This transcript was produced by Otter.ai and there are typos and grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
marketing, partnering, brand, microsoft, organization, people, customers, technical, vince, technology, marketers, event, inspire, industry, microsoft ecosystem, sales, thinking, songs, story, business
SPEAKERS
Dux Raymond Sy, Vince Menzione
Vince Menzione 00:00
Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to partnering in this podcast Vince Menzione. a proven industry sales and partner executive brings together technology leaders to discuss transformational trends and to deconstruct successful strategies to thrive and survive in the rapid age of cloud transformation. And now your host, Vince Menzione. Welcome to or Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering where technology leaders come to optimize results through successful partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and my mission is to help leaders like you unlock the leadership principles and learnings of the best in the business. To get partnerships right. optimize for success and deliver your greatest results. I find that technology organizations undervalue the power of brands and under invest in marketing. If you want to learn from one of the best in the business, how to achieve high performance building brand with leaders like Microsoft, then you won’t want to miss this episode. My guest for this episode of the podcast is Dux Raymond sigh, a dear friend and the chief brand officer at app point. This is Dux third visit to Ultimate Guide to partnering that puts him in rarefied air, and I asked ducks to come back to Ultimate Guide to partnering to help you understand why brand brand storytelling and investing in marketing are critical to success working with the tech giant. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed spending time with Dux Raymond sy. ducks. Welcome back to the podcast
Dux Raymond Sy 01:39
avian stankey. Thank you for having me back on so happy to buy you dinner worked.
Vince Menzione 01:43
It was a really nice dinner by the way. I really enjoyed that.
Dux Raymond Sy 01:48
It was a crucial dinner virtual
Vince Menzione 01:50
dinner. That’s right. Well, we haven’t done the in person events just like we’re talking about here. And I’m so excited to welcome you back to Ultimate Guide to bartering. This is your third time back on Ultimate Guide to partner your your three time are now. And
Dux Raymond Sy 02:04
I feel special in my record holder so far.
Vince Menzione 02:07
You’re close, you’re close. Well, we’ll get I think app point as a whole is a record holder. How’s that?
Dux Raymond Sy 02:13
Oh, thank you. Thank you that that that’s good enough. You
Vince Menzione 02:16
guys are great. I love that boy got a long history working with you. And let’s talk about you and your role, right? You’re the chief brand officer for AP point. And now this three time guest on Ultimate Guide to bartering you’ve had an exciting year. I mean, it’s been a big year for avepoint. And I was hoping we could catch up. So let’s go.
Dux Raymond Sy 02:34
Thank you. And for those listening, it’s a pleasure to be back. And for those who have not met, my name is Dux. I’m the proud husband of Ramona and dad have two amazing kids. As Vince mentioned, I serve as the chief brand Officer here at AB point app points, the largest SAS data management solutions provider for Microsoft 365. We essentially help companies around the world to collaborate with confidence, especially during this time of pandemic where everybody’s jumping on the cloud. And my job is to lead up points brand strategy and brand experience and brand value. And as Vince mentioned, it’s been an exciting time for us. Last July, we became a publicly listed company after 20 years in business.
Vince Menzione 03:15
Wow, that’s amazing. 20 years in business and just went public.
Dux Raymond Sy 03:19
That’s right. To some It’s been a while we’re not like a lot of the other tech companies out there were six months in business. They’re public, but slowly but surely, it’s it’s definitely an exciting time. And
Vince Menzione 03:30
we’re grateful. Well, you’ve done an astounding job building the brand at that point. And I talk about this being a shiny quarter in a bucket full of shiny quarters and how it’s difficult today, there are 1000s and 1000s of technology organizations that need to stand out and build a brand we are you and I we’re both work in the Microsoft ecosystem. We know there’s over 400,000 partners just in the Microsoft ecosystem alone. And so I was hoping today we would kind of dive in a little bit because you’ve done some really amazing work on building brand brand strategy and marketing. And so I was hoping you could share some of that with our listeners today.
Dux Raymond Sy 04:11
Absolutely. I’m more than happy to and maybe we can start with the basics right what is brand some of us think of brand as a name, how people perceive you. But for me the best definition of brand is from a brand strategist His name is Fabian ger halter in the way he describes brand is that brand is a service product company or person would soul that is attractive and smart. I love that definition. Let me repeat brand is a service product company or person with soul that is attractive and smart. I think that encapsulate at least to me what a brand should be.
