What's up PartnerUp?!
Today we have PartnerHacker's head of partnerships, Will Taylor.
This episode is all about how Will forged relationships and compounded trust in the partnerships space.
We dive into Will's journey into B2B partnerships, explore his beginning as a sales person, and talk about adding value at scale.
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Transcript
Jared Fuller 00:00
Hey what is up partner up? We're back. Isaac.
Isaac Morehouse 00:18
Thank you. I just realized our last episode. Wait,
Jared Fuller 00:24
no, hold up.
Isaac Morehouse 00:26
It might come out after this one. I'm trying to remember because we've got a done off schedule this week. But you did not open with what is up partner up.
Jared Fuller 00:34
The last one I just rolled. Yeah, I mean, I don't have to do it every time. I don't have to do it. Okay.
Isaac Morehouse 00:39
Okay. I think because I know cadence and ritual are very important for you. You know? Yeah, so
Jared Fuller 00:45
it's like a standard thing. But at the same time, I think rolling into a combo that was that. Was that the Braden one thinks so? Yeah, because we're just rolling into a combo too. So sometimes when we like all know each other, and like, there's like a combo. I'm like, I was you just rattled, because I was trying to get my stuff set up. But ironically, I feel like whenever we have like a long term relationship with the like Jill or Braden, or someone like that, we tend to roll in. And then if it's a normal episode, I'll start it.
Isaac Morehouse 01:17
Okay. All right. All right. I thought I was I thought I was gonna get you, you're gonna be busted for forgetting the brandy on brand opening. But fair enough. It's a it's flexible. I like it makes it real? Well, I'm excited about speaking of people that we know, well, we're talking about the will, right? today. And I'm really excited about this conversation, because it's very, very much in my wheelhouse is the kind of stuff you know, I've been working with people on for careers and talking about a lot of the stuff we'll be talking about today. For over a decade, my my previous life before jumping into partner hacker. And, you know, it's funny, if you ask like, Okay, what is a what is a personal brand? I mean, it's basically just a reputation brand can make it sound kind of kind of douchey, or kind of cheesy, but it's basically a reputation. It's what comes to people's mind when they hear your name. Or if they hear opportunities that might be in your wheelhouse, do they think of you do you pop into their mind? That's kind of a way to think about it. And that's a great way to set this up. Because when we first launched partner hacker just a couple of months ago, we're kicking it off, we're seeing that there's a bunch of people that are loving the PhD, obviously, people would love this podcast for a good while now. And we're really seeing a lot of momentum. And Jared messages me in Slack, and he's like, A, what if we made our first hire already? And I was like, I was thinking about that, too. He's like, I have somebody in mind. I'm like soda. Why? And he's like, is it will Taylor? And I'm like, Yes, we both independently, immediately. We're like, if we were going to make a hire, who would it be? And we both knew right away. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that. And neither of us have worked with well, in a professional capacity before I didn't even know who he was until I started partner hacker with with Jared a couple months ago. Why did that happen? And that's what I want to kind of unpack today. So Well, first, can you give us just like a quick career timeline, like, give us your sort of, you know, where did you get started professionally? And what led you to where you are now and then we can kind of unpack some of the really interesting things that you've done?
Jared Fuller 03:24
No. Will I need you to spend at least 10 to 15 minutes on your government experience? Oh, no.
Isaac Morehouse 03:29
PTSD? Yeah.
Will Taylor 03:30
Well, there's enough content. Yeah. Yeah. So I graduated from psychology. And I was like, I want to be a therapist. And then I realized that's going to take a lot more schooling, and there's not as much potential opportunity, at least for my ignorant you know, 20 year old self 22 year old self thought. And I was in Kitchener, Ontario where Vinyard is based BlackBerry started. And so I kind of just fell into the tech scene just because my friends were there. And you know, there was down the street and office of a tech company. And I was like, Okay, I want to get into technology. I already had experience in sales, doing retail sales. And I was like, Okay, I'll do sales. That's pretty general, you know, that's a good way to break into an organization. And then my previous plan was actually I'll get into HR, because I had a minor in HR as well as my degree in psychology. And so I was like, Yeah, I'll be I'll be a BDR. And then the company will grow and they'll need HR people. So I'll be going into HR because, you know, that's what I find interesting.
Jared Fuller 04:39
We'll I think you're the first person I've ever worked with that. Like set out to go be in HR. Like literally the job hive slogan that we had for a while which no one liked. It was a horrible slogan. It was kind of like internal was like ending HR or something. It was something horrible like that was like so anti ever Sounds like you can't say no problem.
Isaac Morehouse 05:01
No, this is this is so funny though, because so when I when I was in college I like, had no idea what what I would should major in. So I looked at like, try like every because I'm like I like people I like ideas. I like communicating what does that mean? So I was like communications, PR HR, I looked at every one of those and every one of my like, took a class and was like, and so like, I totally get that, oh, maybe this is for me. I like people, humans, I don't know. But then Jared, just like you I had two different companies in the in the sort of tech training space. And in both of them. We were like internally, like we any basically any company that has an HR department greater than one is already losing the battle. That's your you've already got a messed up hiring. That's like the way that we thought about it, right? That's the way that we thought about it. So it is hilarious. So Sorry, continue. So HR, you were almost sucked down the dark hole of HR.
