Karl Palachuk at Channel Partners 2024

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[00:01:11] To start a trial today, visit huntress.com-carl. Hi, this is Karl. Welcome to another SMB Community Podcast. I was very lucky to get to channel partners' conference in Las Vegas this year. Channel partners is always one of my favorite events.

[00:01:32] It started as a place for telecom resellers to get together and find new products, new vendors, so forth and so on. All the stuff that we do in SMB. And has evolved over time to try to appeal to managed service providers.

[00:01:50] So for several years, I probably 10 years, they have had a managed services summit, MSP summit in a separate room that's on like day one and two and then on days two three four, they have the big conference.

[00:02:06] So I was able to talk to some of the vendors at the MSP summit. And also, I caught up with Kathleen Martin who has been a longtime friend and community builder.

[00:02:17] And she has a new venture going that was launched right at the time of the channel partners conference. So I had an interview with her as well. Here is my report from Channel Partners, 2024. And I am here with Dave Cybert at the Channel Partners Conference in Vegas.

[00:02:42] So I gotta say just before we start the interview, how many times a year do you go to Vegas? Like a hundred? No, fifteen. It seems like a hundred because there are so many things in Vegas and it's like a one hour hot for you.

[00:02:56] You know, it's almost embarrassing because the flight wheels down is about thirty four minutes. And you know, I used to drive it with the price of gasoline. It takes four hours to drive it and it actually costs more for the gas than it does the airplane's good.

[00:03:11] But even at SNA, you spend more time at the airport than you do in the air. That's the advantage of precheck. So normal, you know, it's really for those people to travel.

[00:03:22] You do the precheck and you show up at the airport and you literally, you know, 20 minutes before the flight. Or do you can everything's just fine? No precheck, no clear, you're in trouble. So do the guards, security guards know you? That's an eye. No, no chance of that.

[00:03:40] Okay. That almost sounds like I'm in trouble now. So, down to business, tell me why you come to Channel Partners and the MSB son of you. You know, this, come on, this industry moves really fast. The industry changes fast.

[00:03:56] This is one of my ways of staying on top of what's relevant, what's exciting, what the direction of the market is. And then also, you know, the hallway conversations, you know, bumping into people that you know having conversations,

[00:04:10] sometimes those conversations for five minutes outways of 45 minutes, session any day, absolutely. Especially when you hang out with Dave Cybert. Very good. All right. Another event everybody should go to at least once a year is SMB tech fast.

[00:04:26] So when is the, I think it's cute too, come on up? Yes, so we finished Q1 just about four weeks ago. Q2s coming up just in a little bit over two months away. It's on May 9 and 10.

[00:04:40] All right. And yeah, it happens quarterly so four times a year. And it's all about getting a whole bunch of MSP, MSSP, cloud security partners together, learning through panels, learning through each other, finding out what some hot solutions are that you can offer to your client base networking.

[00:05:00] Let me tell you, a lot of it is networking. You know, doing more projects together, finding people out of the area that you can team with when you got a client and you don't want to travel. But you want to trust the partner that you met.

[00:05:15] All of those things, you know, smash those together in a good way. Right. And you get us a B tech fast. So some events are panels only. Some events are vendors only with like, they give one hour to an MSP just so they can check the box. Yep.

[00:05:32] Yours is, you have individual presentations which might be 30, 40, 50 minutes and then you have panels as well. So why do you do that mix? I do the mix. One, I think it's higher value. I really do.

[00:05:47] I, you know, a partner is going there because they want to enhance and prove their business and one of the best ways to enhance your business.

[00:05:55] Whatever that goal is, maybe it's top line revenue, maybe it's lower your Cogs, maybe it's to find a new solution stack for your client base. But whatever that is, learning from other partners is one of the best ways to learn.

[00:06:09] So I bring leading partners up, put them on panels and let them share their experiences. And that way of all the other, you know, providers in the house.

[00:06:19] They get to hear firsthand from their peers what works and sometimes more importantly what did not work so that they don't make the same mistakes. Very good.

[00:06:29] And like, you know, friends like we know, you know, a great example would be Amy Babichak, she was there at the last event. And she did an incredible session on Microsoft conditional access. A lot of people don't really know how to leverage it.

[00:06:45] Not only did she go through it for like 40 minutes and go through a conditional access, but she talked about how does she sell it? How does she turn it into a business model? How does she, you know, what kind of profit is in it?

