Are you aware of the three biggest cyber threats to your business? And how to safeguard against them? Our guest today is Nathan Whittacre, who is a cyber security expert and he shares with us some of the current trends with technology including some of the good trends and some of the bad trends.
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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Nathan Whittacre, CEO of Stimulus Technologies, is not your typical tech enthusiast—he’s a visionary leader who has spent his life at the forefront of technological innovation and entrepreneurship. With a career spanning over three decades, Nathan has established himself as a trusted advisor, mentor, and thought leader in the technology field. Driven to bring technology success to all businesses, he authored, “The CEO’s Digital Survival Guide: A Practical Handbook to Navigating the Future.” As he does with his clients, Nathan guides the readers through technology solutions by telling relatable stories from both his personal and business life. When Nathan isn’t working with his clients, he enjoys spending time with his wife and 5 kids, everything outdoors, racing in triathlons and marathons, and flying his airplane.
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The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Tom DuFore (00:00):
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(01:12):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I’m wondering if you happen to know what the three biggest cyber security threats are to your business. Chances are, you might have a hunch, but are you safeguarding against them? Well, our guest today is Nathan Whittacre, who’s a cyber security expert, and he shares with us some of the current trends with technology, including some of the good and the bad trends that are happening.
(01:52):
Now, Nathan is the CEO of Stimulus Technologies who has a career spanning over three decades. During that time, he’s established himself as a trusted advisor, mentor and thought leader in the technology space. He’s written the book called The CEO’s Digital Survival Guide: A Practical Handbook for Navigating the Future. And when Nathan is not working, he loves spending time with his family and kids, enjoying the outdoors, racing in triathlons and marathons, and flying his plane. So let’s go ahead and jump into my interview with Nathan Whittacre.
Nathan Whittacre (02:24):
Yeah, it’s great to be here. Tom. My name is Nathan Whittacre. I’m the CEO of Stimulus Technologies.
Dr. Tom DuFore (02:31):
Part of the reason we wanted to have you on the show and to be talking today is really about technology, cyber security, things of this nature that are going on every day in our businesses and what we’re working with. And one of the topics that really stood out to me in preparing for our interview was this idea of building a business culture of technological excellence. And I’d love for you just to maybe start there to start expounding a little bit on that and how you might go about doing it.
Nathan Whittacre (02:58):
Sure. So one of the things you think about in business today is how much it’s changed through technology, especially over the last 100 years, and then accelerated dramatically even over the last 15 or 20 years. And business owners often think that technology is either just a cost or an impediment to their work, but technology really has changed the way that we do business and dramatically increased productivity across all sectors. Even if you think 15, 20 years ago, we were using basic cell phones, no text messaging, no internet on those devices, and how much it’s allowed, especially a small company, a small entrepreneur, individual entrepreneur, to act and be like a large enterprise.
(03:50):
The technology that we have today was only available 20, 30 years ago to large companies, large enterprises, governments with billions of dollars of budgets and now it’s accessible to us as small business owners. And so as we’re thinking about that, businesses that truly invest in technology and improving their operations, improving the way that they do business with technology are the most successful ones. They’re the ones that last through downturns, recessions, market changes, and they’re always through that idea of innovation improving their company so that they can be better and make more money, which is the goal in the end because we want higher productivity and reduced costs and more revenue and that drives dollars to the bottom line.
Dr. Tom DuFore (04:41):
Maybe you could talk through some key strategies for implementing new technologies and with as little disruption as possible. At least I know for me as an owner, when I start implementing new technologies, one of my biggest concerns is, how does this impact my staff and my team or serving my clients and customers to deliver what we want to deliver to them? And we know once we get through it’ll be better or more efficient or whatever it might be, but it’s getting through it that’s the big concern.
Nathan Whittacre (05:12):
When I often talk to business owners in longer form workshops and discussions, I go through a seven step process of effective technology implementation. And unfortunately because business owners are often very busy and we’re learning new things all the time, our way of implementing technology is often rather disruptive. We go to a conference or we talk to a colleague or friend and they say, “Oh, I’m using this tool or technology, you should do it too.” And we take it back to our companies and say, “Hey, we’re implementing this new product or tool, go do it,” or, “I’m going to do it myself.” And it leads to high disruption inside the company and often those efforts fail because you don’t achieve the return on investment quickly enough.