Will Taylor 05:55
Yep. And I like the training aspect of it, which comes into play later. But I was selling software to the government. And this company took a leap of faith, so to speak, I had some sales experience. But they said yet this will guy he seems eager and coachable. And so let's bring them on as our first BDR. And I'm selling procurement software to the government. I didn't know what procurement was, I barely knew government. I wasn't too immersed in political sciences. And so I had to learn both of those things as long as well as doing tech sales. A will. And
Jared Fuller 06:32
were you extreme? This is a genuine question. Were you curious about the learning, or like during that process? Just to me, like you've said, Three trigger warnings now. So like knowing you now like, this is what's funny is like you've said government, you said, HR, and you've said procurement. And all three of those things are triggering to me. Were you in that moment? I'm just curious. Were you curious about like, sales and like tech and how things worked? And you're young enough to where you were like, oh, no, this isn't, you know, not what I want to do or where you like, I cannot do this forever, like very quickly.
Will Taylor 07:11
So at first I was sold on the idea that it was very important. It wasn't necessarily something that I was like, Oh, this is super interesting. And you know, it's gonna work my creative muscles, but I was like, Okay, well, this has an impact on society, because, you know, politics are involved in procurement. They use taxpayer dollars. I'm a taxpayer. So I was like, Oh, this sounds pretty important. I should learn about it in some form. And that was one of the pieces, I would say the least compelling, the most compelling was the career opportunity. And also, you know, tech seemed cool video and had a cool office, and that, you know, a beer fridge on one of the floors, a foam pit, like all this cool stuff. My office didn't have that at a ping pong table. But that was mostly the career trajectory, where it was a lot of growth in a short amount of time, I was craving that because my previous role as just doing retail sales for telecom, that was a little bit more limiting because it was with a larger corporation. So I was very hungry for the growth. That was the primary driver for my interest. And then, let's say 35% of the interest was the actual space.
Isaac Morehouse 08:23
So videocard that's, that's, you were doing? You were BDR. You said? No, so this company was called. I'm sorry, that was that was when that was when you're talking? Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. So that Yeah, I did eventually join VIV yard is that was your first role there in partnerships.
Will Taylor 08:43
Yes. So at bonfire I did BDR. For a year, I, you know, did pretty well then became an account executive was doing pretty well. And then COVID hit and it was like, go. And then I knew people who worked at video art. And you know, our office was basically across the road from video to Office. So I knew a lot of people there. And that had some friends there. And there was this idea of partnerships, and it was partner enablement, specifically, the enablement piece I was wanting to get into for sales, I started to love sales. And I was like, great, I want to train other people to see this growth that I've seen as well. And so enablement, I'm like, I'm all in on that. I want to learn how to, you know, train adults to develop their skills that make them better. And the partner aspect was interesting, but I didn't know a lot about it. And I had tried to do it as a salesperson where, you know, I was a, I was carrying a quota, and we went through a merger at bonfire where we merged with five other companies. And in my mind, I was like, oh, there's a way for me to make sales easier. These other software companies, that service government, they have these clients. Let me try and get an introduction, and it was very ad hoc. I try I to make the first cosell happen and at the time I didn't know it was a cosell. But that was my exposure to feeling the pains as a salesperson and wanting to make sales a bit easier for myself. And so I use that in the the conversation in the interviews with video cards to attach that partnerships beast, the enablement piece. So very interested in enablement, I did it being the first person as a BDR, bonfire. And then partnerships, I spoke through how, you know, it makes sense, it makes sales easier. And I want to, you know, learn more about that. And that's my nature as well to be very collaborative. So that's when I took that first step.
Isaac Morehouse 10:39
You know, what, um, you know, what I'm hearing here, Jared, something that you've pointed out, and we've come across, especially a lot of people in sales who are kind of like, starting to starting to eyeball partnerships, you guys get rid of that mean with like the guy walking with the girl, but he's like, looking at a different girl walking by the other direction. And the girls looking at. It's like, I feel like a lot of salespeople are kind of doing that they're kind of looking over their shoulder at partnerships right now, for the reasons that because a lot of people are like, will like will when you're describing your sort of trajectory. I can see all right, like you have the partnerships gene, right. There's something about you you love. I mean, that's why you're interested in psychology or even HR, the enablement side of sales. You like to help people so like, when you figure something out for yourself, your immediate instinct is, oh, I want to show other people how I did it in case it helps them figure out the same thing, right? Like, like the, like the guys who you know, fix their lawn mower and immediately go on YouTube and make a little video about how they did it through trial and error. And I'm so thankful for those because then I'm like, How do I fix my lawnmower? I pull it up, some guy is like, Hey, I just did it. And what's interesting about that, is the most helpful material tends not to come from experts, right? If you've ever pulled up videos to fix your lawn mower, and there's some dude who's just like a lawnmower guru, it's not going to be that helpful. It's like too much it's over your head, they're using phrases you don't even understand. When you pull up one that's like, Hey, I could not figure out how to do this. I think I just figured it out. Let me show you someone who is just one step ahead of you. They're not an expert yet, but they're but they're sharing their learnings out loud. That comes natural to you. And I think that's like a really core part of what makes a good partner person. I've just started to observe this. Again, I'm early in this partnership space. But this is kind of something that I've observed about the people who tend to do this well and who tend to be attracted to that. I don't know, Jared, would you say there's something there that I'm picking up on that you've that you've noticed,
