Welcome to Elevate with Elsner. Join us for inspiring conversations with individuals who have transformed their lives and are making a difference through the work that they do. And now, here's your host, Blake Elsner.

Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Elsner, the show where we explore stories of passion, purpose, and growth. I'm your host, Blake Elsner, and today I'm thrilled to bring you a guest who's embodies transformation, both in business and in life. Brett Gallant is the founder of Adaptive Office Solutions and is a cyber security expert with over 25 years of experience in the IT industry. But Brett's journey doesn't stop at protecting businesses from cyber threats. After years of focusing solely on his career, he made a decision to prioritize his health and lost over a hundred pounds. That's incredible, Brett. Brett now shares insights now on scaling and securing businesses, but also on the mindset shifts and habits that have reshaped his life. In this episode, we're going to dive into actionable strategies for cybersecurity, the power of delegation and the mindset that helped Brett transition from a hands-on operator to a visionary leader. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce Brett, and Brett, thanks for coming on.

Blake Elsner 

Hey, it's great to be here, Blake. I'm really proud to be here with you and to be able to tell my story and share my personal journey, my transformation, and why I'm so passionate about cybersecurity, especially in the times we're living in.

Brett Gallant

Totally, totally. First, I guess you gotta tell us about your two friends that are with us, right, behind you.

Yes, my, the twin powers, I call them. I have Spock and Pope Francis behind me. And it's a funny story about that. Spock was put into my Amazon cart about six or seven times by my son as a joke. And finally, after the seventh time, I actually ordered it. And then, and then about three or four months later, I said, Spock needs a friend. So naturally, of course, he needs the Pope.

So I always, my, my joke is, you know, that pissed the Pope off, as I say, you know, but yeah. So no, yeah. Tell us about your, your introduction into, you know, your background into it and cybersecurity. Let's just start as basic as it can be and go from there.

Sure, yeah. I think the best thing would be just to go back in time a little bit and share a couple of my quick stories. When I was younger, I always liked to tinker around with toys and take things apart. And then I got into Commodore VIC-20 and I learned the program a bit. Finally, when I was in college, I was taking international software marketing and publishing, and the instructor said, you really should get into systems. And I pondered on that. And I left after that course, I made a decision to transition into IT. And I had this great opportunity to work for a construction fabrication company. and really made the foundation for who I am today as a person who delivers and executes on service. And during that time, I worked with that company for 14 years approximately. And I had this vision of wanting to be employed by myself. So getting into business, I thought, oh, I could run a successful IT company. I was actually doing some work for some clients while working for that company. I remember back in 2007, I was helping a real estate company set up for a webinar. They were going to watch a Brian Tracy webinar. And in that webinar, I was invited to stay and watch it. I'm so glad the owner invited me to watch it because it was one of the most impactful webinars that really set the transition for where I was going. Brian stated in that webinar to write down 10 goals, take three minutes, write down 10 goals for what you want for your life. I did that 2007 and I found my goals earlier in 2024, right before I did a speaking engagement in Phoenix, Arizona. And I brought that book with me and goal number four was by April 1st, 2010, I will own my own successful IT company. Adaptive Office Solutions was born on April 1st. I had not looked at that goal book for years. That was an incredible moment for me to find that. But even more, it was such a pleasure to be able to hold that book in front of that audience and share that story. It really, really hit home the power in my own life and a reinforcement of the importance of goals. And along the way, I've had different journeys in adaptive office solutions where I've evolved. I used to be the IT company for everyone. And I'm really thankful for that. I had the opportunity to serve. We would do everything from fixing laptops, residential, and helping people reset their Facebook. But there came to be a point where I was running with the candles at both ends. I remember doing a job like for a subcontractor where I was in, where I was at a gas station to start a point of sale upgrade. And I started that job at five o'clock and coming out of there at noon the next day and recognizing that something needed to change. And I made that decision that day where I said, okay, we're going to start looking at ways to do things better. And so I started to double down on personal development, leadership development, and I made some decisions on how I want to operate the company so that everything wasn't coming at me and making decisions to focus on a niche. which led to, there was various different stepping stones along the way, but I settled on really doubling down on what matters most, cybersecurity. And I'm really grateful to do that because being able to support businesses where it matters most has been impactful for me. And I know I'm also a gatekeeper, protect people's livelihoods.

Yeah. A lot. When you say livelihoods to like, I don't think people realize how much information that we give and that we put out there. Um, we're, you know, it's like, I feel like we're one click away from destroying your, your, you know, information.

