August 5, 2025 • 36 mins
Struggling with communication in marriage? This episode offers a powerful masterclass on fixing relationship arguments using three core principles from the world of cybersecurity.
In this unforgettable episode of Executive Connect, cyber incident response manager turned marriage coach David Kiwimagi delivers the now-legendary “Lasagna Story” a hilarious and relatable tale of miscommunication, culinary betrayal, and emotional landmines.
What starts as a lasagna gone wrong turns into a powerful lesson on unspoken expectations and emotional intelligence.
David shares the exact cybersecurity frameworks that helped him repair his marriage and become a stronger leader.
Whether you’re leading a security team or navigating relationship minefields at home, this episode is packed with fresh, practical insights that hit close to home (and the firewall).
Timestamps:
00:00 – Episode Preview & The Lasagna Story Hook
01:25 – Sponsor Segment: David & Alexis Kiwi Coaching
02:05 – Podcast Introduction & Guest Welcome
03:15 – The Complete Lasagna Story: Unspoken Expectations
05:00 – How Silence Built Resentment in Marriage
07:30 – The Business Crisis & Coaching Transformation
11:30 – Three Key Principles for Relationship Success
12:15 – Principle #1: Turning Unspoken Expectations into Agreements
17:30 – Principle #2: His Business, Her Business, Not Your Business
24:00 – Principle #3: You & Me vs. The Problem
28:00 – Cybersecurity Meets Emotional Intelligence
31:30 – Leadership Advice for Tech Professionals
33:30 – The Lasagna Story Conclusion
36:00 – Final Thoughts & Contact Information
Guest:
David Kiwimagi
Host:
Melissa Aarskaug
Connect With Us:
Visit our website: www.executiveconnectpodcast.com
Watch full episodes on YouTube: Executive Connect YouTube Channel
Social:
LinkedIn: Melissa Aarskaug
Instagram: @executiveconnectpodcast
TikTok: @executiveconnectpodcast
Facebook: Executive Connect
In this unforgettable episode of Executive Connect, cyber incident response manager turned marriage coach David Kiwimagi delivers the now-legendary “Lasagna Story” a hilarious and relatable tale of miscommunication, culinary betrayal, and emotional landmines.
What starts as a lasagna gone wrong turns into a powerful lesson on unspoken expectations and emotional intelligence.
David shares the exact cybersecurity frameworks that helped him repair his marriage and become a stronger leader.
Whether you’re leading a security team or navigating relationship minefields at home, this episode is packed with fresh, practical insights that hit close to home (and the firewall).
Timestamps:
00:00 – Episode Preview & The Lasagna Story Hook
01:25 – Sponsor Segment: David & Alexis Kiwi Coaching
02:05 – Podcast Introduction & Guest Welcome
03:15 – The Complete Lasagna Story: Unspoken Expectations
05:00 – How Silence Built Resentment in Marriage
07:30 – The Business Crisis & Coaching Transformation
11:30 – Three Key Principles for Relationship Success
12:15 – Principle #1: Turning Unspoken Expectations into Agreements
17:30 – Principle #2: His Business, Her Business, Not Your Business
24:00 – Principle #3: You & Me vs. The Problem
28:00 – Cybersecurity Meets Emotional Intelligence
31:30 – Leadership Advice for Tech Professionals
33:30 – The Lasagna Story Conclusion
36:00 – Final Thoughts & Contact Information
Guest:
David Kiwimagi
Host:
Melissa Aarskaug
Connect With Us:
Visit our website: www.executiveconnectpodcast.com
Watch full episodes on YouTube: Executive Connect YouTube Channel
Social:
LinkedIn: Melissa Aarskaug
Instagram: @executiveconnectpodcast
TikTok: @executiveconnectpodcast
Facebook: Executive Connect
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Ever try to fix a marriage?
(00:02):
In the same way you fix a cyber security grid?
The lasagna store is kind of three parts.
I asked my wife, can you make my favorite childhood meal?
The one my mom had made every year for my birthday.
She made it, I was sitting at the kitchen table,
she sets it down in front of me.
Oh, the aroma hit me.
(00:23):
It smelled amazing.
And I had these really high hopes.
I was like, oh my gosh, this smells good.
They were pretty much shattered.
I peaked in between the noodles and there was a hard boiled eggs.
So, do I tell my wife, my brand new wife who's glowing with pride,
that her lasagna has just committed the unforgivable culinary crime?
(00:44):
Most arguments too come from unscrupulous people.
It's you and me, versus the problem.
When you focus on what's in your circle of influence,
and you let go of control in trying to focus and control other people's
your anxiety level, massively decreases.
10 years later, she made the walk to my mom's house
and she sat down at the kitchen table with my mom.
(01:07):
She looked across at her and said, "I gotta know,
what's this recipe that David loves?
I've tried everything.
I've given up, can you just share with me this amazing recipe
that he apparently loves?"
My mom looked at her and she said, "What recipe?
I always bought it frozen from the store."
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(01:29):
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just like they are at work.
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but quietly disconnected from your spouse, you're not alone.
Check them out at davinandalexaskiwi.org.
They have spent years creating a simple tool set
(01:50):
that will help you save your marriage.
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Ever try to fix a marriage the same way
you fix a cyber security breach?
(02:11):
David Kwomagi did sort of that.
He's a cyber incident response manager by day
and a husband who tried to solve a lasagna related standoff
by staying silent.
Spoiler alert, it didn't work.
On today's executive connect podcast,
(02:32):
David's cracking open,
what the world of incident response taught him
about emotional intelligence, clear communication,
and yes, how to win an argument and secure networks
without burning down the house.
Get ready for insights that go beyond the firewalls.
Welcome, David.
(02:53):
Thank you Melissa.
I'm excited to be here.
Now you used to manage critical incidents
in high-pressure environments,
but let's rewind a bit to a different kind of incident.
I'm talking about the lasagna moment.
Can you walk us through that?
What happened and what did it reveal?
(03:14):
Absolutely.
So the lasagna story is kind of three parts.
We'll go over those throughout this podcast.
But I really started back when me and my wife were first married.
I was working in healthcare,
doing an emergency response management.
I was working on the truck,
and we'd been married about a year.
And I asked my wife,
can you make my favorite childhood meal?
The one my mom had made every year for my birthday.
(03:37):
Yes, I know.
I did not set her up for success with that request,
because I had some expectations like it.
I got a standard here.
She was like, absolutely.
I got you.
Obviously we go make you a lasagna.
She got her grandmother's recipe.
She shot for all the ingredients.
She made it.
I was sitting at the kitchen table.
She sets it down in front of me.
Oh, the aroma hit me.
(03:58):
It smelled amazing.
And I had these really high hopes.
I was like, oh my gosh, this smells good.
They were pretty much shattered.
When my fork started to dig in.
And I hit something like rubbery,
but not like a noodle, like bad rubbery.
And I peaked in between the noodles,
and there was a hard boiled eggs.
And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking,
(04:22):
that's not how my mom made it.
This is going to my head, right?
So do I tell my wife my brand new wife,
who's glowing with pride that her lasagna
has just committed the unforgivable culinary crime?
Or do I just stay silent and eat it
like a good husband?
The truth was, I really didn't know what to say.
(04:44):
I was afraid of her reaction,
and I was afraid to hurt her feelings.
So I stayed silent.
I kept my mouth shut.
I swallowed my pride.
I swallowed the lasagna.
But it didn't taste good.
The lasagna, especially, but also to just stay silent.
That's not the first time that either one of us
(05:05):
stayed silent throughout our marriage.
In fact, over the years, when something happened,
and we had an unspoken expectation that went unmet,
we just shut down.
And this started to build, honestly,
a little resentment in our marriage.
Things really came to a head, though,
a few years back when my wife came in,
and she's like, let's start a business together.
That's a great idea.
(05:27):
Anyway, long story short, about 30 grand in,
we're not getting profit, we're not getting,
we're not productive, and we really just add a head
to the point my wife gave me an ultimatum.
