Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Secure First, Scale Fast: ProArch CTO/CISO on AI That Won’t Break Compliance

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Secure First, Scale Fast: ProArch CTO/CISO on AI That Won’t Break Compliance · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes, and today's
0:02
guest is Ben Wilcox, CTO and CSO at Proarch, a global digital
0:08
transformation company that's been on an absolute tear,
0:11
growing past 500 people and anchoring itself as a Microsoft
0:15
Featured Partner. In this conversation, you'll
0:17
learn how to build a secure foundation before layering on
0:21
AI, why compliance isn't something to retrofit later, and
0:25
how startups can avoid the painful mistakes that come with
0:28
ignoring security and data data privacy in the rush to product
0:32
market fit. We also get into the explosive
0:34
rise of agentic AI, the challenge of change management,
0:38
and even pull some surprising leadership lessons from Ben's
0:41
life as a racing instructor. This episode is for founders,
0:44
builders, and tech leaders who want to scale quickly without
0:47
blowing up on compliance, security, or culture.
0:51
Buckle up. This one's fast, fun, and packed
0:54
with insights. If you enjoy the podcast, you're
0:56
going to love the newsletter. Go over to AI for Founders dot
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4:04
All right, we're rolling. Ben, how are you?
4:06
Thanks for coming on the show. I'm great.
4:08
Ryan, how are you doing today? Wow, I'm doing really good.
4:11
I love that wallpaper. That you, that you.
4:14
This makes me feel very legal as well.
4:18
The attorney in me. I'm a fan of the Paisley.
4:21
You know, it, it seems like, you know, that fractal kind of
4:24
psychedelic street art got really popular for a while.
4:28
And I was always looking at, I was like, you know, this is just
4:30
kind of like Angular Paisley. You know, there's a calming side
4:34
of it. I think it's good to have,
4:36
especially inside the security. There's always a lot of fires
4:38
going on, so I walk into the room.
4:41
I feel calm. Nice.
4:43
Heck yeah man. Well I'm so excited to have you
4:45
here. Why don't you give us a brief
4:48
overview of pro arc and your roles and responsibility with
4:51
more dation? Yeah.
4:53
Thanks, Ryan. So Pro Arc is a digital
4:56
transformation company. I'd say we probably focus on
4:59
like 2 main areas when it comes to digital transformation,
5:02
securing the foundation so that an organization can really adopt
5:07
the technology that would make differences in their business.
5:10
And then secondly, you know, we look at and once you have that
5:15
in place right now, you need data, you need to be able to
5:18
laboratory and effectively and efficiently.
5:20
So layering on top of that kind of secure foundation, you have
5:25
the ability to implement new solutions, do it in a transfer
5:30
made way. You know things that can help
5:33
change how your employees are operating from a process
5:36
perspective and how you engage with your customers in a more
5:40
meaningful way, Things that can help you innovate your business
5:43
quicker. Those are things that we work
5:45
very closely with our customers on.
5:47
And once we kind of have that business problem, we go ahead
5:50
and start solving it. Amazing.
5:53
And so kind of like you're kind of ideal customer, are they
5:56
somewhere north of five million annual revenue or or further
5:59
along than that? Well, I think it can really
6:02
start in any sort of spot. It really depends on the
6:04
business and their needs for technology.
6:07
Technology centric organizations like you should kind of a sweet
6:10
spot for us. So, you know, we work with
6:12
startups all the way through, you know, enterprises in that
6:14
space. Yeah, I think it's something
6:17
that's probably ignored a little bit from startups, the
6:20
enthusiasm to get product market fit in the beginning like
6:23
security and data, then I will worry about that down the road.
6:26
Why are they wrong? To think, Oh my gosh, go read
6:32
any, any Reddit SAS, their founders group and you will find
6:38
on the first page, Soners built a successful SAS based app that
6:42
they now have to go retrofit compliance into.
6:46
That is a super hard thing to do.
6:51
Frankly, I think in today's era, knowing kind of your target
6:55
base, understanding what their security requirements are from
6:59
getting, getting started perspective is, is important for
7:01
you as a business around owners or if you're building something
7:05
right. Know who your customers are,
7:06
what's what they have to adhere to, and start baking in some of
7:09
those things because they will be asking questions guaranteed.
7:12
Doesn't matter if you're. Like, yeah, are there like
7:15
common sneaky compliance things? You know, if I was, if I was
7:18
going into anything medical related, I know I'd have issues
7:21
there. If I'm looking for SEC
7:23
compliance and some kind of financial product, you kind of
7:25
know what to expect there. Are there come some sneaky ones
7:28
that people forget about? Well the the one of the biggest
7:31
ones is pretty much anything from APII perspective, so
7:34
personally identifiable information.
7:37
So think of it as, you know, you're a consumer, right?
7:39
Your consumer information, you get a popular state based app
7:43
and you're operating in these states.
7:45
Almost every single state has their own individual privacy
7:49
law. Meaning if you have some sort of
7:51
data leak security problem that you have to then notify your the
7:58
consumers of your application or you know who was affected by
8:01
that as well as potentially notifying the state itself along
8:05
with that. So basically, you know, bake in
8:08
privacy controls and certainly look at it from, you know, an
8:12
overall perspective, right? If they're touching anything
8:14
credit card related, you'll look at it from a PCI perspective and
8:19
isolate that. Preferably, especially if you're
8:21
starting off, go find a third vendor you know, out there that
8:25
can handle that for you. Don't try to do it yourself.
8:28
Yeah, it's great that there's so many off the shelf options for
8:31
this because it's like that kind of compliance like why rebuild
8:34
Stripe when stripes sitting right there?
8:37
No. And they, they do so much
8:38
better. They don't have to, you know,
8:39
you don't have to worry about touching the credit card.
8:42
It's all on a separate site. So nothing ever touches your
8:46
infrastructure. You just get paid.
