Overview

In this episode of Culturally Sound, Chandler Cutler sits down with Allan Richards, Growth Manager at EasyDMARC, to unpack the real-world challenges of email authentication, MSP enablement, and protecting digital trust in a rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape.

Allan’s career spans nearly two decades in cybersecurity channel sales, from building MSP ecosystems at AppRiver to leading partner growth across North America at OpenText. Today, he helps MSPs and businesses operationalize DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to secure their domains, improve deliverability, and protect their brand reputation.

This conversation blends technical insight with practical leadership. Allan shares how he went from the car industry to cybersecurity, why MSPs should treat DMARC as non-negotiable, and how his philosophy of “finding a way to say yes” helps partners turn security into growth.

Guest Bio

Allan Richards is a seasoned cybersecurity channel sales expert with nearly twenty years of experience. He has a proven track record of driving partner growth and revenue, most recently as Channel Sales Manager at OpenText, where he oversaw the North American sales team and trained channel partners across its ecosystem.

Before OpenText, Allan spent more than a decade at AppRiver, playing a key role in developing and executing successful channel sales strategies that shaped one of the industry’s strongest MSP communities.

Now as Growth Manager at EasyDMARC, Allan leads a global team focused on helping managed service providers deliver best-in-class email authentication, DMARC compliance, and deliverability solutions that protect businesses from phishing, spoofing, and brand impersonation.

Episode Breakdown

From Cars to Cyber (00:00 – 03:25)

How Allan’s early career in the automotive industry led to a head-turning leap into email security and channel sales.

The DMARC Wake-Up Call (03:25 – 08:43)

Demystifying DMARC, SPF, and DKIM — and why they’re essential for every business, not just enterprises.

Protecting the Modern Inbox (08:43 – 16:26)

Real-world examples of business email compromise and how unmanaged domains create hidden vulnerabilities.

The MSP Advantage (16:26 – 30:48)

Why MSPs should view DMARC as part of a layered cybersecurity stack — DNS, TLS, filtering, and continuous monitoring.

From None to Reject (30:48 – 35:06)

The right way to move from “none” to “reject” without breaking your email systems — and how EasyDMARC supports that journey.

Leading with ‘Yes’ (36:12 – 45:27)

Allan’s leadership philosophy, daily routines across time zones, and how empathy builds stronger global teams.

Human Side of Cybersecurity (48:37 – 56:10)

Why listening, respect, and emotional awareness matter just as much as technical skill in protecting digital trust.

Final Takeaway (56:10 – 56:44)

“Email is the bloodstream of your business. Protect it, and you protect your reputation.”

Summary

Allan Richards bridges the gap between cybersecurity strategy and human connection. His approach to DMARC and channel growth reframes email security as a business enabler, not a burden — empowering MSPs to safeguard clients, build trust, and grow revenue through reliability and clarity.

Relevant Links

🔗 Learn more about EasyDMARC – easydmarc.com

🔗 Listen to more episodes of Culturally Sound – corethos.com/culturally-sound

Hey there and welcome back to Culturally Sound. I'm here sitting with Alan Richards, the growth manager at Ezdmarc.

Alan, tell us about your journey, where you've been, how you got there and what's exciting for you.

Yeah, it's been quite a ride. Chandler, to be quite honest with you, earlier, my working career probably 20, 30 years.

20, 20 years ago, just say 22 years ago, I started in the car industry, believe it or not. I started, yeah, I've had some experience in the automobile industry. I was an F and I manager for a while.

So I did all the, all the stuff that you, everybody hates doing, they go into the car dealership. But I learned a lot, right, and wound up, believe it or not, getting headhunted by a guy that I'd leased a car to.

And they'd started a company here in Florida and it was an email security company. He was like, hey, I like what you do. If you ever want to change, then let me know.

And that was my initiation into cybersecurity. We moved very quickly into Host Exchange, very quickly into Office365, built a team, built a company.

I was very involved with building out the MSP channel there with appriver. Eventually we were acquired by another company called Zix and rode that through through Covid.

And we were acquired by another company, much, much larger company called OpenText and got a little big for me. You know, they had 25,000 employees, but it was a good ride.

It was, you know, I was there for 18 years, which is really unheard of in the, in the technology industry for somebody to be. It'll at one job for 18 years. But then I left last year and came over here to work with EasyDmark.

I wanted to get back into that space where I really was at a spot where a company was really responsive to MSPs and listening to MSPs and I saw an opportunity to grow out a growth team from the ground up to be really responsive, high touch, high tech to MSPs and cybersecurity. And that's really what we're doing right now. And it's, it's, I love what we're doing because you know, this DMARC space that we're in is.

It's sort of a niche space. It's sort of a new space.

And a lot of people still, even though, you know, DMARC has been a big conversation piece over the past couple of years, a lot of people still aren't sure about it. You know, they're not sure if they have to have it. Do they need, you know, can they manage it on their own?

You know, so it's really an education at this point.

Yeah. So let's, let's talk through that a little bit.

Just for those that don't know MSP Managed Service Providers, DMARC is an email authentication module that uses dkim, another authentication module, and SPF to ensure and authenticate emails that go between email servers. Is that a reasonable explanation of it? Is there anything you'd like to add?

