Leading with Love with Corey White

george grombacher 0:00
Come on

one level, this is George G. And the time is right welcome. Today’s guest is strong and powerful Corey white Cory, are you ready to do this? Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen. Let’s go. Cory is the co founder and CEO of cyber ATAR. They’re a company offering a comprehensive collection of tools to help businesses of all sizes, manage their cybersecurity risks. Cory, I’m excited to have you on, tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work and why you do what you do. Right now, a lot does I think I can, I could ramp up the whole time here at all that in itself, but why I do what I do, I’m very big into why because I want to, I don’t want to just do stuff randomly. I don’t want to do things for for just money. It’s very important for me to be able to do things and have a purpose behind it. So when I say purpose, I mean, how can we change this world? How can we make the world better, and my personal life and professional life? So it’s absolutely key to define that. One of the best ways to do that, I don’t know how many of you guys are fans of Simon Sinek that I had, you know, one of his, I think he calls him igniters come out to one do a session with our team back in 2018. In my last company, and if you read his books, he talks about the professional, why and then you got to figure out your personal why. And I was like, dammit, I didn’t live in life or, you know, 40 something years, I don’t even know my why, like what, like, I should know why I’m doing things. And you know, if you look at it out there, and you challenge people, you ask them, Why are you doing this? And it’s bullshit. If they say, oh, no, make money, man. Come on. Really? I mean, hopefully we’ve evolved beyond making just money, right? Yeah. What is your why? And so my why in I tie personal and professional together? Because I don’t believe that, you know, anybody in life should be saying, Oh, this is this is work, Cory, right? This is what work Cory does. And then this is my personal Cory. I think those he want to be happy and comfortable with yourself and be authentic, is to kind of be the same, or at least somewhat close. So my Y is really, I build companies, and I run this company, so that I have the opportunity to give people opportunities that normally would not have those opportunities to thrive. I do this so that we can actually make things better in this world. And making things better doesn’t mean quarry makes a shit ton of money. making things better means that that the individuals working in the company, and the customers, we call them members here, our members, things actually get better as a result of that interaction. And so it’s kind of a personal metric. If you work with me or my company, your life actually gets better. I’m not taking away, I’m additive. And our companies are additive to to the experience. Sorry, it was a long answer. But hopefully I covered it, just because it’s deep question your Why? Why? I love it. That’s perfect. And you know, I was like you and I think a lot of people are sort of just making our way along, not saying we were just getting by but to really get clarity on what why it is that you do the things that you’re doing why it is that you’re I assuming working very, very hard and why you’re investing so much of yourself into something. I think it makes a lot of sense to to get clear on what that is. And that probably, it’s probably been a benefit to you now that you’ve started really sharing that with others too.

Corey White 3:47
Oh, yeah, it has been is one of the things that we’re doing this year. We started last year, we have these events called Site love, we’ll go site live, sorry. And the thing is, I work on the tour going to different cities around the United States, you got to have a theme. And so one of our you know, Junior marketing team members, it’s just amazing. And, and they came up with the idea of it should be based on love or fear. Now, I was like, Wow, I like that. Like, you know, going back to the motivation of why a lot of people do things out of fear. But wouldn’t it be better if you did it out of love? Right? And so, you know, you take cybersecurity for example. Cybersecurity is a very long time. It’s been sold on what we call fear, uncertainty and doubt. Fudd. Right. And and so, for people that I think says, Oh, you’re gonna get hacked, they’re gonna come and get you the world’s coming to them.

Well, maybe some of that might happen. But why don’t you take the approach of like, Hey, we’re gonna do everything we possibly can to get you locked down insecure, and make sure that you don’t actually get hacked and then we’re also going to have a a guarantee t something does happen, you’re covered. Okay? And so it just, it’s the equivalent of saying, hey, you know, your house is gonna get broken into it let you do, okay, you might as well you know, buy whatever I’m trying to sell you. Or we’re gonna make sure your front doors and windows are locked and closed at all times. Now if somebody still gets in, please still got your cover. You know which one do you want?

george grombacher 5:22
Mm. Yeah. Nobody wants fun. Corey

Unknown Speaker 5:27
sold it all the time.

george grombacher 5:30
Nobody wants to buy five. Nobody really wants to sell it either. So I, I feel like you’ve got the right approach. And how’d you decide to go on tour? It seems like a great idea. It sounds like fun.

