Intro: Broadcasting live from the Greater Perimeter. It’s time for Greater Perimeter Chamber Spotlight. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: This episode of Greater Perimeter Business Radio is brought to you by Mirability with their new compliance Exo service taking you from it risk to it reward. Now here’s your host, Erik Boemanns welcome.

Erik Boemanns: Thanks, everybody. I am have a great guest today very much aligned with the the compliance exo that you just heard about. But from a from a different perspective a different angle. He is Ron Johnson from Tacilent.ai. And if I said that wrong please correct me but want to maybe just start. Tell us a bit about yourself and then kind of from there, what led you to found the company?

Ron Johnson: Yeah. No. Thanks. Erik. So, uh, the main reason behind the company is that we want to be able to provide clarity and chaos. And so, in the 21st century and 2025, there’s so much going on around the world, both internally to organizations and externally. And we want to be able to have basically that source of truth for organizations to be able to understand the what, the so what and what to do about it. And so just from my national security background, whether it’s been from my time in the FBI or in the military, deployed in Iraq or in Africa, or spending time at E! I’ve always turned data into actionable intelligence. And that’s really what we want to be able to bring to our commercial clients, is basically bringing that national security grade level of decision ready intelligence to be able to make informed decisions as quickly as possible and disrupt the status quo when it comes to how you manage risk and moving away from just managing it to a point of resilience. So instead of reacting to getting to a point of predicting.

Erik Boemanns: Got it. Yeah. And I think your background is has so much focus on risk management through the different careers that you had. Right. So it makes total sense why you would bring that approach here. So you have a new platform risk IQ. And so what is that doing to meet some unmet needs in the market. What what makes it different.

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So the biggest thing is so typically enterprise risk management solutions or risk intelligence. If you put it in that category those tools require 25 plus clicks. And you’re looking at multiple different modules and you’re really just managing a workflow and dashboards. And then organizations are still losing millions of dollars because of uncovered or unidentified risk across internally and externally to the organization. And so that’s where we come in in the market. So we’re helping get to action as quickly as possible. And so we don’t believe in workflows. We think they’re completely obsolete because we’re an AI native solution. We allow the agent to handle basically the workflow. And we basically give you the decision ready information so you can act as quickly as possible. And so the typical approach is really just it’s really what it’s called. It’s risk management. And we don’t like you don’t manage risk. You need to predict them and get ahead of it. And you need to identify what matters to you most to your specific organization in the chaos of the world today.

Erik Boemanns: And so not everybody listening has risk management in house. So what does that mean? What does risk management actually mean to a business owner?

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So one of the things we jokingly say is like one of the things we’re moving towards is don’t talk about Fight Club if you’re in Fight Club. So don’t say risk management. Focus on basically dollars. So what’s preventing what’s stopping your organization from what’s impacting your bottom line? What’s stopping you from making money? What’s stopping you from growth? What are those roadblocks. And that’s really what we look at how we define risk. And so we look across that from the entire organization. So whether it’s from cyber to technology, people, operations, finance, reputation then what are those blockers that are preventing you or things that are coming up that you need to be aware of, that you need to predict and that you don’t need to always react to. And so risk is really the things that are stopping you from making money.

Erik Boemanns: Makes sense. And you mentioned cyber. You mentioned some other things like I think risk might have been traditionally something like a fire in a warehouse. Right. But in the cyber we all know about phishing and ransomware. Maybe what’s a risk that people aren’t thinking about that is more common than they realize?

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So I would say one of the more common ones that you might not just be thinking of is really tied to, uh, reputational risk or even, um, right now, reputation. I would say also regulatory like regulatory risk or geopolitical risk is our top, um, area of concern that we hear from all of our clients. So being able to not only react to all the changes in the world, but then being able to see some of those indicators of activity or before it actually becomes a problem to them. And so one of the best stories we have is like, there’s always new privacy laws that are coming out from each state. And so being able to track that if you’re in multiple different states, or even if you’re in your current state, you might not have awareness of all the things being proposed at that local and state level. And so we monitor those things and then tell you exactly how it’s going to impact your business. And so that’s considered a risk, right. Because the fines could equate. So there’s a privacy law example out in the Midwest to where it was basically a $7,500 fine per individual violation. So if you have a thousand people that continues to add up. And so those are the type of intelligence that we provide to our clients, where typically you would have a third party consultant or a lobbyist or really what people are doing right now is looking at RSS feeds, and RSS feeds might not be able to capture that, because there’s so much information going on in the world right now, and everybody wants to know what matters to them.