That's so true because really oftentimes when I'm presenting and speaking with prospects, I'm sharing that story. All it takes is one click and boom, you've allowed the hackers tools to the digital kingdom. And a great example of that this morning, I found out that the school board system locally and across the country here in Canada, and I believe in the United States as well, Power School recently had a recent cybersecurity incident where information was accessed and stolen. And so we have our children's information, out there on the dark web potentially right now. I don't know all the details, but I do know that that is happening right now. They released publicly that it happened right before Christmas, during the Christmas holiday.

Yeah. That's, that's a little scary when you talk about, yeah, children, like their future already, their lives, their information already out there.

Their credit history, like their credit history with some of this information potentially could be used to open up credit cards and, and cause some damage to somebody's history, like credit rating. Uh, not to mention all the other things that could happen beyond just that particular story, but it's, it's incredible what's happening. So.

So what was the founding story on adaptive office solutions?

There was a local IT company that was running and I thought, hey, I could do that. And I always felt I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And we go back to even when I was younger, operating a Dickey D ice cream vehicle. I was giving a route to the worst route and I learned and I worked so hard I made that the best selling route in the community. I learned one thing, ring the bell really loud and go slow where the children are. And I think of that like a metaphor in life when we're doing things. give the clients what they need, what they want and be upfront and honest and tell them. And so I saw this opportunity that there was an IT services company needed. I was doing some work at the time with the company I was working for. And I had to come to a pivot point in my relationship with the employer that I worked for, which was a great company. I had to choose between my day job or my part-time job. I chose a part-time job. It was a leap of faith, if you will, take those steps, courageous steps forward. I wanted to be a firm that could share the values of treating people with kindness and fairness and telling them what they needed to hear. And that's where Adaptive was formed. Based on that, we started small and we've grown over the years. And we've evolved, as I alluded to earlier, where we've pivoted hard to shedding light of those past niches that we did where we worked on residential, where we only do security first now.

Yeah, that's smart. That was smart. How you, you, they say, find your, you know, find your niche and, and, and stay in that, stay in that lane and any other lane that you, you know, you dip your toe and it's like, you always want to try to find somebody else in there that can, you know, is their niche to help, you know, move you along in that other lane if you decide to go in there, but that's pretty neat how you, how you've done all that. And I. I know the process of being a business owner and that whole wake up every day, it's a new thing. What gets you out of bed with cybersecurity? Is that a strange question to you? What makes you really enjoy it? Is it the protecting?

What really gets me out of bed and excited is, number one, I love meeting people and I like to impact somebody's day positive. And now telling people about the risk is not the most fun thing in the world. when I really value that we're doing things and educating people on the reality that this cyber, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And so when I was presenting to a cybersecurity risk assessment to a gentleman earlier this week, when he really recognized how vulnerable he was I didn't take pleasure in that. I took it seriously that I've done my job to make him aware of the risk because that gentleman had 10 other people working for him, that if a cybersecurity event happened to his business, Those 10 people could be potentially without a job if they had a substantial cybersecurity event and impact all the other businesses that he represents. So I've done my part to make him aware of what he needs to know. And he now has the information to make a decision on how he wants to manage his risk. It was quite alarming to see the expression on his face. He was thankful. but surprised to see how vulnerable he was during and after that report.

Yeah, I can't imagine. See, that's what I think people it's probably a hard thing. It's kind of like having kids, right? Until you have kids, you don't you don't really know. And it's like until, you know, you get hacked, it's like you don't know. Right. And unless you hear from like an expert like yourself that truly cares and and has done this for 25 years, that knows and has seen that, you know, the progress or

Oh, I have to tell you a quick story about that, just because I really believe education and awareness and cybersecurity awareness training is important. A small business in my part of the country, well, not actually not really a small business. They lost over $200,000. Because what happened was the threat actors were in the organization's email for a couple of months and they weren't even aware of it. And they called up the person that controls the finances and pretended to be the bank and had all relevant information about recent transactions and customer information and banking information. And they said, okay, I have the owner on the phone. All I need for you to do right now is just give me the key fob so I can help the owner with taking care of some business information. Now, at that moment, everything seemed true and accurate, and they didn't have a policy how to deal with that. Unfortunately, the person gave that info and they lost a substantial amount of money that they can't recover because once you wire some money, you can't get it back.

Yeah, that's scary. We have wire forms in our business and people that don't, I'm like, don't wire any money. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

So what I've told that organization, and I used to say, don't wire unless you see people face-to-face, but now, because the reality of artificial intelligence, where AI can mimic, do deep fake and sound just like you, said you and your finance team need to have a code word if you're going to even do FaceTime or Zoom and talk about financial, you don't change any wiring information unless you have that code word that only the two of you know.

Wow.

The AI is not going to know that, that secret word, that secret handshake.