Corey White 5:45
Well, I’ll give you the colorful answer, which is actually the truth. It. If I weren’t actually doing cybersecurity, I’d be I wish I could sing. I cannot say sounds horrible. Like this runs and my kids run every time I try to sing in the house. So I can’t sing a no K dance. So I can hold a beat. But I’m nothing spectacular there. I’m like, what dammit, I guess I’ll do this cybersecurity thing. So, but the fun will do is I’m gonna have fun. And I’m gonna look good while doing it. And so one of the things I’ve been doing that’s doing cybersecurity for 26 years, myself and my co founder, he’s been doing it for 20 years as a C. So he’s based out of London, the best way to build relationships is get out there and go see people and build those relationships face to face. I know we’re in the Zoom world and everything’s all virtual. But still, I there’s a lot of merit and validity into face to face interactions and relationships. So we go on tour, and we do you know, we call site live happy hours. And we choose a cool little swanky spot rooftop bar outside because it’s COVID. And make sure that you know leaks and fresh air, happy hours appetizers, and we chat. We meet people we get to know we build relationships. And that’s worked really, really well. And that’s, you know, back to your why. That’s what I like to do. I like to like to drink I you know, saline, I’m not a drunk, but I like to drink socially. Meet new people have a good time, and I have a great conversation. So why wouldn’t I do that in my professional life? Why wouldn’t I tie those two together? What I found is that other people like to do that too. Nobody will, if I were to say wouldn’t lose two core and have this stuffy, you know, conference room, and we’re gonna do this PowerPoint presentation to you. Okay, most people was like, I’m not gonna do that I want to go. But you know, we didn’t want to La back in November, we had 102 people show up. Yeah. And so, you know, it’s, that’s cool. You know, and got a lot of leads out of it. A lot of relationships, you actually hired a couple of people from the event, you know, just met, and so it’s just been beneficial. So that’s how we decided originally, I want to be a music artist, which I suck at. So second best thing is be a cybersecurity professional and still go on tour. Yeah,

george grombacher 8:02
I love it. I think that’s fantastic. Nice. All right. So and tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey. How did you how did you find yourself in cybersecurity?

Corey White 8:13
Oh, okay. Um, well, those are how I found myself in cybersecurity. That’s easier question. But I’ll tell you the journey, which I think is interesting, I’ll find myself in cyber is. I started in the mid 90s. And so my first gigs as a consultant was, hey, can you connect us to the internet? I’m like, sure. Okay. So literally connected to the internet, then, like, we’re connected to the internet, but somebody has spoken to some computers like, Wait, okay, I’ll put in a firewall, as I’m putting in firewalls. And then next thing I know, I’m the security guy. And I was like, this is kind of cool, different, whatever. So it just just blossom from there. But the entrepreneurial journey, it, I think, is really important for just talking to another entrepreneur, right for this call. And he quit his job and went full time with his company that he had started on the side. But I think it’s important for everybody in some form or fashion to jump and take that risk. And I use jump in particular, if, if any listeners want to look at Steve Harvey, Google, Steve Harvey jump. He has a book on it now, but he has this really good video, like a couple minute video of what it’s like to jump. And I love the way he explained it. I’m not going to do as well one job, but when you jump, you know, you’re gonna get some bruises along the way, you know, you’re gonna get some scratches and everything else, but you’re gonna figure out how to fly. Okay, and once you figure out how to fly, that is that is the beautiful part of it. I think also it’s beautiful to go through the pain of the struggle, you know, the hustle to actually go through that process, because you’re gonna figure out the fly. And so the entrepreneur journey for me was just really looking at why I left my last company, I talked to a bunch of companies, I had some friends or capitalist friends. They introduced me into some companies. And every time I was interviewing, I was listening to what the founders were saying. I didn’t like their why. Yeah, they, they, they didn’t have a why I can’t work for somebody who didn’t have a y, you know, or they do have y and the y can’t be Oh, yeah, make a lot of money. Like really? Okay. Yeah, hopefully, we’ve evolved beyond just making a lot of money. Why can’t you know, success be the outcome of who we are. Okay. And so, yeah, I think that, you know, savitar, eventually, we’ll make a lot of money, but we’re not going to change who we are to make that money. Yeah, I think that’s backwards, you know, why can’t you be your authentic self, and let doubt come, like come through and let that be what makes you the money instead of trying to force it? So to go into, you know, interviews and talking to companies and always had an in back my mind, that’s just starting, oh, maybe I should stop? No, and everybody around me is like, so Cory, when you start your own business, I was thinking to myself, everybody’s already figured it out. Because I was already gonna start my business. I hadn’t figured it out. Maybe I should just listen everybody else, which I never do. But ultimately, I listened to myself. And I was like, let’s start a new company. Let’s do it. Right. I just don’t think anybody else is doing it. Right. So I had to build a new new business new model, a new way to do cybersecurity.

george grombacher 11:20
Nice. Well, I certainly appreciate that. Why don’t you listen to other people, Cory?

