Episode 116: Erik Riefenstahl – Why Tech Sales?

You’ll lose nothing by using everything! In sales this can look like transferring skills from previous experiences into your sales role, utilizing all your communication channels to reach prospects, and taking advantage of the collaboration and mentorship that comes with being a part of a sales team.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Erik Riefenstahl, now a Business Development Manager for Public Sector at Adobe shares his own professional path leading into sales and the factors, both internal and external, that have greatly impacted his trajectory as he climbed the ranks.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Erik Riefenstahl

💡 What he does: Erik is the manager of Business Development: Public Sector at Adobe.

💡 Company: Adobe 

💡Noteworthy: Erik is an experienced account development representative with a demonstrated history of working in the computer hardware/software industry. He is also a former employee of memoryBlue.

💡 Where to find Erik: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡A background in athletics is a good foundation for a career in sales. Episode after episode, we ask our guests about their childhood, education, aspirations, and interests at a young age to learn more about them and how that is linked to their desire to enter sales. More often than not, we found that our guests are passionate about sports and played one in high school and college. As a result, they cultivated a specific mindset and acquired skills they now use in their professional life. ”Competitiveness for one, teamwork for another. Those are the obvious ones. But I think it’s about grinding when nobody else is looking, putting in the work, going to the gym — doing things you don’t want to do on a day-to-day basis. It helps you build perseverance; it helps you build consistency. And those things are important in sales,” says Erik.

⚡A successful salesperson uses most, if not all, available communication channels. Some salespeople are good at in-person communication; others prefer the phone or digital tools. However, if you want to excel, you must conquer them all. Erik started as a door-to-door seller and transitioned to phone communication, and here’s what he says about the shift: ”I felt like if I was going to be in sales, you can’t just be a face-to-face seller. You have to understand the ins-and-outs of the entire journey that people are going to take, whether in person, on the phone, or by email. That, I think, provided me a good opportunity to round myself out while also providing that leapfrogging opportunity into maybe something bigger at the end of the day.”

⚡You want to be part of a team that allows and supports your professional growth. That includes a manager who is also a mentor and coworkers open to teamwork. ”You wanna make sure that you have somebody who you feel like you can learn from and who’s going to be there to support you from a management standpoint. You want to make sure that the people you’re surrounded with are moving towards a common goal but are also there to help each other out if you want a collaborative environment, like on a sports team. And then the last one is, if the product doesn’t work, you’re not going to get very far, very quickly. So, you wanna make sure that those three things are at the top of your list if you’re looking to move to a new company.”

Episode Highlights

Good Organization Helped Me Succeed in My First Sales Role at AroundCampus Group 

”You’re talking to small business owners; you’re not talking to big corporations. So you’re not going to get the sale on the first call most of the time. You’re going to have to take notes and understand what the business needs are relative to the college community, as well as what services and what they have to offer. 

And then, being able to spin that into your pitch. And then providing some data and statistics to incentivize the businesses further to interact with AroundCampus and, ultimately, the college community. […] 

I wasn’t the best, but I learned a lot and figured out that I could be good at it if I continued to hone my craft and tried to continue doing better every day. […] I did get promoted. So I ended up wanting to come back to AroundCampus Group after my junior year and doing the territory manager.

I’ve always been somebody who wants to help people succeed. And that’s why I thought the management track would give me a different perspective rather than being the person going door-to-door.”

Lessons Learned From Being a Manager

”Everybody learns differently. You have to be flexible with people, and not only with their situations but also how they understand things. Because you could talk to one person, and they’ll give you one answer; talk to somebody else, they’ll give you another. 

So making sure everybody’s on the same page is also important; you’re driving towards the same goals people are getting up to and contributing to that in a meaningful way. And then, holding people accountable.”

Why Tech Sales?

”I talked to my network and realized that tech sales was a better area long term, especially given the market growth at the time; this was back in 2015. 

We’ve seen where it’s gone since then, but at the time, that was an area I found myself to be more passionate about. It took sales to the next level because you’re not just trying to have a conversation with somebody on a local level, but also you’re trying to sell a big business on technology that they’re going to be using for potentially the rest of that company’s lifespan.

And it is much more interesting than selling chocolate. No offense. Chocolate can melt in your pocket, but the technology side is always interesting. It’s something I could use, learn a lot more about, and then I could help resonate that with my audience as I continue to grow my knowledge.”

Prospecting Over the Phone Versus Face-to-Face

”It’s much easier to hang up the phone as prospects. So you better earn the time to continue the conversation early; you need to provide that value earlier too. You can’t just stand there and wait for them to kick you out or call the police; they can just easily click. 

But ultimately, if you go at it with a more personal approach, and you do your research on those people, and you do the upfront work, then you can get over that mindset where people are like, ‘Oh, it’s another sales call’ to ‘This person has done some research, and cares more about me.”’

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Erik Riefenstahl: You wanna make sure that you have somebody that you feel like you can learn from, that’s gonna be there to support you from a management standpoint, you wanna make sure that the people that you’re surrounded with are moving towards a common goal, but are also there to, like, help each other out, that you want a collaborative teamwork type of environment, like on the sports team. 

[00:00:16] Marc Gonyea: Erik Riefenstahl paying us a visit, Chris.

[00:00:40] Chris Corcoran: The Stonewall. 

[00:00:41] Erik Riefenstahl: That was my nickname in college.

[00:00:43] Chris Corcoran: That’s why I said it.

[00:00:44] Erik Riefenstahl: All right.

[00:00:46] Chris Corcoran: Rief! 

[00:00:46] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk about that, we’ll get to college, but welcome back, it’s been a little while, right, and you, you departed in, uh, spring of 2015?

[00:00:55] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, pretty shortly after I joined, uh, fortunate enough to live the memoryBlue dream and get hired up by my client.

[00:01:02] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, we’re gonna talk about that. But you, but just to, just the, the quick high level, everyone, Erik was an SDR back in the day, uh, outta a Virginia office, and we opened up the California office, he road tripped out there and, you know, helped us open that office, which we’ll talk about it.

[00:01:17] So, now he’s paying us a visit, he lives back on the East Coast, and he is here today to talk about what he’s been doing for the past eight years. 

[00:01:23] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Office is definitely a little bit bigger than I remember it, so that’s always a good sign. 

[00:01:29] Marc Gonyea: It is a good sign.

[00:01:29] Erik Riefenstahl: For sure. 

[00:01:30] Marc Gonyea: All right. So, just to kind of ed, edify the audience, Chris and I, tell us, to start, we’ll go wait in the time machine, tell a little bit about you growing up, where you grew up, what you were like, that sort of thing?

[00:01:41] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, of course. So, I grew up in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, uh, also known as, uh, Amish country, to most people. So, I started out there as a, as a kid, I was really into sports, so I started out playing soccer, baseball, basketball, swimming, you name it, I was probably doing it. Ultimately ended up…

[00:01:59] Marc Gonyea: Siblings?

[00:02:00] Erik Riefenstahl: One sibling, one sister. She was, uh, actually a, a really good swimmer, so she got sixth in the Olympic trials for Beijing, almost made it, and while, and did the 200 backstrokes, and 

[00:02:11] Marc Gonyea: She’s a backstroker? 

[00:02:12] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, and then she went to Texas on a full ride actually.

[00:02:15] Marc Gonyea: Really?

[00:02:15] Erik Riefenstahl: She outshined me a little bit. 

[00:02:17] Marc Gonyea: Wow. That’s some athletic talent. 

[00:02:20] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, got it, I guess I, I got the short end of the sticks, you know?

[00:02:24] Marc Gonyea: Dude, I mean, you could, to be a Olympic swimmer, that’s top notch. So, okay, all right, okay, all right. So, older sister’s a swimmer, just, I got, we gotta ask, how into swimming were you?

[00:02:34] Erik Riefenstahl: Uh, I tried to shy away from it because I would get, uh, outshined by my sister, and I was also a little chubby as a kid, so, I was buoyant, but not very fast. 

[00:02:43] Marc Gonyea: All right, good, buoyant, you can float longer. Okay, all right, all right. Did you develop a, oh, uh, a favorite sport?

[00:02:50] Erik Riefenstahl: I did over time, actually when I moved to the Philadelphia area, I joined the soccer team, it was really my passion once I hit about 12 years old, I knew it was something that I really wanted to do, and they say you have to be a little bit crazy to be a goalkeeper, and that was all my personality growing up, a little bit of ADHD here and there, but ultimately got it calm, cool, and collected between the goalposts, so it was a natural fit. 

[00:03:13] Marc Gonyea: There you go. You definitely need to have a different mindset to be a keeper in, in any sport, right, or starting pitcher, like, some of those, those individual gigs, it’s, it’s different kind of on an island, not that I would know. All right. But as a, what did you think you wanted to do?

[00:03:29] So, you’re an athletic kid growing up. Did you have any idea when, like, in high school, what you wanted to be? 

[00:03:36] Erik Riefenstahl: Not really. I mean, I think it’s, you’re always trying to figure out what you wanna be doing, whether you’re in high school or whether you’re later on in your professional career, your interests and your drive and your passions change.

[00:03:47] Um, in high school it was really about trying to figure out what that was and really where I wanted to go to college and what I wanted to learn more about, and that’s where I decided to kind of focus in on business administration and marketing, had a lot of creative thoughts and wanted to be able to harness them in a way to kind of benefit businesses, or maybe even sell that as a service.

[00:04:06] Moving into college is really where I found a little bit more of my passion for sales, I don’t know if we want to take that direction right now. 

[00:04:14] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah, yeah, go, go. We’ll talk about sales, we’ll talk a little bit about the, the sports, sales, we’ll talk about, we gotta get Chelsea in just for Chris, for Chris’s benefit. But, so, keep going, cool. 

[00:04:24] Erik Riefenstahl: So, yeah, jumped into college, uh, my sophomore year, I took an internship over the summer, working for the AroundCampus Group, which some of you may be familiar with.

