[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam, welcome to Power CEOs. The truth behind the business. I'm your host, Jen Gode, entrepreneur, investor, and business strategist. Why are we here? Because iron sharpens iron. And when we bring industry leaders, disruptors, and investors to share what's working and maybe some of what's not, we all learn and grow. As a result, our businesses grow with a ripple effect, impacting not only ourselves, our teams and their families, but also our communities and our world.
Today, we're diving into mastering the mental game of leadership in a world where high performance is expected 24. 7. The brain, not the business plan, is often what determines success as opposed to failure. Your brain is your most valuable asset as a CEO, but for most executives, it's also the most neglected. What if burnout, fog and short tempers weren't character flaws, but they're actually biological feedback from a brain that's on fire? Today we're going to go straight into that control center, the CEO brain, with Dr. Ryan Williamson. He is a board certified neurologist, Navy vet, and the founder of Transcend Health. Dr. Ryan specializes in helping high performers to sharpen their cognitive edge and extend their brain's lifespan. This conversation might just change the way you lead. Dr. Williamson, thank you for joining us and welcome to Power CEOs.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: No, thank you, Jen. I'm so happy to be here.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Okay, so let's dive into this silent killer of executive performance, neuroinflammation. You say that that's one of the biggest threats to executive function, but most CEOs haven't even heard of it. What is it and what are the warning signs?
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Well, I'd like to frame this problem a little bit broader than even neuroinflammation, and that's just general inflammation in the body.
And one of the most alarming statistics that I've read in the last decade is that 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. And what that means is that we don't have optimal levels of blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, fats in our bloodstream, or an abdominal circumference.
And if you get three or more of those, you have something called metabolic syndrome. And that is a major driver to insulin resistance to the development of chronic high blood pressure of prediabetes, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, or high cholesterol. And then that all leads to heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and so forth.
None of which we want to state the obvious.
However, before we get to any of that, if we were to measure the kind of low grade inflammatory markers in the body, in many of these people, they're elevated as a result of this metabolic dysfunction.
And this permeates the brain as well. And this idea of neuroinflammation, that can really happen and sort of smolder under the radar, is a performance killer. And again, when we look at how our brains and our bodies are designed to function, we're designed to operate a certain way. And if we don't respect that biology and respect how we work, things go off the rails. And when I say things go off the rails, I mean, you know, our performance suffers and we have mood changes and we don't lead effectively. And for the CEO, this is a major problem.
And to reiterate, we're not talking about some of us, we're not talking about most of us, we're talking about Everybody. I mean, 93% is darn near everybody.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: It really is. That's very frightening, actually.
And so when we talk about this, so we've got the metabolic dysfunction and we've got the inflammation that's decreasing our performance, but we also have stress.
And as an executive, as a founder, as a CEO, we have a tremendous load of stress. There's a lot of responsibility, especially with what's happening right now. We have tremendous changes and shifts in business climate, technology, all the things that we have impacting not only our business lives, but also our personal.
However, most stress hacks for the normal population, they're not the same ones that work for high achievers. So can you talk to me a little bit about why some of the stress hats that we've heard about aren't really working for those of us who are constantly in the spotlight making million dollar decisions, why aren't they working for us? And what actually does work?
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So again, I think you and I have covered this previously, but in this rate of ever increasing change and increased speed, we've got to remember that we have to slow down. And I say that because, again, everything comes back to our biology and the human body and the human brain are machines. Or maybe the brain is part of the machine, that is the body. Maybe a better way to say that. But if we do not respect those principles and those systems and how they work, we're not going to function optimally. And a very basic example of this is you wouldn't skip an oil change on your car for 100,000 miles and expect the engine to run well. Right. Or even maybe a quicker example, if you run out of gasoline and your car conks out on the side of the road and you're kicking the tires, yelling at it, going, why aren't you running, you stupid machine?
We know why not working, right? Because we're not giving it the right fuel. So we in many ways are no different. Yet for whatever reason, we just assume that we can sort of put this stuff to the side or deal with it later because we've got important million dollar business decisions and we've got people to take care of and we have things to do.
And I think that's the wrong frame or the wrong paradigm entirely. Because everything, every decision, every high stakes moment is filtered through and processed by your brain. And if your brain's not working appropriately, then the decisions are not going to be the best. And that has some serious opportunity cost. And I'm sure we've all been there, right? And in one, one way or another. So that's the problem. I just want to frame that for people first before we get into sort of what are the solutions or how do we deal with this or how do we do this.