She's like, we need some coaching, some help,
or something, or we're done.
And she met Dunn in both business and possibly marriage.
We reached a point where we were like something had to change.
(05:49):
And so she's like, I found this coaching,
I want to do this, this strength-based coaching,
and I literally thought, I've already invested
so much money into this business.
How much is this going to cost?
I kind of reached a dead point, but I also realized
something had to change.
So we shifted our commitment,
we shifted our focus, and we took the training.
(06:10):
And it is not like counseling, we tried that, that did not work.
But, and it wasn't therapy, it was coaching,
it's a coach on basketball, right?
They're going to come up to you and be like,
this is what you're doing well, you need to do it better.
This is what you're good at, focus on this.
It's a total different approach.
Well, sure enough, in just a few weeks,
my wife and I learned about each other's strengths
and what we're good at and what we operate well in,
(06:31):
and we realized we were trying to force each other
to be like the other person.
And we're like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
You have so much value to you, you have so much capability.
And I started just seeing her differently
and she saw me differently.
Now, unlike in the first lasagna moment, right?
I didn't know what to say, I know exactly what to say
and how to say it in a way that she feels it.
(06:53):
I was afraid of her feelings.
I was afraid I heard them.
I know exactly how she feels.
In every scenario, I know what her drives her
and what her motivations are.
And I was afraid of her reaction.
Now, I value it.
In fact, for this very podcast, I'm like, hey, I got this thing.
I want to do this.
What is your thoughts on it?
Do you want to join me?
Some podcasts we join together today, she's sick, unfortunately.
She won't be joining us.
(07:14):
But it completely changed everything.
Now, we have a thriving business.
It is booming.
We are loving it.
And we're working together on a whole new level.
The most amazing part, when we got done,
she came to me and she's like, I want to do this for other couples.
I want to share this for other couples.
And that's how we got started in our coaching business.
I love it.
So after the LaDonna, slow down,
(07:37):
there was a huge shift, like you mentioned,
for the two of you guys, something clicked.
What helped you guys realize things had to change?
Was there a specific moment?
I know it wasn't just at home, but it was professionally.
And you really pivoted how you both communicate in general,
not only in your marriage, but outside the world.
(07:59):
So was there a specific change that happened?
Was it the training?
Well, before so, before training,
it felt like date nights were business meetings.
It felt like quality time together was more just a checklist.
And I was from corporate America.
I'd been working cyber security.
When you have an incident, and you have a full threat ransomware,
(08:20):
it's like, let's go.
Let's do this.
And I just take charge.
I'm very strong at command, which makes me good at handling high intensity incidences.
Well, my wife is really good at relationships.
And so someone who comes in says, you should do this.
Yeah, that goes well in a relationship.
And when I started to realize through the coaching,
how she thinks and how she's wired,
(08:41):
it changed everything for me.
And she started to see me.
So now it's like, I appreciate how you feel in this situation.
And I honor your thoughts in this.
Show me what it was like from your perspective.
Her insights.
Now that I see her, the world through her eyes differently
has helped me on the cyber side as well in high intensity situations.
Like you got ransomware, you got stuff going on, people are getting hacked.
(09:05):
And they're freaking out and they're panicking.
I have so much more emotional intelligence now,
because I'm married to her and I've been listening to her.
And that helped me out my work substantially when I was working with corporate America.
And I love that you explain that because what I heard was you listened to her.
Not the way you needed her to speak, but you actually listened to her from her perspective.
(09:29):
You took off your hat and put on her hat and and listen to it.
And I love that you are layering cyber security into it because you're so spot on.
We're reactive. We respond.
We engage.
We don't ask those softer questions.
We don't open up with under the hood.
We just see the problem go after it's the fight or flight response and cyber security.
(09:52):
So you've talked about three big ships that have helped you grow online,
both in your personal life and your work.
Can you walk us through what those three key things that changed everything for you were?
Oh, absolutely.
There were three like key moments that shifted us in our marriage, in our business.
And then I taught them to everybody at my work after I had learned them and it changed everything.
(10:17):
So the first one was how to turn unspoken expectations into agreements.
And we all have them.
Everybody has unspoken expectations.
Like back when I was first married, you know, we'd been a couple years.
We had our first kid and I'm driving home from work.
You know, cyber security is stressful.
And I get home from work and I'm in the driveway walking into the front door and I have an expectation.
(10:39):
I'm going to be just real and vulnerable.
I was newly married.
So don't hold this against me.
I expected, oh, I'd walk in and the house would be clean because my wife's a stay at home mom, right?
And so she's putting time to clean the house.
And so and then I'd go in and dinner would be made and we'd have dinner and I'd play with my son and my newborn.
And we'd just have a good time and then we'd spend some time as a family and go to bed, right?
(11:01):
And it would just be a wonderful evening.
Well, I unlocked and opened the front door.
And reality hit.
I navigated the landmines of the activities of the day, stepping over toys.
I walk into the kitchen to not find dinner, but alas, breakfast still on the counter.
(11:22):
And my wife is sitting on the ground with a baby stuck to her chest.
And so I asked the good husbandly question.
So what'd you do all day?
I'm still alive.
But I did. We had these expectations.
And then of course in moments like that, whether it's a ruin lasagna, whether it's asking your boss for a raise or whether it's getting into situations at work that are high intensity, we have an expectation of how they're going to go in that moment.
(11:51):
Trying to solve the unspoken expectation usually doesn't go well because any nailed it, the fight or flight response.
People get into these high-intensity situations or that they super-disappointment. Now they got quarters all levels that are high now get stressful and then boom, you're in an argument.
Most arguments to come from unspoken expectations.
So there's a way to solve those.
(12:12):
You can do this as a boss with your employees.
You can do this with your spouse.
You can do this with your manager if that's in your position.
Restit down. Say I want to do an exercise with you.
I want to create our unspoken expectations into agreements.
And here's what you do. You get three pieces of paper each.
So in this case, I'm with my wife and on the top of each piece of paper, you write your name, you write their name and then you write both.
(12:37):
Now, here's what I recommend.
If you are an entrepreneur in a couple, which is what we mainly work with, that you sit down and you pick a category.
So for example, like the housework or the business, right?
Because these lists can get really long if you put it all in one.
And we do this like once a month. We actually sit down and we were reevaluate this quite often.
(12:58):
And we'll say, all right, for the business, I am on my list of like, I handle Facebook ads.
I handle training the new people. I handle training the new coaches.
And my wife does the webinars and does the one-on-ones, right?
And then on both things that we work on together, like creating new ads.
We have so much fun with that. So we put that on both.
Now, when you're done, no cheating, no looking at each other's notes,
(13:20):
I do recommend you do this with food because that just makes everything better.
And then you sit down and you exchange notes when you're done.
If you're first married or you're newly married or you're newly working with someone,
it's probably not going to match.
And that's okay. That's expected.
Now though, you are outside of the moment where the expectation has been crashed or dashed, right?
(13:44):
And you can actually have a discussion saying, okay, I put laundry like we did household, right?
I put laundry on your work, honey. And she's like, why put it on yours?
So now we get to negotiate a little bit. We're like, okay, cool.
Neither one of us like laundry, but why don't we try something?
How about you wash it and bring it up to the bedroom and dump it on the floor?
I will fold it and put it away.
(14:06):
So I don't have to worry about keeping track of all the cycles of laundry throughout the day,
but at the end of my day, I sit down and I fold laundry.
This is actually our current plan. Red's going on right now.
And it works great. And we're like, okay, we both agree. We both hate it,
but we're getting it done. So it turned into the both category.
But when you handle unspoken expectations outside of the moment,
when they're not met, you can actually resolve them and turn them into agreements.
(14:28):
Because as a warning, unspoken expectations, speaking from experience,
when left that way are like seeds of resentment that can grow in the garden of your relationship.
And I love that. I got to unpack that.
So when you're saying this, I'm thinking unspoken expectations are rooted in so many breakdowns.
(14:49):
I think of like gifts from, you know, I don't need anything for this, my birthday or mother's day.
