Today on cyber work, I speak with John Hansman of the IT managed service provider, Truitt and the co-host of the Business and Bytes podcast.

Now, John's tech experience goes way back, starting with the time he learned the difference in a really surprising way between a local network and the Capital I internet.

On his podcast, he's helping small business owners leverage AI tools to solve their fundamental business challenges.

We also talk about some inspirational guests that have been on business and bytes.

And John has lots of great advice for overcoming overwhelm and getting out of your own head when things get difficult.

It's a great talk today, and it's all here on cyber work.

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Your cyber security journey starts here.

Now let's get the show started.

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Cyber Work Podcast.

I'm your host, Chris Sanko.

My guests are a cross section of cybersecurity industry thought leaders, and our goal is to help you learn about cybersecurity trends and how those trends affect the work of InfoSec professional, as well as leaving you with some tips and advice for breaking in or moving up the ladder in the cybersecurity industry.

Now, my guest today, John Hansman, began his career in electronic security working 20 years in a 24 7 monitoring center.

Eventually becoming IT Project Manager after a corporate acquisition.

For the past seven years, he's helped businesses solve tech challenges, improve profitability, and strengthen cybersecurity.

John enjoys educating business owners and speaking at events to promote cyber awareness outside of work.

He travels with his family in their fifth wheel RV and as founder of truitt.

A family owned cybersecurity company.

He's passionate about protecting businesses of all sizes.

Uh, the other part of, uh, John's career that I'm interested in talking to is he is a fellow podcaster like I am.

Uh, his podcast is called The Business and Bites Podcast.

I've listened to a couple episodes.

It's fantastic.

Hope you all will do the same, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about it.

So, John, uh, thank you for joining me today and welcome to Cyber Work.

Hey, thanks for having me.

I'm glad to be here.

My pleasure.

So, uh, so John, let me, uh, start out, as I usually start out here, I wanna know a little bit about your, your early years as a, uh, as a tech person.

Do you remember if you had like an initial spark or a, a, a family computer or something that really got you excited about all this stuff?

You know, my dad was an IT technician,

Oh, okay.

he got out of the military, he went and worked for the state, worked his way up,

This is a family business then.

yeah, in a sense he worked for the state government and so for a, I can't remember his, a 12-year-old, 13-year-old, I go into his office and helping him build computers.

That's back when slave labor in the United States was legal.

Yeah, for real.

Uh, but I was, my, my previous guest, I talked to another one person today and, and yeah, building a computer back then was a lot different than it is now.

Now you can just sort of like shop the pieces at, you know, go to a microcenter or something like that.

And, uh.

Yeah,

is like putting together a puzzle, but boy, back then it was a, it was fraught.

So yeah.

Tell me about that a little bit.

was.

I remember just as.

Uh, helping, uh, just with little things.

He was just showing us his work and sometimes he had projects that ran out of his normal eight to five that he hadn't finished.

And so he would just bring us along and, and show us what he was doing.

And

Hmm.

always been the person who likes to solve problems.

I've always been the person who is programming, you know, grandma's VCR,

Oh yeah.

We were, I remember, you know, I, I'm a, I'm 45, so I grew up right as, uh, windows was taking off in

Mm-hmm.

school and high school years.

and so, you know, most of that stuff was just nerdy stuff that we did,

Yeah.

bulletin board systems, you know, and those were popular for a minute.

Yep.

Yep.

those things.

Uh, and I can remember, uh, I was telling this story recently about how I remember my first exposure to the internet as a kid.

I didn't fully comprehend it.

And we were on a bulletin board system and my dad had a card that he was trying to sell and I was like, oh dad, I can put it up on the local bulletin board system.

Well, what I didn't realize there was the checkbox or an a thing that was gonna move it to what was the internet at the time.

Mm-hmm.

And so this, this bulletin board system I didn't realize was connected nationally.

So my dad started getting phone calls nationally

Wow.

people wanting to buy his car.

And he was like, what did you do?

And I'm like, 12 years old, dad, I have no clue what

Yeah.

Wow.

turned out there was little switch that was all these bulletin board systems would check in with each other and, and it was the first of the internet before it was what it is today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When I, I was in college when I went from intranet to internet and, and, and you have that similar feeling of like the aperture opens and suddenly you just, like, there's a, a bajillion people sort of staring at you, you know?

Um, although, yeah, but as a, as a kid, not as a 18-year-old like I was, but yeah.

Um, uh, yeah.

Also, I, you know, uh.

We're, I think we're of the similar generation.

I'm 51, but yeah, like computers were not ubiquitous.

So like computers were just kind of a hobby.

It was like a fun thing to do.

It was not like, this is going to be your career or whatever, because everyone's going to use a computer.

