Episode 27: Secure and Steady: Phylicia Hill on Growing a Cybersecurity Firm from the Ground Up.

In this episode of the SCORE Houston Podcast, host PV Bala sits down with Phylicia Hill, Co-Founder and CEO/Managing Director of H5 Strategic Alliance — a Houston-based cybersecurity and IT professional services firm she co-founded with her husband James Hill in 2013.

Phylicia shares her remarkable journey from a career in education and school administration to building a thriving cybersecurity company that serves enterprise clients across healthcare, financial services, and beyond. She opens up about the patience it took to grow the business over five years while working full-time, navigating Hurricane Harvey, and putting family first — all before going full-time in 2018.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How Phylicia merged her business acumen with her husband's deep technical expertise
• Why patience and preparation are the foundation of sustainable business growth
• How the COVID-19 pandemic became a turning point that accelerated their growth
• The unique talent model that powers H5's delivery across multiple states
• How small businesses can protect themselves from today's AI-driven cyber threats
• Why mentorship is non-negotiable for minority and women entrepreneurs
• What's next for H5, including their new Ignite managed services platform

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a small business owner, or simply curious about the cybersecurity landscape, this conversation is packed with real-world wisdom and practical advice.

Phylicia Hill was recognized as the SBA Houston District Minority Business Owner of the Year.

About SCORE Houston Podcast: SCORE Houston brings you inspiring stories and actionable insights from successful entrepreneurs and business leaders in the Houston area. Subscribe for new episodes every week!

Give your comments at https://scorehoustonpodcast.blogspot.com or write to pv.bala@scorevolunteer.org. Let us know what you like of this episode and suggest subjects on which you wish to know more. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, and welcome to Small Business Success Stories at Score Houston. This is where we bring insights, experiences, and the journey of successful small business entrepreneurs. Score Mentors volunteer their time to guide small businesses. SCORE is America's largest network of volunteer business mentors supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Here in Houston, we provide free confidential mentoring and education to help entrepreneurs start, grow, and succeed. Now let's dive into today's small business success story.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Welcome to SCO Houston Podcast. I'm Pivi Bala, SCO mentor and host for today's podcast. Our guest today is Felicia Hill, co-founder and CEO, managing director of H5 Strategic Alliances, a Houston-based cybersecurity and IT professional services, a firm she built alongside her co-founder in 2013. What makes Felicia's story particularly compelling is that she came not from technology background, but from education and leadership and channeled the foundation into building a firm that today serves enterprise clients across healthcare, financial services, and beyond, and has earned recognition as the SBA Houston District Minority Business Owner of the Year. Alicia, welcome to Score Houston Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

You know, as I said in the background, you spent years in education and school administration. So what made you move to business? You know, what is that moment then you said, look, I want to get into business?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Well, actually, I was a business owner before I got into education. And the business that I have now, that uh my co-founder with me is actually my husband, James Hill, who has been in IT since uh early days of Browning Root, which was years ago before it became Halliburton. And as a business owner, the area, well, let's say as an educator, the area that I was in was career and technical education. So I had always been involved in technology from different perspectives, but I also taught business education, which meant I taught accounting and business management and all the things needed to run a company. So previously had run a company and then got into education and then moved up to management, taught business education, and then in a idea conversation with my husband, you know, I'm looking at what he's going through, what I'm thinking about, me wanting to get back into business. And then I say, you know, we can merge our two skill sets together, right? He has more of the, you know, technical uh aptitude. I have it, but I have more of the business and the operations. And he has, he wants nothing to do with the operations. So it was, you know, within our marriage, it was a good marriage for the business as well to be able to take both sides of it and make it work. And so that's what we've been able to do once we established it. I actually stayed on with the school district in my capacity for CTE as a coordinator. So I had management experience too. So as a result of that, I stayed back. We got one of our first big contracts in October of 2018, and he was able to go into the business full time. And since then, we were able to grow our team, grow, you know, grow the staff, grow our geographically grow our business to other states. And that's what we've been doing, you know, since we started.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

But I also noted that you founded in 2013, but you were full-time on 2018. I think the five years were learning the ropes, or what is happening?

