Building a Scalable Business - Eric Brooker - Channel Security Secrets - Episode #12 - Channel Security Secrets

Episode Transcript
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Lou Rabon (00:01):
Welcome to Channel Security Secrets. I'm Lou Raban.
On this show, we expose theuntold secrets and critical
insights from the people shapingthe future of cybersecurity
sales in the trusted adviserchannel. If you're looking to up
your game around sellingsecurity, stick around. Channel
Security Secrets is brought toyou by Cyber Defense Group on a
mission to shift cybersecurityfrom reactive to resilient.

(00:38):
I'm really looking forward toour guest today. He's a
technology leader, keynotespeaker, podcast host, and best
selling author. He's the authorof the best selling book, You
Are Enough, host of the CouncilCulture podcast ranked in the
top 1% globally. He built achannel advisory firm that
empowers suppliers to boostvisibility and drive growth.

(00:58):
He's the founder and CEO of thechannel Standard.
Eric Brooker, welcome to theshow.

Eric Brooker (01:04):
Good to good to be here. I always love
conversations with you. Soexcited about the conversation
today.

Lou Rabon (01:10):
Yes. Yes. Likewise. Likewise. And, you know, just to
jump into it, you know, tell us,Eric, you've got a storied
background, obviously, and we'regonna go through some of the
things you've done in the past.
But what can you tell ourlisteners the the biggest secret
to your successes in thechannel?

You know, it's interesting. You and I have had
a lot of conversations over thelast couple of months. And I
think for me, when I when Ireally sit on that question, I
think of folks in this industry,particularly after you and I
bumped into a show each other ata show, what, just a couple
weeks ago. I've got a lot ofrelationships in the channel
with people I've nevertransacted with. And some would

(01:52):
argue maybe that's not where Ishould be investing my time.
But people do business withpeople that they like and trust.
I made a conscious decisionprobably early in my
professional career that Iwasn't gonna focus on. I I'm
gonna get to know Lou. I'm gonnaget to know Ian, or I'm gonna
get to know Patrick for the sakeof doing business. I think we're

(02:14):
all sort of drawn to people thatwe wanna get to know and be
around.
I can think of a couple people.Again, I'm not transacted with,
but if I'm honest with myself,they have been great resources
to get to connected to the otherfolks in the channel that would
take the big piece for me, inshort is just building

(02:36):
relationships for relationshipssake and not having any other
motive or agenda.

Lou Rabon (02:43):
Yeah. I think that's great advice, and and I I hear
you. I think you had told me astory of someone that it it was
actually years before you had,kinda met that person. You
helped them with something. Theyweren't even really necessarily
in the same industry, and thenafterwards, you, you know, many

(03:04):
years down the road, theyactually were in a position to
help you out.
And, I think that that's thatthat's completely relevant.
Like, not selling if if you'reconstantly on, constantly
selling and you're looking ateveryone like a piggy bank that
might be able to, you know, helpyou achieve your dreams, I I
think people can sniff that, andthey and they just they that

(03:26):
it's kind of repellent in a way.

You know, I'll I'll I'll share a story maybe a
little bit vulnerably, but whenI set out to launch my own
company, I didn't have anyclients. I had money in the
bank, and it was unexpected. Ihad gotten laid off, got a a
really great sort of goldenparachute, if you will. At one
point in that journey, I had puta note out on LinkedIn that it
was it was really vague. It wasintentionally vague because I

(03:50):
didn't wanna admit that I waslooking for work.
I didn't wanna admit that I wasstruggling to get the business
off the ground. And so it was asuper vague. I might be looking
for work. I might be looking forclients. I am looking to pay my
bills next month.
Someone help. And I got a lot ofcalls like, hey. What are you
what are you really looking for?And an individual we'll we'll

(04:11):
call him Ryan mostly becausethat's his name, but we but we
won't name his company. But Ryancalled and he said, hey, I saw
your post and I wanna help.
And I just sat there and Ilistened. Because again, I was
early enough in this now threeyear long journey of of
entrepreneurship where I didn'tI I wasn't even ready to tell

(04:33):
him I needed work. I just neededmoney. I needed some
consistency. Grateful to be onthe backside of that.
But what Ryan said to me is,Eric, you're an entrepreneur. I
wanna help. What can my companybuy from you to keep you down
the path that is clearly whereyou're supposed to be? Ryan and

(04:56):
I had bumped into each otherover the years, sort of that old
adage of do unto others, if youwill. I'd always been good to
Ryan.
Ryan had always been good to me,and I needed something, I e, a
job or some stabilityfinancially. And Ryan, I didn't
call him, but Ryan picked up andsaid, hey. I I got you. Let's

(05:16):
figure it out.

Lou Rabon (05:17):
It's amazing. And and that was not even intentional on
your part. Like, someday Ryan'sgonna do this for me. It's just,
being a good person, beinggenuine. You know, ultimately, I
think anyone's success is youknow, we're standing on the
shoulders, shoulders of ourparents, shoulders of our
grandparents, shoulders of allthe people that helped us to
where we are at and and ourfriends too.

(05:40):
And sometimes, yeah, friendscome from strange places that
you wouldn't expect. You know,obviously, Ryan saw something in
you that was he could tell thiswas a passion of yours, and he
wanted to support that. And, youknow, that's that's excellent.
That that really is a testamentto to who you are as a person.

I appreciate that.

