Episode 189 - Curt Vincent - Leaders on Leadership
Have you ever felt like your life wasn't going according to plan? Curt Vincent's story is one of unexpected turns, leadership lessons, and finding the path to purpose. After being drafted out of high school, his initial plans were derailed, but with the help of a strong leader, he discovered a talent for leadership and a love of learning. Life threw him curveballs, like being called back to the Army after 9/11 and later having to choose between a high-paying job and his startup dream; through these challenges, his faith and openness to new opportunities guided him. In his third career, Curt is on a quest to discover his true calling. He emphasizes the importance of self-confidence in leadership, balanced with keeping the ego in check. Tune in to this episode because Curt's story is an inspiration for anyone who has ever felt lost or unsure of their path.
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Curt Vincent - Leaders on Leadership
It is time for our latest edition of the show, where we pull back the curtain on leadership and talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I am tremendously excited because we have a very special guest. His name is Colonel Curt, or to us, lay people, civilians, Curt Vincent. I want to tell people briefly about Curt's subject matter expertise.
Curt is a cyber security consultant. He's a strategist and also a speaker. He has been a cyber security maverick in both the Army, respect, and Wall Street. He is the Founder and leader of the 400-person Morgan Stanley cybersecurity program. He's been a leader since becoming a sergeant at the age of nineteen. Curt has been in the cybersecurity world. He loves to say that he demystifies cybersecurity for senior leaders, C staff, and boards. It's not just technology. It's people and culture.
I love this Curt, because everybody's aware of this from yelling across the room at somebody saying, “What's this email?” “Don't open that.” Curt says insurance claim data shows that as much as 80% of cyber breaches occur because your employees unwittingly invite criminals into your company or home. Curt, we want to talk about all things leadership but especially about this great thing that you do with cybersecurity. Welcome, Curt.
Thank you. It's good to be here.
Give the audience a brief context of where we connected. Our first correspondence was Curt had come in with an order through our website so automatically, I see how tremendous he is. I then see he comes through with another order. When you order from our website, you get a discount code for the next one so he came in and ordered something else.
I went in and being the nice person that I am, I refunded his shipping because it was going to the same place. I get this email from Curt saying, “What's going on? You refunded the shipping.” Fast forward several weeks and here we are. Curt, you've been in the tremendous sphere for quite some time but we have only just connected. Would you share about that?
I'm thrilled to share about it. I'm going to embarrass you in the process because you have no idea what I'm going to say. The first thing that I want your audience to know is I knew very little about Charlie "Tremendous" Jones. However, I learned the quote, “You will be the same person in five years, except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I love that quote. I use it in my public speaking because it's so profound.
One of the things I do is when I go all the time, I'm always exploring somebody or something extremely deep. I had decided at this point in my career that I was going to dig into who was Charlie "Tremendous" Jones. I started to watch as many YouTubes as I could find. I started buying old CDs off of eBay. I discovered your website. From there, it's a short circuit, more data and input. I started to order these things. I noticed you had some videos and MP3s.
I'm going to tell your audience, I prejudged you. I've seen this many times. People are riding on the coattails of their mom or dad and they're not able to stand up for themselves. However, you told me the story later that your dad threw you out of the house and said, “Go earn your stripes,” which made me respect you. I dug into your LinkedIn and I was like, “This is an amazing lady.” I prejudged her incorrectly. I had to buy one of your books and went through it as quickly as I could. If I make a mistake, I admit it. I sent Tracey an email saying, “I judged you incorrectly. I apologized.” From there, we started to have a dialogue and I would say we became friends if I can call you that.
Thank you for that. Charles did. He pretty much was like, “You got to go earn your stripes.” I remember watching successful people that I sat under their tutelage since I was little and no one said, “I inherited this. My last name is this. My daddy was a general.” It was all, “I made my own way.” I thought, “To be standing in front of people and help them find their way, you have to have made your own way.” He emphasized that but that was something as a child, I understood. I appreciate that, Curt. It means a lot. Let's get right into talking about paying the price of leadership.