[00:04:32] Marc Gonyea: Did you have anyone in sales growing up in your family, or like, friends or said network? 

[00:04:37] Erik Riefenstahl: My mom transitioned from, uh, being a, like, traveling nurse, to actually going back to school, getting her MBA and now she’s a client executive for, uh, big bank. So, she’s been doing that for the past about 20 years. So, I think that’s probably where it, it stems from.

[00:04:53] Marc Gonyea: A little bit of that, okay, all right, okay, got it, all right. So, you’re in college, I’m gonna go to college, and let’s talk about college real quick ’cause you did, you played sports in college, too, and there’s a connection to always the athletics and sales, I, I think a lot of times. But, so, so you played soccer in college? 

[00:05:08] Erik Riefenstahl: Yep. So, that was, uh, part of the reason I picked the school outside of it being a, a smaller school, which is a better fit for me, personally. I had offers from Westchester and a couple other big ones, but ended up honing in on Elizabethtown College because it was closer to home.

[00:05:22] It was also, it’s hard to find a goalie. So, those individual kind of positions, they’re, they tend to be a little bit rarer. And then, so it made it a little bit easier to be able to continue that passion at the time in, in, into college.

[00:05:37] Marc Gonyea: Do you have, like, this athletic background influenced you in your career when you got outta school? 

[00:05:41] Erik Riefenstahl: Absolutely. 

[00:05:42] Marc Gonyea: How so? 

[00:05:42] Erik Riefenstahl: I mean, competitiveness for one, teamwork for another, those are the, the obvious ones. But I think it’s really about grinding when nobody else is looking, putting in the work, going to the gym, doing things you don’t want to do on a day-to-day basis, it helps you build perseverance, it helps you build consistency, and those things are really important.

[00:06:00] Marc Gonyea: In sales, yeah, sales development. 

[00:06:02] Chris Corcoran: Sales development or, or really anything you’re gonna be doing, but definitely in sales. 

[00:06:06] Marc Gonyea: Got it. All right. So, you’re back in college, you, let’s go back to that. Your sophomore year, you kind of talk about the sales, and I’m sure Chris is gonna be interested in the AroundCampus experience. 

[00:06:15] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, of course. So, uh, in college, they always tell you to do internships, so I decided to get it, get in early and often with my sophomore year, taking that step, being proactive and joining the AroundCampus Group, uh, I didn’t really know much about it at the time. 

[00:06:29] I did know it was gonna be a sales internship, and I quickly learned that it was something that I could be passionate about, that I could transfer a lot of what I’ve dated in sports into sales, and that’s kind of where it started. Ended up doing that internship for that summer and ended up being 13th out of 38 people in my region to, in terms of, uh, total gross sales.

[00:06:52] Marc Gonyea: You do that this summer after your sophomore year?

[00:06:55] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, for junior year. 

[00:06:55] Marc Gonyea: What, so, tell the listers what, what exactly, what were you doing? What were you selling at? 

[00:06:58] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, of course. So, the AroundCampus Group, they do advertising to college campuses. I’m sure they’ve evolved a little bit since then, but ultimately they’re trying to help local businesses reach out to the college community, or they might not have a voice usually, or they might be kind of drowned out by on-campus services and things like that.

[00:07:17] So, uh, they offer the ability to advertise, but then also they had a mobile app at the time that companies could offer coupons. So, if you had a, a pizza shop or somewhere that was a kind of safe haven for students, you could offer them an additional incentive to come try out your business and really explore what was around their college community more so than maybe just hanging out in the dorms or, or going to house parties, things like that.

[00:07:39] Marc Gonyea: I see. So, this is a hundred percent commissioned job, if I’m right? 

[00:07:43] Erik Riefenstahl: A hundred percent commission. 

[00:07:44] Marc Gonyea: Hundred percent of the commission, and essentially you were going around your college town to different businesses, trying to sell them advertisements. That’s essentially the job?

[00:07:51] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, cold calling, door to door. 

[00:07:53] Marc Gonyea: Door-to-door sales.

[00:07:54] Erik Riefenstahl: Hitting the pavement, as they say.

[00:07:55] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Hey, and, and you were success, successful. What, what made you successful doing that? 

[00:08:00] Erik Riefenstahl: So, in that role specifically, it was organization because you’re talking to small-business owners, you’re not talking to big corporations. So, you not only need to kind of, you’re not gonna get the sale on the first call, most of the time,

[00:08:14] you’re gonna have to take notes and understand what the businesses’ needs are, relative to the college community, as well as what services and what they have to offer. Uh, and then being able to kind of spin that into your pitch, and then ultimately also providing some data and statistics to further incentivize the businesses to interact with AroundCampus, but ultimately the, the college community.

[00:08:35] And what else made me successful is that perseverance as well, so, people will say no to you, they might even have had people come in that were part of AroundCampus previously that offered maybe false promises or, uh, maybe didn’t made your job a little bit harder, but people don’t buy from, prefer technology all the time, they usually buy from people, so you need to build those relationships on the individual level with people who are, are using their hard-earned money to support themselves, and you really want to be able to offer something that can help them overachieve on what maybe they’ve done in the past.

[00:09:08] Marc Gonyea: So, you were, you were, so, you were good at that? And then

[00:09:11] Erik Riefenstahl: Uh, decent, I wasn’t the best, but, uh, I learned a lot and I figured that, that I figured out that I could be really good at it if I continued to hone my craft and, and try to continue doing better every day. 

[00:09:23] Marc Gonyea: But you got promoted ’cause you came back for a second summer, right?

[00:09:26] Erik Riefenstahl: I did get promoted, so I ended up wanting to come back to AroundCampus Group after my junior year, and doing the territory manager. I’ve always been somebody who wants to help people succeed, and that’s really why I thought the management track would give me a different perspective rather than being the person going door to door, how can I take what I learned that summer and then transfer those skills to other folks? 

[00:09:46] Marc Gonyea: What did you learn as a manager? 

[00:09:48] Erik Riefenstahl: That everybody learns differently, and you really have to be, what’s the word, you have to be flexible with people, and not only with their situations, but ultimately kind of how they understand things

[00:09:59] because you could talk to one person, and they’ll give you one answer, talk to somebody else, they’ll give you another. So, making sure everybody’s on the same page is also something that’s really important, making sure you’re driving towards the same goals, people are getting up to and, and kind of contributing to that in a meaningful way.

[00:10:14] Uh, and then holding people accountable, uh, that’s a big thing in sales that I think goes kind of, uh, it usually has a negative stigmatism to it, but it’s really like, hey, you’re out here to, to do this job, to provide the value to the company and to ultimately help grow the bottom line, so we need to make sure that you’re, you’re kind of helping out in that sense as well.

[00:10:34] Marc Gonyea: Help me understand, like, the mindset, people here, Chris said earlier, a hundred percent commission, and you said door to door. Most people hear that when they’re coming outta their sophomore year in college, I mean, they’re still pretty young, they’re like, why the fuck would I want to do that? Like, what, but, but I think people let that get in the way, understandably so, they’re like, I’m not even gonna get paid a base salary, like, that’s, that’s a different mindset than what most people have, why did you decide to be like, okay?

[00:11:06] Erik Riefenstahl: I mean, I’ve, I’ve worked in jobs since I was 12. So, going up and going out and doing the work has never been an issue, and it’s usually been for minimum wage. So, the fact that it is commission-based and a hundred percent commission meant that I could earn as much as I wanted to, or as much as I’ve, effort as I put in, I could get that output in terms of the monetary side. So, that’s really why I gravitated towards it because it really took the, the cap off of what I could earn.

[00:11:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, got it. And what about the door-to-door part? Why would, you mean they don’t know you? You just gotta knock on their door. 

[00:11:38] Erik Riefenstahl: Sometimes you just barge in and open the door. 

[00:11:40] Marc Gonyea: What if people are mean to me? 

[00:11:42] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, that, that’s, uh, that’s always, uh, in the back of your mind, but you should just leave it there because once you actually go in and, and talk to somebody, you never know what kind of reaction you’re gonna get.

[00:11:51] Um, and I think it’s important to, to not go in with a predetermined agenda, you’re gonna learn something new every time that you talk to somebody, or every business that you go to. So, I think it’s definitely intimidating at first, but once you hear a bunch of Nos, you’re just waiting for that next Yes.

[00:12:07] Marc Gonyea: When you say leave it in the back of your mind, what, what did you mean by that? 

[00:12:11] Erik Riefenstahl: So, typically, when I’m talking to somebody, I’m not trying to kind of go into my brain and think too hard about what I’ve already thought about, I’m really just trying to have an honest and open conversation with them so that way I can really determine if I can help these people or not, and hopefully, people are in the same boat as me. 

[00:12:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah. And how valuable was that experience into what you’re doing now? 

[00:12:33] Erik Riefenstahl: Uh, it was invaluable, I mean, uh, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else, um.

[00:12:37] Marc Gonyea: Most valuable thing you’ve done? Like, was it more valuable than playing sports in college or your major?

[00:12:42] Erik Riefenstahl: I think it’s, it’s up there with my memoryBlue experience. 

[00:12:46] Marc Gonyea: Oh, I wasn’t even looking for that answer, okay, okay. Let’s transition to that. Yeah. So, you, you do the AroundCampus thing, you get, I mean, coming out of college and you’ve got two summers of sales experience, business-to-business sales experience, working on a hundred percent commission, and then leading a team of individuals doing that.

[00:13:07] That’s amazing experience for any, uh, company that’s looking to hire salespeople. So, you knew you wanted to get into sales, it was just kind of trying to pick what you wanted to sell, is that essentially the case? 

[00:13:19] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, that’s essentially the case, and that’s, I actually had a few options coming out of, outta college. The AroundCampus Group has partners like Tom Jones, or 

[00:13:28] Marc Gonyea: Tom James. 