Lou Rabon (05:58):
Yeah. So that's a good secret, I think, for anyone
because one of the through linesof of this podcast, it's it's
really interesting for mebecause I'm I'm getting to learn
the channel's relatively new tome as well, and what works, what
doesn't. I'm not a I'm apractitioner, a security guy.
I'm you know, I I'd normally ifI weren't doing this, I'd have a

(06:19):
c level title somewhere in,like, a CSO whatever company,
and I'd probably be bored out ofmy mind. So I'm really happy to
be doing it, but the the channelstuff is is new and the sales
stuff, like, the mechanics ofsales is new.
And for practitioners, we oftenlook at it like, oh, yeah.
Salespeople, you just have to becharming and and have a good

(06:42):
Rolodex and know how to speak topeople or whatever. And, you
know, what I've learned overthis journey is that's
absolutely not the case. Thepeople that are most successful
in this channel are people that,you know, generally in life.
It's yes.
You're genuine. Yes. You trulywanna help. You've got passion
for what you do, and you've gotintegrity too. So I think
nontransactional sellers are theones that especially in this

(07:05):
channel because this channel isabout relationships.
Everything's aboutrelationships, but to your point
of what your secret is, havingbeing a person in this channel
with relationships, that'ssomething that, it's such a
small world too. You there'scurrency there.

Yeah. Yeah. I I agree. It it's interesting. The
consulting practice that I havenow and has been around for
three years.
I've never thought of it thisway. A lot of what I do is
figure out for our clients, thesuppliers, who their ideal
partner profile is, not ICP, butideal partner profile. Who are

(07:42):
the trusted advisers that aremost likely to sell your stuff?
And what I'm hearing from you issomething that I had never
thought of. The reason theseagents pick up the phone is
because many of them I'veestablished relationships with
never sold through.
And now I need some help. Butnow I've got the relationship

(08:02):
capital where I can pick up thephone and say, hey, Lou. I've
got a new supplier that might bea really good fit in your
portfolio. Would you give mecandid feedback? Would you take
a look at this supplier and letme know if you think there's
value?

Lou Rabon (08:15):
Big time. We we actually have we call that an
iTap. Ideal trusted adviserprofile. So not ICP, but iTap.
And we learn because the firstyear that we were in this
channel, we were like, wait asecond.
We're we have look at ourmeetings. Like, the metric was
meetings. If we the moremeetings we have, the more deals
we're gonna close, and thatwasn't correlating. We're like,

(08:37):
wait a second. We've had 30meetings this month or something
or you know?
And and maybe we've had one dealcome out of that. Wait a sec. We
need to really dial in here. Andwe found there's trust advisors
that all they want, they'relike, Give us a quote.
Immediately, we say, No.
Want a quote. You don't want usto speak to your customer. I get

(08:57):
it that a lot of the customersdon't want to have endless
meetings with endless suppliers,but especially for what we're
offering. You know, they theyneed to understand more than a p
it's not gonna come across atblack and white on a piece of
paper. Plus, we understand thatthat's if we don't establish at
least some connection with thecustomer, there there's not

(09:18):
there's there's a low likelihoodthat that's gonna really go
anywhere.
And then also really what Ithink the trusted advisers are
doing in that circumstance isit's three quoting. Right?
They're like, okay. We needanother quote. Let's just go to
these guys.
And so we've we've turned thatdown. That that puts you we have
a scoring system, and you youget points off immediately if
that's that's how we'retransacting with you. Or, you

(09:39):
know, we've learned that some ofthese these trust advisers don't
have personal relationships withtheir customers. They it's
they're in the Rolodex. Right?
But to your point, they have notestablished a relationship with
them. Again, very transactional.So they're like, oh, yeah. We
sold them something. We're gonnatry to sell them something else.
And so when we go in there andmaybe we do start to present and

(10:00):
give a quote, they can't give usany intel as to, you know, where
we are. And and we don't alwaysexpect to be, okay. You're our
preferred provider. That'sideal. Right?
But we understand we might beone of three other more
providers. At least give usfeedback. Right? Like, tell us
this is you know, they they likethis. They don't like that
pricing, whatever.

(10:21):
That's the whole reason we'rehaving this relationship, and
that to us is, like, earning thecommission. So we've got a bunch
of metrics like that. So it's,you know, you're tracking on
that one too. I think it'simportant.

I love it.

Lou Rabon (10:32):
So so what about, security? Do you do you have any
thoughts about how security isevolving and being sold in the
channel?

So when I started in the channel, there were about
50 suppliers. I spoke to a TSDthe other day. Actually, it was
a week ago today, and they toldme they had over 700 suppliers.
So when I first started, mysecret was I was the only guy in
the industry that worked for acompany that sold SD WAN, which

(11:00):
made it really easy to winbusiness. Right.
Because I had the one widgeteverybody wanted, but nobody
nobody else was selling. Youknow what's interesting? Because
when I started, there were a lotof folks that we now refer to as
as transactional. A lot oftrusted advisers out there
selling the low hanging fruit.The 10x spiff on UCaaS maybe on

(11:25):
a good day if the customer asksfor it, contact center.
But there's a lot of partnersthat are just selling
connectivity. Nothing more.Those are not your iTab. They're
not your ideal partner profile,but there's this elite group of
sellers. Some of them are oldlike you and I that decided it

(11:48):
was time.
Sorry if I offended you incalling you old.

