Maril: 0:00

Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Cyber Queens. As always, we are your host, Maril, Erika, and Amber. I am Maril resident, Offensive expert, and Ethical hacker. We are joined by Erika. Yeah, it was. She was like, I heard you're starting this podcast. Like, I want to…. And she was talking to Erika actually, and Erika was like, oh, we have someone in Vegas, Maril's there. You should meet with Maril. I was like, yes, that would be great. And it took us like three days to hunt each other down. That con is extremely large. But yes, as Dani mentioned, she is the founder and CEO of Audience 1st. Dani frequently shares her insights from CISOs and other cyber professionals about better sales practices and better marketing through building authentic relationships with people in the cybersecurity industry. So, Dani herself, though, is a non-technical person with a successful cyber company. So, I want you to start off with telling us about you and what you do in your background and like how you get into cyber? Why did you say, I'm just going to start a cyber company today, or start working for a cyber company. How'd that happen?

Dani Woolf: Wow. That is…. I wasn't prepared for that question but let's break it down. Well, I've been in B2B marketing in the tech industry for over 13 years this June. And wow, I got into the security industry about five years ago. I was working in different verticals like big pharma, just general information technology, and it was just really boring for me. I didn't feel like I was doing anything meaningful. And then I found this really great company at the time that was looking for a marketing manager: 0:04

Guardicore. They were a micro segmentation company at the time. Now they're acquired. And I just felt like working in the security industry would be a lot more meaningful than any other industry because of the nature of the job, protecting people, protecting businesses, working on really smart technology. I got the job and I was really excited and I learned so much about the marketing role in security. I learned a lot about technology. I learned a lot about people, about communication, about business. And from there, just things took off. Like my career shifted dramatically. I was going through different roles at a couple other startups in security up until right after Black Hat, when I really burnt out. I burnt out because my goals were super aggressive, like unrealistic and resources were really low. Culture was a little bit hard for me to swallow, at the company and I was just really unhappy and burnt out and I felt like things just weren't going anywhere for me, and then I'll just, you know… are we allowed to swear on this podcast, by the way? She's going to be part of the cohort and she will. We're going to talk about that. Yeah, so it's a lot of fun. The most fun part about it is that I get to connect with people. I'm here in Israel right now. I'm going to be stateside soon. But the most fun part is I get to connect with a lot of really smart and really nice people, which was a stigma in and of itself, like I as a marketer, thought I wasn't smart enough because I wasn't technical and I shouldn't be talking to people like the sales engineer should talk to them and product should talk to them. And I was like, Nope, I'm just going to break that stigma. Yep. And oh my God, it was a breath of fresh air.

Erika: 0:08

So, as Dani knows, I've been on your CISO plus sales mashup series, and then I even joined one of your ‘WTF Did I just read’ sessions with you and Chris Roberts, and I'll say this, every time, the sales process is broken and it starts all the way from Wall Street and the VCs and it trickles down and the numbers that they set are…. for like somebody like me, my quota is magnified by like probably 5x. I really could probably have like a 500K quota, but I have to have like a 3 million dollar quota because they have to overestimate their targets. And even though they overestimate it, if they don't hit, they still make money at the higher level and I don't make money. So, it's really hard to be a seller in today's day and age, and with any industry because you're worried about pleasing the VCs, which I'm not hating on them but I get they want their money and your shareholders. I understand all of that but it's like, what just happened with the crash of the Silicon Valley bank? The CEO, like a week before the crash sold, I don't know if it was equity or stock, like $4 million. He offloaded it and then they crashed. And companies like the one that I just got laid off of, which is Sentinel One, I'm laid off. In under 60 days, They had business there. I don't know that it has anything to do with them terminating my role. But it's going to hit a lot of the companies in tech because we're worried about pleasing our VCs.

Maril: 0:10

So, speaking of, so Dani out of her exposure to the cyber industry and out of coming into this role and experiencing that world, experiencing a lot of that as even not someone who works necessarily----did you work directly in sales or were you in more of a marketing role? So, I took a lot of inspiration from Justin Welsh, who's a solopreneur. He's all about Solopreneurship. I knew I wanted to build my own life. I knew I wanted to spend time with my family. I knew I didn't want to burn out and I wanted to enjoy what I was doing. And so, I built my business around my life. I used evidence from people that I wanted to sell to and that I cared about and built with them essentially. I built my business with the people. And I'm at a like space right now, I'm at a time right now that I need to kind of pivot and I need to optimize the way I'm doing things in order to scale the business because I want to eventually bring people on. I want to hire people. I want to grow this into something that's really meaningful and hey it can't pay what Sentinel One’s paying but…

Erika: 0:14

I love that.

