How To Overcome Self-Doubt and Build a Personal Brand | with Joe Erle

You're not going to be good at it right away. You have the advantage when it's on video that you can take multiple takes. Don't, don't try to do everything at once and, and just give yourself some compassion that you're not going to be the, the best video person right away.

Hey hey. Welcome back to the Accelerate youe Insurance Sales podcast. My name is Andy Neary. Today I am joined by Joe Earl. Joel is a cyber security specialist with C3 Risk and Insurance Services in San Diego and he's also a gentleman I've had a chance to work with and I wanted to have Joe on because the man is putting in the work. He has built one heck of a brand around cybersecurity. Heck, in this episode I learned a lot about cybersecurity that I was completely unaware of and he is contributing consistently as a thought leader through articles like Hacker Swang, you Should Know and the Rise of AI Driven Cybercrime. He is also the podcast host of Ransomware Rewind. Yes, this man has built a niche around cybersecurity, an area of insurance that is only going to continue to grow in importance. And quite frankly, I wanted to have Joe on to reward him because the man's putting in the work when it comes to content. So he is going to share his journey from self doubt to building a nice little content machine for himself. So if you are sitting in a position right now where you know you should be doing a little more content, but you got the fears and the doubts, you're going to love this episode because Joe's going to share his journey. So here we go. Joe Earl C3 Risk and Insurance Services this episode is brought to you by True Captive Insurance. What if you could take full control of your healthcare strategy without the financial burdens of traditional insurance? At True Captive Insurance they make that possible. As the only captive in the nation that puts up the majority of collateral on your behalf, they provide financial flexibility from day one, making them an advocating partner for their customer success. True Captives fully customizable plans and cost saving strategies ensure you never have to choose between affordability and quality care. It's time to break free from the limitations of conventional insurance. Take the next step today. Visit truecaptive.com and discover a smarter way to manage healthcare that is truecaptive.com Joe Earl welcome to the podcast my friend.

Thanks Andy.

I'm excited to have you on for one one big reason. You know a lot of people know us complete game consulting for content and helping people with content and LinkedIn and all that stuff. Not all we do, but it's definitely part of our wheelhouse. And you're somebody that I wanted to have on the show, I want to say almost like a reward, because you're putting in the work. And we're going to talk about that today because I'm sure you had a lot of hesitancies when you. Or a lot of fears right when you started doing it. But for people who know who may see your stuff on LinkedIn right now, I think people would think this guy's been doing this for a long time, and that's not the case. And so I definitely want to talk about that. But let's start here. Joe. For people who have no clue who Joe Earl is, this is the first time they've heard the name Joe Earl with C3 risk and insurance Services. Let people get to know you a little bit.

Of course. Thanks for having me on, Andy. Really happy to be here. I guess I'm in my own office, so I'm always here.

We are in the C3 podcast studio, which you call home.

Yeah, I usually sit in that chair, though.

So, yeah, Joe Earl here. I'm originally from Sacramento. My family moved around a lot. We were Air Force brats. Okay. My dad was a navigator in the Air force.

Retired after 20 years as captain. So we lived in Alaska and then we ended up in Sacramento, where he finished his career, grew up there, and then went to college in Cal Poly. And now I'm here.

Did you go to Cal Poly? Slow.

Yeah.

Yes. One of my employees, Amy Essig, is a grad from Cal Poly Slow. So. Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

I love. Never heard. Never been there, but I heard San Luis Obispo is a cool town.

Yeah. It was a lot easier to get into than it was than it is now.

Where did you guys live in Alaska?

Anchorage.

How was that? How old were you?

I was young. I was like zero to five.

Oh, okay. So probably don't have a ton of memories.

No, not a ton of memories. I remember hanging out on the roof. My brothers would set off firecrackers. Actually, my oldest brother would shoot firecrackers at my brother Ezra.

So not. Not a recommended, but.

And. And older. Oldest brother being Gabe?

No, we have one.

Oh, you actually have an older brother than him? Because Gabe. Gabe's also in the business here at C3.

