167 - How You Too Can Evolve into an Influential Partnership Leader?

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An Influential Ecosystem Leader Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering

So you recently took a partnership ecosystem role and are wondering where you can go to learn from what the best leaders in positions like yours are doing. You wonder, “how do I orchestrate across my organization and organize for success?” and “how do I overcome obstacles to my success that propel my career, evolve my career to one day become an influential partnership leader, perhaps in a category-leading organization?” In this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering, we will show you how you, too, can evolve into an influential partnership leader.

My next guest on Ultimate Guide to Partnering brings 20 years of leadership experience in leading and building new revenue models at scale at leading organizations – including an organization whose very name has become synonymous with how we communicate in online meetings today. Laura Padilla, has built a successful career doing the uncomfortable and shares why hard work, integrity, competency, and a reputation for problem-solving have helped propel her career path. The learnings she shares are a great primer on how to evolve your career as an influential partnership leader.

In Laura’s words

Laura Padilla is currently the VP of Global Partners and Services at Airtable, building the partner and services delivery strategy. She brings over 20 years of leadership experience in leading/building complex business units and new revenue streams to scale small, private companies to +$1B post-IPO revenue, including Zoom, Nutanix, Box, and Riverbed. Leadership experience across marketing, alliances/business development, and partner/channel sales roles in the SaaS, Enterprise Software, and Hardware industries.

She most recently was at Zoom, where she led the global partner and platform sales business unit composed of over 300 team members and over $500M in revenue. This included indirect sales with and through VARs, service providers/carriers, OEMs, referral partners, ISVs, and SI’s, and influenced revenue with technology partners such as Slack, Dropbox, Box, Okta, Five9, Twilio, and others. She is known as a function builder, and her strength is in scaling new organizations to drive incremental revenue and customer value.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode

The most impactful personal growth comes from doing uncomfortable things (1:52)
Airtable’s value and mission (6:44)
A time like no other, leading Zoom’s Partner Program (13:56)
How the role of the partner leader is different than ten years ago (17:31)
What Laura sees from the best partnerships (23:10)
Laura’s journey and the obstacle she overcame (26:35)
Advice on how you can optimize for your success (36:29)

Creating Ultimate Partnerships

Let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper but never live up to their expected results. There are many reasons why partnerships fail, and at Ultimate Partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and frameworks. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website.

Partner Ecosystem Leader Episodes

163 – A Partnership Leader Uniquely Growing Hubspot’s Ecosystem Community

162 – How You Can Unleash the Power of Data to 10X Your Partner Growth!

153 – Janet Schijins – Ecosystems & Megacosm

150- Celebrating 150 Amazing Episodes with a Five-Timer Guest, Jay McBain

149 – WTF is an Ecosystem? And How Partner Hacker helps tech companies PartnerUp with Jared Fuller

Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partnerships, partners, partner, teams, people, integrations, zoom, leader, customers, product, build, isvs, laura, applications, business, person, data, solution, work, accelerated

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Laura Padilla, Vince Menzione

Vince Menzione 00:00

You’re in a partner ecosystem role and wondering, Where can I go to learn from the best of the best? How do I orchestrate across my organization? And how do I overcome obstacles that propel my career evolve my career, to one day become an influential partnership leader, perhaps at a category leading brand. My next guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering brings 20 years of leadership experience building new revenue models at scale, including an organization whose name is synonymous with how we communicate in online meetings today.

Announcer 00:40

This is the ultimate guide to partnering the top partnership podcast. In this podcast Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partner. And now your host, Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione 00:56

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I welcome Laura Padilla is currently the Vice President of Global Partners and services at airtable. Most recently, Laura was at zoom, where she led the global ecosystem spanning service providers, carriers OEMs, s eyes, ISVs, and significant technology partners. I hope you enjoy this interview. As much as I enjoyed welcoming Laura Padilla, Laura, I am so excited to finally welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering, you are a significant contributor to this partnership community that we all care about one of the most influential channel leaders, in fact, having led partnerships at zoom, which was a rocket ship during your time there and now at Air table. So I’m so excited for this discussion today.

Laura Padilla 01:55

I’m super excited to be here, Vince, thank you for having me.

Vince Menzione 01:57

So for our listeners, maybe the one or two that don’t know you tell us about you and how you describe yourself.