Dani Woolf: 0:16

Yeah. Okay. Again, great question. I led with hey, I really need feedback and I would love to learn from you and that was just like doors flew open. I didn't want to sell anything. And even when I was working in-house as a demand gen marketer, that was what I led with and it was legitimate. I was really genuinely curious to learn about their world and understand their problems from their lens of the world. And everybody was very specific. And I started understanding that the CISO role is just not one bucket. There are very different functions in different organizations, in different sizes, different maturity levels. I didn't know that before and I was like, wow, this is a big world. That's why I think the best advice that I got from my previous CMO back at Guardicore was like, he told me you could go so deep on your customer for one year. And that's what I did like, that was the best advice I got in my life. Just one year on CISO and now I'm shifting to other roles. You know, Maril, we spoke and now I'm shifting to a much more technical role. The lieutenant of the CISOs, the people, all the boots on the ground.

Erika: 0:18

Yeah. And sales management and above, they're like, you have to be at the C level. Well, that's true. You have to be at that level at some point but you really need to make friends with everybody above or below them. Exactly. People like Maril, people like Amber when she was a solution architect.

Amber: 0:20

I mean, I don't know, Dani, I mentioned the, like a Shameless Plug on the last episode we had about you. Right? Because I was like, I love Dani because I had been following Chris Roberts for so long and I was like, my biggest goal in this field is not to be publicly shamed on his shit list, right? Like, I was like this is the greatest person I have ever met. He's in my book and stuff and it's great. It took me like three. To draft and like a LinkedIn message that didn't sound creepy or annoying to be like, Hey, I…. a picture of you in my book, is that cool? Are you cool with that? I'm just going to delete this and start over tomorrow. But I was like, the last thing I want is to have a screenshot and then post it to LinkedIn like this, don't be this idiot. And then I remember like one of the posts that he had was with you and I was like, oh my God. There's hope. There's hope for all of us. And Chris, if you're listening, we all love you. You're just one big teddy bear. We get it. From afar before you know Chris, you're like, oh my God. Like I don't want to be this terrible person that's like doing all these things wrong and using marketing the wrong way, and annoying that bejesus out of everyone.

Maril: 0:22

And that's not even just seller to consumer. That's also like technician to internal customer as well. I was on an offsite recently with a lot of my cohorts and, they were like, oh, I gotta talk to this guy. I gotta talk to him about this. I gotta talk to him about this. I need this out of him. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm like, dude, you need to calm down. The social hour is not where we bombard people with our business needs and like our propositions and stuff. I was like the reason I'm so successful is because 90% of the business I do is not related to business. It's just getting to know each other and letting you know who I am and letting you know what I'm about and stuff. And then like the last five minutes at the end, I'll be like, by the way, do you want me to email you about that idea I had? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, great. Send you the details, out of your way. I like it, it's really just based on the fact that they know me and the fact that we have a good interpersonal relationship. That's what enables us to collaborate and do business together. I was like stop hammering people with this, even in real life, it's not cool. I think I can identify the problem in this last question. This is the last question I have and I think it's going to encompass what we just talked about. So, we work in an industry where interpersonal relationships are often overlooked in the name of things like features and reputation and like companies just coming in and saying, well, we're this company. You automatically want to work with us because we're just the best or we're just who we are. And I just want to say whether you're a company selling, whether you're a person selling, whether you're a personal brand, interpersonal, co-workers, whatever, and this is for everybody, What is the value of building genuine relationships? Why should we take the time to do it? And what is the value we can get out of them? I think the possibility is really endless but I'll open up the floor.

Dani Woolf: 0:26

Yeah. And then a lot of people say that B2C is based on buying, and is based on emotion. But B2B is buying like buyers based on emotion too. Everything. Yeah, and this stuff's expensive and this stuff can change things up, change lives and save jobs and save lives. So, I don't know, and maybe again, a little utopian, but whatever. So, value… there's no number on it. Long term, just relationships are great. People are awesome. I don't know why people aren't connecting more with buyers. I really don't understand it. It's beyond me. I don't know why marketers aren't doing more of that. I'm still trying to figure that out. I was trying to push more marketers out towards customers. That's my mission. Hopefully a little change.

