Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Episode 69: Omari Morgan – The Importance of Fostering Diversity

Omari Morgan has mastered getting outside of his comfort zone – and his commitment to playing the long game with his career is paying off in a big way.

From his start in sales at memoryBlue seven years ago to his position now as a highly successful Channel Account Manager at SecurityScorecard, Omari has cultivated a powerful network from coast-to-coast. Incredibly self-aware and immeasurably well-versed in his professional craft, he offers up a wealth of knowledge here based on his personal career journey.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Omari joins us in our Silicon Valley office to outline the importance of increasing diversity in tech sales, highlight the differences between channel and direct sales, and share why company culture is a vital consideration when planning your next career move.

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Omari Morgan

What he does: Channel Account Manager 

Company: SecurityScorecard

Noteworthy: Before moving to SecurityScorecard, Omari worked as a highly successful SDR before being promoted to a role as Sales Development Executive at memoryBlue.

Where to find Omari: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ Culture is key. Building and growing a positive team culture is essential to success in sales.

⚡ Competition drives results. A true competitor will step outside their comfort zone and widen their scope if it means being the best.

⚡ Build your network. The relationships you cultivate in this business are priceless. Stay connected and help your network to grow with you.

Episode Highlights

Self-Awareness is Key to Development

“I like skateboarding. I also like snowboarding. It’s pretty interconnected, and it’s one of those things where you want to make sure that you master something before you’re shooting for something else. For example, when you’re learning how to grind on a ladder or a rail or a box, you’re going to learn how to do a 50-50 grind. Before you start doing a nose grind, crooked grind, or anything like that, you’re going to make sure that you land that 50-50 grind, 3, 5, or 7 times in a row the same way before you start moving over to the hook shots and everything. So, the awareness of development and patience around development has been there for a while because of that. […] And I’ve learned the hard way that trying to shoot for things that might be outside of your repertoire before you have proper development is not in your best interest.”

The Channel is an Extension of You, Your Product, and Your Solution

“We went 100% channel in 2017. And being an inside sales rep who was in New York and selling to the West Coast, I wasn’t getting on a plane and going out to San Francisco, LA, or Denver. So, I had to find a way to have a better presence in a market that I couldn’t physically be in. And when I realized that we were selling through the channel, it didn’t click immediately. I had to learn. I had to talk to people. But what I quickly realized was that the channel is truly an extension of you, your product, and your solution, if you use it properly. And I realized that if I could start to build relationships, I could have people out here in the West sell on my behalf and bring me into meetings. And that would be great for all of us.

Channel is just a mode of sales. Most people are going to be familiar with ‘direct.’ You have a manufacturer that’s selling a solution to an end-user. When you hear the buzzword ‘channel users’ because that channel is no longer direct, it’s typically going to be because you’re using a value-added reseller, a global systems integrator, a managed service provider, or a managed solution service provider.”

Choosing the Right Channel Partners

“I like to bring on partners that make sense for the business. So, we have a lot of partners that reach out and a lot of people that have an interest, but where I’m leaning in are the partners that have a lot of key relationships. They are able to deliver services around what we are specifically doing because that’s more value to my customers and that makes my solution stickier.

It’s not about having a relationship. These people need to be your friends. So, you have a friend, you have a teammate that can give you inside information and help you sell wider within an organization versus you have the unqualified outbound that is like, ‘I’ll make the call two weeks from now at 5:30.'”

Living in San Francisco vs. Living in New York

“Living in San Francisco and living in New York is night and day. […] San Francisco is way smaller, 1/10 of the population in New York. So, what you have is a city that sometimes feels like the city, and sometimes doesn’t. There are a lot of suburban areas and little enclaves.

New York is about going from point A to point B and trying to get there as quickly as possible. But things feel a little more organic out here [San Francisco]. People are a lot more down-to-earth, but tons of love to the New York area. It has a special place in my heart. So, two different places, but I love them both.”

The Reason There’s a Lot of Movement in Sales

“The boom in tech is a boom in investment, and that gives people the ability of equity and wealth. So, a lot of people are bouncing from place to place, even though they have a three-, four-year vesting cycle to get 25% of the piece of the pie here, 25% of that. […] It’s like playing the lottery. I get how people do this, but for me, you’re not going to master something unless you invest the proper time in it.”

A Piece of Advice for His Younger Self: Stay Calm and Be Yourself

“Take it freaking easy. Take a deep breath. Be yourself because you’re not going to get anywhere [otherwise]. And this ties directly into being a person of color in tech sales. Pretending to be somebody that I’m not has never done me any favors. Wear your heart on your sleeve, be proud of who you are, bring that to your work, and master that. That’s the advice: stay calm and be yourself.”

Transcript: 

[00:00:20] Marc Gonyea: Omari Morgan in the house.

[00:00:47] Omari Morgan: What’s up, guys? 

[00:00:48] Chris Corcoran: Omari, man, a Virginia transplant in California. 

[00:00:54] Marc Gonyea: But Omari walks in and he’s looking fresh. He’s looking smooth, handsome as ever. Looking smooth and then I said, “That’s a nice black vest, Omari.” And what did you say? 

[00:01:02] Omari Morgan: Oh yeah. This is a vest I used to wear in the office down in Tysons Square. 

[00:01:05] Chris Corcoran: So first off that’s navy.

[00:01:07] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. We’re talking about this, in 2014, you used to wear that thing, or 2015?

[00:01:15] Omari Morgan: 2015,  2016. I’m sure that we have pictures between, you know, some of the alum. We’ll get into the names a little bit, but, uh, yeah, I’m sure we have pictures. I know that we have pictures on from like, the Facebook, the Blitz Battles that we used to have in that quarter. This vest got me through. You guys. it was cold in there. 

[00:01:36] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause cold, people work in the phone. Cold calls, cold calling. All right, Omari. So we’ll get through this. But, Omari or doing this podcast from our office in downtown San Jose. And Omari is a resident of San Francisco mission district, right? After, you know, living in New York, before that living in the DC area, working for us in Virginia, with us in Virginia. So we’re going to talk all about that, but like before we get into it, Omari, introduce yourself to the audience because we’ve got people who are listening.

We’ve got over 300 SDRs now, right? 515 employees as of last Wednesday. And we got the alums and we got people who are thinking about coming to work here. So people are more interested in hearing and learn a little bit about you than Chris and I blabbing away. 

[00:02:22] Omari Morgan: Sure. So I’ll give you the soup to nuts version. So I was born in Queens, New York, grew up in Northern New Jersey. 

[00:02:30] Marc Gonyea: What part of Queens? 

[00:02:31] Omari Morgan: Cambria Heights. 

[00:02:32] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right. 

[00:02:32] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Like real Caribbean neighborhood, my father’s Jamaican, my mother’s Haitian. So, um, you know, they came up initially Brooklyn, then, you know, they settled in Queens. They had me, and then they moved to Northern New Jersey, where I mostly grew up. 

[00:02:48] Marc Gonyea: You and who else did they have? 

[00:02:50] Omari Morgan: I have only a sister. She’s about seven years younger than me. She graduated from Tufts, last May. 

So yeah, my sister grew up in Jersey and then I went to University of Maryland. I’ve graduated in 2014. 

[00:03:07] Marc Gonyea: College Park? 

[00:03:08] Omari Morgan: College Park guy. Go Terps, go Terps. Yeah, and then after school, came to work for you guys. I was there until summer 2016. And that’s when I decided to move up. 

[00:03:18] Marc Gonyea: What were your like, a little bit, growing up thoughts? ‘Cause you’re in sales now. You’re a tech sales professional. 

[00:03:23] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[00:03:23] Marc Gonyea: What were you like in high school kid or did sales kind of rear its head at any point?

[00:03:28] Omari Morgan: I think sales was always there. I just don’t think I had the knowledge to know that that was what my interests immediately were tied to. So when I was in high school, I was part of a Civics and Government Institute, which largely was modeled after the US government. What I realized is that I like to speak.

[00:03:46] I like to work in teams and I like to get things done. So, that was a great learning experience. And also that school surrounding that was really fruitful. And then, I went to university of, or let me actually go back a step. So in high school I played lacrosse, but growing up, I was mostly in skateboarding. That was like… 

[00:04:05] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I remember talking about this.

[00:04:06] Omari Morgan: That was my thing. Like, I don’t know, maybe age 10 on and I mean six hours a day…

[00:04:13] Marc Gonyea: Really? 

[00:04:14] Omari Morgan: Just on a skateboard. Yeah. 

[00:04:15] Marc Gonyea: Did you have a board in San Francisco? Are you, one of those? 

[00:04:18] Omari Morgan: I try. I mean, I just turned 30. So I’m not like going down any stairs or anything. My knees are not as sharp as they used to be. So, you know, I’m flat ground.

[00:04:28] And I know that if I can get out before the sun sets up, like at a local tennis court, I’ll go out there. My girlfriend doesn’t want to hear that, so. 

[00:04:36] Marc Gonyea: All right, sorry. So as you plan, you boarded and then in lacrosse, go on with that. Tell us. 

[00:04:41] Omari Morgan: Yes. So lacrosse was great. I’ve started playing lacrosse my freshman year. Before that I was mostly playing, it was tennis and skateboarding. And, uh, I just didn’t, high school thinking,

[00:04:52] Big high school. How do I make an impression? And I also wanted to go to private school before that, too. So that was like a big thing to me, to go to a big public high school, to make friends and to feel a part of something. So instead of playing tennis, I went out for the lacrosse and keep in mind at this time, dude. I had glasses, like add some weight on me. 

[00:05:12] Marc Gonyea: You told me that. Really?

[00:05:13] Omari Morgan: So there are things at lacrosse that they taught me. It was like a lot of discipline. Our town was really good, right? We have a really strong tradition of lacrosse up in New Jersey. So there were really high expectations. I couldn’t just walk in freshman year and make a huge impression.

[00:05:28] It took a lot of work. So that same work ethic from skateboarding translated well into, into a lacrosse in terms of that, that due diligence and that thrive. So much like I had, like, I built a skateboard obstacles. Like my neighbors had quarter pipes, I had boxes and rails. So, my yard and my driveway, my front area were always filled with that sort of stuff, when we started playing lacrosse. The box got multi-purpose for a pass, like a bounce back wall. I got a goal for my neighbor and I was just out there, after practice two hours every night, just trying to get better. And by the end of high school, you know, our team won a state championship. That was a pretty awesome achievement. 

