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Hi, my name is Jamal Ahmed and I'd like to invite you to listen to this special episode of the #1 ranked Data Privacy podcast.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• How to secure data from dark patterns and online skimmers
• How to choose the right tool to guarantee compliant consent management
• What a cookieless future really means for marketers and how to navigate it
• The secrets to getting hired and enhancing your career prospects!

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Dan Frechtling has over 20 years executive leadership of technology organizations and unique experience helping customers achieve compliance and growth simultaneously.

Dan has significant industry grounding in digital advertising, marketing, privacy, and payments serving clients from SMBs to large enterprises. As the CEO of Boltive he leads a team dedicated to helping customers avoid regulation and reputational risk so they achieve brand safe, privacy first growth. Boltive is known for highly satisfied customers that use their software to find, block and replace invasive advertising. Invasive ads include those with malware, data leakage, and other violations.

Follow Jamal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmjahmed/

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frechtling/

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Hi everyone and welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast. My name is Jamilla, and I'm a data privacy analyst at Kazient Privacy Experts. I'm primarily responsible for conducting research on current and upcoming legislation as well as any key developments and decisions by supervisory authorities. With me today as my co-host is Jamal Ahmed, Fellow of Information Privacy and CEO, Kazient Privacy Experts. Jamal is an astute and influential privacy consultant, strategist, board adviser and Fellow of Information Privacy. He is a charismatic leader, progressive thinker and innovator in the privacy sector who directs complex global privacy programs. Considered by his peers and clients to be one of the UK's pre-eminent privacy experts, he has the credibility and gravitas to engender confidence. He is a sought-after commentator, contributing to the BBC, ITV News, Euro News Talk Radio, the Independent and The Guardian, amongst others. The Privacy Pros podcast reaches audience in 72 countries and is ranked the number one privacy podcast in the world and one of the top three GDPR podcasts. Jamal strives to be a great leader, listener, and coach. He has grown a talented, high performing team who protect the privacy of a billion plus data subjects and our international experts in data privacy, GDPR and cybersecurity. Jamal and his team are driven by the principles of simplifying and demystifying privacy, removing complexities and educating clients to forge a privacy by design culture that enables clients to build their internal privacy capability and capacity. He works with global clients across multiple sectors and jurisdictions, partnering with boards and C suite, debates constructively, challenges, rigorously questions intelligently and advises pragmatically alongside exceptional experience and qualifications. He has value by providing pertinent insights, bringing alternative perspectives, and triggering healthy debates. Hi Jamal.

Hi Jamilla. Thank you for such a great introduction. You make me feel about two inches taller.

No problem. I'm excited for our guest today. So with us today we've got Dan Frechtling, who has over 20 years executive leadership of technology organizations and unique experience helping customers achieve compliance and growth simultaneously. Dan has significant industry grounding in digital advertising, marketing, privacy, and payment serving clients from SMBs to large enterprises. As the CEO of Boltive, he leads a team dedicated to helping customers avoid regulation and reputational risks, so they achieve brand safe privacy first growth. Boltive is known for highly satisfied customers that use their software to find, block and replace invasive advertising. Invasive advertising includes those with malware, data leakage and other violations. Welcome, Dan. Thank you for coming. I was going to say thank you for having us but thank you for coming.

Thank you for having me. Jamilla and Jamal, you as well. Thanks so much. Good to be here.

As we always do, we start off with an icebreaker question. So what fictional world or place would you like to visit?

Nice. Jamal?

I'm going to say probably it's between Narnia and the Willy Wonka chocolate factory. I'm not sure which one.

That's a good shout. The chocolate factory. What about you? 100% Hogwarts. Definitely Hogwarts. I just love to learn magic. And as a child, I was a big nerd who loved school that much. I really wanted to go to boarding school. There we go. All right, let's get into our privacy questions. So, Dan, what started your interest in privacy?