Lou Rabon (11:51):
Oh, yeah. You can see this totally fit that
description.

See, the nice thing for me is I've got a
couple grays here, and I've gotnothing up top. Some of us old
guys have adopted the newertechnologies, cybersecurity, and
AI being on the forefront. Forthose of us that have, I think
we're gonna clean house. This isa conversation that MSPs have

(12:17):
had for many, many years beforethe channel started having the
conversation. But we're reachingthis pivotal spot in in the
evolution of the channel whereMSPs are now becoming agents and
selling connectivity and contactcenter.
And agents are now sellingmanaged services, including but
not limited to cybersecurity. Mythesis is they're gonna bump

(12:41):
heads at some point, and theclient ABC company is eventually
gonna say, well, wait. Hold on aminute. I buy all of this as a
service stuff from Eric, andthen lose over here doing my
managed services, but they'reboth telling me they can do what
the other does. I'm gonna justwork with Eric, or I'm just
gonna work with Lou.
Cybersecurity is the linchpin inthat conversation. Cybersecurity

(13:05):
is the thing that keeps businessowners up at night.
Cybersecurity is the thing thatand I hate that old adage, but
cybersecurity is the thing thatkeeps c level executives up at
night because if you look atsome of the historically large
breaches, I'm in Minneapolis. Iimmediately think of Target.
People lost jobs.

(13:26):
People forget about the millionsof dollars. Forget about the
Hard loss. The the hard stuff.Yeah. Or what was was it
Cloudflare that had that day'slong outage a couple years ago
that affected all the all thecar dealerships across the
country?
If it wasn't Cloudflare, it wassomebody else. I apologize. But

(13:49):
the impact of not addressingcybersecurity as a c level
executive for the customer istheir job, is the potential
bankruptcy of their business.Cybersecurity is the hot talking
point because everyone'sarguing, well, Eric, sure,

(14:11):
cybersecurity was, but now it'sAI. No.
Because you can't have the AIconversation without having
cybersecurity policies.Otherwise, you're just letting
all your information, all yourIP out into the public
atmosphere. If your GeneralMills or three ms or Best Buy,
three ms is a great example.They have a cybersecurity AI

(14:34):
policy. You can only use the AIplatform that they programmed
and built because it stays inthe building.
It stay stays in the three mfamily.

Lou Rabon (14:43):
Mhmm. That's right. You know, AI, security, AI
governance is data governance,and data governance is data
protection is, you know,cybersecurity. So you're you're
a 100% on. I'm glad you broughtup AI because, you know, we're
obligated to speak to it.
We had to. This is gonna be theAI secrets podcast maybe next

(15:04):
year. But, no. It's, it's reallyrelevant because you're right.
Cyber is, still new, and I couldtell you as a practitioner, the
things that we're seeing.
I've been doing this for overthirty years now, roughly. So,
you know, professionally. Andbefore that, I was I was
dabbling myself in things that,you know, we won't talk about.

(15:25):
But the point is, like, the theproblems haven't changed. It's
actually that that's a shockingthing.
So, is new to be sold in thechannel. Cyber is new and
exciting and it's a door opener.That's a 100% and that's why we
we really encourage TAs to to goout there and speak about it
even if they're not comfortablebecause they're gonna no one is

(15:47):
going to say or the people thatsay, you know, when you when you
ask them, hey. How are youfeeling about your cyber
program? If they say, yo.
We got it covered. Everything'sgreat. The the hugest red flag
They're lying. They're lying toyou. No one has it covered.
You know, to the extent thatthey'd like it to be. And
there's always maturity too.It's like, okay. Yeah. We've got
the basics down, but now wewanna move to the next level.

(16:09):
Those are the conversations wehave. But, you know, it's it's
really interesting because AItoo yeah. Now AI is dominating
everything up until that bubbleburst, but it's not going away.
AI is relevant. It's actually,it's definitely an accelerator.
It's kinda like, you know, goingfrom the, you know you know, I
don't know, horse horses bythemselves to a chariot behind

(16:31):
the horse or a cart, you know,like the wheel, basically. AI is
to tech as the wheel was to, youknow, farming and stuff like
that and and commerce becauseit's it's really an accelerator,
but you wouldn't put your whole,you know, business, model behind
the wheel. Right? You would saythe wheel is a way to go faster,

(16:52):
but the wheel is not unlessyou're Goodyear or something,
which they have an awesomecommercial, by the way. But, I
wanted to go back to, the whatyou talked about, the cost of a
breach.
You're you're you were talkingabout, like, every every c level
executive is up at night becausethey're thinking, like, what if
and what might that cost? Andyou said, like, Target,

(17:12):
etcetera, which that was througha third party HVAC vendor. That
that was one of the classics.And, you know, the costs are not
just, okay. Yeah.
This is how much we had to payfor an IR firm. This is how much
we had to pay for legal counsel.This is how much we had to pay
to, you know, do data IDprotection for all the people

(17:34):
that were hacked. There'sthere's regulatory fines. All
that stuff too is is a hardcost.
Here are the soft costs. Andagain, this is what I've learned
as a business owner now runninga sales organization. What about
your pipeline? Minute you givepipeline is so precious, right?
And and the minute you start togive an excuse to those

(17:56):
prospects to go to yourcompetitor or for your
competitor to have an a reasonto drive them away from you to
them, That's what breaches are.
There's there's a number of softcosts that you can't
productivity. It's a three tofive year cost, if not longer.

