In this episode our discussion carves out the differences between simply referring business and actively engaging in the co-selling together. We'll give you insights into the operational hurdles that come with defining partnerships, the significance of RevOps, and why sales initiatives should not only be replicable but data-driven. Remember, it's not co-selling if you're not sharing the load.
Finally, we put our strategist hats on to map out the alchemy of building a go-to-market strategy. Here's where we get into the nitty-gritty of why selecting your partners isn't a numbers game, but a deliberate choice meant to enhance your bottom line. You'll hear about the underestimated marathon of marketing efforts needed before sales can bloom, and why this journey, is a testament to resilience and patience. As we wrap up, we extend our gratitude for the conversations that inspire us, the colleagues who challenge and support us, and the evolving benefits that make our corporate lives a little more like home.
In this episode our discussion carves out the differences between simply referring business and actively engaging in the co-selling together. We'll give you insights into the operational hurdles that come with defining partnerships, the significance of RevOps, and why sales initiatives should not only be replicable but data-driven. Remember, it's not co-selling if you're not sharing the load.
Finally, we put our strategist hats on to map out the alchemy of building a go-to-market strategy. Here's where we get into the nitty-gritty of why selecting your partners isn't a numbers game, but a deliberate choice meant to enhance your bottom line. You'll hear about the underestimated marathon of marketing efforts needed before sales can bloom, and why this journey, is a testament to resilience and patience. As we wrap up, we extend our gratitude for the conversations that inspire us, the colleagues who challenge and support us, and the evolving benefits that make our corporate lives a little more like home.
Where's the topic?
Jessie:It's fine, you look fine for a podcast.
Adam:That's right, I got a face for radio.
Jessie:You certainly do.
Aaron:Was that?
Jessie:the point where I was oh man, was that the point where I was definitely supposed to be? Like, what are you talking about?
Adam:You look amazing. No, this is great. No, I love this. No, we know how this great. No, I love this. No, we know how this works.
Aaron:My kid walked out here today. Had to go walk out here to my office. Is this going to be relevant? Walks into my office because the door's open and then says your hair's turning white.
Jessie:Just random. That's all he had to say.
Aaron:That's like the whole thing he came out here to do is just to come out here and like throw me under the bus. I was like that was not kind of you man.
Adam:Watch this epic way to turn this into being relevant. Uh, in under 60 seconds, uh, man, yeah, he just noticed that all of those years that being in partner programs put on you Uh, and that's why we should talk about a big partner program topic.
Jessie: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 in 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.
Adam:See it made it relevant.
Jessie:Man, we didn't even get through like a minute of banter and you're moving us on to the topic. You're like, like I got a party to go to. Y'all like go away. Uh, I did have um brisket and grandma's rice last night. My dad, my dad made a brisket, uh, and I don't know.
Aaron:Talk about this grandma's rice thing. That's not enough context for me to know what's going in your mouth.
Jessie:But yeah, um, I call it papa's rice because the recipe came from his grandmother and now he makes it. He's always made it for us and now we just call it papa's rice, so we're just gonna switch the name of it. It's like a buttery uh, savory it. What's what goes in it? It's like a stick of butter and like half an onion and some mushrooms and they all get like sauteed up in the stick of butter and then it's parboiled rice and a kitchen bouquet. Do you know what kitchen bouquet is?
Adam:Nope.
Jessie:It's like this brown seasoning thing I don't know how to describe it. It comes in a bottle, it's like a liquid and you put it all together and you bake it and it's like literally the most addictive rice that I've ever eaten in my life and we don't get to have it very often. My dad doesn't make it my parents just moved here but like, so we're going to eat it more frequently. But whenever I make it it's not the same, like there's something about the way he makes it that is just like I can't figure it out. It never tastes the same, but I need to figure it out because you know he's not going to live forever. So I got to figure this Papa's Right shit out so that I can pass it on to my children, just like your partnerships, but they're not going to last forever. What are you talking about?
Adam:No, our partnerships, unlike our families, will last forever.
Aaron:Is that accurate? I'm just trying to pivot back.
Jessie:All right, yeah, okay.
Adam:Multi-generational partnerships. Today, this weird pavilion just came out there. That was a weird.