Correct.

I'm curious. Like, you know, I've always heard, like, when you live in Alaska in the wintertime, it gets dark at like 2, 3 o', clock, doesn't it? Like super early. I couldn't imagine that, what that would be like when it's already getting dark and it's like halfway through the afternoon.

Yeah, I don't really, really remember that much of it. I remember one time there was a moose that came up to the window. I remember one time my brother was chased by a bear. And I remember one time we. My brother got turned into the fire department by my mom for having too many firecrackers. And I was at the fire department saying, yeah, M80s bottle rockets. M80s bottle rockets. That's all I remember.

So this is not going to be a podcast on pyrotechnics here, but. Well, how did you, you know, most of us didn't have some fancy story of how we. We intentionally got into the insurance industry. How did you get in the industry?

Oh, right. Yeah, I guess I was getting to that. My dad's second career was an insurance broker.

Okay.

Yeah.

So after he retired from the Air Force, he went into insurance. Okay.

I worked at a farmer's agency and then.

He went to an independent agency after that and he eventually became partner. Okay. Then my brother Gabe got into the business after working at IBM for a few years. And I was not going to be in insurance. I did not want to do insurance. I did go to business school, but I was planning on, you know, being some kind of.

I'll come, I'll come into the industry.

I didn't really like corporate America. It wasn't what I thought it was. Okay.

Or where this agency is located through the training.

Yeah.

And they still have the benefits now.

When they're been with like tech companies. I've worked with a lot of startups.

A lot of times I've experienced. Been part of those, losing those accounts because the, the client takes insurance broker, like, okay, yep, it sucks to lose, but at the same time, you, you can't get too mad at yourself because you really did nothing to lose it, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm always happy for them.

Yeah. Let's talk about. So, okay. Content. You know, I worked with you guys when. When did we work together? It was like early 2023, I believe. And.

At that time, I will be honest, when I looked at everybody in the room that we were working with here at C3, I probably would have not picked you as the guy who would go on and now kind of be the one I see all the time on LinkedIn with video content. What made you decide like, all right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to Put the work in to start creating content for social media.

Thinking back to back then, I would say that I probably had, like, one foot into.

Kind of tech, one foot into trucking.

Okay.

And I was making content about trucking and some about cyber, and I.

I just, like.

Had some small successes with. With content, and I started to get a little bit of recognition and really, a little bit of traction. And I really hate cold calling, which is where.

Which is where most people start their content journey. I just trying to avoid cod. Having to pick up the phone. Yeah, that was me in 2014.

Yeah.

Honestly, I built my strategy because I did. I didn't want to have to pick up the phone.

Right, right. Yeah. I'm not afraid of the phone. I mean, my first phone experience was, like, calling people from Cal Poly and asking them to give donations, and I was, like, the top guy getting, like, credit card numbers and stuff like that.

So you were good on the phone?

Yeah.

Wow.

I was good, but, like, it was very transactional.

Yeah.

Yeah. But the kind of companies that we're working now, it's like just getting past the gatekeeper is very difficult. And when you start to make content and people find you online, you're kind of skipping that. They. They're coming to you or you're going to them directly, and they've already seen you, so it's a little bit easier.

What would you say? You know, early on, when you did make that decision.

I have to imagine you had some fears.

Whether it's fear of failing, if I do this, or comparison, what will people think? Did any of that go through your head as you started to create content? Because, you know, you're not just creating any content, you're creating video content. And I think for people, that is what is ultimately the most difficult. Because now you're putting yourself on camera, and I think a lot of people, that's when they freeze up. All the doubts come in. Did you have any of those fears or doubts when you started hitting the record button?

Absolutely.

What was going through your head? Like, what were some of the concerns? Because I think there's a lot of people that are gonna be listening to this episode that are probably in that position right now that are sitting on the sidelines, not doing anything because they're too afraid or they're waiting until the perfect moment. And you and I both know there is no perfect mom.

But, yeah, I would say it's like a microcosm of, like, my overall fear of failure.

