A thrill to have Sagar with us in the studio today for the Brand Lab Series. I feel like I know him, but I don’t know him. He’s got a great big smile, super friendly. We’re both Goldman Sachs 10K alum. I believe that’s where we first met, actually, speaking on an alumni panel together, and you’re very active also with Goldman Sachs, with EO, with other things, and I have had some nice run-ins with you over the last couple of years. I’ve been excited as a bystander to kinda see how your business has grown. We’ll talk a lot about that throughout the show. And you are specializing in an area that I think is important not just to me as a fellow business owner, but also to businesses of all sizes as well as individuals today. And that’s really around cyber security and some of the dangers that I think people should be aware of and how to protect themselves, their families, their businesses today. So I’m so excited Sagar to have you on. So welcome to the Brand Lab Series.

SAGAR

Thank you for having me.

BRIAN

One of the things that I didn’t know about you in all of our last few years of running into each other is you are the classic entrepreneur. You know we always have a couple of styled guests on the show. One is usually a big brand executive, another one is a rising entrepreneur. You’re certainly more of the latter in the sense, but what I didn’t realize is you are an OG entrepreneur who started selling things when you were just all of 10 years old. Is that right?

SAGAR

That’s correct, yeah. It’s rooted in my childhood. You know I really started down this path to really control my destiny at a very young age and it stuck with me throughout the years. I knew back before I started my company when I was working for some great organizations here in the Chicagoland area that down the road there was really something more that I was put on this earth to do, and really taking that leap of faith has just been… It’s been a phenomenal journey to this point.

BRIAN

Yeah. I wish I had known that. I didn’t come to that realization ’til I was into my 30s. So it’s kind of like if I could go back and tell my old self, I think I would. So talk just a little bit more about your background and how you got interested in technology and I know we’ll talk a lot about cybersecurity and other things, but obviously in addition to entrepreneurism, technology in general has been a big part of your life as well, probably from the get-go.

SAGAR

Yeah, that’s very true, and I attribute my interest and the reason why I’m able to do the things today. My father at a really young age was sort of a computer person as well. He was really interested in technology. He was always a forward-thinking individual. So I attribute a lot of my success to my father. At a young age, he got me a computer and he said, “Hey, I think you should check this thing out.” So at the age of 10, I’m selling logos and I’m trying to make websites for his friends, right? Many years later, I realized that those websites and logos weren’t that great, but then being my dad’s friends, they really supported me. So at a really young age, I was in technology and it was really interesting for me, especially growing up in school. I was a bit of an outcast. I was really quiet, really an introvert in classes throughout junior high and high school, so that meant a lot of time was spent at home by myself just on the computer. If you guys remember back in the days of Napster and Kazaa, really just downloading music that everyone did back in the day, it was really something that sparked my interest, more so when I got into college, I went to DePaul University for my undergrad.

I majored in CS and then at some point in my early, very early 20s actually, at the age of 21, I realized quickly that the corporate world just wasn’t for me. There were so many things I didn’t like about the structure and just having to answer to someone and typical entrepreneur story. So I took that leap of faith and of course my parents were very unhappy with that decision. We struggled really hard to start the company. We really didn’t have our path and really didn’t get our footing until probably five years in of doing what we really did. So it was really just a journey of curiosity that got us to this point, and obviously now we’re at the point where we’re supporting some really well-known businesses and really providing meaningful results for organizations, not only protecting their data, but also helping them grow and use technology as a growth factor.

BRIAN

And we’ll talk more about Middleground which is coming up on 10 years now, right?

SAGAR

10 years in July, yep.

BRIAN

Yeah, congratulations. That is an incredible milestone in business as you know.

SAGAR

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

BRIAN

But before I ask the next question, I was dying to ask, but I didn’t wanna interrupt, what was that first computer?

SAGAR

It was a 386.

BRIAN

Okay.

SAGAR

Yeah. It was a Pentium. It barely had any hard disk space. I remember it had enough space just to load Windows 95, right? It really just had two programs on it. It had Notepad and it had a blackjack casino game. That was really the first computer that I really ever had a chance to work with, and that really just sparked my curiosity at a very young age.

BRIAN

Yeah, it’s amazing that we’re all walking around with phones in our pockets that can do more than almost any computer that anybody ever would have grown up with.

