Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Bill Hentschell - Rebuilding a Key Partnership
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In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Bill Hentschell, Global Director of Partnerships at Fortinet, to explore how he successfully rebuilt and revitalized a strategic partnership with World Wide Technology (WWT) one of Fortinet’s largest and most influential channel partners. Drawing on a 25+ year journey that includes pivotal roles at Cisco and a formative start at WWT, Bill shares a unique vantage point on what makes high-performing partnerships sustainable and scalable over time.
Channel professionals will gain practical insights into building long-term partner alignment, establishing a partner-first mindset within a vendor organization, and executing strategic partner enablement all grounded in Bill’s proven leadership framework. He unpacks how listening, cultural fit, and empowering high-functioning teams are essential to nurturing resilient, ROI-driven alliances. If you’re leading channel growth or looking to transform a key partner relationship, this episode delivers strategic guidance and real-world takeaways that resonate.
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about channels and partnerships on a weekly basis. My name is Effa and I'm excited to introduce our special guest, Bill. Bill, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_00:I'm doing great, Epa. How are you?
SPEAKER_02:Doing great. Thank you for asking, Bill. It's Friday afternoon, so best time of the week for me, and really excited for the conversation. Thank you for taking the time. Maybe you could give us a bit of an introduction of who you are and where you come from.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So my name is Bill Henschel. I'm in St. Louis, Missouri. And currently I'm the global director of partnerships for worldwide technology at Fortinet.
SPEAKER_02:Great. Great to meet you. Could you tell me a bit more about your current role at Fortinet? Because you were hired for a clear mandate, and that is to elevate your partnership with worldwide technology. How has that been going for you?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's it's been going great. I uh, you know, I it's I was hired very specifically at Fortinet to turn around a relationship that had started good and then had a little bit of a gap with worldwide technology, uh, the arguably one of the largest resellers of Fortinet. Um I came I came from worldwide actually back in the late 90s. I worked for uh a couple companies when I was getting my uh start doing technology and getting all the certifications like everybody did in the Y2K days, and uh and went to worldwide and I worked there from uh late 97 to 2000, and I went to Cisco for 24 years and did a whole bunch of different roles. But one thing I did was I maintained relationships at worldwide. Uh you know, I'm here in St. Louis where their headquarters are, and a lot of their senior executives were not so senior when I worked there, so it's been super cool to keep working with them. And so uh Fortinet reached out to me and said, hey, we we really want somebody who understands worldwide and really understands partnerships and fully understands the depth and breadth of the value of WWT and what they can bring. How would you like to come work for us and change the way we go to market with worldwide technology?
SPEAKER_02:I think you are the right person for the job because as you mentioned, you were part of the organization back in the days, and then during your time at Cisco, you all were also engaged with WWT, and now you're at Fortinet. How was that evolution from your perspective? You know, being a part of the organization and then handling from the vendor side and again 25 something years later from Fortinet now, how has that evolution been? What's been the most surprising change that you've seen within uh World Wide Technology?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, for me, uh it was really interesting because I remember my first year there and the the former CEO who's now chairman of the board, Dave Stewart, uh we had our big celebration, and we were trying to remember now, I want to say it was like 280 million, 300 million dollars, and you know, woo, you broke it, you know, and now they're uh almost a$30 billion company. So uh that changes a lot of things. And working there and sort of starting their security practice when security was I have a firewall or I don't, it's kind of crazy how the markets change, was really exciting times because worldwide had captured a tiger by the tail by moving from railroad reconciliation and document imaging into technology without really realizing it. And back then, Jim Kavanaugh, the current CEO, and Matt Horner, the EVP of Global Sales, had a big sit-down and said, what would it take to be one of the biggest bars in the world for you know big name brands, like you know, Dell and Cisco and uh Pure EMC, all of it. And and they really set that North Star and to watch them execute that plan over the years has been incredible. Um, the the investment they've made in the differentiation and things like their Advanced Technology Center, their ATC, and their North American integration center, the NAIC, uh getting involved in the service provider realm and the government entities and watching that. And when I left, you know, I said it was about 280 million. If I remember, when I left, they were celebrating 480 million. Uh so again, it's it's it's been a journey. And it's uh they've they've been so customer focused over the years. You know, I had the privilege of being in London when they opened their UK office on Canary Wharf. It's it's since moved, but I was there for the ribbon cutting and to see that. And then I was down in Singapore with them when they decided to break into the Asia Pack market, and it was uh a rep and two SEs, and their office was the rep's car. We were meeting in coffee shops, so they didn't have an office, and and watching that grow. And now, you know, they're opening offices, they've got a big presence that's growing uh like wildfire fire down in Australia. So to watch this just become this machine that anybody in the Fortune 100, like if you're not working worldwide, you probably aren't working with the best partner, in my opinion, uh, because they're they're they're focusing on the customer first and their depth and breadth of knowledge and capability is you know, it's it's bar none.
