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How to Make Strategic Alliances and Network like a CEO · Speak In Flow

• 0:02
  Melinda Lee: Welcome. Dear listeners to the speak and flow podcast where we dive into unique strategies and stories to help you and your team achieve maximum potential and flow even when the stakes are high. Today I have a master. I want to say about communication connection building strategic relationships.
• 0:25
  Melinda Lee: He's the director of channel and strategic partnerships for Actian. His name is Tony Zernon. Hi, Tony
• 0:33
  Tony Zirnoon: How are you great to be here? Thanks for having me
• 0:36
  Melinda Lee: I'm excited. As the audience knows, we talk about building relationships because we know our net worth is our network.
• 0:44
  Melinda Lee: And so what makes you excited about what you do
• 0:49
  Tony Zirnoon: You. You took the words out of my mouth, I think. That's what I pride myself is, you know,
• 0:55
  Tony Zirnoon: I think, in a world that is very digital right? These days. We're, you know, most digitally connected. I feel that as humans, we are most individually
• 1:05
  Tony Zirnoon: analogy apart, right? I mean part of it, Covid. So I think that the more trusted relationships we can build which is not easy, is not comfortable for us to go out, and some people have lost that art. I take pride on being able to spend as much time I have during my day job, but also outside of that and help nurture those relationships. And time and time again, I've seen that as the more of these trust relationship you build, the more communities you build, it will just come back right. Things just happen right.
• 1:35
  Tony Zirnoon: And the trick, I say, put an effort and build relationships before you need it.
• 1:41
  Melinda Lee: Yes, I mean, people know that. I think maybe not someone. Maybe. Let's talk about the strategies to do that. But before we get there. I think that, like you said a lot of times people know it, but and they struggle with it because because we've lost it. Maybe Covid hit or or it's just uncomfortable. So what are the key challenges that you see that people have with building these trust trusted relationships?
• 2:07
  Tony Zirnoon: I think, Melinda, you said it. I think part of it is that we became comfortable. We became lazy. Digital.
• 2:13
  Tony Zirnoon: whether we're nomads or not. But we are definitely becoming digital beings. Right? It's great that AI is here. Leverage AI in what you can do to augment your capabilities to increase your efficacy all that. But it's not a replacement for you as a human being, right? And it's much easier to send a text to someone. Right? I mean, think about before, right? When, before all this happened, you would pick up the phone for your friend or someone like that. And you say, Hey, happy birthday right? Or you write a card, right.
• 2:41
  Tony Zirnoon: you know. And and if you take those times right, you're showing people that you care, and you generally have an interest in them. It's not just an easy, comfortable text or an AI sending text. You know, you can program your iphone with everybody else you want.
• 2:53
  Tony Zirnoon: you know, and then say, look this birthday, send happy birthday to everybody. I think there's I don't know. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about. Actually take a part of your time and then go beyond your comfort zone. Right?
• 3:06
  Tony Zirnoon: Call that one person that you guys used to be together. But you haven't gone for lunch right? Just have a lunch. Just just go out for a drink right? Just just rebuild that muscle right? That that human connection muscle that we've lost a lot of it for Covid and a lot of it, just because we're very busy individuals, right? And of course I'm going to text it, and you can see this deteriorating over the over the generations. Right? Millennials. Some Gen. Z. Is kind of like. Don't even talk to me right? Just text. Me right? So
• 3:35
  Tony Zirnoon: the more we go towards AI, the more of ourselves we're losing. So we have to take a stand. It's almost kind of like working out right. Of course it's easier to be on a couch, but you get up and you get on that treadmill. Whatever you do, you will rip the benefits of it right? There is some muscle memory that we've lost in this
• 3:53
  Tony Zirnoon: art of connecting right?
• 3:56
  Tony Zirnoon: So I think that's what I would say that, you know. Just put an effort. Put a goal for yourself, hey? I'm going to go. Have a lunch with someone right? There's a great book that says, never eat alone, right, you know. Never have a lunch. I forgot exactly the name of it, but I think that's what is never eat alone, and I think during corporate I use that right. I think you know when you're there. When you go to a cafeteria, I'm sure there's somebody else out there. Just go have lunch with someone right?
• 4:22
  Melinda Lee: And do you have a specific example of how this works in your as successfully with your career
• 4:27
  Tony Zirnoon: Yeah, I mean couple of different areas. But you know, I give you one example is I was hired at a different company.