Yeah. Because the pipeline dries up, and then your
salespeople, some of your topsalespeople are under the gun.
They're under pressure, and theyultimately decide to leave the
business. I mean, I think of itlike we're going through. I
don't know when this will air,but at the present moment, we're
sitting through a governmentshutdown.
And TSA and air traffic controlare somehow deemed nonessential.

(18:39):
So these are folks that for theforeseeable future going to come
to work and not get their theywill at some point get back pay
but some of them woke up twoweeks ago and said, hey, if we
go to a government shutdown, I'mgoing to leave and certainly,
you've got folks in the fieldthat you can replace but you've
got folks at the top that areliving paycheck to paycheck that

(19:03):
say, I I don't wanna livethrough another government
shutdown. I don't know how longthis is gonna be. We can't
afford to go four monthswithout. So people are going to
leave.
So, yeah, to your point, thesoft costs are astronomical and
often not judged in advance.

Lou Rabon (19:17):
Yeah. Yeah. We it's shameless plug here. We have a
calculator that we post, andI'll, like, what are what are
the real costs of a breach? Andit does it even on only over two
years, I think, and that's justan an idea, but it tracks.
We've done a bunch of researchand stuff. So, yeah, the the
things like pipeline, the thingslike productivity, the things

(19:38):
like additional investment inIT, the things like your cyber
insurance premium, if you evenhad one, and if you can even get
another policy, that's going togo through the roof, just like
if you had made a claim onhomeowners or auto, etc. And
they're getting much harder.It's interesting because with
cyber insurance, we're seeingsome of these policies were

(19:59):
written, like, five years agowhere it was like, you know, fog
a mirror, tell us or whatever.We'll pay, like, this
multimillion dollar policy.
We I've still seen those becausewe do, you know, breach response
as well. So I've seen those,but, you know, they get paid.
It's pretty shocking. But nowthe insurers have, the the
carriers have gotten really,smart to all this, and they're

(20:20):
like, here the the terms andconditions are like, you know,
if they if you give them anyreason not to pay that claim,
which in a security program,it's just one person, you know,
reusing a password acrossmultiple sites or something like
that, they're gonna say, sorry.You didn't have a a reasonable
security program in place, andwe're not gonna we're not gonna
pay that claim.
So those are all the soft costs.So I I they're kind of a

(20:43):
tangent, but I think, hopefully,for people listening, these are
the reasons that when you'rehaving these conversations with
your prospects or with yourcustomers and they're like, you
know, why why should I evenconsider spending more on
cybersecurity? These are thethings, you know, kind of,
answers you can give to them oreven just questions. Are you

(21:04):
comfortable if if something badwere to happen? Do you know all
the costs that would beassociated?

So I think the the real value is I see it that you
guys bring as as as a businessis if I'm an adviser, there's a
good likelihood that I don'tknow the first thing about
cybersecurity. So while the TSDmay have given me a couple
questions to ask on aspreadsheet, you know, I to
identify a cybersecurityopportunity, I know that those

(21:32):
businesses, the TSDs are oftenconstrained. They've only got so
many engineers where you are, asI understand it, a supplier that
I can leverage to help me designand put together a cybersecurity
tool belt, if you will, todeliver to that end user
customer. So there's a I thinkthere's a ton of value in what

(21:54):
you guys are doing right now.

Lou Rabon (21:55):
Appreciate that. Yeah. We that that's what we're
here for. We we say to the TAs,it's okay to say, I don't know.
It's okay to not you know, youcan start that conversation.
And if it starts to gettechnical, you say, well, let me
bring in, you know, a supplierlike us. CDG, the team will come
in, and then we'll start towe're we're also asking why. And
in a lot of these podcastepisodes, there's repetitive

(22:18):
things. One of them is, don'tjust take the when when do you
want a pen test? You want anassessment?
Like, why? Because those thingsare just the beginning of what a
full program looks like. And theonly way to protect, you know, a
company these days is to reallyhave a full program that is like

(22:39):
lather, rinse, repeat. It'ssomething that is repeatable,
something that is is able to be,documented, and it doesn't
matter about the tools. Thatthat's a a real misconception
that there's a lot of money insales and marketing, right, to
be thrown at people about thesilver bullet approach for
cyber.
The real value is when you havea program, and it's also not

(23:01):
just throwing a body at iteither, which is what we see a
lot of mid market companiesdoing, and that's where we play
mid market and enterprise. Midmarket, they'll throw a body at
it and say, okay. Or a couplebuys. Or we we've got two
people. Maybe they're, you know,half IT, half security.
It's not enough, and it's notthe right strategy. You really
need to have a formal program.So, yeah, we we we are here when

(23:23):
when the TAs wanna reach outand, and speak, security to
their customers. What are someother challenges you're seeing?
We talked about AI, we talkedabout cyber.
What are some challenges thatyou've had to solve recently or
that you're seeing kind ofcoming down, the pipe?