Jessie:Yeah, it just kind of flew out of your mouth. Okay, we're just going to get right into the topic then, because clearly both of you are sick of hearing. You asked, you asked about the rice and I'm giving you the rice thing.
Adam:I'll post the rice, I appreciate that Aaron's getting involved and he should have asked about the brisket. Who hears brisket and asks about the rice? I know, but brisket is brisket.
Aaron:But somebody says I have grandma's rice. You're like what in the world?
Jessie:Like grandma's rice, could actually turn out to be like a jello mold for all you know. It's right like you have to ask that question. Yeah, uh, also like aaron have you ever had braised brisket?
Aaron:certainly you've had smoked brisket, but have you ever had braised brisket? I would have to probably claim ignorance. If I have. I don't know. I don't brisket myself.
Jessie:This is a braised brisket is a very like Jewish thing, it's just very different. It's very, very different Equally delicious, but just different. So anyway, I had, I had braised brisket last night so and also didn't know it was Passover. So when my dad was like it's Passover, I was like, oh dang, good thing we're having all the Jew foods, like perfect.
Adam:And then you had the rice before Passover started, not after, when we can't eat the rice anymore. So that's a smart.
Jessie:Oh see, I didn't know this rule. I'd have eaten the rice on any day, so I bet.
Adam:Well, listen, it depends on who you are, and there's a debate of the rice absorbs water. Does that expansion count as rising? Who knows?
Jessie:Oh, my yeah Just depends. Getting to the thick of it All right.
Aaron:We need to debate Matzah.
Jessie:Matzah for today. When do you get to eat expansive things again?
Adam:Matzah starts tonight Matzah. It's not Passover, it's Matzah Matzah tonight, seven days.
Jessie:Seven days of unleavened.
Adam:Probably seven days. There's an outside chance that it's eight days.
Jessie:Can you eat a cookie? So cookies have leaveners in them.
Adam:Yeah, definitely no cookies, no cookies. There's special soda made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup, because corn kernels pop and so you can't have anything made with corn in it. Good luck with that in modern America, goodness.
Jessie:Yeah, that's a lot of rules, all right, but you know, seven days you can get through, it'll be fine.
Adam:It's a bone broth. We're just doing matzo ball soup and brisket for seven days.
Jessie:We're good. Okay, I'm in. We're good, let's go.
Adam:There's a right way and a wrong way.
Jessie:So I was supposed to come to the conversation with the topic this week. So so I was supposed to come to the conversation with the topic this week. So here we go, Ready, we got it, we're getting started. Should partnerships have a different focus based on the stage of your organization? So I would posit that partnerships at an earlier stage company should be more focused on like what would be considered like a marketing motion. So like referral partnerships, potentially affiliates, although that is a completely different motion from the referral partnerships.
Jessie:But this concept of like you're not asking anybody to co-sell with you, You're not asking anybody to sell on your behalf. You're really just asking your partners to be aware of when you should be in the room and to invite you into the conversation. And then, as you start to mature as an organization, maybe you're moving up market into more enterprise type sales. You have a sophisticated sales team, you have sophisticated sellers. Then you can start looking at what should be a co-sell motion, which is actually a fairly complex like. Even if you're selling to smaller organizations, it's still a very complex sale.
Jessie:The true nature of co-sell right, Not sort of this like we sold things at the same time that's not co-sell right. And so like what do you agree with this concept that there should be like stages of partnerships in the same way that companies are going through? You know, you go from like word of mouth and then, once word of mouth has sort of been saturated, then you move into demand generation and then, once word of mouth has sort of been saturated, then you move into demand generation and then, once demand generation is saturated, then you move into more like of a sales motion and you kind of like follow. Not everybody agrees with that, but like this concept as a very pavilion concept. So what do you think about this?
Adam:Yes, I win.
Jessie:Good thing, aaron is muted. That's right. That's right.
Adam:So I agree in the vast majority of cases I'll give you the like exception. I think to me that proves the rule. So it's like the anti-argument. For if you'll go with me on it, is that when our partnership is discovered because our customers are driving us there that it was our customers that started figuring out the use case, and a lot of them are already doing the better together and we found it through customer success and how they're already doing it. So it was kind of like this organically got through that original word of mouth. So that means the value prop is already clear because we've been able to distill it from customers. Then, like sure, we might be able to start on second base. But if we're the ones coming up with a new value prop we don't have a ton of mutual customers already and we're trying to gain traction in this new partnership then yeah, I mean, how are you going to start all of a sudden jumping into co-selling when you don't have a wide base of experience to go from? You got to crawl before you can run.
