You're listening to the identity at the center podcast.
This is the show that talks about identity and access
management and making sure you know who has access to what
let's get started. Welcome to the identity of the
center podcast I'm Jeff. And that's Jim.
Hey Jem. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
Oh, not so bad yourself. I'm doing good man.
Here in the RSM podcast, rzm sponsored podcasting sweet.
The sweet sweet. We've been here all week stop
doing that. It's not well, I've only only
can do it for a few more times. After, you know, I've had a
great couple of days here, learn so much.
Got to You old friends, make new friends.
But I do want to Lodge a complaint.
Yeah. And not going to Lodge the same
complaint, which I normally do, which is too cold.
It is this free breakfast that you've provided me is not meet
my standards. No, it won't be that.
What? It's a real complaint bought.
Two bottles of water at the pool the other day or didn't you said
and you know what, it costs, two bottles of water.
I'm going to say $15 T $30.00. How big are these bottles?
They're big but they mean what you're talking about.
Water doesn't matter how big they are.
I guess. Not absolutely crazy.
I don't think they can play that on inflation.
Well that's a kiss for you. I mean everything here is just
expensive. Yeah.
Usually I'd say it's by the end of the week I'm like I can't
wait to get out of here. I think.
If I don't get out of here ASAP I'm going to be broke.
Well, we will definitely get are getting out of here.
We're recording this as the kind of the last day of the Gartner
conference here. It's been a wild ride, lots of
great guests. We've got another great one
here. We're going to be talking about,
Brad to me. He's a Senior Solutions engineer
at Indy, kite. Welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys.
Really pretty cool to listen to a lot.
So it's pretty cool to be here and it is definitely a sweet
sweet. Don't get him started.
So, it's a sweet sweet. So Before we get too far along,
we have if you are a listener you will know that.
The first question we always ask our guests is, how did they get
into the identity space? What's your identity origin
story did, did you choose Identity or did it choose you?
I'm going to say identity chose me.
I think it's sort of a sort of my career as an application
developer and the a couple years into my career somebody that I
worked with had left and sort of working for a new company and he
called me up and he said, Hey, I met this new company.
We're doing identity management and since that's what you and I
were working on at the at the last place, they want to talk to
you and I thought I did it. I don't, what are you talking
about? I have no idea.
I had no idea what I didn't even, I had no idea what he was
talking about. We had worked on.
We were, we had written some code to create.
They were our sacred initials at the time and to me, it was just,
we're just writing code to create our essay credentials and
I really don't know what RC credentials are.
So from there this was this was early 2000's from, they're just
sort of jump at and they're going to the nuke that new
company and they were they have been a lot of federal
Contracting and at the time I think was you off program like
around the 863 and the M4 for that was coming out.
So all the federal agencies were scrambling to to do you know to
Great. And so my role there was
basically to do a bake off between the the major vendors at
the time so that sort of parlayed that into a Consulting
career ended up working for Oracle.
They're starting my own company company did that for 15 years
and you know, just kind of focused a lot with like you
know, one or two vendors. Just so I can really get, you
know, kind of like the t-shaped expertise.
You don't like a really Focus and then just, you know, more
recently with indicate. So it's I guess the the long
answer there is, its kind of stumbled into it and then it
grabbed a hold of me right now and That's My Philosophy.
I think most people at least some my conversations.
I've been having is that generally identity.
Pick them somehow they fell into it.
Stumbled into it and the hooks have been deep and generally
haven't, you know, gotten away from it.
I want to talk about Indie kite in a That.
But from a conference perspective how has the Gartner
conference been for you? Any highlights any interesting
stories conversations things like that that have taken place?
Yeah, I would like to, I'd like to Second the the cost of water
here in the desert. The water is not cheap, that's
running out. Yeah the conference has been
good. It's been really good.
I mean, this is this is the second or third conference.
I've been to the last in the last year but I got to say it's
nice to be back in front of people and Not have a video
screen or a monitor in between US unless you don't get to a
session in time. Yes.
The sessions have been really good.
The the I think for me the Highlight, there's two
highlights. The one is that the sessions
themselves have affirmed, kind of the the vision that we're
working on it indicate and so it's good to hear that from from
from, you know, from someone like Gartner and not just You
know, some some random person said, hey yeah, you know did a
project like that once too. So it's nice to have that that
confirmation that we're on the right track.
The other thing is just the and I know it's it's everybody says
it, but it's the networking, the conversations, you know, from
identity management of such a small community.
Everybody knows everybody. So you know, you're seeing old
friends, you're seeing you're seeing people that you You know,
maybe you've never met them in person before, but you've you've
talked them or you've exchanged emails for 15 years, so it is
this conversation? Yes, exactly, exactly.