8:47
Yeah, huge. And I, I think right now too,
8:50
there's a, there's going to be a major shift because because of
8:53
the rise of the vibe coding apps and the way you can idiate and
8:57
create so quickly. Like really what I see is the,
9:00
the future of software in some aspect is just bridging third
9:03
party applications. I mean you're that's basically
9:06
N8 NS whole business model is to is to create like a Nexus of
9:11
agents that connect third party tools together.
9:14
And what I'm seeing now is our people that just create a
9:18
product around that. So they're not using N8 N
9:21
they're doing something intrinsically.
9:23
I'm talk talking about a Jeeva dot AI spoke G yesterday and
9:28
very interesting where he he's taking like these work
9:31
automations and instead of like sitting down zapiering it N8 N
9:36
it together, it works for three days and then something breaks
9:39
or stay Pi changes and you got to keep with fiddling with it.
9:43
He just takes that whole operation, you know, kind of
9:46
revenue operation and puts it under 1 banner, which I think
9:50
we'll see a lot more of because, you know, while everyone wants
9:53
to talk about a agentic solutions boy, building them is
9:59
still kind of half baked. You know, some some really cool
10:02
stuff you can do, but it's like, oh man, becomes a bit of a
10:05
headache. What's your what's your opinion
10:07
on kind of where we're at agentically right now?
10:10
We're definitely in the starting phases of that.
10:14
I can tell you like if you look at just anything that's happened
10:18
in the last five months, frameworks are changing, new
10:20
frameworks are still being built.
10:21
They're not even at like version one from a gentle perspective.
10:25
So, you know, the fact that you know, we have so many different
10:29
choices right now could certainly developers a lot of
10:33
choices of what they should be doing in there.
10:38
I think you ought to be at a spot where you can evaluating
10:40
where you are at this point and we move forward quickly with
10:44
what your available options are. Because if you wait, I mean, if
10:48
if you started having a product planning session today, right,
10:51
come around in January, you'd have new choices to be made and
10:55
having to figure out what you need to do.
10:56
So we often encourage we're talking to customers or
11:01
developers, right? Let's, let's take your plans now
11:03
and start moving. Because otherwise we'll just be
11:05
revisiting this literally every two months and trying to rescope
11:09
it to fit what's changed in the environment and the ecosphere.
11:14
Yeah. The this Jiva product, you know,
11:17
he launched in January and as of now he's got a $6 million annual
11:22
run rate. You know, so it's like, oh, the,
11:25
the desire for this kind of stuff is humongous.
11:28
I talked to another guy, absolutely brilliant Alexander,
11:31
he's got a company called Smith OS and it's an it's an agent
11:35
building software. It builds agents, and he was
11:38
talking about agent swarms where sooner and later you, it's not
11:43
that you're building agents, rather you're deploying groups
11:47
of agents that all work together.
11:50
And his vision of the future is really kind of philosophical in
11:54
like how we're going to start designing systems and how
11:57
profitable be where. I'm kind of like seeing where
12:00
the puck's going is like, OK, if you have this hot, hot product
12:04
that goes, you know, zero to 6 million in 6-7 months, you know,
12:10
what's to stop? You know, any other company, you
12:13
know, that really you have kind of the, the, the speed to which
12:17
you can deploy before like all the other competitors enter the
12:20
space. So with the the clients that
12:22
you're seeing, you know, how are they thinking about like the
12:26
speed of pace right now with AI? It's daunting for a lot of them.
12:33
We have a lot of conversations in the prospect side of things
12:38
and not nearly as much movement on when it comes to doing
12:42
things. And, and part of it, I think is
12:45
that, you know, some of the returns that have been promised
12:49
haven't been completely realized where if an organization really
12:55
goes through the process of understanding what they're
12:57
trying to solve, figuring out, you know, how much accuracy is,
13:02
is acceptable. What can I can I get from this,
13:04
you know, a gentic approach or, or, you know, just any AI side
13:08
of the right from generative perspective, and this is
13:11
acceptable. They can see returns.
13:13
I think that sometimes what people are looking for is really
13:16
like that professional side of it.
13:18
And I don't know if we're quite at that stage yet, but there's
13:21
still a lot of tuning. It requires a lot of effort to
13:24
get to high accuracy. And you know, I, I'm sure we'll
13:27
get there, just not quite yet. Yeah, It's interesting.
13:30
We started with accepting such a high tolerance for error.
13:37
It's like, wow, this is like, really, really wrong.
13:40
And it's just so confident about it.
13:41
And people go, oh, hey, that's that's just, you know, the LLM
13:45
slipping up, you know, and I guess everyone's just like, OK,
13:49
you know, I suppose compliance isn't quite as forgiving.
13:53
No. It's not.
13:54
And like in the compliance side especially, right, we start
14:00
thinking about the agentic side and there is some concerns on
14:03
there, right. How do you, you almost have to
14:05
treat this agentic agent as its own, you know, user or identity,
14:10
right? And its actions are going to be
14:13
represented by your business. So anything it does right needs
14:18
to be audited, logged, especially if it's potentially
14:21
touching any sort of sensitive information out there.
14:24
Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, the, the,
14:27
the innate fear I think with the, the whole agentic movement
14:31
is that it's going to reduce headcount and people are, are
14:34
worried about if is their job safe?
14:36
Is their job not safe? I've heard it described a couple
14:39
of ways, one being, you know, either you're as close as you
14:42
possibly can get to AI or you're as far away as possible from it.
14:47
And that's basically how it keeps you safe.
14:49
So when you're thinking about Prolark and your team, you guys
14:52
have what, about 400 people on staff?
14:56
Yeah, around 4:00. Or 500?
14:58
Somewhere in that range. Or 500?
14:59
And then how many direct reports do you have?
15:02
Oh I I am only I have 6 right now so sticks.
15:06
OK, so when you're thinking about it and how do you ease
15:09
their fears, you know, if they're coming to you, they're
15:12
saying, Ben, I'm a little bit concerned that, you know, AI is
15:15
going to take my job. You know, how do you ease their
15:19
fears or, or what kind of tasks or skills are going to be
15:23
necessary for people in the workforce today?