Erik Boemanns: Makes complete sense. And so you just said, we don’t want to talk about risk management. So we’re not going to use that phrase anymore, right. Yeah. Except that your product is called risk IQ. Yeah. But I think you have a different phrase that you prefer to use. What was that again?

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So, um, for us, like we’re discussing specifically, clarity and chaos is one. Yeah. Um, and so that that clarity is what we’re focused on. Uh, we have a couple of catchphrases. That’s one. The other one is basically never take another risk assessment again. And, um, really going back to that whole phrase, don’t talk about Fight Club if you’re in Fight Club. So the one of the biggest challenges that we, we hear from our clients is like, why am I reacting to risk three months, six months or a year after the fact? And actually, that’s absolutely obsolete. Um, I jokingly was putting out some some content here recently where it’s like, um, Ricky Bobby says if you’re not first or last. And that’s the same thing when you’re looking at what are the things that are stopping you from making money in your business? Yeah. Um, if you have that mentality of reacting all the time, then you’re never actually doing anything proactive. And if you want your business to be able to sustain growth or just sustain the market share that you have, you have to be able to look over the horizon and understand what’s going to start impacting you and plan for it now, or just have awareness of what’s going on that’s stopping your organization, whether it’s a reputational risk. When we think about reputation, um, we, we have clients to where sometimes they might be trending in a negative standpoint, but they might not have any awareness of it until it after it’s already starting. There’s a news article in the, in the, in the times or in the post. And at that point you’re, you’re in basic crisis response mode.

Erik Boemanns: Yep. And so that idea of finding about finding out about the risks through that newsfeed, right. The the real time intelligence risks are real. They’re always going to happen. They happen to every business. So rather than manage it, which sounds kind of boring almost. Right. And probably not that effective, I think you talked about risk resilience as an alternative. And so how does risk IQ through that real time intelligence produce risk resilience as opposed.

Ron Johnson: Yeah. And so like moving away from the reactive piece and into the resilience perspective is really focused on our output of what the platform provides you. So we’re going to quantify all risk in dollars. So what does that dollar amount of that risk to the business. And then what does it cost for you to do remediation. And that’s really the part of the value there. The other piece is we go a level above most tools. Most tools are really focused on that tactical, what I call tactical intelligence, tactical transactional approach. We’re building out a strategy and a roadmap to help you drive maturity and resilience. And so that’s typically what I would do back in my previous life as a consultant or a recovering consultant. As I say, now that we focus on helping you drive maturity and resilience long term. And so how do you build the foundational program? Because one of the biggest gaps I saw, um, when I was back at EY, was that organizations should be focusing on more foundational things instead of spending so much money on all the flashy tools when they’re not doing core things like training or awareness, or just making sure that they have the licenses that they have in place through M365 are turned on, that they don’t have to go buy another tool that does the exact same thing.

Ron Johnson: So being able to help with that level of building out the program and being that source of truth. We had a client the other day that said like, oh, this is basically like my little wrist buddy. And I was like, that’s exactly what it’s meant to be. It’s meant to be like, hey, we typically we’re going to go to GPT, we’re going to go phone a friend, we’re going to go to Google, we’re going to go to some other tool to figure out a source of truth. And really we still have to interpret that information. We don’t know if we can trust and validate that. But our our platform is that source of truth when it comes to that certainty and that clarity or quote unquote, the risk resilience piece of like, where can I understand risk from my organization? And how do I know that the information that it’s built on is of quality and is reputable?

Erik Boemanns: Yeah. And so when I think of risk resiliency, it’s the bad stuff’s going to happen, but how quickly do you bounce back? Or how even better, do you just keep being able to make the money and absorb that bad thing?

Ron Johnson: Yeah, yeah. I had a, um, back when I was advising at one point, one of the things I was telling an executive before is like, you should be able to have processes in place and build the program to where certain things become white noise. So you remember how, like, the TV channel would disappear back in the day, it was like, oh, it’s just it’s just white noise to where it doesn’t really impact you or your bottom line, because you’ve built out the program to be resilient or built the business to be resilient to those shocks.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah. And so obviously AI is in the name of the product, the platform, the company. How is AI enabling that possibility.

