Entrepreneur Intel

In this insightful conversation, Wes chats with Steve Hernandez, the CEO and President of The North Group. Steve shares his journey from being a military personnel to becoming a prominent figure in the intelligence and security industry. He discusses the importance of situational awareness, the complexities of handling threats in both personal and corporate realms, and provides valuable advice on business risk management. Additionally, Steve dives deep into the dark world of human trafficking and the importance of safeguarding against digital exploitation. Entrepreneurs and leaders will find this episode particularly useful as Steve provides pragmatic advice on crisis management, stakeholder protection, and the evolving landscape of security.
 
Takeaways: 
  • Leaders must have situational awareness and preparedness. This means being acutely aware of the environment and potential risks your organization may face and having plans in place to address these risks before they materialize.
  • Create and maintain strong communication channels. Ensure that every team member knows they are not alone, and foster a culture of openness where concerns and observations about potential threats can be shared and addressed promptly.
  • Invest in pre-crisis risk management. Being proactive in identifying and mitigating potential risks is far less costly and more effective than dealing with the aftermath of a crisis. This includes having security assessments, creating emergency protocols, and educating employees on these measures.
  • Understand and prepare for the broader impacts of risks. Analyze the second and third-order effects of potential risks. For instance, supply chain disruptions can have cascading impacts on various aspects of the business, from financial health to workforce stability.
  • Leverage technology for security and risk management. Utilize advanced tools for data collection, analysis, and threat monitoring. Ensure your company's data and communications are secure, especially when dealing with sensitive information or traveling internationally.
  • Adopt a trust-but-verify mindset in professional relationships. While it's essential to foster trust within your team and with external partners, verification processes should be in place to prevent exploitation of that trust, ensuring the integrity and security of operations.
  • Focus on building resilient systems and processes. Ensure that your company has robust systems to handle disruptions, including backup plans and redundancies to maintain operations under various scenarios. Continuous refinement and testing of these systems are crucial to organizational resilience.


Quote of the Show:
  • “You can't have a company full of donkeys when you're trying to raise thoroughbreds.” - Steve Hernandez


Links:


Ways to Tune In:

Creators & Guests

Host
Wes Mathews
KC
Producer
Kyle Conover

What is Entrepreneur Intel?

Welcome to Entrepreneur Intel, a podcast where we discuss the most important strategies for success from amazing entrepreneurs. Host Wes Mathews sits down with business owners to learn about how they got started running their own business, what helped them succeed and the biggest lessons they learned along the way.

Be sure to catch new episodes every Thursday morning, and to make sure you never miss out on any insights, don’t forget to subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, You Tube or wherever you get your podcasts.

This show is sponsored by Stealth Consulting, your Fractional CMO. Stealth provides the roadmap and accountability to reach your business and marketing goals. Learn more at https://stealthconsulting.com/

Wes: I'm really excited to, uh, chat with today's guest. So he is a CEO in the intelligence and security industry. And a very unique thing about him is he's developed systems for impending crisis and preventative crisis. Uh, he's a reserve police officer, focuses on asset protection of human capital. Uh, He is the CEO and president of the North group based in Milford, Michigan.

Welcome Steve Hernandez. Hey, Steve.

Steve: Nice to be with you, Wes.

Wes: Dude, thanks so much for coming on. I'm really excited to kind of dive in with you. You have such a unique skillset business, so I'm really excited to dive in. But I first got to ask you, I asked everybody on the podcast, you know, you've been a, you've been an entrepreneur now for about 13, 14 years.

Uh, you've been the CEO and president of the North group for about seven and a half years. Like what's one of the biggest lessons you've learned thus far in your journey?

Steve: Oh man, that's a, that's a loaded question right there. Uh, I would say the biggest lesson I've learned is, um, this too shall pass.

Wes: That's a good one. We share with a group of, I get together with a group of entrepreneurs and every time we meet, you know, we meet once a month, we talk about personal family business. And it seems like everybody kind of goes through things. And that's something we use where it's like, it kind of hits everybody at different points, but it's definitely going to pass, but I'd love to just crack right in, right?

Like what is the North group? You, you do so many different things and really cool things. Like, can you give kind of a high level of what the North group is?

Steve: Yeah, so we're a global risk management firm. So, um, our, our core focus is managing both crisis and, and preventative crisis measures, right? So whether it's protective services, protective intelligence, risk management, Um, what we call embedded services, whether we're monitoring cameras and access control systems.

Um, we're, we're about 80 plus employees and, and we have, you know, several hundred contractors globally. Um, we've got offices throughout the U S and, and, and, uh, we've got an office in Poland, um, and a footprint there as well. We're really focused on finding customers that have unique problem sets that we can help manage.