15:26
So I am a big proponent of everyone using AI as a personal
15:31
assistant to begin with. I mean that that's your starting
15:33
point, right? And you really have to push that
15:36
change to write your entire organization, because without
15:39
that, those fears are going to stick around.
15:41
People need to see how it can add value, how it can make a
15:45
difference in their productivity, being able to do
15:49
something for them that maybe maybe it was a time consuming
15:54
thing. I'll give you an example.
15:56
I work a lot on the Microsoft partnership side of of pro work.
16:00
And one of the most complex things I have to do was try to
16:03
disseminate what Microsoft is changing this my new fiscal
16:07
year, which just started. And they're all of their go to
16:09
market to all of our organization.
16:11
And we cover, I said 90% of what Microsoft's that sells as a
16:17
business. So we we build solutions on top
16:19
of that. Now trying to disseminate all
16:22
that information and have repeated meetings over and over
16:25
again around what it is is important to Microsoft help for
16:29
work Alliance can be very, very time consuming.
16:32
I mean, it's like the first three months of that new fiscal
16:35
year for me. So I've built a series of
16:38
different agents that can talk to our internal teams around
16:43
what they should be doing in the marketplace.
16:45
What should they be looking at from a solution perspective?
16:48
How do you know if we're looking at a certain type of activity,
16:51
right? And AI is very much security,
16:54
it's very much data, it's very much application development,
16:58
right? How do we get all these teams to
16:59
kind of work together and solve them, solve a specific problem,
17:03
right? It's not just individual teams
17:05
really, you're creating a solution out of all of your
17:09
groups. So I use it to, to help speed up
17:11
that let people will ask questions to, you know, ID 8
17:15
around their, their role, their responsibilities.
17:18
We've been a lot of parameters around that and it's saved me a
17:21
ton of time so far. Yeah, so a lot of.
17:23
Meetings, but I'm having probably at least half of the
17:25
meetings that I I would previously.
17:29
What tools are you using daily? Kind of like in your AI tech
17:32
stack? OK.
17:33
For me personally, I use Copilot for business productivity stuff
17:39
so right within office so it looks a big part of it.
17:44
Teens live without my AI note taker in there.
17:49
I mean that's that's fundamental.
17:51
It helps keep everything on track and helps facilitate the
17:54
conversation. Outside of that, I really do
17:58
like chat sheet BT he was a professional version of that.
18:02
Also like clogs or the clog does a really great job when it comes
18:06
to working with policy procedures like refining of of
18:11
material. I've been able to build some
18:14
really great projects around that set.
18:15
So those are those are the probably the primary ones I'm
18:18
using. I have played around with lots
18:20
of different ones out there, but those are the ones that keep
18:22
coming back soon. Yeah, what?
18:25
What about Gemini? Are you playing around with that
18:26
at all? I did, but I really didn't have
18:28
too much success or after using it for the, the 10 or 14 day
18:34
trial, I just was like it wasn't keeping up.
18:38
I wasn't, I wasn't liking the output quite as much.
18:39
You know, probably I was having to do a lot more refinement to
18:43
have done some of the other ones.
18:46
You know, everything changes though.
18:47
I mean, at one point, you know, you feel kind of like what's
18:54
happened to my tools, right? All of a sudden one day it just
18:56
like stops working right? The way it was at hand.
18:59
You know, they're adjusting stuff and usually it comes right
19:02
back. I just, I could never feel like
19:04
I got over gem. I was one sense for what I use
19:07
it for. Yeah, and I, I feel like it's
19:11
fully integrated now. I, I go to GPT just like first
19:14
response it and it took me a minute.
19:16
You know, I, it came out in what, November 22, something
19:20
like that. And I remember the big thing was
19:22
you could create like a JavaScript Twitter bot with a
19:26
couple of prompts. Like the first real like
19:29
interest I had was like how you could code with it with GG early
19:33
on now. I mean, it's like, it's, I mean,
19:36
just the vibe coding thing is out of control, but like using
19:40
it just to check down for copy, using it to aggregate
19:43
information, notebook LM I, I love that for, for, for creating
19:47
digestible content. There's so many different ways.
19:49
And it really reminds me of like when the iPhone came out and I
19:55
kind of had like a sea change where I was like, OK, I now I'm
19:58
going to see if there is an app for everything.
20:01
Just to find out kind of what was out there.
20:03
And so like sitting down and be like, OK, well, I want to know
20:06
what kind of plant that is and go find the app and then
20:08
download it and OK, cool. What are the capacities?
20:11
And we're at a similar junction right now.
20:13
When it's like if I'm thinking outside of AII feel like I'm
20:17
wasting my time, I'm, it's almost like a discipline to say,
20:20
OK, take this process, take this workflow, take this idea, take
20:25
this question, bring it to GPT and then ask it to like ask me
20:28
questions to kind of make it a better prompt.
20:33
Which is to say that like I'm, I'm I'm almost convinced that
20:38
it's smarter than me. You know where for a long time I
20:42
was like, now I got the ideas, but now I'm like, make my ideas
20:46
better. Yeah.
20:47
And then it does enhance it. I, I feel the same way like it's
20:51
with with the some of the memory knowledge in there, right?
20:54
It's starting to really be able to personalize the output to me
20:58
and it's, it does kind of feel like you're talking to yourself
21:01
sometimes on there. So pro arc over the last couple
21:06
of years has had absolutely explosive growth like if you
21:09
look kind of year over year, I was checking it out over like
21:12
the last four or five years. What do you and it's a 20 year
21:15
company, right. So like what what do you
21:18
attribute to that explosive growth?
21:21
Well. I think it's that we are willing
21:24
to explore. I do believe that we're very
21:27
good at solutions and being able to kind of package things,
21:30
right. So if we look at helping helping
21:35
a business, right, people don't want to spend a whole lot of
21:38
time planning, right? We don't and we live in an era
21:41
today we're we're planning for six months for a data platform
21:47
just doesn't make sense, right? So you're going to have
21:50
accelerators out there. You got to be able to do things
21:52
that are, are much quicker and you know, you, you build these
21:55
solution accelerators or their platforms to solve 70% of of the
22:00
build time, right? Then you can focus the rest of
22:03
the time on the actual business problem.
