Channel Security Secrets

Lou: 00:01

Welcome to Channel Security Secrets. I'm Lou Raban. On this show, we expose the untold secrets and critical insights from the people shaping the future of cybersecurity sales in the trusted adviser channel. If you're looking to up your game around selling security, stick around. Channel Security Secrets is brought to you by Cyber Defense Group on a mission to shift cybersecurity from reactive to resilient.

Lou: 00:38

We have an esteemed guest on the show today. He's a master of scalable growth and a recognized channel visionary with over twenty five years of experience running technology companies. He was named one of Channel Future's channel influencers of the year. He has successfully led five, count them, five company exits through high impact acquisitions and propelled companies to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Currently, the CEO at Amplyx, Dan Gill, welcome to the show.

Dan: 01:06

Thank you, Lou. Well, that was that was way too kind. I feel like I should have some walk up music or something behind me. Yeah.

Lou: 01:13

We would need to get some. That's a good, recommendation.

Dan: 01:16

I appreciate it. You took five years off my age by saying 25 instead of 30, so thank you.

Lou: 01:20

Oh, well, that's awesome. We'll have to correct that or just take it.

Dan: 01:24

No. No. I like I like it. That's good.

Lou: 01:26

Yeah. I mean, it let it's a it's a great pleasure to have you here because of your experience. So, you know, just to jump right into it, what's the biggest secret to to your success in the channel?

Dan: 01:39

Yeah. So I thinking of Amplex and myself, and I'll focus a little bit on security too because obviously, you know, that's your sweet spot and and something you care about and topic. There's there's four things that really come to mind around that. I think first and foremost is being customer centric, always. That is something we live and die by every day.

Dan: 02:04

I always tell people don't get lost in the mess of commission rates and spiffs and all the stuff that goes into this. It's really you find the right solution from your customer, regardless of how it impacts you financially. And so the best people in our business grow through referrals and earning the right to help their customers with multiple technology areas and solution needs. And so you only do that by being customer centric. So that's number one.

Dan: 02:36

Two is really think of the world in terms of the problems you solve and the outcomes you help deliver. With security, you're not selling something. You're helping a business operate and scale securely while protecting the most critical assets. You need to think that way and you need to speak that language when you're talking to decision makers in that realm. That's not just security.

Dan: 03:00

That's any significant technology area, cloud, CX, what have you. Next, I think is really about investing in the expertise that you need to have these conversations and then to be honest about your limitations. So when I talk to the team, credibility is paramount in advising on security solutions. And so you've got to have some expertise on your team. You need to train folks and get them access to training, and you should not wade into areas where you lack credible knowledge.

Dan: 03:34

The way I think of it is the stakes around security are so high for our customers. We need to be transparent about what we're good at and then when we need to refer them to someone else who might be better suited to help them. And you have to be honest with yourself around that stuff to do it right.

Lou: 03:50

Yeah. I sorry. Just to, like, jump in on that. That's really interesting because I think that's one of the problems in the channel right now with selling security because they're afraid without having the expertise that they can't be credible. So how do you, you know, address that?

Dan: 04:08

Yeah. So, I mean, there's multiple avenues. Right? Like, I I think trusted advisers either invest in it directly, bring folks into the organization like we have with and I know you've experienced working with Dan and Jeff Lieberman and others in our company. We made a direct investment.

Dan: 04:24

I think that's the best path to this because it's important as an advisor that you own those strategic conversations and you're not outsourcing the strategic conversation to some other things like relying on someone from a TSD to be your security expert. There's great ones. I think you had Stefan on an episode or Will from Avant, he's phenomenal. Telarus is great folks. But I think it's important as a trusted advisor to have that expertise in house so that you're owning that conversation.

Dan: 05:00

So that's first, invest yourself. The other is there are great people at the TAs. There are consultative vendors, but there's less of those in the portfolios we have access You know, there's not a lot of you in the portfolio. Right?

Lou: 05:16

Thankfully. Right?

Dan: 05:18

And yeah. No. It's good for you.

Lou: 05:19

For us.

Dan: 05:19

Yeah. Aircity is good for you. And so so it's hard to rely on the vendors. Like, when you rely on a provider of MDR, it's hard to get unbiased approach there. Even though they're well meaning and do great work and might provide great services, like we like to have that expertise in house or you know, have a partner that can lead the strategy conversation without a view on downstream solutions.

Dan: 05:45

Just how do we get the right posture for the customer? Then we can worry about what are the downstream solutions.

Lou: 05:52

Yeah. So bringing the the expertise in house as far as having a, someone that's responsible for security. They have the title. This is our security specialist. Yep.

Lou: 06:03

You know, even if they're not someone that's necessarily been a practitioner before, that would be ideal, obviously. And those are the ones that we have the most success with. But, you know, I for some of the smaller TAs, TA companies, you know, obviously Amplex is is, you know, one of the biggest ones. So what about the smaller TAs? I guess if they don't, we tell them to rely on us.

Lou: 06:26

We tell them that when they hear certain, you know, certain keywords or when it starts to go down the path of security, we try to enable them. And then we say, okay, when it gets to a certain point, you wanna say, listen. And and you mentioned that too. You wanna be honest. You don't want to start to pretend that you're the expert as a TA.

Lou: 06:45

You know, if you don't have that knowledge, it's better to say, I don't know, but I know someone rather than, fudge it because to your point, credibility, especially in security, you can lose it pretty quickly.