But the, it's the random conversations, you know, you're
standing in line for coffee and the person in front of you, just
turns around and starts talking, you know.
And they were, they they look at your badge and they're like, you
know, I've never heard of your company before.
Tell me what you do and that that you go down into this
rabbit hole with them. And, you know, they start.
You're comparing use cases. You're comparing situations or
in a lot of cases that you don't even talk technology or identity
management. You just talk.
You just, you know, where you from.
Oh, cool, I've been there. I've never been there.
You know, it's that, I think that's the best part.
And so weird for me, some typically pretty introverted,
you know, I spent a lot of time in my hotel room when I go to
conferences just because, you know, the crowds tend to be a
little overwhelming. But with this, you know, I found
myself like, okay, you know what?
I'm going to Grab my laptop, go find a table.
I'll be I'll be near the crowd, you know, kind of like crowd
adjacent. Yeah, exactly.
You know, then you see someone that you haven't seen in a
couple years and so it's been cool.
I mean, so I would say those are the two, the two highlights.
Lowlights really haven't been any, I mean, just, you know,
joking about the cost of the water, you know, I was going to
save the charge for coffee in the hotel room and you know,
it's coffee's been plentiful downstairs.
So, Can't complain too much about that.
That is a bummer because you know, that is my complaint to
and it's a first-world complaint.
Yeah, I'm you know, we're in this sweet.
Thank you RSM again this week. The sweet, sweet sweet, and now
you got me doing it but they cap you it to Internet devices and
then charge you $15 right to connect another one.
It's a sweet and you have two devices.
What are the expectations there? It just doesn't make any sense
to me. Yeah.
Even if you're just one person in the room, you have you have
four or five. Without a doubt.
I got my phone to laptop, Etc. So yeah, Caesars get your act
together on my flight, my Delta flight coming here.
I could connect for four hours for five bucks.
No, but you're connecting in a chair in the sky race seems more
reasonable to pay, only five bucks for that?
Yeah no II. The point I was making is like
if they can do that for five bucks, couldn't the sweet.
Sweet. Give us more than two
connections, and then not charge 15 bucks or the third.
I'm with you. I get it.
I mean another let's lot of such as far as that I will only work
for them. Yeah, so Brad you and I have
known each other for a long time.
What I'd like. 12, 15 years, nothing like that.
Really good to finally have you on the show, one of the things
that I wanted to bring up was Jeff and I did an episode where
we reached out to was a four or five people about a lot more,
only four or five people, you only 45 people responded.
We have some zoo of recording to answer this question.
I'm going to pose it to you, which is, you know, the our
Industries kind of changed names or is there.
Um, name change happening from Identity and access management
to digital identity. My question to you is, what's
the difference between digital identity and identity and access
management? Yeah, I think from our
perspective, digital identity is the the properties that make up
or describe and Identity or which is just a representation
of something that's out there in the world.
Whether it's a human or non-human, a bought a machine, a
house or car, but whatever it is.
Where I am. I are the processes or the
services around that. What can you do with that
identity? What can you do with this
properties? How do you secure it?
How do you use it? Leverage it for Access, anything
that you can do around that to meet up falls under under.
I am? Yeah, I mean I think of the
digital identity is like the fingerprint for a person or a
thing and identity. And when I think of that, it's
like, what's the credential information?
What is the, you know the digital signature that makes up
a face recognition or whatever kind of biometric were using
sure. It's also probably the core
identity attributes but beyond that the digital identity
includes more, right? It's all the things that we want
to collect and know about a person.
So why privacy? Exists because they're going to
collect all this information about you.
We're going to get data from maybe another source like a DMV.
We're going to get information about what entities you belong
to or Associated to or even going to get data about your
shopping preferences or what you've bought in the past or
websites. You visited, we're going to
store all that. And in talking to you about
Indie kite and kind of learning what your product is all about,
kind of think that you guys are taking an approach to that.
And so rather than trying to explain to for you, I'm just
going to ask you to explain it sure.
So at the core indicates based on the on the graph database
technology. So instead of using ldap or like
relational database or some other data store, we picked
graph technology and it was very deliberate decision because of
the capabilities, the graph provided The model that we've
picked because of the experiences that we've had with
implementations over the last 20 years, is essentially to create
to sort of each customer would get two or more graph databases.
The, the first one, the identity graph is that digital identity
data that you were that you were describing.
So the properties are the credentials that make up that,
that digital Identity or that make up that that identity,
whereas Each customer that we work with each customer, each
organization would has their own business model and to try to fit
that or bend that into the identity graph is impossible.