Aaron:I'm trying to strategically respond to when my loud mowing neighbor is on the other side of the yard.
Adam:The reality is of the podcasting.
Aaron:Let me know if you can. I think about this from an operational perspective, actually two things. One in my own efforts right now. I think about this from an operational perspective, actually two things. One in my own efforts right now. I think actually our path to market for what we built will be stronger if we go to market with partners from the beginning who see the value and are positioning it as a part of and in particular, we're looking at. We're talking to a few consultants who work in the space who routinely need a solution like ours to bring something to the table as, like they don't want to do the operational part. Maybe they're more strategic and so we can help fill the gap. So that's a really viable path to market for us.
Aaron:As we're having conversations which to me contradicts what you're saying, because then we would probably focus more on those relationships and maybe co-selling. Maybe it's considered referral, like I don't we, we we might show up right to explain what it is and to do the demos, and then it's their job to sell why it's a part of their default solution that they're buying, et cetera. We don't know. We're kind of exploring that right now. So it's a very salient conversation for me in terms of what I'm working on on the side, but operationally it's definitely easier to pick one lane. Whether you do one or the other. I don't know, I can't, I don't know Strategically if there's a value. I don't know, I can't say that, but I think, operationally, if you're trying to do both and have your ops team figure out how to how to support all the rhythms, that's a lot to do in early stage company.
Adam:Well, I think this piece of like. Starting with partnerships, though, though One of the biggest challenges that I have starting a new partnership with someone that hasn't gone through their own sales process yet, or just doesn't even know their own specific sales process ahead of us selling with them is that there's too many unknowns. One of the core pieces early in setting this better together story is figuring out what the joint go-to-market is, and if it's just a simple referral, that's different. That's just communicating the better together story and then leaving it up for, like, here's a trigger situation and it goes over the fence, and then now you just do your thing, that's fine, that's not co-selling. Your thing, that's fine, that's not co-selling.
Adam:But if we're talking about this difference between marketing early in a partnership versus mature co-sell, at the end the mature co-sells. I got to know your discovery process. I've got to know what's your optimal buying path, who are the decision makers, what are their jobs to be done for the various personas, and how do we navigate this, what's your optimal? And then I can share with you my optimal, and now we can really have a theory of how we merge them. But now we've got to go and test this go-to-market co-sell theory that we have, but this still means that you can't start there, because both groups need to have a dialed-in sales process to then inform each other of, to create this net new sales process where you uniquely fit together in this buying situation.
Jessie:Yeah, Apparently, this is not as interesting of a topic as I was hoping it was going to be.
Adam:Well, we bored you. Pivot us out of this I'm bored.
Aaron:Yeah, let me ask you this when you say mixing though I'm looking at your text, not what you just said Do you mean mixing them up in terms of order? Should you always start with marketing and better together stories? I really don't think that you should Like. Should you always start with marketing and better together? I really don't think that you should.
Jessie:I don't unless you are directly selling to enterprise companies from the start. Like you are an enterprise focused solution and you, as the founder, have experience enterprise selling. I don't think that you should have co-sell until you get there. And when I say co-sell I don't mean I identify that there is a solution, or a customer brought to my attention that there is a solution that should be working in tandem with mine, and so I'm going to let that person know, and that they are simultaneously selling while we're selling. I'm talking about a true co-seller where it's like we have a co-mutual action plan. This person is responsible for this part of the sales cycle, this person from the other company is responsible for this part of the sales cycle and it's like a whole thing.
Aaron:That's like working together to sell the customer the whole solution, not like tandem solutions, or I guess you're also defining co-sell right, and so one of the things that we can talk about, this like this opens up a whole nother door for conversation and partnership. Like what do you mean when you say agency? What do you mean when you say reseller?