Dan: 06:56

Yeah. I mean, people get fired over lapses, and businesses have millions or tens of millions of dollars at stake related to these things. Like, so transparency, you you just have to. Like, if you wanna do right by that customer, you gotta be honest about your limitations. I think for the small adviser, look, there's ways you can do it.

Dan: 07:17

Alright? You you can you can have an advisory board even as a small advisor where you've got certain practitioner experts from your network that you can bring in on special projects or occasions or conversations with customers. So maybe they're not a full time employee, but there's someone you can access who's excited to do it and has the right background. I think that's a good way to do it. If you can't go hire someone, not everybody's got the budget to do that.

Dan: 07:44

And then, yeah, like you said, finding it's harder to find though in the portfolio. So you might have to look outside your portfolio to find the boutique consultant that is security focused, that is of the right size, that they're willing to engage with a smaller TA who happens to have some good customers, and then can take that unbiased approach that's consultative and posture driven and strategy driven and not immediately tactical about a small set of services that exist in the portfolio.

Lou: 08:18

Right. Yeah. We've seen that too, where it's there, you know, it's a per seat licensing basis. They're trying to shove into their model to your point, which is there's a need. I mean, MDR, as you used as the example, that is definitely kind of table stakes for a lot of companies that are starting their security journey.

Lou: 08:37

They're like, Okay, we need monitoring. We know we need some type of monitoring. That's not a full security program, and that's obviously what we're providing. But at least they're getting in there. The problem is when those vendors start to say they do some of the things that we do or other consulting companies do, and what they're doing is tacking it on.

Lou: 08:56

You know, they're they're basically outsourcing it to a company like one or two people that maybe are practitioners, but it's not really part of their core competency, but they're doing it to capture the revenue so they can, you know, get their foot in the door or, you know, just pretend they can land and expand. So do you think that that's a good strategy to to kind of, like, have MDR, tack on some things, or do you do you think they should just admit honestly that, hey. We're an MDR company, and that's it.

Dan: 09:25

Yeah. It it depends on the company. Right? Like, there are some that legitimately have the right people and resources internally to have broader conversations and they provide some downstream solutions. The customer has to decide whether that feels comfortable to them or not.

Dan: 09:42

And then, yeah, I don't think folks who don't have that as a real practice and it's just a side gig tack on type thing, then I think that becomes more risky for the TA and the customer. So I do think it's possible for companies to invest in both and have legitimate practices, But there's not many that can credibly do that. And so I like the unbiased third party approach that may not provide some of the downstream services. And the challenge is, this is an interesting topic. If you ask TAs if they sell security, most will say yes.

Dan: 10:26

And it's because they've done one or more MDR deals. Either they've got a great MSP partner that also does MDR or they've sold one of the couple handfuls of MDR vendors in the platform. And they what we're missing is they got to do it because they had a customer who loves them and had already made a strategic decision and just came to them for some tactical help. And they earned the right for them to come to them, and it's great. But you're not owning the security strategy conversation, and that is very transactional, And it's different the way the legacy TA approaches network or UCaaS or these things where they can have the strategy conversation and the design conversation or all those things because they have tremendous capability and talent.

Dan: 11:15

And so that's what I mean about investing in the expertise. Because if we're just transactional about the security elements and around just things like MDR and stuff, we're gonna end up losing some of those to VARs and integrators and MSPs just doing this stuff. There's a lot of MSPs who are direct and aren't even in the channel. And so you're going to start If you're not having the strategy conversation and you're purely transactional, you won't scale that security business. Eventually, you'll start losing those opportunities to people who are selling them other security technology.

Lou: 11:50

And we've seen that over and over again. Plus the risk, you know, to your point, when the experts come in for UCaaS, CCaaS, you know, they're they're saying, we've done this. We know how this is is done. There can be, you know, maybe a mistake with a vendor that's chosen, and then they have to kind of do some, you know, firefighting to get that vendor across the line for whatever. Maybe one of the vendors one of the products is not, you know, they have an update that takes things down or whatever.

Lou: 12:20

But at the end of the day, the risk there is a lot lower. In my opinion, you could convince me otherwise. But I think with security, if you go in and you, you know, project yourself as the expert, you do something transactional. You say, oh, yeah. This is gonna be the thing that you need.

Lou: 12:35

And then all of a sudden, something bad happens to your point that could be a very significant incident. We've seen it. You know, we're called in obviously with incident response, and often it is the MSP. You know, they've been brought in and they're not themselves doing certain, secure practices like they're sharing passwords across clients. They're not getting paid to, you know, look at the whole, program holistically.

Lou: 12:59

So maybe there's some devices that are not, you know, they didn't pay the per seat license or the per device license, so they're not covered for vulnerability management. And all of a sudden there's a, you know, some kind of exploit. So I just think that, you know, again, reinforcing your point of having someone that's an, you know, if not an expert at least can speak to the holistic program rather than just the transaction. It's not only are they going to lose that business to another transactional, you know, security company or someone that brings a little bit more value, but they're also introducing risk because they might be held accountable for some of the decisions they they ask the customer to make without having the expertise.

Dan: 13:37

Oh, a 100%. And we should be held accountable. Like, if we're coming out and saying we can help you make this decision, then we need to be accountable for how we help them and what the result is. It's interesting, there's big consequences on all this stuff. The network's down and people can't access applications and do business, that's a massive thing.

