Episode 24: Adam Dennison of The Channel Company

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: M. I'm Jordan Tenenbaum, host of Soligo's technology leadership podcast. As always, I'm joined by Mark Simon, Seligo's Vice president of strategy. Hey, Mark. And today we are joined by our guest, Adam Dennison, the vice president of midsize enterprise services at the channel company. Adam, welcome to the show.

Speaker C: Hey Jordan. Hey, Mark. Uh, happy to be here. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: Great to see you again.

Speaker C: You too.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Old friends meeting in new places. This is what I like to see. A great way to start off the podcast. Um, Adam, we want to start you off, uh, kind of give you a platform here and make sure the listeners can get to know and understand you a little bit better. Um, but if you don't mind, could you tell us just a little bit about your journey to becoming the vice president of the midsize enterprise services at the channel company?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and thank you. Um, you know, so my, my high tech media career, um, it's been over 20 years now. It started, um, back in 2001. Uh, I was a regional sales rep slinging, uh, ad pages for Information Week, which at the time was, uh, the largest controlled circulation, um, IT publication in the United States. Um, so, uh, was, you know, running the New England territory, um, loving what I was doing. Um, had an opportunity a, uh, few years into that to move up into a more of an account director role, have a little bit more responsibility. So I actually switched over, stayed within cmp, which was our parent company, and went over to, um, crn, which, uh, is owned by the channel company. And I'll get back to that in a second. Um, that's computer reseller news. So rather I switched from that end user focused Information week and then went over and started to learn the channel. So, um, CRN catered to solution providers. Uh, even at the time, I don't think they had really a lot of mssps. Um, did that for a couple years and then, um, around 2007 or eight, uh, had an opportunity to, um, move over to a brand called CIO.com. i'm sure you're familiar with that brand. Um, I'm in the Boston area. Uh, IDG is the, is the publisher of cio. So it was a really interesting move to, you know, the, The CMP was, was based in Manhasset, Long Island. So I was able to kind of, you know, work for a large company here in the Boston area that was extremely respected. And the CIO brand was one that was highly, um, respected as well. I competed with it for a Number of years. Um, so went over there and I also had an opportunity to move out of. I could see that ad pages weren't going to be where things were headed. Um, and I had an opportunity to go over and run nationally, run their um, their custom um, custom solutions group which you know content creation research, um, things like that, you know for companies to help them, you know, thought leadership types of pieces. So I stayed there for about 13 years. Um, I worked my way up to publisher of the CIO brand, was uh, running their US events. Um, and then uh, and then Covid hit in uh, in 2020 and so you know all of our events ah, froze. That was a big piece of what I was doing. And so they made some shifts and, and I was out. Um, I uh, at that point then you know just started kind of reaching out to my contacts. You know, didn't have a resume, LinkedIn wasn't updated. Um, I reached out to folks that I had worked with at CRN which they had gone through a lot of changes and did a management buyout, created the channel company, um, started talking to them and they said hey you know we really like your, your end user background um at CIO because we have this, we have this brand called uh, mes which at the time was just mid size, um, uh Enterprise Summit that they had bought from Gartner uh back in about 08 and they said we're not really doing much with it. It's three, you know, it's three live events. You know, why don't you come on board and see if we can build this thing out. And so in uh, In July of 2020 I came back to the channel company if you will. Um, quite a few people are still there that were there when I was uh, with them in the early thousands and, and I've been with them ever since. And now we're building out you know MES to um, to be a much larger entity than what it was when I got there.

Speaker B: That is fantastic. Thank you for that intro. Um, and just to kick us off slightly into second gear we'll say could you tell us just a little bit about what, what the channel company does, the problems it solves for its customers and uh, yeah, we'd love to hear about that.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. The channel company overall we're a global high tech um, media agency, uh, services consulting organization. Um again I mentioned the flagship brand is crn, um which caters the solution providers of the channel. It's the bible, uh, in that space, um, I sit in that a little World called mes. So I represent the end users. Um, but we have grown significantly uh, through acquisition over the last four uh, years since I've been here. Five um, or six acquisitions to be exact. One of the more recent ones was about a year and a half ago we bought Incisive Media, um, which is UK based and along with that came crn, uh, UK and then a brand called Computing, which is a uh, very well respected end user brand over in the uk. And I'll get into that in a little bit in terms of how MES and Computing are, are working together. But um, yeah, we, we've uh, you know we are a mid market uh, size organization and we act like one. And so it's, it's, it's nice that you know the audience that I serve being in that mid market space, um, we are one as well. So you know we kind of really uh, understand each other. Um, when we're, when we're, when we're talking

Speaker A: that Adam, that, that's, that's a helpful description. Um, and I'm certainly familiar with, with CRN having been a practice leader in a, in a consulting practice. We were, we were in one of the top netsuite bars. So like you know that was, that was all, you know, that was something we were always working for. Getting coverage in there.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, getting some of the awards was always something we were, we're striving for and look forward when we got those. So certainly uh, from my perspective, you know, certainly would agree with you that being like the premier channel, um, you know, channel focused, you know, uh, and I think of it as a magazine from, from a few years ago. But really it's right, it's a multi multimedia presence really. Um, and so I've got a good concept of that. But on the, on the mid, on the mes side, um, can you describe a little more you touched on a little bit those events, three events. But can you kind of describe what those events are and, and how those services work with your um, with your member base?