Okay.

So, like.

When you go for something or, like, you commit to something and you do it publicly. It's. It's bigger than just doing it silently where that, like, you know, you're. You're. When you're creating video and you're putting yourself out there, it's very public. And if things don't go well for you, that's what. At least what I'm thinking in my head. You know, obviously things have gone well and.

You know, I can still, like, kind of look back and, you know, see, like, where I was and if I look at old videos and things like that. But you don't want to publicly fail. Right? And that goes back to just, like, a fear of failure in the first place. Like, I feel a fear of, like, being judged. And during that time, I was doing, like, a lot of self reflection and I was working with, you know, coaches and things like that, and it all kind of tied together on.

My, you know, fear of fears of failure and things like that that I was working on, on the other parts of myself. And it kind of made sense that, like, by doing this, I'm giving myself, like, my own therapy almost.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think what you're saying is you're actually helping yourself overcome fears in life. A lot of the limitations you have up here, we all. And. And actually recording video is helping you accomplish that.

Exactly.

Yeah. And that's interesting.

And it's. It's interesting because, like, when I first started, I was very awkward on camera.

We all are, man.

I'm still pretty awkward on camera. Like, my kids were making fun of me the other day, and they didn't mean to make fun of me. He's like, daddy, it looks like you don't want to be, like, behind the camera. I'm like, really? That's good feedback. I need to be like, more like, you know.

Yeah.

Seduce the camera more like Tommy.

Like Tommy did in the recent. The past episode, Right? Yes.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm still learning, but it's really helped me because I'm doing more public speaking, doing panels, webinars, and every time I do one, it's like, I get a little bit better.

Yep.

And I would just tell the people out there that you get better at the thing by doing the thing.

You know what? Here's what I would love to do with this, man. I think people are going to love this because you just kind of hit the nail on the head. If we look at you today, you're. Now, you're putting out content, you have a podcast, you've been sitting on panels. You've done some public speaking, which, by the way, recording a video is a form of public speaking.

Absolutely.

And so we see where you are today. I'd love for us to kind of peel back the onion and go, okay, let's go back to the start because. And we're going to kind of walk people through this. I think they're going to get a lot of value out of this. So let's take it back all the way back to when we were actually working together. Again, I would have not pinned you as the guy of everybody in this office, as the guy who would have gone on and now is probably the one doing the most video content, simply because in our conversations, I could sense the doubt a little bit. But here you are. So let's start here. One of the things I teach when I work with people on content is the first thing you got to get clear on is what do you want to be known for? So as you put content out there, what are you going to be known for? And I think one thing you've done a few fabulous job of is picking that lane. Cyber security.

Right.

So let's start there. Why did you. Because at the time we were working together, you. You were doing some trucking. Targeting trucking, you were also doing some cyber. What made you ultimately go, okay, I'm going all in on the cyber security lane.

It's a funny story because it does relate to cyber. I was at a trucking convention, the annual membership convention of California Trucking association, and one of the clients of ours, it was one of Jamie's clients, and he approached us and he's like, very flustered and feeling, you know, you could kind of tell he is off because he's usually like a really fun guy to be around. And he's real, real guys guy. And he had just been hacked. Akira Ransom Group, Ransomware Group, you know, locked him out of his systems. And it wasn't just like a. A regular ransomware where they just encrypt his files and have to pay. They exfiltrated his files. And of course it's got his tax returns, his family's tax returns, like his mom's stuff, his dad's stuff. And even though he has backups, he's like, you know, I can't let that stuff get put out on the dark web. And of course, you know, not everybody has cyber insurance. It's probably like 50, 50 right now with people that have it and. And don't. And he was on the 50 that didn't have it, and he had Done a good job. He has. He had his IT people working on it, and he was negotiating with the ransomware guy himself. They demanded 250,000. He actually got him down to 115,000, which is, like, great. That's almost 50% of what they asked for. And the problem came is, like, he's got to pay these guys, right? And they want to get paid in bitcoin. He doesn't have any bitcoin. He's not like a bitcoin, you know, purist. So he has to get a coinbase account, put $115,000 in there, tries to send it to them, and his account gets locked. So now he's got $115,000 locked up in a Coinbase account. He's got to get it out of there. And. And he still doesn't have a way to pay these guys.

