In this episode of the Full Throttle Leaders podcast, host Michael Falato interviews Melissa Aarskaug, EVP of Strategy & Growth at Druvstar and founder of Executive Connect. Melissa recounts her unconventional career trajectory—from banking and civil engineering to the casino gaming industry—culminating in her current role leading a cybersecurity firm focused on data governance for regulated sectors like gaming and healthcare. She explains Druvstar’s go‑to‑market approach, which relies on deep relationship capital, industry events, and AI‑driven solutions that free up staff for higher‑value work. Melissa discusses the challenges of selling cybersecurity in regulated markets, noting a current tension between shrinking security budgets and rising AI investment. She shares a personal philosophy she calls the “dumb tax,” emphasizing rapid learning from mistakes and the critical role of active listening in both engineering and sales. Through vivid anecdotes—cutting the wrong side of a mountain as a civil engineer, turning a $20k client request into a $3 million solution, and using a phone’s unlocked contact info to secure executive buy‑in—she illustrates the power of deep questioning and curiosity. Melissa also highlights the importance of AI tools like Fireflies as thought partners for capturing meeting insights, and describes her media venture Executive Connect, which produces a podcast network, a newsletter (The Executive Brief), and a book on redefining success. The episode closes with contact information for listeners who want to engage with her on cybersecurity, leadership, or media content.
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Hello, Michael Falato here again from GTM Full Throttle and my podcast Full Throttle Leaders. I have Melissa Arsgaard from Drewstar. She's the VP of Strategy and Growth, and then also she runs a company that connects people called Executive Connect. Hi, Melissa, thanks for joining the podcast today.
Thanks for inviting me to be here today.
So tell me a little bit about your 2 companies that you work for, and then after that, let's talk about how you even got to those 2 companies, your journey.
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I started my career— I'll actually flip it the reverse because it'll make more sense. Um, I started my career in banking, worked for a large bank. At the same time, I was studying to be a civil engineer. So I was doing kind of both finance and banking. And at one point, I was one of the engineers on one of the largest bridges built at that time. And then I found my way into the casino gaming industry, accidentally applied for the wrong job, and went in for the interview, took the job. And I have worked with about 95% of the gambling around the world, either through compliance, cybersecurity, or technology. And today I sit as EVP of Strategy and Growth for Druvstar, which is a cybersecurity company built for the casino gaming industry. We focus more on data governance, cybersecurity, and technology. And alongside that, as you mentioned, I am the founder of the Executive Connect. It's a media platform. We have podcasts. We've done, I don't even know at this point, like 230+ episodes. Episodes with about 3,500 hours of content, um, of leaders around leadership, alternative investments, technology, um, longevity, and faith. Um, and then we also have, um, a newsletter called The Executive Brief where we take all the smart things the people say on our podcast and we break them down to actionable steps people can take today. Um, in addition to that, I am an author of Renaissance Redefining Success for Modern Mavericks. And I am a speaker, so I speak on subjects like cybersecurity technology and a bunch of different leadership topics.
Awesome. So, and then tell me a little bit about, um, how do you grow your company at Drewstar? Like, what, what's your— are you doing go-to-market strategies, or what's—
or, or is it overall growth of, of current clients, or Yeah, so the founder of the company has sat in a technology seat in the industry for a while. And myself, I've also sat in a leadership seat for over 15 years in the gaming industry. So a lot of what we do and focus on are people that we've had long-term relationships with. So his products are AI machine learning. So people can leverage not only technology, but they can leverage, you know, essentially keep their people busy. So we leverage technology to get the insight so our people can actually focus on the work that they need to do. And so most of what we do and how we drive business is through our existing relationship capital, through industry events, and speaking that we do on the subjects.
Is it mostly their ICP, just gaming, or is it pretty much AI companies or tech companies, or what's who they sell to?
Great question. A lot of who we sell to is gambling and gaming and the healthcare industry because there's a lot of regulation around security and compliance. And so most of what we have expertise in is, and what we tend to focus on, is regulated. But we could do things in other industries. Oftentimes, if it's not required, People don't want to do it unless there's really a reason behind it. You know, I think I'm seeing right now, you know, cybersecurity, you know, budgets shrinking a little bit so people can invest those dollars in AI. And so there's kind of this interesting dynamic going on right now between cybersecurity and AI.
And how long have you been over at DriftStar so far?
Actually, it's almost a year next month.
What's a current win or loss that either drove you to learn something from losing or learn something from what you've done? Could be AI, it could be strategy, it could be processes. What's something you can bestow across my audience that they don't have to lose and learn or win and learn?
You know, that's a great question. I think I used to call it, I mean, I still call it the dumb tax we pay on the mistakes we made. Oftentimes, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes young in my 20s in my career. But now when I make the mistakes, I learn quick. So I make mistakes fast, I learn quick, and, you know, I continue to move forward. And so for me, you know, I've told this story many times. When I was in civil engineering, we cut the wrong side out of a mountain.
Really?
And, you know, it was a very important mountain that we were cutting and building a bridge over. You know, that's a big mistake, right? Costs a lot of money.
How does that happen?
