Interview with Dekel Skoop

You're listening to One Sharp Sword cutting through to what matters Most with outfluencer Dr. Wayne Purnell.

Welcome to One Sharp Sword Cutting through to what matters most. I'm your host, guide and coach on this journey, Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell. Today is a special one. Today's guest is Decal Scoop. He's a mission driven tech founder who has built and scaled numerous companies focused on serving the underserved. He's a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree and former CEO of a web accessibility company. Today, he brings that same mindset to cybersecurity, helping small and mid sized businesses protect themselves in an increasingly complex digital world. Welcome to the program. Duckle Scoop, welcome.

Thank you very much, Dr. Pernell. And you got the scoop. They say. Nice to meet you.

Very good.

Happy to be here.

Happy to have you. And you're free to call me Wayne or Dr. P. It's all good. Dr. Pernell is always so formal. Right.

So I will, I will go with Wayne. I like the name Wayne, by the way.

Very good. Excellent. Talk to me a little bit about what you're doing, you were doing. You know, we're sharing with the audience your, your leadership lessons along the way. And I'm just, I'm curious about what was the. If you could describe the accessibility company that you had and how it really supports, served the underserved. Talk a little bit about how you got there and then we'll dive into a little bit of what you're doing now and where you're headed.

Of course. So let's take it way back before we came up with the idea of creating web accessibility for the underserved. Talking about roughly seven, eight years ago, the only way to make your digital assets accessible is, was if you have a lot of money, a lot of time and expertise in doing so. Which means by default that the majority of business owners who want to make their digital assets accessible is underserved and can't do it, even though regulation will come up later on and enforce them to do what needs to be done to be accessible, which is very important. Obviously it's a basic request for everything. Just like the physical world, who has to be accessible for everybody. The Internet and the digital world should be accessible as well. But there's complexities and back at the time, it used to be almost impossible for small medium businesses to become accessible as later on regulation will come and force them to do so. We encountered this challenge because we used to own a marketing agency. We used to build websites and manage them, maintain Marketing efforts, design efforts all across the border to manage your websites and marketing. And our customer need to become accessible. And we knew the classic ways to make website accessible back then and we gave them an offer and it was too pricey and too complex for those SMBs to become accessible.

Let me ask you a question just for the sake of definition, right. When we think about accessibility, we think about how to use something, right. So when you're talking about something not being accessible, who are you serving specifically? Is the site impaired? Is it the mobility impaired? Is it the general population that just doesn't know how to. How to make use? Right. Can you just define who you're actually serving?

So let's take a step back. We served two types of communities. On one hand, the users of those websites, these are individuals who are living with disability and they want to use a website and they need a website to accommodate their situation. On the other hand, the websites owner the businesses who are having the website and need to become accessible and don't know how to do it.

I got you. Okay.

Unity. That we had to serve. One hand, website owners who want to become accessible don't know how to do it and have very limited resources. On the other hand, the audience who are using those websites, the customer build businesses who are want to have an equal access to those websites. Yeah. So audience want to go and acquire certain product on a certain website, on a certain brand website. If the website is not accessible for that individual who is living with a certain disability, he won't be able to acquire that product like someone who is not living with the same disability. So it's inequality online right there. It's like not putting a ramp to someone who's using a wheelchair in the entrance of a store and having only stairs. And then you are serving only those who can walk the stairs, but you're not serving those who can't walk stairs. That's the idea behind I obviously clear now.

Yeah. Everyone deserves to have access, really. Right. So.

Right.

And that's. So I want to back up the clock even further. What got you interested? What like why? Usually that's based in some passion or something, someone close to you or like what got you started in serving the underserved in that way and in creating accessibility. I'm just like, this is. This is where the human part of. Of you comes through. Right. So

I'm a very call to action kind of guy. When I see something is not working or something is not right, I would like to fix it. So I think looking at that lens we found the problem and we wanted to fix that problem. We were also lucky that by fixing this problem and serving those audiences were doing something good for the world. This is something they always wanted to do. I always wanted to be able to make a living while doing good. Think it's a gift and I feel very honored and lucky that I was able to do it. And still, and in my personal situation, I don't want to say it's a reason of what I did and why I did that. In my family, we are living with a genetic disorder called arthrogryposis that for some people in my family caused more severe situation regarding their ability to walk or to run or to even, you know, stand and some less. I'm living with a very minor challenge that came with that genetic disorder. Siblings in my family had it more severe and other family members had it more severe. So my life were always around, you know, physiotherapy and access for people who need some more help or how to overcome physical challenges you were born with and live with. Maybe that's a part of what built my character and also what withdraw me. Pulled me, sorry. Into the world of accessibility. Maybe. But I don't want to say that's the main reason. It probably gave some color and tastes around what attracted me. But as I said, it's a, it's a, it's, It's a mixture of a lot of things.