Loneliness
Curt, one of my father's known speeches was called The Price of Leadership. It's in one of the little booklets that we have, the life-changing classics. In it, he says, “If you are going to truly be an authentic leader, there's a price you're going to have to pay.” It isn't a corner office, million-dollar salaries, or everybody loves you. There are four things he talks about. The first is loneliness. We've heard the statement, “It's lonely at the top or heavy as the head that wears the crown.” Can you share with us in your leadership journey maybe a time when you went through a season of loneliness and some words of exhortation for our audience?
Unfortunately, Tracey, everything with me is a long answer. Let me dig in. You'll appreciate this though. I have to go back to when I was in high school. I was back in an era where things were very different than now. My father felt, rightly or wrongly, that I was very rebellious so he forced me to quit high school and join the Army on my seventeenth birthday. What happened here is that I joined the Army as a seventeen-year-old man-boy. As I like to say, pimple-faced kids are showing up in the 101st Airborne.
The first sergeant who was the top enlisted person for the company took a look at my education and entire profile and said, “Vincent, it says here that you're a high school dropout. You're not going to the airfield,” and that was supposed to be a helicopter mechanic and a co-pilot.” He says,” You're going to the education center. You don't come back until you get a GED.”
I have to make a very long story short. This guy was about 5'5", a Puerto Rican gentleman named First Sergeant Ortiz but because of the amount of leadership and his time in the Army, I thought he was 9 foot tall. I did exactly what he said, fear and trembling. I went to the education center and did everything I was supposed to do. That was my job, to get the GED. I brought it back and laid it at his feet. I said, “Can I go to the airfield?” He said, “Yes. However, you have to go back to the education center and sign up for college credit. I want you to show up in my office weekly and tell me how you're doing.” It took two courses.
I started to do this. I was getting extremely good grades, A's and B's at that point. I wasn't getting that kind of positive feedback at home. I started to learn that at the very beginning, we'll get to the loneliness but the whole thing is this man went out of his way for me. To make another extremely long story short, he had me take college courses up until it was about four months from when I was supposed to graduate high school, co-wrote a letter with me that I sent to my high school with my GED and my college transcripts, asking them if I could graduate with my class and they allowed me. I'm in the yearbook as Unavailable For Photo.
The reason I'm mentioning this is this was the first influence I got in terms of what leadership is about. It's about making sure you're doing the right thing for the other person. There's no loneliness there. However, because of this individual, I strove to do the very best I could in this environment and made the rank of Sergeant at a very young age, nineteen years old. This is where the loneliness comes in.
Leadership Is Servitude
The very first thing that happened was I was a part of a group and then I was picked to lead that group. I had a very senior NCO come to me and say, “You need to disassociate with those people. They're no longer your friends. They work for you.” The one thing I love saying is he taught me that leadership is servitude. It's not about you. You're there to make them successful. I learned that at a very young age.
Leadership is servitude. It's not about you. You're there to make others successful.
The second thing he taught me is, “Phrase in public, rebuke in private.” Never call anybody out in front of anyone, pull them on the side, and be able to explain but phrase them to the high moon in the same way that First Sergeant Ortiz had with me. At the age of nineteen, I had to learn that leadership is servitude but I also had to learn how lonely it is as you're trying to stumble through figuring out what's the right thing to do and how you can be a good leader. It's very lonely.
It’s the idea of perseverating over particular problems and going and asking senior NCOs. This was long before I became an officer. Also, to be able to ask, “What would you do?” I didn't realize it at the time but that's what mentorship is about. You can cure a bit of loneliness by getting one or more mentors, which I still have, to be able to help you sort things out but not violate the relationship between what you have with you and the people who work for you.
