Jothi Dugar – Helpful Cybersecurity Executive
Jothi Dugar is changing the world by bringing modernized transformational leadership programs to the corporate setting that combine mental fitness, energy psychology, body hacking, performance science, neuroscience, and behavioral psychology and much more using simple and effective techniques that can be done anywhere, anytime, to increase performance, happiness, relationships, and resilience of leaders and their teams. By learning how to harness the power of chaos, corporate leaders and their teams are able to 10x their lives and become authentic and powerful leaders of themselves and others that they serve.
Jothi is a leading Cybersecurity Executive who knows what it’s like to be the only female executive in the room for over 25 years. She is a catalyst for change, inspiring transformational leadership as a Holistic wellness specialist and coach, author, international public speaker, and a mom of three. Jothi embodies the duality of merging of the eastern world of wellness with the western world of corporate leadership. She is passionate about empowering people to take charge of their minds, their lives, and their health.
Book a Chaos Clarity Call today to speak with Jothi on individual or corporate programs by visiting Jothi Dugar is changing the world by bringing modernized transformational leadership programs to the corporate setting that combine mental fitness, energy psychology, body hacking, performance science, neuroscience, and behavioral psychology and much more using simple and effective techniques that can be done anywhere, anytime, to increase performance, happiness, relationships, and resilience of leaders and their teams. By learning how to harness the power of chaos, corporate leaders and their teams are able to 10x their lives and become authentic and powerful leaders of themselves and others that they serve. Jothi is a leading Cybersecurity Executive who knows what it’s like to be the only female executive in the room for over 25 years. She is a catalyst for change, inspiring transformational leadership as a Holistic wellness specialist and coach, author, international public speaker, and a mom of three. Jothi embodies the duality of merging of the eastern world of wellness with the western world of corporate leadership. She is passionate about empowering people to take charge of their minds, their lives, and their health. Book a Chaos Clarity Call today to speak with Jothi on individual or corporate programs by visiting www.jothidugar.com and join facebook.com/groups/transformchaos today!”>www.jothidugar.com and join facebook.com/groups/transformchaos today!
The Conversations with Influencers podcast has been brought to you by Richard Lowe of The Writing King. Richard is a ghostwriter, writing coach and LinkedIn Profile optimizer.
Interview Transcript Jothi Dugar
Richard Lowe 00:00
Good day. This is Richard Lowe. And I’m with the conversations with influencers podcast. And I’m here with Jothi. Do gar who is a global influencer. She’s one of the few leading female cybersecurity leaders in the world. And she’s a people transformation chains, ex agent for organizations as well as individuals. Welcome to the show. Thank you
Jothi Dugar 00:25
so much. I’m thrilled to be here today, Richard.
Richard Lowe 00:28
Well, thank you. So when you say one of the few leading female cybersecurity leaders, that’s that seems curious to me there aren’t there, there aren’t that many of those.
Jothi Dugar 00:39
I honestly wish there were more. But unfortunately, the the number of percentage of women in cybersecurity in general has very, very slowly risen, when I first joined was about probably like, 5%. Now it’s about 14% of women and cybersecurity leaders, being women, even even lower than that are about one one or 2%.
Richard Lowe 01:07
And what’s causing that, it seems like it would be an ideal place for women to be to find a position and career.
Jothi Dugar 01:15
Um, well, I guess it doesn’t seem very ideal of one because currently it is male dominated. So for women to see themselves in that type of role, especially in a leadership role, when they, when they’re, they don’t see other leaders that look like them doesn’t really prompt them to want to be even in that field. But also, cybersecurity in general has, this is relatively new. It’s really I joined cybersecurity about 20 years ago, when it wasn’t even called cybersecurity was, you know, information assurance, and there’s been a whole lot of other term terms put on it. So I would say it’s still kind of a general, generally a new field. But it’s also very, it’s perceived to be very technical. And my goal is to really change that perception of it, because it’s really not only about the technical skills, there are parts of it, that can be technical. But there’s also lots of other parts. There’s a such a broad field, which most people don’t recognize. So there, there definitely is a lot of scope and room for women and the innate skills that they bring to the table, which is not well known.
Richard Lowe 02:38
Interesting. Yeah, I was actually in charge of cybersecurity for Trader Joe’s for about 20 years. Before I was a writer, so we have some, some confluence of our skill set here. And I do know what you mean, about there being it’s being treated to technical, sometimes like the forget about the non technical parts, most breakdowns are caused by people, for example, which has nothing to do with technology. He’s it’s social engineering. What do you think about that?
