How to Dominate Industries that are Rapidly Changing with Kevin Lancaster: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Light that spark fire nation. JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how to dominate industries that are rapidly changing. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Kevin Lancaster and to EO Fire Studios. Kevin is an award-winning tech entrepreneur who scaled and exited the fastest growing cybersecurity company in the IT channel. He recently launched channelprogram.com to centralize the 2 trillion IT channel network. and the value bombs today are reinvention is the key to success in your career.

0:38Use opportunities to help eliminate chaos in rapidly evolving industries and if you have an idea and passion for making a change, then believe in it and take action and owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kevin and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Franocity has helped hundreds of people leave unfulfilling jobs, invest in recession-resilient businesses, and create legacy income for their families through franchising.

1:23Get started today with Franocity's franchise funding guide packed with real-world strategies to launch your business without draining your savings visit franocity.com. That's F-R-A-N-O-C-I-T-Y.com. Kevin, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, thanks for having me and what's up Fire Nation? You know, that's a very thought-provoking question. And I think my answer would be, it's really never too late to reinvent yourself and succeed. Contrary to what folks like Gladwell might say, it doesn't necessarily take 10 ,000 hours to do it as long as you have drive, passion, and you're really willing or you're trying to solve a meaningful problem.

2:12So I think reinvention is the key to success in your career. I love that because it may take 10 ,000 hours to become a true master of something, but it can take as little as a weekend to become better than 99 % of the people in the world on a certain anything that you wanna focus on. And that's what we're talking about today, Foundation, is dominating industries that are rapidly changing because Kevin's been able to do this, as you heard in the introduction. So I wanna talk, Kevin, about common challenges. What are the common challenges that just seem to surface when industries like technology are just quickly scaling and then rapidly changing?

2:52The first thing you see is that industries that are scaling quickly, they become noisy, they become chaotic. You get tons of new market entrants, competition increases, competition for attention increases. They become highly fragmented, often subdivided into hundreds of micro marketplaces. I mean think about podcasting, right? Podcasting started to matriculate, became a thing, and then now there's millions of podcasts. And that creates friction, right? It creates friction in the sales process between the buyers and sellers, if we're talking about an industry. As everyone rushes, it furthers the chaos.

3:29And again, you see it happen across just about every major industry, from podcasting to automobiles, furniture, airlines, the internet. Innovation fuels growth, but when there's explosive growth, everybody wants in, thus chaos is born. Chaos is born, Fire Nation. And there's actually a great book that I love. Have you ever read the book Anti-Fragile, Kevin? I've not. I've not. such a fantastic book. The author's incredible as well. He's written some books like Black Swan and others. And he just talks about how people that actually grew up during times of change, during times of fragility, like maybe it was a civil war or a time of famine or whatever it might be, a depression.

4:09Those individuals, they have this anti-fragility about them where they can just take on the world. And that's some of the issues that I think we're seeing today with people that are being coddled their entire lives. And then they have their first major challenge as adults and they just wilt like a flower because they just can't take any type of challenge or any type of just hard knock that may come their way. So that's something to think about. And something as we're kind of continuing this conversation, you know, into change because change does bring opportunity, Kevin. So when industries are changing so rapidly, what opportunities surface?

4:46What are you seeing in your world? When you see these industries change, when you see any industry change, no matter what it is, if it's consumer or business B2B, we want some sense of normalcy. The buyer at the other end of the line wants sense of normalcy. We want choice, but we want it to be easy. You know, so we want to see these marketplaces consolidate, you know, but we don't want to see less competition. You know, everyone's looking for a home, a voice, a platform to lean on. That's why I think probably it's why your podcast is so popular, right? You've done that with this podcast, entrepreneurship and self-help.

5:27It's very noisy marketplaces, but you've eliminated a lot of that chaos. You've made it kind of a home, a safe place for people. So, you know, when this happens, you know, there is chaos, as we mentioned. That's why like these large platform sites like cars.com and Angie's List, you know, they make it easy. Right. And so, you know, one of the tricks is, you know, how to maximize these opportunities, but do it in a way that you eliminate friction and help everybody accelerate at the same time. Now, one thing that I want to move into next is friction, because friction can be dangerous. and at the same time, you can use it to your advantage when you know how to wield that weapon, that tool.

6:09So can you give us some examples of how you have tried to take friction out of different industries in your career? Let's get specific. I'd love a real specific example or two of how you've done this. Appreciate the question. So you made a career of trying to take a step back and look at different marketplaces and solve this problem. How do you take friction out of these emerging marketplaces? So early on, going back to the post.com bubble, started out in government contracting. So started working on building what I would consider a lighthouse government contract consulting firm. And the first thing I did is I looked at the marketplace, government contracting, and said we need to build a home, a front door.