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Well, we were still working full-time, even though we have started the business. We kind of used it as a supplemental income initially. It wasn't until, like I said, 2018 that we got a contract that would allow him to step off of his, you know, step away from his company, where, you know, he he was getting, you know, he was the breadwinner of the family in terms. I mean, I had a good job, but his was much better than mine in terms of our income. So once we got to a certain position, then we took the business. A lot of people want to kind of jump in and say, Oh, I want to be a business owner and I just want to jump in it right now. But you need to be able to take care of yourself. You need to be able to cultivate, like, what is this going to look like? Can we sustain it over a period of time? And so those were the factors that allowed us to be patient and wait during that time to, you know, get the business off the ground. And two things happened that were critical during those five years. I graduated two kids from high school, and we went through Harvey. Remember the hurricane Harvey? Yeah, of course. That was in 2017. Our house flooded the whole nine. We lost multiple vehicles, like so much happened during that time. And and so my daughter graduated in 2015 and my son graduated in 2018. And so, because I was so committed to making sure they were good, I waited until they were done before we decided to you know launch it full-time.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

Oh, lovely. That's a good decision. Now, when you did get into it full time, you got a fair level of confidence that you're going to break even and operate profitably. You had enough business on the pipeline.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

So initially, we got started with that first contract. I I continued to work for three more years.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Right? To carry the family, the insurance. Because my my my goal was I did not want us to just up-end our lives trying to start a business. I went, I know, I knew that it was going to take sacrifice on one of our parts, with him being the guy who could go on-site and all these other different things. I knew that I could stay back, you do the invoicing and all the things that needed to be done to, you know, register the business, all the other stuff that had to be that had to happen as far as certifications and all of those things, that I could do those things where I did them in the evening time over the weekend. It didn't matter. I knew that what we had to do was grow it to a certain point that we could maintain our household in the fashion that we had originally. And so in order to do that, I sacrificed an additional three years of working both jobs before then going into it full-time.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Did you have to put in any additional capital into the business? Or it just did not require capital next other than the working capital?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yes, it did not require us to go out and get capital initially because we had very low overhead. Once he took that first contract, that first contract allowed us to then get into other, you know, to set up other things. So it did not require us to make a large like capital donation or you know, from our personal income into the business. Now what happened 18 going into 19, 19 was like the pre-pandemic, right? During the pandemic, we grouped exponentially because we were dealing with securing networks, right? So what happened was when people were all trying to move from their offices to home offices and people were looking trying to do VPNs and everybody was trying to figure out how we're gonna secure this when everybody's at home. That's when our business was able to really just explode. So we actually, within, I would say, within the first three years, we had exceeded like our five-year goals, right? Um, and then we were able to, you know, put the money back into the business. So from the very beginning, we put the money back in any profit that we made, we put it back into the business to help grow it. And you know, those first five years are they're tough. It's a grind, but they're crucial too to the survival of your business. And you got to understand, you know, like we I did set up for line of credit, I made got relationships with the bank, you know, everything that was needed, I I set out to do it before I needed it, right? And so, you know, that was just just just one of the key factors in as far as financing. We were able to grow and use those same funds and then use that money that we made to say, hey, now I want to open up a line of credit and kind of prepare us for those opportunities like what we're in right now. When you when you have an economic downturn and you have issues, you're able to lean back on the decisions that you do or make in the beginning. Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

Tell me from what I know, cybersecurity is a very specialized credential, heavy industry. It's not an easy industry in the IT sphere itself, you know. So of course, your husband is a technical guy. He has prior experience, but is he a cybersecurity expert, is it? I mean, yes in the field?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yes, he's a CISSP, which is your you know, cybersecurity specialization. He's a CCIE, which is a Cisco certified Internetworking Expert certification. And then, of course, he has multiple ones on top of that, right? I see. So what we did was in the process of building the business, we built a team that was equally certified, but across different networks or across different technologies. Let me correct that. So, like with the vendors that we partner with, like Cloudflare or Arista or Cisco or Palo Alto, in each area of a technology, we based our company on providing expertise and knowledge within those different technologies. So when you get an engineer from H5, you're gonna get somebody who averages about 20, 25 years experience, but understand and have seen multiple environments. They're not coming from like what we find in a lot of cases, they're not coming from a one shop or one business, you know, where they provide services for one customer. James has touched over 500, over 500 companies.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

So you have a lean internal team, but you have a larger network of subject matter experts, exactly, on whom you depend upon. Exactly. It's a very unique model that I come across, you know, and it seems to be working so well for you. So how do you do you plan such kind of a business model and how effective it is now?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