But again, when I, when I say slow down, I really think the average CEO, at least the ones that I've worked with or come across, really need to take a serious look at their schedule and embrace the Pareto principle.
Many of you probably heard of this, but the Pareto principle is the 8020 rule, right? I'll skip the Vilfredo Pareto and the Italian citizenship and landowners. I'll skip that history lesson. But the point being, if you focus 20% of your effort on the 80% of the problems that need to be solved, that frees up a ton of cognitive bandwidth. What do I mean by cognitive bandwidth? We've got a very limited working short term memory in a very limited working memory period that we can actually focus on one thing at a time and execute our tasks at a high level. And if the other 80% of our decisions are gunked up with minutia and systems based sort of tasks that can be automated or outsourced. We could put in an AI protocol, for example, or have an assistant or a colleague or a manager or somebody take care of this for us.
If we're in the weeds and focused on those things which as founders that have vision but still can't let go of some of those things we are all guilty of. I assure you I fall in that camp, have had to learn through the school of hard knocks how to get past that.
But in all seriousness, you've got to look at what's the highest and best use of your time. And I know your listeners Know this. But if we focus on that 20% and we can delegate the other 80, that frees up the mental clarity, the bandwidth, the space to then put the practices in place that support a healthy brain and a healthy body. And we can certainly talk about those too.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I would like to dive in because one of the things that we've talked about before, and we talk about this a lot actually on the show, is minimizing distraction, turning off all of the notifications, if you will, so that we can be focused. But the reality is we have so much techno stress, we have an always on brain.
So many executives are constantly on slack zoom, they're in front of people, they're in meetings 24 7. So how is this digital load rewiring our brain and what's the cost to our decision making and performance? Because you are an expert in this space and with the neuroscience, I want to drive this home to everybody who's listening. Because the reality is we say we have to do it, but what is the cost to our high level function when we are always on.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: That's right. So there's actually some interesting data that showed even if you keep your phone in the same room, forget about being on, you can turn the notifications off, you can have it on airplane mode, but if it's in the same room, it actually lowers your performance and your iq, which insane to me. The mechanism is not entirely clear, but perhaps it's maybe the thought in the back of the mind that oh, you know, I can just grab my phone and it'll think for me, so get the phone out of the room. This one recommendation.
But in all seriousness, Jen, being able to focus on one task and being able to get past this idea of distraction, as you said, really is so paramount and so important.
And again, the more that we are exposed to the techno stress, to the multiple streams of constant information competing for our attention, you're literally rewiring your brain to have a shorter and shorter attention span. And the opportunity cost, as you said, is the inefficiency or the rewiring away from maintaining and using our highest and best functions.
The average adult attention span in our country is about 8.25 seconds. That's the latest data and the latest study, which is insane to me. And as one who's gotten into social media, not as a consumer but a producer, as I'm doing videos, when I watch the reviews with our team, it's literally the average views like 8 seconds. It's unbelievable as people are scroll, scroll, scroll. The More you do that, the more the emails come in, the more the phone calls, the quick decisions. You're basically conditioning your, basically you are conditioning your brain to make an impulse decision with limited information, with a limited amount of time.
And again back to these large important strategic level decisions that may cost seven, eight, nine figures. Plus we've got to have a longer attention span. We've got to operate from that highest and best place and again avoid this, this overload because it's stressful in the moment. But again, costs cost big money or at least there's large opportunity cost. I'll say that down the road if.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: We, if we don't absolutely that's really frightening that it's 8.2 seconds that attention span of adults. So if you're watching this, what does this mean? This means we must be very hyper vigilant about our schedule. We must task like put our time blocks in to where we can have true focus time on the most important decision.
And Dr. Ryan talked about the 8020 rule. We've talked about that before. I'm going to say there's a, there's an 8020 inside of that 20%.
And so if you're thinking about this, the highest best use is actually that 4%.
Right? That's 20 within the 20. That's where we want to be spending the bulk of our time and giving our focused attention with no distraction so we can make sure we're making the right decision faster with better information and we keep our brains high performing. We do have to take a brief break but you're not going to want to go anywhere because we are back with Dr. Ryan after to really dive into training your brain like a peak performing athlete. Because in business mental stamina is the ultimate strategic edge. We'll be right back.