So yeah, it's, that's a, that's a interesting, uh, sort of era like that and yeah, I, I love, I love hearing about old BBSs and stuff like that too.

That's always fun.

Uh, so, um.

You know, I, I, I, I mentioned this before the show, but you know, a lot of our listeners, uh, are looking for the, their job roles, their potential, uh, career roadmaps and so forth, and they like to kind of window shop with our, our podcast.

So I wanna ask about your work in managed IT services.

Uh, can you talk about some of the roles and key moments that got you to where you are today as the CEO of Truett?

What was the draw with managed it specifically?

Uh, to be honest, it was being stuck at a dead end job.

Okay.

What was the dead end job?

I was, I was working for, at the time, was a small business when I first started my, my company, it wasn't called true at the time.

It was called something

Mm-hmm.

I was already helping people, random people on Facebook with, uh, tech issues, and I was helping small business owners.

I knew with problems and those types of things.

I was just doing it under the table.

Mm-hmm.

a really good friend of mine, maybe I'll send him this podcast because I don't, I don't know if how often or if he's heard this story very much, but a good friend of mine who's a pastor at our church

Mm-hmm.

in this transition stage of his life where he was gonna get out of ministry and he didn't know what he was gonna do.

So he went and saw a career counselor and no joke, I believe he works for one of the major rock, he works for one of the major rocket firms.

I'm not gonna tell you which one.

Uh, but, he went from pastor.

To rocket engineer.

Wow.

Like what Acra crazy change.

And so he

Yeah.

his way, decided what he wanted to do, what his end goal was, and I remember him saying some of the same things.

I said, I don't know what I could do.

I've only done one thing my whole life.

And I had been in the home security, electronic security industry for the same amount of time he'd been in ministry.

And I was saying the same things.

And so I went and saw the same career counselor and that helped open my eyes to the possibility that I wasn't as stuck as I thought I was.

So I immediately went and got my business license.

I immediately turned my, you know, under the table job into a legit business.

I was

Okay.

already doing chamber things for the alarm company I was working for, so I just stopped promoting them and started promoting myself.

Fantastic.

I literally, I was making 50 bucks a referral if it panned out,

Mm-hmm.

I was like, well, I could go and meet people and just, I could make, you know, a hundred bucks an hour, you know, doing this.

Mm-hmm.

Or I think even was even like 65 at the time when I first started.

I was just not sure what I was doing and I just, you know, honestly, one thing led to another.

I sat down with people that I knew who were in the industry that I met through.

Through networking.

I sat down with a, a coach who helped me navigate stuff.

I had a really good friend who's, uh, who's funny'cause he's a good friend and he's a competitor in one of my spaces.

he at one point says, bro, you gotta stop doing this, this break fix stuff.

Like, you need to think about managed services because.

not gonna pan out.

Like it's, it's a lot of work for a little return.

So I started looking into it and I started, uh, figuring it out.

And one day, uh, I had met my, what was my very first managed, uh, client

Mm-hmm.

and uh, just a week or so before that, my business coach was looking at my books and was like, Hey, you realize you're making just as much.

on your own business as you are full-time at your job,

Mm-hmm.

what would happen if you expanded your 10 pegs and, went to full-time business?

So being the good coach that he was, he forced me to pick a date and he said, a date.

I'm gonna hold you to it.

And so I picked a date and I just happened to close a.

My first managed it deal right as I had picked my date, and I said, uh, September, uh, was when I want to, uh, quit that job.

And so they happened to be right on the same timeline.

And so I, I went right in with a client and plus I did residential stuff.

So

Hmm.

what's crazy, uh, is, and I, I always tell people the dates and they're like, oh, because I quit my job September of 2019.

Mm.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

six months later our world changed

Yes, it did.

and, and I was forced to kind of make some decisions.

I was out literally doing, I was beating feet, you know, doing the entrepreneurial, you know, go to each every business I could go to, and all of a sudden I couldn't do that anymore.

Mm-hmm.

So I had to figure something out.

People started calling me for, for repair and like,'cause all the major Best Buy.

All the major repair places were

Yeah.

Yeah.

They weren't gonna do it.

they were like, can you do it?

I was like, yeah, I'll take money.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Now more than ever.

And so I just, I did that for about three years, moved into a commercial space because people kept showing up at my house at weird hours with computers.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, and then, then I just grew my team from there.

And at some point I just was focused on managed services.

The whole time was my desire, and I just started, started to build it up.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's, yeah.

What boy, what a what?

A what?

A what a harrowing moment there though.

That was, there's a lot of, uh, a lot, a lot of people doing a lot of fancy footwork around that time in terms of, uh, yeah.

Hard pivots and whatnot.

Yeah, a lot of people did, and I, I was small.

I was really small at the time.