[00:06:07] Marc Gonyea: Lots of people can not say that. I’m jealous for like the lacrosse competition. 

[00:06:12] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:06:12] Omari Morgan: Yeah, yeah. It was tough, but I learned a lot and that also, I think it was a huge impetus for me getting into sales, the teamwork aspect, but also the individual contribution, the work that you do.

[00:06:24] So, how you prepare for meetings, right? I go back home, I’m researching the company before I’m meeting with them. In the channel sales, you know, I want to know what they’re selling, what they’re reselling, I learn what other companies are partnered with, and that sort of thing in terms of preparation for games. Right? I want to know who I might be up against. Right? What are my strong suits, where are their weaknesses, not suits. But those sorts of things helped in preparation for sales, for sure. 

[00:06:47] Chris Corcoran: What position did you play? 

[00:06:48] Omari Morgan: I started off at attack and then by the time I got to senior year, I was playing defensive.

[00:06:53] Chris Corcoran: Big stick?

[00:06:54] Omari Morgan: Short stick. Short stick. 

[00:06:55] Chris Corcoran: Ok. 

[00:06:56] Marc Gonyea: Did you ever want to keep playing after high school? 

[00:06:59] Omari Morgan: I did. And I played, uh, like a couple of like games in terms of Columbia at Maryland, but it was never a huge thing. The university was a huge school and I wanted to play, but, I don’t think that I really was at that… 

[00:07:14] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. It was a top flight program.

[00:07:15] Chris Corcoran: They were on a national TV. 

[00:07:18] Marc Gonyea: All the time. So, how did you end up in Maryland? 

[00:07:20] Omari Morgan: Wow. That’s an interesting story. So when I was in high school, my top choice was university of Pennsylvania and, long shot, but I had pretty good grades in high school. It could have been better for parents. Yeah. So that didn’t work out, but I had…

[00:07:41] Marc Gonyea: Maryland is a really good school. Sound like it’s a bad school. It’s not.

[00:07:44] Omari Morgan: I’d been interested in going to Syracuse also. And I watched your friends that went to Syracuse. Lots of dear friends went there. So that was something that was pulling me there.

[00:07:51] And then actually Maryland picked me up after accepting me in the fall. And I took that very personally. You know what Michael Jordan mean? That was me. And so I was thinking about going to Syracuse until Maryland came back to me and they were like, “Hey, we want to send you to London for your first semester.” So I was in London for three months in my first semester of college. 

[00:08:16] Marc Gonyea: We left that out. 

[00:08:18] Chris Corcoran: He really is doing it all. So you lived in London? 

[00:08:21] Omari Morgan: Yeah. First semester college. 

[00:08:23] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:08:24] Omari Morgan: I went with, there were 14 students from University of Maryland and it was a pilot program. 

[00:08:28] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:08:29] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Like completely new thing. I think they do it, you know…

[00:08:32] Marc Gonyea: It’s more common now. They’re doing freshmen year.

[00:08:36] Omari Morgan: Like I was, I was a guinea pig, for sure. Yeah. 

[00:08:40] Marc Gonyea: Then what was that like? 

[00:08:42] Omari Morgan: It was amazing, tough, but like, it was all over the map. Right? So, London was just, uh, complete, just eye-opening experience, right? Like you’re in high school, you go from being out of your parents’ roof to not necessarily being on your own, but being in a completely different country in a huge metropolitan city, like just navigating the subway which is like scary for me. Because I can navigate the New York subway, but it’s just like, I didn’t know where I was. 

[00:09:10] Chris Corcoran: So we’re talking, we’re listening, we’re talking to a New Yorker, who’s having a hard time. Like, imagine someone who’s not from the city going to London. 

[00:09:18] Marc Gonyea: Unless you’re a freshman in high school. I mean a freshman college after your senior year. Like not really. Ask guy until you did it. 

[00:09:24] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So I went there. I had a torn meniscus because that had been sort of one of those injuries that I got the lacrosse. I needed surgery, so I wasn’t able to skateboard over there. So I’ll just go and go to the local skate spots and go hang out and watch people skating. And that was fun.

[00:09:41] Marc Gonyea: Doing your thing. What’d you major in? So you came back with a major before? 

[00:09:46] Omari Morgan: Yeah. My major that I started with is not the major that I graduated with. So I wanted to be a business major. I did not do as well as I thought I would in pre-req, pre-reqs and that really forced me to look internally and figure out what do I want to do, what are my personal motivations and where out there in the world can I fit. And so I thought initially it would be communications PR, stuff like that. I thought communications was a lot more like sales. I thought PR was a lot more like sales. I didn’t realize there’s a lot of just the print or not just, right?

[00:10:17] It’s a difficult job. It’s a job that people mastered. So I thought that PR was a lot more deal making. And once I realized that it was not, I didn’t really know where I fit. So I actually went to history. I graduated the history major because I have a natural interest in history. It’s something that I can read about.

[00:10:38] I can never put a book down because about an important historical figure, or era. So…

[00:10:43] Marc Gonyea: What’s your favorite period of history?  

[00:10:47] Omari Morgan: I really find Caribbean history in the late 18th century, particularly interesting. 

[00:10:53] Marc Gonyea: Commerce, or because of…? 

[00:10:55] Omari Morgan: You have a lot of merchants realism in terms of trade, which eventually becomes a model for capitalism.

[00:11:00] But most importantly, the Caribbean was really the center of trade for a long time in terms of the Western world. And it’s not really widely talked about, but one of those islands, I said that my mother’s Haitian, my father’s Jamaican, but both of those islands were huge in terms of sugarcane trade. Haiti was the largest sugarcane exporter, at that time.

[00:11:18] And they had a revolt in 1790, which was the Haitian revolution, which was the first, I guess revolts revolution that was black led, and actually successfully. 

[00:11:30] Chris Corcoran: I read about this.

[00:11:30] Marc Gonyea: I heard in some podcast talking about that. 

[00:11:31] Omari Morgan: 1776 United States gets their independence. 1790, just around the corner, Haiti pops up and they’re like, “Hey, we’re here.” And there’s a lot more that goes to that, but it’s super interesting because it also helped me learn about my family, my mother’s country culture a little bit more because I had only been to Haiti once. So yeah. 

[00:11:49] Marc Gonyea: You majored in history? 

[00:11:51] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Majored in history. And then, I got involved with a project with a friend of mine from home. It was a social platform for people that want to give to non-profits. It was called iFLIP4 and friend of mine, his name is David Ellman and… 

[00:12:04] Marc Gonyea: High school friend? 

[00:12:06] Omari Morgan: Nursery school. So we grew up together. Our families were close. And so, he had this great idea. He was going to Brown. He left school to pursue this. And so when I was home in summer, we sat down, we talked to. And he was like, “I could use some help” growing the, what he calls work, what we call the ambassador network.

[00:12:27] So the way that this business model was to expand was through college ambassadors. So what I was responsible for was to set up chapters, so to speak at different schools, bring on 1, 2, 3 people, build out a chapter, have those people go out and evangelize. And ultimately what I realized is that this is a pre-requisite for me learning how to sell.

[00:12:47] Right? Like, I didn’t realize that I was selling at that point. 

[00:12:50] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:12:51] Omari Morgan: And so after going through these motions for a year and a half, two years, I started to realize like, “All right, so this is really business development, like gorilla marketing sort of stuff going on here. But like, what is a professional path that you can take this experience and clients to grow from?”

[00:13:06] And so I picked out, or I realized that sales was a play, but I didn’t know how to get into sales. And so I continued to work on other projects. Another thing that I did was a project with a friend called Puzzle… And we actually won, University of Maryland has given the challenge in 2000 and either ’13 or ’14. And that was great because there was an app and, that got me out talking to people, talking on stages and in DC and Maryland. Well, the little microphone and dude, like, I didn’t even know…

[00:13:34] I didn’t even know what this stuff was. So, you’re going out, you’re getting cards. 

[00:13:40] Marc Gonyea: You didn’t even know what you’re doing. Right? Because they’re so young. And it was like just doing what you think was going to make sense, which is really your, like you said, your first sales experience.

[00:13:49] Omari Morgan: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:13:50] So I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was getting these cards and, I started noticing names and titles and roles, and there are a lot of CEOs, founders, people that are interested in investing in these things, but they’re also people that are there to watch pitches.

[00:14:03] Like there are people that I was being introduced to that were in sales, that were enterprise sales. And so I started to think, “You know, let me talk to a couple of these people, get a sense of what they do, what their day-to-day is.” And some years would go by. When I say years, I mean, two, three years would go by and, you have a conversation.

[00:14:19] And I started to pick up on that. Enterprise sales was, was a play. And so that’s really what sat in my head. And then I think the conversation started at the right time, with you guys. 

[00:14:31] Marc Gonyea: Got it. So you’re coming up on , you know, to graduate. What’d you think you’re going to do? Trying to make a relevant one of these startups, you just kind of your friends who you grew up with or like? We can talk a little bit about it.

[00:14:41] Omari Morgan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, uh, actually when I graduated, that’s what I was doing. I was still working on iFLIP4, rent an office in east Hanover and David and I, and then we had a couple of other plays that were going in and out every week. So, that was great. It was a great learning experience. I graduated, I came home.

[00:14:58] I like lived like everybody else, so I quickly fell into it. And I think for me at that time, I was interested in pursuing some similar figures. Right? iFLIP4 was where I started, but I felt like there was a lot more for me to learn and I felt like I should get to that sooner rather than later.

[00:15:16] And, I had also been looking at financial services companies, becoming an advisor, things like that. So that’s… And my mom was in finance. Right? That sort of thing started to crop up. So 

[00:15:29] Chris Corcoran: Great. And, what other organizations were you involved with at University Maryland?

[00:15:32] Omari Morgan: I was in Phi Gamma Delta. 

[00:15:34] Chris Corcoran: FIJI?

[00:15:35] Omari Morgan: Yes, FIJI. I was a FIJI. At University of Maryland there are a couple of FIJIs that are alumni. And I was in a black business association at university. 

[00:15:43] Chris Corcoran: Got it. So, let’s talk about how we met. 

[00:15:47] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So I am at a Greek life and athlete networking sort of situation at the Comcast Center,

[00:15:58] I think it was called that at that time. And I walk in and I see Chris and I’m like, “I’m pretty sure I know who this guy is.”