[00:06:58] And so I like to combine those. I like to combine those panels. I like to combine the educational content speakers that are going to let you make more money in your business.

[00:07:10] And of course, you know, sure we all, you know, we have sponsors, but you know, the sponsors, they make a lot of it happen. Our industry wouldn't happen without them. www.smbtechfest.com and join us. And what was it eight again?

[00:07:27] May 9 and 10 as the next one coming up and Sunning Southern California. Oh, and may it will be perfect weather actually. We're going to do hot. All right. So I'm here at Channel Partners. I'm catching up with Michelle Regusor. You've been quite the scene in a long time.

[00:07:43] No too long. Last year, congratulations. You're now at Sonic. Tell me about that. Thank you. I'm very excited. Obviously everyone knows Sonic. It's a very good 30-year cybersecurity company. We load firewalls, but we've been doing a lot of exciting things.

[00:07:58] We launched our secure first program for our partners, making easier and more profitable to do business with us. You made two acquisitions in the last six days with Solutions granted for MDRX here. EBR and Banyan Enterprise Security for zero-testing teammates. So it's way more than a Sonic ball.

[00:08:14] It's more than a firewall. Way more. You see how I like equates on a global firewall? That's how most people know and love us, is true. Very good. So how long have you been doing this with Sonic Ball? I started May 1st, so almost a little over 10 minutes.

[00:08:28] I'm not sure if you can take it to that long ago. Yeah, time flies when you're having fun. You're settled in, so you have to have no excuses anymore. You're now in charge of this House of Channel Program going. It's amazing. Our news secure first program.

[00:08:41] We launched F1 globally. So we lowered rebates for us. So more partners can earn incentives with us. We moved from proposal base to approved base marketing development funds. So we could help them pull market, post-selling, co-innovate. They can still propose a request. So it's not proposal-based?

[00:08:57] Nope, we have a code base so they earn as they grow with us. So that's really great. And if you still want some proposal and eat incremental funds, we'll make sure that we can be really small.

[00:09:06] So like when I sold Sonic Ball, I'd need lucky to do one a month. It's like, one a year okay? It's fun every six months. Absolutely. I mean, and especially with our solutions granted, it's just one license, one router, one firewall, one switch, anything you need from us.

[00:09:23] We start small. We have flexible consumption, building in our ears. As we go, cancel any time, www.sonicball.com, forward slash partners. And if you want to look up our details of our secure first program at Sonic Ball, simple Google search, we're just connecting with me. I'm LinkedIn.

[00:09:39] I'd love to tell you more about it. All right, very good. So if somebody signs up as a partner, do they get anything like training? So that they don't want to sell because you have a variety of includes. And very high end stuff.

[00:09:50] So I want to right size the solution I sell to a client, and I'm going to sell something different to a five-user client than I do to a 50-years-or-client. So you helped me with that? Absolutely. We have Sonic Ball University.

[00:10:02] We've had over a million classes taken since inception. And we continue to add enablement and training. We also do tear much plus one. So if you're working with one of our competitors right now, we honor that level. And we give you plus one.

[00:10:14] We level you up with us. If you're a gold XYZ partner, you'll be platinum with us. And we will make sure that we get you a partner to develop and manage our assigned to you to help you onboard, get training, enablement, do our sort of patience

[00:10:27] if you like to upscale with us. And we also have amazing engineers, virtually and on-prem to help you learn, demo, configure, whatever you need. All right. So Delta no longer loves their flyer. They're frequent flyers. And they've kind of messed up their entire program.

[00:10:44] And I switch my Delta platinum over to Sonic Ball. Yeah. But you can fly with us, but I'm in the back with a trick-in. All right. Very good. So folks, if you got a Sonic Ball dot com slash partners,

[00:10:57] get signed up, get some training, figure out what's going on. Now here's a question you don't want to answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway. And if you just start passing, they'll just cut it out. So for 20 minutes, Sonic Ball was part-and-erdward.

[00:11:09] And now they've given you time to think about it. I don't remember one of the questions. So for 20 minutes, Sonic Ball was owned by Dell. And they Dell actively screws their partners. So, he's Sonic Ball better and not stealing an account.

[00:11:26] If I have given you a tip about a partner that I want to sell into. No, right. So I will say, we're going to go to Dell. We are not owned by Dell. We are private equity backed. We are independent. We are 100% channel.