I only had a couple client managed clients

Okay.

time, and, so my phone just stopped ringing.

For

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

like most peoples, except unless it was an emergency,

Yeah.

so I was literally the world shut down and I'm trying to figure out how to get more business

Yeah.

like

Yeah.

crazy times.

Wild.

Um, well, okay, so I, I want to, I, I, I, I might come back to that, but, uh, I wanna hear more about what you do now.

Tell our listeners about your role as CEO of Truit does.

I mean,'cause that's, I imagine there's a lot less, uh, you know.

You know, you bring the thing in and I do it with my own hands or whatever.

You got a team now, so, uh, how does, how does that work?

Well, he, one, one thing when you're small, you know, we're a small business.

We have about five of us total.

Mm-hmm.

wife, uh, now is a stay-at-home mom.

We had a, we had a baby a year, what is it?

A year, just almost a year and a half

Mm-hmm.

So she's, uh, kind of moved into a real, real part-time role in the business.

So we just have a couple technicians,

Okay.

for me and myself, and.

My wife, uh, and so most of my day is marketing things like podcasts and public speaking

Mm-hmm.

and then.

Focusing on the day-to-day vision and service delivery with our team, making sure that we're meeting, you know, what we say we're gonna do, and just trying to be a, a better company than we were yesterday.

That's really what our focus is as we learn and grow.

You know, I, I didn't have the benefit of being like a lot of people in our industry who were, I was a nerd, I'm the different extrovert type, so.

I, I was not the person who got into to it because I was like, this is what I wanted to do with my whole life.

I wanted to be an IT guy.

And then I started a

Yeah.

you know, like a lot of people, I was the guy who was like, I'm good at that.

I could solve problems for people.

Mm-hmm.

could turn that into a business.

Yeah.

So for me, I love the sales and marketing and public speaking and education side.

So for example, um.

You know, it's, uh, what is it today?

Today's the 28th.

Mm-hmm.

we have a big a lunch and learn here in Spokane, where I'm at Spokane, Washington

Okay.

we have 25 people coming to learn about AI and how they can grow their business with it.

Nice.

just finding opportunities to help people

Yeah.

with their business and use technology to solve problems.

That's really what we do and my, my job as a CEO in my role today.

Mm-hmm.

Is marketing, sales, and, uh, high level service.

You know, uh,

Yeah.

project management.

It's a little bit of when you're a CEO of a small company, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

the luxury of

Signing checks and swabbing toilets and the whole thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

needed to fill in the holes.

Yeah, yeah,

when the

yeah.

my guys are on the phone.

I answer'em and help out.

So.

One of the, uh, the sort of, uh, conflicting pipelines we hear on the show a lot is, is people who really are sort of lifelong problem solvers, tech geeks, uh, like to break things and put'em back together.

Uh, and the, and the, the issue.

They have when suddenly they're promoted into management.

'cause they don't get to get their hands dirty anymore.

Now this sounds like a, a, a sort of a different position, but, and also you said that you're, that wasn't necessarily your whole entire life, uh, you know, doing the sort of like hand to hand managed it.

But do, was there any kind of a disconnect when you sort of lifted yourself out of the, you know, client, client base to base into what almost is more of like a, almost like an outreach sort of role it seems like now.

I think the disconnect was really, it was when I had hired my first employee with the residential consumer side.

But when before we switched to Truett,

Mm-hmm.

because my face was the logo,

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

people came, uh, and uh, there was a bearded white guy as the logo and I had a.

bearded black guy who was an awesome employee

Mm-hmm.

in and I had to pivot from, yes, my logo's on this, but my employee who's really talented was perfectly capable of doing what I, what I would do.

Mm-hmm.

and so it, there's just a mind shift that had to happen,

Yeah.

but I don't think, for me, it personally, it wasn't.

I've been reading business books.

Hmm.

like while I was developing my business early, I don't, I didn't feel like there was that much of a, a disconnect with, uh, having people jump into to my business.

Yeah.

I think it's been later on.

Where, uh, things are bigger there's more responsibility.

Like, I, I'm taking a week next week to go a week and a half to go to a camp for, for kids

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

and I'm leaving things with my team for a week.

And that's nerve wracking because it's just,

Yeah.

that's a pivotal mind shift change of like, I've trained them, I've equipped them, I've put safeguards in place.

They're capable of doing all, all that I would do and doing it well.

Mm-hmm.

And so it's good to put yourself in a place where you also figure out are the things that we need to fix.

Like there might, there will probably, something will come up that only I can do I'll have to figure out how to solve that for the next time.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it also seems like you started this company, uh, for different reasons.

Like I, I think, you know, if someone who really likes to play with the guts of a computer starts a company so they can do more of that, then yeah, they're gonna be bummed when they don't get to do that anymore.

