This episode features Aaron, Adam, and Jessie's first podcast conversations about the partnerships industry discussing their experiences, challenges, and the concept of starting from scratch in various aspects of their careers and the partnership landscape.
Takeaway 1: The importance of building partnerships and personal connections in business
Takeaway 2: The challenge of gaining organizational buy-in for partnership programs
Takeaway 3: The value of starting from scratch and redefining careers
Check out our sponsor for this episode SuperGlue!
https://www.superglue.io/scratch
This episode features Aaron, Adam, and Jessie's first podcast conversations about the partnerships industry discussing their experiences, challenges, and the concept of starting from scratch in various aspects of their careers and the partnership landscape.
Takeaway 1: The importance of building partnerships and personal connections in business
Takeaway 2: The challenge of gaining organizational buy-in for partnership programs
Takeaway 3: The value of starting from scratch and redefining careers
Check out our sponsor for this episode SuperGlue!
https://www.superglue.io/scratch
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Aaron:I've spent, I've spent like, like an hour almost now, actually at least 30 minutes in Jesse world by the way. Um, cuz I just got off the phone with Allison, who you reckon I love Allison that I connect with. Isn't she so delightful? We had a really good chat. Yeah, we had a really fun chat. Cuz we're both like ops minded.
This is literal, scratch the podcast where three friends brought together by partnerships. Dig deep into that world with authenticity, vulnerability, and a touch of humor. We're here to share our experiences, challenges, and successes, and to help each other grow in the partnership space. Whether you're a seasoned pro and partnerships, or just starting out. Join us as we navigate the twists and turns of our professional lives, sharing insights and learning from each other along the way. Welcome to literal. Scratch.
Jessie:There was an email. I think I accidentally trashed it because sometimes I just do that. Um, an email that was like, Uh, the partner news email. Can't remember who sent
Aaron:it. Who knows? I get a lot of partner something, emails. I don't, I
Adam:don't open any partner emails right now. Uh, I'm very much in a different journey, uh, building back up from scratch. It's pretty wonderful, but I have elected to stay out of the news and say, you know what? I'm just not gonna keep up for a month or two while I build out my, like first principles and, uh, and kind of do a little reset, get outta the echo chamber
Jessie:for a minute. That's fair. Um, I like that. Although on this Friday, these Fridays, we're gonna pull you back into the news for a hot minute. Um,
Adam:no love it. No. Can that'll be like fresh perspective cuz it's gonna be like I have been in a totally different mindset and pulling me back in. Like, I may say things that are out of the, like LinkedIn feed orchestrated norm, like, I don't know, I'm just gonna shoot from the hips and, uh, you could hot. I like it. Hot text. Hot text. Uh, I, Jessie and I, I've been, I've been practicing my spicy texts. Uh, I'm just getting, um, uh, you just always
Jessie:qualifies them with the chili emoji. Um,
Aaron:so, oh, this is spicy text? Literal text. Yes. So you know when it's a spicy tag. Okay. That's good. Miss cause I gotta call it out. Didn't cause
Adam:otherwise some people think that I'm being too serious. It's like, nah, I'm just being spicy. I
Aaron:have that problem a lot. People say that I'm really dry at the end of the day. I have a really dry sense humor and so it's, and I'm always sarcastic about everything, all the time to everybody. And um, that's how I know who my true friends are though, cuz they, they get it. Yeah. Um, they get it. It's nice. It's nice. Yeah, for
Adam:sure. I think we can attest that this group is fine, given. The instant and merciless ripping I got from you both on
Aaron:being Android, being the Android user. Did I send 100% text? I meant to send you, by the way, literally the next day, Amazon's whoop site had had iPhones on sale. Wish, don't, can remember,
Jessie:wish would just switch over and make our text messages much easier. Literal. I just got a new one. Really hate the green.
Aaron:Oh, look at you. Yeah, we have a partnership opportunity
Adam:here, guys. Uh, I'm happy to put on the back of my new iPhone a fluency sticker. Yeah, put an Aaron sticker on there. Fluent is fine. Like I'm happy to turn this into a little race car for you guys. First partnership
Aaron:opportunity? You mean assuming we buy you an iPhone? Oh, I'm
Adam:sorry. That's a sponsorship. What a great place to
Aaron:start. What a great place. Good call. So partner partnership versus sponsorship. What's the
Jessie:difference? Yeah, I was actually gonna ask Erin if you had like the, the Amazon, whatever you called it. The referral. The referral you, yeah. You can probably set yourself a referral link on literally everything on Amazon. So just send it to
Aaron:Adam. Adam, exactly. A hundred percent. A hundred percent would be great. Affiliate. Yeah, for the one, for the one sale, I don't know if that even qualify for payout. I'm not sure what their limits are. Uh, I did that on Quora for a while. I think I'm up to 17 cents on Quora. Oh, amazing. Yeah, from an answer from five years ago. Um, I must
Adam:pay for that postage.
Aaron:Were we moving towards something with your email about partner news?
Jessie:No, it's fine. I was gonna be like, okay, we should probably have something to talk about. But then I was, I came back to myself and was like, maybe what we should talk about is like, why we, why we've named the podcast, what we've named it. Like, what the hell we're doing here. Like, why, uh, people should even give a crap or listen to us or whatever.
Aaron:Hm. I struggle to believe that anyone should listen to me, ever. I just know that I like to talk, and that may not be the greatest way to like, Get buy-in. Um, but over the past, over the past, like, uh, I'll say over the past 10 months of being more involved, like in this other, what I call people, the nonsense side where we get to be social and talk to people and engage, and it, and it seems to do, it seems to do good things for me personally and professionally, and I don't fully get it. Um, That's part of why though, I think that's part of the buy-in for me is wanting to do something like this is that I love, like I live for these conversations. Yes. I have a full-time job. Uh, am I the only one of us that has a full-time, like official full-time gig outside of like maybe starting, we all
Adam:have official multiple full-time jobs. I
Aaron:don't wanna be Yes. You're the only one.
Jessie:Jobs. Who's gainfully employed? That's correct.
Adam:You the only one getting sweet insurance. Aaron, you got that in insurance. That's the only one
Aaron:with insurance have. That's right. Okay. I'm trying to figure out the right way to say that cuz I don't ever want offend anybody who's working for themselves. Like you don't have a real job because that's way harder. Totally get it. But I get Magic Money Day. Guaranteed.
Jessie:And I think I now have Magic Money Day too. Um, but it does not, uh, I have to figure out how to pay my own taxes and, uh, yeah, no figure out my own insurance and all that kind of stuff. But I do now have a Magic Money day. So, uh, applause for that. And you know, someday soon, Adam's gonna have his magic Money day too. Oh,
Aaron:I
Adam:have magic idea market fit iteration day daily. Um, I really love the days where I find I've had four pivots and that's great. Those four pivots did not end up in a full circle. They weren't just four left turns that brought me back to the same place. Fantastic. Uh, so it's pretty remarkable. And right now the current. Iteration is wildly different from where I started, but still in the referral space.
Jessie:Uh, hashtag ADHD founder?
Adam:Uh, yeah, very much,
Aaron:very much. I can't tell you. Um, I, it's one of my favorite things when Jessie, like, I'm texting Jessie about something and she texts me back. Um, something along those lines. Like, oh, basically it's a reminder like, oh, that's right, you're a D h D. And then like, everything clicks for her while we're talking about this other thing. And she tells me about you, and I'm like, I'm so glad that we have a, a, uh, neurotypical here, uh, to keep us on track.
Adam:I don't, Jesse is a referee,
Jessie:so somebody said somebody's right. I saw this as a meme the other day where somebody was like, uh, 80 ADHD or neuro neurodivergence tend to. Conglomerate, right? Like in, in a room, you, you pretty quickly identify like who, who the H ds are, uh, or the other neuro neurodivergence and like you just kind of swarm together. And so it said, look around friend. If all your friends are A D H D, you probably are too. And I was like, oh no.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Jesse, I've been to a partnership conference.
Aaron:Yeah. Yeah. Case in point. Um, sorry,
Adam:one last, uh, for all of the listeners that was dry sense of humor, that was way too dry. It was so good. My current theory is that 98.7% of all partner leaders. Are epically, neurodivergent. Uh, but it's because I don't think that's true. I,
Aaron:I think it might be, but think it's one why reason. What happens. The
Adam:nature of what we have to do as partner leaders end up in
Aaron:connecting
Adam:all of the things inside of our company, connecting all the things outside of our company, bringing them together.
Aaron:You were, you were so frozen. Uh, I can't wait to see what that looks like in post.
Jessie:Yeah, both, both of you were talking literally at the same time. And I was like, one of them cannot hear the other one talking, but I could hear both of you. And I was like, this is the most A D h D moment and we are keeping it in here.
Aaron:Well, so I'm on Cox Internet. We should also talk about like the, yeah, like I'm on, all I have is all, all, I'm two blocks away from a fiber connection, two blocks. Two blocks. Drives me nuts. Um, go ahead Adam and say what you were saying again. Top wire it in.
Jessie:Yeah. Okay. Yeah, just
Aaron:dig in there and get it. Yeah. Let me just go run two blocks with the fiber water.
Jessie:This is how this is gonna go all season long. Sot tap, you know, tap in and listen to our ramblings.
Aaron:Um, yeah, I'll get better internet.
Jessie:I'll work on it. Okay. It's fine. Yeah. Um, it's worth it. So let's talk about. Uh, this idea of literal scratch. So somebody was like, oh, what's your new podcast gonna be called? And I said, oh, it's gonna be called Literal Scratch. And they sort of looked at me like, that's the stupidest name I've ever heard. And I was like, I don't care. I love it. Yeah. They're not
Aaron:wrong, but we
Jessie:like it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so. First of all, like, what was the text, Aaron, do you remember what the text was? Where you're like, I'm starting from literal scratch, or like, let's start from literal
Aaron:scratch. I, I don't remember. I I don't even know. I could put on my phone. It was, it was, it was along those lines, right? That we are starting from literal scratch like we were talking about. Yeah, I think we were talking about like, when, when are we gonna start recording? How much effort are we gonna put into it? And I think I was just highlighting like, we're just starting from literal scratch. Uh, and then that, that resonated I think with you. Pretty quickly in terms of, oh, that's what we should call it. Um, which again, it made immediate sense to me and I was like,
Jessie:good job. So I I, I would love to hear like, well, yes, great job. Pat yourself on the back. Uh, I'm, I'm, you know, air patting you from Colorado, I feel That's great. Yeah. Um, and very soft touch. I know what it means to me or like how it resonated with me, but I would love to hear how both of you kind of felt like literal scratch sort of resonated and why we should call it this.
Aaron:Do I have to go first? Adam, you pointed at me. Yes. I don't think this, we're not doing a video thing, so people would I have to call that out. Adam points at me. Oh, I am
Jessie:recording video, but I don't know that I'm actually gonna put it anywhere, so we'll see. Right. Depends on how
Aaron:much work it is. So I just need to tell, like I just was highlighting the point that we're just starting from the ground up and we should just start recording from day one to see what this does organically. And then when you wrote back and said, well, that's what we should call it, it immediately struck me because I think that's what I'm seeing in partnerships, right? Frequently, everything. So many people right now are getting into partnerships. For the very first time. They have no experience in partnerships. They've got no background in partnerships. Um, and that's like, it's not just like junior people, like it's it's leaders, people who are being hired in to build programs from the ground up, literally from scratch who don't have experience. And so for me it's like twofold. One, lots of companies are looking at partnerships right now. They're gonna keep looking at partnerships to build something from the ground up. And the people they're hiring to do it are also. Net new to the industry, net new to the concept. And so you've got scratch happening both in terms of personal development, personal professional, and then also the corporate actual company approach to what it is. And so I was like that. That makes a lot of sense. Cause I think the three of us both live in that world where we're really connected to a lot of people in that space as opposed to, I mean, I happen to work at Atlassian, right? And Atlassian has got, the 20 year old ecosystem is built around flywheel, built around channel. That's unusual in this world. Most people are starting from literal scratch. Adam to you.
Adam:Yeah. Let me like build on that it, because I, I don't need to just repeat everything. It was all a hundred percent. I agree. Build on that. Agree. Um, um, even our, their other go-to market teams that we work with, they're all starting from scratch also because Yeah. 2023 in a 7% interest environment. Um, With, with people risking down rounds, like everything has completely changed. They're the folks that came up just a few years ago and, and had like meteoric, uh, careers with very early success. Like, they have not been in an environment like we're in right now before. And, you know, the, it, it may be that this pre, you know, I'm gonna look at the books on my shelf, the predictable revenue, the blitz scaling, the. Whatever else that we're using, these playbooks that were developed over the last 10, 20 years, like may not be as relevant anymore. Like how, in what ways are they not relevant anymore? I don't know yet, but I think that to me, when I hear, um, Starting from literal scratch, that's what I'm thinking about is to say there are lessons to be learned from every era that's come before us. And not only are there all of these people starting partnership programs from scratch, that may be in partnerships for the very first time, but even if they're not, even if they've come with a pedigree of go go-to-market success, this market is different from all of the others, and they're gonna have to build it differently. They're gonna have to build it from scratch. Love it.
Jessie:So for me it's actually more about us, the three of us, right? So as soon as you said literal scratch, I was like, oh dang. Like that's what I've done. That's what I've done. That's what a or am doing, right? That's what you are doing. That's what Adam is doing, is like literally tearing down like. Uh, or, or thinking about tearing down or all of what was our careers in the past and like tearing it down to its basics under basic understandings of what we're really good at, like what we're getting down to. Just the foundation of what we're really good at getting good at. We're, we're tearing it down to the brass tacks and the literal scratch of what we are excellent at and rebuilding our careers, um, around. That excellence. Mm-hmm. And we are defining it for ourselves and we're not, yeah. And things we care about. We're not, we're not being defined by somebody else's, um, constructs or, uh, we're not being defined by somebody else's frameworks like we're saying. There's a real interesting opportunity here and a passion of partnerships that we all love and we all love it from a different aspect. Um, and we're, we're saying we're really. Good at this part, at the, at these pieces of this. And so like, let's, let's take it down to the literal scratch of what we are and rebuild our careers towards that. And so like, that's, that's actually what resonated with me. It was like, it, it was a representation of who we are.
Aaron:All, all of that resonates with me. Agree as well. Right? I think that's great. Oh, I think that's great. Um, I like. Adam, I like your broader approach too, right? I, I hadn't thought about that aspect so far. I, I, I mean, I'm really deeply involved in the partnership side and the partner tech and I look at product a lot and the operational side, and I know right? The thing that I hammer down to people all the time is partner operations is not a vertical function Partner operations is a horizontal function. It's building bridges across functionally, and if you as a partner leader aren't doing that from the start, you need somebody at ops to do that program. People have to do that, right? Partnerships is, should be a horizontal function. But it gets billed as this vertical function. And so as I think about that, I think about that a lot. Like if I, if I come in from the operations side and somebody's trying to build something up from the ground up and they don't have their architecture right, a lot of times it's because they don't have that buy-in from marketing or from customer success or from legal or finance. Like they don't know what's happening in partnerships. And I'm going over there and doing the same thing. I'm starting from scratch saying, Hey, are you aware that this type of program. For example, has these specific types of rhythms that will impact your product delivery team or your, uh, commission's payments, like, and so there's always, and every program looks a little different. Um, I think it's a great call out on that front. And Jesse, honestly, again, I, because I'm gainfully employed, I haven't really considered myself in this same world as we kind of, I think I probably discount myself off. We talked about that, right? Like, I'm still working full-time. I've got 40 hours a week that I owe another company. And it's, it's what I call my 40 hour distraction. Um, sorry, flas, if you're listening. Um, I just think that like, I, I am looking right for that future that says, good. How do we, how do we take all the experience we've done? And I think this is another thing that makes me excited. Just to talk to the two of you each week, regardless of whatever else happens, is that I think we all care about this community of people and partnerships, right? Mm-hmm. We drive to create value for people because we do see, I think all three of us are talking to people that are, that are new and junior. I've talked to operational people who are sliding over from CS ops or sliding over from somewhere else into a partner ops role. They got a vet PRMs, they got a vet technology, and they're like, I don't, we don't, vetting technology should be about the same in everything, but in partner tech, like it's, it's a different world. There's so many startups and so I think that desire for the three of us. To connect and try to have conversations. Selfishly, we get something out of, because we have a good time, but maybe actually help drive value for somebody else. I think that's a big pull for me too, is I think if we get this rhythm down, we maybe we can maybe offer real value across the gamut of the things that we care about. Right. And Jesse, I think you highlighted like we all kind of bring. Two aspects of ourselves to the table for the conversation. And that might be something worth covering cuz like, so, and I'll go first cuz I'm, I'm, I'm first in the alphabet and I am talking right now. Um, is, I'm Aaron. Pardon me.
Jessie:Will I take the,
Aaron:excuse me the soapbox for a minute. Uh, uh, you know, so for me it's operations and product, right? That's, that's my wheelhouse. That's where I live. I'm a product person at heart. And Jesse, I love that you know that about me inherently, right? You, I think you've seen that in me probably. More organically than a lot of people, cuz I get stuck in the operations box. But I, I care about ops because ops is a connection of products. And so that's my wheelhouse. That's what I'll generally lean toward and talk to, uh, and pivot about. Jesse, you. Oh, I get to go
Jessie:before Adam. Adam hasn't talked in a while. Oh, you do? Yeah. It's okay. You're fine. Adam. Uh, um, you know what, what's so interesting to me and, and goes back to, um, again, the scratch piece is that when I talk, when people contact me about partner enablement, which by the way is sort of my, my piece, if you don't know me, like I'm, I'm all about the enablement. Um, and what I've been getting down to is really like the. The, the scratch, the, the brass tacks of what enablement is, and people try to go into it with these like, grandiose ideas. Like they're so scared of like what it has to be. They don't never start on what it should be. Um, and, and they don't start with like the simple things or like the, what's the, what's the smallest piece that we can do right now? Um, And so like, and I've been having lots of conversation, lots and lots of conversations with people who are like, I don't know where to start with partner enablement. I'm like, well, it's not, it doesn't have to be as complicated as you think. It, it, it should be, right? Yeah. Um, and, uh, and so partner enablement is me. Um, Adam, what, what are you gonna be enlightening all of us with these days?
Adam:Well, it's really the connecting, the, the amorphous, tangential ideas and people in the building of the program from scratch. I've built four programs from scratch. Uh, the first in, uh, news media, digital advertising, the second in defense and foreign military sales. Uh, the third in B2B gifting. Uh, Then the fourth in, uh, uh, marketing data and analytics, right? So pretty, pretty broad areas. Uh, uh, you can see a little bit of the a d d flying in there as I pursue my interests. That's also the partnerships. But, uh, uh, in each of those, we starting it literally from the ground up. Um, And so like I've got a lot of those scars of. How to do it wrong, how to, how to take two years to realize, oh, we could have just done this thing in a quarter. Oh, we don't need to do all things all at once. Uh, we don't need to be operating when we're in a series B company, uh, with the expectations of a, of a well-formed product, market fit series B department, when we're actually a pre-seed department inside of a series B. When, when we now know how to frame for the rest of our organization, um, them remembering what it was like to be at Idea Market Fit, to just be figuring out what it is that you're bringing a value as a sales and marketing organization. As a product organization. Now, usually that this partnership team is being formed from scratch. Inside of companies that have already figured out product market fit, they're already starting to scale on the marketing and sales side and on the product side. And then partnerships comes walking in and is not ready to scale. Uh, and so I've got a lot of, I've, I can bring a lot of that experience of, of how to navigate those waters. Uh, lots of stories of what not to do, uh, and a and a few stories on, uh, on what to do and, and how to move forward.
Jessie:Yeah. Um, is there anybody on this call who has been a part of a wildly successful partner organization?
Adam:It depends on how you
Aaron:define it. If say no, is that, should we go like clean up our LinkedIn history so people don't go find out and
Jessie:like, think it's really important? I think it's really important that we say no. Well, well, it doesn't diminish any of the work that we did. It's,
Aaron:there's one, there's
Adam:one, there's one that I did that I don't talk a lot about that did produce 500 million in revenue, and that's what, what you call wildly successful. That partnership program that I created produced 500 million in revenue. Like, that's, that's pretty successful.
Jessie:That's nothing. That's Yeah, for sure.
Adam:Uh, and, and it's in this, it's in this defense space. It, it, it involves, um, Just like a lot of details that, that I can't really speak verb both
Aaron:about. Can we, can we just acknowledge though, Adam, you just said you had a wildly successful partnership in the defense space. Now my understanding of defense contracts is it doesn't take that many to get the 500 million. So I don't, I don't, I don't know. Would that count as wildly successful? I was gonna ask like what
Jessie:the overall
Aaron:spend was there. You had two good deals before you had to go do the next thing. And that those contracts are 12 years long, like, you know. Yeah, just check it. Just
Jessie:check. 500 million in PLG is a little bit different, I feel like, than 500 million in a defense contract. But the
Adam:nice thing is the money spends the same. It's all US dollars. Okay.
Aaron:Okay. You know that's fair. No,
Jessie:that's fair. That's fair. And, and you built it from scratch and it made$500 million and that's nothing to shake a stick at. These, these friends, we've
Adam:all been part of these friends and supporters and partners of mine. Just immediately just jump right on you. They're just looking for, listen, I thought you were here to build me up. We're just trying to give people context,
Aaron:success and listen, part of my, I think part of my brand, if I could be so boldness to say that I have anything around, have a brand. Totally. Somebody wrote me recently, it was like the best compliment and Adam, it might have been you or somebody reference, somebody wrote me recently and they said, Hey, somebody said I should talk to you because you, you will, you will shoot straight with me. On a, on on product feedback or whatever. And so I, I will, I will always call it when I see it because I think that's something like, again, ops technology side, I think that vendors in the partner tech space have a tendency to get the deal signed without doing proper vetting. Because if we get the deal signed and the paper come across, we can deal with the problems on the other side. We can sort out your architecture, we can do this, we can do that. Um, I, I think they do a disservice to the customer, so Yeah. I don't mean to make you feel bad, buddy. Uh oh. I feel fantastic. Call what it. And I also wanna say, Jesse, I'm, I didn't do anything to build this one, but I am part of, it's part of what's enticing about Atlassian. I am part of a billion dollar. Channel ecosystem here in Totally, right. Totally. Their whole flywheel model, um, from the beginning has been really heavily driven around partners, uh, channel partners. Right. And they're in, they come from the old school, like reseller world, like traditional reseller world. Yeah. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so speaking of things that I've looked at, right, like you're a cloud company. If you're a pre perpetual company wanting to go cloud and you've got resellers hold onto your buttons, right? Like that's a, that's a huge transformation. That's a multi-year. Transformation from the top down. And I somehow, I've been a part of three companies making that, making that play. I don't know how that happens. I mean, I, I thought about that. I graduated in 2000, right? So when I graduated, Salesforce was a thing, and I've still managed to work at three companies with perpetual licensing models, making that conversion. I don't know how that happened. Uh,
Jessie:I mean, I was part of literally the, the company that defined what an ecosystem is, right? Like Apple. Apple is the penultimate ecosystem company, right? Without the App store, apple isn't a trillion dollar market cap. Right? Um, yeah. And truthfully, like I was part of a channel organization that drove a billion dollars in sales. Like, and all of that is successful. Um, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't like, Really hard. Yeah. Um, and, and I think like even, and, and you can probably attest to this too, at Atlassian, and even also like in defense contracting, uh, and defense consulting, like partnering is hard no matter how. Rich, your company is how rich your clients are. Like partnering and getting people to understand the value of partnerships is difficult no matter how successful your partnership's organization is. And that we've all been a part of organizations where it didn't quite go the way that we would've hoped that it would. And so I just wanna like acknowledge that because I think that, yeah. There isn't a partner person who's been in this for longer than three years, that hasn't been a part of something that's probably failed wildly. Yeah. Um, or went through like significant pains where they had to like, and, and so there's just a piece of that that I, I guess I wanted to make sure that anybody who's listening understands that, like, we are not coming at this conversation as like, The know all, be all and know of anything, partnerships, like we're just three professionals who've been in this for a while, um, that come at it from a different, uh, aspect and perspective that understand where you've been, um, and that we're just gonna shoot it straight in, in exactly what we know and we're not gonna tell you. Um, or, or come at it from a perspective of like, I don't know. Hubris, is that the right word? Yeah. We,
Aaron:we've lived through the mistakes. Right. That's one thing I'll try to always go back to is like, let me point to an experience where this actually happened and let's give you tangible feedback. Like in the operational space, I'd say it's really difficult for companies to get good feedback on product in particular, right? There's always like the high shiny stuff you wanna buy. I think maybe that's true with partnerships, right? You bring a new partnership in, there's the shiny side of the partnership that's really attractive and gets you in there. Then when you get into the partnership with the nuts and bolts, you find out, oh, your product team doesn't actually work in any sort of structured delivery framework that's gonna make a tech integration really difficult because we, you know, we do and you don't kind of thing. Um, and so that's kind of what I wanna make sure to, to your point, Jess, that's what we uncover, right? Like it's not perfect. Partnerships is not a perfect world. And I'm wondering too, how many people. What do you think the average experience is of, of your partner? Partner people right now kind of floating in industry and speaking to different things. I, I mean, I've been in and around channel partnerships working in the space for like five years.
Adam:So, so I think it depends, uh, if they're on the tech. On the tech side, on the agency side. So I did a lot of work with, um, agency channel partners. Yeah. And I, I got to the point where I had my own introduction email describing what Crossbeam was, introducing them to my rep there so that it would make their onboarding to crossbeam easier. So then it makes my job easier because now we can, we can, uh, uh, Account map better, uh, on a, maybe crossbeams her next sponsor. Uh, doubtful. Right? Um, but so, so I take that experience, Aaron, to say, uh, I like they didn't even know about account mapping when, when they were signing up to be my partners and this is experience from 12 months ago. Um, yeah. So we are still very much in the greenfield plus layer in how many partnership departments were just ended. Like, just don't exist anymore inside those companies or faster reduced down to one person. Yeah. So like the realities of 2023 and the partnership ecosystem is that there are the hyperscalers. And, and the, the great, I'm gonna say legacy, but I don't mean anything negative by it. Right? Like a billion dollar company. Like, like, uh, Atlassian or like Legacy Apple. Legacy like legacy, right? Yeah. The giants that are, that are not going to um, uh, just get rid of their partnership departments cuz they understand it. Most of this are the people that jumped on the partnership bandwagon right at the peak of the market between 2020 and 2022 that didn't have the time to allow it to incubate in the right way. When you brought on people that are doing it for the first time, Right. You can't expect someone coming in doing it for the first time, building it from scratch to get it all right and have it producing, you know, product market fit level results in q2. Like it's just not gonna happen. Now with a, with a seasoned operator that that can bring the off the shelf, that just needs a slight tweak because okay, maybe, uh, and so I think that there's a lot of, and, and this goes back to the last conversation around. Um, you know, our past experience and, and some of those failures that we're bringing to the table, a number of those also are building departments inside of companies that lost faith in the timeline, either from. What we were planning on executing it over, over maybe a 12 to 24 month period of time. Mm-hmm. Or because of how the market changed and what the Excel spreadsheets decided where the level of results needed. And they've gotta reallocate when you're going through multiple rounds of layoffs of, of your go-to market department. Right. So, yeah. You know, it, it, it's all mixed
Aaron:together, I think. And so that's a, that comes back to your question. I think I'm hearing, and Justin, I think you and I have talked about this, uh, probably more frequently is. The question that's commonly coming back is partnership. People who have been hired in a leadership role and are going, Hey, how do I get buy-in from the C-suite? My, oh, we should just do a whole episode about that. That's a whole nother thing. But that's, I think that's what you throw Adam, right? Is like in the midst of chaos, they thought when, when times are good, we're gonna bring in partnerships. And then as soon as it starts to go bad, well hey guys, you don't have any revenue coming in. Uh, all the math says 12 to 18 months. Um, you're seeing strategies come out in, playbooks come out to go between the six to 12 months from, from certain people, right. Which are really fascinating and interesting. But I think it goes back to that, right? Like there's not a strategy. For all of it. I think we can all probably look in our individual segments of what we like to talk about, like sales, marketing, uh, enablement, ops, all this stuff, right? And we can go, cool. There's no strategy. You're, you're, you're leading a function without a larger strategy by what you wanna do with partnerships. So the experience piece is a big one for me. Like, your experience is not considered, it's not holistic. Your strategy's not holistic. You're looking for a dollar sign. Partnerships is more than a dollar sign that's gonna be represented across your entire funnel. And if you don't have that mindset right going in, like we wanna see partners from top of funnel to bottom of funnel and measure impact across the board, you'll never get there operationally to track it and you'll never have the right KPIs or ros, whatever you wanna, whatever you need, right, to actually come back and say, cool, that's a good investment. Because partnerships always feels like a cost center initially. Because you're, especially for experienced people, right? You're looking at what, 250, 350$400,000 to get a small team of maybe, maybe four people. Boots on the ground if you got that for that talent. I know y'all are shaking head. I I know
Jessie:one person, four people. What the hell kind of company are you talking
Aaron:about? I'm talking about a company that has a great vision, great culture. Any leaders. Great options.
Adam:Any C-suite. Any C-suite. Listening to Aaron's numbers. Those numbers were wrong. That is for one experienced partner leader. And the smallest of, uh, of share of the marketing budget to do a little bit of design work that it does not include in a support team.
Jessie:But the, the deal is though, is that that's fun to be
Aaron:corrected. Live
Adam:feels great with authority.
Jessie:Uh, it's just, it's so, like, it's so interesting to me that if you look at the incubation of a company, Right. How many, how many year you typically, if you get advice from a really good founder, right? They're gonna tell you that if you wanna start a company that you better have 24, do 24 months worth of personal runway in your bank account because you're not making any money for at least a year and a half. In your company, you're not making any money for at least a year and a half. So why is the expectation that once you have found a first customer and are making money, and then you get to the 10th customer and then you don't probably hit product market fit until you're at, like, depending on what your solution is until you're in the hundredth to 200th customer, is when you really started to figure out what the thing is that you build, right? Uh, and what, what really works? Then why is the expectation to drop in a partner team right there and expect immediate results? What is that? Like, it's like founders forgot that it took so much time to build a company. Um, and so I'm just always like, and, and the hard part is, is that this isn't just like a, a series A problem or a seed problem, or even a series B problem. This was the problem at Apple. The CFO was literally like, I don't understand why these partnerships aren't making us money. We were like, welcome. But it's
Adam:the same answer for Apple or, or, and again, I'm not calling out Apple in particular, but it's the, it is the same for an iPod company. That's alright. I really wanted to, it's fine. Uh, but it's the same, it's the same conversation. The series B company, the I P O, the sales marketing products, engineering support teams, they're all at that same product market fit stage and then comes in partnerships. It's because partnerships isn't built from the beginning. From scratch.
Aaron:Full
Jessie:circle. Full circle.
Adam:We did it. We did it.
Aaron:Figured out the name. Yes. Episode one of the books. Thanks guys. This was
Adam:real. So when, when people, when, when a new founder isn't to say, oh, well my marketing team, I'm gonna do marketing for this, I got sales for that. When they don't even think about partnerships from the beginning, and by that nature has to bring it in later. That cognitive dissidence is going going
Aaron:to exist, and that's probably why so many partnerships exist, and part of I, I think it's a weird part of their selling culture, like, oh yeah, we're kind of a startup within a startup. That's a huge red flag for me. Now, if I'm interviewing for new roles in partner ops or channel ops or anything like that, and they talk about describing their partnership or channel culture as a startup within a startup, I'm like, oh, red flag. You're not connected if you're the partner leader or the hiring manager or anyone in the call tells me that you don't understand. It's a deep connection between partnerships and everything else. Interesting. Like that's a new, I I, I've been at a co couple of those and I, when I get in, I'm like, Ooh. This is
Jessie:concerning, but why? Because that makes total, it makes sense to me that, uh, if you're a well established company who does not have a partnership motion, but wants to have a partnership motion, it makes sense to me that you would start your partnership motion as a startup within a startup and allow it to incubate and, and give it the proper, um, Investment that it needs and give it the proper people that it needs to grow. Uh, that would make sense to me. So what is it that is differentiating that model from the model that you are seeing where they're describing it as a startup inside of a startup?
Aaron:When, when I hear that phrase, it's a cultural thing, right? That tells me that partnerships operates really independently. That means that they may have their own budget, their own strategy, their own stuff. They're maybe still scrapping for resources. They're still trying to get buy-in from the company. It goes right back to what Adam said is cool. We build everything around direct without an ecosystem mindset because, hey, in startup, is it, is it audacious? Isn't it audacious to be like, day one? By the way, guys, here's our partnership strategy from the beginning, like, Guys, you may not even make it five years. That's statistical, right? So I get it. It, it's hard to include, but that's why what he's talking about is exactly why that exists that way. Because oh, now we wanna do startups. And so they treat it that way. And it sounds nice. I think, to your point, Jesse, right? Like good, you want to give it room to all those, I agree with you, let's give it room to do all those things, but it still has to be part of the core company. And when I hear people say that, what it means to me is routinely and I, I'd love to hear other people's feedback on this outside of our group, but routinely, if I go to that company, just talking to those people, It's because they literally act like a startup within a startup. They're not using the crm, they're managing things on spreadsheets. They have their own separate tech stack. They might, they're probably a part of the tech, like the Slack group, but they are fighting for resources, visibility, explaining what they do, justifying their existence just like a fresh startup would be. And then the company comes and says, oh, it's been 18 months and you haven't made any money. Chop. We're gonna cut that leg of the business off like it's a bad apple and we're gonna keep moving with our direct rhythm, not realizing that you've just cut off. That third leg of your stool that's gonna allow you to stand when times really, really get rough, right? Yes.
Adam:Partnerships die on islands.
Jessie:Yeah, for sure. I do wanna push back on it though, because there is a company that is doing it this way, but they think about it in a different way. Um, so like I talked with Keith Rabkin, he's the C R O. Um, at Panda Doc and Panda Doc is doing exactly the thing that you described where they kind of have it in this incubation phase, but he oversees it all. Right. That's, I think that's the most important thing, is that somebody, yeah. He's got, you've got zone to win right there. Um, he, he uses, they use Zone to win at Panda Doc for a number of things and partnerships is just one of the things, um, that they have decided. What is that? Is it,
Aaron:it's,
Adam:It is Aaron, but Jesse, this is exactly what I wanted to bring up. I wanted to bring up zone to win as, as a transition to you clicking. Lemme finish my thought because go for it. It's literally static.
Jessie:This is a good framework and I, I bet you anything, I'm gonna have to like start over and cut this out because like that static has gotta be probably just in my ear. But you're hearing it too, right? Adam? Okay, then It's Aaron. Is Aaron, was that a click? No, it's static. It's like actual, like staticky noise. Um, I don't know. That could be it. That would be weird if your air conditioner was, but also you live in Arkansas in the middle of almost July, like you're gonna have to turn that back on.
Aaron:Yeah, a hundred percent, but that's how much I
Adam:care about this. 10 minutes left on the podcast, he's gonna sweat through. This is how much he cares.
Jessie:He's gonna get real sweaty in there real fast.
Aaron:Wish you had your hat on. Could you
Jessie:get it to shrink for me? I don't even have air conditioning at all in my house. Um, at any rate, uh, Panda doc incubation at Panda Doc. Yeah. They're running this as, as a startup, but it has, they have four people, right? So they have somebody who's doing partner sales, they have somebody who's doing partner marketing. They have somebody who's doing, um, like partner, actual partner building and partner relationship management and all the, and like all these different, uh, box, uh, they, they live in a box in a, in this partnerships box. But the point of being in that incubation phase is to say, let's not be disruptive. Because we'll always fail if we're disruptive to the people who already have the revenue engine kind of running. And the, the goal of that incubation phase and being a start quote startup and start inside of a startup is to actually begin to integrate into the those processes that are already working into the go-to market that has been defined and redefined and built to be a revenue engine for that company. Not to operate on its own forever, but literally to build itself, to then slide into those processes really seamlessly and like, and it's given all the space after it's proven its worth in order to do that. And so I think that there's merit to startup inside of a startup, but the idea of like having to claw your way to, um, To resources isn't necessarily part of that or should necessarily be part of that. Particularly for Go ahead. You have things you're like in your seat and the camera.
Aaron:I think that, well you said it, that you, when you said it a minute ago, and Adam, you reading the book too, right? That's a cultural approach to incubation that I, that doesn't exist in these other companies. That's why. That's right. Because they wouldn't, okay. Yeah. They wouldn't treat anything else that way. Partnerships are treated that way because we don't Got it. Marketing, sales. Yeah. These are all like, cool, here's the core business. This is how we run projects, or Waterfall, ma, whatever. Right. Partnerships. Yep. Let's see if we can get you going a little bit. Just jam. Once you earn your jam. Right. Once you earn your place, we'll pull you in. Right? Um, yes. And that's, that's, I think that's the core difference. It's a cultural
Jessie:shift. That's a huge call out. Right? So Zone to Win is being implemented across the board at Panda Doc. Yeah. Uh, and partnerships just happens to be in the incubation zone. Um, but that model I think is really interesting for other companies to adopt partnerships as part of their innovation play rather than trying to shove it into an already functioning, uh, revenue engine. Yeah,
Adam:yeah. It's the incubation that's really is the piece there, that is the real nuance to, to Aaron's point about culture. Treating it in that appropriate way. Mm-hmm. And managing expectations and resources in the appropriate way that allows it to either flourish like it probably will with Panda Doc because of how mindful they're being with it. Mm-hmm. Versus many, many, many, many other examples, uh, that of partner programs that were started in the last three years, many that do not exist anymore.
Aaron:Yeah. I think that comes back down to the partnership approach too, Adam, like, and you've got the experience to speak to this. I can only speak from the programs I've been a part of, right? Where. And I, I could probably give you three or four people that I've talked to, uh, through partnership leaders that, that are being the thing. Oh, how many? I'm new. I'm the first one. I'm working on agency tech and GSIs. I'm working on OEM tech and resellers. I'm working on, yeah, yeah. Referrals and affiliate like. No matter what, there's not one thing they're working on. They are being tasked with multiple rhythms, which all ha and you, we all know this, you don't enable a tech partner the way you enable a reseller, and you don't enable a reseller the way you rated an affiliate. And you don't have to sell through either one of those the same way you might sell through an oem, right? It's all different. Every program has a different thing. So also when you're saying, Hey, partnerships, we're gonna throw you at the wall and see if you stick. And then we're also gonna throw like four darts at you at once to see if that helps you stick. Because it seems like the DART would help you stick, but really it just makes it impossible for you to hang on.
Adam:So, so this is a mistake that I've made and it, and it actually, the way that you kind of phrase it here, Aaron, which I'm sure happens to people, is that they're being pushed into all of those different, uh, pots throwing all of those different darts. I'm gonna mix all of the different metaphors. Um, for me it was that I did that to myself because I lacked. Organizational buy-in top, down, bottom up, middle out. I, I had to get, I hired, hired to build this partnership department, and then the very first thing that I had to do was go teach the C-suite the VPs and directors, the, the managers and staff. I had to teach every single person. What does partnerships mean? Yeah, how can partnerships involve? Show me your KPIs. Show me your OKRs. Let talk to me about where you are struggling and how and where you are succeeding so that I can start making the matches between how you offset and support. Partner organizations, how I can bring you partner resources when I know that there's this other thing that you do really well that could be of great value to partners. And I ended up having to be this matchmaker, but at the same time, I have to get into 15 different things because I don't have enough buy-in in any one area to actually fully dedicate myself to that. Because if I did. I'd find a bunch of which has happened before, I'd find a bunch of, uh, co-marketing opportunities. I'd ship'em over to my marketing team to go develop the content for it. And then, you know, two weeks later, they haven't even started it. And then I end up going right, all the co-marketing copy myself because I need to get this partnership going because time if time kills deals, time kills momentum, time kills partnerships. There's an argument for when you need to take the slow, methodical approach, but there's other times where you've got to show value fast in this new partnership of some kind to get that ball rolling. And that's the reason why I put myself into 15 different tactics, because I lacked any strategy, because I lacked the organizational buy-in.