Vince Menzione 04:55
I love that. So I want to I want to peel back on that a little bit. Right so he taught me something About soul I’m thinking about is that authenticity?
Dux Raymond Sy 05:03
It is. And it’s, it’s that and among other things, so if we unpack that, so we think about soul, we think about authenticity. And the reason why we exist, because if you think about it from that perspective, it’s essentially from a customer vantage point is why should people care about you, that’s your soul. And that’s true for a person. That’s true for a company or a product. So if you think about your brand, why why should people care about you and being authentic is important. Being credible is important. It’s, it’s answering the question, why do you exist?
Vince Menzione 05:41
So it’s your just cause? So I think about just cause I think about when you think about, like, What is the reason? What is your reason for existing?
Dux Raymond Sy 05:48
Correct? Absolutely. And, on one hand, we can talk about we exist, because we have a great product that help companies better manage data in Microsoft 365. That’s okay. But that’s not something that I would care about. So if I think about avepoint, for example, and we’re in this constant journey, making sure our brand is accepted, our sole is to help organizations collaborate with confidence. Now, Microsoft is one ecosystem, there may be another ecosystem out there that people take advantage of such as Google, or Salesforce, or what have you. But our reason to exist is we want to help organization collaborate with confidence. So they’re not concerned if their data impacted. If there’s malicious activities that happen, be it ransomware, or any other things, or I want them to be confident when they move to the cloud, I want them to be confident that they’re in compliant with regional restrictions such as GDPR. So what’s the reason for your existence? Right? So it’s above and beyond features and function?
Vince Menzione 06:53
I think about Simon Sinek and his famous presentation on why right and so what’s your why, right, so the Center for you is collaborate with competence. Absolutely. So talk to me more about like, okay, so attractive and smart. Like, how do you define those two?
Dux Raymond Sy 07:08
Sure. So we talk about soul is why do you exist? Now with attractive, right, like, how do we make people feel, I think about the North Star for me as a chief brand officer is I think organizations like like apple, like BMW, right? Like the mere fact I mentioned the word apple or BMW, hopefully yourself or the listeners out there, suddenly, you felt something. Let’s pick Apple, for example, the moment you first got introduced to Apple, you saw their ad, you touch their phone, you walk into an apple store, before pandemic, you call for help you download an update. There’s this sense of simplicity, there’s this sense of consistency. And then there’s this sense of luxury as well, when you think about Apple, it’s so different than the car brand BMW, right? You feel as if you’re special, those that’s the kind of feeling evokes. So when you think about attraction and attractiveness. How does your brand make people feel? And it’s a tall order, right? Because this takes intention. This takes a full long brand experience thinking. So it’s not just marketing alone, right. So when I think about us as a company, again, the moment somebody sees our website calls, to see a demo of our product engages with our sales team, they buy our product, how do they like using our technology? So it’s an end to end experience, and making sure that people love it, and they’re attracted to it.
Vince Menzione 08:40
So how do you infuse this into an organization? Right, we can talk about like advertising and slick ads for BMW and apple. But that’s not where it ends, I just work begins,
Dux Raymond Sy 08:51
I think about is from the emotional connection. It’s, it’s when you feel when you come in contact with the brand. So you write the ads are the first step. But then how do you carry through? So as you may surmise, it’s not straightforward and easy, right? So this is where we have to start thinking about marketing can’t just be a silo within your organization. The common thinking is that, oh, we need marketing. We need ads, we need to be at an event, we need to put nice links out there. But elevating from that thinking is, what would be the experience. Like it’s so different than how we interact with people, right? So for example, Vince, the first time we met, I don’t know if you recall this, or you were still at Microsoft, I think we met at a local event or inspire some public sector event, but I had a great first meeting with you, and then you followed up, and then we had a call. So it’s consistent, right? So it’s not just that first interaction, but throughout the interaction, the conversations, the touch points, has to go from, again, marketing to the end to end experience, which for me, it’s a The journey for any organization.