Ron Johnson: So we’re completely AI native platform. So everything from the model that’s driving it to how we collect the data to fuel the model, um, the, the output, uh, there’s an agent that’s driving basically what you would call the traditional risk workflow. Um, and then the way that we monitored multiple different sources externally to an organization and then how we’re connecting to existing tools. And so we’re the, the, the foundational piece for a cognitive type of AI solution. So being able to contextually be aware of what’s going on around you, but then also learning from that to continue to evolve. So the longer you use the platform the better it becomes. So it’s beyond just traditional automation of point and click and then it’s going to generate something. But the platform is actually starting to learn is learning who you are as an organization. But then it’s also adapting to the environment. So you get real time intelligence, but then also it’s tailored specifically to who you are as within your risk or business profile.

Erik Boemanns: Got it. And and I think what naturally follows for me from that perspective is you can’t not read a headline recently about how by using AI, some of your company data got leaked out, right? Like, like, oh, it turns out your chats with ChatGPT weren’t private all those sort of. So we’re bringing AI into the business, but we’re bringing new risks to our data, to our practice and practice. So how do you guys approach that to that responsible use of AI?

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So, uh, so that’s the part of the responsible AI. Privacy is a core function of who we are as a company. So I’m a professor in responsible AI and cyber at Tennessee Tech University. Um, and so everything that we’ve done, we have seven core principles that are tied to responsible AI. And really that transparency is one of the most critical ones. And so within our platform and specifically digressing a minute, uh, to the security piece. So all the data is encrypted in rest and in transit. Um, nothing is being the model is not being retrained on any company or any client data. Um, none of the data is visible from for us as a company, it’s all within, uh, within that box for the organization. The other piece is really tied to one of the things we’re working on right now is although we connect to other systems, uh, we’re working with the partner to integrate the ability to only send specific requirements to the systems to get to an output for our platform. And so that approach is really tied to how you collect information when you’re looking at it from a national security perspective. And when you’re looking at intelligence specifically is focused on requirements. So you don’t go collect everything in the world, because then at that point you’re just like, you’ll get stuck in the sand.

Ron Johnson: For us, we’re looking at specific requirements from the tools that exist and then externally, and then we’re collecting against those requirements to be able to build out that data set. And so that’s that’s one of our first stop gaps. There is basically what I would call not over collecting. The other piece is like we are soc2 qualified or um, attested uh, with the product. So we adhere to GDPR and all the different requirements as far as like how you should store and keep data. But when it comes to the transparency piece that’s built into the platform as well. And so how the decisions are being made. So every decision that comes out in the platform, you can go and check that source. So the documents of the. So the platform provides you the the quantitative piece but also provides you qualitative recommendations. And so the way we look at that we provide you the what. So what is the risk and what is the cost of that risk. And how much does it cost to remediate. Then we provide you the so what that so what is um citations back to the documents and the systems that we have access to that you can go back and verify that information.

Ron Johnson: And then the same thing for externally, if it’s an external news source you can go and check that news source and do you can recreate that um evidence based decisioning so you can get to a decision um, quicker. And so we’re really every step in our process is built on those responsible AI principles, because that is something that every single client demands. Now as as you mentioned, there’s always I was just talking to my students last week about how, um, there’s been prompt injecting basically to where, um, there’s been that what we would call spillage in the cyber world of, of, uh, sensitive data. But the actual, uh, problem with a lot of that is there’s been no data governance or security before. And so when you look upstream, which is what our platform is meant to be to help you do, it’s like, well, what’s the root cause of that? Right? Because companies haven’t done any data governance or security before. And that becomes a problem. So we’re instituting that as like how we build a program and what information we’re, uh, we’re pulling in from our clients.

Erik Boemanns: Got it. So protection from the AI. Basically, you’ve got the box built around it to to let it do its job, but also not start sneaking data out.

