hats. So we really liked, you know, just physically the strength of a panther. We just felt like that embodied women. And then I really liked the little extra touch as we add a crown onto our little panther. And whenever we ride out fierce, we like to put the crown on that as well. And that's also just to remind us that Like no matter what is going on, you are still a queen. You can handle this. You've got everything you need within you and you just have to, you know, sometimes your crown might get banged up or it might get tarnished, but you just clean it up and you bang out those dents and you keep going.

A crown or a tiara?

We like a crown, but I'm not opposed to a tiara.

What's the difference? I'm feeling so stupid today. I didn't even know a jaguar and a puma and all of them were the same thing.

I think of a tiara as like it's just a little front piece of adornment and then it's kind of more like a headband-y kind of a thing versus a crown is like complete.

You go for the whole crown.

I'm just saying we're worth it.

See, this is educational also.

We learned the difference between them. Yeah, so much. I'm also learning that it appears that you and Abigail are very good at branding and creating messaging, far better than Adam and I, if you've seen our website. Your site is beautiful.

So part of the deal here is we brought Rebecca on to the show. She's going to provide a 25 minute free consultation on what we should do next.

I mean, you know, the sky's the limit, man. We're Panthers. We can do anything we want.

Thank you.

You know what? I would like to tell you about a workshop that we're planning for the fall. I think that would be really fun too. So we're calling it, this is our first like large event we've had. Well, I guess that's not true. We had that wonderful breakfast at RSA this past year. I think we had about 200 people who registered and probably about somewhere between 130 and 150 people that showed up to a breakfast. And it was just sort of a nice little come and go kind of thing. But that was really cool. So that was at RSA earlier this year. But we tend to do like one big thing a quarter. And sometimes it's just like a nice happy hour kind of thing. The other thing that we like to focus on is we want to make sure that the women who are a part of our organization That you don't have to pay to come to something We find sponsors. So, you know, we kind of we kind of you know utilize that muscle that we have in building partnerships and we And we use we use that now to build sponsors that then you know invest in us and invest in the women and You know, obviously we're there for them whenever whenever our sponsor Companies are looking for employees and they want you know, they're specifically looking for female talent You know, we've got a nice little database of women we can we can send their way we can promote any, you know job openings things of that nature. So it's a very, again, it's a very simpatico kind of a thing where it's a true partnership. We want to add value.

That's going to be part of also our guidance. Rebecca's going to show us how to get sponsors. Yeah, we could use that.

Yeah, our current pitches, we'll plug anything that's not illegal.

Whoa, whoa, that's not true. Step back a bit. That's not true. I'm willing to plug some illegal stuff too.

Okay, but you know what? That's interesting. That is really interesting because I know that there are a lot of companies out there that like when they're getting started, they actually do have to have conversations about stuff that could be controversial. Like, you know, like, let's just pretend for a moment that you guys were consultants.

You know, would you

take a job, a gig from a company that was something that maybe you morally objected to. Maybe it was something in the porn industry. Would you do that?

No. Actually, we're joking around a bit. I'm still negotiating. I'm still negotiating. There are a number of industries I really prefer not to work for. Adam's like,

It's an interesting thing.

Rebecca, this has been brought up to me before. I've actually been in interviews, and I bet you wish you were flying on the wall for this. And somebody's like, why do you want a job here? And I go, look, this is what I'm passionate about. I said, if someone gave me $500,000 to twiddle my thumbs, or a million dollars a year to twiddle my thumbs and do nothing else, just sit there like this, I wouldn't do it. But if it's something I believe in, something I want to do, and by the way, I've had some, opportunities to work in some morally questionable places. And I even left one place recently because I was not happy with the ethics. So the point I'm making is I'm very careful what we do. And we have these conversations, Joe and I, all the time. You know, we're careful what we plug. We're careful what we repose. We're careful what we say. We try not to mention companies. We try to be vendor agnostic. But we will bring vendors on if they want to talk about their product and how they relate to the industry. But we're very careful.

Yeah, I think that's a good policy to have. I do a separate podcast with a guy friend of mine. And we had to have some similar conversations as well, because it's like, listen, we're not trying to Don't want to upset anybody like, you know, that's just not that's not who I am. I'm not trying to be controversial I'm not you know, I mean obviously I am who I am and I have you know beliefs and you know values That I stand behind But I but I would never like sort of force that on anybody else, you know, I

Well, it's, yeah, it's tough because you know even insecurity there are some controversial issues and we've, you know, and we've taken on some because we have to because it makes sense because it's what people are interested in. But, you know, at the same time, you know, we're not looking to. you don't have to have people screaming in the comments or any craziness like that. We've got to keep it, you know, a little more elevated, you know?

Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah. So, so I like that. I think, I think you guys are totally on the right path with, with what you got going on and, um, you know, just stay true to yourselves and, and, you know, whoever your target audience is. And I don't think you can go wrong.

You know, just because we have a voice does not mean we should use it. Right. Um, yeah. And let's keep in mind, let's be fair. Our podcast is just starting out still. The audience is not great, but if the audience was, let's say, 100,000 or half a million people, both Joe and I would not use that audience to start ranting about people or organizations. Our goal is to bring together vendors and people that we want to speak to in a way that, you know, and Joe brings this up all the time, as if we were at a bar, just having a conversation and having a drink. That's what we look for, to enjoy each other. Not to make money.

That's right. But then, but then, you know, when it gets late and it's like, you know, in the fourth or fifth round, you start saying what's really on your mind. We kind of try to avoid that. That gets a little- Oh, we don't record that. We don't record that, yeah.

Yeah, turn the recorder off. Yeah, because those are still great conversations to have. You know, I love a good, you know, get into the weeds kind of a discussion like that. That's fun for me. But yeah, don't don't have the recorder on for that one. No proof.

OK, so, Rebecca, with fears, it sounds like it's covering a broad thing with women, is it all business, more technology, security, what are you covering there?

Yep, yep, no. So again, when we look at what is our mission, what is our charter, we really, we focus on, we sort of have the four foundations of Fierce, which are empathy is the most important, resilience, courage, and hustle and or work ethic. And so everything that we do, we can always bring it back to one of our four foundations. And so I started to tell you, and I can't seem to finish my thought on this, is our workshop that we're gonna have in the fall. It'll be in Austin, Texas, and it'll be one and a half days. We'll kick it off on a Thursday evening, and it'll be a networking event. And we're using this fantastic platform, Happily, H-A-P-P-I-L-Y, We love that platform by the way. They're a great partner of ours. And so we'll kick it off with a networking event. And why I mention that platform is when you RSVP you can also upload like a picture of yourself. So imagine how helpful that would be for you to go to a networking event and you knew before you went Oh, I want to find this guy and mention something to him, have a conversation with him or her. And so you've got a picture of what to look for for when you get there, you know. So we think that that will help a bunch too.

Well, especially if it's not a 12-year-old LinkedIn picture like most people's are. So that's cool.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be ideal. Yeah.

I think a lot of people were looking for me, so I'd probably use Joe's picture.

That's a great trick, actually. Let me steal that. And then on Friday, we'll have some keynote speakers. And we'll have some really good discussions, some panel things. And we'll talk about topics like finances, like how to maximize your benefits at any company that you're at, investing, even fractional investing, just some things that if you've never really spent the time to dig into it, you may not know about. And it's a great way to empower women financially. And then we'll have some sort of mental health and wellness as well. We have a nurse manager on the agenda. We have a lady who's going to talk about your personal brand, how you build your personal brand. We have somebody who's gonna speak on mentoring and champions and what the differentiators are between them and how you find them. And then we'll have some other good panel discussions. And some of the things that, if I had to just toss out, I'm gonna give you three questions that we typically get from women whenever we're addressing them. We get a lot of women who ask us about you know, how do you how do you how do you not? How do you not always feel guilty? Right if I'm at work I I'm guilty that I'm not at home with my kids if I'm home with my kids I'm guilty that I'm not doing the thing at work. I'm supposed to be doing so we get a lot of that So we help, you know navigate Sort of the age-old question of you know, can women really have it all? you know and And it's not just a simple yes or no answer. It's sort of yes, but there's a lot of things that are wrapped around that yes. We also, we get a lot of questions on the champions and mentorship, so we definitely want to do a deep dive there. And then, you know, strategies for if you want some upward mobility, but maybe you've got some gaps in your skill set. And that's another topic that we have. We have a gal coming on to talk about exactly how to bridge those gaps. She created a little company called Bridged.

So that's pretty cool.

