051: The Hidden Network That Powers Tech Industry Jobs!

What does it take to build a successful career in the technology channel?
The answer might surprise you. It's not technical prowess—or even owning a computer. It's relationships.

The journey from industry outsider to respected insider shows how a few key connections can completely transform your career. Entering the MSP ecosystem without a technical background? Your ability to form genuine, lasting relationships becomes your greatest asset.

This approach has even earned a name: the Rob Ray effect—where consistent, authentic interactions at industry events build over time, compounding into a powerful network that opens doors throughout your career.

Success in the channel means pushing beyond your comfort zone: showing up to early breakfast meetings you'd rather skip, staying late at the lobby bar to meet three new people, or sharing random whale facts that make you unforgettable. These relationship-building habits pay off—especially in an industry where who you know can matter just as much as what you know.

Business development exists in nearly every sector—from restaurant beer reps to travel agents to technology vendors—and the core of the job is remarkably similar across all of them. But if you're someone who thrives on connection, craves meaningful interactions, and loves industry events, the MSP channel offers uniquely rewarding opportunities—plus better compensation than many comparable roles.

Curious how your network could transform your future?
Tune in now to discover the relationship-building secrets that can secure your place in the tech world—no coding skills required.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Power of Industry Relationships
• 1:39 Ascendio: Security Platform for Compliance
• 4:31 Community Building in the Channel
• 8:11 The Art of Creating Lasting Connections
• 11:18 Using Risk Assessment as a Business Tool
• 15:49 Finding Purpose in Business Development

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Stan Wensley said to me in that interview. He said that the industry is really small and there's only a handful of people you need to know to help guarantee yourself a job moving forward. That thing is the same when it comes to the MSPs, the vendors, the people. It's all about the people and I've focused on the entire industry of building relationships on the entire industry of building relationships.

Speaker 2: 0:25

You were looking for that right fit right, that right fit for you, and you weren't willing to accept anything other than that. What makes you the right fit for that role? What is it about you? What strengths do you have that makes you that person for that role? Help me understand that yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Um, okay, so ascendio wouldn't talk about ascendio first and then backtracking why I'm right for the role, um, even before I knew it. So ascendio is a like-year-old compliance platform that was built by CISOs for CISOs. So you're looking at a bunch of CISOs. I used to spend a lot of time talking with Ryan Weeks. I love that guy. I don't know if you know him, but definitely recommend anything security-related. Follow Ryan Weeks. Half the words he says I don't understand, because he's a billion times smarter than me. And those are CISOs, those are the security guys. I don't understand it, but I love it. It's phenomenal. But so imagine a bunch of CISOs just geeking out on security and building a security platform that helps with compliance. So it's not a compliance platform, it's a security platform that will help you become compliant, because if you have security it falls in line.

Speaker 1: 1:47

And then they were selling on the enterprise level with different CISOs, so a very high-end product. And then our CEO came on board about three months ago, bought the company, flipped the entire model on the side and said the first thing I have to do, how do you take an enterprise product and bring it to channel? Well, community, community is all of it and a big part of it. And then your pricing and your partnerships and your relationships with a vendor. When it comes to MSPs, those are also incredibly important. So first thing he did was hire Paul Redding.

Speaker 1: 2:22

Paul Redding is incredibly well-known in the community, especially when it comes into compliance. So, um and Paul's plan was to first build out the community, build out the Reddit, build out the um, how MSPs have the, the relationship with Estendio, um, and then build out the marketing go-to markets plan, which is also a lot of fun. And then we got to throw the entire business model on its side. So they decided first to do now we offer any managed service provider a free partnership for a year that gives them their own not-for-resale license and then gives them the tools to help use risk assessments for the prospects and their clients. So that's Ostendio, kind of minimal, but like your booth pitch essentially.

Speaker 2: 3:12

Yeah, yeah sure.

Speaker 1: 3:13

But when I look at that and when I had a conversation with Paul, paul said community, community, community. And then when I called Paul or texted him, the reason why he was so excited about me and I shouldn't put words in his mouth, but I'm fairly certain he would say the same thing is because of my community skills, my community growing skills and the amount of effort and work that I put into growing community professionally and personally within the channel. Since my very first interview, dan Wensley said to me and I've said this on a million podcasts and a million times and I'll always become proud for this In my interview that I did not take seriously and I wasn't going to take the job and I just went in because it would just be fun. My first time working on the no, I didn't even know what the channel was. I didn't understand any of it. I'm not a technology person. I like, up to that day I don't even think I owned a computer at the time Like that's, like that person Channel.