No, I think it's a great explanation.

You know, and I think a lot of, I think a lot of it really is for people to understand that obviously all businesses out there, your email is your lifeline. And as a company, your reputation with your business is crucial to your success.

Right.

And there are companies out there, there are, you know, mal actors, bad actors out there that really want to take businesses down.

Right.

And so a couple years ago, DMARC has been around, the actual protocol has been around for a while.

And if people don't really understand what DMARC does, basically what it does, it's an overarching email authentication that looks at your SPF records and your DKIM records.

And the whole, the whole purpose of it, Chandler, is for recipients to have surety that when they get an email from a sender, that it is actually coming from that sender, that it's not coming from a mal actor that has hijacked a domain similar to yours or one of your other domains that you're not using. So what it does is it looks like the SPF records and it says, okay, yes, your SPF records are aligned. So this comes from a legitimate source.

And then the DKIM records, or public and private email key that basically says, okay, the, the body of the email has not been tampered with.

Right? So, Right.

A lot of people related to, like you go into a club, a nightclub at night, right? And the door guy checks your invitation, says, okay, yeah, you have an invitation so you can come in.

But then he also says, oh, you're dressed a little weird, you need to go back and change your clothes.

Right?

That's sort of what DMARC does.

But it tells the recipient, okay, if the email does not check with spf or dkim, it either needs to go to quarantine or reject, which means you never, the recipient never sees it.

And what Google and Microsoft have done over the past couple years, if they said, look, our standard now is that it has to be in reject status, which is well and good.

But what a lot of people don't understand is it's not as a business, it's not just your primary domain that has to be authenticated because as a business, you're doing business with a lot of third party apps.

You're doing businesses with, you're using CRMs, you're using billing, you're using marketing, you're using, you know, whatever that sends email out through your domain. Each one of those sending sources has to be authenticated with dmarc. It's not just your domain.

And you know, I think a lot of people's eyes might be rolling in their heads or wondering what we're talking about. And I think, you know, there's such a knowledge gap between what an email is and all of the components that go into sending one safely.

Yeah, I've worked with countless clients that said, well, you know, I don't have any problems with this.

And you know, some, some consultants are saying, well, you only need a DMARC record if, if you're, if you're sending to, you know, 5,000 emails a day. And it's, you know, that's, that's not, that's not really true.

When, you know, I, I worked with a travel company who had a $60,000 bill sent on and, and confirmed by the CEO of the company, the CEO of the company never sent that email to accounting to approve that bill. And it almost got paid. Yeah. So, you know, it's not just about broadcast sends or email newsletter sends, like high, high, high volume email sends.

That's, I mean, that's another reason to have it.

But the spoofing and the phishing and the AI element and how quickly they can, they can knock on the door and rotate codes is just, and passwords are, you know, it's, it's, it's a much longer conversation.

But the point here is, doesn't matter how big your company is, you need these three records on your, on your, on your set in place to support your email sends, to make sure that those that are receiving them are accurate and properly received. So what, what, what's your, what's your first step? What's your, what's your entry?

You know, when you're, when you're first working with a new client, or a new msp.

Where do you direct them or point them to look first for, to make sure that we're doing things properly and responsibly and you know, what can our listeners do? Sort of out the gate to make sure that they're aligned and if they're not, they're able to reach out for some advice.

Yeah, so I mean, that's a great question.

And you know, one of the things that I would say about DMARC protocol is it's just what you've got to realize is that your cyber security and your email security is a multi layered approach, right? Because you have to protect different, there's different services that you have to have for different things.

Like your email security filters out what's coming in through your email. Then you have your DNS protection, which really protects where you're connecting to on the Internet.

You know, the DMARC protocol and your DMARC sending is really more, it is down at the DNS level. And I worked with one of my previous co workers and they said everything is DNS, right? Everything. Because DNS really is the core to everything.

When you're looking at. This is a DNS setting at the very basic of everything.

What we do, one of the tools that we provide is on the Easydmarc.com website, there's a domain scanner. You can actually go in and you can just plug your domain in and it's going to give you a score and it'll tell you where you rank, right?

What is the, what is the score that you're, that you're looking at? How prepared are you for this? Because you know, what a lot of people don't understand is that if there is.

Just to give you an example of what you're talking about, Chandler, if you get an, if a client gets an email in or business gets an email in and inadvertently clicks on a link, right, There's a lot of thing. And they may not see anything that happens, right? But here's, here's what's a business, what we call business email compromise attack, right?

A business clicks on a link, they may not know it, they may know it, nothing happens. But what's going on in the background. What they don't see, right, is these black hats, the bad guys are monitoring your email.

They've gained access, they've gotten your password and now they're monitoring all of your in and out emails and they're looking for something that is financial related, right? Since they have your email password now, when they see an email that comes in that's financially related and they know who to contact.

Then they can get into your email and they can send that email that you were talking about that says, hey, I need you to send this money here. And it looks completely legit.

Yep.

Right?

It looks completely legit.

Right.

And that's where the DMARC and the authentication, the SPF and the DKIM records come into play to help protect those business email compromise attacks. But you've got to know where you stand first.