So, yeah, so we get, you know, a lot of sort of typical questions from women, but again, we focus on women. It could be in technology, it could be just in corporate America, but we also, like, you know, if you wanted to be an entrepreneur, if you want, if you were in government or you're in academia, we'll be addressing a group of women at the University of Texas sometime in the near future. You know, so there's just, We have another company that we work with that we, it's a mostly female company. They provide female services. And I think one of the interesting things that they asked us about was sometimes the women are real catty and there's a lot of just, you know, catty women fighting kind of amongst them. How do they break out of that cycle? You know what I'm saying?

Well, you're allowed to say that, not us.

again, so you know and then we had it we had another organization that was like, you know, all the women are The are the women who are the women in the organization are the ones who are doing all of the work But the boss is always a man. I mean, how do we how do we break out of that? How do we get corporate to see us as an option? for the you know highest of leadership as well and So, you know, we, we, we, we get it all and, um, you know, hopefully we address it all, but we don't, we, we are not just specifically focused on technology. We, we do, we do all sorts of areas of interest.

Yeah. I'm going to say something that's not popular, but, um, it's, it's funny. I, I've had this conversation with both, uh, my wife and my child and I'm like, in the animal kingdom, the women are the, or the female species are the ones that do the hunting. They're the ones that are the providers. The prairie mantis, after procreation, rips the head off the male. In the bird species, they're the ones that go hunt and provide nourishment for their offspring. So I've said this before to some men, like, just shut up, just shut up. But it's kind of true, right? It's kind of true.

We're pretty magical creatures, yeah. Plus we're the ones that create the miracle of life in our bodies.

Yeah, can you imagine? I've seen these little movies and shows where they try to give you the picture of a man giving birth and what would happen and it's not pretty.

No, the population would completely die off. True. Yeah. So, yeah. So, there's lots and lots and lots of things for us to grow into essentially. We address a lot of the sort of triaging that needs to happen today. But then, you know, the ultimate goal is to not even be needed in a future generation, right? For us to not even be needed to exist. Because we're gonna, you know help do such a good job of teaching both men and women You know how to raise strong women how to raise women who are not afraid of the stem industry and You know, it's it's I I absolutely Can see that that will be a thing I can absolutely know I think you know There's some real simple things that you can do today, which is you know I know you may think it's the most amazing compliment to call your daughter a princess, you know but if she grows up thinking that You know, all she is is pretty and she can't handle, you know a job, you know being You know, you know something in the biomedical field or she can't do she can't be president. She can't be you know no, we really want to help eradicate any of that sort of thought process and You know, we want to equip Both men and women on you know, how do you be a part of the solution? So that we don't ever even have to have these discussions again

So, you know, Joe and I, we go through sometimes these sessions where we talk about how are we going to find people for our podcasts? And I found that I know it's not representative of the industry or even IT. I found that there were more women thought leaders on LinkedIn than I see of men in IT. And every once in a while, and we've actually invited other women to be on because it seems to be a very powerful message to convey. And not to say I don't want men on there too, because of course I do, but you know, there's a lot of thought leaders out there, a lot of, and this is probably a bad word, cheerleader for women to, excel in this field, which is great. And as a, as a, as a father, I want to see, you know, I had these conversations with my child and I said, Hey, you know, you need to be independent. You need not to rely on anybody. And that's really important for me.

Yup. Yep, and those are super important conversations that dads should have with their daughters and Abigail my my co-founder of fears She actually wrote a book called Abigail's amazing dad. Her father is no longer alive you know with us, but he did a really good job of of You know when women like Margaret Thatcher and Ann Richards would be on TV and they would be you know doing what they do best He would make sure she was in front of that TV watching it seeing it hearing it firsthand and then you know They would talk about it later and he breathed that life into her, you know that absolutely you can you can do anything you can be anything and You know Like there's there's nothing that's off-limits and that's not to say that even if you don't chase after something big that you know You've not accomplished much, you know, and that sounds I don't even like the way that sounded coming out of my mouth because you know Being a stay-home mom is also a very important role. If a woman chooses to work outside of the home, you know, great. Sometimes women are, you know, there's no, there's no choice. You just, you have to, you have to do whatever you have to do to care for the family. So, so it's not to, it's not to, It's not to put any sort of a light on you know, that role not having value because absolutely it does But also kind of going back to that guilt part that I talked about earlier You know, I have a lot of women that part, you know part of that guilty question is, you know How do I have? a successful career? How do I make time to be a thought leader, to present myself well, to excel at work and be the best that I can be at home? And that's why I said that answer just is not as simple as there's like one magical recipe and then boom, you've got it.