[00:16:06] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:16:07] Omari Morgan: We’re still working and he’s talking to somebody. So I go another direction. Right? So eventually we meet and strike up a conversation. And I think it was something along the lines of you asking me if I knew Matt Bright or something like that. And I said, “Yeah.” 

[00:16:22] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. My bad. Sorry, Matt. 

[00:16:24] Omari Morgan: So yeah. Matt Bright was working for memoryBlue at that time, or was he still there? 

[00:16:30] Chris Corcoran: He was. 

[00:16:30] Omari Morgan: So he was at that time. So Matt Bright was a brother of mine in FIJI. And, I think Chris was kind of peeved at Matt for not having introduced us. 

[00:16:42] Marc Gonyea: We’re still mad at Matt for his lack of ability to bring in more FIJIs.

[00:16:48] Chris Corcoran: So this is my recollection of the story. First off you were saying Maryland is like the Great White Whale for me. I’m dying, dying to like recruit Terps. 

[00:16:57] Marc Gonyea: It’s more like 30, 45 minutes.

[00:16:59] Chris Corcoran: It’s so close to our office and it’s great, great students, smart people, successful folks. And we, we haven’t been able to crack it.

[00:17:05] So somehow, fortunately, we, we ended up hiring Bright. And I knew Bright was, I mean, if you even ask him, he’ll tell you he was big man on campus.

[00:17:17] So I’m like, “All right, big man on campus.” I was like, “Let’s get a bunch of FIJIs. I want a pipeline. Let’s get in there.” And he’s like, “FIJIs? I’ll get you all of a Greek life”. And then we, “All these promises that’s said and the other.” So I go to a career fair and I meet this guy who, he played wide receiver at Maryland and he was probably in his forties and he said, “Hey, Chris, come tomorrow night. Here’s a personal invitation.”

[00:17:39] Omari Morgan: Oh yeah, there was the… 

[00:17:41] Chris Corcoran: And he said, “There’s athletes and Greeks.” I’m like, “I am in.” So then we met and I was pissed. I was like, “Wait, wait. Hold on a second. Bright, you know, why don’t you tee these things up?” So the next day I walked into the office and I go.. 

[00:17:58] Marc Gonyea: We love that Bright. This is fun to me.

[00:18:01] Chris Corcoran: I go, “Hey, hey Matt, can I talk to you for a minute?” I was like, ”Does the name of Omari Morgan mean anything to you?” And he has the biggest shit-eating grin on his face and he thinks it’s hilarious.

[00:18:14] Then, of course, Matt Bright style, he tries to take credit that he made the introduction, “Bright. Cool. Give me some more, give me some more.” So anyway, that was a funny story that I still give Bright a hard time to this day. 

[00:18:33] Omari Morgan: No, you should. Yeah, I, I talked to Bright about memoryBlue, but I think that our conversation at the career fair, definitely is where I would hit the road.

[00:18:43] Because at that point, I think I graduated not long after. Then we started talking to summer, I came down for a couple of interviews and then, yeah, a couple of weeks later I was moving down, moving down to, uh, the DC area. 

[00:18:56] Marc Gonyea: So let’s talk about that. Right? ‘Cause you haven’t talked about this before. Like your mom was, like any moms, who has opinions about what her first born is going to do.

[00:19:04] Right? So, she kind of, all parents have expectations for their children that, hopefully meet, but also like, how we get there is different. 

[00:19:12] So talk about that too. Did she want you to do something else? 

[00:19:14] Omari Morgan: Yeah, I mean, my, my mom worked in public finance. So, her experience in the working world was, people in finance can make a lot of money, right?

[00:19:23] If you get in early and you learn, you cut your teeth and all that good stuff, you can work your way up. And so for her, and then also the, my family in general, I feel like finance had been one of those things that was talked about or kind of impression upon me. Yeah. I’m after in all the time. I spent to a lot of centralized stem camps, things like that.

[00:19:45] So like those investments when I was growing up. And so I think there was almost an expectation that I’ve moved in that direction. And when I told my parents that I was interested in tech sales, they were kind of not baffled, but they were kind of just questioning, “You know, what is tech sales like?

[00:20:02] Are you going to be selling an app? Are you like…?” They had no clue where to start. Right? And so explaining to them that my product or that the career opportunity existed, they were definitely into that, but they just, they weren’t going to buy it until they saw it. 

[00:20:21] Marc Gonyea: That’s parents. 

[00:20:22] Omari Morgan: And so they were hard on me. Right? They were really hard on me when I first moved out. There was a really big expectation for, for doing well and not to say that I didn’t do well because….

[00:20:31] Marc Gonyea: You were there for seven months. 

[00:20:34] Omari Morgan: It was really solid in time my parents, especially my mother, came to trust a career path a lot more.

[00:20:39] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. It’s interesting, right? It’s still, it’s not as big as secret now as it was when you graduated, just because technology is being so singularly focused in society, but it’s still like, not, nobody dreams of like little Omari going into sales. Like, my son just did stem camps, not really. But like, I don’t know. If anyone says you can, but a lot of people don’t think that. 

[00:21:01] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[00:21:01] Marc Gonyea: So, so, all right. So you made, you moved back to DC. 

[00:21:05] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So I moved, I actually first moved in with my aunt who lived in Silver Spring, nice basement that I was living in. And I had my parents’ Volvo, that they lend me, and that was all good. So that’s where I really started the first three months I was there with her.

[00:21:21] And then after that, I think it was in January of, geez, it must have been ’15. I moved in with some buddies off a U Street in DC. 

[00:21:30] Chris Corcoran: U Street Corridor.

[00:21:30] Omari Morgan: Yeah.

[00:21:34] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, of course it was a good time. Okay. And you started at memoryBlue. So what was  that like? 

[00:21:37] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So, starting at memoryBlue is, was, I mean, I say daunting because I made it daunting. I think it was a really warm reception that I got. The team around me was great. I think, the first team that I was on, I was on Mishler’s team.

[00:21:52] Marc Gonyea: Mike Mishler, will be here tomorrow.

[00:21:53] Omari Morgan: Yeah. He was my, my first manager as an SDR, and… 

[00:21:58] Chris Corcoran: Were you in Boone? 

[00:21:59] Omari Morgan: Oh, that’s the other… No, that was still…. So I was in that Courthouse building, Mishler was my first boss, Jim Gandolfo. He was a FIJI… 

[00:22:17] Marc Gonyea: Surfer? 

[00:22:18] Omari Morgan: Yeah. He was also on the scene… 

[00:22:19] Chris Corcoran: And also he had a, “Who’s part of a mo-ped gang?”

[00:22:27] Omari Morgan: He is a all things engines guy. Yeah. I last saw him in New York, right before I moved to…. Who else was on our team? Brandon Eyring was on our team. You know, also just had a… So congratulations to them. And who else was our team? Joey Cohen. I don’t think he was on the team. We might’ve been managed by somebody else but we were close with him from the beginning. 

[00:22:55] Marc Gonyea: He’s great. 

[00:22:56] Omari Morgan: Yeah.

[00:22:57] Marc Gonyea: He’s working for the company there’s in Denver. 

[00:22:58] Omari Morgan: Denver. Yeah,  yeah. 

[00:23:01] Marc Gonyea: So what was it, what’d you make daunting about it? The role? It’s a hard job. 

[00:23:07] Omari Morgan: It is, but I overcomplicated things from the beginning, right? Like I, I think I got too obsessed with iterating on scripts, iterating on styles. Learn the fundamentals first. And get some reps in first before you really start to dial into what you need to improve.

[00:23:25] But I made it to super complicated the first month. And then I think after a couple of conversations, like Mishler probably was listening to calls giving me tips, “Just relax.” So once I started to learn that this isn’t about being like a canned personality and it’s just be yourself, find your style, navigate conversations that way. Just let your personality dictate how you approach it, things just sort of, fell on the place.

[00:23:51] Marc Gonyea: It can kind of question your being when you first started doing this job, if I get back into the time machine, because you have to, you think you’re calling these strangers because we’re heavy on, on the phone. We email, use LinkedIn, but you get better at sales by talking to people on the phone, you got to get into conversations. And then we kind of have you do to a certain way, but the people are rude, and people are short, and they minute speak interested. So then you’re like, “Am I doing this wrong? This guy next to me it is really working well for him.” And like, “Is it me, is it their script?” Like you don’t, you just question everything. Right? And then, but a lot of it just comes with the miles, getting the time to get the perspective. Right? And that’s what Mishler’s supposed to do.

[00:24:32] Their manager is supposed to help out say, “Hey, just like,” and we all react to it differently. It’s great. It’s good, but it’s good to have like you could be able to look back on it now. So what did you get good at? Because you obviously got good at it because you know, it wasn’t too long, we said, “Hey Omari, do you want to do something else?” You know?

[00:24:46] Chris Corcoran: I want to hear it, hear that, but I also wanna hear what clients use in technology you’re supporting. 

[00:24:50] Omari Morgan: Yeah. What did I get good at? Yeah, the upfront contract. I felt really important to perfect it. So it’s when you are opening a call, establishing the agreement that we’re going to spend 15 – 25 minutes on this overview. We’re going to mostly talk about discovery, right?

[00:25:07] Does that work? Yes. So coming to an agreement as to how the time that you’re going to spend on the phone is going to work with the prospect, and then leaving room for yourself at the end to discuss next steps, if they make sense or not. And I think a lot of people in sales that, and I also see this all the time.

[00:25:24] A lot of people that think that they know everything. I’m just going to get on the phone they start blabbing, and blabbing. They get to minute 27, 28. And we’re still working through this, you know, this one thing over here and then, “Oh, I want to show you this.” Oh man, this is turning into a mess real fast.

[00:25:40] So the upfront contract actually really helped me to establish a better process overall, right? By establishing that it allowed me to better manage my pipeline. 

[00:25:49] Marc Gonyea: You still use it now? 

[00:25:50] Omari Morgan: Channel sales has a little, is a little different. I got to say I do, especially when introducing my product to a new potential reseller or say, “I’m just, there’s somebody that I met somewhere in the Bay, right? And I’m the first point of contact before introducing it to somebody else internally.” 

[00:26:05] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:26:06] Omari Morgan: I’ll always have those, those upfront contracts on the call. 

[00:26:08] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. Okay. Got it. Tell us who were your clients? 

[00:26:11] Omari Morgan: My client was WealthEngine. 

[00:26:12] Marc Gonyea: The client was WealthEngine. Did your Mom like that?