Laura Padilla 02:04

I think of myself as a constant learner. And I actually really like taking risks and trying new things that scare me a little bit. I think the most impactful personal growth comes from doing things that are uncomfortable. And that can be both in the form of Korean personal choices. So for example, I learned to surf a few years ago, we were in Hawaii with my family and I told my husband, hey, I want to learn to surf. And even though it scared me a little bit, I’d never been on a surfboard, my kids were laughing at me and making fun of me and I went to the class and I was by far the oldest person in that class. As I was walking down, I was like, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do this put myself up. And now I love surfing. It’s actually one of my favorite things that my daughter and I do together. But it was a little bit intimidating if I’m being honest the first time and I’ve taken the approach as I’ve gotten into my 40s that I want to do things as I get older that intimidate me a little bit, because I feel that’s how you really push yourself to continue growing as an adult and in this world and life that we live in.

Vince Menzione 02:55

I’m intrigued here. First of all, on the surfing side, like getting up on a board is scary, right? I’m at a certain age right now my son’s a surfer, and I’m afraid to go do it. Like, what was that experience like for you?

Laura Padilla 03:05

It was scary. Because I’m sitting here in class and they’re teaching you right, they do the basics on grass. So they give you a board and they say okay, learn to stand up, you have to use your core muscles and jump up on the board. Make sure you’re right in the right position, you’re going to fall over. And so having to do that several times until you get to a point where you feel comfortable, then you actually go into the water. And when you are competing against the ocean and the waves, you’re always going to lose that battle, right Mother Earth has a way of conquering us and so learning to navigate the waves and being okay with your body and the movement and jumping on that board the right way was is really complex and difficult. I would say the first two times that I went surfing, you fall a lot and you have to really just keep pushing yourself to I’m going to do it again. I’m going to do this again. It’s okay I’m going to do this again. It’s supposed to be this hard and mentally preparing yourself for difficulty. And once I got past that and actually being able to stand up the first time then it became really fun you do this mental shift from uncomfortable and not fun to this is really fun and I can do this I was doing with my daughter who was a nine or 10 at the time and seeing how much you enjoy doing this with me together now it’s something we just love doing together whenever we go to Hawaii or anyone else with beach in waves.

Vince Menzione 04:20

I love that now you got me wanting to go do it. I’m gonna get my son to teach me now. So let’s dive in. So you now are the global partnerships and services leader airtable Can you tell us about that role mission and what air table is all about?

Laura Padilla 04:36

Air table wants to democratize software creation, empowering people who are not coders to create their own software and applications. So we consider ourselves a connected apps platform that enables anyone to build custom applications on top of shared data. This allows teams to stay aligned and to do their best work together. Teams can build custom applications on this shared data to support any unit workflow that they have a marketing team can manage campaigns, a product team can launch products. This also helps strengthen alignment across teams, it boosts employee productivity and efficiency at scale, and also reduces costs and risks through tool consolidation. There are so many SaaS products out there now they’re everywhere, right? So people buy SAS products from everything from project management tools to services runs, a ticketing systems around it, the issue is that they don’t share data or actually talk to each other, all these different siloed applications. And so we’re with airtable, what you can do is actually have them all talk to each other, and maximize the data that they share. So it was extremely powerful, and it’s empowered our customers to just be able to do so much more with less. So this is completely different than what is why airtable has such a strong brand and reputation. And if you look at all the funding we got last year, why we were considered one of the top startup companies in the Valley right now, it’s a really powerful concept. And so an heir to my role is I own the global partner strategy and professional services actually. And the reason for that is that we want to build a large global ecosystem of partners, who will become experts in designing architecting, and delivering air table solutions for our customers. Because our platform is so customizable. Our customers want guidance around how they can best use the platform today. So our focus right now is on system integrators and technical consultants to join our partner ecosystem. And we’re building training tracks for them to become certified and validated to eventually deliver services on our behalf.

Vince Menzione 06:44

I love what you have to say here. First of all, we all have so many diverse SAS base applications, right? We’re running in gun in between all these different applications all day long. And it’s hard and it’s not integrated, right? The data is what’s really important and surfacing the data and then having one view one pane of glass. So one of the things I think you said is that you’re allowing these applications to surface up the data so that I, as a user, or team of users can see all of the data or everything that’s relevant, and maybe show it up in a way that’s more consumable to the use of the function of the business.