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think it would be helpful to explain what we mean by mid market as well. So we're all talking language.

Speaker A: Very good.

Speaker C: Um, you know first and foremost when we say mid market, um, I like to say that it's, it's a big swim lane and we've used Gartner's um, definition uh, of it and uh, Gartner. As a matter of fact there are, there are exclusive main uh stage research partners as well. We do twice annual state of the mid market Research. So it's kind of helpful to have, have Gartner there and their branding involved. But when we say mid market we mean um, 50 million to 2 billion in revenue. So that's a, again a huge swim lane. But you're cutting out the Fortune 1000 and then the, you know, the very low end of the SMB. When we think about it in terms of um, employees or seats, 100 to 2,500. And then when we think about it in terms of an IT department, 5 to 50. So that's the criteria we use to bring folks into our events and into our MES world. Um, everything that we do has that mid market lens on it. Um, we believe the mid market is dreadfully underserved, um, when it comes to the media, uh, when it comes to analysts, when it comes to vendors, to be honest with you, a lot of vendors, um, they have the technology that they believe can serve the mid market, but it's just, it's too much. They don't need all the uh, you know, all of the um, uh, attributes that a specific technology might have or it's too expensive and they simply can't afford to get involved in that. So we, we play in that, in that mid market only space. And you know, when I was over at cio, we played in the, in the heavy enterprise, extremely competitive space. Um, you know, we had mid market but we didn't shine a light on them. So that's why we have such a wonderful relationship I think with our audience because they know that we're out there batt for them. They know that we're, you know, we're vetting um, vendors and who they should be talking to as much as we can to make sure that they are mid market friendly and mid market focused. Um, you mentioned the three events and you know, we've grown substantially at MES in the last few years with our platform. You know, when I came here it was simply live event platform. So we do, we do three events a year, um, and we do what's called a hosted model. And so that means if you're a mid market IT professional and you fit those criteria that I said, um, we'll bring you to the event, um, we will pick up your airfare, we'll pick up your hotel accommodations. Um, in return they're going to do two, two things for us in two, two big ones. One is they're going to fill out a big qualification card that's, you know, a lot of different technologies listed. Is it high, medium, low on their list what their budget looks like, how do they buy? Do they buy through the channel direct? Who are their partners, um, what vendors are they, are they, you know, on their software stack, the hardware stack? And then we have this one area that we ask, you know, what are your big projects for the year? And that's simply a write in. So you get a lot of rich information and data there. Um, this information, all this data, this then gets turned over to our vendors and solution providers that sponsor and fund the event. And um, that's in return what we provide them. Then the other thing they're going to do for us is they're going to be where we ask them to be at the event and they're going to be attentive and they're going to be engaged. Um, you know, you're not going to find them on the golf course, by the pool, um, you know, at the bar, at uh, you know, four o' clock in the afternoon. Um, in the backbone of our events, um, you know, we do a lot of it, main stage and you know, pavilions and things like that. We do uh, what we call boardrooms. And so we take our audience and we divide them up into groups of eight to ten, um, you know, kind of birds of a feather. Maybe it's some specific, uh, you know, technologies they're interested in or they're all in government or something along those lines. And we put them in these boardrooms and several times throughout the day we shut everything else down. And our sponsors buy boardroom time where they get to go in and do a 25 minute, I like to call it a front of the focus, um, you know, front of the front of the glass focus group with that audience. No other vendors are in there. Uh, and that's where a lot of the, you know, the business takes place. You might not get a contract in there, but you're, you're, you know, who you want to follow up with and you have great, great opportunities after that. So that's our, that's our event platform. And then I'll just, I'll let you know the other two that we've launched on the digital side. Um, you know, so during COVID um, the channel company made a concerted effort to launch a communities, um, strategy. And so with that, in September, uh, of 21, we launched the MES IT Leadership Network. And so that is an online gated community. Um, we have over 800 um, qualified IT leaders in that network. Um, we also have some, um, some, some vendors and sponsors in there. Soligo being one of Our, our premier ones content, uh, partners like Gartner and other folks are in there as well. Um and they really use this as an extension of the event and they you know they're asking questions, they're getting free peer advice. Uh, to be honest with you, they're asking questions about specific initiatives or specific vendors. I'm looking at, you know, has anybody worked with these folks? Uh, you know, does someone have. I've got an integration issue. Could you provide me some, some support here? And you know other folks may have just done that six months, months ago and they're more than happy to, to provide that information back to them. So, so that is a, again that's, that's our gated community on a, on a, on a um, network level platform. And then we're really proud. Uh last month, tomorrow, no today is a month ago today um we launched uh, mes, uh Computing. So that is our first um, uh you know, content destination site mescomputing.com the computing piece is that marriage between MES and computing in the UK that I had mentioned. Um, we hired a senior editor, Samara Lynn. Um, she's fantastic. And again everything we do in here um is, is focused at that mid market and you know we borrow uh, you know we're still small right. We got one editor. Um, so we borrow some content from computing that makes sense. Um, and we're looking to ramp that up. Now we can do lead gen programs. You know it helps folks like Soligo do you know do branding and advertising outside of just three events. So we've really become in the last four years uh you know a live uh, you know a live event and now digital networking uh plus content site platform.

