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Today’s guest is Sean Henry. Sean runs a digital marketing agency in Austin, TX. He brings a unique perspective on the importance of digital security for your business’s online assets and accounts. Listen in for some great insights and new ideas that you can apply to your online life.
You can check out Sean's marketing firm at https://www.fletchingdigital.com
Online security and privacy aren't very sexy, but they are important. SpiderBytes is a podcast where normal people from many different fields discuss the tools and techniques they use to be more secure and maintain their privacy. Hosted by Adam Tervort. Guests from across the SpiderOak community.
Adam Tervort (00:06):
Hello world. Welcome back to another episode of SpiderBytes, the podcast from SpiderOak. I'm your host, Adam Tervort. Today's guest is Sean Henry. Sean runs a digital marketing agency in Austin, Texas. He's going to share some really interesting insights in how businesses and individuals can help to keep their digital identity and accounts safe while conducting business.
Adam Tervort (00:33):
Sean's in a really interesting vertical and has great interactions with his customers; people who do great work but aren't really focused on digital, but need to be marketing online in order to continue to run their business effectively. There's great insights here, and I know you're going to enjoy this episode.
Adam Tervort (00:53):
Hang on. After these messages we'll get right into the conversation with Sean Henry.
Adam Tervort (01:00):
This podcast is sponsored by SpiderOak. At SpiderOak we believe privacy and security are important, and it's our mission to secure the world's data. From secure data compartments for collaboration and data storage, to protecting your backups with end-to-end encryption, or even protecting communications in space, we want to be part of your plan to protect your most important data. Learn more at spideroak.com.
Adam Tervort (01:28):
Well, welcome back to SpiderBytes, the SpiderOak podcast. My name is Adam Tervort. And today I am excited to be joined by Sean Henry. Welcome, Sean.
Sean Henry (01:38):
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Adam Tervort (01:42):
Well, could you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about you?
Sean Henry (01:45):
Yeah, absolutely. Like it was already said, my name is Sean Henry. I am a resident of Austin, Texas, just as long as I can afford living here. I own and operate a digital marketing company called Fletching Digital. We work with people ... I say people ... businesses which include people ... in the home services industry.
Sean Henry (02:13):
So what I like to tell people is that if you touch a house in some manner, whether you're a roofer or you carry in a new countertop for a kitchen, or you completely gut a bathroom, we help you with your marketing. The rule we've found is that a lot of people who can do incredible things with designing a kitchen are generally quite awful marketers. And most of my clients would agree. Yeah. So I really strive to help them.
Sean Henry (02:44):
Outside of that, I've got a lovely girlfriend. And I've got a really annoying dog who's right beside me right now, a little upset because I'm not giving him all the attention that I'm giving you. But yeah, that's me in a nutshell.
Adam Tervort (03:02):
That's great. Austin's a really fun town.
Sean Henry (03:04):
It is. Outside of the fact that nothing good ever happens after midnight, Austin's really fun before 11:59. Outside of that, I tend to tell people to hide and go home as quickly as possible. But if that's your speed too, you can find some fun there after dark as well.
Adam Tervort (03:23):
There you go. So pro tip for anyone going to visit Austin.
Sean Henry (03:28):
But don't call me. I'll be asleep.
Adam Tervort (03:29):
There you go.
Adam Tervort (03:33):
Share something interesting about yourself that maybe a lot of people don't know.
Sean Henry (03:38):
Ah, this is always a fun question. So back in college, I attended Midwestern State University. Which I'm wildly guessing that no listener is familiar with. And that's okay. I'm not going to tell you much more about it because I like the legitimacy that you have for me in your head right now.
Sean Henry (03:56):
Anyway, while I was at Midwestern State we had a huge community from the Caribbean that took classes there as well. They had a lot of cool incentives to come in and get your degree there. So one of the classes I was in, it was a small class, the professor was one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life and just one of the kindest too. Not much of a people person, but he really tried his best. And the majority of the class were people not from the US.
Sean Henry (04:34):
And so my name's Sean, it's pronounced S-E-A-N ... or it's spelled S-E-A-N. You could pronounce it that way too, if you want. Some people get a little confused on how to pronounce it. Well, that poor guy, he walked up to every single person and said, "Hi, I'm professor ..." I guess he didn't make that big of an impact because I don't remember his last name. But he introduced himself and he was like, "Your name is ... whoever. Right?" That poor person, every single person, he tried to pronounce their name, he just got it miserably wrong. He tried. You could tell, he tried and he practiced.
Sean Henry (05:10):
And he got to me. I was the very last one. And he got to me. You could just tell in his face, he was just down, he was just a little bit sad about it. And so he looks at me and he goes, "Excuse me." He looks at me and he goes, "Hi, Sean." And I look at him, because I was a terrible person, and I go, "It's pronounced Seen." Which it wasn't.