• 4:35
  Tony Zirnoon: as a as a fractional, to help them build a relationship with Microsoft, right? And I didn't know anybody at Microsoft and definitely didn't know anything about healthcare. My background is in cyber security, right? And I've done partnerships and alliances, and, you know.
• 4:50
  Tony Zirnoon: build a whole, you know. Go to Market channel through partnerships. But in this case one of my previous vps of sales, you know, who had gone to his company, asked me and said, Can you do that so? Well, I can do it fractionally, and I took it on because I wanted to know. What was it to build relationship with with Microsoft.
• 5:08
  Tony Zirnoon: you know, and then prove to myself that I was good enough of a connector or strategic Alliance Business Development person if I could do it for a domain that I didn't know much about which in this case was telemedicine. So I started kind of building connections through Linkedin, you know, and kind of.
• 5:24
  Tony Zirnoon: I figured, okay, if I have a couple of GM's. And people that convince them to connect with me. Then I can have other directors connect with me, and by the time we went to the 1st Microsoft event, I think, was inspire. I already had like 100 connections with me, and I already able to go there. Hey, I'm coming there.
• 5:40
  Tony Zirnoon: you know. I made an effort to meet as many key people right? And and have those dialogue. My name is Tony. I'm with global met. This is what I'm trying to do. And I listened to what Satya Nadola had shared about the division, what the mission of Microsoft was, and how our company could contribute to that goal.
• 5:58
  Tony Zirnoon: and I went and found a Vp. Of channels. It was actually an event at the art show which I loved, and we went over there and talked to Jackie. I said, Jackie, can I share with you my goal, my vision for next year? By next year I would love Satya Nadola to go on this stage and be as inspiring was. But say, we want to democratize value-based care through partnerships with telemedicine companies like global med. Do you think that would be possible? So, my God, Tony, I love that. How can I help you?
• 6:26
  Tony Zirnoon: Right? So we put our effort into that and started building relationships within Microsoft. And obviously I had to train my team internally. That look, we're going to go this route. Here's what I need you to do. We need to basically be at Microsoft Technology Center. So it was a lot of orchestration that had to happen.
• 6:43
  Tony Zirnoon: But by October of that year I started in March by October. We had our technology stack in Microsoft technology centers. I had been invited to, you know, bunch of Qbrs. I had cell numbers of the GM's right of the Microsoft, and we went to a Federal event in in DC. Where they had an immersive you know, showcase where our technology was there. But guess what happened?
• 7:08
  Tony Zirnoon: This wasn't even 6 months, and Satya Nadola had a, you know, had a speech right? He had a, you know, for the Federal side. And, in fact, what we just talked about. He ordered that right, he said. Look, we will democratize value-based care through partnership with great telemedicine companies like global Med
• 7:26
  Melinda Lee: That could
• 7:27
  Tony Zirnoon: Change the course right? And it's like, Oh, my God! You know what's happening, and that's what. When you have a purpose, and you can articulate that to people, and they see you being assertive, and they see, Hey, this is a win win. This is where one plus one equals 3 or more
• 7:40
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 7:41
  Tony Zirnoon: You say, well, why should I worry about partnering with global Med? You have to be able to articulate that you have to show what is the win-win and the win for the customer? Right? And and that was a catapult for us right to do that. That's 1 example that that you try to make those relationships as genuine as possible, and a lot of them was just go to events.
• 8:02
  Tony Zirnoon: you know, find someone had a dinner with with their CTO. Have a dinner with the GM. You know. Have some drinks. Let them know that you are a trustable person, that you guys are pulling the same direction. Once that trust is built, amazing doors will open
• 8:16
  Tony Zirnoon: right and suddenly you can. You can bypass a lot of their bureaucracy
• 8:20
  Melinda Lee: That is amazing. That is absolutely amazing. And you didn't even know anyone in there. And it took you 6 months
• 8:28
  Tony Zirnoon: There's a lot of, you know, a lot of support, but also a lot of pulling teeth. Trust me from my own team. That kind of like, you know, it was. It was interesting. It it's a culture, right? You have to kind of instigate that. Also, it's you know. It's going back to sales. People want to be very individuals. This is what I'm doing. Why should I spend this? How? What's it? How does this
• 8:50
  Tony Zirnoon: benefit my pocket. They're very coin operated. You're constantly translating. And once they see the value that the partners and honestly can be a force multiplier for them. Yeah. And it kind of like opens up to new markets, like building a bridge to a whole different island. It's a green space
• 9:06
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 9:06
  Tony Zirnoon: Then they're like, Oh, the light goes up so it's a lot of advocacy is a lot of evangelism that comes with it on both sides.
