Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 119: Rick Hill, VP Sales at Ava Security, on the process of being acquired (and how it feels)

Transcript

119: Rick Hill, VP Sales at Ava Security, on the process of being acquired (and how it feels) · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Before we get into today's topic, I have one favor to ask of you.
• 0:37
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• 0:54
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• 1:06
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• 1:17
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• 1:20
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• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sales Bluebird provides tips, tricks, experiences, examples, inspiration, and ideas from people who've been doing this for many years and many companies.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and joining us today, our guest is Rick Hill, the Vice President and General Manager of America's at Ava Security.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Rick, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Andrew.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure to be here with you.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you having me.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's gonna be fun.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I say vice president, general manager at Ava Security, but of course, one of the things we're gonna be talking about today is Ava just got acquired.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Changes quick, doesn't it?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been uh fast.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Quite an exciting run for the AVA team.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we'll dive into that.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, it's it's been a good color.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to covering that.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: But before we do, one of the things I just started doing on the podcast is taking sponsorships.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're looking to reach an audience of sellers and sales leaders at predominantly cybersecurity companies, but in different areas in that as well, head on over to salesbluebird.com and in the top menu there is an option for sponsors.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: It takes you through what is offered and how much and all that good stuff.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm offering early adopter pricing right now.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: We signed up our first sponsor last week.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a few spots left for early adopter before we get going into the main bit of sponsorship.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm kind of excited about how that's progressing.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So exciting times all Ryan.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: But Rick, to get to know the real you, first of all, six questions.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: These are quick answers, they're either ors, they're not for debates and depends and and maybes.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh I have to answer though.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's no like C, none of the above are opt-out, right?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in on this.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing you should be leaving in Vegas, put it that way.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, first one the dive bar or cocktail bar?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Dive bar.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Suite of the four seasons or cabin in the woods?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sweet of the four seasons.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Tricked out jeep or German car with all the gadgets?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go with a luxury automobile on that one.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Beach or mountains.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Beach.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: They say that home is where the heart is.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Where is home for you?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Currently in Davidson, North Carolina, about 15 miles north of Charlotte.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And how did you first make money as a kid?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Gosh.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of babysitting, a lot of shoveling snow.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in Boston, North Carolina, or Boston, Massachusetts, excuse me.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there was always something on the ground.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Snow leaves, the grass needed mowing, but manual labor was definitely the first place I started making money.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then transitioning that into babysitting and then doing some summer camps and stuff like that.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: But never enough money to actually make it go anywhere.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: But uh it's funny how that happens, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that we've still solved that problem, by the way.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's plagued me all my career.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: But you left Boston, you don't have an accent from New England.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: The the good folks the good folks at Clemson, South Carolina beat it out of me.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I left Boston and came down to college in upstate South Carolina and quickly realized I did not sound like everybody else.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a little bit more of a neutral accent.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, after a couple of those drinks from the uh dive bar, you might hear my R's start to soften a little bit, but um pretty neutral.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really Boston DeClemson.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's what introduced me to the South.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And clearly we're here not too far away.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I fell in love with it and really never left.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Good stuff.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, Rick, when I look at your LinkedIn profile, there's one word that comes to mind, and that is Cisco.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like you started your career there, and you had a long, very good run there, 16 years or so at Cisco.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering, you know, what your experience was like there, learnings, good things, bad things.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: What do you recall most about it all?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh amazing company, incredible run.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So fortunate and blessed that they would take a chance on a kid right out of college who had no discernible skills, did not understand anything about computers, did not come with an engineering degree or anything that qualified me for that job.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that being said, Andrew, that job was to sit in a call center and make a hundred calls a day out of Excel spreadsheet and then uh pass anybody that actually picked up the phone and talked to you along to a very qualified account manager.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I like to think the degree of college that you had to do that?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I did.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was a general marketing major from an agricultural university in upstate South Carolina, not exactly breaking any IQ records here, right?