Jared Fuller 12:31
as it's funny, because this is the fifth? This is a cool, cool little moment to that. They got the three of us on the partnership side. And then of course, Ella, I don't think she's produced her mode today. But it's cool to have you on we'll and we were just doing the sassy sales course. Right? And the partner hacker, sassy joint partner up initiative, and in that conversation, so you were auditing it to like just feedback like, hey, let's always get better, right? In that. I was doing some version of a clarion call to amp up the attendees being like, hey, you matter, this this, this role matters. Isaac, we independently were like saying the same thing. And I was referencing Well, when I was talking about it, what's so funny is that that same concept for partnerships is basically compound interest. Right? So compound interest, I mean, the navall Raava Khan quote, like all gains in life, whether personal business, or relationships come from compound interest. So if you sit there and like you're like, Hey, first job, like I send, I sling, LinkedIn lead generation by sending unperson alized, hundreds of LinkedIn emails a day, every single interaction is an erosion of trust. But let's contrast that to Will. Will, what did you do differently? Right, like, you went from COVID to being I don't know, like, I see dozens of LinkedIn posts all the time that will like it'll reference like, you know, five most helpful people in partnerships or like 10 people, you have to follow on partnerships, or thank you so much Well, like I see tons of independent validation about you all the time all over social media. The guy Simon that sent me the cold LinkedIn message about how he's gonna help a media company generate leads for his business through on personalized cold leads. I mean, come on, really, like, I actually messaged him, Isaac, and I said, I never respond to these. I really hope you read what I'm about to say. And I wrote him like a little allegory of like, why compound interest and how like, he's gonna regret this decision and like, this is a dead industry and you have nothing against you. I totally get it. But I really hope you read this article and you change your ways, like, so Well, let's unpack that because it's the same for individuals. Like, I feel like partner people, like there's this interesting intersect where it's the same kind of concept, right? Like the whole point of partnerships, ecosystems is that there's compound interest. It's not just a, Hey, I got another lead. It's like, well, no, I worked with the company, and then we can get more leads together later on to. How do you do that? Between like, How'd you do that in two years,
Isaac Morehouse 15:21
right? I know that. How did you know? That's my mystery. I'm like, how young is this guy. He's had like one partnerships job. And I literally go to cloud software. So SAS connect, and there's people lining up to shake this guy's hand and do office hours and stuff with it. And again, like, there's a secret here that we got to tease out. And there's a reason me and Jared immediately wanted to thought of you to hire that we got to tease out here that I think yes, part of it. You're really talented guy. I'm not taking anything away from that. But there's something that you're doing that I think a lot more people can do so. So help us out with that, Jared. Jared will what is that?
Will Taylor 15:58
It's because I'm a Canadian. I think.
Jared Fuller 16:04
unpack that for a second. That was this is kind of funny. The sauce connect job.
Will Taylor 16:08
Yeah. So there are Yeah, a lot of partnerships, people, at least seemingly are Canadian. And I'm Canadian, you know, partner sack, bunch of Canadians. sneers from Canada, Lindsey, who set up SAS connect also Canadian. And, you know, my, one of my best friends, also Canadian, is in partnerships. And so as it was, like, maybe the reason that partnerships is blowing up is because Canada's you know, taking control a little bit. They're being nice to people giving and dominating business in some form, it's the
Isaac Morehouse 16:46
throat salespeople come down to us. But if you need some part of people that like to collaborate, you know, those Canadians just have it in them?
Will Taylor 16:55
Yeah, so I don't think it's just that I think that that probably helps. But yeah, honestly, it is. The challenges that I felt as a salesperson where, you know, I was doing the traditional methods, and it was working some of the time, but there was this awkward feeling that I had, where it didn't feel natural, doing sales, and not natural as in, I'm not a natural, but natural as in, it doesn't feel like a normal conversation that I'm having with another person. And so my best sales were the ones where I had a really good relationship with the person. And you know, I made introductions, or I gave them something. And this is becoming more of a common theme within sales. But that thing where, you know, I had a better relationship, and a better time speaking with this person, when I was in that mode, although, you know, it's harder to track necessarily, it's technically dark social from, you know, a conversation and a referral happens. That was the the pain that I felt. And so I started thinking, Well, you know, I have this personal mission where I want to give as much as possible, how can I do that at scale? And that's where partnerships come in. But how can I also have a business benefit through that, and what I learned and after the video, when I joined mailshake, as the only partnerships person, I learned that if I give first, then I receive a lot in return. And it's not with the intent of giving to receive, but just the fact that it does happen, where, you know, I can approach a potential partner with this message of value that was so good that and it was all in the idea of them getting value that it was hard for them to say no. And that was really powerful. That kind of flipped a light switch in me where I'm like, Okay, well, if I do this with other people, and I was already kind of doing this, but if I formally did this with other professionals, then there's going to be this massive effect. And so I, on a personal note, also have always felt like I didn't really have a large network. And so when I felt that pain of like, where am I going to go next? When I was let go a whole lot of startup COVID.
Isaac Morehouse 19:17
Wait, when did you feel you didn't have a large network? How long ago? Are we talking? Because that's crazy to me to hear you say that?
Will Taylor 19:23
Yeah. Honestly. I would say probably like 2020 as a
Jared Fuller 19:29
kids, kids these days. We immediately feel
Isaac Morehouse 19:33
old. So yeah, so So two years ago, you felt like you didn't you didn't have much of a network. And now to me at least it seems like you have a really massive network. So what when you have that realization, what steps did you take what what did you say, Okay, how am I going to remedy this?
