140. Connecting Cybersecurity to Root Chakra Wellness with Bobby Deetz

Michelle Walters:

Welcome to Mind Power Meets Mystic—the show where practical mind power and mystical wisdom collide with humor and wild curiosity. Yeah, we’re not here to play it safe.

Cinthia Varkevisser:

I’m Cinthia Varkevisser, your resident spiritual shit disturber. I stir things up with mystic power and bold action.

Michelle Walters:

And I’m Michelle Walters, coach and hypnotherapist. I bring strategy and transformative hypnosis to help you turn subconscious blocks into unstoppable momentum. Let’s shake up your thinking, dive into your soul, and make bold moves in your life. We’ll take you on a journey of breakthrough and aha moments, exploring spirit, business, love, relationships, and self-expansion. We’re connecting you with your highest self and flipping fear into strength. So buckle up. We’re doing this one wild, transformative conversation at a time. Let’s go.

This Week’s Episode

Michelle Walters:

Welcome to this week’s episode of Mind Power Meets Mystic. You are here with me, Michelle Walters, and my podcasting co-host, Cinthia Varkevisser. I am the mind power part of our podcast. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist and marketing strategist, and Cinthia is an intuitive healer and our show mystic. We are very excited to have our guest, Bobby Deetz, visiting today.

Cinthia Varkevisser:

Bobby Deetz (they/them) is a Portland-based technology coach and trainer and the founder of Digital Deetz. They help creatives, solopreneurs, nonprofits, and business teams get organized and confident with tools like Google Workspace, Apple devices, and everyday productivity apps. Known for their calm presence and sense of humor, Bobby makes untangling tech feel less overwhelming and a lot more human. Outside of work, they love taking photographs in nature, exploring creeks and rivers, and connecting with other vegans. Welcome, Bobby!

Bobby Deetz:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited about this episode.

Root Chakra and Tech

Cinthia Varkevisser:

We are too, especially since we’re talking about the root chakra, which is all about security and safety and survival, right? And what you do in tech hits all three right in the gut. It really does. It couldn’t be more targeted to the root chakra, because there’s nothing worse than feeling unsafe in your software. So I’m really curious, how in the heck did you get started with Digital Deetz?

Bobby Deetz:

Thank you so much. Yes. So I have a long history as an instructional designer and a tech trainer, mostly in the higher ed industry. I started at the Berkeley Lab and went to UC Berkeley and California College of the Arts. The majority of my work was working with faculty, staff, and students to use online technologies to enhance their teaching and learning in and out of the classroom. Even before that, both my parents were computer programmers. My dad built computers. There were computer parts all over the house, so I’ve kind of been exposed to techie stuff early on. Any job I had, even if it wasn’t around instructional design or tech support, I was always the one helping out with the tech or coming up with the training materials or helping to onboard people. I just kind of did some of that automatically. I’ve always been good with people and good with tech—how to use tech, not so much the IT back end stuff. I’m really more hands-on, strategy, things like that.

During COVID, like a lot of people, I got inspired to say, “That’s it. I want to work for myself.” I’ve always wanted to work for myself. I’ve always enjoyed my day jobs, but it was time to really launch my own thing. So I decided to take the parts of those jobs that I had enjoyed the most and felt were the most being of service to others to get more comfortable with their technology. And I basically pieced together Digital Deetz.

Messy Mac Makeover

Michelle Walters:

I’m familiar with some of Digital Deetz. I took a great class that you and Julia Williamson put on a year or so ago called Messy Mac Makeover, and I was so impressed. It kind of reminded me of how me and Cinthia work—really good partnership, you and Julia. It was so well presented and thorough and hands-on and solved problems. Your explanations, your patience—you were just awesome in terms of helping all of us really sort out what we have and get a much better handle on the Mac. I don’t know, mine probably needs another makeover now, but at least it was doing really well at the time I took Messy Mac Makeover, so thank you for that.

Bobby Deetz:

Oh, thank you. Yeah, that’s a really fun class, for sure. Julie and I have partnered on many workshops. We make a good match. Julia is a minimalist, and she’s really good at deleting and getting rid of stuff. I’m a bit of a digital hoarder and collector. I like to save things, but I like to be super organized about it. You bring those two superpowers together, and we have a lot of fun and help a lot of folks with their file structure and getting things cleared out and set up more securely and strategically.

Mind Power Meets Mystic: The Project

Michelle Walters:

You’ve been listening to Mind Power Meets Mystic with me, Michelle Walters, and my co-host, Cinthia Varkevisser. We want to tell you about a special gig the two of us have going on. It’s called Mind Power Meets Mystic: The Project, and it starts off on a Zoom call with Cinthia. Cinthia, tell everybody what they can expect.