Speaker A: That's, that's really cool. And uh, you know I just, I just pulled up the MES Computing site here. I hadn't checked it out yet so I'll get it, get it up here. We'll have to familiarize myself with it. Um, you know what I think is interesting about what you do there at MES was the, there's two sides to it and we'll start one from ah, I guess from somewhat of a selfish perspective from a self centered perspective which is as a, as a sponsor there. So if you're a, if you're a provider of services to mid market companies, um, you know, full disclosure.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So Lego Soligo ah, is involved as you mentioned. We spot we were part of sponsor for the two, two of the events last year and I personally went to the spring one last year in Orlando and That was, um. You know, what you described, those boardroom events, those were real. I mean, for me, that was unlike any experience I'd ever been involved with, because I think we had. Gosh, I'm trying to think we had like 16 of those. Something. It's hard to keep count. There were so many. And they were. You get in the room, there's. There's 10 or 12 of these, uh, these IT leaders. And most of them were CIOs or VP of systems. Very senior. And 10 or 12, and, uh, the focus is on you. And you've got your 20, 25 minutes to explain what you do, why it's valuable. And then sometime in the end, then you get graded on this too. I mean, that's the other thing, right? You get these grades, uh, on how your presentation went. And, you know, we. I'm gonna be honest, we went and did the first one and, uh, we were like, oh, like, we. We got some kind of, like, some heart. We made some assumptions about the audience. We're like, okay, well, we've got. And. But it wasn't a. And I always talk about this internally. Um, talking to our. Our chief growth officer about this the other day, saying, like, it was such a fantastic experience because you get to pressure test something with your. Your. Your audience that we're trying to sell to and target and, and. And make sure that we're conveying the concept of value. And if you're selling and you're not talking about value and you're hand waving or, or you're using too many buzzwords, you will get called out on the spot.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it was, it was fantastic. I mean, I learned so much. And we refined how we talk about the product, how we adjust, um, in that two days, I mean, it was. It was a lot of fun. We got a little competition going internally because we were trading off between a couple of us taking leads. It was who got the bet. You know, there was. There was a little. Little side bet going on who was going to get the best score at the end. But, uh, more importantly, it was. It was really interesting way as an organization to be like, okay, well, are we to get that super direct feedback and be like, just improve what you're doing right there in real time? And I thought that was. I haven't seen anything like it, um, because you can go out and present and do all these things, but to get that very raw feedback in a. In a kind of very tight spot. And, you know, it's clear that it was a little bit of A. In a way, it's kind of like you mentioned community earlier, and I almost think of it like club, because so many of those leaders knew each other and they had a rapport and they fed off that and it was, it was, it was actually really, really cool. Um, so that, that was my take on it. Being on that, uh, on a sponsor side was. Man, it was hard. I had a sweating, but, uh, in a good way. And it made us, uh, you know, really made us better out of it. And I, I'd encourage any company that was. That had something that was applicable to really look at. It's a good way to like, you know, like I said, pressure test what, what you're doing. And, uh, and you know, no matter what happens, you're going to be better for it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, you know, there's a few things there. Um, our attendees, our users as part of the Mercy community, and they do call it an Ms. Community. Um, you know, they take this event very seriously. Right. They don't get to go to a lot of things. Um, we have an advisory board of 20 to 25 sitting. You know, CIOs, VPs of it. Uh, we ask an awful lot out of them, um, to help us with the strategy. You know, speakers, you know, help bring us potential sponsors. Um, you know, and they're the ones that run the boardrooms. Uh, the boardroom leader. So the person that said, hey, you got five minutes left, that's the boardroom leader. That's one of our advisory board minutes. Our, uh, leaders. Um, and you know, we measure everything and we want to provide that feedback. And I think the. It's okay to have. Not have a great boardroom if you've got seven more. If you take the constructive criticism, it's the vendors that don't pay attention to it and say, ah, that board doesn't know what they're talking about. They're the ones that are going to have a bad show. So, you know, we do the best we can to prep vendors ahead of time. We have what we call an adoptive vendor program. So we have, we have an advisory board member will get on, say, hey, let me see your presentation. Let me make some suggestions. Let me do this, let me do that. Um, you know, we do build a better boardroom. You know, we do all we can, but then it's. Then it's on the vendor. Um, you know, then the challenging part can be. And we understand, you know, a lot of the people that buy it and sit on the prep calls, they're not the One that's presenting. The presenters are very busy people typically, and so they, you know, they're like, I don't need to be on that prep call. I mean they go in and they're like, ooh, geez. And you're like, we gave you a prep call.

Speaker A: So I was not on the prep call.

Speaker C: We do the best we can to get everybody prepped because we want, we want everyone to have a great experience. We want, you know, we want the attendees to come back. Um, you know, we do guarantee, you know, 60 net new at every event, but if we, you know, you run through a year and you're not there, we'll bring you back again. Um, which is why, you know, some folks, maybe they haven't been to one in a year and a half, they come back, they see a board member and they're like, oh, you know, they're reconnecting with them. So it works.