Unknown Speaker 11:30
I like to lead turns aside as that.

Corey White 11:35
Yeah, me, obviously I get you get blunt answer. Cuz they’re mostly wrong. And if they are, right, they’re right for them, not you. So you got to figure out what is right for you. And so listening to somebody else tell you, that’s their opinions. That’s their experience. We all have our own life journey, our own plight. And so what is right for you may not be right for someone else. So you have to figure that out for yourself. Now, that ties back into another thing that is also broken, just kind of in society in general. I’m on a lifelong journey of finding yourself. You know, if people say you’re, you graduate from high school, and take a year and go find yourself and all that stuff, I believe that, I truly believe that. Because what happens is, when you’re a kid, you’re who your parents want you to be, you’re following their lead and everything else. Right. And then you got a few things. Yeah. Whether it be your parents and family, you’ve got, you know, society pressures, like this is what it should be you grew up now American married, have 2.5 kids, and don’t picket fence. And that’s what you think happiness is, they may not be happy for you, you know, you got all these things coming and dictating to you what happiness is, I think every individual should figure out what their own personal journey and happiness actually is. Once you figure that out, then you can go and start a new company or do your own thing, and live your life that way. That’s, that’s, that’s the sweet spot is never like, you ever get there. And you’re like, Oh, I found myself, I’m happy and all that, and I’m authentic. And then you stop, oh, they’re layers, you keep on going deeper and deeper and deeper into it. But as you go deeper, you become a better person, you become a more evolved person. And so that’s, again, I get ran on that for a while. But that’s why you don’t follow anybody else. You got to figure out who you are, and then follow yourself and get and I’m on universe kind of guy. So you get into the universal flow. You get into flow state, and life and then then life just fun. And it’s also easier.

george grombacher 13:35
Yeah, I think that’s all really well said, and I 1,000% agree with it. You know, there’s so much that that society puts on us and says that we’re supposed to act a certain way. And what we’ve been talking about the whole time is figuring out what happiness is, is is is for you. And then why not do business that way? Why not do life that way? Why does Why do things need to be segmented and separated? And why does this need to be a certain way? Because everybody else has always done it kind of thing. You know, I’m fond to saying we got you know, there’s only 50 Saturdays a year. Appreciate that. There’s 52 But you only got one crack at this deal. So maximize the time that we have.

Corey White 14:17
Yeah, yeah. 1,000% And that’s why within our company, we have this this model, you know, a lot of people say but I don’t think they actually believe it, is the whole you know, work hard play hard. And I was interviewing a candidate that spoke to one of our other executives and we did one of our OSI Live Tour. Things a couple weeks ago, we did Miami with a Tampa and and they asked how was that? How did it go? And and the the employee said it was like, you know, you know, working at Disneyland there’s like Disneyland tour, like it was just fun he was and you know, everybody’s you know, thing is different. So if you’re not like Disneyland, but the end of the day, it should be a fun experience, but we’re working hard At the same time, I truly believe a lot of people don’t, you know, they don’t get how this ties together is that, you know, you shouldn’t have to go to work every day, you know, you shouldn’t have a job, I’ll tell people that I’m interviewing, this is not a job, okay? This should be who you are, this is what you enjoy doing. So you can come into work and actually enjoy it. And it’s something you can’t wait to jump up a morning and do and go tackle. And that’s, that’s what should be like here. And I told my team, if you’ve stressed out working here, call me, let’s have a conversation. Because only by stressed out in this organization, interesting enough, I got a call one of my employees, she was in the wrong, you know, job, and she ended up switching to another team, you and she was like, I felt like you were talking to me when you said that. And I just had to reach out and we sat down. And we talked about it. And I actually found another spot in the company and other team wants me there. And it’s a better fit, like, do it 100% So that that’s what it all means to me.

george grombacher 16:02
Although what what a great story, you know, you give people the opportunity, and then they take advantage of it. So amazing. I love it. So all right. Well, I, I want to let you share with people how how, why people come to savitar the, the the breadth of solutions you bring without talking about Fudd Talk Talk to us a little bit why people who is who is a good fit for for what you’re doing?