But you're, it sounds like you're, you, uh.

Reason for doing this early on was an educational sort of element or a collaboration and bringing people together, and therefore, uh, if you're doing that on a higher level, uh, there's not, not really a disconnect between you doing that and,

me.

yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

different than a lot of people.

I'm,

Yeah.

of, uh, one of the big, uh, uh, cohort groups of MSPs that's, that's out there.

Uh, uh, Chris Weiser's

Mm-hmm.

And there's a lot of guys who come into the program and they're like, I don't wanna speak, I don't wanna do sales, I don't

Yeah.

of people.

Yep.

the opposite.

I'm

Yeah.

love getting in front of people.

At my old job, I used to do trainings and I, and I would put, I put on trainings with 50 technicians coming in to learn a product, and I taught the class.

Mm-hmm.

I just, I love that stuff.

Yeah.

it's, it's something like, I will wake up Friday morning before our, our lunch and learn stoked to get outta bed and go sit in front of 25 people and teach them about ai.

Like I love that stuff.

Marvelous.

that way.

Oh, love it.

Well, okay.

Well, uh, since we're talking about, um, public facing positions, obviously, uh, you're a fellow podcaster with me and, and you're the cos co-host or host of the Business and Bites podcast.

I've only listened to the early ones, and I, I are, are you and Emilio both co-host still or is it a total thing?

funny is we pivoted, we

Uh.

our, our, uh, podcast format

Okay.

of the last 90 days.

Oh, okay.

What's different now,

did a lot of guest appearances.

We'll still be doing some of those.

The idea was to bring in people from business,

right?

had them tell a story, and it was great, but it was really hard to find guests, to be honest.

It was, know, this, you're

You're,

doing

preaching to the converter, my man.

You're just trying to find people to show up, and if you are trying to get them to tell a story, an inspirational story about business, it's probably 10 times harder in some ways.

Mm-hmm.

So with the launch of, of really looking at AI and where it's going and looking at our business of cybersecurity, we've pivoted business and bytes, uh, more towards, still towards the small business owner.

But we're pivoting it towards a educational piece to help people navigate AI and cybersecurity and all that from a small business, medium sized business perspective.

And so now we actually have three of us that are doing the podcast together.

So,

Yeah.

so it's three IT guys shooting the breeze, talking about, uh, AI and what it means for our world right now, talking about cybersecurity and how all those things work together.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, we'll probably have some guests on me.

You know, we're just, we're figuring it out

Great.

uh, you know, I've done Emilio a while, uh, and so we're just, we're figuring it out.

That's just what happens when you have three people who are, uh, starting to work on something together.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm one of those sort of fussy listeners who has, feels like they have to listen from the very beginning.

'cause there's, you know, an unspoken narrative, you know, in those 27 episodes or whatever.

So that's why I'm not as aware of the most recent ones.

But, uh, um, yeah.

So is it always gonna be AI focused like that?

Or is it, or is the focus just on small business?

own small business.

Our

Yeah.

is to meet people where they're at and

Yeah.

the mission of business invites.

Um, there are lots of really good nerdy cybersecurity podcasts out there.

Mm-hmm.

really great ones out there.

That, that are catering to those of us in the industry.

I listen to them because they're really informative.

Mm-hmm.

got friends who run the Cyber Squawk podcast, if you've never heard of them.

Mm-hmm.

guys.

they have a really great podcast.

but for me, I never wanted to have a, a nerdy podcast.

Yeah.

to have something that was really focused on how do we bridge the gap between Tech talk and the the owner who's literally just trying to find profit, who's trying to solve problems, who's trying to, maybe just trying to keep things afloat

Yeah.

to turn his business into something that he works on 70 hours a week to something where he can go golfing if he wants to.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

AI and having a really good IT infrastructure and all of those pieces come in handy because you can then turn your business into something that makes you money by putting the right things in place.

So our goal is to bridge that education gap for small businesses.

That's what business invites is about.

Nice.

Now, um, can you, uh, tell our listeners about maybe some of these, these recent episodes or, or like the, what, what the topics are around these, these, these post pivot episodes and maybe what other, what other sort of trends or tech you are thinking about for future episodes?

Yeah, so we only have a couple episodes out now of the new format,

Mm-hmm.

we really are just doing an introduction to AI right now.

Okay.

it?

Yeah.

How can it address your, you know, work in your business?

And then we're also talking about what's it doing in cybersecurity, because there's a, there's a, a good role in cybersecurity, like most vendors are using AI in some sort, especially if they're in security.

They're using AI to scan, look at traffic.

They're doing a bunch of things, but cybersecurity criminals are doing the same thing.

You notice how in the last, like what, five years, four years, spelling all of a sudden is better in scam emails.