22:04
And I think that we do those things too really, really well.
22:08
We got some really exceptional and smart people here that have
22:11
been here for a long time. And I think that, yeah, when,
22:16
when you're able to marry security and data and AI
22:20
together, you have a really strong story and it's going to
22:23
keep bringing people back, right?
22:25
So you can really help an organization from, you know,
22:28
starting off to, to, you know, when they're very mature and you
22:32
know, we're on their 20th iteration of their product, like
22:35
that's stuff that we do so. Yeah, well, and you guys are are
22:39
closely married to the Microsoft ecosystem and that's been really
22:42
successful to you. And Microsoft, I suppose
22:45
famously has just hit it out of the park with AI right out of
22:49
the chunk. You know, it's just it, you
22:51
know, obviously they have that partnership with GPTO with open
22:54
AI, but Copilot is a total smash hit.
22:58
You know, it'll be very difficult to kind of dethrone
23:01
that position for a lot of engineers and programmers.
23:04
Do you think a part of pro Arcs success is largely tied to kind
23:10
of Microsoft doing so well with LLMS?
23:14
Yes and security, I think both of those things are are super
23:18
important because you really can't do AIA without that secure
23:22
foundation trust the data sources, right?
23:25
If you've had data, who's who's going to trust your your AI on
23:29
that front. So I think the combination of,
23:32
you know, you can get a work with one vendor that can bring
23:36
all of those things together and do it much more effectively,
23:40
much more efficiently and at a reduced cost is certainly an
23:43
enabler. And I think us hitching our size
23:47
of Microsoft dozens of years ago has certainly helped.
23:53
Yeah. I'm curious because of your
23:56
experience in the industry and also just the the great breadth
23:59
of customers you've got, you know, where you see kind of UI
24:03
going for AI, which is to say right now we're in a spot where
24:07
there's like a little sparkly button.
24:09
You know, it's like, oh, try the AI feature and it like it puts
24:12
like a glowing rectangle around whatever you're doing.
24:15
And now it's AII have this kind of core belief right now that
24:19
that's going to change and that ultimately what I want out of UI
24:24
is 1 button to solve my problems.
24:27
I don't want to have to type anything that's annoying.
24:30
And I want the AI just to kind of work like magic.
24:33
It doesn't need to announce it to the world.
24:35
You know what I mean? It just just give me what I
24:36
want. So when you're seeing successful
24:39
products being developed right now with AI, am I way off base
24:42
here or or maybe a better question is like, how are people
24:46
doing it? Well, simplicity.
24:49
Certainly I I think that is that is key.
24:52
Less verbosity, too much, right too much text, right.
24:56
Keep it simple. No one like it's hard to read
25:01
long emails. Why would I want to read a long
25:03
prompt response, right? Keep it keep it brief.
25:07
Let's keep that going. So I think you're spot on there,
25:10
Ryan. Success is there and frankly, it
25:13
comes to accuracy and being able to do that sustainably over time
25:19
is challenging because if you think about it from like a, a
25:23
quality engineering perspective, right?
25:25
Used to be that you write an application, you send it off for
25:29
quality testing or maybe you know, your, your full set
25:32
development where team was doing that.
25:34
If you know, you're running really lean and mean, right, and
25:38
you're coming out and you know, now you can ship it.
25:42
Well, now you got this back end program that's kind of silly
25:45
shifting its versions, right? And the parameters of of what
25:49
the LLM was really good at six months ago has just changed.
25:53
And you know, is it, is it still solving the business problems
25:57
the exact same ways that you wanted it to previously solve
26:00
it? Those things are real problems,
26:03
right? And and that's what the case is.
26:05
So now you have to actually think about the quality of the
26:07
back end constantly and measuring those successes around
26:10
as well. So making sure that your
26:12
business outcome still still valid even though the back end
26:15
changed. Yeah, and I think of the way
26:18
that I, you know, am engaging with these tools and I say that
26:24
I, the typing is annoying, but I still prefer it.
26:27
Like I think, you know, GPT like, blew up because it's so
26:31
simple and you just chat with it.
26:33
But now there's opportunities that you can upload pictures,
26:37
you know, and use that as kind of like a data input, or you can
26:40
turn your microphone on, which then speech to text and then you
26:43
submit the text. Or you could just have a
26:45
conversation with it and it'll just straight up talk to you.
26:47
Like how, how about how are you using it?
26:50
Are you still doing mostly chat like?
26:52
Typing I'm I'm mostly a type person.
26:55
I think it's because we're in in so many meetings during the day
26:58
and I talk a lot. I just don't want to talk
27:00
anymore. So like I, I was really
27:04
impressed. I, I remember when they first
27:06
launched that feature and ChatGPT of communicating and I
27:09
had had a nice long conversation with it one night and then my
27:14
wife's like, stop talking that thing and stop talking.
27:19
At that point I decided to put it up and have more
27:23
conversations. Yeah, it is off putting though,
27:27
right a little bit. There's something about it.
27:29
I, I mean, I, if I'm feeling up to it, if I have a long drive or
27:33
something, I like to just have conversations.
27:36
So I'll be like, you know, tell me the story of the Cheyenne
27:40
that lived in Confluence Park area of Denver, Co through the
27:45
lens of a prospector that's getting ready to go mining for
27:50
gold, you know, and it, and you can, you know, have this like
27:54
great story. But when I you did that one
27:57
specifically, the lady was like, oh, that's cool.
28:01
Yeah. Let me tell you a story.
28:02
And I was like, stop, stop, stop, stop.
28:03
Hey, bring the SAS down. Like, give this to me like
28:07
Malcolm Gladwell or something. Like I I don't want to have like
28:10
attitude. What are you?
28:13
Well, my, my, I, I haven't personally used it for telling
28:18
stories to me, but I think that's a good use.