Laura Padilla 07:17

Absolutely, and then be able to use that data. So one thing is viewing it and seeing it but another thing is actually been able to use it in different applications in different ways so that you can automate those workflows and streamline it. So for example, let’s say your product team put together a product book and a SKU book with pricing, and so forth. It may live today in G sheets, or Salesforce or something like that. But the marketing teams who actually have to create assets or campaigns around that different product toolkit and set and scuba probably has to extract that data, and then put it into something else to be able to use it with air table, you can actually use that shared data in one application in one platform that you can customize and be able to have multiple teams use it in the same place. So it’s super powerful in regards to making teams much more productive.

Vince Menzione 08:10

I think about just the world of partnerships that we live in right now. Right. So I’ve got data in my CRM solution. I’ve got partner portals that may be leveraging to reach out to my group of partners. I’ve got all these other applications that are surfacing opportunities, and this whole ecosystem. My friend Jay McBain talks about right this channel ecosystem movement, this tech movement needs to be integrated. There’s a huge opportunity just within our own space of partnerships here. Oh, absolutely. There’s so much we can do. You mentioned specifically systems integrators and tech practitioners specifically, but it sounds like you’re also building integrations and working with other SAS software companies, too. So you’ve got the tech stack, you’ve got the implementation partners. And then you and I were talking about you also have the hyperscalers. Correct.

Laura Padilla 08:55

Right, exactly. So I do have a small team right now that is working with all of our ISV partnerships and our product partnerships. And what we’re doing is looking at which use cases are the highest ones that our customers are asking for and consuming with airtable. And usually that starts with a common data set they want to use. And so things like Salesforce is a huge use case for us. People want to take data that lives in Salesforce, and be able to share it across different teams for different projects. You have things like Workday as well, that’s also a huge use case for us as well HR teams being able to do that you have you know, Adobe actually is also a large integration for us as well that marketing teams use when they’re doing, you know, different campaigns and so forth. And then we have integrations. I mean, you name it across the board with collaboration partners like Slack, no inbox, and then we have the hyperscalers Mike Microsoft for we’re working very closely with everything from the cloud, Azure infrastructure piece to then the applications that they have like dynamics and teams that are custom was also using want to have deeper integrations with air table. I would

Vince Menzione 10:03

think that around modern work and specifically and also around, you know, workplaces with Google as an example.

Laura Padilla 10:09

Oh, absolutely. And Google two is one as well with a G sheets and all the way that our customers use Google for capturing data and information as well as also the collaboration platforms. All those things we’re looking at as well to partner with Google.

Vince Menzione 10:23

Can you mentioned Adobe with regards to marketing, but I think about the Scott Brinker Mar tech stack, right, that alone would be a huge source of opportunity.

Laura Padilla 10:33

Oh, yes. So if we look at categories of which lines of business are actively using us today, the highest usage is around marketing teams, as well as product teams. And I also like to think about how do we align really closely with product around, which are the largest use cases we have to do to unblock our sales teams to have more conversations with customers. And those are the large hyperscalers that you talked about, Vince, I mean, the large companies have the largest market share, those are the largest requests. And those are the types of integrations we will have to build ourselves. And we know that and so we need to dedicate engineering resources to that. So those are kinds of depth partnerships, that we think about breadth partnerships. And we can work with the hundreds and 1000s of ISVs, eventually, where we say, hey, here is our general API SDK toolkits, here’s a technical documentation here sandboxes, that then an ISV team would go out and try to get a large breadth of partners to consume those

Vince Menzione 11:29

to talk to me about professional services and the role it plays in with partnerships. From your organizational perspective.

Laura Padilla 11:35

Yeah, so our product is very customizable, which means that you can get up and running really quickly, you don’t have to be somebody in it or a coder to be able to do that, which is great from initial ease of use. The customization is where once you have companies that are kind of mid to large enterprise, they themselves have a way that they work. So they’ve already have an investments they’ve made in different SAS tools and applications. And what they’re asking for is really integration. So they say, okay, if I’m going to now add on airtable, as part of my tech stack, I need you to be able to integrate it with the way that we do work today, Services is a very big part of that conversation, where we, right now most of the services are done in house, because I’m obviously new and we were just about to launch our partner program early next year. But the vision is longer term that we would train our partners to be able to do scopes of work solution design, architectural design for our customers, where eventually they would do that, and then do the actual implementation delivery work for those customers or as well on our behalf. And we’re actively recruiting and training partners, such as system integrators and technical consultants to be able to do that work eventually,

Vince Menzione 12:45

it makes a lot of sense, because you’re building capabilities, competencies and practices that ultimately help those partners to scale against. And then is that team organized by specific solution areas, like you talked about marketing, as an example, sales is another example. Are you organized that way

Laura Padilla 13:01

not our teams aren’t however our training tracks will be. So we will have a focus on different use cases and the trainings so that we’ll be able to quickly get our partners up and running on let’s say, marketing use cases, because they’re very specific versus product operations. And so those will be the first two validations that we will bring out into the world with our partners.