Dan: 13:59

Ties to revenue, ties to probably customer experience. If the UCaaS or CCaaS systems are having problems, that touches the customer, has real downstream impacts. But the security issues make the papers and the board meeting. Right?

Lou: 14:16

And so Yeah.

Dan: 14:17

Exactly. Because of just the view of an organization who's had its data breached or is in the middle of a ransomware incident or its employees fell victim to phishing and exposed. That kind of stuff escalates quickly and it's really brand damaging and probably more damaging than individual outages on a system that a customer touches or something. So it it is really, really heightened around that.

Lou: 14:51

Yeah. We we have a security spend paper that we posted online. There's hard costs and there's soft costs when you get hacked. The hard costs are, you know, you've gotta bring in a firm like ours to clean it up. You've gotta bring in probably an MSP to redo a bunch of, you know, the IT stuff, the network, the endpoints, etcetera, the and lawyers, all that stuff.

Dan: 15:10

Cyber insurance goes up, like, the whole

Lou: 15:13

Yeah. It's sometimes insurance will cover it. Right? But with the the soft costs are and and it's what you're talking about. It's the reputational damage.

Lou: 15:20

I mean, you've been in sales almost your entire career. I'm learning a lot more about sales than I ever did. The pipeline, right? Like you you guard that pipeline. If you give your customers any reason to look at the competitors, you know, the competitors are jumping on that number one.

Lou: 15:36

And number two, they're saying, okay. Yeah. Listen. We can't do business with you. You're we just saw that you were down.

Lou: 15:41

You're in the papers, etcetera. That's a soft cost because that that hits your bottom line later. Right? Yeah. As lower revenue, etcetera.

Lou: 15:48

But and your pipeline decreasing, but that's not necessarily on a balance sheet. So it's it's not a a hard cost. Like, okay. We spend x. It's like lost opportunity cost.

Dan: 15:59

Yeah. And and there's the uncomfortable board level conversation of how could you let this happen?

Lou: 16:05

Yeah. Why why did this happen? Sometimes the board has to look inward and say, oh, yeah. We didn't approve. We didn't

Dan: 16:11

give you the budget. Yeah.

Lou: 16:12

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But yeah. So, no, that's it's all great stuff.

Lou: 16:17

I wanted to go back. You know, you're talking about outcomes. I I was very proud to have trademarked the term outcomes based security, which, led to probably zero revenue. But

Dan: 16:28

It sounds cool, though.

Lou: 16:30

Yeah. It's it you know, it's because everything's about outcomes, and it's interesting that you're talking about that. So, what do you consider to be, you know, when you're selling or your team is selling solutions, the are they always aligning with outcomes like the business and things like that?

Dan: 16:45

Outcomes are challenges. Right? There's sometimes there's existing challenges. Like, I've got x y z problem I need to solve. Some are more outcome driven.

Dan: 16:55

Like, if I'm SOC two compliant and can be audited and say that, then I can sell to more people and I can more easily pass the vendor risk process or the Yeah, procurement. And deal with procurement in ways that I couldn't before. That's a common one. Obviously, there's frameworks around HIPAA and PCI and government related business. Those are all kind of outcome driven things for customers trying to find their way to be compliant within those realms.

Dan: 17:30

There's outcomes tied to the launches of specific products or initiatives or migrations to the cloud, or all those things that require posture enhancements. Right? And or it's obtaining and staying in compliance with cyber insurance.

Lou: 17:48

Oh, yeah. That's a big one now.

Dan: 17:50

This And it is. And it's not just about getting insurance because when it comes time that something goes bump in the night and, you know, something go bump in the night for just about anybody these days.

Lou: 18:01

Oh, yeah.

Dan: 18:02

Nobody's beyond the reach of of the bad actors and attack vectors. So you have to be you have to stay in compliance or they'll find a reason not to pay the claim.

Lou: 18:12

Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. We've seen it.

Dan: 18:14

And so we're always reminding customers not just about obtaining the coverage. It's you need to stay within the parameters of that and make sure you're doing the testing and the auditing and the assessments and all the things you need to do to make sure you're there because the policy is not very good if it it's not really worth much if they can't they can't reimburse you for something.

Lou: 18:34

Yeah. You're paying the premiums, but and and we all know insurance companies, you know, they're gonna try to wiggle out of anything that they can to pay if possible. So, yeah, it says, hey. You must maintain a certain security posture, and it's, you know, intentionally vague. And so they can poke holes and really almost no one can, you know, not no one, but there's very few companies that are doing the right thing.

Lou: 18:59

And the right thing is even not just hiring someone. You know, we see that too where they're like, well, we'll we'll give you the security title. You're now director of IT and security. And it's like but their job is keeping the lights on, and they they don't really have time. And so they're, you know, doing the best they can, but that's not a proper security posture.

Lou: 19:19

You know? They it's really having a team that's, dedicated to making sure that you're doing all the right things. And it is a certain size company. Right? I mean, we've seen SMB.

Lou: 19:29

We we, have played in that space in the past more more startup level, but I they don't have the resources for and and our team is, you know, highly skilled obviously. So, that's not really the area we plan and they have a they have a gap. That's where MSPs can really fill in because they can do the the you know, beginnings of that. So, SMB has kind of the s the MSP market. But when it comes to mid market and especially enterprise, enterprise usually has their stuff together, at least Fortune 500 or global 2,000 or whatever.