SPEAKER_02:That's a super inspiring story. And I also think that you are proud of all the people who are working there because they're close friends of you to see how they turn that business into a giant. You mentioned customer centricity as one of the key factors of that evolution. What other things were they doing correctly to become a giant in the var space?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, they they I mean it starts there. It starts with customers, you know, what does a customer need? They they didn't approach the market like a traditional VAR where it's just a transactional. I want a widget, get a PO, here's your widget. You know, if you want some services, sure, we'll do that. We want services because it's highly profitable. But then we're gonna move on, right? They they their big focus has been multi-year relationships. And one of the mistakes that I think a lot of vendors and other VARs do is they show up and they try to sell them the entire solution, especially in the current market where everything's an EA. How do I get a you know, EA? Uh, and and a lot of manufacturers put a lot of incentive for obvious reasons behind selling these EAs. And worldwide doesn't try to do that, they never try to push you need to buy everything. And they definitely not everything from any one vendor, because at any point in time, they really look at what is a customer trying to do, what business problem are they trying to solve, and what is the right solutions to bring to bear. Um, and it's not just we want to give you a lot of solutions so we can drive pro services, but it could be, you know, today it's four products from one vendor and three products from another vendor, and over time it might end up being one vendor as that vendor does a better job of integrating and providing incremental value. But if if a vendor's not providing incremental value, uh they they'll they won't talk about, you know, that that's not, you don't want to go there. And there's risks and challenges associated with that. So being customer loyal first has allowed them to build things. But to do that, to really understand hybrid networks, that's where their advanced technology center and now their iterations that have spawned off of that, like their cyber range or their AI proving grounds, really allows a customer to get hands-on a product and really uh experience it. You know, one of one of the things they did early days in the ATC was they made a huge investment, which looked pretty pricey at the time, and I can't remember the brand off the top of my head, but it was a it's a virtual layer one switch. So instead of going in and moving patch cables around, they can go in and virtually say, I want to connect a router switch, a firewall, whatever, this way. And then the customers say, Well, what if we did it that way? And they can just go in and just drag lines, and it was a huge upfront investment, but it is paid dividends because they are so agile and being able to do what-ifs model, allow the customer to experience things, and and I perfectly model the way the customer's network looks that the customer feels like you, you, you understand us, you get us. You're not just trying to sell us a box and make money. You're you're really trying to help us move. And then they go into the okay, well, you know, if you added these products, or if you, you know, what do you do with AI right now? Obviously, is the biggest focus. Uh, they do that. And so the customer walks away with a true understanding of what both the technology and worldwide can do and opens up their eyes to think about their network in different ways.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's great advice. Customer centricity. It's also a topic that comes often in the podcast. We had some people from AWS, you know, it's one of their leadership principles. And I know a lot of partners listening to us, a lot of partners in that maybe 5 to 50 FTE space that are currently thinking, okay, how do we get to the next level? I feel like that's one of the hardest places to uh, you know, hardest thresholds to cross, maybe like that 2 million ARR mark. A lot of partners aren't at that place and they're thinking, okay, how do we get to the next step? But the example you gave about WWE being customer obsessed, not pushing of solutions maybe because they have better margin, but really thinking about the customer and building a long-term relationship sounds like is the right way to go in the long term.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and that's it. I I mean that's why I said they they they play the long game. That's where worldwide is so different because it's they look at what are we going to do together over the next five or ten years versus I got to get the number this quarter. And you know, see, they get a lot of pressure from vendors of sell more, sell more widgets because I need to hit my number this quarter, right? How do you come on, bring it in, bring it in? And and you know, they they of course uh accommodate that within reason, but but they definitely are much more focused on man, you know, that's it's too soon. We need to, it hasn't been deployed yet. They don't understand the value or the value's not there. They're they're fantastic about going to vendors and they're very open. That's another thing I'd say they do incredibly well, is they'll invite vendors in and say, hey, under NDA, give us your early code. Let us, you know, they they acquired new Synchrony Labs, which is a you know, code writing house, and let us look at your code. Let us look at whatever you're willing to share, and we'll beat it up. We have all this real world experience. And instead of you testing it with one or two things in a lab with potentially engineers that have never really sat customer and give really good feedback to vendors to improve their products because they they want it, you know, they want everybody to be better.