Jothi Dugar 03:09
That is my mission is to basically drive the people centric approach to cybersecurity from a holistic using a whole holistic approach. So since I’m in the holistic wellness, business, and cybersecurity and technology, I have a pretty unique approach to cyber that I bring in from the wellness world, which is a mind body energy connection. So if you look at the mind, you know, it’s the mindsets and this is where the people come in, to, to focus, because if you teach the fan power the people, they will make the right decisions. But a lot of times in the cyber world, people are looked at as the weakest link instead of our biggest assets. So if you’re treated as the weakest link, you’re pretty much going to act as the weakest link. Well, of
Richard Lowe 04:01
course, of course, and a lot of companies don’t are feel that they don’t want to train people in cybersecurity, because they don’t want people to be alarmed, I guess, or aware of even the thing. So they’re, they’re ignorant about, for example, we had a problem where hackers would come in dressed as in any uniform and replace POS terminals, your point of sale terminals in stores, with hacking with ones that were modified, so that it made a copy of all the card data and send it off to the hacker site. It’s the story that people don’t know about that. They’re going to just go along with it.
Jothi Dugar 04:39
Right, right. So you know, by empowering our people to ask questions to look for things you know, you know, say something if you see something, all those all those kinds of things, and really empowering them with the tools, the skills that they need, even even in any role, not just the cyber team. improve security team or the IT staff, it’s pretty much any role like when, in your years as a great example, you know, even a cashier can be can use cyber safe practices in what they do from a physical security standpoint and also from, you know, computer security standpoint. So, and you know, when when we talk about social engineering, that can be pretty much anything could be, you know, gone are the days or somebody actually has to steal your laptop, you know, because now you can actually do it remotely. Because there’s so many wi Fi’s out there that people want to connect to they they choose convenience over security. So. So it’s been my goal to bring the people centric approach to cyber. And when we talked about people, we talked about the mindsets, the the mind body energy connection, because if you’re not in the right frame of mind or a mindset, then you’re going to be making simple, easy mistakes that you probably wouldn’t have made if you were if you’re, if you’re really taking care of your mental health and well being.
Richard Lowe 06:14
Well, yeah, I was asked myself how people I used to ask myself how people fall to the Nigerian scam type things until I almost fell for one of myself. And then I realized how easy it is to be fooled. I had a somebody who wanted a big ghostwriting project, and he came in and he seemed real. And it wasn’t until he asked, he asked to send more money than the book would cost. And then it asked me to refund the rest that I realized I’m dealing with, with the scammer, and called him on it. And that was that. But had I not been awake? I’d have been out $40,000 And that would have been that would have hurt. So but yeah, it’s it’s hard to imagine being in a situation or was for me that I could be ripped off by a scammer until I almost was. And then I realized how close it was.
Jothi Dugar 07:07
Yeah, it happens to everyone. Even for me, like I teach dance classes, have a dance company as well inside. And you know, sometimes when the offer is too good to be true by someone, you know, gets you a little bit excited, like, Oh, hey, this person wants to enroll 10 people, right? And they started asking them questions like, well, you know,
07:30
they’re gonna show up in this day, but you know, I need to just Why are you the money now? And
Jothi Dugar 07:34
I’m like, Well, can you pay my credit card? Like, no, we’re in the hospital and we really want to get our kids in the class and give them something to do like, you have 10 Okay, first of all, you have 10 kids you know, then you start getting all bunch of excuses and like okay, let me just look up your phone number and Google and then you find out like, oh, okay, this is kind of a new scam. Alright.
Richard Lowe 07:58
Yeah, big clue is they won’t talk to you the only the only talk over SMS or over email or something like that. They want to talk to you because then you’ll hear their accent, you’ll know. Okay, this is not legit. And that’s one of the first clues is they simply won’t talk on the phone.
Jothi Dugar 08:14
Yeah, they’re like we’re not allowed to take calls and the hospital. Hospital are you at
Richard Lowe 08:20
and then they asked to wire the money, you want to wire the money wire transfers, of course, I’m not trying to train you can’t get them back once they’re there. So all that there’s all kinds of red flags. I’ve actually written for cybersecurity books now ghostwritten. One of them was about this very subject. And it’s it’s interesting, the number of ways the red flags that come up that people tend to ignore, and I thought this is all people, like you said, this has nothing to do with technology.
Jothi Dugar 08:48
Exactly. Yeah, it means people bosses technology for a reason. And somehow cybersecurity professionals just most of the time, just concentrate on the technology part. And well, but on the process, but you’re really not on the people aspect at all. Other than looking at them as weakest links. So you know, I really found that to be not a very effective or efficient way of cyber or, or, or just really anything, you know, if we don’t empower someone to do the right thing that happened, we call them our weakest link because we’re not giving them the tools that they need, you know, the knowledge that they need the information that they need, and also like how how to report things. You know, if you take a common person, do they know what to do? Like if if your identity gets breached is every single person know oh, here’s a number you call or if they see something suspicious, you know, here’s what you do. It’s there’s just no one really knows what is the next step but if it’s a physical emergency, everyone in the world or In the US would know oh call 911
Richard Lowe 10:03
Yeah, like we had a laptop of a senior exec that was in he was in Colombia, and the laptop got stolen. And he was all freaked out, of course, because it had confidential data on it. And we were, we told him, okay, so when was the last backup? Backups? Don’t you do that? You’re on a laptop in Colombia, we’re not going to back you up. And, you know, Oh, well. Does your computer have a password? No, oh, that was too inconvenient. Okay. Do you have to locate media software on it? No, no, you know, we went down the list. And it’s like, okay, you know, you’re pretty much your computer’s gone. And there’s nothing we can do about it. And whatever confidential data is on there. Let’s just hope that they just wiped the computer and sold it rather than looking at it. Which is probably what they did. But he was totally freaked
Jothi Dugar 10:52
out. I mean, so yeah, there’s just so many, I think the word cybersecurity tends to scare people away, because of course, the movies and the films and media just painted to be okay. I’m like this dark moon, this dark room wearing a black hoodie. And, you know, coding away trying to hack into stuff. And yeah, there are people like that. But that’s not everyone. And that’s definitely not you, if you’re a cybersecurity professional. You’re not a hacker criminal.