So my interest in privacy really began when I was running a related company. I ran a business called G2, which made the Internet safer for ecommerce. And at that time, we were in the business of finding bad actors of various types that were selling prohibited goods. Whether it was illegal drugs, whether it was scams, extremists, hate content, all those kinds of things for banks all over the world. And while I was there, I was the victim of creepy ads. It was a tough period because I was seeking out cancer treatments for a loved one. And I began to see my browse history shared with online ad vendors, and I would be followed by cartoonish cancer related ads, very personal, all over the Web. When I look at sports, when I look at news, when I look at entertainment. And so that's where I started to learn about data leakage, and now what today is called more commonly surveillance advertising. But when I was at G2, it was a line of business we weren't engaged in. So that's where the point at which I joined Boltive, which does a similar thing, it's finding bad actors. We find bad actors in advertising online, and I get to do something about it from that standpoint. It allows me to continue what I believe is a mission in life, which is to help make the Internet safer and stopping bad actors in the advertising world. In short, stopping invasive ads.

That sounds really quite distressing. The situation you're in where you are looking at cancer treatment and then you're being reminded of it every time you go from website to website. Have you had a lot of your users at Boltive, do they have similar stories? Is that something that you've seen is quite common?

I have come across those with similar stories and many times it is in healthcare. Ironically, it tends to be health conditions that draw the most ire from people when they see that kind of information shared, followed closely by financial information. When we look at the nature of advertising and the amount of data that's shared, there are a number of sensitive categories that are commonly coded in the taxonomy of internet advertising. So sexual orientation is one, of the ethnicity is another one, religious beliefs, political beliefs, right? These are all commonly included in one's browse history and are categorized. So, I do come across people with their own stories of being chased around the web with information that they didn't believe was being created about them and made really into a dossier, a profile that governs what kinds of ads they'll see.

That's really interesting. Two reasons. Number one is because in Europe we see privacy as a basic human right and the GDP actually expressly stops organizations from collecting special category data, which is basically the sensitive data that you describe people's health care, sexual orientation, political opinions, et cetera, et cetera. And when companies are actually collecting this stuff and then selling it to the highest bidder, it sets all sorts of alarms ringing for all the privacy pros listening. But also from just a basic human right point of view, it's very violating, isn't it? And what I really love is how you were a victim of them following you based on the search you had, but how you've actually found strength in that. And instead of kind of like saying, I don't care, what can I do anyway, you've actually decided you're going to combat that and conquer that. And it ties really nicely with the vision that we have in our organization where we want to give every single man, woman and child the right to really safeguard their privacy from this kind of surveillance monitoring.

What I love is when I come in contact with other privacy people, that there is an intrinsic drive to what they do, that they do believe. And I think we are categorically making the world safer for consumers because the pendulum has swung so far the other direction prior to this point around targeting it, particularly in the US. And your reference in Europe, Europe has a much better understanding among the regulators of real time bidding and the activity by Belgium not too long ago that's still being worked out with the IAB is an indication of that. The ICO in the UK is an indication of that. But an understanding of the abuses that can happen when these auctions are predicated on who has the most information about a user so that they can win the bid because they can have more premium advertisers bidding on that private information. So that we're a little bit of a counterweight to that in the privacy world. Kind of back to the original question. When I come across others and we share our stories, it comes back to what can I do about it? And we're in the kind of field where you can get up every day and feel like you're making the world, the Internet, safer for everyone.

And do you think there are attitudes now shifting for companies and CEOs into seeing privacy is more and more important?

On that note Dan, why do you think individuals, consumers, the general public, why are they becoming more and more concerned with privacy? Because it's really interesting. A few years ago, you mentioned privacy and people wouldn't really care too much, even when we had all of the Edward Snowden stuff going on. But now we see companies like Apple talking about how they're selling their phones and they're selling millions of phones based on the fact that it's meant to help you to protect your privacy over any other features of the phone. Why do you think that privacy is so important to individuals right now?

The states, they're less encouraged to make privacy laws. Do you think the attitudes are shifting there as well?

That's a very good question, and you could argue that from two different places. One is what is the nature of the governance of those states? So we have so called red states and blue states where blue states are more liberal and red states are more conservative, and the blue states are generally viewed as having more progressive privacy regulation. Kingdom, California, Connecticut, for sure. Colorado kind of fits in there as well. My state, Washington state, which has been trying to pass a privacy law for a couple of years now and has been unsuccessful to be considered progressive in that regard. We had an incident this week with Kansas where Kansas is considered more of a red state, more conservative. The will of the people was towards protecting abortion, protecting the right to abortion. So I think we might even see a bit of a divergence between what the citizenry espoused the majority of the citizenry, versus political positions taken by the national parties. And that is very interesting as the US Is about to engage in midterms in Congress to see who controls the national legislation.