SPEAKER_02:So now you're at Fortune, you're managing the relationship with WWT. And from what you said, I'm guessing that you're also not that vendor who is you know calling them and pushing products and be like sell more of this and hit my quota. How did you, when you first started this role? I think it has been about seven, eight months, correct me if I'm wrong. What was your playbook going into that to understand uh what was broken or what was under leverage and what was your plan to really elevate that relationship?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, something I learned uh early in my career, as I said, I've had a whole lot of different roles from being an engineer to a global sales leader to mergers and acquisitions, uh product marketing development. I've kind of been around strategy and planning. Uh, and what I learned is it the role, regardless of the role, is that if you don't have a process, if you just kind of come in and wing it, it's it's never successful. And you know, people have the steps they do, but if they if it's just you know, do A, B, C, but not really have a process that includes things like feedback loops and being agile, you're you're never going to be successful. So what I did with worldwide is what I've done as I've taken over a whole lot of different teams and all these different roles is to start off with listening. There's a there's a a book that I like to reference called It's Your Ship, where it talks about uh it's a U.S. military, it's a book about a US military, a ship in the Navy, that where the uh this admiral came in and the first thing he did when he got on a ship, or I don't actually I don't think he was an admiral until he uh had success and became an admiral, but he he listened to everybody. There there was no, you know, he never shut himself off like, well, oh, you're you're a low-level person or whatever. And he got some of the best ideas from unexpected sources. So the first part of my process is just a listening, just what's going on. And I want to get, give me the raw feedback, don't sugarcoat it. Tell me, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly. And then I I will ask a few questions to try to get better insights. Because I want to understand what do you, in this case, what do you what did worldwide think of Fortinet? What was their opinion of Fortinet? What were we doing well? What weren't we doing well? But but besides that, just what's your do you like us? Do you want to do business with us? Do you feel like we're the right company to to partner with? Or is it uh, you know, like just a necessary evil, like customers asking for it and you don't want to miss the markets, you're doing it, but it's not really a good relationship, not a healthy relationship. And then the second part was the parts of there were gaps is how can I either help you see the value of the relationship if it's not there? Um, in this case, they understood and they thought that Fortinet made great products, they just didn't think that the partner relationship uh for the last call it year before I had come into the role had been where it needed to be, wasn't optimized. And so understanding what are the pieces that could get there, some of it's obvious, like making investments and stuff, but Fortinet was making a lot of investments before I got there, but they just they weren't focused necessarily on the right things. It was a little bit of a scattershot approach. So, what what are the areas where we can really grow together? And uh to steal a quote from a now competitor, uh G2 Patel over at Cisco, he he just was uh at the worldwide championship and had a really good comment about there's two ways to look at a situation. One is some leaders look at how do I get a bigger slice of the pie? How do I grow my slice of the pie? But the really good leaders look at how do we grow the pie. It's not about how do I get more to the detriment of potentially ecosystem partners or even competitors, but how do we grow together? And so that's was a great way to describe my process, which is how do we grow? How do I grow worldwide? It wasn't about growing the Fortinet business, that'll come. But if I'm just the way worldwide and probably from those early days, looks at a customer experience is how do I look at a partnership that way where I want to be considered where you're confused whether I work for worldwide or Fortinet. And coming in with that lens really allowed the leadership to lean in and all the data I pulled together to show history and growth and opportunity and where we were winning and gaps, which I don't when I see gaps, I always put, I have a slide that I put a big box on. I said opportunity. You know, it's not, hey, you guys aren't doing it right. It's here's an opportunity where we're doing X amount of revenue. We could be doing two, three, five X that if we go after this. What do you guys think about that? And that's more money for everybody. Uh that having that kind of language now gets you more integrated at the C-suite, right? That that's where now they want to talk to you because you're talking about growing their business, not just, hey, I need my quota, I need my number, why don't you sell more Forty gates? It's how do we grow the worldwide business? And if I'm the one that helps you, Fortinet, Fortigate, you know, Fortis switch, Fort Everything is going to be one of the first things that comes off their tongue.