I love that you talked about the two big factors as a young person where you're in a collective with camaraderie in high school. You got stripped away from that. When you go into the military, as I did, you're in a troop or a barracks together. If somebody has to fall out, get separated, or gets held behind due to whatever physical or you had to get your GED, that's lonely too, because you come in together as a cohort and the goal is to come out on the other side as a cohort. Rather than be so angry about the fact that you didn't get to do the traditional route, say with your peers, you said, “I'm all in.”
Like Joseph, you landed on your feet. Curt is also a dear brother in Christ and we're going to talk about this. I was reading Oswald Chambers and he talks about how burdens are a fact of life but we learn to carry them with God who was our companion. When you talked about that and a mentor, Lena Horne has one of my favorite quotes, “It's not the burden that breaks you down. It's the way you carry it.”
When you have other people there to help you, back when we grew up, it was more like, “You got to tough it out and figure it out.” Now, the more people you know to assist, the higher you are as a leader because you're asking other people to shoulder that burden with you. Mentors are the cure for loneliness. Curt, the next thing we talked about is weariness. I know you know 1 thing or 2 about weariness and Charles as a leader.
Weariness
You're going to be doing all kinds of things physically, mentally, and spiritually. Charles always told me, “Tracey, it's not for people who are weak, even physically, because a lot of times, you're going to be doing things that somebody else should be doing. If everybody did what they were supposed to be doing, then we could be a collective. We wouldn't have to have a leader and a follower. It's tiring.” Curt, how do you stay in top fighting form? You're dealing with a nasty and cowardly enemy that can sneak up and wreak terrible havoc and even lead your troops. How do you combat weariness?
The story I would tell you there is we have to fast forward a number of years to where I had gotten out of the Army, went to college, Electrical Engineering, Master's, went back in through ROTC, worked my way up through the ranks, and ended up into cybersecurity. A part of what I like to joke about was that I had planned to get into the recording business and had planned to use my engineering degree to be able to do recording and touring, which I did in college to put myself through.
It's not in the Bible but I love this adage. It's man's plans and God laughs. At the end of college, I ended up back in the Army and cyber, which I didn't expect. You used Joseph as an example. It's like being thrown in a cistern but ending up as number two in Egypt later on but you can't see it at the time. After my Army career, I ended up getting picked up on Wall Street as a technologist. Back in the '90s, Wall Street was trying to figure out the latest technology as best it could.
I did some consulting and got picked up by Morgan Stanley. The guy I had done work for, the top technologist for 6,000 people who were all technologists, says, “This internet thing is going to be big.” Nobody had a vision of where it was going to go but this guy did. He said, “I want you to build a group. Here are six people. Keep hiring until I tell you to stop.”
This is where the weariness comes in. If I was going to take six people who I had to first convert to my way of thinking, that's job number one. Number two, start hiring like crazy and be able to put in place my philosophies, which are not mine. They're from reading books like your dad, Earl Nightingale, and all these greats. Why try and reinvent the wheel?
The thing is that you've got to have a team that can help you grow a larger team and get what I would call something equivalent to a movement going as opposed to fighting. Where it became weary is telling people, “The one thing that I put into place is that as we hire, if you hire anybody that is not smarter than you, I will fire you.” The reason I said that was I have twenty years in the government and I've seen the DMV and the post office. Usually, you hire people that you can control and you're better than.
I didn't want to grow a large organization of people who were trying to maintain control. I taught the initial team and as we grew, we would have leadership sessions for the people who showed leadership potential and grew them internally. We would explain how leadership works. The one thing I said to folks is, “There are two ways to get promoted. One, you can either stand on people's heads and climb over the wall and you are successful or they can lift you and make you successful.”
That's the way we tried to grow up. You want to talk about weariness to be able to try and convert people to a different way of thinking, especially on aggressive and abrasive Wall Street to be able to get people to understand that this is going to be our culture. We are not going to be like everyone else on Wall Street. We're going to be different and we were but you want to talk about being weary and lonely at the same time. That's the one because you can find very few mentors when you're trying to do something different.