28:20
Like my kids do use it for that. So they, they like to have
28:26
stories about whatever they want to hear about in the morning.
28:28
And we have the, the preview feature is that they have on
28:34
Alexa that has better AI assistance and you know, it
28:38
tells a great story. You know, it talks about Marty
28:40
McFly or whatever. Only 5 year old wants a year so.
28:43
Yeah, yeah. And my kids do the same.
28:45
They're they've always used speech to text, so they don't
28:49
have a little bit. I think there's like a privacy
28:51
thing that I'm worried about. Also to your point, I do a lot
28:53
of talking. So I like kind of like the
28:56
solitude and the the quiet. But also, yeah, my prompts are
29:00
so weird. Like, you don't want someone
29:01
overhearing you asking and talking about the Cheyenne and
29:05
some prospector, you know what I mean?
29:06
I'm kind of like embarrassed. So like, the prompts will be
29:09
like all down here, you know? True.
29:11
True, right. Yep, absolutely.
29:13
Yeah. You know, I think that we'll
29:15
we'll probably end up in a state where it's it's hybrid and you
29:19
know, when memory even gets even more better, right, it's going
29:21
to be able to pick back up on it.
29:23
And, you know, right now it feels like I'm having all these
29:26
kind of separate chats and, you know, sometimes get a different,
29:30
different person on the other side, right?
29:31
I don't know what your chat is. So when it feels more
29:34
consistent, maybe it'll end up having more trust with that
29:38
persona that's on the other side.
29:39
So. Yeah, yeah.
29:41
It's like the the voice of Siri changed on my phone for some
29:44
reason and I just got such, so less patient with Siri.
29:48
I was like, who's this new Siri? See.
29:52
Seems more pushy on me. Amazing.
29:57
You know, somebody told me once when they're doing diligence on
30:00
a company like the 10 year and longevity of the the management
30:05
of the company is something that they look really heavily at.
30:07
Now. You guys over at Pro Arc have a
30:10
lot of veterans that have been with the company for a long
30:13
time. What is it about Pro Arc, the
30:15
culture or the the work itself that seems to to keep you guys
30:20
around for so long? Well, I can, I can really kind
30:24
of speak to myself and on that. But I've grown with the company
30:28
18 years. And what I really like is the
30:32
fact that I have opportunity. I'm a funny object type person.
30:38
As soon as something comes out, I'm not probably that I won't go
30:40
deep into it. It doesn't mean I want to stay
30:43
there. And so I've always had the
30:45
opportunity, a priority of all of myself, work on new
30:49
technology, go deep. You're really good at it for
30:52
them be able to hand it off to others.
30:54
And I like I like that I can it's opportunity to try new
30:59
things. So it may turn out that, hey, I
31:01
don't really like doing this right, but at least I gave it a
31:03
shot. But that's what I always tell
31:04
everyone joins pro Orc is right. If you love learning, you'll be
31:08
a pro ORC a long time because we are constantly learning
31:11
something new. It takes a lot to stay up from a
31:13
Microsoft relationship certifications, right?
31:17
Our team members council, having to do new things.
31:21
Would you like to sing to poor crowd already?
31:23
So that's important for us. And I think that's allowed us to
31:28
have a lot of successes in that space.
31:30
And by having leadership that embraces those same things, that
31:33
change is good, change can help, right?
31:37
It's allowed us to grow and continue with success.
31:43
In addition to kind of managing A-Team, you're also very hands
31:46
on personally, yes. Yep, Yeah, cool.
31:49
I've had 12 different roles. I've had, you know, 150 people
31:55
underneath me. I've had roles where I've had
31:57
one person underneath me. It's it's you know, I've been an
32:00
individual contributor numerous different instances, pro arts
32:05
where I get my start in cybersecurity and, you know, got
32:09
my start and work more regulated industries.
32:11
Up to that point, I've been working and building
32:17
applications or I work in public education or I, I was
32:21
entrepreneur myself or so those are all things that you know, I
32:25
learned from. But then I realized, hey, I
32:27
really like change or like doing good things and if I'm at home
32:31
pretty good or not. Well, and then do you guys have
32:34
a big HQ? Are you dispersed?
32:37
We're a remote work. We do have, we do have offices,
32:40
but I've had a remote location and you know most of our
32:45
employees there as well. Cool.
32:47
All right. I want to do something,
32:49
something new and special here. So I've got these cards.
32:52
I think I got these like four or five years ago.
32:54
And I, you know, I was going through a box.
32:55
I was like, oh, yeah, those things.
32:57
And what they are is they're they're biases and logical
33:01
fallacies. So what I'm looking for here is
33:04
some honesty. Ben.
33:05
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34:24
Right, I want. I want you to do some self
34:27
reflection from your direct reports how they would answer
34:30
this about you. OK, OK, so the first one we have
34:34
is in Group bias. This is you.
34:37
You unfairly favor those who belong to your group.
34:41
What's the group? Oh car.
34:45
Enthusiasts. You an F1 guy?
34:48
I. I like F1, yeah.
34:51
I honestly don't watch as much as I really want to, but yeah, I
34:55
do like watching F1. I I watch the recaps.
34:58
Yeah, It's cool. They're opening this like F1
35:02
Cafe or something like that in Denver.
35:04
And it's basically like a really, like, beautiful hit bar,
35:09
you know? And then it has like, I think
35:11
like a dozen F1 simulator. So you can go there and, like,
35:14
race your friends, you know, Awesome.
35:16
And yeah, it seems really fun. But I think seems like a really
35:20
smart way to market the F1. Like F1 seems like it's growing
35:24
like very quickly. I was like, this is like a
35:26
really smart idea to get people into it, particularly women, you
35:30
know? Yeah.
35:32
I mean, you know, a bunch of handsome guys driving around
35:35
cars really fast. I think it's all right.
35:38
They'll get bases everywhere, right?
35:40
Yeah. 100% So your car guy, what's your favorite car?