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I fully agree with you. I think that being that uh strategic advisor, that like trusted advisor, and you can go into those conversations, talk about how we can grow your business, then you're much more valuable. And I think that that's why I always say that in like channel leaders, channel people, one of the key I think skills that's required is business acumen overall, like understanding how to talk about the C-suite, understanding their priorities. And that feedback loop you mentioned is so important as well. It sounds like you know, you came into the role, you already knew them, you already had key relationships, but then you really tried to understand what were the gaps and the processes, and then you build the process, but the process you need a team to execute it, right? There's a if strategy doesn't mean anything if you don't have a strong, reliable team to execute it. How what do you focus on when building out your team in Fortinet? And what are the things that you're really looking for in your team?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so there's there's two things. So my team strategy, one thing, and I had a uh another uh great mentor, uh uh another Cisco guy, Tim Carnes, um spent some time with me and we talked about, and I think I see this a lot. I actually just talked to another Fortinet leader about this who's early in career, about that transition from being a manager to being a leader. And so the first step in building on a team is understand your role. If you understand your own role, then that you're not you're gonna get people to do work, but they're just doing work, and then you're just doing work. You're not really advancing the relationship, the partnership, and the execution. So the first part of that is understand as a leader, my role is to set the long-term strategy. So, like one of the things I did early here, and I've done it in priest roles, is what's my three to five year plan, and what are three big rocks that we need to move that would equal success? And by painting that vision, that's what one of the things that turns you from a manager to a leader. So I had to start there and understand, first understand the situation, and then next, okay, what's the opportunity? What's the vision I can paint? And once you can get your head wrapped around what's the vision, then you start bringing people on the team. And for me, you know, I I've said it for years is I hire for personality, I hire for likability, I hire for fit on the team. I let the rest of the team do the interviewing on competence. You know, uh, they're the ones that find out, you know, oh, can you be a channel account manager or a partner account manager, whatever title we're going by this week? Um, but but you know, they're the ones that, you know, hey, do you know how to use Salesforce? Do quote that I'm not worried about because a lot of that you can teach. But what you can't teach is that personality. So usually I'm pretty good within five to ten minutes talking, somebody I can already figure out yes, you'd be a good fit on the team or not. You're somebody I want to work with. And that's one of my key hiring uh criteria is do I on a daily basis, I'm gonna have to be on the phone with you, I'm gonna have to be in person with you, you know, I'm gonna have to be at events with you, or you somebody that I would, if I had nothing else going on, would say, hey, let's go out to dinner. I just want to talk to you. Like ability. And there's been a bunch of studies done that likability is one of the key traits that make people want to work with other people. So building a team where the culture is king, and that's what I focus on. I'm hiring for culture and let other ones, as I said, work on the on the competence has allowed me to have super agile teams that are more like a family than a work team. And and it's it's great how it shows up because people support each other. You don't have people trying to, you know, well, try to uh showboat or highlight themselves because they feel like it's it's a family and we want to win together. And so it it creates this beautiful fabric where they're all working together for a common goal. And part of that is also is give them plenty of space to execute. The way somebody does it in the West is not going to be the same way it needs to happen in the East. The way it's done in the UK is not the same way it's done in Australia or Singapore. So you've got to give them plenty of space and again create that environment where I'm setting the vision as the leader, and then let them figure out how to execute that vision, be a sounding board, be a coach, but let them execute and give them that space to go figure out how to do it on their own, uh, with you know a little mentoring along the way. And that's where they feel super empowered. And an empowered team that has clear vision is going to execute like nobody's business. In fact, I I just had a call with my leadership right before this, and the comment was, You did in six months what I thought would happen in 12 to 18 months, and asked me some questions, the same one you just asked, because how did you do that? And I said, Well, it's not me. It's how it's my philosophy on how to build it a high performance team, and the team's doing it. It's it's the people I hired that are making this happen.