(05:58):
And so going through a more methodical process of identifying gaps where technology can improve operations, even if you’re, again, a small business owner, a small team, less than five people, you can look at like, what are we doing that’s wasting time or not serving our customers well? And as you’re going through a quarterly analysis or an annual review of your company, look for those things, those areas that really need improvement. And then once you’ve identified one area for improvement, you can go out to the market and say, “Okay, what technology is available to help us solve this problem?” And then you identify the priorities of the things you want to solve and also ensure as you’re going through those priorities and analyzing new vendors or new products or tools that you’re implementing in your company, making sure that you’re not eliminating something that’s going well, but that you’re being only additive to the process.
(06:58):
And that’s where a lot of new technology implementations go awry, is that, hey, it solves this problem but it causes another problem that you were unaware of. So really taking time to ask your technology provider, the people that are implementing it or the vendors that you’re buying it from, if it will solve all the things that you’re looking for and still maintain the level of effectiveness of the tools that you’re currently using. And then once you’ve gone through that process, the implementation should be methodical. Develop procedures, training for the employees and staff that are using it, retraining them again because it takes time to get it sticky enough, and then finally look back and do a post-mortem on the process and then go through it again. What’s the next cycle? What’s the next thing we can do?
(07:45):
And so it’s really a cycle of improvement. I think a lot of companies forget about the need to plan for technology as they’re looking at what they’re doing. They look at maybe I need to do this marketing effort or this new sales effort or I need to produce this new product. But all those things have a technology component and, if you’re planning for better technology inside the company, it will help you be more effective in all areas of your business.
Dr. Tom DuFore (08:12):
I know you had mentioned seven steps. Were those the seven steps you talked through or were those pieces of it? I was just curious.
Nathan Whittacre (08:18):
Yeah, it’s a summary of the seven steps. You get them more in-depth, especially when we’re talking about implementation and training and writing procedures. But it’s basically this iterative cycle of looking for new solutions, analyzing what’s going well inside your company, and finding new solutions to solve what’s not going well. Choosing the vendors, writing the documentation, going through the training and procedures, getting feedback from employees, and then looking at the whole process as a continual improvement. So those are overall the seven steps.
Dr. Tom DuFore (08:55):
In terms of thinking about business and implementing new technologies and so on, there’s always the idea of digital threats that come along, whether it’s from various forms of viruses or emails coming through, digital threats that seem all over the place. What do you think is the biggest digital threat out there and how can you effectively counter or manage this?
Nathan Whittacre (09:21):
So I look every year at the FBI statistics for cyber crime and look at where things have changed year over year. And we don’t have the statistics for 2024 yet, so best I can do is comment on 2023. And the things that I find interesting is issues that we had maybe four or five years ago that were the big topics were ransomware, which is where you get some type of virus on a computer and it encrypts all your data and they ask for a few Bitcoin to un-encrypt your data. That used to be one of the top ones and now it’s fallen down towards the bottom of the list. It still happens and it’s still very costly to businesses, but it isn’t our top priority because all the things that are causing, the root cause of loss to cyber crime, really involve around three major things. And really I can resolve it down to one big issue, and the big issue is what we call social engineering and it’s a hacker convincing somebody to do something they wouldn’t normally do.
(10:30):
The top one is financial fraud, and financial fraud usually comes in with a cyber criminal convincing somebody to transfer funds, wire or ACH funds, to the cyber criminal. And how does that happen? It could happen over SMS text messaging, those SMS messages you get every once in a while say to you say, “Hey, are you Dave? We met at a conference the other day.” And you’re like, “No, I’m not Dave. You got the wrong number.” And they say, “Well, can I ask you a question?” And then they continue a conversation and build some rapport with you and then they convince you to do something with financial fraud. Or it’s the the vendor or the fake vendor that asks you to change ACH payment information for them or an employee that asks you to change direct deposit information. Those financial frauds, again, social engineering, they’re convincing you to do something that you shouldn’t do. That’s one issue.