[00:11:38] So everything we do is with our partners. And if we do installs, renewables, we will call the partner and not brought that deal to us specifically. All right. So you have no inside sales to compete with me. Never. Beautiful. And I love it.

[00:11:51] And I knew the answer to that question, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to say that. I do. You know, we are a child first channel friendly all day long. Very good. Michelle, it's all great to see you. Thank you. I'm like a couple. Thank you.

[00:12:02] Thank you. I'm like a couple. Thank you. I'm here with Mikey Frouette at the Big MSP Summit. How would you serve? Doing fabulous. And you're with D RS. What is this? D in S filter. We all know what D in S is. What's D in S filter?

[00:12:21] Well, sadly it's the exactly as it sounds. It's not much more complicated. We filter. We have a layer of security. The DNS layer. We can block threats and content and basically protect in users from the vats of out there.

[00:12:36] And we keep all the tools from Russia out of my office. Actually, yeah, we could be a DNS. Right. Right. But if I want to block Russia and China, I can do that. You absolutely can. Very cool.

[00:12:47] So tell us how we get started with you as a partner. Well, it's very easy. We go to app.dnsfiltre.com. You can sign up. We have a free to trial. You can test us out. We're very confident in our software. Give you a free trial.

[00:13:00] I promise you'll love it. Very easy set up. Five minutes you've done. And then another 30 minutes you can load out to your old company. Now, I'm sure that there are lesser companies that offer similar services. What makes you better?

[00:13:11] The big differentiator with D in S filter and the others is the threat intelligence that we have. So we also consume a bunch of third party threat beats pay a ton of money for them.

[00:13:22] But we have an in-house engine that we call web shaker that categorizes domains all day and night. So we've found about 60% of the threat domains that we know about are unique to D in S filter.

[00:13:33] We see on my side here, y'all can't see this but probably it says 10 days faster. So in about 10 days on average, the threat domains that we know about we see show up on those threat beats.

[00:13:45] So, you know, we're not going to stop paying for them, but our intelligence is just better. And from the MSB first effective, do I get a nice dashboard right and see all my clients? Yeah, absolutely. We're very easy, easy self for MSPs.

[00:13:59] We are fully white labelable, have a multi-tentancy dashboard. We have some global features where you can manage different MSPs different customer separately or manage certain things globally for your convenience. Very good. Give us some website one more time. Are you going to D in S filter.com?

[00:14:16] Very good. Thank you for your time. Hey there, this James Kernan with Kernan Consulting and I'm here to talk a little bit about the Mastermind peer groups. So with the Mastermind peer groups, you get a powerful combination of customized coaching, accountability,

[00:14:29] and weekly synergy sessions with light-minded professionals from all around North America. These peer groups are really focused on sales, marketing, and growth. It's all about results. So I am your personal group facilitator and your experience, weekly accountability meetings, monthly trainings,

[00:14:48] and then quarterly face-to-face meetings where we all get together on a quarterly basis in fun cities all around America. So be prepared to take your business to do heights and see if you've got what it takes to be one of the Mastermind peer group members. Thank you.

[00:15:03] Hi, this is Carl Pollachuck and I'm joined today by a long time friend Kathleen Martin, who welcome. Thank you. It's great to be here.

[00:15:19] So we'll talk about A L and but first, give folks a little bit of your background who are you and how did you get here and all that?

[00:15:27] Oh my gracious. How did I get here? Well, it was a long and windy road through the gun dropped for us as my good friend L says. You know, I've been in IT channels for let's just go over 20 years. Let's leave it at that number.

[00:15:43] I think that I'll ever say I've been in here longer than just a little bit over 20 years. But I have been a huge fan of working in all parts of the channel. So I have worked with vendors.

[00:15:55] I have worked with editors. I have worked with research. I've worked with consultants. I have worked directly for and with MSPs. Today I am with a large consultancy by the name of the J. S. group, where I serve as their senior vice president of communities.

[00:16:13] But more importantly today I am also given the title of chief community officer at the Advanced Leadership Network.

[00:16:21] And we'll get to that in a second, but I will say the channel is a fantastic place and having had the option of and the good fortune to work through all these various slides of it has really given me a unique view into how the channel functions.

[00:16:37] I agree completely. So you know, having a variety of different approaches. You know, when they were when they groomed people to be the leader of, you know, the next person in charge of Microsoft or Intel or something like that.

[00:16:53] They have to go through a little bit of hell of going, oh, you're going to be in charge of the the office in Paraguay, right?