You can find very few mentors when trying to do something different.
There are two books I'm reading. One has been around. It's sold millions and millions of copies. The Master Plan of Evangelism. It's all about Jesus picking the twelve, and that was it. It’s how he got their buy-in and loyalty. It wasn't about him going and healing people, although he never shunned mass ministry but it was all about that core. Leadership is about getting that 6 because then that 6 gets their 6 and that 6 gets their 6. That's how you grow a movement.
The other book is by Steven Sample. He was the tenth President of USC, The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership. In it, he says, “The problem with organizations and leadership is A people hire A minus, A minus hire C, C hire D.” I'm sorry. That's the way it is. That's not being mean. Look at any organization. His thing was, “You have to be incredibly intentional about hiring. You can't even hire yourself. You have to hire above you.”
Men say, “I married up.” You got to hire up if you want this thing to do it. I love that you said that. You don't have enough energy. You have to focus on your core. That's one of the biggest leadership pitfalls where we fall. We have to be everything to everybody and be there for everybody. Not even Jesus was that. Pour into the people that get it so they can go be an extension of you.
Jesus went off with Peter, James, and John.
Abandonment
Even after his twelve, he had a further level of intimacy. The three-legged stool, I tell people, “You got to have your trinity.” You have other layers but otherwise, you'll burn out. You'll never make it. I love that, Curt. Loneliness, weariness. The next thing my father talked about was abandonment. In this, he said, “Abandonment is necessary.” What he meant was you have to stop thinking about what you want and think about in favor of what you ought and need to think about.
He would tell me, “Tracey, on any given day, I do more to contribute to my failure than my success.” I'm like, “What are you talking about?” He's like, “I waste time. I have conversations that have nothing to do. I don't capture my thoughts.” His thing was abandoning everything that isn't the highest and purest form of your calling. Can you share with us about how you help people do that?
I'll give you the story first. In this particular case, I had also gotten called back out of retirement to be able to serve again after 911. The reason I'm telling that story is I thought I was going back to the Middle East but they said, “No, not this time. You're going to Fort Huachuca, Arizona.” I went out there and ended up buying a house and starting a business of wireless internet for the desert because you can do that by having satellite dishes.
The whole point is after I came back to New York City and Morgan, 2008 hit and nobody got bonuses. My boss came to me and said, “You did a good job this year. I want to do something for you. I can't give you any money but if you want, you can work from Arizona. You could go to your place in Arizona as opposed to the four-hour round trip commutes into New York.” I said, “That's worth more than money.” I went out there in 2008. I was able to work for a couple of years. The decision was made that all senior leaders had to come back to one of the four hubs, which was New York, London, Japan, and Hong Kong.
I was told, “You have to come back or we got to let you go. There are no exceptions here.” I had taken and put a lot of money into this business in a year and a half prior. I couldn't leave my business partner so I made the decision to take early retirement from Morgan and stay in Arizona. The feeling of abandonment was going from a Wall Street salary to a minimum wage job at a college. I was doing a startup. I felt abandoned. I'd lost complete hope like, “I'm doing the wrong things. I'm not doing what you want, God.”
You brought up Joseph. My wife and I are studying Daniel. It's the same thing. You don't know what God's plans are. Therefore, I didn't understand what God's plans were and here I am, as I'm trying to get this business off the ground, which is doing quite well but this is many years later. I couldn't see it at the time with that feeling of abandonment. Losing everything I've gained and it's all going to slip away was an awful feeling. I didn't dig myself out. I was led to being dug out.
Different opportunities present themselves. I was brought to the world's largest hedge fund in Connecticut. I was brought for six months. This was when I met Maria, my wife. I ended up staying in Connecticut. Life started to change. I ended back up on Wall Street again with different organizations like Bank of America and such. Life started to take on a different feel from what it had been.