Right.

You've got to, we have on the, on the Corythos website, we've, we've partnered with Easy DMARC to build that domain scanner into our email delivery management page.

So you can, you can head over there, run your, your URL or your domain through that scanner and it'll give you back a score and then we can talk about what that score looks like.

Yeah, I mean the other thing is, is that, I mean you guys have the ability to MSP right, with your clients and a lot of, a lot of clients don't understand this. There's ways that you can protect the domains that you don't use as your primary domain.

Right.

Because most businesses have one domain that they usually primarily use, but what they've done is they've bought these other domains that are just sort of sitting there.

Right?

Yep.

For whatever reason or the 40. Right. Those, those domains need to be protected as well.

Yep.

And a lot of my clients, their, their host domain for their website is different from their emailing domain for security reasons and for other reasons. And clients don't know that they use this alternate domain for their, for as their email server, their mail server.

And so they don't protect their host domain.

And the bad actors that the black hats are emailing from the host domain because it's unprotected and immediately recognized because it's brand related and they're following the request and the details that come across in those, in those emails, it's, it's wild. The, the creativity behind what they're, what they're trying to do. So super interesting.

And absolutely anyone that has any questions about this, please. Links will be in the show notes and we can definitely jump into that conversation.

What do you see as the future, the evolution of not only dmarc, are there other protocols, are there other strategies, are there other solutions that you're excited about seeing come to market? What does that look like for you, Alan?

Well, yeah, I mean, I think that when we're looking at things that are come to market, I think that what we're going to wind up seeing is, is I think that eventually we're going to see if we could see anything tighter.

Right?

I think Google and Microsoft are going to tighten these screws down even more because that their. It is their esp right? Their servers, their clients, they're responsible for a certain portion of this.

Right?

For protection. So I think you're going to see that and I think you're going to hear more talk about it. But what we're.

The overall thing that I think that, that I'm excited about with Ezdmarc is that we're quickly moving into what is more of a total email deliverability type of a. Of a platform.

Right?

Okay.

Because there's so many people that think that. And not to say that all MSPs are like this, but there's even, even MSPs are like they were just sending email out, right?

And MSPs are having, the managed service providers are having to quickly expand their knowledge base into email deliverability, right? Not just sending emails out. And they have to use that for their clients.

Because I know you've probably never heard of anything like this, Chandler, but a managed service provider who has a client and they hire a marketing director, this marketing director is excited or this person's coming and said, we need to implement this new tool.

And all of a sudden they implement this new tool, but they don't think about contacting their MSP to see how that's going to fit in with their total infrastructure, how that is going to fit in with cybersecurity. And that's one of the things that the Ezdmarc product does, is once you get to that reject status, it's going to monitor all of your sending sources.

So, you know, Chandler, you can take care of your clients and you can be notified if there's an SPF record that changes or dkim record that changes or something that is out of line, because those things do change. SPF records change, DKIM records change. And how are you, how is your client going to know that?

How are they going to know that all of a sudden they're sending out invoices that are not getting PA or they're sending out marketing efforts that are going flat because a record has changed. But more than that, DMARC protocol is really just the beginning. It's just the start on email deliverability, right?

So when you, when people are in clients or sending out emails, you know, and they're using for marketing, whatever, they've got to make sure that those emails are landing in the boxes where they're supposed to land.

That's right.

So you know, we've come out with this easy sender protocol or that's not a protocol but it's a platform that's going to give you total visibility into all the emails that you have. You can actually go in and load some email addresses in there and see as an inbox placement tool, see where it would land.

You know, it's one of the first things that we do with our clients is run through, run that for a week or two, learn all of their sending sources, confirm all of their sending sources and anything that's an outlier or we don't understand, we do a deeper dive because it's shocking.

And nine times out of 10 there's one or two sending profiles that they didn't even realize they were using because like you said, someone from the marketing team added in a tool and now it's, they've, they added in the domain to send from it and because they didn't have anything that was monitoring and you know, their, their DMARC was set to none. There' there's no restrictions and you know, it was sending the emails out, they didn't even know that that tool was using it.

So now that creates a portal for bad actors to use that mechanism to send out emails with the same email domain that you use daily to sort of request money and get paid. And in the digital economy that's such a core component. So it's definitely something you want to, you know, sort of first steps.

Definitely something you want to, you want to look at.

Yeah. And there's other things that the Easy center platform is going to be able to do as well.

So it's going to be able to look at your text to image ratio.

Right.

So be able to determine that if you upload an email, you know, how, what's the probability of this? You know, what are your links, what are your click through rates, what are your open rates?

You know, so it really helps to make sure that the emails are getting to the, to the intended recipients. You know, you know, as a business owner you're spending a lot of money on these, on these tools, right.

And you're relying on, on the email chain, right. To get them where they, where they need to go.

And you know, a lot of people don't understand Chandler and it's still the case they think that just because they send the email, they send an email from their inbox that that email is secure.

Right.

And they don't understand what most people don't understand about email because they, it's not something they can visualize. You may as well take your a postcard and write all of your company information on it and go drop it in the mailbox, right?