• 9:13
  Melinda Lee: So so what would be your 3 big pieces of advice for these leaders?
• 9:20
  Melinda Lee: Who want to get buy in from executives? Or maybe. What are the 3 key
• 9:26
  Tony Zirnoon: Who.
• 9:26
  Melinda Lee: Ice from the story to build strategic relationships. Yeah.
• 9:31
  Tony Zirnoon: Yeah, I mean, I mean, this is one example. I can tell you another one. When you talk about executives, for instance, you know, obviously, when you come up with this, you have to have a very clear strategy. You're gonna have to have a support team in your company as to why, we're gonna go. Do partnership
• 9:46
  Tony Zirnoon: strategic alliances, tech partnerships with with Company A or B. Why am I going to go partner with aws? Why am I going to partner with Cisco. Why am I partner with Microsoft? Right? Because this is not not core to them, especially when you need to have the sales leaders to buy, because you're taking mindshare from their salespeople which should be just selling, and you got to have to convince them.
• 10:03
  Tony Zirnoon: and I'll give you a quick example, where I was, a different company called Vss. Monitoring. This was in the 2011 time era, and this were, you know, we're building hardware right back then where they're packet brokers, and we had a fierce competition like Gigamont.
• 10:20
  Tony Zirnoon: I was brought in to build a vertical around cyber security right for these packet brokers with inline bypass. I saw some challenges, and there was an opportunity that I had to go
• 10:30
  Tony Zirnoon: and convince the board right to allow me to bring an inbound oem, or we bring somebody else technology. We put a white label on it and we sell it along. Our product. Why? Because their box was a appliance that would do. Ssl, decryption like, you know, like you know, when you do the https. If it's encrypted your your tool, cannot, you know, inspect it. So we had to decrypt the tool to decrypt the traffic and pass it to the inspection tools.
• 10:55
  Tony Zirnoon: Well, that was a huge problem. But we didn't have the technology so brought as an oem, built it as almost exclusive for the packet brokers amongst my competitors, and then had to convince my team, my Cfo. Who didn't want to do an inventory, my product management team, who said, Wait a minute. This is we build stuff. This is, it's not Vss. You bring in somebody else. Why should I do that? Why should I put effort, the marketing team, who didn't want to go build a whole messaging around it.
• 11:21
  Tony Zirnoon: And then executive team like, you know, my my CEO, and then head of business development. Luckily I was able to find couple allies right. So I was able to convince the CEO as to the why right? Why we need to do this is a door opener. It was kind of like a Trojan horse for us to be able to do off box decryption and then feed the traffic to multiple tools, which is what we're doing. And then
• 11:44
  Tony Zirnoon: I had to get the buying from my head of business development to help me with what I wasn't very strong, which was maybe the financial projection. How does this change the numbers. How do we position them? The Cfo gets a buy in. This is very strategic, is not very tactical, and then really being able to kind of massage all this, and then kind of create like an inception in their mind, because sometimes when you go there and try to convince the executive team.
• 12:06
  Tony Zirnoon: If you're trying to kind of force down to them, they don't have time to listen to you. The why has to be big enough has to either add to the top line or the bottom line, and you have to translate it. So the Cfo has to do it. The CEO is going to look at that! The Cr is going. Oh, my God, you're distracting my people! Why should I allow you to do that? It's a lot of maneuvering. It's not going to happen in one meeting. So you have to have a lot of previous meetings
• 12:27
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 12:27
  Tony Zirnoon: Who are your buyers in in your idea, who are going to be against, and then use the power of, you know who's your Allies to kind of overcompass it for the guy who's always going to be a naysayer right and a lagger right? So we had to do a lot of that. We had to have very, you know. You know a lot of practice.