[00:13:28] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, Tom James, uh, and a few other ones, uh, ultimately I was planning to stay close to home, and work for Hershey as a, a sales consultant there. I actually talked to some folks on my, on my end, my personal network, and realized that tech sales was probably a better area, long term, especially given the, the market growth at the time, and this was back in what, 2015? So, we’ve obviously kind of seen where it’s gone since then, but at the time, that was really an area that 

[00:13:57] I found to be more, more passionate about and found some that it also kind of took sales to the next level because you’re not just trying to kind of have a conversation with somebody on a local level, but you’re trying to sell a big business on technology that they’re gonna be using for potentially the rest of that company’s life, their lifespan, and it, it also is much more interesting than me, 

[00:14:18] than selling chocolate, no offense, chocolate can melt in your pocket, but that technology side was always really interesting, it’s something that I felt like I could use, I could learn a lot more about, and then I could help resonate that to my audience as I continue to, to grow my knowledge.

[00:14:34] Marc Gonyea: Who would’ve want the guy come outta college, right? Sales experience and not just the baseball player or something like a soccer player, right, and a goalie, not like an outside back, like, like the smartest, supposed to be the smartest guy on the field on the pitch. 

[00:14:48] Erik Riefenstahl: Craziest for sure, I don’t know about smartest. 

[00:14:50] Marc Gonyea: Get out to the CDM, you’re in clouds working for him, so, okay. How did you find out about memoryBlue? 

[00:14:58] Erik Riefenstahl: So, Kristen, who, uh, actually worked at AroundCampus Group. 

[00:15:02] Marc Gonyea: Kristen Wisdorf? 

[00:15:03] Erik Riefenstahl: Yes. Kristen Wisdorf, the one and only, uh, actually ran into her on the elevator on the way up here, she actually helped us find the office again, so yeah.

[00:15:10] Marc Gonyea: That works. 

[00:15:10] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, small world, uh, but she was at my, uh, part of my leadership team at AroundCampus, and she, I think, made this move to memoryBlue at the similar time. So, that’s where I first heard the name, and then I ended up doing some of my own research, and that’s kind of how we ended up here today.

[00:16:21] Marc Gonyea: Wow. Okay. So, it’s through Kristen. Who was your recruiter? Do you remember any of that? 

[00:16:26] Erik Riefenstahl: None, it’s been, it’s been a long time. 

[00:16:28] Marc Gonyea: It’s been a while. 

[00:16:29] Chris Corcoran: Sounds like Kristen.

[00:16:30] Erik Riefenstahl: Probably, probably, actually.

[00:16:32] Marc Gonyea: She’s taken care of it herself, she does a coast-to-coast. Tell us about the earliest, at memoryBlue, did you know what you were getting yourself into? Did you know what we were doing? A lot of times, people are like, “I kinda, I dunno what they do, I’m not sure, I’m, tech and sales, or something.”

[00:16:46] Erik Riefenstahl: I mean, I, I think I had a little bit of an idea, but be, because of my experience in, in college, going door-to-door and understanding sales is, hey, you’re gonna have to go out and make cold calls, and you’re gonna have to go grind.

[00:16:57] So, I knew that was gonna be the mentality coming in, uh, what I didn’t have the skillset for was doing it over the phone, it was something that was totally new to me, phone and email didn’t really exist to be AroundCampus Group 

[00:17:08] ’cause you could just, hey, go pop out, go run down and ask the questions to the people you needed to, or go prospects right down the street, this was, uh, kind of foreign, but it wasn’t something that I wasn’t up to the challenge for, like, I felt like if I was gonna be in sales, you can’t just be a face-to-face seller. 

[00:17:25] You have to understand the ins and outs of the entire kind of journey that people are gonna take, whether it’s in person, on the phone, email so that I think it provided me a good opportunity to round myself out while also providing the, that leapfrogging opportunity into maybe something bigger at the end of the day.

[00:17:42] Marc Gonyea: Who, who, tell us about the early days of memoryBlue, what do you remember? 

[00:17:46] Erik Riefenstahl: So, I, I remember, uh, moving from Pennsylvania to a apartment, or actually, no, a house, uh, lived in the basement of this lady’s house, she had just excavated her, like, three kids out officially.

[00:17:58] So, I lived there for about six months, but ultimately found kind of a home in memoryBlue where I could leverage not only kind of people on the floor, but the, the buddy system that you guys have here, where you have somebody come in who’s net new work, with somebody who’s been here for a, a little bit of time and has been successful about it to be a much easier transition.

[00:18:21] Marc Gonyea: Mentors.

[00:18:22] Erik Riefenstahl: Into the role.

[00:18:22] Chris Corcoran: Payday mentors.

[00:18:25] Erik Riefenstahl: And, uh, I think when I started, I actually, uh, one of my first meetings, I was doing the NetApp PPM. 

[00:18:31] Marc Gonyea: You were? Okay.

[00:18:32] Chris Corcoran: Oh yeah, there you go.

[00:18:33] Erik Riefenstahl: And, uh.

[00:18:33] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about what PPM is for those who don’t know what that is. 

[00:18:36] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, so that’s a pay-per-meeting. So, uh, outside of your traditional clients, if you wanted to put in some extra work or put in some extra hours, so, again, make some more money, uh, you can, you can sign up to work those accounts and, and try to help yourself out while also helping those clients out. 

[00:18:50] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, and, uh, who was on your team? Do you remember that? Who you started with? Uh, your, your DM?

[00:18:56] Erik Riefenstahl: Started out here with, uh, Michael Mishler.

[00:18:58] Marc Gonyea: Fish Daddy. 

[00:18:59] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. Congrats to him, uh, he’s doing, doing big things, got his house, got his, uh, got his kid now, so. Outside of that, I had Robbie Connors, uh, Yacine 

[00:19:09] Marc Gonyea: Robbie.

[00:19:10] Erik Riefenstahl: Nate Cassa, Alexis. 

[00:19:11] Marc Gonyea: Alexis, your wife?

[00:19:12] Erik Riefenstahl: Reagan, yeah. 

[00:19:13] Marc Gonyea: Reagan? Oh, yeah, Reagan Callahan. Okay. 

[00:19:16] Erik Riefenstahl: That’s the, uh, that’s most of what I remember.

[00:19:17] Marc Gonyea: Got it. 

[00:19:18] Erik Riefenstahl: And then, uh, there’s a few others, but names are escaping me. 

[00:19:21] Marc Gonyea: That’s okay. And you were in Courthouse or you in Boone?

[00:19:23] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, I was in Courthouse. 

[00:19:25] Marc Gonyea: You, okay, got it. All right. And then, was, was Reagan your delivery manager?

[00:19:29] Erik Riefenstahl: So, Mishler was at first, 

[00:19:30] Marc Gonyea: Mike Mishler. 

[00:19:30] Erik Riefenstahl: and then, uh, that’s actually who I tagged along with to California. 

[00:19:34] Marc Gonyea: So, let’s talk about that. One more thing. So, you come into the company, you’re learning the phone, like what did you, when you were an SDR in the early days, what were you good at?

[00:19:44] Like, you had this sales experience at AroundCampus, like, what? You said you had to pick up the phone, were you good at the phone? Were you good at something else? Like, what was kind of your signature move? 

[00:19:53] Erik Riefenstahl: Signature move is and always will be the phone, uh, something that never dies, in my opinion. 

[00:19:59] I know people will go back and forth on that, social, email, calls, but at the end of the day, um, you can convince somebody over the phone much more easily than you can over a static form of communication

[00:20:10] Marc Gonyea: And qualify ’em

[00:20:11] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, qualifying is 

[00:20:11] Marc Gonyea: much more efficiently. 

[00:20:12] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, okay. 

[00:20:13] Marc Gonyea: You can’t qualify someone over email, although you should use those things to book meetings, don’t get me wrong. 

[00:20:17] Erik Riefenstahl: You gotta use a little bit of everything on caveat it, you don’t want to just solely rely on the phones, ’cause you will have slow months where the holidays kick in, or people will take vacations, and then you can use those out-of-office replies to send ’em a LinkedIn message, 

[00:20:30] say, “Hey, enjoy your vacation, send you an email, let’s connect when you get back.” And then, they’re awaiting your kind of outreach once they’re back in the office. So, there’s always, you always wanna trickle in, you don’t wanna rely on, on one single kind of pane of glass, I guess, for your outreach. 

[00:20:45] Chris Corcoran: Sure. What’s the difference between, uh, cold calling, if we want to call it that or just say, call it prospecting, prospecting over the phone versus face-to-face, like, what, what’s the biggest difference? 

[00:20:56] Erik Riefenstahl: Biggest difference is it’s much easier to, to hang up the phone as the prospects, so you could better kind of earn the time to be able to continue the conversation early if you need to provide that value earlier, too, you can’t just kind of stand there and wait for them to kick you out, or call the police on you, you, they can just easily click. 

[00:21:15] So, I think that was the biggest transition, but ultimately if you kind of go at it with a more personal approach and you do your research on those people, and you do the upfront work, then you can typically get over that kind of mindset where people are like, oh, it’s just another sales call to, this person actually has done some research, and cares about, more about me than maybe most of the other people that are giving them a call.

[00:21:38] Marc Gonyea: Fascinating. What’s harder? 

[00:21:40] Erik Riefenstahl: And what’s a, a cold calling, or cold door-to-door? Uh, in terms of booking a meeting, or in, like, uh, I guess I think probably door-to-door because you have to take it all the way to close, and once people start seeing, like, the, the dollar values, it can change their mind a little bit,

[00:21:54] and you might have to continue selling versus once you get the meeting, uh, depending on how far you’re taking that early-stage sales process on your own, it’s kind of like a sigh of relief, you’re like, “Whew, all right, my job’s done.”

[00:22:06] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Yeah. Flip it over to the AE. 

[00:22:08] Erik Riefenstahl: Exactly. 