So the way we handled it, because especially during the pandemic, during the pandemic, you had a lot of what we call really great talent that got an opportunity to really expand their wings in terms of the companies that they work for. Those really good guys, they don't want to be tied down to one company. They like that freedom of being able to work for more than one company. So what we did was tap into that talent base that at some point, I would say around 22, 23, when people had to start laying people off. Well, what we did was we started tapping into that talent and bringing those guys into the fold because, you know, we knew they were excellent talent, but they needed to be, they needed to work. And so because of the relationships that we set out and the opportunities that we provided to these individuals, they're like loyal. For, you know, that's the best word I could say that they're loyal because we we put a lot of people to work during a time when, you know, folks are getting laid off left and right. And we put them to work and they are just loyal and thankful and grateful for it. So now, you know, we we consider that our our resource pool. And so we let's say if I need a cloud guy, if I need a you know, Microsoft guy, if I need someone who can implement or an integrator, I have multiple gentlemen that or and ladies that are in that on our list of resources that we can tap into and provide excellent support and service for our customers.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

Tell me, I mean, I'm curious to know how you did the marketing in the initial stage and subsequently how you make yourself known and along with the credibility, you know, for people to come and seek your services for something so specialized as cybersecurity. So so definitely I feel marketing has been one of your strengths in this field so far. So, can you talk about it a bit?

SPEAKER_00 13:48

You think so? It has that part to me is difficult because you know, when you start off, you don't have like um, especially a small minority owned, woman-owned business, you don't have like millions of dollars to say, hey, I'm here, right? And uh and so it's been a what I what I called a slow and steady process, right? So for one, because of the work that we do, you know, word of mouth is so crucial for us.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

So when we go and work with a customer, we're we're gonna do above and beyond. So when that customer becomes a reference or a champion for us, it puts us in a position that, you know, one person could contact that reference and you know, they're gonna give us ray reviews because we're not leaving until the job is done and done well, right? The other part is there's a community service arm to our business that that we had to have in terms of the work that we do. So I support student scholarships on a rate every year. I support it through other activities, serving on a board. So there are different things that I do that are outside of H5 that also gives recognition to H5 because I'm so dedicated to providing that support and community service to the organizations around me. So I'm I'm very committed to like Spring ISD. That's one of the first school districts where I worked, but then after working, you know, I just had a passion for kids, also for small businesses. I serve in the capacity of entrepreneurs and Christ organization that allows us to mentor other individuals who are getting into business as well. So these things help others to know and learn about us as individuals, but also as H5. Now, recently last year, I did hire a young lady who's a brand and growth strategist, Ariana Hatchett, and she is so super good in terms of the type of content, analytics, all these different things. So she's been helping us now almost a year in terms of making sure that we are marketing appropriately. But yeah, I'm I I think I'm looking for this upcoming year, I'm looking to get some additional investors so that we could, you know, make get it to that next level. Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

You know, I also noted while reading your background, you have gone through an impressive number of business development programs. Goldman Sachs and 10,000 Small Business, SBA's Thrive, Emerging Leaders Program, Apex Accelerator, and Counseling through Score Houston, also, of course. Now tell me, what drove your commitment to continuous learning and what has that discipline meant for your company?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Continuous learning should happen regardless of what position you're in, what company you're in. In order to grow and be successful, you have to have a mindset that I have to continue learning and improving. And so moving from, you know, Goldman Sachs or SBA Thrive, they all offer different elements of the things that you need to put into your toolbox as a leader. And so I always want to get better. I always want to improve. And then I want to improve the lives of the people that we also have on our staff. Because if we're not growing and doing the things that make us better, then how can I help my staff improve and grow and get better? And so that's why continuous learning is just so important for me. I actually had a phone call yesterday because I have my bachelor's of business administration. I have a master in educational leadership. And I said, Do I need to get my MBA? I know I've gone through these programs, but do I need to get my MBA or should I go and get my doctorate? So I'm I'm like on the just trying to make that decision about what I'm gonna do next because I have some other things that I'd like to do. I really want to grow to the point where I become this philanthropist and I I can give it all away, but I'm not there.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

Very noble thoughts, very excellent thoughts that you have, you know, for your personal life too. I'm very impressed. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

So yeah. So so learning is important, and you know, just making sure that we serve outside of the business. You know, I I I didn't get in business to be selfish. I got in business so that we can help people.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

Absolutely. Tell me, I the other point I had was you know, you serve clients in healthcare, financial services, hospitality industries. Now, many of these are highly regulated and highly targeted by cyber threats, you know. So many of the clients wouldn't know how vulnerable they are, really, to threats. So, how do you go about educating them and you know alerting them?

