In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry sits down with Kelo Makelele, an Army Veteran and Direct of Operations at RedTrace Technologies since 2018. Kelo Makelele successfully transitioned from IT and Cyber Operations in the Army to a cyber security career in the private sector. We delve into the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on modern businesses and how it’s shaping the future. Kelo also discusses his decision to venture into entrepreneurship and the factors that influenced his choice.
Drawing from his military background, Kelo talks about the essential leadership qualities that have helped him succeed in both his military and civilian careers. Watch the full episode to hear Kelo’s inspiring story and gain valuable knowledge on navigating the intersection of military experience and entrepreneurship.
I can continue to work for someone else, or I can take a chance on myself. If it doesn’t work, I can always go back and be a W2 employee somewhere else. What I didn’t want to have was regrets. I didn’t want to look back in five, ten, 20 years and say, what if?
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today’s guest is Kelo Makelele. Kelo started off in cybersecurity in the army and now runs his own cybersecurity in the private sector. Today, we’re going to talk about how he got to that point from deciding that he was going to be a cybersecurity consultant or employee to being a cybersecurity CEO. And, of course, what he learned along the way from the military and his entrepreneurial journey. Welcome to the show, Kelo.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure.
Tell me a little bit about in the army, you’re doing cybersecurity, and we know that is a field in which they want to keep you as long as they can. And then when you get out, private sector loves you.
Yeah.
And so what happened when you got out of the army?
My last duty assignment was at Fort Meade, Maryland, which is the home of the National Security Agency, NSA and United States Cyber Command, where I spent time at both. So when it was time for me to get out, I was a little nervous. And to be honest, I didn’t know, you know, who was going to hire me, what I was going to do. But then I spoke to, you know, a couple of other service members who had transitioned, you know, prior to myself, and sort of allayed my concerns and fears. So the transition was relatively smooth. I transitioned out on a Thursday, and on a Monday I was back in that same office as opposed to being in, in uniform. I was in civilian attire. So it went well for me.
So were you a DA civilian then?
No, no, no.
So just a complete.
Yeah, I was a contractor with. Can I say the company’s name? Yeah, Booz Allen Hamilton once I initially got out. And I applied for a federal position, my intent was I was going to roll over my military time, convert that to a federal civilian service. And, you know, do another 25 years and, you know, call it a day. But as I was waiting for a federal position, you know, the green light to come in, I was contracting. And so they said it was going to take about 12 months, 12 to 14 months for it to come through, but it ended up coming in four. And so at that time, I didn’t want to quit because I just started, you know, with Booz. So I said, I’ll give it at least a year and then, you know, I’ll transition over. But then once I got into the, you know, the contracting space, I actually enjoyed it. I enjoyed the flexibility, and the different projects I was able to support.
And so I said, hey, I’ll just I’ll ride this for a while.
Some of us, you know, we become entrepreneurial because we’re unemployable. Right? That’s just we just don’t fit into that box. But you, you’re doing well, and you’ve got a great life and you’re happy. Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur and start your own cybersecurity company?
Okay, so, once I, retired and went over to Booz, a little while after that, I was recruited over to PwC, one of the large consulting firms, one of the big four firms, and I was supporting cyber operations for that company. I was loving it. I was loving it. But if anyone who’s ever worked in that space, you know, it’s long hours, you know, you’re on a plane all the time. The demands are incessant. And I got to a point where I figured, hey, if I’m working this hard for someone else, I could be doing it for myself. And I’ve seen, I saw other individuals, other companies that I would say that weren’t as industrious and wasn’t as hard working or even talented. I said, you know, if they can do it and they’re successful, why can’t I? You know, I have the drive, the mental capacity, and the technical acumen to do it.
So I said, let me take a chance on myself. And so that’s what I did.
And the name of your company now is what?
Redtrace Technologies.
And so you founded Redtrace, what, six years ago?
Yeah. Back in 2018.
Okay. So here’s an interesting question where you hang out with a lot of Veterans, we hang with a lot of Veterans who own businesses and companies. And you know, we think about in the military and the cybersecurity was taken care of. I mean, you had to do the silly annual cybersecurity training, remember, with the same stuff year after year, but it was all taken care of for you. I mean, yeah, you couldn’t use the thumb drive anymore. And there were, you know, the things changed, but we didn’t really think too much about it. And then, you know, you become a small business owner, and you realize, wow, like, if I want to do business with bigger businesses, there’s a lot of cybersecurity requirements I have to meet. There’s a lot of threats out there. So to the Veterans out there who have started businesses, what do they need to be aware of in terms of base level? What do they need for cybersecurity?