[00:22:09] Marc Gonyea: Okay, good. So, tell me about this, you and your manifest destiny, right? Going west, go west, young man. You grew up in Pennsylvania with the school in Pennsylvania, you, you moved out to DC, which is moving to a new city, right? Not super close, but how did you transition from, okay, I’m going to, I’m going west, like, how did that, how did that happen?

[00:22:33] Erik Riefenstahl: I mean, honestly, I, I was kind of scared shitless at first, now you’ll have to bleep that one out, but…

[00:22:39] Marc Gonyea: No, not at all.

[00:22:40] Erik Riefenstahl: It was something that, because we were going as a group, it made it a little bit less intimidating because 

[00:22:46] Marc Gonyea: If you remember the origin of that? Like, how did that happen?

[00:22:49] Erik Riefenstahl: Uh, I think Mishler just, like, threw it out one day in our de, in his conversation with the team meeting, it was like, “Hey, by the way, I’m moving to California, those of you who want to come with me are more than welcome to. We’ll help you out a little bit with the travel and expenses, and we’re gonna help open the office for memoryBlue and establish their West Coast prep, presence.” 

[00:23:06] So, I thought that was all pretty cool, I’d never been out west before, I was already doing okay at memoryBlue, and I liked the team that I was a part of. So, I knew, like, if he went, I wanted to continue being a part of his team and kind of follow him as my mentor. Uh, and then, that’s pretty much it. 

[00:23:22] Marc Gonyea: And it was kind of a group decision in a way, like, you guys were all kind of into it, so, like, let’s go.

[00:23:27] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, well, it was 

[00:23:28] Marc Gonyea: It’s scary. 

[00:23:28] Erik Riefenstahl: Definitely scary, but, uh, Nate and I actually traveled out together. We drove across country, he sold, sold his car before we left, we, we took mine, made a couple stops, uh, ran into Alexis in Vegas. 

[00:23:39] Marc Gonyea: I remember, I remember hearing, I remember tracking you guys when you guys were going.

[00:23:42] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. So, we, uh, we hightailed it out there, everything packed in the car pretty much so we, that we could, and it was good to have our, our kind of travel companion too, ’cause I’ve never driven that far either, but… 

[00:23:55] Marc Gonyea: Most people haven’t. 

[00:23:56] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, yeah. So, um, but getting out there was, wasn’t the, I guess wasn’t the heaviest lift, so.

[00:24:03] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, be, you’re kind of a risk-taker, right? Commission-only, door-to-door, right? 

[00:24:08] Chris Corcoran: California. 

[00:24:09] Marc Gonyea: California.

[00:24:10] Erik Riefenstahl: I mean, if you’re…

[00:24:11] Marc Gonyea: Where does this come from? You guys roll in the dice. 

[00:24:14] Erik Riefenstahl: So, there’s always a saying, “Be comfortable being uncomfortable.” And I think that comes into play here, it’s not gonna be for everybody, especially across these different types of, I guess, experiences that I have,

[00:24:26] but it’s just more of just who I am, it’s something that I like to get excited about, I like the new, new and exciting, that’s what kind of keeps me energized because I don’t want to kind of just be sitting there doing the same thing every day or trying to, uh, kind of figure it out, I guess. I like to just kind of get up and go, and where, where the wind takes you a little bit. 

[00:24:46] Marc Gonyea: But you, but you’re willing, you’re not too much bravado, like, “No, I was scared.”

[00:24:49] Erik Riefenstahl: Oh, yeah, it was definitely scary, but I’m not gonna have that intimidate me, I mean, I’ve been scared of facing a penalty kick, but I’m still gonna dive and try to make the safe.

[00:24:57] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, what were the early days like on California? What do you remember? 

[00:25:03] Erik Riefenstahl: So, I’m, I remember we were right near the, uh, the 49ers’ stadium, so that was unfortunate because I’m an Eagles fan, I’m just kidding.

[00:25:08] Marc Gonyea: It is unfortunate. 

[00:25:10] Erik Riefenstahl: It was pretty cool ’cause like, uh, you could go, basically, go out and walk to the stadium. So, we did some, some events over there ’cause they don’t just do the football games, they do concerts and things like that. The weather’s always super nice in California, for the most part, maybe about 350 days out of 365. So, that was definitely a big change from Pennsylvania and, and the East Coast, a welcome change, I should say. 

[00:25:32] Marc Gonyea: Of course, beautiful. 

[00:25:34] Erik Riefenstahl: And then, um, we were in Tech world, so we had, uh, an office, uh, maybe twice the size of the room that we’re in now, which for those of you who are just listening maybe 20×20, so very tight quarters, but we all made it work, uh, made our calls at the same time

[00:25:50] Marc Gonyea: Right up the fax Bill.

[00:25:51] Erik Riefenstahl: And Mish, Mishler had his own little office, so he was pretty happy about that, but, um, I mean, it was definitely a transition because we’re going from hey, having, like, the client pool that memoryBlue has on the East Coast and kind of having that, 

[00:26:06] I guess Rolodex versus to going out and basically starting over in California, you have to have somebody like a, a Jeanne Ball, or somebody kind of go out and find net new account, accounts, and startups that are looking to kind of expand their sales potential without necessarily making as big of a commitment as hiring internally.

[00:26:27] So, those are, uh, it was definitely learning curve for us, I think a little bit. Ultimately, I think we’ve, you guys have, or the company in general has really hit its stride, having the office it does today and the number of alumni, or memoryBlueveneurs.

[00:26:44] Marc Gonyea: And blues and beers. 

[00:26:45] Chris Corcoran: And beers.

[00:26:46] Erik Riefenstahl: And there’s a pun, a bunch more companies to go after, too. So, there it was for lack of, uh, I guess, estate. 

[00:26:52] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk about that, ’cause Chris and I, I mean, I’ll, I’ll this is a kin to, like, you’re in the premiership now, right, in the tech world? Oh, boy.

[00:27:00] Erik Riefenstahl: That’s a good one. Fair. 

[00:27:01] Marc Gonyea: That is a good one, I’m just doing all, you’re not gonna crush the soccer thing, so Chris gets super upset at, so you, to start out. Yeah. So, you’ve, professionally, when you’re working at memoryBlue, but you’re, you’re in the premiership, I mean, there’s opportunities, big crowds, big money, right, high stake, derbies, right?

[00:27:22] Erik Riefenstahl: A little bit of everything. 

[00:27:23] Marc Gonyea: Little bit of everything, but what, what, walk us through kind of what happened from your career, just from the memoryBlue thing ‘ cause I can’t remember the details, right? 

[00:27:32] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. So, for me, I ended up going out, and I had two clients, um, when I started, uh, ended up, one was called Gridstore at the time now called HyperGrid. 

[00:27:43] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, Gridstore, yes. 

[00:27:45] Erik Riefenstahl: And then, the other one was called, uh, Foray, and the Foray one was, uh, more website kind of building services, whereas Gridstore offered hyper-converged infrastructure similar to a Nutanix type of approach. So, basically, data center consolidation, making it run more efficiently with less space, which was really big, especially, uh, as you look at now, cloud kind of taking over the tech space. 

[00:28:08] Marc Gonyea: Well, that space will always be big.

[00:28:10] Chris Corcoran: Will it? I mean, how much can they get on one little chip? 

[00:28:14] Erik Riefenstahl: I’m, I’m sure it’ll continue to surprise us, honestly, because that’s always gonna be the goal, it’s like, how can I get more power with infrastructure? 

[00:28:23] Chris Corcoran: Doubles over a year. 

[00:28:25] Marc Gonyea: Can I keep going? 

[00:28:26] Chris Corcoran: Moore’s Law. 

[00:28:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I know, but isn’t there, there’s limitation at some point? No? Okay. 

[00:28:32] Erik Riefenstahl: The limit does not exist.

[00:28:33] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Lord, over there. So, so, so, tell me, but did you, you made the transition, did, was there a client that was key in making that happen, or not a person, at the client? I can’t remember, that’s not, well, tell, walk us through how that happened. What did you do next? 

[00:28:50] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. So, uh, I was working with Gridstore for, as soon as I got out there pretty much, and after, like, two months, I really started to click because I was able to understand the technology to a point where I was doing a little bit more than just your typical, hey, call, qualify, set the meeting. Uh, one of the meetings I actually set went to close within two weeks, which really prompted them to take me under their umbrella out of memoryBlue’s and bring me on full-time. 

[00:29:20] Marc Gonyea: One deal, one moment of brilliance.

[00:29:22] Erik Riefenstahl: That’s all it takes.

[00:29:23] Marc Gonyea: Right? Talk about how important that is, though. So, you, you went a little bit, some people was like, was booking the meeting. Go on to the next one. You were, what do you mean, took it a little farther? Explain that. 

[00:29:34] Erik Riefenstahl: So, uh, essentially…

[00:29:35] Marc Gonyea: Why is that important? ‘Cause you’re your manager, individual contributors now, right? So, go ahead. 

[00:29:43] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, so, especially being, like, passionate about tech and knowing that this is gonna be an area I’m gonna be investing in for a long period of time, understanding the technology side and being able to have an intellectual conversation with not only your buyers but also the influencers, 

[00:29:57] can allow you to basically take out that kind of introductory call that typically is set up by, uh, at, an ADR, BDR, SDR, and having that information or having that conversation before also allows you to get deeper in your qualification because they’re not just gonna kind of give you the surface level stuff,

[00:30:14] they’re gonna allow you them, they’re gonna hear things that you say and they’re gonna think about it in their environment, and then they’re gonna ask very specific questions, and that’s where you’re gonna be able to dive in

[00:30:24] and better understand their pain points to then also add more value, depending on how well you know your solution to basically set up the stage for your AE to come in and just have to show the demo, show it works, and, and go in and close it.

[00:30:37] Marc Gonyea: How frustrating was it for you? You had so much experience closing deals at AroundCampus and then managing people who were closing deals. So, you had closed a lot of deals before you became an SDR, then you’re an SDR, and then your only thing that you’re closing is your closing meetings. So, was that frustrating at all that you weren’t able to take it the distance?