But really a lot of times women do want something, but they don't want to have to ask for it.
And men want other things that they don't want to have to ask for.
So how did you learn how to move from assumptions to agreements?
(15:11):
Because I think we naturally do this as humans, right? We assume something.
And then we move through our day as humans, right?
Because we're assuming humans constantly assessing situations.
So how, like what change for you to move from assumption assumptions to agreements?
Oh, hands down. I see. So perfect example. Like I like the one you talked about gifts.
(15:35):
A lot of couples have learned their love languages.
They learn the love language of the other spouse. Love languages are really big because it's like learning another language.
You may be outside of the Kremlin, right? And you're trying to take a picture in Russia and everyone around you speak in Russian.
And you don't understand a lick of it. And it's just kind of like, well, want, well, want, like the, I don't know, the teacher from peanuts or something.
It doesn't make sense. But then all of a sudden you hear someone yell, hey over here, this is a great place to take a picture.
(16:00):
You immediately tune into that because that's your native language.
So a lot of times people will have native languages and their love languages.
Like for me, I'm touch, but my wife is time. And so for me, I go by, I give my wife a hug.
I give her a kiss on the cheek and I'm good. I'm fed. I moved on. But I was speaking French and speak French.
Whereas she's time and she's like, well, you stop cleaning.
(16:23):
Well, you just sit down and spend time with me. I was like, what do you mean? I love you. I'm trying to clean.
So when you identify an area and here's here's the easiest way to identify an area where you, there is an unspoken expectation.
It frustrates you to think about it.
When you recall that memory, when you recall that moment, you're like, ooh, I don't like that. There's a reason.
There's an expectation there that's not being met. So I'm like, I'm mad at my wife this morning. And I'm like, why am I mad?
(16:47):
Oh, because her meeting was supposed to end at eight because I had an eight o'clock meeting and she's not upstairs yet.
So I had an expectation that she would be timely in with her, with her meetings, but it ran over. Right?
So now I was like, okay, let me write that down. Best thing you do, take note of those moments and then don't deal with them in the moment.
Sit down, have a date and I do the exercise and go through each other.
What really does help to you is picking a category. I'm going to say that again, just super important.
(17:10):
If it's housework, pick housework, if it's business, it's pick business and stick with that, you're welcome to do all the above.
I just wouldn't do them all at the same time because it's just a long list.
I love that. Okay. So that's principal one. What is principal two?
All right. So you have on turning unspoken expectations into agreements and this one released a lot of the pressure for me at work as well as in our house.
(17:36):
This one's called his business, her business and not your business.
I've also heard it taught your business, their business and God's business, but his business, her business and not your business is an understanding of mind shift.
I am responsible and have full control over everything I feel think, do and create.
(17:58):
One of the really powerful stories that I was reading as a guy who survived the Holocaust and he had very little control over his environment, but he came out the other side incredibly mentally strong forgiving his captors and just like, wow, what happened?
He said, I had still full control of my thoughts. No one could take that from me and I was like, oh, that's some powerful stuff right there.
And so when you say I have full control over my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, what I think do and create means if I control what I think I can control what I do because thoughts turn into actions actions become habits habits to find your character and your character will shape your destiny.
(18:35):
So if you want a better future, change the way you're thinking. Now here's where it gets dangerous.
You are not responsible for thus her business, right? In my case, what she thinks feels does and creates.
So this concept of I can create an environment. I'm responsible for that. One where my wife feels loved my wife's love languages time.
(18:58):
And so I set up what I call couch time and I set aside where the kids are distracted for five minutes.
We can sit on the couch, hold each other's hand, looking through each other's eyes and spend some time together, right?
I try to do that. I really make it out for to do that. But if she doesn't feel loved in that, that is not my responsibility. My responsibility was to create the environment.
This was a profound concept for this one lady. We were teaching this in a class and she was over like, whoa, you okay?
(19:23):
That's like she's like 90% of my anxiety is because I'm constantly focusing on how my husband feels.
I'm like, yeah, you are not responsible for his feelings. You're responsible for the environment you create. And if you focus on that, you know the word I feel is you'll take care of those.
And she's like, oh my gosh, which way. So for the next like, I think we can have she was like, I'm just focusing on the environment. I'm creating that he feels loved in it.
(19:45):
She's like, it exploded because I'm no longer asking him all these do you love me questions, right? He's like, wow.
The last one that leads to this one is really hard. Perfect example, like just had a conversation with this with a director of a sock. And this has got what we call God's business or not your business.
This is things that are completely outside your control and the control of others. So think about like a hurricane, right? An act of God.
(20:10):
If the hurricane's coming in Florida, I can sit here and I can stress about it all I want, but all that does is cause me anxiety. When I focus on what I think feel doing create and I let God handle what he feels things doesn't create or not my business.
Then I focus on what can I create? Well, I can create an evacuation plan. I can create a disaster recovery plan. I can create an incident response plan. I can have this ready to rock and roll. So when disaster strikes, I have a plan.
(20:37):
When you focus on what's in your circle of influence and you let go of control and trying to focus and control other people's your anxiety level massively decreases.
Perfect example of this. So part, I guess part three or four or part two of four of the lasagna story that lasagna my wife made. I ate a piece because that's a good husband. I ate a piece.
But then she put she made a nine by 13 pan of it and she put it in the fridge. Well, you can kind of guess how this goes. So I go to work and I'm opening the fridge and I'm looking for food and I'm like lasagna.
(21:09):
A moldy cabbage. I'll take this.
I didn't eat it. I didn't touch it. She was so mad at me because she's like, you didn't like my lasagna. You didn't you should have eaten it. And she was in my business. She was in what I think feel doing create and she got very upset about it.
She made five different recipes over the first couple of years of our marriage. I didn't like any of them. I didn't eat any of them. Oh, she knows this. It's really fun when we get to share the story together because she tells her perspective of it as well.
(21:42):
But yeah, that's a perfect example. She was focusing on what she was outside of her control. When you focus on what you can control. Let me take this from like a cyber perspective.
I cannot control the ransomware that went into a system, but I can control how I'm prepared for it and how to handle it. I cannot control the fact that someone's going to try to scan and attack my network.
But I can control how my defenses are ready for it. So stop stressing about what's outside your control focus on what's inside your control and then rocket when you put all your mental energy into what's inside your control.
(22:12):
You are way more prepared to handle the stuff that's outside your control.
I love that. That's so good. So many questions and that. And I think a lot of time kind of going back to your analogy where she was supposed to be, you know, you were supposed to be on a call at eight. She was running late from a meeting.
Now, how do you figure out whose business is who's like, who's is more important at that point? Like, how does that, you know, agree at work with whose business are you at that time?
(22:46):
A lot of it actually goes back to the first exercise, right? You sit down, you're like, okay, I have these expectations that you are going to create the ad for this week or whatever the cases and I didn't create it. She's like, wait, I thought you were going to do that.
Well, that was an unspoken expectation.
So when you sit down and you have a meeting like, okay, this is within my business. One of the things we teach people to is to operate within their strengths.
(23:09):
We use something called Gallup Clifton's strengths to help them understand who they are as a person. And oh my gosh, that was amazing. That is incredible. And so for me, I'm high influencing.
I'm really good at winning people over, having conversations. So a lot of the podcasts we do, the webinars, any public speaking on stages, I was just at a summit a couple weeks ago.
I do that because I love it. I eat it up. I love this stuff. But my wife's really good at community. So she does like the webinars where we do one-on-one teachings.
(23:35):
She does a lot of the training coaching directly with people. She also really helps wives understand their husbands because she's helped me with that and vice versa.
She's really good at connecting people. She's also really good at coming up with ideas. So when we sat down with our business and we said, okay, I'm good at this. I'm just going to own it.
And she's like, I'm good at this. I'm going to own it. When you operate in what you love to do, it brings so much satisfaction.
(23:59):
Oh, I love that. That's so good. Okay. So I'm going to pause on two. We're going to put a pin in two and we're going to move to the third key. Tell us what the third key is.