Will Taylor 19:47
Yeah, so it was keep doing what I'm doing by being, you know, a giver first, but also how can I do this at scale? And so I started off by booking meetings with people I immersed myself in a community, I spent time talking to people. But then I started to think like, Okay, well, this is great. I only have so much time, how can I have more of this? How can I give more at scale? And that's where content creation started to come in, where I started seeing people, you know, that Justin Welsh of the world, Morgan Ingram, and they're just blowing up by creating videos and giving to people. And you know, they're getting business opportunities from that. And of course, they're growing their network massively in terms of followers and probably having lots of conversations. That was an initial inspiration where I thought, Okay, well, if I create content, then that is networking at scale. And that's giving at scale, because in every single sense of the the manner of creating content, there's going to be someone who's going to reach out and say, Hey, I like this, let's chat. And the more that I can create those opportunities, a the less time I'm spending, you know, doing the outbound side of things. But be I can give more at scale as well, my impact, my positive impact can be accentuated more than just an individual conversation, why not, you know, summarize one of those conversations, put it into a post, and then it helps 10 other people. For me, that was enough. And I mean, I don't go viral or anything. Now, my posts do pretty well. But my main intent is, if I was starting, or I learned this, today, or a day earlier, I would have been so much better off. So I want to give that to people. And I think going back to your example of the lawn more where it's, you know, not experts who create the content. And that's the best content. That's what I want to do. It's simplified. It's relevant to a lot of people, and it can impact at a very large scale. And that's exactly what is aligned with my personal goals, where if I can crack that code of influence at scale and impact at scale, then I should really lean into it and creating content does that and it is, in some form, eventually self serving, but the initial intent is, let's give first and have that widespread impact.
Isaac Morehouse 22:17
Well, you know, this idea, like a lot of people might hear that and say, okay, but I'm not a, I don't have a personal brand. And I'm not really that type of a person. Well, you do you have a brand, whether you like it or not. Okay, so what's beautiful about the age we live in, really, for the first time in human history, you have granular control over that brand, you haven't the ability to take ownership of it, your brand is not the family, you happen to be born into your family name, or the city you're from, or the place you went to school, that's what your brand used to be, right, because people didn't have time to figure out anything else that was that just kind of was stuck with you. And you had to, if you wanted to be thought of as something different, you had to do a ton of work over a long time. Now, your digital reputation, your body of work, your digital footprint is under your control. And so like you have a brand, right? I mean, even if I google you and nothing comes up, or I go on LinkedIn, and nothing comes up, that is a type of a brand. It's a brand, tell in my mind, I'm going to associate you with nothing. Which means if an opportunity comes my way that might be interesting to you. I won't know that because I don't know that you're interested in that kind of opportunity. Right? Your your luck surface is tiny, you can increase your luck surface area by taking charge of that brand. And just you don't have to like, go out and be like, Hey, let me tell I'm a thought leader, right? You can just do that learning out loud. And LinkedIn is so interesting with this, they've they've managed to and it can be cheesy and formulaic. And people are trying to game it and stuff like any social platform, but they've managed to maintain a level of sort of optimism and positivity that I don't see on other platforms. And so you'll see some of the most interesting and high engagement posts are things like, Hey, I was struggling every time I tried to have a call like this at work, and I kept getting running into a problem and I couldn't really figure it out. So I started experimenting with this. And I just did it yesterday and it seemed to work well. Right. And it's this very like transparent. Here's where I am in my career. I'm not I'm not pretending to be an expert. I'm telling you, Hey, I just solved this. Maybe if you're having the same problem that will be interesting. So I've noticed that you tend you do that kind of stuff. You're very honest about your learnings. But you don't just like post, you comment and you engage with people, you're very generous. You're very kind. If anyone tags you, you'll jump on there. You're you're having a conversation, you're participating in it. It's not just a one way it's not like a billboard, here's the latest from will. It's like, Hey, I'm in your world. I'm in your ecosystem, right I'm, I'm investing in this whole thing. I'm one of us, right? There's just something there that like it's not a really high bar. I mean, if you don't feel comfortable posting to people listening out there at least just engage comment, send people a DM and just tell them hey, I love that post you had the other day. I thought that was great. Like Yeah, it's just real stuff. It's stuff that you would do if we were face to face. And I think just bringing that digitally it's it's incredible. I mean, in just two years you've built this this really profound network. So absolute absolute testament to the power.
Jared Fuller 25:12
I have to comment on this real quick because what's so funny about this is obviously I'm a big Joe rally. fanboy Jill's just, she's always helpful. She's always great. Did you know we're gonna
Isaac Morehouse 25:25
we're gonna start we're gonna start like a drinking game, by the way, Jared? Like, there are certain things like certain phrases and ideas, whatever certain things that you say, where we should just do a shot. I don't know we wouldn't be passed out maybe but But Joe rally is one of them. Jill rock gel, you come up all the time, Jared is definitely a fanboy.