It's definitely interesting, and I don't know loads about American politics, but one would assume that the red states would be more inclined to privacy because then it would protect things like gun laws, it would protect the individual's rights. But seeing that in reality, it doesn't work, it's just very interesting with what you said about Kansas as well, being that they voted to keep access to abortion.

What’s very interesting is the ADPPA, which is on a little bit of a hiatus right now because the legislature is in recess. That is a bipartisan conservative and liberal Republican and Democrat supported law. And it does bring together the opposite ends of the political spectrum back to this point before. Because everybody has their story of having been exposed to having their data exposed in one way or another. And so that is one of those issues. There's maybe only a few issues that bring together the whole political spectrum and privacy right now is that issue. Amazing.

Earlier, Dan, you mentioned about Boltive and how that's helping companies to help that mission that you have that you identified. Can you tell us a little bit more how it actually works?

If I was to go and talk about Boltive to some of my clients, what is the kind of business that would sign up to something like this and how does it benefit them?

So the kinds of businesses that sign up for us are engaged in either online advertising or online commerce and many times both. And so they want to make sure that they're respecting their users, that not only are they following the laws and the regulations, but also that they're enabling and maintaining that trust that their users have in them because that is a pretty high bar. And back to what I said just a moment ago, I introduced this concept of dark signals. And dark signals are the phenomenon that we have seen, you may have heard of dark patterns. And dark patterns are where there is manipulation going on with the user interface. Well, that's very visible. Dark signals are actually invisible. And that is where these methods that I just talked about that fail between 37% and 100% of the time that consent choice, opt in or opt out gets lost. It gets corrupted, it gets mis transmitted. So our software discovers where that's happening and enables that to be corrected so that when consumers opt out, they're not getting served ads. And on the other side, when they opt in, that's a chance for brands to know who their loyal, interested prospects are. And because that gets lost at the same rate as the opt ins, that's really a top line problem for businesses as well. The software works almost like a smoke test of the online ad web plumbing, if you will, the pipes where all the consent flows to make sure that signals don't go dark, that they actually pass through to where they're intended. That takes us to the online skimmers, which is the other concept I mentioned a moment ago, is when you have consumer data flowing non compliantly, then you have a high incentive for people, for nefarious actors to go in and intercept. That right. And it's a bit like card skimmers at automated teller machines or gas stations where the scammers will put a plastic device that fits over where the credit card goes in and they'll intercept that credit card data. We see the same thing going on on the Internet. And so we have methods to protect against unauthorized data collection because that is where you get the issue of the Russian sanctioned entity receiving information from Google or another client we worked with where there was a malware distributor in the Philippines that was getting access to consumer data and that was not a good thing to try to identify where these online scammers are and restrict their access to the consumer data.

That's super interesting. You frightened me a little bit there as well. I was not aware of these online skimming activities taking place. And how prevalent is it?

It's very prevalent, and it's been known for decades, as soon as programmatic advertising, which powers most digital advertising on the web, and programmatic advertising are those real time auctions in five to 20 milliseconds, bids are received, and an advertiser is awarded access to a user. It has created a very prevalent activity because it is so lucrative and there are virtually no barriers to signing up to get a seat at an ad exchange to see the data going back and forth. Even if you're not going to bid on the ad slot, you can see the consumer data going back and forth, which enables things like cookie syncs. And the cookie syncs allow you to build larger and larger dossiers, larger and larger profiles on people. And again, you don't have to pay for it because you don't have to necessarily bid at that moment. So it's very lucrative to have access to personal information and create a data asset out of that that can be deployed later, because when you see that user next time, you know a little bit more about them because of the cookie sinks. And that's just from a commercial standpoint, from a national security standpoint, and back to why Congress in the US. Was so concerned. Knowing someone's preferences, knowing what their political beliefs are, knowing who and where they visit, makes it very tempting, if you're an intelligence organ of another government, to use that information with influence campaigns. In fact, that's ongoing. So it is more prevalent, but it's because the incentives are there from a commercial standpoint, and even from a global standpoint, to have that user data.