SPEAKER_02:I want to talk about likability for a second because I think it's double important for channel roles because you the people that you hire, the channel account managers, they are representing your company. They are part of your brand. Uh, it's how you show, how you present yourself to the partners. I'm really curious, you said that you're you're good at you know, five to ten minutes with talking to someone, you can kind of figure out if they're someone that you would love to talk to, go to a dinner with, have a conversation. Do you have a specific question? How do you spot that like ability to trade in interviews, or is that just a gut feeling?
SPEAKER_00:I usually start off with tell me what motivates you. And that is it seems like such a simple thing, but when you can figure out uh, and I do this when I acquire a new team too, you know, where where I don't have the opportunity to hire someone, they're already there, is what motivates you? What what is the thing that would you wake up? And then the second one is is tell me about like your hobby. And I'm like, what if you had all the money in the world and didn't need to work, what would you go do on a regular basis? And usually those two questions provide a lot of insight about the way the person thinks. It also helps me as a leader figure out are they in the right role? Is this the right role for them? Or if I acquire a team, are they in the right role? I had that uh one of the last teams acquired my former company, where uh I had two people and they told me what they were passionate about. One was like, oh, I really, I really get into numbers, I love numbers, I was always great at math and all. And they were in a role that didn't involve a lot of numbers. And I'm like, well, you're in the wrong role. And I swapped them with somebody who was in a role to be like a data analyst, and they're like, ah, it just was draining on them. And so when you can find what activates restraints, and so in an interview, when I'm talking to somebody and hearing what their passions are and hearing what they focus on, one of the ladies, one of my top formers that I I recently hired, you know, she talked about in her spare time she runs triathlons because she likes to challenge herself and push herself. And she's not gonna be, you know, she's not gonna be top of the Iron Man or anything, but she she just has that focus where she likes to figure out what else could I be doing? Like that's a that's a really interesting quality that if I went through the normal, you know, tell me about the hardest thing you've done, or it you you don't you don't get those insights about somebody. And it's not just the description, but how they describe it and lean in and the passion uh is where you can really feel their energy and you know, is this somebody that wow, I want to hear more? Or like, uh okay, okay. And I you also uncover the when someone's trying to sell you or uh give you uh trying to think of a proper way to say it, uh, maybe maybe they've made some interesting edits on their resume that aren't real. You know, that you can just those questions can kind of tease that out and you can see what kind of person they are.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I fully agree with you. It seems like culture and a good team is two really important factors for you. And you actually wrote a LinkedIn post that kind of went viral uh about how you mentioned that the culture at Fortinet spoke to you, and especially the story about how the hiring manager, the VP at Fortinet really impressed you. I would love for you to share that story with our audience and talk about what about the Fortinet culture made it really stand out for you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, cult uh uh Fortinet's going through a very interesting transformation currently, in my opinion. Uh the what I saw, it reminds me a little bit of when I part of the reason I had joined Cisco back in 2000 and why I love being at Worldwide and still, I still think I'm gonna end up at Worldwide before I retire at some point. It's just such a cool culture. But it was how how they supported the interview process. So I I had uh I talked to three companies. They uh actually some of the other roles would have paid more and I would have gotten even fancier titles. But when I interviewed with them, it just it seemed very constrictive. And they didn't want to know about me. They didn't want to know what made me tick. They didn't want to know, like, well, why do you want this role and what what would you do with this role? And you know, if if you had the ability to pick a different role here or or you know, uh it wasn't about money, it was really just more about what's gonna make it for you to wake up every day and be excited to be here. Uh and the other companies didn't do that. They just, you know, it was like, hey, yeah, you've got a lot of experience, you'll be doing a lot of things, you got this all this global experience, that's that helps a lot. A lot of companies are attracted to that. And uh, so we want you to come do what you did there here, right? You had a lot of success there, come here and just wash, rinse, repeat. But I didn't feel like I was gonna get a good support. It was gonna be left on an island. And while it's great to make a lot of money, uh, and I've I've had a lot of uh luck in my life in that. That's that's not I've had those jobs where you wake up every day and you're just like, oh God, you know, I gotta go do this again. You know, yeah, I bank account looks good, but it's just exhausting. I don't like the people I work with, I don't, I'm not inspired by by the technology or the area I'm focused on. And that's what Fortinet did different. You know, the uh Eric Flagel got our