[00:26:16] Omari Morgan: Yeah, she did like that. It was a, it was the technology that was focused on, there’s something that nonprofits. 

[00:26:23] Marc Gonyea: Better help nonprofits raise money, right, by identifying the right people. 

[00:26:26] Omari Morgan: And my experience at iFLIP4 was perfect. Yeah. My mom was on the board of a nonprofit, so she was like, “All right, let’s go.”

[00:26:37] Marc Gonyea: Stem camps. Yeah. So that, that was your client? 

[00:26:40] Omari Morgan: That was my client. And,… 

[00:26:41] Marc Gonyea: We had multiple people on that campaign? 

[00:26:43] Omari Morgan: We did. ‘Cause, you know, I was at the… oh, Allegheny, she was on the team. 

[00:26:46] Marc Gonyea: Oh yeah. 

[00:26:48] Omari Morgan: In the office over there. And we’d go sit there and write up with Jim and Allegheny and Pat Digioia as well. 

[00:26:55] Marc Gonyea: Digioia, I got to give him the dates. He’s a hustler. 

[00:26:59] Omari Morgan: Dude, that guy that, I learned a lot from him too. Great dude. So we were all part of that. I don’t think that was on WealthEngine. I think he had a client that was just, you know, around the neighborhoods, go grab lunch and we were over there. But, um, yeah. Yeah. Brandon, I would have to say that I was probably most competitive with Brandon on that account. Yeah.

[00:27:20] Marc Gonyea: Mr.  Eyring. 

[00:27:20] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[00:27:22] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about that.

[00:27:23] Omari Morgan: So Brandon and I were both athletes. Like we just have like an athletic sort of, like he played football, I played lacrosse and I was a skateboarder. So, he quickly established this thing where he would like tease me. 

[00:27:34] Chris Corcoran: Smack talk. 

[00:27:35] Marc Gonyea: In a good way of course.

[00:27:36] Omari Morgan: Smack talking.  And I mean, you play these sports, you know what it is. Like you’re on a court here, “Dude, don’t let me cross you up. Don’t want me to get past you again.” So that’s the sort of talk that Brandon’s like, “Don’t let me out dial you.” 

[00:27:49] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:27:50] Omari Morgan: And I’m just like, “You know what, dude? You guys can’t see what just happened. I just cracked my neck or try to.” But yeah, it’s like you get serious about being approached like that. So, it became an effort to show up earlier, stay later. I’m going to make sure that I have 250 more leads up the system to sweeten him. Just finding ways to truly just outwork each other was pretty consistent.

[00:28:16] Marc Gonyea: And why is that sort of environment important when you’re kicking off like your career or you’re working in an SDR role? 

[00:28:25] Omari Morgan: Oh God, it’s absolutely critical. I think the competition is really just the most important thing in sales, right? Like what am I going to do if I am the only person that’s dialing on an account and it’s just me.

[00:28:38] Yes, I want to make sure that I live up to the expectations of the client. It’s great. The client’s going to come back and say, “Hey, you’re doing a great job,” but if somebody over here is doing 25% better than me, then that puts a fire under my ass, for sure. 

[00:28:50] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:28:51] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So it’s absolutely critical.

[00:28:53] Marc Gonyea: All right. So you’re doing your thing on WealthEngine and then that was awhile ago, so we’re still kind of figuring things out, but we, we said, “Hey, Omari, you want to hop on the memoryBlue internal sales team?” Right? Do you remember how that came about? Obviously you were doing a good job because we tried to pick the best of the best. So that’s why we approached you. 

[00:29:12] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So I think what happened was that WealthEngine was getting to a point where they were looking at potentially bringing somebody into. That was the conversation that happened from, from me. WealthEngine was a technology, was focused on nonprofits, but as I was talking about enterprise sales was like, ” That’s the X on the map.”

[00:29:29] Right? So, while it can be presented as such, I didn’t feel like it was the best move for me at that time. Right? And I, and you know, seven months in that was like a, a ton on the water, so to speak. Right? I felt like there was a lot more developments happening and I was glad that you guys felt the same. So, yeah, moving to the internal sales team was fantastic. 

[00:29:49] Chris Corcoran: I remember it is that Matt Bright was on that team, as a closer? I remember him barging into our office and say, “Guys, you’re doing it all wrong. We need Omari on the team.” And I was like, “You know what? I would have never thought about that, Matt. You’re exactly right.”

[00:30:21] Marc Gonyea: So let’s talk about that though, ’cause you have, do you have to have the self-awareness ’cause the clients, we could work some cool clients, cool technology, they were venture funded. They had some impressive executives and sales people that work there, right? 

[00:30:33] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[00:30:34] Marc Gonyea: Where did that kind of awareness that you felt like, “Not yet.” What does that come from? Because other people are like, “I’m out of here.,” which doesn’t make it right or wrong, ’cause we don’t stop it and we don’t have any criteria for people to help them to stay if a client wants to convert them. 

[00:30:49] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[00:30:49] Marc Gonyea: So,…

[00:30:50] Omari Morgan: I mean, I’m just going to tie everything back to like mainly skateboarding, right?

[00:30:55] Skateboarding is one of those things, and I also love snowboarding, right? So they’re pretty interconnected, but it’s one of those things where you really want to make sure that you master something before you’re shooting for something else. Like a good example would be when you’re learning how to grind on a ledge, or a rail, or a box. You’re going to learn how to do a 50 50 grind which is where the trucks are going this way on it. Before you’re going to start doing a nosegrind, crooked grind, before you do anything like that. Right? But you’re going to make sure that you land that 50 50 grind 3, 5, 7 times in a row, same way that you, you kind of what you’re shooting. Before you start moving over to the hook shots and everything, so the awareness of just development and patience around, development as has been there for a while because of that.

[00:31:40] And I’ve also tried to jump and do things too quickly, right? Like before… I remember, dude, I was like, I.. 

[00:31:49] Marc Gonyea: Just showed up? 

[00:31:49] Omari Morgan: No, dude. I went snowboarding with my buddies, in high school men. We, we cut out after class, race up to the mountain and because I was a skateboarder, I was like, “All right. Hell yeah. I’m going to just do a 360 like the day 3.” Yeah, I broke my wrist real fast. So yeah, I’ve learned the hard way that trying to shoot for things that might be outside of your repertoire before you have the proper development, definitely is not your best choice. 

[00:32:13] Marc Gonyea: How’s the snowboarding game now, by the way?

[00:32:17] Omari Morgan: Yeah, dude, two days in last week, not enough to Tahoe. I uh enjoy the snow on Friday. Yeah. I’m doing my thing, whipping out three sixties off of freaking huge jumps. Right? But I hit the park a little bit, through a couple of backside one eighties front side my days off. I’m just cruising, man. 

[00:32:37] Marc Gonyea: I like it. All right. All right. All right. So you moved into the SDE role and then you kind of moved in. I kind of, then you moved into the inside sales role. 

[00:32:48] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[00:32:48] Marc Gonyea: Talk about that process because you know, every SDR wants to know about, “How, hey, how did it happen or what do I have to learn, have to do?”

[00:32:55] Omari Morgan: Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing that you have to be ready for is work your ass off. Anything in life is, that’s worth it, you’re going to have to work towards, right? So there was no part of my brain that was thinking that this was something that would be easily earned, from the SDE role perspective. It was just coming in everyday, bust your ass and, and make sure that you’re, getting feedback was super important to me.

[00:33:18] Right? So having not only Tommy, my boss, provide feedback, but Abby Lacy to my development. She spent a ton of time with me in terms of helping me develop. Brandon, Chima Urama. A good guy, I spent a lot of time with. It were tons and tons of people that I would just stay back and spend time listening to calls and give me feedback. And just being in that environment helped me to develop and then move into that inside sales role. 

[00:33:46] Marc Gonyea: Nice. All right. And what was that like? 

[00:33:49] Omari Morgan: Dude, it was great. Tommy Gassman had me drinking a lot more Red Bull than I… 

[00:33:57] Marc Gonyea: We didn’t know what we were doing then. So we supplement the process, which we didn’t have, ’cause they’re so new. It was still newer for Red Bull. 

[00:34:05] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Wait, supplement process for Red Bull? 

[00:34:07] Marc Gonyea: Well, ’cause Tommy to have like, you were an early generation at memoryBlue sales. Right? So now, yeah, so it was you and Joey and Abby. Right? Abby was first and then Abby went to go work. Eventually Abigail left. Right? So now Tommy, well now Nimit’s running the sales team. Right? Yeah. And we’ve got the ExecVision so called recording technology. 

[00:34:29] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[00:34:29] Marc Gonyea: He’s got things documented as to how to get ramped as a sales person versus, “Here Omari, drink some Red Bull and make some phone calls.”

[00:34:37] Omari Morgan: I mean, there was coaching, right? Tommy definitely sat me down. You know, we would have these morning meetings like a little huddle, right? Go into one of the conference rooms. And I think so when Tommy would do is he listen to a call either on his ride home or on his ride to the office. And so he would just walk in, I’m sitting down, tell me, rushing through the door and go straight to the whiteboard, and he just started to write, he started writing just stuff. Right?

And then, you know, give him 10 seconds, I’m trying to figure out where he’s going with it. Right? But then he, then we talked through his point and that was really cool to me. It was fast. It was there, but it gave me something to focus on for that. Somebody to get to focus on getting better with that day. Being able to get that feedback pretty consistently was super good and especially one-on-one, that was incredibly helpful. 

[00:35:25] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.  And so you were closing deals. Do you remember your first deal? 

[00:35:29] Omari Morgan: Oh, wow. I don’t think I do. 

[00:35:30] Marc Gonyea: Do you remember, do you have a memorable one or one that got away? It was a while ago. It’s good you know.

[00:35:35] Chris Corcoran: What about your career favorite deal? 

[00:35:37] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:35:38] Omari Morgan: We’ve been doing some deals at Scorecard lately, but I don’t, I’m not sure. Okay, I’ll say that we did a deal with a large multinational media company, recently that has been working for, for like 15 months. Right? One of the biggest deals that we’ve done in company history, we’ve done another deal with a huge telecommunications company.

[00:35:59] We were referred back last year that was absolutely massive. So just being able to help out on those deals has been really important to me. Those have definitely been the biggest career wins, ’cause you know, you’re talking about things that are getting into the million-dollar markets. So yeah, that’s the fun stuff.