Yeah, that's, that's great. It offers some context because usually, usually, you know, in my experience, people get into serving the underserved because they're close to it in some way. So thanks for that. Thanks for sharing that.

Of course, of course. Object.

So let's talk a little bit about, you know, you saw a problem, you've always been action oriented and you saw a problem and fixed it. There are a lot of problems to fix. So, you know, that's also why when it's close to you, it's like, well, now it means something. You, you gain purpose when you give meaning to something. Right. And, and so it's. This is great.

Let's talk about if, if you're okay with the. The backbone of almost every developed economy, which are the small medium businesses. On one hand, there's so much on their shoulders helping the economy of a certain country. On the other hand, they always end up underserved by technology, innovation, services. And I think that's also something that I like to do in my career. And you can see through the years, I was myself a small media business owner I had four restaurants and bars before I established my marketing agency. And then I jumped into the software side of things to provide a solution. First 1 million businesses and also now with Guard Cyber Security for SMBs and MSPs, mainly. MSPs to help SMBs. I'm still doing that. I think that's more of like trajectory of why I'm doing what I'm doing and where I'm going. And there's some repeated around it as well.

Cool. So cybersecurity, the, the name is Guards. G U A R D Z.

Right, Correct.

Okay. And, and that is, that is quite a trajectory from bars to marketing to accessibility to cybersecurity. It's all, it's, it's funny because in some ways it's all customer service based.

It's all like relationships.

Good.

Everything is relationship internally with the people you work with and the people you build products with and the people you're going to market with. On the other end, the people you serve. It's a relationship people want to work with people they feel comfortable, safe, trusted. So again from married my wife, well out for the last 15 years together. It's a relationship, I think my kids relationship, working with my partners and my colleagues and so the customers I work with, it's all about building the right relationship, I believe.

That's awesome. Well, you, you and I had a conversation not that long ago and one of the things that you brought up which really struck a chord with me was, was along the lines of relationships. It's how you run the business. It's how you focus on what's important to you. And what you said that it's first it's about people, it's about process, and then it's about the product. Do you want to talk a little bit about that philosophy?

Of course. I was lucky enough to have a lot of very smart, successful people supporting me and helping me to learn how to keep on going. I'm doing a lot of things for the first time with an entrepreneur, with a, as a CEO or startup or a founder. And I think the best way to start is to ask people who've done that, been there, that will give you some color. So one of the first things I learned was that when you look at an organization, small or big, it doesn't matter. There's a certain way to start building. You start with the structure, which is the people and what those people are going to be responsible of. You put the right people, put them in the right place. That's structure, talent and responsibilities. And then you look at processes that those people are going to run in the business and at the end of the day is the instruments that allows you to scale those processes and allow those individuals to excel in what they do. So it's structure people, you can call it or structure people. It's processes and then instruments. That's the way I see it.

I'm taking some notes because this is the, this is good people, the processes and then the instruments. Right. And it doesn't really matter what the product itself is. It could be a service, it could be a physical product. You always start with structure. How did that say that again?

Always start with the people.

Start with the people. Good. What belief did you have early in your career? Like, because you've been in leadership, from a bar to a marketing agency to, you know, numerous other companies, you've. You've had different beliefs. As a leader in each of those organizations, what belief has struck has stuck with you. And what belief did you take on early and then realize that you had to let go of to grow even further?