paint plane or very early, early in the process and flew to St. Louis. Said, I just want to, he actually, and what was really impressive is he had been away from home for a week. And instead of flying home to his family, he said, I'm gonna change my flight and fly to St. Louis and I'm gonna sit down with you. And we spent 90 minutes just kind of, you know, clear in the air, just talking, just talking. And he treated me like, you know, like we've been friends for years. Uh, and he was he was so open, and you know, I wrote about it in that post on LinkedIn. He he was so open and transparent and was so curious about what motivated me and what he could do to make this a great onboarding experience and all the things that he wanted to do to empower my success, it just spoke to me. He just leaned in so much. And when I saw back to what I said at the beginning, the transformation is that Fortinet had a lot of success with their you know, custom basics and everything in the SB commercial space, and now they're you know uh a top tier in the in the enterprise space. But what they've realized, and I've seen this evolution because leadership from my EVP all the way to me is all we're all less than a year in at Fortinet, is that they realize what got us here won't get us there. And you see that a lot, like when companies hire CEOs, like the CEO that gets you from you know, the founder startup that gets you to 50 million or or 100 million if you're doing really well, isn't necessarily the right person that's gonna get you to 500 million or a billion, right? It it's a it's a different mindset, it's a different way to focus. And that's the evolution I see happening at Fortinet. Was that that uh hats off to Ken Z, our founder and CEO, is that he he saw that we had success, but our success was starting to get limited because we just didn't necessarily have all the right people in place for the next wave. Nothing, nothing bad about the people there were before, but it's just that different mindset to go from where we are now, 7 billion, to get to so how are we gonna get to 50 billion? And and so bringing that in and having that that mindset and enablement and leaning in and what's it gonna take. Um, I I just again I just had this call with my leadership earlier where they were talking about Ken's open to things he's never been open to, which that also speaks to me. You have a CEO that said, Hey, I I don't know all the answers, and I'm gonna bring in great people. And if you say we need to do something different, and the way I've always done it isn't gonna work for that next level, let's do that. Uh so that all of that combined really made me say, yeah, okay, I could see working here for the next five to ten years. I I'm a little later in my career, I don't know how much longer I'm gonna work before I retire, but I definitely want to have a good time doing it. And uh, and man, I have uh like I said, I just actually today is my seven-year anniversary or seven, excuse me, seven-month anniversary. Uh, and I uh I I I I've been working my butt up and having just so much fun. And, you know, that's that likability thing.
SPEAKER_02:Amazing. Sounds like you're at the right place. And uh what you mentioned about I think that human touch when hiring, I had a similar experience when joining at Chen X here. Uh, you know, I was interviewing with several companies, and a lot of them didn't feel like they really cared about him or really wanted to get to know him. But I remember uh when I visited office here at Chen X and we we had a I had a talk with the CEO here, and it was just uh we didn't talk so much about the role, we don't talk so much about um you know my experience, but it was really a conversation about like what motivates me, what's what's my passion outside of work. And he told him that like this is something he also usually does when hiring for a different role because the team, as you said, the rest of the team will check for competence, make sure that it's there. But I guess at the end of the day, as a human, who are you, what motivates you as a person? I think that's really important. And I guess to all the leaders who are listening to us, a good paycheck, uh maybe some benefit. It's it's not everything. It's not the the thing that's going to, I think, get you the right talent. So, you know, go that extra mile. I'm not saying miss out your family and go fly fly out to San Luis, but take that extra step and you know, really try to get to know the talent that you are trying to bring onto the team.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. That's right. And then give them the time and space to do what they need to do. Um, you know, one one habit that that uh my leader has that I uh I do as well, but I I I haven't I haven't been as methodical as he is about it. And so I'm trying to be better about it. You know, I I always think you can uh even with all my years of experience, he's still there's always a place to learn. You know, if you're not always learning, you're not doing something right. And he finishes every call, whether it's uh uh just an impromptu cell phone call or uh you know a formal one-on-one or a big meeting is what else do you need from me? What else can I do for you? And even if I'm like, I'm I'm good, nothing, the the context that sets, and so I do it to my team every time I talk to them. What else can I do for you? What else do you need for me? It just you know that uh just human nature, feeling heard, feeling respected, feeling liked, uh just makes you feel better about what you can accomplish. And it I think it makes you want to do more. Like I don't want to let him down. I I you know he he he took a bet on me. Um so I want to make sure that he you know is getting his his ROI on investing in me.