Thank you for sharing. That's super interesting.

It's all quite scary thinking about how at risk we are when we go online. What can an individual though to protect themselves? Or is it too late? As someone who's been on the internet since I was about eleven years old and used to put my email address on forums when forums were a thing, am I still able to have privacy online?

You certainly are. It does come with a choice in deciding to spend a little more effort in protecting yourself. Because yes, there's a lot of fun that comes from sharing on social media. There's a lot of fun that comes from putting our contact information on for us so that we can better interact with people. But as we know, there's a dark side to that. The first place I'd say consumers can look to is on mobile devices. So choosing Apple operating system iOS, where you can turn off app tracking, whether you're on Apple or Android, deleting unused apps, Apple has made it a little easier at this point to manage your privacy. So that's one choice you can make your choice of browser. Choosing a privacy safe browser like Brave or Ghostry Dawn or Firefox instead of Chrome. Chrome has 60% to 70% global market share because it's so easy. And when you set up an account with Google it makes everything else accessible and it's a convenience. But this is where you got to make some choices about choosing privacy over convenience. DuckDuckGo is another example, and I think you had Kelly Finnherty on this podcast really recently from Startpage. And Startpage also has a privacy safe search engine similar to DuckDuckGo. But choosing your search engines in a way that where their practices are more privacy compliant. Email. Choosing anonymized email like ten-minute mail. And by the way, these companies that I've mentioned, I have no affiliation with them at all. I want to make it easier for people to know where to go, rather than just being abstract. For those that want to go a little bit further, masking your IP address with VPNs Tor is an example of that. And then the other one, I think, which maybe been hardest for me is when those software updates come in, accept and upgrade your software. I used to resist those because I didn't want the latest software that was going to break because the bugs hadn't been ironed out yet. But the trade-offs are there. It's better to upgrade your software because that's where the patches will come through. And then beyond that, if you want to go really in the advanced category, some people go and remove their information from those people search websites, which you can do with requests. And technically speaking, you can also block scripts from running on your browser. But for the average person, I think looking at your mobile device, your browser, your choice of search engines, your choice of email, and then being aware of what you share on social media, that will go a long way.

It's interesting how easy it is to find someone online and find out the information. When one of my friends gets a new partner, I am the designated, let's see what we can find online about them. Don't make it so easy for me. That is the message I'm giving out.

Or, don't date Jamilla’s friends.

My friends are very nice. Thank you very much, Jimmy. So Dan, what do you look for when you are hiring in privacy?

What I look for in hiring privacy people is what I look for for every individual that I'd like to have joined my team. But for privacy specifically, there's some general principles. I have this framework I call the Six Cities, which is for the individual I like to see curiosity, tenacity, and authenticity. And with how they go about their business, customer centricity, simplicity, and velocity. It's a bit trite, but it works for me in diagnosing, who I think would be a good fit, but particularly for privacy professionals, people that are lifelong learners that will continue to watch and pick up what's going on in privacy, there is so much activity going on every week. I haven't been in the industry with so much news, so much regulation, so much activities from businesses and consumers, but being. A lifelong learner carries with it a little bit more obligation. And what I'd also like to see is people that are not just lifelong learners, but lifelong teachers. Because when you're at the helm and you're at the front of the interface and seeing what's going on in privacy, picking out what the rest of the organization needs to know makes you very valuable, I think, to that organization. So that's, number one, being a lifelong learner but also a lifelong teacher, second is spending some time to understand the other side. So personally in my career, I actually started out in marketing. So I was the big offender with hyper targeting and privacy invasive activity because I didn't understand the implications of it until I had my own incident, my own creepy ads hitting me. Other people come from different perspectives. You come from a legal background. For example, you may not have spent time in marketing understanding why marketers engage in this level of targeting, that they're just people and they have objectives and KPIs and projects that they have to get done. They're not bad people. They're just doing what their incentive structure is. But understanding where that comes from, understanding how the marketing technology works, I think makes privacy people very valuable to organizations. And I think third is the certifications and programs like Privacy Pros has, like what you guys have in Jamal. And your program, I think is incredibly valuable because it teaches not just elements of privacy, but getting out of your comfort zone and pushing yourself and going beyond what you thought possible because that's valuable in any walk of life. But in programs such as yours, the opportunity to connect with others or using LinkedIn or other social networks where you can find other privacy professionals. So whether they're alumni from your program or whether there are individuals that you meet through other connection points. The third is that what makes someone really valuable, what I like to see is that they have a network and they're actively building their network among privacy professionals because that helps in numerous ways.