Yeah. I got to tell you, I got some real thoughts on it. And I think it applies to everyone, men and women. And this gets to something, I read a lot of a lot of philosophy and ancient stuff and everything. And you know, the, you know, the question of, you know, how do I have it all? Or how do I do all this, you know, is, is actually not a new one. And even in the, you know, even in the, you know, even in the modern, modern world. And, you know, the answer, I mean, I personally think just being a little slightly mature, whatever I like to think, but you know, very mature. You have to have a, if you say you want to have it all, you need to have, You need to have a realistic goal of having it all. That's right. And set your expectations and your priorities in life. Cause you know what? You gotta have priorities. I mean, even if you're a, you know, you're a dad, it's like, you know what? I mean, I can tell you too, I've made certain decisions. It's like, if you're going to be at all the baseball games and all the concerts and doing all these things, you know what? there are certain jobs you're not gonna be able to have. I mean, that's just, and that's not necessarily a negative. That's just the reality of putting some priorities on your life. There are people, also you look at some men who are hyper successful, many of them have horrendous relationships with their families and divorces and everything. You gotta make your decisions in life, unfortunately. But I understand that for women it's especially So it's almost like any more expectations.

Apparently it's almost like cyber security. It's risk versus reward. You're going to risk one thing in order to help or reward on the other. And I told my wife, we had this conversation many times, my wife, not recently. And she's like, you know, I want to be home with the kids when the kids were younger. And I said, look, we'll try to make things work. But if you go to work, you're going to be very happy with yourself because you're going to have a career. And not only are you taking care of the kids, you're also providing for them monetarily. So while you might not be home every single moment with them, you'll be able to excel and be a bigger provider in addition to the compensation I get in order to put the kids through programs they want, what they want to do, pay for college. So yes, it's give and take. Where you want to give, where you want to take. And one size does not fit all. What might be right for a stay-at-home mom might be very different for another woman that can work 18 hours a day and then come home. It really depends on your situation.

Yeah. Yeah. I have, I have two major thoughts where that's concerned. Number one is, um, what we found to be true within our family was that it was quality over quantity. Did it, you know, it didn't necessarily matter how much time we spent with our son. It was the time that we spent with him. Was that true quality time? Were we really focused? Were we really present or are we all just sitting around, you know, on our phones? Right, so we made we maximized the time that we had together and it is you know We absolutely felt that made a huge huge difference. We were phones down You know during family dinners and we always sat at the table and it was always discussions, you know So it's like maximize your time with that so that was you know, one of the one of the big things that we did and then I Um, on secondarily, I always like to tell women, especially when they're sort of, you know, feeling that the pangs of guilt is, um, you know, your kids also need to see you thriving. They need to see you fulfilled. They need to see you, um, you know, um, working through challenging situations. Like you're modeling the right behavior when you're doing those things. right? Because also like, you know, kids, they think that they're the center of the universe, right? And they want, they love being the sunshine for everybody and nobody can live without the sunshine, right? They love that. But it's also not healthy for kids to believe that they are the center of the universe.

In my household, well, yeah, at a certain age, they need to get over it.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. So what we've been doing in our household for many years is Um, we have the children, uh, my kids as contributors. And what I mean by that is it's whether they're going out and throwing out the garbage or helping bringing groceries or even, even my son has gone on this bicycle. Yes. It's that knowledge is a little bit different, right? You know, and it has bicycle to the store to pick up groceries. So, you know, that's, that's how, that's what we try to do. We try to bring everybody in as a contributor in order to help for the common good.