• 12:47
  Tony Zirnoon: you know, do like a game theory. What is? What is Jim's gonna say, what is Jack's gonna say, what is Jill's gonna say? Right? How are we going to come back with that? And we had to believe that, hey, this is great. This is going to be a land and expand. This allows us to go to even our competitors
• 13:01
  Tony Zirnoon: with that tool, and then be able to show additional value, and this actually completely changed the game for us into the enterprise we went from like a 3 million dollar, attributed revenue to security in to like
• 13:14
  Tony Zirnoon: 33% growth like, actually, no, a lot more growth from 3% to 33% in 3 years. And getting to enterprise accounts with, you know, 7 figure deals in major, you know, finance, oil and gas and telecommunications right? And it was a strategy need to get people. It was a challenge. But once we're able to go, and and also, I think, is the right timing. The 1st time we went it was the right timing, because
• 13:43
  Tony Zirnoon: the board was looking at a potential exit to Danaher, and they didn't want to have a dangling oem. So I had to be patient and wait for that to happen after it happened. Then I was able to go use one of the strategic partnership with Mcafee to bring it back again, and then it worked right. So a lot of times you have the right idea. But it's not the right timing
• 14:02
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 14:03
  Melinda Lee: How long did this take? How long did this whole
• 14:05
  Tony Zirnoon: Oh, so the initial part, I mean it was probably about 4 or 5 months right that that when we we thought about it. We were kind of meeting company, and until the Oem was done, and then the game just started right, and then we had to go and do trust me. I had to do a Plm. You know. I had to management. I had to do inventory management things that I didn't want to do as a partnership, but I had to take it on right there. Things that were just not fun.
• 14:28
  Tony Zirnoon: but it allowed us to really go through. I had more pressure internally against my product management, because they're like it wasn't their idea right. And they said they could do it better
• 14:39
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 14:40
  Tony Zirnoon: I'm like. No, no, I cannot wait 18 months
• 14:42
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 14:42
  Tony Zirnoon: We brought multimillion dollar deals and opened up
• 14:46
  Tony Zirnoon: it was that make it more concise, make it more valuable. Have a storyline, but be able to articulate it to the Executive, because a very, very short span, right? It was a lot of exercise of going through that and be able to back it by the right numbers, projections, and things, and then convince the Board that look. This is very strategic for us
• 15:05
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 15:06
  Tony Zirnoon: Because they're looking at the attachment I'm like, look
• 15:08
  Tony Zirnoon: we. We reduced it to the point that every one of those boxes it would about 4 x of our boxes, right? So 4. And that number stuck with our Cfo right? And then that was all to do it. But to go from this idea to actually bring it down and tactically driven it. It was a lot of back and forth. We made some mistakes back and forth, and and really building those allies. And one started happening, do I did have challenges absolutely. I didn't have the right people to do solution marketing. And trust me, there was no chat. She to be back then, that I could backfill right
• 15:39
  Melinda Lee: I had to kind of convince people
• 15:42
  Tony Zirnoon: It's a great opportunity. Come on board. It wasn't a comfort zone for salespeople, right? So yeah, I mean, I would say, that's a great story.
• 15:51
  Melinda Lee: Awesome. That's congrats.
• 15:52
  Melinda Lee: Congratulations on that. Yeah.
• 15:53
  Tony Zirnoon: I think you know. Always leave with the why first.st What is the why, when you're trying to do a partnership, why should the executive team. Give a damn about what you're about to say. What's in it for them? What's in it for the business? Is it aligned to the mission?
• 16:07
  Tony Zirnoon: If you're private or public, right, you know you should know what those mission and the vision and mission is for that year. What are the strategic values? What are the Okrs right? Or the operating? You know, key performance indicators, you know, and then carve the extra time, you know. And and really have you basically coming up with the business pitch. It's just like you're pitching a startup right into the Vc. It's the same play right? And as you do this, I would say that
• 16:34
  Melinda Lee: And I also want to add, like for those who are not pitching, who are. Maybe you're just in in corporate. You're a mid level manager. You're pitching a new idea. You might be partnering with the cross functional team to do something right. You're pitching an idea so still similar
• 16:48
  Tony Zirnoon: I was blessed that I had a very, very astute and very, you know, supportive CEO Martin Breslin.
• 16:57
  Tony Zirnoon: And he saw the potential when I went in there. And honestly, I went there because I got tired of people telling me I was in the tech marketing. I was a practitioner cyber initially, and they're saying, Tony, you're great in bd, I'm like, what is bd biz dev, what is biz dev is it sales?