Yeah.

Because people don't understand all the hops that email has and what is open. It's open, it's not, it's not secure.

So good moment to sort of share, you know, quick high level overview. What's, what's, how does, what does that path look like just for the audience listening, for those that, that don't understand.

I draft an email in Outlook and I click Send. My expectation is that it just populates in your inbox a couple seconds later.

But there's actually, you know, quite a few steps between when I click Send and you click on that, you know that, that little link that is in your inbox that has a quick preview of the, of the message. Are you able to sort of just quickly.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, real quickly. I mean it's there. This is maybe getting into the weeds too much and people's toenails may start to curl when we start go down this road a little bit.

But I mean behind every domain that people see when they're emailing Core Ethos Comm, there's an IP address behind that.

Right.

So you could just very easily go to the address, the IP address and type that into the web bar and you wind up at the Core Ethos address.

Right.

So everything has IP addresses. So Outlook is just a client that sits on your desktop.

It is not, it's just something that translates the email from the Microsoft server to, for you to be able to interact with it and send, receive emails. That's all Outlook is.

So when you send an email, when you draft an email into Outlook and you click the send button, it goes out from your365 account or your Google account, it goes out through their servers.

Right.

And the, the server says, okay, I'm looking for this IP address.

Right.

This is where I need to go. My destination is here. And it does not go straight to the destination.

Right.

It goes out and it may, it may make 10 or 12 stops all over the Internet through different servers. Yeah, right, Yep.

And if any, if at any point any of those servers have been compromised or there's bots in there that can see that they can hijack that email.

Right.

Once it gets to that server address, the core Ethos IP address and then it looks for the Chandler Cutler at, and then it's delivered to that mailbox.

Right.

But it does not go straight for me to you.

Right, right.

So part of that is where, you know, like TLS encryption comes into play.

Right.

Because if I'm sending you an email and it's TLS encrypted, that's the TLS is, is like a security key that's on the front of the mailboxes.

And if I email you and I send it under TLS encryption, it' to go to your server and it's going to make a handshake, it's going to say, oh yeah, I recognize that encryption. You can come on in.

Right.

And that's, it's not fully encrypted.

Right.

Like it's not for compliance encrypted.

Right.

But the majority of a lot of the emails now are coming out TLS encrypted.

And if you really want to enforce something with EasyDmarc, you can enforce the TLS encryption, which means that as a business, I'm not going to receive any email unless it's TLS encrypted.

And that's going to sort of, that's another layer of security that you can have to make sure that the sender is sending out with TLS encryption and they're just not some bot out there sending stuff out of a, out of an unprotected mailbox.

Yeah. And that's a process and a protocol that we make sure is in effect for all of our clients. It's just, it's, it's one more step.

It's a little bit more secure. It's, it's a little bit more awareness. It's just makes a little bit harder to interrupt. Right.

So definitely, definitely something that we build out and make sure is, is in place for, for all of our clients.

And again, if any of that is, is interesting or you have any questions, by all means, we'll, we'll have some links in the show notes and to, for some information as well as.

Where.

Where you, you can get in touch and get some more information about what that looks like. So from a next steps perspective, Microsoft, Google, they're going to clamp down a little bit more. They're going to make it a little bit more secure.

Spam rates.

Do you have any, any perspective or any thoughts on the amount of garbage that lands in everyone's inbox these days and any, any thoughts on how that's going to change or if anything' done about it? What are your, what are your thoughts on that?

You know, I think there's really, there's only so much that you can control about what people are sending out. The only thing that you can do is control what you're receiving, right?

You know, and so you've got your email protection, which is hopefully, right, if you have a good quality email protection. And I'm definitely not going to drop any names out there.

You can drop some names, but I'm not going to drop any names, right, but they should be searching for, for, you know, links in the email and testing all the links. They should be that are embedded in the email.

They should be looking at the, these addresses to make sure that they, that their phishing and malware is not in there. But inevitably there's something that's gonna get through, right?

That's why on an internal basis you also have to have something that, that checks every link that you like, a DNS checker that checks every link that comes into the, into the company. That's one of those layers that we were talking about.

But the other thing that, for example, like with ezdmarc, one of the things that we have is a lot of people don't understand or they don't know that when DMARC is implemented, right, and that DMARC protocol is set in place, there's a tag in there, it's called a RUA tag in your DNS setting and it basically generates a report of all of your compliant emails, all of your non compliant emails and also your threats, right? But the problem is that report that shot back from your DNS provider is all in XML files.

So I mean, and I've heard of MSPs, like I'm just going to do this by myself, I can just do DMARC management by yourself. And then one thing I say is, are you an expert in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics?

Because that's really, if you're not, you're not going to be able to parse those XML reports, right? So with, with the Ezdmarc platform, we take those reports, we parse them out into aggregate reporting.

So you can actually see where your emails are, where they have succeeded, where they're failing. And you can also see the threats.

So you can see the actual threats that have been made against your domain and the domains that you have that you necessarily aren't using. That's a huge plus because it's a verification that yes, this is working, this is doing what it's supposed to be doing.

Even though you don't see it running, it's running in the background, just that.

