Andy Ellis, Orca Security | RSA Conference 2023

This is texturung TV. Hey everyone, this is Alan Schimmel Tech strong. Welcome.

Welcome to my first interview for RSA 2023. I know we had a full day of coverage yesterday, but I was actually over here in Moscone south where in Moscone West right now for our Ninth Annual deaf set cops devops connective set. Go upstairs.

What a great day. We had I think some of the best sessions that we've had in nine years. I'm Shannon leads Mike Rothman.

I'm just trying to think in my brain here. They're all coming, June 3rd. I believe we we recorded all of the sessions you can get a virtual devsecops Day event there.

Don't miss it. But now I'm excited to be back here in Moscone West. We're live on broadcast Ally and for my very first guest I could think of a better person.

He's my favorite Pat's fan, but he's also a fantastic. It's been a fantastic see so and a power in the security industry. Let me we got people coming over to say hello to us here.

Let me introduce you to my friend Andy Ellis Andy, how are you man? I'm doing fantastically today Alan. Absolutely.

You know what I spoke to I spoke to Bonnie my wife this year and I said Bonnie, I am so happy and excited to be here and it's back. Yes. She said yeah, you're with your peeps I said and I know how Bonnie means that because she thinks all my friends are a little my security little crazy.

Yeah, but she my people. You know, are you excited? I'm at RSA.

I'm excited about RSA. The timing couldn't have been better for me because I just published a book which you've got sitting right there. Where's that tight shot right here shot in one percent leadership.

So Andy this really look I mean we're friends. Not just doing this and I followed this labor of love. It's been three years three years making So well, let's do this.

Let's first of all talk about 1% leadership. What's it about? So yeah, I'm sure lots of people have been to leadership training at some point in their career and you go to this seminar and you have somebody who comes in who preaches to you and they say like this is the way it's very Mandalorian.

Yeah, like you should do this and you will be successful and the reality is whoever they're modeling that on that wasn't all they did and it won't work for you like you got to take your helmet off once in a while. Yeah, that's a good one. And so the way I look at it is leadership is a skill set.

But you're a leader in a different way than I'm a leader as are you the folks we have here behind the cameras that you all can't see they each lead because leadership is about how do you just make work more effective? How do you take the energy that people spend and help them produce more value and there's lots of ways to do that servant leadership Mission leadership like we can go the whole gamut. Yep, and what I really wanted to do.

Take the skills. And help people put those into words and think about how do you focus on yourself? How do you lead yourself?

Because if you don't lead yourself, you can't lead other people effectively. How do you lead a team? And how do you lead an organization?

And so it's 54 chapters. Wow, every chapter is a standalone lesson. And I'm not trying to hide any of the lessons.

The chapter titles are the summary of The Lesson. Are these lessons like a daily lesson or weekly lesson? So it's 54 is about a Year's worth of lessons.

You could use it weekly, you know, that's one intent that I had for this to say. Hey, you're every Monday morning take find the lesson and be like, how am I going to apply that this week and just get a little bit better? You don't have to be perfect.

No leader is perfect. But just how do I improve by one percent if you want to be fast, read it one day and try to figure out how do I work that one today? I love it.

And you know, it's so funny. I actually had a breakfast this morning before coming down here to Moscone West. I was talking to a good friend of mine who's been in security world.

You probably know him. I don't want to mention his name right here, but it's been in security world for a long time and and he's betwixton between What he wants to be when he grows up, right? I still wonder if you and me both it.

but you know and and he's the issue is he's he has natural leadership abilities. He's currently in a kind of a single contributor mode. And he's not sure does he want to be a team leader be a leader as a single contributor realizing but as a single contributor, it's limited.

Yep, and I actually had this discussion with them. You could be a single contributor and still be a leader. Absolutely.

You're organization. When you act like one, yes, right and that's a big part of and that's a huge part. I think a lot of people think oh, like I'm an individual contributor.

And so that's what I am and the reality is, you know, I think of this is the hard skill soft skill dilemma, and I actually hate those words but I use them so I understand stuff and where I just did when we talk about hard skills. What we're really talking about is technical skills, which is the ways that you change the world through your own will and energy. Yep, right?

And so when people think about individual contributors, that's what they focus on is. Well, what can I do? But the reality is if you're a senior individual contributor, you leverage people skills all the time when I was aquamised Chief security architect 90% of the good that I did was other people doing work because I had inspired them to do it.

I couldn't tell them. Yeah, I had to inspire them and since people skills that's team leadership and Leadership is not Authority and I think we've confused those two, especially in the business world so much we say, oh once your vice president will send you the leadership training. First of all, no offense to all the vice presidents who are out there.

It's a lot of them. It's a lot of but it's really it's too late like you believe you're amazing. And now we're gonna send you try to training by then.

You've already developed your leadership right deals hope so so I wrote this and my attitude is when I was writing it is I wanted this to be the book that my kids could use through high school and college and when they went into the career field and so while an executive will find things useful in here no matter where you are in your career like you should learn these skills because maybe you're not in charge of developing organizational processes, but you should understand how so that you can influence them. Agreed, you know, I'm gonna tell you something I I think. It is a lesson.

I learned early my because in most of my startups I I was the biz Dev Corp Dev first. Yeah, that was my thing. And and that's a funny.

It's a funny position because you might have a small team like I had in some of them but for the most part. Leading without Authority or responsibility, right? Is where you truly develop leadership skills?

Yes, because if you could lead by example lead by influence if you will, I think that's important and that you know, I I know these are the kinds of lessons in here. Let's talk about the three year Odyssey here though. Yeah, what's it take to do this?

So it takes an idea and so this idea actually started as every time I would go to a security leadership training and or my team would go I said, how do I distill this down into something actually practical that they'll use and not rebel against in fact, one of the chapters in here is what the book was originally intended to be. It's entitled unsolicited advice won't always apply. Oh, no, he's imply.