Wow. That's that right there is one thing that I think anybody, I mean, that's a, that's a powerful thing. I never even thought about that secret word. I mean, you think that you're, you think you're doing some type of a drug deal or something, having a secret word right now, you know, here we are having to use it to protect our identity and protect our, our stuff. Jeez. So, well, When you say when you were like, it's a small business and it wasn't a small business, why is no business too small to be hacked?

Because the reality is the hackers just don't care. It's a numbers game. They're sending out information and we think sometimes as business owners, unfortunately sometimes we keep our heads stuck in the ground like an ostrich thinking, oh, this won't happen to me. They don't want my information. I'm aware of a small business here in my community that had $30,000 stolen a year and a half ago because of a cybersecurity incident. And they thought they would never get hacked.

I guess 30,000 is more than zero, yeah.

It's a 30,000, now for some businesses, that's not a lot. And for some businesses, that's the difference of being able to make payroll and going bankrupt. And some don't even have that to lose. So it's, the look on the people's faces when they came into this office was devastating. And I felt for them. It's like they've seen a ghost. They had told me previously that it would never happen to me. Some days it does happen. I hope it never happens to anybody, any of your listeners, but the question everyone out there has to ask is, what's my plan? if it does happen and who am I going to call and do they know I'm going to call them? That's the conversation you have to have. And folks, for those of you listening, if you want a document, I've created a document, 15 ways to help prevent cyber security attacks. that you can look at and work with your team or even reach out to me. It has some actual items. So you can DM me 15 ways and I'll send that to you, no strings attached. So be happy to give that to your community.

Awesome. That's, yeah, that's really awesome. I'm sure there's going to be people reaching out and we can always attach that onto the links of this episode when it comes out as well. That way it's cool. That way it's there's as well. Cause any information, like you say, no strings attached, any information you can digest, you know, sitting there and before bed read.

Well, yeah, and all it is is being aware of it. And then the next decision is on all of us, because we're all in this together and we have to take action. And when we take action and we start asking each other, what are you doing? And some businesses are asking each other, hey, do you have cybersecurity in place for your business? That's starting to happen now. So get ahead of it. Take some action this week, folks. It may be the best decision you ever made if you haven't really tuned into this reality, this unfortunate reality. So, yeah.

And when I say like, you know, you see, like, unfortunately, the defense in general is a huge um, industry, right. Between some of these big, you know, Lockheed Martin, that's a different type of security, but, you know, looking at some of these stocks, like there's a lot of information and a lot of, uh, things inside the defense where, what do they say? You know, even in sports, you know, defense wins games, right? Like, Your defense protects yourself, unfortunately.

The best offense is a defense and your cyber, like two takeaways for anybody listening, cybersecurity awareness training, multi-factor authentication, and just getting your head around this and working with experts like me to help you manage it. or augment your team to support you.

When you talk about that multi quick, quick little question, you obviously nowadays you see all these things when we're signing in the multi, you know, SMS, um, authenticator, you know, you should always have that on, right?

Oh, that's a non-negotiable for today's world, especially for your email and your banking. That's a non-negotiable reality. Imagine if you, we have in our area, there's still some people using legacy email from the telephone provider and Interact transactions are getting intercepted because the hackers get into that email, they get the password if it's on the dark web and they just intercept the e-transfers and funnel it right into their bank account. Wow. I seen that happen four times to the same business.

That's scary stuff that like this just occurs. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah.

Well, you know, I think, would you say that's like the biggest misconception is that people don't really know that this happens so frequently?

Yeah, I think that's part of it, but the other reality is now that we're seeing it in the news, now there's such much more of awareness, but sometimes there's, well, a lot of times there's still that reality. I don't have anything of value, but often when we do the cybersecurity risk assessment, where we look a deep dive into the business, we see that there is some things of value, but it's not just what you have of value, it's the reputational damage. If you've been hacked, people unfortunately think twice of working with a company that has been hacked. And then if also, if your systems are down for two weeks or one week, it's really hard to get work done if you can't do ordering or fulfill your stock and do payroll. So.

Totally. And that, yeah, that's all great. Great advice in terms of, um, you know, what to, yeah, got to get payroll, but transitioning real fast over to kind of like the leadership side. Now you have, you have virtual assistants, right? Yes. And those have really, I would say transformed your business.