So think about your target market and who you’re working with. If there are any type of laws or compliance requirements that are for that industry. Like if you work in healthcare, you know, you have the HIPAA compliance. In the legal field there’s, you know, several guidelines and regulations. So if that’s an industry that you’re in, be aware of those rules and guidelines. And then make sure that you’re compliant. If you’re looking to do work with the federal government there’s things like NIST 853, NIST 171, CMC things like that, that you would need to be concerned about.
And today we just heard from a panel on AI. And while there seems to be a ton of opportunity there and both internal and external operations, I mean, the client experience opportunity, the sales opportunity, the marketing opportunity, and then just internally using AI to train your team and using AI to become more efficient. You know, I think in the legal industry, those new associates may become obsolete because if they can do B-level work, that senior partner can look at it and say, well, wait a minute, if AI can do the same work, I can get it done at a lot less cost and get it done a lot faster than having a person do it. So unless that person is excellent at what they do, I probably don’t need them. And I see that coming. But from your perspective, what are the threats? I mean, if those capabilities are coming, I got to imagine that the ability to hack and the ability for deep fakes and all these things coming through AI, I mean, it’s got to be a pretty scary world. So what do you see as the big threats coming?
Yeah. So for us, you know, AI is an enabler and a force multiplier. So there’s still going to need a human in the loop. It wouldn’t just turn over all the different job functions over to AI. But what it does do is that it frees up the talent that you have to work on, I guess higher level, higher order type of tasks. So even the most menial tasks that may have taken a skilled operator a couple of hours to do, AI can do it faster, but you still need a human to review it. One who’s knowledgeable in that space and to correct it because it’s not perfect, but it is quite, quite helpful.
In your role in cybersecurity, are you finding ways to become more efficient to use AI in cybersecurity?
Yeah. So both from a technical perspective and also from a business leadership perspective. So we’re using it to review contracts to review code. There’s multiple use cases for it. And so yeah we’re actually heavily leveraging it.
So I want to shift gears and just go into, you know, six years into your entrepreneurial journey. Are you glad you did it?
Yes. And so when I started the company I was at a point of, I would say, an inflection point in my career. I can continue to work for someone else or I can take a chance on myself. And, you know, if it doesn’t work and I can always go back and be a W2 employee somewhere else. And so what I didn’t want to have was regrets. I didn’t want to look back in five, ten, 20 years and say, what if? What if I had taken a chance on myself? Where could I be? Where could my family be? I could have created generational wealth. I could have had more freedom. You know, as far as time, buying back my own time to do the pleasurable things that I’m interested and interests. And so looking back at it, yes, the amount of time that I put in, you know, working nights, weekends, you know, losing well, not taking a vacation and losing time, you know, with the kids.
You know, I looked at that and I experienced that when I was in the military as well. So it wasn’t foreign to me. And so I said, I can do this. But as I look back now, six years, I have a bit more freedom. So, you know, the organization has matured. We have the proper team members in place, leadership in place. And so now I can actually focus on running the business and operating the business versus working in the business and being able to do things that a CEO should be focused on and pulling those levers and growing the organization.
And you think about it now you have a team of 50 and it’s a little bit you have that stability. But if we would go back to the beginning, you were also in a pretty good position. I mean, there are people who go off and they’re going to start some store and sell some goods. But for you, had you failed, you’re still in high demand. I mean, you would have found a job immediately.
Yeah.
So it’s interesting, though, that you still decided that you took the risk and you decided to build that bigger, better future for your family. And now, as you continue to grow and figure out what unique abilities you want to stay in, and like you said, you know, don’t worry about the day to day because you’re growing the company. What is the most important thing that you do in your company today?
Right now I would say that strategic messaging, making sure I’m checking in with the leadership and the team members doing what we used to call battlefield circulation, just going around to the different contract sites and different team sites and the offices. So, you know, we’re based in the DC metropolitan area, but we have a have a similarly sized office down in Norfolk, Virginia, near one of our anchor clients, also a satellite office down in Huntsville, Alabama. And I’m originally here from the New York City area, and we’re expanding our commercial line of business and so we’re opening an office here. It’s a very small one, but here in the New York City area. But we also have team members across the country. We have team members in Colorado, Georgia, California, Texas, and so ensuring and clients spread across those different jurisdictions as well. So ensuring that, you know, staying connected with a geographically dispersed team. So it requires me to hop on planes, hop on trains, you know, stay connected, flying them into headquarters so they can meet other parts of the organization and conduct team building type activities and also staying connected with our clients.
Now you generally do what I would consider to be large contracts. And so my question to you is, do you worry about filling that sales pipeline in commercial, or is it like a foregone like, hey, we got we got you know, this is cybersecurity. Everybody wants some. How does that or do you worry about the marketing and sales aspect or not?