Aaron:What do you mean when you say co-sell, we can have a whole mess of those episodes for sure. All of these concepts are not well-defined from an industry perspective. And so a sales rep will absolutely be like, oh, we're going to co-sell. Or a partner manager might say we're going to co-sell because it sounds nice to say co-sell, but all you have is a referral program, that end of the day, right. And then co-sell should. I think I agree with you. Like co-sell should mean deep, collaborative. We're on calls together, we're solving problems together, we're both driving this deal for the sake of everybody in the deal, right? Because even what you're talking about this is what I'm seeing constantly.
Aaron:The difference between a reseller and a co-seller is very different. I don't think that resell exists personally, like in the SaaS world, I just don't get anybody who calls it a reseller and then they have to come back to you to get final quoting and license delivery of anything. Like you're not reselling, then Not really. Like you're co-selling. Maybe you're co-selling, you're an agency, for sure you fall into an agency model, but you're not, you're not really co-selling.
Aaron:I just think that's where I get nitpicky, because all that then spills down to operations because we're like well, here's how we want to realize all this in the system, we need to be able to run reports based on partner type or program or co-selling or what's not co-selling. But if you can't define it, you can't report on it. If you can't report on it, you have a really hard time justifying that internally. People that don't get it don't get it. But you have to have time to get there. So I think I would agree with you on that front, though You're right, because you're also pushing co-sell up into the enterprise conversation. You're saying inherently that co-sell is an enterprise rhythm, and if you are not an enterprise level product or company, you're not co-selling.
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Jessie:And I think that maybe even like if you haven't even gone all the way up market, but if your partner, you exist in a partnership ecosystem that has an enterprise at its hub, that you have to have the kinds of sellers who can run an enterprise sale in order to be able to partner and co-sell in that way.
Jessie:So, even if your market is SMB well, maybe not even SMB, it's mid-market. Let's just say it's mid market If you're selling into mid-market but you're trying to co-sell with an enterprise into mid-market, then your sellers have to fundamentally understand how to run an enterprise sale in order to be able to run that sales process is all I'm saying, like it's just, it's a next level of sophistication that if you, if your AEs the majority of your AEs are just coming off their first BDR job, like that's probably not something that you're trying to help them with, right, they're just not that far along in their sales for you to try to run a partnerships, a true co-sell right, like something like again, where you're selling together, not selling at the same time. There's a nuance there.
Adam:And I think it's fair to say that that's true Like you'll really struggle to do it at scale. Like, could you do a handful of them and keep it running again with people that can understand enterprise co-sell, even in the mid-market? Yeah, you could get away with a few, but it won't scale. That's the critical point. A sales-led founder would absolutely be able to run these things without RevOps, without partner ops, but they wouldn't be able to run this in a repeatable, scalable way across a team of even a handful of representatives. But they also without all the RevOps and other pieces. Then you're not going to know, you won't have the data elements to point to. What pieces can you start not doing manually? Where can you optimize this process? You're going to be shooting from the dark. Not scalable.
Jessie:Did you have feelings, Aaron?
Aaron:You said the scale word and I don't think people understand what scale means. Yeah, don't, no, I don't. I think people want scalability but they don't prioritize scalability until it's too late, until it hurts really, really, really, really bad. Now we're going to go after scalability because it's hurting and at that point you're losing money because you can't scale, because you can't keep up, and that puts your whole program, that puts everything you're doing at absolute risk, because if somebody shows up to do the business that you've sold them that looks really great on paper and maybe has a few good evidences to support it and it's just hard to do, they're going to go do something else. And so I think, like you say, scale, I appreciate that. That's also where I'm saying, like one, I agree with you, I think in that term of co-scaling, I think I agree with your initial hypothesis. So put a pin in it. We did it, we solved the problem, go us.
Aaron:But two, this is where I think operations just can use. Come up, you're right, you need good people, you need good strategic thinkers thinking about your operational stuff and building you holistic models from the ground up so that you can manage programs, try programs, scale programs, shut things down when they fail and ramp them up when they're successful, without having to initially pump the brakes because, oh, we need to hire three more people to do the work that program requires because we don't have the operational bandwidth to support the automation of process. It's an interesting thing to me that in the world of AI, where you see all these things happening, you still go back to a lot of these core problems loads of companies which is to solve operational problems. We just hire people a dome at the wall. So it's partner managers who have to come in and take over relationships and, like, 80% of their job is admin, not relationships, not sales, not growth. I think that's still it's still a problem.