Speaker 2: 4:11

My radio has channel, so does my TV. What yeah, exactly? I was like what Um?

Speaker 1: 4:15

anyways, Dan Wensley said to me in that interview. He said that the industry is really small and there's only a handful of people you need to know to help guarantee yourself a job moving forward. That thing is the same when it comes to the MSPs, the vendors, the people. It's all about the people and I've focused on the entire industry, on building relationships, and so if you and I were ever to walk into a room at a conference, people stop me all the time and they don't stop me because I'm the most popular person in the room. Not even it's, I don't even know. Jay McBain coined it as the Rob Ray effect.

Speaker 1: 4:58

And the first time I ever noticed anything like this. It's not from building a relationship. You go to an event and it's one building a relationship. You go to an event and it's one person it's. You go to an event and you meet, say at a conference, a booth time, you might a regular event say I'll meet 2000 people, we'll bring down 100, 500 people. So we meet 500 people. You talk to 500 people. You might have like a five second conversation with all of those. Maybe only half of them will ever remember you you're not getting it down to 250 and then at the lobby bar of those people, maybe you talk to 50 more people over the span of four days and then three of those people you've talked to before five or whatever and you now talk to them again, but this time you have a 30 minute conversation instead of five minute conversation and you reference the last conversation. So your relationship is built a little bit further. And then you do that every week continuously, not every week, but often at every conference, for five years, 10 years.

Speaker 1: 6:01

But you scaled up because each person that you built a stronger relationship with you have another story that happens at the next conference, if you see them or you see someone who I didn't see you but so-and-so, was telling me that they met you at the last event, and then I should hang out with you and chat and I'm like, of course, I'll buy you a drink, let's have a drink, or what do you do? Or me, I'm like the most random conversations or like interesting facts, things I just like I get, I blurred out random things and they start building these relationships with people. They remember you because you blurted out some me, a whale fact, there's some interesting whale fact that I'm like you did you know this about whales? And they're like, no, I didn't know this about whales. Like what are you doing?

Speaker 1: 6:41

But then they remember me and I think that that community building skill was something that a it was probably pretty natural to me. It's just who I am as a person. But then because of the coaching, the mentors that I've had that since I got into this industry, they pushed that relationship building. Um, dan would always be like Des, yes, you have to go for breakfast, I hate going for breakfast. And yes, you have to go for breakfast, I hate going for breakfast.

Speaker 2: 7:06

And yes, you have to talk to people.

Speaker 1: 7:07

I hate having to talk to people at breakfast Like I am not. I'm like, hi, no, it's breakfast, leave me alone. But those are those things. Because it's about, yes, des, you have to stay at the lobby bar and your goal is to talk to three people that you've never talked to before. Your goal is to do this, um, those that community relationship building, I think, is absolutely everything, and probably the biggest reason that, um, that Paul Redding and Ken Verone were interested in bringing me on board or excited about bringing me on board. Um, we were at an event we're at Beyond event and it was the first time I ever met Ken in real life and I walked through the event with him and we had several, several MSP stuff and be like, oh my God, you brought Des on board. That is really cool, that's very exciting. I'm excited to see what products, what you guys have or have and are doing. Besides that, I hope that it's my personality and my ability to sell, because I do love selling and I think that I do a good job. Really, all I'm trying to do is get people to take 30 minutes of their day to review our solution and give us feedback. It's a free partnership, so I think that there's enough value in it.

Speaker 1: 8:16

Myself, I like, on a side note, going back to Ryan Weeks, I remember when the big attack happened and it was I think it was Huntress, like the so Kyle, ryan Weeks and somebody no, no, not Huntress. I just said Kyle and Huntress is not. That's the wrong company. So I apologize ahead of time. That's okay. Okay, but Kyle, no. So Ryan Weeks and a bunch of other vendors. They did the risk assessment checklist after the attacks on Kaseya had happened way back in the day, and I used to go to conferences and go to peer groups and say this risk assessment will really, really help you and people were really excited about it, but they didn't know what to do.