[00:30:58] Chris Corcoran: I mean, for me, it, it honestly wasn’t. For me, it was, I’m still selling something, I’m mostly selling time now, not necessarily a meeting, so people’s time is probably even more valuable than what they’re gonna write you a check for. So, in that sense, I didn’t feel like I was devaluing myself by taking an SDR position.

[00:31:17] And also learning a lot more because I knew I was still relatively immature in my sales process and my understanding of sales beyond my local community. So, I knew that I could take this opportunity and leverage it to do and create something much bigger than what I had done in my internships in college.

[00:31:38] Marc Gonyea: I see. Very good, very good. And then you surfaced a deal that closed two weeks later?

[00:31:42] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, and, uh, that I wish I had closed, but, you know, I’ve heard some other stories where it can take, wait a lot, lot longer than that, so. 

[00:31:50] Marc Gonyea: Right, right. So, then you end up, so as a result of your work and that deal that you surfaced, that closed, the client decided to bring you on full-time. Were they in the Bay Area? 

[00:32:00] Erik Riefenstahl: They were in the Bay Area. So, they were based out of, uh, Sunnyvale, California, about 20 minutes from San Jose office. Um, so I actually had the opportunity to go up there a few times while I was still at memoryBlue, and then ultimately, when they hired me out, started going there full-time.

[00:32:15] They had an inside sales team of about three or four folks. So, different atmosphere, right? memory, memoryBlue, you come in, there’s 20, 30 people at a time, on the floor. So, now you have to get really, I guess, honed in on kind of what you’re doing because you’re, only have so many other people that you can leverage to kind of help you learn, especially as you kind of get into the position.

[00:32:39] And then, ultimately, I was also expanding a little bit on my side. So, I started not only doing the cold-calling but also doing renewals. So, talking to existing customers with issues or resolving those issues to then help them kind of resign with the company. So, it was, uh, it was definitely, uh, an interesting mix of kind of both sides of the ball there.

[00:33:00] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. I think one of the things when you first go out to Silicon Valley if you, you haven’t been there before and you’re in tech, I mean, I guess you get a mini taste of this if you drive down the road, they’re govern, mostly government contractors.

[00:33:14] If you’re driving the Dallas airport, you’re driving through the bay, there are, every building is like a tech branch or some company, some fascinating name, bam, bam, bam hair there, right? And everyone’s in tech. 

[00:33:32] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, not just the buildings either, the billboards. 

[00:33:35] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, the 101.

[00:33:37] Erik Riefenstahl: They, they don’t, they’re not shy about it, that’s for sure.

[00:33:40] Marc Gonyea: So, when you’re out there, and you’re kind of getting your street cred, what are you thinking, like, you want to do? Like, how is it, how, how’s all this opportunity impacting, like, what you wanna do next?

[00:33:54] Because I would imagine it’s difficult to kind of sort through what type of company you wanna work for, or the manager you’re looking, there’s just so much opportunity, I feel like you can get kind of, there’s a lot of interference.

[00:34:06] Erik Riefenstahl: There definitely is, and, um, I mean, there’s a lot of companies, like, not all startups make it, about 90% to 95% fail. So, things that you wanna look for when you’re making that jump, product, people, and like, the environment, I guess, those three things, like not, oh, I guess your manager would be the another one, so. 

[00:34:26] You wanna make sure that you have somebody that you feel like you can learn from that’s gonna be there to support you from a management standpoint. You wanna make sure that the people that you’re surrounded with are moving towards a common goal, 

[00:34:36] but are also there to, like, help each other out, that you want a collaborative teamwork type of environment, like on the sports team. And then, the last one is, if the product doesn’t work, uh, you’re, you’re probably not gonna get very far, very quickly.

[00:34:49] So, you wanna make sure that, that, that those three things are the top of your list if you’re looking to, to move into a new company. 

[00:34:55] Marc Gonyea: And how, what was most important for you, you know, when you were kind of transitioning out, you got hired by your client, and eventually you, you departed. Like, what were you, what were you trying to keep in mind?

[00:35:07] Erik Riefenstahl: Uh, I mean, at that point, I 

[00:35:09] Marc Gonyea: Would you given advice to your younger self, basically, right? Was it that long ago?

[00:35:12] Erik Riefenstahl: It was, yeah, it was, I mean, I had hair back then, so yeah, definitely a little bit different, but, um, if I had to give myself advice, I would say do the same thing again. The one I wouldn’t change much of anything, honestly.

[00:35:25] Going for, to Gridstore and I jumped out of that company after about a year and a half, I moved into, uh, a similar company, uh, maybe that would be the one thing I would change, but I wouldn’t have ended up at Illumio if I changed it, so I can’t physically change it. And just to kind of recap, is that Gridstore for about a year and a half after memoryBlue, transitioned to a Series A startup, Series A essentially means freshly funded.

[00:35:48] They were in the similar space, the company was called Diamanti, ended up basically being their first inside salesperson. So, not only was I responsible for setting up, uh, or building that early stage pipeline, but it was also building process. Ultimately ended up, they ended up bringing in another person after hiring somebody else on my level as a manager for us.

[00:36:08] We didn’t really see eye-to-eye, so he ended up actually letting me and this other person go, and this was after me finding some really solid opportunities. We had paid POCs at Walgreens, uh, change healthcare, and a few others. And just a few months of me being there. So, it was, uh, definitely a tough pill to swallow.

[00:36:26] Um, but based on relationships I was able to build at Diamanti in, in a six-month frame, I actually was referred over to Illumio by somebody on the marketing side at Diamanti, ended up taking that interview, uh, and landing that job and the software space. 

[00:36:41] So, transitioning from hardware to software is definitely something you should look for, uh, or just being in software in general ’cause nobody wants to buy hardware, we just talked about the chips and their capabilities and them getting smaller.

[00:36:54] It’s the same with software, decreasing your physical footprint or your IT hardware footprint, and transitioning into something that’s consumable, uh, is something that most companies are looking to do. So, that would be the recommendation, I guess. 

[00:37:07] But I, being that I didn’t know that at the time, uh, and being that it ended up allowing me to jump into the cybersecurity software space, that is why I wouldn’t change it. 

[00:37:17] Marc Gonyea: So, you were there and you did such an outstanding job, them bouncing, but you impressed someone and not finished a short period of time that they were, feel comfortable referring you into Illumio.

[00:37:26] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah.

[00:37:26] Marc Gonyea: Right?

[00:37:27] Erik Riefenstahl: Exactly. 

[00:37:27] Marc Gonyea: And then how did that experience, because that, that’s, happens a lot, like, Chris and I had early jobs where we were like, okay, this is not exactly what we’re looking for, and how did that influence that six-month, or what, how long it was? How did that influence kind of your, what was important to you moving forward?

[00:37:47] Erik Riefenstahl: So, that, that’s where I, I kind of, I think there’s some things you can’t anticipate, right? Like, I couldn’t anticipate somebody coming in above me, somebody who doesn’t necessarily have the same level of experience as me. 

[00:37:57] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, or work style.

[00:37:59] Erik Riefenstahl: Work style, doing the spray and pray versus shotgun, or…

[00:38:02] Marc Gonyea: Style play.

[00:38:04] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, exactly, the formations, you know? 

[00:38:06] Marc Gonyea: Yep. Right. Yep. Yep. So, but how did that impact you? Like, you can’t, you really, I can’t control these things.

[00:38:12] Erik Riefenstahl: I mean, I was still pissed off, and I just wanted to go out and prove myself even more because I’ve never been fired from a job, I’ve always had a level of competence in my work and what I provide to know that the effort and the output that I give or that comes out of it is generally pretty high quality.

[00:38:29] So, if anything, it just fueled me even more jumping into that, that new company that I needed to go out and prove myself, and ended up doing that in my first year as a BDR at Illumio. 

[00:38:38] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, let’s pause on that real quick, like, that’s a, you just said it, that’s a big thing that to talk about, but it gives you a lot of, not street cred, just like credibility, right?

[00:38:47] You, you learn more in the things that don’t necessarily go your way and work out than you do in the things that go swimmingly, right? So, you went to this company, short stand, didn’t work out, but you’re in the Bay Area, of all places, to go through that, and that’s probably more valuable than the success 

[00:39:03] Erik Riefenstahl: In many ways it is, especially, uh, kind of going back to building those relationships, too. That’s so important not to just kind of go in, clock in, clock out, talk to your AEs, talk to your manager, you wanna go out and spread a little bit wider

[00:39:15] because you never know, they do say it’s a small valley, like, they say it’s a small world, who knows, everybody knows everybody out there. So, you’re bound to make a connection where you can, hopefully, you don’t have to, but if it, if it comes to that, then you can go in and leverage them to see what’s out there and hopefully find a good fit for you. 

[00:39:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, like, Corcoran likes to talk about, we have people at memoryBlue, and things don’t always bounce their way for whatever reason, sometimes their control, sometimes out of their control, sometimes it’s more fair, sometimes it’s seemingly less fair. But how people handle those things says a lot about them, and that’s a score. Like comes in sports. Sports or a job promotion, sports is a big one, right? You win every game. A lot of times you lose a game.

[00:39:56] Erik Riefenstahl: Or tie. 

[00:39:57] Marc Gonyea: Or tie, right, tie’s the worst. So, all right, so let’s talk about Illumio ’cause you had an amazing run there. So, so, and I want to talk about the SDR thing, too. ‘Cause you’re, you’re the SDR, and a lot of people are like, “Dude, I gotta get out of the SDR job, gotta get out SDR job,” but you were using that to kind of get where you wanted to go, right? Like, talk about that. 

[00:40:19] Erik Riefenstahl: Yep. So, I, uh, I landed at Illumio, um

[00:40:22] Marc Gonyea: Which is what kind of company?