• 17:12
  Tony Zirnoon: It's a product. I'm like, what am I not good enough for? Sales? Not good enough for product? So what am I in between here. No, no, but you were really good at, but nobody could articulate what that was. So it became a challenge for me to go find it until I met Martin in this opportunity. And I basically used that as a platform to go become a Bd right? Become that you know things that are
• 17:32
  Tony Zirnoon: within you right.
• 17:33
  Tony Zirnoon: I feel that what gets me going is when when my passions are are aligned with my talents. Right? If you can do that.
• 17:42
  Tony Zirnoon: there's nothing else you don't want to do. I mean, you can actually smile in the toughest days, and for me is I'm a connector, right? And I have a passion for making impact and building trust relationship. So the business development was a natural thing. Other people could see it, but it was my blind spot, right because I was able to solve problems.
• 17:58
  Tony Zirnoon: not because I was the smartest guy in a room, or or you know anything like that, but because I had built relationships with other people that were willing to do project. It was like cleanup project and enterprise that they wouldn't want to do that job for the boss, and they're like, let's bring a task force.
• 18:14
  Tony Zirnoon: And I got to a point that Melinda got tired. That's why I left the corporate as a practitioner, because when pulp fiction came about right, I felt I was Harvey Keitel. You know the cleaner. I'm like. Your lack of planning is not my urgency right, and I wasn't satisfied. So I just said, Look, I know I don't like doing this. Let me go do something else that is more aligned to what I want to do, and you have different challenges. But what I would say is, once you figure out the why, and then able to have your core
• 18:44
  Tony Zirnoon: talents aligned to it, and then build your relationships of what you don't have. I was able to to find somebody who could really help me with like, let's say, the financial projections and translate that into Cfo lingo which wasn't my forte at all, and I was the person in the head of business development. And eventually I joined his team to go do this right? So it's building those alliances right. And the only way I was able to do it because
• 19:06
  Tony Zirnoon: I had built those relationship with him right? I had taken time to meet him, even though he wasn't my boss. Right? You know, we connected, and we figure out a way? How can I come part of your team right? What can I do? And this was a perfect opportunity for us to to do. And not only we want internally. The company won
• 19:24
  Tony Zirnoon: our our partnership one, but the customers one right. This was something that wasn't available, and we offered them a a very scalable solution that opened us up to tier one banking in the world. Right? Oil and gas telecommunications across the world, right? And it took about a a tough one year to get it going, but it completely
• 19:49
  Tony Zirnoon: positions us differently against our competitors, which ultimately allowed us to get much more valuation when we exited to Danaher because of our, you know, vertical have build around security right? Which our competitors didn't have right. So hopefully, that helps
• 20:05
  Melinda Lee: Wonderful what a story! Well, congratulations! That's incredibly hard, like you mentioned to be able to see the vision so clearly, to be able to talk to it, get buy-in from multiple people multiple allies, and then also show the metrics, show the traction
• 20:26
  Melinda Lee: for the naysayers to push it through to to actually get to the end where you're able to see the results that impact the client, the organization.
• 20:36
  Melinda Lee: and so congratulations on that
• 20:39
  Tony Zirnoon: Yeah, I think it's there's our lesson learned that I tried to kind of share and
• 20:43
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 20:44
  Tony Zirnoon: And they're they're, you know, translatable into other things. Right? So I bring that into the the startup community and innovation in Silicon Valley. So I love to do mentorship for what I can mentor startups. Because I love to make that impact. Right? I get that
• 20:58
  Tony Zirnoon: at Actium. We're the data platform. So we build, you know, we're doing the partnership. Go to market right? So we're trying to figure out what's a win-win look like. But outside that I'm in the early stage investment community so venture partnerships and, you know, help fund the funds, but also help the innovators right? There's a lot of great technologies, right? That can build, especially with AI. Now, right? And a lot of people can build tech very quickly.
• 21:21
  Tony Zirnoon: But what they miss a lot it has to do with go to market, and a lot of it is they don't have the right advisors. They don't know why should they do this? And when they get there, they don't know how to scale up. And that's where channel comes in. Right? So having an idea and creating, okay, I'm going to do this first.st I'm going to prove myself the value here. The product market fit is there. Here's my go to market and be able to build those relationships find people around you that have done this, and you don't have to go figure out everything on your own. It's the same thing. I didn't know what I didn't know, but I knew that Dean
• 21:52
  Tony Zirnoon: was the right person to help me figure that out right? So it's building those alliances. This is called advisory right? It's around you and and get into that community right honestly, I tell people like, Come out is behind the keyboard. Right? Come out.