He's out 115k, doesn't have access to his stuff yet, and now he's trying to figure out how to get the money.

Yeah, and. And the clock is going down.

You know, they're like, always, like, sounds like a movie.

You know, you have two weeks to do this. And he was already, like, one and a half weeks down, you know, and they're about to, like, release his stuff. Right. So he's, like, trying to buy time with these guys. So that's where, you know, we came in. And I was like, let me. Let me make a call, because I was already kind of in with the cyber security community a little bit, and I had a. A really good contact, a good friend now that lives in Pittsburgh that owns a cyber security company, and he used to work at the NSA and everything. And I called him up and he connected him to this company called Digital Mint that makes payments for. For this exact thing. That's like, what they do. They make. They have a big bitcoin account, and they make payments to hackers on behalf of individuals and insurance companies. So he was able to talk to those guys even though they were in New York at the time, and, you know, it was after hours, and they were able to do that transaction within, like, 24 hours. So I was like, this is something that people need.

Yeah.

And I can make the biggest impact.

Oh, man. I mean, yeah. I would love to know what was his response to you when you able. You were able to come through like that.

Oh, he was so happy. It was like.

It was like life for you in many ways.

Like, it's you. You don't understand, like, when you're. When you're Hacked, you're like, it's like somebody's got you by the, the tail. You know, to be nice about it.

I say the balls. Yes.

They have you and it's like very, you feel very vulnerable. Yep. And I mean it sucks to get hacked, but like if you do have, you know, an insurance company that can help you, at least you have like.

Somebody that can help like put the team together to get you back on your feet. Yeah. Because like all the things he did by himself with the incident response, the.

The negotiation. The.

Negotiation, like the payments, all that is done by the insurance companies when you have a hack.

So do these insurance companies even have the negotiators?

Yes.

Wow. Okay.

So they, when you have a hack, they usually first connect you to breach council and they'll make sure that you're like saying the right things and tell and kind of guide you through it. They'll, they'll usually bring in an incident response team and that way everything's under privilege.

Yep.

So that things that don't need to be shared don't get shared. And then you know, they, either the incident response team or the breach council, they both have negotiators and they usually go with whoever has the best.

Rapport with that specific ransomware group.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I have, I've, I just talked to an agency about a month ago that had a breach in their email system and it wasn't quite that where they were being held for ransom, but they were told that their emails all the way back to 2015, geez. Were probably compromised. Yeah. It's caused a major issue and, and this is an employee benefits. Right now you're dealing with HIPAA information, you're dealing with all that stuff and it's. Yeah, it's, it's a nightmare. And I think, I think the need for cybersecurity, you know better than I do. I gotta believe it's only going to get bigger with, as we, as we move forward. I feel like my credit card gets hacked once, once every six months nowadays and it's like, it's just a common thing. It's like, I guess they're gonna close that one out and I got to order a new card again.

I know. And then all the things that you have on auto pay, you know, it's such a.

Well, I'll tell you on a little micro scale, nothing to that degree. I was overseas this last fall. I was in Spain on a, on a men's retreat and I was in my hotel room at like 10 o' clock at Night, which would have been.

Morning here. And I got a call from the sheriff's office of the county I live in. And the number looked legit. Walkshaw, Wisconsin, everything. And they had me. They had me by the proverbial balls because they were saying that I won't go into the details, but they were saying I was part of a case or a suit and I needed to be at the. I needed to report to the police department in Walkshaw to. To verify somebody. Next day. You have to be here the next day, otherwise. And I said, I can. I'm over, I'm out of seas. I'm over. I'm out of the country. And the second I said that, I, I looking back now, their script went. Their script went into motion at that point. They had me, man. Wow. Yeah. And thank God. Truly, because of some divine intervention.