And so it's which you're usually left with is either you're going
to massively warp, your schema and try to fit it into the
customers model. Or you're going to, you're going
to massively warp, the customers model to match your schema and
neither of those are ideal. So, to resolve that we have, the
second graph, which we call the knowledge graph.
And because the graph database is, you can essentially, when
you're modeling a graph database, you're using like, a
your, it's a real world model. So it's a one for one mapping
between, what is the customers? Business model look like and
what does that graph model look like?
And so between, you have those two graphs, we import the data,
we get the data into the graph, the customers data, and then we
create a relationship between the digital Twins or the digital
identity from the identity graph to the knowledge graph.
And then the week, the graph works is, it's all about
traversing, the graph and finding the paths within the
graph. To what are you related to you?
What are you connected to? And then using that That it's
using that relationship to determine access or do you
determine entitlements or determine what can you do?
And so that's really kind of the way we were seeing way we're
building. The, the I am services around
that things have always kind of wondered with graph databases is
why they're white. They weren't, you know,
wholeheartedly adopted more because I know in what I found
with developing And mostly on the customer side.
So, like big identity management use cases, is you have these
relationships that exist. So it's not only the identity
but you have relationship to an entity or relational data, and
if you put that into a sequel database, then the problem is
that when you have a massive amount of data, tons of
relationships, it crawls to a halt, right?
It gets really slow. Idea with the graph databases
that, you know, you you're not confined by doll that structure
but it has the power of building the relationships and fetching
the data quickly. So I always kind of wonder why I
didn't even Management Systems weren't already adopting the
graph. You guys are so do you know what
was holding that back and why you feel like you can overcome
those things? Yeah.
So I think it's a it's a resource issue.
So if you've spent the last 15, 20 years, building your
platform, building your foundation, and it's based on
ldap, the three of us. We've all worked in the
industry. We've spent the last 15 20
years. Convincing people to stop using
databases, get your passwords out of the database.
Put it into a know that. Well, are you going to go back
and say, hey, remember, we told you to use all that we want you
to now use a graph database. So plus we've invested, you
know, we have millions of lines of code that are all tied.
Pretty closely to out to ldap. So to go back and retrofit that
is I think it's a daunting daunting task.
That's why we decided to start basically start over.
You know, that mean there's a lot of Open Source libraries out
there that we could have used. There's, there's products that
we could have used and we could have just, you know, retrofitted
but it was cleaner and better for a lot of reasons to just,
let's start from, let's start from zero.
It's I mean if you're going to, if you're going to, if you're
gonna start a revolution, you gotta Gotta Throw it all out,
right? So that's that's you know,
that's why we that's what we basically started from those
kind of been like a tactical problem is that everybody was
starting where it said. Ol daps fast bad at
relationships, but we're going to use it because and then we
they built their product that way and it was hard to kind of
like a bandit that I moved to something better.
Yeah and I think that I don't want to knock all day.
I've spent the better part of my career working with ldap in it
was for the identity problems. I think ldap was better than a
database. It definitely served its purpose
for a long time but when we started hitting that wall with
access control and authorization and hitting the limit the limits
of our back and finding that. Okay, well we're going to, you
know, we're going to do an are back role-based access control
project and you know, oh no. You now have you have twice as
many roles what? We do, we do, it's just, it's a
recurring problem. And, you know, I don't think
that I think as an industry we've spent a lot of time on a
authentication, but I don't think we've spent much time on
authorization. And so, that's, you know, that's
kind of put a Line in the Sand and said, this is what this is
where we're, this is where we're going to make the mark and this
is where we're going to go after.
We're going to try to solve that.
So I think it's kind of a two prong issue, right?
So it's not about digital identity, which sounds pretty
clear like you guys. R /, you know, putting G of
their solution to manage the identity as well as the the
knowledge, all that, whatever that whatever data that business
has about the Identity or about other things that need
relationship to the identity. They've got you've got the real
identity piece down. Now, when I think of identity
and access management, I think of all the processes that are
associated with managing, I use are extracting that data so it's
kind of the the tool Cooling and the management of everything
that's in that digital fingerprint of a person, plus
all that knowledge about them. So does indicate also address
that piece? That's tough question.
Or I should say not at all, but it's a complex question.
We're building the tools to manage that the challenges with
the services that you need is around that identity is
determining what the identity is.
So if you're a human and you have a digital identity, you may
need to have a password. You may need to have a password
reset, you may need to have an impersonal verification, you may
need to have all the things that a human would need to do to in
the in the life cycle of their identity.
You can't apply those same Services, the same principles to
a non human identity. So building a set of tools and a
set of services to manage the lifecycle of the identity is
there's commonality between but it's not a one size fits all so
I guess that's that's a reason I said, the questions kind of toss
us because it's I've got imagine you guys to take like a Services
service-oriented approach to that, right?