One big thing I've learned in a scaling organization that is kept on changing and growing. Change is the only constant. Okay. The only thing for sure is that changes will come. And you always need to be as flexible as possible with what the change will bring upon your company, organization, your team, whatever you're running. You always need to be able to go after the cheese that is kept on being, moving away from. There's cheese you want to go and get. There's a great book, psychology behind it. So you always need to be able to refigure new ways to get where you want to get. Because it always changes, especially in the world we're living today, that everything keeps on moving, sometimes too fast even. But then that's the life we live. Humanity always trying to get better, which means things will keep on changing, evolving and moving around. We can learn a lot from history, but we always need to know that tomorrow will probably look different than today. And we need to embrace it and accept it and not come against it. And that's one big thing that I've learned. So when I want to have people to work with me, I'm always looking for people who will be open for trying new things, learning new things, changing their mindset. Maybe if it's a bit of a very small change, but to get where they need to get, I think that that's the right way to run. If someone is too in love or too stuck in the idea he had for too long, it's going to be Outdated one day and then it's very hard to pull that person towards the day we are facing and not stuck in the past as he is. So I think that's one thing that's great.

You said a bunch that I actually want to repeat. So one of the things is in a growing organization, one thing you can be sure of is that changes will come. And I love that because it's, it's like in life, right? Changes will come. I'm, you know, you and I love analogies.

So think about that way. You come and establish an organization, you hire 10, 20 people. 10, 20 people. You manage them in a certain way with a certain processes and certain tools. Your company keeps on growing. In a year, those 20 people became 40, 50. By design, the business has changed. And also usually when those things are happen, product that you're selling probably also changed. The customer base that you're serving sometimes may change as well. So by design, if you're successful at what you're doing, change will come and you need to be ready for it. A very smart and successful mentor. I had always told me that my job as a leader or other CEO or a manager or executive is to always have a plan a year or two years ahead of what's happening today and understand how if we're successful, I have a path towards that plan. It doesn't mean that now you need to do things you're doing in two years. It means that what you're doing now should complement the journey of where you need to be or want to be or going to be in two years. So by design, if you're successful, what you're doing, change will come and you need to embrace it and be lucky that change is coming if you're successful because you keep on growing, moving the organization and it comes all across the board. The way you hire people, the way you manage those people, the tools you're using, everything will change.

Yes. Yes. That's so good. Cool. I want to repeat some of this because I think it's, I think it's worth repeating. I think it's really great, right? So one more time. In a growing organization, the one thing you can be sure of is the change will come. And then I'm going to jump ahead to something you just said, which is this is like blog post worthy. I love this. By design. By design, if you're successful in what you're doing, change will come. And, and I don't know that anybody really thinks about it that way, that it's like, oh no, we are we are planning to change, we're planning to grow. If you do that for yourself and you know I do organization organizational consulting and I do one to one coaching and I think if you think about that for your as an individual, by design you must change, right? You need to grow and change. So and then the idea of having a plan for two years out and what you're doing now should feed that two year plan. And I'm going to add to that which is, and that two year plan continues to be on the horizon so that as, as a month or two goes by, you're still creating a plan for another two years like a rolling two years out. So what you're doing today feeds tomorrow.

You also need to be careful, not plan it too far ahead. So there's always like a bracket of timing and it might vary depending on the business, depending on the DNA, depending on the market. But you should have some sort of future roadmap where you should go, you should revisit this roadmap once in a while obviously to see that it really works alongside the reality. And then you need to have the steps to take you towards that place. And I would like to segue this into what take you to the, this outcome you want to achieve and it's the people you choose to work. And one of the biggest things I've learned, turning myself from a founder who's doing everything with my partners and the co founders to CEO who need to bring other people to do the things I used to do before but do better than me now as we grew, is that as a leader think your job is to make sure that every person you bring into the room, into your team is better than you in what he needs to do now. Well, I used to like to say to the managers around me that in every management meeting I am trying to make sure that I am the, the most stupid guy in the room. Let's call it or not. Obviously not. Smartest kid in the room. If I'm the smartest kid in the room, I made a wrong decision. As a leader, I need to surround myself with people who are smarter than me in the areas they manage. So that's where you can scale a business and make it better. If you bring people or you are better than them, you're going to keep telling them what to do instead of they telling you what needs to be done in order to get to where you want to go. So your job as a leader is to mark the destiny we are going to go and the goal we're going to have. But your management and your teams will tell you how to get there because they will give you higher. Right. People have more experience in those specific areas that allows you to excel and scale the business. One person can do so much and the moment grows. It's time to bring people in and make sure that those people know their job better than you. And then you can scale the business successful.