Oh yeah.

It's because of ai.

It's

Mm-hmm.

got better or scammers got better at spelling.

Right, right.

that's not what happened.

Uh, they didn't get better at English.

They're using AI as a tool to write

Mm-hmm.

and

Mm-hmm.

are a little bit easier and better formatted set up differently.

And that's, that's, we're trying to educate people on what, why is it important to know?

And, and like the, I really, I'm, this is my opinion, I firmly believe if you're not using AI move the needle in your business, you're probably missing out.

We don't know where it's gonna be in 10 years.

Right.

think it's going anywhere.

Oh, it's definitely not.

Uh, okay.

Well, let's, uh, let's speak to the, uh, the, the, the small business owners who might be listening here.

What are some AI tools that you see people are kind of leaving on the table that they should be, um, integrating into their, into their workflow?

So, uh, one is a, just in fact just adopting your favorite language model, so Chad, CPT, uh, it could be a Microsoft's tool, it can be any of those.

Mm-hmm.

All those tools have the ability to speed up your, your work.

Mm-hmm.

think about not writing, just writing marketing emails, which is what a lot of people do, but think about, I had an email from a client that literally was so many words and letters and it looked like a square book, and I'm like, man, that's a lot of reading.

So I put it into ai.

I said, and help me answer all these questions.

Find out questions they had, and I'll answer'em, and then we'll craft an email together.

Mm-hmm.

probably saved me 45 minutes.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

like that you can have challenge your thinking.

Mm-hmm.

Most people don't think about AI as something that can help you with your critical thinking about your business.

Hey, ai, I've been doing this for the last three years in marketing.

It's not really working.

How do I.

Move the needle.

What do I change?

What's, why is this not working?

Mm-hmm.

thinking, things like that.

There's also tools in marketing, like I know go high level, which we use.

Uh, they've got a new, uh, sdr, so they've got a new voice, uh, caller that can literally, if somebody fills out a form.

Call them on the phone and have a conversation with them

Wow.

to that form that they filled out and get appointments scheduled and and do crazy things.

Mm-hmm.

There's a lot of tools out there.

I think the big thing we have to watch out for is security

Yeah.

and just making sure we where that data's going, and if you feed data in it, you have to assume that it could come out into the world.

Yeah.

It's going public, there's no question.

Yeah.

if they get hacked,

Mm-hmm.

have a good privacy policy, if they get hacked, it's out

Mm-hmm.

like, just like your banking, just like anything else.

So you, you have to look at AI through that lens.

Whatever you feed, it could become public.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Either on purpose or by accident

Yeah.

and, and make really good decisions on how you.

Do that and medical's doing it right now.

Like you think about

Oh yeah.

my doctor for one of my appointments came in with his phone and was just pushing the button.

Okay, we're gonna record our call and I can have notes.

And you know, they're, they're doing it already,

Yeah.

there's no avoiding, there's no avoiding these tools, but there's a lot of'em out there that are

Yeah.

well, you just have to, and one of the things we do.

part of consulting that we've added to our business, as we sit with businesses and answered those questions, ask them, what's the thing that takes you the most time that you wish you could get rid of?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Yeah, uh, I saw a presentation by, uh, David Foot at, I was at ISACA this weekend or this past weekend, and he also has a AI based podcast, and he, uh, I'm sort of cribbing his idea, but yeah, he said that he ends every episode with, uh, asking the guest, you know, what's in your toolbox.

Uh, and he's, you know, he said, if you, if you.

Learn about, you know, one new AI tool a week by the end of the month, you know, or

Mm-hmm.

the year, you're gonna be really, really comfortable with what you need and don't need.

So I guess, uh, so, you know, at the risk of using someone else's idea, John Hansman, what's in your toolbox?

What are, what are some AI tools that you're putting to use with, uh, with Truett?

So I'm definitely a heavy JB GBT user

Okay.

I, I do a lot of creating my own GBTs that do specific things.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

tools out there that you can buy.

I don't remember what one of them was, but there's one that was like, it's like a whole bunch of little look like they look like, uh, astronauts.

Mm-hmm.

name of the product, but they have a GBT for everything.

Okay.

And they're really just basically creating GBTs and then you, they just interact a certain way.

all about creating my own.

So we have one that literally works with our guys.

If they have a problem on a ticket, they throw it in the GBT.

GBT helps'em solve the problem and then helps them put the ticket into, uh, information for the ticketing system.

It automatically allows'em to cut and paste.

So we've, we're creating things like that.

I have a round table, uh, board of directors.

Which is crazy.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

a bunch of, uh, famous people who have lots of books

Mm-hmm.

just fed all their information, uh, into ai, and, and then I ask questions based on the content of their books.