Welcome Back to Power CEOs want more of what you're watching? Stay connected to power CEOs and your favorite now media TV shows. Live or on demand, anytime, anywhere. Download the Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish on the move. Check the podcast version on our website at www.nowmedia.tv. from business and news to lifestyle, culture and the and NOW Media is streaming around the clock. Ready when you are. Okay, we're going to dive right back in because if you want your business to perform at the next level, you as a founder, as an executive must perform at the next level. Period. End of story. Your brain is trainable. Most executives are still using default settings.
So we're here with Dr. Ryan Williamson, he is neurologist, founder of Transcend Health. We're going to get tactical. What does it mean to optimize your executive function, to extend your cognitive prime and to turn your body into a superconductor for your business brain?
Dr. Ryan, there's a lot of hype around biohacking. What's real and relevant for entrepreneurs, what really works? When we talk about biohacking our brains.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: I just detest that word for what it's worth.
The reason I don't like it is because I think it gets overused. And unfortunately there are people that I have observed in the space that kind of use it as a mantra or maybe a way or platform to sell an idea or a product that is not evidence based or that doesn't work. So for what that's worth. So I don't really believe in shortcuts. I believe in permanent sustainable habits that can transform our health. And that's the paradigm that I operate from based on what the medical science tells us.
However, if I can use the biohacking word just as much as it makes me feel prickly, if there's one that I really like, it would be a supplement. And it's a supplement perhaps some of your audience has heard of, but that would be creatine monohydrate. Now, for those of us that come from the physical performance space, I know you and your physical therapy background, surely you've used creatine with athletes for decades. We know how effective this is for muscle building and strength.
However, in the last five to 10 years there have been some amazing studies that have looked at the performance and increased improvement of cognitive function with an appropriate dose of creatine monohydrate. And in fact actually just read a recent article that showed a different form of creatine is creatine hydrochloride. I believe that actually crosses the blood brain barrier, at least in women in postmenopausal women in particular, at a lower dose. But we'll table that. So let's just stick with monohydrate because we know this works. One of the most effective studied molecules, but somewhere between 5 and 10 grams a day, as long as it's a verified purified, third party tested source. So you gotta be careful with these because again, no supplements, FDA tested or approved. So please vet that. But can be a major performance enhancer.
I personally do 5 grams twice a day, split it up morning and night, limited data for doing it twice a day versus once a day. But I and many people that I work with have noticed a real improvement in their cognitive edge with just that simple supplementation. There's a hack for you. As much as I don't want to say that word.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate it and you know, it's really funny because we have in the sports performance world that has been a go to for us, especially from a recovery standpoint and performance. But it's really important folks. If you're not, if you're not taking care of and setting yourself up for success and you're not giving a brain everything that it needs in order to function, then all the training in the world isn't going to help us. So we talked about metabolic dysfunction earlier and how that creates inflammation in the body and also neuroinflammation and impacts our brain health. But can we talk about optimization, metabolic optimization and brain health for long term leadership? What strategies do you have that can extend not only just our current function, but also really help us with our peak performance band?
[00:16:43] Speaker B: We sure can. I mean, again, there are multiple pillars we can discuss here, but movement is perhaps the most key of all of these. And I say movement because I think the E word exercise unfortunately gets a lot of negative resistance and unnecessary resistance attached to it. When people hear it and they go, oh yeah, I know I need to do more of that, but I'm not a gym person or I hate running or you know, insert excuse here, then it doesn't get done. Well, what if I told you that for just six minutes a day, right? This, this could cut your risk of dying of anything by about 40%. Is that something you would consider?
Most people would say yes. And if you don't have six minutes in your day, then you really need to work on that age when you roll or the 4%, the 20%, because we've all got six minutes and you don't even have to do it six minutes at once. This is two minutes three times a day. And what I'm talking about are something called an exercise snack. And exercise snacks are just a very brief high intensity exercise. I mean, so you could do jumping jacks, high knees, run in place, mountain climbers, push ups, wall sits, whatever, stairs, if you have stairs. But Jen, if people do this three times a day for two minutes and especially if that's around meals, so it helps lower blood sugar spikes. And again, as I mentioned, this, this lowers your risk of dying by anything by about 40%, 38% depending on the study. So this is a massively powerful quick intervention for again, just six minutes a day or two minutes three times A day. That's easy. Now, there are dedicated types of exercise that people can do and resistance training is a very important one. Because when we look at our cognitive health and our age, strength is also an independent predictor of lowered all cause mortality or that risk of dying of anything as we get older.