Jessie:I agree with that. Do you feel like there is a coinciding sort of crawl walk run with partner operations too? Coinciding sort of crawl walk run with with partner operations too, like if you start I, I struggle with this because I really want to believe in the snyder method. Uh, and this like if you, but the reality is is that the reason the snyder method works is because cory is an operational, has an operational mind, right, and he already knows what all the pieces are in place and he actually has all the relationships and he's just like bringing them all in because he already knows, like how it all works. But I think it's few and far between that. That can actually like be a thing that works consistently. But like, let's say that you're not Corey Snyder, let's say that you are, you know, your your average partner leader who's been, or you know former sales leader who's been asked to build a partner program. That's the reality of it. Right, there's a lot more of those.
Jessie:The crawl of a partner program is really like identifying which ecosystem you live in and which ecosystem you're trying to build as a result of that ecosystem, and then you know mapping out your IPP and then actually like going and making a pitch to those partners. But in my mind, unless you are built on a platform and have integrations that are necessary to function if you want quicker results in terms of revenue like if you're a partner program that lives under the revenue organization integration partners aren't going to get you there. Like they're not going to get you to quick revenues. They're sort of just like does my product? They really belong under product more than they belong under revenue, and so like from a revenue or go to market standpoint, it's like what are the services and agency partners that I can go and get that?
Jessie:What is that ideal profile? Look like To me that's the crawl right. It's like the ecosystem map. It's identifying one or two partners. But not keep like dang. I'm really working through this as we talk about it. But like Corey's thing about volume is that he's been burned right, like that's his thing is like he's like I want lots of partners so that I can have a few asshole partners who leave me high and dry, but my partner program isn't dead as a result of it. Right, he's had his basket fall apart with the eggs inside right.
Jessie:Say that one more time, sorry.
Aaron:He's had his basket fall apart with all the eggs inside.
Jessie:You say he's been burned right.
Aaron:Got all his eggs in one basket and then, boom, it fell apart. So he protects himself from that. Now because he's felt that personally and to your point, I think, going back to like I think what was your original question is like does partner operations like scale? How does that work into the conversation?
Jessie:What's the crawl, walk, run of that. And does it work in tandem with the choice to say we're going to focus on this kind of partner program first we're going to get to some revenue, we're going to prove out the model, then we're going to try to build a few more partners and then we're going to go seeking other kinds of partner programs. But if you have the core of the operations sort of figured out, can it then build on itself?
Aaron:Yeah, that's the problem, though, right. So think about, think about said with Corey. He's a good example because, you're right, he brings the operational rigor to what he wants to achieve with him. So he doesn't need, probably, your CRM to work for him. He's got a system in play. He's going to use his G-sheets, his tools, his signups. He knows what he's going to do to execute on that. He's going to do it regardless of what support he gets internally. So he will bring the value, he will bring the business and he will push the deals in where the deals need to come in.
Aaron:This is where I keep having that conversation with people that attribution is a byproduct. It's a byproduct of partner managers who build relationships with partner accounts, who have partner contacts, who eventually signed a partner contract that is tied to a program that then results in attribution. So architecturally, you need all those things in play, but Corey can go build a program on his own without all that and manage all that separately, because he's a good operator and the business doesn't care about any of those things until attribution shows up. So when Corey's big, and because he's highly focused as well, we talk about him so much on this podcast.
Jessie:I can't get that conversation out of my head, yeah.
Aaron:It's a good one though, but I think you're right. I think it is because Corey is a strong operator. So in terms of, like, just op scale, every program is different. If you're running an agency program, then you do need, like, an inbound lead model. You maybe need an outbound lead model because you're going to funnel off everything in 50 below employees off to your agency teams, like. So you need certain rhythms, operational rhythms, and the downside of partner ops at this point is that we typically have to build those rhythms on the fly to support whatever program is here and we don't get to focus on the holistic approach of a multi-program, multi-tiered model until the pain is just so great that it demands better solutions. So does a core operational model scale? It can Do. We get to do that often, no, because certain programs have certain demands.