Richard Lowe 11:21
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that people are the weakest link, maybe that the weakest link, because they’re treated as the weakest link, and they’re not treated as a strength. Because actually, they’re a strength. If you train them, and you give them the information they need people can be your asset. But if you treat them as weaknesses, that’s what they’re going to be.
Jothi Dugar 11:40
Yeah. And if and that’s why I’ll always compare it to a physical security incidents. You know, what, when there’s a crime scene, the police are always looking for witnesses, because they are your biggest strengths. Okay, who saw something, you know, can you describe what happened? They don’t they don’t treat people as well, you know, they’re the weakest link. So we got this. But when it comes to security incident, it’s almost, it’s almost like were they immediately jumped to finger pointing and who didn’t do their job? And why did you click on this link? And did you not know any better or, you know, then immediately, without really taking the time to embed security into everyone’s rules? So from an organizational perspective, I’m a big proponent of just education, information and the continuous flow of information. You know, most organizations have once a year annual security awareness training, and then never again, talk about security.
Richard Lowe 12:45
Of course, of course. Yeah. And there’s individual security to where like, if your wallet stolen, what do you do? If your if your? If your identity stolen? What do you do? Most people don’t have a clue, and they won’t have a clue until they go to the cops and the cops don’t know. They’re starting to know, but they don’t really know what to do, and they’re not going to help you that much. So, you know, as an individual, for me, because I’m in I’m in cybersecurity, I always have plans for those things. Okay. So what if I lose my wallet? Because hey, there could be a hurricane, I could just lose it because of the hurricane. It’d be somebody stole it. So what do I do? You need those driver’s license, sometimes you need those credit cards, so I got duplicates and stuff. So that’s, that’s kind of important. I was also in charge of disaster recovery at Trader Joe’s. So that was the other part of my job was kind of interesting. That’s a big part of security, too. Yeah. Huge parts are often overlooked. And what are you going to do when the thing goes down? Because it will go down. And it will self destruct? They do? Even in the cloud.
Jothi Dugar 13:50
Right, right. Yeah. So yeah. So and so you know, I try to bring in I try I’m what I’m trying to do now is merge both the cyber worlds and the holistic wellness worlds together. So bringing the holistic wellness, to cyber, because like I said, if you’re if you’re cyber leaders are not taking care of their mental health and wellness, then we know the state of your organization.
Richard Lowe 14:18
Yeah, of course, of course. If your people if your core security people are not healthy mentally, then you’ve got a problem.
Jothi Dugar 14:28
Yeah, and a lot of people tend to resort to or give a lot of importance to the malicious hacker out there and, you know, nation state actors trying to hack into our networks and yes, that is a threat. But then most often what happens is there’s a you know, it’s it’s what they call insider threat, but the only reason it’s a threat is because you haven’t empowered these people with the right tools and the right information and the right training, or they’re being overworked you know, so if you’re are, you know, especially now with a pandemic going on, if you’re if you have you have kids at home, you have spouses that whom you’re, you’re trying to juggle being a parent and possibly even being a teacher, right? You know, and if you’re in the cyber field, you know, you’re doing cybersecurity as well. And all it takes is one split second for you to get an email or, or something. If you’re configuring configuring something, and you’re about to do something, and then your child calls out or starts creating a whole lot of ruckus. And you know, you concentrate on them, and you come back, and then you accidentally entered the wrong thing, or you click on the link, then it’s kind of like split second decisions. And that’s why it’s a threat because okay, you know, if you’re trained like, oh, you know what, let me pause for a second, like, I was really distracted there. Maybe I shouldn’t be making this kind of decision. Right. Now. Let me just pause, let me do some, you know, a quick 30 minutes or sorry, 3/32. mental exercise to get me back into state, you know? Yeah,
Richard Lowe 16:10
there’s also the perception of risk, like clicking on a link is considered extremely low risk by most people. So of course, they’re just going to click on it yet. It could be high. Like I was expecting a package from ETS a couple of months ago. And guess what came in, there was a, there was a scam email from the UPS. So So look, what did I do? I’m a security guy. I clicked on the friggin link. Fortunately, that, you know, Malwarebytes said, Oh, no, you don’t want to click on that. Because I have multi layered defense, because that’s another important thing. Because I realize I’m not perfect, but even security people get fooled.