Yeah. Think the biggest challenge for the
channel is for so many of us,myself included, having owned an
agency at one point, I went atit without a business plan. And
I think right now, we're seeingthe evolution of the industry.
Private equity came in. You saidin the same meeting I did, now
two weeks ago, they talked aboutmore than $2,000,000,000 has

(24:06):
been invested and theexponential growth that has
happened.
I think the one of the biggestchallenges right now is the big
names in the industry, the bluewaves, the up stacks, the ARGs,
Amplex, OneSource, some ofthose. They've got a business
plan. They've got a businessplan in part because most of
them are backed by privateequity or debt equity. So they

(24:26):
have to have a plan. But thenthere's solopreneurs, guys like
me, entrepreneurs, guys like youthat are going at it without a
plan.
They're walking into anopportunity unprepared for the
scale of the opportunity. Ithink there's some friends of
mine, in the Pacific Northwest.All they do is sell
connectivity. That's it. And yetthey're walking through.

(24:50):
I listen. The connectivitynowadays might be 10 or 15% of
the overall spend. If I'm gonnago put effort forth to earning a
client, I wanna make it assticky as possible. I wanna get
as much of the revenue aspossible. But I also wanna know
what's going on in their networkso I can so I can make sure what
I'm proposing is right.

(25:11):
And so I think for us to besuccessful as an industry, and
some of the TSDs are starting todo this, gonna educate some, not
all, of the advisers on how tobuild a scalable business.
Because when I when I owned myown agency about fifteen years
ago, I was opportunistic. I'dcall Fidelity National Title

(25:34):
because I had done a big dealwith them before, and I'd take
my buddy Chuck to lunch, and I'dsell him connectivity in the, in
the county that he wasresponsible for. But I didn't
ask him for an introduction. Ididn't have a business plan.
I walked into an opportunitythat was a million dollars a
month because they called me andasked if they could buy certain

(25:54):
services. But I wasn't ready tohave anything beyond the connect
that was just connectivity. Amillion dollars a month in
connectivity. So we've gottastart really planning for our
success. What are our goals?
What are our objectives? Whatare the products that we're
going to bring in to everysingle client in 2026? Are we
going to have the AIconversation? Are we going to

(26:17):
have the cybersecurityconversation? And if so, what's
my first line of defense when Idon't have the answer?
To your point just a minute ago,When when someone asked me a
question and the answer is Idon't know. Do I call CDG? Do I
pick up the phone and call theTSD? At what point do I say, the

(26:38):
TSD knows a a little or maybethey know a lot, but they don't
have the resources. Getting themnow is booked out as weeks in
advance.
I wanna close the deal. So, Ithink we've gotta identify the
partners need to identify whatis it that they wanna sell and
it's gotta be programmatic. Youcan't walk into an opportunity
without expecting to ask thequestions about AI or

(27:00):
cybersecurity or BPO or whateverelse is on their agenda.

Lou Rabon (27:04):
Yeah. If you wanna be sticky, a 100%, because, it's a
solution sale versus, you know,just a quick project or product
sale. And I think that thatthat's what we've seen too,
again, being, relatively new tothis, understanding that, yeah,
listen, million dollar a monthsale. That's a much larger. I'd
love to get there someday, butthat's not the numbers we're

(27:27):
putting up right now.
You know, we're our numbers areare lower, and and therefore,
when they're like, okay. I cando something transactional
quickly, get this through thirtyday close, you know, sales
cycle, or there's a six monthyou know, actually, we've just
we just closed a a great one inin sixty days. So those sales
cycles are now, you know,shrinking. But let's say sixty

(27:49):
days versus thirty days, andthere's work involved. It's
like, okay.
I've got to have multiplemeetings. We've got to scope
back and forth, etcetera.They're gonna go a lot of these
TAs have decided, hey. We'rejust gonna go with connectivity.
But to your point, that's thethe shortsighted, you know,
approach, which is kind of likelifestyle business versus

(28:10):
scalable, saleable business,something that you could exit
from and and be rolled up withthe PE firm with into an Amplix
or or one of the other largeTSTs or not TSTs, but TA firms
now.
So it's interesting too becauseyou you mentioned the
connectivity. Again, going backto that in security, what we've

(28:31):
all Stefan from from Yvonne isreally famous for for saying
this, which is it's what'sadjacent. If if TAs don't
understand security, they dounderstand connectivity, and
they understand DDoS, you know,distributed denial of service,
which would be, securityrelated, and it would take

(28:51):
connectivity down. So so that'sthat's how they can start to
kinda get their foot in thedoor. And and I spoke to another
TA, recently, and they that'swhat they said.
They started really just kind ofselling one piece. It was like
Cisco umbrella or something. Andthen that as they did that,
they're like, wait a second. Howdoes this thing work? And they
were curious.
So I think what you're talkingabout, Eric, is, like, these

(29:14):
these trusted advisers need toevolve a 100%, but they also
need to be curious. It's like,listen. What lined your pockets,
especially as as you get older,you see a lot of people that
are, you know, later in theircareers or they've they've
already had their careers andthis is a way to make pocket
change. Great. You know, letthey're they're that's a
lifestyle company for them, andthey're solopreneurs or

(29:36):
whatever.
But if they you know, for theones that are hungry that wanna
grow, they they gotta curiosityhas has to be one of their kind
of driving principles.

Yeah. I completely agree. And and the opportunity
has never been better. Whetherit's AI or cybersecurity, the
opportunity at scale is neverbeen better, and I don't know
that it will get better. So whenI started back to our earlier
conversation in this industry,twenty five years ago, about 17%

(30:07):
of businesses made decisions,technology decisions through a
channel.
That number now, twenty fiveyears later, somewhere between
7682% of businesses are nowmaking IT decisions through a
channel. That means there's morebuyers than there's ever been.