Wow.

have a really big Mike Mitz fan for business books, and he's one of my board of di ai board of directors because I love his stuff and I

Wow.

what he's doing.

So I literally have big name people.

And their content is driving AI to, to ask me questions, answer questions, uh, things like that.

I'm doing all of that through chat, GBT, those are my main ones.

And then I got, you know, uh, you've probably seen, uh, the plot, you know, it's the AI

Mm-hmm.

That's probably one of my new favorite things.

Mm-hmm.

it can records meetings, summarizes them, does a bunch of stuff.

I'm using a lot of different things.

Uh, but GBT just standalone.

The team's account for my business has been like just transformative for our

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

just because it's adoption and we, we have this, this thing that we, we give out to people,

Okay.

of it, it says, can a, can AI help me do this?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

challenge people to stick these on their desk

Yeah.

have it looking at them so they can just ask the question before they do something.

Can AI help me do this?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And, and begin to just look at things through a new lens of maybe I can save time.

Yeah.

And I, yeah, that's, that's what I'm doing.

Nice.

Uh, yeah.

Great, great answer.

I, yeah, that was, that was exactly what I was hoping for.

So, uh, John, I wanna talk to you a little bit about the, uh, some of the pre pivot episodes of the podcast here.

The podcast takes in a wide range of security topics, uh, but especially has a lot of really interesting.

And diverse guests.

So one example is Dominique Reman.

Uh, she told her story of, uh, having jobs as diverse as boxing manager and model before becoming a communication manager for a nonprofit.

Uh, and a lot of our listeners are also people who are transitioning into security later in life.

So, uh, based on some stories you've heard of people who have come to security later in life like this, are there commonalities in terms of the things they had to like push through or, or adversity, uh, that she, they need to overcome to be successful in this?

Yeah, I think, I think the biggest thing is mindset.

Okay.

talk about being an owner, from my perspective, that's a, there's a lot of mindset shift that has to happen.

Mm-hmm.

Things come and go, you know, and, and as an entrepreneur, you gain clients, you lose clients.

There's ups and downs, Mm-hmm.

if you're getting into the industry.

I, I had that mindset for a long time where I was like, oh, this is all I know.

This is all I've done.

And if you're coming into a new industry later study.

Make sure you know your stuff.

sure that you are putting customers and the, the people you're serving first.

'cause that's what we're looking for as owners

Oh yeah.

and, and you just go after it and, and prove that you are the best for that job.

If, if it's a job you want, you're

Yeah.

into security like I did in my thirties where I came into it.

As a business owner, you want to get to, uh, you want to get out of tech as fast as you can.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

might be contrary to this, this podcast but the best owners who make the most money and move the needle, the faster in MSP land, they get out of tech

Hmm.

they focus on sales and marketing, or I.

Yeah.

They move into management of their technicians and they hire people who are good at sales and marketing, the best owners aren't out in trucks on site doing tech support.

leaving and growing their company and they're thinking like a CEO, who not a technician.

Yeah,

So we all have to do it at the very beginning.

It's mindset.

And that was the thing about Dominique.

She's, you know, in a nonprofit, she's probably a hundred pounds, you know, like, she's like the, the person that you

I.

at and you're like, you weren't a boxing manager.

That's not

Right.

Right.

but she would go in and own the room.

Mm-hmm.

She went in and she owned the modeling world where people get messed over all the time.

She actually read her contracts and she was really smart and savvy.

Mm-hmm.

That are the, those are the kind of people that were just, they were phenomenal to interview because you're, you just don't picture it.

I had no clue.

I had met her on multiple occasions for networking things.

Had no clue that was in her history.

That was just,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

an awesome surprise.

That happened in in the conversation.

It

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

literally the day we recorded, I was, she told me, I said, what do you wanna talk about?

She's like, you know what?

I was like, what'd you do before this?

And she told me, I was like, okay, we're talking about that.

Like there's no,

Yeah.

We're

Yeah.

No kidding.

Yeah.

but really in anything you do, whether it's tech or it's anything else, it's all about mindset.

And, and we have a lot of people in our world who think I can't.

And it's just because they're stuck.

Yes.

And even me being at a place where I'm in a better spot in my life than I ever have been before, there were times this week where I felt stuck

Oh yeah.

people who care about me like, you need to get outta your head and you need to push ahead and keep going.

It is part of the human condition.

But we have to just continually coach ourselves, continually put stuff in front of us, people in front of us who are gonna speak the right things to us, tell us the truth, help us with our journey.

Those are the most important things, whether you're an owner or whether you want, you're looking to join a company and be an employee, find the right leadership.

If you want to be an

Hmm.

for a tech company, suggest you interview them as much as they're interviewing you.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

I wish more people would say that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I.

they, you should be walking into that business as a contractor, not a, not a slave or, or

Uh, uh, yeah.