SAGAR

Ten times more. Yeah.

BRIAN

That always fascinates me. Let’s jump right into cybersecurity. I know we were chatting for a minute before we started recording. It’s obviously a buzzword. It’s talked about a lot, and in many cases though it’s surprisingly, probably as much as it’s talked about, it could be misused or even misunderstood, and I think in some ways everyone knows that it’s a bad word or a scary word, but really kind of how would you define that in terms that most people would really understand?

SAGAR

Sure. So I think more recently, cybersecurity has carried a bad connotation simply because of the outcome that’s attached to the word when it’s used in context of a conversation. I would define cybersecurity not so much as a use of technology, but more so a use of processes and everyday actions that help people and organizations protect their information, their privacy and their data from unauthorized access. I think a lot of folks, when they hear the word cybersecurity, they either see dollar signs, they see hackers wearing ski masks, or they see the word, ransom word being thrown around. Cybersecurity in its most purest sense is essentially following a specific protocol, following some processes really to protect data. So it doesn’t lead to ransom requests and unauthorized access. And I think the word has really been used as a buzzword, Brian as you’re saying, because obviously businesses are utilizing it for profit purposes but I think small and mid-sized companies still don’t really understand how to approach the subject without a certainty of fear. But I think understanding that it’s a process that people can follow as a team really will drive efficiency and security and organizations today.

BRIAN

Great. Well, in a little bit, I wanna ask you a little bit more about the process, but as you said, like it sometimes it’s not just a buzzword, but it kinda can fuel the flames of fear. And it seems as though every day there’s a story about a data breach, something of phishing, not the kind of fishing that a lot of people like to do in the summer.

SAGAR

Sure. [chuckle]

BRIAN

Ransomware, again, which just sounds so frightening. But when you think about all the things that are involved in cybersecurity, and I know it’s probably a tough question for someone with your expertise to answer in the sense of there’s probably a lot of ways you could go, but I’m curious, like what does give you the most fear? Like what concerns you the most as an expert in this area?

SAGAR

Sure. So I think what concerns me more, two things: One, the fact that it’s happening more and more every single day, right? That tells me that organizations are not truly taking this as seriously as they should be. Whether you’re a two-person start-up working out of your garage or you’re a multinational Fortune 500 conglomerate, the fact that I hear about breaches and issues coming up every single day concerns me that we’re not really taking the right actions to deploy the right process to stop it. And then secondly, I think what’s even more concerning is I think all of us have a sort of security fatigue or notification fatigue that I like to call where you hear about a breach almost every single day, Google news, on CNN. You know online you can see a dozen or so breaches that are reported, hundreds that go unreported, and I think that’s conditioned us as a society to just accept that as a norm and just sweep it under the rug and not give it a second thought, and I think because of that second concern that I just mentioned to you, it leads to more and more breaches happening every single day. So I think as a society, if we’re gonna continue to brush this under a carpet and forget about it, it’s gonna continue to be a problem. It’s gonna continue to cost businesses their hard work, their life savings, and the reputation that they’ve spent so many years building.

BRIAN

Yeah, I agree with you. I think the fatigue thing is real. I mean I know even just talking to some of my peers, when the big Starwood, Marriott and just some of the big bank things have been happening, and again it seems like every few months there’s one of those, and I’m always surprised at how many people almost kinda shrug their shoulders, or I think in many cases, people assume that it’s gonna be, “Well, someone will take care of that.”

SAGAR

Yeah.

BRIAN

Or like, “Oh, I don’t need to really worry about that,” or, “My credit card company will just take care of it.” And I don’t know that that’s always the case. I actually have had people in my own family who have had identity theft and I know that that’s not something easy to remove yourself from even if you kinda have the best laid plans there.

SAGAR

Yeah. And it’s not… Security is not a problem that if you don’t think about it, it’s just gonna go away. It’s definitely something that needs to be addressed. There’s a process and a protocol that you can follow that can help you greatly in preventing things from happening. But Brian, I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s just understanding what it really is I think will help people combat a little bit further against it.

BRIAN

You know you’ve talked a lot about process in that as well, and I know we joked earlier about some of your early technology you were using in your early entrepreneur days, but when you hear cybersecurity and some of this stuff, like you immediately think about data, you think about technology, but how much of cybersecurity is actually a technology problem or a people problem?