[00:36:14] So we’re cracking that egg. 

[00:36:15] Marc Gonyea: I will get this… 

[00:36:16] Chris Corcoran: That’s good. 

[00:36:16] Marc Gonyea: Let’s progressing to that. So you’re doing your thing at memoryBlue, learn how to close, close and work, and then you eventually bounced. Right? And went to New York and sort of guiding the tech. How did that go down? 

[00:36:29] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So, I moved to New York to be closer to family and friends. So, I say I moved here. I moved on, dude. I went back to my childhood home, I had to get on my feet. And that took some time. So I was working for, I was living at my parents’ house. I had this, job that isn’t even on my LinkedIn, I’ll just say I work for a point of sales company.

[00:36:51] Right? And the experience was pretty short. And a couple of things that I took away were that. I didn’t get the sense that the investment on my development was there the way that it was at memoryBlue. The culture wasn’t as strong. I didn’t feel… I had friends there. I quickly made friends and that was good, but I didn’t feel like it was as insulated as strong, as warm as memoryBlue. So that I was quickly like, “All right, this isn’t working out.

[00:37:15] Let’s, figure out something else.” So, what happened? I got a call from a recruiter that had reached out to me for an opportunity I wasn’t interested in. But she had in like a week’s time she went to this other company called SecurityScorecard. And so she called me, they’re like, she was like, they’re looking for somebody that has experience selling into the West, from an inside slash commercial sales experience.

[00:37:39] Like, “Would you be interested?” She’s like, “I think you’re perfect for this.” So I go in, I meet with my future boss over here, Michael Takla and then Tom Wells and then our CEO, Alex Yampolskiy and the interviews just go fantastically. Also one of my old lacrosse coaches at SIM, was somebody that I knew from Montclair and he’s in investments.

[00:37:58] So I also, funny thing about Scorecard is that actually, when I was working at memoryBlue, it wasn’t my territory because it’s New York and I was focused on the West. But, I tried to claim the account, because, because I knew that. I was going up on weekends and playing lacrosse with my boys. Lacrosse. So I kept trying to put this bug in his ear about memoryBlue and then it turns out that I think Joey, was trying to get in too. And so I got, I think we had a couple of cards. 

[00:38:28] Marc Gonyea: So you ended up going there. 

[00:38:30] Omari Morgan: Yeah. I started to work on September 2016 as… 

[00:38:33] Marc Gonyea: Which is where you are now?

[00:38:34] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Five in, it’s almost five and a half years. 

[00:38:40] Marc Gonyea: And you mentioned culture earlier. The culture there must be strong. So tell us about that, but tell us why culture is important, particularly when you’re grow in your sales career. 

[00:38:49] Omari Morgan: Culture is absolutely key. You need to have a place that’s warm and fostering to not just salespeople said to anybody. It’s just point blank for any company that you want to start.

[00:38:58] Culture is incredibly important, especially on a sales team because everybody has their individual number. But you’re not really gonna to win alone. You’re never gonna win alone. Right? There are people, especially if you’re talking about a cybersecurity product.

[00:39:10] Chris Corcoran: Right? 

[00:39:11] Omari Morgan: You need to loop in prep. You need to be talking to find friends on the product team, the engineering team, data science team, being able to literally pop my head up and go and talk to Bob in data science or, anybody on our product team and ask questions, “And why is this this way?

[00:39:24] Is there something that’s on the roadmap? Are you hearing this from other people?” Those things, and having a warm culture is absolutely critical to seeing success. And that’s one of the big reasons why I’ve been at Scorecard for so long. It’s just great culture, a lot of great people.

[00:39:38] And, being able to have friends throughout the organization has been really, really amazing. 

[00:39:42] Marc Gonyea: So you started there and then did you move into city? When did you move into the city for them? 

[00:39:47] Omari Morgan: I’m going to say March of probably 27th, maybe a little later. Then I moved into the city. My first apartment was in Manhattan on 29th and second.

[00:41:01] Marc Gonyea: So it’s checking all these boxes, right? London, DC. You strive to place, I would love to have lived. And then, now regroup, and live in Manhattan. And what were you doing for them when you first started? 

[00:41:15] Omari Morgan: Yeah, so inside sales for the West. So I was the only person covering the West. When I joined the team…

[00:41:20] Chris Corcoran: Close the deals? 

[00:41:23] Omari Morgan: It was just fun and challenging. And then, yeah, I was the only closure for the West for about six months. Then we brought in a gentleman that lives down here in the San Jose area, as a field seller and he and I got close quickly, and focused on building up the territory.

[00:41:37] We have an SE that was based down here in San Jose. So, they’d come to New York, we’d sit down and then, picking up the phone. After call, “David, can, you know, what did you think about that call? What could I have done differently?” Constantly gathering that feedback is absolutely key.

[00:41:52] And then I also had people in the office. I had my friend Ray was absolutely integral to my development at Scorecard. Right? She would, or they would spend a lot of time with me, drilling into the call, again, “What could I have done differently?” Or they would also invite me to sit down on their calls so that I could pick up what they were doing well, or see if that worked for me.

[00:42:13] And that was something that at memoryBlue was again, key to my development. So that culture was fantastic. 

[00:42:19] Marc Gonyea: And then you were living close to the office? 

[00:42:21] Omari Morgan: Yeah, I was a 27 and 2nd. So we’re 30, we’re 29th and 7th. So I was just a straight five avenues across. 

[00:42:30] Marc Gonyea: Why is that important or why was that important for you?

[00:42:34] Omari Morgan: So, when I was living at my parents’ place as covering West Coast hours, but also, new job hard-worker, “I’m going to make a good impression. I’m not going to drag my butt in too late”. So I try and show up to work early, 8 o’clock, 8:30 every morning, and then calling into the West.

[00:42:49] And especially if you’re selling, you’re not catching these execs or people until they’re on their way home. So I’d be in the office until like 8 o’clock, 8:30, 9 o’clock at night. So, commuting back home, not ideal. Living in the city five avenue block, five avenue walk to my apartment, definitely so powerful. 

[00:43:07] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, that’s great. Okay. When did you, so when did you make this transition now, ’cause you on getting into this from direct to the channel? 

[00:43:16] Omari Morgan: So we went a hundred percent channel in 2017.

[00:43:20] Marc Gonyea: The company did? 

[00:43:20] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So, and especially being an inside sales rep that was in New York selling to the West Coast and I wasn’t really…

[00:43:29] Inside sales to the company means insights, right? I’m not getting on a plane and coming out to San Francisco, LA, Denver. So I had to find a way to have a better presence out in the market that I couldn’t physically be in. And when I realized that we were selling through the channel, it didn’t click immediately.

[00:43:45] I had to learn how to talk to people, but what I quickly came to realize is that the channel is truly an extension of you and your product and your solution, if you use it properly. And I realized that if I could start to build relationships, I could have people out here in the West, sell on my behalf, bring me into meetings.

[00:44:05] And that would be great for all of us. 

[00:44:07] Marc Gonyea: How would you define, so that people listen to, they don’t know what the channel is. How would you define the channel? Like the simplest form for like somebody who’s in like an SDR who’s in tech, who they’ve worked most with direct reps. 

[00:44:19] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Channel is really just a mode of sales.

[00:44:23] Most people are going to be familiar with direct, right? You have a manufacturer that’s selling a solution to an end-user. When you hear the buzzword channel users, because that channel is no longer direct. It’s typically going to be because you’re using a value added reseller, a global systems integrator, a managed service provider, or managed solution service provider.

[00:44:42] Marc Gonyea: What’d you call those professional services companies that work with technology companies? 

[00:44:48] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So the last two MSP and MSSP would be professional services companies that work with tech companies are usually IT. So, professional services focused and then the first two global systems integrators will work with the biggest of the biggest companies out there.

[00:45:02] They will deliver services, but they also resell other softwares and hardwares. And then value added resellers are also going to be delivering professional services, reselling softwares, and hardwares as well. And they can also dip into the other models too. 

[00:45:16] Marc Gonyea: Those companies make up the channel. 

[00:45:18] Omari Morgan: They do.

[00:45:19] Marc Gonyea: Ok. Alright. 

[00:45:20] Omari Morgan: And also, I should probably add that Alliance Integrations can also make up the channel because if you’re making integrations, that’s another avenue to go gather revenue. Right? If I have a, an integration with Microsoft, then now I have an addressable market that taps into Microsoft’s customer base.

[00:45:37] Right? So it’s just helping companies get wider and stronger. And we talk about virality effect a lot in the day in the age of social media, that’s an easy sort of way to think about it. 

[00:45:47] Marc Gonyea: So the company switched from direct channel and you’re like, “Hey man, I need, I got to cover this ground. I can only cover so much ground from the office in Manhattan?”

[00:45:54] Right. I got to start working with these channel. I got to, you know, these companies are the way to do it. And so what was that like? Did you have to identify them? 

[00:46:03] Omari Morgan: Oh, so I had, some really good channel managers in my time at Scorecard, Gavin Osters and Dan Buccellato were fantastic. So they helped me learn, right?

[00:46:13] Those are the people that, I’d grab an hour, 30 minutes to an hour with them, to just soak in their, their knowledge. But it also came through reps. Right? I have an opportunity. We went a hundred percent channel, so I couldn’t even send out a quote myself anymore. Right? So I had to send a quote to a channel partner.

[00:46:28] I’ve got Gavin, Gavin appointed me to the right partner. And then just do these reps. I’m like, “Oh, this guy, Isaac Lou’s name is Bob it up a little bit in my patch know, maybe I should call him. Maybe I should sit down with them and figure out what he’s doing. And so, I get somebody’s account list.

[00:46:43] You get on the phone with them. You talk about where their customer base is, I’m then going and calling those accounts. I’m working my BDR to go after those accounts. Now I’m getting more information. Isaac’s going and leveraging that to get me a meeting. So it’s one of those things where you’re legit, you’re team working with another organization to go sell a solution into a company.

[00:47:03] And that organization can also wrap professional services around it. Right? Huge margin for them top dollar. Right? So the value of my introduction or our work together is significantly higher by working together with the channel. 

[00:47:18] Chris Corcoran: So as part of that, were you,  responsible for identifying and recruiting and bringing on new channel partners? 

[00:47:24] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So usually what I would do is that I like to bring on partners that make sense for us. Obviously it makes sense for the business, right? So we have a lot of partners at that, reach out, a lot of people that have interests, but where I’m really leaning in are the partners that have, a lot of key relationships.

