Quick WINs: Education, proactively pursuing opportunities, and building a non-profit with Scott Davis.

By Ian Richardson, Managing Partner, Richardson & Richardson Consulting

Podcast Season 1, Episode 10 Guest: Scott Davis, Sr Sales Engineer, Liongard

Scott is an innovative senior technology professional with over twenty years in leading IT infrastructure and network security compliance for organizations of all sizes. Scott serves as the Senior Sales Engineer with Liongard, bringing his in-depth knowledge of multi-year business planning, cybersecurity planning, technology documentation, workflow design, project management, and network design to MSPs around the globe.

Scott is an active member on the Security and Compliance team with Liongard.  Scott’s background and knowledge of PCI-DSS, HIPAA, NIST, GDPR, CCPA and other state breach notification laws allows Scott the ability to quickly identify and develop a plan to bring organizations to compliance.  In addition to being part of Liongard, Scott also teaches at Harrisburg University and NuPaths, produces a weekly video podcast called The Morning Breach, and is the President of the Cybersecurity Association of Pennsylvania.

 

I got a chance to sit down with Scott on W.I.N. and had a few key take aways that I wanted to share with you.

 

1. Education as a strategy: Education is a key strategic focus, especially going into a disruptive market. If you’re looking to provide a product that hasn’t existed before you get into a space, you have to educate someone on the risks, opportunities, or pain points your product or service offering can address for them. Put another way – someone needs to be aware of what’s going on before they’re going to buy from you. (I had written about this in my article around Red Ocean vs. Blue Ocean strategies, which you can view here) Scott uses his expertise and knowledge in cyber security as a strategic performance driver to open opportunities both in his role at Liongard, as well as at his non-profit (mentioned more below).
2. Proactively pursue opportunities: One of the items that really stuck out in my head was Scott’s tactic of proactively pursuing opportunities that had PR impact for him. Public Relations and press exposure is fantastic brand awareness strategy – if you can get written about by the media it can super charge opportunities for yourself and your organization. Scott pursued an opportunity to get in front of a joint session of the commonwealth legislature in pursuit of advocating for his non-profit organization and its mission. That opportunity has far-reaching impact for Scott, his non-profit, and any organization he is associated with due to the PR bubble that circles around such an event. Proactively pursuing these opportunities allows one to gain “free media” around themselves.
3. Building a non-profit: An interesting take away I had from my time with Scott was around the challenge presented by building a non-profit agency. Scott has been securing other founding members, figuring out funding sources, and moving towards creating an impact through his organization. Having insight into those challenges reinforced the value of strategy, process, and a focus on incremental improvement in my mind.

 

I gain so much value from meeting with fellow entrepreneurs and leaders. Each and every person I speak with brings their own experiences, knowledge, and viewpoints to the table, and without fail, I walk away with a head full of ideas and motivation to do better in my own business. I so greatly appreciate Scott’s willingness to come onto W.I.N. and share his story.

If you’re interested in joining me on an episode of W.I.N., it would be my privilege to host you. You can book your spot by visiting https://randr.consulting/connect and selecting the Podcast Booking option from the services menu. You can find previous episodes of W.I.N. on our website and subscribe to it on whatever your platform of choice is.

Always Forward,

Ian