(11:29):
And then the next one is business email compromise. And a lot of the fraud that comes in is through emails that hackers are using now AI to generate really good emails that get past your email protection systems and your firewalls and your antivirus to convince you to do something, again, that you wouldn’t normally do, which is click a link to go to a banking website, maybe send some private information, download a file, something like that. It’s the business email compromise, and that’s where a lot of these attacks come in from is through email. And then the final one comes around with account security protecting accounts on your network and your devices. So it’s password fraud, people being convinced to enter passwords in sites or password theft, and then they use those passwords to get in and across all your logins.
(12:29):
So those are the big three right now. Financial fraud, business email compromise, and then tech support or password theft. There’s things that you could do to protect it and a lot of it is pretty simple. Really, employee training is part of it because employees are the ones that are making these mistakes. And employees could be you as the owner too. Owners have a lot of power in their organization. Usually, access to the purse strings and access to a lot of data. So training and identifying where this fraud’s coming in from. And then you have to set up a lot of advanced protections on your systems. Protecting the email, protecting your account passwords, using things like multifactor authentication, the one that we really don’t like, those text messages you get periodically to put in the extra six digit code or the authenticator app that you have to enter an extra code in.
(13:22):
And really all these things are about slowing down and making better decisions along the way with cybersecurity. And so they’re not that expensive. It just takes time and thought to implement the right tools and then slowing down and making better decisions. When you get that email that doesn’t look quite right or that text message that feels a little off, just make better decisions with it, slow down and double check the information that you’re getting from somebody else.
Dr. Tom DuFore (13:50):
It’s interesting what you’ve shared about how you review the FBI crimes and take a look at that, and just interesting how it’s changed even just in what you’re seeing in the approach. And I like how you described it as the social engineering where someone’s essentially pretending to be something they’re not or getting you to do something that’s out of the norm. I like the caution there. Just even as you’re describing that, I reflect back to an instance where I had phone calls come through and started getting asked to do things and it sounded very real over the phone or email, or however it first started.
(14:27):
A few minutes into it I realized, oh, wait a minute, something seems off here. And then eventually ended the conversation realizing that it was probably a few steps down the pathway of maybe trying to get scammed along the way, or whatever they were trying to get. I mean, I didn’t go through with it, but just how easily I was, I guess, duped or misled into this conversation. It happened a lot faster than maybe I might’ve thought it would have.
Nathan Whittacre (14:54):
Yeah, it’s amazing. We call it social engineering because they’re very good at building rapport. They’re very convincing. It isn’t what we think of a robo hacker or some random evil guy on the other line. Really, they sound like a friend or somebody that’s very helpful and there’s always a little bit of sense of urgency to it too. You have to do this now or something bad could happen. And so they effect on that fight or flight emotions that we have, so we want to take action, and then we realize that the action we’re taking is actually harming us. It’s interesting as you study it more, the social engineering aspect. It’s pervasive in our society because we’re very trusting as people. We’re very helpful. We want to provide good customer service to our vendors and to our customers and that they lean on, unfortunately.
Dr. Tom DuFore (15:52):
What do you see as an outlook? You’re in the thick of this every day with what you do, what do you see happening?
Nathan Whittacre (15:58):
Well, we can’t have a conversation about technology without talking about AI. That’s on everybody’s mind right now. How is AI going to affect my business and life in general? Certainly, a lot of buzz. There was announcement a couple of weeks ago about a $500-billion investment in data centers and AI technology in the U.S. It’s the new space race between the competitive countries of who’s investing and creating the best AI technology. And then you sit here as a business owner and you go, well, what does that mean to me? It’s Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman and these guys are billionaires that are talking about this, but how do I use AI in my business today? And that’s a really difficult question to answer. What’s happening that I see right now is twofold.