(30:29):
That means with all of thesellers that are out there, all
of the trusted advisers and someof the other channels, MSP,
MSSP, and so forth. Theopportunity at scale is is is
great. I mean, back in the day,I was selling UCaaS but people
had on premise phone systemsback then.
There's still 40% of peoplestill have on premise phone

(30:50):
systems. The opportunity isgreat. But the inverse of that
is and you may know the number.I don't. I would suspect it's in
the low teens at best, have acybersecurity position.

Lou Rabon (31:03):
Oh, gosh. I mean, we we actually were doing a study.
We started for the first timelast year an annual study. I
think that's a good question forour second annual study, which
is gonna be coming up. We juststarted speaking to the firm
today about or yesterday about,what we're gonna ask, and I like
that.

(31:23):
How many companies actually havea security program, Like, a true
formal security program? I cantell you right now. I mean, if
it's out even outside eveninside the Fortune 500, like,
that's an effectiveconversation. They're throwing
the money at it, they have aprogram. But is it effective?
You know, I've I I can tell youright now, a lot of them, it's
not, obviously. That's whythey're in the news. But mid

(31:43):
market, you know, below theenterprise, I would it's it's
probably a low teens, alreadybecause, again, they're just
throwing a person or two at it.They've bought a bunch of tools.
That's not a security program,and that's what we're helping
with, you know, and that's whatwe're educating the channel with
too is that it's been it's beena slog, you know, not gonna lie,
to to really help the TAsunderstand and what's helping

(32:07):
drive that is the customers,thankfully, because the
customers are like, Okay,version one of this was, just
need a bunch of tools orwhatever.
Version two was, well, you know,our IT people can handle it, and
then they learned that this theIT people actually can't handle
when they're not dedicated tocyber. They're they're it's just
kind of a bolt on. Then theysaid, we'll get a VC, so version

(32:29):
three. Well, one person as a VC,so our virtual chief information
security officer, it's saying dothis, do that, and then coming
back. That's not effectiveeither.
So now our model is like versionfour, you know, gen four of what
security needs to be as anoutsourced when you look at it
as an outsourced provider, andthat is a program, a repeatable

(32:52):
program that you can do. We'rethe market's coming to that,
but, you know, that's, peer topeer selling is what you're
talking about, and that's thedifference. And I think, where
did you get those stats, by theway, the 70 per se?

That came from a TSD national event. I believe it
was last year. I can I can lookthat up and track that down for
you, though?

Lou Rabon (33:16):
That's awesome. I mean, I would love to if you
don't mind, I'm I'm sure it's ifit's published somewhere, but I
I wanna definitely have ourmarketing team understand that
as well, because that's a bignumber to go from 14%, 20% to
75%, but we all know it. Tell methe last time anyone that you've

(33:37):
spoken to as a salesperson haseven opened a deal based on a
cold call.

Oh, no. Everybody everybody leverages a
relationship.

Lou Rabon (33:47):
Yep. No. I I made that mistake in the in the early
days of CDG. I was like, youknow, I got taken for a ride for
one of these companies that arelike, we're gonna make a billion
calls a day, and we're gonna getyou all these meetings. And it
was like it reminded reminded meof when I was like a teenager,
and they they had me selling,like, door to door China.
I that was one of my like andand the way they would get the

(34:10):
people is it would be asweepstakes. Like, you want a
sweepstakes and then I wouldthey would fill out or no. You
can you're entering a raffle,which there was no prize for the
raffle. It was just a way tocollect leads. And then I would
go to these people's houses, andthey're like, who are you, and
why are you here?
And, no, we don't want China.You know? So or or or flatware
or whatever it was I wasselling. So I think that's cold

(34:31):
calling is is dead. You know?
I I hate to say it. I think thethe the what the channel is
showing, the reason thosenumbers are going up is because,
yeah, you with Slack, with, youknow, Discord, with all of with
all the social media, LinkedIn.I mean, if you can especially if
you're a decision maker in amidsize or large organization,

(34:54):
if you don't have a network thatyou can reach out to, you know,
you've been living on on Mars orsomething. There's just everyone
is using their leveraging theirnetworks, and that's where the
trust advisers fit in. Right?
They're they're they're thenetwork. They're the person that
these these people should bereaching out to. And and then
boom. Back to your originalpoint, right, is, relationships.

That's really where it starts. I I but we also
have to have relationships withthe suppliers. Gotta have
relationships with companieslike yours. So when we
ultimately need to transact orwant to transact with you, we
feel like we trust you. I thinkthat's the biggest misperception
in the channel is they'll dobusiness with us.
I I well, a couplemisconceptions. One of which is

(35:38):
it takes time. As a supplier, itcan take, you know, this two to
three years to really turn thecorner in the channel, and a lot
of that is establishing andmaintaining relationships.
People wanna know that you'regoing to be around for the long
haul. There's so much that goesinto it, but we gotta like and
trust you.
It goes back to cold coldcalling doesn't work. I mean, if

(35:59):
I look at you introduced meearlier as an author and a
keynote speaker and all that, Ijust realized the other day, I I
did a quick run through of allthe talks I've given over the
last few years. You know, Ihaven't gotten one of them from
a cold call. They've all comefrom people that I know or for
those that think LinkedIn is awaste of time or from LinkedIn.