Jared Fuller 25:43
She coined helping as the new selling in 2015 2015. And that's kind of what we're saying, right? And I'm I'm looking at sales for life, which I'm pretty sure she was co founder of or something. And it's how creating value uncovers opportunities. It's exactly what you just said, well, and the reason why I brought that up is you know, this person that's credited with inventing social selling is like, look, that's actually the partner up origin story to the partner up origin story is, after I landed the big deal with panna doc and HubSpot, Rembrandt asked me altos asked me some some venture firms Hey, can you like, help our head of sales at another Porco? Do this and then I did. And then, like, slowly, over a year, two years, three years, four years, five years, six years, literally, there was a point at Drift, where I was doing one to three, for free, just like I was helping a fellow partnerships person or company or investor, it just like kind of got out there. Like, just reach out to Jared, he'll be helpful. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. Like I just I honestly could not do 123 calls a day. My wife finally was like, What are you doing? I'm, I'm hoping someone she's like, get off the phone. Get off the phone. And I'm like, I got it. I got it. And I was like, I guess I'll start a podcast. It was like, I'll just the people that I would go ask. So will the other thing I wanted to kind of pivot this right off the back of is, it's not that you need to know all the answers. Right, Isaac, to your point. It's not about the luck surface area these things, nine times out of 10 I don't I repeat myself a lot. Because the things that I know to be true, high conviction, that's what matters, the things that I don't I'm like, Oh, I have no idea and thought of it that way. But three people come to mind. That is also a superpower, right? The network. So you start producing content, and you're learning out loud, etc. You increase that luck surface area, it doesn't mean you have to have the answers to every test. But you could get really good at getting to the people that do. That's like that's other tangential benefit that like partnerships, helping is the new selling partnerships. I mean, in a QBR. So well, you've you've ran quarterly business reviews with a partner account. Typically, it's just so formulaic, and bla bla bla bla bla, one of the things that I loved was showing up to the QBR with like your most strategic partners. With something that was a problem of theirs that they didn't even ask you about, already solved it nine times out of 10, you had to go to someone else to do that. Right? You had to go out of your way out of the normal to be helpful. So like following up and like, someone asked you for advice, then what do you do? You go and talk to other people first, and then you make an intro, you just actually did twice as much work. super interesting. It compounds then you just made another connection where there might be a valuable relationship there. Compound Interest, man, I'm telling you, you recognize that really quick in terms of the career pivot then. And I think there's lots of people that are waking up to it. Yeah, what's your what's your take on this kind of like rising tide stuff? Like my my evangelism and hype Hype Machine? I'm just like the hype guy right now. You audited the SAS e course? I'm curious what your what are your forecasts so to speak on like sales at large or some of the other things that you've seen in that transition? You know, is every one a will? You know, because it can everyone, like move that direction? Or what would you be, you know, for someone that's like, Hey, I've been a longtime listener, first time caller right? They've been listening to partner up, they've never posted anything. Like how do they get over that cold start problem?
Will Taylor 29:42
cold start problem for posting content. Well, it's
Jared Fuller 29:45
like the, if I was gonna title this episode, it's like the ecosystem of one right? It's like, who were the companies, the partners the accounts that like you know, you really know lots of people you have lots of nodes and trust and you've done business with them. Right so like my surface area for companies that I've done actual real business good deals with, you know, like, from outreach to marketing automation, like public companies where I can call an executive and they'll take my call, I can DM them, I can text them. And they'll be like, yeah, like, trust them. But you don't start there. Right? That happens, that happens over time. And then the content adds on top of it. So the cold start problem, the ecosystem of one is like the other side, too, it's the individuals or the community, right? So like, we'll tailor, you have people that will say good things about you, because you've helped them for what, you take their money, you take your time, not really you just help them. So if you have nothing, where do you start?
Will Taylor 30:46
Yeah, that's where like, I would argue that you, you always have something, even if you're, you know, an outsider looking in, you have an opinion, if you're in marketing, and you're seeing all this partnership stuff, and you want to maybe dive into partnerships, you still have a perspective, your perspective is different, and it's valuable. And if you're, you know, day one, you have a perspective, that's different from someone who's, you know, year 10. And so I, I'm of the believer of the mindset that it doesn't matter, you know, where you are in your journey, you have value to provide. And, you know, the reason for that is because, if I'm on day one, of let's say, being professional, there's someone who's on day zero, and they want to know what day one is like. And so if I'm on year one, I should talk about, you know, what was your one like, there is someone on day zero, you know, day 15, who need some answers need some form of guidance, and they want the most up to date version of that not necessarily, you know, the traditional channel world of 20 years ago, they want someone who is immersed in it in the last year or, you know, yesterday, kind of thing. And so I would argue that anyone who's listening is like, I don't think I have valuable things to say you do. Because your perspective is similar to at least one other person out there. And that community is only going to continue to grow, especially as you become that evangelist yourself. And so for me, like if I'm talking about the bridge between sales and partnerships, I'm not the only one who's a salesperson who have felt the pains of doing sales and want to get into partnerships or make it easier through partnerships. There's many people who are going through that. And so, if I think you know, I'm the only guy posting about this. Sure, but that doesn't mean that there's not you know, 1000 people who are feeling the same thing, and that I've a message that resonates with them. So I would say you always have value to provide curious.