Um, and that could be anything from. You know, a threat to their organization, a threat to their family or, or a, um, a liability impending, or they just have some sort of compliance and audit regulation requirement where they need to have security procedures in place, um, to prevent those liabilities from occurring and causing stakeholder damage.

Wes: You mentioned, so that's quite a, quite a bit of employees. You have some in Poland. So for me sitting here as an entrepreneur, I'm like, man, how does that apply to entrepreneurs or like a service like yours? Right? Cause I think it's some of the offerings that you have are so unique where I love leading entrepreneurs to services or individuals that They didn't know existed, right?

Everybody's got problems. And like, so, can you walk me through, like, what's a typical entrepreneurial problem that you're solving? Or is it, you know, if there is, you know, I, I hear a lot of, Hey, this company's emailing me, I have to pay them 10, 000 in Bitcoin or 100, 000 in Bitcoin to get my data back. What should I do?

Is that some of the stuff that you're dealing with on the, on the entrepreneurial level?

Steve: Yeah. I get the ransomware. We call that ransomware, right? I get the ransomware or, or data theft conversation, but, um, it could be around, um, um, A threat to the organization such as say someone's been terminated and they are now creating hate and discontent online and they've made a threat that I'm going to come back to that location and we're going to hurt so and so.

So we have what's called a behavioral threat assessment model that we leverage for things like that. Um, both for our celebrity clients, our private clients and our corporate clients, we conduct a behavioral threat assessment. a human threat and the way we do this is, is, is fairly interesting. So it's risk equals threats times vulnerabilities divided by counter measures times impact.

So everybody starts with risk, right? Always. Um, but how do you, How do you understand what the risks are? So threats are, are going to be manmade in nature, right? Um, vulnerabilities are typically natural in nature and then your impacts, you know, from those two, from those two categories, um, get evaluated.

And then from there, you're, you're looking at countermeasures that are currently in place. And. That ultimately will form your, um, your analysis that allows you to advise the customer on, on risk as far as it, as far as it goes for the organization or the stakeholders, right? We say stakeholders, I'll use a family office as example, or, or a private equity group, right?

They may have an impending deal in a foreign country and say that deal goes south, and they, they need to kind of get out of this. They need to understand what their risks are. Um, the way we evaluate liability is through four categories, and that's going to be legal liability, financial liability, life safety, and insurance.

And then we look at it from how does the customer buy and spend on those liabilities. So there's a cost to each one of those liability categories. So ransomware would be a financial liability or a legal liability. It necessarily wouldn't be a life safety liability. Depends on if you're dealing with the intelligence community, maybe that information could lead to life safety concerns.

Um, In some aspects, maybe national sports teams, other things like that, travel itineraries, that could lead to a safety concern with that data breach, um, but legal and financial issues is where we would put that if you called me and said, Hey, all of our data has been stolen. We don't know what to do. We always advise don't pay anything until you understand the situation.

Um, but you know, and there's insurance liabilities to that as well, right? If you didn't have an insurance policy, um, and now you want to go get one because it happened, it might, it might be an impending issue. So what is the cost to that liability? Then we multiply that by 0. 0134 and that typically puts us in a category of, of what the customer should spend.

Um, and there's a lot of preventative customers that come to us. There's a lot of reactionary customers that come to us as well though.

Wes: That's interesting. So, part of your intro is, you know, you're supporting organizations, um, crisis management, problem solving, uh, you got some such as veterans and human trafficking. Like, does that tie in at any capacity with like, I'm looking at businesses, whether it's an entrepreneur run company or a fortune, you know, 100 or 10 company, like there's, I would imagine once you get to a certain revenue clip or a certain amount of status as either you're an entrepreneur, business professional, like at what point do you have to start looking into your company where, Hey man, like I never thought about this stuff, but I can't be delusional and I need to talk.

To your company to prevent because I don't know what I don't know, right? Or an entrepreneur doesn't know what they don't know.

Steve: So, you know, the, the counter human trafficking stuff we've done over the years and, and continue to be involved in is philanthropic in nature. Um, uh, you know, the, the fight against probably, I think one of the most evil things on the planet. which is people that are going to harm or hurt kids or exploit children.

I think that fight, um, is, is an ever growing battle. Um, I could talk for days on that. I mean, that's, that's something that our organization is very interested in. And looking at from both of an intelligence and then kind of actionary standpoint of how do we, how do we help? How do we train? How do we assist advise behavioral threat assessment?

