Mastering the Fundamentals - Stephen Semmelroth - Channel Security Secrets - Episode #5
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 Rabon:I'm really excited to speak to with today's guest. He's a cybersecurity leader, go to market coach, published author, and US army veteran. As a global ambassador on the Council for Responsible AI, he is shaping the ethical future of AI and cybersecurity. He's a former army ranger who led cyber teams and infantry platoons in Afghanistan and now acts as a lifetime member of the MCPA or Military Cyber Professionals Association. He's currently vice president of cloud resilience at Avant Communications.
Lou Rabon:Stefan Semmelroth, welcome to the show.
Stephen Semmelroth:Thanks, Lou. Glad to be here. It's always weird kind of, you know, hearing the stuff that you've done in the past. I introduced myself as Stefan.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Well, we know that you're humble, but you're you're also a badass. So as one of the first guests on this podcast, I am very, very honored to have you here, and I can't wait because we're gonna have a great conversation. And with that, I'm gonna just jump right into it. This is channel security secrets.
Lou Rabon:So I wanna hear what is the biggest secret to your success, which is very deep in the channel.
Stephen Semmelroth:Usually, we talk about success in terms of knowledge, skills, and either abilities or behaviors. And so I'd say probably the first per part is the foundation knowledge of kind of what's going on in the industry and tech and cyber. I can give a big shout out to, like, my mentors when I was in the military, the education that we had in the military, and, you know, the the the books that were written, steal this computer book versions one, three, and four from years and years and years ago. Books like, hackers, the heroes of the computer revolution. You know, we're going way back here.
Stephen Semmelroth:A lot of those knowledge fundamentals. And then the skills were developed from coaches and mentors like Kim Baker when I was at Stratacore and the amount of investment that he put in me personally to build that skill. But I would say, as those are kind of like the foundations of the pyramid, the the top of the pyramid, I think, is has been the, ability to translate highly technical content and roadblocks into meaningful stories that non tech executives can use to take an action. And, it's been tough to do that, but and you do have to have that that, you know, fundamental attack. At least I had to have that to to get to that point.
Stephen Semmelroth:But the knowledge, the skills, and then the abilities, I oftentimes see myself as a coach or translator more than I do almost anything else.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Big tell you are that for sure, and everyone knows who you are in the channel when it comes to security because of that. You also mentioned this book that I gotta
Stephen Semmelroth:Oh, yeah.
Lou Rabon:Yep. Knowing above and below the line, and and you mentioned so, obviously, books and reading are really important, and and following the principles in that book. I haven't cracked it yet, but, you know, what can you tell me about this? Yeah. I got it based on your recommendation, and it's that's why it's sitting on my desk because it's next in the queue.
Lou Rabon:You think that there's some secrets in there that that people can use?
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. Yeah. So so when I was a trusted adviser, at Stratacore before coming to Avant, a shout out to Dom Singer who who kinda sat me down, and he goes, Stefan, you need to read this book. This is the next book on on your list of professional development. And, you know, when when he said that you know, first off, I'll I'll listen to mentors like Dom.
Stephen Semmelroth:But when Dom said that, I kinda sat back and went, another sales book. I'm only reading this because you asked me to read it or told me to read it more emphatically. And then I was I was doing some drywall work at the the last house that we had. And I'm doing drywall, and I'm painting, and I'm listening to the book, on audio, probably at two x because I'm painting, I can actually, you know, kind of focus. And as he got more into it, as as Skip Miller got more into the the content, I went, oh, man.
Stephen Semmelroth:And I I sat down. I took my you know, the the latex gloves off that I was using because I was painting and making a big old mess. And I hopped on Amazon and ordered the book and print copy, which for me is at least at that point in my life was a big litmus test of, okay. This is this is good, and I gotta spend some more time onto it. And, you know, it's it's right here in it's in my quick grab book area because I I recommend it so much.
Stephen Semmelroth:But, you've got, like there there's perceived quality of fit type things. I've got, you know, notes all over this book. And, I think for me, the reason that, when Skitt Miller wrote this, that it resonated so well is, for me, it translated the fundamentals of leadership and change management that I learned in the military to the corporate world and did it so simply that it was really easy for me to latch onto. And this has been sort of kind of like one of those guiding as myths as I build out training for the industry that I try to focus a pretty substantial amount of our training wrapped around this book in particular. I think it does a really great job of modeling the sales process, the value prop, and figuring out who it is that we're really talking to on the other side of the table when we support trusted advisers out with their clients in the field.
Lou Rabon:Good stuff. So basically, you know, the biggest secret would be one is, obviously, you know, providing information, providing value. The other is, you know, reading the right books. So this this book in particular, I know that you mentioned, like, speaking to different stakeholders, controlling the tempo of tempo of a sale, jumping around the org chart. Like, what what can you tell me about that when a a security deal is coming in and and, you know, there's some maneuvering that has to happen?
Stephen Semmelroth:So when we when we go back, I think one of those fundamentals that most of the people in sales in this channel have learned is that finding the compelling events and then translating that into a plan is often the key to change management. I think that sales is often the key to change management. Right? Like, what is it we're going to change? How is the world chain I'll throw a little Andy Raskin on it.
Stephen Semmelroth:How has the world changed today such that you must do something or change yourself? And one of the thesises of of Skip Miller's book is that when we go back to the basics, especially for salespeople, the things that they learned as like a BDR, they resonate and they works extraordinarily well. So we talk about, like, a security deal going from identification and qualification and then maintaining that urgency to get to close. Right? Often, one of the things one of those fundamentals that I pulled back out of Skip Miller's book was building a visual timeline for clients.