SPEAKER_02:You mentioned that Fortinet is going through a big evolution right now. There's uh now you're concentrating about okay, how we get to the next step. What's on your timeline? What's something that you're really excited for that you're solving for right now? What's on the horizon? You mean it worldwide or at Fortinet? At Fortinet, for you, for you personally, for your role. What are you really excited for looking forward?
SPEAKER_00:Uh I I see something that I haven't seen in a company for a while. Uh I've seen a lot of starts and attempts, but this you know, a lot of companies say they're customer first and and try to make things better, but the agility and speed and the investment, where it's not just how do we generate more capital and you know, go and have some earnings per share for the street kind of thing, but really the hyper focus on the product and how we make a better product. You know, what one thing that's interesting about Fortinet for me is that a lot of our products are homegrown. And they're very open about they're not always the best, right? We have 65 products, we've been getting into cloud. I'd argue one or two of our cloud products are arguably really good. Some of them other ones are not, they're not great. But like when I look at like our sassy, when our sassy product came out, it was not great. And it had a lot of problems and and you know, God love those first customers that adopted it and struggled through it. But the focus on, but we are gonna be great, and now to see that we're number one in like Gardner MQ and all the different, you know, Del Order, everybody talking about it, is that's inspiring to me. So I'm I'm very excited about uh some of the things that aren't announced yet around what we're gonna do around AI, both in you know, in the cyber world, there's a lot of different dynamic pieces here. You know, like one of the big challenges with AI in general is how do we generate ROI? A lot of customers like, how do we generate ROI with AI? But what to see what Fortinet's doing around both protecting uh what users are doing, things like putting you know IP into an open source like Chat GPT, and like, wait a minute, that's you're violing HIPAA or PSMA or FASB or any of those other things, like that's a bad thing. Don't do that. And uh the the folks on okay, we've got to make sure that's secure, making sure that your LLMs and the things the RAG models are doing to generate information, how do we secure that so someone's not intentionally injecting uh data to create hallucinations or cause bias in the model to understand how uh we're from a cyber perspective looking at that and and the transmission between a client and the actual, you know, the brain, wherever the LLM lives or who's developed the LLM, see what Fortinet's looking at and how they're approaching that market. You know, they did this with OT. You know, we're we're one of the leaders in the OT market, again, just like Sassy wasn't when we started, and now we are. To see what they're doing, and Fortinet, uh, unlike some other companies, they don't talk about, hey, here's the roadmap three years out, and we might accomplish 10% of it. Fortinet's very closed in. You know, you don't we don't talk about what we're doing, but I can what I what I can talk about is seeing some of that and being out at our headquarters and seeing what what we're focused on, like, wow, that's gonna be game changing. And it's you know, how cool it is to be here at this point in time where they're they want to be, you know, a$50 billion plus company and they're making all the right moves and the right investments, and seeing that, uh that that's what I'm excited about is already having some insight into where we're going. And man, if we execute like it looks like we continue to do, that it's gonna be great for customers, it's gonna be great for what I can do with worldwide. Uh, and it's it's just gonna continue to have this really fun growth. Like I said, I I remember coming to Cisco in the 2000s where it was, and that's uh I I see that here. So it's cool to be you know at the base of the mountain going, oh yeah, we're gonna be at the top soon.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm really happy for you, Bill. It sounds like also when you're speaking, I can see the passion in your eyes. I feel like you're at a place that you really love and enjoy right now. For those of our listeners who are maybe at the beginning of their career, someone who's starting out in the channel or wants to get into the channel space, you've been in the space for a long time. You're a veteran, as I would say it. What's one piece of advice that you would give to someone who's just starting out that wants to grow in the channel and become a channel leader?