It's. It's a great formula for scaling.

Right.

Make sure that you are hiring the right people. How do you go about hiring? How do you. What kind of great interviews do you do? You know, when you look for somebody, you've already said you're looking for somebody who shows flexibility. How do you find that out?

You want to test a few things while bringing someone into your team. Okay. You want to make sure that the culture of the person will match team culture. So it's character. You want to make sure that the experience will match what the company is missing or trying to achieve. Right. And you want to make sure that that person has the right knowledge and the common sense around taking the right decision. I think common sense is one of the most important traits you can have when you run a company.

So how do you measure that?

Because it's very hard.

Yeah, it is very hard. What I've. What I've noticed is that, you know, I had a. I had a mentor years ago who used to say, common sense is not common practice. And it's. It's like that is all too true. We see that everywhere. Common sense is just not common practice. Like people say they have common sense. How do you measure it? How do you, like in, you know, it's. It's hard to put your finger on, I would think. But how do you measure. What's your. What's your measure for common sense?

Let me ask you, let's start like a doctoral diagnosis with an elimination thing. It's easier if there's a doubt. There's no doubt when it comes to hiring. During the hiring process, if you find a big problem and you're doubting it, it means it might be not the right thing. So you need to move on. Even if it's going to take you more time to hire, it's very important. Hiring is one of the most important processes building the right organization. So let's start with definition. If you have a doubt, no doubt. If by default, this person doesn't have one or two of the things that is important for you. So let's move on. And when it comes to common sense in particular, you're totally right. It's super hard to measure it. And the more you are meeting the person and the more you guys are talking and experiencing, it's easier to see all of those intricacies. But for every position there's a. At least for my company and everywhere I go, when I build hiring processes to my team, for every position there's a few different things we want to check. Some of all of them will have the same DNA matching practices that we're doing, obviously. And then for every position you want to check other things. In some areas you want someone with a bit more quantitative and someone was a bit more qualitative. And then you build the right tests and tasks to check that out. For some hiring, I would like to bring more team members to give an assessment and say what they think, what they feel about this person. So it's hard for me to tell you that. There's one process I run across the border. There's a few processes depending on the position and depending on the seniority of the individual. But in all of them there's the personal interview. We're trying to see the personality of the person, which I usually do in the HR is doing as well. There is a portion of home assignment or task in almost all of them, depending on what you're doing, there is a portion of presenting how you present stuff, how you show stuff. And that by the way, the great way to see common sense, if someone nailed it and understood one plus one equal to or get more complex, it's easier to see it. And when it comes to hire, very, very close to me employees, they also almost always go to dinner, you know, getting out of the office, go to eat with someone, drinking someone with them, something with him and open up to really get a bit more of a this person and his beliefs and his common sense, by the way, because you get to hear a lot more about his day to day and he's getting out of the shell of interviewing and letting you hear only the right thing. And when you go to dinner, all of the shields are getting off. You are exposing yourself as more vulnerable and then by default the other side feels more comfortable and allows himself to also be open to you. And that's a great time to get all the question marks you had during the interview process out there.

I've heard of CEOs I've heard of CEOs taking prospects to dinner, prospective employees to dinner.

I have a funny story about one. I lived in New York back then. I hired executive to my team and we ate and drank. And the conversation was very interesting and it was very important position for me and my company, specifically due to the board structure we had. So I really wanted to manage this person and I wanted to be 100% sure, guys. So we ran three and a half, four hours dinner. My wife thought I was kidnapped or got that. I didn't look at my phone even for one moment or four hours. And she managed to find a way to call that candy face and ask if she's dinner with me right now. And he's like, your wife is calling me. I don't even know how she got my number. So that, how did I go when I want to hire a very important position.

Wow. Okay, that's, that's, it's an interesting kind of process that your wife went through to get to you. But that's, that's awesome. So sometimes when CEOs will take prospective team members out to dinner, they look for certain things. That's how they see the traits of the other person. How does that person treat the wait staff? How does that person deal with frustration if something's not right on their plate? Are those the kinds of things that you're looking for as well?

Of course, all of the above. You see manners, how they reacting, treating other servers, for example, on people who are having their time there. Patience. You can get to learn a lot from someone by eating with them and drinking with them, by the way.