Sean Henry (05:35):
The whole class laughed. And for the remainder of my time at Midwestern, ever so often I'd be walking through the quad or I'd be going to a different class, or even just at Target, and someone would stop me and go, "Hey, it's Seen. Hey." And then someone I'd be with would ask me, "What was that?" I go, "It's a long story."
Sean Henry (05:58):
But yep, that's my legacy back at MSU. Not good grades or Dean's List or anything like that, but having a funny sounding name.
Adam Tervort (06:10):
Well, that's such a great story. I love it.
Adam Tervort (06:15):
Well, it sounds like you're doing some really interesting things in your professional life. I do a lot of work in marketing as well, and so what you're doing sounds like it has a big impact. It also sounds like you're a delightful person. I wish I was down in Austin, we could go out and get a drink together. But ...
Sean Henry (06:35):
Hey, come on down. I'll pick you up from the airport. I know some places that do some great breakfast tacos. We'll have a great time.
Adam Tervort (06:45):
That is a tempting offer. I love breakfast tacos.
Sean Henry (06:48):
We got to go to Dave's. We got to go to Dave's Tacos. Shout out to Dave's Tacos. Yeah. We'll go, it'd be a great time.
Adam Tervort (06:56):
There you go, another pro tip for your trip to Austin; Dave's Tacos.
Adam Tervort (07:02):
Well, tell me a little bit about, in terms of privacy and security in the digital world, what are things that worry you or what are problems in this area that you think about? And then what are the things you do to address those concerns or those problems?
Sean Henry (07:24):
Absolutely. So a lot of the work I do with my clients ... and I have some amazing clients. But my clients are both my best friends and my worst enemies as well. I'm not a security expert. And I'll just say that first. And I'm learning as I go, and I am learning just as time goes on, how much I don't know.
Sean Henry (07:48):
One of the things that has been most interesting, as I am talking to people just all over the US and Canada, is just ... I say this with all due respect to the industry ... how behind the home services industry tends to be. Because, for example, if you have someone running Facebook Ads, you generally have maybe the owner of the company, the assistant, a couple of other people able to log into the Facebook account or the Google Ads account. And so you're having people logging in from all over, touching things, tweaking things, maybe they shouldn't, or maybe they don't know what they're doing. And then security is never even thought about. Until your account gets locked out or until someone hacks it or something else happens, it's just a last thought.
Sean Henry (08:43):
And so I've had situations, just with my clientele, where I always give them access to their accounts, because it's theirs, they should have access to it. And inevitably, once a month, or once ever so often, someone will go in, do something they shouldn't. Or we've even had it where someone, they've left their password open or their password is just something embarrassingly easy to remember, and then someone has gone in and done stuff they shouldn't. And either they've upped their ad spend, because they weren't paying attention, or just done the wrong thing.
Sean Henry (09:20):
And so, as I've learned more, as I've realized that I have much more to learn, it's been just making small changes: making more secure passcodes, educating my clients on how I do things on my side of the business; to keep my privacy safe, to keep their private information safe. Because if there's a leak I don't want it to come from my business, because that will tank you faster than you could even imagine.
Adam Tervort (09:56):
So what are some of the specific things that you do within your business, whether that's with account management or in other areas, those things that you share with your clients that you do? Can you share some of those with us?
Sean Henry (10:10):
Yeah, absolutely. So any websites that I host, I run daily backups, just because sometimes you have someone coming in, they don't like the way that photo looks and they want to change it. And my web designer cries a little bit. And it's all about making that web designer a little bit happier. But I always recommend a complicated email. I always ask them not to message it or email it to themselves or their coworkers.
Sean Henry (10:44):
For myself, I use Bitwarden, just to keep track of all the different passwords and to make them a little more complicated than my brain is capable of making them. And, from there, it's just being smart about it.
Sean Henry (11:01):
And again, home services industry, they are fantastic at what they do. But they'll be the first to admit they're not the most technical of people, they're not the best marketers. That's just not their forte. Much in the same way, if you told me to install a granite countertop I would probably break in about five minutes.
Sean Henry (11:23):
But with that in mind, it's been a really interesting shift, as a business owner, because I get to look at them and say, "Hey, I'm learning as I go. But let me show you what I've learned. And let's both make small steps forward together."
Adam Tervort (11:40):
Yeah. I think, in my experience, that's really important. Just taking small steps in the right direction can make a big difference. And if everybody did something as simple as using a password manager and not repeating their passwords across websites, it would probably reduce their attack surface by 90% or 95%.