[00:16:59] You're going to have to do regional stuff and then they have to be in charge of software in charge of hardware in charge of personnel, right? They have to learn all the pieces of the business. So so now you're qualified to be in charge of Microsoft. So congratulations.

[00:17:15] Well, thank you. You know, I was thinking about that I was any more than five years old when managed print services started, right, which was really the precursor to today's managed service market.

[00:17:26] And I remember then trying to explain to people something that had become ingrained in the copy or dealer market that was very simple. I'm going to charge you based on this per month, I have this recurring revenue coming in watching that growth and that explosion of growth.

[00:17:43] And especially is now we're looking towards an even bigger change if you will inside the market with AI has been something that's been fun to watch and also be a part of. Very good. So skip ahead, March 2024. Tell us what is the advancing leadership network?

[00:18:05] Well, in a nutshell, it is a leadership for women with men if that makes any sense. So one thing that was really important to us is when we started this.

[00:18:15] We recognize that you can't go anywhere anymore without literally tripping over another women in tech network, but yet nothing's happening. Nothing's really changing the industry as it will to change the core number which is women represent somewhere around 51% of the overall workforce.

[00:18:33] But yet, are not even close to 30% of the leadership positions inside of the IT workforce. So our network is dedicated to helping women get those critical skills that they need in order to be leadership ready.

[00:18:50] Some things that companies no longer offer or that are not offered in traditional schools. But it's not exclusive to women, well, there are spots inside the network that are exclusive to women. A good portion of this is training that can be used by anybody.

[00:19:06] And that's the whole purpose of advancing leadership. That's why it doesn't say advancing women's leadership, but says advancing leadership that is our goal inside of the industry.

[00:19:16] And I have said for years and Carl, you heard me say it. If women could do this alone, we would have already done it. We'd be there and we'd be finished. So if something we need to do all together, women and men and everybody else coming together with us.

[00:19:31] So I know you're familiar with the term ally of course. Is being an ally not good enough?

[00:19:39] So I think being an ally is critical, I really do. But you have to be an engaged ally. So if I could put that word engaged in front of it, it's one thing to say, I'm an ally.

[00:19:51] It's another thing to engage and walk with that individual to get them to that next step, really opening the doors and helping them round out some of the skills and opportunities that may not be available to them.

[00:20:06] So with the advancing leadership skills, what kinds of things are you actually offering inside the community?

[00:20:14] Critical to now. The first one is finance. That is something that most people immediately shark away from. Oh, I'm sales. Oh, I'm marketing. I am not finance. But yet you cannot get to that position in Microsoft or in Teller anywhere else without having a basic understanding of revenue and what.

[00:20:34] That you know, an income statement looks like compared to understanding even though right those are those are crucial skills that a lot of people skip over or tend to think are unimportant.

[00:20:45] That's in there. There are leadership courses actually, you know, taking that next step to what does it mean to truly build a team? How do I become a servant leader or a different form of leadership that I'm most interested in.

[00:21:00] There are courses in there that will be opening very soon on how to be a strong ally. What does it mean to actually walk with the person instead of just giving them some talk that says, go you I support you, but then never actually participating in it. So if you can think of a single course from time management to negotiation skills to sales.

[00:21:21] We offer 101 201 and 301 courses. Very good. We should take a break and make sure people know how to get to your website. So that's really easy. It's www dot A L N dot network. Super simple.

[00:21:39] A L N dot network. Great. And you'll send me a logo so I can put it up on the. I do this.

[00:21:48] So when you talk about this leadership, is there a path? Is there like a start here, you know, start here or this is the path for finances is the path for strategy or whatever.

[00:22:01] Well, so not exactly because who doesn't need all of those courses right to become a well rounded leader. What we have done is built it into three different series ascending as into where you want to go.

[00:22:14] So if you have just joined the channel or maybe you've only been in there for a year or two and you're ready to boost some of those skills. There's a path available.

[00:22:23] If on the other hand, you are say already in a management position or you've been in the channel for several years and maybe you're looking to up into management further up into management think director level or senior director level. That's our mid tier.

[00:22:39] And then when you're really ready to swing a little bit farther for the fences maybe you're looking at senior vice president or jumping into the C suite.

[00:22:48] That's actually by application and at that point we're putting you together with individuals that are already in that role that are certified business coaches. So these just not just anybody can throw out a single single and say here I am I'm a business coach.