I texted a buddy who was on the trip with me saying, hey, can you come down here? And he came down. And while I'm on the phone with this guy, he's doing some investigation on his phone. We come to find out, he's like, this is, this is. This is. Get off. But had he not been there, they would have had me. Wow. And the only reason this is the part that was divine intervention. He said, dude, I gotta tell you, when you texted me, my phone was off and I was about to go to bed. He said, but something told me to check my phone.

They had me, though. And now I know that's not a cyber security attack, but these are guys out to do one thing. Right. I mean, it's a different form of it. Right.

We cover social engineering.

Yeah, yeah. Like, that's. They were good. They had me. And I look back and there were probably mistakes I made in the conversation where I gave away something I shouldn't have, but I'm like, dang, that was good. They, they, they had me believing they were legitimately the Waukesha County Sheriff's Office.

Yeah. That the sheriff's not going to call you. They're going to come to your house.

Yeah. Well, and that's where. That's where we finally went like this. Kyle called the sheriff's department and they said we would never ask for payment from somebody over the phone.

Right.

And that's when he went.

Yeah, I've gotten those calls. My wife's got them. She's called me and be like, do you know anything about this? Like, do we have to pay these people?

Yeah, yeah.

And I've. I.

While back, I fell for a, like a vacation scheme where it's like, you know, pay 500, and we're gonna give you, like, a week in Maui and then another three days in Vegas. I. I feel for that.

Yeah. I'm sure everybody listening has had that one moment where you look back. God, was I an idiot. But we. We all got sucked in because it's good. Yeah, they're good nowadays.

And then they called me back again.

That's how they got me. They called and left a voice message, and then they called again, and that's when they got me. I'm like, they're calling back again.

Yeah.

Yep.

They wanted me to pay an extra, like, $200 so that my credit wouldn't expire.

Hey, it's Andy Neary. Thank you for listening to the Accelerate youe Insurance podcast. Did you know the ideas we share on the show are things we actually specialize in helping you implement. If you want to increase your sales, make more money, and be the thought leader your prospects, reach out to, please go to my LinkedIn profile DM me and sign up for a free discovery call. Again, go to my LinkedIn profile DM me and we'll get you set up for a free discovery call. All right, now back to the show. Well, we're not talk horror stories, end of the episode. But let's go back to cyber security. So that. That. That situation that you just shared where you helped this trucking firm get out of that. That situation. I mean, I hope every advisor, especially if there's commercial advisors listening in who are selling cyber, Who. That. That would. That has to open a lot of eyes. What. So at that moment when you realized the impact you made on that trucking firm, is that when you made the decision, like, okay, this is something I really want to do. Like, there's a little passion behind helping people with this.

Yeah, it was. That was definitely part of it. Like.

I was working with the coach at the time, and I was making a lot of cyber security, cyber insurance content. And I was talking to him about, like, how, you know.

It would be cool to be, like, the cyber security guy at C3. And then we had hired.

A new sales manager, Marie Faye, or business development vice president. I don't know what her title is. Whatever. And she was like, joe, like, I see you on LinkedIn all the time. Like, you should be our cyber security guy. I was like, yeah, I know. Like, I just talked to my coach about that, like, two hours ago. And then this. This episode happened, like three days, like a week later. And after, you know, we. I talked to him. I was going to the. The john with. With Jamie and he's like, joe, you should be the cyber security guy at our office.

You know, how many times do I have to hear this in a matter of a couple days.

Yeah, you know, that's a good idea.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it was, it was then and also, like, it was also in the works kind of in the back of my mind. So that's awesome. Eventually it just happened.

Yeah. So talk to us a little bit. So as you sit down, when do your content. So number one, you got a podcast, right? What's the name of the podcast?

Ransomware Rewind. That's awesome.

And can we find that on Apple?

Yeah, on Apple Spotify.

So, like. Yeah, so, okay, so I want people to hear this. So remember, you decided you're going to go into cyber. You decide that you're going to start making content. And by the way, whoever this coach is deserves a couple thumbs up. And it's not me, it's somebody else, but they deserve a couple thumbs up because it sounds like they encourage you to do this.