For example, right. If, and if an individual is suspected of doing something criminal or, or that, that, uh, you know, breaches legal grounds, conducting a behavioral threat assessment to understand is this being, what's their motive? What's their intent? Right? So we take those same tactics from the commercial space into the philanthropic space to, to help prevent human trafficking or help mitigate, um, the impact of, of trafficked, uh, areas and victims.

Wes: How prevalent is human trafficking? Like as you're talking, my mind's kind of like, I don't hear anything about it. I'm not focused on it, but how like you, you and I are in the same. Area right. Southeast Michigan. Like how, how big of a problem is it?

Steve: Well, it's a very big problem. Um, the, the, the problem with understanding it is you have to put it into buckets. So you have known to the victim. perpetrators, right? And then you have groups, and then you have transnational groups. Um, and then to further break that down, you have to look at it. You know, what, what type of trafficking exists?

Everybody hears labor trafficking. Um, I just, I've got a 67 page report on, on trafficking, but it's all sex trafficking and labor trafficking, um, primarily to, you know, teen minors or, or, um, adults. And. One of the big ones that we don't talk a lot about is the child porn exploitation that goes on in the world.

Um, and a lot of that's the known perpetrator to the victim. So this could be a family member. This could be a loved one. Um, it's, it's crazy. I just had a conversation with my six year old last night. He's, you know, up in arms cause he wants to go to a friend's house. And I, we know most of the parents, you know, vetted most of the parents.

Um, I am one of those parents. I've got two boys, um, God help me. And, and a girl, if I had a girl, right, because I would, I might be a little bit more paranoid, but nevertheless, I don't think exploitation knows bounds, um, when it comes to gender. I think that, uh, Perpetrators don't, you know, there's. It's opportunity meets placement and access.

And then a perpetrator has deviant behavior that, that they then push onto a child that can happen anywhere. That could be a football coach. That could be, uh, a gymnastics, um, doctor. Um, Right. I mean, so we were, you know, all affected in Southeast Michigan by the Larry Nassar situation. Right. So you don't know.

And when you look at that, you got a doctor of high stature, well respected in the community, right? It could be, it could be, it could be a police officer. It could be a judge. It could be, you know, I mean, positions of trust are not, are not excluded to deviant behavior. That's never been exposed. And I think for me, from a behavioral threat assessment standpoint, It's a lot worse than we see on the surface, um, to the known perpetrator to the victim, right?

Um, I, I think we don't uncover that. I think a lot of people don't expose it, uh, to the level that it needs to be exposed. Um, but the exploitation of children is by far one of the most heinous crimes we have, you know, to deal with in this country. Um, and here's the thing. In some countries internationally, it's normal, right?

Um, it, it, it was normal in the Middle East. Uh, it was, um, and I think for me, it's, it's one of those things where enough people don't focus on it and it's hard. You know, my, my, you know, I've got people in my family, they don't wanna hear about it, they don't wanna talk about it, they don't, they don't wanna address it, right? It's not for everyone.

Wes: Yeah. And like, and you, in your position, I'm just assuming you see like the worst of the worst where you have so much just institutional knowledge. I have five kids and we had, you know, my boys are older. We had a little girl and I worry about that stuff and you iPhones and just the internet, it's just crazy what's going on.

Like, any tips or anything for parents? Like, you bring up a valid point of people want to avoid it, act like it doesn't even exist, but are there things that you see? Like, is it just communication with your kids, or how do you, how do you stay ahead of that, right? Um, you know, when you have a family and it's that prevalent going on.

Steve: So, I mean, coming from the world that I come from, I'm, I'm obviously overly paranoid. Um, you know, I, I, I live a little bit of a different life. My family lives a little bit different life when it comes to this. Um, you know, we're not, I don't let fear consume my day to day or how we live, but I'm always prepared for an impending crisis.

And I feel like. You know, but, but I've been doing this since I was 17, right? Like, you know, from the time I was getting ready to join the military, preparing my mindset to be situationally aware, situational awareness is key. Um, I, I, I've always worked on something with my kids, um, through different stages and ages as they grow, uh, my 14 year old, who's.

You know, 6'1 and 180 pounds and looks, you know, he looks like a linebacker, um, at 14. I mean, no one's taken him, right? And they're going to have a hell of a fight if they try. Um, uh, I don't even, I have trouble taking him these days, right? He's just getting big. Um, but, you know, he's very well prepared. He's, he's educated.

And one of the things I do is I play eyes and ears. What do you see? And what do you hear? And we could be at a restaurant. We could be in a diner. Um, if you allow your child's mind to open up and understand what makes them uncomfortable, that's a natural, response to, you know, that person. I've taken it a step further, you know, who in here might be carrying a weapon, who in here could be a threat.

