Decoding Channel Success - Kameron Olsen - Channel Security Secrets - Episode #1 - 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):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to thechannel Security Secrets
podcast. I'm Lou Rabin, buttoday's guest is really
interesting. I'm really excitedto speak to him. He's actually
this is our first episode is andhe's our first guest, a good
buddy as well.
He's a pioneer and recognizedleader in the technology and
communications sector with overfifteen years of experience

(01:01):
driving innovation. He's afeatured voice in the channel
speaking events like IT Expotwenty twenty five. He's also
host of another podcast, thechannel2.0 podcast, where he
meets industry experts andexplores the trends shaping the
channel ecosystem. He founded apowerhouse company in the
technology solutions space andempowers suppliers and

(01:23):
accelerates revenue across theTSD community. Please welcome
the president at ChannelAdvisors, Cameron Olson.
Welcome to the show.

Kameron Olsen (01:33):
Thanks, Lou. I couldn't, I couldn't think of a
bigger honor than being yourkickoff guest for this really
cool podcast. So thank you.Thank you for having me.

Lou Rabon (01:41):
Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate you, going through
all the the bumps here, helpingme figure it out. So really
appreciate it. Let's just jumpright into it.
You know, what's the the firstquestion I have is what is the
biggest secret to your successin the in the channel?

Hey. This is this is an interesting conversation
and something I've beenpondering on over the last
couple years. Because as Istarted up the channel advisers,
my goal with that organizationwas to teach people how to have
success. I've been lucky, youknow, in my channel career to,
what I would say, trip oversuccess. And so I had to spend

(02:19):
some time really thinking backof, like, okay.
If I was to teach somebody howto do this, what are the steps
to do that? And so the firstthing I think where things
really started to change for meis when I sat down and really
decided what my values were andwhat was important to me. Up to
that point, I was a terriblesales rep. I would come in at

(02:42):
10:00, leave at three, andusually play golf or take a long
lunch in the middle of that. Andwhen I wasn't making any money,
I had to sit down and think,okay.
You know, what what do I reallywant out of this? And what I
wanted to do is to provide formy family. And so I made the
decision that I was gonna dowhatever it takes to be
successful in in in being asales rep. Luckily, I found a

(03:06):
company, and through the hardwork, I think the second piece
is is finding a mentor or aplace where you can get
education and training in thechannel. It's kinda tough
because there's not a whole lotout there, but finding a mentor
was immense.
And I think if you put in thehard work, they kinda find you.
Anybody who who can see somebodywho's willing to put in the work

(03:28):
and the effort will typicallygravitate and grab grab good
people and pull them under thewing, and I think that's how
this channel is built. And thenI think the big piece is having
an owner mentality. Like, I'verented out houses, and you can
have two different rent renters.You can have people who've only
rented houses, and you can havepeople who have owned houses.

(03:49):
And people who own houses, whenthe light bulb is broke, they
fix it, and renters call you andsay, hey. Come fix it. And so
having an owner mentality islike, I'm gonna own this stuff,
and I'm gonna do whatever ittakes to fix it and and do it. I
think asking lots of questionsis super important. And then I
think the last piece where Ireally spend a lot of my time,

(04:14):
if you've ever read the book RayRay Dalio's book principles,
there is a process of trysomething, and when you fail,
diagnose why you fail, redesignthe process, and try again.
And the faster you can do thatover and over again, I think
that's where success comes from.So that's kinda like my five

(04:34):
step process to to findingsuccess in the

Lou Rabon (04:37):
That's that's awesome. And it's true. I think,
you know, first, you talkedabout luck and kinda tripping
over luck and success. But, youknow, the process you just
described is essentially theroad to success, which is, you
know, I always quote WinstonChurchill on this. Success is
going from failure to failurewith no lack of enthusiasm, and

(04:57):
that's pretty much it.
Celebrating failure? Yes.

I failed. I figured out how not to do it.

Lou Rabon (05:05):
Yeah. And Ray Dalio, I love he's he's done little
infographics and stuff. He postson LinkedIn a lot. He's got,
like, a telegram channel thatI've I've subscribed to. He has
a new book out now too, so he's,like, really very out there.
But, yeah, it's true. It's theproblem is a lot of people, they
stop. Right? They they theystart they get that first

(05:27):
hurdle, and then they're like,well, no. That's a that's a a
roadblock.
That's not just a roadblock.It's a huge wall, and they they
don't wanna climb it. And thenit as you go through successive
failures and blocks, you startto see them not as walls, but as
speed bumps or, you know,obstructions that you need to
get around versus, know, okay.That's it. So taking that owner

(05:50):
mentality, I love that analogytoo about the owner versus
renter.
Been there, done that. And if Itold you about my last the the
way my last tenant treated myplace, nightmare, but we won't
get into that.

I mean, that was something I learned early on
when I moved from Salt Lake Cityto Dallas, and I rented out my
home here because we workedthere because we weren't sure
this was a permanent thing.Like, somebody finally told me,
you gotta find people who areused to owning homes, not just
permanent renters. And so, yeah,it was a huge a huge thing for
me. I think the other thingthat's really important to

(06:24):
understand specifically in salesin general is besides being an
entrepreneur or a CEO, it's theonly position and job where you
have to create your own job.Right?
It's it's it's not something youcan just sit back and be
responsive to, although there isplenty of times of being
responsive, but a lot of it isgenerating generating your job.

(06:47):
And I think that's hard for mostpeople to understand.