Erika: 0:28

The value in relationships is like, so Chris Roberts, I've never sold anything to him as a CISO but…. Well, no, listen, this is the value though. He considers me within the cyber family because I've met him, we've done things together. I've been real with him. He was at an event that Teach Kids Tech was at and he was there for his organization. He came and joined our table and was telling all these stories about how he's been arrested for hacking and all of these things. And I'm a salesperson, so most people would say, you're wasting your time just being friends with him. Actually, I'm not because I've built a relationship with him. He recommends me to other people that I didn't even know about. It is that whole thing about your personal brand. What do they say about you when you're not in the room? And he's friendly to me and he would stand behind anything that he thought was worth it for me. You know what I mean? That's the value. I never sold him, and I probably won't in the near future. Maybe one day, Chris, I'm coming for you but…

Amber: 0:30

Speaking to what or going back to what you were speaking of Maril, when I first got into this industry because…. we know this by now, it's fine. I'm pretty awkward but still pretty talkative. So as an engineer I like to fit both roles. I was like, I don't like people either, but I can talk to them, And I remember thinking like, that's not a skill, that's just normal. everybody's like, no, it is not you guys. I have interviewed hundreds of people as a manager. I’m like oh, oh, oh, okay. This is the most awkward interaction I've ever had, even my podcast. But like I'm telling you, there are so many times where it's like such a… they were like, wow, you're the only analyst we have on the team that's really good at talking to people, or you seem to connect really well with people. And so, when we're losing our customers, like we're losing them, right? The Amber's there to be like, hey, how's it going guys? Come on in. That's such a skill to have. And then like, speaking to what Erika said, right, that goes back to what I always say on these things, which is, your network is everything, right? Your people that you have are on your team and to help you out when you're not there. And I just feel like the more that you're doing in your community and the more like a community network, whatever you want to call it, the more that you're actively engaged, the more people are like, you're like top of mind, right?

Erika: 0:32

I'll go first. First of all, never open up with pitching. Do not pitch people. Learn about them. My biggest tip is learn who your target is as a person, what they're interested in, what they support, like if they have charities, and don't go and stalk them at the places if they're involved in stuff. Learn about them, their business and how that person works within the business and how that person as a culture fit. Learn their goals. And so, you can learn the organization, like are they trying to get promoted? Are they trying to hire or grow or whatever. Learn the person that you're actually pitching, and not just the business or the person you're trying to build a relationship with. And show up when you don't even have any monetary gain from it. I went to a charity hockey game three hours away one day on a Sunday because I supported one of my customers who wasn't even buying anything for me at the time, but I was there because he invited me. He enjoyed my presence and it just shows him that I'm invested in him, not just his business.

Amber: 0:34

Yeah, I had a good friend of mine who was like, I think the reason that you got so much traction with your videos and like all this other stuff in the podcast is because people can see…. you have like a little bit of a quirky, and I'm like, be careful, careful with these words, right? He's like, you can be a little quirky and like sometimes you'll fumble and mess up. But people empathize with that. They relate to that and they make you approachable, right? So, at the end of the day, just always kind of be yourself in that. But I'm also, and I say this, I've said this like a hundred times this week. So, I'm sorry to anybody from my work who's watching this, but like, I focus on being a Venus fly trap, right? And so, sales managers hate when I say this. I'm just not like a hunter where I'm going after people and just like attacking them all the time. My goal and strategy is, I just put things out there of value for free. My videos, I try to make them funny. I try to make them interesting and quick and little tidbits of learning. Because at the end of the day I want to be seen as the trusted advisor, what I'm talking about because I've researched enough to talk to people about it. So, I think providing value and like letting them come to you that's another thing.

Maril: 0:36

All right, well, I guess we're saving the worst for last since y'all took all the good ones. Thank you for that. I thought you guys loved me. That's fine. I'm just going to go with to make yourself a human, kind of what Amber said. Be authentic, like, keep in mind that perfection, while it makes us look really great, it makes us feel really good, because you don't… like a lot of people are afraid to show up unless they've got everything dialed in and on point. But when I started, I just started showing up even if I was wrong. And if I was wrong, please tell me. I always say make your mess your message. Whoever it is you are, just be that person and people will accept you for who you are. Again, one of the first things I do is I reach out and I let people see me fail. I ask stupid questions. I let them teach me. I let them educate me. And if I am awkward that day, great. If I seem to have it all put together, that's probably something that's been rehearsed a dozen times. I do tell people I'm nervous for this meeting, can I rehearse this deck with you a few times?

Dani Woolf: 0:38

Yeah. This month is the podcast birthday, so yay. But, it's a great book. Great book. Very easy to read. Very quick read too.