[00:40:23] Erik Riefenstahl: They’re a cybersecurity software company that protects digital assets and end-point technologies. 

[00:40:28] Marc Gonyea: So, is it the end-point, end-point, vendor, or would you say it’s if you wanna zoom in on it, what would you, what? 

[00:40:35] Erik Riefenstahl: Uh, securing critical infrastructure. So, today we secure about $3 trillion a day in live transactions across 10 of the largest banks in the world. 

[00:40:44] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Interesting. Okay. So, you went, you went, got into cyber, right, and a lot of people are like, “Man, why did you go to the cyber? It’s so hard, it’s so difficult.”

[00:40:52] Erik Riefenstahl: It’s actually fun, I mean, it’s, uh, if you kind of go at it with that daunting type of like, oh, man, people in cyber are so smart, like, they hide their phone numbers, they hide their emails, how am I even gonna get ahold of these people to hit my quota? 

[00:41:06] Then that is a very real, real thing to be scared of, but it’s also an opportunity for people who can go out and treat it more like a, a game when you’re trying to go out and find information. It’s not always gonna come easy, it’s not always gonna be in Salesforce. You have to go out and look on LinkedIn, you have to go look up news articles, uh, you have to see where people are, are spending

[00:41:26] their time as prospects, if there’s speaking sessions, events, things like that will always help in your prospecting and ultimately trying to get ahold of these folks, you may even have to use some things like, uh, a truepeoplesearch.com to try to get their house phone number, uh, and whatever way that you try to get ahold of them, I guarantee you 9/10 SDRs are not doing that. 

[00:41:46] So, when you do get ahold of them, they’re not gonna be expecting a sales call, you’re gonna be able to, hopefully you have your pitch ready, uh, and then you’re gonna be able to lock in those meetings. 

[00:41:55] Marc Gonyea: You better, you do all that work to get their phone number, you better have your shit together. 

[00:41:58] Erik Riefenstahl: Oh yeah. You don’t want to go in and start stumbling, like, uh, there was one time I called the guy by the company name ’cause it was Thomson Reuters, and I just read Thomson Reuters and he was like, no, click. And I never got a hold of him again.

[00:42:10] Chris Corcoran: That, that’s probably, that, that’s, that’s, those things happen. 

[00:42:17] Marc Gonyea: And he was like, “I’m done.”

[00:42:18] Erik Riefenstahl: He was like, “Nope, see ya.” And then it’s like, and then you just feel like, um, you, you can’t take it personally, right, but at the end of the day, if you do all that research and then you, you fumble it on the one-yard line, it just, it stings a little bit more, but it’s more fish in the sea.

[00:42:32] Chris Corcoran: You have to sneak up on people.

[00:42:34] A little bit, little ninjas, you know, you can, uh, big thing for me was in cyber, connecting with people on LinkedIn and building that social network, not necessarily for meetings, but just to est, establish credibility ’cause in cyber specifically, they’re basically always on the lookout for threats.

[00:42:52] Phishing could be associated with kind of cold calling or prospecting, asking for information, things like that, confirming people’s employment can be taken as a phishing, especially when you’re talking to somebody who thinks like that all the time. So, if you were able to build out your, your personal brand then it allows them to feel more comfortable when they’re actually talking to you. 

[00:43:12] Marc Gonyea: You would do that to kind of warm ’em up, basically? Or just your, just in case they check your email or hit on LinkedIn just to kind of see how this guy’s in the club, so to speak. 

[00:43:21] Erik Riefenstahl: So, um, I mean, I’ve probably connected with probably over a thousand security professionals over the past five years, a lot of CISOs, um, and people that you might not think would typically accept a connection request, and I don’t think there’s a perfect science to it, but you can kind of fill, fill it out and, and figure it out.

[00:43:38] Marc Gonyea: I think what people, in your role or your previous role, or young administrators, they didn’t realize you’re also a cyber security professional. Nordstrom, the cybersecurity professional, so are you. You have to look at it that way, it’s dif, it is different, but it’s the same. 

[00:43:58] Erik Riefenstahl: It’s like I, uh, I actually removed an article I wrote about cold calling from my profile so that I would not seem like a salesperson up top, and then on top of that, fo, going into groups, not just following people or 

[00:44:11] connecting with them, but joining security architecture, cloud security architecture, contributing to those discussions, and contributing to posts. Also, just kind of, like you said, you’re a cyber security professional,

[00:44:22] you need to share your opinion, and obviously, don’t be like, “This is what Illumio is great for.” Like, that’s not gonna help anybody, they, they’ll probably get you blocked, if anything. But if you share, like, useful insights that people can use, then that’s what they’re looking for. 

[00:44:34] Marc Gonyea: They know your role, or recognize where you are in the hierarchy, that’s the wrong word, so don’t think they’re lower, in the ecosystem. 

[00:44:41] Erik Riefenstahl: There you go. 

[00:44:41] Marc Gonyea: But you’re, they need you, absolutely, they wanna keep their job, they gotta find what tech out there’s gonna help ’em from, from that, losing, them not losing their job. 

[00:44:53] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, and the average tenure is about 18 months for a CISO.

[00:44:55] Marc Gonyea: Wow. Shorter than a CRO.

[00:44:57] Erik Riefenstahl: Probably. 

[00:44:58] Chris Corcoran: Wow. Why is it so short? They get phished? 

[00:45:01] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, exactly, get ’em on the line. No, um, but for cyber security professionals, it’s a, it can be a really stressful job, I mean, you have basically the company’s brand on your shoulders nowadays, you don’t really have a lot of safety nets, um, insurance providers are cracking down on what they’re gonna require in order to actually pay out insurance policies. So, that means the cyber’s as organization cyber needs to become more of the vocal point. So, that comes all the way down from, like, the CIO, and ultimately, I think CISOs, it’s definitely

[00:45:32] difficult for them ’cause they have to embark on this change, but they could inherit something like that might just be a mess. And as we know today, with a lot of infrastructure, it’s very static, but we’re moving to a much more dynamic workflow with hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, um, so those things can, uh, kind of linger as they try to formulate plans to migrate or update their systems, uh, and sometimes they just aren’t given enough, uh, enough time.

[00:45:58] Marc Gonyea: You sound like you know what you’re talking about. 

[00:46:00] Erik Riefenstahl: Like I said, I’m a student of the, of the industry. 

[00:46:04] Marc Gonyea: You’re a cybersecurity professional. 

[00:46:06] Erik Riefenstahl: There it is. 

[00:46:07] Marc Gonyea: Right? All right. So, you’re, you, you go to Illumio, you’re in the SDR gig, right? How are you viewing where you want to go with things? 

[00:46:15] Erik Riefenstahl: So, that’s, that’s a great question. So, I started out as the BDR, uh, so we were actually reporting up to marketing at the time, so we were just qualifying leads, it was very elementary, I would put it. So, we weren’t having to go out and do a lot of hunting, it was a little bit different for me ’cause given my experience and background, that’s kind of what I was really good at.

[00:46:33] Marc Gonyea: Going outbound? 

[00:46:35] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, going outbound. Uh, inbound was okay, but it didn’t give you a lot of flexibility in terms of, like, going out and targeting the right types of people at the right companies.

[00:46:43] Chris Corcoran: You’re not sneaking up on inbound? 

[00:46:45] Erik Riefenstahl: No, they know you’re coming. So, we did that for about a year, I was, uh, top-performing BDR, and then my, the leadership actually changed. So, we brought in somebody who really focused on, uh, what we called an ADR or account development rep

[00:47:01] Marc Gonyea: Leadership changed, what do you mean by that? 

[00:47:02] Erik Riefenstahl: So, my bosses, uh, basically left the company 

[00:47:06] Marc Gonyea: Marketing brought in? 

[00:47:06] Erik Riefenstahl: Yep, and we brought in a, a new leader who reported up to sales for the, uh, ADR group.

[00:47:13] Marc Gonyea: So, what from ADR, ADR world reported through marketing, the SDR, whatever you wanna call it, sales development reporting from marketing, sales development reported into sales. What’s the key differences? Not just at Illumio, but like, you think there is in news being run by market versus being run by sales, if any?

[00:47:30] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. Well, my, my wife’s probably gonna be upset about this one, but marketing, they kind of give a lot of pats on the back to each other, it’s, uh, it’s much more light and fluffy most of the time, so, uh 

[00:47:40] Marc Gonyea: Your wife would just, so everyone’s clear, you met your wife at the company? 

[00:47:43] Erik Riefenstahl: I did. It was Alexis Romano.

[00:47:45] Marc Gonyea: Yep. Boom. That’s right. That’s, that’s a, that’s, that brings me and Chris a lot of joy that you guys are married after meeting here and traveling out west with this group and those things, that’s wild.

[00:47:57] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, it’s crazy that she used to not like me because I had snacks at my desk, so.

[00:48:01] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. She told me you ate Doritos.

[00:48:03] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, I think it was, like, the Keebler cookies, but yeah, semantics.

[00:48:08] Marc Gonyea: Goalkeeper’s gotta eat, man, right, you can’t be like the, the Argentinian guy, just be a skinny, skinny cat in the goal. 

[00:48:14] Erik Riefenstahl: I mean, maybe it will, maybe it’ll work out better, who knows? 

[00:48:17] Chris Corcoran: It might, maybe it will.

[00:48:18] Erik Riefenstahl: Not for the wife, though. 

[00:48:19] Marc Gonyea: That’s right, that’s right. All, all right. So, so, so, sorry. So, go back to the difference, like, marketing might not be as

[00:48:24] Erik Riefenstahl: It’s a little bit fluffier, uh, it’s, uh, more pat on the backs, “Good job, hey, we executed our programs.” Uh, that’s all kind of fine and dandy, but moving under sales, it’s all about results, it’s all about driving revenue, driving pipeline, uh, so that way the company can obviously continue to grow.