This is, strangely enough, is measured by hand grip strength. So you know, people that squeeze the little, I forget what the hand grip device is called, but you know, people don't need to go buy one and worry about that. But to me, what hand grip strength is an indicator of, it's a reflection of what work have you been doing. And so people that tend to have stronger grips, you know, are doing things like lat pull downs or rows or curls. They can do push ups, you know, squats, deadlifts, things like this where they've got to pick up and move weight. And again, when we look at this might sound funny, you think, well, how in the world strength muscles, does that really matter for my brain? Yeah, turns out it does. Because back to that metabolic health. Your muscles are your largest reservoir for glucose or sugar. So again we take in that meal instead of that blood sugar spiking. Again, if your muscles are hungry and they're conditioned, they want to store that sugar as glycogen for a future date to do that work.
Because glucose is actually a preferred fuel for the brain. So we can make it new in the liver, we can release it more from the muscles to get across the blood brain barrier to do some of that work. And we maintain steady blood glucose levels. Over time we have increased strength. Those independently help with our metabolic function in our long term cognitive health. Not to mention there's a whole class of signaling molecules called myokines. So think like myo for muscle. And then cytokines or signaling molecules merge those together, those travel to the brain and increase the circulating levels of certain types of signaling molecules like BDNF and nerve growth factor that help. It's like fertilizer for your brain. So back to that neuroplasticity, that synaptic growth, enhanced memory, lowered inflammation.
I mean, the list goes on. And again, we can dive into cardiovascular training or even high intensity interval training. Those all matter too, but just a basic resistance program and just basic exercise snacks.
Those are easy places for people to start. And I'll tell you what, I'll give you one more because this is easy. I don't have a chair in my office because I like to stand. And when we stand, we actually burn about 50 more calories an hour than if we were to sit just by contracting anti gravity muscles. And so if people think about integrating intentional movement into their day, you don't have to go out and buy a standing desk if that's not an option. But we talked about ultradian rhythms, I think on a different show at a different time. But that's this 90 minute question. Focus, block and before people really need to push away and take a quick break from what they're doing. But that's a perfect time to go move and you get outside, go walk around, get some fresh air, or instead of sitting in a conference room, take a walking meeting. You know, bring your phone or your little earbuds with you, walk, get a meeting done or do a zoom call that way. And again, many of your audience may have heard of the 10,000 steps a day thing, right? Well, also that lowers your chance of dying of anything by almost 40%. So I mean, there are multiple ways to get at this. And if you integrate multiple of these, again, you're increasing your muscle mass and training and strength, you're increasing that myokine release, you're buffering blood glucose, you're improving metabolic health. All of that pays massive dividends for your longevity, your brain health, your focus, your performance and everything you need to do your job.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Wow, Dr. Williamson, that was tremendous. Folks, if you're watching this, you just got really advice from the expert. Move your body.
It does a body and a brain good. It enhances our decision making, focus, our executive function and helps us with everything from our basic health all the way through our cognitive function. So this has been incredible. Where can people learn more about your work at Transcend Health and about your book, the Incredible Brain?
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Yes. So our website, transcendhealthgroup.com is the easiest place to find out about everything we do.
There's a link for my book the Incredible Brain, which I'm very proud to say hit bestseller last month at launch, which was amazing. Had some positive reception from everybody that's read it, which has been great. That's on Amazon. But again, the link to the books on the website as well as well as our Instagram, our Facebook, all social media, it's all there.
And again, for those that are interested, I mean, I do group in private executive coaching, which is where a lot of this feedback that I've had has come from my clients. And it's just, it's amazing, Jen, to watch people transform from a struggling, fragmented, mentally, I guess, stressed individual to an even higher performing, improved, bottom line, better health, showing up better for their family. I mean, it just, it's a, it's an absolute privilege to watch this unfold in people. And it's simple. It's just a matter of putting this stuff in place and practice every day.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Absolutely. And it's really fun because, you know, as someone who coaches as well, it's the stuff that we know we need to do, but we just don't do it or we haven't found a way to do it. And having a coach, folks, is really good because what it does is it holds your feet to the fire. There's an external source of accountability and a sounding board really, so that you can get to where you'll be. Thank you, Dr. Williamson, for joining us today. Your insights remind us that the most powerful investment that any leader can make isn't in their company or their portfolio. It's actually in their health and in their brain. So to our viewers, remember, the difference between burnout and breakthrough often comes down to how you're training your mind to perform under pressure. Build rest into your routine, build movement in your into your routine so that you can really feed and fuel your brain. Most importantly, protect your clarity. Like it's capital, because it is. We're making high stakes decisions. We have to have our brains optimizing. Make sure you follow Dr. Williamson.