• 22:05
  Tony Zirnoon: talk to potential customers. Ask your customers, get the voice of a customer. If you don't know, get some advisors who can get you there before you start building.
• 22:14
  Tony Zirnoon: you know, have a community that if you want to tap into it, you have built those relationships.
• 22:19
  Tony Zirnoon: build those relationship before you need it. And I often say something to people sounds the same. But it's not, I said. Some people come and network with an agenda. Right? It sounds good to me. It doesn't.
• 22:32
  Tony Zirnoon: I think you need to network with a purpose, even though the same is not. What is your purpose is very different than you coming with an agenda. I've some people that come in. What do you do? What do you do? Oh, you're investor. Oh, oh, you're a founder. Okay, no. So you're just an advisor. Okay, I just need somebody who invests right now, you actually, I'm like, you're not going to go far.
• 22:53
  Tony Zirnoon: Make it a 1 lucky person. It's good to have that that aggressive approach and want to make it happen. But
• 22:59
  Tony Zirnoon: I think you over your skis and quickly, you're going to realize that people are going to avoid you right? Because you need to contribute a little bit before you. Right? So a lot of the same skills in the corporate, I brought them into the startup community. And I get a I get a
• 23:15
  Tony Zirnoon: massive sense of, you know, accomplishment. When I see I give an advice to someone, and somebody actually listens and they're coachable.
• 23:24
  Tony Zirnoon: You get to a point that you want to help them. But they're not coachable. Right? If you're a tech founder, be coachable. It's okay. You don't need to know everything. Don't have what I call a fundritis, right? That you're the founder of everything. You know everything. No open up, man, it's okay. It's good to have vulnerabilities. Right? That's how you build trust right? And then
• 23:42
  Tony Zirnoon: your community will lift you up. Right? So
• 23:44
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, like you said, I mean, I'm not the smartest person. But if you open up you can get the answers. You can get the right people, and I have a question about networking with purpose. What is that like? So there's there's you describe the networking with agenda. What is networking with purpose like
• 24:00
  Tony Zirnoon: So there is this thing that the people go and define. What is your purpose? Right? You know some people purpose is listening to someone is like, you know, in the in the case of ambiguity and confusion, his purpose was to bring clarity right, because a lot of people have so many problems. We all have complex problems. But there's that one person that can sit down, listen to you, and then really help you pull in that thread and says, Look.
• 24:24
  Tony Zirnoon: this is the path right? The purpose is to do that is being a concise, clear path through ambiguity. His purpose is clear, so he looks for that. Some other purposes is, hey? Look, I want to make an impact, whatever that is. That's my purpose. How can I contribute to that? And I can do it some purpose. I want to make a lot of money. I want to make a lot of residual money, but I want to do it. Whatever your purpose is your purpose to go find a co-founder. Your purpose is to get, you know, the right funding to build a community, whatever that is right
• 24:53
  Tony Zirnoon: that you know, and you're going to have to focus on that and let people know what your purpose is. Right. I'm a connector. My purpose is to help startups in cyber security build
• 25:03
  Tony Zirnoon: applicable solutions. Not a me, too. I'm I'm trying to remove
• 25:10
  Tony Zirnoon: the the A lot of me, too. Players. There's a lot of confusion in cyber security. We have 4,000,
• 25:15
  Tony Zirnoon: you know, security vendors, and Rsa is going to come. If you walk the floor honestly, it's close to having an aneurysm. They all sound the same
• 25:24
  Melinda Lee: Wow!
• 25:24
  Tony Zirnoon: Number one investment area, Melinda. In security. I often joke with people. It's like, what is it? Is it endpoint security? Is it cloud security. And they argue, I'm like, no, it's not. It's marketing. That's the number one investment area, I mean, they all sound the same.
