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After a 2-year hiatus, I am excited to welcome you back to Ultimate Guide to Partnering™! It’s so good to be back – especially now during these turbulent and uncertain times. I can’t think of a better time to be back in this seat to share an intimate conversation and hopefully help each of us during these times. People are craving certainty and direction during these incredibly uncertain and turbulent times. Today we see massive changes in our lifestyles, businesses, and society. I that as leaders, we must elevate our voices and drive clarity. I also believe that Organizations that embrace fundamentals and principles will have the best chance of success, and ultimately survival.
Many of you following and joining me on the journey know I’ve made it my life’s work to help organizations achieve exceptional business outcomes through successful partnering to achieve more significant results. I didn’t start as a partner guy, but as a business leader, I quickly learned that building successful partnering can be a pivotal accelerant to getting the results I needed. I’ve also been passionate about overcoming adversity.
I’ve described my career as consisting of three successful professional transformations. After nine years leading a significant channel strategy, I understood that partners often struggled to understand the tech giants. Partner Friends who ran successful practices with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon shared frustrations connecting and staying in lockstep with the technology giants during this time of massive change.
My friends at the tech giants were equally frustrated, scaling their limited resources to reach and enable their ecosystems. At the time, most of the outreach by the technology giants consisted of in-person events, blog posts, and an occasional video. What I saw was an unfulfilled need to help these organizations better stay in lockstep and thrive by sharing product and organizational information, best practices, and lessons learned to achieve successful business outcomes.
I took a page from the podcasts I enjoyed when I started. I decided on a long format to allow each episode to accomplish my three goals: 1. Help business organizations tell their relevant story and value proposition to help my listeners connect. 2. Ask each of these partner experts, “what makes great partnerships,” and why they often fail. 3. Peel back on the personal and professional journey to mentor my listeners. After 60 episodes, over 25,000 downloads, and more than 1,900 unique listeners worldwide, the work represents a vast compendium of “what makes successful partnering.” I have interviewed many leaders from Microsoft, leaders from Amazon, Google, and Salesforce, and many “Partners that Got it Right,” working with the tech giants. From this body of work, I have synthesized fundamental principles to help other organizations avoid the pitfalls.
A remarkable outcome has been the body of inspiration and learnings shared by my guests on overcoming adversity to achieve personal and professional success. I love sharing these examples of the grit, persistence, and determination needed, and each is a source of inspiration. Perhaps the most incredible outcome is that the podcast helped me to learn and grow personally and professionally. I learned so much through my incredible guests and have developed deep personal relationships through the process.
We’re at a different point in time now – not only is the world changed, it is calling out to each of us to be and to do more. The messages and the medium of podcasting are more critical now than ever.
On a deeply personal level, with all that has happened in our world in this last month and the need to finally address racial injustice in this country, I am hoping this podcast can serve as a beacon to those of us in the technology community. My episodes have always focused on both the business and the personal journey of my guests. I am hoping to share new examples of grit, determination, and leadership that both inform and inspire.
I’m excited to begin again. I hope you don’t feel like we ever left. Consider this a new volume or series of volumes focused on thriving during this time of considerable uncertainty, unrest, change, and transformation – in our society and our world.
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