Vince Menzione 13:24

And so if our partners listening today want to reach out and learn more from you, Laura, what would you recommend they do?

Laura Padilla 13:30

So I would say to go on our website, airtable.com. There is today a way for them to be able to apply to be what we’re calling a directory consultant. So that would be the first step for them to do that. That comes into my team, we review those applications, and then we reach out to those partners.

Vince Menzione 13:45

Great. And we’ll share those links in our show notes. I want to kind of go back in time with you a little bit though, because you know, you were at a very interesting organization during a very interesting time. Do you live through a time like no other we all did. But you were at the Nexus right? You were running partnerships, Zoom during that time of explosive growth. And you know, I feel like we accelerated we got seven years of acceleration in one year. And we saw during this time, like no other everything changed, everything accelerated. What did you see during that time that you didn’t expect to see?

Laura Padilla 14:17

Yeah, I mean, look, there was so much chaos in the world because of COVID. And what happened was zoom became this essential product overnight. So use cases both personal and professional just exploded. So everyone globally, was using zoom to stay connected and continue to run their businesses and the volume of work was insane. And we did not have the capacity to support it honestly events because I think I just finished putting in my business plan for the year and leadership had just accepted it or proved it. And then COVID happened a few months later. And so that plan was just void because the volume was just so insane. So what we expected to see at zoom actually was businesses to purchase directly through online or through our sales reps because they wanted to get up and running really quickly, so we thought that the partner business was going to take a hit honestly, because of it. And what happened was the exact opposite. This did not happen, the partner business actually grew double what the direct business did, it was shocking. And what it did was solidify the need for partners, and how important it was for customers that they’re really looking for guidance, and how to solve for the situation and to keep their businesses running. And they weren’t looking at just vendors, they really wanted trusted consultants and partners to be able to tell them what to do. And so it really solidified that need for zoom to continue investing in partnerships, and even more so than before, and how it was a really important strategy for both zoom at the time, as well as our partner ecosystem.

Vince Menzione 15:48

That’s fascinating. I would have thought just the opposite, right? Everybody just needed to be up and running right away, like you said, and just reach out to the salespeople. But to your point, I think a lot of new use cases came to be right people built like zoom walls. They did very innovative things with Zoom during that time. Oh, yeah.

Laura Padilla 16:04

And that was part of the challenge, right? So business, Zoom was really built for businesses. It wasn’t built for consumers to run consumer businesses on but what happened was, and I call some, I call like, Zoom events, for example, which is a product zoom has now a COVID. Baby, I call it that, because what you saw was all of these companies that were in person had to go quickly online yoga studios, or networking events, or even churches or anything like that, right. All of these events that were in person had to go online quickly. And people were just searching for a frictionless way. And they chose Zoom. Zoom was really not built for that, right. And so what evolved, after seeing that need was that product, so we assigned an engineering leader to build that product from scratch. And it’s a product that is now up and running, and it’s doing really well. But that was really a result of COVID. But yes, to your point, there was so many different use cases, we can even think of people got so creative with Zoom, that it was it was awesome for the company. But it was also challenging for us from compliance, security, privacy, all those types of things to make sure that we were covered.

Vince Menzione 17:13

There’s amazing time. And we get spent a lot of time here. But I want to talk about another subject we were just talking about before we got started this space that we both live in this amazing space, the partnership world partnership and ecosystem world as we’re calling it, we talked about our mutual friend, Jared Fuller, and the work that he’s doing. And you know, you’ve been a leader in this space and movement. What would you say about where we are today in this journey, and Jay McBain calls this the decade of the ecosystem. And where do you see that we need to go or maybe even improve from a partnership perspective?

