Today’s Best Advice Q&A comes from Markus Scott, chief executive officer at EyeQ Monitoring. He shares the best advice he’s ever gotten, gives tips for young security industry pros on the rise and names the people to whom he always listens.
Security Sales & Integration: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Markus Scott: During EyeQ Monitoring’s early days, one of our board members gave me a piece of advice during a challenging time: focus on your customers and everything else will take care of itself.
That’s always stuck with me. It’s easy to get caught up in what competitors are doing, the latest trends or short-term revenue pressures. But if you stay focused on doing a really great job for your customers, you’ll retain them for the long haul – and a lot of those other things tend to follow.
We’ve grown because our customers are happy and expand with us. Our team is in a better place because they’re not dealing with constant issues. A lot of the value creation comes from that foundation, allowing us to build deep customer relationships, uncover pain points and iterate on our technology to create custom-fit solutions for specific sectors and customers. It’s simple, but it’s still core to how we operate today.
SSI: What advice would you give to those looking to achieve success in the security industry?
Scott: Security is a very tenured industry. There are many players who have been serving the market for decades. But at the same time, there’s a significant amount of change happening, driven by new technology and evolving customer needs.
My advice would be to embrace that change in a customer-led way. Spend time really listening to your customers. We ask ours all the time, “What would you do if you could actually sit and watch your cameras all day?” That kind of thinking helps inform where we build and how we challenge the status quo – not just to disrupt the market but to truly serve our customers better.
I also talk a lot about being “irreverent,” encouraging our team to adopt an innovation mindset and challenge legacy ways of thinking, rather than doing things a certain way simply because that’s how they’ve always been done. If you stay disciplined around this mindset and mission to better serve your customers, you’ll land in the right place.
SSI: If you could point to one person in the security industry and tell up-and-comers, “Make sure to listen to what they have to say,” whom would you pick and why?
Scott: I’ve been fortunate to learn from several phenomenal mentors and advisors over the years who took the time to pour into me and support my leadership path but two teams I’d highlight:
Ira Riklis and Dan Barbera from COPS Monitoring are two that stand out. Fifteen years ago when I was a young leader, they were generous enough to sit down with me, share their experience, and help me identify where there were opportunities to serve people in the security space.
I also quickly saw the strong emphasis they placed on finding and keeping great people. You can see that reflected in the longevity and success of their business and it’s something we’ve tried to model with our team as well.
I’d also point to John Robuck and Saam Parsa at Capital One. As incredibly successful and thoughtful lenders to the industry, they’ve seen just about every version of how to build something meaningful and lasting in this space, including what works and where companies fall short.
I was fortunate enough to connect with them even prior to leading EyeQ and we owe much of our growth and success to our now decade-long partnership and the valuable advice they’ve provided along the way.
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