Speaker B: You know, something that seems abundantly clear is the value of the community that you're creating, um, as the channel company at these events. Um, someone that we had on our, our podcast, both Mark and I was Ashley Dodge, who's the VP of community at Capado. They're one of the biggest, uh, Salesforce Development, cicd, um, I guess development companies out there. And she built their, their community from like 6,000 to 100,000. Um, and there's all these engineers and coders and very smart people getting a whole bunch of value. And it's clear that you know, for the channel company, this kind of tight knit, um, you know, community that has a lot of rapport with each other, as Mark was mentioning, um, is not only just important to, you know, kind of fueling these events, but also providing really good feedback to um, attendees. And I'm kind of curious like, what's your take on developing these communities? How do you do it? What's the strategy behind it? Um, that's like a, kind of like a not really a talked about aspect when it comes to conferences. Um, but you guys seem to be doing something different, so I'd love to hear your take.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And I think the, again, the um, the MES community, um, it is tight knit. You know, they, they feel like the underdog a lot. So as long, you know, as long as we're, we're doing everything through that, that mid market, um, lens that I like to say, we keep their attention and they know we've got their back. Um, the challenging part for me was, you know, launching the MASIT Leadership Network. The literally the gated Online community. You know, I, I'm not, I'm not part of any online networking communities. I've never been a, uh, you know, a network community manager. Um, you know, didn't know what I was going to do really, so didn't have any training on it. We just said, hey, let's, let's, you know, we try things at the channel company. So we went out, vetted, you know, various platforms, said, hey, let's spin this thing up. We, we did test it with our audience. We always, you know, we survey the heck out of them before we launch things. So we did an online survey. We're like, there's something there. You know, there's definitely something there. We did, um, you know, we asked him what, what networks they're part of. Have you seen anything like this? The answers were no. Um, uh, we did our last MES virtual event, and my boss, Bill Jones, and I went in to every boardroom, uh, as you did, Mark. And again, uh, it's exhausting, but at least I was able to sit in my chair and do it. Excuse me. Um, but we went in there and we said, hey, this is our vision with this community. What do you think? And we got a lot of great feedback. Um, you know, not everybody was gung ho about it, but most people were like, yeah, I'm definitely interested. And it's free for them, right? So as long as they qualify, they're in one, um, thing they did tell us, they said, look, we, we know you're going to fund it with advertising dollars. We get that. We want to talk to vendors. We do, but we want to have our own space also. So within there, there's an IT leaders only group that is just them, myself and a couple of my MES colleagues. And we're very serious about that. So there's different dialogues that happen on both sides, but that immediately bought, bought, you know, bought a lot of trust out of them. And the fact that we keep it that way, um, you know, they'll ask questions in there that they wouldn't in the. All members. Like, they might ask about specific vendors. They don't trash them, but they might say, hey, I'm looking at these three vendors in this space. What are you, what are you thinking? And they'll get 8, 10 responses within a day and a half. So the other piece of it, I'm very lucky, I think, that I don't have to drive dialogue in the network. I'm not the one posting everything and hoping that people respond to it. There was a certain point when we got past like 500 attendees that people start posting their own stuff and so I can kind of sit back and comment and I produce content in there. I vote, you know, I'm very visible, but I don't have to try to get them to talk because I think if I, if that were the case, it would fail. Um, it has to be them wanting to communicate with each other. It's very professional. Um, and you know, it's just, it's a lot of fun and I can't wait to grow it larger. I mean, you know, I'd love to be at, you know, 5,000 right now, but I'm also very serious about, um, keeping it quality. So I personally accept or deny everybody that's in there, and I think that's key as well. They're like, they're not hearing back from somebody that's a consultant that shouldn't be in there. They're not hearing back from student or some, you know, something like that. They're hearing back from, from true peers.

Speaker B: Very Reddit of you. I love that. Sorry, Mark, go ahead.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I mean, that's really interesting. I mean it sounds like you've reached that point with just 500 members that you have that. I was thinking of that critical mass, like any community needs that has that tipping point where it generates its own content. It doesn't need curation. And that, uh, that point is sort of different depending on what it is and how it's constructed. And a lot of, a lot of community is 500 wouldn't be near enough. But it's, it's interesting that, you know, and I think it says something that, okay, at that point it's, you know, you've got that, those lively dialogues, you're, you're augmenting it, but you're not having to keep it going.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and I just think about like the access to that, um, having been in, uh, uh, in, in a CIO role. Cto. CIO role for, for a couple, a couple of companies. Um, you know, a little bit, a bit under your, uh, you know, not quite mid market but high growth and smaller and just thinking like, wow, uh, you know, being able to have had access to some, to a community like that would have made a huge difference because regardless of whether you're 50 or 100 million or you're 15 and you're trying to figure out and you have the line of sight to being 50 in another another couple years, uh, the, the technology decisions you're making are, I mean, you realize that they're make or break, you know, whether you're spending 100k or a million dollars, whatever it may be, you're like, I can't screw this up because if I do, like it's going to set us. You. It's, you know, it's not so much the money. Often it's the time.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Oh, if I lose six months on this.