6:51It's a very complicated, convoluted marketplace. And so I went out and bought sites like governmentcontract.com and gsaschedule.com. And they ended up becoming the front door of this, you know, multi, you know, hundreds of billions of dollar industry. And so this is the time when, again, you had the post dot com bubble in 2001, the global financial crisis of, you know, I guess it was mid 2000s up into 2012. And then, you know, along the way, we had wartime spending. So it was a marketplace that it's just insanely fragmented, insanely chaotic and a lot of friction. So it would create resources that would help emerging contractors really understand the market, figure out how to get in and sell, and at the same time help government agencies identify emerging vendors to solve their problems.

7:39And so that was pretty challenging. And then after that, I had this moment of, I guess, clarity in 2014 where we're doing this great work in helping companies get into industry. And really a lot of it was focused on technology. but it's got to be a way to solve even bigger problems. And back then, this is before you had all the salacious and data breaches like Dropbox and LinkedIn and what have you. But early on in 2014, I started thinking about how do we solve for this big issue called cybersecurity and focused on compromised data and credentials. And so in 2014, started this little prototype in early 2015, came out with this platform called Dark Web ID.

8:30And it was really designed to, again, solve that problem, solve the friction in cybersecurity. And so you launched this product in early 2015. Interestingly enough, in May, June of 2015, we were hired by OPM to help them with the data breach response. that they had suffered. It was a nation state that compromised OPM and had stolen data on 4.2 million individuals. And we provided the identity and credit monitoring in response to that breach. But so again, looking at that industry, cybersecurity, it's full of fragmentation, it's full of friction because cybersecurity is so convoluted, it's so mysterious.

9:15And so we said, if we can focus in on the credential, the email address and password, and show people that their clear text password is out there on the dark web. You know, maybe we can start changing behavior and maybe we can start to take the friction out of this whole industry of cybersecurity. And that's what we did. This platform went on to scale from, you know, zero partners to 2000. And ultimately when I exited after I sold it to a company called Kaseya, we were hovering around 5 ,000 partners. But it was all with the goal, this platform, the specific goal was to take the friction out of cybersecurity.

9:51And that's what it did. And I love this example of Fire Nation. I hope that you're listening and thinking, how can I apply what Kevin's talking about right now to my life, to my experiences, to my knowledge, to my areas of expertise? Like when you're walking around every day, keep your eyes, your ears open. You need to find what is the void in the marketplace? What is an underserved opportunity? What's something that's maybe being ignored? What's something where I can be literally the best solution to a real problem in this world? And we're going to be talking about the$2 trillion challenge and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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14:09What does that even mean? Entrepreneurs are either gluttons for punishment or I guess we're just all in a different breed to our own or what have you. Early on, as mentioned, I started looking at this government contracting space and a massive multi-billion dollar industry. How do we simplify that? And then cybersecurity, how do we make that simple? How do we change people's behavior by showing them their password and getting them to understand that they need to invest in security? And again, that's why that company scaled so fast. And so as I exited from Kaseya after they acquired my company and spent a couple of years there, I said, what is the next big challenge that's out there?

14:51I could have sat on the sidelines and enjoyed my mini retirement, but I was sitting on the sidelines thinking, what is next? And it hit me. It was like we've done so well with this company ID agent and this product Dark Web ID. How do we take what we did, the lessons learned from scaling that business and making things simple that way the industry would understand it? And how do we take that and how do we help other vendors and how do we help just the IT industry in general do the same thing? And so we jumped up this concept called channelprogram.com. In the channel, as you know, vendors have the opportunity to sell or technology vendors, organizations have the opportunity to sell either direct to their customer or through channel.

15:40And selling through channel, selling through intermediaries, IT resellers, IT service providers, it's roughly a$2,$2 trillion marketplace. And so if we could apply those same principles, right, how do you take the friction out? How do you eliminate noise and chaos? You know, we could have a meaningful impact on this massive industry. And so the whole idea behind Channel Program is take the 35 ,000-ish vendors that are out there, the IT software and hardware providers, the startups that probably most of them, you know, if they listen to your podcast and get inspired or motivated to keep moving forward.

16:15But how do we take them and get them to focus on taking the chaos, eliminating the friction, eliminating the noise in their messaging as they enter the marketplace? Because as everyone knows, technology is a very noisy, very crowded marketplace. Just about every cybersecurity company uses the ubiquitous hacker with the hoodie image. And so how do you differentiate yourself from that? And then on the other side, there's a million plus people that work in the IT channel. So how do you make it easy for them? It's kind of a two-sided marketplace. We're taking the friction out of both sides of the marketplace.

16:50So helping the IT service provider, the MSP, the value-added reseller identify the right technologies, tune out all the noise, and look for solutions that help them keep their customers safe, help them grow their business, become more efficient, more profitable. And so it's, you know, you start off with these big, hairy, audacious goals of eliminating chaos and eventually land on this is the way to do it. We can create a platform that makes it easy for both sides of the marketplace. The vendors that come in and make their story very simple and very understandable and relatable. And then on the other side, the buyer, the individuals that are looking for these types of technologies, you know, make their job of identifying vendors that much easier as well.