Fact finder, basically you're like, yeah.

What's, yeah.

Like Yeah.

If you're, if you're in security, you're already looking for weaknesses in the system, like you should be doing that.

Yeah.

I mean, you, you can, you can figure out pretty easily if you talk to people a couple steps down, uh, from the hiring manager, like, what is the culture like here?

'cause the hiring manager's not gonna really tell you that, so.

You, you wanna wake up in the morning regardless of whether you own a business or whether you're an employee and be excited about what you do.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

about everything I do every day?

No,

Yeah.

Right, right.

excited about milestones.

Like

Excited about the big picture.

I'm

Yeah.

about doing podcasts.

I'm excited about a lot of things that I do and I get to do.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and, and it's really just, just the mindset.

Like I, I, that's the biggest thing.

If

Yeah.

somebody coming into the industry, I wouldn't let your age be a factor.

I would just say, Hey, I've got a ton of experience, life experience, and I can treat your customers well and I can make people taken care of, and I've got all this other experience that I can bring to the table.

And that's, we're not even looking at college that much.

When we look at people, we're looking at certificates and knowledge more than, we're looking at a lot of

Yeah.

Oh, no question.

It's definitely where it's going.

Um, yeah, so, um, yeah, I, I, I, I definitely struggle with, uh, getting easily overwhelmed.

And, and, and I know a lot of our listeners do as well.

You, you said you had people around that were kind of helping you get outta your own head.

Do you have any particular self strategies for those moments when you, you get in your own head and, and, and just feel like you've, uh, sort of painted yourself into a corner?

What, how do you, how do you get outta that?

I'm just joking.

Uh, no.

Uh, here's what I'll say.

You know, I'm 45.

Been in business, uh, I'm going on probably, actually eight years now of doing the business.

there's no quick fix to anxiety if you face it.

I think a lot of us who own

Truth.

I.

We, we struggle with it, man.

Mm-hmm.

go right.

Customer says they're leaving, you know, uh, you look at money and you're like, whoa, things aren't where I want them to be.

There's all these different things.

it's funny, as you elevate, sometimes those things feel bigger than they really are.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

uh, here's what I would say is the biggest, and I'm gonna talk to business owners'cause that's just what I am.

Yeah.

your numbers.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

If you know your numbers.

You can be in a place where you're making executive business decisions and you're not making emotional decisions.

Hmm.

You know, Hey, if that customer leaves, I'm okay.

'cause you know in it, not every customer's great, right?

Like some people just

Sure.

fix things and they don't want to pay for it.

And then you end up.

problems because they don't wanna fix things

Mm-hmm.

dealing with that with a client now.

Okay.

Yeah.

wanna fix your old stuff.

And, and then, then they blame us when things don't go well.

And they've got 10-year-old machines, 15-year-old machines in their, in their book of business.

Mm-hmm.

Um.

It's really about knowing like where you're at, like you want to be working on your business

Yes.

where you're at and then, and really just, uh, have confidence, like if you do the right things, there is a formula to business.

Like there is a formula to growth and it literally is doing the same things over and over and over again.

And you start, you start getting business.

I mean, like we're, like I said, I got 25 people, probably three quarters of them I've never met.

Coming to an event on Friday,

Mm-hmm.

I've got 25 people who've never heard our message about cybersecurity.

I.

Yep.

Who get to be in front of us, and it wasn't because I just put something up on Facebook.

I've worked at this all year long for the last six months, started out with five people, and we've just, we've grown it and we've done those same things, the right things over and over and over and over again.

To get the results that we're looking for.

So yeah, it's, it's mindset and it's all about getting people like I love if you're in the MSP community, I love the seven figure MSP community.

That's where I'm a part of.

there's a lot of people around there getting a mastermind group either of.

Business owners that are in your industry, or you can go into one final local, one of people who are in other industries who are just steps ahead of you

Yep.

and, and, and then really just make sure you've got people around you that are willing to just tell you, you know, you're not doing the right thing, opening

Oh yeah.

to people.

Criticism too.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah.

how I'm working on it.

That doesn't mean I don't struggle.

Like I said, even this week, like there's been a couple times where I'm, my mindset wasn't great and I had to go take a walk and, and be like, Hey, we're good.

Mm-hmm.

doing awesome stuff.

Our company's growing, we're doing awesome things, even when hard things happen.

that's just part of life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, the awesome, awesome place to, uh, sort of, uh, start to wrap this up.

So, I guess, uh, before we go, uh, for people who are interested in business and Bites, uh, what's your favorite episode of the podcast?