Yeah, absolutely. I think having the right kind of community. People with the right mindset is super important. Especially when you have so much going on in so many different jurisdictions and being able to ask or just bounce ideas of Privacy Pros who are working in jurisdictions in different industries. Who are familiar a little bit more with something that you haven't touched for a long time. Maybe the first time you're touching is so valuable. And that's why I believe that employers need more people who are connected because it helps them to do their job better. It helps them to be aware of what's going on, and it helps them see things from a different perspective sometimes. So sometimes we see conversations in our community of people from one industry asking about their approach to something. And then somebody will come up with completely different approach that they would never have thought for in a million years because it's just such a different way of thinking about it and it really enriches those individuals to be able to empower those businesses to adopt all its privacy practices in a much greater way.

Isn't that an interesting point about privacy? And I'm going to go back to the regulations that so many industries that are regulated are industry specific. And in the US there's the FAA for airlines and the FDA for drugs and food, and then there's specific regulatory agencies for nuclear power and electricity and other things. But in privacy, it's really cross industry. You can be in so many different verticals, yet still face some of the same fundamental privacy issues and principles. It makes us have a lot more common and item really a much larger community as a result.

Absolutely. So Dan, one of the things that you like speaking about is the Cookie less future and how that impacts on privacy. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Thank you for explaining that. And in the UK, we've had some proposals for reforms which are now in front of the government and what they're talking about is getting rid of cookie consent banners because they apparently are very annoying and nobody wants to see them. What do you think that means for the future of the UK and the British public and what that means for their online privacy?

It's going to be an interesting experiment. The UK, I think, is standing out as a place where commerce is maybe a little bit more pragmatic from the EU, certainly different than Germany and France's approach. And there are some benefits, it remains to be seen, right? Does that lead to an environment that fosters more innovation and draws more companies in and create more start-up formation because there are fewer restrictions? Let's be honest, these privacy rules disproportionately hit small and medium sized businesses and disproportionately impact start-ups. It makes it harder to get in. So it will be an interesting experiment to see if, while maintaining at least a floor of protection, the UK is able to generate more innovation and more businesses and draw in more investment. For that reason, and I'm sure these are all the things that are going to be measured, but the counter argument to that and the contrarian approach will be, well, UK may lose its adequacy definition and it may have to go under a lot more review by the EU and I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, I don't understand the GDPR implications well enough to answer that. It's a little bit of a contrarian point, but I think it's going to be very interesting. The UK is in a neat spot where it can make its own decisions on this and let's see where it turns up.

Very interesting insight. And I'm definitely having lots of different conversations with people from different parts of the world about what this actually means. No one is making any sure predictions and a lot of people are saying that it till has to go through the first, 2nd reading and there's a whole process and by the time it actually ends up as an approved bill. It could look a lot different to what it started off with and it could actually end up not being a lot of those reforms could end up not being implemented at all.

Yeah, that's the political system, isn't it? Summed up right there.

It's given us a lot of things to talk about, but the problem is what changes can businesses start thinking about making? And I don't think they can actually start thinking about any of those changes until we actually know for sure what the extent is. A lot of our colleagues in Europe are saying, well, actually, whatever the changes are, it's just going to make it easier for businesses because the whole reform is meant to make it more pragmatic. So I don't think there's anything to be concerned about for businesses thinking about what the reforms mean. For me, if you're complying with the GDPR, it's most likely going to be that you are already compliant when these reforms come in. So I don't think there's too much there for UK businesses to start worrying about.