35:43
I mean, you kind of. Oh well.
35:45
My, my personal favorite is probably the car that I drive
35:48
on. I I teach people to drive on
35:51
race tracks, so I do high performance driver education
35:55
instruction and I personally drive our BMW 330.
36:02
Nice. You're a racing instructor.
36:04
Yes, ma'am. That's amazing.
36:06
How did where did that come from?
36:08
Were you like a hot rod guy in high school or something?
36:10
I always love cars. I.
36:11
Really, cars were kind of a passion, a hobby.
36:15
I got introduced through buying a car.
36:18
I bought a car from an instructor back in 20, the year
36:23
2000 and I never took it for a number of years.
36:27
And then I had a mechanical problem I brought, so I got to
36:29
fix it and it turns out he wears the head of the Northeast Audi
36:33
Quattro Club and invited me down and I've joined.
36:36
And then I got addicted, ran out.
36:39
Yep, seems. Dangerous.
36:41
And by dangerous I mean expensive, yes.
36:43
Yes, yes, you have. All those things you ever
36:48
wrecked a car? I have.
36:50
I've kissed a wall before. So amazing.
36:56
OK, I'm going to try and find a logical fallacy that was too
37:03
complicated for me. OK, Making what could be called
37:06
an appeal to purity as a way to dismiss relevant criticisms or
37:12
flaws in an argument. It's quite a mouthful.
37:16
This is called no true Scotsman. Making what could be called
37:19
appeal to purity. I'm not even sure I'll follow
37:24
that. What's the question?
37:27
I have to go back to the logical fallacies.
37:29
It was too complicated. I'm like, read it again and be
37:31
like, Oh my gosh, I do this. Oh, no, OK, how about this, the
37:37
backfire effect. When your core beliefs are
37:40
challenged, it can cause you to believe them more strongly.
37:48
I don't think I'm abide by that. If someone like offended your
37:56
car or it was like your car, whatever.
37:59
You know what? For me it's best best idea in a
38:01
room lens. If you can prove it otherwise,
38:03
go for it. Yeah, yeah.
38:06
Is that, I mean, that's very scientific of you.
38:10
Well, I've spent a lot of time in some great debates with with
38:14
some very smart people. And you know, you're never the
38:18
smartest person in the room. There's there's always someone
38:20
who has you can add some context in there.
38:22
Yeah. Frankly, that's a great use
38:23
Spray. Yeah, right.
38:24
It is balance, balance out my thoughts, right, Because I can
38:27
go One Direction too far, right. And you personally might know
38:30
what that is and you know, you can help me kind of get a
38:33
different view on this. Yeah, that's a really good
38:36
point. Like I've got a guy, good buddy
38:39
of mine, known him for 20 years and I feel like we're very
38:43
aligned politically. I'm not a very political guy.
38:45
I just don't. I like business and sports
38:49
hunting and stuff, but so if something, if there's an issue
38:53
that comes up, particularly locally here in Denver or
38:55
something, I'll call him up and be like, hey, how do we feel
38:57
about this, you know, and he'll let me know how we feel.
39:02
I'm like, OK, yeah, that makes sense, you know, and.
39:04
Now you can either decide if you want to join the board meeting
39:07
or, you know, on the street and pick it or whatever you got to
39:10
do, right? Yeah.
39:11
These kind of habits, though, usually come from having good
39:14
outcomes. You know, it's like, OK, you
39:15
trust a guy, they or you, you trust in a process.
39:18
And so like then you can kind of default to the best idea.
39:21
How would you kind of like, how would you kind of protect that?
39:25
Because it is like these biases are interesting because they're
39:28
kind of baked into us, you know, and you see that politically a
39:32
lot. If someone like comes after your
39:33
guy, suddenly you're you're so pro your guy and you hate them
39:36
and and this kind of thing. It's never been a big thing for
39:40
me. But like, how do you kind of
39:42
stay true? Or better question would be like
39:45
someone has a better idea than you.
39:46
Like how do you concede the point?
39:49
Graciously. And I think it's that can be
39:55
challenging, especially if you feel like you're invested in it
39:57
or you spend a lot of time in that in, in whatever the topic
40:01
is. But at the end of the day,
40:05
especially, I think it's easier in business personally.
40:08
And I think it's hard sometimes, but in business, right, you're
40:12
there to solve the problem or come up with a solution that
40:16
that is in the best interest of the customer.
40:20
And so therefore it really can't be a personal thing, right?
40:23
It's about team building trust. So when I would run teens,
40:28
right, it's about building those that trust between them, right,
40:32
people, people, confrontations fine, Like it's a good skill to
40:35
have and be able to confront someone.
40:38
You know, when you feel, you know, emotion, right, you should
40:41
take some sort of action based off of that emotion.
40:44
But you know, whether it's tempering it down because you
40:47
feel too angry or or, you know, saying that you want to go do
40:50
something else. So, you know, certainly trust is
40:54
big, right? If you can feel like you can
40:56
trust your team to to be behind you regardless on that, that's
41:00
where I would start and making sure that you have a team that
41:02
can feel that way and confident that hey, everyone has a bad
41:06
idea once in a row, right? It's not uncommon.
41:12
It's OK to be wrong. I'd be interested in your kind
41:15
of leadership style too, because the, the folks that always kind
41:18
of inspired me from a leadership perspective of kind of a yes and
41:21
energy. So you're, you're trying to
41:23
gather, you know, multiple opinions about what you know,
41:26
best next steps are. And if there's conflicting
41:28
ideas, it's a, it doesn't need to be adversarial.
41:31
It's like, yes and yes, and, and this is an experiment which
41:35
we're going to go, you know, put an epic around so that we, we
41:39
have a ways to, you know, demonstrate if it was successful
41:42
or not, but try not to marry that to the person whose idea
41:46
what you know what I mean? Like so even like a unsuccessful
41:49
experiment is still a success. Yeah, 100%, yeah.
41:53
I'll give you the racing analogy to that, right?