Aaron:If you want to go like real resellers, then you've got to support quoting. You've got to support deal desk, you've got to support invoice and PO alignment. If you want to go with technology partners, okay. Well, now we need a marketplace. We need integration access, no-transcript partner manager, not to do all that work, necessarily, but to go help the teams who are going to have to support that work, understand what their role is in partnerships. This is why I say like partnerships is not this, it's not this. Like a vertical. For people who are not watching us because this won't be online, I've got my hand up here. Making a vertical line Partnerships is not a vertical. There's this vertical sales organization within partnerships. Right, like we have a direct relationships, but almost everything else about partnerships is horizontal.
Aaron:Your first partner manager. They've got to know how to talk to product. If integration partnerships is the game, great, they got to understand product. They need to understand product development. They need to understand Scrum. They need to understand Agile. They need to understand delivery models. If they don't, they need to hire an ops person that does so. They can go build relationships with integration partners and still have somebody back home.
Aaron:Like helping the product team get on board with this idea, helping the sales team understand what they need, helping enablement understand how to fill the gap. Like we need enablement resources. It's just such a weird organization sometimes where it pops up organically based on the needs of whatever that first person is driving. That's what I've seen. Right, like you get hired and Adam, you're experiencing this, probably right now. I think you're hired, you're in. You've got two different like wheelhouses, right Like marketing and partnerships, and so you're kind of you get this pretty big scope and you've got to figure out, like, which way do we move, what needle and how, and you're going to go find people to fill gaps based on really specific needs. You have tied your strategy, right or wrong? Right or wrong? Adam shrugging, people can't hear a shrug adam.
Adam:Yes, I have a like I don't know. Yeah, this is what I gotta do. We're gonna build this wall one piece at a time.
Jessie:Yeah.
Adam:I guess your question.
Aaron:I rambled a lot.
Jessie:You did ramble a little bit and I almost stopped you, but it's fine, I guess, for me, like, what is the?
Jessie:I feel like early partner programs tried to do too much too fast. I think is the root of this, this conversation, right, is that without like a lack of, or without like a real structure, which I think also is the problem. We do this a lot where we compare startups to partnerships, but, like it's, the problem with startups when they try to go to market as well, is that they don't really understand this structure of like they want to hire a salesperson as their first revenue right, their first revenue hire is a salesperson, when they haven't really even figured out demand generation right and word of mouth hasn't even started and they want to go hire a salesperson. And I think it ends up the same thing with with partnerships, where they're sort of like, well, we're going to co-sell and or we're going to build a, we're going to build this integration, we're going to build a Salesforce app and we're going to put it in the app exchange and magically people will find it and buy it.
Jessie:And and the reality of like what that actually there's whole companies built around solving for that mindset. Right, like, invisory is built around solving for the mindset of like, well, I built my Salesforce app, but I don't understand why they won't talk about me. And so it's like, how do we try to start building some of these frameworks for early partner programs? Right, like, how do we start having this conversation for people who have been given the role of partnerships but only have experience in sales? How do we make it so that they're not moving in every direction all at once by providing them some you know, at least baseline frameworks that they can start to work from? Are you raising your hand right now? Okay, no rambling, because after you make a statement we're going to move into gratitudes.
Aaron:I think the way you fix this is that you hire your first partner, people for specific goals instead of we want partners. Adam has partners on his resume.
Jessie:No, I get that Adam go to partners?
Adam:Yeah, but that's not practical because people do hire them for a purpose today. They hire them to generate revenue today. That's the core problem. Yeah, I don't have a solution to this other than recognizing that you can't sell a thing that nobody knows about. So it's hard to not have marketing clearing, the first field that then you can go and plant in. And even in a world of founder-led sales like, there's still a area that they're able to go into that is receptive to that message. And even with founder-led sales, no founder showed up and someone was like, yeah, let me just, I'll just buy that thing right now.
Adam:It is far longer than everybody thinks that it is because there's a bunch of marketing that ends up needing to be done, even though you got into that sales process really early to. This is like, how do you do it? It's like recognizing that it takes an integrated go-to-market to create a new go-to-market process and it's different from your direct sales. Until teams recognize that fact, then we're going to all run across purposes. But then what's the best first way to build that go-to-market from scratch for that new thing?