So providing Our Sizzle. And if you're not going to force
structure in that Knowledge Graph, then you almost have to
have like a concept where people can develop their own endpoints
to manipulate the data. Of course, if you're going to
have an IM tool, you want to enforce certain principles
around that and I was thinking of and I can't even remember the
name, but there's a type of A point as available in the for
drunk, I DM product right where you could create your own
endpoints of some kind of wondering if that is something
that you guys have something similar.
And then I also wanted to bring up the whole for dark piece
because just knowing that the founder of your company lost the
Anderson was also, you know, one of the founders anyway of
forgerock. So certainly the right pedigree
there. Maybe kind of talked about that,
that endpoint thing and then talk a little bit about you
know, what, you know, loss A did to get the company started.
The sure. Sure.
So as far as the custom in point, I do with, I know what
you're talking about. I DM, you can create, you can
create with my JavaScript you can, you can create a custom
endpoint and you know, exposed that out as a service.
We don't have that that could be, could be something that we
Eventually would add in the value of something like that.
Is it essentially the availability of the data?
Yeah, I'm trying to I was trying to think through kind of the the
use case. I think we would get to a point
where that would be you would need to have We just can't think
of all the services that that a company or organization would
need around their data model. And so, what it makes sense to
have to be able to extend the platform and say, you know what,
create your own apis, create your own Services.
I think that makes makes sense. That's probably something that
we would eventually get to to needing.
I think it was, I think it was a couple years into until I DM
before they before they have that capability, right?
That was something that came down the road.
Yeah. The your second question was
more about kind of losses story of from the transition from Ford
Rock. So I think loss of the every
entrepreneur saw the opportunity saw were the market was going.
I mean, the vision came from a lot of experience working and
with graphs. And as I said earlier, you know,
the sort of the validation and that, you know, here at
Gartner's that that creating, that, that identity Fabric, or
creating that, that service layer, and being able to do more
with the identities and to do more with, you know, using using
graph. You know, I think to place his
credit, he had that that vision and then have the opportunity
and the means to execute on it. Yeah, I mean, it's like
everything we just talked about right there.
It's just seems like a solution that was so maybe not so
obvious. I don't want to like take away
any of the of the shine of what has been accomplished here.
But just to me it was like yeah but aren't those the best
products. These are the best.
No. Duh.
Why didn't we think of that, it right.
Well, it's exciting because you're, you know, you're in the
mix of it, you know, your heads down day-to-day and your you
kind of have to pop your head up there.
Once in a while and say, okay, remind me what the vision is,
okay? Okay, yes, yes, yes.
And then I got to how was I was up half the night last night,
just it was so exciting to apologize for keep going back to
this. But, you know, just the
validation, you know, the people I talked I spoke with yesterday
the other presentations, yesterday, just like this is
where the markets going, this is where it needs to go, you know?
This is where we need to. We need to.
We need to give organizations to tools to be able to build the
sort of building communities out of their customer data.
I mean, able to, when I say community, what I mean is being
able to create the relationships between the digital identities.
I mean, right now, you know, we're all of us are, you know,
our identities are in hundred, you know, and install hundreds
of different data stores. But none of those identities are
related across and none of the data's.
None of the identities are related within those data
stores. So, for example, to construct
the family or organization mean, you just have, you know, most
companies just have, you know, a million identities that are all
stand alone. Yeah, I mean, you know, would
why I really wanted to get you on the show and kind of talk
through this. Like I said, I've known you for
like 12 15 years. And you've been kind of a, you
know, between independent consultant and kind of running a
small Consulting business, but you could have easily just done
that for the rest of your career, right?
You're solving problems and very successful.
So there must have been something about indicate that
was just like, all right, I'm going to drop this other stuff
that I've been doing been successful.
I'd take a chance with something new and I you know, what is
that? What is it?
That, that drove you just make that decision.
Ian, it's to think so. Number one, it was it's the the
vision and being able to execute on that, you know, having spent
a lot of time in the in this industry, the problems that were
solving really resonated and I experienced those as a
implementer firsthand, the challenges with ldap, the
challenges with trying to create access policies that are complex
enough to solve the problems that the customers are the
organizations are having I mean, the number of times that my
response to a customer was okay, well just, you know, let's come
up with a role and will do, you know, we'll do you know, we'll
do role-based access control or tell me what the permission
needs to look like, but being able to be part of, I'm going
into the second part now is but to be able to be part of
something much bigger, it's, you know, as a independent
consultant it's a little bit of a lonely world.
You You come into an organization and your, you spent
some time there. But at the end of the day,
you're not really part of that organization.