The abandonment is the equivalent of Joseph being thrown in the cistern going, “All I got to do is wait for it to rain.” You're waiting for the other shoe to drop but there's a lack of faith, is my point. I'm confessing that I didn't do a good job of saying, “Lord, I don't know what you're doing but I'm in no matter what happens.” I'm working on my third career at this point.
I love that you said a different feel. For anybody out there, change is difficult, even though we have our faith and we know that God has already worked it out. He doesn't write checks and intends to cash in on and call you places. I love such a word of encouragement. We've had so many of our guests and you echoed the same thing. It is scary. We feel like you poured so much into it but remember, it is all God's. He's already seen this to the end. You're His child.
I love that you said it's a different feel. I feel the same way too. I'm not a big feelings person but I look at life now, even from what it was years ago. I'm like, “This is a good season.” Coming through all that, it's radically different than what I thought it was going to look like. It's different but it's good. There's a richness about it that you can reflect and go, “I see why I was dumped in the pit to become number two and everything in between.”
Daniel is being thrown in the lion's den. It's a different feeling from leading all of Babylon.
I'm going to see Daniel at Sight and Sound. You're outside of Philly, correct?
Yes, I am. My wife and I have tickets. We’re bringing a relatively new believer with us out to Sight and Sound to see Daniel in August 2024. That's why we're going through the book of Daniel at home in extreme detail.
That’s Ezekiel.
Ezekiel is my thing.
Vision
It is the time to make it your thing. The last thing that Charles talked about is vision. We've heard, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I don't know if you know this about my dad but he flunked out of school in the eighth grade. He went on to get his GED and become one of the most wise people out there or a guru. He had this hunger for leading. He had a few men in his life and women, my mother, one of them, who gave him the affirmation that he did not have growing up.
Path To Purpose: If there is no vision, the people perish.
He would tell me, “Tracey, vision is nothing more than Snally seeing what needs to be done.” We all can do that but then doing it, there's this very pragmatic action-oriented execution type step that he takes not just in theory but in reality. You're talking about you're on your third career. How do you set the stage for vision and what's next? A lot of our audience are like you on their third and fourth couple retirements but you show no signs of slowing down. How do you craft what's next?
I want to take you back to what my plan was during my undergraduate and when I was getting an Engineering degree. I had my vision but it wasn't God's vision. You wanted to talk about abandonment. It fits right in with that as well. I didn't put two and two together. This is like Monday morning quarterback. You look back over it and it's easier to see than in real-time. I've got a vision.
My first career was in the Army. My second career was in Wall Street. In my third career, I decided to strike out on my own and do cybersecurity and public speaking to be able to generate the leads for doing the cybersecurity consulting. I also want to be able to build an organization where I raise people who understand what I do so that you can become me if that makes any sense.
I don't want to get too much into detail, except to say I've been in five startups in my career. None of them made me rich but the main thing is that I do understand the startup mentality. You're waiting for the payoff in the future. You're not expecting it now. This is all part of the vision. You’re saying, “This is what I want to be able to see.” However, in this third career that I'm working on, I'm trying to leave my vision glasses, if you will, on a coffee table and saying, “Where's my God vision glasses?”
I'm trying to seek because I've got my ideas for what Curt Vincent wants. Yet, what am I supposed to do? I'm not quite sure of that. This is why I take you back to my first vision of working in the recording business. What I’m trying to do is to be able to be aware of when the Holy Spirit is moving. It’s when you're meeting somebody you didn't expect to meet. I didn't expect to meet you. I wanted to buy some books and material off your website for crying out loud.
Here, you've taught me humility as well. I'm gaining a lot about the knowledge of your dad. I want to make a digression here and say that your dad dropped out in the eighth grade. I know the story and also how he ended up at work. That's where that quote that he said about reading. I do a lot of audiobooks. You and I talked about that in an email but I do that because then I can do a lot of mowing the lawn and driving. I can consume a whole lot more. I do probably close to 24 books a year in that regard.