Speaker C: And the credibility, Credibility, uh, you're going

Speaker A: to lose personal credibility. Often, often it gets represented as organizational credibility because it shows up to your, Your customers, your, your, Your other partners, your vendors, whoever it may be. Um, you know, but very often your customers. And so, you know, it's hard. You know, it can be hard to move quickly and assuredly unless you've done this thing before. And when, when you haven't, it's hard to find, okay, who to listen to. That or set of advisors. You might have one or two, but those are only sort of, you know, they're somewhat isolated viewpoints. Uh, and uh, this, I, I think creating that community like that is, is really valuable and I'd encourage, you know, any technology leader to try to find that community however they can. And certainly from what I saw me as was, was a good avenue to that and pretty valuable. Um, how are you finding that your community are competing with any other community, uh, efforts like that, or what are you, are you coming up against anything that sort of takes away from, from your.

Speaker C: I'm glad you asked that because that was part of what we asked in the, um, three. Well, three times we asked it in the survey. So the online survey. We asked it in all those different boardrooms and then we asked it of our advisory board members. And I like to look at this and say that where MES plays is the, you know, the intersection of business and technology. We're not down in the weeds in the tech. My audience can go there. I cannot. My audience can go there. Um, but we like to be at that intersection of business and technology. And they said, you know, out. So we said, what are your communities that you're involved in? They said, well, the MAS community, this was before we launched the online one. Like they meant the live event. And they said, well, what's outside of that? And it was, um. Excuse me, it was, you know, a lot of the local, maybe a local SIM chapter, uh, maybe a, uh, local, uh, vertical play chapter. Uh, maybe. I know, I know the head of the, the CIO in Indiana CIO network and you know, they've got an Indiana network. Like it's that, that more localized Thing the um. So then I started proactively saying to them because there was, you know, I'll say it now, Spiceworks, right, that was, that was a competitor that popped up, gosh, probably, I don't know, 15 or more years ago when they popped up. And we were like, they're changing the game here. And the question was, are you, you know, are you IT leaders part of that and is this going to just be something that, that you know, you wouldn't spend your time with? And the answer we got by and large was they are not part of Spiceworks. They have some team members that are. Because Spiceworks tends to be very developer focused, very, very technical or they were

Speaker A: down a level or two. A little more end user than leadership. Intersection.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's not that, it's not that intersection there. So they said look, you know, there's nothing like this, that, that we're a part of, um, you know, especially from an online standpoint. So, so it was kind of an open playing field when it, when it, when it came to that. Certainly we have competitors out there. We have some specific, you know, um, event competitors and stuff. We do some things, you know, different ways. Um, and then the other piece would be when we launched this, this um, the website, um, you know, I mean any place and one of my attendees eyeballs goes or a dollar from a potential sponsor goes is going to be deemed a competitor. But to truly line it up and say here's an online content news analysis site dedicated to the mid market. I, I don't think there is one out there.