How do people go into surgery and get operated on the wrong hip? I've seen this happen recently. It just happens, right? I think communication is key. And sometimes if you're a technical person or you're in a rush, you're not paying attention, directions just get kind of miss and people just wanna execute, right? So if you're not listening first and you're doing second, you know, it's funny, I laugh that you, you say that. I don't know about you, but I often leave meetings sometimes and people will message me right after and say, hey, what was I supposed to do again? I'm like, wait, were you not sitting in the meeting for the last hour? And so I think we're listening to what we want to listen to versus what is kind of some of the underlying discussions. And so to answer your question, that is my, you know, suggestion is to really listen to what people are asking. Sometimes, you know, people are asking or not telling us what we need to listen for. And sometimes, like, I did a deal, gosh, I think it was like a year ago now, with a client who came to me for a $20,000 problem. I ended up selling them a $3 million solution. They came to me Um, with a $20,000 problem and I solved a $3 million problem. And so point with telling you that story is, um, ask deeper questions, get curious, better understand the reasoning and the why behind things and what's keeping people up at night.
Yeah, people don't do that in sales or even their podcasts. Like, you didn't add on to that last question, right? You just skip to the, like, what's keeping you up at night? It's like, Start thinking about what's— what they're saying and figure out something else to ask, you know, based on that. So that's important.
I'll tell you a funny story on how it relates to cybersecurity. So in my industry, a lot of the tech, a majority of the tech and security is run through the IT department, but they need the support of their CEO, their boards, and their leadership teams to get the dollars to do the thing they need to do. One year I was at a conference and An IT leader asking me to talk to his, his general manager who is not supporting his initiatives. I happened to notice that the man's phone was open and unlocked, and I went to see if I could AirDrop his contact details to myself. And sure enough, I did. But, and the reason I did that, A, I helped the IT leader because he was trying to get to basically do better for the company, but the general manager didn't see the importance of cybersecurity. So I was able to show him that in 30 seconds. And it's funny, when it happened, this man said to me, oh, you already had my contact information, Melissa. I'm like, I did not, but I have your address and your contact information, your picture, and everything important. And funny enough, guess who got his money after that meeting? And so the IT leader didn't tell me to do that, but I knew the person he was working with, that he had made his mind up that it was no, and no amount of talking that I did was gonna make a difference. I had to have a different set of tools.
Did he get angry at all that you, that you went on his phone?
You know, initially he, I think he was in such shock That he, he, he didn't truly believe that I actually did it. Yeah. And so when I showed him how to, you know, lock his phone down better, he's like, oh, um, but I think, I think part of it wasn't— he wasn't angry, he was more embarrassed.
Yeah, he should be.
And I, I think the funny thing, that person I still am— I know today, and I will be a longtime friend of him, uh, of his, and But the point with telling you that and the point with telling the other story is sometimes what people are coming to us for, in the example of the IT director, he was just frustrated. No matter what he did, he couldn't get what he needed to do his job, and he needed somebody else to help him solve the problem.
We, we had a thing at this company I didn't really like, but if you left your computer open and it wasn't even, even in the office, they would mess with your computer, right? And then they would also— you'd have also have to bring in donuts the next day for everybody. So yeah, if you didn't lock down your, your computer, because they were GT SOC 2 Type 2, um, secured, and, and they had doing onboarding stuff, and it's just like, you can't do that. You can't leave your computer on. But it was just so intense, like, you just— Even if you walk to the restroom and come back, if you had your computer open and not locked, it was, it was a problem. And then the whole thing with listening you mentioned earlier, I take my Fireflies note-taker that I have, any note-taker, and say, what did I miss? What do I owe? How do I keep up with this, this particular meeting? Because I don't remember things like, like, like if they're in your meeting, like you should have your phone out and record it if it's okay with the group, but That was a big lesson I learned, how to be a better listener is use AI. Yep.
It's so true. I think, you know, I just taught a class last week on this. Are, are you, you know, are you using the tool as a thought partner or are you using the tool to— are you outsourcing your thinking to the tool or are you using your tool as a thought partner? And what you're saying is use the tool as a thought partner because people, I would argue, You know, people are communicating less and less, right? Their brain is on kind of fight or flight, or they're code switching so much. They got so many popups that they're not, you know, we're not getting to the root of where we need to get quickly enough with a lot of things. And, and I also see it kind of being a trust event too, right? I think there, we are seeing a lot of, you know, M&A, a lot of changes in our world. Um, you know, people sometimes don't know what to communicate, what not to communicate. Should I communicate it? Um, and so I think it's to your point, it's really important to, you know, re— rethink about what happened.
And then we're going to come to a close on this podcast. So who should reach out to you? And yeah, how do— how— and how should they reach out to you?
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so if anybody kind of wants to go deeper The best place to get more information is either the executiveconnectexperience.com or my podcast where we unpack different conversations about technology, Altium Investments leadership. And for anything from a cybersecurity perspective, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm a big LinkedIn user. But, you know, I think the key thing too is if you're wanting kind of quick actionable things or tips and tricks, go follow the Executive Connect Brief where we interview, you know, millionaires and billionaires about different topics. And it's a quick bite-sized, you know, piece of what you could take away today and apply to your life.
Well, thanks for being on, Melissa. Let's keep in touch.