Yeah, we always refer to our family unit as Team K-Hack. And to this day, we still do that. Our son has just started his final senior year at Texas A&M University. And to this day, we are still, thank you, we are still Team K-Hack. It's like you are representing this family, and today your job is to continue to do well in school, and your job later will be something else. You know, he definitely knows what his role is and how he contributes and yeah, I mean again you kind of like Adam we started off with you and I talking about our partnership and how You know because of what I could provide it made you stronger and because of what you could provide it made me stronger It's no different like partnerships need everybody pitching in

I was going to say, I think another part of that is, and this is where the relationships come in a lot, and it's especially important in, uh, in security where there's so much stress, there's so much after hours is, you know, we've got to learn to be, um, a little. accepting and kind with each other, you know, especially, you know, when you, yes, when you're doing an incident, you have these things going on. It's tough and everything, you know, and it's very hard to remember also that people are, you know, also people, you can't drive them too hard. People will need a break. And, you know, also people do have have families, you know, sometimes things can get so rough, you know, even as a, even as a manager, we got our members like, Hey, did you tell your wife, you're not going to be, be going, be going home tonight. You know, you, so, you know, remember. even as we're focused on this, there were other things. And also, you know, I know I've, I've screamed, uh, you know, more than once at me, at someone saying that you, you know, say I need this right away. And then sometimes, you know, someone comes back and says, Oh, I'm going to miss my kid's game. We're going to do something. And it's like, and that's even, you get some guilt with that. It's like, Was it really that important? Was it really that essential? Is the world going to end if this is the next morning? Yeah.

Yeah. That was actually how Adam and I became friends because we had some incidences that essentially had us working over the weekend. you know, I would, I would often send him text messages over the weekend and it would, you know, and it was, it was just an update on like, okay, here's where, you know, we stand with this. And it wasn't like anything's required of you, but just so you know, if you get a call from anybody, you've got the latest information. And sometimes the latest information was, I don't have anything new from our last update, but I am constantly checking in. You will be the first to know.

Yes, you did. And, I've seen on LinkedIn and on little shorts and videos, and they remind you that your job is always not going to remember you, but your kids will. So, you know, your kids are forever, right? You know, your job is not forever. Very rarely does anybody last their whole entire lifetime in a job. And while you're, I'm not saying don't do the right thing by your employer, you always should, but how far are you willing to go? to a point where your kids might suffer. And I even like, I'm a big, I'm a big Jack Ryan fan. I was watching Jack Ryan today with again, on Amazon. And I was like, yeah, Amazon, I think it was. And you know, um, uh, I think it's Wyndon Pierce, or he plays, uh, one of the CIA guys. And he, Wendell, you're Wendell. Yeah. Thank you. And he was going to a football game with his kid, but he got called by the president and he left. And he's like, you know, he goes, yeah, I got to remember to take care of my kid. So we, we have to remember the kids are always going to remember the bad experiences and the good experiences. I even saw another, another customer of mine today. post from Disney World that he goes, sometimes you gotta make sure you keep the memories. So those are the things that kids are gonna remember.

Yeah, absolutely. And back to Joe's point about balance, right? So I can't imagine the president needing my services for anything. However, if that happened, I mean, I would hope that I've also taught my child the importance of a leader like that. You know needing something from you, you know and then going back to Abigail part of you know the the strength of our relationship was you know, I very distinctly remember a time where we had rented out a one of the you know premium suites at a at a pro football game and My husband had to he had to have an emergency business trip and So there I was and the game was on Sunday and we had nobody available. I to help us take care of our kid. And so I remember calling Abigail saying, hey, I'm really sorry. I can't go because Brian had an emergency trip he had to fly out for. And so now there's nobody available to help take care of our son. And she was like, bring him. And I'm like, oh, we're going to be with our customers. I don't want to make this messy and whatever. And she's like, you know, she knew Daniel. And she knew that he's a very well-behaved, respectful child and whatnot. She's like, he'll be fine. It'll be fine. You're not missing out on this. Come. And it was wonderful. And he did great there. And it all worked out. So again, when you find those good leaders, man, you hold on tight.

Probably the star of the show, the kid, your kid. Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't walk away if it wasn't important, and he knows that. If it wasn't absolutely necessary, I would decline it. And he knows how I view that, and he would recognize that it's not that he's not important or what he was doing isn't important. You know, but he saw the trade-offs. He saw, you know, many times that, you know, there are certain things that you really, you really, you know, have to adhere to where your work responsibilities are, even when it's, you know, not, you know, 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. And then there are other things that, you know, you can't pull back on, you know. When we would go, we would always do a week-long trip. We'd go to Colorado. We would do this family camp thing. And there wasn't cell service, and there wasn't Wi-Fi. So we were really present for a whole week in the summer in the beautiful mountains. And so not that one week in the mountains is going to make up for everything, but there are moments to do the quality things.

Well, if your family can survive a week in the mountains with no cell coverage outside of not having any work calls, that's pretty impressive on its own.