Isaac Morehouse 32:51
Curiosity is so undervalued curiosity can can kill the cold start problem can over? Because there's no, there's no level of expertise, you need to be curious, right? Anyone at any stage can be when I did nonprofit fundraising, I was meeting with all these really wealthy people, and you know, ultimately asking them to fund the things we were doing. But I was like, just just selfishly, this wasn't a tactic. I was like, I'm meeting with somebody who's made tons of money. He's self made millionaire, sometimes billionaire from these businesses, they start I'm so curious, like how they did it. And I was genuinely good. So I've just asked them all about their business all the time. And they loved it. They loved it, right? Because what do they usually get? Let me tell you about our program. Let me let me you know, let me add, let me tell you how good you're going to feel donating to it. I would be like, Okay, I gotta make sure that I have time to like, say something and make an ask of money from them. Because I know I'm that's what I'm here for. But I just, I gotta take this 30 minutes this lunch that I have with this person who made a multimillion dollar plastics company. I don't know anything about this. It's so fascinating to me. How did how did they get into it? How did that work? And that curiosity is such a superpower if you cultivate that. And there's this really interesting thing that can happen sometimes like the things that work in your work, the things you do for your job. Sometimes it's easy to forget that those also apply outsider jobs. So in partnerships, in particular, what are you doing in the world of partnerships, right, you're investing in your ecosystem, you're living in your community, you're creating value for partners, all these things we talked about. But often, within your formal role people can sort of feel like especially early on, all of that is living in your company, Slack channel and your emails and your HubSpot and your Salesforce and whatever, PRN. That's all living in your official work duties. But when you go on to social media, for example, or going to do your normal life, you're not bringing those principles with you. And here's the here's the crazy paradox. If you apply those things to your non work life, that's actually a way to leapfrog ahead in your work life, right. So the person who is in their official capacity, they're being helpful to partners people they do business with, they're asking the questions, whatever. Yeah, that's good. That's table stakes, they're doing the job. But people who take that same mentality with them to LinkedIn where yes, they're representative of the company, but not entirely, that's kind of LinkedIn whole thing, you're kind of yourself, even though you're also record, they take that and they're just being helpful to other people who are maybe even competitors in their own, you know, role at a different company. And they're bringing that same mentality, those people will often leapfrog ahead in their career, they'll go from just being an individual contributor to being a leader in the space, way faster than if they just do their job internally and wait for someone to promote them. Because they're, they're like going outside the walls of the company, to put the ecosystem thinking in practice in their own life and career, just like they do with customers. They're doing it with friends and people in their network and competitors and everything else. And that somehow it has this like, it has this positive feedback loop. It's like if you live that way, if you live that way, with people who will never even be customers, they're just random people you meet, if you send them thank you notes, the way that you would a customer. Somehow this like it creates this crazy thing that ends up accelerating you in your career, even though the things you're doing don't directly relate to it. I know I'm kind of rambling about a several topics here. But like, in my mind, they all tie together. It's all one they do.
Jared Fuller 36:22
Yeah, they do. This is I have a secret agenda, which is been going very well the past four podcasts is to really increase Isaac's top time. Because the amount of content this this human has consumed and produced. And aggregate is mind boggling. And I don't know this, there's something there's something interesting about the information like not asymmetry, but like this imagery, whatever that word is, between people that are curious. And people that are really, you know, set in their ways, so to speak, you know, curious people are interested in the other party, their story, their learnings, like, what does this person know that that might help me? And what does this person care about? So I can help them? That if that's like, kind of core to who you are, you just see those people go so much further in life. I mean, the smartest CEOs, I know, they read more than everyone else. And they never try to solve a problem by themselves. They always call someone smarter than them every time. Every single time. Mr. Ecosystem, man, right. So now you got like, now you got two great people to call on. So like, I mean, a we i, i aggressive. I aggressively recruited you. Because it was like, Hey, we're launching this thing. Like, it's official, we have a little bit of money. Let's make our first hire. It was like, come in, like next week, like right now. Like, come in right this second. But let's say something blew up, and like the business imploded or whatever, getting your next thing, starting an independent consulting company doing whatever.
Isaac Morehouse 37:59
Yeah, cuz it could because it's easy, because it's like, here's this guy, he's creating value, whether whether anyone pays him to do it or not, he's creating value. Well, if I see someone creating value, I'm gonna be like, I want them to create value for me. You know, so that's why you do it out loud, right? That's why you don't just keep it behind the closed doors of the company, because you're going to attract that. So okay, so Well, we got a few more minutes here. I want to get tactical, I want to get really tactical. How do you approach this, because you're still doing this, it's your reason. It's not like something you did and all of a sudden, it was successful. You're you're engaging with your network all the time doing things like hey, I'm just gonna do office hours just for the heck of it. tactically? How do you approach this? Do you have like, daily rituals? Are you like, Okay, I'm going to every morning, I'm going to start by spending 20 minutes on LinkedIn, I'm going to comment so many times, I'm going to do so many posts a week, I'm going to do, like, how are you? How are you being deliberate? Do you have specific rituals or, or habits that you have for yourself in order to continue to invest in your network? Yeah,
Will Taylor 38:54
absolutely. I carve out time every day to post. So right now, I'm not planning the posts in advance, I want to I want to use a scheduler tool. But that is hopefully something that gets done in the next few months. But I show up, I post, you know, over 10 to 15 minutes, it's second nature to create the content now in a digestible format. And then, you know, off the tail end of that, there are like these micro groups that I am trying to inspire to create more content or you know, help them out with content. And that's across, you know, a few different groups where I have, you know, a bit of a deeper relationship with these people. And I'm helping them out on a more consistent basis. And I engage with those people. And I also sign up for notifications for the people that you know, I like that are trying to post more and that are relevant to MySpace as well. So that helps me to you know, they post a certain time I dedicate, you know, whatever it is 1520 minutes or so, check out those notifications. Check out their posts and then engage with it. And it's not a lot of time. And although I've built the habit, it's it's not a lot of time. And the way that I talk about it for anyone who's thinking about starting is approached it in three different phases. Phase one is just build the habit of posting, you know, five days a week or every day, do that for 30 days, and you'll have the habit, second phase for the next 30 days, refine the content, make it a bit more easy to digest, and, you know, put it off framework to it, so that it's not just, you know, your stream of consciousness, it's structured thoughts that are easy to consume. So you know, top three, list or here's some bullet points or whatever form that is. And then the third phase is the phase that I'm in is, you know, try and systematize. So save yourself some more time, where you can focus on engaging more, but systematize, you know, schedule out posts and create templates. And this is honestly from not the three phase approach. But the the general idea of systemize systematizing. It is from Justin Welsh, who talks about, you know, he's making money talking about how to post content on LinkedIn, by posting content on LinkedIn. And he does all of this where, you know, he has categories of these different templates, make me feel, make me think, challenge me, so on and so forth. create those templates, inject your context, and it gives this variety, but also this structure. And it's also not in a robotic way, it's in a way that is just easier to consume. And you don't have to think about the structure you just think about those very valuable thoughts. So yeah, first things first, carve out time 15 minutes a day, even if you're posting just like you know, word soup that are your thoughts, build the habit, and then go from there and start refining it as you go.
