From Toothpaste to Firewalls: How One Founder's Personal Hack Led to a Mission to Protect Small Businesses

Nicole Sain has never been afraid of hard problems. As a trained engineer turned wellness entrepreneur, she built TrnscndWellness™ from the ground up — a minority- and women-owned company headquartered in Chicago, IL, best known for Talk Toothpaste, a sensory-friendly, fluoride-free oral care brand she created for her autistic daughter. But a few years into running her business, Nicole encountered a different kind of challenge — one that no product formula or business plan could have prepared her for.

Her iPhone was hacked.

"When I contacted Apple, they told me that Apple ID accounts are typically compromised by people close to you," Nicole recalls. "That hit differently. It wasn't some faceless hacker across the world. It was personal."

It wasn't an isolated incident. Over time, Nicole experienced multiple targeted security attacks — the kind that small business owners rarely talk about publicly, but many quietly face. And as someone who thinks in systems, she started asking the same question she always does when something is broken: What's the fix?

The answer became Eight Shield — a cybersecurity company rooted in the same principles that drive TrnscndWellness: accessibility, intentionality, and making something complex feel manageable for everyday people.

The Small Business Blind Spot

Cybersecurity is one of the most underdiscussed vulnerabilities in the small business space. Founders are busy building products, managing teams, showing up on social media, and serving customers. Security feels like a big-company problem — something for enterprises with full IT departments and six-figure budgets.

But the data tells a different story. Small businesses are increasingly among the most targeted groups for cyberattacks, precisely because they're assumed to be underprepared. And when a breach happens — whether it's a compromised email account, a hijacked social media profile, or stolen customer data — the damage can be swift and devastating.

Nicole built Eight Shield with this reality in mind. Her Cybersecurity Foundation Checklist for small business owners isn't a dense technical document. It's a practical, founder-friendly framework designed to close the most common security gaps without requiring an IT team or a massive budget.

The Foundation Checklist: Where to Start

Nicole organizes her approach into three core areas every small business owner should address immediately.

1. System Security

The basics matter more than most people think. Nicole recommends ensuring that antivirus and anti-malware software (such as McAfee) is installed and kept up to date across all company devices. Equally important: using a VPN whenever accessing business accounts on public or open networks — a coffee shop, an airport, a hotel lobby. These are prime environments for data interception.

Beyond devices, cloud environments deserve specific attention. For businesses using Google Workspace, Nicole flags a few non-negotiable settings: using a managed domain for email (rather than a personal Gmail), enabling password expiration policies (she recommends every 60 days), and turning on multifactor authentication — but specifically through an authenticator app, not SMS. Text message verification, she notes, is more vulnerable to interception than most people realize.

2. AI Tool Security

This one surprises a lot of founders — but it's increasingly critical as AI tools become central to daily operations. Nicole points out that many default settings in popular AI platforms are configured to use your inputs to improve the model, which means sensitive business information you type into these tools may not stay private.

Her checklist addresses this directly. For ChatGPT users, she recommends navigating to Settings > Security to enable multifactor authentication via an authenticator app, and going to Settings > Data Controls to turn off "Improve the model for everyone." For Claude users, she advises turning off "Location Metadata" and "Help Improve Claude" under Settings > Privacy — and using Incognito Mode (the ghost icon in the upper right corner) when handling any sensitive business data.

"Most people don't even know these settings exist," Nicole says. "But once you know, it takes two minutes to fix."

3. Access Control

Passwords are the front door to your entire business — and most small businesses leave that door unlocked. Nicole's checklist emphasizes a few non-negotiable practices: enabling multifactor authentication (MFA) across social media accounts, email, and any critical business application; using only an authenticator app for MFA rather than SMS; and regularly rotating passwords.

For storing and managing passwords, she recommends a reputable password manager like Bitwarden or 1Password. These tools eliminate the temptation to reuse passwords across platforms — one of the most common entry points for attackers.

Engineering Thinking, Applied to Security

What makes Nicole's approach different from generic cybersecurity advice is the lens she brings to it. Engineers are trained to find root causes, not just symptoms. They look for the weakest link in a system. They design for failure.

"When my phone was hacked, I didn't just want to fix that problem," she explains. "I wanted to understand every point of vulnerability across my whole business — and I wanted to build something that other founders could actually use."

That instinct led her to map the security landscape from the ground up, identifying where small businesses are most exposed and what the highest-leverage interventions are. The result is a checklist that prioritizes action over perfection — because the goal isn't to build a fortress overnight. It's to eliminate the easiest points of entry that attackers rely on.

A Message to Fellow Founders

Women's History Month may be wrapping up, but the work Nicole Sain is doing is the kind that keeps going year-round. Building a business as a minority woman founder in Chicago. Creating products for communities that are too often overlooked. And now, sharing the hard-won lessons of her own security experience so other small business owners don't have to learn them the painful way.

Her advice to fellow founders is simple: don't wait for something to go wrong.

"Security isn't a luxury. It's not something you add later when you have more time or more money. Your data, your customers' data, your brand — all of it is worth protecting right now, at whatever stage you're in."

The Eight Shield Cybersecurity Foundation Checklist is available for small business owners looking to get started. Because the best security investment you can make is the one you make before you need it.

Nicole Sain is the founder of TrnscndWellness™ and Eight Shield, based in Chicago, IL. To learn more about Talk Toothpaste, visit talktoothpaste.com. For cybersecurity inquiries, stay tuned!