[00:47:42] They’re able to deliver services around what we specifically are doing, because that’s value more value to my customers that makes my solution stickier, and then scale right. Skills, super important. Right. we’re a company that’s, that’s pricing for an IPO. So really investing in spending time and identifying areas that presents scale, stickiness, and, how can I get my, getting my data basically everywhere. Those are the areas of focus that we like to click at. 

[00:48:07] Chris Corcoran: Interesting. So what’s it like? Compare selling direct versus selling through the channel. 

[00:48:12] Omari Morgan: Some of the channels, like you have another teammate, you have another, you have somebody that has information from behind enemy lines, because if I’m selling this one solution, but my reseller can sell like hundreds of different things in there.

[00:48:27] Right? They’re already a customer there. So we have my reseller can, they know what, they’re, buying. They know what projects that they have, you know, for the roadmap this year. So, end of the, year’s coming up and we run on a calendar year for our fiscal. I call my boy, Isaac, ” Is this realistic man? He’s not going to be ask me.

[00:48:42] Right. Being able to have those relationships. So it helps with, pipeline management, setting expectations to management, and also you’re able to just have much wider reach, because I didn’t realize this, but my partner reps here figuring out to lunch down here, you’re gonna have to golf, they’re going out to Warriors games.

[00:49:00] Like these are not areas of touches that I had access to. So really like leaning in and making, it’s not about just like having like a relationship. It would be these people need to be your friends. So how does it different? It’s that, you have a friend, you have a teammate on that can give you insight information and help you sell wider within an organization versus you have and I mean, I’m going to make this sound as weird as it can be, but you have the unqualified outbound that was just like, “Yeah, I’ll take the call two weeks from now, three weeks from now on, at five 30.”

[00:49:33] Instead of it being that, where you get on the phone and it’s like, “Oh, so, why did you decide to take the call with us today?” Instead of it being that it’s like, they know what you’re talking about. You already know that your partner is qualified, this or that they have a need because your partner has presented it to them.

[00:49:45] They’re like, “Hey, I’m interested.” Right now. Makes sense. Right? I’m not just continuing to call Collins and his account is hoping that it’s the right time. It’s super advantageous. That’s a group of description. 

[00:49:55] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, definitely. 

[00:49:56] Marc Gonyea: Right. You did a good job describing the value of what a channel driven organization can do, like efficiency, cutting out the bulkshit.

[00:50:05] But also providing the client, the customer, like some that makes sense, right? Because ideally those, your channel partners know what’s going on in the client’s environment and tell the client is we’re not going to work with, we’re not going to recommend something that doesn’t make sense. We know all the stuff about you and then you’re going to be upset at us.

[00:50:23] So when you’re doing this, when did you decide to make the move? So you’re, you know, you conquer Manhattan, Brooklyn, doing your thing. 

[00:50:30] Omari Morgan: So, it was 2019? So keep in mind, keep bringing this up enterprise sales is the X on the map, right? development is something that we’ve talked about already.

[00:50:39] So knowing that I work at a hundred percent channel organization, and then I want to get an enterprise sales, I wanted to move up, but the opportunity to move up didn’t really exist. We moved to that enterprise sales, role didn’t exist at that time. So instead of being all pissy about it and trying to go somewhere else, I was like, “You know, this is an opportunity.”

[00:50:59] There’s an internal opportunity for me to move to the channel team, to learn a little bit more about the channel, because now I’m going to go outside of my box of commercial sales, selling into Northern California. There’s one corner, which isn’t a great corner, but so I’m looking at the entire West, everything west of Denver.

[00:51:14] So I’m learning about the Denver market. I’m learning about the Phoenix market, learning about Los Angeles market. I’m learning about Pacific Northwest Seattle, Portland, Boise, those markets as well. Getting entrenched with the partners there, developing those relationships for our company in turn developing, my brand interact with, the channel partners big.

[00:51:33] So if I can develop that, then eventually hopefully I can move into an enterprise sales role, but I do love the channels. So there, so at this point in my life, you know, I have two very, I think, great career opportunities, which is I can stay in the channel, continue to develop. And because I’ve been spending the last several years building the brand, the company has been growing like crazy year over year.

[00:51:54] So, I can stay there. Or if, say for example, if I wanted to move into enterprise sales, then I can bring that channel experience to the table. I don’t ever really, I already have the trust down, my partners trust me. They know I’m going to have their back. So, it could be off to the races way too.

[00:52:09] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. You’re doing it the right way, Omari. 

[00:52:12] Chris Corcoran: So you got everything west of Denver? Wow. How many partners are you managing up? Ballpark? 

[00:52:19] Omari Morgan: So, I’d say actively 15, 20. 

[00:52:25] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[00:52:25] Omari Morgan: We’re keeping close and then overall, I mean 50, 60. 

[00:52:30] Chris Corcoran: Right. And one of the challenges of it, what I remember, is getting these partners to sell your solution as opposed to your competitor’s solution or a different technology. So how are you able to kind of stay front of mind with all your..? 

[00:52:43] Omari Morgan: Yeah, that’s a really..

[00:52:44] Chris Corcoran: Key partners.

[00:52:45] Omari Morgan: I think it really comes down to being honest about how you run your business and understanding how the partner runs their business. They need to be honest with you. You need to be honest with them because when the two of you are able to come together and have that honest conversation, then you’re able to see opportunities to work together more.

[00:52:58] How do you stay top of mind? Well, if I know that my competitor is giving them X amount of margin, then I know that I should probably come in above that. But when do I need to do to substantiate that? I need them to get involved earlier, early in the deal cycle. I need them to help out sufficiently so that my rep feels like, the margin that we’re extending is worth it.

[00:53:20] Some reps tends to think of this margin, which has extended to a reseller to get a transaction done, that they feel that is attached to them, but they think it was a tax completely. And that’s, I look at it as leverage and value. 

[00:53:32] Marc Gonyea: So tell us about why people think it’s a tax, just real quick. Just for people to understand the channel, but you’re, you’re describing it well, but… 

[00:53:40] Omari Morgan: I’ll continue to try my best.

[00:53:41] So if you have, say for example, you have a deal that’s a hundred K, and you’re selling it directly, right? Your company recognizes that a hundred K, right? If you’re doing a deal, that’s a hundred K and you’re selling, if you have a channel. And you’re doing it on a teaming margin. That’s 10%. Your company recognizes the 90 K. Your quota recognizes that 90 K.

[00:54:03] So some people think of that as a tax. It’s like, “Oh, I could have gotten a hundred K out of this. I could have retired more quota.” Right? But…

[00:54:09] Marc Gonyea: It’s a direct rep mindset. 

[00:54:11] Omari Morgan: That’s most of the reps that anybody’s gonna talk to. Right? But the way that I like to look at the channel is actually if I have a hundred K deal and I can get a channel partner involved early, that already is working with them, has papers easily able to transact, as really good relationships, right through C-suite down, is delivering services that touch not only the team that I’m talking to, but other teams within the organization.

[00:54:36] 2025 points. Right? So that hundred K deal, I recognized 75 K, but the amount of hard work in banging my head against that wall is going down. And that allows me to spend my time on other opportunities. 

[00:54:49] Marc Gonyea: A multiplier. 

[00:54:49] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:54:50] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Damn. And you got it down cold, man? 

[00:54:53] Chris Corcoran: For sure. 

[00:54:53] Marc Gonyea: All right. So when did you make the decision to move, to go to the West Coast? 

[00:54:57] Omari Morgan: Yeah, so I needed to be the general manager for the West and I had to live here. Right? The company was not going to allow me to do that from New York. So it worked out in that sense. So I moved back here in July of 2019. My first…

[00:55:11] Marc Gonyea: Three years this summer. 

[00:55:12] Omari Morgan: Yeah, my first place was a sublet by, uh, Golden Gate Park.

[00:55:17] Cute and nice, but slept on an air mattress for a month. And then I found an apartment with two really good roommates in Knob Hill. Uh, one of which was in sales at a company called Darktrace. The other one was in finance, at BlackRock. So, I had two guys that I could vibe with for sure.

[00:55:36] Yeah, that’s sort of how it all kicked off. I really enjoyed those first couple of months in San Francisco and I hit the ground running, right? Like I was downtown. I went to, we have a partner that had an office downtown about SHI. They let me go there all the time.

[00:55:49] Right? Going out to lunches downtown. So having that accessibility was absolutely awesome. Because I was completely starving. 

[00:55:58] Chris Corcoran: Do you know Jeanne Ball? 

[00:56:00] Omari Morgan: Yeah, of course. I know Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne, and I actually did a deal together.

[00:56:06] Chris Corcoran: Where did you meet Jeanne? 

[00:56:10] Omari Morgan: I met Jeanne in Virginia. 

[00:56:13] Chris Corcoran: Did you meet her at memoryBlue or? Okay. And then she’s at SHI. 

[00:56:16] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So I met her at memoryBlue and then I came over and took that role. She was already at SHI at that time. So and their office was… Yeah. So what would happen is that I would go into the office and it was Jeanne’s team, but I think the day that worked for me didn’t work for her, most of the time, but we stayed close.

[00:56:34] I had MobileIron as a customer and we worked together on that one and Jeanne was app. You know what I was talking about, about the insider information? 

[00:56:41] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:56:42] Omari Morgan: Jeanne was absolutely killer. He was like, she was like, “Hey, listen, like, this is how you should come in on the price because he’s going to do this, that and the other.”

[00:56:51] She just really prepped me with how to deal with the end-user and keep in mind, this is one of those opportunities where I had been working it and working it. And I was like, banging my head against the wall, “Like, why won’t they freak it to buy?” And Jeanne, I’ve realized that this is what at Jeanne’s accounts and that she’s doing business with them.

[00:57:06] And so we hop on the phone and she’s like, “Okay. Yeah, I know who you’re talking to this guy.” And so she’s giving me the whole lay of the land. And so, yeah, that was a prop. It’s crazy. I’ve been totally forgot, but yeah, Jeanne and I have done business together and it was really easy work with her. 

[00:57:20] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:57:20] Marc Gonyea: She’s got uncommon interest.

[00:57:22] Chris Corcoran: I think she’s cleaning up. 

[00:57:26] Marc Gonyea: For a second. So, Omari, like, did you graduate school in 2014? Not even I guess, eight years out, this May. So now you live in a San Francisco, just checking the life experience list. What’s the difference between like living in San Francisco versus living in Manhattan?