Okay. Third part of the lasagna story. As I work, and this was back probably six years ago, and my boss and I were just in the break room talking about our favorite meals.
Well, of course I mentioned lasagna and he goes, my, oh, man, my wife makes an amazing lasagna. I'll have her make you one and you can take it home to your wife and kids. All I can think was, oh, God, please don't.
(24:30):
Like, I'm going to get in so much trouble. The next day I show up at work in the work break room fridge is a nine by 13 pan with Kiwi written across the top.
I opened it up. It's lasagna and it looked good.
So I bumped into my boss and he's like, did you see it? Give me instructions. And so I thought, do I take this home and possibly have a fight with my wife? Or do I leave it here and disappoint my boss?
(24:56):
But I also thought this might be the first time in my marriage. I've actually had good lasagna. So I take it home.
My wife finds it. She opens the fridge. She sees it. She goes, what's this? She talks just like this too. And I'm like, food. She's like, where'd you get it?
(25:17):
My boss is wife made it. I will never forget her words. She goes, hmm closes the fridge. She looks to me, puts her hands on her hips and says, couldn't get it from your wife.
So you had to get it from another man's wife, huh? And thus was one of our greatest arguments ever. And so everyone has them. Everyone has unspoken expectations. Everybody ends up in somebody else's business and then we end up in a fight over it.
(25:41):
So how do you win every argument every time guaranteed?
Again, a lot of this is a mindset shift in perspective. If you think back to when you're first married and you're holding hands at the altar and you're looking at each other, you're googly adding you're like, I'll take on the world with you.
But then the kids come along and then you start a business together. And now it's like, you're the problem. You're the problem. You're the problem. You're the problem. You're the problem. That's how it goes. The truth is, it's not you're the problem.
(26:06):
It's not someone has to lose. It's not happy wife happy life that actually ends up been kind of resentful husband to be honest and you want a happy marriage.
So here's the shift. It's you and me versus the problem.
Let's take this from like a management perspective say we have a manager and he's told he has to cut costs and you have an employee who wants a race and they have a meeting.
(26:30):
You can see how that goes, right? Well, what is the manager and the employee came together and they said, it's you and me versus the problem.
They said, what's the real problem here? Well, the real problem is that the company is not bringing in enough profit.
The real problem is the company is not as profitable. It could be because if the company was more profitable, we wouldn't have to cut costs costs so hard and the employee could have the raise. They're looking for.
(26:53):
So now the manager and the player say, okay, you and me, how can we work together and bring in more profit when you do it in your marriage. This is one that like if you have kids, which I do have three and you get a car.
Look at each other before you start driving and go, same team.
So you and me versus the problem. So when you approach every problem and every argument with it's you and me versus the problem.
(27:16):
You guys are now united on the same front to attack it. Now sometimes it takes a little bit because you may feel like they're the problem or what they're doing is the problem.
You got to really sit down and look at each other and be like, okay, I want to find the real problem here. And usually it's not what you think.
Nine times out of 10. It's an unspoken expectation that's usually what it falls back on, which is why I teach these in this order because for our marriage, a lot of it was even with the lasagna.
(27:45):
I love that. I think there's so much wisdom in coming together to resolve conflict because everybody comes out winning.
I want to switch gears on you a little bit. I love the cybersecurity analogy because I also work in cybersecurity.
Now you lead sock IR teams managing incident responses like you met and across complex environments.
(28:12):
How is your work in cyber helped you identify emotional intelligence and then kind of the second part to that.
How does this play into your leadership style? Oh my goodness. So I was a very logical individual. I was in the Navy for eight years. They taught me to be a hacker and then I started working DOD after that.
(28:33):
And computers are logical. They're one or there's zero. There is there's no middle, right? This is just how they operate. However, humans are not.
And so the interesting part when you, I'm going to just go cyber a little bit, but when you think like a hacker, the most successful attacks are psychological ones because technology changes, AI changes and things evolve fast.
(28:56):
What doesn't change a psychology, the number one factor for people is curiosity. They're like, I want to click that we click stuff so often because we're just straight up curious.
And so when you learn a lot more of the psychology aspects and you have the more emotional intelligence when it comes to assessing how a threat actors going to act, you can actually kind of get inside their head.
(29:17):
And when you're a defense person and you're fighting against that, you can have a very understanding predictable. This is how they do it. We call it pattern of life.
So without getting super technical, this is how people tend to act these are what are called TTPs tools tactics and procedures that threat actors will use on your environment from the opposite side of the house, right? Say I'm in a meeting with a customer that has actually happened.
And they're really mad because their systems encrypted and our sock was supposed to watch it, right? Well, it's you me versus the problem. They feel like we're the problem.
(29:47):
We feel like you didn't secure your environment like you were told to they're the problem and the real problem is there's a threat actor in the system.
All right, let's let's start with one. Let's prioritize and execute and let's take care of this threat actor. Another one to is unspoken expectations when we're talking with salespeople and they're like, oh, well, you'll do all this for our customers, right?
We need to make sure we're all on the same page. So down to like, this is what we do. This is what we can do. This is what we don't. Is that way when the customer comes in, they have an understanding and an expectation of I know what's expected of me and what's expected of you, which goes and leads into his business, her business and not your business.
(30:22):
These three things alone and there's many more, but these three things alone, having an understanding when I, after I got done with this coaching with my wife a couple of years ago, she and I sat down and we started to apply these to our lives.
While I was at work, I actually was shifted. I used to be a manager of a security operations center, incident response team where we get with ransomware.
(30:43):
I got moved into a senior more manager director level and I was managing multiple teams because I was really good at helping managers see how to work directly with their employees.
So even though you may be in a highly technical job, learning how to work with people, how they understand what their needs are, how to help them understand his business or business and not your business and how to work with them when you have disagreements.
(31:06):
You can revolutionize any attack vector, stop any threat and work as a team to meet any patch management plan.
Oh, I love that. And as a fellow techie and for leaders that are listening in and heavy tech environments, which is, you know, mostly introverted in my experience, working with a lot of these individuals.
(31:28):
What advice would you give them and your experience on how they can show up not only professionally to do a job to do a cyber security job, but how can they show up personally?
So personally and professionally, I don't feel like those should always have to be different. Now I knew so know some people that their personality is not appropriate, HR wise professionally.
(31:50):
Let's just be real.
A lot of these guys are vets and so I get them because I was a vet, I'm a vet myself.
But when you come into work, you should never feel like you have to put on a front.
You should never feel like you can't be your authentic self.
One of the things that we teach in our coaching and I've done this coaching for IT professionals. I've done it for entrepreneurs. I've done it for couples in network marketing across the board. This is the truth when you learn how to be authentically you and give your best self.
(32:18):
Don't change the thing about you. In fact, embrace who you are. And the skills and talents that you have, just like every superhero, you got to learn how to use them and it helps to have a guide along the way.
When you do that and you show up to work as your authentic self, you give your best to the world. And when you give your best to the world, whether you're an employee to your boss or a husband to your wife or a director to your entire operations center, when you give your best, they give their best and they feel safe to do it.
(32:45):
So I would leave on that note with that when you have an environment where people feel safe to be genuinely who they are at their core and they're safe to do that, they'll innovate.
They'll show up to work early, they'll give it their best and they'll operate in a way that honors who they are in your productivity and profit will go through the roof.
Yeah, because they're aligned. They're aligned. Would you say with the mission, they feel like they're part of a team and they're pulling and working hard. And so I love that. I think that's a great example.
(33:16):
Now I'm curious, David. I'm sure everybody else is curious. Did your wife ever find that perfect lasagna recipe for you?
And there she did after a couple of years she gave up, but 10 years later, she swallowed her pride. And she made the walk to my mom's house.
(33:42):
And she sat down at the kitchen table with my mom, she looked across at her and said, I got to know what's this recipe that David loves. I've tried everything. I've given up. Can you just share with me this amazing recipe that he apparently loves?