Vince Menzione 10:02
So this is a great conversation. And we’ve talked about two very visceral brands. And we both work in this tech sector, this high tech sector, many technology organizations, a lot of the organizations, you and I know, they struggle here, they struggle with brand, they struggle with marketing just in general. So why do you believe that? So?
Dux Raymond Sy 10:24
That’s a fantastic question, Vince, when I took on this responsibility, which I think this was a year ago, now really leading the brand strategy for add point is, I studied a lot of organizations, including ourselves, I think it comes down to three reasons why, especially tech companies struggle with building successful brand marketing programs. And I think the first one is, I alluded to this earlier is marketing is often mistaken as secondary to sales or engineering. Case in point, and this is my experience as well, in previous organizations where marketing is looked upon as I hate to say this, but I have to be blunt, right, like marketing’s often hired help. Oh, let’s get interns to do this. Or, hey, hey, marketing, folks, can you put a brochure together? Because I need for my presentation? Yeah. If you think about successful tech companies out there, such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, guess what marketing is in the same playing field as sales and engineering. That’s right, equal playing field clear. I think last year, Microsoft spent 20 point 2 billion on sales and marketing, it’s critical. And I think that’s the first reason why a lot of words struggle is putting marketing as a secondary priority. The second reason is a lot of organization, they surrender to the fact that oh, we can’t measure marketing, which I don’t believe marketing, just like any other divisions, the organization should have measurable KPIs like sales and engineering, for example, here at AB point, right when we measure different facets of marketing. So let me pick couple examples. So our field marketing organization, where each business unit has a field marketing leader, so for example, Germany, or friends or US public sector, there’s a field marketing manager that sits side by side with the business in sales lead, and say, Hey, this is our target for this year, we need to get to x million dollars for this business. So the field marketer along with the sales team would sit down, figure out, Okay, what do we need to do to get to that number? What campaigns Do we need to run? What account based marketing strategy? Do we need to they’re measured around the sales target? And then conversely, for our demand generation team? They’re measured on how many leads that come in? How much of those get converted? What’s the marketing influence on business? And then on the brand side, we measure around? What are the mentions, we get from, for example, press or media? What’s the click through rates that we get based on the brand ads that we put. So point being is, just like any other discipline in the business marketing should have measurable KPIs? Because oftentimes, I hear from other organizations say, Oh, it’s hard to measure marketing? No, no, it’s not it’s doable, but you have to put some metrics in place. That’s the second reason, companies don’t put metrics around marketing in third. Now, this may be controversial events. But I think a lot of tech companies struggle to build successful marketing programs is they don’t have anybody technical in marketing. So so let me let me expand that further, right, being a tech company, sure, we can hire marketers all day long. But at the very least, you need to have at least one person in there. That’s technical. And this is the lesson I’ve learned in the value I found since getting involved in marketing is being ISV in the Microsoft ecosystem, having myself and couple my other colleagues that are technologists first marketers Second, we could be more authentic, we could be more credible. And then we can speak to things that are top of mind not only with with what the industry is doing, but also with what the customer needs. That way we can organize our messaging or value prop, our go to market strategy. That’s technically sound. Right? So it’s not just oh, what does he know? He’s just a marketing person. Yeah. And again, that’s a common feedback we get that’s a no, no. I’m a technical person. First, I can still code. I can get up on stage at a technical event and talk all the technical stuff that people in the room would want to learn.
Vince Menzione 14:50
That credibility is, is so valuable, you know, you talk about authenticity, right? So when you’re technical and you understand the technology, you can simplify it And transfer the value back to the customer because you know it intuitively at a deeper level than if I just gave you words on a page to read
Dux Raymond Sy 15:09
100%. In frankly, the ecosystem in the technology is getting more sophisticated and complicated, right? A lot of customers these days, while as much as I love to say they’re 100%, Microsoft Cloud, well, they’re not in the movement towards a multi cloud environment, which makes sense for customers also brings in more complexity. And a marketing organization should be able to really, like he said, simplify that and message it in a way that would make sense to customer and still be true and credible and authentic.
Vince Menzione 15:46
I want to ask you about like, how do you get people like what what is the skill set? So I look at you as a kind of a shining example, right? Somebody who has technical chops, but can translate it down to the most simple level for people to understand, how do you get good technical people into the marketing organization?