[00:57:41] Omari Morgan: Man, it’s night and day. Like people ask me this question a lot and they’re like, “What do you like more?” And I can’t really answer that question in terms of, “What you like more?” They’re just too different. 

[00:57:49] Marc Gonyea: What’s the difference? 

[00:57:51] Omari Morgan: So, San Francisco is way smaller, one 10th of the population in New York.

[00:57:55] So really what you have is, you have a city that sometimes feels like the city, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like the city. There’s a lot of suburban areas, little enclaves. You hear this thing about microclimates out here. Like it’s very much how the people are too. 

[00:58:08] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. 

[00:58:08] Omari Morgan: So you have your neighborhood and you have the fireworks that go on in your neighborhood in terms of whatever culture that is and, whatever the attractions of that neighborhood are.

[00:58:16] And I like that, right? Like I’ve lived in Knob Hill, which is kind of like this, we’ll call it a snooty. 

[00:58:21] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:58:22] Omari Morgan: Snooty part of the city, where you don’t have a lot of people coalescing, you don’t really get that community feel. In mission, you know, you have a Mission Dolores Park, which is a huge park. People go there.

[00:58:33] They enjoy themselves on Saturdays and Sundays. And that’s somewhere where you go and, you just get the energy which is just so right. And New York is, ” I’m going from point a to point B. I’m trying to move there as quickly as possible.” It’s a lot of, ” I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this, I made this much money, this much money.”

[00:58:50] So it just feels, things feel a little bit more, more organic out here. People are more down to earth, but you know, from the New York area, so tons of love definitely, definitely a special place in my heart. So too different, too different places, but I love them both, in a specialty way. 

[00:59:06] Marc Gonyea: Talk about something, that’s good. ‘Cause people want it now. ‘Cause people think about moving these two places all the time. 

[00:59:10] Chris Corcoran: Well, we compare it to Austin and DC. 

[00:59:12] Marc Gonyea: Oh yeah. 

[00:59:13] Omari Morgan: Oh, wow. That’s so interesting. So DC has a really good feel for me, especially ’cause I went to Maryland. So for me it’s more so like a nostalgia, but DC was a great place to get my start for sure.

[00:59:26] I really liked that I started in DC because it’s not one of these major cities. Right? You don’t feel absolutely, you don’t feel the weight of the world, like rushing on every freaking moment. Right? Again, back to the development piece. I think there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of pressure to perform in both of those cities, but with DC, it really allowed me to take a slob, enjoy the experience and DC is another warm place, right?

[00:59:49] I meet a lot of great, I met a lot of great people at memoryBlue. I had a lot of my personal friends from college. It was just a super warm place where I was able to learn, develop, and cut my teeth both, in a professional sense, and as a young adult, made some mistakes as a young person, recent graduates because learn from those and, come to the big cities and start to play a little bit harder ball.

[01:00:07] Marc Gonyea: There you go. They’re playing some harder ball. So Omari, you like continually by what you talked about by your actions, you have a really high degree of self-awareness, I think and you said earlier, when you chose not to go work for WealthEngine which is no disrespect to them, you stuck around and then you invest this time energy and SecurityScorecard and they moved to this channel model.

[01:00:27] And you said something earlier about, “Hey, I could have been upset,” but you didn’t get upset. Because people in tech behave where there’s a lot of movement. 

[01:00:34] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Right. 

[01:00:35] Marc Gonyea: And you have been at SecurityScorecard for five, five and a half years. 

[01:00:38] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[01:00:39] Marc Gonyea: So what’s kept you, I won’t say what’s kept you there exciting because I think I know what you’re gonna say, but why do you think it is like your peers in the industry are bouncing around and more, so more than you are, or more than other people? Like there’s a lot of movement. 

[01:00:50] Omari Morgan: Yeah. I think one of the things that you’ll always hear about is conversations, social conversations in New York or San Francisco is going to be how much equity does somebody have in a company. With the boom in tech is a boom in investment.

[01:01:04] And that gives people the ability of equity and wealth. So a lot of people are bouncing around from place to place to place, even though they’re having a three, four year vesting cycles to get 25% of the other piece of the pie here, 25% of that, so that’s just you doing one year, one year, one year.

[01:01:19] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. 

[01:01:21] Omari Morgan: And they’re trying to spread out the likelihood or it’s like playing the lottery. So, we’re just trying to spread out an investment in time.

[01:01:28] Marc Gonyea: It’s not smart to play the lottery, right?

[01:01:30] Omari Morgan: I mean, I get how people do this, but for me, it’s, you’re not going to master something unless you invest the proper time in it.

[01:01:37] And that’s why I’ve decided, or that’s why I liked the time that I’ve spent at Scorecard. So I liked the time that I spent at memoryBlue, because it wasn’t not even like quick gate. It’s really invest, understand, learn, apply. 

[01:01:50] Marc Gonyea: So you think people have got a strategy, but why also? ‘Cause people aren’t getting 25% of the company in a mid-level sales job, and they’re getting some equity. Right? 

[01:01:58] Chris Corcoran: Okay. No, what he’s saying is like, you get your equity and you, you wait until one year, so it’s 25% faster and then you go somewhere else so that you have all your bets on the table, all fast tables. So if one of them hits, even though you’re only gonna get 25%, but you have a lot of bets on the table. 

[01:02:15] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, it goes back to my point, like, are the bets that’s significant? Like, are you hearing stories about reps people who are just like, ” Yeah. You know, I’ve had four jobs in seven years and like the one, this number two job, my 5,000 options.” I, you know what I mean? Like,

[01:02:31] Omari Morgan: I mean, there are certain people that like, there are going to be one person, but the large majority isn’t happening.

[01:02:41] And also the thing is I’ve seen people do it. So it’s like, all right. So, you four years later, what do you got going on here? Right? You touched four different industries. You haven’t really dug into one. You haven’t really put your, your mark anywhere. So now you’re kind of floating around in this, ” I’m a sales rep and I’ve been at these last four companies for a year or pop. Nobody’s really talking about my wilds.”

[01:03:06] Like it’s tough to really stand by, to stand by your, your resume at that point. Right? Like you want to know that you’re, if I’m hiring somebody, I want to know that they’re invested. 

[01:03:15] Chris Corcoran: Well, let me just think about it. I think about how much more valuable you are to the marketplace in that now five and a half years of cyber experience and the experience, who’s who in the West for the channel, right?

[01:03:32] In cyber, in cyber. So that’s much more valuable than someone who did that for one year and sold to the financial services industry in New York for a year. And if you bounce on your build up the momentum and that’s really what makes you more valuable. 

[01:03:47] Marc Gonyea: Like it’s a tough way to go about it. 

[01:03:50] Chris Corcoran: What? Bouncing around like a cabinet dryer?

[01:03:52] Marc Gonyea: I’m just kind of hoping you’re open, you’re small. I mean, I can’t get on the vesting schedule and getting it going, you know? I don’t know. So let’s talk about something else real quick. Cyber. So at memoryBlue and the SDRs listen this are gonna hate me for saying this, but they’re always moaning and groaning and whining and complaining about how hard cyber is and how… Well some of these things are true.

[01:04:16] Like cyber folks are harder to get on the phone. They’ll pick up as much. They’re more cynical opening statement. And they think, you’re in Russia trying to like get their information to ruin their life and get them fired from their job, which happens from time to time. So, “Oh, you’re on the cyber campaign. That kind of sucks”, or like, “My cyber, I’m on cyber ends.” And they kind of want to get off of it.

[01:04:38] Omari Morgan: I see. 

[01:04:39] Marc Gonyea: Why is that a bad idea? Well, why, why might it be a bad idea for some people?

[01:04:45] Omari Morgan: It’s a bad idea because you’re, you’re walking away from a real big learning opportunity. That’s what I think is most significant, right? Like if I had the opportunity to sell… 

[01:04:53] Marc Gonyea: “I want to get paid. I’m an SDR. I want to hit my quota every month.” Everything is time invested 

[01:04:58] Omari Morgan: It will get you paid later. That’s like, that’s the thing we’re talking about, we’re talking about thought processes that are short-term versus long-term. And if you have the opportunity to, if I had the opportunity to be on a cyber account, I wouldn’t, I would ask to be like, if you had like a full FTE and I was half of it, I’d be like, “All right.

[01:05:15] So like, how can I become that full?” Because if I can spend more time with their reps and learn about, ” What do you guys do on your calls?” Right? Because, I’m setting up the meetings, we’re getting on our one-on-one calls. We’re making sure the meetings are good, but also if I can just have five minutes of just information gathering from this rep on the other side, that’s huge to me, because again, I’m going back and I’m applying that, if I can in my day to day, but also that rep is seeing you go out of your way and invest your time in learning more, which at the end of, “What is the rep like?”

[01:05:46] There’s nothing any field rep wants more than a sales or SDR that’s invested, that wants to learn and that wants to grow. So I think if you’re honest, I recount you have a huge opportunity to make an impression just with hard work and ask them questions. 

[01:06:03] Chris Corcoran: Well, cyber was super hot in the ’90s, and it has been ever since.

[01:06:09] Marc Gonyea: I mean it, and it will continue because it’s so innovative and it’s changing all the time. You got to start one step ahead. So all your memoryBlue SDRs, you want to be on a cyber campaign, you should be asking for it because you’re trying to position yourself where are you going to be three years from now, five years from now, eight years from now, this we should be focused on.

[01:06:29] Yeah. So yes, it’s harder.  Good. Lean into that shit. 

[01:06:33] Omari Morgan: Yeah. And here’s the thing. Like it’s harder, but if you can, crack that nut. Come on, make it rain. 

[01:06:41] Marc Gonyea: As a long snapper who can get the job done. We’ve been playing football for 25 years. So, I mean, I’m inspired by you when you were traveling some good game earlier. So, you know, I’m trying to your level. 

[01:06:52] Chris Corcoran: Let’s talk about diversity. 

[01:06:54] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. That’s where I wanted to go through in tech sales. This is exactly what I want to say. There aren’t a lot of guys, Haitian- Jamaican backgrounds rocking around in the tech sales world. And we talked that, we touched on it a little bit, but let’s hear from you.

[01:07:12] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Tech sales is a place where it is, you do not have many people of color, especially black men and women in this industry. So one thing that I find really important is making sure that to stay connected. Right? I think it’s one of the things that we don’t see as much anymore because of COVID and everything is these conferences, Kendrick Trotter, he’s an alum of yours, right?