Lou: 20:00

But when I say that, you know, having come from those environments, I'm not implying that they actually the teams are effective, but at least they have the headcount and the tools and things like that. But when it comes to, mid market, I think that that's the big opportunity, and, only a couple industries are starting to to wake up, I think. Are are you seeing this too? Like, certain industries that traditionally hadn't been in security are now kind of jumping on board?

Dan: 20:27

I I mean, all the regulated industries are industry subject to data privacy laws and regulations in the mid market. We we see warning and asking for help. The if you look at the stack of people and technologies to do all of this yourself and properly protect an environment, it it's almost unreachable to do it properly for a mid market company. They need help. Yeah.

Dan: 20:52

And the good news is there's providers like yourself and the MSSPs and different folks that can get them access to the entire stack and services in a way that doesn't cost a fortune and is is broader than what they could do on their own. And so even that Fortune 500, you know, they fall victim a little bit to the, hey. I've got the budget, so I'm gonna hire a bunch of people and buy a bunch of tools. Exactly. Approach to it.

Dan: 21:19

Yeah. It's still hard to manage. The the defense is not a human scale problem anymore because the bad actors are using AI and sophisticated approaches. It's okay to get help. And it makes sense to get help.

Dan: 21:34

Like, you might start finding the mid market better protected in some cases because they have no choice but to seek help. And they end up with broader strategies and capabilities that are better managed than even in some in some big companies who are more of a go it alone. And I get it. Like, you you sit with a CISO of a Fortune 500 company, that's a brilliant individual that is highly capable and, will know just incredibly talented folks. So you get the desire and the impulse to do it internally, and they hire really great people.

Dan: 22:11

But the problems change so dynamically, it's hard to manage it with bodies. Like, you need help from service and technology in different areas, and it's okay to go get that help. And we're we're seeing more conversations with big customers, not just mid market because of that dynamic.

Lou: 22:28

Yeah. Yeah. And there's something to be said about those. Absolutely right, Dan. And it's really interesting that you said about the mid market perhaps being better protected because there's truth to that, I think.

Lou: 22:40

I hadn't thought of it, but it's actually very relevant because also in the mid market, you've got a team that's small enough where you don't have, eight different heads of eight different departments that have to put their input. Usually in the mid market, it's like, okay. We need to do this. The board says we need to do it. The c suite's aligned, and then you get to work.

Lou: 23:00

Whereas in, you know, Fortune five hundred, you might have, yeah, so many people that have to have their, input. The the project doesn't even get started for a year or two because, you know, this person isn't in the meeting or now we have to rehash everything.

Dan: 23:13

And and and complex procurement processes. Oh gosh. Yeah. But but what's interesting, the mid market has the opportunity. Right?

Dan: 23:23

I think it it's easier for them to get to a really strong footing because of their nimbleness, the fact that they really have no choice but to get help. So they're gonna end up but they traditionally make bad you know, can can make really not always, but can make really bad vendor decisions.

Lou: 23:40

Big time.

Dan: 23:41

Because they have folks who are spread very thin doing a million things that don't this is why TAs exist. Right? Because they don't have the internal time and resources to make optimized decisions where you're doing proper evaluations across a set of vendors with detailed data about their performance and their pricing. And, you know, they'll Google search, come up with three or four vendors, or look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant, get three or four vendors, and then the best salesperson wins. Exactly.

Dan: 24:14

And that's not a path to an optimum decision. So the opportunity is there to be incredibly well protected because of the universe of providers available to them and the fact that they have no choice but to get help. But if you don't make if you don't run the decision process correctly, you can still end up in a bad place where you just you you have that MSP that's not really qualified to do some of those things, but you like them because they did your help desk and three other things or your your peer said, hey. These guys are great, or their salesperson was just better than than the other folks who came in.

Lou: 24:51

Or it's just easier. Like, well, we're using them for this. They they're gonna tack on these things. You know, they say they do security. We need to tick the box.

Lou: 24:59

Let's do it. But ticking the box is not adequate anymore.

Dan: 25:02

No. Not if you if you wanna be secure and feel and sleep and sleep really well. Yeah. It's not.

Lou: 25:11

Yeah. Big time. Yeah. I feel like there's, like, a couple generations of decisions in security. One of them is, you know, in the beginning, maybe let's hire someone to do this or let's give the title to someone.

Lou: 25:23

Then it was our MSP can do it. They they're doing other things for us to your point. Now we're kind of in either generation three or generation four, which is, okay, now we've been through this. Oh, generation three, sorry, is VC. So we're gonna hire someone as a VC.

Lou: 25:39

So RVC. So and and what that will be is one person that might have phenomenal enterprise experience as a CISO, but they don't have a team behind them And they're kind of just saying do this and come back in a month. And did you do that? Relying on the customer to actually do the work. So now I feel like we're at Gen four, which is now we need a team.

Lou: 25:59

If we're going to either do it internally, we've got to spin up a team that's gonna take time interviewing all that stuff, or, you know, they outsource it to someone who's a specialist. Obviously, that's our value prop. But that's I think where the market is moving because they've had, you know, the buyers have had these, they've made these decisions over years, and they're seeing no success, no success, no success. And that's where we're we fit in. So I think finding that tea, that outsourced specialized team that is the people in process part, not just the technology, That's the secret sauce, especially in the mid market.