Absolutely.

Yeah. That's awesome. And then you had all your teammates again. I call it divine intervention. You have how many different people say, hey, Joe, you should be the cyber security guy? Start the podcast. One way to create exponential awareness. Get a message out far, fast and wide. Who do you typically interview on your podcast?

We interview cyber security experts.

CISOs are people that are running cyber security for companies. Also, like, people that have stories to tell about being hacked and.

Influencers, either in cyber security or elsewhere. Like, I interviews, interviewed my friend that's a comedian, that's an influencer. We talked about cyber security for influencers. So I, I think, like.

I'm open to interviewing a lot of different types of people. We just keep the theme on cyber security.

Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. And, and, and how many times? How often are you doing an episode?

We're putting them out. Probably like two a month.

Two a month. Cool. That's awesome, man. How about the panels? You said you talked about the panels and the public speaking. I'm curious, did those opportunities come by way of your content where somebody saw you and said, hey, we'd love to have you on this panel at this conference. How did you start opening the door to the speaking on panels or public speaking opportunities in general?

I would say it was a combination of that and also networking within the community and also, like, kind of.

Part of my.

What do they call that when, like, you're doing your own therapy? Like when people, like, put spiders next to them.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, it's part of that. Like, I'm. When I'm talking to people in cybersecurity, I'm like, you know, do you know anybody that he wants to speaker on cyber insurance? Do you. Do you need. Do you need any experts? Do you know anyone that's running conventions? So I'm asking for those actively to try to get on those panels and things like that.

That's cool. So how does it feel? Like I said, I. I take it back to when. When I. When I. We worked with you guys, and I know you had some doubts and some fears. Here you are now putting all this kind of content out. How does it feel now? Would you say, like, when you hit record on a podcast today compared to hitting record on a video a year or so ago? How does it feel today compared to a year ago? Is it a lot easier to hit record?

Yeah, Yeah, I would say, especially on the podcast, because I have more like. It seems like it's something I kind of do for fun.

Okay.

On the videos, sometimes I feel like I do procrastinate on purpose for those. And. And.

Okay, so you still have your doubts.

I still have your hesitation when I.

That's cool.

I press record.

That's natural.

One thing that's really helped with that is hiring a social media media manager.

Okay.

So, like, I'm investing in the social media. I. He needs videos to edit and Is.

That the marketing team you guys work with here?

No.

Okay.

I use my own person.

Oh, you do. Okay. Awesome. So I want. Here. I want people to hear this, though. You've invested in your own person.

Correct.

Okay. I want people to hear that. That's important. Cool.

Yeah. So.

I meet with him about once a week and we go over the posts and things and we like. Because when I first started, I was doing everything myself.

Yeah. Oh. Which I think you have to, by the way.

Yeah. I taught myself how to edit.

If you don't have an edit. If you want to learn how to edit, I would recommend just starting with like a. An app called Cap Cut. It's really easy to use. It's fun to use. And I was, you know, fits and starts still, you know, it was like, you know, I was my own, like Log Jam or. Or Bottleneck. So, like, by being able to do fits and start still, but, like, having content planned out a month ahead, I can have a concurrent amount of content, like four videos a week. And still, like only tape, you know, once a week.

That's awesome. And where are you posting a lot of your content?

I'm posting on every platform now.

You are? So LinkedIn.

Yeah.

YouTube.

Yeah.

Instagram. Correct. Facebook. Tick tock. Yep. Dang. Nice. You're hitting all five. Love that.

When I was doing it myself, I only had time to, like, do it on LinkedIn. Yeah. I got to do quotes and I've got to call people and all this stuff.

And I'm curious how to work. Has it, has it helped at all? In any shape, way, shape, way or form when it comes to new business, whether people just say, hey, man, I see your stuff, I like it. Are you getting any kind of that feedback from clients and prospects?

Absolutely. Probably the out of my.