Added extra layer of security and information. So that your IT team can go to work on cleaning things up and just making sure that things are a little bit more secure.

So your role, what does your day look like at Ezdmarc with your team and sort of with growth strategies around EasyDmarc?

Yeah, I mean, so growth strategies are really important because I think that when we're looking at the DMARC space, the managed DMARC space is growing, right? There's a lot of companies out there that are popping up for, for managed DMARC services.

And we, what we really try to do and is we understand that MSPs, they need help through this journey, right?

Because one of the things that you can't do is you can't just go in and we always say DMARC is a journey, it's not a destination because you can't just go in and just flip dmarc, put all your records in and just go to Reject and like, oh, I'm DMARC compliant now, I'm DMARC enforced, right? Because and everything's going to start, you're not going to get any email. And I've seen that before, right?

I've seen it where companies have come in and say, hey, I need help. Because, and we look at it like, oh, you're on reject. But none of your, none of your sending sources are set up, right?

So we walk you through that process and every MSP sort of like you that comes on board, they're dedicated to growth manager. And that's my team, right?

And our team is to make sure that we understand from a one on one perspective with mst, what is your growth strategy, right? How do you want to grow your business?

Because we see this not necessarily as a selling of DMARC licenses or DMARC users, but how can we help take this platform and help you as an msp, become a better msp. How can we help you to understand. So we have training sessions along through, along through the year as well to help enlarge your knowledge.

You're in your MSP practice, you know, but we want to make sure that you have a point of contact, right? I have four people on my sales team right now, my growth manager team.

The msps can reach out to them at any point via email and say, hey look, you know, or phone say, hey look, I need some help with this. What's going here? We'll set meetings for you, we'll walk you through.

We have a crack technical team that just, is really phenomenal, that just walks you through and get online with you if you're having any difficulties.

Because from the time that you, you start the DMARC process to the time that you're on a, like a P reject status, which we call P reject, you know, you could be looking at six, eight weeks, right, Depending on how many sending sources you have. Because once you get the, once you set that initial DMARC record in place in your DNS, we're going to pick up all your sending sources.

And that's where the msps like you come into play, because you can go into platform and you can see all of their sending sources. You can ask them, say, hey, Mr. Customer, are you really using this? This is something. Are you using all these sources?

All right, we need to get these records set and you can get them set up and then you monitor them, right? Once you're monitoring them and you put it into quarantine status. So there's three statuses of dmarc.

You've got the none, which basically does nothing at all.

You may as well not have DMARC set up or you can have quarantine, which means that if the SPF or DKIM are not in alignment, then that email goes to the recipient's quarantine. Because remember, DMARC is outbound. It tells the recipient what to do with the email if it doesn't align.

So quarantine, it goes into the recipient spam box and then you have reject, which means that if the SPF or the DKIM do not align, then that email is never received by the recipient, is rejected.

And how do you work with your, your growth team to partner with your MSPs and, and what's, what's the, the most exciting or most interesting aspect or, or most challenging aspect?

You know, what, what's, what's that, that barrier, that wall that you continue to come up against that, that has your team scratching their heads, maybe that's more interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I think when we're talking with MSPs, a lot of times, you know, MSPs and for the by and large, they love technical stuff, right? They love fixing people's problems. That's what they want to do when it comes to sales. And how do they sell? Yeah, they need some help, right?

They need some help.

Because what they'll do, a lot of times MSPs will go into their clients and they're going to say, okay, well, these are the services, you know, I have. What do you want? Right, right, right. And you know, if you're dealing with A, an attorney or a real estate, they are an attorney.

They don't know what they want, they don't know what they need, right? So it's up to you as an MSP to go in.

And one of the most just, it just makes me so happy is when I see an MSP and I talk to them, they're like, hey, look, I found this out a long time ago. All my clients, when they come on board with me, they get the same cyber security stack across the board. They don't have an option, right?

Because at the end of the day, if something gets through on the client side and they get hijacked or they get something breaks through, that attorney or dentist or tax, whatever, they're coming back to their IT person, right? And they're going to say, why do, how did you let this happen? You know, why did this come through?

So it's up to the MSP to really look at that business and say, okay, look Mr. Customer, this is what you need. This is my cybersecurity stack.

And they don't necessarily, and you people can disagree with me, but they don't necessarily need to line item everything out because what winds up happening is the, the client's going to go through and they're going to say, oh, what's this DMARC thing? It's an extra $20 a month. I don't need that.

Right?

I don't need this. And that's not the way. The clients don't know. MSPs are the experts, they need to be the ones protecting their clients.

And so what we tell people what we've seen more and more MSPs doing with the DMARC solution is they're just wrapping it into their cybersecurity solution, right? When they get a new client on board. DMARC is part of what they have because it is email authentication.

It's required by Google, it's required by Microsoft. There's no question it's in there. We're going to monitor it. Case done, right?

The other question is, is how do I do it with clients that are already under contract for a year, right? And I want to implement dmarc.

And I've heard MSP say, well, I can't implement this for six months because their, their contract doesn't end until the first of the year. And what we've had real good success with, with the, with the msps is just saying, look, you go to your client, say, Mr. Mr.