SAGAR

Sure. That’s a great question, Brian. I think the answer to that is cybersecurity is 50% a technology problem, 50% a people problem, and here’s why. We’ve collected a lot of data on our customers. We see a lot of trends and a lot of patterns that happen within the world around us. Technology is only as good as the ability for people to use it correctly in order to protect them and their data. Many times, we’ve seen organizations have the best technology implemented. They’re spending the largest security budget. They’re putting forth the most effort to implement the right tools, but they forget to train their people or give them a roadmap or an understanding on what the technology is and how they can utilize it to then create a much stronger barrier within the organization. So I think organizations need to focus on 50% of their efforts on implementing both hardware and software-based technology that does many things, right?

Reporting. It does analysis. It does continuous monitoring. But also focusing on people within an organization because people are the biggest risks to any company today. We’re the ones that click on stuff, download things, plug things in when we’re not supposed to, go to websites that we’re not supposed to. So I think when organizations spend 50% of their efforts on training their staff continuously, you know not just once a year, after the New Year, continuously providing training, continuously giving your staff a platform to report incidents so that there’s no fear of being called out or terminated or given some type of disciplinary action. I think if you can open that up, organizations are gonna see a much better protected organization and infrastructure and they don’t have to spend as much on very expensive technology when they have their people that can be conditioned to help them provide better security.

BRIAN

Let’s also talk about another buzzword that is obviously changing everything from a technical perspective, changing the way we work, changing the way we live, and that’s artificial intelligence. And again for as much as it might create better processes for us and for our businesses, I have to imagine that AI also raises some security risks for us as individuals or as businesses as well. So where do you see AI playing and what are some security risks or concerns that you have there?

SAGAR

Sure. I think the emergence of AI in the last couple years is incredible. We’re on the forefront of some really bleeding edge technologies that create tremendous efficiencies for organizations while also allowing their people to focus on more higher level projects and continually to drive that innovation within an organization as a whole. I think the challenges with AI in terms of security really boil down to two things: One is the understanding of the AI’s capabilities. There’s so many things that AI can do for us today, whether it’s chatbots, automating billing, automating notification or emailing. There’s so many things that AI can do for you as an organization. It’s really important for technology teams to understand capabilities of AI, what reach it has in your network and what it can do in terms of automation, whether it’s client-facing or internally. And I think secondly, what a lot of organizations, and it’s not just related to AI but just processes as a whole, is to create a good set of controls when things go wrong.

Computers are not perfect. Software and technology is not perfect. It breaks, it has bugs, it has misconfigurations because of some human error. If there’s controls in place that can help stop, for example, a malicious email campaign that’s built through AI and it’s sent out to a list of subscribers that may inadvertently expose a link that leads to a malicious website, there needs to be some type of control put into a place so that the AI doesn’t scale in a malicious manner. And I think the AI industry is lacking that a little bit right now. Building those controls and really understanding what access AI has in their organization is really gonna lead to a better security protocol over all.

BRIAN

My industry, especially in the marketing side of things, is moving at a rapid clip as well. And I’ll just throw one more buzzword out and that’s MarTech. Like you know there’s constantly technology and other things that are changing traditional marketing. As Howard Tullman would say, it’s not about trying to keep pace, like you have to be far ahead of that curve and being able to kinda predict and see where your industry is going. And I think what’s so fascinating about technology companies and certainly one like Middleground that focuses also in the area of technology and cybersecurity, is that is changing every day. Like we were just talking about AI and other things that are happening so quickly. So what are some of the things that you do or your organization does to kind of really think about where the industry is going? I know we’re all not futurists. If we could look into a crystal ball and tell everyone was gonna happen tomorrow, we wouldn’t be sitting in this podcast studio. But what are some of the ways that you kind of prepare and think about where your industry is heading and how you can better serve businesses?

SAGAR

Sure and that’s a great question. Being technologists, we have to be on the forefront of technology so that we can recommend the best solutions for our customers and also to stay ahead of these cybercriminals so that we can better protect our data and our information. A couple of things that Middleground does to really stay on the forefront of technology, first and foremost, is we invest a lot of time and resources into peer grouping and peer networking. It’s impossible for us to know everything that’s out there in the world that’s gonna help support our customers. Our attention to those trends through our peer grouping and our attention to the time that we spend with them has really been an asset for us as an organization because we learn a lot from fellow IT companies and IT company partners that we work with. Part of that has been really peer grouping and really being involved in the community as a whole and really discussing ways to better protect ourselves and find efficiencies for our customers in terms of technology.