Ron Johnson: Yep. And as we continue to evolve, like our goal is, um, for us, we’ve built a proprietary data set on risk that has, um, basically global standards and best practices. And then we developed a methodology that is patent pending that looks at futures and foresight, risk, predictive risk intelligence. Um, but the core thing for all of that is really for us to build an additional context layer. So basically a micro link small language model that is able to be very, very efficient in risk. And so the traditional large language models are somewhat a little bit of overkill for us. And then when we look at long term efficiency play for us and the tokens that are required, our goal is to be able to run our platform on edge devices for small businesses and in some national security applications.

Erik Boemanns: Okay. So basically a private walled garden for their own, their own product. Um, I think one of the other kind of secret hidden risks to businesses, especially in today’s world of cyber security and all the platforms is actually like too many platforms. So they keep buying new platforms, they keep spending more money on platforms and products, but aren’t actually benefiting from it. And so of course, risk IQ, another platform. How do you approach that, that conversation where this platform actually can save you money? It’s not going to just be yet another platform.

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So uh, so our hypothesis when we first launched this. This current phase of our product is for us to replace 3 to 5 legacy type of tools. So what that includes is that traditional governance risk and compliance or the enterprise risk management tool, um, whether it’s a risk intelligence type of platform and then the, uh, the initial data aggregator of like, well, what do I need to focus on? And then the other piece is what we’re doing is a first Swag is providing that level of expertise that typically is done by, um, from my previous life, a junior consultant. Um, but they want experts like us coming to the table, and it actually allows our platform, allows experts like you to come in and actually provide immediate value, because you can bring in the knowledge base of the information and where the problems are and provide additional context that our platform is not there yet. But then also the nuances of the human is still required. And so, um, the, the pieces that that we try to focus on specifically are tied to the fact that all these different tools in place.

Ron Johnson: The one thing we’ve learned that we’ve learned over the last month is we were, uh, there’s a competitor that we, uh, in the space from an enterprise risk management firm is able to augment is really it’s going to give you the decision. You can decide, you can go and validate that information. And so you don’t have to spend cycles of like, oh, I need to do additional research. I got to pull this presentation together. It’s really meant to get the action. So you don’t need a lot of the tools that we are traditionally, um, in organizations would use. They have a, a user of the tool. To your point, Erik, earlier, and you don’t need that user anymore because we can have the agent do that. What you want to be able to do for us, and I teach about this as a professor as well, is we want to push individuals up the thought chain and the critical thinking piece. And so some of that initial research and information gathering. We can now do that and then validate that information on the on the back end.

Erik Boemanns: Interesting. And so you mentioned no dashboards. And so now I’m thinking the executives, they got to go present to the board. The board of course board members get bored very quickly with technical details that aren’t relevant to their decision making. So how is the AI side of that helping even that board level communication?

Ron Johnson: Yep. So basically you can ask. So our platform, when you log in it feels just like you’re using perplexity or GPT but for risk. And so like you have the you can interact with your data interact with your risk data. You can ask for um specific board reports. Or if you have a template that you would like to use, um, that’s what we can help you tailor that to. Uh, and so really what we’re trying to do and what we’re actually doing is instead of, uh, and I would see this when I was at EY, you would get this long board report that has all of the criticals that you cleared for the last quarter, and that really doesn’t tell a story. And so one of the things I would always notice is specifically we’re speaking about the cyber or the information security or the the CIOs type of shop, the chief information officer shop. Is that how do you tell a story of how is what you’re doing helping the organization make money? And so I would always hear individuals tell me, well, I don’t know how the business makes money. I was like, well, if you can’t articulate that, then you can’t articulate your existence, because in reality, the business sees security as a cost center, because you can’t draw that line between the value proposition and the ROI. And that’s what we help tell that story across the entire organization. What is the cost benefit analysis of everything that we’re doing? Because as you and I are entrepreneurs, that’s something that we have to everything has a dollar sign attached to it. And so that’s the story we help help tell. So not just the dashboard and the pretty graphs or like the what story. What what story do you need to be able to tell to articulate the so what behind the decisioning behind the tool? Just rationalization or like what um, personnel decisions or things that are impacting the supply chain.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah, that makes sense. And so that kind of looks at decisions you’re making today. Now for those business leaders gazing into the crystal ball over the next five years. And not only do they want to be more resilient, but they want to even be more competitive, and they want to grow the business. How does risk IQ help with that?