Client, there's been some upgrades in email protocol. We need to make sure that your emails are getting where they need to be. We need to implement a one time fee of $200 or whatever.

Whatever, Right, sure.

We need to get this implemented and they implement on a one time fee and then when their contract comes around they can, they can, you know, they can work it into the next contract building and then, but that's a way that you can go in and you can just do it immediate or do an immediate quick fix on it and go from there. But this is a service that msps are providing, right? They are providing the service. It is a revenue generation.

It is another way to help MSPs reach their goals. In addition to, I mean you've done it, you just said it, right? You have the domain scanner on your website, right.

We also look at this as a lead generation tool for msps.

You may not make a lot of money off of a DMARC engagement, but what it does is it gives you another point of access to market all of your other security services.

For sure, sure. Yeah. And I, I think that's, that's sort of the, the crux of the solutions is diversification. Service provision. Right.

And I think it's, it's now more important than ever to have a bit of, a bit of a diversified strategy and how you approach and, and you know, if you don't having solutions in hand such as Easy DMARC or you know, any other platform where you can lean on and get educated or find partners to work in that space. From an MSP perspective, but from a client perspective, being curious about who's providing the services and what's included in there.

Because having a line item or just confirming that DMARC is wrapped up in that solution is critical for customers. So now from a team perspective, being the growth manager for easydmarkey, you have a four person team.

Now.

How do you communicate with your team and support your team in what they do? They're going in, they're having conversations with MSPs.

What kind of feedback are you getting back from MSPs and the challenges that they're experiencing? And how do you navigate with your team or collaborate or co create with your team to bring those solutions back to the msps that you're working with?

Well, one of the things I think is important is I've told my team and I tell them all the time I was like, I want to be on these calls with these MSPs, right. From a management standpoint, it's not just enough for me to get reports back. I want to have that contact with the MSPs, right?

And there's a lot of times with MSPs, they, they work with their account manager, their growth manager, not necessarily with us, but just with any company. And you know, sometimes they feel like they need to have another connection.

Right?

They need to have another person that they can. If something goes, if something. I'm from the south, so like if something starts crawfish and you ever seen, you ever heard that term before?

If something starts crawfishing, certain, you know, crawfish walk sideways and they, but if something starts going off track, they need to be able to know that they've got somebody in their corner.

Right?

So. And I want to hear that. I want to hear the MSP's concerns. And so it's more of a collaborative effort between myself and the growth manager.

You know, what can we do? What can we do on this?

Right?

And what we're, our goal is how can we, number one, how can we find a way to say yes to the MSP and how can we make them a better MSP and how can we help them grow?

Right.

Love that.

And, and that that's really what we are. And I guess on a, from a more of a negative, I guess it's, and I don't like to be negative side point, but it's.

MSPs are like, I'm too busy for DMARC. I've got much more things going on.

Right.

It's such a small part of what we do.

And it is, it is, you know, granted it is smaller than some of the other network operations that you have going on, but sometimes some of those very small things can make such a big difference in the client's reputation.

I mean, if you think about clients out there and you look at the average amount that they are taken for in, in a, like a fishing or malware attack, it would sink any business out there. It would sink any small business out there.

If they're, you know, they're hit for, you know, a ransomware for, you know, $80,000, you know, then in regulatory fees and everything. I mean, it's just, it's insane.

Yeah, it gets, it gets steep quick. What, what areas, is, what area fills your, your, your cup the most when you're able to connect with those MSPS solutions.

Is there, is there anything that.

Really.

Gets you excited or, you know, you get off that call and, and you just, it really, you know, says that you're doing good work?

Yeah. I mean, I like when I'm talking to an MSP and I'M taking him through.

And like one of the things that we've, that we've done, and you've seen it with that domain scanner, we give them that risk assessment tool, right?

And when people, when an MSP can take that risk assessment report that's drawn out in third grade language, and I've heard it over and over again, where MSPs have run it to their client. Because when they're looking to grow their business, right. What avenues do MSPs have for clients?

Right.

They go to their leads, they go to their elite and they're say, hey, I'm an msp, I like your business, I'm better than this other msp.

Right, sure, sure.

But when you can go to a client and you can actually lay on their desk and you can show them black and white where they are, where there actually is an issue for them, and you're pointing out a danger point for them in their business and you can we help them with that and tell that client we have a solution for this. Mr. Customer, your DNS records are in danger of being hijacked. We can help you with this.

That, that just really, that for the business community, for the msp, for us to be able to empower them to be able to do that, to grow their business, that, that's, to me, that's incredible.

That's excellent. That's excellent. And I absolutely agree.

You know, and anytime you encrypt them with, with information that has tangible results, it's a critical component of getting through that door and having that conversation. If, if you were to, to, you know, turn this conversation a little bit more on, on, on yourself.

Alan, if you were to describe yourself in three words, what, what three words do you think you'd use?

You know, I think I would use optimistic, brilliant, you know, always learning.

Right.

In a problem solver, I think I would, I would, I would probably do those.

Yep.

You know, I've been in the industry for a long time and you probably see a little gray over here on the side. Yeah, right.