And then secondly is obviously education, right? Vendors and companies and technology partners are coming out with new products every single day to help solve challenges that businesses face today. Our goal has been to adapt and implement new technologies into our client base on a pretty regular basis. We certainly don’t wanna become obsolete, right? Technology, as you can tell, iPhones every six months are changing at such a rapid pace. Six months in the technology industry is a lifetime. So really for us to adapt new technology and new trends with products that are released by our partners that we work with has really been an asset for us as well ’cause it keeps us relevant in terms of IT and cybersecurity. But continually practicing that, not just for technology but any industry, being able to adapt and take some risks and really try new things has been really successful for us.

BRIAN

Sagar, what’s the one thing, and I know it’s a loaded question, but what’s the one thing businesses must do to improve cybersecurity?

SAGAR

I agree, Brian, that’s a loaded question, the one thing businesses can do. There’s many things they should do in order to be successful, but I think the one key takeaway is to make a plan. I think a lot of organizations implement expensive technology. They may do some training for their staff, but if they don’t have a plan on how to protect themselves, what to do in the event of a breach, and how to communicate it out to clients and internal people in their organization, it all crumbles and it leads to a very difficult recovery time. So I think businesses in its most simplest form to go down this path of protecting yourself with better cybersecurity, make a plan. Make a plan on where your vulnerabilities are, make a plan on how to solve them and strengthen your security strategy, and then make a plan in case something happens, and it’s not a question of if a breach is gonna happen anymore.

We live in a world now of when it’s gonna happen. Have a plan ready for when something happens. Who are the folks that are communicated and what manner are you doing it and how quickly will you be able to respond so you can continue operations as normal? So I think, Brian, to answer your question, most businesses, I recommend just make a plan for security and get it on paper. Get the right folks involved in the conversation, and continually review this so that you guys can continue to stay strategic and protected.

BRIAN

You’ve provided some great insight. You’ve got my mind racing and thinking both in terms of ideas, planning, fear around the topic of cybersecurity, which I imagine again a lot of our audience, whether they’re big business entrepreneurs, solo entrepreneurs, individuals, I mean this is really an important topic. And it’s exciting, as you said. You know your business, Middleground, is approaching its 10-year milestone, and I see you all over the place marketing Middleground and yourself, which I think is fabulous. I can appreciate that as a marketer, your use of video on LinkedIn and other platforms. Talk a little bit about how you have marketed Middleground effectively. And again, as we talked a little bit about, a lot of people talk about some of these issues. So in some ways it can become white noise, but you seem to have started to break through that clutter. So talk about how you’ve been doing that.

SAGAR

Sure. I agree with your question on breaking through white noise. And that’s been really difficult piggy-backing off all the security fatigue and notification fatigue that we’re so conditioned to today. What’s been successful for us, I think, is really speaking the language of our audience. So I know our audience is usually C level executives, it’s business owners, it’s entrepreneurs, it’s office managers, admin assistants folks that don’t necessarily have a technical background. So our ability to communicate with them in layman terms, we produce video content that we’re uploading to LinkedIn and YouTube right now, and it’s getting a lot of traction and it’s getting a lot of good feedback in a sense that it makes sense. We’re really trying to take the words cyber security and help folks understand at its most simplest form, what it is and how we can help businesses protect themselves. So really utilizing video has been a key asset for us to really break through the noise. There’s way too many email subscriptions and email marketing and articles that are written but if you are not giving context, in a video platform, it’s really hard to convey the message and the severity of what we are really talking about.

So I think that’s been really a breakthrough moment for us, as being an IT company, we really focus ourselves as being a media and a marketing company, more than an IT company, we utilize our online assets, our platform, our content to really advocate and send a message and educate people, and the outcome of that has been obviously business opportunities to protect businesses and implement better security, but it’s also been just awareness around cyber security as a whole. It gets people talking about it, it gets them thinking about what may be lacking in their organization and whether they hire a Middleground or my team to help them or not. People are starting to think about it, they are taking it home to their kids, they’re taking it home to their friends, they’re talking about it with their co-workers. And that’s the goal of our content is to get people talking about it, get them aware so that these criminals don’t continue to win. It’s really an uphill battle, and we’re losing pretty badly. But I think the content that we create, starts the conversation with people, and that’s my vision for it is just to get people talking about it.