So, I think to be part of a group of people that are
building an executing and at this stage, you know, being able
to influence some of that. So you know, they, you know,
they are like hey you worked an identity Brad.
What what do you think about this or what do you, you know,
and being able to say, okay, well I can look back and I know
that, you know, kind of Yuma ego a little bit.
They, you know, I helped make that decision or, you know, the
products going that direction because I, you know, I
contributed to that, it's the new monuments, right?
You're Building Bridges, but it was like the old days, right?
You could carve your initials into it now.
You're in a line of code somewhere.
Right. Exactly.
Yeah.
It's a lot of fun, to be honest with you.
I mean, we could solve things been fun Consultants been good.
But it's, you know, it after 15-20 years, it kind of, you
know, you need something else to get you out of the bed in the
morning and this This is definitely it.
There were some, I was to say, you look great.
You look healthy. I'll thank you.
You look like you are just taking on the world.
Well, thanks. Thanks.
There was something that struck my eye and I know we're getting
short on time but I want to make sure we get to it because it's
it's a concept that's relatively new I believe and not something
a lot of people know it's called knowledge based access control.
So I think people are probably familiar with role-based access
controls but around for like 800 years it seems like and there's
a lot of failed. Our bag projects that are out
there in a lot of messes. We've heard things like
attribute bakes, attribute based access control a back policy
based access control. And now I've got this thing.
That you guys have coined as K back?
Is that something that I guess? Tell me about kbecque knowledge?
Based Access Control. What is it?
And sure, how are you leveraging that?
So, so the knowledge and the knowledge in knowledge-based
authentication or knowledge based Access Control comes from
the knowledge graph and the data that's on the knowledge graph,
what's fan what's amazing about graph database technology?
Is that it's not the just the data that the I did Identity or
the the thing that that digital identities related to you, it's
the relationship between those two with graph.
You can extend augment add to describe the relationship.
So you may be connected to your simple.
Simple example, you're connected to your car.
The label on that on. That line says Jim owns this
car. Okay, but now we can go back and
using artificial intelligence using machine learning.
We can, we can, we can capture things.
Like, how do you use that car? When do you use that car?
We can, we can take that data. The things, the things that
we're gaining, and we're collecting, or to collect about
the things that we're that are generated from the usage.
Of that feed that back into the relationship and extend the
metadata around that relationship and then use that
data for Access Control. It's interesting.
So it's not just a, it's not not, I don't want to knock our
back or a back but it's not it all you want.
Well, it's limited in that you you create a role and you have
access to X if you have this Roll.
But the, as the context changes, the roles.
Don't necessarily keep up with that short.
You can, you can log out, log back in, get a different role.
But in real time, the context may change in that your again,
using that car example, you're driving at 50 miles, an hour or
so, maybe the, maybe the, which you have access to needs to
change, like, you shouldn't be accessing your phone.
Or you need to now, that's something, you know, in the car
or the radio or whatever it is, but it's being able to feed that
data back in and that data is becoming knowledge because it's,
you know, it's it's it's getting pulled from the the usage
reading pulled from the, you know, the you know, machine on a
machine Flores house that data, the data that's being collected
and and being able to augment that relationship that way and
then being able to have access to that, what's really cool
about it, is that This point because we work in identity,
we've only talked about the security aspects of that.
Sure, we can create we can create access policies around
that data. What's really interesting with
this is that that data becomes a valuable tool for non security
organizations within a company. So if you have access, you know,
your work and your work in marketing or you work in
business development or you work in whatever and you have access.
That. So you have this, this this
related data and and the the augmented content around that or
the augmented metadata around that are there new services that
you would offer to these customers?
Because now you can see that they're related and how they're
using the service. Are there new products that you
would offer? Other new things that you could
recommend to them? You know, are there?
You know, I mean, kind of the world's the you're all this
data. What do you do with it, right?
It's like the sky's the limit and it sounds very much like
this Nirvana, that marketing Ting and ecomp teams of
progressive profiling, right? You're building up this
knowledge, database around, who's visiting?
What are they doing? What are they interacting with?
I mean, certainly privacy concerns come to mind, right?
I think there's a lot of concern and probably rightly so over,
you know, is the Facebook app. For example, listening to me,
you know, when I'm not using it right, that that sort of thing,
what sort, you know, the data being collected cetera, the
controls that are in place there for the user to be able to
manage Data. I would imagine it would be very
robust but they also need to be user-friendly.
Yeah, so we we are closely aligned with the web three
Mantra or the the web, three, two components.
I should say, the components of web, 30 decentralized, self
Sovereign, that's huge. You know, we're we're one of the
few organizations at this point that's building consent and at
the beginning. So that it's a really important
step in actually, it's An afterthought.
It it's usually shows. Notified.