Speaker 1: 9:01

The next steps. So I think that there's a lot of powerful. There's a lot of power in having a tool that not only can help you assess risks, point out security, but then have a team behind you that can help you walk through those steps and understand how it's. Sometimes it's not talking about compliance. That's the conversation to have with your clients. It's more about security.

Speaker 1: 9:26

And even like talking to vendors or different MSPs on the floor, they're like well, we don't have to deal with compliance. It doesn't matter, I'm like, but do you have like a baseline security within your own business that you're saying to a client hey, you know what, I don't want to buy this risk. I don't want you to be my client because the risk that you're willing to buy is not the risk I'm willing to buy. So using a system like ours can literally those risk assessments, you can be like OK, this is the baseline risk that I'm willing to work with you, are you? But this is why and walk you through those steps with any prospect and clients, I think there's a lot of value. At least I don't know. When I listened to Ryan Weeks so many years ago, that's what I thought, and so I'm pretty excited to see what's going to happen over the next few months here at Ascendio.

Speaker 2: 10:08

Yeah, no, I'm excited to hear more about it moving forward right and a better understanding of what the offering is and what that looks like, you know, to the channel. So that's where you're at today. I know when I first met you, I met you actually at a conference Geez, I think we were. That was in Arizona and you came to one of our peer group meetings.

Speaker 1: 10:37

The big, big.

Speaker 2: 10:38

Probably leading up to the big, big Yep, correct, correct? And I know you came into our group and I'm like who is this person right, like it was. You had it cranked up and you were full of energy and it left obviously a huge impression on me and there was no forgetting who you were, who Desiree is, so let's talk about. Obviously you're working for a different organization at that time and you mentioned Colin with Passportal in the past and actually Colin recorded an episode with me just last week, the podcast here and we go back before that. You know what we, since you talk about the channel and their relationships, customer relationships and business development. Did you see yourself? You talked about oil and gas and not being for you, but did you really believe that you'd find yourself in a customer relations slash, business development type role that you are today or have been with these past organizations most recently? Is that something that you inspired to pursue or is it just find yourself in that situation?

Speaker 1: 11:57

to pursue, or is it just find yourself in that situation? I fell into it, but I definitely was inspired to pursue it before I knew it existed. I've wanted this job probably I wouldn't say since I was probably about 21. I'm going to say so since my very first restaurant job. I wanted this job. I just didn't know it existed and I didn't know what it was. Job. I wanted this job. I just didn't know it existed and I didn't know what it was.

Speaker 1: 12:23

But I tell people this all the time the business development role is a role that is in I don't know, I'm not going to say all, but in almost all industries and the role is the same. It's the product or the industry that you're working in that can. That can change. But really the role and I coach people all this time I'm like I fell into business development, but I fell into it from sales and then, and then business development kind of be the next step. But to kind of go backtrack on like what I mean by that role exists in every industry, starting at restaurants.

Speaker 1: 12:50

So you work in a restaurant. You have, say, your food delivery person, who maybe you got the food delivery person that you normally order from, and then there's this other company that's kind of coming in and they want you to buy their steaks. So they come in and they deliver a bunch of steaks. Maybe they take you out for dinner at their another restaurant that serves their steaks to show you how amazing they're doing and selling those steaks. Or you have like your beer rep. So say, have you ever gone to like a Bud? Or what is Bud American? Yeah, bud's American as well. Sure, yeah, okay. So you have like your Bud business development rep who would come in and be like oh, we have this new beer that we want you guys to sell. Why don't you guys come to our party and we're going to sell and we're going to do this? So I knew that role existed when I when I was working in serving bartending and at first I wanted to be the beer rep, but then I also was like I don't need to drink that much more and I'm kind of useless after like a certain period of time. Like 11 PM, like I can do the lobby bar, but it takes like 11 pm is kind of my cutoff. I'm like I'm going to bed. So I didn't really want to live that like scene and then fast forward through a couple of industries of watch that that same role and same thing happen.