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, but Cisco was phenomenal to me.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's changed my life, changed my family, and given us opportunities that we never had.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: What I think I really enjoyed about Cisco is that I was able to take a new challenge every two to three years, right?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a large company, but I was able to move from inside sales to outside sales, see the smallest companies out there in the commercial market all the way up to the largest companies in the world, managing 40 of Cisco's largest customers across the world.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to move into first line leadership, ultimately second line leadership.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I spent some time in our channels and partner organization and really felt like I got to have five or six different careers all inside the culture of one of the best companies to work for.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: So a great, great decade and a half for sure.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the training as you were progressing through the ranks there.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Were they good at making sure you were prepped and ready to go?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, gosh, those are probably two different questions, right?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think Cisco does a great job of developing and investing in their employees, especially those that raise their hand and say, I'm looking for a stretch assignment.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get better.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get outside my comfort zone.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm interested in a mentor.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go back to school.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: All of those were different avenues that we had on top of some very good and intensive sales training.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a lot about role plays or sales methodologies or learning about different sales and selling frameworks, being able to have executive coaches who would work with you on your communication skills, your executive presence.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: All of those opportunities were provided.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: They meant a significant amount to me in my development through the organization.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: But but you asked a second question to that, which was did that really help you, you know, kind of prepare for the next step?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: In almost every one of those changes, I took a new job that I did not feel I was ready for, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or I got into that job recognizing that I wasn't as qualified as maybe I thought I was when I was going through the job interview.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So part of that I think is why I enjoy that change so much is the opportunity to do something new, to grow some new muscle memory and really stretch yourself.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: That to me is what this is all about, trying to find a way to get 1% better every day, right?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Be a little better than you were yesterday.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I definitely had that opportunity at Cisco, whether I was always prepared for it or not.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And looking at that and what you were saying, right, you you really did get a good sense of a lot of the business.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, the smaller SMB market, mid-market, enterprise partner sales, the whole thing.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: It must have been a really good grounding and rounding in the in the whole market out there.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think often we're quick to qualify sales talent as, you know, hunters or farmers, right?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Small, small company guy, big company guy, salesperson, channel person.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, each one of those played an instrumental role in helping me learn and be equipped with the skills that I ultimately took when it was time for me to leave Cisco.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if anyone has is worked in sales but never in the channel, I challenge you to spend 18 months on the other side of the fence.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And for all those channel sellers out there that have never called on end users, I think you'll find a whole new respect for your direct sales counterparts.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, the big company, small company thing, one is not harder or easier than the other.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're very different.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: They each have different motions and rhythms, there's different frameworks and processes you have to follow.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I can certainly see why people gravitate towards one or the other.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I walk away with all the respect for any and all that they are able to deliver consistently and successfully over a sustained amount of time.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I truly believe I'm I'm better for it from having those experiences.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And having done all that and having all those great experiences, the learnings, the trainings around things, you decided uh two years ago that you had enough and you left to go to a much smaller company.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I bet that there was people around you at Cisco looking at you going, what are you thinking?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we decided to leave the nest.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: We jumped out of the nest for sure, or uh without a safety net.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what is fun.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I got a lot of calls and they pretty much fell into two camps.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: There were those that were like, Wow, that's awesome.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me how this goes.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought of something similar.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there were those that are like, dude, do we need to have a separate conversation?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Are you feeling well?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what you're doing?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's what makes it, that's what makes it fun.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Having lived through that experience, Andrew, I would tell you that that is not for everyone, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: That and you know this better than probably than even I do.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: That startup world, startup culture is a different beast, it's a different animal altogether.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure we'll talk more about that later on today.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it was the right time for me to do something different.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was the right time for me to take all of those skills and talents that I had a chance to grow and accumulate and put them to work in a different way.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just so blessed I had the opportunity to do so and had so many uh friends at Cisco letting me know that if that didn't work out, uh, I always had a safe place to land.