Dan: 26:33

The the interesting thing too is the when you get that help externally, they have a broader purview than you do. Right? You you just see what's in front of you in your own environment. And maybe through peers in your industry, have somebody's But when someone's looking across multiple industries, across multiple companies of all different sizes, there's a lot of information about the different ways bad actors try to exploit different things in different industries, different sized companies. There's a lot of extra expertise that I think is really valuable too.

Dan: 27:07

We talk about on the trusted advisor model, we have access to all this pricing information, vendor performance information, and how vendors work and integrate with certain things, and how long it takes this vendor to turn up a service versus this vendor. All this data that an internal IT team never has themselves. It's the same thing here. The broader view into what's going on in that dynamic environment is invaluable to folks. Even if they've hired a great team, that team is busy doing what's in front of them and isn't necessarily in tune to everything that's going on and all the different things across different industries and different customer sizes, different vectors.

Lou: 27:51

Exactly. Often, they'll hire someone probably that can't do everything as well, and so that person will need help. Yeah. Because, you know, they can oversee it, but they're not going to they expect them sometimes to do everything maybe with some help from IT. But yeah.

Lou: 28:05

Yeah. So what's the the the you know, you've been in the channel for for a while a while. You know that it's really well. Not '25, 30?

Dan: 28:14

No. Well, I mean, in technology that long. I've only been in the channel for about five years, believe it or not.

Lou: 28:19

Okay. So what how's it changed for you? Have you seen, like, a big change, or is it is it you know, I've only been in the channel for three probably three maximum, like, really deeply in the channel. I worked for, you know, a couple companies that were channel partner focused. But, are you seeing a big change like evolution?

Dan: 28:40

I mean, it's changed dramatically. The influx of private equity investment and just change in the trusted advisor business models and new competitive sets that are appearing has caused significant change just in the five years I've been involved. Before that, you didn't have hugely scaled trusted advisors. Now you have folks like Amplex that have 300 employees and have acquired 11 businesses and multiple enhanced capabilities and can serve a much broader stack of technologies and can also go much deeper in terms of the services we provide. So that's a different landscape for advisors to figure out where the industry is going and for the vendors to figure out how to support them and same with the TSDs.

Dan: 29:31

So that's been a big change. People trying to figure out, do I scale my business myself? Do I invest in it? Do I look at an acquisition opportunity? If I am going to look, what's the right model for me and my employees and my customers?

Dan: 29:44

There's a lot there. So there's change there. I think the competitive environment's changed. You've got certain vendor categories where you see the vendors starting to compete a little bit, like in the TAM world, it's probably outside your realm, but might where they're starting to procure circuits for customers, which kinda overlaps the TAs that they brought in. Might see some of that in the MSP world from those that are not in the channel, where they're doing things that overlap some of the things

Lou: 30:14

we do.

Dan: 30:15

We're seeing large consulting firms. Like, we've had head to head competitive situations on CX with big four firms and won.

Lou: 30:25

Yeah. They need to diversify because they're they're bleeding on some of their contracts and stuff.

Dan: 30:30

Well, it's a logical extension of some of the things they do, so I get it. But the tactical expertise, they lack. Right. Right? And so it's foreign territory.

Dan: 30:41

And so we've been successful in competing with some of those, but we're seeing them. We didn't see them two, three years ago and those types of opportunities. And then just the other is the rapid onslaught of AI and desire to use AI and explore AI is creating all kinds of conversation, not just around the applications of it and how to make a business case around it and how to do it properly to start, but what does this mean for my infrastructure and how does that need to change? What does this mean for my security posture? How does that need to change?

Dan: 31:14

Do I even have a data strategy and data management platform that even allows me to do these things? It's creating conversations that advisors historically didn't have, but can now. So it's opened up tremendous revenue growth opportunities for our channel to be the ones that help people drive those outcomes and solve those challenges. But it requires some investment and some expertise and the ability to really go after it and service customers with the same expertise that you do in our traditional categories. But that's changing everything.

Dan: 31:49

The conversations are so different with C level executives at mid market and enterprise companies than they were even when I started five years ago.

Lou: 31:57

Yeah. Yeah. AI. I mean, it's almost like we have to discuss AI, but AI security is data security. You you hit the nail on the head.

Lou: 32:07

It's, you know, anyone that wants to use it. We had a conversation the other day about, yeah, they're like, so what should we do? And it's like, well, where's your data? Who's using it? What's sensitive?

Lou: 32:17

Do you have a way to determine if it's going anywhere in your or outside your environment? Because that's where you want. That's what you want to protect with AI is. Yeah. So and it's getting tough.

Lou: 32:28

I mean, like, the the big guys are spending like Anthropic and and, you know, OpenAI and Meta and Grok. They're all spent Google, Apple. They're spending billions, hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers and stuff like that. So where does, you know, in the mid market, they can't spin up necessarily that kind of scale. So they're not going to market with an AI product.

Lou: 32:52

They're just looking to use their own kind of AI perhaps internally. Is that right?