Laura Padilla 17:45

Yeah, I mean, the role of a partner leader today is very different than it was 10 years ago, technology and software proliferation is accelerating at such an enormous pace that partners need to evolve to survive. So if you think about just the channel side, and I actually hate that word channel, because yeah, it’s old. Yes, it means like this old thing. And but those days have just been a shop that only resales without solutions is very antiquated. And those companies really not be able to compete long term and they’re already dying, you know, you’re already seeing some of that already. But customers are really looking for services partners that really can recommend architect and deliver solutions customized to what the customer needs. And with tech becoming more open, and platforms allowing more customization. This involves more technical skills, really, and how can we help partners integrate existing solutions with new ones and make sure they all work together seamlessly, customers are also more on a budget. So they’re looking for how they can maximize existing investments with new ones. And these are all the things partners have to address to be able to win customers. So really showing maximum value. This also speaks to our role as partner leaders, but the old school Chaley there who just focuses on resellers won’t be as competitive as those who invest in understanding how a platform actually works. And what that means is how to work with ISVs as well who can integrate with API’s and SDKs and deliver new combined solutions to customers. So our roles are evolving into solution leaders who need to work with partners that can help grow that product solution set, identifying the right products, integrating with existing customer investments, packaging that together and delivering it. And this will hold higher value to your organization and the ecosystems you build if you’re a leader who’s able to really think in that kind of solution, and integration mindset. And it’s also critical that we understand various partner types and align that with what the company needs at different stages of its lifecycle. So for example, if you are a partner leader at a small startup, that’s very different than if your partner leader and a large public company, they’re just in different phases of their growth. Also thinking about what markets you’re trying to break into or grow into such as international where you may not have as many bodies in market, and what partners you need to help growth there versus in the US where you may have lots of bodies. Also thinking about vertical strategies as well, if you’re trying to break into FinTech or public sector or government or sled, those partners may be very different than a commercial type of engagement, and also your corporate product strategy as well. So if you think of yourself as a product solution leader, as part of this whole partner ecosystem, really aligning with the product teams, and thinking about tech partnerships, and ISVs, as well as thinking about partners that can expertly sell, and architect and deliver solutions, and also sales partnerships, as well. So thinking about all the various partner types, and what your company is trying to achieve, is super important. And that’s what you’re expected to do. Now, as a partner leader,

Vince Menzione 20:55

I love what you have to say, who reminded me 10 years ago, I was on stage as Microsoft, at a channel conference talking about the cloud and how these organizations needed to transform to be solutions organizations, right, it was no longer acceptable to go out and try and sell license to somebody as transaction world was changing. And I’m still working with some of these organizations on the other side. And it’s surprising to me to see how some of these organizations still have not transformed 10 years later.

Laura Padilla 21:23

Yeah, I agree. Because I remember when you know, when cloud was a thing, and it was just coming out, and all of these partners really stressing out about how I’m going to move from selling on prem boxes of stuff to selling software in the Cloud and how that’s going to work. That was kind of the first wave of disruption for the partner space. And a lot of companies didn’t survive that. And there are still companies who don’t understand that evolution just started. And then if you don’t keep evolving, you’re not going to make it longer term.

Vince Menzione 21:57

I’m happy to announce that partner tap has become a founding sponsor of ultimate guide to partnering. I’ve been friends with the founders of partner tap for many years. And partner tap is the only partner ecosystem platform designed for the enterprise. Their technology makes it easy to align channel teams with automated account mapping, letting you control what data you share, while building a partner revenue engine. I’m so excited to have them on board, be on the lookout for events, content and more. And I’m so excited to continue working together and our exciting year ahead. So what do you see from the best partnerships? Like what are the ones that you look for or delight you?

Laura Padilla 22:45

Well, it really boils down to investments and those partners that that really understand that I have to invest. And it’s a partnership of giving and taking as well. Those are the most beneficial. And it’s really important to get executive sign off on the business plan objectives. So the expectations on both sides are adequately met when you haven’t had that if expectations are mismatched, people are just not happy. In the end. How important is this partnership for both of us? Are we both willing to invest? And what are our expectations from return? And are those aligned? For example, you know, when I was at Nutanix, our Citrix partnership, there was highly successful one. And because we had all those elements, we had a common enemy of VMware. And so both Citrix and Nutanix both saw, hey, we have to disrupt and when this market against that common enemy, both of us said we want to invest everything from product roadmap, we were going to invest people engineering resources, we’re going to invest in marketing, where people dedicated to the partnership. And so the investment was easy to justify, because we both had the commitment on both sides of it. And so that was a very strong partnership. And then I think about at zoom from the large side, Illumina was a very successful service provider partnership, for the same reason they were extremely invested in in zoom, they invested heavily on the product integration side for integrating with both the Zoom meetings as well as the Zoom phone product, and they actually incented their sellers to sell zoom. And so that was a partnership that was also highly successful. So if you have all of those elements, there should be no reason why it wouldn’t result in good returns.