[00:48:41] Being on the sales side, you really have the responsibility of the entire company, like, the engineering group, everybody who’s a part of it because if the company doesn’t grow in revenue, then ultimately you can’t make a case to go IPO, and oftentimes the company will fail with, uh, with bad sales teams.

[00:48:56] So, that’s why it’s, that goes back to the accountability we talked about early on, uh, but that’s much more apparent in sales. 

[00:49:03] Marc Gonyea: So, new regime came in, and they were going out bad, were you licking your chops or were you, you know, were, were you, like, re, ready to be unleashed or what? Tell us, tell us about that.

[00:49:14] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, so, I definitely was leaning into the challenge, they actually offered different people on the team at the time who were BDRs the opportunity to either continue on with the company, or to exit as well if they weren’t comfortable with the, the reporting changes and kind of the new structure that was gonna be implemented. 

[00:49:31] So, I was obviously one that, that stayed on board, ended up being pretty successful in the ADR role, um, and this is really where I learned a lot of that process around the cyber side of things, um, just kind of touching and feeling as I went. Um, ended up coming in over quota, um, my first year as an ADR, and then ultimately got, that got me promoted to team lead 

[00:49:50] Marc Gonyea: You were the President’s Club, right? 

[00:49:51] Erik Riefenstahl: Went to President’s Club 2020. 

[00:49:53] Marc Gonyea: Where’d you go? 

[00:49:54] Erik Riefenstahl: On my couch, unfortunately, it was canceled due to COVID, but, uh…

[00:49:57] Marc Gonyea: It was canceled due to COVID. 

[00:49:58] Erik Riefenstahl: I made it before COVID actually hit, so it was already planned, it was supposed to be in, uh, Carmel, which is, uh, really beautiful, I think it was at like the Ritz Carlton or something nice, something nice. So, I was like super excited for that, unfortunately.

[00:50:11] Marc Gonyea: Happens. 

[00:50:11] Erik Riefenstahl: World happens.

[00:50:12] Marc Gonyea: But it’s essentially like making the Pro Bowl, right, but, but not going and playing.

[00:50:17] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, basically like, uh, what’s the quarterback that, that bowed out for, Huntley? 

[00:50:22] Marc Gonyea: Oh, I don’t know. 

[00:50:22] Erik Riefenstahl: Josh Allen still plays golf instead.

[00:50:24] Marc Gonyea: Josh Allen, yeah. Huntley had two touch passes, gonna be pro quarterback. All right. Whatever works, man. All right. So, you’re doing this, again, there’s like this, people are like, “Ah, I think it, the SDR job is not a permanent job,” but I think a lot of people get out of it too early. 

[00:50:43] Chris Corcoran: Definitely. 

[00:50:44] Marc Gonyea: Why is that not good?

[00:50:45] Chris Corcoran: Well, I, I mean, there’s a lot of reasons why, but I think a lot of people, uh, are focusing on getting out of, like, “How do I get, how do I get out of being an SDR as quickly as possible?” As opposed to “How do I become really, really proficient at prospecting?” Because once you’re an AE if, if you don’t have a good SDR or your company doesn’t have SDRs, someone’s gonna have to do that prospecting, and it’s gonna be you.

[00:51:10] It’s up to you, and if, and if you’re a really strong, if you are, like, a really strong SDR, those skills travel, and I’m always, I always would say, you’re better off being an SDR for a quarter too long, then a quarter too short. But you, but that’s just me.

[00:51:26] Erik Riefenstahl: Or a year, or a year.

[00:51:27] Marc Gonyea: Right, or a year, but you were an SDR for a while, so why, I don’t know why I’m talking, talking to Eric about it? 

[00:51:34] Erik Riefenstahl: Well, I think it’s, uh, definitely a combination of what, what Chris mentioned, and then, for me, I was definitely, after a year at the ADR role, was looking for that next step, being, going into enterprise at that level, especially at the company, and the product that we were selling, it was highly technical.

[00:51:50] You had to sell to cyber networking infrastructure, sometimes all three groups at the same time, and they all have different objections and different things that they care about, uh, and I felt comfortable that I could have done that. 

[00:52:01] I, I wasn’t given that opportunity, it never kind of presented itself unfortunately, but I didn’t get discouraged by that because I knew I was at a good company with a good product and a good management team,

[00:52:13] um, and they provided me different opportunities. So, they allowed me to kind of go and do, be a team lead and experience a little bit more on the leadership side, uh, while still doing my ADR role and contributing in that passion. So, um, for me, even though I was an ADR, XDR for an extended period of time, to Chris’s point, I learned a lot more than I would have if I just jumped into a commercial role, 

[00:52:37] or jumped into an enterprise role, uh, and especially it would depend on your company, too, like, Illumio, all stars in the enterprise space, still working on the commercial side of things. So, would you kind of give up an opportunity where you’re, you’re being successful, where you’re doing well for something that’s really unclear?

[00:52:56] Uh, in terms of the commercial role, where they have improved it out in terms of product viability or, uh, kind of customer need at that level. And some people would say yes, and maybe my experience would say yes, but there’s only certain amount of risk that you want to take, especially when you know you’re at the, the right company that you want to be at.

[00:53:13] And there’s, when you’re provided other opportunities to put your skillsets forward and help others, help achieve, help others achieve what you’ve achieved, then that’s still more valuable than me trying to going in every day and being the ADR. So, um, and I was doing some of the team lead stuff even prior to getting the promotions,

[00:53:32] so learning that from memoryBlue, whether you have somebody kind of not over top of you, but, uh, someone on the same level as you kind of being there to show them what’s working for you, provide those best practices, and ultimately just try to help, whether it’s process or, or sales side.

[00:53:49] Marc Gonyea: It’s a very mature view of things and it’s gonna serve you well, serving you well now, you’re very successful, and then as, as you move down the path, what do you attribute that to ‘Cause a lot of people don’t have that foresight, right? I’m in a great company, like, a leadership here, like, someone might base chase, right? Or someone might go to this hottest thing, or the, the,

[00:54:12] Chris Corcoran: Shiny objects.

[00:54:13] Marc Gonyea: they might put themselves into a position where they’re very, very not likely to be successful, like, frankly imparted at Everton, right? Like, why do you think you made these decisions? Which I think required more discipline and more delayed gratification, doesn’t make it right or wrong ’cause people are still learning in other ways and, and some people, like, are just hopping around. 

[00:54:33] Erik Riefenstahl: T-charts can be your best friend.

[00:54:35] Chris Corcoran: All right, and Franklin’s in the house. 

[00:54:37] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, there you go. 

[00:54:38] Erik Riefenstahl: Positives and negatives, or looking at each role in that lens and being able to not just say emotionally, I feel like I need to be an AE, like, understanding, hey, is this something that’s going to actually benefit my career, or can I kind of continue what I’m doing, uh, and put more energy into that to then know I’ll be ready when that opportunity presents itself

[00:55:00] versus like you said, going into early. Um, so I don’t know, it’s more just having that kind of, having it on paper, looking at it, understanding it, versus just saying, “Ah, time to go,” being impulsive, I guess.

[00:55:14] Marc Gonyea: Okay. It’s very intentional, which, which is good. All right. Just real quick, how did you get back to the East Coast?

[00:55:23] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. So, uh, by car.

[00:55:25] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, very funny. 

[00:55:26] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, so we, uh, uh, we, I was still an individual contributor at the time, uh, working East Coast hours on the West Coast. So, that was my role most of the time at Illumio, actually, the earliest I ever got in the office was 2:00 AM to call MIA. So, for those of you who think that getting up early is an issue, so toss that out if you’re gonna join in sales, ’cause it’s something that you’re just gonna need to learn to deal with.

[00:55:47] Marc Gonyea: And was that a one-time deal, or was that like, uh, you were doing a…

[00:55:51] Erik Riefenstahl: Couple months. 

[00:55:51] Marc Gonyea: Couple months, every day?

[00:55:52] Erik Riefenstahl: Not every day, but like, sometimes I would come in at 2:00, other days I’d come in at 5:00. So, it was still pretty early irregardless. But that’s what I knew I had to do to be successful. So, I’m gonna understand that and put that as, “Hey, this is what I need to do.”

[00:56:07] It’s not a, it’s not a, like, something I can compromise on, I can’t come in at 8:00 ’cause that’s 11 o’clock, and I know East Coasters, they’re in at 7:00, uh, they’re in meetings all day and then they might leave at 7:00, they might go home early now, but, ultimately it’s, uh, about knowing your audience a little bit, uh, and then kind of adjusting to that.

[00:56:26] But nonetheless, um, we moved back to East Coast, um, drove across the country and was still making calls in the car, so you can make calls from anywhere. We got back in 2020, we actually ended up moving back into Alexis’s dad’s house, he still had, uh, the five-bedroom house ’cause he’s got four daughters.

[00:56:45] And they gave us kind of that safe haven for a little bit, so that way we could see, “Hey, are we gonna have to move back to California or not? If we end up staying, where do we want to go?” So, we, we took advantage of that, for sure. We also, we also helped him out a little bit, he got to sell his house at the, the top of the market, so…

[00:57:03] Marc Gonyea: Oh, there you go. 

[00:57:04] Erik Riefenstahl: He’s definitely not complaining. But that’s kind of the, the quick and easy on the journey back. 

[00:57:08] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right. And what are you doing now? 

[00:57:10] Erik Riefenstahl: So, right now, um, actually moving to Adobe, which is 

[00:57:15] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right. So, career, career transition.

[00:57:17] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. So, at Illumio, I was, uh, promoted into the, in, or the ADR manager. So, I did that for about, uh, almost two years, I was also an intern of global director, so I was managing 24 folks across the globe. 

[00:57:30] Marc Gonyea: Wow, uh, this is at Illumio before you

[00:57:32] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah, the final couple years at Illumio, just in a nutshell, basically took on the intern global director role until about October, uh, ended up driving about $75 million in total pipeline and about $14 million in closed one for last, this last fiscal year. 