Cinthia Varkevisser:

For the first half of our session, you will be with me, and Michelle will be very quietly in the background preparing to do her work. We’ll talk about the one thing that you either want to amp up or that you want to release. Through the intuitive work, I help you boil it down to its essence and give you an RX of three practical things to do to set you on your way. Then Michelle magically appears.

Michelle Walters:

I’ve been listening in but not participating in the first half of the call. I have an excellent idea of what Cinthia means when she says something, and I have an excellent idea of quickly getting to what my client is all about and their individual strengths. I turn all of this into a 20- to 30-minute hypnosis session on the second half of the call, which, when we’re done, I strip off and send you as an MP3 that you can listen to over and over again. You also will have Cinthia’s three-point recommendations and the recording of the Zoom call. It is a fantastic one-hour offering—a great gift for yourself or for someone you don’t know what to get. Such insights, and we’ve gotten such great reviews. If you’re interested, send me or Cinthia an email. You’ll find our contact information in the show notes, and we’ll tell you how to get started.

Digital Clutter and Security

Cinthia Varkevisser:

Michelle’s going to laugh because she knows that I don’t like clutter, so I am more of the minimalist, which I don’t think I am, but in Michelle’s eyes, I kind of am. But when it comes to my Mac—this is the funny part, and I’m wondering how many people are like this, Bobby—on the outside, in the outer world, they’ve got their shit together, everything is clean, and then you look at their Mac or some part of their software piece, and it’s just because they don’t know that everything’s clogged and messy. Do you have a lot of solopreneurs where they’re like that?

Bobby Deetz:

Absolutely, because we all struggle with this. Email—I didn’t even mention email, and that’s probably the biggest one, right? I often start working with someone who tells me, “Look, I only have four or five hundred emails in my inbox.” And I’m like, “That’s four or five hundred unread emails in your inbox? You actually have like 6,000 emails,” or whatever it is. Part of it is the awareness, like you said. Sometimes I can look at someone’s desktop and kind of guess maybe how their physical desktop is, but not always, like you said.

Cybersecurity for Solopreneurs

Michelle Walters:

We’re talking chakra one—root chakra. It’s a lot about safety and security and doing the things that make you feel grounded and clear. Computer security—big BFD, as some would say. Tell us a little bit about, and I remember you telling me a long time ago, Bobby, some story about how you got a big new assignment, but they required that you get cybersecurity insurance and that kind of thing. Without terrifying our listeners, because we do not want to terrify anyone, tell us a little bit about why computer security is so important, and what are some of the things that you think kind of the average person or our listeners might need to know about computer security.

Bobby Deetz:

Cybersecurity has, I think historically, sounded like a really huge word that’s relevant to big companies. The most important thing to get your attention is that actually, it’s the small businesses—it’s us. The percentage is almost all of us; let’s just say it’s hovering around 94% of people last year were a target. We want to do everything we can to protect what really matters to us. The root chakra is your foundation, right? We want to protect that foundation and our energy and what matters to us. We want to communicate to our business that our IP, the digital assets that we create, our clients and our clients’ information, are really important and sacred, and that we will take the time and energy and investment to protect it.

I have a top seven list of things that all of us can do that make a huge, gigantic difference.

1. Passwords: The most common issue is people reusing passwords and reusing passwords that are not good passwords. We want to have a different and unique and not reused password for each of our systems and accounts.

2. Password Manager: Use a third-party password manager, not saving your passwords in the browser, ideally.

3. VPN: Use a VPN (virtual private network) when traveling or on public Wi-Fi.

4. Backups: Back up what matters to you. Understand the difference between syncing to the cloud versus backing up.

5. Software Updates: Update your software as needed—those security patches are important.

6. Antivirus: Use antivirus software, even on a Mac.

7. Awareness: Just being aware and proactive.

Password Manager Recommendations

Cinthia Varkevisser:

For Mac users, do you have a recommendation of which security to use? And you freaked me out with LastPass, right? If you could talk about those two recommendations.

Bobby Deetz:

For solopreneurs like us, I recommend Malwarebytes. It’s very easy to use, protects your Mac, and also has a VPN. For password managers, LastPass had a big breach and is no longer in the top 10. I like to recommend those staying in the top four or five. My current favorite is 1Password. I also like Bitwarden and Dashlane. 1Password is really good for organizing vaults and sharing with your team.

Closing

Michelle Walters:

Bobby, you did an amazing job of talking about very important security things without scaring me to death. Thank you. The information was amazing, great information.

Bobby Deetz:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate this opportunity, and it was really fun to talk with both of you. I want to tell you about my membership now, the Digital Deetz Success Club. It’s a monthly fee, and you get all kinds of things: you get to ask me little questions all month long, you get recordings to all my free webinars, special event pricing, workshop pricing, and my consultation hour cost is much cheaper. You can check that out on my website, digitaldeetz.com. You can also see where my free webinars are—every second Tuesday at 10am.

Michelle Walters:

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, Bobby. We really appreciate you.