(16:52):
There are business processes that can be enhanced by what we call Generative AI, and Generative AI is like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot or some of these other tools out there that use large language models to communicate with us in our natural spoken or written language. And they are really knowledgeable, what I call, high-tech interns. It’s like an intern that you’ve hired as an administrative assistant and you could get all your team members inside your company to use Generative AI to help them with their jobs. Now, it’s not perfect, like an intern, very knowledgeable, maybe in college or right out of college, lots of book knowledge, but maybe makes mistakes on the implementation side. But the more that you train your Generative AI and the more that you use it, it can be so useful in helping with day-to-day work, from marketing materials to sales communications to HR and job descriptions and job findings, resume searches, things like that.
(18:02):
And then down to regular work, helping you improve spreadsheets and PowerPoints and generate graphics and things like that. It’s just a really good productivity assistant. The one that we really like talking about is Microsoft Copilot because it integrates with the applications that we already use, your Word, Teams, Excel, Outlook, and it just is a great assistant to help you along the way. And that’s something that’s inexpensive that you can use today with your teams to be a multiplier of efforts and remove what we call digital debt, having to attend a lot of meetings and read a lot of documents and write documents. It helps you, as an executive assistant or administrative assistant would, with those processes. And your whole team can use it.
(18:49):
The other thing that we’re seeing a lot is we’re waiting for our vendors, the people that write the applications that we use each day, to incorporate some of these tools in those efforts. And that’s I think what we’re going to see a lot in 2025 and 2026, is the software that we’re using today is going to incorporate AI tools to improve the process, improve the workflow, and make it a lot easier to use those systems. And so the more that we make these software packages more human-like with the language mod. Speaking in standard language terms, English or whatever language you use, makes the software and the interface much more friendly. And then on the back end, it’s more powerful, because it can do a lot of automated detection of processes and improvement of those.
(19:41):
But we, I think, as small business owners, we have to wait for the vendors to incorporate those systems into our tools. Unless you’re ready to go out and hire data scientists and software developers and things to implement those yourself, which is difficult and expensive, I think we’re going to see some big improvements from our vendors here over the next year or two.
Dr. Tom DuFore (20:02):
That makes a lot of sense, especially for when I think of the small business community, even midsize business owners, people that are in the midst of doing strategic thinking and then at the same time also running the business or in the field in some ways. And so I think what you described, that makes a lot of sense thinking of Microsoft with their AI or I’m sure Google with their AI that integrates into a Word document or an Excel file or something like that that it’s already in there and it’s a tool that we can start using. That makes a lot of sense for where this is going. How can someone get in touch with you, learn a little bit more about what you’re doing, get involved, get some resources you have available?
Nathan Whittacre (20:44):
Yeah, sure. So my company is Stimulus Technologies. You can find our website, stimulostech.com. You can get in touch with me best through LinkedIn. So if you search my name, last name is spelled a little differently, W-H-I-T-T-A-C-R-E. I’m sure you’ll include that in the show notes. Search me up on LinkedIn, happy to have a conversation or a chat there. If you connect with me on LinkedIn and just send me a quick note that you heard me on this podcast, happy to send you a copy of my book, The CEO’s Digital Survival Guide, where I talk about a lot of these different things of how to implement technology, how to protect your business and cybersecurity, different tools that are effective in improving business. So feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and just mention this, and happy to send you a hardback copy of the book.
Dr. Tom DuFore (21:31):
Excellent. Well, Nathan, this is a great time in the show where we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Nathan Whittacre (21:42):
30 years of business this year, so certainly have a lot of misses. I think the biggest one I can think about was about 15 years ago. We were doing a growth cycle and we were overoptimistic of our projections and capabilities. We had gone out and got a small business loan to be able to do it, and unfortunately we missed some of our targets that we wanted to hit and we had to revamp what we were doing. And it just took us a lot longer than expected. And I should have listened to the advice that my dad gave me when I started the business, which is, “In business, things cost twice as much and take twice as long as you want them to.” And if I would have listened to that, my projections would have been far more accurate. It turned out okay, but it was just a tough few years in the business life that we had to overcome because it just happened a lot slower than what we wanted it to.
Dr. Tom DuFore (22:38):
Let’s talk about a make on the other side of that equation there.