Get his book. It's excellent. I highly recommend it. Join our group on Facebook Power CEOs. We'll put some information in there as well. Reach out to me if you have any other questions. We do have to take a brief break, but you have action steps already. It's to take your movement snacks. Build those two minute movement snacks in three times a day. Add your resistance training and make sure that you're getting your body moving so that you can take care of business. We'll be right back after these important messages.
Welcome back to power CEOs. The truth behind the Business. Before the break, we were talking about optimizing your CEO brain to be resilient and high performing in this increasingly tech dominated world. Now we're going to shift gears just slightly and talk tactically about security. In that same world, AI is rapidly changing the business landscape. Regulation and compliance have been lagging. But let me be blunt. If you're planning to get compliant later, you're already killing deals. Enterprise buyers aren't waiting. They're definitely not trusting your startup without proof. So I've brought in our next guest, Caleb Mattingly, because he is flipping the script. He's showing founders how security becomes a sales asset rather than a sunk cost. Welcome to the show, Caleb.
[00:25:45] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks a ton for having me, Jen. Really excited to be on here and talking about compliance.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I know when everybody's listening, they're like, oh, compliance, that's our least favorite thing to talk about. But what's the biggest mistake that you find that founders make in their first pitch or their first client conversation around compliance?
[00:26:06] Speaker C: So actually we found that traditionally it's even before the conversations about security compliance. It's the fact that they're not asking the questions that they need to, to know what the customer is requiring.
So oftentimes when you're a startup, you know, you're going up to your enterprise customer and you get really excited because you got a really great product that you spent a lot of time building. You bring it to the customer, you go, hey, you want to try this out? And the customer goes, yeah, I want to try that out. Give me a three month proof of concept period. And if it's working, then we'll sign a contract. And at that point they just stop asking questions, right? You're excited, you don't want to ask something that might break the deal and everything. The reality though, is that that's the perfect time to ask the customer, hey, you know, we really want this proof of concept to go well. We also really want the ensuing contract to go well. What are your security or compliance requirements that you have for any of your vendors that you work with? And that's where you hear about if they're requesting SoC2 or ISO or GDPR or HIPAA, all of those acronyms that, you know, keep founders up at night.
That's when you want to know. Because prior to getting that ensuing contract, it's usually an unpaid POC that's happening and you want to get paid, right? You don't want to get to the end of the three months and then find out, hey, you guys need to go get SoC2. And it's going to be another four and a half months before you're getting paid by that customer. Or I mean, worst case scenario, you lose the contract to somebody else, one of your competitors that already has SOC 2 in place. So right up there at the front, you know, when you're doing kind of the, the pitch and everything, and you get past that and you get the proof of concept set up, that's the perfect time to actually start asking the questions, what do you all want from us?
[00:27:47] Speaker A: You know, I couldn't agree more. And it's really important in today's climate because things are evolving rapidly. And so if you're out there and you have a great product and a great solution, but you don't know that you have competition. The reality is there's competition in everything that's being developed. And so if your competition comes to the, to the table and says, what are your compliance needs? And oh yes, by the way, we have these, you've already lost the game.
So it's really, really important. I'm glad that you brought that up. So now let's talk about the illusion of compliance, because a lot of startups say they're compliant, but they really haven't done the legwork. Like, how risky is that and what happens when that is actually the case?
[00:28:29] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question.
And it actually depends on which compliance framework it is that they are talking in gray areas on. So if it's HIPAA and gdpr, both of those don't require an audit, so they're a lot easier for somebody to tell you, yeah, we're compliant. Even though they haven't done anything or they really aren't compliant.
The ramifications, there are typically lawsuits and they're not small.
I worked with a company for a while doing security for them and actually they lost $27 million every the course of several lawsuits dealing with GDPR. So that's definitely something you don't want to lie about and you don't want to shirk on.
When it comes to SOC 2 and ISO, though, oftentimes it's deals lost.
You know, your customers actually want to see a report or a certificate or a certificate, you know, and ISOs are certification. So they want to see like proof that you actually have done it. So if you tell them like, hey, we're SOC2 or ISO compliant, they're going to come back. You know, like I said at the end of the proof of concept would be like, so where's the report? And at that point you're kind of killing the trust that you have with the customer. Right. And that's really what we've seen compliance become for startups is really a trust enabler in the sales process and also like just the relationship with your customers.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and trust is everything, especially in today's world because there's so much happening, especially in tech, SaaS, AI, there's a ton of companies out there. A lot of them we've already, we know there's blood in the water.