Dan: 32:57

Yeah. Mean, yeah, they're looking to utilize these solutions and harness different solutions. Customer experience is the place we see it most frequently because there's real ROI and there's real business case you can make on creating efficiency in your customer service strategy and creating enhanced customer experiences through big, smart companies know. If we do this, it produces this much revenue, it reduces churn by this much, it does all these things. So we've got a 20 person team that just does AI and CX applications at Amplex.

Dan: 33:36

That's how significant and how quickly the success is moving in that particular category. But then you have the other conversations of other business applications and support for data science teams and different things that are more complex and taking longer or someone's board has said, why aren't we using AI? You need to use AI. And so they wrote copilot out to everybody and nobody really knows why or what they're doing with it. But now people at least answering questions and getting content written for them as a part of that.

Dan: 34:12

But it's like, okay, but what data is that pulling from? What's it accessing from a security perspective? Is there bias in those data sets that are making the results and things coming out of it not appropriate for the business or not value driving for the business. Like, there's so much that goes into this that we wrestle with people, and there's risk. Like, if you have a poor first project and experience with it, then it's hard to get support for more.

Dan: 34:40

Right. And you don't wanna stifle innovation because you had the wrong you didn't dot all your i's and cross your t's in your approach. That's really where we talk to folks. Like, let's find a place where we can control what we're going to do, have success that proves value to the business, so that we can get you a broader purview to go think about AI across your organization and not get limited because it didn't produce the results or you didn't do the right work with the CISO and the compliance team and now they're upset and everything's frozen.

Lou: 35:17

Right. Right. Yeah. It's exciting, though. I mean, as a technology, it really is, such a game changer as everyone's seeing.

Lou: 35:24

You've invested. So Amplyx has invested in, heavily into AI and CX, and you're already seeing an ROI on that.

Dan: 35:32

Oh, yes. Yeah. Both in terms of services we provide customers, our ability to impact their bottom line by using the technology and implementing it, our ability to impact their CSATs and and growth through effective use of it. We've been doing it for a while, had significant success. And now we're having a lot of conversations on broader infrastructure.

Dan: 35:55

How do you have the right data management and security policies and environments? How do you manage costs associated with a lot of this stuff in the cloud and the cloud hosted databases that get access for these things? How do I make sure I've got the right connectivity, the right workloads in the in the right place? All those things are we're having more of those conversations now, but CX is lower hanging fruit for AI because it's been proven.

Lou: 36:27

Right.

Dan: 36:28

In its effectiveness, and so, we can move quickly with customers there.

Lou: 36:34

That's excellent. Yeah. And and you talked about the TAs too, the the conversations they're having. Speaking about AI, we're talking about security obviously as well. What is the profile of like what's TA like with the not the perfect TA because it depends on the use case obviously.

Lou: 36:52

But let's say you're someone looking to get into this world. You know, what what do you think the profile is for that person that to have success?

Dan: 37:00

Has success as a trusted adviser?

Lou: 37:02

As a trusted adviser. Yeah. They let's say somebody is, I don't know, they're they're coming out of college and they're like or or they're coming out of industry and they're like, you know what? I don't really wanna do what I did as a career but I've got all these c suite connections and I want to be a trusted adviser. You know, I wanna get started but what's the you know, what not what can they do, but what is their, the the profile of the person that you think would be successful at that?

Dan: 37:26

Yeah. I I think they have to be a solution seller. So the best sellers in the entire industry are not necessarily feet off the street that were just curious. It's the owners of these businesses. Like, were all expert sellers before they get into it, and they continue that expertise.

Dan: 37:45

They have a network of people that they've done something for that trust them, that are willing to listen and and they have some expertise in one or more categories that are sweet spots. And look, you could be a cloud only expert. You can maybe get a long background in cloud. You can go start a trusted advisor with that background and do tremendous with just that. Or security or CX.

Dan: 38:12

When we acquired Inflow CX, all they did was CX. They had 100 people in a trusted advisor organization doing nothing but CX. So having some expertise where you can really understand how to solve problems for folks early leveraging the tools and resources from the TSDs till you build your own infrastructure. But expert seller always works best. It's hard to come from the practitioner or technologist side into this industry alone.

Dan: 38:44

Like, you you have to have a a selling capability and a network of people you can call on who trust you to get started. Selling today is harder than it's ever been. Yeah. Traditional sales and marketing efforts don't work in some cases. Most cases.

Dan: 39:02

It worked with much less effectiveness. Yeah. So having a network so for people coming out of college, I would say I always say, go learn someplace. Go learn how to sell, go learn how to do consultative discovery, go learn how to do these things in a good training program with a big vendor or a mid sized vendor that has a good program for this, learn how to do it. Then build a network of people you help that support.

Dan: 39:32

If you come out of college into something like this without access to a network of customers, it'll be such a slog the first few

Lou: 39:40

years. Pain.

Dan: 39:41

There's a lot of pain.

Lou: 39:43

Yeah. Yeah. But I think the principles you discussed when it at the top of this this, podcast where you were talking about, you know, having integrity, you know, customer centric, being honest about your skills, things like that. That's probably good advice for any TA. And the solution selling, that's my takeaway from what you're talking about, too, is no more transactional selling.

Lou: 40:07

You can only get there to a certain point. It's like the the salespeople that contact the customer, you know, a month or two before the renewal date, and they haven't spoken to him for a year. Like, you're not gonna you know, you're just a number. You're just another, you know, annoying person in their inbox versus someone that's actually got a relationship with them and is trying to help them with the pain points.