Corey White 16:33
Yeah, it depends on the maturity of the organization, right. So if you’re, if a company thinks that they have cybersecurity figured out, they have a full cybersecurity program, then you don’t need us, right? We have this mantra, we only sell what you actually need. And it’s all outcome based. So, you know, the first thing we do in our sales process is we do a free security assessment. And once we do the assessment, that’s that’s usually done in about 15 minutes. And an automated fashion is a questionnaire that we do external scans and everything else all that free. But we’re able to say, Okay, you just say you don’t have proper endpoint protection, you’re not blocking a ransomware attack, and you don’t scan and patch your systems or you don’t have multi factor authentication, then those are the solutions we’re going to propose to you. Okay. And so the good was good about that. These are solutions, these aren’t products. These aren’t services, there are solutions that are tied to an outcome. And what we mean by that and 90 days or less guaranteed, as can be fully implemented. When bringing our products get you locked down secure get you remediated, meaning fix the vulnerabilities not you know, clean alert, some people say remediation, we got to clean out your alerting, you’ll still have alerts, there’ll be better alerts. No, that’s not remediation, remediation is actually fixing the problem and then maintaining on a continuous basis. So we are an outsourced cybersecurity vendor. We call that cybersecurity as a service, we had to create a new category in cybersecurity, because nobody was doing it. You know why? It goes back to the the fun love and fear and you’ve got a thing. A lot of companies, they sell you something, because it makes them more money. Okay. And so the cybersecurity industry is, is really built by a bunch of vendors that are out how can they make more money, get more money back to their VCs? Well, we built this from a customer perspective, because the customers are losing. So think about this. Last year, I think it was $150 billion cybersecurity industry and growing. There are over 4000 cybersecurity companies out there. You know, more than people are getting more and more people getting into the industry. But the number of attacks increased. Okay, successful attacks increased. So we’re spending more on it and the problems getting worse. Like what what’s happening here. The problem is, is that most cybersecurity companies, they aren’t trying to fix the problem. They don’t have to fix the problem to make money. Okay. We, we just say I will fix the problem. That’s how we’ll make money. And so that’s, that’s, you know, game changing. And again, last thing I’ll say is, success is the outcome of who we are. And so success will be from us helping, not just seeing an alert and tell you that something’s wrong.

george grombacher 19:12
I love it. According to people ready for that difference making tip? What do you have for them? Oh, yeah,

Corey White 19:18
I think it ties into everything we’ve been talking about. It’s really simple. Leave with love. Yeah, I know. It may sound cliche in this day and time, but leave with love. And what that actually means is, I’m in business, make a difference for your customers. actually make a difference for your customers. Make sure that’s what you’re doing. On top of that, in your personal life. Have a personal personal mantra. If people interact with you, or your business, their lives actually get better. I love that. Adam Grant who’s you know, a pretty well known author, he talks about give or take, and most people aren’t conscious of are you a giver or you’re a taker. So the real easy answer is, if you don’t know which one you are, then you’re probably a taker. And so be conscious of being a giver, you know, give to make a difference. And he’s done the research. A lot of people say nice guys, nice people finished last. Well, his stats actually show that they actually depending on how you approach it, statistically nice people finish first. And they also can finish last as well. It depends on how you prioritize things. So it’s I think it’s important to look at things the right way. And even if I finished in the middle, it still be a nice guy that will still be a giver. That’s just how I choose to live my life. Well, I

george grombacher 20:41
think that is great stuff that definitely gets caught. Cory, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you and Savitar?

Corey White 20:51
Absolutely, really, we’re all over social media. Our website is savitar.ai on please visit us there. Follow us on LinkedIn on LinkedIn. I’m Cory D White. You can look me up on LinkedIn there. I’m on top of that, where we’re on Tik Tok, Twitter. Facebook actually were everywhere. Follow us. Again, you’ll see who we are because we we focus on finding outcomes and giving back to the community and not just taking so so thank you so much for your time.

george grombacher 21:25
Enjoyed it. If you enjoyed this as much as I did your core your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Sai bataar.ai That’s CYV a tr.ai fundament social media Cory Are you dancing on those tiktoks?

Corey White 21:44
Not yet. Okay. That will be definitely their dance. So

george grombacher 21:49
we’ll get I love it. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai