89 – Spotlight on Transformation, RingCentral Capabilities, and Partners – Phil Sorgen.

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For this episode of the podcast, I am pleased to welcome Phil Sorgen, the Chief Revenue Officer of Ring Central and a former Microsoft Corporate Vice President to Ultimate Guide to Partnering. In this episode, we discuss the Transformation, RingCentral’s Capabilities, and Partners.

As RingCentral’s Chief Revenue Officer, Phil Sorgen leads global sales including all direct, service provider, channel, and strategic partners.

Sorgen is a 30-year industry veteran and spent the last 20+ years at Microsoft in a variety of leadership roles and that’s how I met him. Prior to joining RingCentral, Sorgen was responsible for Microsoft’s US Enterprise Commercial Group, an organization responsible for helping the company’s largest commercial customers in the US navigate digital transformation. In this role, Sorgen led US enterprise sales and customer success teams including national, industry, and technical teams.

Prior to that, Sorgen served as the Corporate Vice President of the Worldwide Partner Group and was responsible for setting the channel strategy for a broad network of diverse partner companies worldwide.

I’ve known Phil for many years and it was great to have him as a guest as partners have played a critical role throughout his career including his role as Microsoft’s Channel Chief.

In this episode you’ll learn more about RingCentral’s capabilities and value, their role in the rapid transformation we are seeing since the pandemic, the role of partners in their business and why customers and partners chose Ring Central.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed spending time with Phil Sorgen.

LINKS & RESOURCES

As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ and where they can find us.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Ultimate Partnerships. Ultimate Partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships. Get Partnerships Right – Optimize for Success – Deliver Results – Ultimate Partnerships.

Transcription By Otter.AI – Please Pardon Typos Below

Vince Menzione 0:30
Welcome, or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host, and for this episode of the podcast, I was pleased to welcome Phil Sorgen, the Chief Revenue Officer of RingCentral, and a former Microsoft corporate vice president. I’ve known Phil for many years, and it was great to have him as a guest to learn more about RingCentral. And partners have played a critical role throughout his career, including his role as Microsoft’s channel chief. In this episode, you’ll learn more about RingCentral’s value, the role they play in the rapid transformation, we are seeing the role of partners in their business, and why customers and partners choose RingCentral. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed spending time with Phil’s origin. Phil, welcome to the podcast.

Phil Sorgen 1:23
Thanks, Vince. It’s great to be here.

Vince Menzione 1:25
It is really great to have you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to Partnering you and I had the opportunity to work together when you lead SMSP. And that seemed like 100 years ago, and you served as Channel Chief at Microsoft, you joined RingCentral in mid-2020. And your organization has a great value proposition. I’m looking forward to this discussion today. So welcome.

Phil Sorgen 1:46
Thank you. It’s a it’s great to connect again. And it does seem like so long ago, but hey, time flies when you’re having fun, right?

Vince Menzione 1:54
It absolutely does. And we don’t even call it SMSP any longer. Right? And I think

Phil Sorgen 1:58
for that that was a that was at least two transformations ago for Microsoft.

Vince Menzione 2:04
And I think for a brief period when you were transitioning to Channel Chief, I think you were my skip level, in fact, for a very short period of time there.

Phil Sorgen 2:12
Yeah. Yep. It was like I was really right at the very beginning of the discussions around digital transformation. The true, not that cloud didn’t exist. It’s existed far beyond before that, but it really started becoming mainstream at that point in time, not only for Microsoft but for many companies.

Vince Menzione 2:34
Yeah. And we were trying to help the partners along the way at that point, right. We were trying to help them pivot. That was tough, those were some tough conversations back then.

Phil Sorgen 2:42
Yeah.

Vince Menzione 2:43
So for our listeners who might not know about you and your organization, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind telling us a little bit about your company, its focus, and how it has evolved over the years.

Phil Sorgen 2:54
Thanks, I’d be happy to you know, I’ve been here eight months. And it’s actually a pretty cool story. I always say, when you have a founder who put his heart into a business, and then 20 years later, it’s achieving tremendous market success. And he’s still the CEO and chairman of the company, that’s always a pretty cool story. But Vlad Shmunis founded RingCentral, the idea of using the power of cloud technologies to really, I’d say reimagine business communications. The company’s vision was to deliver a customer-first solution that met the needs of you know, the rapidly changing business environment that we’re all seeing out in the market today, RingCentral’s platform, our core set of products, enables our customers workforce to communicate, collaborate and connect from anywhere on any device. That’s effectively the message. And our focus is often when we go into customers, it’s to live to deliver flexible and cost-effective solutions that really disrupt the business of their legacy on-premise phone systems, which are really expensive to maintain. They’re not agile, they’re not built for the flexibility that companies need today. And, and we bring together like a single intuitive platform for voice, video messaging, collaboration, context center. And today, we’re the number one cloud communications provider used by over 350,000 businesses worldwide.

Vince Menzione 4:20
Wow. That’s astounding. And you know, you’re at the heart of this growth market. This transformation we’ve all been seeing, experiencing almost a year now. You know, a competitor Zoom went from a startup to being a verb last year, Microsoft Teams is on the rise, I think 115 million active users. What is RingCentral’s unique place in the market? You talked about ubiquity, across devices, and maybe a broader set of competencies in the market. Where are you known and what is your unique place there?

Phil Sorgen 4:53
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. You know, I’d suggest that what makes us unique is that we didn’t grow over the last year, honestly. Single secular trend, the pandemic exacerbated the need for companies to enable their employees to communicate and collaborate more effectively to be more mobile. And to be more data-driven. I like I’ve had so many conversations with companies on those points. And it’s not just one part of our platform, our value proposition across messaging, video, and phone is really at the heart of helping and helping companies achieve that. And the way we set it up the speed of implementation, the simplicity in onboarding that brings speed to organizations to realize those benefits. And I think it’s that combination of an integrated, simple platform that really addresses at the heart of helping companies be more mobile, and communicate and collaborate more effectively.

Vince Menzione 5:49
Are there specific markets where you’re seeing the most growth?

Phil Sorgen 5:52
Well, the pandemics probably accelerated every company’s digital transformation. by five years, at least, you know, I read a number of things in the industry, where people have talked about the last seven or eight months have looked like five years of transformation that companies go to. And in that sense, it’s definitely been a tailwind for us. But, you know, as I mentioned a moment ago, we don’t think everything was fully driven by the pandemic and the need for work from home. In fact, we really think we’re a work from anywhere company. And that will be the most important thing as we get through the pandemic in the next 12 months. So when you ask what markets, I think of any market that is facing an employee base, that is that needs the flexibility to work from anywhere and to be effective across all the different communication modes, from messaging to video, to voice, and those even need to move, you know, sometimes even have to move between it, you started a conversation, his voice, and then you determine it would be more effective to share and have a video discussion. To do that, in the context of a single community. A single call or a single communication is really powerful.

Vince Menzione 7:05
I think about telephony in that comment. Am I right in maybe presuming that the telephony link is an area of differentiation for you? And for RingCentral?

Phil Sorgen 7:16
Well, for sure. And one of the one of the aspects of that makes our solution so simple for a customer is we’re actually a carrier. And as a result, we can provide the end to end solution inclusive reporting numbers and everything else without them having to be if you will, a contractor of all the pieces to bring a communication system together.

Vince Menzione 7:40
And some of that’s very complex, from what I understand. Is that

Phil Sorgen 7:43
for sure, yeah. And, and it’s, it’s not surprising why in this space, if you look at companies, we have from small businesses to extremely large enterprises, but many small businesses made the move first because they didn’t have fully built out and they didn’t have they couldn’t, didn’t have the capacity to manage large PBX on premise, you know, the complexity of those systems plus all of the third parties that potentially have to work with around it. So they’ve moved fastest, but it’s definitely something that is that companies of all sizes and truly across the globe are looking at and moving quickly to.

Vince Menzione 8:25
So you’re the chief Revenue Officer of RingCentral. Can you tell us a little bit more about your role and your mission in that role?

Phil Sorgen 8:32
Yeah, I am. In effect, I’m responsible for go to market at RingCentral and which I have the customer segments. So we have an SMB segment and enterprise segment, I have a channel chief who works for me who runs the broad channel, then we’ve made some significant announcements in terms of strategic partnerships over the really over the last little over a year. And those partnerships are quite large scale those report to me, we’ve stood up a global service provider business unit, because our RingCentral’s solution also powers other companies, solutions, that’s the essence of our strategic partnerships. And we’re also doing that with companies like at&t, tell us British Telecom or bt, we recently announced Vodafone as a as a broad partner that’s taking us to 14 countries in Europe. And then the last group that reports to me is our ISV group, which really works on integrations. It’s important for our customers that we have that live in a world of heterogeneous computing, we’re providing the right integrations into the platforms they use. And examples of that would be like salesforce.com, Microsoft Teams, or outlook, slack are examples. And then we also have many companies, 1000s of developers that write to our open platform, we have an open API environment, so we help them integrate their solution into our platform. So partnership is really At the core of your go to market strategy is what I’m hearing very, very much. So I mean, we we, we ensure that not only are we establishing partners, and that’s been one of the biggest growth areas of our go to market, when you think of just introducing the global service provider business unit less than a year ago, the strategic partnerships we’ve named, but even with a direct sales force, we make sure there’s absolute synergy between our our sales teams and and the channel that we build you and I both know that’s critical to a successful channel model.

Vince Menzione 10:33
Absolutely, absolutely. And we’re going to ask a couple of questions with regards to partnering specifically, but I’m still interested in learning more about what you’re seeing now with the transformation like what are you seeing customers more willing to do now today, than a year ago?

Phil Sorgen 10:49
You know, I think the thing that is more prevalent today, than a year ago is really, in terms of speed. You know, I don’t think that there’s, I could point to a single, I’ll say capability in the market, whether it’s cloud platform, infrastructure, SAS, and the many solutions from line of business to a column or infrastructure, like, it’s not about capability. I remember for the last five or six years, I would talk about digital transformation. And I would have this discussion about we came out of a decade where big eight small in the market. So if you were really large, you had this amazing advantage in the marketplace. And then all of a sudden, this paradigm of cloud came in and it changed. It changed. Economics, it changed business models, it changed route to market, it changed speed of development. And all of a sudden, we got into this era where fast eats big, and every company realized that speed matters, and that you had to think differently. And you had to growth hack and, and stand up solutions more quickly. You had to be faster to be competitive. And I see companies much more willing to be faster today than even they were a year ago. And that was already accelerating.

Vince Menzione 12:12
Yeah. And they’re making decisions to your point like fast means that I’m you know, more capable, right? So people are making decisions on I want the best solution doesn’t have to be the biggest solution. Right? And what you’re seeing too, and I’ve had Jay McBain on the podcast talking about what we’re seeing in the channel ecosystem, as well is that the cobbling together of multiple solution sets, right. So this, this real need for multiple vendors to come together to complete a solution for your customers.

Phil Sorgen 12:42
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

Vince Menzione 12:43
So what exciting plans or announcements are in store for RingCentral in 2021? And can you share that with our listeners,

Phil Sorgen 12:50
I you know, we’ll continue to invest in rapid innovation across all those platforms are those pillars, I should call it a messaging video and phone, that certainly won’t slow down in 2021 won’t be hard to top 2020. In terms of adding strategic partners in general, I’ll say that we expect more on that front, which is a validation of our platform is the best cloud platform for many companies to power their go to market solutions. Our pipeline is really strong in that space. And that will be really important to our strategy of how we will grow internationally and just expand our footprint to more markets around the world. I think that would I think it will be another year of of partnering, in addition to rapid innovation in the core pillars that define who we are.

Vince Menzione 13:37
So we’re on an elevator ride, and you’re leading revenue markets and the like, at RingCentral. And I’m the CEO of a company looking to make a decision here. Why should I choose RingCentral? What would you tell me

Phil Sorgen 13:51
assuming we already had the conversation that they knew what RingCentral was, but they were looking to make a decision us versus our competitors, I would just tell him or her tell him or her that we have a single easy to use platform for voice video meetings, team messaging and contact center we’d under that we understand the importance of security and data privacy, and we build our platform, understanding that the cost of downtime is so so critical to a company and and it’s why we are the only company in our space with a five nines SLA. And I’d probably just remind him or her that our position as a leader in the eucast space is not our perspective alone gardener has had us in the farthest right position of the leader quadrant for eucast for the last six years.

Vince Menzione 14:41
I did not know that that’s amazing. Actually, I would love to pivot here a little bit. As you know, this is the ultimate guide to partnering you had you do love partnering and your background is such I mean you were the channel chief at Microsoft and you even before that intuitively led a business that partner was Central to that business growth. So I’d love to appeal back with you with based on all of your experiences here at RingCentral. And previously, what makes a great partner? What do you believe? What characteristics Do you believe make a great partner?

Phil Sorgen 15:13
You know, the thing that sets partners apart that I’ve evangelized for quite some time is I think it starts with the ability to create unique and differentiated IP, or capabilities that truly stand out in the market. You know, every company that has a partner ecosystem, there’s really like, if I was to narrow it down to two things they’re trying to achieve its reach, they’re trying to reach more segments of the market, that could be geo distribution or different countries in the world, it can be different customer segments, and it’s extending their own capability, it’s recognizing that you can invent everything, and that that assets and value that other companies bring just enhances your solution and makes it more valuable to your customers. I know, we want to enhance what we’re capable of doing, we want to extend the extensive r&d we’re putting into our product. So the best partners bring differentiated IP that either extends our platform or capabilities that help us reach markets, accelerate, pipeline, help make customers raving fans of our platform, when partners really are clear about their differentiation, and then Excel through that capability. That’s the best path to both getting a company to recognize your value add as well as to growing business in the market.

Vince Menzione 16:45
So you know, you discussed your strong partner pedigree and the work that you do to extend reach to integrate solution sets. What do you look for in partners? What challenges do you believe that they might face working with you or just general in the marketplace? Yeah, and what, uh, you know, I

Phil Sorgen 17:01
kind of answered what we look for in partners, which is that, you know, capability extending, really extending and just enhancing what we can bring to the market ourselves. But the challenge that I think all companies face is keeping up with the pace of innovation, you know, do they truly have a learning culture. And the second part is not being afraid to reinvent themselves. Vince, when you and I were working together, we already talked about this earlier, we had so many partners that made a business out of installing and upgrading on premise software, you know, this is a while ago, but we had partners that had to go from that core business model. And we had to show them how they could build a business around the cloud, that it was a great business opportunity, even as it cannibalize their old business. Interestingly, those, those lessons are still true today. transformation takes a long time, every day, you’re cannibalizing something else as you’re building something new. And I think that’s the hardest thing is keeping up with the pace of innovation, and reinventing yourself regularly with you know, it’s and it’s not always a wholesale reinvention, it’s it’s bringing new lines of business, new lines of revenue in as the things that you used to do that filled, you know, that largely contributed to your p&l potentially become less valuable, commoditized or even just not relevant? How do you show them the

Unknown Speaker 18:25
way? A couple

Phil Sorgen 18:26
of different things? I think, one is helping them understand, you know, I think each company that has a partner ecosystem has a responsibility to say, here are the various ways that you can build a business, a profitable business off of our platform, here is the potential areas, here’s what we’re seeing in the market, the potential extensibility. So I think that’s one part, I think, sharing examples of partners in the ecosystem that have been successful, you know, most are willing, you know, they won’t give away their their, I’ll call it very specific IP, but generally, helping them understand how they have, how they’ve been successful is something they’re generally willing to share. So we try to showcase a lot of the partners that have have made the transformation. And candidly, some of it is bringing in new partners into your ecosystem that, you know, that really keep everybody fresh, new companies coming in with new perspectives. You know, they become the competitors to others, but but it pushes everybody along. That’s what makes this market that’s what what makes the innovation in the technology sector so rich, is there’s always somebody new coming in. That’s challenging the norm. And the companies that will succeed pay attention to that.

Vince Menzione 19:47
So I’m a partner and maybe I don’t play in this space, or maybe I do, why should I choose or why would I want to partner with RingCentral

Phil Sorgen 19:55
couple of things is one. We’re first and foremost partners. First at the core. So you you know, one of the first questions I ask is, is partnering aside thing you do? Or is it core to how you drive your business? And and if I partner, am I always competing with you at some level or across the customer segments? Am I going to have a chance to be successful even when you have a direct Salesforce and we check, certainly both those boxes. The second thing is I look at, you know, are they willing to share some of the profitability, this isn’t a volunteer thing, and, and every company not only has to build first party capability, but also wants to know that, you know, representing your product, can help them be profitable. And I think we have a very compelling partner program in terms of have an opportunity to drive a profitable business off the sales RingCentral solutions, from small business all the way up through enterprise, not just in one segment, but across our customer segments. I think the third is our pace of innovation. And it tells companies that hey, if I bet and build a business practice around RingCentral, are they going to be there? I think our validation by Gartner and but more importantly, the relevant solutions that are coming out of the r&d we’re investing in are showing partners that it’s not just what we have today, but it’s also what we’re going to deliver in the future. And it’s a good company to bet a business around

Vince Menzione 21:26
sounds like a very compelling value proposition, I’m going to want to put some links in our show notes so that if partners want to reach out to your organization, they can do so Phil,

Phil Sorgen 21:35
thank you.

Vince Menzione 21:36
So Phil, I’d love to pivot here. As you might know, from listening the other episodes, I’m fascinated with how leaders got to this particular spot in their career. You’ve had an outstanding career both at Microsoft and now at RingCentral. And I love for our listeners to learn a little bit about that journey. Can you share that with us?

Phil Sorgen 21:54
Yeah, no, it’s, uh, you know, it. Look, I think I was rare in my career. I joined RingCentral, eight months ago, and I had to tell them that in 30 years, I’ve been at two companies and over 20, almost 25 years at one. So that alone has, you know, is somewhat unique and in this industry and and I would say that in my career at Microsoft, because that was the last 25 years of it. So you can really just narrow the interesting discussion to that is, you know, I got this opportunity to do many different things. broadening was very key to my career, I was an enterprise seller, I was a channel sales manager, I was a lead developer focus team in the sales organization that was focused on specialists, kind of a specialist sales organization, I was a general manager in a US field, I ran sales operations nationally, I got to be a country manager for one of the International subsidiaries for Microsoft, I got to be a global challenge. I mean, I just look at the, you know, the number of things while they were all within sales and marketing. They were different in that they all built different competencies and experiences.

Vince Menzione 23:09
Was there a secret ingredient, a pivot point, or something that got you on the right track? Because you did have an amazing career at Microsoft, I got to witness that. Was there something that got you started or sparked you in that direction?

Phil Sorgen 23:24
That’s a really good question. If I had to narrow it down, you know, as far as a pivot point, I’m gonna hang on that word. That part of the question, there were probably so many points in my career that, you know, could have gone one way or another. But, you know, when I think of career acceleration, for me, there were two, the things that sometimes happen in career acceleration, or this intersection of life and work. The first was moving away from the city that my wife and I grew up with, that I grew up in, and it was the first time we relocated, and that was a really big decision. And I’m not, you know, always encouraging that relocating for anything is necessary to have a growing and successful career. But it certainly opened it certainly for us, you know, I call it team origin and opened up for us this willingness to look at more things. And that alone led to my first I’ll call it accelerated opportunity, because I went from a job that, you know, like, if you were looking at a career path, I skipped a step by get by doing that and to, to get that opportunity. I you know, my wife, and at the time was just my wife and I both, it was a sacrifice that we made. The second was the first job I took outside of the US and I had similar characteristics. It’s a it’s a big decision. You know, while for us, it was moving to Canada. I often joke with people it may just be to the north, but it’s a sovereign nation with a different government system, its own currency, its own culture. It’s not that close and if you’re trying to move there and live there and immerse yourself in the culture of a country It was a, it was an amazing experience. But it was one that my, you know, again now to Georgia, my wife, my daughter and I, we, you know, we had to decide is this the right thing for the family. And it turned out to be another just amazing growth opportunity personally and professionally. And you know, so I look at these in terms of these opportunities, these kind of, you know, pivot points or seminal moments in a career that give you an opportunity to accelerate give you an opportunity to go outside your comfort zone. And oftentimes going outside of your comfort zone is more than just the single job and its impact on you. It often affects people around you, and certainly can potentially have an impact on your family. And I’ve always done that through the lens of family first, and, you know, this is a team and if it’s not right for the whole team, then it’s not the right step.

Vince Menzione 25:49
Is there anything going outside of your comfort zone did to you from a psyche perspective, did you think it was in a forcing function for you to think and act differently? What What do you think was the ingredient there?

Phil Sorgen 26:01
You know, I think I’ve always been generally comfort, comfortable going out of a comfort zone, I’ve always had this mentality that growth only happened if you’re continuing to push yourself into areas that you’re not as comfortable in. So there is this, I’ll say a little bit of confidence, but but to not be overconfident, the thing that it forces you to do is be really thoughtful, really planful never believe that you have all the answers, you have to be willing, if you’re going to really push yourself outside of your comfort zone, have mentors that whether they’re situational, or long standing, identify the people that are good at what you need to do, and lean on those people be prideful in the fact that you have a network that’s willing to help you and, and not prideful, not not hanging on the fact that you think you have to figure it out to demonstrate that you belong there. So you know, go I’ll use the example of going to Microsoft Canada, I hadn’t really never done business in Canada, I knew Microsoft, well, I knew enterprise, I knew channel, I’d run a sales ops function at that point in time. But I there were many cities that I had physically, you know, never even been to and and certainly the people were all new. And it’s easy to come in acting like you belong, I chose to come in humble but confident and learn. And you know, the first thing I said is I want to know about the people, I want to learn from the people that are here. And I’m confident that I will be able to demonstrate things that compliment them and bring them on the journey. And so that’s always been kind of my approach to entering new roles, whether they’re as big as going to another country or, or they’re just the the next role within your career.

Vince Menzione 27:50
I love that humble and confident. Like I really, that actually speaks to you, Phil, I mean, I mean that in the most sincere way, when you’ve talked about mentors here, was there a best piece of advice? Was there a mentor or mentoring approach that worked for you? And was there one particular mentor? Or was it a group of mentors? Can you tell us more about that,

Phil Sorgen 28:11
there’s been a couple of mentors that I think stood out. amongst many people I’ve learned so much from in the years, I’ve been so fortunate to work around so many outstanding people that I think you picked up something from, you know, from every one of them. But maybe if there’s one piece of advice in this area that we’re talking about, it was to not focus on a job or a role, but to focus on competencies and experiences that round out your career. And that’s really important guidance to someone earlier in their career. Because I think there’s this tendency to always look up, what’s the next job that’s bigger in scope, that is a promotion that has a bigger title and a bigger organization, the fastest path up is potentially too narrow sometimes, and then you hit a wall. And I watch many people that have reached out to me for career advice over the years getting really close to that wall that Yeah, they’ve gotten to a pretty senior level, but their competencies and experiences are really narrow. And to get to that next step that is far more general management. Like they keep running up against competition for those next big jobs. And these people have a broader base of experience. And they asked me, How do you build experience? And I’m like, well, should have asked me that five or 10 years ago, because I might have told you not to go up such a narrow pipe and, but to keep looking at, you know, what are the competencies you need to build to fulfill the complete career over a over 3035 however many However, 40 years, however long you plan to work, and what are the experiences and when you look at that, that’s what makes you really competitive for the next thing. That’s what makes people that are going to organizations or people that are going to hire you confident that you’re going to be able to work through any situation known or unknown, that you may face during the course of a role that you’re

Vince Menzione 30:06
in. Yeah, many cases go across versus going up, right getting a set of skills or competencies to round out your, your career is what this what I thought I heard you say?

Unknown Speaker 30:17
Yeah, definitely. So,

Vince Menzione 30:19
yeah, so you have a billboard that can sum up your philosophy to the world? What would it say on it?