Dux Raymond Sy 16:04
I think so I think about our company, where, as I mentioned, in our brand and marketing team, there are a good set of technical folks, I think, here’s here are the signs, right? Obviously, the person is technical. But second is you can see people that are more engaged, or I would say that would like to be talking to customers more writing, being out there may be publishing a blog or doing webinars, those are some characteristics of good marketers, at least in my opinion. So people who want to be more public, right, so that’s one second is I think, technical folks that can, as you mentioned, didn’t that can simplify or, or tell stories, frankly, I think one challenge technical folks have is in and I’m guilty of this as well, from time to time is we assume people understand buzzwords and jargons. And, and all the technical stuff. No, no, but we need people that can take all the technical complexity, simplify it, and more importantly, tell it in a way that makes sense. And this is through storytelling, right. So that’s the second characteristics that we want to identify in technical people to be good marketers. I think that third part is somebody that that’s able to continuously learn new technical concepts as well, because one caution I have is I’ve met folks who are technical once upon a time, and then they moved over to the business side or the marketing side. And then they just gave up on being technical in, it’s challenging, don’t get me wrong. So even for myself, right? I try and carve out time to learn about what the latest and greatest is with Azure. So I geek out on some weekends and just start learning about cognitive services, or what’s new with Microsoft AI. So you need that person who still wants to constantly learn and keep up with technology.
Vince Menzione 18:03
Yeah, sharpening the saw is the way I like to refer to it. So we have some skill sets that we don’t normally transpose into a marketing organization, we do think about the people that are traditional marketers of the past. Let’s talk more about those skill sets. Okay, so we need to be technical, we need to be able to tell great stories. And then we also need to be able to translate it right, create value, that’s the most important part is I’ve got to be able to transfer that emotion that you talked about earlier. Back to the customer. How do you do that?
Dux Raymond Sy 18:31
So we’ve already tackled a technical bit, right? I think I want to focus on the next few things, the storytelling and then being able to communicate and transferring convey information. So when you think about storytelling, right, it’s, it’s something we’ve discussed a lot, Vince and our good friend Mary wrote a phenomenal book around it. I love Mary’s work. Yep. Be think about story, brand stories, really, a cohesive narrative that covers facts and feelings that are created by your brand and again, has to be intentional. I can’t think of an organization that has a brand story that just made that that that was accidental, or it was just ad hoc, in unlike traditional marketing and advertising, which is about showing and telling your brand, a story must inspire an emotional reaction. I know back in the day, the words emotions and inspire doesn’t really come up when you think about tech marketing, but it’s very, very critical these days. Because stories by the way, is something that can stick more with people I think there’s a research that came out that you remember things 22 times more if you hear it in a brand story or in a in a storytelling fashion. Okay, some some tips. So how do you think about stories where some of the common traits you always start with problems? So I think about the cool thing with storytelling is it doesn’t have to be complex, right? So for example, the way for us the way we think about putting together a brand story or even some assets for our products or technologies? What are some of the core problems? So today during the pandemic, everybody’s going to the cloud. So the challenges around things like how do I move? Once I moved there? How do I better govern some of our investments in Microsoft 365? So start with some of the common challenges or problems. And then another common trait is how do you redefine an experience, right? So when I think about redefining experience, so when we start putting messaging together stories together, we always talk about how do we make it easy to do the right thing for people or customers in Microsoft 365? So for example, I’m sure, Vince, you are familiar with Microsoft Teams, right? Who isn’t today? Yes, but one of the feedback we get from customers is that, but there’s so much to remind our organization on what to do or what not to do in teams to be secure and safe. So what if we make it easy for people to do the right thing? What if there’s a technology behind the scenes that would automate based on who you are what you’re doing, you’ll take care of protecting? Right, so you’re redefining that experience. So that’s a common trait of a story. And then the last thing is, I would say is, if you want the story to stick and be effective, it’s always have something or someone visible in public. So it’s no surprise that you see a such an Adela out there, Steve Jobs, you see all these key people out there that represents your company, their story, in the same with that point, right. So I’m pretty much front and center out there. Jason, my colleague who leads our channel businesses out there, so always have somebody visible. So So that’s something that we have to think about with your story. So it’s not just about telling a good story. But all these different common elements should be a part of it.