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Yes, well, we always start traditionally with an assessment, a very thorough assessment of their environment. We're gonna look for those vulnerabilities and gaps, and we're gonna let them know exactly what it is that they need to do in order to secure their environment. So, cybersecurity for us starts always starts with the foundational security of that company. So we're talking about networking. What are they doing currently that affects how they fare, you know, when it comes to cybersecurity? And so that's that's kind of like our MOI method of operation. We start with that, we lead with that, and then we make sure that we're looking at all aspects of their business holistically. What are you trying to do? What outcomes, what initiatives do you have? What are your stakeholders looking for? And how does that affect what you're doing? And so with that, once we do that assessment, once we provide that information, you know, we tell, we tell people, you don't have to use us once we do the assessment. We want you to know what's going on with your environment. We want you to get it fixed and, you know, move forward with the actions that you need to have. Now, if you utilize us after that, of course, that's great. But the main thing is the main thing, correct the things that you have that are out of order. One of our mantras, our tagline is intelligent IT. You know, that we go into so many environments where they have different teams and the team on the left doesn't know what the team on the right is doing. You cannot be in an environment and do that, especially in an enterprise environment. And sometimes companies get so big that, you know, people have egos and they want to hold on to their aspect of the business and what's going on, or they don't want the left hand to know what the right hand is doing. That's not good for any company. And so what we do is we look at the entire environment and we give them information about what they're doing, what they have, what they're missing, so that they can correct those issues so that they improve their security posture, you know, for the future.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

I also understand that, you know, cost a million dollar revenue and you have been very successful, you're operating in several other states. This all took place kind of organically or really moved up significantly during the COVID time, and that gave you a lot of questions. And how do you manage now when you're talking about clients all over the states, different different states beyond Texas? How is it that you manage all those things?

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Well, managing it, we I mean, we have our team members, leads, we have project managers, and so you know, with that, we strategically work with other small businesses so that whenever there's, let's say, something at out where we may not have personnel like in this particular area. Area, then we utilize our partnerships to extend our reach and to make sure that we have the capacity to do the things that we need to be able to do. But yes, a lot of the projects, you know, we make sure that projects are running on time, that, you know, companies they can be sure that we're going to go into their environment, we're going to do what we need to do, and then we're going to get out. So, you know, we just, we're very particular about how we move. We don't take on anything that we feel like we can't handle, but we do tap into our strategic partnerships that make sure that we have the support that we also need as a company.

SPEAKER_03 22:37

Very good. You are you are doing mentoring and you have been mentored. How significant do you feel? You know, mentoring is for entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Oh, highly significant.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Everyone, no matter what level you're on, should have a mentor that you can go to, talk to, ask questions of. I think that's that's very important. And then once you once you understand that relationship with a mentor, once you, once you've been able to establish yourself, then go back and mentor someone else who's coming behind you. I think that is critical to the growth of small businesses, just you know, across the spectrum, especially when it comes to minority, when it comes to women, you know, we it's almost like we we have to have some of that additional support because of just the many things that we do have to face. So mentorship is extremely important. And I don't think anyone should try to walk this walk alone. It that I can't even imagine what position, what headspace I would be in if I was doing this alone without mentorship. Mentorship.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

Tell me, there are a lot of listeners to this podcast subsequently. And what is the message that you would like to tell the many of them looking at they have some ideas on mind and they're hesitating whether it should go ahead or not go ahead, get into business, leave the job. So tell me, what is the advice that you would give to them?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

