What Happened When Our Live Event Got Hacked

Responding instead of reacting gets tested hardest when the stakes are highest, and that is exactly what happened to Reignite Resilience hosts Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass. In Part 2 of this two part coffee talk episode, Natalie and Pam close out their Spain and Morocco travel stories, then walk through the moment their own Reignite Live success summit got hacked mid session, live, in front of a room full of attendees.

The episode opens with the finish of the paella story from Part 1: eating seafood out of to go containers while sprinting to board a ferry to Morocco, followed by a second sprint back through a storm to catch the return boat. Natalie and Pam use both stories to make the same point they made in Part 1: the memories worth keeping are usually the ones that went wrong first.

The real center of this episode is what happened on day one of their recent success summit. Mid conversation with a sponsor about nervous system regulation, a hacker broke into the event's Zoom meeting and put explicit content on screen in front of the entire room. Natalie walks through her real time response: shutting the meeting down in seconds, sending a new meeting link to the full guest list during an extended lunch break, and getting a security briefing from one of their own speakers before day one resumed. Pam and Natalie compare this to a similar incident that happened to a friend during her own book launch event, where the outcome was far worse because no one on her team knew how to respond quickly. The episode closes with an announcement: Reignite Live season two is set for January 22, 2027, in Loveland, Colorado.

In This Episode:

• How Natalie and Pam responded when their success summit got hacked mid session
• The difference between a three second response and a freeze response, using a friend's book launch as the contrast
• Why taking ownership of the incident mattered more than explaining how it happened
• How the hosts rebuilt attendee trust well enough that people came back for day two
• Why unprotected Zoom meetings are still getting hacked in 2026
• Details on Reignite Live season two, coming January 22, 2027 in Loveland, Colorado

The Quiet Gift: A Journey of Self Worth and Resilience is now available for download as an audible.  Check it out!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, Natalie Davis and Pamela Kat.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Knowing that it takes like an hour to cook.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

And if you're in Spain visiting, if you're visiting Spain, not for our friends that live there, but if you ever visit Spain, let's let me just let you know. If you're going to any restaurant, it doesn't care, matter. Yeah. Um, or anyone's home for that matter. And on the menu is paella. Just know that they are making it in the moment. They are making it scratch. From scratch. Yes. So the rice, raw. It's gotta be cooked. The seafood, I'm pretty sure they went and caught it.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

I think it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Um to make it for us.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah. And so, yeah, so we got it. And I don't know how much time we had, but I know we were you were getting text messages.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Like, yes, we had zero time.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

They're boarding. Yes. And when they bring the paella in the beautiful presentation to the table, and we're like, can we get that in to go containers? Box it. You would have thought we had said, can we have steal your baby, your first?

SPEAKER_02 1:54

We might as well have like thrown it out on the on the ground. They they the the side eye that we got, like the audacity, we just poured into this paella, and now you want me to put it into a to-go container. Great, sure, whatever. And what literally there was when I say that we had no time, we were boarding and shoveling paella into our pie holes at the same time. In the line.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yeah. And people were looking at us, and we each had this these huge plastic containers with giant prawns like the size of our face, like sitting on top of it. Like that's gonna be easy to eat in a container where you're holding a fork in one hand and the comparison. Oh my gosh. But you know what we did? We laughed. Left. Absolutely. Um, the other people that had stayed behind to wait in line were not as did not.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

No, that's okay. You know what? That's not their journey. That's fine. Also, the people in line around us that had to smell paella as we were eating it, not as happy with us. We don't care.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

We don't even care because the experience was and memorable.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Now, if you ask me, like, what else did I eat during those 10 days that we were there? I have no idea. I mean, I know that we had some wine, we had some tapas, but the paella situation, I know exactly when I had paella. Oh. I also remember exactly when I had churros. So it's or yes, in Madrid.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

That was absolutely fantastic. The night that we decided to stay up all night. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

The things when life lifes, then you and you turn, what is it, turning lemons in the lemonade or a lemon drop martini, whatever it is that you your preferences.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Um well, it's it's funny because we typically as humans we remember the negative things that happen. Yeah. And so I think we have just chosen to remember the negative things that happened and make fun, like make them fun.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Make light of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

100%. Make light of it. Because it goes back to Pam's shirt. Did you die? Did you did you die? And I know it's inconsiderate, but we didn't.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

We didn't end this, we didn't end this incident. And how many, and how many people can say that they have eaten paella out of a to-go container in a line to get on a ferry to go to Morocco?