17:33And when you do that and you eliminate the friction and you democratize the channel and you hopefully scale the next big, big platform. You've been hearing a theme, Fire Nation, democratize the channel, eliminate the friction, reduce the fragmentation. So when you, Kevin, launched channelprogram.com, you used these big, audacious phrases that I just shared. Why? Why did you use these big audacious phrases? What does it actually mean? And give us some more details about channelprogram.com. When you start with a big concept like eliminating friction out of a$2.2 trillion marketplace, you have to go big to get people to recognize and understand really what you're all about.

18:22And really, it comes down to that's what we're trying to do, right? Right. What's interesting in in just about any industry, when you have established dominant vendors out there, they make it really, really hard for emerging vendors, emerging manufacturers, service providers to enter a marketplace. And so how can how to you know, the concept was how can we take you take a platform and break down those barriers and really democratize the channel and eliminate friction. right by coaching these vendors to you know take the friction out don't believe overly wordy and and you just get you know cut to the cut to the point cut to the chase right and so with this platform right we're we're leveling the playing field we're allowing emerging vendors to get in doesn't matter what size they are they're a a microsoft or the newest startup you know they'll all have the ability to get in and and you know play in this marketplace grow in this marketplace So we started out with this concept called channel pitch.

19:17And so, again, we're giving everybody an equal level playing field. The vendor gets seven minutes to pitch in front of hundreds, thousands of MSPs. The MSPs log in anonymously and they provide anonymous feedback to the vendors about their value proposition, whether they see if their product is going to reduce costs and it's going to make them more profitable, better secure their customers. and you know i mentioned they log in anonymously but then they also have the ability to engage if they want so it puts the control back into the it service providers hands versus going to a big industry trade show and then getting bombarded with calls after the show because everybody gets the list of all the attendees and so you know that we started with that concept of channel pitch and then we'll iterate on this the second element of the platform called channel explorer and it's really it's a it's a hybrid or amalgamation of a maybe think of it as a youtube meets linkedin where it's social we can create a purpose-built platform or industry a home for the millions of people that are looking for technologies and and the thousands of vendors that have it and so we'll iterate with channel explorer over the next uh you know three six nine months you know and hopefully we grow this this ecosystem and we take out that friction in this marketplace so kevin i want you to take this home with a bang.

20:39What is the one thing that you really want to make sure our listeners get from our entire conversation today? And I know you have a few amazing gifts for our listeners. So whatever call to action that may be, and then we'll say goodbye. We started off by talking about, you know, the concept of reinventing yourself, right? And, you know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs, which a lot of individuals in general, they, they struggle with, you know, what is my value proposition? What is my, what am I going to do in this world? How am I going to make an impact? You know, and that's a hard thing. A lot of people struggle with that.

21:13How do you create something meaningful and have a positive impact in the marketplace? I would just encourage anybody, you know, listening that if you got that kind of seed or that kernel of an idea and you really believe in that idea and You're really passionate about making change, right? You know, do yourself a service and start to, you know, start to see that through, right? Take the next step. Listen to this podcast is a phenomenal next step, right, in your journey. So it's never too late to reinvent yourself. And I think reinvention, you know, for the individual is really the key to success, right?

21:51It's the key to growth and unlocking potential. And so I would encourage your audience that you've got the seed of an idea. As long as you're truly passionate about it, go out there and take that next step and start changing the world for good. And what do you have for our listeners, call to actions, any gifts that they can have? Well, one, they can head over to – certainly head over to channelprogram.com slash fire. They can register for a free profile and start exerting their influence on this marketplace. Two, when they register, they've created a how to cut through the noise presentation. Very simple guide.

22:32Seven, eight steps of taking the friction out of a sales process. So it goes back to just coaching a lot of these vendors, a lot of these technology startups. They want to talk about the color of the button on their screen or how great their team is and all that stuff. It's like, no, cut to the noise. Tell the audience how you're going to help them make money, how you're going to have an impact, how you're going to better secure their customers. Focus on the outcomes. And that's what this guide will do. Help you focus on the outcomes. It's a real simple, you know, how to get started and eliminate the friction and the noise in your industry.

23:08Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with KL and JLD today. So keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com. Type Kevin in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today. Links to all that jazz. And one more time, Kevin, what is that URL for Fire Nation to go to? Channelprogram.com forward slash fire. Kevin, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation.

23:44Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Kevin and Fire Nation. successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. And we're talking step by step. So visit thefreedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.

24:25Franocity has helped hundreds of people leave unfulfilling jobs, invest in recession-resilient businesses, and create legacy income for their families through franchising. Get started today with Franocity's Franchise Funding Guide, packed with real-world strategies to launch your business without draining your savings, visit Franocity.com. That's F-R-A-N-O-C-I-T-Y.com.