Um, and I, and I started, you know, as my son, my older got, my oldest son got older, I started working on that with him. Right. And, um, You know, he's been, he's been blessed enough to be part of active shooter trainings. And I mean, he's, he's been, he's been the assailant in, in an active shooter training at a school.

Cause I, I didn't have, I didn't have someone to do that part when I was teaching a police agency how we're going to respond to the active shooter. Right. So, and so he kind of gets it. I'll say that my youngest. Like my conversation last night was, there are bad people in the world and you need to understand that we're not trying to limit your, your ability to go be with your friends.

We're just not doing overnights at such a high rate. Um, because I think, I think it just, I'm just uncomfortable with it as a parent. Right. Um, you know, I, I also talked to my kids. You know, about, has anybody ever tried to touch you? Is it, I mean, and that's might be an uncomfortable conversation for some people, but I'm going to ask the question, right?

And, and I'm going to understand if somebody has ever tried to expose my kid to something or exploit my kid in any way. Um, because I think if you have that open dialogue, right, the moment something does happen, this is wrong. Right? This is not, this is not how we live, and I need to go tell mom and dad, uh, and that's, and I'll say I've talked to many parents that have now, at that phase, been told something, what do I do next?

And that's, I think, the more important conversation is if you are told something, what do you do? One is you, you, you preserve evidence, um, I won't get too far into that, but you know, if, if your son or daughter were to come home and say they were sexually assaulted, right, it's immediately to the hospital, you know, preserve evidence.

And I'm coming at this from a law enforcement standpoint now, right. Cause investigatively, you know, people need to be prosecuted. Um, the next thing is, you know, preserve information. Um, and you know, and then instill into the victim that everything's going to be okay, this was wrong and, and we're going to get you the support that you need.

There's too many victims that don't come forward out of fear. Um, both children and adults, right? I mean, this is, we're talking, you know, date rape. We're talking all those kinds of things that probably go on at a, at a, at a scale that we can't even quantify.

Wes: Now when's a good time to bring like you in, in your company, right? Because if something like that happened to a parent or even a business owner, like take that situation and you know, it could be very various different things. You know, some people say, well, contact the police right away. Then you have people are like, don't contact the police.

Or contact a lawyer. Are, is your company, or are you the guy to go to first to kind of help navigate a situation like that?

Steve: No, I mean, we're a security company at the end of the day. I mean, I get a lot of people that will come to me, you know, I, I've had, I've had dear friends that have come to me. Hey man, my, my daughter thinks she might've been drugged and raped at a party last night. What do I do? You know, I mean, first things first, right?

Where's she at? She's safe. Right. Um, and then from there it's, you know, you know, the, the, the laws on consensual relationships are one thing here in the state of Michigan. I, I think for me, The common thing I'm seeing is the exploitation of digital media. Um, young, young, young teenager sends a picture to someone and now that picture is out, my greatest advice I gave everyone is tell your kids to put their damn phones down because they're once, once you push it out on here.

Wes: You're done.

Steve: We can find it, you know, I mean, I mean, anybody can find it if they know what they're doing. So the cell phone is the greatest threat, you know, to that, to that, to that topic, right? Because kids are on TikTok. TikTok's the worst thing to hit humanity, in my opinion. Um, I don't have it on my phone, but that's because of what I do and, and the exploitation that I know the app does.

Um, towards the user, uh, and the data that the user has on their device to include banking and all kinds of other stuff. Um, so, you know, being mindful and just talking to your children and your teenagers about, you know, opportunistic threats towards, you know, someone having placement and access to them and being able to exploit and that deviant behavior.

Sometimes manifests late in a perpetrator's life. Sometimes, you know, they, they decide, you know, they like kids and as heinous as that is, right. They don't tell anybody, nobody knows, but they're a youth football coach. We got a problem.

Wes: Yeah. So on the security side of what you do, like I, you know, I'm sure there's a big wide range of, of what you guys do in service, but I mean, you're going all the way to like big CEOs, big companies. Are you guys going in there protecting them personally, but then also like security protecting the company?

Like, where do you, what's some of like the big things you do in that, in that arena?

Steve: Yeah. So, so we've, We, we have celebrity clients. We have commercial clients. We have a large government style events like, um, you know, big political events that are upcoming and we've done, you know, past very, very large events, um, where we have. You know, 50, 60 of the fortune, you know, 50, you know, CEOs coming in and we're, we're helping navigate and then also public private partnerships, right?

So we work closely, closely with different federal, local state agencies, um, to, to manage security projects and venues and different things are. You know, the way we call it executive protection, right? So if we're, if you're a high net worth individual or a corporate executive, some corporations actually mandate through their stakeholder liability policies, that they have security on them when they travel.