SPEAKER_02 4:14

If you have, if you have, please reach out to us. We want to hear your story because it's probably just as good. We will invite you to come on and share your story with us. Please do. Exactly. Exactly. That's uh yeah, those are those are the good ones. That's and that's what I say, like that circle that you get yourself into, that loop that you get yourself into, it can be positive and negative, right? Like you can get into that reactionary state for positive things. Um, but as long as you're not like just continuing to create false narratives that are not the actual event. We know the event was we were going to Morocco and we had paella, and we probably made a poor decision in ordering paella that took an hour and a half and we only had in 45 minutes to get. I mean, that was the old the only reason that we were able to make the ferry is because it was late.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

There was a delay in the ferry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

100%. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

We would not have been.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Yeah. No. And I would say coming back from Morocco, the same thing because a storm was brewing, and our guide, Magic, was like, oh no, we can wait, we can wait. And we be we were running, and I know sprinting. Sprinting.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

And I know sprinting through to get onto the boat. We were those people where everyone's already on the ferry and they're watching the three people run down. Oh, the memories. Did we die? No. No. Definitely did not. We did not. We did not. Oh my gosh. But we also had like recently we had Life throw us a Kerbal. Potentially. They could have like taken us awry. Um, you all heard, if you haven't listened to prior episode about our mid-year uh success summit, go back and listen to those um episodes. But uh Pam and I shared like just how amazing um that two-day experience was and all the aha's and takeaways and the learning and the ability to like create this fabulous circle for learners, adult learners, adult professionals, high achievers to come together and be vulnerable and share. What we didn't share in that recap is that we had an incident that like got thrown our way on day one, the first day. We didn't even make it into lunch break, y'all, before like things started to fall apart. No, they didn't fall apart. There was an incident, nothing fell apart. Um, is yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

We had an inmission. Exactly. Yeah, that was it.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Um, so uh, you know, here we are in frickin' 2026, which I didn't realize that people were still taking their time to um what did we hear? One of our speakers, uh, Zoom Zoom bot? Zoom bomb for people to Zoom bomb anymore, which is where, you know, a hacker will come in and take over your meeting, um, like kind of take control of all of your controls, start to do screen shares under different attendees' names, things of that nature. I've been a part of those meetings at mass scale. Like I've been in a meeting with over 400 people, and there was a hacker that came in. Well, it happened to us. So I can check that box. Uh, it happened, and we are like in the swing of a beautiful first day. Um, presenters that are sharing, and we are taking a moment to sit down and visit with one of our sponsors. And we are talking about the importance of regulating your nervous system, how it is helpful when you are in experiences that are outside of your control or where there's a lot of energy and the impact of a dysregulated nervous system and how it leads to burnout and how we see the impact in the workplace. Just a fabulous discussion with our amazing sponsor. Yeah. And lo and behold, like in the background, this is where you get to become a duck, right? So um I am maintaining the meeting controls and um I'm also having the conversation with the sponsor. And as we're having this discussion about the importance of regulating your nervous system, I can I keep getting these requests to start recording the meeting. And I continue to decline them. And so it's like request to record, no. So and so is requesting to record. No. And so, and it's I'm checking the box. Remember my answer, no, right? Like I'm checking it, like, no, they cannot, and no, they cannot in the future, right? Like I'm like, no, they may not, no, they may not in the future. Don't know. And so, um, and we're going through, and and some instances had happened while we were doing a uh laser coaching session just prior to this segment. And I just dismissed it. I was like, okay, people are being weird. Yeah, people log on from multiple multiple devices all the time. So I saw multiple people, you know, like multiple devices. Sometimes people will, you know, get home and they'll move it from their phone into their tablet or their laptop. And so there's a little bit of overlap. I didn't think anything about it. Well, then as we are having this conversation with a sponsor, um, and I'm saying no to the request to record the meeting, and then all of a sudden the screen turns blue, and it says our sponsor is Wade, is is going to share her screen. And I saw her eyes get big as that popped up. And she's looking at the screen and she's like, no, I'm not. And then I'm like, in my mind, I knew immediately. I was like, we are getting hacked right now. Like this meeting is about to get hacked. And then it was like um a blank screen of that she was gonna share her screen, a pornographic screen pops up. Yeah, and in that moment, it's just like, what in the world is actually happening? Right? For me, there are two things that I can do very, very quickly. One, I will shut a meeting down. And it is pretty close to the same reaction that you'd have if you were gonna throw your computer across the room because that was my very first instinct is I want to throw my computer across the room. Like, make it stop. What is happening? Instead, I shut the meeting down. I was like, meeting ended. We're done. We're done here. Like you're not hijacking.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