Will the UK reforms change policies? Because you said something which is very important, that if you're based in the UK, you're most likely going to be doing business in continental Europe. So does it change? Does it lead you to treat UK residents differently and then have a different set of rules around continental Europe? Or do you just take the GDPR approach and make that your global stand?

It's an interesting question. So on the consulting side of our business, we work with the forward thinking companies, and for them, it's not about the risk appetite and being compliant. It's about going beyond compliance to inspire trust, cultivate confidence, and ultimately secure more business that way. So they would always be looking for how would our customers expect us to treat them, what they want us to treat them at the same level that we're treating people that we're serving in Europe? Absolutely. So what's the right thing to do here? And how can we make sure that we earn the trust of the people who trust us with their information? And they would take that approach, and that basically means they're probably going to still be compliant with GDPR and give that kind of framework out to the rest of the company and all the stakeholders.

Yeah, just to go back, because the question is now just popped in my head. We're talking about what you look for in hiring. You mentioned your six cities. Jamal, you've got your five C's. How does that compare with Dan cities? Because I think a lot of that overlaps a lot of what you look for when you're training people in the Privacy Prior Academy.

Yes. So it's a little bit different. The five C's isn't what we necessarily look for when we're hiring us. So the five C’s we have in the Privacy Pros Academy, or our award winning C5 formula, is actually to help Privacy Pros get from where they are to where they want to be, to really fulfil their potential and to see some growth in those five years. Number one, it's all about having clarity. We hear about self imposter syndrome and people not feeling confident and people not really showing up or speaking up when they're supposed to. And a lot of the time the reason is because they don't actually have the clarity. So the first thing we look to give our mentees is to make sure they have the clarity in the understanding the clarity in how this actually applies and how they can implement whatever they're looking to implement. The clarity and the latest updates to regulations or the latest guidelines being released by the European Data Protection Board. It's sort of like getting the clarity. And what we found is when people have clarity, it leads to the second C, which is confidence. So once you have the clarity, you know exactly what you need to do, you know exactly what's required, you have confidence. And when you have confidence and clarity, it gives you that credibility. And when you have confidence, clarity and credibility, you are somebody who is competent. And your customers, your clients, your employers, everyone in the industry, their peers, everyone can see that you're competent because you're credible. You have the confidence in your clarity. And the final thing we spoke about earlier is the final C, community. There's no point you just being a lone wolf. You need to have a community to support your community, to grow with you like minded people who are on a similar journey, and everyone in the community is striving to be the best they can. So together we can really fulfil the vision of making sure that every woman, man and child has the freedom to choose what happens with their personal information. And they do that by getting their clients, by getting their employers to adopt those honest privacy practices. So they're really going out to serve the individuals and the businesses to make the right decisions.

I like how they build upon each other, that the clarity and the confidence gives you credibility because that's really true. This point that you capture, which is even if it's not something you have 100% familiarity with, this idea of stepping out of your comfort zone, the growth mindset that you talk about, there's a bit of that as well, that going into the unknown is not scary, that going into the unknown is exactly where you belong because privacy is an unknown world, right? It is uncharted territory that we're stepping into right now. So I don't know if one of the C’s covers that, but I do think that was remarkable as I hear about what your training does, that it just creates giving people the sort of push they need, or to push themselves to take a little bit of risk and a little bit of chances. Not uncalculated risk, but not being afraid to step into that unknown.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we have a signature twelve-week Privacy Pros and accelerator program, which is for the more ambitious high-performance professionals in our community. And we have five pillars on it. And one of the pillars that we talk about is that mindset, having that growth mindset, getting rid of all of those self-limiting beliefs and things that are holding you back, and focusing on what's possible. And we really focus on the filters and people defining and visualizing their best self and then manifesting that and going out and achieving it. And that's why you see people coming through the program with no experience in data privacy. We had a gentleman who came across he was in catering for ten years, and then he became an Uber driver, and now he's serving a multinational company as a data protection manager, and they're really valuing the work he's doing. And all his clients that they work with are also really happy as well. So it just shows you that if you believe you can do something and you put your mind to it, absolutely. There is no limiting yourself. And the only time you actually learn, and you grow is when you get out of your comfort zone and you get a little bit uncomfortable, because that's when things start shifting, things start changing. And one of the things that my mentor taught me that I pass on to others is your best level of thinking has got you to where you are now. Your best level of thinking has created the problems that you have now. So to solve those and to overcome them, you have to get out of your thinking, and you need to find a mentor, someone who can guide you, to really take you and elevate you to the next level of progression. And that includes getting uncomfortable enough to admit, yes, there are certain challenges and there are things that I want to grow in, so please guide me and help me. And that's ultimately what we try to do at the Privacy Pros Academy, is to get those individuals who are ready for growth, who are ready for challenge, bring them in and guide them to really start hitting some of the goals that they have set themselves and to start living the life that they know that they truly deserve.