Sean Henry (12:03):
Yep.
Adam Tervort (12:04):
So many other people don't do that. Even a simple thing like that can make a huge difference in the level of effort it takes to compromise your account.
Sean Henry (12:16):
Oh, 100%. And it's the small steps that everyone ... they may not know about, but they kind of know about, at least in some capacity. But it's also the easiest thing to either forget or just choose not to do.
Adam Tervort (12:29):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's another really key part of it, is helping people get comfortable with new workflows. Your workflow, for all the years you've been online, is: remember this one password ... not one password, the company, but that password that you use for everything. There's a bit of a learning curve to get away from that workflow that you've done for all this time.
Sean Henry (12:56):
Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's one of those things. Much in the same way, if you want to build a new habit you just got to do it. But at the same time, a lot of people don't care about their privacy online or their security until they're hacked or until something is compromised. And so if I can do my job and educate them a little bit, let them know, "Hey, this will cost you money," or, "This will cost you time," or something even more important than that, then, yeah, absolutely, they're going to want to change.
Sean Henry (13:29):
If not, and what's more unfortunate, is a lot of times they don't care until their account gets locked out or their nephew or niece does something silly on their account that they shouldn't. Then they're calling me up and asking why their website's upside down and why they can see all this HTML code everywhere, and so on and so forth.
Adam Tervort (13:49):
So as far as websites go, I think we probably have a number of listeners that also run websites, you mentioned one of the things you do is daily backups. Do you have specific tools that you use specifically for website backups?
Sean Henry (14:09):
So I'm a little bit lazy, if we're being honest. I run all my sites on WordPress. And then I tend to use just some of the backup features within there, just because it works. And then I use hosting for that through a partner of mine ... not a business I own, so I don't know if I can even mention it ... and then they handle the backups for me. So I manually back it up, but they handle it through their systems. And it just makes it easy.
Sean Henry (14:49):
Which goes back to how simple ... maybe not how simple it is, but how simple it can be to just back up your site, heck, even once a week, to do simple things. Just so if something goes down, you'll be able to get back to it within a day or so. Yeah, you may lose a tiny bit of information. But better than that, to lose all of it, and to wake me up at two in the morning to let me know your website's down.
Adam Tervort (15:19):
Yep. Yep. Absolutely.
Adam Tervort (15:21):
All right. Well, Sean, as we wind down, one of the things I love to do is hear favorite quotes that we people have. Do you have a favorite quote that you'd like to share with us?
Sean Henry (15:36):
Ooh. Okay. So a man I knew as a kid, his name was Larry Mitchell ... he's not on this earth anymore ... but he said something to me when I was much, much, much younger. And it's one of the only things I remember, but it sticks with me every day. I'm probably going to butcher this because this is being recorded, and I always butcher it if someone asks me. "Your talk talks and your walk talks, but your walk talks more than your talk talks."
Sean Henry (16:12):
Now, for anyone whose head is spinning right now, it basically just means actions speak louder than words. But it's something that, even as an adult, it was so simple but it was just so obvious. It honestly sticks with me every day.
Adam Tervort (16:28):
And I love that. It's also a good tongue-twister, for those of you who are learning English.
Sean Henry (16:36):
I'm honestly shocked I got it out. Since this was being recorded, I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to mess this up. I'm going to ruin my credibility." But I got it out, so we did it.
Adam Tervort (16:47):
Yeah. I love that. That's a great quote.
Adam Tervort (16:49):
Well Sean, thanks again for your insights and sharing your experiences with us. It's been great.
Sean Henry (16:55):
Absolutely, Adam, thank you for having me.
Adam Tervort (16:58):
All right. We'll be back with another episode of SpiderBytes soon.
Adam Tervort (17:07):
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Adam Tervort (17:35):
Why should you consider CrossClave? Well, it helps you share safely and get work done. CrossClave uses distributed ledger technology and end-to-end encryption to deliver a true zero trust system designed to protect you and your business's most valuable data. I'd love to have you try it out. Go to spideroak.com/podcast to get started with a free CrossClave account. No credit card required.
Adam Tervort (18:05):
Thanks again for listening. For all of us at SpiderOak, I'm Adam Tervort. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please consider subscribing. If you're interested in joining us as a guest on SpiderBytes, send me an email at podcast@spideroak-inc.com.
Adam Tervort (18:22):
We'd like to thank Mel Graves for our theme music, Ear Shot. We'd also like to extend a special thanks to our law firm, Dewey, Cheetham & Howe, our staff dermatologists for teenagers ... don't pick it ... our Director of Vengeance, [Rudy Day 00:18:39], and our staffing agency, Click & Click. Thanks everybody.