Stephen Semmelroth:And I think a lot of salespeople have gotten away from some of those fundamentals. I think it's really easy to focus on, like, feature, function, capability, differentiator, where the people, the talent are located that you're bringing in to solve the problem. But building that timeline is a visual representation of urgency.
Lou Rabon:And
Stephen Semmelroth:I didn't I as we as we kinda started, you know, talking through and teaching timelines in our events across the country around the world, I did not anticipate the number of senior late stage career sellers that would come up after, like, keynotes or after presentations and say things like, oh my gosh. I've strayed so far away from my fundamentals. I've I've really invested into the art of selling, and I forgot the science of selling. And it's so important to blend both.
Lou Rabon:So that timeline that you're talking about, visual timeline, you mean specifically, like, here's when kickoff is, here's how the project's going to go, here's, you know, here's roughly where you will be in x amount of time, six, twelve months after doing this stuff. That that's what you're talking about?
Stephen Semmelroth:Absolutely. Yep. So, let's see if I can find an actual timeline here. Skip calls it the iDate, which is the implementation date, and that's when the go live really has to happen. And so we've kind of adapted it for channel sales and for security a little bit more.
Stephen Semmelroth:But if the client has an incumbent right now, what we've been really doing and looking at and training on is the two primary dates of when do they have to give notice to the incumbent, and then when is their implementation date. Because sometimes the notification date to the incumbent is the key thing that moves us along. So they might have to have a ninety day notification clause in there.
Lou Rabon:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Stephen Semmelroth:Or sometimes it's the implementation date, like, you know, driven by private equity change or a merger and acquisition or something. And so often, we go from there to backwards planning. And if we don't have, like, a meaningful driver, maybe it's greenfield and something the client wants to do, then usually the tactic that we take is we start looking at the project timeline itself. What are the other projects and priorities that exist? Where does it fit in that?
Stephen Semmelroth:Where will the clients people have the capacity to even do a project, whether it's software based or more consulting based because there's so many different layers to this. And then we use those opportunity windows, those change windows as kind of the driver to work backwards from. And, that process then you know, we've run kind of this timeline process now. We'll say dozens and dozens of times, maybe a 100 times. I don't know.
Stephen Semmelroth:I haven't I haven't tracked this specifically. But when we've run those timelines, a good portion of the time of the the opportunities when we're helping clients work through this, The conversation starts off with, oh, my renewal's not until, you know, a year from now. And then by the time we look at change windows and implementation date and notice date, we work backwards, etcetera. By the end of a call, they're sitting there going, oh my gosh. I'm three weeks behind in my process.
Lou Rabon:Mhmm. Yeah. So so having that visual tool to to give them a timeline, that's a great sales sales tool, and that helps close deals. In any case, it doesn't matter whether it's security or not.
Stephen Semmelroth:Because it's not my urgency. It's the client's urgency.
Lou Rabon:And pain. Right? It's all about the pain. Or you know, whether it's immediate or future. What about the number one piece of advice specifically around security?
Lou Rabon:There's a lot of TAs that are trying to sell security. We come across it a lot. That's that's really the reason that we started this podcast too, because so many people want to get into selling security as a trusted adviser in the channel. What what kind of advice can you give to the TAs that have never sold security before?
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. It's so much easier than they think. It's so much easier than they think. And when I sit down with a trusted adviser that wants to get into selling security, one of the first questions we ask is what is your key differentiator right now? What's your key differentiator?
Stephen Semmelroth:What's your value prop? What are you really good at selling? What's the base of clients that you have today, and what have you sold into that base? Because the add ons are the next best thing to do. So if you talk to a client or a trusted adviser, you've talked to a trusted adviser that has sold connectivity for the last fifteen years, really difficult for them to go from connectivity into managed detection and response.
Lou Rabon:Mhmm. Right? Technically, yes.
Stephen Semmelroth:Yep. It could be. So then we'll start with, okay. Well, what about zero trust network access? Or even easier than that, DDoS.
Stephen Semmelroth:If you're selling circuits, sell DDoS. Why? Because if they start with that, it's basically some objection handling and not much more. And it gets the trusted adviser repetitions at something that's just outside of their comfort zone and not too far out of their comfort zone. And then they start getting reps of going, oh, you know what?
Stephen Semmelroth:I can do security. I've got this capacity to do security. You go, okay. What's next after that? If they're cloud, then we say, Great.
Stephen Semmelroth:Cloud. Well, maybe how are you gonna govern the cloud? Or what about backup and disaster recovery? Probably the easiest add on. And then you're messaging when as a trusted adviser, when you have these starting conversations with your clients, you're telling them that they that you do security.
Stephen Semmelroth:Next thing you know, they're coming to you for, all of the fractional CSO or the restructure of their system. You start to be more indispensable to your clients, and you're starting to upsell cross sell into more things, and you're really helping them get to that next phase or move that next needle or get to the next milestone or get to that next summit along the ridgeline of their journey.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Great advice. How do you, address the fear of the deeper conversation? Because that's what we see a lot too, right? It's like, well, I want to talk about security, but I don't know enough about it.
Lou Rabon:And I'm afraid that they're going to just start talking, you know, like even backup and disaster recovery, business continuity, things like that. Like, if they've never sold that before and they just put out a buzzword or two, I I've we we've gotten a lot of pushback like, well, we don't understand it, so we need to understand it first.
Stephen Semmelroth:So I go back to the genesis of why this go to market motion exists in the first place. This is the business of, I got a guy for that.
Lou Rabon:Mhmm. Yeah.