Dan: 40:28

Yeah. Look. If you're transactional, even if you have success, you're so easily replaced.

Lou: 40:33

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At the lowest, the next person with the lowest price. Right?

Lou: 40:38

Yeah. So what what's in the future for Amplyx, and, what excites you about what's going on there? Because there is a lot of exciting stuff going on there.

Dan: 40:46

Yeah. So more more strategic acquisition. Right? We're looking to add expertise and capabilities in specific categories, that we think are important to the next generation trusted adviser. Look.

Dan: 41:00

We're setting out with big goals. Like, we're setting out to build, you know, a definitive brand and a really important space. You know, the the industry is worth billions of dollars now, and it's got thousands of players. And, it still remains to be seen who the definitive brands and winners are. We're trying to do it by adding value to our customers.

Dan: 41:20

What are more capabilities? How do we support the full life cycle of a technology investment better from strategy to optimization and everything in between. And then we're growing really healthy organically. We'll continue to do that, adding to the team, bringing in a lot of new customers, cross selling to our existing customers. All that will continue.

Dan: 41:44

Continue to have a methodical approach to M and A as we've had. And we still work with the TSDs and love engaging with those guys. We'll continue to do that.

Lou: 41:53

I constantly see Amplix winning the top top TA award, award at all of the TSDs, so you're obviously doing something right.

Dan: 42:03

We've got a team of, highly motivated, amazing people that, you know, work work their rear ends off and treat each other like family. So it's a special environment.

Lou: 42:15

Yeah. Yeah. Good people over there. We've worked with them. Yeah.

Lou: 42:18

I'm gonna pivot quickly to some to just you personally. I'm first, do you have, like, a personal story that demonstrates where cybersecurity might have had some kind of impact on you or your life?

Dan: 42:29

Yeah. I'm I'm gonna put work aside on this one. And and, like, it's it's I have two people in my life that I'm super close with that are a bit blissfully unaware of the the risks associated. One is my elderly father.

Lou: 42:44

I was gonna say it's gotta be your parents, right, or one of them.

Dan: 42:47

Yeah. He's who's got some he's he's almost 80. He's got some cognitive slowing down, like, type things.

Lou: 42:53

Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: 42:54

He gets targeted on text message and email constantly.

Lou: 42:59

It's disgusting.

Dan: 43:00

It it's it's really horrific. I don't think people understand. Yeah. To the point where, like, I'm just happy he doesn't really know how to use his phone very

Lou: 43:08

Right. You give him a flip phone, basically.

Dan: 43:11

So just trying to explain to him about not giving certain information ever, not clicking on anything ever, that stuff. And then I've got a teenager who's really bright, like a good math and science kid, super smart, can work devices like I'll never work devices or anything, but still doesn't understand the scope of bad actors and attack vectors and trying to get her to understand where and how she needs to be careful. And so these are constant conversations because doing what we do, we see scary stuff all the

Lou: 43:44

time. Oh, yeah.

Dan: 43:45

And so, of course, I bring that home and like, hey. Did you know this? And, you know, okay, dad. And I'm like, no. I'm serious.

Dan: 43:52

Like, this is actually something you need to worry about. I'm not just telling you about work today. And so that that's been my kind of funny personal experience with it is there's, like, a constant dialogue with those two people that, you know, I care about so much to try to help keep them out of harm's way.

Lou: 44:10

Yeah. Yeah. I think I I mean, no one is immune these days. It's to your point. My mom's 94, And, you know, even earlier than that, yeah, she is constantly like, we had to get her a special phone blocker for know, she still got a landline.

Lou: 44:26

So we had to, you know, things like that because it's, yeah. It's just and then on the email and things like that, thank god she's not using that stuff anymore because it's just yeah. It's horrific.

Dan: 44:37

Oh, and social media. Like, it's

Lou: 44:39

Yeah. And now with AI, you know, deep fakes and stuff. Yeah. So that is pretty personal. Yeah.

Lou: 44:46

And then, you know, Dan, the man, you're in Massachusetts. You've got you know, I mean, I'm I've got a list here of of the organizations that you've been a part of. You know, five exits. I what what do you think? And I don't know if that's even accurate.

Lou: 45:01

Is it five, or is it even more than

Dan: 45:02

No. No. No. It was, you know, prechannel. There were four startups that I was part of that I helped lead to exit, and then I I helped put the three companies together that became Amplex and take on our private equity sponsor.

Dan: 45:15

I ran that process for us. So that would be the fifth, although it actually involved three companies. So yeah, this is kinda crazy to think about. Yeah. So I've always been you know, I did a few years upfront at big companies to learn, learn how to sell, learn how to run a business, learn all of those things.

Dan: 45:34

And then I went out and did venture backed and growth stuff from that point forward. And, it's riskier, but really intellectually stimulating, and, your contribution is magnified in the smaller environments, and it's really fun, and cool to be a part of. And, yeah, it's been a great ride.

Lou: 45:54

Yeah. You can really see the impact. Yeah. And, and it's it's really interesting too because I think a lot of people that have had exits, it's not always, a successful exit. Like, maybe they've been part of an organization, but they haven't really gotten what they were hoping, etcetera.

Lou: 46:09

But you have obviously learned probably through some pain points throughout the years.