[00:23:04] They actually have to have the certification to back it up in order to be a part of that offering. So you have kind of a mentor program. We do partner people once you get all the way up into there.

[00:23:15] Yep, more important than that we have a sponsorship program and that's where we really where we're asking allies to come aboard. Regardless of gender, everybody can be a sponsor and needs a sponsor. And the sponsor, if you will, is as easy as opening the door for someone.

[00:23:32] I am sponsoring you to walk through this door. So your job is to open it and then say why this person has every ability to walk through that door.

[00:23:41] We should all want to job not because of our gender we should all want to job because we are the best individual suited for that role.

[00:23:51] So the channel includes very large companies, includes both Google and one person shops. So it sounds like a lot of this is geared towards companies with tiers of leadership, tiers of management. Is it useful for people in SMB?

[00:24:13] Oh, most definitely and that's really where tier two covers the majority of individuals. That's really where we think the majority of people will go think about being in a smaller SaaS company right maybe there's only 10 to 20 people inside of your company.

[00:24:29] Do you really understand what it means when the company is going out for series A funding? Do you understand what it means when they talk about the difference between equity and profit sharing?

[00:24:41] If you're a small SMB, have you really paid attention just like your professional society does for IT professionals? Do they really know what they're getting into legally when it comes to HR? Do they really know how to avoid some of those things?

[00:24:57] That is where we're asking partners and allies to come on board and help us make sure that everybody has the tools available to succeed. So if I joined today, you have a free version. I'm talking about the non-free versions.

[00:25:15] So you are talking about the non-free version inside of the free version. We invite everybody to come in and be a part of the conversation right? We have to all add an individual drop to the ocean in order to raise the level.

[00:25:26] But inside of the paid versions is where you actually get access to the education. The sponsorship can happen inside of free or paid certified coaches are only inside of the paid version. Very good. So folks can join for free and then upgrade later.

[00:25:43] I hope you can see what's what? And I think it's really important too. The point out that these costs are not out of reach for the average individual, whether you're a small business or a large business. Start it to your one with $1,000.

[00:25:58] Tier two is $2,000 annually and tier three, which you're actually being positioned with that certified business coach and executives that are already there. That's only $5,000 a year. So it's not outrageous. We've tried to make it not out of reach for individuals.

[00:26:14] And does the $1,000 have to be paid in one loop so? People can choose to pay it in one loop so or they can pay $99 a month. You save on average between 10 to 20% by paying annually. Okay, so there's monthly and annual. There is.

[00:26:32] And so you just launched in March. Have we did any members? Yes. Yes. Actually we have. Last week was a fantastic week in which over 75 people registered for the network itself. Everybody's filling out their profiles right now and as a person finishes their profile they jump right in.

[00:26:53] We do have a couple screening questions in this age of bots and artificial intelligence. Right. That's sort of required to make sure you're a human being. I'm sure at some point, ALI figure out how to answer those two.

[00:27:06] Very good. So we're almost out of time, but let me ask you a question. Probably are not prepared for it. But oh, I love those questions. What's the long term vision? Five years or now, where do you want ALN network?

[00:27:19] Where do you want it to be and what do you want it to look like? Oh my gosh, she would think we'd already thought about that. This isn't even a tough one.

[00:27:26] At that point, I want to see is close to as possible as many women reaching for the leadership goals that they want. Our logo is actually designed to show with one hand lifting yourself up with another hand open to lift up somebody else.

[00:27:40] So as each person ascends, I hope that they're taking two or three other individuals with them. I don't want to call it barrel monkeys, but think of exact same thing when you're in the process. Exactly how it works, right? We all get up there by joining together.

[00:27:56] I would definitely avoid that analogy. That's just my advice. That's my free advice to you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Very good. All right. Well, we wish you the best of luck with this. So ALN.network. Folks can poke around, get started today.

[00:28:12] A prep of good profile picture and your buy-outs. So you can jump in right away. Anything else you want to say before we go? No, but thank you so much for this opportunity and Carl, thank you for being the ally that you have been.

[00:28:25] Not just me, but so many others for the time that we've known each other. And it's exactly individuals like you doing what you do That will help all of us get there together. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And thank you for your time. Thank you.

[00:28:40] Thanks for tuning into this special report from Channel Partners 2020-4. We'll see you next time on the SMB Community Podcast. Today's SMB Community Podcast is brought to you by Huntress Manage Security. Cybersecurity isn't just about software, it's about expertise.

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