There's another person who is a little on the notorious side, Frank Zappa. I'm going to change the quote a little bit to make it PG but he says, “If you want to meet a girl, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” The whole point there is that you have to be focused on the vision of what it is you want to learn and then you consume a lot of books like your dad said and did to be able to use that as fodder so that you can be the vision that's designed for you can become more clear and you've got the tools so that you can affect that change in that vision.
If you want to meet a girl, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.
I love that you talked about what's next. Vision has that future element. There's the past. We learn from the past. There's the present. We want to be mindful, enjoy, and be aware of where the spirit is leading us. It's why I wrote The Art of Tremendous. It's not my dad. It's if you do these things, then you get to be tremendous too. You can carry the moniker like tremendous Colonel Curt is carrying the moniker on. I love it. I'm interested to see what this next chapter is. It’s very exciting.
Thank you. I'll keep you posted on that. I have no clue.
I'm with you. Isn’t that beautiful though? The tendency is, “I'm going to go reach for my glasses again because I got to know what's going on.” God puts the glasses on you when He needs you to know. Until then, be present, be mindful, and fall deeper in love with Him. He'll make it clear when the time is right but it's hard for people like us.
I'll give you one more piece if I may and that is at the tender age of 68, I've learned the difference between praying and meditating. I shared with you on an email that there's a huge difference, and I'm not going to go into it, between presenting and public speaking. I didn't realize that until a few years ago. I want people to hear this. It was put to me in military terms by a friend who says praying is like transmitting. You're transmitting.
Anybody that's been around prayer knows that prayer is not supposed to change God. It's supposed to change us. Got that, but meditating is taking your finger off of the transmit button and listening. That's something I haven't spent a lot of time doing. I've spent a lot of time in prayer but I've not spent a lot of time in meditation trying to sit here quietly like Jodie Foster in Contact with a pair of headphones, trying to listen for what God is trying to tell me. There's a requirement for patience there. I want the answers now. I don't want to wait.
You said you're studying the book of Daniel. That's meditating. We get this idea that it has to be humming. That's good but anytime you're opening the word of God, His word is living and the Holy Spirit is speaking if you open your mind to that. You're meditating a whole lot more than you may think you are.
Thank you. I needed to hear that.
That's what I'm here to exhort you. Curt, we covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. It’s such a robust discussion. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. Is there anything else regarding leadership, because we're all things leadership here, that we haven't touched on that you would like to share with our audience?
Ego Vs Self-Confidence
The one thing we did not talk about is ego. There's a massive difference between ego and self-confidence. Ego is about you. Self-confidence is about the tools you've been given one way or another or in faith. Therefore, it’s the idea of relying on self-confidence, being open, having the receptors out, and being able to keep the ego in check. I'm no different than anybody else. My ego gets out of control. My wife slaps me around and gets me back in line, which I do appreciate.
I would say it’s the idea of being able to truly understand the difference between those two. In leadership, everybody wants to follow someone who is at least acting like they know what they're doing. Therefore, you don't want to be so humble. You stand there with your hat in your hands going, “What do you think?” No, that's not the way it works. Therefore, it’s being able to keep those two in balance so that you're presenting something that people want to follow and feel confident in following, and then the ego, which can get out of control. There are countless Bible stories of ego getting in the way.
Path To Purpose: Keep your ego and self-confidence balanced to present something people want to follow.
I was reading Clarence Larkin's book on Dispensational Truth written in the '20s. One of his points is the Bible has to be inspired by God because nobody would write a book so damning of their culture, race, and civilization. As the 44 authors of the Bible, we'd only put about the good stuff. Not that I have any doubt that it is the revelation of God but who else across the history of time would write about the Jews writing about their horrific failures, David, the gross moral sins, Moses, Esau, and Cain? It goes on and on.