Jothi Dugar 16:47
Right. So if you if you, you know, have a set of practices that you can use to kind of just, you know, take take pauses in the moment, and a lot of people think that taking a pause is then taking away from what they what they think they’ll be more efficient, if they don’t take a pause and just keep on going for the rest of the day. But really, it’s the opposite effect. When you keep on going without taking any pauses, then you’re really just driving yourself insane, you’re gonna have less energy at the end, you’re gonna be less efficient, actually less effective, as well. So I always resort to the analogy that I heard from someone about NASCAR drivers, fastest people in the world, but every single race car driver comes to a complete stop in the middle of the race, to take that pause to check on their tires, you get their car, you know, ready to go again, and I’m sure inside their car, they’re getting their mindset and mental state, you know, taking the next step pause, you know, so and then they kind of keep keep going. So if they can do that, you know, all of us can take that that moment. You know, I always recommend about five minutes every hour to basically rejuvenate yourself. So I what I teach in my holistic wellness programs that I bring to the corporate setting are two minute three minute or five minute techniques that you can incorporate into your your workday, so that you can take this pause, but that you really and it’s a must. It’s not a well, when I have time, I’ll do this. It’s like nope, if you don’t, if you don’t do this, you know for sure you’re not going to be as effective or efficient as you were successful as you could if you actually did take the five minutes,
Richard Lowe 18:39
of course, and one of the things that I found causes a lot of problems is today’s mindset and a lot of people that they have to answer emails and Facebook posts and all those things instantly. The faster the better of how many likes did I get in the last five minutes, and I didn’t get 10,000 likes, oh my god, everybody hates me. What I do is to help partially to help with security and partially for sanity sake, is just I look at my email at certain times during the day and I ignore the rest of the day or my Facebook posts or whatever. And I don’t keep the phone with me looking at it all the time to see who’s talking to me because I don’t need to be on that much on the edge of of things. And I think that mindset actually is is a bad mental state to be in where you need to be instantaneous and it leads to security problems. On the phone, you could reply to a message that’s actually a scam message. You could click on a link. You could somebody could be hijacking a Facebook account and you don’t know it and you’re talking to is actually a scammer that happens to me that happened to me several times. And it’s always fun when I find out because then I can mess with them. And be you got to get out of that mindset. Did you have to answer these things instantly because you don’t and it affects your mind it affects as you say the mind is important and get Half the hair trigger.
Jothi Dugar 20:02
Yeah, yeah, it’s so technology hat. Yeah, like everything in life, there’s a, there’s a great use for it. But when you overdo it, it actually becomes a health issue. You know, just being connected and wired to technology from a mental state, like you said is a is definitely a wellness issue. But also just being around technology, you’re getting all of these gamma rays that are being or EMF rays that are being sent to you, whether you appreciate it or not. And it’s also causing you health issues, which you don’t really realize. And then you know, things start happening and go to the doctor, of course, they’re not going to dissect anything, they’re just going to handle the over, you know, high level symptoms. So you’re not, you’re not really aware of how it’s affecting you until you actually just, you know, stop doing that. So, you know, kids these days, you know, wearing glasses when they’re like two years old, mainly because they’ve been staring at iPads and computer screens or TV screens for too long. And even lots of behavioral problems, just because they’re not, they’re not as active anymore, as maybe we were when, actually, I shouldn’t say that. It’s better No, which generation you’re from,
Richard Lowe 21:31
maybe Burma.
Jothi Dugar 21:34
You know, like, what I when I was growing up, it’s like, you just you came home from school, and then you spent maybe like, the first hour or just kind of running around outside in your neighborhood. And, you know, then you came back did your homework. And, you know, there’s like, no question about sitting there, like just watching TV or, or, of course, we didn’t have gadgets. So there weren’t any gotchas. But it’s, it’s just unfortunate now that in and what that what that leads to is like, kids don’t really know how to how to be creative. So once they’re done with an activity, like I try my best, and in the evenings after I’m taking a break from work, I’m like, Okay, let’s go outside and play. But the moment you come back, and they’re like, Well, we’re bored. You just came back in like one second ago. Figure out something else you can do, like, well, we don’t know what else you could do. We’re just going to watch the phone like, No, you’re not.
Richard Lowe 22:29
Yeah, yeah. And they want to play video games, because it’s creative, but it’s not creative. You’re actually following somebody else’s creation. That’s not your creation. Yeah. Doesn’t matter how hard it is, or how big the puzzle is, you’re, you’re following somebody else’s creation. And that’s okay, in moderation. But it also affects physically, people sit around a lot more than they used to. And I know me, when I sit around, I get a sore back and I get a headache. And I know a lot of people who get sore backs and headaches and get surgery and migraines and things, what did I do? No, I don’t want that stuff. I take walks, and exercise the back and do do stretches and stuff. And I’d rather do that. Even though it’s a little bit slower than taking medications and taking medications, because they’ll have side effects on the mind and on the body. For sure. And who wants. Why? Why would you want those side effects when it’s just a simple matter of, for me getting off my bed every couple hours for 20 minutes and taking a two mile walk, or one mile walk or whatever it is, and enjoying the outdoors without the smartphone.