Adam:It's probably really dependent on a lot of factors and I don't know, maybe just a shout out to pavilion so that you can like ask a bunch of people all at once like, hey, this is my situation, what's the best way to sell into this kind of a situation? Uh, and you know, adapt a uh of a situation and adapt a direct selling marketing. Go to market that makes sense in your criteria and then adapt that to your partners and build it together as a joint venture. That's probably the best way to have a catch-all conversation yep, all right, uh, gratitudes this week.
Jessie:uh, this week I'm grateful for the friends with benefits podcast. Um, so I don't. Yeah, sam and jason landed sam jacobs on their podcast, um, and I listen to sam jacobs every week, so that he was sam one. This was he Sam one, or is it Sam two, it doesn't matter. Uh, on the podcast they were differentiating. I think he was Sam two, um, but he, uh, I listened to him twice a week.
Jessie:He, you know, on top line on the on Sunday and then a top line hotline on Thursdays, but he's always talking about some kind of like revenue, something right. But on Friends with Benefits they got into the premise of kindness, because his book of kind folks finish first, and he was super vulnerable and very huge, like just real human, like sometimes your favorite people, particularly when you listen to them on podcasts all the time like they stop becoming human beings and they start just talking heads. You know what I mean, even though, like, I've talked to Sam and I know he's a human, but for some reason, like on this uh podcast, he was just super vulnerable, um, and he also had like an interesting. He had an interesting opinion on partnerships that I thought was uh, useful. So, uh, just grateful, uh, for that this week and uh, grateful for that podcast for Sam and Jason. Just in general, good people, um, but definitely go give that episode a listen, both of you and then also the 13 people who listen to us.
Adam:I love that Mine is in the day job.
Adam:I am really thankful for really the whole team, everybody involved, because a lot of the things that I'm asking for is they've been looking at something from one direction and I'm coming in and asking for us and pushing us to start thinking about things in a complete perpendicular direction.
Adam:And it's hard, it's hard for all of us, but everybody has, like, been really kind and, um, really flexible as we talked with this, and it would have been very easy to come into an organization and face like a lot of resistance and well, and it's very common that I've done this in the past uh, where like every little thing took so much cajoling and pushing that that it took a mile to go an inch and pushing that that it took a mile to go an inch. And I'm getting surprised now that with like, uh, like a testing conversation, they're like oh, no, let's just do that, yes, let's that, yeah, tell us more like go to step two. No, don't, don't redo step one, let's go. Uh, it is, it is refreshing. So gratitude to uh, to the day job, to the people of the day job.
Jessie:I love that for you.
Aaron:Uh, I am grateful, uh, for magic money day, and the magic money day increasingly comes with more, uh, holistic corporate benefits. Um, it's interesting to be at a point where and I don't you don't have a lot of details just yet, but like to be able to take advantage of some what I would consider to be advanced, a point where and I don't have a lot of details just yet but to be able to take advantage of some of what I would consider to be advanced benefits that just did not exist when I started 20 years ago, to be able to provide my family with some focused attention, things like that. It feels weird that that's on the table for a guy like me. In general, I'm just grateful that the world is changing to make, hopefully, life more livable for all of us in the human side of life. So I'm very grateful for that and continually grateful for a partner that just loves me and loves it. When I get to find things that I love and nerd out on In the past couple of weeks it's been this new Star Wars trading card game it's been like a really nice release for me in my 40s to go back to my childhood and crack packs and have some fun.
Aaron:So if anybody, if anybody, if our listeners do that, please worry about that. It's a lot of fun. Um, but, like when I'm like, hey, I want to buy a box of cards, and she's like, do it, you deserve it, you have earned it. I want to give you all the things, like every time, it's just wonderful to have a partner that just loves you. You know for who you are. So for me it's all human, human gratitudes, and that's it. We're out.
Jessie:We did it. I know that this was hard for us today, so good job. Talking about partnerships and uh, that's the Adam. Adam. Next week it's your topic, my guy, Uh, cause. Aaron brought it last week and I brought it this week.
Adam:So you, so you just be thinking about it. I got it. I'll figure it out. You won't be surprised when it involves marketing. This is where my 100% focus is right now.
Jessie:I love it.
Adam:I will have it.
Jessie:All right, Scratch off y'all.
Adam:Peace, bye.