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So, um, that is one of the the methodology I mentioned before, as far as the predictive intelligence and the warning analysis is what the platform is built on, is built on to predict the future. Um, I know it sounds kind of corny and, and I have investors like, oh, that that sounds aspirational, but it’s not. There’s a science to it, right? And that’s where I spent the last 20 years of my career, building out those chops to be able to come up with that methodology and then prove it out in some of the most high stakes environments where how do we prevent the next disruption or the next cyber attack or the next geopolitical risk? And we were able to do that in some of the most high stakes environments. And then that actually drives how you develop operations today. So you can mitigate those risks before they become a catastrophic problem. And that’s what we’re bringing into the platform. And so the platform has the ability for you to be able to run simulations. So if you see an intelligence notification coming in you say, hey, what does this look like from an organization 6 to 18 months down the road? And then you can track those things, and then the intelligence is going to be able to come in and tell you it’s like, hey, and this is why we considered this never taking a risk assessment again.

Ron Johnson: It’s because the platform is living. So the roadmap and the strategy is alive with the organization. So as the environment changes, the roadmap might change because the traditional method that we look at is a snapshot in time of a PowerPoint deck, or it’s a dashboard that we basically just work projects off and it’s not connected to our internal systems or externally, and then it’s not interpreting the so what? Because the business model today for most of the tools is built on integrations and how long it takes you to go through and click and then adding more modules. We’re saying none of that needs to matter now because we’re going to give you the decision, you’re going to track your progress. We’re going to track and measure whether or not you’ve implemented that change. And if you haven’t, here’s the decisions of that risk, right. So it’s the fork in the road. If I do nothing or if I do something, what does that look like for me today? What does it look like six months down the road? And then if that if that analysis is no longer relevant, then we’re going to tell you why it’s no longer relevant. Because there’s these new factors that are coming in.

Erik Boemanns: Interesting. And so without revealing too much of the secret sauce, these predictive models that you’re talking about are those based on real world outcomes, that historical data or how does that how do you feed that? How do you train that?

Ron Johnson: We have a lot of content that we post there. Um, as well as we push out daily intelligence briefs, which shows from an industry perspective. Focus on that medium, small sized organization. So think of the information that we push out really is focused on the what to do right. So being able to give you a sneak peek of what the platform is able to do and the things that we’re tracking as an organization.

Erik Boemanns: Awesome. And so that’s t a c I l e ai, right? Correct. Yeah. So, um, it’s pronounced just like it’s spelled. Yep. Perfect. Uh, so a lot of my guests here are also founders. You’re a founder. Uh, so I always want to find out kind of from the founders perspective, is there some sort of advice that you would give to people who are just starting their journey, or kind of at the crossroads, whether they should start that founder’s journey?

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So I’d say take the leap. I mean, it’s probably the the hardest thing, but also the most rewarding thing that I’ve done. Um, and then been able to, uh, be extremely resilient. You have to have a level of, um, what? You have to be a little crazy to do it because the the failures and successes happen all within the same day. And so I definitely think it’s worth the journey. Taking advantage of the opportunities now is better. There’s no better time now to start a business, especially with the tools that are out there. I mean, in the US, economy is built on small businesses. And so, um, but resilience is the number one thing I would say that you have to be able to do is to be able to take those punches and continue to move through them.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah, resilience is a good theme for today’s call for conversation. But and I want to I had a founder who also said, like, if you ever have a bad day, just try to go sell something because to your point, the successes and the failures come in the same day. So if you can take a shell of that hit and make it a win somewhere else, then yeah.

Ron Johnson: Yeah, yeah. I heard, uh, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank was saying just like, hey, like you will have a failure, catastrophic failure. But if you just wait, like something good is going to happen. And so and that is actually true. Like, you never know, it might be get a free ice cream cone or something.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah, exactly. So other than perhaps, you know, check out RiskIQ. What’s a one thing that companies could do like right now, today to reduce their risk or to become more risk resilient?

Ron Johnson: Yeah. So I would say one using our platform would be the first one. The second one would be, um, is think about the number one thing stopping your organization from making money. Like what does that do. Organizations actually know what that is. And then start to plan for how to remove that roadblock. And so I would say that would be the the number one thing.

Erik Boemanns: That’s great advice. And so I thank you for coming on today. I appreciate the conversation and look forward to future conversations.

Ron Johnson: Awesome. Thank you for the opportunity.