Vince Menzione 24:23

I heard invested and committed right for me committed as resources, it’s incentives. It’s exceeded that it’s like everybody’s focused maniacally focused on the execution of the partnership. What about the partnerships that you see fail? Is it just the antithesis of this or there’s the dysfunction? What do you believe to be the kryptonite?

Laura Padilla 24:41

Yeah, I mean, I’ve had several partnerships fail honestly. And, you know, if I look back on them, it’s usually happens due to misalignment in our goals and expectations. And for example, what we wanted out of it wasn’t what the other wanted is well, or what they wanted to give us and so sometimes this happens due to existing partnerships with competitors that They don’t want to disrupt. So not naming names. But we had a big partner, actually two big partners at zoom, that we were super excited to partner with them at the beginning. And they really were not a good fit. And the reason was the partner initially had said they wanted to invest in product integrations. And then at the end, they pulled out of it and said, they didn’t want to do those integrations. And really, what we found out was they had made commitments to some of our competitors to do them. And so they didn’t want to disrupt an existing partner, and all the revenue they were making off that partnership, right. And so back to the commitment and mutual alignment, if that partner doesn’t want to commit to what’s needed to make it happen, it’s not going to happen.

Vince Menzione 25:43

Yeah, really insightful, really insightful. And I could think of some of those relationships where the seat at the table was more a, it was more a flanking position. For them. It was more of a, you know, we’re doing this not because we really want the partnership to be successful, but we want to block the strategy. Yeah. And

Laura Padilla 25:59

sometimes partners, and they were honest with us would say, Hey, I’m really only partnering with you, because my customers are asking for it. But it’s going to be a reactive partnership versus proactive because I’ve already made commitments to your competitors. And when that happens, you know, they they pretty much have up front told you I’m gonna invest all my money with your competitors, but I’ll just do what needs to happen to make sure when customers act, react, ask reactively, we’ll be able to fulfill that demand, which isn’t very inspiring on our end, right?

Vince Menzione 26:29

No, it’s not as if we’re gonna check the box basically, is what they’re gonna say. So Laura, we could talk all day about partnering. And I want to have you back on the podcast. I love this conversation and the energy you’re bringing to it. But you also have had an amazing career. And I love to share with our listeners, many of whom are earlier in career professionals. How you got here, was there a spark or a nugget of advice you received on the journey that accelerated your path?

Laura Padilla 26:55

My career journey is actually really interesting. When I was in college, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I wouldn’t say that partnerships, or being in tech actually was something that interested me, I was very interested in music and was hoping to pursue a career in music that didn’t pan out. And so what I did was get into tech and quickly figured out what I was good at and what I really enjoyed doing. And I found that partnerships allowed you to really feel like you’re owning a business. I mean, you have to be technical, you have to understand contracts and negotiation, you have to understand finance, you have to understand technology, managing people writing a business plan. So it’s almost like you had to be your own CEO of a business division, I really love being able to do all those different disciplines. And also along the way, I would say that I had several great bosses that believed in me and gave me a lot of room to show what I can do. Since I said earlier, I like to be challenged and learn new things. What I did was I never really turned down new work. So when I saw there was a new project or a new area that the company needed, I would just volunteer and I jumped into it, right or anytime I was offered something new to take on. I never turned it down. And so for me, it was a personal challenge to show that I could do it at zoom, for example, I had never run that large of a team or a business. And at first I was intimidated, because I thought, wow, they’re gonna let me do all this. But I really just dug in and asked for lots of advice. Do not ever be shy to ask questions or ask for advice. And really what I was was energized by all the learnings and responsibility I was giving. And this large challenge just made me want to do even better and more work. And so I really embraced it. And so those bosses that encouraged me have had a lot to do with my success. Actually,

Vince Menzione 28:39

it strikes me that this reminds me of the conversation we had a little bit earlier about serving, like embracing something that was uncomfortable, like doing the uncomfortable.

Laura Padilla 28:47

Yeah, I enjoy that. Because for me, it actually just challenges me to do better and more, and I feel I do my best work in that area. And that space and that mind space.

Vince Menzione 28:57

You know, I interview many women in technology, and also people of different various backgrounds. So Laura, you’re of Latina background and a woman in technology. Was there any unique obstacles you needed to overcome?