What just happened? I think I was probably still covering my eyes because when the image came up, I was like, oh my God.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

No, I shut it down. You're like, you're like sitting there with your eyes closed and like no one's there. We've all left the room. I open, I'm like, oh thank goodness, she closed it. Yeah, meeting, meeting ended, right? And then it's like, okay, here I am. That is where you're reacting, right? Like I had to react in that moment because there's no time to respond. And I guess you can say it's a response, but there's no time to truly respond. Later's reaction, and what is my reaction going to be? We're shutting the whole thing down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

And then we just jumped on a card.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

As I'm shutting the whole thing down, now I'm like, how are we going to get all these people back into a meeting? Because for me personally, my narrative, the story that I started to create was there's no way we're gonna get everybody back. Because if it was me attending another conference, I'm not coming back, right? Like I've I've already um spent a few hours with you today. I'm just gonna go have lunch. I'll come back tomorrow, right? And I in my mind, I'm like, we're gonna lose half of our people. Like, this is not going to be a good thing. And so, I mean, you talk about uh the timing, it probably could not have been better timing. It was an unfortunate incident, but we were leading into a lunch break anyway. So take a longer lunch, we're gonna set up a new meeting space, send out a mass email to everyone that registered for the event, minus the hacker, to let them know that we had a new meeting space and a new location. And um, in that same time, I had an opportunity to speak with one of our speakers who had her security team member on that was like, okay, here are the steps that you need to take for your Zoom call to make sure that they're protected and this, that, and what have you. And then uh uh went into detail in terms of like how it happens, which I'm grateful that that they were able to do so. I don't care how it happens, I don't care why you're spending your Saturday morning, afternoon, or evening hacking into Zoom calls in 2026, like that ship has sailed. Come on, let's let's find something else to do with our time.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Yeah, go do something.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Because what's the point? That was my biggest thing was the point.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

The reaction they wanted to record the reaction probably of everybody on the call.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Exactly. Exactly. And you know what? That's unfortunate because I didn't give them time. I mean, I'm talking so I I so I said that there are two things that I can do quickly.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Seconds.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

I will shut a meeting down so fast that you can't even blink straight.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

And the second thing that I will do, um, if we are live in person and there is something that is going to be a memory that makes me laugh forever, my camera will be up and recording before you can even think straight. Like I am either recording or shutting it down in the same breath. Like it just happens that quickly. Um, and so I shut it down. But again, like coming out of that, we could have just said, you know what, summit's over. We thank you guys for coming. We appreciate you spending time with us. We're done.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

We didn't.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

But we didn't.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

We responded. It's like, okay, let's get everybody back together. Um, and I think the other big piece of it that was really important for us was like taking ownership for it, right? Like, because here we were creating this space. We're bringing our community together. We're talking about the importance of um like regulating your nervous system and responding to high stress situations. And then we had the opportunity to live it in the moment. Like as we were talking about it, we had the opportunity to exercise it. And so mass email went out, changing of the rooms went out, people were instructed on how they were gonna get into the new space. We reconvened after lunch, and we were able to recreate our safe space because that could have triggered many people. We were able to recreate that safe space and um continue on with the the first day of um content, which I thought was super valuable. And then the other piece was that we still had folks that came back for day two. They trusted us. Absolutely. And I think that's huge. How you respond um when people are watching you is going to definitely influence if they can trust you in leading them moving forward. Um, and so I'm grateful to all of our participants that came because they did entrust us with that. So that's that's huge.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