Lou Rabon (06:50):
Yeah. Man, I have so much more respect for sales and
salespeople in the last twoyears. I I came at it as a
practitioner. You know, I'mobviously been doing security
for for most of my career. Andso I came in thinking probably
what people, based on whatyou're saying, come in as
salespeople like, hey.
Just have to be really friendly,have to, you know, maybe some

(07:11):
steak dinners and and buy somedrinks, etcetera, and then
success. And it's so much morethan that. I mean, it's it's
probably as hard to be good atsales as is in any other career.
The problem is it's just a lowbarrier to entry. And so people
are like, hey.
I don't need, you know, anyspecial qualifications. I can
just speak and have a good maybeRolodex, but not not the case

(07:35):
anymore. You really have to foranything, you have to put the
hard yards in. And it's funnybecause you have kids, I know,
and and same here. Anyone withkids is, you know, you recognize
that and try to tell your kids,listen.
You can't just go my kids, theway they speak to me, oh my god.
Like, they're like, dad, no. I'mnot gonna do that. Blah blah
blah. I'm like, you guys knowI'm the CEO.

(07:55):
Like, people don't speak to melike this.

Nothing nothing could test nothing could test
your patience as much as the is,interacting with your kids.
Right?

Lou Rabon (08:07):
Yeah. Yeah. Teenage teenage sons, especially. And
it's like, guys, you know, I'mnot used to this. I like, I'm
not saying that people do what Ido nor am I, you know, implying
that I'm, like, some kind ofnasty leader directing everyone.
But still, it's kinda like, youknow, you go in and or whatever.
As an expert, you open yourmouth and people listen. Whereas

(08:29):
when you have teenage kids,they're like, yeah. Why should I
listen to you?

So Yeah. They know everything. Why should they
listen?

Lou Rabon (08:35):
Totally. Totally.

But you're just you're just an old boomer. What
what do you know in this Yeah.

Lou Rabon (08:41):
And and so, you know, when I going back to where
you're trying to give theselessons to the, you know,
salespeople that are maybe juststarting out, it's kinda like
having kids. Right? It's like,hey. We've been there, done
that. So and and that's where Iwanna talk more about what
you're doing at Channel Advisorsbecause I think that that
there's value there where you'reyou're kinda trying to guide

(09:02):
people to say, hey.
This is a new thing. Even ifyou've been in sales for a
while, the channel's a wholedifferent experience. But let's
before we go into that, I wannakind of ask you something else
about I wanna go back to thesecurity stuff. Like, what's
what's the number one piece ofadvice you might give to a
trusted adviser about thathasn't sold security before that

(09:26):
wants to. You know?
And and maybe there's even abefore you answer that question,
I just thought of another one,which is even more important is
how do you find it to sellsecurity? Let's go to that
first. How is selling securityin the channel? Do you think
it's difficult? Yeah.
It's tough, man.

It is tough. I think we have to back up a
little bit to to lay thegroundwork and the foundation of
of cybersecurity in the channel.Like, what most people don't
realize when they come chat tome is there's two channels.
Right? You have your DSDMSPchannel, and then you have your
TSDTA channel.

(10:03):
The MSP DSD channel doessupport. Right? I I always said
somebody in customer service ortechnical support, when they go
start a business, they go startan MSP. And somebody who is in
technical sales, when they gostart a company, they go start a
TA. Right?
So a little bit of two differentmindsets. And and when both of
these side got started, the MSPstarted with network, LAN. They

(10:27):
started with cybersecurity. Theystarted with cloud. They started
with firewall switches, routers,those types of things.
And when the TAs got into thespace, they did Internet and
long distance and dial tone.Well, within the last four or
five, maybe six years, TAs havestarted to pick up cloud and
cybersecurity, and the MSPs havestarted picking up Internet

(10:51):
connections and UCaaS and CCaaS.And so now there's this kind of
overlap. And I think the placewhere trusted advisers go wrong
with cybersecurity is they thinkit's a SKU or a product just
like a UCaaS seat or just likean Internet connection, and it's
not. It's not necessarily aproduct.

(11:12):
It's more of a mentality or aprocess or a system, and and I
think the trusted advisers inthe TSD space really kinda
struggle with that salesmentality in that process.

Lou Rabon (11:27):
Yeah. It's a solution. It's it's not a a
product sale for sure. So that'sthat's the the problem in the
skew, the transactional natureof that. But wouldn't you say
any sale?
Like, that's the thing. I mean,full disclosure, I'm learning
the channel myself. That's oneof the reasons I'm doing this
podcast. I wanna speak to smartpeople like you to teach me what

(11:48):
the heck's going on here. So,you know, is there, like, a
transactional nature?
Where like, isn't maybe there'ssome TAs that are better at that
transactional SKU stuff and someTAs that are better at the
solution sale, or do you thinkthey all need to understand
solution selling?

Trusted advisers are like snowflakes. There's no
two trusted advisers alike, andthen you have a a really broad
gamut of of that spectrum. Youhave everybody who is a very
transactional, hey. I have awebsite. You can click on what
you need, and we'll get youpricing, all the way through
where I know some cybersecuritytrusted advisers that are

(12:33):
executives or board members ofsome of these cybersecurity
companies.
Right? They they they understandnot only the cyber product, but
they understand how the businessneeds protecting and how to
build a business around theproduct. And and so, the answer
is yes and no. Like, there aresome out there who who really

(12:58):
understand it, and they doamazing. They do amazing things
selling the product, and there'sother people who are struggling.
So if I had one word of advicefor trusted advisers, it's like,
this is not a product you canjust know the SKU numbers and
what it does. It's it's it's adeep dive into understanding the

(13:20):
mentality of cybersecurityframeworks, NIST, all of that
type of stuff In order for youto be a true consultant, you
can't just come in and say, hey.Do you need cybersecurity?
Because the customers are gonnabe like, well, I have a
firewall. And if you don't knowanything that's that, then
you're gonna be like, oh, okay.
See you later. And so, yeah, itreally requires you to be a true

(13:43):
consultant, to to the wholenature of that word.