Speaker A: Clearly, clearly there's a need, I think, I mean that we know that a

Speaker C: lot of companies in the mid market.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, well, and I think one of the things that I've seen is a trend and, and this might be a good segue to talk about trends a little more broadly. Um, you know in, in my past I don't know how much we've gotten to talk about my, but my consulting path, my team implemented, I did something like 500. Um, you know, I think of it more broadly as digital transformation initiatives, but at the core was always ERP implementations. And then we had integration and everything else over, over the span of the time that I led that practice and I think about that and you get to see a lot of emerging patterns. And one of the big, and those were predominantly in mid market, some SMB, some enterprise, but you know, kind of the, the bell curve was in mid market. And I um, mean one of the biggest trends that I saw was just technology Leadership challenges for mid market companies. Um, whether often companies, maybe they were older, more established organizations trying to move towards the future but they don't have a technology leader in house. That was one of the biggest problems is it. They were in the process of becoming a technology company but no one was thinking of that being a technology leader. Because it's one thing to have a, an IT admin or administrator assist admin, a technical person but it's very different to have a technology savvy person as a business leader in your organization. Those are two different things. I don't care what title they have, that's really important. And so I saw that often is something missing, uh, I often saw other things where maybe they had somebody but they were more of a keep the, keep the trains running on time, keep the lights on type of person. And they weren't really transformational. They weren't, they weren't when the organization needed or the CIO or board had said hey we're going to transform or move forward but they had a misalignment and you know these were like very, very common patterns and it was like wow, it's really hard to move your company forward unless you have that right, right alignment around your technology leadership. And when I saw a lot of people were trying to step up into those roles and fill those roles and, or from different places in organization and they, and often they needed good coaching, they needed help, they need advisement and, and uh, I saw as a consultant there's opportunity there, you can become a trusted advisor, you look out for their best interest. But I saw a lot of consulting companies taking advantage of these gaps and essentially carving out their own fiefdoms essentially. And it didn't have some of the best outcomes. And I'm curious, have you seen the same things in mid market in that trend? What do you see around that, that sort of key leadership role and the needs there for companies like this?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I think, I mean first off when you look at titles, right not, not every mid market company has a cio, not every mid market company has a VP of IT even it could be a director is the highest ranking official. Um, I think a lot of it has to do with how the companies run, who's at the top, who's the CEO. A lot of these companies um, are privately owned. A lot of them are family owned. Do they believe in technology? Do they not believe in technology? Um, are they going to put the resources behind that? Um, I don't really, I don't really look at reporting structure that much. Um, the majority of our audience does report to a CEO, president or owner. Um, next one after that is typically a COO or a cfo. I think we've moved well beyond the days of, um, you know, I report to a cfo, so I'm not as, uh, I'm not as strategic or I'm not as, you know, wanted. I think, um, you know, technology has certainly, uh, you know, spread across industry and, you know, organizations that they need this. So, you know, we are, I think, I think a lot of what you're saying we saw 12, 15 years ago, maybe now it's like 10 years up. I mean, a lot of people think tenure for a CIO is, you know, two, two years. We see it up around five, six years right now. Um, if you're reporting into the top, if you're, you know, you're investing in technology, you've got a trusted, um, you know, opportunity to meet with the rest of the business leaders. You know, they want that stability there. Um, you know, a lot of our audience too, they came up through technology. So like, again, they can. In a boardroom, you better bring someone that can talk tech, because if they go there and you can't, um, you know, they'll let you get back to them, but they're gonna ding you. So, you know, they wear a lot of hats. Um, but yeah, I think, I think, um, you know, I think now where we're seeing some of this is around like security leaders, right? So I think it's only 15 of, of the mid market has a CISO and you know, most of it still is reporting into the, into the cio. They might have. I think it's. On average, our audience has one and a half dedicated security IT professionals. So that's where I think there's a pretty big gap right now. And they're, they're hustling to try to get that filled. And, and that's where they're trying to lean on some of their partners and MSPs to fill some of those gaps as well. But, um, yeah, I think, I mean, the profession's coming off a long way in the 20 years that I've been here.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's really interesting. Those are, uh, some good insights, particularly that you mentioned the security one, Adam. That stands out to me, notably. Oh, yeah, I know just here at Soligo, because we're selling an integration platform and we were trying to be disruptive where we both. And we're working with a whole spectrum mid market enterprise SMB. And the one thing that I have seen in the five years that I've been here. Uh, and I've seen it pretty closely for a while our security and compliance, uh, our data protection officer reported into me. So I saw this very up close and personal for a while was that. But I saw the movement downstream of very sophisticated and oftentimes very intensive uh, security and compliance vetting as a vendor. So we're coming into a deal, we're working with someone, it's great. And you start to talk about their process and they have, oh, you've got to go through X, Y and Z in a very rigid manner. And that used to be something you saw at 100 million or 250 million and now we're seeing it down in, I'm going to be honest, sometimes we see it in a $5 million company. They're bringing in, they're bringing in a consultant that essentially they brought someone in as an outside advisor. They're running this across all their vendors for them. We see you know, different external software platforms, the whole spectrum, um, even, even when they aren't quite ready to hire in that, that, that data protection officer or CISO yet. But they're, they're, I mean this is just moving downstream and becoming much more um, you know, you know, broad.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And seeing universally and often seeing it come up when we do renewals and stuff, it comes up and it's all sudden it was like oh, they, they didn't, there was no security. They've been a customer for three years. No security review. It's like wow, here we go. And we're, and we're always, we're comfortable with it. We've got it. We've got a great clock too. And like we've got a really got one of the best SOC2 audit reports. Cleanest uh, one that I've ever seen having reviewed a lot of our vendors audit reports. And so I'm like hey, this is, you know, so we're, we're good at that but it still takes a lot of work. And I think a lot of companies are getting um, I think a lot of companies are getting caught off guard by this on both sides of the fence whether they're, they're selling us in their vendor and they're not kind of, they're not quite prepared for the, the, I mean because I think this is only going to increase greatly especially as some of the complex compliance. We see some of the state by state compliance that we really saw with California GDPR led the way and then California and then you See it sweep through. And now that we have other states starting to adopt their own data compliance protections, uh, when you look to the future, potentially in a few years, having let's say a dozen or 20 of these individual state data protection policies out there, this puts a huge burden on everybody, both the vendors and also the mid sized companies. How, you know, how are they going to manage this? So it's, I think it's very, you know, yeah, it's, it's a important thing that you bring up because I think it's a, it's a, something that's going to change and create a, quite a, quite a big burden here. Um, what, how do you see, how do you help, how does MES help their members navigate any of this? Is there anything that you're doing yet that kind of helps them along, along that path?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I think it's, it's all the connections that we help help them make. Um, you know, we don't, we don't provide any specific training or anything like that. We don't, we don't, we're not in that space right now at least. Ah, um, it's, you know, when we have a member or an attendee that can find an answer from another peer, you know, peer member or attendee, and we can help make those connections for them. I think that, you know, that that's gold for us. That, that keeps them interested, it keeps them coming back and now, uh, and then, and quite frankly on the vendor side as well, like, you know, our vendors and suppliers and solution providers, they're not just there to foot the bill. I mean, we want them to succeed. So we, you know, we want to set the right boardroom, you know, meetings up with the right vendors so that, you know, when they send us their ideal customer profile, we send them the right, you know, the right people that are in, you know, in that space looking for it. It's up to the, it's up to the IT leader to decide if that vendor's, you know, got what they need and can help them, you know, down the road. But we want to make those connections. So I think that's kind of a, you know, a really big piece of it. Um, you know, we have outside speakers, uh, you know, that come into our events. Some of them are, are going to be, you know, motivational speakers. Some of them are going to be, you know, we've got our, our it, uh, security event coming up in just a couple of days. You know, former FBI guy will be there. We've got, um, you know, another guy that's an attorney, um, talking about, you know, kind of what he's seeing come through his office right, right now and you know, the most, the most common threats and things like that and how, how he's helping them handle it. He's like an incident response coach. Um, you know, and I do a monthly webcast. Um, you know, and some of, some of those will be tech focused, some of them will be soft skills focused. So we're always trying to help them in, in that regard. But yeah, we don't provide any specific training. It's just, you know, the best that we can do to help them make those meaningful connections and you know, and then from there, you know, take, take it, take it from there is how we try to, how we try to serve our audience the best.