Stephen Semmelroth:Right?
Lou Rabon:Yeah.
Stephen Semmelroth:And the trusted adviser does not have to be the technical expert nor they should they be in most cases. And so often, what we train trusted advisers on is very simple. You as the trusted adviser do not have to design and build airplanes. All you gotta do is sell
Lou Rabon:seats. Yeah.
Stephen Semmelroth:Sell tickets. That's it.
Lou Rabon:Open the open the airplane door, essentially.
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Hi.
Stephen Semmelroth:Welcome to flight 93.
Lou Rabon:Right. Right. You know, the the pilots and the the air whatever hostess or hostesses are are gonna take care of you. Yeah. Big time.
Stephen Semmelroth:Absolutely. Like, they don't you don't have to know how each of those little fins around, the turbines are stamped and then pressed and then soldered and welded. You don't have no. No. No.
Stephen Semmelroth:You wanna go from O'Hare to San Francisco? Yeah. We've we've got competitive rates for that, and you're gonna love the experience.
Lou Rabon:Exactly. Get on board and or, yeah, we'll have a an agent speak to you about that. The agent being, you know, now the supplier, like us where we would we would be able to have that conversation, navigate it.
Stephen Semmelroth:No. I've I said something there that I think I should probably do a little expansion on if you don't mind.
Lou Rabon:Go for it.
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. Then the next step, I can it's it's pretty cheekily that I can say, oh, yeah. We're in the prod the the business if I know a guy. But there's also a really important other distinction here is that when trusted advisers look at the buyer persona they're most comfortable with. If it's a director of IT, well, we're gonna kinda pick those next security adjacent things that that buyer persona wants.
Stephen Semmelroth:And what most people are actually scared of is not the technical discussions. What most people are actually scared of is the CISO as a buyer persona.
Lou Rabon:Oh, yeah.
Stephen Semmelroth:Because the CISO happens to be a technical expert, and they're often the smartest person in the room. I'll give another shout out here. Let's see. Do I have the copy over here? I do.
Stephen Semmelroth:Christian Espinosa actually tells in this book here called the smartest person in the room, my buddy Christian says, hey, CISOs. Stop being jerks. That's basically the thesis of a book, and it's a great bunch.
Lou Rabon:Oh, yeah. I mean, the the the vendor, abuse. There there's a certain type of person, you know, they say you can tell a person by the way they treat, you know, help, hired help or waiters and waitresses and stuff. You can also tell a person by the way they treat a vendor. Right?
Lou Rabon:And unfortunately, I you know, we've come across this often where vendors are just like, you're bothering me. You're at you know, buy me some steak dinners. You you know, you're just a tool. You know, there's humans behind this. So I think, yeah, that's, maybe a little bit of the the trepidation too exist because people have had trusted advisers have had that experience where they've gotten kicked and beat up because they're, you know, they're salespeople.
Lou Rabon:They're going out. They're asking for something. And these people sometimes that are in the position of making decisions take advantage of that. No doubt.
Stephen Semmelroth:Now let's talk some dollars real fast. The biggest security deals are often sold to the CIO, not the CISO.
Lou Rabon:Interesting. Why do you think that is?
Stephen Semmelroth:So if we look at it, the CISO still most companies still owns infrastructure. Right?
Lou Rabon:Mhmm.
Stephen Semmelroth:So what do they want? They want secure infrastructure. So if you if we dive deep into that, that the CSO owns backup and disaster recovery. They own con sorry. Hold on.
Stephen Semmelroth:The CIO owns infrastructure. They own backup and disaster recovery. They own connectivity, secure connectivity. They own these really big spend items that often the CISO gets kind of bolted on at the end.
Lou Rabon:Yep. Definitely.
Stephen Semmelroth:Now we say shift left and do security early and all this sort of stuff. In the end, the CISO still has a limited scope of what they can do in the organization, and the CIO still controls it all. So the c CIO's budget for backup and disaster recovery is sometimes bigger than the CSO's entire program budget.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. 100%.
Stephen Semmelroth:Yep. And we look at we look at even fractional CSO types of things. Most of those can be huge deals on the order of dozens of thousands of dollars a month because you're outsourcing a program, and oftentimes, ideal client means they don't even have a CISO or the CISO is more of a prog program manager and somebody's still got to come in and do the work.
Lou Rabon:Yep. Exactly. Yeah. So that's it's it's interesting. I mean, why why should TAs sell security going back to your original where they're saying, hey, you know, I connectivity, those deals are really easy.
Lou Rabon:This stuff that we're talking about right now is very can be complex navigating the C suite. A lot of times they're not even speaking to the C suite, right? They're speaking to someone in the IT world. Therefore, we you know, how how do you talk to TAs when they're like, I don't even wanna sell security. It's too complex.
Lou Rabon:Like, why why should they do it?
Stephen Semmelroth:First off, start easy. Start easy. Start small. Second, if we look at just pure connectivity sales and the uplift for DDoS, you're looking at somewhere between a 412% uplift on the total deal size. So there's a financial comp like, you sold 10 things.
Stephen Semmelroth:Do you wanna sell another one? Yes. For every $10 here, you get an extra dollar in DDoS. So just that one little transactional objection handling, put it on the purchase order is a great place to start for a 10% uplift. Like, if your growth is 20 or 30% per year and you can get a third of that just by adding DDoS, now you need less logos to sell to.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. No brainer.
Stephen Semmelroth:Yep. When we look at cloud and and and backup and disaster recovery and some of those other categories, those are some of the easiest upsells in channel. And, again, the dollars just make sense. Somewhere on the order of, call it, 10 to 15% of an uplift onto what you're already doing and really, really good at right now and focused on objection handling. Yeah.