But you know, what I've come to realize is that when you, when you're in this business, there's a lot of people that get to a point and they're just like, screw it, you know, I want to go in, I'm going to punch the card, right. I'm just going to do the minimum. But, but there's a lot of people.

And what I realize is that there's people out there, MSPs out there that are reliant on us. They're reliant on our team to help get them answers because we understand that each MSP out there, their clients are reliant on them.

Right.

And when you're talking about small businesses and protecting small businesses, these people, these small businesses have invested their lives into their business.

Right?

That is their blood, sweat and tears in there. It is their business reputation, it is their income.

These msp, these smaller clients also they have clients that the employees that are dependent on them. If they get hit by something, there's a whole chain of effects that go through.

Right.

How can we help make them more protective?

Absolutely agree. I mean, blood, sweat and tears, sometimes in the same day for sure.

Yeah.

What do you, do you, do you lead your team with a guiding quote or do you have a mantra that sort of speaks into what guides you in your leadership of your team?

Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to, it goes back to really find a way to say yes.

Right.

Love that.

Find a way to say yes. Because every day we talk to MSPs and they may say, well, no, I can't do this. Right.

And I've taught my team, go back and ask more questions, ask more questions, get more information. Because we don't. And this is not just a sales thing to, to get a sale, but you, you don't take no.

Right.

And that's something that I think MSPs can learn too from.

This whole thing is when, when, when they're in there with a client and the client says, no, I don't need this DNA, this DMARC thing, I don't, I don't need this. Mr. Scott, why don't you think you need this? Tell me, tell me more about your thought processes.

Draw people into conversations, draw MSPs into conversations.

Right?

We're not in there just to sell a license. We're there to build a relationship. We're in there to find out how their businesses work, what is their mindset, what are their chall.

There might be a solution. If we can get in there and find out what an MSP's challenge is, we might have a solution for it that's not demark related.

Right, Right.

But we may be able to point them to another solution. And maybe that solution fix, fixes a much bigger problem for them.

And I think, you know, building that relationship and understanding those other avenues of friction or challenges and you know, we've all had lives before the seats that we're sitting in.

There's, there's a wealth of knowledge and you never know, you know, what might come of that conversation and you know, particularly when you're, you're dealing with someone such as yourself that, you know, wants to be a part of that solution, wants to find the answers and is willing to go the extra mile to support you, you know. Couldn't agree more, Couldn't agree more.

What do you have a morning routine or some sort of framework that sets you up for success for the day or what does that look like for you?

Well, you know, it's, it's a little bit different for me than a lot of, a lot of people. Okay, okay.

Just to, to give full frame of reference, I am, I sit physically in the redneck Riviera, the Gulf, Northern Gulf coast of Florida, up in the Pensacola, Panama City beach area, if people are familiar with it. My team sits in Yerevan, Armenia, where my sales team is. And they were, they are a great team.

So my morning routine generally starts, I generally start about 4:30 or 5 in the morning. And I'm on the line with, I'm on the line with my team every day, right? I have one on ones with each one of them. Every week we have a team meeting.

And you know, I don't, I don't micromanage. These, these people are phenomenal. The growth team that I have underneath me are just phenomenal.

They are driven, they're, they're just enthusiastic about what they do.

And, but I want to, I want to know their challenges because even though I am across the Atlantic from them, right, they have their lives that they're living. And I think as a growth manager, as managers in general, you've got to pay attention to your team.

You've got to know what is, what, what is driving them. Just like we Talked to our MSPs, I talked to my team and I'm like, how's your day going? What's going on with you?

Because what we don't understand as managers is that these people that we manage, we're, we're, we're helping them to build their careers and they have their own lives and whatever is going on outside of their work hours affects their work hours.

So one of the, one of my guiding principles has always been right, I've had an open door policy with every team that I've managed and we have one on ones and I tell them on the weekly one on ones, this is not me giving you feedback on what you do. This is your time, right? This is your time to tell me whatever you need. What's going on? How's life? Are things going well?

Because sometimes they, they need to work things out too. You. Right, so as a manager, you're more than just a sales director or salesman.

You're trying to help build your team career and you have your challenges that you have to overcome and sometimes you have to give a little bit of direction that's outside of the sales business area to help that person succeed.

Yeah. Really is. You know, if.

If you want your team to bring their full self to work and, and you know, give it their all and, and be participatory, understanding that's. Influence is critical for anyone. That's, that's managing. That's an excellent, excellent point. What. And this.

You can, you can go be as vulnerable as you wish, you know, professionally, personally. What's the one thing you're most afraid of and what drives that fear for you?

You know, I think that, you know, obviously there's been a lot in the States going on this week, right? Yeah, there's been a huge amount.

Right.

And I think that, that what, what bothers me right now, I think what's been going on in my mind a lot this week is just, you know, we need to be, we need to be open with people. We need to be able to be able to have conversations with people.

Right?

We need to be able to have hard conversations with a soft glove. We need to have, you know, be willing to listen to everybody that's, that's around us.

And I think that, that a lot of times in our, you know, if I could say anything, it's just listen to people. That's where I am this week. You know, that's more from a personal basis.