Lou Rabon (13:48):
I think you just hit on the the one of the main
problems though is that I thinkbecause security is can also be
kind of very esoteric and, like,pay no attention to the man
behind the curtain, black boxkind of stuff, and all these
things, I think some trustedadvisers are afraid to, like,
bring it up. If it does, to yourpoint, they start to say, hey,

(14:11):
firewall. Oh, forget firewall.We need MDR, EDR, DSPM, you
know? And then it's like, woah.
Okay. Then they and they don'twanna feel like that. They don't
wanna feel, like, completely outof their depth, so they kind of
avoid it. Are you seeing thattoo?

Yeah. When you go in and your and your value prop
or your value pitch is, hey. Iknow all things technical. And
then all of a sudden you ask aquestion and you can't answer
basic responses. It puts you inkind of a weird a weird
position.
And so there are I think thereare different ways of selling it
where you don't have to get intothose crazy conversations or

(14:49):
lose your value based on thefact that you can't answer
questions. Right? Really,really, I think a trusted
adviser job is to be a connectorinto the ecosystem and and find
the right resources and helpthem overcome and understand the
technology and bring in theright products and the right
people at the right time toanswer the right questions to

(15:11):
get the the problems fixed. Ithink we're what trusted
advisers in the channel doesreally well is it translates.
Right?
So SaaS and telco and cyberproviders have a product. You
mentioned EDR, MDR, you know,all of those types of things. We
talk about ransomware andwhatever other problems there

(15:32):
are out there. Business ownersdon't know what EDR is. They're
never gonna come up to you,especially on the small business
side and say, I need an EDRsolution or, hey.
I need an MDR solution or, hey.Do you have a sore or a sock?
They're not gonna ask thosequestions. They're gonna say,
hey. I have real concerns thatcompetitors or bad actors or

(15:52):
somebody's gonna come in andcause issues to my business.
How do I how do I make sure thatthat doesn't happen? And if you
don't know how to translatethose conversations from one
side to the other, then it'sgonna be it's it's gonna be hard
for you to sell it.

Lou Rabon (16:08):
Yeah. So so the solution would be, you know,
other than educating themselvesbecause they may already, you
know, have limited time or notthe interest to really get deep
into cybersecurity. What I'mhearing you say is that they can
say, listen. Not my area ofexpertise, but I know I got a
guy or I got someone, you know,kind of thing. Is that right?

Yeah. I think I think you got a guy is perfect,
but you also have to know whereyour guy is.

Lou Rabon (16:36):
Yeah. Guy being a vendor or supplier.

Yeah. Guy, gal. Like, let's not be sexist.
Right? There's there's plenty ofreally smart people on both
sides of that fence.
But, and then you have to knowenough about the technology. And
I think where our industry coulddo better is when we go to
events, instead of suppliers,going to an event and saying,

(16:59):
hey. I paid $20 to be here. Ipaid $10 to be here, so I'm just
gonna throw a commercial at you.It's, hey.
Let's sit down and talk aboutthe product, what pain points it
solves, how to identify theopportunities to capture the
attentions of the trustedadvisers and those that wanna
lean in and find or havecustomers or have verticals they

(17:22):
go after that that would begreat for the cyber product to
sit down with those suppliers,and then suppliers have to
create better sales enablementtools. And sales enablement
tools aren't email campaigns.Sometimes they're educational
tracks. Sometimes they'recertifications. Sometimes
they're, you know, things tohelp the trusted adviser really

(17:46):
grasp the concepts of the thingsyou're trying to fix.

Lou Rabon (17:50):
You think the TSDs are doing a good job at that
right now?

I think there's always room to improve.

Lou Rabon (17:57):
We won't we're not naming any names here.

No. There there are there are brilliant there
are brilliant people in ourindustry. Right? There are
people that know this stuff likethe back of their hand, although
I don't know the back of my handreally well, better than the
back of their hands, that thatcan talk circles around these
things. They just know theinsides and the outs, but you

(18:21):
have to find them, and you haveto know who to trust.
Right? Because not all peopleunderstand the product, and not
all people understand thechannel. And it's it's hard to
find somebody who understandsthe channel and the product all
at the same time and bring thosetogether to make it a great
experience for everybody.

Lou Rabon (18:38):
I I have to give a shout out to my buddy, Stefan
Semmelroth, who's gonna be onthis working for Arvon. He he's
always giving me shout outs, soI'm giving him a shout out. He
is the man. Everyone knows this.He's great.
And he is the you're like, whenyou talk about that person, I
always think of him. He'sphenomenal. So

Yeah. I think the other thing and and, Lou, I'll
give you a shout out. I thinksometimes what's missing is I
say I I said you have to be likea true consultant. And I think
there is a really big spacewithin our channel for people to
bring in consultants. Like, ifyou are not the expert, but you

(19:18):
have relationships that areuntapped and un un you haven't
had conversations with themaround this topic, finding
somebody like you and yourorganization that can come in
and have the agnostic approach,have the framework discussion,
have the check boxes that I callit the jiffy loop checklist of,

(19:42):
hey.
Do you have this? Do you havethis? Do you have this? And when
the answer is no, learning howto, like, dive in and dig into
that particular topic, I thinkwe should have more
organizations like what youprovide into the channel.

Lou Rabon (19:56):
I appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks, Cameron.
Yeah. It's listen.
At the end of the day, it's whatwe're finding in cybersecurity.
These point products don't work.And there's a lot of, you know,
the MSP model of just like iskind of like what you were
talking about with TAs. Do youwant fries with that kind of
thing? That that doesn't work.