Stephen Semmelroth:Pretty pretty easy. Pure security? Now I'm gonna go I'm gonna answer this for you too. For pure security, one of the things that we're finding is the trusted advisers that do have those reps. Right?
Stephen Semmelroth:They've got those repetitions. They've done those training. They've really gotten to know maybe just a couple key vendors that have picked one line item that matches their base. Like, if you're in the mid market or lower enterprise, like fractional CSO or outsourcing consulting, that program's a really, really, really good fit. If that's your base, they match so well.
Stephen Semmelroth:It's something that allows you to go back to your base and allows you to talk about outcomes in the business and makes you sticky across the organization. So oftentimes, it selling security is a part of the journey. It's not the destination, and it unlocks all these other doors because it touches everything else that you're already doing. And it really messages, I'm an adviser because I'm helping you think about the things that are important to you, mister and miss Klein.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. And building trust. I mean, that's that's one thing that we speak about as well as yeah. We the deal, if you're going to do data center, if you're used to doing data center as a TA, multimillion dollar deal, you're gonna get a nice, you know, commission check from that. And it's not that complex.
Lou Rabon:You need well, you know, how much capacity, etcetera. Where in the world? Okay. Here's the you know, get the three quotes, etcetera. Much easier than sometimes a complex security sale, but that's one time transactional.
Lou Rabon:Okay. Maybe they sign a three year deal, and you're done. However, what the trust that gets built by successfully delivering, you know, good security program or good security outcomes is is really that that builds onto all the other things that you're talking about, the stickiness, the saying, oh, wow. You did such a good job introducing me for security, and we're we're we're cranking on that now. Can you show me more data center?
Lou Rabon:Can you show me more bandwidth or voice, whatever? You know? So, yeah, I think that's that's been our experience too. But sometimes it's hard to to to explain that.
Stephen Semmelroth:Well, I think it it is hard to explain it, and that's kind of why oftentimes we go back to when we talk to trusted adviser and we help them pick the play. Right? Because it's not most trusted advisers are not ready to fully whole hog sell security.
Lou Rabon:Right.
Stephen Semmelroth:But when we sit back and look at their base and pick the security play that matches their base, now instead of having to learn all of security, may they learn one segment of it and start there and build those reps. Right? So, like, the the difference between a Fortune 100 financial client is very different than a mid market manufacturing company.
Lou Rabon:Oh, yeah. So what does
Stephen Semmelroth:your base do? What do they want? What's your buyer persona? What's that next phase? Maybe it's managed detection and response.
Stephen Semmelroth:Maybe it's, MSSP. Maybe it's, some sort of consulting layer on top of that. Maybe it's having somebody come in and kind of retool all of your security functions on top of some of your other systems where you've got a cost advantage. So now you can share that costing across multiple programs. Like that like, these just what this one thread that matches your base.
Stephen Semmelroth:Let's start there.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. And are you seeing a lot, with a different like, it used to be health care and finance, but now different verticals, different industries that are now taking security a bit more seriously?
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, generative AI is really emphasizing what we already knew in the industry. And I say that because, Expedia does a good job promoting what they call the five AI truths. And their number five is that employees are already using AI.
Stephen Semmelroth:It's kinda like the shadow AI problem, which is it's just a rebranded version of what we call the shadow IT program, you know, a decade ago. Right? Yep. So when we dig into it, the the fear of AI is that a company's superpower, their data, their intellectual property, is being siphoned out of their company. That's a very valid fear.
Stephen Semmelroth:So what we say is like, okay. Great. How do we put some controls around that and do it in a meaningful way, put some governance bolted onto it? So, like, who's allowed to do what, where, when, why, how? Gee.
Stephen Semmelroth:That sounds an awful lot like a security program, doesn't it, Lou?
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Oh, big time. And everyone to your point, it's every industry. It's not that that's not just a health care finance issue. And, traditionally, it's been because they've been the ones that have been, you know, the higher highest regulated.
Lou Rabon:Right? But now I don't I think that no one can dodge the bullet. I you just you saw about the SharePoint, you know, vulnerability that was just released. It it's stuff like that. And that hits legacy companies because it's legacy companies that are, or legacy organizations that are hosting SharePoint on prem.
Lou Rabon:Like, who the hell is doing that? A lot. A lot of companies.
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. The addressable market for on prem is still extraordinary.
Lou Rabon:Huge. And it's almost always done, you know, kludge together without proper segmentation and things like that. So, yeah. You you so you would agree. Yeah.
Lou Rabon:It it's getting it's expanding beyond the traditional industries where, yeah, we're definitely seeing gaming, man a lot of manufacturing, which has OT issues as well, and yeah.
Stephen Semmelroth:We're seeing AI, generative AI specifically, being the compelling event that's causing companies to go relook their strategy for everything, especially security because there's so much fear about losing their own superpower.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. We had a a discussion with it was actually a recruiter, last week. I was speaking to someone, they were like, wow.
Lou Rabon:AI this. And what is, you know, like, how can someone get an AI security? I said, again, to your point about the basics in selling, the basics in security, it's like, where is your data? AI security is data security because to your point, the IP could be going out the door because you don't have the proper controls to know when your data is going through the door. So it's funny how it all comes down to back to basics.
Lou Rabon:Right?
Stephen Semmelroth:Yep. It it's going back to the basics, whether it's a sales process or security process or AI, it's the same problem just reskinned.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Big time. So so last question on the TA front. You know, what a TA wants to get ramped quickly, in selling security, what's your advice? And before you answer, I I will interject that.