Vince Menzione 21:57
Before we started, you and I were talking about this world, we’ve been living through this this age, since the pandemic, and we’re still not quite out of it the way we would hope to be at this point, the in person events, we’re all going to going through some fatigue. So there’s a lot of ways like when I think about you, and Jason and your visibility, and we both use vehicles like LinkedIn, but what are the other? What are the other call methodologies, vehicles? Like how do you think about holistically? Once you’ve built that brand story? How do you convey it? What vehicles do you use to convey it?
Dux Raymond Sy 22:32
You bring up a good point then, because oftentimes, organizations or even people think about building brand is a transaction one time event, oh, let me tweak this, or let me write this blog or let me speak at this event. And I’m good, I’m done. Well, just like anything else, it has to be consistent. So there are a couple of ways I would recommend organizations or people to carry on and be consistent with their brand. So first and foremost, especially in this day and age, you have to be active and involved in the appropriate social media channels. People always ask me, they’re like, hey, should I be on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, tik tok, I go, where’s your audience? So the first step you have to consider or the first thing you have to consider is with your brand building exercise. What are you trying to do? Number one, are you promoting your company? Are you doing for altruistic reasons. And once you figure that out, the second part is who’s your audience, right? Because knowing who your audience is, you’ll know where they are. So for at least my personal brand, and I’m sure Jason’s the same, most of my audiences in LinkedIn, and maybe Twitter. In fact, those two sets of audience are quite different as well. LinkedIn is primarily where a lot of the customers I work with are present. with Twitter, it’s more on the industry, peers and industry folks. And knowing where your audience is, the third part is okay, based on where your audience what kind of content can you consistently share. And when I say content, you’re not just randomly, as best you can sharing stuff that everybody else is you have to stand out. So a lot of the content I share is around how can you use it to be more productive? So I share a lot about things around productivity, life hacks, or I also share a lot of content around our industry, right? How can you better use Microsoft 365. So you have to be intentional, that people will learn and pick up stuff, and then you’ll be consistent about it. I do use a lot of different tools and assets to convey all this information. So it’s not just articles, sometimes it’s video, sometimes it’s presentations, and consistency is key. And then the last part I would say is to continuously communicate. You can only do so much in the digital space. You brought this up, people are just burned out or resume fatigue. So once the opportunity opens up, again, engage in face to face setting be at an event or a local meetup or a local user group. So So those are just some of the things that we should do. And it’s not the only thing. By the way, there’s also a misunderstanding that, oh, when I start jumping on social media, I don’t have to do this other branding or marketing activity that I used to do. No, no, no, it’s not an order. But it’s an end.
Vince Menzione 25:30
Really great points here. So I am listening. I’m a technology organization. And perhaps I’m struggling here with what do I do next? Like maybe I don’t have much of a marketing function today. What do you recommend for me,
Dux Raymond Sy 25:43
so what I would say step one, so regardless, if you’re a two person, organization, 10 people organization or 1000, people organization, you got to step back and think about as a business, your primary goal is to grow your business and make money. So So you start with that, I would suggest that when you think about marketing, always tie it from a, how can marketing help drive my business? I mean, brand is important. Don’t get me wrong, at least from my purview. And what I’ve seen in larger organizations, we always start more around how can marketing help drive sales or business growth. So start with that. The second thing is look into opportunities where, especially these days, the barrier to me marketing is so low, it doesn’t mean you have to start hiring agencies like there’s a lot of assets and resources out there, on how you start thinking about how you generate leads. So for example, start with content marketing, it doesn’t cost this much you can start a blog or even start a webinar started YouTube video series on how to those are essentially low hanging fruit, sure you invest time and money, but you showcase your expertise as to what you do. Because as we all know, people want to buy, they don’t want to be sold to. In fact, that’s how I started in in my previous company where I was a consulting organization, it was we started as two people and we grew to 30 people, I don’t have any marketing resources. So I went from the I took the approach of how can I share my expertise, so people get to know me. And as they got to know me, they reach out to me and say, Hey, ducks, you seem to know a lot about SharePoint for project management, can you come in and help us figure it out for our organization? So that’s, I think, a good initial step, certainly, you’re going to spend time and effort but that way you’re positioning yourself as a leader, as an expert in that field. And then from that you can build upon your other marketing approach,
Vince Menzione 27:50
some really good and valid points here. I’m just thinking about our Microsoft ecosystem for a moment here. What advice would you have for the organizations today that might still be struggling? You know, I talked about the shiny quarters, what would you say to them to optimize for success this year?