Isaac Morehouse 41:48
You said something really interesting that it feels like Oh, well that's gonna get all like stuffy and pre programmed with you create this, you know, system or even I've had people even say if I like hey, blog every day for 30 days, I'm a massive advocate of that have been for years and gotten many people on the on the train. But oh, well, then, you know, I'm forced to publish a blog post every day. Well, I don't know what that's just all like, it's all formulaic. And it's all forced, what if I maybe I want to do a painting instead, or maybe. And there's this there's this TED talk from way back in the day. And it's like my, maybe my all time favorites called Embrace the shake. It's about this artist who he ended up getting some kind of injury or disability where his hand just shook like crazy, so he could no longer do the kind of art he wanted. So he was like, utterly depressed for a long time. Finally, he was just like, he snapped out of it. He was like, Okay, I'm going to come up with a challenge for myself. Since I can no longer do this type of painting. I am going to make a piece of art using only Starbucks coffee cups, or only peanut butter and jelly like crazy things. He will come with these really, really constrained like, I can only use. I can only use dots with a sharpie on a white piece of paper, what can I create? And he was like, I was in this total creative funk. But once I put ridiculously tight constraints on myself, I suddenly had this explosion because sometimes the optionality is too much. It's overwhelming for our brains. Oh, go post something on LinkedIn. What what do I post? How do I do it? I could be anything. It's too much. It's overwhelming. If you're like, Okay, post a haiku every day for a week. Seriously, I've done this kind of thing. Like, even if it's goofy, force yourself to do a haiku. All of a sudden, within the bounds of that structure. You'll find this creative explosion, you're like, Well, how many different ways are there to give you that haiku about the same thing every day, try it for 10 days, you don't have to share it publicly try to make a haiku every day about football for 10 days in a row. And suddenly you'll find your your creativity is easier because you're within this bounded constraint. So if you're like, you set up that system, and I've seen you do it, there's so much room for improvisation. It's like jazz music, right? There's basic structures that you're stuck within, but then you get all this room to improvise, and to throw in things that you weren't planning on and suddenly say, you know, how many use my post today, I'm just gonna do a picture, or I'm just gonna post. I'm just gonna invite anybody to DM me, and send me the coolest article they read this week, right? All of a sudden, you'll get this flowering of ideas. If you develop the habit, and you systematize the habit. And now you have the peace of mind that it's, it's, it's just gonna happen on its own. I mean, this is like the PhD we send out every day, right? It's got a structure, it's gonna go out every single week, we're constrained to that. And somehow, that gives you this surface to experiment within constraints that aren't overwhelming.
Will Taylor 44:33
Absolutely. And it's, I think it benefits creativity. So anyone who thinks it's more robotic, it's like, if you can't think of anything, you get writer's block, whatever it is, if you look at let's say, a template, and the template is top three things I wish I knew in blank, I can think of three things easily on you know what I wish I knew. So there's an idea right there from a template. And so I absolutely agree that it sparks Creativity more than hinders it. And it guides it essentially. Because you're right. There are so many things you could say
Isaac Morehouse 45:07
we'll do it. I feel like you got me so excited in this episode I just I just preached at you instead of I did not practice what I preach and being curious and asking people questions, just started rambling, I could still hyped up.
Jared Fuller 45:17
So there's learning out loud, there's being curious. And then there's just like, geeking out. Because we like know each other, and we work with each other. Like, honestly, you throw us into a restaurant or something. You know, like after work hours, this is literally the conversation that you walk into, like, it's not an exaggeration, like we're not like, I think Isaac does a good job of maybe trying to do like a basketball game and like, okay, he really likes the Warriors. But like, man, like, it takes like a year for me to like, potentially introduce some new thing. Like, maybe I'm interested in a sports team for like, a little bit. And then like, the next year, it's gone. But otherwise, like, we're pretty much talking like this all the time. So yeah, we're geeking out. We'll we're gonna have you back on though, because you're part of the squad now.
Will Taylor 46:03
Oh, yeah. This was fun. I like to see you both get passionate and you know, have that stream of consciousness go. That's also what I intended to do. And my conversation. So this was great. I liked it.
Jared Fuller 46:16
We got we got a couple of things to plug and talk about. Sunday story quickly. Isaac?
Isaac Morehouse 46:22
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I was gonna say we have like some sort of like wills corner, some kind of like recurring, you know,
Jared Fuller 46:28
yeah, which give them a series.