Some can't travel without it. Some can't fly. And this is a crazy thing I learned years ago. Some executives cannot fly commercial. It's, it's, it's written into their employment contract. Um, So there's a lot around the corporate side. It's called duty of care, right? Organizations have a level of care to provide.

To their people. Um, if they send someone to Africa, right. Doctors Without Borders, send somebody to Africa. Doctors Without Borders has to have, uh, security on those doctors. Um, you know, if, if Apple or Amazon. are putting a distribution manufacturing facility together in Mexico. They need to have security on their personnel that they're sending.

That's, that's the duty of care and liability. And that's a legal, that's a legal thing that they have to abide by. Um, if they know that there's a risk, especially they have a level of care to provide to their people.

Wes: So you're personally protecting them, but then there's also like these things, right? So I would assume that, you know, this, this CEO that needs to be protected, there's like data protection or scam protection or AI, talk about that and how that plays into all of this.

Steve: Yeah, so, yeah, well, so first and foremost, if you're traveling overseas, I carry what's called a Faraday bag, um, which is an RFID and signal blocking bag. You know, you can get them on Amazon for 24 bucks. Um, I've got them all over our office. You know, I just throw them in there. If I'm traveling internationally, I'll typically bring a burner phone too.

I've got a whole bag of them in my, uh, in my closet over here. Right. Just iPhones and flip phones and you know, phones that once I come back, I, I don't ever hook them up to my wifi. I don't ever. You know, because it doesn't matter if you turn this off, the right organizations can still listen and track.

Wes: that's what I was going to ask you, like you with your knowledge, like, yeah, you turn this off or like how, how protected are you? Right.

Steve: Listen, if you can't take the battery out, then you can't turn it off.

Wes: Interesting.

Steve: So that's, that is the rule. And here's the thing, you know, um, when we look at where people travel and what they do, um, it's, if, if, uh, you know, company ABC comes to us and says, Hey, We're launching an office in, in, you know, um, the difference between China and Columbia, right?

Um, I'm not so much worried about the Colombian government targeting my client. I'm more worried about transnational crime. Um, with China, I'm very worried about the government targeting our client. So we call that, you know, Counter espionage, corporate espionage, right? Whatever, cause the, you know, the Chinese government is, is its own, their intelligence services.

They also own their own, own corporations in China, right? So competitive market analysis is, is now corporate espionage, right? So what we consider competitive market analysis company, you know, B2B. Uh, either exploiting information to understand market strategies and market differentiators and how you do your business and all that products, um, products, secrets, trade secrets in China.

When you go to China, the government is collecting that information. Um, a, a, a governmental intelligence agency, right. You know, um, associated with the CPP, right. Uh, or the CCP, the Chinese communist party, right. Is the one collecting that information versus here in the United States. Companies that hire folks like us to collect information or they have data aggregators, right?

Um, so that's, that's kind of how that works.

Wes: So you mentioned while we were chatting, like, have you created your own systems or like, how do you manage through all this data? Like when you're taking on a client or working through a project, like how do you get, you call that intelligence or like what systems or how do you approach that?

Steve: Well, intelligence is, is really, you know, information that we collect, we process it, we analyze it, Um, we understand it and that's the product of intelligence, right? So information starts at the receiving end, right? And then goes into, and, and. An analytical cycle, um, we figure out what pieces of that data are relevant to the customer's safety, security, um, you know, a myriad of different things.

And then from there, we, once we process it, we understand it. Then that becomes intelligence in a reporting function that we would then give to the customer or to the powers that be the security team, the executive protection team. What we also have, what's called threat intelligence. So. If you decide you're going to go to, you want to go on a safari and you're going to Africa tomorrow and you call me and you say, I just need to know I'm going with my family, we're going on a safari.

So we have a travel risk management program that we do for, for many families and organizations around the globe. It doesn't matter where you go. We have a lot of data and tools, um, technical tools, analytical tools that we pull, um, we pull a lot of open source, what we call OSINT data as well. And then the other side of our business is human, right?

Human intelligence, where we have contacts on the ground that we'll go to. And we'll say, Hey, I've got a client coming here. What do you think? What, what are you hearing? What's going on? Our, you know, we put our money where our mouth was years ago. We went to the places where we knew we were going to have customers going.

So we had relationships to receive them or at least give us the information upon them entering that, that area. Um, and for us. that travel threat risk management side of the house is very big. Um, we also track those customers when they move, right? So I have systems that allow us, it'll populate threat data.

There's been an active shooter, 10 blocks away, you know, we're going to advise the client to shelter in place, uh, till we, till we figure out what's going on. Get with our law enforcement partners, advise that we have, you know, a diplomatic client or, you know, we have, we have Uh, what we call a VVIP, right?