(20:16):
You're you're and especiallynow, because, as you know, we do
incident response too. We'reseeing a lot of hacks that are
basically just configurationerrors. I. T. Dropped the ball.
The last three or four we'vedone are I. T. Dropped the ball.
Either they were sharingpasswords or, you know, really
basic hygiene stuff. And so whatwhat customers are finding out

(20:38):
is they can't they can't do itlike that anymore, especially if
they're mid market.
You know, enterprise has a lotof money to spend on this, and
they've got their own problems.Enterprises by no means
completely locked down. That's amisconception. But mid market is
where a lot of the bad guys aregoing because they know they
have the money, and they don'thave the teams that the
enterprise has. And so and then,you know, SMB is just a

(21:02):
disaster.
I don't wanna and not by theirown. They just don't have the
money or and there's no realprovider for them. But that's
what's happening to your pointis, like, what companies
everyone has to start learningis this is a programmatic thing.
This is not a let me drop to youknow? Yeah.
You got this point product, thatpoint product, MDR, EDR,
whatever. Check. You got yourSOC two certification. Joke. I'm

(21:25):
sorry.
But, you know, any of this, youknow, like SOC two, even ISO,
all that stuff. ISO's a lotbetter. Won't get into geeking
out about this right now. Butbut the point is that there
needs to be more. So Iappreciate the, you know, the
the the kudos.
Hopefully, that's where theindustry is going because, you
know, of course, we wanna makemoney and dominate and all that
stuff, but we also wanna securewe have to secure this stuff.

(21:48):
This is not just it's no longercommercial, but it's also
defense. It's home defense. I

mean, everybody knows the book Who Moved My
Cheese. Right? Like, it's it'seasy to say, but in practice, I
don't think it's really easy tolive. I think the problem with
cybersecurity, it is a massivegame of cat and mouse. As soon
as you fill a hole, the badactors find another one, and it
is a constant moving target.
So, I mean, I would guess inyour your years of of selling

(22:20):
cybersecurity, it's never been atarget that you're able to hit.
It's always a moving target yougotta go you gotta go fill. Is
that right?

Lou Rabon (22:27):
That's right. Yeah. That's why it's gotta be
programmatic. It's not like youknow, the we use so many
analogies, cars or human bodies,etcetera. Like, you can never go
to the doctor and and they say,okay.
Take this pill, and you're goodfor everything for the rest of
your life. You know? It's like,yeah.

Nice. Let's hope with AI it brings us that.

Lou Rabon (22:46):
Yeah. Soon when we're plugged into a whole machine.
But anyway yeah. You know, it'snot just one pill. It's like you
diet, exercise, genetics, allthis other stuff.
Cyber is very similar in thatit's a systematic programmatic
approach.

But It's a holistic holistic approach.

Lou Rabon (23:06):
Yeah. I we we these are secrets, but I wanna veer
back into the channel, side ofit. And one other maybe question
about that is how do you choosea vendor? So when you're looking
at security vendors, what do youthink? You know, what are the
ones that you think are great?
What are the ones that you thinkyou avoid? Not naming names, but

(23:30):
conceptually.

Let's throw people under the bus.

Lou Rabon (23:35):
Yeah. Right? Yeah.

The t listies have done a decent job of going
out and finding companies whowho provide a decent service. I
think there's a couple issues inthe cybersecurity landscape.
Number one, I came from the thethe the UCaaS side. So I owned a
a UCaaS company, and what wasinteresting is when we first

(23:56):
started building theorganization is we went out and
we found a multitenantedplatform, but then you had to go
buy a softphone, and then youhad to go find a SIP phone, and
then you had to bring in dialtone, and then you had to find
somebody else to do videoconferencing. And so you, like,
had all of these, like, reallydisparaging systems, and then

(24:17):
you had to bring them together.
And the and the UCaaS provider'sresponsibilities was to make
sure that they all worktogether. But, hey. If your
Internet broke, you know, yourSIP trunks didn't work. And so
they would call you because yourSIP trunks were working. Then
you would point, like, I seethat exact same system in

(24:37):
cybersecurity.
There are so many differentsystems doing different things
that companies have have havetool sprawl that they bought so
many things that overlap, butthen they have huge gaping holes
of things that that they needthat they didn't even know that
they have. And so I think overtime and and we're starting to

(24:58):
see a lot of m and a and a lotof people coming together and
trying to build a holisticsolution, but it's really tough
because it's such a broad abroad term because we're no
longer fighting wars with bombsand guns, although there is
still some of that. It's bitsand bytes now. Right?
Cybersecurity providers are, forthe most part, arms dealers.

(25:19):
They're providing warfare toolsfor companies to fight bad
actors, and it's a constant it'sa constant thing. You gotta
train your troops. You gottaprovide the tools. You gotta be
watching your gates. You gottabe, you know, making sure you
have good locks.
You gotta be, like, increasingyour infrastructure. And so I
think to answer your question,what do you look for in a good

(25:42):
provider? I think it's somebodywho's who's forward thinking,
always iterating, somebody thatyou can trust, and trust is a
big topic of a whole othersegment, but somebody who you
know and can stand behind thatwhen things go wrong and
technology does, and especiallyin cybersecurity, you're not

(26:04):
unhackable if you have acybersecurity solution. But when
things go wrong, do you have acompany that can stand behind
you and make that tough phonecall and let you know things are
going wrong and and will makethat phone call when your
client's been hacked about thesame type of enthusiasm as

(26:26):
closing a 10 k deal.

Lou Rabon (26:28):
Right?

You you have to have somebody who's willing to
do both.