Aaron:I bet there's people sitting.
Jessie:We gotta No, I'm gonna cut you off because we're, we're running outta time. Just going, yeah. Guess Yeah. If we go too much longer, nobody will want to listen to
Adam:this. Let's, let's do a round robin lightning round of the top that we need to hit later. So, Erin, well, no, no, no. We'll, later what do you got,
Aaron:Jesse? First this time?
Jessie:Oh man, of topics that we gotta hit later. Um, a couple, but that's not how I wanted to end this. And I, I,
Aaron:it's my show Jessica and Shena on that whole joke. Adam, Jesse, you typical Adam. Great idea. You were raiding us in.
Jessie:I was totally raiding you in and you went straight down. Yeah. How about we have a round robin of those things later on. Uh,
Adam:I love it in you. You are the referee. Jesse.
Jessie:Keep us on track so, so, We are gonna end the show, every show. We're gonna end it because I love it when, when, uh, conversational shows do this. Um, we're gonna end with, uh, a gratitude. So we can like, and I'll make sure that every week before this you're thinking about your gratitude because I'm now like making you, uh, dive deep into the top of your head. So, and it, it literally can be anything. It doesn't have to be a partner related or whatever. Um, so one gratitude to end the show. Uh,
Aaron:Aaron. Oh, that's not fair. It sounded like you were gonna say your gratitude and I was, I was in the process of doing my buffer. I can,
Adam:do you want me to go my buffer one? Here's Erin. I'll I'll give you some time. I'll give you some time. Thanks.
Aaron:I'm so an, I'm ungrateful, ungrateful person by nature. I guess my,
Adam:my gratitude easily goes to Jesse. Because, oh, come on. No, it does, because I am, I'm in this early founder mode. I am building up, I'm trying to do something revolutionary, and it's very hard, and there's a lot of roadblocks in the way, and there's a lot of times where it's, it's so hard to stay stoic. And it's our ongoing conversations that has given me, like seeing your stoicism and hearing your direct support. Uh, that's a major bedrock that has me continuing to, to iterate and, and work on these problems that I care so much about. And I don't, I don't know if I would still be working on those things had I not. Uh, had that support,
Aaron:I. I just wanna say that might be the first time in my entire life I've ever heard somebody be like, I'm so grateful for your stoicism. Usually it's like your, your encouragement, your enthusiasm. It's legit, your support. No, it's your stoicism. It's the fact. I love it. That's so
Jessie:great. Baseline is, Critical. Yeah.
Aaron:Okay. I can't be grateful for the same things. Um,
Jessie:no, it's weird, y'all. It's getting weird in here,
Aaron:Jessie. You have to be also grateful for yourself and then we've got a perfect ending. Okay. Perfect. I think I'm, I think I can be grateful. For the community of partnerships, uh, in a large sense. Mm-hmm. And that may sound really cheesy, but I've worked professionally in SaaS for 15 years. I've been in data, I've been in cs, I've been in implementation, onboarding. I've been in product, I have been in lots of different groups across the SaaS company, and I've never felt as connected or purposeful, uh, or useful, I think as I have. In the partnership community, in the partnership people. And I think it's because of all the things we've talked about today. This is a community of people who added, to your point, are routinely thrown against the wall to face a challenge. And maybe we overcomplicate our lives because we wanna prove ourself and prove our value and find a way and find a path and solve problems. But universally, when I meet partnership people, they're good people. Um, and, and I think that's a unique aspect of this space that we're in. And I think it's a very, Humbling place to be given where I think partnerships and ecosystems is gonna head in the next five years. So I'm grateful. I'm grateful that my career is finally coalesced into a space where I feel like I have a niche and an experience and, and something to offer, but also just so much to learn and so much to gain.
Jessie:Ditto. Okay. That's the end of our show. No, nailed it. Um, nailed it. Both of those. Uh, I, uh, guys, I'm grateful for revenue. Uh, I'm grateful for revenue. Uh, I signed my first contract at the beginning of June. Um, I sent out my very first invoice this week, uh, and I just finished a lunch and learn with my very first customer where I got them onboarded and everybody was so, Generous and excited and ready to see what fluency is gonna do for their organization. And they're just like, so like I, I literally had a conversation after I was done at the lunch and learn with one of the leaders there and he was like, I am so stoked to be your partner in this. And I was like, you're taking my breath away right now. Like, it's to hear like to. I might, I'm trying not to get too emotional about it, but like literally when you put your whole self into something for so long, um, to have somebody who hasn't been with you, just say that to you is like the bees knees. So that's what I'm grateful for right now. It was an excellent Friday.
Aaron:Amazing. Great. Nailed it. All right. Signing up. Nailed it.
Jessie:All right. Um, we're gonna really make our best attempt to try to do this once a week. Um, it's always gonna be probably really shitty and informal for a while. Um, I hope this was useful and people enjoy listening to it. Um, I enjoy listening to the both of you. Uh, and so that, you know, Worth it, uh, to spend an hour with two of you on the phone. Uh, of course you do. Um, and, uh, all right, uh, thanks everybody for listening and, uh, hopefully we'll talk to you next week.
Aaron:See you.