I'm not saying it was easy. There were a few times that, you know, I'd have to drive down into the little, there was one little town that you could drive into and there would be like a couple of coffee shops that would have Wi-Fi, you know, so I'd go in every now and again and check in, um, just to make sure that nothing had blown up. But yeah, that's where, that's where you need like, again, the incredible, um, leadership support and hopefully you have a good team and a good relationship with your, with your peers so that, you know, everybody just picks up, you know, the, the, the extra work, um, during those times.

And a subscription to Starlink.

The what?

A subscription to Starlink. Starlink is that internet in the middle of anywhere. That satellite? Yeah.

Yeah. That's great. Now you tell me. I could have used that information. No, actually, I didn't need it years ago because I needed to be present. But yes.

Yeah, sometimes it's a little too tempting when you're like, yeah, I can get coverage.

Yeah, no, no, it's good. It's good to check out every now and again. It's good to go off the grid. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So, so where do you see when it comes to security writing in general, um, women's participation going, do you see it going up? Because you know, it's, it's interesting and it's a little deceptive. Like you say, there are, there are some, but not many in leadership positions, but there are some who are very notable and very visible. Yeah. leadership positions, but that doesn't mean we're in a strong position.

Yeah. I would say that there's definitely a crop coming. Now, whether that takes two years, five years, 10 years, I don't know, but I definitely see that so many more parents are starting to steer their daughters in a STEM direction. And I think that's great. I think it's right around fifth grade or most of the stats show that girls sort of stop chasing after sort of the more challenging subjects. They kind of, they pick a lane and it tends to not be math and science and technology stuff. So there's just been a huge, huge pull to steer women, steer young girls in that direction. And that's actually one of the things that we hope to accomplish. with fierce we actually have a we talked to you and I talked a little bit about marketing earlier and In my mind, I think we will call we'll call that focus Thundercats and that will those Those young girls will be there will be the girls that we're going to really really help steer in that in that stem field so that That they're not they're not afraid of it. It becomes something, you know, just like if you're playing soccer, you know You're you're going to be aggressive. You're going to go after the ball. You're gonna shoot the ball. You're gonna You know, all the things. You're going to communicate, be a team player, and we're just going to keep pushing it like it's this most natural thing. And that's one of the things we hope to grow into with Fierce. And then, you know, simultaneously, the other branding thing that we've been pushing, and I think we'll have it ready for our Fierce 100 workshop, is we also want to have a group of women that we call sirens. And our sirens are going to be some more seasoned women. And again, in any field, we know a lot of seasoned women in the healthcare industry and technology in general. And they're going to help us out with the things that they've learned over the years as well. So we're going to kind of bookend it with you've got women where they are today, and we've got the women that are to come, and we've got the women who've already walked through some of the fire for us.

Well, I like that sirens branding because you definitely won't get a copyright strike for that. I don't know about the other ones, but let me ask you something. So I'll ask you for some advice here. I have a daughter. She is 14 and a week or two, she starts high school. And she goes to a good school and she's at the point where we were actually talking today. I said, well, you're not quite ready to start thinking about college yet, but you got to start thinking about what you were interested in, what schools in the next year or two, I'm not going to start giving it some thought. And, you know, she's not tremendously interested in, uh, you know, science and math, but, uh, but when it comes to that, she's actually pretty good at it. She's as good at it as anything else. And, you know, on the one hand, I don't want to forcibly steer her into something that she's maybe not so interested in. But on the other hand, I have where it's like, but is it that she's not interested in it because of these, you know, unconscious gender roles or she, you know, we don't do anything to promote it, but just in everything that she say, this is not stuff that girls do. This is not what her friends are doing and everything. I'm trying to figure out how to, how to navigate that without, you know, turning her into a mess or anything, you know,

Yeah. No, that's a great question. You know, so I don't have a daughter. I only have the one son and, um, you know, I noticed early on, um, that he had an aptitude, um, you know, for, for something that, you know, sort of might look like engineering. And so I, and again, he was much younger when I started this process and I started to put challenges in front of him, um, that sort of fed that. So for instance, I gave him a just a little spiral notebook and and a set of coloring pens or I'm sorry coloring pencils and I was in he'd love to water parks and I would say okay You're an engineer and you get to create the new the newest ride at the water park What does that look like? And so he would he would spend time just you know Drafting out what he thought would be a cool ride and all the details about it, right? He kind of and you sort of just walk them through it. He shows you the work and you go, oh, this is really interesting, but what about, you know, do you have to worry about these sort of things? How do you get around these challenges with it? You know, and you just kind of make them keep going back to the drawing table and perfecting and perfecting and perfecting.