Is there a particular one that people should listen to, to kind of get the temperature of, of the thing and, and get the feel for it?

again, we pivoted, so,

Sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

if you like the old style and hey, follow us and tell us you want the old style back and we'll, we can mix it in.

Okay.

I'm open to, to, uh, stuff.

Yeah.

named Kevin Hayward, who's a really good friend of mine, owns an insurance agency.

If you listen to his episode, that was a fantastic episode on culture and building a business that doesn't need you.

Mm-hmm.

Like he's my insurance agent and literally I don't ever call, I don't ever talk to him like I talk

Yeah.

Yeah.

because he's built a business around.

Good customer service and good employees and taking care of people.

Yeah.

then we talked about Dominique.

I, that interview was probably my favorite because it was the most unexpected

Yeah, yeah.

of the interviews that we did.

And so we'll see.

I, I'm interested in bringing on some more guests and doing some of the old format too.

Uh, but we're just trying to get rolling on this, this new way of doing things and, and we'll see where it goes.

It's gonna be a lot of fun and we're really, our goal is to just really keep it simple

Yeah,

on, on the audience that we're looking to talk to.

love it.

Can't wait to, can't wait to continue the journey.

So, as we wrap up, tell listeners more about Truit and the work that you do.

I mean, you've, you've talked about it as a company, but, uh, for people who are interested in, in learning more, tell'em all about it.

Yeah, so we're, uh, located in, in Washington state.

We do serve nationwide, but uh, we're located in Washington State, uh, both eastern and western Washington.

I'm in Spokane right now at my.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

office, uh, work in.

but we're a managed service provider, so what we do is we provide IT services for, uh, businesses that generally have five or more employees and are at that point where they need to outsource their IT to a company because they're, they need to have like stuff that works.

They need to make sure their machines work, they need to make sure that their employees can continue to operate and, and stay high functioning.

And the other key thing of what we do.

It is everything we do is through the lens of cybersecurity,

Yes.

we don't really do the better, big, you know, a good, better, best model.

We do a real comprehensive look at the business.

What industry are they in?

All of those things, and we make sure that they're a really good fit and give them the right services they need for their particular type of business.

So we're all about cybersecurity, making sure that there's adequate protection for our businesses.

We stopped six attacks last year.

But just in our small book of business,

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

six business email compromises and a couple other things.

So like we've got a track record of taking care of, uh, people, having the right stuff in place.

Uh, and then we also do consulting, like if, if

Mm-hmm.

I.

Uh, like particularly for our clients, if you want somebody who's not just gonna do tech support, gonna help you walk through how to find the right tools for your business, how to navigate a, how to navigate ai, how to navigate CRMs, and all those crazy things that are technology related, but not necessarily tech support.

Those are all included in what we do.

So we are a full service.

Uh, security focused, managed it company.

That's, that's what we love.

We love getting in front of people and helping them solve business, uh, technology problems.

All right.

Well, one last re uh, request here.

Tell our listeners where to find out more about Truitt Online and, and also John Hansman.

I mean, uh, you got a lot to say.

Uh, tell, tell us.

Tell us, tell us where to, where to, where to hear it.

You can look me up, john hansman.com.

I have a public speaking page if you're looking for somebody to, to, uh,

Great.

I.

at your event.

And then Truitt, uh, you can see it here, truitt.io.

So TRUI t.io is our website and that'll get you all the information about what we do.

Again, we we're in Washington, but we serve nationwide and we can take care of anybody who has a problem.

Uh, John, thanks for your insights today.

This was a really great conversation.

I love talking to it.

So.

My pleasure.

So, uh, thank you everyone who watches, listens and writes into the podcast with feedback.

If you have any topics you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like to see on the show, uh.

Drop'em in the comments.

Uh, start using our YouTube community pay tab, or, you know, go over to our TikTok channel, drop us a comment over there.

We're easy to find.

Uh, before you go.

Don't forget InfoSec institute.com/free is a site where you can get a whole bunch of free and exclusive stuff for cyber work listeners, including our free cybersecurity Talent Development playbook, which contains in-depth training plans and strategies for the 12 most common security roles, including SOC analyst, pen tester, cloud security engineer.

Information Risk Analyst, privacy Manager, secure coder ICS, professional and more.

We also have a free cybersecurity salary guide, uh, with the latest data on popular certifications in the related roles.

Uh, you can also sign up for 100 plus free courses in our InfoSec skills platform for 30 days, or an incident response forensic security architecture and more.

One more time.

InfoSec institute.com/.

Free the links in the description.

You know what to do.

One last time, thank you to John Hansman and Truitt and The Business Invite podcast.

And thank you all for watching and listening.

This is Chris Sanko signing off.

Until next time, make sure to learn something new every day.

Keep one step ahead of the story and don't forget to have a little fun along the way.

Bye for now.