BRIAN

Well, I love what you said about, almost like thinking of yourself as a media company, first, I know building off the whole, again, white noise thing that we’ve talked about once or twice before it almost doesn’t matter what line of business you’re in, today, if you’re not top of mind or if you’re not in the right audiences feeds and you are not having the right type of conversational marketing, it’s almost impossible. And I always kind of encourage and talk to people about, think of yourselves in terms of a media company and the type of content that you need to create, and then that content should really speak to the personas that are impacted by the problem that your business is solving. And think of it that way instead of trying to say like, “Oh, I do marketing.” Or, “I do cyber security.”

It’s really a matter of saying, talking in a way which I love that you say people can understand because what you do like, a lot of people do can be relatively complex, and I think the people that can speak the language and break it down in a way that’s a little bit more consumable and certainly creates the conversation that it’s more helpful. I mean, that’s how you’ll win. So that probably explains a lot why you guys are starting to see some really great growth. And I know the last couple of years, you guys have been growing quite a clip. Hopefully I’ll see you soon on the Inc 5000 list. But talk about put your entrepreneur hat on for a minute, though because growth and scale aren’t the same. I know a lot of people think they are, but talk how you balance that, ’cause I know you guys are growing a quite a pace right now. So what are some of the challenges there?

SAGAR

Yeah, and I think this isn’t unique to our industry, or our business. My co-founder Isaac and myself co-founded the business in a garage 10 years ago, and we were completely, we’ve been bootstraps since day one, we’ve grown the business with receivable.

BRIAN

Congrats.

SAGAR

Thank you. And profits. And it’s been tough. That’s the path we chose. Bootstrap, 100% ownership between him and I. I think part of the challenges with growth again, not specific to our industry, has been a couple of things. I think first and foremost is given the type of work that we do for our customers, culture has been a challenge, making sure that our culture is in tune with the right folks that we bring on board to our team because our culture really defines our ability to deliver our service it really defines our brand and our message and it really defines who we are as an organization. So developing that culture has been a priority of mine just making sure we have the right folks on the team, that we’re all working on impactful work for our customers, and really providing good outcomes for them so that we can continue to do things that we do on a day-to-day basis.

I think, secondly, is just staying relevant and in front of this technology that’s being introduced every single day. This one is specific to our industry, being a technology provider and a technology consulting company, we are continuously challenged to be on the forefront of the newest hardware, software and products that are released. Our customers span many different industries. They have their own sets of challenges that they bring to our table and for us to continually be on the forefront of the newest and latest and greatest technology that comes out has been a challenge. But I think the way we’ve really gotten to the point where we are ahead of it, has been continual education, peer grouping like we had talked about, and just putting ourselves in front of these solutions and taking some risks. So I think culture and being on the forefront of technology are the top two that have been challenging for us as we continue to grow.

BRIAN

Great, and beyond your hat as a co-founder at Middleground. Again, as I mentioned earlier, one of the ways we got to know each other was being Goldman Sachs 10K alum.

SAGAR

Yep, absolutely.

BRIAN

I see you very active in that community. I know you’re very active in EO you also mentor up and coming and younger entrepreneurs and, why is that really important to you? I imagine you’re quite a busy guy and time is quite a precious commodity to you. So talk about why you continue to want to mentor the future entrepreneurs.

SAGAR

Simple answer to that ’cause I know what it’s like. We started completely in the trenches with a couple of laptops, and a ping pong table in a garage, that didn’t have any heat so I completely understand what it means to start from zero. And I feel like some of the biggest solutions to the problems we have in this world could be in the head of some entrepreneur or some kid that I’m mentoring or giving some advice to. He or she needs the ability to unleash that and really be able to scale it to provide outcomes and good things for things that are happening in this world. So I’m super involved. Yeah, 10K SB where we met, really was the stepping stone for me, when I first started the company. And that was our five-year anniversary actually, when I think I met you at that time where we thought as entrepreneurs, we were the only ones that are doing what we’re doing and every other entrepreneur is a competitor, and we don’t wanna talk to them ’cause they’re gonna steal our secrets, ’cause they’re gonna take our business.