Still be filthy. It'll still be given but they're given right but that's what I had to learn. And then at some point I said I should collect these into a book.

I reached out to Bruce schneier. And I said, hey Bruce, you've published a lot of books certainly has and he said the most important thing is have a good Agent. Yeah, and he introduced me to Jeff Shreve.

I worked at curious minds and who used to be in book editor before he became an agent and so Jeff and I did a ton of work on this and I had about two thirds written at this point, which is far ahead of how much where most authors are at that point. Most of them come with an idea. He said to me said, okay now we have to work on the book proposal which is almost like maybe a fifth of the length of the book really it's massive.

Oh my God, you know because it includes things like how will I do marketing like do I have a public presence because that's part of your your pitch to a public editor and I'll be honest when we started writing it I hated it. I was like, I've already written the book. I've already got the outline.

Like why are you riding the hard part right except for me the proposal started out as this hard things I was doing. What felt like mundane work and about halfway through I realized that while I'd been writing a book. I had never actually written a book plan.

Right? And so it's almost like you go to market. It really is.

It's a business plan, but it's also a plan for the concept of the book. And so we tweaked the book while doing that. Yeah, and then yeah, I did finish once we had a had an offer and we signed and negotiated that and I got it, you know signed for the advance which is fantastic when you somebody says here's we're gonna pay you to write a book.

That's a nice It's gotta be a good. Yeah, it was a really good feeling then I had to finish writing it and I actually finished as in my manuscript completes in June of last year. It's almost a year.

Now almost a year first. It goes to the acquiring editor who only asked me to make a few changes. One of them was cutting out an entire chapter really but what's 55 chapters was because it was before longer.

They just feel that chapter. It's a really it didn't hang together and he was right and it was overlapping with the previous chapter in the next chapter. So although it was it's fasted because it's really appropriate for this week because the title of the chapter was no matter how good your football team is they're gonna suck if you put them on a hockey rink.

That's the Bruce Bruins have for those not paying attention. Yeah, the buttons are in the playoffs and I for all of you throw Dandy was doing me a favor wearing a black and gold black and yellow hat. It's a brood sound.

Yep for the record. You're not sorry not wearing your black not my black and yellow, but so that one gets cut then it goes to a Content editor. And yeah, she did a fantastic job of going through applying the Chicago Manual of style.

Yeah, we had a few arguments because I do not write in the Chicago Manual of style. Sometimes intentionally sometimes not intentionally. Then it went to two rounds of proofreaders.

Then we read for the audiobook that was in January. So I actually narrated marinated the audio that's been here's what's embarrassing at every round of editing. I participate in the round you hear you and I always find a problem and then I'm reading for the audiobook three new errors.

I found as I'm reading I'm like, oh God, so I think those got corrected in this version good and now we've been doing marketing and last week that's released. Fantastic, I look I got to do the plug. Not you.

Okay, so one percent leadership is available on Amazon or wherever your favorite booksellers are. And I also say if you happen to be catching this while we're at RSA this week because this is live streamed right now. If you go over to the RSA bookstore in Moscone south it's available there.

I think it's 20% off 20% That doesn't come out of your end doesn't come out of my job. It's 20% off you go pick it up. You can also get the audio version it kind of versions out there as well on Amazon and other your favorite book readers and I just got a I just got to mention Andy gave me a copy and I want to read the inscription here to Alan to my favorite other.

Remember member of the six Lombardi Club and I couldn't think of a better thing that Andy Ellis would tell me because there's only two there's only two that's right man draft is Thursday night. We'll be watching it here in San Francisco at RSA exciting times, but Andy seriously I know this was a labor of love, but it was never the Lesser labor. Congratulations.

Thank you this. I'm gonna put the book aside for a second. Okay, and just a quick recap of other things you got going on.

Yeah, so I'm working at Orca security at their advisory. See so for those of you here at the show, if you go down into Moscone south expo hall. You will see a 15 foot tall Orca.

I shoot you a picture of it. Yes, like I the pictures don't do it justice you walk in and you were just like it's amazing. I'm really excited to work with Orca.

I was one of their first investment advisors. Yeah Cloud native applications protection. I'm doing work with Wild Adventures.

I'm gonna operate in court you're there so that a lot of startups. We had a valence was in The Innovation show sandbox. Yeah.

Sure sadly did not win. So I think there was some good thank you to the finals of the Innovation sandbox you want. Yep, so they're they're great great company sad security.

You've got a ton of companies in our portfolio doing cocktail party with them tomorrow night. And if you know, you know, yep, right? Okay, Andy, I want to stop you for taking by.

Oh, thank you for stopping by. It's been a long two days. I'm gonna be longer.

Actually. I came directly here from Amsterdam. I was oh goodness on all week where we did I think 70 videos in two and a half days and those were streamed live in there gonna be available on demand shortly.

And then we I think we have a hundred videos scheduled for RSA between here and our other location. Y'all are busy you produce fantastic content. Not just because I'm here.

Oh, no, but we I mean, it's it's crazy we have yeah, there's 4000 videos on Deck strong TV, but but I am I am jazzed this 40,000 people at RSA this week. I am so happy to be back. Yep, and with people and hopefully this whole covid things in our rearview mirror now, Knock wood.

Exactly Andy. I will see you on football season. Definitely unless the Bruins right?

Well, I don't know if they're coming back to Florida to play the Panthers like series about I think tonight tonight's the last game in Florida and probably the last game of this series. I would imagine I put them out of their misery. Yeah.

All right, Andy Ellis again 1% leadership. Don't miss it. Pick it up.

If you can we're gonna take a break. We are live here at Moscone Center RSA 2023. We'll be right back.