Speaker A: That's, that's great. Um, that makes a lot of sense now. Now Adam, what uh, are you seeing any trends around? Uh, maybe from something that's not very sexy, which is the security, to something that's a little more topical and ah, which is, which is AI.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: How have you seen. Because I know, I know a lot of these mid market leaders are under pressure to adopt or consider it. What are, what are you seeing across the group as far as trends around AI Solutions? Solutions?

Speaker C: It's, it's really been interesting. Um, and I'd say like very interesting in the last, say six to eight months when we've gone just from kind of chatter to now people are starting to put things into play. Um, you know, by far and away right now the top priorities are security. Um, by far and away the top spending is security. One of the interesting things I heard on a panel I did, we did, we did an IT spend survey and I had, I uh, had three CIOs on, on a panel to do my webcast in February. And uh, one of the guys, R.C. woodson from Bristol Bay Native Corporation, said, you know, security is still getting, getting all the funding. So I'll try to take adjacent uh, initiatives and kind of bolt it and attach it onto that security and see if I can, I can push that through. Um, you know, AI is very, very interesting and I've had some real interesting discussions around that. Um, I've done a couple of CIO dinners recently with one of our, one of our um, you know, sponsor partners. Um, you know, you mentioned there's a lot of fear right now in terms of um, on the business side. Where are we at with this? Are we behind, you know, coming from the, the owner, the marketing Person, whatever, coo. You know, I see it here. I see it on all the commercials I read about in Wall Street Journal. Where are we? Kind of like cloud was maybe 12, 15 or so years ago. Um, and then there's a ton of fear on the. We don't have a policy set up yet. We don't have the guardrail set up yet. What happens if my data goes out there in the wrong spots? What am I, what. Who should I use? What the heck are we doing here? So I think you've got sort of, you've got sort of both sides of it. Ones that are like, look, I'm just going to sit back. I'm not getting pressure from above. And other ones are like, I got to do something to the point. And I was kind of blown away by this. We did a dinner in Atlanta and there was a mid market, um, mid market law firm there. And uh, their head of it, this was in December, said last week I just got $400,000 put into my budget for 2024 and it has to go toward AI. And I was like, wow. And he's like, wow is right. Like, that's nuts. I don't know what to do with it. And I was like, I call my vendors. Um, but I was like, that's, that's insane. You know, like, that's the kind of stuff that you're starting to see though, where people are like, the fear of being left behind. And then you have other CIOs that are sitting down and saying, hey, look, we're not going to be behind. Like, let's, let's pick something out that is that we think we can manageably move forward with, show a little bit of results and then let's go ahead and move ahead here. Um, you know, my own organization, um, we said, uh, we were told over a month ago we were going to have an AI policy in place. I have not seen it yet. Uh, I did a dinner on Tuesday night, uh, in New york. We had 14, um, IT leaders there. And I said, show of hands. Who's got a comprehensive AI policy? One hand went up. I said, okay, how about a non comprehensive one? But it's, it's, you know, it's, it's like in the work, nobody else had their hand up. So everybody was all over this guy and they said, can you sanitize that and send it to me like you. I'm like, well, why don't you use chat GPT to put one together? You know, it's like, so, yeah, I mean, I AI and automation. It's, you know, you got some folks like AI is nothing new. And I'm like, well no, but it's, it's now in the hands of someone like me. So it is kind of new. And you know, uh, you know, I'm, I'm toying around with it for setting up session descriptions and abstracts and things like that. Like, you know, uh, we, we've got another, uh, one of our CIOs, um, he's the CIO of the, the San Francisco um, District Attorney's office. And recently one of his, one of their attorneys used AI in a case and it was inaccurate and it wasn't good. So you know, you got to be really careful where you're using this stuff. And so I think there's, there's a lot of fear, um, and you know, a lot of interest, uh, but, but a lot of fear right now and kind of hoping, you know, you go first and I'll, I'll come in and I'll come in behind you and let me know mistakes you made. And I'm sure we're going to start seeing out in the community I, who's done this with AI and what can we, what can we share? Wow.

Speaker A: Well, there's a lot there to talk about and I know, I know you, you get to see such an interesting view of perspective. So there's a lot to dive in there. But I think that's reassuring to, to, to some leaders out there, like, oh, we're totally behind and, and you know, the reality is, you know, everybody's kind of behind and I, I think that's reassuring. Everyone has to sort of get, get to it. But uh, uh, it's uh, it's still a game of catch up for most especially mid market companies. Honestly, I really, really what it is so.