She loved me. She wanted to make the right thing. My mom looked at her across the table, shocked. And like surprise. She shrugged and she said, what recipe? I always bought it frozen from the store.
(34:16):
True story. And when my wife told me that, oh, I felt awful. I was like, I am so sorry. Apparently I like Walmart Stofers, lasagna. That's what I like.
Oh my god. That's hilarious. But it goes to show you. We literally argued over that for over 10 years, 13, 14 years of marriage.
And it's now a funny, the funniest part of our story, but that was a source of conflict, our whole marriage, because we weren't willing to sit down and talk it through until we did it together. But now it's one of the funniest things we have.
(34:49):
That is such a great story. I love it. David, I want to get any final thoughts or anything we do touch on that you want to leave with our listeners.
The biggest thing is I would say the world needs who you are in the best version of it. When you learn to give that, whether you're a leader, a husband, a stay at home mom and entrepreneur or a network marketer, the world needs your message and your voice. You are worth it.
(35:17):
I love that. That's fantastic. You know, you've been a perfect blend of humor, vulnerability, real leadership. And it's rare for me that I get to talk to somebody in cybersecurity. So it's been a blessing to talk to you today.
And I'm sure the listeners are going to feel the same way. I want to get any, what's the best way for our listeners, the connect with you? Is it an email? Is it social media? Share how they can connect with you?
(35:46):
Absolutely. My name is pretty unique. It's David Kiwi Magi, but everyone calls me Kiwi and my friend Circle. You can follow us on social media. If you search my name, I am the only one on the planet with my name. My wife is Alexis. Same last name.
So you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. We share a lot of our videos there. So if you just want more advice, more encouragement, here's some fun stories. We do lots of shenanigans. You can follow us there. If you're actually interested in getting a little bit more from us, being part of our coaching programs, check us out at David and Alexis Kiwi.
(36:16):
Thank you so much for talking to us. You've given us a new way to look at lasagna and incident response. That's the executive connect podcast.
Ever try to fix a marriage?
(00:02):
In the same way you fix a cyber security grid?
The lasagna store is kind of three parts.
I asked my wife, can you make my favorite childhood meal?
The one my mom had made every year for my birthday.
She made it, I was sitting at the kitchen table,
she sets it down in front of me.
Oh, the aroma hit me.
(00:23):
It smelled amazing.
And I had these really high hopes.
I was like, oh my gosh, this smells good.
They were pretty much shattered.
I peaked in between the noodles and there was a hard boiled eggs.
So, do I tell my wife, my brand new wife who's glowing with pride,
that her lasagna has just committed the unforgivable culinary crime?
(00:44):
Most arguments too come from unscrupulous people.
It's you and me, versus the problem.
When you focus on what's in your circle of influence,
and you let go of control in trying to focus and control other people's
your anxiety level, massively decreases.
10 years later, she made the walk to my mom's house
and she sat down at the kitchen table with my mom.
(01:07):
She looked across at her and said, "I gotta know,
what's this recipe that David loves?
I've tried everything.
I've given up, can you just share with me this amazing recipe
that he apparently loves?"
My mom looked at her and she said, "What recipe?
I always bought it frozen from the store."
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(01:29):
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just like they are at work.
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but quietly disconnected from your spouse, you're not alone.
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They have spent years creating a simple tool set
(01:50):
that will help you save your marriage.
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Ever try to fix a marriage the same way
you fix a cyber security breach?
(02:11):
David Kwomagi did sort of that.
He's a cyber incident response manager by day
and a husband who tried to solve a lasagna related standoff
by staying silent.
Spoiler alert, it didn't work.
On today's executive connect podcast,
(02:32):
David's cracking open,
what the world of incident response taught him
about emotional intelligence, clear communication,
and yes, how to win an argument and secure networks
without burning down the house.
Get ready for insights that go beyond the firewalls.
Welcome, David.
(02:53):
Thank you Melissa.
I'm excited to be here.
Now you used to manage critical incidents
in high-pressure environments,
but let's rewind a bit to a different kind of incident.
I'm talking about the lasagna moment.
Can you walk us through that?
What happened and what did it reveal?
(03:14):
Absolutely.
So the lasagna story is kind of three parts.
We'll go over those throughout this podcast.
But I really started back when me and my wife were first married.
I was working in healthcare,
doing an emergency response management.
I was working on the truck,
and we'd been married about a year.
And I asked my wife,
can you make my favorite childhood meal?
The one my mom had made every year for my birthday.
(03:37):
Yes, I know.
I did not set her up for success with that request,
because I had some expectations like it.
I got a standard here.
She was like, absolutely.
I got you.
Obviously we go make you a lasagna.
She got her grandmother's recipe.
She shot for all the ingredients.
She made it.
I was sitting at the kitchen table.
She sets it down in front of me.
Oh, the aroma hit me.
(03:58):
It smelled amazing.
And I had these really high hopes.
I was like, oh my gosh, this smells good.
They were pretty much shattered.
When my fork started to dig in.
And I hit something like rubbery,
but not like a noodle, like bad rubbery.
And I peaked in between the noodles,
and there was a hard boiled eggs.
And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking,
(04:22):
that's not how my mom made it.
This is going to my head, right?
So do I tell my wife my brand new wife,
who's glowing with pride that her lasagna
has just committed the unforgivable culinary crime?
Or do I just stay silent and eat it
like a good husband?
The truth was, I really didn't know what to say.
(04:44):
I was afraid of her reaction,
and I was afraid to hurt her feelings.
So I stayed silent.
I kept my mouth shut.
I swallowed my pride.
I swallowed the lasagna.
But it didn't taste good.
The lasagna, especially, but also to just stay silent.
That's not the first time that either one of us
(05:05):
stayed silent throughout our marriage.
In fact, over the years, when something happened,
and we had an unspoken expectation that went unmet,
we just shut down.
And this started to build, honestly,
a little resentment in our marriage.
Things really came to a head, though,
a few years back when my wife came in,
and she's like, let's start a business together.
That's a great idea.
(05:27):
Anyway, long story short, about 30 grand in,
we're not getting profit, we're not getting,
we're not productive, and we really just add a head
to the point my wife gave me an ultimatum.
She's like, we need some coaching, some help,
or something, or we're done.
And she met Dunn in both business and possibly marriage.
We reached a point where we were like something had to change.
(05:49):
And so she's like, I found this coaching,
I want to do this, this strength-based coaching,
and I literally thought, I've already invested
so much money into this business.
How much is this going to cost?
I kind of reached a dead point, but I also realized
something had to change.
So we shifted our commitment,
we shifted our focus, and we took the training.
(06:10):
And it is not like counseling, we tried that, that did not work.
But, and it wasn't therapy, it was coaching,
it's a coach on basketball, right?
They're going to come up to you and be like,
this is what you're doing well, you need to do it better.
This is what you're good at, focus on this.
It's a total different approach.
Well, sure enough, in just a few weeks,
my wife and I learned about each other's strengths
and what we're good at and what we operate well in,
(06:31):
and we realized we were trying to force each other
to be like the other person.
And we're like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
You have so much value to you, you have so much capability.
And I started just seeing her differently
and she saw me differently.
Now, unlike in the first lasagna moment, right?
I didn't know what to say, I know exactly what to say
and how to say it in a way that she feels it.
(06:53):
I was afraid of her feelings.
I was afraid I heard them.
I know exactly how she feels.
In every scenario, I know what her drives her
and what her motivations are.
And I was afraid of her reaction.
Now, I value it.
In fact, for this very podcast, I'm like, hey, I got this thing.
I want to do this.
What is your thoughts on it?
Do you want to join me?
Some podcasts we join together today, she's sick, unfortunately.
She won't be joining us.
(07:14):
But it completely changed everything.
Now, we have a thriving business.
It is booming.
We are loving it.
And we're working together on a whole new level.
The most amazing part, when we got done,
she came to me and she's like, I want to do this for other couples.
I want to share this for other couples.
And that's how we got started in our coaching business.
I love it.