Phil Sorgen 30:26
Well, that’s a really tough one. I’m not the best at catchy slogans. But, you know, I’m, I’m a pretty big believer that when you give a lot to others, when you take a more selfless view on, on how you lead, and how you engage others, that it gets paid back tenfold. And if there was anything, that character that was my philosophy, in life, whether it’s personal and friendship, or it’s professional and work, it’s to work hard. And by the way, I will be the first to say, I’ve probably failed at this many times, but to work hard to think of how you whatever you’re trying to achieve how you do it with others and, and maybe get others across the line even before you sometimes and and how that ratio of give to get stays balanced, if not skewed towards give, because that’s my belief in the in the long run that it comes back in a significant way.

Vince Menzione 31:33
So how would you sum that up on the Billboard?

Phil Sorgen 31:38
hire somebody that gets to take that great idea and put it into a catchy slogan?

Vince Menzione 31:43
I think I heard give more than you get. I think there’s a little bit of that if

Phil Sorgen 31:46
you’re hired.

Vince Menzione 31:50
I love that you’re hosting a dinner party. And this is you know, hopefully beyond the point, we’re all vaccinated at this point. Exactly. So you can invite people actually be in the room with you, you know, maybe they’ve got COVID tested beforehand, and everything’s everyone’s safe. You can invite any three people from the present or the past to this dinner? Whom would you invite and why?

Phil Sorgen 32:13
You know, it’s funny events. I’ve been asked this question many times, it’s, you know, it’s an interesting question. And I’ve noticed my answer kind of always changes with the time. So right now, I’d probably pick the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Bill Gates. And the reason I would on the firt, there’s a couple of characteristics I throw out there. One is I think it’s we’re at a time where I think we really need to work hard as a world on understanding others looking cross culture, and really having hope and and Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, they are incredibly spiritual. They were incredibly hopeful, had a humanist view of the world. Still, Dalai Lama does Nelson Mandela did. You know, I look at both of those and and say, What amazing, hopeful spiritual, and the world needs a bit of that. And then I throw in Bill Gates in there, because I’m bringing science into the discussion. And he is such an incredibly you know, he’s not his the interest I have in him is he so read on so many topics, and the things he’s doing with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are just so appropriate for the time. So I think that would be a pretty amazing trio at a dinner party.

Vince Menzione 33:34
It sounds like the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, who overcame such adversity, right? I mean, 26 years in prison and came out with an optimism and wanted to heal the nation. So just like his approach was amazing. And of course, Bill, I mean, I agree. I was just reading some things about Bill and Melinda and the work that they’re doing last night, and I am continually just inspired by all of the work he does. So I’d love to join you for the dinner. Maybe I could I could come in for a drink before or after. How’s that?

Phil Sorgen 34:05
And I said, and Vince.

Vince Menzione 34:07
Oh, okay, I’m in. I’m in quite a group. It’s quite a group. And I know, you’ve met Bill before. So yes, you know, just, it’s an amazing man. So you have been an amazing guest. Phil, I’m so excited to have you. I’m so excited for what you’re doing now at RingCentral and his friends just really the great opportunity to connect today. Is there any closing comments or advice you have for our listeners today? You know, I

Phil Sorgen 34:31
just want to thank you for hosting me. It’s, I think of our connection is been amazing as professionals in the industry. And I think it goes beyond that. I think you’re an amazing human being and I’m honored to be your friend and I would just say like, I think this is a great set of topics for the times. You know, we touched on digital transformation and and there’s such an opportunity to help companies succeed. And you know, we touched that we use the word companies a lot. I don’t I want to emphasize that this is A time when nonprofits and educational institutions that are so important to our future that are challenged during this, especially during this pandemic, they certainly benefit from these capabilities. We talked about partnerships, and they’re more important than ever. Thank you for the interesting questions on on my personal, professional journey. I think those are, you know, if there’s any tidbit of value that came out of that for any of your listeners, I’m happy to provide that. So it’s been great to be on here and it’s great reconnecting with you.

Vince Menzione 35:31
Same here. Phil, thank you so much. Appreciate you joining today.

Phil Sorgen: Thanks, Vince.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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