Lou Rabon:Yvonne, I know has a lot of, you know, we we sponsor some of these elevates, obviously, and stuff. So I'm assuming that's gonna be one of the ways. Yeah?
Stephen Semmelroth:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So make sure you come to the Avant Special Forces Summit this September.
Lou Rabon:Mhmm.
Stephen Semmelroth:So we we've built a substantial amount of content to try to make this easy. So everything from everything from how do you go tell your clients that you play in the space to targeting and prospecting and trying to understand some of the stories that are out there. So we have case studies about, like, the Conti ransomware group that's been now been disbanded, and it's kind of repop its head up in different ways. We've got these stories that exist about what the threat model looks like, and then we've got the here's how to go sell it. And we also if you're more technical, we've got those things around like, gee, what the hell are all these stupid acronyms?
Stephen Semmelroth:Which ones do I need to pay attention to? And I often say that acronyms are a distraction because there's 800,000,000 acronyms in this space, and each of those are worth a dollar. So do you want a dollar, or do you wanna go transform your clients in a more meaningful way where outcomes are aligned with capturing revenue? Which I stole from you, by the way.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. You didn't steal anything. I I love it. It's the way the whole industry is going, but, yeah, you know, I'm all about the outcomes.
Stephen Semmelroth:But but it's but it's but it's super relevant here. Right? Like, the acronyms are often a distraction distraction for change. And the outcomes are keep the business up and running, prevent against the bad guys, whether they're in a different country or your employees, and keep the business up and running. Wait.
Stephen Semmelroth:That's two of the top three things. Weird. But it's it's that's that's the fundamental. Right? We're not trying to get, you know, a PAM solution, a ZTNA solution, and a DDoS solution, and blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Stephen Semmelroth:What we're trying to do is keep companies with the ability to go to market and win. Give them the posture they need to win over and over and over again and adapt in a way that allows them to fight Porter's five forces instead of fighting Conti ransomware groups and their equivalents.
Lou Rabon:Exactly. And that's where the ROI, which I know we've we we both are big proponents of that security is an investment. It's not a cost center. So I think those are the conversations I can, move the needle. And then, yeah, when when if a TA wants to get up and running quickly other than reading, you know, and and going online and seeing, the vendors will confuse the hell hell out of you to your point.
Lou Rabon:I I remember one time you asked me, well, all these acronyms just around zero trust. And I I kinda fudge it because I thought they were all the same thing. And then you educated me that there's actually even more that I didn't even know about. And so, yeah, I think going to vendors probably not necessarily the best if especially if they're trying to sell a silver bullet, but going to a, you know, a partner, like a bond to be being able to to understand more about, you know, how do you get past the noise?
Stephen Semmelroth:Can I riff on that for just a second? I'm gonna take kind of a slightly posing view. Yeah. Yep. Six years ago in the channel space, the vast majority of vendors did not know how to position security in general.
Stephen Semmelroth:In fact, many many of the vendors in this space were companies that bolted on security to their own offerings. They weren't necessarily security companies.
Lou Rabon:Right.
Stephen Semmelroth:I will say over the the last the last six years, being able to watch the industry get better and better and better, I would say that as it just does a litmus test, many of the vendors are substantially better at talking about their ideal client profile. Like like that like, no BS. This is what we're good at, and this is what we do. Here's how you can go find business with us. Mhmm.
Stephen Semmelroth:They're, in general, significantly better, and I think we've passed that inflection point about three years ago where, you know, myself and and you and other advocates in the industry have really been pushing to find the signal through the noise. And I'm not saying go blindly trust every supplier in the ecosystem. Right? What I will say is at least the content is better. I think we're probably out of the tunnel, and we're starting to to be out.
Stephen Semmelroth:Like, we made it through the tunnel. We can see the light. We're outside, and now we're all just trying to figure out which direction do we go now that we're out of the tunnel.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. That's a good point. It's those differentiators too, being everything to everyone. I mean, I've made this analogy before where it's like, we don't wanna be the cheesecake factory of security. We wanna be the In N Out.
Lou Rabon:Like, you're gonna come for a burger. You're never gonna see a chicken burrito on an in and out menu or at least, you know, not not for the foreseeable future. And, the same same with the security providers. Definitely for us, that's our goal where we would say, hey. We'll do this.
Lou Rabon:We'll do a pen test. We'll do these these projects. And we're saying, we're the security program company. That's why you're coming to us. And so each vendor saying, hey, you know, there's MDR vendors that we're doing fractional CSAVC.
Lou Rabon:So they're shedding that now or they, you know, most of them should be because they're saying, okay. This is our core competency. I I think it's a a fallacy to think, yeah, we can capture all this stuff, and it's gonna be land and expand. We've learned the hard way that it's better to just, you know, differentiate and and concentrate on what you're good at. So I think it's good to see that.
Stephen Semmelroth:Well, and everybody has their own scope and scale. Right? So, like, for you guys, that absolutely makes sense. Yeah. But there are some there are some vendors out there that can do a substantial amount of things that their clients need, and that's why trusted advisers come to us to help shepherd them which direction they want to
Lou Rabon:go. That's right.
Stephen Semmelroth:Like, just because just because Lou can do pen test doesn't mean you should do just a pen test unless there's maybe follow on opportunity and more of a meaningful outcomes driven monthly type OpEx spend.
Lou Rabon:Voila. Yep. Exactly. So how do you how do you feel that security in the channel is evolving? Already, you've brought us kind of on a journey.