So after the LaDonna, slow down,
(07:37):
there was a huge shift, like you mentioned,
for the two of you guys, something clicked.
What helped you guys realize things had to change?
Was there a specific moment?
I know it wasn't just at home, but it was professionally.
And you really pivoted how you both communicate in general,
not only in your marriage, but outside the world.
(07:59):
So was there a specific change that happened?
Was it the training?
Well, before so, before training,
it felt like date nights were business meetings.
It felt like quality time together was more just a checklist.
And I was from corporate America.
I'd been working cyber security.
When you have an incident, and you have a full threat ransomware,
(08:20):
it's like, let's go.
Let's do this.
And I just take charge.
I'm very strong at command, which makes me good at handling high intensity incidences.
Well, my wife is really good at relationships.
And so someone who comes in says, you should do this.
Yeah, that goes well in a relationship.
And when I started to realize through the coaching,
how she thinks and how she's wired,
(08:41):
it changed everything for me.
And she started to see me.
So now it's like, I appreciate how you feel in this situation.
And I honor your thoughts in this.
Show me what it was like from your perspective.
Her insights.
Now that I see her, the world through her eyes differently
has helped me on the cyber side as well in high intensity situations.
Like you got ransomware, you got stuff going on, people are getting hacked.
(09:05):
And they're freaking out and they're panicking.
I have so much more emotional intelligence now,
because I'm married to her and I've been listening to her.
And that helped me out my work substantially when I was working with corporate America.
And I love that you explain that because what I heard was you listened to her.
Not the way you needed her to speak, but you actually listened to her from her perspective.
(09:29):
You took off your hat and put on her hat and and listen to it.
And I love that you are layering cyber security into it because you're so spot on.
We're reactive. We respond.
We engage.
We don't ask those softer questions.
We don't open up with under the hood.
We just see the problem go after it's the fight or flight response and cyber security.
(09:52):
So you've talked about three big ships that have helped you grow online,
both in your personal life and your work.
Can you walk us through what those three key things that changed everything for you were?
Oh, absolutely.
There were three like key moments that shifted us in our marriage, in our business.
And then I taught them to everybody at my work after I had learned them and it changed everything.
(10:17):
So the first one was how to turn unspoken expectations into agreements.
And we all have them.
Everybody has unspoken expectations.
Like back when I was first married, you know, we'd been a couple years.
We had our first kid and I'm driving home from work.
You know, cyber security is stressful.
And I get home from work and I'm in the driveway walking into the front door and I have an expectation.
(10:39):
I'm going to be just real and vulnerable.
I was newly married.
So don't hold this against me.
I expected, oh, I'd walk in and the house would be clean because my wife's a stay at home mom, right?
And so she's putting time to clean the house.
And so and then I'd go in and dinner would be made and we'd have dinner and I'd play with my son and my newborn.
And we'd just have a good time and then we'd spend some time as a family and go to bed, right?
(11:01):
And it would just be a wonderful evening.
Well, I unlocked and opened the front door.
And reality hit.
I navigated the landmines of the activities of the day, stepping over toys.
I walk into the kitchen to not find dinner, but alas, breakfast still on the counter.
(11:22):
And my wife is sitting on the ground with a baby stuck to her chest.
And so I asked the good husbandly question.
So what'd you do all day?
I'm still alive.
But I did. We had these expectations.
And then of course in moments like that, whether it's a ruin lasagna, whether it's asking your boss for a raise or whether it's getting into situations at work that are high intensity, we have an expectation of how they're going to go in that moment.
(11:51):
Trying to solve the unspoken expectation usually doesn't go well because any nailed it, the fight or flight response.
People get into these high-intensity situations or that they super-disappointment. Now they got quarters all levels that are high now get stressful and then boom, you're in an argument.
Most arguments to come from unspoken expectations.
So there's a way to solve those.
(12:12):
You can do this as a boss with your employees.
You can do this with your spouse.
You can do this with your manager if that's in your position.
Restit down. Say I want to do an exercise with you.
I want to create our unspoken expectations into agreements.
And here's what you do. You get three pieces of paper each.
So in this case, I'm with my wife and on the top of each piece of paper, you write your name, you write their name and then you write both.
(12:37):
Now, here's what I recommend.
If you are an entrepreneur in a couple, which is what we mainly work with, that you sit down and you pick a category.
So for example, like the housework or the business, right?
Because these lists can get really long if you put it all in one.
And we do this like once a month. We actually sit down and we were reevaluate this quite often.
(12:58):
And we'll say, all right, for the business, I am on my list of like, I handle Facebook ads.
I handle training the new people. I handle training the new coaches.
And my wife does the webinars and does the one-on-ones, right?
And then on both things that we work on together, like creating new ads.
We have so much fun with that. So we put that on both.
Now, when you're done, no cheating, no looking at each other's notes,
(13:20):
I do recommend you do this with food because that just makes everything better.
And then you sit down and you exchange notes when you're done.
If you're first married or you're newly married or you're newly working with someone,
it's probably not going to match.
And that's okay. That's expected.
Now though, you are outside of the moment where the expectation has been crashed or dashed, right?
(13:44):
And you can actually have a discussion saying, okay, I put laundry like we did household, right?
I put laundry on your work, honey. And she's like, why put it on yours?
So now we get to negotiate a little bit. We're like, okay, cool.
Neither one of us like laundry, but why don't we try something?
How about you wash it and bring it up to the bedroom and dump it on the floor?
I will fold it and put it away.
(14:06):
So I don't have to worry about keeping track of all the cycles of laundry throughout the day,
but at the end of my day, I sit down and I fold laundry.
This is actually our current plan. Red's going on right now.
And it works great. And we're like, okay, we both agree. We both hate it,
but we're getting it done. So it turned into the both category.
But when you handle unspoken expectations outside of the moment,
when they're not met, you can actually resolve them and turn them into agreements.
(14:28):
Because as a warning, unspoken expectations, speaking from experience,
when left that way are like seeds of resentment that can grow in the garden of your relationship.
And I love that. I got to unpack that.
So when you're saying this, I'm thinking unspoken expectations are rooted in so many breakdowns.
(14:49):
I think of like gifts from, you know, I don't need anything for this, my birthday or mother's day.
But really a lot of times women do want something, but they don't want to have to ask for it.
And men want other things that they don't want to have to ask for.
So how did you learn how to move from assumptions to agreements?
(15:11):
Because I think we naturally do this as humans, right? We assume something.
And then we move through our day as humans, right?
Because we're assuming humans constantly assessing situations.
So how, like what change for you to move from assumption assumptions to agreements?
Oh, hands down. I see. So perfect example. Like I like the one you talked about gifts.
(15:35):
A lot of couples have learned their love languages.
They learn the love language of the other spouse. Love languages are really big because it's like learning another language.
You may be outside of the Kremlin, right? And you're trying to take a picture in Russia and everyone around you speak in Russian.
And you don't understand a lick of it. And it's just kind of like, well, want, well, want, like the, I don't know, the teacher from peanuts or something.
It doesn't make sense. But then all of a sudden you hear someone yell, hey over here, this is a great place to take a picture.
(16:00):
You immediately tune into that because that's your native language.
So a lot of times people will have native languages and their love languages.
Like for me, I'm touch, but my wife is time. And so for me, I go by, I give my wife a hug.
I give her a kiss on the cheek and I'm good. I'm fed. I moved on. But I was speaking French and speak French.
Whereas she's time and she's like, well, you stop cleaning.
(16:23):
Well, you just sit down and spend time with me. I was like, what do you mean? I love you. I'm trying to clean.
So when you identify an area and here's here's the easiest way to identify an area where you, there is an unspoken expectation.
It frustrates you to think about it.
When you recall that memory, when you recall that moment, you're like, ooh, I don't like that. There's a reason.
There's an expectation there that's not being met. So I'm like, I'm mad at my wife this morning. And I'm like, why am I mad?
(16:47):
Oh, because her meeting was supposed to end at eight because I had an eight o'clock meeting and she's not upstairs yet.