Laura Padilla 29:12

Oh, of course, I mean, everybody is bias. Even people that say that they’re not we are we just have inherent bias and everything right, just in every walks of life. And so I had overcome the fact that I don’t usually fit the typical mold of what an executive in this role should look like, or what people are just used to, it was very obvious that most of the time I really had to prove that I deserved a seat at that table. And I really just did it by doubling down on the work. Because I do ultimately believe that it’s about your work and your capabilities. I will speak above everything else. And ultimately people will look at you and they’ll ask themselves, do I trust this person to deliver the job? And do I enjoy working with them? And so I quickly realized what I thought I was good at and I just double down on that and I carved out my role as someone who’s an expert in building partner functions and teams and so Have, I really looked at other leaders and peers, and I took what I could as their strengths, and extracted that. And I also looked at maybe areas, they weren’t that strong. And I wanted to be very aware of that and to think through how I could be better than that person in those areas of weakness. So building that self awareness was a really important for me. And I also as I got older, I really didn’t want to look at these biases, as you know, someone who’s unfair or look at it negatively. I took it more again, as a challenge to myself to win this person over and to show that my hard work and my ethics, they would want me on their team. And so I always took that approach.

Vince Menzione 30:39

What about being in the room? Did you feel different? Did you feel unique? Was there anything specific there? Oh, totally.

Laura Padilla 30:45

I mean, it was, and it still happens all the time, where I walk into the room, and I’m the only female in the room, or the only person who’s you know, divers are different. And also because I’m petite, you know, sometimes people it’s funny, they don’t assume I’ll be the leader that they were expecting, right? So I have to kind of turn the conversation and, and show them that I have that capability and that skill set to have that seat at the table. It’s very common, it’s more common than not, and I’ve taken it more as an opportunity for me than looking at it negatively.

Vince Menzione 31:17

Yeah, I have the example of the woman leader who’s got maybe a male, associate somebody who’s on her team there. And they address all the questions and conversation to that person as opposed to the leader in the room.

Laura Padilla 31:29

Yes. And that happens quite a bit. I’ve even had situations where I’ve owned a function. And I noticed that a peer of mine who’s a male, even though he doesn’t own the function, he would have opinions on my work. And my boss, or the leadership would listen to him versus myself, right. And so it was funny in those situations where I would at first be upset. And I would say that’s frustrating. But then I actually learned to navigate it, where I would partner with that person on being able to deliver a message or to use that person as an ally in those situations, and it worked out great.

Vince Menzione 32:03

Any advice for people that you would mentor? What advice would you give them?

Laura Padilla 32:08

You didn’t really need to focus on being the best? And what I mean by that is understanding your craft and being somebody that people want to work with and admire. What I did was I really looked at, okay, how can I carve out an area of expertise for myself and be the best at it? I want people when they think of partnerships, they would think, Oh, Laura would be the person I would call immediately if I had a question or I needed to build an org around partnerships. So how do you stand out in that functional area that you want to be considered an expert at? And you need to just double down on the work, understand it, and be the best at it. And it’s just really comes down to that. Nothing comes easy. And you would be really surprised how many people expect to be rewarded without putting that work in. And it just doesn’t work like that anymore. Or ever.

Vince Menzione 32:58

I so agree with it. There. You heard the example before about like, if you do great work, expect Okay, results, right? You’ve got to do like the most excellent work to expect great results.

Laura Padilla 33:09

Exactly. There’s really no shortcuts to success. Unfortunately, there aren’t.

Vince Menzione 33:13

So let’s have a little bit of fun. You are hosting a dinner party, and this dinner party could be at any location, it could be in Hawaii could bring your surfboards to this dinner party, in fact, and you can invite any guest three guests, in fact, from the present, or the past to this amazing dinner party. Whom would you invite, and why?

Laura Padilla 33:33

This is an awesome question. And I had to really think about it. So I would want to invite Dolly Parton. And the reason is because obviously having musical background I love music. She’s someone that a co worker introduced me to. And obviously I knew of Dolly Parton, two of my co workers obsessed with her and I started started spending more time reading about her. And she’s a really fascinating woman, not only she’s a prolific songwriter, very successful musician, but she’s also a philanthropist, a feminist. You know, she helped everything from trying to fund vaccine, she builds libraries, to make sure that kids are reading I mean, she really gives back and for her to be able to do that as a woman, especially you know, this day and age and when she started is super impressive. So being able to hear more about her life story. And what drives her would be super interesting. A second person would be Abraham Lincoln. And the reason why I think of him is you know, he was president during a time of huge political strife. And there were so many things happening, everything from wars, to slavery to all, you know, just the building of this great nation that we live in. And there’s so much political strife happening in the US today that he would be someone that I’d want to ask about how he would handle this situation when there’s so much conflict and differing of opinions and what learnings we could take from the past and the third person would be Michelle Obama. I met her at a conference and I made a total fool of myself when I met her because I was so intuitive buyers are really funny story humans, I’ll tell you a different day. But I spoke with her for about 10 minutes. And she’s very striking in person. And she’s very amazing to talk to. She’s very well educated, obviously very intelligent. And she has traveled the world and seen the world as First Lady supporting her husband. And so she’s someone I think future generations could look up to as a role model, as well as I’d love to see your perspective as a diverse figure, this generation and what we’re going through and what the future may look like moving forward. So I think those three together combined would be a really great dinner party.