Speaker C: Well, I love to, I, I had, I had. Sorry to interrupt, but I had the, I had the opportunity to, to interview your CEO, Jan. Um, I think it was maybe six, eight months ago and we brought up AI and I said, I said tell me, you know, what you guys are doing. AI. And he's like look, it's, it's in our, it's. It's in our. I was asking him about the hype around it and he's like, he's like look, it's in our products. You know, we have it, but, but we're not running around screaming about it because it's there, it works. He's like, that's. Our position's not going to be AI. Like everyone Else's because it's almost like again I look at it with cloud, like everyone was just, you know, so, so over the top cloud. Yeah. Um, it was like exhaustive for the, for the CIOs.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's interesting. You mentioned that We've, we've had it. He and Jan probably mentioned that we had it. We built an AIML team, gosh like three years ago to build it into our product before the uh, latest generation of um, generative AI and the new generation of the large language models were out. And so we've been doing this for a while and kind of doing it behind the scenes. And so it's like, hey, we've been at this. But we recently, a few months ago, started using it internally, started to use our product to wire together different systems, bring the data together and then feed it into generative, uh, AI tools, feed it into the um, open AI APIs and do things like bring it together, essentially disparate centers of knowledge about our product. Bring it all together and use it as a tool for our internal team to answer questions it might be, use it in the back end when they're doing support internally, whatever it may be. And we, we see some really amazing stuff with it. It's awesome. And you look at this and you're like, well that really wasn't that hard to do. It took some skill and you had to have a kind of a pretty, you have to have to have a sharp technology focused skill set to wire the things together. But it was a lot of wiring. It wasn't like it was, it was coding based. And I look at that and like, wow. The opportunity for mid, for mid market companies is massive. But there's not a lot of people out there actually putting that together and talking to mid market companies saying like, okay, well what are your problems? Oh, and it's, it. This is ess, potentially another tool in the toolbox. But there's not enough practitioners yet, there's not enough journeymen, ah, out there to know how to apply. And I think that's, that's what we're seeing. We can, we help with some of the wiring but still need somebody to be in the field and figure out, okay, let's plug these two things. Let's plug these five things together and you're gonna get, you're gonna get a great uh, you know, insider, you're going to get great answers to your, your, your questions from your customers, whatever it may be. Um, so, uh, maybe before we move to Jordan's final question, because I Think we got to be aware, aware of time here a little bit. Adam, I want to ask you one, one final one for me and that's um, if I'm a mid market,

Speaker C: uh,

Speaker A: technology leader, I'm the CIO of $100 million company and I said, wow, this community sounds really cool. I want to be part of this. Um, how do they go about that? What do they need to do if

Speaker C: they go to masitnetwork.com? um, it's a very light. Excuse me, a very light fill out in terms of a registration. That'll come right into me. I'll take a look. Make sure you are who you say you are, you're at a mid market firm, um, you're not at a technology vendor and I will approve you uh, into that network. Uh, if you want to learn more about outside of that before just going to there. If you email me@adennisonechannelcompany.com I'm happy to have a dialogue around the network and anything we can do to help out mid, uh, market IT leaders.

Speaker B: That's. Thank you for uh, dropping that in and setting up the alu. Mark, that was lovely.

Speaker C: Thanks Mark.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, uh, Mark's pretty good at that. Um, so we're closing down at the end of time. Um, and I like to wrap these up because you guys have been pretty in the weeds with some very, um, technological and leadership oriented questions. And like I always say, Mark's probably sick of me saying this, but I like to make sure that people remember that our guests are not strictly technology leaders. They're not, um, you know, tech based robots. They're actually people outside of work. Um, and for people who might not m. For people who might not know you that well and would like to know you just a little bit better. Adam, outside of work, what are your passions, hobbies and interests? What makes you tick?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Um, and I'm probably going to change them, uh, in the next few years. Sadly. I, uh, I've got, I've got three kids, um, I've got a 17 year old, 15 year old, uh, and a 12 year old. They're all very active in sports. Um, and I'm, I've been coaching all three of them. I can't coach my 17 year old anymore. She's too old. Um, but I coach, uh, I coach my son in baseball, uh, competitively for a number of years. I, I now have him in high school so that those days are gone. Um, I've got, I've got one left that I can coach with though. My, my uh, my youngest is in sixth grade so I, I coach her basketball team. Um, but that's, that's spent an awful lot of my time over the last 10 years and I just you know, absolutely love it. It's a great, a great community here. Um, so after that I gotta, I guess figure out um, you know, take up golf or something like that to, to spend my times. But and I certainly I, I love watching sports. I went to Syracuse so I got to watch them play um, a horrible game last night and secure their spot not in the NCAA tournament, but uh, you know, so I'll spend a lot of time watching sports and um, you know, watching my kids play sports now and for the next, you know, two, two to three years I'll still be able to be a coach and then maybe I'll, maybe I'll stick around and do some coaching outside of them. Just uh, give me something to do once they're, once they're off in college. But that's ah, that's a big passion of mine.

Speaker B: That's fantastic. And I will say you are our second baseball coach on the podcast this week.

Speaker C: Awesome.

Speaker B: So thank you for being a great baseball coach. Um, with that in mind, clocking uh, in a minute early. Um, I just want to say Adam, thank you so much for being a fantastic uh, guest on this podcast, um, for talking so much about the importance of community, um, and evangelizing um, the mid size enterprise services at the channel company. I think you've done a absolutely fantastic job. Um, stick around for a sec. But uh, for those of you still listening, stick around. Uh, we'll have a new episode coming out in about a week. Bye everybody.

Speaker C: Thanks, thanks a lot. Really appreciate it. Sam.