Oh, absolutely. The biggest thing I've learned to do is let go and delegate. I have a VA that helps me manage my email. I have a VA that helps me manage my social media, my content. In fact, my EA helped me book my travel and hotel and even check the medication that I forgot in the hotel in Halifax, made those calls. So any way I can buy back my time, And give that opportunity to that person to do what they love. In fact, I even went a step further last year in October. I gave the gift for my wife and I to have a person come into our home and organize our house and keep it up to date once a week. Best gift we ever did for ourselves. And the lady that does our house loves it, finds quite great joy. And who loves doing housework? I don't. But there are people that love it. And there's some things that we do that we don't like. And when we buy back our time and give that opportunity for somebody else to do that and let go, it gives us the time to do our passion and serve in ways that are at our best capacity. I really believe that's part of the biggest reason why I've had this transformation in my fitness and my health, because I've been able to do that and I've had the oxygen The old analogy, when you get on an airplane, they tell you to put the oxygen mask on first. So I purposely put my oxygen mask on first so I had the energy to serve others and serve my team. And I've released 110 pounds since October of 2023 because of that.

That's truly incredible. I, yeah, I, I, I think that's awesome. That weight loss. I mean, that, that stuff that is, it's not easy. And when you say you put the, put the mask on yourself, that's true. And I, you know, I never realized that, right. That is that stuff I've learned from people like you that I talked to, like, Hey, you got to take care of yourself first. Like.

Yeah, and so for me, part of that, I've talked to other business leaders and it's a struggle. As a business owner, we're on this island sometimes and sometimes we're drowning. And what you have to do is treat yourself like you're your own best client and give yourself permission to have that hour. For example, today, I went for a hike for an hour. And I had that time in the woods, in the wilderness, walking through, there's snow right now, and I had that time to think and reflect. And then I came back to the office with more energy and some answers to some things that were troubling me or solutions of something I wanted to tackle. So not only has it been great for my fitness, it's been great for transforming my business as a leader because I've had more thinking time.

Yeah, those are, those are, I love that you got to take that hike and that's all, that's discipline, that's being consistent, that's maintaining your health.

Consistency compounds. And you have to, I believe in this a hundred percent, like when you have a goal, a goal is not a, is, it's just a wish if you don't take action. So the number one thing we have to do as business leaders is fight for our goals. You've got to fight.

I love that. I really do. So to kind of sum this up, what would you say your like top advice for entrepreneurs or, I mean, just, or just the everyday person on cybersecurity and just cybersecurity alone? Like, I mean, it's a very broad topic, but what would you say is just the top advice besides reaching out to you?

Obviously, if you're not reaching out to me, reach out to an expert. Okay, reach out to somebody else. But beyond that, the document I'm providing, that's the second, but number one, multi-factor authentication and cybersecurity awareness training. and build that culture in your organization that we talk about it. If something doesn't seem right, make sure the team knows that it's okay to talk to upper management and say, this computer is a little slow, something seems not right. And oftentimes, unfortunately, that might be the trigger sign that something is going on. Not so fun fact, once they get in, it's really hard by the human eye to see it, okay? So, but those few things are my top advice.

Yeah, definitely have somebody set up your office, right? I mean, IT is important when you have, you're setting up computers, right?

Well, I look at it as my bookkeeper. I have my bookkeeper do my work. She can do, I can do some of the things she does and it will take me four hours and I hate doing it and she can do it an hour and a half and I can focus on higher leveraging tasks that I'm not doing something that I shouldn't be doing. And it's the best thing I've ever done. I've really focused on, hey, if this is not my lane and if I can replace myself, even fractionally, I have some people that are doing some of these roles like 10 hours a week or even 10 hours a month. It's okay to do some of that when you need to do it, if you need to get the experts on board to support you so you can do what you love to do. And I'm doing what I love to do. That's the biggest thing.

That is, that's, that's a big takeaway. If you didn't take away anything about cybersecurity, take that away. Do what you love, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, no, I, I really appreciate you coming on here, Brad. It has been, honestly, it's awesome. People, you know, there's. not just this link we're going to put in there. It's they have the access to now reach out to me, to reach out to you. I mean, that's what's that's what's important.

You know what I'm more excited about, Blake, though, is even with my story about putting the oxygen mask on first. If some of you decide to take action today on putting yourself first, let me know. And even if it's taking that 10-minute walk at a time, like 30 minutes a day, but do 10 minutes little chunks. I'll get so much energy knowing that I've inspired people to do that. I'm grateful to be here with you today.

Yeah, I appreciate you. I mean, you've inspired me to to look into this. I mean, you don't realize like all the all the stuff that's out there and the chaos that, like you say, one click and you're done. So I appreciate coming on here and sharing this insight. So. All right, well, thank you all for tuning in to another episode of Elevate with Ellsner. As you know, Brett's story that you just heard reminds us that transformation starts with a decision, a decision to prioritize what truly matters both in business and in life. So if you find today's conversation valuable, please leave us a review. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it because cybersecurity is very important, as you just heard. And stay inspired and as always, keep elevating. Until next time.

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