Lou Rabon:Where where where do you think it's going? Is it is it going to continue to differentiate where vendors are gonna, really kinda hone in on the things that they're good at?
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. So I think at a macro level, if we look at you know, we go back and look at a funding perspective. The vast majority of companies that are in the security landscape, like if you look at the Optiv cybersecurity map or some of those other landscape maps that are out there, I think we're going to see a substantial number of AI security startups, which are going to tackle AI security in a number of different ways, but I think that's just one quadrant of that map. I think the rest of that map will actually consolidate. There'll be winners and losers, and we'll see fewer options across all of those different areas of that giant grid of all the other landscape that are out there.
Stephen Semmelroth:And we're seeing that we're seeing that with those consolidations. I think consolidation will be the name of the game, and I think that the majority of those acquisitions will actually be to round out one company's base and offerings for things that are adjacent that make sense. So, like, on the data security side, like data discovery, data classification companies are now starting to merge into really DPSMs, data posture security management, as, like, again, who can touch what, where, when, why, and how, and can you audit it and maybe even block some of it if required? I think we're gonna see those a lot of that consolidation happening in the space, and it'll be fun to watch.
Lou Rabon:Oh, yeah. And, yeah, basically, everything will be owned by Palo Alto soon. So
Stephen Semmelroth:Well, they did make a early bet on APIs and bought a bunch of companies and continue to bond by a bunch of companies that are API driven. But I also, I also think that, while they move fast, their ability to charge a premium on all of those companies that they bought is turning many clients away because they don't wanna pay the premium.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. And also the it's it's kind of the Mac fee model from fifteen years ago, which is buy you know, acquire everything and then poorly integrate it. Give a promise of, you know, one single pane of glass, the elusive single pane of glass, and then don't execute on that. And, you know, I think that there there's gonna be a lot of growing pains there. Maybe in the new technology world we live in and with a little bit of AI and ML, you know, sprinkled on top, Maybe they can come close to achieving it, but I think it's definitely the Palo Alto acquire everything and integrate it.
Lou Rabon:It's it's a lot harder than than expected. And look at Google, if if you wanna see what what they've done with some of the the acquisitions. We'll see how Wizz goes, but I think consolidation to buy, mind sharing to kill competition, you know, it may their jury's still out if that's a good thing or not. We'll see.
Stephen Semmelroth:I I don't know, but I I think that the in general, the map will actually be smaller, especially because, a lot of those venture backed companies are at the end of their cycle, and they're looking for some sort of an exit.
Lou Rabon:Big time.
Stephen Semmelroth:And their investors are demanding an ROI. And so we're gonna continue to see these layoffs at the product vendors. I'm specifically right now, I'm talking about, like, the product vendor ecosystem, not the service provider ecosystem. Right. But we're gonna continue to see layoffs as they get closer and closer to those exits, so their their price to earnings will go higher.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Final question I'm gonna transition to more about Stefan. Uh-oh. What excites you about the future?
Stephen Semmelroth:Oh, man. There's there's a few things to to kinda tackle this. I do like I I do tend to like a market that that shifts and changes a lot frequently.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. It suits your personality?
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. Yeah.
Lou Rabon:Yep. Yep. I think anyone in cyber in in security, it's like constant learning. We're we're kind of addicted to constantly learning autodidacts.
Stephen Semmelroth:Yep. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Right? And, like, the more chaos in the industry, the more opportunity there is.
Lou Rabon:Yep. A 100%.
Stephen Semmelroth:So it's it's fun to watch that. It's and it's also fun to be at a distributor where, we can also sort of shape that sometimes
Lou Rabon:Yeah.
Stephen Semmelroth:And be a part of it, and figure out, you know, when when those consolidations happen or m and a, etcetera, like those changes, how do you message that and turn that into an opportunity so people can capture the opportunity there? I think it's it's a blast. It's super, super fun. I also some you know, I have I have cloud as well. And so the uncertainty that Broadcom and VMware are injecting into the market is substantial.
Stephen Semmelroth:And so watching kind of watching the market shift and we talked about on prem. So watching the market shift from, like, on prem and hyperscalers towards that middle of, like, the colo and infrastructure as a service and even those hyperscaler, like, partners that are out there. Watching the kind of the client base compress towards the middle of that evolution change has really interesting. I think that clients in general, companies not even think. I'm watching this happen in real time, you know, working with Trusted Advisors clients out in the field at our Battle Labs at Havant in Chicago and and Houston Dallas.
Stephen Semmelroth:Dallas. Watching clients realize and rethink their entire cloud strategy is happening because of generative AI right now.
Lou Rabon:Do you mean because the the data centers are getting they're they're expanding rapidly and compute is getting cheaper, or do you mean people are asking ChatGPT more?
Stephen Semmelroth:Well, all of the above. But as we dig into it, like, boards are asking their CIOs and CTOs, what are you building that's going to change the game? And that question like, they got they have to find a really interesting way to answer it, and there's two things that they need to do for slowing them down. Number one is how do they find the funds to build something that will change the game? And that means probably moving out of a colo or moving off of a hyperscaler because they didn't refactor their workloads.
Stephen Semmelroth:Right. And as there as that comes up, the second thing that's slowing them down is some of this uncertainty around virtualization in the market. And so when you tie price compression and a need to to unlock dollars along with this, I gotta go build some AI stuff, that's part of why we're seeing this compression towards the middle of, like, the Colo, IaaS, and Hyperscaler, like, partners that are out there. And so they're trying to find the dollars to make the investments to do this stuff, and it all happens because the board wants to know what they're building with AI to change the game.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. And Broadcom just completely destroyed VMware, and, you know, I that that strategy is very confusing to me, but I don't wanna go too deep into that.