I would say don't if if God gives you something, then you know, I think you should go forward with it. But you do need a plan of action. I don't think people should set out to start a business kind of like Havecock, like you just want to start it, but you haven't done your research, you haven't done your groundwork, you haven't looked into, you know, your target audience, you haven't looked into how you're gonna take care of yourself throughout that process. You know, what is your budget gonna look like? These are just key things that you need to think about before you start a business, because a business can weigh heavily on you financially, mentally, physically. And so you have to prepare yourself accordingly. If it's something for you to learn, learn it before you launch. If there's something for you to do, do it before you launch. Get your personal affairs in order. If they're not in order, don't try to go into business because everything you do as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner, will be checked, will be scrutinized. Your credit is important. So there's so many factors in preparation. But then once you get there, have confidence, believe in yourself, bet on yourself. Um, these would be the things that I would share with the next person that's coming up. And and then, like I said, tap into that mentorship, get a mentor, have somebody you can talk to, and you know, go for it. Because look, even if everything fails, you can get up and start over. Whatever happens, know that you've tried it. Because if you're fearful and you don't even try, you'll never know what you couldn't accomplish.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

Beautiful advance. What's the what is the plan for your company's future? What are you, what is the vision that you have?

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Well, actually, we are launching a new program called Ignite, and it's our managed services program because we were basically project-based. We are a bar, a value-added reseller, which we can sell products. We are agnostic, meaning that we're not tied to one particular product like a lot of companies are. We're going to do what's best for the customer, their team, and their environment. And so, with that, we're we're definitely leaning towards doing more like lunch and learn webinars, more activities to get information out to customers. But our small business platform of this managed services is going to be where we're helping small businesses get secure, just like an enterprise business would, but based on what they have the capacity to do. And with us launching this, and I can't wait to share it with everybody once we launch it. You know, our goal is to, like I said, really help those small business owners, you know, fortify themselves because what's happening is they don't think that they need to. But when we hit a when we find a story, like a person calls us and says, Hey, somebody on my team clicked on this link and they thought it was from the owner and they sent $50,000 or $200,000 and that money is gone. That's not the time to call us. Because once it's gone, it's gone. Yeah, that there's nothing we can do. That's right. So we try to get with customers before that happens. We want to train your staff before that happens. We want, we want to make sure you guys are, you know, the small businesses are taking care of themselves before something happens that can cripple a company. And right now we're talking about 40 to 60 percent of small business owners are being attacked. One attack could wipe a company out, and we just don't want that for our fellow business owners.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

So last question, you know, with AI now, artificial intelligence rampantly moving up, you know, everybody is getting into AI, and that AI is helping people to hack better. It is, you know, so it is becoming extremely difficult to prevent a hacking with this this is AI helping hackers to do better. So, how do you manage in this kind of a scenario? Because the tools that you may have traditionally may not be sufficient when it comes to AI initiated hacking, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Yes, yes. So I I would say AI AI is supporting hackers on being better at hacking and better at social engineering. They can make things look like it actually came from somebody from your company. But there are things that you can do, you know, and we really call them some common sense things that you can do because, you know, don't just believe what you read, check it, validate it first. We there's an article on our website that talks about zero trust, and that is foundational to everything that we do as well. Zero trust. So we want to educate companies on the things that they can do. AI can be beneficial for you as a small business if you understand how to use it. And being able to secure your infrastructure is important and knowing and understanding how to do that. And these are things that you know H5 can help with. And so there's so many different tools, like just the basic MFA multi-factor authentication. We talked to some small businesses and they don't even have MFA, and we're like, oh my God, that's the first line of defense is the coming back to your cell phone, giving you a code, and then you put that code in. That's like the simplest form of protecting yourself. Now, of course, as you get into larger enterprises, there's so many other things that you have to do, you know. But like I said, we we can do an assessment, explain it, share it, give them the proper information. If they want to incorporate AI as a company, we can share how to do that. And so it's just a matter of, you know, we got to get in the company and we got to see what's going on to be able to give them the proper information because there's no one template that fits every company. It definitely depends on the industry, the people, what the people know in that environment, their staff. Like if you have an IT team, if you don't have an IT team, you know, what does that look like for you? You know, you just can't dismiss it. You know, you got to own it and you gotta make sure that that you secure your environment.

SPEAKER_03 30:52

Thank you, Felicia. Thanks for coming on to Score Houston Podcast. Really appreciate it. And I'm sure this is going to be very useful for the listeners, the entrepreneurs. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Thank you for listening to Small Business Success Stories at Score Houston. If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, we'd love to support your journey. You can reach us at 713-487-6565 or visit us at 8701 South Gestner, Suite 1200 Houston, Texas, 77074. Our office is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., except for federal holidays, and walk-ins are always welcome. To learn more, request free mentoring, or register for our workshops, visit us online at www.score.orgslash Houston. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and remember at Score, we're here to help you thrive.