Jothi Dugar 23:27
Yeah, and then the five minute techniques I teach within the within each hour include things for the body as well. So it’s not just mindset and energy exercises, but even just just simply the act of getting up off your chair, you know, changing your physiology. So if you didn’t have the time to do a two mile walk in the middle of your day, that’s fine. You know, you can just actually get up off your chair face a different direction. And you can do some you know, squats or you can do some arm circles or, you know, just kind of you know, twisting and turning, you know, there’s different things you can do to change your physiology, which then changes your, your emotion and mental state as well. Just from the office room.
Richard Lowe 24:12
Yeah, there’s also the hypnotized stare that you get looking at a screen, you’re at the same fixed distance from the screen all day long. Whether it be a smartphone or a computer screen. It tends to hypnotize you, so does the TV and sort of video games. And that makes you less effective in life. And it makes it more you more prone to make errors that cause security problems and problems in your life. It’s just it’s an area that I am kind of passionate about. So is one of the reasons why I’m excited about this discussion. It’s yeah,
Jothi Dugar 24:43
it’s not very common. I think you’re the first podcast or of a podcast I’ve been on where we’re the podcaster is also from cybersecurity fifth unique. Yeah, I
Richard Lowe 24:54
saw you coming out. Oh my god, this is gonna be fun. Yes. Yes. I mean, we’ve had we had Break ends and we got the first I love you break in. Remember that one where we lost our email server crashed from 20 billion email messages. I don’t know how many it was, but and then we had blast or blast through the place literally took us months to get rid of it because it just kept replicating and we couldn’t find the machine that had it. And found a consultant to install off crack and broke into systems. And we had to fire him. I mean, all kinds of security stuff that you have in a big corporation, it was quite interesting. And simple things like making your consultants hire, excuse me making your consultants sign a bond or something or a contract that says they won’t do things, or they will do things that a certain way. Like, we had people attached into the network, who didn’t have secure computers. And of course, we repeat, we became PCI compliant. So that was a no, no. So they all had to sign documents, and we had to test those computers. You can’t attach a laptop to the system to network directly anyway, anymore, you had to go through the guest network. And then you had to make sure you had antivirus and all this other stuff. And if you didn’t, it was considered a big problem. And you could get a consultant could even be fired for that. Right? So all important, all all different things. And those are all people problems, all that technology.
Jothi Dugar 26:19
Yeah, so I think that’s where, going back to our first discussion about women, you know, there’s a lot of misconceptions out there that that the the only aspect of cybersecurity is that technical part. But when it comes to people, women, you know, are innately wired to be collaborative, and be more of a social and like, people person, because, you know, they’re there, they already bring these things naturally from within them, if they allow themselves to be authentic. You know, a lot of times they don’t, because they they, they need, they sometimes lack the confidence, and there’s a lot of fear, to be themselves within a male dominated environment. But if they do allow themselves to just be innately they bring bring out their femininity, to the cyber field, it can really, you know, boost the field, overall, because you need that collaboration with, you know, all all of your stakeholder groups, not just your IT staff, you need the you need someone who can speak different languages. So when it comes to women, like they’re so used to this, especially if they have families and kids, you know, you’re you’re gonna talk to each of your kids possibly in a different way, because you know, they’re all uniquely different. You know, you’re not going to talk to your husband the same way you would talk to your kid. So when you come to the workplace, like, you know, you’re going to treat each of these different groups of people that you have to work with, and cyber, it’s very unique role. And I think women have that. They have a lot of what it takes, it’s just that they don’t realize that this is what it takes. And most people even in the cybersecurity field don’t really realize this is what we
Richard Lowe 28:13
need. I think it’s true of technology in general, actually, I just was reading about a from Ai initiative. I think it was Amazon or one of the other large companies have really we’re going to use AI for to make hiring recommendations. So they read the last 10 years of history, and that’s how you train AI is reading the history. And much to their surprise, it tended to bias strongly towards hiring men. Well, you know, that 10 years of history, they’ve been hiring men mostly. So of course, it was biased. Of course, they pull the plug on it immediately. But if they’d had one woman on the team, that would have been caught, right like that, right? You know,
Jothi Dugar 28:54
it’s, you know, it’s a, what I find really interesting is even when I speak with other fellow CISOs, or cyber leaders within the industry, I mean, of course, any person or men, but then there’s, there’s a lot of misconceptions, it’s like, well, you know, we just hire, you know, the best for the job and, like, well, what if the best didn’t really apply for the job because, you know, they work, they’re wired differently, you know, as, as women like, we don’t we actually won’t apply for jobs unless we meet, you know, 90% of the criteria. versus, you know, most men, you know, would apply if they even met 10% of the criteria because, okay, I have a 10% chance of getting this so I’m just gonna put it out there. And women don’t so you don’t know if you’re hiring the best among those that applied, but then you’re kind of leaving out the rest that didn’t even apply because they you know, they He didn’t feel confident enough to play. So what do we do about that? So I actually started working, you know, I do a lot of mentoring and coaching with women and just getting them to get to that that type of confidence level, like, you know, just go ahead and apply, you know, what’s the worst that could happen, you don’t get the job, but you already don’t have the job. So it’s okay.