So it's really important if you are in that industry that you are on the up and up and you're, you're gaining that trust. And doing it in a, in a way that is full of integrity. So let's talk a little bit about on the M and I A side because I have a lot of clients as well and we do a lot of M and A work, whether it's on the acquisition or we're exiting. What role does security really play in that transaction? And have you seen valuations drop or even deals fall apart? I mean, I've seen deals fall apart over compliance and security, but have you seen that or have you seen decreased valuation because of weak compliance foundation?
[00:30:39] Speaker C: So that actually goes back to your last question too, right? If you're lying or skewing the truth about whether you're compliant with a given framework and then you go through the acquisition process, that that acquirer is going to do a ton of due diligence on your company and as they do that due diligence, they're going to find out the truth that you're really not compliant. And that creates a ton of risk for them. So 100% your valuation is going to drop when that happens.
We have seen that it also can increase valuation for customers when they have like SOC2 or ISO because it eliminates a huge process for these bigger companies.
So we had a previous customer that got acquired and in the acquisition process the acquirer did not have SoC2, but our customer had SoC2. And so in purchasing them, they actually were able to take on some of the benefits of having SoC2 right. For that one product.
And so that opened up an entirely new ballgame for their sales process.
Being able to say like, yes, this product that we have purchased is SOC 2 compliant. We can come after these enterprises that we couldn't go after before even though they were bigger. Right. Like, and that's the thing too is we're seeing some small medium sized businesses, not just startups that don't have compliance and could really use it, that are actually starting to enter the game now of going after compliance frameworks specifically because of the deal flow that it ends up unlocking for them.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Absolutely. So let's talk about that now. Whether you're a startup or small to mid size company, what are the fastest, lowest lift things that, that these businesses can implement in the next, for example, 30 days to bump up that, that compliance. You talk about minimal, minimal viable compliance. Like what does that look like realistically?
[00:32:34] Speaker C: MVC minimum viable compliance. I have to remember that. Jen.
Yeah, for, for the customers that are, for the PEEP companies in particular that are interested in doing just kind of good steps right towards, towards Becoming compliance. It really all starts with policies, which I know you mentioned earlier, people hearing compliance and kind of shuddering and then we mentioned policies. Now it's not the most exciting stuff, but it actually moves the ball significantly.
So getting your policies in place that are just talking about, you know, access control reviews or dealing with software development, lifecycle policies, or really security in general, but how it pertains to your entire organization and specifically how you deal with your customers data. Once you get that stuff in place, it makes the whole compliance piece of whether it's HIPAA, GDPR, ISO or SoC2, it makes it so much easier to get across the finish line because you have the base work laid that you can build off of.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I know it's not sexy, but it is the real deal. I mean anybody who's following, especially with the AI, the euro act and 3% of profit is at risk if you are in violation. That's a, that's a hefty chunk of change for any company, no matter where, what stage of business.
So let me, let me dive into this a little bit more because one of the things that I've been hearing in my circles and talking about a lot is developing a culture of compliance where we're thinking about it every step of the way. Because a lot of companies are now doing their digital transformations and adding AI to the mix. So we have to think about how we're obtaining data, how we're storing data, how we're utilizing it to train the models. What does that look like every step along the way? So break down the culture of compliance and how we can actually use that compliance and security as part of our sales team and sell with compliance instead of apologizing for it.
[00:34:32] Speaker C: I'll answer with a slight analogy.
You know, historically when people pick a bank, right, and the bank's trying to sell to you, they don't come up to you and go, hey, we've got the most easy to access bank in the world. You know, it's not, it's not, hey, you walk into our vault, you pick out the money that you need and you walk out and you're good to go. No, it's, we've got the thickest vault walls, we've got the, like the top, top notch security, you know, fingerprint scanning, giant wheel that you got to spin in order to, you know, break it open. Everything, it's, it's a ton of pieces that, you know, your assets are secured by. And in a similar way, what compliance does is it actually creates a similar like mindset for your customer, where it's not money that you're thinking of directly, it's customer data and as. And it's protected data, whether that's confidential or actually like your customers, pii phi, that kind stuff.
And because of that, within an organization to build like a compliance mindset or culture, as you put it, it's really important for your customers to understand what exactly it is that compliance actually like, feels like to your customer. And in that case, it's the same thing as when the bank tells you we have all these security, security pieces in place. It creates a sense of trust.