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So well, it's nice to know that, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's that made it a little easier for sure.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is interesting.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we when we make decisions in life, we we almost think there these are life decisions when you know in the day, you can take a step backwards, step sideways, step forward, and anytime you want.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not truly isn't like you know a 15-year decision you're making at that point.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's so well said.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's an element of perspective.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned two years ago, so it was literally smack dab in the middle of COVID, July of 2020.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So things were still pretty intense with lockdowns and communicate, human communication was relatively restricted, and things were just really different at that point in time.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're looking at this through the through the lens of what's happening in Ukraine on the other side of the world.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what I what I've learned about this whole thing is take a breath, relax.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't that big of a deal.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're gonna land on your feet, you're gonna figure this out, whether it ends up working out the way you wanted it to, or your path leads you down a different adventure.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I burned way too many emotional cycles agonizing over that decision.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I can look back on that with a little bit of a chuckle and hope that I can I can come to that next career decision with a little bit more perspective.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about Ava then.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: You you go there when you walked in and after the first couple of weeks, were there things that surprised you that you weren't expecting?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Or was it just, you know, oh yep, this is what I thought it was gonna be like?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, great question.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm really fortunate to have worked for the board and the executive team at Ava.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: That was an experienced group of entrepreneurs and executives that had led successful exits at Tanberg, at Ocano.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they had the Ava company now.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're currently some of the folks backing Neat, which is another just absolutely on fire startup.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys haven't seen what they're doing in the video conferencing space, really, really cool stuff.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I felt like I was walking into a group of mentors and confidants and folks that had walked the walk that would uh would certainly help me in my growth.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there weren't surprises per se, in terms of the personalities I got, the you know, what was under the covers once I got into the organization, any of those things.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: There were surprises in just how fast the business moved and the speed of which I had to make decisions with the lack of available information with which to make them.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: That was very different from Cisco, where I was making um decisions with significantly more data points, right, that would have longer-term impact.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But here I was asked to make a volume of decisions with a level of intensity that that really like mentally would exhaust me by the end of a day or of a week, right?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they just never stopped.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: They just kept coming.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And those decisions were big decisions, like go-to-market strategy and how do we access cloud marketplaces and branding and logos and digital content, you know, design, all the way down to like, what should our business card look like?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And like, who ordered those?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I need to order those.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's right.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and are we using Macs or Dells and we want webcams or not?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And where's our office gonna be?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just that constant yo-yo of you know, this emotional roller coaster of these huge decisions down to the extremely tactical.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's that intersection of that bouncing back and forth that really, really makes it makes it difficult and makes it intense and exhausting.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's where the fun is, in my opinion.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I was not prepared for that.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that took me a while to adjust to, without a doubt.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And was it a restart, a rebuild, were you just keeping momentum going?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: What was it you were walking into?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Great question.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: So at that point, we were taking two companies and merging them together.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they were both owned by Ubon, so same ownership group, same basic premise, in that they were using AI-driven machine learning to spot anomalies or patterns.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: But one was happening on the physical security side of the business.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Think cloud-connected cameras, smart video surveillance, and the other was happening on the cyber side of the business.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So think more DLP, right?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Enterprise grade, data loss protection policies, all cloud delivered.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so they were bringing those together as they were seeing converging buying centers, customers that were starting to cross over and look for ways for OT and IT to talk together.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so they rebranded both of those companies together as Ava Security.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I joined to lead the Americas business for Ava.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So each company was about two and a half-ish years old.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: There was a product to sell.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: They had just come out of stealth mode.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: They were delivering product, they had a small channel, uh, and then about 20 people combined in the Americas.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it certainly was not a continuing uh the acceleration of the success, but it was not a pure, you know, it's me in my garage starting as employee number one.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was really, I would say, kind of a reset.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: We had an opportunity to take what was working in each of those individual motions, figure out where we wanted to link those together, and really come up with a new go-to-market strategy around messaging, channel, customer targets, product roadmap and direction, marketing, all of those different functions we got a chance to hit the reset button on.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really special.