41:55
If you're going around the racetrack, there's lots of
41:57
different lines to go. Some lines are going to be
42:00
better than others. And until you have vast
42:04
experience on that single racetrack, you might ride with
42:07
someone. And I have a regular students
42:09
that go around a certain section and I might have 10 times the
42:13
amount of seat time that they have, but you know what they're
42:16
doing something different that improves an exit speed or
42:20
something there that I would be able to take it back myself and,
42:23
and use it right. So I think, you know, there's
42:26
something that would be learning from everyone And and you know,
42:28
you just got to counsel and refine or reiterate and, you
42:31
know, tilt to the point where it doesn't make any more financial
42:33
sense or you know, your deadline and make it done.
42:37
Nice. I love the the analogy.
42:40
Do you find there's like a fluency in in with cars or
42:45
anything else you're really into?
42:46
And I'll say it like this, like another lifetime ago, I was a
42:50
touring and recording musician and really the way I interpreted
42:53
the world was like in melody and rhythm.
42:56
And I, I like that was the language, the fluency I had.
43:00
And then I got really into jiu jitsu and like, so I started
43:03
seeing the world is like grappling and like, OK, position
43:06
and submission or retreat. Like you could start to kind of
43:10
use it as like analogous. Do you find the same thing with
43:13
cars or anything else? Definitely with cars, I mean
43:16
like eyes up, right? Eyes up is a is a very common
43:21
thing because when so once he first starts driving a race car
43:23
where they tendency to kind of look in front of them or they're
43:26
checking their dash for it or whatever it is, right?
43:28
They want to see how fast they go eyes up because you can't
43:30
make a decision about what you're going to do next unless
43:33
you're peering around that corner on there.
43:35
So yeah, I would say that we'll have a whole lot of time for
43:40
other companies out there. But I think that there is there
43:42
is some good balance with that and certainly right now.
43:46
If if we're looking broadly in business, what's eyes up, what
43:50
do you need to be looking at? Definitely on AI, definitely on
43:53
security, and keep a keep a close eye on your data at this
43:58
point. Yeah, amazing.
44:00
OK, we're entering the lightning round.
44:02
Are you ready, Ben? I'm ready.
44:03
Let's go. All right, let's say you're
44:06
entering college as a freshman right now, knowing what you know
44:10
about the future, what do you study?
44:13
Data science still I, I think that there's, there's
44:18
foundational interviews there. Once you kind of understand that
44:21
data of where it can go, because you should, you still have to
44:24
bring all this stuff together. We live in a world of
44:26
information and like there you have to be able to try to do
44:30
these things together. We need some core skills to be
44:33
able to extract that data and put it into different systems.
44:36
And then certainly, I mean, I'd say you even need to be learning
44:42
outside of some of those things and building some personal
44:45
skills as well. But those are those are key
44:47
parts and have a job that lets you talk.
44:50
That's being a fraternity while you're.
44:52
Going to school? Absolutely, yeah, My daughter,
44:56
she's a freshman in college and she was just telling me she
44:58
joined a sorority a lot a week ago and she's like, Dad, I have
45:02
I have a 40 hours I have to commit to this float we're
45:05
building. I was like, yeah, well, welcome
45:07
to the club. I.
45:11
Also like a sales job, sales jobs require a lot of patience,
45:15
a lot of rejection. You know they'll teach you to be
45:17
strong entrepreneurs or business team member.
45:22
Totally agree. If we're talking about groups
45:24
that I prefer, people that come from retail and food service
45:28
backgrounds, you know, aisle with a smile, you know?
45:33
That, that is a tough skill. That's a tough.
45:36
Skill for sure. The audience of this podcast
45:40
here love business ideas. So if your only mission was to
45:43
earn 1,000,000 bucks, what business would you start?
45:47
Oh. 1,000,000 bucks. I would say my interest would be
45:58
on helping an organization. I do think that there's a lot of
46:02
stuff with AI, but I also think that people are fundamentally
46:07
getting the early stages of change management that is
46:11
required in the business to adopt AI.
46:14
They're doing it wrong and they're not doing it well, and
46:17
they don't have that change management side of it.
46:19
So I'd build a practice on helping organizations do better
46:22
change management. I love that now everybody wants
46:26
to be an AI consultant and and build agentic things and build
46:31
and build and build, but nobody's talked about like the
46:34
change management component of like, OK, all the AI stuff is
46:37
great, but what about the people left to run it?
46:41
There's people still need to run it, right?
46:44
Go back to what you said earlier, right?
46:46
Yeah. It's not going to take your job.
46:47
It's going to augment it in my opinion.
46:49
But it's going to take this mundane task, but you have to
46:53
figure out what it is or someone has to help you get to the point
46:56
of being able to figure out what it is.
46:58
So I like, I think change management to baking a slim
47:02
piece of where we are at. I totally agree.
47:05
It's I adapt and do things pivot on a dime all the time, dramatic
47:13
ways, but I'm probably kind of a weirdo.
47:16
I think most people like it's scary and change is really hard
47:19
and they don't they don't like it.
47:21
You know, I, my mother-in-law worked in change manner for, for
47:26
a long time and I would just hear these horror stories
47:28
because you start to think particularly, I think if you're
47:33
fluent with the tools you're comfortable with, like digging
47:36
in, you like to get your hands dirty.
47:37
You want to tinker around a bit and find the parameters.
47:40
But if you're not, you know, people get freaked out.
47:44
And it really does take kind of a steady hand to help people get
47:47
to the point because what's the point of, you know, having
47:50
agentic support for your team if they don't use it?
47:54
And I think another big piece of change management is the people
47:58
about, I mean, and whether or not they are choosing to well or
48:02
ignore the communication or the the news, right?
48:05
But we're all just inundated with so much information.
48:09
How do you pick out what's relevant and right change is
48:12
communicated, but you got to find the right mechanisms to
48:16
communicate with your entire team base here when you're
48:20
talking for a larger business. But that's hard to to get that
48:25
and but once you can figure that out and you could get some
48:28
adoption going, that's where I think some real big game
48:31
changers could be. If you could live in any
48:36
historical era except for now or the future, what would it be?