Richard Lowe 30:17
That’s true of everything in life. But I remember when I was like, 19, this guy used to get used to pick up women all the time, and it was in Christmas at that age. And it was like, how do you do that? And he says, You got to ask. Yeah, but they’re gonna say no. And he says, well, some of them are, but not all. Like, oh, well, that’s the secret is instead Well, there’s more to it than that. But you got to get to the point where you ask, and, and that’s how you get dates with women, as you just you got to ask like, Okay, that was that was actually kind of a turning point in my life, you just have to open your mouth and ask, and I learned a lot from that about life and things. But I think this this happens with all minorities, I guess that’s the right word nowadays. I’m sure I’ve heard it from people of color and from different other people, groups and things that it’s it’s obviously a male dominated a white male dominated society in many ways. That’s, that’s changing. And I’m really glad it is, I always tried to have a diverse staff at Trader Joe’s, I felt that that was important. Because I got different viewpoints. I mean, he put you put a woman and a black man and I had a Cuban at the same table, they’re all going to have an Israeli, they all going to have different points of view. And your problem solving becomes more enriched with that diversity. Sure, you know, you got a white guy on, on the staff to maybe, you know, mix it up. And you were the somebody may come up blank, and the Israeli may come up, say, Well, you know, how about this approach? And then the Pakistani will come up and say, No, how about that one, and you get this conversation going. And the women will have a different approach. And it’s, I found that always very empowering to have all of those different viewpoints. Sometimes it was more frustrating to because not all of us, we weren’t always on the same page. Whereas if everybody had been the same, you know, in the same set, it would have might have been more
Jothi Dugar 32:27
aligned. But then you won’t have creativity or innovation from that
Richard Lowe 32:31
I didn’t want. I didn’t want a group of Yes, men, so to speak, I wanted a group of people who actually use their brains. And yeah,
Jothi Dugar 32:38
yeah, and I mean, this has been scientifically proven that the more diverse the workforce is, one, it does make a happier team, but they’re also more effective, efficient, and also drives their creativity. Because just like you said, they’re not they don’t all think the same. So you really have to show why your point, it might be the best idea. But then when somebody else maybe takes that apart, it actually opens up your your awareness on like, oh, yeah, I didn’t i i weren’t given thought that way. Yeah. So it’s only going to drive creativity and innovation and going to like the next growth basically, would you wouldn’t have come to us everyone just thought the same way.
Richard Lowe 33:26
I mean, I was married for 12 years. And one thing I learned is that I’m very, very logical, intellectual to the point I just want the facts, ma’am. Just the facts. You’re not just like dragging, you know. But the wife, she passed away a long time ago, but she, she was emotional. And she wanted the she was worried about feelings and emotions, and I didn’t care. I was, you know, just the facts. Yeah, it produced two totally, we both had to come to terms with that and find the center point where we had the facts, and we had the emotions to consideration.
Jothi Dugar 34:01
And that’s where I think that women can really add to this field because, yeah, like you said, Men are kind of wired to to solve the problem and move on most men. I wouldn’t say all men, of course.
Richard Lowe 34:12
very general here, actually.
Jothi Dugar 34:16
But, you know, I’m just talking about how they’re innately wired. Of course, some men choose to do different things. It’s just based on their personality and things like that. But um, innately you know, men want to just solve the problem and move on because if you even just think about the caveman days, that’s what they were daring to do, you know, just go out there. Get the the tiger Saber Tooth line or whatever it’s called and bring it to the table. And that’s it. My job is done.
Richard Lowe 34:42
Deer dinner, go. Let’s go get it. The wife. You don’t think how does the deer feel? We don’t care. It’s dinner.