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad I had an opportunity to go through that.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, Rick, that sounds kind of interesting, but you know, my gut would tell me that the buyers for AI-driven DLP versus AI-driven physical security will be different.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you found?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're dead on.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think any good story is uh littered uh with mistakes made along the way.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think could we, if we had done it all over again, I would I would recommend we did not go down that path.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: What we certainly saw is a confluence of those buying centers coming in through the IT department and specifically in the physical security side.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: More and more IT directors, VPs of security, CIOs were finding that anything that touched the network was falling into their purview.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And because all of these cameras are now IP enabled, because they're essentially different nodes on the network, because there's different security protocols that need to be addressed to ensure the safety of what is in an extremely sensitive video footage of their internal spaces, more and more of that was moving to IT.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: What we really saw on the DLP side is that continues to be a relative niche boutique specialist skill set that really sits outside of what's called maybe just general IT.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so those buy and centers never really aligned, even though we might be talking to the same overall IT department.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that never worked out in the favor as well as we thought it might.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if I was one of your sellers, would I be selling both at the same time, or do you split up the sales team?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, we did split them up.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: We did not go all in on that and make an attempt to be able to speak both languages, if you will, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: We realized that that was a different enough sale and they had different selling motions, right?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: I would tell you on the sick on the physical side, it was very much a C try-by approach.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do a demo.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let me get you a you know a physical demo kit, put it in your own environment, let's work through relatively quickly.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're able to make a decision in 45 to 60 days.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: The DLP pieces was much more intensive, right?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: As you can imagine, many more custom scripts, workflows, things that needed to be done, uh, much longer proof of concepts.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And just by nature of the platform, we tended to move up market a good bit, typically into the Fortune 1000, Fortune 500.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so there you were felt you were faced not with a volume of transactions, like we were almost more in the more commercial-oriented physical security model.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: We were dealing with much longer sales cycles in general with a much more sophisticated buyer.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we kept those very much.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: I just interviewed uh Denise Heyman, and she's currently at Sunray Security, but she was the first head of sales at Vontu back, gosh, 18 years ago, when Vontu was really the pioneer in DLP, got bought by Semantic.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, I was actually at McAfee and we bought a company.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we were talking about the DLP sales cycle, it is really interesting because it's one of the areas in security where even in a POC or a POV, you can find things that people don't want to be found, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's implications if you find things, right?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: If someone's doing something they shouldn't, you can't just say, oh well, we proved it worked, and now we're just gonna shut it down again, right?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we typically found internally that we were doing a good job when we stumbled onto something like that, right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it was all about then how we would share that, you know, privately with the champion inside the account.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you're spitting the truth 100%.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: There were things you would find that I don't think anybody was excited that you found.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it again proved the need for the technology and it established a baseline of credibility as to why that was so important.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we used to back in the day, I'm not sure if you were you've been doing this under Ava, but we would want to have legal HR, people like that in the room for the redot because they needed to know very clearly what they had at their disposal if they needed it.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Andrew, legal and HR, specifically legal, interestingly enough, for us, that's a budget creator.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, anytime we can get outside line of business, I think as technology professionals, we're doing a good job and you're finding new ways to create value and attach value to your solution, which would differentiate you from.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's be honest, customers have more choices today than they ever have before.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So getting to line of business is critical, but specifically legal, this fits so beautifully into what they were trying to do to make sure they could restrict with confidentiality patient data, sensitive information, employee data, that they could track those things happening through the organization in real time, especially as employees as a whole were moving to hybrid work, right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So the basic concept here is on network, off network, device agnostic, doesn't matter where you are, what you're using, whether you're on a VPN or not, if there's policies that are being applied and pushed down, we're going to ensure compliance with those policies.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we think that was uh the right time to be having an open message around enabling employee work.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And as COVID hit, that accelerated that.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then fast forward to a few weeks ago, an announcement was made.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you just quickly explain what happened and then we can talk about what was the lead up to that decision?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we're extremely fortunate to have been purchased by Motorola Solutions or MSI.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: They bought the video assets of our business.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: So in a very quick amount of time, we have separated the video and the DLP side of our business, which is somewhat ironic because that's where we started, like a little more than two years ago, right?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: The cyber side is being renamed Cush Security, Q-U-S-H, website, marketing launch, all those exciting things will happen next week.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage you to check them out.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the video side is rolling up under MSI, which is the market leader in fixed in cloud video.