Lou Rabon (26:32):
Yeah. Big time. And I that's great because also it's
the why. You know, I think thatthat's really important is often
we get a lot of inbound requestslike, hey. They want a pen test,
And and we're like, why?
Like, can we speak to themoften? You know, sometimes TAs
get a little bit they push backbecause they wanna protect that.

(26:54):
And I don't blame them, by theway. You don't want your clients
speaking to, like, 50 differentproviders. They're going to get
fatigued pretty quickly.
And plus, that's the TA's job,right, is to filter that stuff.
So I totally understand and Iget it. But we often we have to
ask why for exactly the reasonthat you're mentioning, which is
they probably don't need a pentest. They probably actually

(27:16):
need more of a you know, theyneed a whole security team. And
instead of doing these things,like, one by one piecemeal
throughout the year and notgetting any results and spending
as much, if not more, than theywould if they just approach the
problem the right way in thefirst place.
That's why we ask why often. Andand I think if TA start asking,
okay. You need a pen test, but,you know, and then we equip

(27:39):
them. They've gotta have a bunchof questions. And I think
getting past those questions,being able to ask the questions
and not being intimidated, Imean, that's where they should
pull in a vendor like us.
But if, they can't, maybe havingenough ammunition. But the why
is really important because,yeah, otherwise, it's just

(27:59):
they're they're they're they'regonna lose trust. You you
mentioned trust. I think trustis lost when, you know, a TA
recommends someone obviously,and and it falls apart. That's
always that's why we love goingin because we're like, trust me.
They will love you. Bring us in,and and things will be good. And
that's what the other vendorshave to do, obviously, and not

(28:19):
to your point, wait until youknow, be really happy at the
sale and then absent whensomething actually goes wrong.
But, also, you know, they theyjust need to to to engage on a
deeper level and and make surethat the the trust that the TA
can bring the right solutions isthere. So

I've always loved I've always loved the analogy,
like, when a customer says, hey.Let's do a PIN test, and the
trust adviser is like, okay.I'll go find you a PIN test.
It's like, first question shouldbe with, like, well, do you have
doors on your house? Have youadded locks?
Like, have you closed yourwindows?

Lou Rabon (28:52):
Exactly. Let's make sure

let's make sure you've done at least what the
bare minimum is before we do apen test because it's just gonna
tell you all the things you knowalready just by looking at your
network.

Lou Rabon (29:05):
Yeah. Yeah. We had we've had a couple inbound. It
it's like why? What what youknow, you're doing this pen
test.
Yeah. Just to tell you thatthings aren't the way. Well, we
do it every year and we've gottado it for compliance or or when
we know, but we're gonna get tothat. It's like, You really and
and we started turning themdown, you know, to be completely
frank. In the beginning, I waslike, you know, bring it.

(29:26):
We don't but, yeah, it's like,okay. You want go ahead. Do your
pen test. When you're ready todo something, you know, really
do security, then call us up. So

Yeah. Yeah.

Lou Rabon (29:35):
Let's talk about your biggest challenge. What's your
biggest challenge today, youknow, in the channel at least?

Yeah. I think there's a couple things. I think
I think number one, I think ourbiggest challenge is that we
just don't have enough data.Right? I think we're a fairly
young industry.
I mean, we got started in thelate nineties, so we're twenty
five to thirty years old as anindustry, which in industries is

(30:03):
really young. Right? And the waythat this industry was built
was, you know, off off the backsof back end deals and spiffs and
commissions and and gut feels.We went from 50 suppliers to 500
suppliers in the channel in fiveyears, and you'd be shocked on
the amount of suppliers in thisspace that don't have CRMs. They

(30:27):
don't have basic tools to starttracking.
And when you don't have toolsand metrics to track, you don't
know where things fall short. Sowhen your revenue numbers start
to dwindle or when things startto get tough, you don't know
where to go plug those holes. SoI'll say, like, numbers are
cybersecurity for suppliers.It's like, okay. Let's go look

(30:48):
at where our gaps are in ourchannel program.
Hey. We're out there. We'rebringing all sorts of, trusted
advisers in the front door.They're looking at our product,
but we can't get anybody tobring us an opportunity. Well,
there's probably something wrongwith But you don't know that if
you don't see the numbers.
Right? You're just like, hey.There's something wrong, and
let's go work harder. And right?So you're going out and finding

(31:11):
more partners, but that doesn'tchange the fact that very few of
them actually like your productor your messaging or need your
whatever.
Right? So I think number one isis, metrics, I think, is a big
piece. I think number two,there's not a lot of education
and training. I haven't methardly any members in the

(31:32):
channel that are supplierfocused that have had any sort
of formal onboarding or trainingon what the channel is. So it's
people who have come in andfound a good mentor and have
taken them under the wing andshowed them how to do it.
But what that's caused is it'svery, very difficult to come
into the channel with the hugeexpectations because channel

(31:56):
managers are expensive, channelprograms are expensive, and
there needs to be immediateresults, but we don't have the
data. And so you get an eight ornine month ramp. You don't know
what you're doing. You don'tknow that you have stuff coming
in the pipe, and there's verylittle tolerance for failure
before they start churning over.And so being able to bring in

(32:18):
some new fresh blood, teach themhow to run a channel program, I
think will do wonders for thetrusted adviser.
Having somebody here here'shere's the biggest eye opener
for me in the last couplemonths. I have interviewed now
about 10 field sales rep on theTSD side and about 10 trusted
advisers, And I asked them ifyou could pinpoint the single

(32:45):
thing that makes a a channelmanager successful or not, what
is it? And all of them all ofthem have said they follow-up.
That's simple. They follow-up.
Like, that's the minimum barrierto entry. And if that's the
minimum barrier to entry, ittells me that there's just not

(33:05):
enough people knowing how to dothis particular job. So I think
it's those two things. I thinkit's numbers, and I think it's
training.