Jothi Dugar 34:49
What are you doing? You know, that they’re not really caring about, like, you know, is the woman at home taking care of the kids making sure they’re safe and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So um, And this happens in our in our office. I mean, I think it’s happening more now since we’re all in closed spaces you know, when you’re not used to living with your spouse 24 by seven in a closed space, then you really get you get to see the other side more. And it’s really up to each family now, how they deal with it, which is I think we’re why we’re we’ve been seeing a lot of COVID divorces, what they call,
Richard Lowe 35:31
oh, yeah, yeah, I saw that a bit. One of my neighbors, he has three kids and two of them are special needs. And they were driving her crazy, because they’re out there all at home. And she’s not used to it. So now that school started, she’s she’s much happier. She would her temper was getting short, you know, she’s, she’s having a hard time. The father is a trucker. So he’s on home a lot. So she was having to control these three kids. And one of them is literally all over the place all the time, he’s got so much energy. And it’s just weird energy, you know, I think he’s autistic. And weird, being different, not weird being wrong. And so now she’s much relieved that they’re back in school and literally physically in school, because because she, she has a little time for herself, and she doesn’t have to deal with that energy all day long.
Jothi Dugar 36:25
Yeah, and, you know, I think what I see also happening is, you know, a lot of times since women are kind of used to, because they have to sometimes be this way, you know, they, they have their job, they come back and they’re they still gather up enough energy to take care of the household, take care of the kids, but dinner on the table. And they’re, you know, they just keep going, they’re always on the go, go go. Now that they they’re home, or if they if they happen to be home trying to work, it’s they just get more of a taste of, you know, what their spouse does. And just, you know, just based on how men and women are innately wired, men focus on one thing at a time, and you know, they need they kind of need that break, or they just really focus on nothing. Right? You know, and most women that are, I wouldn’t say all women, but the women that are really like go getters, like they’re their leaders, they’re, they’re going after their dreams, like they’re inside their minds. They’re, you know, it’s basically going at 80 miles an hour, like, Oh, I gotta do this, I got to do that. Oh, like, what are my kids doing? Oh, what was that noise? So they’re not really taking a break, you know, they couldn’t be thinking of physical break at times. But mentally, they’re constantly thinking of this and that. And, and I see a lot of this happening, where the women are kind of like, Ah, wait, I worked the same number of hours as you. And I’m still, you know, I, I’m still going, I’m still taking care of the kids. I’m doing this. I’m doing that. And then here’s my spouse just kind of sitting there watching TV. Yeah, you know, and it wasn’t a problem before because, you know, they were outside of their houses, and they came back and they didn’t, you know, most people were running their lives unconsciously before, of course, right. And now, people are just more conscious of like, what each other is doing.
Richard Lowe 38:25
Because it’s in their face. Yeah. And that, of course, it’s usually a simple conversation, or even a complex conversation can solve those those issues. It’s when they’re not talking that they blow up. Exactly, least that’s what I found when I was being married. Because I tend not to be a talker. I’m like, let’s just do it. And you told me the problem. Let’s solve it. Of course, she would always want to talk it out. And for hours and hours. When are we going to shut up and just solve the problem, but typical man, you know. And she would talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, you know, anything, so I just tuned her out. And so yesterday or yesterday or yesterday, which of course was a mistake, because she kept on? You’re not listening to me. What did you say? See? I told you Oh, darn right. My wife radar was was not working there.
Jothi Dugar 39:17
Real Life marriage counseling call, like right on here.
Richard Lowe 39:21
Yeah, those were the days but yeah, it’s it. You’ve got a fascinating mix of talents there. The the mind combined with the security is is interesting and interesting approach to security. Obviously, you’d need to have your mind engaged to be secure. I mean, unless you’re going to depend on a robots and stuff and those aren’t going to work all the time.
Jothi Dugar 39:48
Yeah, so you know, mind mindset. And, you know, when we talk when you’re talking about just being able to I take those breaks, you know, also from a physical perspective and changing, you know, there’s a reason why it’s called E motion because it’s motion and, you know, in an energetic format, so a lot of people don’t realize that like, they’re they’re in, you know, especially if you’re doing like instant response or you’re in the middle of a crisis mood could be a security crisis, or just could just be a crisis in general. People just want to keep going and trying to solve this crisis, like until they’re done, without realizing that this crisis might take a really long time to be done, you know, most crisis is our, it’s otherwise it might probably won’t be a crisis, it just be kind of like a, okay, it’s just, you know, something happened today. So, when if you don’t take that physical break, like change your physiology, you’re not, you know, you’re just gonna dry, you’re just gonna get burnt out, and you’re not going to solve that crisis. So, and a lot of people are like, Well, what do you mean, I need to take a break, like, I’m in the middle of this crisis? Like, yes, that’s exactly what you need to take a break. And it doesn’t have to be a long break. So you know, just, you know, just get up, you know, just go to the other side of the room, look out the window, take a couple deep breaths, and then come back, and I’m sure you’re, you’re going to react or respond differently to the situation.
Richard Lowe 41:25
Yeah, I remember our worst computer crash. We had a, it was a, it was a simple thing, removing a disk drive that was that should have been saved to remove it, there was a bug in the firmware, and it caused it to ripple through and the system crashed. And it affected the Dr. Site, and the backups were corrupt. And you know, I could go on and on and there was no recovery at all. And I was awake for 70 hours, with with one of my team members. Literally awake for so many hours. And man reality gets different when you’ve been away for 70 hours. Mind, it did my mind. I don’t know where my mind was. But it was on another planet for a while there. I mean, I took a few cat naps and things but that was that was my most interesting experience with with what sleep deprivation can do to the mental state. And my person I worked with her my dva he he was awake 70 hours also. So we were having some probably some very bizarre conversations.