[01:07:33] Kendrick Trotter’s a good dude. Last time I saw him was at RSA and 2020, but yeah. 

[01:07:41] Marc Gonyea: When COVID started, right? 

[01:07:43] Omari Morgan: Like our booths are right next to each other. And it was like one of those things where like, we knew, we know who each other, who we are. Right? We, there’s mutual respect there. I’m trying to stay up to date with him on LinkedIn all the time.

[01:07:54] So being able to, you know, be plugged in is super important, but Kendrick’s example of a memoryBlue alum, but just with other people in tech, right, I have, there are other people at other VARs that I’m working with, sales reps that I’m working with, that as far as sales reps, internally, other people within my company, making sure to stay plugged in is super important.

[01:08:12] But building your network in sales, especially as a black man, with other people of color is super important to me. And that’s, something where I definitely lean into to building those relationships a lot. 

[01:08:24] Marc Gonyea: That’s good. And how do we, get more going, like Trotter furthers on that a lot? We obviously, right, we want to open up, we want to open up the flood gates. ‘Cause there’s a, there’s a portion of the population that I think if people knew about this career choice and the skill that you develop and the money that you can make and the experience it can offer you, it’s amazing, but how do we get the word out?

[01:08:51] Omari Morgan: So I think a lot of it has to do with kind of looking backwards. Right? I didn’t realize, I didn’t learn about this career path until I was pretty late in college. So earlier in college is better. Like the earlier you can push this forward in terms of presenting it as, ‘This is a career path that you can do well’ and two, ‘People of color are important’.

[01:09:11] So I think it starts with college, at least for now, right? That’s the area that makes sense, because I also know people that have gone all the way, they got their masters. People have gotten their master’s and then got into sales and it’s like, they got the technical piece down, they got the business piece down and they ended up in sales or that with air quotes.

[01:09:29] But this is a career opportunity that existed significantly before that. So being able to tap into college networks, black associations at different schools, HBCUs, I think are gonna provide as significant, are definitely the right type of talent for us. 

[01:09:43] Chris Corcoran: Definitely. 

[01:09:44] Omari Morgan: Like there should be a huge focus on HBCUs.

[01:09:49] Marc Gonyea: I want to do what Deion Sanders is doing for business. Right? He’s taking the…

[01:09:53] Chris Corcoran: Jackson State. 

[01:09:53] Marc Gonyea: Four star and five star kids. He’s, they come to Jackson State. We should try and take the four and five star kids at HBCUs and get them into tech sales. We’ve got some now Francois and we got Mark. We’ve got some guys, we need to get more.

[01:10:08] Omari Morgan: Yeah, totally.

[01:10:09] Marc Gonyea: Because I think they’ll thrive. 

[01:10:11] Omari Morgan: Absolutely. 

[01:10:12] Marc Gonyea: Right? I mean, we just got to expose the opportunity, but sales has kind of got this, like say you want to go and see, why do you want to go to sales?

[01:10:17] Chris Corcoran: So Omari already dealt with his parents. 

[01:10:19] Marc Gonyea: And I remember talking to him about his mom when he was working with us. God bless your parents, did a phenomenal job, obviously.

[01:10:23] Right? Shout out to your parents. But what is your mom? What’s your pop think now about this or the wind for securities cohort to go public or they are like, “Hey, we want you to come back or like…?” 

[01:10:34] Omari Morgan: My parents are fully supportive of what I’m doing. My mom and my dad are like very respectful of the hard work that goes into this. When I catch up with my parents, you’re like, “Oh, have that deal work out.”

[01:10:50] Marc Gonyea: Mom’s got like a whiteboard… To be upgraded. 

[01:10:57] Omari Morgan: Yeah. So my parents are definitely invested in the career path and, they see me developing more and more happiness as, as my career…. 

[01:11:04] Marc Gonyea: We talked with you about the channel. It’s powerful. 

[01:11:07] Chris Corcoran: Definitely. 

[01:11:08] Marc Gonyea: Right?

[01:11:08] Chris Corcoran: Definitely. Definitely. 

[01:11:09] Omari Morgan: There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of opportunity in the channel for companies that are direct only.

[01:11:14] If you’re looking to grow as a rep, don’t count out value added resellers, don’t count out a global systems integrators, don’t count out managed service providers. Those are all areas where you can spend time, learn a lot. When a time…

[01:11:28] Marc Gonyea: I was like a channel rep before at micro-strategy as an indirect account executive.

[01:11:32] And I got everything under a billion dollars. I worked with all these VARs. Chris has got a lot of work experience or on channel experience too. Right? Losing to Radware all the time. But, I think it’s kind of an overlooked path to get out. I mean, you’re only eight years out of school. You just had an impactful things and you’re learning sales kind of adult the whole thing. All right, Omari.. That’s great. All right. So final thought, my final thought because probably it’s gonna try more. So knowing what you know now, the night before you started at memoryBlue, what advice would you have for yourself? Eight years later. 

[01:12:11] Omari Morgan: I mean, take it freaking easy, dude. Take a deep breath. Yeah. Take a deep breath. Be yourself, because you’re not going to get anywhere. And again, this actually ties directly into being a person of color in tech, pretending to be somebody that I’m not is never, never has done me any favors.

[01:12:27] Right? Wear your heart on your sleeve and be proud of who you are and bring that to your work and master that. Yeah, that’s the advice, to stay calm and be yourself. 

[01:12:34] Marc Gonyea: And you’ve backed that up with a  powerful work ethic. 

[01:12:37] Omari Morgan: I mean, you’re not going to get anything unless you work hard.

[01:12:39] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 

[01:12:41] Chris Corcoran: So, Omari, I’ve got to thank you. So I think about you maybe once every other week, because I have a pair of SecurityScorecard socks that I wear. So thanks for the socks. I wear them once every two weeks with my black pants. 

[01:12:57] Omari Morgan: I got to get you guys some, some new socks, hopefully a… 

[01:13:00] Marc Gonyea: Same navy blue socks. Do we just save this as vest? 

[01:13:04] Omari Morgan: We just did some new branding. I do have some of the old ones, but I knew that I might get my hand slapped if I give out the old branding. So let me get some new branding. 

[01:13:12] Chris Corcoran: I’d like to take it through my, digging through my, sock drawer going, ” Where am I, Omari? Where am I, Omari?” 

[01:13:17] Omari Morgan: You can 

[01:13:18] Marc Gonyea: Fill the brand around Omari..

[01:13:21] Chris Corcoran: Hey, last question. Podcast recommendations? 

[01:13:24] Omari Morgan: Oh dude, I don’t, I’m not usually on podcasts. And the one podcast that I have been listening to is not sales. 

[01:13:34] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. But, um, what is it? 

[01:13:36] Omari Morgan: I do like Huberman Labs. He’s a neurosurgeon and…. Huberman Labs. Huberman. I think I get it on Spotify, but..

[01:13:44] Marc Gonyea: What is it? 

[01:13:45] Omari Morgan: He is a neuroscientists from, it’s called Huberman Labia, neuroscientist from Stanford. And what he does is he looks at a ton of different areas. For example, like, let’s see, effects of fasting and time restricted and, restricted eating on fat loss and health, master your sleep and be more alert when you wake like… Simple things like that are all tools for managing stress and anxiety, right?

[01:14:12] Those are super important, in today’s day and age, right? Mental health is becoming more and more of a topic of conversation more than ever. For me, it was like, I used to always have to have like my lowest end moments before I’d get on a call and go into a conference room. Like, take a couple of deep breaths, some quiet meditation.

[01:14:28] Those have always been things that have added to my ability to be a salesperson. So I’ve always been interested in, you know, the brain chemistry and the science that goes behind all of that and try to find ways to improve by just, and this guy bringing up like clinical research. It’s pretty cool. 

[01:14:43] Chris Corcoran: Cool. That’s awesome.

[01:14:44] Marc Gonyea: I got one more question for you before we’ll wrap things up. We kind of gloss over this. So you went from working, you like warmth in a culture, in that environment. But you laid the foundation, but then also you’re working with your, you get your crib, even when you were subletting your, in your one bedroom, whatever, and then you moved to that apartment. So you’re working virtual. Yeah, right? 

[01:15:04] Omari Morgan: Yeah. 

[01:15:04] Marc Gonyea: The memoryBlue SDR game is not a virtual game. Like we get these guys and gals back in the office as quickly as possible so they can work. They can have the same memories you have, learning experiences. Right? You got some experience now, but what’s it like, what are some tips you have for people who have to work on their crib?

[01:15:17] Omari Morgan: Yeah. Tips would definitely be to stay connected. And how to stay connected for me is, I have to change up my environment every now and then. You have to go to coffee shops. I like to call people while I’m taking a frequent walk, call people that, from former jobs, call people all of that, working different lines of work, stay connected to your team outside of slack.

[01:15:37] Right? All these things are super important, to keeping your head on straight And then being able to push forward. But for me, partners, once with partners and our happy hours, I suck at golf, but, uh, hopefully in the next year I can get better. So I guess I’d go and partner golfing.

[01:15:53] But just getting out and doing things with your partners or clients, customers, prospects, whatever. Yeah. Huge. Right? Where a lot of people were stuck inside, but, you still have an excuse to go see your customers of course. 

[01:16:06] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. It could be in front of people. It’s time well spent. I need to get on… Are you on Instagram?.

[01:16:12] Omari Morgan: I am. 

[01:16:12] Marc Gonyea: You got any of those? 180, 180s? 

[01:16:17] Omari Morgan: I mean maybe by the end of this snow season. 

[01:16:19] Marc Gonyea: All right. Okay. We want to follow you on Instagram. Wait for that.

[01:16:21] Chris Corcoran: So, you know, you know, when Instagram is falling out of favor?

[01:16:36] Marc Gonyea: Very good.  All right, Omari. 

[01:16:37] Chris Corcoran: This was awesome. Thanks so much. We appreciate it. 

[01:16:39] Omari Morgan: Thanks you guys for having me. This has been great. 

[01:16:41] Marc Gonyea: Continue. We’ll do this again in like three to four years, to see what’s going on with you.

[01:16:44] Omari Morgan: I’d love that. Absolutely love to do that. 

[01:16:46] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, for sure. 

[01:16:47] Omari Morgan: I’ll do it.