As soon as I went into the Goldman Sachs program, and met you and other great like-minded entrepreneurs, I was completely hooked. I said there is a community of support and I think Chicago does a tremendous job of doing that, helping other entrepreneurs, supporting each other and really being there when they need us. So I think in the Goldman Sachs program, I really understood the value of peer grouping and working with other like-minded entrepreneurs. Fast forward to a couple of years ago, joined EO, Entrepreneurs’ Organization. That’s been phenomenal. My monthly forum meetings for all you EO listeners out there has been absolutely great and absolutely the reason why our business continues to succeed. But giving back and making that time to do things outside of day-to-day operations, it keeps me going. Right? I succeed more and I get happier when I see others succeeding than I do with my own success or our own wins, simply because it’s incredible to see people go through nothing and coming out and creating something and making an impact in the world. So that’s my selfish answer, it makes me feel really proud and excited and it gives me that energy to continue to operate at a high level every single day.

BRIAN

Well, there’s nothing selfish actually about that. And I know we joked early in the conversation about you being a 10-year-old entrepreneur with a computer and designing websites and logos and some of those things and how I always kinda had this entrepreneurial bug but I decided to unleash it when I was in my 30s. And I’ll tell you, for me, what was really hard at first and I can echo what you said about the Goldman Sachs 10K program is, most of my friends and most of my peer network is awesome as they were and still are today. They weren’t founders, they weren’t entrepreneurs, they weren’t co-founders, they weren’t working in start-ups. They were like me where he or she was working in a larger organization.

So I tried to talk to them a little bit about some stuff and I felt like I was just talking to myself. They couldn’t relate to me, I couldn’t relate to them, it was a little awkward and it was, I think, at the Goldman Sachs moment for me as well, where I was like, “Wow, this is really something.” And it reminded me a little bit of when I actually first started a marketing group because since I didn’t have a peer network, what I did do is I try to find one or two small business owners that had been running a business or owning a business for a long period of time. ‘Cause one of my mantras that I’m sure a lot of my team is sick of hearing me say is that, “Anyone can start a business.” That’s the beauty of the country we live in. Anyone can start a business. But the trick is, can you stay in business? And I have such an admiration for small businesses of every stripe and they’re all in the Goldman Sachs program, and I imagine in EO, as well.

And I think when you’re walking around, especially when you’re walking around a place like 1871, that’s a little bit more of like the flashier side of start-up life, you don’t give a lot of thought to but it’s those people that have been running businesses 5, 10, 15, 25 years. Like, the statistics on the ability to start a business and it be around in five is crazy. The statistics to be at 10 which you’re about to hit that milestone, again, huge props to you guys for that, it’s staggering. And so that community is great. So that’s my long-winded way of saying there’s nothing selfish because we need more people like you. That’s one of the reasons why I like to mentor as well is because it is about building a community. Unfortunately, I think, still, we joked about white noise as it relates to cyber security. I think some of the white noise in the entrepreneur space is still all about those success and the glory of the hustle and the glory of the this and the glory of the VC rays and some of that.

And I think what’s off and missed is a lot of the defeats that sometimes happen and being able to rise from those and how, again, there’s nothing wrong with VC versus PE versus bootstrapping versus so many ways, but they are all so different. So as we start to wrap up, one of the things we love to do that in some ways sometimes stump our guests and it’ll be interesting because you have been so eloquent and the way you’ve answered what can be actually some kind of complex and intimidating questions around cyber security and some of those things but we always love to have a little bit of a speed round that just kinda gets a little bit at who the guest is. No wrong answers but designed to just be kind of quick and punchy. I think I might know the answer to this, though, based on our conversation, but who do you admire most is either an entrepreneur or a business leader?

SAGAR

I admire the family members, spouses, and friends of entrepreneurs. We are in our own class in terms of mood swings and time tracking and managing and showing up to events. So huge props to the ones, especially in my life and I can imagine for other entrepreneurs, for putting up with our crazy long hours, our mood swings, our inability to show up at important events. Those are the real rockstars because they’re the ones that support us and allow us to do what we do every single day.