Nathan Whittacre (22:42):
I think some of the biggest things that we’ve done to improve the company, we’ve done some acquisitions that have fueled more rapid growth than we could have done organically. And so some of the acquisitions, both from a geographic expansion and a talent expansion, has really helped us grow the company tremendously. So we were just eight years ago in one state with less than 20 employees and now we’re in five states and have 70 employees, and we’re a much different and bigger company. And especially the people talent that came along with that, it expanded our capabilities from people and just really gave us a different sense of how to operate the company.
Dr. Tom DuFore (23:25):
And Nathan, have you used a multiplier to multiply yourself personally or professionally or organizations that you’ve run?
Nathan Whittacre (23:33):
So I will use the personal multiplier and this one, again, about that same time in my life that I was about 13, 14 years ago that things were going a little south for us in the business, I decided to invest a lot of time in myself. I lost a significant amount of weight and got into endurance sports. You’ll see the medals over my shoulder here that I run marathons and triathlons and Ironman events. Taking that time for myself each day, an hour or two, to focus on my health and my physical health improves my mental health and my ability to come to work every day at my best. And so that’s been my multiplier. It sounds like taking an hour or two to exercise is detracting from the work I’m doing, but it certainly has allowed me to have more energy, be healthier, and come much better prepared to handle the challenges of every day.
Dr. Tom DuFore (24:33):
The final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Nathan Whittacre (24:37):
More time with my family and five kids and spending time with them, although a few of them are out of the house now. That’s the biggest success, spending time with my kids, my wife, enjoying the fruits of my labor. We enjoy traveling, international travel, so taking that time. And then on the business side, seeing my company grow and the people grow. I love when somebody comes in to the company, maybe new to technology, new to the workforce, and we can really mold them and help them grow and expand their career.
(25:10):
We’ve had, over the 30 years, so many people that have come into their company with just a little knowledge and we’re able to expand them and provide a great place for them to work. And we have some team members that have been with us for 10 or more years, which is rare in technology, but helping people and our customers grow. I often say this is a people business, even though we’re in business with technology, in the end, we’re just helping people, whether it’s our employees or our customers, that improve their lives through technology.
Dr. Tom DuFore (25:43):
Nathan, before we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Nathan Whittacre (25:50):
The biggest thing, we discussed some opportunities, we discussed some challenges with technology, and just reiterating what I said already. Technology allows you to grow. Whether it’s personally or in your business, it really is there to be additive to everything you do in your life. Not being scared of technology, learning how to implement it correctly, how to choose the right technologies to work with really could be game-changing to business and our personal lives. So that’s the biggest thing that I want to share with people.
Dr. Tom DuFore (26:24):
Nathan, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is, when Nathan said, “Just think about how much technology has changed over the last 25 years,” think way back to the year 2,000 where we didn’t have smartphones. There was little or no access for advanced technology by small businesses. And think about as a small to mid-sized business what you have access to today that 25 years ago was really only available to large enterprise organizations, so very large corporations, large governments, et cetera. Takeaway number two was when he talked about digital threats and how the FBI releases cyber crime statistics each year, and I found it interesting when he listed the top three issues and he described them all relating to social engineering.
(27:22):
He said one is financial fraud, when a scammer convinces someone to send them money, business email compromise and that scammers are getting way better by using artificial intelligence and AI to do that, and through use of account security, through password fraud. So the thieves are using this to access checking accounts and other things at a business. I found those top three really interesting. And takeaway number three is when he talked about ways in which you can try and problem solve or reduce these digital threats. So the first one he said was just to set up some employee training, just having a more educated staff and team. And the second is to use multifactor authentication. Thought those were great suggestions. And the last takeaway is that, if you do get solicited or someone were to call you or email you, he said one telltale sign is that the person on the other end might be a scammer or is likely a scammer if there’s a great sense of urgency behind what’s going on.
(28:31):
And now it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win is when Nathan mentioned at the very end of the episode, he said, “Technology allows you to grow and is designed to be additive to your business and to your life.” So learning how to use these technologies and systems to add to your life and to be a part of your business is going to be important. So I thought that was just a nice little closing takeaway and win-win from the business because that’s going to be a win for you and a win for your company and your staff and team. And so that’s the episode today, folks. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast. And please, please, please, we’d love a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.