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I would say, you know, I've I give this advice to people when people ask me about cybersecurity, as I said, I I was back in the day when a firewall when you had the three vendors to pick from, and if you had one, that was that was security. You know, like, wait, what? We need a firewall. Uh and when someone talks to you about cyber, like, hey, I want to get to cyber, the advice I give them is well to be good at cyber, to be a true cyber engineer. A lot of people go, you can go to those class online and stuff, but if you start there, I think you've missed something. Really, the way to approach cyber is to have spend some time in programming and understand how programs work and writing code, spend some time in operating systems, understand client-server relationships and you know, Windows or Mac OS or uh Linux, and then spend some time in networking so you understand how just networks work in general. And once you truly understand those three points of the triangle, cyber sits right in the middle. Think about channel. I think it's the same thing is if you haven't spent some time carrying a bag and selling, if you haven't spent some time, at least you not you necessarily becoming a systems engineer, but spending some time to actually understand technology, even if it's just configuring some stuff in your house, uh, and don't just get the, you know, the whatever it is, the ASUS or Linksys or TP Link or something, and you know, I type three lines. That's not that's not engineering. Like challenge yourself to understand actually how data flows across the network and without having to, you know, you don't have to go get your network cert, but understanding that piece uh of the products you're selling, understanding sales, and then spend some time in business, whether it's you know getting your MBA or just at least, you know, there's so many courses online that are free, understand the language of business, understand what you know NPV is, understand what uh you know the difference between gross profit, gross margin, understand what points versus how that you know, points of discount, how that relates to gross profit. If you can once you have some expertise, I'm not saying become a guru in all three, but you should at least have a little bit of domain expertise in those three areas, truly be a good channel person because then is when you can really unlock the value of your relationship with a with a VAR because they're looking for that. They want you to represent your company, understand their products, but you got to understand their business. I said, I I like to get to the point where people are confused of whether I work for worldwide or work for Fortinet because I almost seem like I'm more of a WWT employee than a Fortinet employee. And if you can get yourself there, that's when you'll find it unlocks so much. So many, you get so many meanings you can't get because they're like, ah, you're just gonna pitch me something. But when you really do that, that's just like we talk about selling to a customer, when you understand their business and how they go to market and what they're focused on growing, is when you can really be a true channel, you know, a high performance channel person. But if you haven't spent time, whether it's, you know, actually have a job or at least uh on the side, spend some time understanding those other domains, I think you're missing a piece. You're you're not gonna show up credible and authentic with them, and you'll come across more like a used car salesman, you know, as we joke about in the States.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I fully I think that's great advice. And you mentioned it, you have an engineering background, you did a lot of different things in your career, so that does give you a bit a lot of uh advantage in your current role right now. Bill, thank you so much for the conversation. I have one last question before I let you go. You always end the episode by asking our guest for a future recommendation. Who would you recommend? Someone who is passionate, as you mentioned, someone who's motivated, someone who's an expert in the channel space.
SPEAKER_00:So I know, you know, uh I've seen several of the people you have had on this channel, and several of them I'd recommend. So I got to think of someone you haven't had. Uh, you know, I know somebody that I work with a bunch and who's been around the channel for a very long time that I don't think you've had on. Uh, there's a lady named Hope Galley who's over at Pure Storage now. I work with her uh at Cisco and she spent some time at Juniper, and now uh she's the VP of US Channels for Pure. Um she's she she knows the channel extremely well. So if you want to talk to somebody who's been around the block, really knows it, has some really good insights. I I would say uh uh hope if you're listening, uh you should come on here and and and have them have a good conversation with you. Have Five of Gotions.
SPEAKER_02:Amazing. Thank you so much uh for your recommendation and for the conversation again, Del. Uh and hope if you're listening to us, I'll be reaching out to you. Hope we can get you on the podcast. Excellent. Thank you for thank you for yeah, thank you for listening and see you in the next episode.