(36:22):
I got one too this week fromLinkedIn.
Hey. I love what you're doing onLinkedIn. We'd love to hire you
to come and speak for us. Thevalue of relationships is where
I think many of us fail in salesbecause we treat it like it's a
transaction, and it's so muchmore than that.

Lou Rabon (36:42):
Yeah. Yeah. People buy you mentioned it earlier.
People buy from people. Theydon't buy from businesses.
That's why if you get up and,you know, you you might work for
Xerox and then you go work forRico. You know? All of a sudden,
those people are gonna buy fromRico, not because Rico
necessarily has a superiorproduct, but they know Eric, and

(37:03):
they wanna do business withEric. You know? They trust Eric.
They have a relationship withEric. So, yeah, kind of pivoting
to, to the personal stuff. Youknow, what do you have, like, a
a story about cyber that that'saffected you personally?

Oh, golly. A story about cyber that has affected me
personally? Well, I think as anindividual, the thing that comes
to mind is, the data breachesand the impact of those data
breaches on on us individuals. Iget all the same phone calls you
do. I get all of the the we getwe had a a huge storm about two

(37:42):
months ago that tore up a bunchof trees, and every roofer on
the planet is calling my cellphone.
But beyond that, the breachesthat impact me on a daily basis
where I've gotta, you know, geta new debit card or golly, the
other day, Verizon's network, Iprobably shouldn't have called

(38:05):
them out, but Verizon's networkwas down across the country just
a few weeks ago. And myunderstanding is it was a breach
of some sort. They shut thenetwork down in an effort to
stop the breach. I just happenedto walk into a store that day in
which point they told me, hey.We we can't sell you anything

(38:25):
today because we can't doanything.
They were all standing outside.I walked up and thought there
was some big party. You know, Iwas gonna get, a free piece of
cake and a and a cup of water orsomething, But I was turned
around. And so the impact, Imean, I can think of times over
the years I've been atStarbucks. They the the impact
of Starbucks, here's a greatstory.
Here's two quick stories. Do youknow what Starbucks at least

(38:48):
when this happened to me, whattheir policy is when they're
when they can't process creditcards? Close the store? Free
drinks. Oh, that's interesting.
Because they don't wanna loseyou as a as a they don't wanna
lose you as a customer, sothey'd rather give out free
drinks. It's a brilliant culturemove in terms of creating the

(39:09):
culture that you want. But Iwalked into Starbucks years ago.
They gave me the drink for free,and I half heartedly joked when
she wouldn't take my debit card.I said I should've something for
my wife and kids.
She said, what does your wifewant? And how many kids do you
have? Well, Lou, you know this.I have seven kids. We got a lot

Lou Rabon (39:27):
of Do free drinks that

you know what? Do you know what, again, this this
a little dated, but Best Buyspolicy when credit cards can be
processed is to do the oldtriplicate form from when you
and I were kids under a thousanddollars. In my mind, the number
of credit cards after thecybersecurity event, when things

(39:52):
get back up and running, thenthey process, they get declined,
must be staggering. Right?Impact of an event for me or for
you generally is seen as a mildinconvenience.
Right? I can't get my coffee orI can't buy my $4,000 TV, or my
identity was stolen or somethinglike that. But in the grand

(40:14):
scheme of things, the impact ofthat is pretty pretty minimal
for even me where the breachesoccurred. But, again, going back
the impact of a Target or aCloudflare or Delta Airlines or
some of these others that havehad significant incidents, It's
jobs. It's unemployment.
It's all sorts of things, andit's and it's millions, if not

(40:37):
billions of dollars annually.

Lou Rabon (40:39):
Big time. Big time. The businesses bear the brunt
for sure. But, yeah. Gosh.
Seven kids. I have so muchrespect for you, you know, and
you don't have a farm, which isreal or do you? Do you have a
farm?

We we have we have one animal. It is a it is she is
a dog and seven kids, six toalmost 20 five. 25 later this
month.

Lou Rabon (41:06):
That's amazing. That's amazing. That keeps you
very busy, obviously. And youyou wrote a book. You are
enough.
What what can you tell me aboutthat? I I think I need to get a
copy.

Send me your address. I know a guy. I'll send
you a copy.

Lou Rabon (41:20):
May as long as it gets signed by the author.

I you know, I actually totally digress. The
guy that wrote the cover quote,you'll see Andy and I were
together maybe six weeks ago,and he looked at me and he
talked about giving away freebooks as a part of a way to,
like, bring people in andkeynote speak and all that. He
said, oftentimes, I will hand itto, my seatmate on a plane as I
get off. I will hand one of mybooks to someone I'm sitting

(41:46):
next to. He says, and you cansteal this and make it your own.
He said, I will often hand it tothem and say, hey. I'm done with
this book, and my wife reallylikes the author. So, short
story, totally unrelated totech. I wrote a book. I went on
a journey.
I'll I'll ruin the ending alittle bit, but we have an
estranged relationship with ouralmost 25 year old. We've not

(42:09):
spoken in eight years, andthat's a lot of what the book is
about. This idea that everybodywe interact with in the channel
or outside of the channel, everysingle person we interact with
today is going throughsomething. The loss of a loved
one in a strange relationship,divorce, miscarriage. The flip
side of that is there's alsoreally good things going on in