48:47
I think it would be really interesting to be, you know,
48:52
early America on some of the frontier stuff.
48:55
You know, I can't really kind of imagine what it would be like
48:58
thinking out like Boston, but in the early 1700s or late 1600s.
49:05
I imagine it was probably pretty, pretty wild and scary.
49:08
Or are they even fun to check it out?
49:11
So cool. It seems it's always seemed like
49:14
kind of smelly to me, you know, like thinking about it, you
49:19
know? Oh, I'm.
49:19
Sure it was, but less smelly than like a place like London
49:24
during the same time, right? Well, yeah, I know it is.
49:27
In my mind's eye, it's Gray and dark and smelly.
49:33
Amazing. I got a couple more here.
49:36
Let's go back to the the bias one.
49:38
Here's one, here's a good one. So the placebo effect, you, if
49:43
you believe you're taking medicine, it can sometimes work
49:47
even if you know it's fake. What's your placebo?
49:57
Driving fast for my. Wife definitely will will give
50:01
me to do anything so. Nice, this has been awesome.
50:06
Hey, what do you think of electric cars being a car guy?
50:10
I think that they have a place. I think that personally, from a
50:15
racetrack perspective, not quite there yet.
50:18
I'm not completely bought in, but I do think that they have a
50:22
lot of great technology out there.
50:23
I think that they're, you know, it's good to have have a mix of
50:26
stuff out there. I'm interested to see kind of
50:29
where they're going with more hybrid technology.
50:31
I think that's be a big push for a little bit.
50:36
Once they figure out a better battery system that gets a
50:39
really much farther, I think that will maybe revisit electric
50:42
cars in 10 years and may have a completely different opinion on
50:45
that. Yeah, You know, I think
50:47
ultimately I, I, I kind of consider myself an aspiring car
50:51
guy, but you know, I'd like a like a 72 like Chevy pickup.
50:56
I've had my eye on some of those, but I just can't really
51:00
justify it. So I, I'm really hoping that
51:02
next couple of years, you know, we have Waymo subscriptions that
51:06
are 30 bucks a month and I can drive wherever I need to go.
51:09
So then my vehicle would be like something I love and cherish.
51:12
You know, I think I think that could be really cool for for
51:16
kind of classic or automotive enthusiast in general.
51:20
Is that like just the the basic daily transport is just kind of
51:24
taken out of your hands or, you know, maybe it's a revenue
51:28
opportunity. You can have six cars just
51:30
driving people around out there. But maybe I'm just trying to
51:33
rationalize buying a classic car.
51:37
Well, everyone. 'S go ahead and to bring a
51:39
trailer right now, I think so I had to go find that car of their
51:42
dreams. But no, I like that idea.
51:44
I think, you know, Waymo's, I loved it, right?
51:48
San Francisco, I'm heading back there in November.
51:51
Can't wait to Waymo around the city again like I did this past
51:55
spring. I think it was a great
51:56
experience. You know, I'm happy Never ever
52:00
be in another Uber again. Like I'm OK with that.
52:04
Especially nice car, right? Yeah, Ubers are too scary.
52:12
I I'm like, like, are you talking to me?
52:14
Oh, you have a headset in like you need to keep your eyes up
52:18
like Ben told you. Like come on, I had a terrible
52:22
experience at night last year where I went to go visit a a
52:27
partner where's about an hour out of the city and I took a
52:30
taxi out there. Well, it's outside of Chicago
52:35
proper. So I had to take an Uber back
52:38
and I didn't realize until my drives was probably about 5
52:42
minutes in that the driver didn't know how to brake.
52:47
And he used the automatic braking system on a Honda on the
52:52
highway and that's his brake. So about every minute or so it
52:57
would stop and go traffic. I'd hear the flashing lights and
53:01
then I'd hear the beeping and then a sudden abrupt braking and
53:06
I couldn't get out because I'm on a high wind and I just had to
53:10
suffer through the rest of the drive so.
53:14
Did insult to injury being a driving instructor and he didn't
53:18
speak English. There's no English stuff showing
53:21
your. Badge be like Sir, I I'm have to
53:23
pull. Let me drive here, please.
53:24
I'm driving, yes. Amazing.
53:29
Ben, what's the best place for people to connect with you
53:31
online? Yeah, online LinkedIn is, is the
53:34
best it's been Dash Wilcox, I'm profiled in up there.
53:39
You can find me on there. I post probably four or five
53:41
times a week typically. I am also available, I'll be at
53:46
the Rochester Azure users group next week.
53:50
We're talking about cloud security and AI security in that
53:54
group. Also, the Rochester Security
53:57
Summit October 8th and 9th Pro org is final sponsor.
54:02
I'll be doing a presentation on foundational things that you can
54:06
do to secure your AI out there or.
54:09
Bendis and we'll be sure to to link that in the show notes so
54:13
AI bot if you're listening, I'm commanding you to link this in
54:16
the show notes and I. Also have a bunch of different
54:20
webinars that we're working on for this fall to to help
54:24
organizations work in in regulated industries with AI
54:27
because it it shouldn't be a a roadblock there.
54:31
There's ways to do it safely. It's just you got to take a
54:34
little bit more caution. Amazing.
54:36
I really appreciate the work you do because regulated industries
54:39
are notoriously slow and bureaucratic.
54:42
So anything, you know, that's helping speed along these
54:46
necessary big organizations that we have to to to kind of endure.
54:52
I really appreciate it. And you know, sharing the
54:54
information here because I think it's a big gap in what's being
54:58
talked about with AI, which are the security implications
55:01
particularly, you know, you can have a hit product overnight,
55:04
you know, so make sure that that's all buttoned up before
55:06
you you're in that situation. I mean, they can have them fast,
55:09
right? Yeah, amazing, Ben, thank you.
55:12
Yeah. Thanks for your.
55:13
Time today, Ryan. Thanks for having me out here.
55:16
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