Oh no, we have all this data analysis data would now we're
it's no longer a benefit to have a state and also liability to
have this data. So, you know, we, we want to
dress that up front so that if we are collecting the data, we
are using the data or maybe we're just referencing the data.
The user has the ability to say you know what going back to the
digital identity. Well these three properties or
you know these these It's, I'll share them with you, but only
for this week or only for this one time or only for whatever
and then being able to digitally sign the consent.
So that if somebody comes back later and says wait a second I
never I never consented to that you.
We have that that audit Trail and it's digitally signed to say
well here you did, you know you did sign that the terms of
whatever and then terms change through you sign this first?
Version. You didn't sign that version
having things like that because I think all of that ties into
the privacy and consent. And you know what you agreed,
what are the terms, you agreed to So, so going down a rat hole
with this knowledge base authentication, but I can see
some real world use cases, like you're in an e-commerce portal.
Maybe you buy the membership that gets you.
The free shipping stuff like that.
Like, use a joint at the log back out to now, get permission
to that, it just has to be added to the profile.
What you have access to is now to tap into, maybe just A
section or something like that. So, totally real world use cases
are bound by think. And I mean, that example, it's a
simple. As you create a relationship
from from that, from what person's digital identity to
that permission, or to that object or two that, whatever,
whatever it is. So you're not having to go back
and say, okay, can you request someone to add this role?
You're just the system is just creating that relationship and
you're, you know, you're moving, along an out.
Now that you have this new thing, That you're related to
okay. Well, what comes along with that
and being able to just just just roll with that, just just have a
system that is just flows with that.
I'm not going to bore to see where this goes because I think
obviously the I see the, I see the promise of it.
I'd like to see it in action and sort of like the real world.
Oh, yeah. And see how it works and works
through. But I know we're running out of
time and we want to let make make sure that you can get out
on the town and enjoy yourself. But before we go, we were kind
of talking before we hit the record button here.
And we got into the Concept of, you know, what would it take to
walk away from something? And for those who are familiar
with the other, the term is f you money.
I won't spell it out here but you can look it up and it's
inspired by our friend. Mike would burn.
And here's my question, as we wrap things up for today, what
is your F? Your, what is your number when
it comes to Fu money? Me a little walk away from
things. So, I want to be able to just
say the number and then, you know that you guys are gonna be,
like, here's the chat. Here's the Giants.
I'll check, check under your seat, better luck next time.
That's a tough question and I know you're just looking for the
short answer saw. Just I'm just going to say a
number but there's there's a lot of caveats to this say, my
number is somewhere between 10 and 20 million, 10, and 20
million. I could do that yourself.
That's kind of a cool. That's a much higher number than
I was impressed. So first of all, I want to give
you a little bit of background so Mike would burn is one of my
favorite people. Not only died imagery but in the
world I know he listens to the podcast.
So shout out Mike, you know. Yeah shout out of Mike and you
can send your check right to me but I wanted to tell the story
so I went to Maui and like 2012 and came back and was like I
want to move to Maui then Financial reality set in and got
back to life and never move to Maui.
I met Mike let's say 2015, 2016 time frame, And makes it I'm
going to visit. Maui is like Mike when you come
back you're going to say I want to move to Maui and then you
will never do it. Okay.
Yeah, right. So he goes to Maui because well
he's like I want to move to Maui.
Well those who know Mike would burn know that he actually did
actually follow through with it. Oh yeah and so that was I think
Mike is a smart guy many ways and obviously had his financing
set up in a way that he was able to actually make it happen.
So to me the fu money answer is not a firm dollar figure but
it's about how much annual expenses I had covered.
And that would need to have like a Year's worth of expenses.
In the bank, the annual expenses part, unfortunately goes up
every year, right? So this year, I'm not going to
put a number out there because it's not important, but it will
be more Sure. And the reason I say one year
because it's kind of like to me it's like not me saying F you do
the world, it's just being able to say all right well I'm going
to go do something else and you know might take me a year to do
it but you know today's my last day kind of kind of thing, not
that I actually ever see myself pulling that trigger but that
whole question I heard you got Mike I said I'm right front of
my boss right? So yeah.
Anyway That's I like that answer now.
I feel like it a lot of people here that question and you're
instantly. Thank, you know, in a what
number would it take for me to throw my laptop on the ground
and walk out? And, you know, do you like a
Jerry Maguire? But it's it's really about the
freedom to make the choices like what question people ask all the
time. This, what would you do if you
knew you couldn't fail and to me that those two are tied together
because this that's really what fu That's a really about.
It's what, what, what, what, what can I say, no to what?
Choices, you know, it's like I'm making, you know, I would
probably continue working. If I had, if I had the, you
know, my whatever that number is, you know, I would continue
working because I like what I do.