Jothi Dugar 42:26
Yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it is one of those unique fields. Because even in healthcare you know, your shifts usually. Or you know, when you’re on call, it’s usually usually don’t go through a period where you’re totally not on call at all. And suddenly you get called middle the night to go do something like if you know, okay, you’re the doctor on call, you might get called the middle of night. So you mentally kind of prepare for that. But in fiber, it’s like you don’t you don’t know. Okay, well, tomorrow at midnight, someone’s gonna hack in. So, you know, just be prepared to handle that situation, look, so it’s almost like it just catches you on the fly. And you have to be mentally prepared to handle something at any time, any, any time of the day, any day of the week, even if you’re on vacation, and you just gotta suddenly shift from whatever you’re doing to this crisis mode. You know, middle of the night, so it’s and yes, you know, if you have enough resources and stuff and you can, you know, you can say, okay, these people are on call like, These people aren’t. But if you’re the leader, you kind of have to be prepared to have get calls middle the night regardless.
Richard Lowe 43:47
Yep, yep. I still, I there was one time that I was, I was I was going to Fresno I lived in other than LA. So I was going up to Fresno for the renaissance fair. And I had three models meeting there, because I’m a photographer. Also, we were going to spend the whole day at the renaissance fair. And then they brought costumes and things and going to have photoshoots the whole thing. I get a call saying the computers down. Now I’m 100 miles away from the office. And I had to basically run the recovery effort on my phone from 100 miles away while doing photo shoots. It was it was a very bizarre day.
Jothi Dugar 44:29
I’m sure and you know, that really gets you if you do it for a long time and nobody else really understands the kind of like, can you just tell them you’re not working? Like kind of not?
Richard Lowe 44:44
You’re the leader.
Jothi Dugar 44:46
Right. So yeah, that’s the way it’s been. Just my passion to kind of bring that that aspect to this field because I think the people in the field just don’t realize how important it is.
Richard Lowe 44:59
Well, yeah, can Peter’s go down companies out of business, and in many cases, specially central computers. And we were literally out of business. So there wasn’t any choice. And I couldn’t take the 200 mile trip back because there was people to run, and I wasn’t gonna be on the phone while I was driving on the freeway, you know, so, and we had security things were the same thing happen, it got to be a drag after a while to be on call all the time, and have those kinds of urgencies regularly. Hence, now I’m a ghost writer, and it’s much easier because I make my own hours and make my own clients and things. So your do you work for your own company? How’s this work?
Jothi Dugar 45:40
Um, so I have to say I, for my security position, I actually work for NIH, National Institutes of Health. But I also have a holistic wellness business. We’re, you know, and I’m also an author as well. So, yeah, I have my first book, coming out October 1, called Ultimate Guide to self healing. Nice. I wrote a chapter I didn’t set my entire book, but I wrote a chapter on busting burnout for badass leaders. You know, basically dedicating it to the corporate field. So because that’s where I really see the big need for it. And then there’s about 24, other really cool spiritual tools, and also just meditation tools and things like that. But my, my chapter is on the three of the easy mind body energy techniques that you can incorporate into the workplace.
Richard Lowe 46:41
Okay. Okay. Sounds exciting. And how can how can our audience reach you if they need to?
Jothi Dugar 46:49
Yeah, so my website is www dot jothee, du gard.com, J UTHID? G ar.com.
Richard Lowe 46:59
And, and on there, you have contact information so that somebody can reach you?
Jothi Dugar 47:04
Yes, yeah. It’s not like information there. There’s also the links for the books, if you’d like to preorder them, they’re going pretty fast. And there’s, you know, there’s information about all my online programs on there as well.
Richard Lowe 47:18
Well, very cool. Very cool. Well, it’s been interesting to talk to you do you have any final words for our audience?
Jothi Dugar 47:25
Um, you know, from a mental health and wellness perspective, you know, always reach out, never feel like you’re alone, especially during these times, but really, anytime, you know, if you’re facing something, I can guarantee you somebody else’s as well. So, you know, the more you reach out, the more you actually talk about it, and put yourself out there, the more help you can get in support you can get but also you can encourage and inspire others to to also seek out assistance.
Richard Lowe 47:58
Sure. Sure. Well, thank you. It’s been it’s been an honor to talk to you. Interesting chat, and I’m Hope you had fun. And there you go. So that’s the end of the podcast. Thank you for coming.
Jothi Dugar 48:09
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a blast.
- Unlock 10 🔥Plot Devices: Write with Passion! - September 22, 2023
- Master Citations in 5 Simple Steps! 📚🌟 - September 19, 2023
- Avoid Plagiarism: 7 Awesome Tips for Authentic Writing - September 17, 2023