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why the split then?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what we found was there were there were multiple options in everything that we were doing from raising capital to looking at potential.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Acquisition and there were there were multiple options for each business individually, but they were being valued at a premium versus as they were coming together, they were almost being discounted.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's because if we think about the folks that would be acquiring a video brand, cybersecurity isn't necessarily a part of that complementary portfolio.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the other side, if we think about a CrowdStrike or an Okta or a Dell that might be interested in that part of it, video security isn't necessarily in that.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: So company had to make a bet, not just on the technology they were acquiring, but on the other technology that they wanted to enter that market.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was just too big of a pillow to swallow for most companies.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's really why we ended up recognizing that the uh whole is worth less than the sum of its parts, right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was at McAfee in times when we'd be divesting, we'd be acquiring and divesting.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I always imagined that there was a whole bunch of people behind the scenes with spreadsheets and different systems trying to cut the business different ways to figure out, you know, how do we separate this or if we separated that, if we brought that in.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: I would imagine that was going on as well behind the scenes the last few months.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd say again, I come back to both the opportunity to work with Ubon and then with our with our friends at MSI at Motorola.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's been very clear, like everybody has a home.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just a technology stack being acquired, it's the people.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: People is what makes a company.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Technology, the product is what we sell.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: People is what makes the company.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I just mentioned to you, I just got back from some time in Dallas and was in Vegas last week beforehand.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Motorola family has been incredibly welcoming.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been thrilled to take a large part of that combined entity and bring them over with us to Motorola.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And business has just continued to keep ramping, right?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're finishing what will be our best quarter ever.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, growth rates north of 500% uh worldwide, the company is really starting to gain steam, and we fit really nicely into Motorola.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm excited about where we're gonna go now with their combined resources and efforts.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And on the Cush side, every one of those folks has had the opportunity to now step into even more expanded opportunities if they want to.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: So throughout this whole transition, nobody has been asked to leave either side of the businesses.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a home and a future for everyone.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, like that's why you get into this, right?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is to go build something incredible with great people that you care about and do something that's really hard and then be around to celebrate that.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we're seeing that.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that makes me really proud.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then from your standpoint, your your growth and your career, were you how involved were you in the process of the decision to divest and then how it would happen, things like that?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Were you involved or was it really more the board level?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great question.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was board level to make the decision to divest.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Once that decision was made, I became very involved in the mechanics of how that was going to work, right?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I was pulled in to some of those discussions as we were going through it, and it was an unbelievable learning experience.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: But uh that decision belongs to the folks who put their money on the line to start this thing on the get-go.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: So any surprises for you?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Things that you kind of caught you a little bit off guard in the process?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I think it still comes down to it's uh it's people dealing with people, right?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there's different relationships and there's trust and how quickly can you establish trust.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I really think about IQ, EQ, and maybe even RQ, which is how we measure relationship intelligence.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing in high stakes, sensitive, time, you know, time-compressed, you know, times like that, the ability to work well collaboratively with others to quickly build credibility and trust, to work towards a common goal, to do what you say you're going to do.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, Andrew, those are all the same things I tell my reps when they start with us, right?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: When you tell a young rep getting ready to go out to the field for the first time, like these are the things that matter that will help create a name and a brand for you that your customers will respond to.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And here we were negotiating, you know, the largest deal I've ever been a part of, right?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was those same fundamental factors that were a driving part of getting things done.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: It is interesting how I bet when you started off in your career, so much was down to IQ and activity, and not much was paid towards EQ or RQ, as you were saying.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: But it seems like in the last decade or so, those two things have really come to the fore as things that we need to do as an industry a lot better, a lot more thoughtful.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the leaders that really rise up are the ones that that really truly understand that and and take things seriously.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: It it is the soft skills.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, back to my joke on you know, a Clemson educator, a public school kid, Clemson educated, finding myself in these opportunities that I'm probably not qualified for.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly isn't because of IQ that we've had the success we've been able to have.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think it's that emotional intelligence of how to interact well with others, how to create trust, how to engender yourself as a leader that empathetically cares about others and will put them before yourself.