And I think um changing the order a little bit because we had a session that we didn't get to do before lunch because of this event, but we decided to push that to the next day so that we could get back with our sponsor who took us through an activity for regulating your nervous system, which I'm like, I mean, people on the outside might have said, Did you guys plan that? Like to get our our you know, our nervous systems all like ramped up so that you could then like show us how to go through it? Because I know what we did.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

So it ended up we did, right? Completely outside of our control. And we could have, we could have reacted in a different way. And in instead, we we took the things that we talk about, like the things that we talk about on the show. I always, you know, mention in in episodes where we have guests that come on and I'm like, oh my gosh, I had so many nuggets, I had so many gems, some things that we've taken away, things that I apply to my life. This is real, y'all. Like I'm these are things that we are truly applying to our lives because it well, I hit I'm gonna make it an I statement because that's important. For me, learning these things and having the ability to put them into practice just instills the fact that I am embodying them, right? Not just simply reading it or or learning about it or talking to a guest just to have them on in a filled space. Um, our intention is to continue to share value with our community. And Pam and I are part of that community too. So um, it was just nice to see it. Did we need it? Probably no, but you know what? It was in a contained space and we did it collectively as a group. It's probably better than like crap coming at us when we're on our own and not in a contained space where we're supported by one another.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think to your point, I think because of us doing this podcast as long as we've done it, it has it, it's had to, and it has impacted how we respond to adversity that we face in our life. And I am not, and I'm this is an I statement, but I'm sure you'd agree. I'm not the same person I was when we recorded our first episode in Mexico. No, totally person, and a lot of it is because of the tools and the tricks and the all the wonderful things our guests and what we've learned over the the years, plural.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Exactly. So I love it, which is amazing, which is a good thing. Yeah, and if y'all are new here, this is the first episode that you've listened to. Go back and listen to some of the older episodes. There's a ton for you to choose from. We've talked about so many different adversities. We and our guests have covered so many different adversities and um ways to strengthen resiliency in your life, both personal, professional, and within your community. And community is a big piece. And so listen to some of those prior episodes. There's a there are a lot of nuggets out there for you to pull from.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Because, you know, at the end of the day, resilience isn't about powering through, it's about rising differently. And exactly every everything that happens is a lesson for the next part of our life. And I believe that everything that we go through is making the path easier down the road. A hundred percent. Rali wouldn't have handled that incident happening the same three years ago or three years. Exactly. So, you know, exactly. Up to this, and so you exactly prior and the meeting.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Done. We're done. End. And I know exactly what we're gonna do here. Right? Because then again, like the whole narrative starts. It's like, well, where did this come from? What did this happen? Why did this happen? It was it was not, I mean, it was again, and then lessons learned, right? It was totally not a security breach. We had a Zoom meeting that was open, it wasn't password protected, you didn't have to authenticate yourself to get into the meeting. We just assumed good people would want to join us.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

But apparently everyone wants to join us, but maybe you know honored that we're like significant enough that somebody asked us. Hackworthy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Maybe we put that in our bio.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

We are hackworthy.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Hackworthy. Actually, no, thank you. I'm done. No, I'm not. I'm not. I've it's already done. I don't want to put that out there. Um I do find it interesting though that um coming out of that weekend, um, a good friend of mine, she shared that she was doing a book launch a year ago to the date. Um, and on that book launch, she had uh she created an entire event similar to our success summit, full day event, multiple speakers lined up. Um, and she had somebody that was working the back end uh for her Zoom meeting, and she too did not have it password protected. There were a couple hundred people that were on that call. Uh, and she and it was for the launch of her book, the first thing, like she poured herself into this book and hackers took over, and there was pornography playing on the screen. She was not the host of the meeting, so she didn't have control over it. Her assistant was host, and the assistant didn't know what to do, right? So when we talk about like that, are we responding? Are we reacting? It's fight, flight, freeze, or fun, right? Yep. And so assisted didn't know what to do. They couldn't communicate to each other because the hackers were in control of everything. And so what was less than three seconds experience for us in the success summit was a much longer experience for my friend. And she was sharing how this was supposed to be like such a beautiful, momentous occasion of, you know, I've poured into this book and I'm launching it, and I have all of these people that have helped me and guide me over the year, guided me over the years to create this book. Those are the same people that had to like witness her in this space of like getting hacked and not having control of the space. And and she remembers it a year later. Um, I will remember this a year later, but it it again, I think because of the practices that we've been introduced to on this show and in our lives. Um, and just spoiler alert, when we get introduced to new practices in our lives, we typically bring those people on as guests. So you guys get to hear them. Um, yeah, right? Like it's whenever we, whenever Pam and I meet somebody that we're like, you're amazing. Do you want to come on the show? And then that you all get to hear it too. And so I think because of these practices that we've been able to incorporate in our lives and share with all of you over the years has helped us. Not, you know, not judging how other people respond or react, but I definitely think uh had this happened to us three years ago, uh I would have I would have frozen.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