Somebody that we need to protect. So it just depends on, on the nature. Every one of those clients is set up in a very boutique and custom manner, if that makes sense.

Wes: No, it makes a lot of sense. And it's, it's really awesome. Cause I didn't know something like that existed, right? Like I have five. I'm getting them passports, like, we want to travel to Mexico, right? But me as an average civilian, I hear, go, I hear people like, don't go, go. And I'm like, man, I want to go take my family and have a good time, but I don't want to be worried about something happening.

So. You would take a call from a guy like me, help my family. Like, is that like a retainer thing that you do? Or is it just,

Steve: Yeah. So we, we, we have, you know, we have fixed costs for our travel risk assessments, right? And then, and then you say, Hey, I don't necessarily need security when I'm there, but I'd like a secure driver from the airport. We have contractors and vendors all over the world. We would call a vendor or, or have one of our contractors go.

Um, I have clients that have their own aircraft, right? So sometimes, you know, it's just. Hey, we're going to throw somebody out the plane with you. They're going to be, they're going to be part of the furniture though. Right. That we just, we, that's kind of our inside thing, right? You're, you're the furniture or, Hey man, you're, you're, you're hip pocket, right?

You're on them. Um, uh, you know, done hundreds of those details, you know, domestically and around the globe, right. Where. You know, personally, back in the day where I was with the client, hip pocket, you know, if something happens, I'm grabbing the back of their belt, cover and move, put them in the car and go, um, at the end of the day, like, you know, I've, I've had that, I've had that environment a couple of times where I've had to move some clients out of, out of harm's way.

We've done a lot of evacuation work. We evacuated folks out of Israel, Ukraine. Um, so, you know, for us, we love pre crisis, right? We'd prefer to be pre crisis. Post crisis is always very expensive, um, for everyone, uh, to include the client. So we try to. I've had clients that come to us and say, we're doing this.

Uh, well, we think we'll be good. And we're like, well, we don't really, you know, and they're like, no, we'll, we'll take the chance. We'll call you if something goes wrong. And then 1130 at night, I, you know, I can, all I hear is, you know, either gunfire in the background or, or, or whatever. And they're like, we need out.

And, you know, I had this with, uh, with, uh, a faith based organization. And they, you know, went down somewhere where some conflict started. I'm like, you probably shouldn't. They did anyways. And now they needed to get out. And, um, it was, you know, so,

Wes: wow. So, so you've had the North group for seven and a half years. You built a really significant organization. Like what, what led you to start the company? You said military background, but like what, what sparked the passion to go down this path?

Steve: well, it's kind of a funny story, right? So I. I was in the military, did the whole global war on terrorism thing, was in Iraq 2007 2008, didn't really understand that, you know, I mean we were losing 100 to 125 guys during the height of the war, during the surge in that time, and a day, and it was like kind of one of those things where you know, Um, I didn't really have a plan.

Like my plan was to stay in the military, do 20 and, and, and out. Right. Uh, crazy thing. I look at that now I'd be like, I'd be like on my way to retiring here soon. Like, so it's, it's wild, but, uh, the good Lord had other plans, uh, ended up getting out and I was going to go to culinary school, actually. Um, you know, the joke was I heard that chicks like dudes that could cook.

So I, I'm going to go to culinary school. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm a country boy from Highland, Michigan. I didn't really know much, been around the world a little bit at this point, but, and I was a single dad, um, and I needed to figure something out. Um, buddy of mine called me, said, Hey man, I need help with a problem set.

Um, Made more money than I'd ever made for like three days worth of work with a crisis. And, and literally I'm, I haven't left the security industry since, uh, but seeing the crises around the world that I had seen and started to get more acclimated to, I just saw a void for, for more risk management versus I got a guy, you know, I didn't want to just be me doing the consulting thing.

Um, entrepreneurship sucks. Uh, it's not for the faint at hearted. Uh, you know, a couple of quotes. I live by as heavy as the crown of thorns the King may wear. Right. I mean, at the end of the day, like it's a lonely Island, man. Um, I feel like I've, I've lost more friends trying to run and grow and lead a business because there's an expectation that they don't need to be held accountable.

Um, family, right? I've hired family. Hey, I'll help you out, you know, and you know, and then. When the performance goes, you know, it's like, Hey, you know, there's got to be this conversation. Um, I've had, I've had people, I had an employee that was, that was a family member and my executive team would call, you know, the cat with nine lives.

Because I, but it was like, I'm trying to help. I'm trying to help. And then a lot of the, I, the biggest lesson I've learned is you can't have a company. Full of donkeys when you're trying to raise thoroughbreds.