Stephen Semmelroth:It's an interesting thing to watch.
Lou Rabon:Yep. Yeah. Definitely helps. And and it destroys obviously, there were a lot of SMBs that were, you know, managed service providers, IT companies that were relying on that, and they it really kind of destroyed their business model to a to a certain extent or made them pivot really hard.
Stephen Semmelroth:And it's gonna be tough for them. Yeah. You know, that, like, the, you know, the the whiplash, especially for those smaller MSPs and even some of the large ones that didn't make that list of 15 in North America, boy, they're they're in a tight place right now, and they've gotten till October 31 to come up with a really good plan.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Gonna be interest So
Stephen Semmelroth:And then how do you secure it?
Lou Rabon:Voila. Voila. And so so let's transition to you personally. I mean, listen. You know, what got you here?
Lou Rabon:I can say, you know, you're in Chicago, originally from that area. And West Point, you went to West Point for undergrad. First, like, what what made you wanna West Point is amazing, by the way. And, I I grew up not far from West Point, so I've got a, you know, soft spot for the cadets there, that used to tear the town up, the small town of.
Stephen Semmelroth:Right. You're from Poughkeepsie. Right? Newburgh. Newburgh.
Stephen Semmelroth:Oh, close. Okay.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So not far from Poughkeepsie. Yeah.
Lou Rabon:So Newburgh, there there were a number of places, bars. Yeah. Really interesting times. But, yeah, the what made you wanna go army in West Point?
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. So, my grandfather growing up, we'd be sitting around the table and kind of the the hero culture that we built in the family that my my grandparents on both sides of the family built was that our family, on both sides of the family, we do hard things. But my grandfather would tell stories about men and women that did incredibly difficult things. So, like, reading Reader's Digest excerpts about, like, Amelia Earhart growing up and Charles Lindbergh and, like, these other, you know, notable people in history that that did something that everybody else thought was crazy at the time. And, know, the resilience of being able to get back up when things go wrong over and over and over again.
Stephen Semmelroth:And then I I saw that my grandfather was a business owner. My on the other side of the family, my family were were farmers and at one point had, like, a sawmill. And it was go do tough stuff. What's the hardest thing you can do? Go do that.
Stephen Semmelroth:And so I remember this distinct memory, and I think it was junior year of high school. I was walking down the the the senior hallway, and they just put all of the college and university posters all down the hallway. And everybody was kind of flocking over us in Illinois. So everybody was flocking over to, like, you know, Illinois State and Illinois University and and, University of Chicago and all all the local ones. You know, University of Michigan was up there, and no one was looking at the one all the way down, which was West Point.
Stephen Semmelroth:And I was like, well, if everybody's doing all this stuff, it must be easy. So I'll go take a look at that.
Lou Rabon:Ignorance is bliss. Right?
Stephen Semmelroth:It's Anthony. Yep. And and it was it was phenomenal a experience. You know, the the exposure that I got to have there to to people on, you know, on both sides of the aisle, congressmen, senators. You know, routinely, we had, like, astronauts, other extraordinarily distinguished people.
Stephen Semmelroth:And, one of my roles, because I had this, you know, closer to the top of my class, one of my roles was to kind of, shepherd those people around, and I got to learn from them while I was showing them around West Point, explaining some of the history and kind of being their executive assistant while they happened to be there. And, you know, every single one of them, when I asked them about how they got to where they are, almost all of them credited mentors and family people. They they almost all had gratitude towards other people in their life that had helped them get through really tough things and overcome obstacles, and that worked well for me there and then just kept picking the toughest things I could do for a long time, and life has given me some amazing sparring partners that have made me better at fighting this thing called life. It's been great.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. I mean, we don't have time to go into deployment and stuff like that, and I I'm sure you have amazing stories with that. And you are such a humble guy, Stefan, because you have this just absolutely amazing, you know, CV. You're you've got two mass if I understand correctly, you have two masters engineering, then you got your MBA. You know?
Lou Rabon:How how did that happen?
Stephen Semmelroth:So I had I had broke my back in Afghanistan, which we'll just gloss over for now. And the army didn't know if they were going to keep me or not. I was a airborne ranger at the time of the infantry. Army didn't know if they were gonna keep me, and I said, well, I better be ready in case they, you know, you know, launch me back in the civilian landscape.
Lou Rabon:Right.
Stephen Semmelroth:And, Illinois had this amazing veterans program and still do called the Illinois Veterans Grant that paid for me to go to school. And I said, well, I have an electrical engineering degree. I might as well continue along that road, and get a a master's of engineering. And, halfway through it, I realized, that I was never going to be one of the best in the world at it. And I thought and I had this, like, this frustration of and and and maybe it was a fear of if I went to an amazing corporation and I invented something that was world changing, I would have to rely on sales and marketing to take that invention that I made and go actually change the world with it.
Stephen Semmelroth:And I was unwilling to let somebody else take theoretically, unwilling to let somebody else the success of something that could be world changing that I did build if I got there, let it live and die in the marketplace. And so I said, okay. If I'm gonna do that, what how do I do it?
Lou Rabon:Yeah. You think about Nikolai Tesla. You think about Gutenberg. When you hear the stories of these inventors that actually didn't reap the profits of of most of their inventions, it's it's really, you know, shocking.
Stephen Semmelroth:And I didn't wanna fall in that that same pitfall. Right? Like and I'm not gonna compare myself to Gutenberg and Tesla, but sometimes I got the occasional good idea.