I would have been And we just said, All right, we're not doing an event again. That was And I'm never doing it again.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Exactly. But you know what? That's not the case. So we're like, all right, what's next? Exactly. Exactly. Um, which leads us to if it I mean, just get sick of hearing it right now because we're gonna talk about it every episode. Um, January 22nd, 2027. We are gonna have Reignite Live season two in Loveland, Colorado at Casa Sagrada, full day event, first full moon of the year. We are lining up the speakers, y'all, and it is going to be amazing. Um, I am truly excited about um our reignite live that's coming up in January. We'll start to have information. I think there's only a save the date that's out there right now. So um don't Register yet, uh, but register soon because you'll want to hear about the uh the fabulous lineup of speakers that we have, the um activities and events that we have scheduled for the day. Um, really gonna be a fabulous, beautiful way to jumpstart your 2027 to make sure that you see success next year.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

So we did a fun strategy meeting yesterday, and the juices were just flowing. And so we've we've come up with something that's um it's gonna be crazy good. So you're not gonna want to miss it. You're gonna want to miss it to Colorado.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Exactly. You just come to Colorado. It just come anyway. It's a beautiful time of year. It it'll be lovely. Um fly, drive, probably fly, but what however, just make your way here.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Horseback, bicycle, snowshoe, ski.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

I was gonna say, snowshoe, maybe. I don't know if you want to bike it to Colorado in January, but we have the snow tires for bikes now.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

So, you know, there's you know, I guess dog sled, uh snowmobile. There's snow tires for bicycles. Oh, yeah, that's a big thing. That's a big thing. The up on the they literally ski the ski mountains or the bike the ski mountains in the snow.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

They bike the ski mountains. So so here's the reason that that's not on my radar. You'd have to have some type of desire to do something like that for that to be.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

I don't have a desire to do it. Like, I don't want anyone to think that I'm like, you know, some this person that's gonna go right up. She's pims out here doing parkour. Yeah. I don't like the cold. So there's no, you have no, there's no chance you're gonna find me doing that ever. No, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

I was gonna say, I was like, you're doing like parkour stuff. Like, I'm not doing that. Doesn't even exist in my reality. But you know what? Okay, put your put your snow tires on your bicycle. Yeah, whatever it takes, y'all just come out out to see us.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Oh my gosh, it is absolutely awesome.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Anywho, by y'all, what have how do you respond? How do you respond when life throws the ish your way? That's that's the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

I think it's just being aware of okay, how did my body just respond? Because that's instantaneous. We have no control over it. And then what's the story we now create because the judgment that we've got? And then what are you gonna do to do a pattern interrupt so that you don't get into the confirmation loop of your brain seeking out things to validate this judgment, the story you've created, because then you're in this like this belief loop that's probably not very positive.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

And we go over and over again. Over again.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

So love it. Love it. There it is. That's it. That I mean, here, listen, there's there's always some stuff that's happening uh in our world. Uh, make sure that you head on over to Regnetresilience.com to find out what that stuff is. Um, make sure you subscribe to our Think Letter and follow us on your favorite streaming platform. And if you know of somebody that would enjoy this episode, pass this on to them. We'd love for you to continue to help us in growing our community. All right, until next time, we'll see y'all soon. Bye, everyone.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas to fuel the flames of passion. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes, and of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.