Wes: Yep. Yep.

Steve: full of donkeys and one thoroughbred. The donkeys will kick the crap out of the thoroughbred.

You will see one donkey in a pasture full of thoroughbreds though, thriving and protecting and protecting, you know. Right. So at the end of the day, and you know, that's one of my favorite, you know, little cowboy references right there. I got, got horses and, and, and, you know, I, that's kind of my, my, uh, my RNR, right, is getting out there on a horse and, and getting out on the property and whatever, but when you look at this, For me, the journey started with enormous failure in my first company.

Um, and you know, mind you, I'm going through all kinds of personal stuff, being a single dad. I'm also trying to reacclimate back from a world that I expected to spend the rest of my adult life in, and that was ripped out underneath me. Um, You know, because they said, Hey man, you're, you know, your knees, your back are gone, you're not going to be able to do this, um, we're going to, we're going to medically retire you.

And, and, and I fought it for a while and it was, it was hard because I had the one caveat I'll say here is I had so many people, mentors that invested in me along the way. But it wasn't till about 2014 when I got serious about business. When I really, this is after a failure, right? A failed company, right?

Um, hitting rock bottom. Um, and then, but I've never quit. My wife will tell you this about me is I, I've never given up, right? I, I, but I've had a lot of people take advantage of that tenacity. Um, and you know, people will say, well, stop. Chances. Well, I'm not, I'm not going to change who I've been called to that bridge.

And then, you know, and then I'll, I'll, I'll throw an extra grenade on it for, for us both. Right. But I don't enter a relationship with trust, but verify. And, and like, if you're a good dude and you come from a brother of mine, I don't, I don't need anything else. Right. Like that's it. And people are like, well, that's not a good way to run the bit.

Well, It has been the very, the very thing that's also almost killed me in business, but also built my business. Um, and, and, and honestly, this is not my company. It's the people that work here as company, right? It's, it's, I get, you know, 60, 80 plus families here that, that, that rely on the success of this. I think that's the other hard part is, is appealing and appeasing to everyone's desires and needs.

Um, you know, I, I, I'll say that it's, it's hard to, it's hard to quantify the journey. Right. Um, but you know, failed more than I've succeeded, um, until the last few years. Right. And then it wasn't really a metric benchmark or, or compare anymore. It was just like, I'm going to wake up every day. My mind, my mind, my mindset became this West.

My mindset was. I'm going to continue to be me and I'm going to wake up every day and try to change the world and the worlds of the people around me. All I can do is do that, right? That's it. And I'm not going to sit here and go, you know, of course I've got a number, I've got goals, I've got aspirations.

But I don't really care. And that's, and that was the, that was the change in entrepreneurship for me. I don't really care anymore. I'm going to wake up every day and people will be like, I remember when you were this kid getting expelled from school and you know, you were, you were, you were a troublemaker, you know?

And it's like, I was just uninterested. I was uninterested as a kid, right? Like the, the math class didn't interest me. Right. Um, and. You know, I, I think my military service into early failures and entrepreneur led me to where I am today. And the basis of how I got here is going to be, I, I just woke up every day and I kept going.

And in my head, this too shall pass.

Wes: Yeah. Well, no, I really appreciate that share. I mean, you just covered a lot of things and I think it's, you mentioned a couple of things. One, like, yeah, it's super lonely being an entrepreneur, right? And there's a lot of stressors, a lot of things that weigh on you, but clearly the passion is what drives and then, you know, not chasing the dollar, doing what you love.

Yeah. Is huge. And the question I want to ask you, because like your business to me as an outsider looking in. Man, details matter. I mean, details for you, from my perspective, life or death. If I screw a client up or one of my employees or teammates screw something up, like, we can typically overcome it, right?

But that's always a challenge in running a business, is always getting better, learning from your mistakes, but how do you architect systems and processes for your 80, you know, 80 team members? Because man, those details are critical, like beyond critical.

Steve: So the industry has some very common practices, do's and don'ts. Um, this is an ever refining thing within our business. Um, we are constantly Looking at one is our customer relationships are built on trust first and foremost, right? We say we we do what we say we're gonna do always If we can't we tell the customer the the the processes around data and and security methodologies Behavioral threat assessments, right?

It's really About creating communication channels for the lowest man to not be on an island, right? The lowest, the lowest, the lowest woman, the lowest employee, right? They're not on an island. They, they understand where we're going as a company, what our mission is, you know, and, and what our vision is. Um, and for, for me, You know, I could go get a job as security director, chief security officer, you know, uh, advisor for a family.