Lou Rabon (33:14):
That's great. I this this is like gold here because
that's what you do at thechannel advisers. Right? This is
you're basically teaching bothsides, right, how to operate. So
tell me more.
Like, what's your engagementmodel? How do you, you know,
approach, you know, what whatdoes it look like?

Yeah. So typically, what I get is there's
such a huge gold rush ofsuppliers who are wanting to get
into the channel. So a lot ofthe times, I get a phone call or
an email and say, hey. So and sotold me to reach out to you. I
wanna get into the channel.
And the first thing I said is,why do you wanna get into the
channel? And they say, well, Ihave this one guy who sells my

(33:57):
product, and he usually sellsmore than my entire direct sales
team. And when I asked him, howdo I find more people like you?
Their answer is, oh, you have toget into the channel. And then
they go, what's the channel?
Right? So it's usually aneducation and training of the
model. Evergreen commissions,you need resources, sales

(34:19):
enablement. You need a productthat makes sense. Here's the
category.
So there's a whole trainingaround what the channel model
is. And then it's building someof the groundwork. It's hey. I
went out after my time at atTelarus when I recognized there
was a major pain point on the onthe supplier side, and I looked

(34:41):
for a methodology for forindirect sales models. You can
go out and you can do challengersales, and there's there's
hundreds of different salesmethodologies and sales models.
But I couldn't find a singleplace that had an indirect sales
model, a sales through or saleswith motion model. And so, the

(35:02):
first thing I did, I created it.I created a channel2.0
methodology that kind of laysout who's responsible for what
along the way. And where I thinkmost people go wrong is they
don't realize that the suppliershave two funnels. You have a
partner funnel.
And if and only then after yousell those people, do you get

(35:23):
access to the customer pipeline?And so you gotta make sure that
that experience on the partnerside is a pleasant experience
because if you don't do a goodjob of selling them who are
professional salespeople andtypically have have shown
themselves to be very wellThey're they're really good

(35:44):
salespeople. They know goodsalespeople. If you show up and
you don't show that you're aefficient salesperson, you don't
follow-up, you don't know yourproducts, you don't know how to
ask good discovery callquestions, you don't even care
about their business, there's noway they're gonna give you
access to trusted relationshipsthat they've had for years. So,

(36:05):
right, showing up the best youcan as a salesperson to them to
help them, only then do you getaccess.
So so building that indirectsales model, and and then I I
just come in and I I build theprocesses. So you have the
methodology, you have theprocesses, and then you have the
training. But more importantly,we help them with their

(36:25):
messaging about their product,help them adjust their product
if it's not right, and help themadjust their messaging if it's
not right.

Lou Rabon (36:32):
Yeah. We we've learned that lesson the hard
way. I mean, this is, again,just super you cannot it's kinda
like what we're talking aboutearlier about being a
salesperson. Show up day onewith a, you know, a corporate
card at golf clubs and, youknow, a couple people to call.
That's only gonna get you sofar.
Coming into the channel justlike we've got a great product,

(36:54):
you know, that I've learned thehard way that if you build it,
they will not come. You gottahave a process, you know, for
sure. So, yeah, a little plugfor for for what you're doing in
the channel advisers becausethat that for anyone looking to
get into the channel, and we'veworked with you, you've been
great. So, yeah, definitely giveyou a call. But I I wanna go now

(37:19):
personal because we we don'teven though this is channel
security secrets, I also dowanna kinda get to know you a
little bit more even though Iknow you pretty well, but for
our audience, you know, youknow, what what what what do you
do outside of work?
Like, what gets you going?

Wait. There's such thing as that? Yeah.
There's there's life outside ofwork.

Lou Rabon (37:42):
Yeah. That's a tough one too.

I've been extremely blessed in my life.
I'll tell you that. My first youknow, my my UCaaS business that
I built, I had no businessbuilding it, but luckily, I had
a gentleman who believed in meand pulled me under his wing.
And when I was building it, Iwas in the middle of going

(38:07):
through college and raisingthree kids, and so my life was
pretty hectic. A lot of guilt ofbeing gone and focusing on
business as much as I did, butwe we did a great job.
And I have three amazingchildren that that are pretty
much raised. So my youngest is16 and just graduated high

(38:28):
school as a junior. So she'skind of up and running. And so
now my hobby is building thisbusiness. I get to do it guilt
free, and I get to spend as muchtime as I want because they they
don't really want my attentionmost of the time except for to
take them to dinner or, youknow, give them money for this
or help them with that.
So it's very few and farbetween. So I do spend a lot of

(38:50):
time doing podcasts and buildingeducational platforms and
playing with AI and seeing ithow it can integrate into to
what I'm doing. I'm a hugepickleball fan. I just picked up
pickleball, and so it's it's mygreat way of relieving stress.
And, yeah, besides those twothings and business, pickleball,

(39:12):
and family, I do have someconcerts, some music, and that's
about it.
That's awesome. My life's prettysimple right now.

Lou Rabon (39:19):
That hey, man. That's good. I mean, you're you're
living the dream in the sensethat just getting your kids
through. Guys, the high schoolis a big deal. I'm still in
that, but also being able to doother things and work on what
you wanna do.
That's the advantage of youknow, the thing that people
don't see when you own your ownbusiness, though, is those years

(39:40):
that you were talking about,like going to college and and
putting the kids to school andand the, you know, lack of time
and and, you know, sacrificingthings. Now you're you're
reaping the benefits to acertain extent, but it took a
while. Right?