By the way, you're smarter than me. You bought him a set of pencils. My kid bought the waterpark video game. I think it cost me 50 bucks.

You know, this was a while back. This was kind of before technology is the way it is. You know, it's so easy today. Like, you know, now he has all of the, you know, he would, he would do it on it with his Apple pencil.

You're complaining. I took my kid to the water park. It cost me a couple hundred dollars.

Okay, I definitely got off a lot cheaper than you guys, but and so then we would find like coding camps and then we would find like The the Lego robotics and we just kind of kept Introducing him, you know immersing him in certain things that sort of fed into that So then it was a very natural thing. And so, you know today he's he's a his degree will be an industrial engineering with a business minor and And so it worked out for us that, you know, I could see early on that he had the aptitude. So we just kind of kept feeding into it. We would introduce him, we introduced him to architects because there was a, it was about a two-year period where he thought maybe he would do architecture versus engineering. And then he decided, he's like, you know, there's not enough math in that. I want to do something that's a little more intensive with math. So we were like, all right, scratch that. You still have time. That was still while he was in high school. So we were like, you still have plenty of time. We can go this other direction. So then we started introducing him to our friends who were engineers. And in lots of different, you know, engineering is so broad. There's so many different types. So we started introducing him to different types of engineering. um people and and and um school of thought so um so he got exposed to a lot um before he went off to college and then you know so he just sort of when you when you get to A&M you you just I think you declare engineering and then it's I want like two years into it is when you go more specific into it which which specific study of engineering you want And that's when he selected industrial. So you can do things like that. So again, you can notice, I know about five, somewhere between five and 10 years ago, a lot of companies started creating sort of STEM themed toys for girls, right? So yes, they were made in pink and things of that nature, which I'm gonna let it go because I appreciate the fact that it was being done.

But let me ask you this. Here's a trivia question. Who's the largest employer of women? I'm hoping it's still in STEM.

In STEM? Largest employer of women in STEM, gosh.

And supposedly it was at least 33%. I don't know. I don't know. NASA.

Oh, I love it. NASA, really. I love it, love it.

Google it, yeah.

Yeah, I love it, yeah. Yeah. And, and again, you know, I, I was in, I think, uh, 10th grade. Was that, it was at 85 was when, um, like they took a teacher up, a female teacher up. Unfortunately it was the challenger and it didn't work out great, but you know, it's still, you know, representation matters. There were a lot of girls who saw that and were like, I could do that too, you know? And, Representation matters. You have to see it to believe that it could be an option for you as well. You know, that's why it's just so, that's why we love the name Fierce. It's like, it changes everything when you have female representation.

I see a lot of women wearing, I'm not sure if it's a fashionable thing or they really like it, NASA t-shirts.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, Joe touched on it, branding, marketing. It's incredible. It's incredible what branding and marketing can do. And, um, you know, and social media, um, can be, can be used for so much more good than just, you know, wasting your time. Um, so that's another thing like, you know, can you expose your daughters to, um, to certain books to, um, you know, sort of like Abigail's dad did, you know, when, when there is, um, a woman leader who has a great Ted talk or something, Sit down and watch that TED talk with your daughter and then have that conversation afterwards about, you know, what did you think about this? Did you like what she had to say? How would you have done this differently? You know, what topics are top of mind for you? And, you know, and again, this dovetails into my, you know, it's not quantity, it's quality. And that's how you really get to know who your kids are so that you can steer them.

Okay, so quality. So my daughter has a t-shirt personally signed by an astronaut. I love it. So am I covered? Am I guilty at this point? But you know what else? I have to do a little more?

You can plant a seed. NASA does an incredible internship program for kids and- Not like for high school kids or? No, I think it's college kids. But maybe, they might do camps that are, I bet you they do camps. I have a friend, you know what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna send a guy your way and have him be one of your guests. And he can tell you all about the different things, because he leads up their internship program.

Oh, nice, pretty cool.