The other thing about is Paul outside of crisis. The leadership of Paul in Romans 8 is saying, “In my spirit, I want to do right but my flesh, I can't help myself.” We have to struggle with that as leaders. We still are part of this earth, even though we're regenerated. We have victory but we still have that old sinful nature. What does he say? “It causes me to do everything I don't want to do.” We can't do a Flip Wilson, “The devil made me do it.” We still have control.
The other one is, “New levels, new devils.” As you continue to grow in your faith and knowledge, the devil has to get very crafty in finding new ways to seduce you, wear you down, or depress you. You've got to stay in fight and force as you know who's been fighting bad guys his whole life. I love the thing on ego. That's the root of everything. All bad things start with pride and ego. Curt, how can people get in touch with you? You're a speaker and you like talking to different groups. There's anybody out there in a corporation. Do you speak at events or trade shows?
Yes. I've been trying to focus more on senior leaders and boards only because boards are being held accountable. They can be fined and go to prison if they're not showing fiduciary responsibility to cybersecurity. I focus more on leaders. My big thing is I demystify. What do I mean by that? You get 50 cybersecurity people together and they want to talk all the geeky stuff. Therefore, it frightens CEOs and presidents. I boil it down to where this is not hard. We need to be able to talk about this and break that down. That's what I do. The easiest way is simple. It's CurtVincent.com. That's where my speaking site is with contact data.
Path To Purpose: The easiest way is really simple.
You also have an email of dry bones. Do you want to talk about that?
I do. Funny you should mention that too. Dry bones are important to me. It comes out of Ezekiel 37, a vision that Ezekiel had. For those who are not familiar with it, I'll tell you in 30 seconds, God gave a vision to Ezekiel and showed him a valley full of skeleton bones. They represented the people of Israel, who were no longer following God. God brought him to this valley in a vision and said, “Can these dry bones live again?” Ezekiel answered, “Only you know, God.” He says, “You're going to help. This is what you're going to do.”
The dry bones through the story come together, muscle sinew, and then become human beings again as they get watered through the word. The word dry bones is important to me because it represents a second chance. My wife and I bought this place in Pennsylvania. This is my 23rd move. I told Maria, “I'm not moving again. They're taking me out of here with a toe tag.”
That's what my husband says about this house. He says, “The only way I'm leaving here is that a body is in a casket.”
We're doing that but we named our place Dry Bones Farm. The only thing we grow here is old. The reason I mentioned that is on the property, we have a small barn but it's more of an outbuilding. I'm building a recording studio in there as a place where I can do music, recording, Bible studies, or whatever I want to do in that facility. That's why dry bones are important to me. The barn is the holy of holies.
For those of you not familiar with Ezekiel, there are a couple of different animated things on YouTube. I remember the first time I saw it. Ezekiel wasn't one of those you dwell on, not anymore. I was mesmerized by talking about regeneration through Christ, even before Christ had through the word and the beginning was the word. Curt, thank you. Get in touch with Curt. Curt, you got to write a book too.
I'm working on it.
I’m glad to hear it because we got to hear your word too. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with our audience. I’m so thankful that we connected. I’m glad to hear you're close by. I look forward to many more tremendous interactions with you.
Thank you so much for having me on. I hope the words were encouraging for some.
To our audience out there, if you like what you heard, please hit the like and subscribe button. If you would do us the honor of a five-star review, that would help other audiences looking to pay the price of leadership know that this is a great place to come for resources and advocacy. As Curt said, remember, you're going to be the same person five years from now that you are today, except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read so keep them both tremendous. Thank you so much for paying the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of the day.
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About Curt Vincent
Curt Vincent is a cybersecurity maverick in both the Army and Wall Street. Founder and leader of the 400-person Morgan Stanley Cyber program. Leader since becoming a Sergeant at the age of 19.
Curt demystifies cyber security for senior leaders, C-staff, and boards. It's not just the technology; it's the people and the culture. Insurance claims data shows that as many as 80% of cyber breaches occur because employees unwittingly invite criminals into their company. With Curt, you can feel confident and protected.