It creates a sense of security.
Now we, we tell our customers compliance does not equal security. You can be extremely compliant and still get hacked. Plenty of companies, most of the companies actually that you see that get hacked have SOC2 or ISO or HIPAA. The difference, though, is that by putting these things in place, you're protecting the data in the ways that you're supposed to internally and even, even externally a bit. But, but making sure that your com, that your company in general knows that compliance is in place. Not to be like a bunch of roadblocks and hoops you got to jump through for the sake of it, but it's in place to protect the people that you're ultimately serving in your business.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. If compliance can close deals, can it drive your exit strategy? Coming up next, Caleb is going to share how AI tooling and operations could set the stage for traction with your M and A activity. We'll be right back after these messages.
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But first, next, here's the truth. Mason let's talk about AI. We are in a AI feature.
Just Apocalypse, if you will, or Revolution. And most AI features look really sexy in a demo, but they collapse under due diligence. What if you built your tools, your traction and your tech stack for growth today and your exit tomorrow? I've got Caleb Mattingly here. He's going to talk to us all about how to do that. So, Caleb, we're seeing AI everywhere, but how do founders avoid building flashy features that just crumble when an acquirer looks under the hood.
[00:38:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question, Jen.
I think it comes down to two things. One, you never can stop talking to your customers, right? Like as you're building any kind of product, the features that you're putting out have to be applicable to your customers, right? You can build as many cool features as you want, but if your customer doesn't want them, they're not going to pay for them and they're kind of worthless to build.
Additionally, when you're building with AI tools and, or if you're building AI features, we can't neglect scanning those for security issues on a continuous basis. In the same way that when a human rights code, we still scan it for security issues, or linting as it's called. You know, we, we can't just accept what, we can't just accept what the AI is spitting out per se. As you know, essentially the tech bible, we have to go through, make sure that it's actually correct and then that it's not insecure. And oftentimes what we're finding is that with a lot of the AI tools that are coming out, with a lot of the AI features that are coming out, they're being written by AI and these companies are not doing their due diligence and going through and properly securing the code proper, properly vetting that the code itself even works correctly. So there's, there's several pieces to this that, that companies need to think about when, when building AI features in particular.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: Yeah, we're seeing that we talk, talk about that all the time across the board. Anytime you're leveraging AI, you always need to have human in the loop on the input and as well as on the output to check for accuracy. Whether we're talking about copy, but especially if we're talking about code and compliance.
So let's talk about, you know, smart, smart operations with AI. Where do you see the highest ROI for found that optimize their operations or compliance, especially for compliance and security.
Heavy industries like healthcare, legal, financial.
[00:40:46] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that the main way that even, even we've seen, you know, AI taking a big part of our business to the next level has been in document and like just information aggregation, dissemination. So taking so much information, I mean we have a lot of clients across a ton of different verticals that all have completely different environments and to context switch constantly, that's always been like very time consuming for our team. But now with the tools that we have, and specifically in using AI to just take all of that information and then be able to ask questions of it and obviously provide a source for where it's getting the information that's been able to increase speed and efficiency for our operations dramatically. And we've also seen the same thing across, like the healthcare system and finance system. So I was at a conference in Columbus a couple weeks ago and a lady was given a, a presentation on a document analyzer that they, that they built, like an AI document analyzer that they built that has actually increased speed 20% for healthcare organizations as their onboarding companies into, into their, their system.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Yes, it's so fascinating. We see it in legal as well. I've seen it with the whole discovery process of legal, how quickly they're able to sort through shift and screen whether somebody, whether a lawsuit is viable or whether, whether there's an actual case.
And it's been really interesting to watch. So I agree with you completely. I've seen a lot of speed and efficiency improvements in.
So let's talk about, let's talk about your systems and whether they can make or break your technical due diligence. Because if we're a company and we're anticipating an exit in, you know, 18 months, three years, what are the things that we need to be paying attention to under the hood so that we can actually make it through the technical due diligence process?
[00:42:59] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good, Another good question. They've all been very good questions, Jen.
I think that the main pieces to this come back to again, doing some sort of scanning and checking in your process. You know, if you're using CICD or continuous integration, continuous development, building into your pipelines, some sort of security checks, that's really important, you know, and it needs to be not just your code, but also your infrastructure.