Speaker 1: 14:08

I ended up falling into travel and worked as a travel agent for a few years and in the travel agent you'd have the business development role of the tour companies or WestJet, like the airlines, but the tour companies were the ones I really liked and then the vacation packages were the ones of course. So say, we'd have like WestJet vacations, their rep would come in and be like if you sell this many packages, these are the this. They tell us about this hotel and this hotel and this hotel, and you would get like a $500 budget that you could go on a working fan. So they would bring you down to a resort in Mexico and you would do tours of hotels all day. They're fine dining you and it's amazing. Or in the tour company. So there's this company called On the Go Tours.

Speaker 1: 14:51

I went to Egypt with them Absolutely amazing and Miles Walker, who also works in the industry now, was our rep on the go tours. So he took us to Egypt and we did 10 days. It was absolutely amazing, great tour. Of course they're like doing all these really, really cool things. And so I looked at Miles Walker and I was like I want your job, but we're in travel and when originally I started applying for these jobs, the role when I like I said when I got the interview at Passportal and I wasn't taking seriously.

Speaker 1: 15:26

I turned down jobs in travel in the role that I wanted, the business development role because the wage that they pay was really really low, because it's heavily involved in well, you're going to be traveling to Egypt and insert wherever three times, like you're going to be traveling six times in the remaining trips. You going to love the job, but the age range that I was I kind of aged out is like financial was more important than than that, so I couldn't accept the role. So then, all of a sudden, I got introduced to the channel and this role that exists, that I had dreams about and I loved, and it's all about relationship building. It's all about traveling to different conferences.

Speaker 1: 16:07

I also have a passion for conferences. That's a kind of another story. I've heard conferences around the world in many different industries. They blow my mind. They're just so interesting and so there's just so much to attending, working and doing good execution at a conference. So I was like working conferences, going out for dinner, taking people out, getting to see cool things, getting to see amazing speakers. This is a phenomenal job and the industry itself pays a lot more than travel.

Speaker 1: 16:39

So, okay, maybe I found my industry, um, and then actually got. This is why miles I talk about miles walker and then I was like miles you should work over here and got him to move over here too.

Speaker 1: 16:50

And I have to say, like I love the business development role, so so much. Um, I love sales, I do. I love closing. I love sales like to me, sales like I talk about closing. Um, I got on a call yesterday and, like I said, I'm doing follow-up. Cold calls not really cold, because they're listing from the people who attended the events and they scanned your booth badge. So people have scanned, so people have scanned and said like you're, you know you're scanned, you're gonna get a call back. And this gentleman I called yesterday was like I don't want to talk to you. I was like okay, cool, like about to hang up. And he's like I just want to tell you that I've received too many phone calls and emails from you guys. It's the follow-up from the event. And he said since the event, all of you vendors are just calling me all the time and just trying to like sell me, and I don't have time for this. And I'm like I absolutely understand, I a hundred percent understand. It sucks, but it's also our jobs.

Speaker 1: 17:42

You're like going to a conference means that's what's going to happen. Anyone who's listening. If you don't want that to happen, you create a vendor email for the event, you register that way and then you get your follow-ups to that vendor email. That's neither here or there. So I call the guy and he's telling me about how upset he is about vendors reaching out. But then he holds me on the phone for 15 minutes because he's interested in the product. Now, if I hadn't emailed him and hadn't called him, he never would have remembered to reach out to us to tell us that he was interested in the product Because he's busy, because, like you just said, he's way too busy to talk to vendors.

Speaker 1: 18:23

He's way too busy. So it's like a catch 22. We have to do that and I love doing it. I can mentally get over the fact that they don't want to talk to me, but I also know that, based on the information that I have of the compliance solutions in the industry, what we're doing is beneficial and helpful and if it means that if I pick up the phone and call and find value to an MSP, that can help them sell more. Ken Verone brought the company that he worked for on, mainly using compliance and then other things, of course. From like zero, like three employees, to like a hundred million plus in 18 months, that's a conversation worth having, and so I get through it, but definitely the calling is not my favorite. I like the business development side, hi.

Speaker 2: 19:14

I'm Mark Thomas, founder and CEO of Current Tech Solutions and Cyber Guardians. We know business owners like you want to focus on growing your company, not worrying about IT problems or security threats. That's where we come in. Our team uses AI to protect your business from cyber risks and keep everything running smoothly. If you're ready for peace of mind and a stronger future, reach out to us today. Let's secure and elevate your business together.