So I had an expectation that she would be timely in with her, with her meetings, but it ran over. Right?
So now I was like, okay, let me write that down. Best thing you do, take note of those moments and then don't deal with them in the moment.
Sit down, have a date and I do the exercise and go through each other.
What really does help to you is picking a category. I'm going to say that again, just super important.
(17:10):
If it's housework, pick housework, if it's business, it's pick business and stick with that, you're welcome to do all the above.
I just wouldn't do them all at the same time because it's just a long list.
I love that. Okay. So that's principal one. What is principal two?
All right. So you have on turning unspoken expectations into agreements and this one released a lot of the pressure for me at work as well as in our house.
(17:36):
This one's called his business, her business and not your business.
I've also heard it taught your business, their business and God's business, but his business, her business and not your business is an understanding of mind shift.
I am responsible and have full control over everything I feel think, do and create.
(17:58):
One of the really powerful stories that I was reading as a guy who survived the Holocaust and he had very little control over his environment, but he came out the other side incredibly mentally strong forgiving his captors and just like, wow, what happened?
He said, I had still full control of my thoughts. No one could take that from me and I was like, oh, that's some powerful stuff right there.
And so when you say I have full control over my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, what I think do and create means if I control what I think I can control what I do because thoughts turn into actions actions become habits habits to find your character and your character will shape your destiny.
(18:35):
So if you want a better future, change the way you're thinking. Now here's where it gets dangerous.
You are not responsible for thus her business, right? In my case, what she thinks feels does and creates.
So this concept of I can create an environment. I'm responsible for that. One where my wife feels loved my wife's love languages time.
(18:58):
And so I set up what I call couch time and I set aside where the kids are distracted for five minutes.
We can sit on the couch, hold each other's hand, looking through each other's eyes and spend some time together, right?
I try to do that. I really make it out for to do that. But if she doesn't feel loved in that, that is not my responsibility. My responsibility was to create the environment.
This was a profound concept for this one lady. We were teaching this in a class and she was over like, whoa, you okay?
(19:23):
That's like she's like 90% of my anxiety is because I'm constantly focusing on how my husband feels.
I'm like, yeah, you are not responsible for his feelings. You're responsible for the environment you create. And if you focus on that, you know the word I feel is you'll take care of those.
And she's like, oh my gosh, which way. So for the next like, I think we can have she was like, I'm just focusing on the environment. I'm creating that he feels loved in it.
(19:45):
She's like, it exploded because I'm no longer asking him all these do you love me questions, right? He's like, wow.
The last one that leads to this one is really hard. Perfect example, like just had a conversation with this with a director of a sock. And this has got what we call God's business or not your business.
This is things that are completely outside your control and the control of others. So think about like a hurricane, right? An act of God.
(20:10):
If the hurricane's coming in Florida, I can sit here and I can stress about it all I want, but all that does is cause me anxiety. When I focus on what I think feel doing create and I let God handle what he feels things doesn't create or not my business.
Then I focus on what can I create? Well, I can create an evacuation plan. I can create a disaster recovery plan. I can create an incident response plan. I can have this ready to rock and roll. So when disaster strikes, I have a plan.
(20:37):
When you focus on what's in your circle of influence and you let go of control and trying to focus and control other people's your anxiety level massively decreases.
Perfect example of this. So part, I guess part three or four or part two of four of the lasagna story that lasagna my wife made. I ate a piece because that's a good husband. I ate a piece.
But then she put she made a nine by 13 pan of it and she put it in the fridge. Well, you can kind of guess how this goes. So I go to work and I'm opening the fridge and I'm looking for food and I'm like lasagna.
(21:09):
A moldy cabbage. I'll take this.
I didn't eat it. I didn't touch it. She was so mad at me because she's like, you didn't like my lasagna. You didn't you should have eaten it. And she was in my business. She was in what I think feel doing create and she got very upset about it.
She made five different recipes over the first couple of years of our marriage. I didn't like any of them. I didn't eat any of them. Oh, she knows this. It's really fun when we get to share the story together because she tells her perspective of it as well.
(21:42):
But yeah, that's a perfect example. She was focusing on what she was outside of her control. When you focus on what you can control. Let me take this from like a cyber perspective.
I cannot control the ransomware that went into a system, but I can control how I'm prepared for it and how to handle it. I cannot control the fact that someone's going to try to scan and attack my network.
But I can control how my defenses are ready for it. So stop stressing about what's outside your control focus on what's inside your control and then rocket when you put all your mental energy into what's inside your control.
(22:12):
You are way more prepared to handle the stuff that's outside your control.
I love that. That's so good. So many questions and that. And I think a lot of time kind of going back to your analogy where she was supposed to be, you know, you were supposed to be on a call at eight. She was running late from a meeting.
Now, how do you figure out whose business is who's like, who's is more important at that point? Like, how does that, you know, agree at work with whose business are you at that time?
(22:46):
A lot of it actually goes back to the first exercise, right? You sit down, you're like, okay, I have these expectations that you are going to create the ad for this week or whatever the cases and I didn't create it. She's like, wait, I thought you were going to do that.
Well, that was an unspoken expectation.
So when you sit down and you have a meeting like, okay, this is within my business. One of the things we teach people to is to operate within their strengths.
(23:09):
We use something called Gallup Clifton's strengths to help them understand who they are as a person. And oh my gosh, that was amazing. That is incredible. And so for me, I'm high influencing.
I'm really good at winning people over, having conversations. So a lot of the podcasts we do, the webinars, any public speaking on stages, I was just at a summit a couple weeks ago.
I do that because I love it. I eat it up. I love this stuff. But my wife's really good at community. So she does like the webinars where we do one-on-one teachings.
(23:35):
She does a lot of the training coaching directly with people. She also really helps wives understand their husbands because she's helped me with that and vice versa.
She's really good at connecting people. She's also really good at coming up with ideas. So when we sat down with our business and we said, okay, I'm good at this. I'm just going to own it.
And she's like, I'm good at this. I'm going to own it. When you operate in what you love to do, it brings so much satisfaction.
(23:59):
Oh, I love that. That's so good. Okay. So I'm going to pause on two. We're going to put a pin in two and we're going to move to the third key. Tell us what the third key is.
Okay. Third part of the lasagna story. As I work, and this was back probably six years ago, and my boss and I were just in the break room talking about our favorite meals.
Well, of course I mentioned lasagna and he goes, my, oh, man, my wife makes an amazing lasagna. I'll have her make you one and you can take it home to your wife and kids. All I can think was, oh, God, please don't.
(24:30):
Like, I'm going to get in so much trouble. The next day I show up at work in the work break room fridge is a nine by 13 pan with Kiwi written across the top.
I opened it up. It's lasagna and it looked good.
So I bumped into my boss and he's like, did you see it? Give me instructions. And so I thought, do I take this home and possibly have a fight with my wife? Or do I leave it here and disappoint my boss?
(24:56):
But I also thought this might be the first time in my marriage. I've actually had good lasagna. So I take it home.
My wife finds it. She opens the fridge. She sees it. She goes, what's this? She talks just like this too. And I'm like, food. She's like, where'd you get it?
(25:17):
My boss is wife made it. I will never forget her words. She goes, hmm closes the fridge. She looks to me, puts her hands on her hips and says, couldn't get it from your wife.
So you had to get it from another man's wife, huh? And thus was one of our greatest arguments ever. And so everyone has them. Everyone has unspoken expectations. Everybody ends up in somebody else's business and then we end up in a fight over it.
(25:41):
So how do you win every argument every time guaranteed?
Again, a lot of this is a mindset shift in perspective. If you think back to when you're first married and you're holding hands at the altar and you're looking at each other, you're googly adding you're like, I'll take on the world with you.
But then the kids come along and then you start a business together. And now it's like, you're the problem. You're the problem. You're the problem. You're the problem. You're the problem. That's how it goes. The truth is, it's not you're the problem.
(26:06):
It's not someone has to lose. It's not happy wife happy life that actually ends up been kind of resentful husband to be honest and you want a happy marriage.