Yeah, love that guy, love him. So I'm gonna send him your way. But do you see how we're having this conversation, so now I'm planting seeds with you and then you're going to do some more things and you're going, like, now use it, again, use social media for the betterment. So post this kind of stuff. Like challenge your male friends to like, hey, I want to see you support young girls, women, whatever it looks like. you know publicly and Because we need we need the male allies like you guys are key to unlocking this So men have to recognize that it needs to be done and then you have to be willing Participants and you really got to be our cheerleaders. You gotta be our champions and you got to help us out. I

Wow, Rebecca, you're like a leader or something. You've actually got me excited about this. This is, and you're going to get us another guest. You're the best.

I promise. I promise. I mean, this is what community is about, right? You have a podcast because you want to build a community. This is what community is about.

All right.

Wow. So my personal opinion.

So maybe we need to start gearing some of our swag for our show towards women.

Yeah, absolutely. And that doesn't mean you make it pink.

I was gonna say, should we order some pink flasks?

No, no, no. No, that's only insulting people. Next show, Cosmopolitan. I drink that.

You know what I didn't think about? I should have created my own little Fierce Teenie drink for today's show. That would have been incredible. I wasn't 100% there with the branding for today, but that's okay.

You have been great, and we would love to have you on again and try out whatever a Fierce Teenie ends up being. Fierce Teenie!

It's probably going to have tequila of some sort because you guys, you got to know that's my drink. I'm a tequila girl.

That I know.

Today's sipping tequila, you know, like the junk you drank in college. No, that's not my game. I like a nice little sipping tequila.

Well, I'll tell you, when they rang up that bottle of Castamigos, I was like, yeah, this ain't the stuff I had in college. I can tell you that much. I can see why George is doing okay.

Weren't you drinking Night Train, $2 a bottle?

I might have had a Night Train once or twice in my college career. I can neither confirm nor deny. But we moved on from that.

What I love about our generation and anything that may or may not have happened, um, is that there's no proof. We don't have this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're good. We're good. We're good. This next generation, not so much.

Oh, no, it's going to be. Okay. That gets into our surveillance episode, but that's a whole other subject.

Exactly. Exactly.

So Adam, I think we're at last call. Adam always gets our final thoughts here.

All right. My final thought is we need to get a sponsor, go down to the workshop over in Texas. We need to learn a thing or two and we should be okay.

Well, that sounds really good except, you know, I don't want to crash the women's conference like, you know, with a big bottle of tequila and say, hey, we're allies, you know, girls, we hang out with you. I don't know if that's going to work.

We're going to gain. And at the last conference that Rebecca had, they had guys.

We did, we did, we did. We typically do. I will say that unless you're an actual sponsor, we're gonna keep this one to women. Of course, any of our sponsors that are males are welcome to join us. I know, I know, but just this one, just this one. All the others, we more than welcome. We absolutely need our male allies. Like I said, the only way this is successful is, and the most important piece, and I love it for both of you, that you have daughters and you can see that I want I want life to be different for my daughter when she hits this phase of her life where she's Evaluating, you know what companies what roles? Even for you Joe like what should she study? How do I how do I navigate that like, you know, we really need you in the game with us here You're super important.

I guess the alternative is if we can't go your your Conference and you have to come to New York and hang out and we'll buy tequila. I

I can easily do that, love to do that.

Yeah, when we're in New York, we'll hang out and get together or whatever else you like.

Love it, love it. Look forward to it.

And notice how I said New York. Thank you. Joe, not going to New Jersey, you coming to New York.

Oh, I'm coming to New York. I can't hang out in New Jersey, please. I need to maintain an unsullied criminal record in my own state, so I'll go to New York.

I'm just gonna tell you this, Rebecca. He lives near a mall where people valet park their six-figure cars.

Yeah, yeah.

Doesn't everyone have that? No.

I mean, I'm not a six-figure car girl. I could care less about cars.

I didn't say he had a six-figure car. I said he lives near a mall where they valet park the six-figure cars.

Yes, I park in the deck like a peasant, not in the valet parking.

I mean, again, we talked about priorities. We talked about like, you know, what does success look like? For some people, it's very different. You know, for me, it's like, if I'm healthy, my family's healthy, we have all the wealth and success that we need in life. But, you know, it's different for absolutely everybody.

That's true. Yeah. Okay. On that note, Rebecca, thanks again for joining us. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you. Cheers, guys. Adam, take it easy. Yes, sir.