So wouldn't necessarily be about, you know, like know, tell
everyone to get off. No, it's I think it's, you know,
it's the, the crude way to be able to work on what You want to
work and pass on the things. You don't ya, well into not to
make this all about like would burn because this is all about
me. But, you know, Mike having
talked to Mike. I know that he makes choices,
you know, like, you know, you, I go and buy a car, or I go by buy
a house. And I go by this and I have, you
know, this is a reference from, like, but I have 15 streaming.
Services, you know, well, all of this costs money, but I'm making
those choices. You don't have to have a ton of
money to live the lifestyle you want to have you just have to
make the right choices to be able to do that and you know
like the lifestyle of the the choices that Mike and he also
has the ability to go in like someone describes their project
and was like, yeah, we're going to will throw money at you and
still be able to go and no, I'm not going to work.
I'm not going to spend my life force energy.
On that because I don't believe in what you're doing.
You're making a stupid decision. I'm just not doing that.
Yeah, well I think that the key is like, it's, it's at what
point in your life are you, are you comfortable saying no to
people and not having the fear of, you know, worst-case
scenario. So what I started out
Consulting, you know, the thing that my wife and I would say is
worst-case scenario. I just go get a job, you know,
and it's like, that's how I felt, that's how I got to
consult. He's like, you know what, I'm
gonna give it a shot, I can always go.
Back to, you know, being a civilian and not a consultant
and you know whatever it might be.
That was exactly what I thought. It was like those are better
time, I felt confident enough in my abilities, my network my
reputation. That if I went into this and
either I failed at it, because I wasn't good at it, or I didn't
like it, I could pivot and go back to what I knew that was
successful at. Yeah, and I think what you hit
on it. There's it's having the
confidence. To be able to do that.
Yeah. Well, let's bring it back to
Gartner because really, what's your number?
Good question. It's probably pretty high
because I like nice things. I am a consumer, certainly of a
bunch of different Services. I mean, I could I get by I'm
lower number. Probably do I want to know.
Could you clean your own house? I have got many things to do,
you know, I don't know. That's certainly one of my
guilty pleasures. It's like cleaning service.
But enough of my first world problems, I would say I'm
probably somewhere in the same area, 10 to 20 million.
Let's just say, because I feel like I like what I do I do this
podcast because I like to do it the work that I do and identity
is a consultant. And, you know, now, leading and
identity, practice and building it up, right?
You're building it with me. I like doing that.
It's fun for me. When it's no longer fun, or the,
you know, the cons outweigh the pros.
That's when I look for something else, right?
It's a As that I will work until I can't work anymore.
That's the way I look at it. You know what?
I like to do nothing. Yeah, probably great for what
I'm under a little while. Yeah.
And then I get bored and I was like, I need to do something,
right? So that's kind of how I look at
it, you know, there's, there's a number.
Let's just say, you know, x million, this point du du du
where we are from the economy, but that doesn't mean that I
stopped working. It's, I'm going to go do
something right. There's only so many streaming
services. You can watch right.
Maybe I'll create a new one. All right.
Well, I want to bring back to Gartner.
Oh Because one of the things that came up in this just why we
were asking The Catcher in the question here, was, it started
off with Mary mazzaglia, when she opened things up on the
opening keynote and it was she talked about the, the
generational divides and the people who are in the workforce
now, you know, younger folks versus the older folks.
And, you know, I think everyone in this room is probably more on
the ladder side and we didn't talk politics religion, Etc.
Didn't have public stands. As in the workplace and now you
know the the younger folks are expecting to have some sort of
position on things like that. And I think being able to have
that that discussion say yeah. Here's what I want to work on
and here's why that's inspiring, right?
No one wants to work on a project that they don't like
they don't want want to do. They don't want to work for a
team or a leader or a company that they don't support right.
Those sorts of things. So I think it's important to
even if it's not a number, I think the question is Our to
say, okay well, what is my intention here?
Am I doing what I want to be doing whether it's in the
identity field or anything else, really?
I think it's I think we've come kind of Full Circle.
We start with, you know, Gartner 9 a.m. on a Monday and here we
are, you know, local time five around 5 p.m. on the Wednesday.
Yeah yeah I think it's um I think it's interesting.
I've two young adult children and they're on the cusp of the
rest of the rest of their lives and their, my daughter just
finished her Nursing degree. So she started out Out and
professional world and to see the choices that they make and
what's important to them. I mean, it wasn't it's it's only
a few Generations separating, you know, my daughter from my
grandparents to where my grandparents were like, you go
to work. You do what you're told.
You spend 25 years there, you get your watch and that's it.
What, what questions do you have?