Dan: 46:14

100%. Not a Yeah. Not all not every exit was, like, massively successful from a financial standpoint for all the investors and everybody, but, you know, it getting to an exit is really hard, particularly as a venture backed startup. Right? They invest in 10, hoping one or two produce.

Dan: 46:32

Right? Right.

Lou: 46:33

Right.

Dan: 46:33

And so but when you sometimes there's outcomes that are modest that are really good, that are good for the customers, and they're good for the employees because maybe there wasn't a huge financial windfall, but it became part of something bigger and continued forward. Right. And and, you know, and the customers had great experience, and the employees had career paths that they didn't expect. And, you know, so I I try to measure all of those results as a part of this. Of course, the you know, delivering for investors is is very important, and I think about that every day in in all shareholders, internal and external.

Dan: 47:11

So

Lou: 47:12

Mhmm. Yeah. Not a lot of people have that ex you know, the the breadth and depth of experience that you do, so it's really impressive. Thank you. Yeah.

Lou: 47:21

And then, you know, what do you do outside of work? You're on the board of a couple nonprofits.

Dan: 47:26

I am. So I'd I've been involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters of now Eastern Mass. They've broadened since I got started. I was a big brother for almost twelve years and then just started fundraising and offering advice on their advisory board. Then also the Join Drizzy Foundation, which helps directly provide funding to cancer patients in active treatment who are having financial troubles.

Dan: 47:53

So we're paying mortgages and utility bills and providing transportation and meals and dealing with food security issues you know, for thousands of patients who are in active treatment. And it it's astounding. I think it's like more than fifty percent of cancer patients end up filing for some form of bankruptcy.

Lou: 48:12

That's I mean, to be honest, I think that's criminal too. Probably a conversation for another time.

Dan: 48:17

Yeah. That's a that's that's a long conversation. But

Lou: 48:20

Yeah. Yeah. But I think what you're doing, that's really impressive, Dan. You're giving back. Yeah.

Lou: 48:25

Amazing. That thanks.

Dan: 48:26

I appreciate it. Other than that, I'm I'm a girl dad. I've got one daughter, and she's an amazing athlete. What's she what's her sport? Softball.

Dan: 48:34

We travel all around the country Oh, wow. Doing softballs just in your neck of the woods playing in the national championships in Huntington Beach for

Lou: 48:41

something new. Amazing.

Dan: 48:42

Our team, you know, did really well, and she played great. And she's gonna go play in college. And so when I if I when I have free time, it's my wife and I with her traveling somewhere doing something softball related pretty much.

Lou: 48:57

Yeah. Yeah. That's a that's a huge commitment, especially these days because everyone takes it so, so serious.

Dan: 49:02

Oh, yeah. You can tell. When you see me, I'm a terrible golfer, and, you know, there's not I when I can get out of the ocean, I want to, but I don't get to do it nearly enough.

Lou: 49:12

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you're taking advantage of those days. I've got the two boys that are teens. My eldest is gonna be graduating high school too.

Lou: 49:21

So soon you'll have you'll be, you know, wanting to be as busy as you were with with running around with softball and stuff. So Yeah. Yeah. Take advantage of it.

Dan: 49:30

My wife and I, we joke. Like, what are we gonna do next? Like, we have all when we have this time. Like, what are we gonna talk about? Like, where are gonna go?

Dan: 49:37

What are we gonna do?

Lou: 49:38

Yeah. Somebody tells me you'll figure it out.

Dan: 49:40

No. We're looking for we look you look forward to it, but you also are like, That's right. I don't know. It's been, like, seventeen years of all consuming, so I don't know.

Lou: 49:48

Right. Right. Yeah. That's the empty nest syndrome. Yeah.

Lou: 49:52

So where can people find you? You're on LinkedIn, x. I don't know if you're active on, Twitter slash x.

Dan: 50:00

I'm not as active as I I don't know. That platform last couple years, I've just spent less time. And LinkedIn's the

Lou: 50:06

Yeah.

Dan: 50:07

Great place to reach me. People can reach me just at dg@Amplex.com. Super simple. And I love to talk to people. Love to talk shop.

Dan: 50:17

Spend lots of time talking to other owners, not about M and A, just about industry and what's going on. And, you know, I'm you you know me pretty well. I'm an open book. I'm happy to offer advice, experience. I'm happy to ask for advice from folks.

Dan: 50:32

And so I love engaging with people.

Lou: 50:34

You've been super generous with your time with me, helping me out. So

Dan: 50:38

Yeah. Well, you're you're running a great business with a great product, so happy to do it.

Lou: 50:42

Thank you. Thank you, Dan, Gil.

Dan: 50:45

No. I appreciate it. This was great. Yeah. Look look forward to, keeping the dialogue going, and hopefully, it's helpful for folks out there on the channel.

Lou: 50:53

Big time. Yeah. Thanks to everyone that's watching and or listening. If if you learned something today or laughed, please tell someone about this podcast. We're still new, so we wanna spread the word.

Lou: 51:03

Thanks again, Dan. Yeah. And this has been another exciting episode of Channel Security Secrets. See you next time. That's a wrap for this episode of Channel Security Secrets.

Lou: 51:14

Thanks for tuning in. For show notes, guest info, and more episodes, visit us at channelsecuritysecrets.com. Channel Security Secrets is sponsored by Cyber Defense Group. When it comes to protecting your business, don't settle for reactive. Partner with experts who build resilience from the ground up.