And it's interesting because we see companies come to us pretty often that have one part of it really well kept and the other part completely ignored. Where, you know, containerization is really big right now. So maybe like the Docker containers, the container images themselves are not being scanned, but all the code is, or vice versa.
And what we're noticing more and more is that companies should be putting in place like a more holistic security implementation across both their infrastructure, their code, even people ops too. You know, how do your people get terminated? Like terminated? I know it's an uncomfortable conversation to have, right, and to be thinking about, but like, what is the checklist when you, when you terminate someone or when somebody leaves? Like, what do you do to make sure that their access is no longer Right. Like, are viable in the company. And that's something that, crazy enough, is still a really big deal with a lot of the companies that we see on a regular basis.
Because you have so many tools nowadays, right. That companies are using that it's really easy to forget to, you know, take Mark out of the system, you know, out of your CRM, because it's not connected to sso, but everything else is. And so you think, I took him out of Google Workspace, he's good to go. Or your Active Directory. I took him out of Active Directory, he's good to go. But he's still got this account over here for, you know, your CRM or your AWS account or whatnot. And that's. That's a pretty big deal. So those kind of things are things that companies should be thinking about more holistically.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: So I want to switch gears just a little bit and talk about something that you talk about. You talk about dual track discipline, dual purpose growth, building every system to scale revenue, but also to scale valuation. We've been having a lot of conversations on the show about growing your business like that, asset value.
So what's the mindset shift that founders need to make with regards to compliance and security in this conversation?
[00:45:32] Speaker C: Well, I think even before compliance and security, like, the. What you're building has to have stickiness, right? That's really important for any business that wants to grow and eventually be sold. We're seeing companies, and I was just talking with one of our customers today about lovable and how lovable came out the gate. They made a ton of money really quickly. Like, their ARR is just.
Was astronomical.
And now we're seeing a very significant drop off of all their users and what their ARR looks like as they're changing business models. But then also, like, because once somebody's built an app, they don't need to continue using the tool, right. And then you start hiring software developers and stuff, so you move off of it.
So the stickiness piece is really important when building a tool or when building a company, and in particular when it comes to compliance and security.
I think making sure that you're keeping up with all the ongoing controls is very similar. Because what we've also seen is companies will go and get compliant and then spend, you know, the next nine months not doing anything to do with compliance, and then scramble for another three months trying to get it all back together for their audit to then let it all go again. And it's, it's very similar to, I don't Know if you've heard of like go, go dieting. But like, that's like how we, what we think about it as in regards to this is Gogo. Compliance is all right, all right, we're going to get really compliant. Then we're just going to like let it go. Then we're going to get really compliant. Just let it go. And that doesn't work really well. And it frankly, it shows up in due diligence with your mergers and acquisitions. You know, people see like, okay, well why was it there nine months where you guys didn't do X, Y or Z compliance requirement? And you have to answer to that. And that's, that's a, that's an uncomfortable situation.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: So, yeah, it's a liability and they're looking at covering their downside. So if you're listening to this, Caleb has given us tons of value.
Compliance isn't a one and done. It's an iterative process. It's ongoing conversation in our business. Just like AI is an iterative process and everything else. So, Caleb, how can people reach out to you? Learn more if they're interested in learning more?
[00:47:44] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. You can reach out to
[email protected] we are actually going for longest domain name in the world, so vote for us on that.
Just kidding. But we, we definitely love when people reach out through there.
I've got a LinkedIn as well, so feel free to check that out. It should be Caleb Dash H. Dash Mattingly is the tagline line on the end of that.
Happy to answer any questions. Anybody has more than happy to like help with compliance stuff.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: So thank you so much for bringing your expertise to the show. I really appreciate you today, Caleb.
[00:48:21] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks again for having me, Jen. This is great.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: Absolutely. Compliance is not the bottleneck, it is the blueprint, folks. AI isn't your gimmick, it's your growth lever if you build it right. Founders, today's the day. Audit your claims, tighten your tech stack, build like you're already being watched. Because guess what? You are.
Even if it's somebody in the future who's going to be looking back. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, including this show. But first, action steps without action. We say the same. Pick the one thing you heard today. Whether it's fixing your compliance scenario, using it as your blueprint for growth, or it's implementing the two minute movement snacks three times a day for brain optimization, follow Dr. Ryan Williamson. Follow Caleb Mattingly so that you can move forward because it's that forward positive momentum that grows our business and creates that ripple impact.
Unfortunately, everything comes to an end. But good news is we'll be here same time, same station next week. So until then, when? Today, Win this week and I'll see you next time.