It doesn't really necessarily have to do anything with, with business, but I think in general we're, we're sort of at this really fragile point and we just need to, we just need to be kind.

Yeah, it's, it's a bit of a. Bit of a pressure cooker these days.

And you know, I was having conversation with some, some friends at, that I was at, on Wednesday night and you know, I've been saying it for a while and, and it was, you know, shared unprompted from, from another, another fellow at the, at the, at the event.

You know, it's becoming harder and harder for people to just be people and have conversations and talk about an opinion or a, an event circumstance and not, not go personal on, on. On the opinion where, you know, it's okay to disagree, it's okay to have a differing opinion and talk through that.

I think, you know, everyone wants to live in a, a Loving, peaceful, safe space, how we get there, there's a million ways to, to, to arrive at that destination. And I think, you know, there's a multitude of solutions to get there.

And sometimes you just have to agree that you're headed in the right direction and see where that takes you and not attack the individual personally, but hold space for differing opinions because that diversity is what makes things interesting to a degree, I suppose, without going too deep into it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, from a personal standpoint I want to just, you know, whenever I'm talking to people, I try to project to them that look, you got a safe space, it doesn't matter who you are.

Right.

I'm not. And I think that's how we, and I think that's part of the whole thing with building relationships.

Right.

Because when you, you have to do this when you're, when you're an MSP and you're working with clients, you're working with people, right. You have to see the person for the person and that is how you build relationships.

Right.

When you're building a relationship, if you're an MSP and you're going to, in a client and you may see things, paraphernalia or whatever, you know, this person's going to be on a complete opposite spectrum from you.

Right.

You're not going to agree on a lot.

Right.

But it doesn't matter.

Right?

There, there is a person, I think that we have to, we have to right now reach out and say, look, how can I help you succeed? How can I help you? How can I help you succeed?

Right.

And what, what, what does success look like to you?

Well, I mean, I think for me in that area success is, and I am, I, I really sort of pride myself on the fact that, you know, if you were to look at the people that I associate with, that I talk with.

Sure.

I've got people across every spectrum. I've got conservatives, I've got liberals, I've got all these people and we all just, we just get along, right?

We get along because there's a mutual self respect.

Right.

And we, we have to, we have to maintain that. And I think that's, that's something that I just really strive for. It's just, it's just mutual self respect.

I look forward to a time when we aren't defined by our political affiliations. And you know, that wasn't a thing until recently, as, as far as I understood.

Yeah.

You know, and, and you know, that, that was never, that was never a defining point of, you know, introduction or, or a relationship based. A relationship basis. You know, it's. It's just.

It's a guy I play hockey with, or it's a guy I play football with, or it's a guy I went to school with, or, you know, it's a guy person. You know, it doesn't. Doesn't have to be a guy.

Yeah.

You know, and, And I look forward to when the rhetoric and the divisiveness sort of toned down because that, that pendulum swing is way, way outside of the middle. And, and it'll be nice to. To have that. You know, everything has its season. I look forward to the end of this one.

And, and it's, it's. And it's up to each individual.

Right?

Everybody. Yeah, but. But, yeah, but. And, and it's like, it's me, right? It's me, right? How do I, how do I deal with this?

How do I make a decision every day to go out there and try to positively influence somebody's life?

Got it.

How do I, how do I show that kindness to somebody that I come in contact with?

Little.

Little.

Little compassion, little patience, little understanding goes a long way.

What.

You know, I've got. I've got Yoda over here, I've got Groot over here.

It doesn't have to be Marvel or dc, but do you have a superhero or a mentor or someone that, that, that you, you aspire and you look to model? Is that, Is that a thing for you?

You know, I've got. I've got so many. I've got so many.

First one that comes to mind.

You know, I, I don't have one. There's so many. I just. I would have to cipher through. It's just, you know, it's.

There are, There are people that have just really affected other people and have just really been a leader and a developer of people.

Right.

Because so many people are lost. And that's. That's really what I. That's really what I. It doesn't matter about my success.

Right.

It doesn't matter about where I go.

Right.

If. If the, the old saying is a rising tide raises all ships.

Yep.

Right.

And I'm not worried about myself. You know, I'm. I, I want my kids to be successful. I want my, the people around me to be successful. That. That's what I want.

So any, Any leader out there that is more concerned about the people around them than they are themselves, any leader out there that is helping to raise people that, that, that is on their team, that that's a mentor to me.

Good for you. I love that. That's great. Listen, Alan, it's, it's been a gift. Thank you so much for your, your time and your.

The, the, the knowledge that you've shared and the insights that you've pointed to. I think our, our audience is, is more informed and better for it. Any. Any closing thoughts? Any, any. Anything that you want to pass on?

Yeah, I mean, email security is. Email is the bloodline of your, of your business. Whether you're an MSP, whether you're a client, Ms. Email is not going away. Take it seriously.

Protect your email. Protect your email. Protect your reputation.

Yeah. Yep. Nope. Absolutely agree.

We'll, we'll put some details in the show notes so that people can reach out to you, reach out to us however they want to do it. But you know, protect yourselves, protect your email. Wise words. Thanks so much, Alan.

Absolutely. Thanks, Chandler.