• 25:38
  Tony Zirnoon: So we don't need another. Me, too. My purpose is to help find the right talent that can see the problems that need to be solved. And we have a lot of them in cybersecurity. Right? And we have a talent shortage. How do I go solve those problems and then find those people build the right community around them, from investors, from advisors to say, Hey, look! We need more talents coming in attract, more talent, more diversity, more females in cybersecurity. That's 1 of my purpose, because we need more different
• 26:08
  Tony Zirnoon: right? And then, you know, when I go with that, people know, oh, cyber security, you need someone. Go talk to Tony right?
• 26:15
  Tony Zirnoon: It just becomes your brand, right? It's just, you know, once people know that. And you evangelize that you don't have to work as hard. Other people want to be part of your purpose.
• 26:25
  Melinda Lee: Oh, yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that so good. Right? Because, like you said, when you when people know your purpose. They were gonna start going to you.
• 26:35
  Melinda Lee: And it could be all sorts of people right as long as they're in alignment with your purpose.
• 26:39
  Tony Zirnoon: And you. You'll support somebody else's purpose right? I mean, for me. I support a lot of
• 26:46
  Tony Zirnoon: like female in tech, right women in tech woman in cyber. Why? Because we need that diversity right? We need part of the minorities in cyber security. Right? Bring the talent. Why am I doing that.
• 26:58
  Tony Zirnoon: I don't want to work, you know more right? I want to bring new talent, and and that is, you know, to solve a 4 million skillful talent gap in in cyber. And AI. Now, right it's it's it's a huge gap. We're losing this battle.
• 27:12
  Tony Zirnoon: Just to give you some numbers for your audience. So the entire cybersecurity domain, Melinda, is about 250 billion dollars. Right? It's a big number.
• 27:22
  Tony Zirnoon: the hacker economy.
• 27:25
  Tony Zirnoon: By end of this year it's going to be over 10 trillion dollars in profitability
• 27:31
  Melinda Lee: What?
• 27:32
  Tony Zirnoon: Yeah. So that makes them the 3rd largest economy in the world, and bigger than the entire cartel.
• 27:38
  Melinda Lee: Right, business.
• 27:40
  Tony Zirnoon: So they have to be right. Only one time we have to write 100% of the time. It's an asymmetric war.
• 27:46
  Tony Zirnoon: and we have a 4 million talent gap. How are we gonna solve that problem? So what is my purpose
• 27:51
  Tony Zirnoon: to be able to make an impact? Because you can imagine, right with AI and everything. They're using AI to attack us more efficiently. And I'm like, how are we going to do that? We're building all this ais, how do we gonna build cyber resilience into that? And it's just this community like guys, how do we do it? So we created think tanks to solve this intersection. How do you solve the bias? You know all the kind of things that you can imagine going to AI, and like.
• 28:17
  Tony Zirnoon: you know, the sky is not falling, but if you don't do something
• 28:20
  Melinda Lee: It.
• 28:21
  Tony Zirnoon: The floor will open up
• 28:25
  Melinda Lee: That's funny. That's funny. Wow, okay, that isn't funny. But I like that. That really is a good visual. So I'm so glad that we have leaders like you and trying to make this impact. And how can people get a hold of you if they're on the mission? They want to be on the mission with you and the purpose with you. Can. Can they get a hold of you
• 28:48
  Tony Zirnoon: Absolutely. Yeah. So you know everybody nowadays everybody uses Linkedin as a as a very poor Crm. For that matter, people just connect on Linkedin like. When did that happen? So I give you my handle and on. Linkedin is very simple. It's my last name IRNO, n, right. So if you go Linkedin, you know.com slash in slash 0 noon, I'm there. So just connect with me on Linkedin, you know, and more than happy to to connect with people, and, you know, find common purpose right
• 29:18
  Melinda Lee: Well, thank you, Tony. I I really did learn a lot, and I trust that also. The audience did, too. I appreciate your time and your expertise
• 29:26
  Tony Zirnoon: I appreciate the opportunity to be here, Melanie, that's great great meeting you, and we'll continue your your dialogues. I love. I love the speaking flow that that just that attracted me right there, you know, just like
• 29:37
  Melinda Lee: Great
• 29:38
  Tony Zirnoon: That's a purpose. That's the whole purpose.
• 29:40
  Melinda Lee: Speaking flow. So I hope that new audience, too, had got your golden takeaways and implement them right away. And remember, anytime you have an opportunity to speak. You have opportunity to connect, to inspire, to speak in flow even when the stakes are high, so take care I am your sister in flow until next time. Much love bye, bye.