Vince Menzione 35:38

What a fun dinner. Can I come along? Could I just may come along for a beverage or something.

35:42

But of course,

Vince Menzione 35:43

first of all, Dolly Parton people underestimate Dolly Parton, like she came up in the 60s and 70s. When you talk about bias towards women, she is super intelligent. She is about as sharp as they get an incredible writer songwriter, right. I mean, she’s written songs that are prolific even beyond her recording them. And then she’s done so much great good in the world. And she continues to do and she’s so such a, besides being forced to goods, such a source of life, Abraham Lincoln, I mean, we need Abraham Lincoln now more than ever, and then Michelle Obama, who I just, you know, I adore the work, we could talk about the work that she’s done the role model that she has been to so many, what’s it such a great dinner party?

Laura Padilla 36:24

Well, thank you. That would be fun. I’d love to be able to do that.

Vince Menzione 36:27

All right, where are you having this dinner party? You’re gonna have it in Hawaii? Where is this gonna take place?

Laura Padilla 36:32

Hawaii would be fun. I know, actually, I don’t know, I’d have to think about that. Maybe in Mexico City, Mexico City has amazing food and culture. So it might be fun to do it, you know, somewhere with a little bit more of kind of pizzazz and all this combination of all these different flavors and

Vince Menzione 36:48

cultures come definitely coming. My daughter just came back from her second trip to Mexico City and has told my wife and I that we need to go. So there we go. I’m coming along.

Laura Padilla 36:57

Yeah, it is. It’s amazing. All right.

Vince Menzione 36:59

So you have been an amazing guest, Laura, I want to thank you for the energy, the expertise and the time that you’ve taken to be with our listeners here today, this great group of listeners. But as we round the corner during this time, this time, like no other, what advice do you have for our listeners to help them optimize for success.

Laura Padilla 37:19

Ultimately, if you want to lead a team or be successful in a certain discipline, or company or job, you really just have to be really good at what you do and stand out amongst others. So thinking about what skill set can I build for myself that will make me stand out is really important to think about what I did, for example, years ago is I noticed that there were a lot of leaders in channel at the time or in some of the partnership roses that weren’t very technical. Do we understand that? Well, the products they were selling and on sound surprising, but it’s actually true. And so I spent a ton of time becoming more technical spend time with the SC organization as well as a product management organization. I had friends in both. And I just dove in and had them teach me and whiteboard things, even asking dumb questions. And so I’ve taken that approach anywhere that I’ve gone. And so hard work competency, integrity really does win out in the end. And one other skill set is problem solving is one thing that I’ve completed, I think is hugely underrated today. I mean, the most impressive people are undeterred by problems. And instead they find creative solutions on how to solve them. For example, some of my leaders that work for me, the one that distinguish the good ones from the great ones, or the ones that come with me with a problem and a solution, versus the ones just come and complain and say, Hey, there’s all these problems, and expect me to solve it. For them. Being able to be a problem solver is so critical today. And you will stand out as a result of that. So one thing also, I’ll leave people thinking is, are you the person that they would call if they need an awesome partner leader to hire, ask yourself that question what you need to do to be sure you’re the first one on their list?

Vince Menzione 39:01

Are you the person they would call and you mentioned hard working integrity, competency and problem solving as some of the attributes of skills. I love it. Laurie, you have been an amazing guest. I want to thank you for being such an amazing guest on Ultimate Guide to partner. Well, thank

Laura Padilla 39:17

you, Vince. It’s been super fun. And it was really great to meet you. So great

Vince Menzione 39:21

to meet you. And let’s go to Mexico City. Let’s do it. All right. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Guide to partnering. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner, executive and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it. We all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail and that ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of Best Practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com.