So you can. That's true. Let's talk for a few minutes before we wrap up. Let's talk for a few minutes about what it is you're doing with guards. Specifically. This is your new company. It's, it's been around for, I don't remember how long. It's within a year or so. Right? You.

Less than a year? Less than six months?

Yeah, less than six months. So it's really new. So, so what specifically does it do and who are you serving and what opportunities and what challenges are you seeing coming your way right now?

So in Guard right now, I am the Chief Business Officer and we, we are serving solely MSPs, managed service providers and empowering them to protect their customers who are mainly SMBs, one of the businesses in the digital arena. We are helping them to protect everything they need, A to Z. And we're doing it in a very, very efficient way and affordable way. Today there's too many tools MSPs are using while protecting their customers, securing the customer, and our mission was to unify it and making it all in one platform, all in one place. And Connecting the dots for them as well, getting insights for them as they work instead of they need to go and work with 3, 4, 5 different solutions and doing all of the dot connection on their own without the abilities of AI and machine learning that we have in our system. So we came into a very fractured world and united into one platform that does everything you need to protect your customers.

So you're basically you're streamlining and as you said, uniting digital security for small mid sized businesses.

All right, nice. And we're doing it while allowing the MSP to improve dramatically its operation efficiency.

That's great. How do you, how do you measure success with something like that?

First and foremost, the satisfaction of the customers when they're coming to us and told us that they can finally present to their customers a right security posture and can really understand what's happening with all of the security posture of their customers, that they feel safe, they feel protected, they can trust us and know that we're going to stand behind what we're promising them. I think that's a great way to measure. We're also running a lot of internal tests on everything we do. We are improving the products day in, day out with a very strong R and D and product team. Invested a lot of time, money and effort on, on doing so. You can see the growth of the organization, a lot of MSP really moving from outdated older softwares or, or processes or instruments towards our platform. And I think that's a great testament of what we do. Great.

That's great.

Our organization is growing dramatically fast. I joined six months ago roughly to a two man team and this team is right now around 20 people already. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

20 is a big team. It's amazing.

Out of 120 right now, around the globe. Yeah.

So what's next for you?

What's next? So it's always improving the product. That's always what we do. When you're selling a product and software, that's one improving the way we serve our customers, understanding a lot more things. Cater and nurture those pains better and better as we go and keep on learning and evolving. The mission in life, I believe it's always be better tomorrow than what you are yesterday today. Even if it's a small move towards better, do it every day a small move towards being better. And then if you look at it retrospective, it's a very long journey. So I think that's the idea. And we live in a world that is constantly evolving. New software coming in, new processes coming in. AI, LLM, Generative chatgpt. You know, you name it. And you always need to be with your hands on the poles and learning what's going on, what can help me, what is noise? And it's very important to always, you know, be mindful. What about going around?

I think that's great. So is there anything declarative. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you thought I'd ask you or you wanted to talk about?

No, I think we covered almost everything we wanted to speak about in the former meeting.

Very good. Okay.

Yeah.

All right. And if. If.

Very precise.

If our audience wanted to reach you, well, here's. I mean, you. I wanted to pause along the way and, and call out some of the. The leadership lessons that you've offered, which I think is great. So hiring is so important. Common sense is hard to measure. Success is measured through feedback from customers who report feeling safe and protected. I love all of that. And I think, you know, I keep going back to by design. If you're successful in what you're doing, change will come. I think that's like the. The takeaway of all of this, at least for me. If, if any of our audience wants to reach you, how. What's the best way? Is it LinkedIn?

Yeah, I assume LinkedIn is the best way. Decalscope. D E K E L S K O O P that's my name. I'm very accommodating and I love to meet new people. I love to learn new things. And I believe that every person you meet can teach you at least one thing that you didn't know before. So I'm very open for it and I would love to also help people if I can. So, yeah, feel free to.

Very Good. All right. LinkedIn. De scoop. D E K E L S K O O P Great Decal. It's great to have you here. I'm so. I'm so glad that we got a chance to talk. And again, thank you.

Thank you so much for having me here.

Alrighty. This is one sharp sword cutting through to what matters most. My guest today was Decal Scoop. I am Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell and we will see you here next time. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. To one sharp sword cutting through to what matters Most without fluency. Dr. Wayne Purnell. For more information, please go to OneSharpsWord.com.