Dux Raymond Sy 28:06
Yeah, for this year. First and foremost, you got to be crystal clear with Microsoft’s focus areas and KPIs. One of the great things that Microsoft offer, especially with their partner organization, there’s tons of assets and tons of resources. So look at that, and how you can take advantage of it and align with that as well, because other than resources, they’ve got incentives, not only from a corporate perspective, but also in the specific focus areas that they want to push, such as industry verticals, or, or industry clouds. Another area that Microsoft focus on is hybrid work. As we all know, people are trying to figure out how to go back to work teams is blowing up, Microsoft 365, and dynamics is blowing up, see if you can align your practice with that and your marketing with that. The second area of what partners can do as well is partner to partner so as as you mentioned, Vince, we just recently launched our channel program, where for example, we have opportunities for partner not only to work together and help our business grow together, but also co marketing opportunities. So look at outside of Microsoft, what other partners you can work with, and to do co marketing and then jointly grow your business. And then the last part around marketing is, look, you gotta in this sea in this sea of noise, right? where customers are just inundated with a lot of different offers and promotions and in webinars and what have you. You always have to go back to the basics. How can you stand yourself apart from everybody else? What’s your unique value prop and then take that value prop and look at all the different marketing approach and marketing V. Nichols to promote that
Vince Menzione 30:02
some really great advice. I really like what you had to say about partner to partner, by the way, because I do think that this ecosystem, the seats at the table, right, we tend to just think about our own organization, but they’re the other seats at the table, the customers thinking about implementing a whole solution and having the influence and the relationship to drive your brand through others as well is such a powerful force.
Dux Raymond Sy 30:25
Absolutely. I mean, if you just do the math, right, so what Microsoft is to last I checked $2 trillion business crazy. In the last that was what for every dollar that a customer spends, they spend $9 for partner solutions or services. So you do that math, nine times two, that’s $18 trillion. industry, the pie is just so big, that there’s no reason why partners should join forces in and work together and grow together. While we’re
Vince Menzione 30:57
on the topic of Microsoft, it seems like 100 years ago, but it was just a couple months ago that we were all at inspire. And I wanted to get your perspective, because you got to be the boots on the ground reporter at the event covering the events, I want to get your personal experience what that was like. And then also talk a little bit more about what are you seeing and how does it feel in the room and the announcements that were made.
Dux Raymond Sy 31:20
Now I’m so grateful for for the opportunity to be in studio for that virtual inspire, again, nothing beats in person inspired, but we make the most out of what we can during this time and with technology. So I was up there in Redmond in Microsoft Studios, so had a blast. And, boy, it’s a full on production. It’s like a two day TV show between having posts and segments and sessions. There’s a lot of energy. So a lot of folks behind the scenes doing the broadcast and streaming. And then I think there’s that continued sense of inspire excitement and optimism as they had back when we would used to go to Vegas. So the industry is growing, the opportunities abound for partners. And for me three key announcements or three key things that stood out for me number one, the slashing of the marketplace fees for partners, they used to charge 20% transaction fee. Now it’s down to 3%. So Microsoft’s really being aggressive on wanting partners to get engaged in their marketplaces. Yeah, especially having a huge partner ecosystem. Adam, if you talk to partners about about this, this announcement that they
Vince Menzione 32:38
made. Well, I was very telling, and we’ve had Sanjay on Sanjay Mehta from attacco io on talking about this whole ecosystem. And other guests have been talking about it as well. I mean, it was a very telling announcement that Microsoft is serious about marketplaces.
Dux Raymond Sy 32:52
And then the second thing is around their industry clouds, right. So having one of the top I would say if not the top Cloud Platform globally, but now they’re really zeroing in on different industries, obviously, they started with public sector, now they have health care. And now I think Adam inspired they announced their club for sustainability, that helping organizations through record report and reduce their emissions toward net zero, I think, again, to some This is way out there. But it makes sense in really aligns with their commitment to a lot of the work they’re doing for sustainability. So I think that was huge, right, the continued investment on industry cloud. And then the last part is around hybrid work and future of work with the continued growth of Microsoft 365. And the deeper integration with dynamics, where open up opportunities for partners to build collaborative apps, apps for employee experience like Microsoft Viva, right. And also the announcements of Windows 365. So, so really, Microsoft is leading the charge on what the future of work looks like. So to me, that’s exciting. And as a partner in that space, tons of opportunities.