And I think that younger people today have choices.
There's not just One big company in town that you have to go work
for. So you better not, you know,
embarrass yourself. They've got the freedom to make
choices. They have freedom to make
mistakes. I don't necessarily agree with
living out your all your mistakes in life on social
media. But, you know, that's, that's,
that's, that's their world today.
You know, I think that the world, I think people are much
more health-conscious. They're much more
environmentally conscious and so, it's wouldn't be fair to
say, well, Well you can't bring yourself to work, you know, you
can't bring who you are. So you know I think that thought
when you can do that, that's when you found the place.
Yeah. If when you can be yourself and
I've been in positions where I don't feel like I can be myself
and others where I can and it makes the world of difference in
how happy you are, which then has a, you know, an impact on
the quality of the work and you're just general demeanor.
And you know, it sounds like you know, silly you know.
Don't die advice. But if you're not happy, go find
something that will make me happy.
All right. We've wax poetic and I know you
want. I know you're like it.
I'm like so I think it's kind of ironic because I have been
thinking about this last two days and it's kind of like,
okay. Our generation was attacking
this the wrong way, right? We're not supposed to talk about
these things, but imagine the scenario now where on one hand
were supposed to talk about About all these things that have
been taboo to talk about and on the other hand you're not
allowed to judge anybody based on their opinion.
So let's say one person's like got very far left.
Using somebody elses very far right fuse and they have to work
together, right? Their views on things, outside
of the workplace, really aren't relevant, right?
And you know whether or not you believe then, you know, the
environment should be perfect or you just think That or people
should be able to do whatever they want to do.
Whether you think that you should eat meat or you love,
you're a foodie and you love to eat like the most exotic foods.
Like this aren't really relevant discussions for the workplace,
right? And whether whatever you like to
do in your free time as kind of none of my business.
What you practice for a religion or how you like to spend your
weekends? Not my business and What what I
do on the weekends and what God I pray to our don't pray to,
it's really none of your business either.
So I get getting on. Yeah, I'm getting choked up
who's going with that. But I think it's we're living in
a world where it's really not appropriate to be judging
people. And, you know, the best way to
not judge was really not to engage in conversation.
I could become very polarized. Sure, well, I think that's
another form of identity, you know, it's the more of the, the
psychological, the, the Freud or the each version of identity.
It's and people People get wrapped up in.
This is my identity, this football team is my identity.
This this this car you know this type of the type of truck.
I drive is my identity, you know, and they get wrapped up in
that. And so they have to have to show
that because this is my identity, this is, you know, and
it's a, it's, it makes them feel better.
It makes them feel more secure in who they are.
And they, you know, work is, you know, I spent, I spent eight or
nine hours a day at work. I have to bring my And you know,
if you can put your if you can put your Pittsburgh Penguins
post-iraq, then I'm going to put a twice twice as big, Washington
Capitals poster up and you know, you start bringing this to work
and I think that it does. Some of that does unnecessarily
draw attention to those things. I think that, you know, like we
said earlier, you should be, people should free be free to be
themselves, but there are things that, you know, there's things
you bring along that you don't have to.
That I think sort of make it, you know, complicate the work
environment. I'm personally I just am like on
the I want to go to work and I don't have pictures on my on my
desk and, you know, let me do my job and then, you know, I'm
going to leave after I'm done working and I'm going to go with
my life and do the things that I like and the things that are my
identity and the things that are are fun fun to me, just be nice.
That's all I have to say. All right, let's wrap it up.
It was very philosophically. I think that was, that was fun.
We'll go ahead and leave it there for this week.
We will put a link to indicate in our show notes.
It's IND. Why kitv.com?
Thank you so much, Brad, finally, great to meet in person
versus emails and things like that.
If you've got questions about Unity kite, will have breads
LinkedIn in the show notes as well.
So reach out to him and get some information.
I think you've got an interesting story there,
anything I'm curious to see how it plays out.
I hope to hope to continue the conversation.
I hope you have any back you know, somewhere in the Near
future and I can give you an update and kind of tell you how
things are progressing. And if you'll have me, if I
wasn't too bad, then I'd love to come back and of course more
about it. The door is always open.
All right, we're going to leave it there for this week or weeks
for this episode. We were just kind of here at the
Gartner episodes are a gardener a conference.
I didn't the center.com is where you find us on the web, idac
podcast is where you find us on Twitter, tweet us questions,
connect with us on LinkedIn. We're always happy to take
comments feedback. I could cetera.
Whatever. Makes the most sense, get it to
us and we can take it from there.
So thanks everyone for listening.
And we'll talk with you all in the next one.
Thanks for listening to the identity at the center podcast.
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visit us on the web and identity at the center.com.