Lou Rabon:So you pivoted to well, you still got your master's, right, in engineering.
Stephen Semmelroth:Oh, we finish what we start. Yeah. Smell. I was actually I was in the last semester of the program, and while I'm applying for the MBA actually, I was in the second to last semester. And, applying for the MBA and, the University of Illinois MBA program, the dean reached out.
Stephen Semmelroth:He goes, let's get on a call. And he goes, are you gonna do two masters at the same time? I was like, no. No. No.
Stephen Semmelroth:No. I'm gonna get in now, then I'll defer a semester. I'll take thirty days off, and then I'll start your program from scratch because you're not gonna take any of my credits that I've done anywhere else. So let's go.
Lou Rabon:Unbelievable. That is it's really impressive, but not surprising considering, one I think it was last year where you did two was it two triathlons or two marathons or so? What were you doing, like, in a
Stephen Semmelroth:Oh, yeah. So I did the Chicago triple challenge, which was you do three triathlons in one weekend. Jesus. So you do this a a really, a short one on Saturday, and then on Sunday, you're the first person in the water, the first group in the water, for the Olympic distance, the international distance. And then once you cross the finish line, you hobble back to the start, and you do a sprint.
Stephen Semmelroth:Wow. And when you add all of the distance up, it's not quite a half it's not quite a half Ironman. So a couple weeks ago, did a
Lou Rabon:half Ironman. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So you're constantly doing challenging yourself, doing the hard stuff.
Lou Rabon:And that's in addition to having a family, young children, and then immense responsibility for for growing this security and cloud portion and AI at Avant. So, I mean, just doesn't end, man.
Stephen Semmelroth:I could I could not do this, but for the fact that my wife lets me. Aw. Right?
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And she's got her own. She's impressive too from from what I know.
Stephen Semmelroth:Oh, yeah. She's an army special operator nurse and has done all sorts of crazy stuff. She worked in the ER for a while, and now she's a she's an a nurse practitioner with a doctorate that works in a cardiovascular institute doing electrocardiology and, like, supporting crazy, like, pacemaker
Lou Rabon:technologies. Unbelievable. And and from what I understand from nurse practitioners, they actually do 10 times the work that doctors do with the same level of knowledge. So it's a lot of, lot of respect there too. Your your your kids are going to either be absolute superhumans or they're going to be the laziest children ever because both of their parents are such high achievers.
Lou Rabon:They're like, what else do we have to do? So
Stephen Semmelroth:Well, that's actually, Anna and I talk, often. We talk a lot about how we're going to manufacture adversity for our children.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Definitely. It's really important. Speaking of which, in, like, five minutes after this, I'm gonna be talking to my son about certain responsibilities he has during summer and Go. Making money.
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah?
Lou Rabon:Really
Stephen Semmelroth:important. Yeah. Got fam family duty.
Lou Rabon:That's right. That's right. So we're almost at time. I guess, last thing, I know you're you're doing scuba diving as well, which I can't believe. Are you doing that still?
Lou Rabon:Is that still a high high thing for you, high priority? Or
Stephen Semmelroth:I haven't ran a class in a while, but we still we still get in a few dives a year, which is which is absolutely phenomenal. I got the the scuba helmet behind me over here. And heck, if I if I actually liked boats, maybe I would have gone in the navy. But same reason I didn't go on to tanks. Oops.
Stephen Semmelroth:But, yeah, no, we still we still get quite a few dives in a year and, you know, with my back, I I can't really sustain teaching basic courses, but, I try to run, you know, an advanced course or, or like a mixed air diving type of thing, about every year or two just to just to keep the dust off because that's kind of the retirement plan.
Lou Rabon:Nice.
Stephen Semmelroth:So I I went through all those instructor and dive master courses in the late aughts and just keeping it up and running and trying to stay current. So, you know, thirty years from now, I can ski in the winter and, you know, teach skiing and teach teach scoop in the summer.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Maybe living in The Caribbean will be seeing you with your own little bar.
Stephen Semmelroth:Only one? No, bro. I'm I'm gonna take over the the whole intercontinental stuff. Yeah.
Lou Rabon:Seven, where can people find you? We're gonna leave a list, but we've got LinkedIn and, you know, I'll I'll post your LinkedIn, but, obviously the Avant website, you've got your own personal website page as well. Any other, places people can find you?
Stephen Semmelroth:Yeah. I I do the most these days on, on LinkedIn and, and through the Avant general channels. I had been posting a lot more video on LinkedIn, and I found that the creativity it took me to do LinkedIn was taking away from my time with my children, the creative the ability to, you know, do storytelling at bedtime with my kiddos. So I've I've dialed back. But, yeah, mostly on LinkedIn and through the Avant channels on goavant.net.
Stephen Semmelroth:And, in fact, we've got webinars that, that I they let you participate on, about, about monthly. So you can join us there, and that's where we try to give the best tips and tricks, the visibility into the market, and convert those stories, what we're seeing happen into the simple sailing motion that trusted advisers expect from us today.
Lou Rabon:Amazing. So, Stefan Semmelt, Rolf, thank you so much.
Stephen Semmelroth:Thanks, Luke. Glad to be here, and, I hope this helps someone. And if it did, please pay it forward.
Lou Rabon:Thank you. Yeah. And to for those of you that are watching and or listening, if you learned something today or laughed, please tell someone about this podcast. Thanks again, Stefan, and we'll see you again soon.
Lou Rabon:That's a wrap for this episode of Channel Security Secrets. 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.
Lou Rabon:Partner with experts who build resilience from the ground up.