Isaac Morehouse 46:31
So Sunday story, if you guys haven't haven't seen, we've, we've done two of them now. And I absolutely love putting these together, I love just being able to dive into a particular category, a particular company, the stories of the people in the partnership space, and the companies in the partnership space are absolutely fascinating. So if you guys haven't seen him, I hope you read in the most recent, we did on on deck Business Development Program, the odbd. So on Deck is founded like, I don't know, three, four or five years ago, it's like a sort of started as like a fellowship for aspiring founders who are like, hey, I want to found companies and you know, kind of just getting together and then it kind of it kind of became it came very organically as this community. It became they started doing grants, and they started investing in some of these companies. And it kind of turned it into a bit more of a program. And the growth was so insane. And I think the near and dear to my heart, the education space in sort of traditional education is so lacking in terms of, if you want to get into startups, or become a become a business development rep or a partner manager, right, or any of these roles, most people don't even know they exist, let alone know how to succeed in them. And so they just exploded like a year ago with all these different offerings of basically the key roles at startups, like, okay, maybe you don't want to be a founder. But if you're gonna be that startups first, you know, first marketing leader, or first partnerships leader, or first sales leader that kind of put these fellowship programs together. And the business development fellowship is specifically for people going into those bizdev roles at tech startups. And we just kind of dive into, you know, the evolving space and the way that the way that talent, the way that learning has changed in the way that kind of the combination of community and content, you're sort of come together to provide the best surface for, for advancement and for learning in those careers. And so definitely check out the story and check out on decks business development fellowship, like if you're like, early in this space, or you're looking to break into this space, or you just want to you just want to expand your network and you want to you want to get connect with what are all the other companies out there. What are all the other, you know, people who are working in this, you know, the bizdev and partnership side of startups? Absolutely, absolutely. Check it out. I've been a fan of Eric Torian Berg, who started on deck for a lot of years. It's got a really interesting podcasts very curious guy. His podcast is just all about interesting questions. So I've been very impressed with watching what they've done. And since they launched this program that's so relevant to our audience was really awesome to be able to dive into that story.
Jared Fuller 49:08
So here's what I got out of the story that you it's kind of cool because I get to, I get to see Isaac kind of like, pull out like the real why. And then I get to like, process it before it's like out in market. And the real takeaway for me, was like this atomization of like, signal, like, signal is like, closer to you now. And, you know, I always love the Rhone quote, like you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. Now, people think about that in like, I think in business, like a very strict business sense. Like, oh, I'm an I'm a founder. So therefore I need to be spending time with like, better people. But like imagine, okay, you're just coming into like your first executive role, like, Okay, you got promoted to director or VP. And you're at a company where like, literally no one's done that before. So there's communities that are out there that are great for like answering asking big questions, but cohort based team things. I am, I am a full believer in full believer and having a cohort. And that's why I liked I mean, on decks, I have a bunch of I actually have four friends now that have gone through on deck started companies, and then venture funded. So I'm like, Okay, there's something special with that model, they're really doing well, in a space that was very heated. But for partnerships, I'm like that, that really is a secret. Like, if I could have gone back in time, and had five others, you know, five to 1015 other people like a small group cohort, where I'm going through that first year together with them. Do that sick. I really I really, really like that because like partnership leaders has a spot. But it's just not the same to have like this fully planned first month
Isaac Morehouse 50:50
there. Yeah, there's a level of commitment praise Archer, you know, that. Yeah. Imagine everything we just talked about, we will the kind of things that you're doing in those first couple years, doing that, together with a group of people who are all doing at once in kind of a higher level of intensity and focus. There's just some magnesium coming out of that, that you can't predict, you know,
Jared Fuller 51:09
right. So like, you might come into, you know, any community there's several different communities out there now. But the experience it will, it's what you talked about, you know, like the, you know, your your zero your one year five year 10, like, the year 10 ecosystem executive That's like trying to orchestrate across a 5000 person company. Like I appreciate all you out there that like, like listening to the first principles. I think that's the thing that we Isaac, you and me, and we're trying to do is like, make first principles apply to everyone. But the reality is, you bring someone on, like, there's there's certainly particular topics or executives where it's like, that's not going to help the frontline partner manager that much like, like, not right now, like cool is file that away. But like, that's not what I need. So like the relevancy, the signal is very high, it's atomized, right. It's the people around you, feedback loops are better. You know, like, it's a, you know, you have college class sizes of 400 people versus like 20 that tend to have some very interesting outcomes where the smaller group sizes work phenomenal. Well, big shout
Isaac Morehouse 52:17
out to ondeck. Biz Dev program and then ecosystem week 2022 coming up real real soon. So if you haven't signed up yet, we're doing this with partner stack. Go sign up. There's a big there's a big ad our singular ad on partner hacker.com We just have one. And right now, it's up in the up in the corner there ecosystem week. You can go register, it's free, it's gonna be killer. Absolutely. Killer lineup.
Jared Fuller 52:40
Well, one last thing too, because this will hopefully it'll be done by the time that Sir Isaac did. Did the the styling didn't change on the site yet, right? Or did it? And am I going crazy? I debated this back and forth with Alex for like five minutes.
Isaac Morehouse 52:53
No, I don't think the styling changed. Yeah, it was a somewhat subtle change that you recommended, but it wasn't that subtle. I don't think it's changed. Yeah,
Jared Fuller 53:00
I was losing my mind. So we got a couple of we got a couple of little neat things coming out to excited to announce and talk about after ecosystem week. It's gonna be a blast. How many we got we had what the well over 500 people we have
Isaac Morehouse 53:15
I think we have over 600 people already registered. time of recording this. It's only been like, what a week we can have since we announced it. So.
Jared Fuller 53:23
So yeah, I mean, if you you're probably already attending if you're listening to the show, I wish I could do podcast segmentation marketing automation. So if not, go share it. So if you're not like probably you're probably attending because let's be honest, this is the first time ever this conference has existed. And guess what? It's going to be the biggest partnerships ecosystem conference ever. So I'm excited. Well, I should say b2b SaaS, obviously there's some IT partner stuff that's pretty big, but b2b SaaS, it's gonna be the biggest one ever, and I'm really excited about it.
Isaac Morehouse 53:52
Love it. All right. Well, this was awesome. Thanks, man, guys.
Jared Fuller 53:56
Yeah, thanks for jumping on we're gonna do a corner or something like that. I liked that idea is pull that thread give him like a little a little syndicated spot. Let's do it. On the squad. Alright, partner up. We will see you all next week. Peace.