Yes. Yes, definitely. It never, complacent, you know, always hungry, always continually growing because you never know what could happen from either any type of geopolitical issues to the economy that could disrupt our business. So we’re trying to stay diversified and ensure that we have balance. So as I mentioned, you know, we started in the GovCon space. And then, you know, we were asked by some individuals who had left the intelligence community and went to industry to come over and support them. And so that’s how we got our foot into the commercial space and, you know, landed our first couple of fortune 50 clients and so continued to grow there. But now we’ve become more intentional in our growth on the commercial side. So we’ve hired, you know, a VP of commercial sales, and he’s focused on growing that. And, you know, I’m lending my expertise and support and helping him, you know, grow that book of business as well.
So as I mentioned, we support GovCon. That’s where we got our start, you know, three letter organizations. We support several fortune 50 clients. And we also support SMB, small and medium sized businesses with similar services, but they’re tailored for the unique needs of our, those specific clients.
Wow. And you’ve taken that leadership and said, hey, I’m going to build this team and we’re going to build to serve the clients. And you’ve done that extremely well. And so I want to take you to the after-action review, the great leadership and the not-so-great leadership. And it can be in the private sector. It can be in the military. But I’d love for you to give those three great examples of leadership that you have learned from and that you still use today.
All right. So one was direct and frequent communication. You know, I use the term troops, but not just military, but also our team members. Just telling it like it is even the bad news or the tough information, relaying it and providing frequent updates and direct communication and maintaining an open-door policy. So there are three leaders, two in the military and one in the civilian side that espoused those that principal. And I leveraged that to this day. I say I struggle with it, but I’m still always trying to improve. And, you know, I revert back and remember those instances. And I tried to emulate that in my communication style. Another positive leadership attributes, being personable and humanistic. Treating each team member as a human, understanding that they have a life. They may have a spouse or significant other, children and other interests outside of work. So not just treating them like a number or a machine and trying to extract, you know, all the resources, you know, out of them and resources being time, but also understanding that they have a life outside of work and trying to support that and also support them in whatever their personal goals are, be it, you know, educational, be it professional, be it athletic or spiritual. And so, maintaining those as well.
Great and now the bad. What are some of the bad leadership that you do not want to emulate, or you don’t ever want to see in your company?
Yeah. Screaming at team members. There’s so the oh my goodness. So a adage I like to say is that, you know, no longer in the military anymore. You know, there’s no bullets flying. And it’s not a life-or-death situation except for in some cases we’re dealing with, you know, utilities for power, water, you know, healthcare. But for the most part, it’s not a life-or-death situation. There’s no need to scream at team members. So we do not tolerate that in any type of toxic leadership from senior, from our senior leaders to our middle managers. We’re not going to tolerate and stand for that. Another one is not giving credit to the team members. There’s some leaders that will take credit for anything that’s positive that’s done within the organization. And I did this. I did that. But not giving credit to the team members who actually put in that, that the yeoman’s work.
OERs. Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Officer evaluation reports in the Army, I did this.
Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, really look to those leaders, who praise their team members who help the organization achieve those strategic goals.
And then finally, do you have one more?
There’s a lot but another one that sticks out. I would say is, incompetency. Incompetence. So leaders who don’t understand. Not saying that being a specialist, but don’t understand the task that they’re asking their team members to perform. You don’t have to be a subject matter expert in it, but to have some sort of appreciation for the task that you’re assigning to your team members and, you know, and checking in with them and showing appreciation for their efforts. And so if you don’t do that, there are leaders who don’t, or who look down upon, you know, certain, you know, staff team members. I try to say hello to everyone in our office when I’m walking in, in the building, you know, from the individuals who are cleaning the windows, taking out the trash, doing everything. When I started the company I was doing it.
Right.
So I understand, and pretty much every task or job that’s in the company to this day, I at some point performed.
Leadership by example.
Yeah.
Wow. Well, that, you know, that’s something that I’ve come up against too, where you get people who have the general knowledge, but they really don’t understand what it takes. And why isn’t this done? Well because it takes eight hours to do it. Not it doesn’t get done in an hour. And we have to have that conversation with clients like this is not you push a button and it’s done. This is going to take a long time. And I’m sure you have the same conversation. They want it right here, right now. Like, whoa, this is not out of the box ready, we have to build this. That’s going to take some time. And I totally get that. Well, Kelo, thank you so much for your time today. I want to make sure we get up to the reception here. We’re in downtown New York City, and we want to be able to see the sky and the lights. So if you could tell us how can Veterans learn more about you or your company?
You can go to our website, www.redtracetech.com. That’s r e d t r a c e t e c h.com. Also, you can look me up on LinkedIn. My name is Kelo Makelele. That’s K e l o. Last name is Makelele. M a k e l e l e. Reach out and I’ll respond.
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting Veteran leadership in business, strengthening the Veteran community, and getting Veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching @VeteranLed on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.
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