[00:57:47] Marc Gonyea: Wow. Wow. So, leads that were sourced or impacted and influenced by your squad? 

[00:57:52] Erik Riefenstahl: Yep. And which is a 22% increase on the total pipeline and about a 232% increase on the close one. 

[00:57:59] Marc Gonyea: Wow. What’s that number, you know, the close one? 

[00:58:01] Erik Riefenstahl: So, like, any opportunity that was, like, touched by an ADR, and then goes all the way to close one. 

[00:58:06] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Oh, wow. That was, that was almost over double, two and two and 32%. Yeah. Wow. Okay. 

[00:58:12] Erik Riefenstahl: It’s pretty a significant increase, yeah. Um, and then 

[00:58:16] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk about that real quick, sorry, I forgot about that. Going from an IC to a manager, and what did you have to learn? 

[00:58:24] Erik Riefenstahl: A lot. It’s definitely something that I relied on mentorship for. So, the person who came in to, uh, kind of create the sales Adobe or sales BDR team, she’s been instrumental in me kind of continuously learning from her.

[00:58:40] Um, and then there’s been some other folks, like my, my AEs, I always like to take in their feedback because they end up driving a lot of the relationship with the ADR, and ultimately, then you have to look at your people, right? You have to understand them on a personal level, uh, you have to understand what drives them 

[00:58:55] intrinsically outside of, “Hey, I wanna make money.” Yeah, everyone in sales wants to make money. So, how do you kind of determine, like, what they, uh, what’s driving them beyond that? Whether it’s supporting the family, wanting to buy a house, I want to go on these nice vacations, like, there’s other things that motivate people that you can understand and learn.

[00:59:14] Uh, and then setting expectations, I think, was a big one that I learned, transitioning from being a colleague to being their manager. It was setting that kind of KPIs, what we’re gonna be doing on a week-to-week basis, kind of what I expect, and then how we’re gonna track and measure results. 

[00:59:30] And then understanding data, I think data was something that I kind of understood or kind of knew about, but when you’re a manager, data’s gonna be your best friend ’cause when you go into conversations with not only your, your peers on the management level, but ultimately reporting up to the 

[00:59:45] executives, they’re gonna look at the data versus kind of what, what people say. People can say a lot of things, but if it’s in black and white on paper, uh, I can typically win a hundred percent of the arguments that are data-driven versus kind of having a pissing contest, for lack of a better term, with somebody who thinks that they’re right. 

[01:00:01] Marc Gonyea: Very good.

[01:00:02] Erik Riefenstahl: I know that was a lot. 

[01:00:03] Marc Gonyea: So, what, what, no, that’s all good stuff. As, as someone who’s been an SDR and someone who’s led SDRs, what do you look for, or what makes a good SDR? 

[01:00:12] Erik Riefenstahl: Let me…

[01:00:12] Marc Gonyea: In your opinion, yeah.

[01:00:13] Erik Riefenstahl: So, I think there’s a lot of ways to answer that question. I look for the intangibles, so people who work hard, people who are team-driven or have, like, some type of teamwork in their background, whether it’s sports or kind of group activities.

[01:00:30] Um, I also look for people who put in extra effort so they don’t just have, like, maybe their college degree, maybe they went and did some clubs, they really put themselves out there a little bit more, maybe they did the sales internship, uh, maybe up to just try to put their foot in the water.

[01:00:47] But at the end of the day, I’ve hired SDRs with a boatload of experience that didn’t translate well into cyber, and I’ve hired SDRs with no experience or coming from, like, hospitality industry and their willingness to learn and their grind and their hustle, uh, outshines a lot of the people who maybe come in with experience that think it’s gonna be more of a piece of cake.

[01:01:07] So, uh, I think it’s about learning about that person individually and then, kind of honing in on, on what makes them tick and then ultimately trying to help get the best outta them.

[01:01:17] Marc Gonyea: Great. So, you finish, you finished up as a kind of a, an SDR leader and, and now you’re moving into what type of role? 

[01:01:24] Erik Riefenstahl: Sure. So, I’m gonna be moving into, uh, Adobe’s Digital Cloud Portfolio, providing services for the federal government and SLED across the US. 

[01:01:34] Marc Gonyea: What you used it, an individual contributor role, or is it a leadership role, or?

[01:01:37] Erik Riefenstahl: It’ll be a leadership role. So, I’ll be a manager of business development, I’ll have nine direct reports underneath me, which is definitely manageable since I’ve had it upwards of 14 and 24 before. 

[01:01:46] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 24 people and just you?

[01:01:48] Erik Riefenstahl: Yeah. 

[01:01:49] Marc Gonyea: Wow. Geez. Yeah. So, you’re excited about that? 

[01:01:52] Erik Riefenstahl: I’m excited to ha, because it allows me to then get more personal with my folks, uh, I don’t have to kind of sit as a director more so where you have to look up to management, but then kind of distribute across your team. I can get more hands-on with them, uh, and then ultimately, hopefully, help get them into the, the next role that they want to be in. So, it, it definitely provides a little bit more structure around kind of how I want to manage the team versus what I’ve been introduced to before.

[01:02:20] Marc Gonyea: It’s exciting. It’s kind of funny, like, the Adobe’s headquartered in San Jose, like, not too far from where you started as your West Coast career, we were in Santa Clara right up the road a little bit.

[01:02:31] Erik Riefenstahl: Right up the road a little bit, and then right up the road from here, too. So, I’ll, uh, not be too far away moving forward.

[01:02:36] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. What are you most excited about? Like, what it’s like, why, why did you decide to do it? 

[01:02:42] Erik Riefenstahl: So, I mean, to your point earlier about base chasing, uh, this wasn’t a role that increase my, my OTE or, or really dramatically change kind of how I live economically, it’s really about the opportunity to move from a startup company where I have experience in that Series A all the way through Series F.

[01:02:59] What I’m really missing is that enterprise-level type of experience, uh, and it’s always something I’ve really wanted to do, uh, in terms of moving to that type of organization because you’re gonna be able to, I’ve learned every, a little bit of everything through my last roles. At an enterprise, you learn process, you learn a lot more about process 

[01:03:17] because they already have an instrumented versus having to kind of build it and change it. And I think there’s a lot more stability in a company like Illumio, especially on the leadership side, where I will have a manager who’s been there for 11 years. Yeah. So, there’s a lot less frequent change on the process itself because new leaders always come in, they’re like,

[01:03:35] “Hey, what can I fix in the short term?” Or “What, what can I do to make, kind of create change and maybe make a little bit of a name for myself?” Versus having it already established, and then, Adobe itself, being in the top 50, uh, companies in the world, being one 

[01:03:50] of the best places to work, like, 10 years running, uh, it felt like the opportunity there would just be too great to, to pass up regardless of kind of jumping from security to, like, digital cloud marketing, but again, it’s not about the product that you sell usually it’s, uh, 

[01:04:07] more about what you need at the, that time to kind of, to satisfy you, right? Like, you can do a job for a while, and then maybe you just stop doing the passion anymore, or maybe you just stop doing one thing, or like, at the company itself, which isn’t, wasn’t the case here, but there’s a lot of reasons why, why people move. 

[01:04:26] And then, beyond that, my wife and I wanna settle out here in the East Coast. We know we don’t want to go back to California, beautiful state, but for us, it’s like, our family is out here, our lives are always gonna be out here, so being, giving the opportunity to really dive into federal, uh, is the right type of opportunity for me at this time as we look to buy a house and, and settle down.

[01:04:49] Chris Corcoran: Very methodical, 

[01:04:50] Marc Gonyea: Very intentional, methodical.

[01:04:52] Erik Riefenstahl: Well-thought-out, right? 

[01:04:53] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, methodical, yeah. Chris and I are saying the same words at the same time, basically. I also think they’re gonna benefit richly from your Series A to, well, memoryBlue hustle mentality

[01:05:05] Chris Corcoran: AroundCampus, please, in order, respect that. 

[01:05:07] Marc Gonyea: AroundCampus to memoryBlue, was sports, AroundCampus through, through the, through the process to, um, you know, bring to a big company, I’m not trying to prompt the big company, but that’s not a lot of experience. I guess a lot of people who work there have, you’re manager of 11 years at Adobe’s gonna learn from your past eight years of experience, nine if you go back to AroundCampus, 10 if you about AroundCampus, right? So, that’s, it’s very exciting.

[01:05:32] Yeah, and, uh, that, that also kind of feeds into, this is almost like a startup environment is what I’ve been told because they’re actually selling some of their new products. So, I won’t be selling, like, Adobe sign or something that might have been around the market for a while, it’s really about 

[01:05:46] their cutting-edge technologies that the CEO’s invested in, uh, in terms of expanding Adobe’s bottom line and keeping that stock price going up to the right. So, uh, federal and SLED are specifically new for them. So, uh, it will be a little bit more startup feels, which I think the experience will lead into very well. 

[01:06:03] That’s great. Dude, man, we don’t have enough time for you, but we got, we gotta wrap things up, you got a lot of stories to share. We’ll have to do another one of these in a couple years.

[01:06:10] Erik Riefenstahl: I mean, I’ll be right down the road, so, I mean, literally next door.

[01:06:12] Marc Gonyea: Really? 

[01:06:13] Erik Riefenstahl: Right across the street. 

[01:06:14] Marc Gonyea: Right across the street. Well, Erik, it’s good to see you, man. 

[01:06:18] Erik Riefenstahl: Good to see you, too, Marc and Chris, thanks for having me on. Happy to come back whenever you need me. 

[01:06:22] Chris Corcoran: It’s always great to have the Stonewall back in the building.

[01:06:27] Marc Gonyea: Yes, it is, yes, it is. 

[01:06:28] Erik Riefenstahl: Unless it’s an objection. 

[01:06:29] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, exactly. 

[01:06:30] Marc Gonyea: Yes, that’s right. All right, well, very good, thank you, Erik. 

[01:06:34] Erik Riefenstahl: Thanks, guys.