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that whether we agree or not, we're seeing the other side of it, making tough decisions and communicating those decisions well.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's that's really important.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I've struggled for a long time on you know, how do you teach that?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do you teach EQ?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: How do you teach emotional awareness of how others are feeling, how others are perceiving you at this point in time and how that might change your talk track?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I have not figured that out yet.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a podcast you could do with someone who has, because I think that would be something you might want to bottle and sell.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'd certainly buy some, but I don't think there's any lack of talent, any lack of intelligence, any lack of really talented people who will work hard.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: But what seems to be separating those right now in this economy, in this digital economy, is the strength of the relationships and their ability to monetize those relationships, for lack of a better word, over a career.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the the phrase that your network is your net worth, I think has never been more true.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll you've actually hit one of my hot buttons.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna play back to you how I think about this and tell me what you what your initial reaction is.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I think if you listen to the narrative around sales, there's a lot of things that people talk about in black and white.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take EQ, for example.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Does that person have EQ or do they not have EQ?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Does that person have curiosity or do they not have curiosity?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is that person a people person or not a people person, right?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: They have these kind of black and white uh viewpoint on the world.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't see it like that, right?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the wrong question to ask.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: The the right question to ask is where are they on the journey?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And how open are they, coachable are they to get better?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: So take EQ, for example, right?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Were we all born with EQ?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, you know, each old question, right?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nurture or nature.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is it something that people can get better at?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, right?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Shine a light on it, help them, wherever their starting point is, they can get better.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: There will be those that are naturally further down the path than others, and there'll be those that are further behind.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think we limit ourselves when we just say, you know, you you can't, you you either have it or you don't.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not that simple a question.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's kind of going back to uh Angela Duckworth's book on grit, right?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like what really makes someone successful?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: You think about Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours or things that you can learn.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I do believe we're born with certain inherent skills or traits, and there are things that gonna come easier to me than they came easier to you.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: But what you choose to do with those talents and skills and traits and how hard you choose to continue to push yourself to develop and grow and expand those is really important.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the things that, you know, not everything we did at Cisco translated over to Ava.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: In some cases, I had to unlearn some things that opt to help help me be successful in that environment and relearn them in a different one.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that we didn't let go of was the concept of getting, you know, 1% better every day, but but growing as a person and a professional.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do I work on something from my team that helps them become better people, maybe more financially astute, maybe better communicators, maybe more aware of health and wellness opportunities that are out there for them to live a more fulfilled and a rich life?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And how do I also help them become a better professional?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, communication skills, organization, sales methodologies, technical acumen, like those things.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: But that constant focus on just getting better and being curious, and no matter where you are in your journey, continuing to take that next step, like that to me has never, never changed.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it will, regardless of uh whatever environment I have the privilege of leading next.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, amen, hallelujah to that.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the audience of the podcast, Rick, is sales teams and and leaders at cybersecurity companies.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: As you look back on what happened to you in the last month, two months with the lead up to the announcement and then with the divestiture and all that happening.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Any advice, any tips you would give to anyone who's maybe looking at a similar situation or they're wondering if their company is going to be acquired in a certain in a certain way?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think in many ways I would share that that I'm probably not the model.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: I would not make a jump to a startup thinking that you are going to have a successful exit in 18 to 24 months, right?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't happen to everybody.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Surely I do.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: Surely.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of things have to happen to come together for this to successfully work.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I have much more awareness of that now than maybe I did when I was really in it, like in the grind every day, just head down trying to work through things.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd say, I'd say make sure you're going at it because you love the journey, you love the work, you're excited about the experience, back to this theme of just taking it one step at a time and you know, stopping and smelling the roses and being aware of what you're learning and you know how you're growing.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's that's really important to me because um they don't always end up the way you want them to.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of ups and downs along the way, certainly a lot of a lot of highs and lows.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really important that you're celebrating those wins along the way and learning from the losses and being there to pick someone up off the ground.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure they'll do the same for you.