So here's the shift. It's you and me versus the problem.
Let's take this from like a management perspective say we have a manager and he's told he has to cut costs and you have an employee who wants a race and they have a meeting.
(26:30):
You can see how that goes, right? Well, what is the manager and the employee came together and they said, it's you and me versus the problem.
They said, what's the real problem here? Well, the real problem is that the company is not bringing in enough profit.
The real problem is the company is not as profitable. It could be because if the company was more profitable, we wouldn't have to cut costs costs so hard and the employee could have the raise. They're looking for.
(26:53):
So now the manager and the player say, okay, you and me, how can we work together and bring in more profit when you do it in your marriage. This is one that like if you have kids, which I do have three and you get a car.
Look at each other before you start driving and go, same team.
So you and me versus the problem. So when you approach every problem and every argument with it's you and me versus the problem.
(27:16):
You guys are now united on the same front to attack it. Now sometimes it takes a little bit because you may feel like they're the problem or what they're doing is the problem.
You got to really sit down and look at each other and be like, okay, I want to find the real problem here. And usually it's not what you think.
Nine times out of 10. It's an unspoken expectation that's usually what it falls back on, which is why I teach these in this order because for our marriage, a lot of it was even with the lasagna.
(27:45):
I love that. I think there's so much wisdom in coming together to resolve conflict because everybody comes out winning.
I want to switch gears on you a little bit. I love the cybersecurity analogy because I also work in cybersecurity.
Now you lead sock IR teams managing incident responses like you met and across complex environments.
(28:12):
How is your work in cyber helped you identify emotional intelligence and then kind of the second part to that.
How does this play into your leadership style? Oh my goodness. So I was a very logical individual. I was in the Navy for eight years. They taught me to be a hacker and then I started working DOD after that.
(28:33):
And computers are logical. They're one or there's zero. There is there's no middle, right? This is just how they operate. However, humans are not.
And so the interesting part when you, I'm going to just go cyber a little bit, but when you think like a hacker, the most successful attacks are psychological ones because technology changes, AI changes and things evolve fast.
(28:56):
What doesn't change a psychology, the number one factor for people is curiosity. They're like, I want to click that we click stuff so often because we're just straight up curious.
And so when you learn a lot more of the psychology aspects and you have the more emotional intelligence when it comes to assessing how a threat actors going to act, you can actually kind of get inside their head.
(29:17):
And when you're a defense person and you're fighting against that, you can have a very understanding predictable. This is how they do it. We call it pattern of life.
So without getting super technical, this is how people tend to act these are what are called TTPs tools tactics and procedures that threat actors will use on your environment from the opposite side of the house, right? Say I'm in a meeting with a customer that has actually happened.
And they're really mad because their systems encrypted and our sock was supposed to watch it, right? Well, it's you me versus the problem. They feel like we're the problem.
(29:47):
We feel like you didn't secure your environment like you were told to they're the problem and the real problem is there's a threat actor in the system.
All right, let's let's start with one. Let's prioritize and execute and let's take care of this threat actor. Another one to is unspoken expectations when we're talking with salespeople and they're like, oh, well, you'll do all this for our customers, right?
We need to make sure we're all on the same page. So down to like, this is what we do. This is what we can do. This is what we don't. Is that way when the customer comes in, they have an understanding and an expectation of I know what's expected of me and what's expected of you, which goes and leads into his business, her business and not your business.
(30:22):
These three things alone and there's many more, but these three things alone, having an understanding when I, after I got done with this coaching with my wife a couple of years ago, she and I sat down and we started to apply these to our lives.
While I was at work, I actually was shifted. I used to be a manager of a security operations center, incident response team where we get with ransomware.
(30:43):
I got moved into a senior more manager director level and I was managing multiple teams because I was really good at helping managers see how to work directly with their employees.
So even though you may be in a highly technical job, learning how to work with people, how they understand what their needs are, how to help them understand his business or business and not your business and how to work with them when you have disagreements.
(31:06):
You can revolutionize any attack vector, stop any threat and work as a team to meet any patch management plan.
Oh, I love that. And as a fellow techie and for leaders that are listening in and heavy tech environments, which is, you know, mostly introverted in my experience, working with a lot of these individuals.
(31:28):
What advice would you give them and your experience on how they can show up not only professionally to do a job to do a cyber security job, but how can they show up personally?
So personally and professionally, I don't feel like those should always have to be different. Now I knew so know some people that their personality is not appropriate, HR wise professionally.
(31:50):
Let's just be real.
A lot of these guys are vets and so I get them because I was a vet, I'm a vet myself.
But when you come into work, you should never feel like you have to put on a front.
You should never feel like you can't be your authentic self.
One of the things that we teach in our coaching and I've done this coaching for IT professionals. I've done it for entrepreneurs. I've done it for couples in network marketing across the board. This is the truth when you learn how to be authentically you and give your best self.
(32:18):
Don't change the thing about you. In fact, embrace who you are. And the skills and talents that you have, just like every superhero, you got to learn how to use them and it helps to have a guide along the way.
When you do that and you show up to work as your authentic self, you give your best to the world. And when you give your best to the world, whether you're an employee to your boss or a husband to your wife or a director to your entire operations center, when you give your best, they give their best and they feel safe to do it.
(32:45):
So I would leave on that note with that when you have an environment where people feel safe to be genuinely who they are at their core and they're safe to do that, they'll innovate.
They'll show up to work early, they'll give it their best and they'll operate in a way that honors who they are in your productivity and profit will go through the roof.
Yeah, because they're aligned. They're aligned. Would you say with the mission, they feel like they're part of a team and they're pulling and working hard. And so I love that. I think that's a great example.
(33:16):
Now I'm curious, David. I'm sure everybody else is curious. Did your wife ever find that perfect lasagna recipe for you?
And there she did after a couple of years she gave up, but 10 years later, she swallowed her pride. And she made the walk to my mom's house.
(33:42):
And she sat down at the kitchen table with my mom, she looked across at her and said, I got to know what's this recipe that David loves. I've tried everything. I've given up. Can you just share with me this amazing recipe that he apparently loves?
She loved me. She wanted to make the right thing. My mom looked at her across the table, shocked. And like surprise. She shrugged and she said, what recipe? I always bought it frozen from the store.
(34:16):
True story. And when my wife told me that, oh, I felt awful. I was like, I am so sorry. Apparently I like Walmart Stofers, lasagna. That's what I like.
Oh my god. That's hilarious. But it goes to show you. We literally argued over that for over 10 years, 13, 14 years of marriage.
And it's now a funny, the funniest part of our story, but that was a source of conflict, our whole marriage, because we weren't willing to sit down and talk it through until we did it together. But now it's one of the funniest things we have.
(34:49):
That is such a great story. I love it. David, I want to get any final thoughts or anything we do touch on that you want to leave with our listeners.
The biggest thing is I would say the world needs who you are in the best version of it. When you learn to give that, whether you're a leader, a husband, a stay at home mom and entrepreneur or a network marketer, the world needs your message and your voice. You are worth it.
(35:17):
I love that. That's fantastic. You know, you've been a perfect blend of humor, vulnerability, real leadership. And it's rare for me that I get to talk to somebody in cybersecurity. So it's been a blessing to talk to you today.
And I'm sure the listeners are going to feel the same way. I want to get any, what's the best way for our listeners, the connect with you? Is it an email? Is it social media? Share how they can connect with you?
(35:46):
Absolutely. My name is pretty unique. It's David Kiwi Magi, but everyone calls me Kiwi and my friend Circle. You can follow us on social media. If you search my name, I am the only one on the planet with my name. My wife is Alexis. Same last name.
So you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. We share a lot of our videos there. So if you just want more advice, more encouragement, here's some fun stories. We do lots of shenanigans. You can follow us there. If you're actually interested in getting a little bit more from us, being part of our coaching programs, check us out at David and Alexis Kiwi.
(36:16):
Thank you so much for talking to us. You've given us a new way to look at lasagna and incident response. That's the executive connect podcast.
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