BRIAN

That may be the best answer I’ve heard in five seasons of The Brand Lab Series on any question I’ve ever asked. We could do a whole show on that but that’s a whole world that again, I don’t think people have any concept of what that’s like. So I know we talked a little bit about this, so this might be a tough one for you but what’s your biggest cyber security fear?

SAGAR

The biggest fear that I have is just what I mentioned and alluded to earlier, was that the threats keep happening. Right? And I’m worried about a world where to even use the internet, or a mobile device, or a wearable, is gonna lead to an invasion of privacy or it’s gonna lead to unauthorized access to data. That’s my biggest fear. The average individual now carries at least four to five internet-connected devices. You got a car, phone, watch, laptop, some people have glasses that are internet-connected, that’s my fear, is the attack surface is growing so much and the more data we produce, the more they’re gonna get into the hands of the wrong people unless we do something about it. So that’s definitely my fear.

BRIAN

Okay. You talked a little bit about a huge industry disruptor earlier, Napster. And I know those days as well. So speed round, question, what is your favorite music genre?

SAGAR

Favorite music genre is rap, hip-hop.

BRIAN

Favorite artist?

SAGAR

Favorite artist right now, I would say is, I like Logic. He’s producing some really good music right now.

BRIAN

And what’s a guilty pleasure for you?

SAGAR

People think I don’t have a sweet tooth, but I actually do. So I’m like a closet sweet tooth person. I love my sweets.

BRIAN

I’m not closeted when it comes to sweets. That is gonna be the death of me. In fact, I’m currently trying to take a month off after a long bender of sweets with a lot of travel. So I can appreciate that. Final speed round question: What’s your favorite go-to spot in Chicago?

SAGAR

My favorite go-to spot is the Riverwalk. They’ve done a tremendous job rebuilding it. Unfortunately we only get two to three good months of actually enjoying it. I love the Riverwalk. On a weekend, weekday, you can head down there, sit by the water, have a drink with friends. Nothing beats that, and I think that’s the core thing I love about Chicago, is having that place there.

BRIAN

I would agree, I love it. And I think because we only get a couple of months, it’s probably what makes it even better. But when we do have these nice days, I love to take the team out and we’ll have walking meetings along the Riverwalk as well, so it is great to see how that’s come a long ways in just a short period of time. As we wrap up, I know we’ve talked a lot about you as an entrepreneur from an early age up until co-founding Middleground, and as you are about to hit a really big milestone in your company at 10 years, we’ve talked a lot about ways that you can help businesses think about plans and people and processes as it relates to cybersecurity. So how can our audience learn more about you and about Middleground?

SAGAR

Sure, so we are gonna be continually posting more content. LinkedIn, YouTube, on our Instagram page, you can follow us by going to Instagram.com/middlegroundit, YouTube.com/middlegroundit or find us on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.com/middlegroundit. Moreso this summer, Brian, we had talked about this earlier, I’ve identified a gap in, at least in the Chicagoland area, of a way for business owners to get continual updates on cyber security. So we’re gonna actually be launching a cyber security podcast this summer, which is really gonna focus on the audience and really help them understand in layman terms what security is, what are the new trends that people are seeing, and what are some actionable things they can do to protect their organization. So that’s definitely gonna be something very important to us. That’s gonna be coming out this summer, but all of our social channels will have a pretty regularly updated content that folks can view and hopefully use in their businesses to protect themselves.

BRIAN

Well, I am excited and I will definitely be subscribing to that podcast because, I think as we talked a little bit, both on the show and then when the mics were off, I don’t think it matters how big your business is. Any size business and any size individual needs to be aware of everything that comes under the umbrella of cyber security. And we’ve talked a lot about how you’ve broken through the white noise and how you’re helping businesses, think about that. So again, I knew this would be a great and a very topical conversation. I love having rising entrepreneurs. You’ve been quite successful, it’s well deserved.

SAGAR

Thank you.

BRIAN

You’re a very humble guy, but you’ve got some nice swagger about you, which I can appreciate as well. Look forward to keeping an eye on everything great that Middleground continues to do and will do to help businesses and maybe including ours someday to fight cyber criminals. So thank you for being on the Brand Lab Series.

SAGAR

Brian, AE Marketing, and Brand Lab Series, thanks so much for the opportunity to speak on the show. We are also thrilled to see your fifth season, congrats on that. You got a team of happy subscribers here as well. Thanks so much, and everyone else, stay safe out there.

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