It does. It does. And it's you know, if you wanna
get really personal, what's hardis really deciding the trade off
because building a business oror working at a job or learning
a new trade so you can make moremoney, you know, you have a
skill set more than, you know,doing menial tasks and getting

(40:18):
paid minimum wage is planningfor the future. And there's a
trade off. You have to decide onhow much you sacrifice now for
the future versus how much youlive in for today.
And I don't you know, businessowners are gonna hate me for
saying this, but there's notthere's not a right answer. You
gotta decide what's right foryou. We had a tragedy in the

(40:43):
family about a year and a halfago. We lost my daughter in a in
a motorcycle accident. And I'lltell you, I I would give every
single dollar and everything Iown to have her back.
And so that tells you that tellsme one thing, that money isn't
money isn't the thing you shouldsacrifice everything for, at

(41:04):
least not in my book, not in myvalue system. Mhmm. But I also
realized that if I stoppedworking today and I've lived and
lived life to the fullest andtake my kids on trips, and we
went out to eat, and we just hadgreat experiences all the time.
I'm gonna be working, you know,I'm gonna be working at at
Walmart. Sorry.

(41:25):
Walmart. But I'm gonna beworking at Walmart. Is it
better? Yeah.

Lou Rabon (41:31):
Insert minimum wage job here.

I don't I don't want I don't wanna be working
into my eighties. Right? I wannabe Yeah. I wanna be, doing this
this type of thing. Retirementfor me just says I get to say no
to more of the things I don'tnecessarily love to do as much.
So

Lou Rabon (41:49):
Yeah. No. It's it's a trade off, and to your point,
there's no right answer. There'sno well well, I I will say that
there is a right answer that youdo need to take time for sure,
and you do there's no meeting orI think I just read recently
where there was someone that waswinning an Oscar or something,
and they missed it because theirmom was turning 70. I don't I
don't know who that was, but,yeah, that's, you know,

(42:12):
priorities.
Right? It's like they work hard.They did the work, but then they
had a trade off to you know, isthis awards event more important
than me seeing my mom turn 70?They said no. For some people,
they would not agree for anumber of reasons.

But Yeah. Look. The Academy the Academy Awards
probably wasn't happy, but, youknow, I think we should respect
people and and their decisionsand just be much more aware of
the decisions we're making andmake them consciously versus
just doom scrolling our waythrough life.

Lou Rabon (42:43):
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see. It's
really interesting to thinkabout what's happening with
technology.
I mean, you mentioned AI. Sowhat are you doing with AI? Are
you just using it like I am,like my own personal assistant
and slightly addicted?

Yes and no. I am building platforms that allow
sales teams to get critical realtime feedback during the sales
process. Oh, wow. So if you area channel manager and you're
having calls, right now, there'snot a whole lot of places where

(43:26):
you can say, how well did I do?What feedback would you give me?
Unless your manager is sittingon that call with you all the
time, it's really hard to getsome of that feedback. And so
trying to educate and trainpeople real time is AI, it knows
everything and nothing all atthe same time. So if we can
leverage some of the stuff we'vebuilt, the processes and the

(43:48):
systems and the structure andall of that type of stuff, I
think it speeds up our salesprocess and go to market motions
faster, and we become betterenablers for our trusted
advisors to go find success aswell. We give them the tools and
the resources and the knowledgeas us as a supplier that they
need to go find success in theirrealm.

Lou Rabon (44:10):
Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, the the use case for AI is
almost limitless and, you know,not to take over jobs, but to
augment. It's a tool, you know,to your point.
Yeah. So yeah. How do you

how do you see AI affecting the cybersecurity
space?

Lou Rabon (44:28):
There's a lot of great use cases. I mean, I think
not just cybersecurity, but, youknow, in every entry level
position, it's kind of it's it'sa little bit it's gonna get
tough for for people that aregraduating now because the jobs
that used to go to them are nowgoing to AI. So same thing with
cyber. I see AI as being thatfirst layer tier one analyst.

(44:51):
You know, here are the alerts.
Here's what they mean. Even tiertwo to tier three, perhaps,
which is, okay. And this is whatyou should do to remediate it. I
don't see it at a point whereit's like, okay. Let's auto
remediate everything where I Iwouldn't feel comfortable doing
that, but it's it's a forcemultiplier for sure.
I mean, just the things I've youknow, the other day, I had to

(45:13):
parse a mailbox file for areason. And it we basically, I
said, I need a Python script toto go through who's the two from
subject, etcetera. And it waslike a 65 gig file. It did it
in, know, it created a scriptfor me, which, you know, my

(45:36):
Python scripting skills arelike, you know, baby level. So
this wrote like, you know,master level Python script to go
through, pull this informationout.
There were a couple of errors. Isaid, this is the error. Boom.
Here's a new script. Literallywithin five minutes, I pulled
this information out.
Thanks to to AI. So also withforensics, you know, a lot of

(45:58):
the things, technical thingsthat we need to do, we can pull
it like, what's this Windows logmean? What's the context in
this? You know, what would anattacker do? What, you know, why
am I seeing this?
What other logs would correlatewith that? It's amazing. But so
so AI being used by a humanright now, I think, is the use
case for cyber. AI taking overcertain cyber activities,

(46:20):
definitely in the there's nodoubt in the future. But, you
know, and AI being able to runcyber, you know, we gotta wait a
little while for that.
Essentially, I think that mighthappen, but until you take
humans out of the loop, there'salways gonna be issues. So

Let me ask you a question about the future of
cybersecurity. One of the thingsand one of the projects I'm
working on with an MSP whofocuses on that SMB range, you
mentioned that, like, let's sayunder 250 users. That that that
group of employers doesn't havethe budgets, doesn't have the

(47:00):
expertise, really struggles withthe knowledge base and stuff. I
mean, they're just struggling tokinda keep doors open and
revenue coming into the space. Isee large enterprise who are
working on on cyber insurance,they're going to Travelers or
some of these big cyberinsurance companies, require

(47:21):
these huge check boxes andthings to fill out to to get
approved or underwritten forcyber insurance.
When does that go down to theSMB business? When is the SMB
required to get to those samelevels that the enterprise is
gonna have to be at?