Vince Menzione 34:07
Yeah. And the street reacted, right, we’ve seen the stock price go up. I mean, it’s quite telling what’s happening with Microsoft. And we’ve also had Bob Evans on from Cloud wars, talking about the three hyperscalers and how they come at it differently. But Microsoft’s approach right now, I think, is telling. I think it’s an exciting time for sure. For all of us in ecosystem. Absolutely. So ducks, I’d like to have a little fun here. I’ve been really diggin Spotify. I mean, I still have Apple, and I use that but I like the Spotify, ability to share playlists, and building the building some of my own playlists lately. And I was wondering, like, if you had only if you could only pick five songs and this would be your only playlist for the foreseeable future. Right. Think about this for a second. You may be stuck on a desert island with will think castaways here Or just the only songs you’re gonna listen to for a period of time. What would those five songs be? And why?
Dux Raymond Sy 35:06
Only five songs? Only five songs? All right, you two in the name of love, guys. I’m Michael Buble a home. I love that songs. Nice. Reminds me when I was traveling a lot, and I hear that music.
Vince Menzione 35:22
I can’t make those long flights.
Dux Raymond Sy 35:24
Exactly. And I’m into bossa nova so I would say one note Samba, especially the one that this singer covered her name is city si TTI. And I’ve heard I don’t I’m looking her up now city. She did a cover on one note Samba. Very good. So that’s three, right? Yeah, yeah. Get to more dancing in the moonlight. It’s a new version of this. It was done by I don’t know if I’m pronouncing the name right. But jus Bell, J UBE. L. I’m stuck on this
Vince Menzione 35:57
song. Oh, wow. I love that song, too. I can’t wait to listen to this one. This
Dux Raymond Sy 36:01
is a cool chill out version. But it’s very cool. Very nice. And then there’s this one musician I’ve been listening to. It’s from he’s from Australia. And it’s more of a, I don’t know, no, maybe more of EDM, but but the song is called descent. d s, c and T descent and the artists. Yeah, and the artists is all over. But it’s it’s spelled as o l dot v er.
Vince Menzione 36:28
Very cool. Very cool. We’re going to post these, we’re gonna put this playlist together and post it along with the episode for our listeners. So everybody could we could all pull down this music. I can’t wait to listen to Alex. I’m really excited about this. So I love what he had to say today. You first of all, I just love you. You’re like such a great guy. I mean, such a great individual, authentic real, just a great friend. And I just want to thank you for that and have it. Thank you.
Dux Raymond Sy 36:53
I love you, too. Thank you for all the support and really all the love through the years.
Vince Menzione 36:59
Well, it’s real. And I just love working with you. And I can’t wait to be in person again. Like we were talking about this earlier. Right? Like have just get some time together, break bread, do not do virtual dinner, let’s do a real dinner and can’t wait to do exactly, exactly. But I want to thank you again, for being so generous with your time you I know how compact and compressed your schedule is. And so I love having you back here on Ultimate Guide to partnering. Want to have you back again at some point. And I want to thank you for being such an amazing guest. I love what you had to say today especially on some of the topic of brand and marketing that some of our listeners really need to have.
Dux Raymond Sy 37:35
Awesome. Well, Vince, thank you all the best and definitely looking forward to you.
Vince Menzione 37:40 Thanks again. As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please subscribe on your favorite platform, like comment, tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to partnering and where they can find us and i’d love your feedback. Please like the podcast and provide comments or reach out to me at Vince Menzione on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You can also like and follow Ultimate Guide to partnering on our Facebook page, or drop me a line at Vin Sam at ultimate dash partnerships.com this episode of the podcast is sponsored by ultimate partnerships. Ultimate partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships, get partnerships right, optimize for success, deliver results. For more information, go to ultimate dash partnerships.com thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering calm and facebook.com slash Ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to