That is a really good way to crystallize it, is that the approaches and your way of thinking that have gotten you this far have also caused your limitations. It's hard to shake yourself out of those patterns. You really fall back into what feels comfortable and what you've done before. Gosh especially in a distributed world post pandemic where there's less interactions. That never been more true what you said, than today.

Yeah, absolutely. But you know what the great thing is, and I'm going to go a little bit on you here, is our brain is plastic, so we hear this concept of neuroplasticity, which means that even though you've been in the same thing for 20 odd years, you can still change it. You can make new connections. And that's where the book by is it James Clear who talks about atomic habits, how you can really garner every single goal that you want to achieve by creating the environment. That's correct, by creating atomic habits. So whatever you've been doing doesn't mean that you have to do that and live your life that way. You can actually believe and know for a fact. Science proves it that your brain is neuroplastic, which means any time you can pick up new habits, that's going to really help you to take you to the next stage of your growth. And that could be whether it's in your career or in your life. And what normally people find is you spend so much of your day doing your work. So if you really show up and do a great job and you feel confident in your work, that translates to other areas of your life. You actually radiant give permission for people in your family, your children, your relatives, your partner to really be the best they can do, and you become inspirational. And one of the things that I love is when I get phone calls or text messages from the partners, the mothers, the children of the people who've been through the academy saying, who is this person that you've created that we love them so much? I'm inspired by them and now I'm going to take some vocational training in my area of life. And they're such a nice person to be around. They're more bubbly, they're more confident, they're getting involved with stuff more. It's amazing because one of the things we find when people have this self-imposter syndrome and lack confidence is they withdraw into themselves. And that doesn't just impact their work, it impacts their family life, their social life as well. And that's one of the biggest positives of being in such a great community. You see all of these people who have not just lit themselves up, but the lighting up their communities and their families as well.

It's almost living. Almost. You mentioned James Clears book Atomic habits my take away from that. And partly what I'm hearing you say is it comes to willpower, in a way, to will yourself. Whether it is just your job or whether it is your relationships or whatever it is, once you experience that challenging yourself and getting beyond where your limitations worked for you, then you apply that in other aspects of your life. And that's so important. Right? It's one thing to be engaged for ten to twelve weeks in a program and grow, but how do you grow for the next twelve? How do you grow for the next 52 weeks beyond that? That takes willpower. Your motivation is going to last for ten weeks. You got to find other ways to build routine and habits to make sure you're going to do it. You're going to walk the talk. And that's really the secret. It keeps maintaining that when even when you don't feel like it, right, you commit to something even when you don't want to, because you're always glad you did. You never regret continuing to take yourself out of your comfort zone.

And what a nice message to end on. Thank you so much for joining us, Dan. It's been a pleasure to speak with you today.

Yeah, thank you so much, Dan. It's been super interesting. You've given me so much to think about, and you've given our listeners so much to think about as well. And we have to learn and grow and we have to kind of discover about some of these dark art practices that you mentioned and really make sure that we identify what we can do to help our employees and our clients. And if someone's listening down and they want to get in touch with you or they want to understand about how your solution can help their employer or their organization, what's the best way to do that?

The best way to reach me would just be through my email. dan@boltive.com B-O-L-T-I-V-E. It's like active but bolted. It's a combination of a lightning bolt and a lock bolt, a fastener bolt. It's kind of a double meaning there, but Dan@boltov.com is the best way to reach me. Well, thank you. It's been a real pleasure. I love your podcast and it's great to meet you too, face to face also.

Thanks. Been a pleasure.

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