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I there are so few companies that have the experience that you've had.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think it is, in all seriousness, worth qualifying to people that this doesn't happen all the time.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when you're on that journey and you approach it right, you know, these things happen more often than than if you had the wrong kind of viewpoint.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: They do.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think maybe one other thing, one just one more qualifying piece.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of the real common threads I saw at folks from Ava, and it didn't matter if they were coming from you know cyber or physical, and as you can imagine, we had this confluence of different demographic profiles, right?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: You had you had early in career, you had uh later in career, you had IT backgrounds, you had you know physical security backgrounds, you had you know MBAs, you had no college degrees.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like we really had a very inclusive and diverse, talented demographic.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing they all had, it's good gracious, Andrew, dude, that we have passion.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we woke up, eat, slept, breathed, believed in what we were doing, why we were doing it, and who we were doing it with.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that was on display for the world, from the t-shirts we wore to the socks we wore to how we showed up authentic as authentically Ava to the time we chose to spend together, the way we treated each other, the way we engaged our stakeholder community with our customers and our partners, you know, focusing and prioritizing collaborative experiences together.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like there were just things about us that I thought just exuded passion.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe that really is a force multiplier in many ways that helped get us where we were going, probably a little bit sooner than any of us expected.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Did you hire for that then when you were building out the team?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And how did you type it?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: I hired and fired for it, for sure.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, gosh.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and you don't always get that right.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we made a lot of mistakes.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned earlier, uh this road has been littered with learning experiences and mistakes of mine.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you're ever starting a company, by the way, that you want to operate in America, don't start it with a.uk address.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: That that does not work out terribly well for you.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: So note to self there.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, we we did our best to hire for passion.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that was difficult.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we couldn't always do that.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to really assess about other things people were passionate about.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we got to the point where we were having people give us five or six minute like elevator pitch presentations to a panel of us at Ava Nation, and they had to do it on something that they were passionate about.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was their dog, their beach home, their family, a project they were working on.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: We left it open-ended enough that we wanted to be able to see what makes them tick, again, either as a person or a professional, and how could you communicate that to us?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Could you get me as excited about whatever you were excited about by the end of that five or six minutes?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, could you use visuals in a different way?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Were you creative in how you communicated with us?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or was it kind of a wont-wah, right?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that helped us really make hiring and firing decisions as well.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh such a good exercise to go through with uh potential new hires.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Rick, I've I've enjoyed the conversation this afternoon.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's obviously an incredible time for you and the team, everything that you've been going through and the changes that are going on.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: So super excited for everything that's been happening.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: If someone wants to reach out to you or get hold of you, what's the best way to do that?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I would love to.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be happy to learn from anybody else that has some answers to some of the questions I posted and share some of my experiences as well.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: So you can reach out to me at rick.hill at AvaSecurity.com, avasecurity.com, or on LinkedIn.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to connect with me.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh good following there.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I post a lot of some of the same content on these things that excite me and you and others that are just trying to figure this crazy sales game out one day at a time.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: And final question for you is there a sales questioner saying that you just can't stand and you want to dispatch into the far reaches of the universe never here again.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't ever ask a customer, tell me about your business.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you're sitting in front of that customer, you should know about their business, right?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: You should already have done some homework and told them enough that you care and that you're going to use their time in a productive way to help them solve some of those problems.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't even matter if you've got a good understanding of what it is, or that you have been able to figure out where you solve it.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: But even twisting that just a little bit and saying, hey, you know, I read your most recent filing or I saw this on the website, or I drove past one of your sites the other day.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, my my assumption is X.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, would that be valid?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is this something you're struggling with?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like just changing that up a little bit versus the old, I'm gonna act like I care about you, tell me about your business because I'm too lazy to go figure it out myself.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's probably one that I know when I get that question, I'm on the buying side.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty quick shutoff right there.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: So good one, good one.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Rick, thanks so much for joining us today and look forward to hearing what happens on the rest of your journey over the next year or two.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's my pleasure, Andrew.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.