Lou Rabon (47:39):
It's a great question. Right now, it's
already happening where if youwant a lot of coverage is not
there because these companiescan't answer those questions.
Yeah. Or and and so there are, Ithink, products for the SMB
market. At least it used it'sevolving.
There was one point where theywere like, here, use this
browser plug in. The insurancecompany was giving a browser

(48:00):
plug in saying, this will tellus how your security is. You
know, it was a joke. So they'regetting more sophisticated. So
ultimately, what you're gettingat, Cameron, is there is no use
case in the future where acompany can't have some basic
level of cyber.
Now do they need an advancedprogram? We look at the world
through maturity, through thelens of maturity when we're

(48:20):
looking at companies. We're notsaying, are you doing it or are
you not? That binary thing, thatdoesn't work. It's you know, are
you at least doing it enough toa basic level where you'll be
able to detect something weirdhappening?
You know? Or or closing off thethings that if it if you can't
detect it, at least it's not away in. And and then there's you

(48:41):
know, you go up the level ofmaturity. So I think that
everyone needs it. We, you know,one of the IRS we worked was a
was a much smaller structure.
They didn't have cyberinsurance, and it was really a
it was actually painful. I Ifelt bad, you know, charging
what we charge because I knewthis was coming out of pocket
for this person. And and we wedon't normally do that. You

(49:02):
know, we're normally at the midmarket and enterprise. But in
this case, it was it was it allworked out.
The point is this person, youknow, it was almost like going
to the casino. Like, they'rejust they did not, invest in
cyber or even IT to a pointwhere, you know, this was
definitely gonna eventuallyhappen to them, and they just

(49:23):
had tech and security debt foryears. And then finally, you
know, it came it landed on theirnumber, but in the negative
sense. And, you know, and nowthe numbers that they're putting
up, if they had invested in aprogram for the last five or ten
years, would have been half orless of what they paid amortized
over that amount of time. Sothat's really what we're trying

(49:44):
to to get out there.
It's like, yes, right now it'san investment. Right now, you
may not see the reason, but ifyou do it proactively, you can
do it at your own pace. And thenwhen you do it at your own pace,
you're you're heading off afuture. There's a future ROI if
there's not one immediately.

Mic drop. Boom, baby. I feel like I feel like
you just gave your wholeelevator pitch. That was like,
brilliant. It was perfect.

Lou Rabon (50:13):
Well, that I I wanted this to be more about you, not
about me. So any any closingthoughts before we, you know,
close-up?

Yeah. For me, I think the future is bright. I've
never been so excited about whatthe possibilities are, but
terrified at the same time.Optimistically apprehensive. Is
that even a phrase that we couldsay?
But

Lou Rabon (50:40):
Cautiously optimistic. There you go.

Alright. The the world's our oyster right now.
There's such an opportunity outthere. There's such a demand,
and and there's such a huge needto have a trusted resource to
come in and help guide thesecompanies because the technology
rate of change is not slowingdown. The, a rate of bad actors

(51:06):
trying to hack and and hold youhostage is not going down, And
your competitors are not slowingdown, adopting technology to to
benefit and grow, you know, andand provide better experiences
over you.
And so the channel is a greatplace to be. The future's
bright. And, as long as you stayahead of it and you put time in

(51:28):
and learning and education,yeah, the the world's our oyster
at this point, I think.

Lou Rabon (51:32):
I love it. I love the optimism, and I totally agree.
So, where where can people findyou? You've got your LinkedIn.
We'll put links in our

Yeah. Come to my house. We'll swim in the pool.
We'll have a drink. You know?
All that. Come find me.Thechanneladvisers.com. Go
there. You can fill out a form.
Come look at my stuff. A lot ofmy stuff is free. Right? I I
want the channel to benefit.Self paced.
If you just wanna learn how tobuild better channel programs,

(52:03):
come grab my stuff. There's alot of stuff on my university. I
have a job board. If you'relooking for people, there's
there's great, people on there.That's all free.
If you want me to come in andhelp you look at where you have
holes and gaps, I'm happy to dothat. If you want a curated
experience to help you buildyour channel program, I'm happy
to do that as well. So, yeah,whatever you need, I can I can

(52:25):
help or at least point you inthe direction?

Lou Rabon (52:27):
Awesome. Thank you, Cameron. Really appreciate
having you here. Thank you tothe audience. First episode,
boom, down.
And, if you learned somethingtoday or you laugh, tell someone
about this podcast, please.We're looking to get it out
there. And thanks again,Cameron. Really great to to

(52:47):
chat.

Such a pleasure. Thanks for having me on live.

Lou Rabon (52:50):
Yeah. Absolutely. Bennett, another exciting
episode of the channel securitysecrets podcast. See you next
time. That's a wrap for thisepisode of channel security
secrets.
Thanks for tuning in. For shownotes, guest info, and more
episodes, visit us atchannelsecuritysecrets.com.
Channel Security Secrets issponsored by Cyber Defense

(53:11):
Group. When it comes toprotecting your business, don't
settle for reactive. Partnerwith experts who build
resilience from the ground up.

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Decoding Channel Success - Kameron Olsen - Channel Security Secrets - Episode #1

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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;}Decoding Channel Success - Kameron Olsen - Channel Security Secrets - Episode #1