(42:32):
the world.
People are getting new jobs.People are getting promoted.
People are getting married,buying houses, getting pregnant,
all of those things. But the waywe interact with people is often
missed. We we often miss thefact that we recognize
something's going on.
We don't know what it is. We'renot asking the questions. I'm

(42:53):
not leaning in saying, hey, Lou.How are you? And then saying,
actually, Lou, how are youreally?
How's the week going? What I'mdoing is I'm saying, hey, Lou.
How are you? You're saying, man,I'm great. How are you?
Saying I'm good, and then wejump into a podcast. The barista
at Starbucks, the person baggingour groceries at Target, the guy
that cut us off, the the womanat the restaurant that gave us a

(43:17):
bun when we said no bun. Man,for all we know, her mom just
died, and she's gotta go to workto pay rent. And we don't take
the time to interact withpeople. So I share some of the
highs and lows of not just mylife, but people that I've
interviewed on my podcast,people that I've met candidly
through LinkedIn that haveshared their stories with me.

(43:37):
In fact, there's a story about awoman in the channel in the book
as well and how she met herhusband. But, it's been a great
journey. I'm writing a secondbook. Just started. It'll be
done.
I haven't said when it'll bedone. I'm gonna say it'll be
done by the '1, publishedprobably summer of next year.

Lou Rabon (43:56):
Amazing. I mean, that's it's impressive to write
a book. I love the premise ofthis first book. You are enough.
And and I love that premise,Eric, because I think that in
today, the way that, you know,we we dipped into politics a
little bit without, you know,any political leaning on any
side.
Like, we just need to startspeaking to each other. As a

(44:17):
matter of fact, we need to startspeaking to each other on both
ends of the political spectrumtogether. Like, if you're, you
know, far left and, you know,the other person's far right,
you guys everyone needs to startspeaking and understanding that
we're just humans, like, youknow, on this planet for a
really short time. So I sorry.You got me philosophical, man.

No, man. I I I love it. I I'm 45. I'll be 46 in
a few weeks. And about threemonths ago, I lost a
relationship with my childhoodbest friend.
We've known each other fortyyears, and he called me guns a
blazing, politics ready, andwe've all we've disagreed on

(45:02):
everything for forty years,political and religious and
otherwise. And I'm I'm fine withhis decision. It's devastating.
I think about it a lot, but Ican't change it. What I
realized, I I was filling out aform the other day for a a a
coaching thing I'm doing inJanuary.
And the question was, what wasyour favorite book? Now my

(45:25):
podcast is a 150 some oddepisodes deep. I've read nearly
every book from every guest I'veever had on the show, so I've
read a handful of books. And theone that really sticks is a book
called love is free guac, likeguacamole, guac is extra, and it
was written by the now formerCEO of Chipotle. He started when

(45:46):
they had 750 employees.
He retired when they had about75,000 employees. So he was
there for significantsignificant growth. And he talks
through the book of, how heleads, how he hires, how he
builds a tremendous culturebecause candidly and they I
think they've lost their way alittle bit as a business since
he retired. But the thing thathe talks about in that book that

(46:09):
really sticks based on what youjust said is we are more united
than we are divided, and I'llget a little political here. I
don't care whether you lean leftor lean right.
I enjoy hanging out with you.I'd love to grab a drink with
you next time we're in the sameroom. And politics and religion

(46:31):
and all those things aside,that's that's the little stuff.
It it may have a big impact, butwe're more united. We there's
more that we have in common thanwe have that we don't have in
common.
And yet here's the politicalpart. The media wants to tell us
otherwise.

Lou Rabon (46:48):
Yeah. Because we'll buy some more crap. I think we
just need, like, an alieninvasion, like, literally aliens
from another, you know, galaxy.It's I

read on I read on the news. It's happening
tomorrow at 3AM.

Lou Rabon (47:01):
Oh, perfect. Perfect. Alright. So we'll all get
together. It'll be likeIndependence Day.
But, the movie that is. So, howcan people connect? You've got a
lot of, you know, ways toconnect.

Channel folks can find me at
thechannelstandard.com. My bookand my podcast can be found on
ericbrooker.com, or just find meon LinkedIn. My cell phone
number is on LinkedIn. Feel freeto call me. I'll give it to you
now.
It's (480) 296-9777. I will makemyself as available as I can.

Lou Rabon (47:34):
That's bold. I'm impressed. That it well, it's so
oh, wait. You know, we don'thave a huge audience, so that's
probably safe actually.

Your mom your mom call me and thank me for coming
on.

Lou Rabon (47:45):
My my mom's gonna be calling you after this. But,
Eric Bruker, thank you so muchfor for coming. This has been
super enjoyable, thisconversation. We've gone we've
we've touched on a lot ofthings. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Great conversation.

Lou Rabon (48:02):
Big time. And, thanks to everyone else, that's
watching and or listening. Ifyou learned something today,
laughed, or cried even, pleasetell someone about the podcast.
Thanks again, Eric. This hasbeen another exciting episode of
Channel Security Secrets.
See you next time. That's a wrapfor this episode of Channel
Security Secrets. Thanks fortuning in. For show notes, guest

(48:24):
info, and more episodes,protecting your business, don't
settle for reactive. Partnerwith experts who build
resilience from the ground up.

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Building a Scalable Business - Eric Brooker - Channel Security Secrets - Episode #12

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Building a Scalable Business - Eric Brooker - Channel Security Secrets - Episode #12