Right. I could go do a million things. Um, I'm not just doing this for me. Uh, I made peace a long time ago with like, You know, and what ended up happening was the journey to get into where we are and grow our revenue the way we have. I never expected us to get where we are. And, and now my focus is M& A, right?

My focus is, you know, growth through acquisition. Um, it's, you know, and that's where Because I see the writing on the wall, our industry is going to evolve and change, right? Security is going to become way more technical, even on the protective standpoint. Um, which is why we pushed a, you know, a subscription model to protective intelligence, right?

Because I, I knew that we needed to be there and not heavy on human capital. Um, but more on technology integration and, and how we're going to, how we're going to, how we're going to ebb and flow with what our, what we're doing. What our industry is saying it's going to do.

Wes: And what does that look like for a business? Like, you know, my sphere of influence are all entrepreneurs. And I'm a big proponent of, you don't know what you don't know. And I see like big changes coming on the technology front. I mean, AI, I mean, the other day, other month, my son plays hockey. One of the parents was talking that they got a phone call from what they thought was their daughter.

And she's like, mom, mom, mom, I need help. They've got me somebody grabs the phone like I have your daughter like the voice They're like it was exactly my daughter's voice and they went down like they were ready to wire money over and do all these things I mean, there's stuff like that, but then there's just pure business Like what's something that should I be thinking about as a business to your

Steve: The market.

Wes: I'm sorry.

Steve: Yeah. The, the, the economy. Um, you know, I mean, we're bearing down on, on, on probably one of the worst economic crashes that's, that's impending. Um, you know, I, I think as a business, right. Cash is king, sit on as much cash as you can. Um, I, I think the other thing you want to do right now is look at the, the, um, I mean, what's your market saying?

I mean, for me, right. Security is, is. If you're good at what you do, people keep coming to you. I, I'm not, I'm not at all worried about the security industry lagging. Um, I would be worried about, you know, dealerships, auto manufacturers. I mean, COVID created this environment where I think we realized that nothing is foolproof.

Um, you know, I, I, COVID also was exacerbated to the point of. Look how many businesses in the, in the hospitality space went out. Right. And, and it, and it was because the capital on hand was two weeks. Um, you know, uh, I would also. You know, venture to say that the current threat landscape with geopolitical environment, um, is concerning.

If you're in manufacturing and you know, the proverbial, you know, crap hits the fan, um, we think COVID is bad. We think six months of supply chain disruption is bad. Wait. Wait till there's a, there's an international conflict. Um, that, you know, the least of everybody's worries is, is going to be where, where we're getting toilet paper or where we're getting, you know, um, car parts.

I mean, if China decides to take Taiwan, the majority of our chipset and semiconductor, you know, microprocessing is done in Taiwan. Then what? Right. I mean, how many businesses are affected by that? So the way I, and just to kind of tell your listeners, the way I look at risk is. Second and third order effects.

So I don't ever look at risk in a singular manner. I don't ever look at, okay, well, someone's going to punch me in the face. The risk is I get hit in the face. The second order effect is that I fall down. The third order effect is that I hit my head on the ground, right? This is a very basic example, right?

So take that to a business level. You have an impact in your supply chain. You've now impacted your, your monetary standing. Okay. And, and revenue and EBITDA, and now you're laying off half your workforce and say a fourth order of effect is okay. The issue gets cleared up and now you have to go find a whole new workforce.

You see what I'm saying? Like the way I look at business risk is, has also been a, you know, and I've got a, when I say I, I mean our team, the way our team looks at business risk has been, um, has been the inherent reason why we've, we've been very successful in our space. And what we do is because we're not just looking. And this is the analogy I use. We're looking through the windshield, not living in the rearview mirror here.

Wes: Yeah, that's great. I mean, that's that's really good. That's really good advice and just feedback I actually, uh, I think a lot of people feel better knowing you. I feel better knowing you. So if I go through a crisis, I know who I'm calling. You were actually introduced to me through Skip. So Skip's an amazing guy.

He lives on my street, so I know where to go. However, if the listeners have a crisis or they have something that they haven't known where to take that, what's the easiest way to get in contact with you or the North group if there's any questions or concerns out there.

Steve: Yeah. Shoot us an email, right? Call us, um, our websites, you know, www. tngdefense. com. Um, info at tngdefense. com. Um, we'd love to hear from you. Um, we also have a podcast time to head North, right? So we're. You know, we're, we're all things security and risk management. Our core, our core function as an organization is, is to help people solve complex problems and, and help minimize risk and liability to stakeholders.

Wes: Well, Steve, I can't thank you enough. Again, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it.

Steve: And thank you guys. I really appreciate you.

Wes: Thanks, Steve. Have a good one.