On this episode of Friends with Benefits, Jason Yarborough asks Sam Yarborough all the hard-hitting partnership questions.
Sam is the SVP of Partnerships at PFL.com, working in the Salesforce ecosystem. She shares how marketing strategies and intentional communication play a crucial role in nurturing partnerships.
Sam and Jason explore the elements of a strong relationship and offer insights on balancing personal and professional commitments.
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Highlights
- What does the term friends with benefits mean to you? 0:00
- Why did you go all-in on Salesforce? 7:06
- Maintaining internal buy-in and budget. 13:16
- The importance of speaking to the right people. 20:12
- Salesforce & partnerships. 28:09
- The importance of communication and self-respect. 31:29
- Intentionality and vulnerability. 37:12
- The importance of vision for your future. 47:06
Transcript
Jason Yarborough 0:09
Welcome to the Friends with Benefits podcast, a business podcast about revenue generating partnerships, not a podcast about business time with friends. We're your co hosting couple. I'm Jason.
Sam Yarborough 0:23
And I'm Sam. Welcome to the show friends.
Jason Yarborough 0:26
Welcome back to the show Friends. The first of its kind we are in the studio together today the studio meaning our office and my desk. If you're watching my video, you see that we are also just sitting really close to one another will come to the show. But this is such an official studio we are the sound is good. The lighting is fantastic.
Sam Yarborough 0:47
We've made it we're sharing a mic. We haven't quite
Jason Yarborough 0:51
figured out the in home studio thing yet limited space, especially with kids. But you know, right now we're recording together at my desk, because we're interviewing you today.
Sam Yarborough 1:03
I know I'm a little nervous about this one. To be honest, it's a lot easier to pepper people with keys to instant answer them yourself, especially
Jason Yarborough 1:10
in person, which you'd like at first date. Okay, I thought about making this one a short one and just calling it a quickie, but Muna may not work for a lot of folks listening.
Sam Yarborough 1:19
That's still that's still in brand for approval at this point.
Jason Yarborough 1:23
Yeah, I mean, I get a lot of people that are able to come on the show of using terminology like that. But anyway, welcome to the show.
Sam Yarborough 1:30
Thanks. Happy to be here. Friends.
Jason Yarborough 1:34
We are we're going to interview Sam today. If you haven't figured that out yet. Sam has been in partnerships for a while now building some really great programs that a company called PFL, which I know quite well. But you've got an interesting background, much like myself that have led you to partnerships, I think we'll have a really good conversation around that. So you're typically the one asking this question, and you're the one who conceptualized the podcast. But what does the term Friends with Benefits mean to you?
Sam Yarborough 2:05
Okay, this is my show, and I was not prepped for that cause I'm friends with benefits means showing up day in and day out for people. And it's the law of rest. Reciprocity, it will return to you in ways that you don't know. And I think that's true from a personal perspective. And I know that's true from a business perspective. So
Jason Yarborough 2:33
yeah, we don't get a chance to dig into this question too much, because we often find ourselves just moving right on to the next question. But I like the aspect of showing up with like we've heard and other guests use something similar. But the benefit of what we do in partnerships is like just showing up and being there to help one another and helping everyone in the work they're doing. I just got back from catalyst you unfortunately couldn't attend. But the thing I heard from most people that were there, especially those that were new to partnerships was how great the partnership community is, like they're always there to help are always there to introduce lendahand or whatever, because that's literally what we do. We facilitate connections.
Sam Yarborough 3:17
No doubt. I loved what Sandra said on our show the other week, too, about how that is what partnership people do. We build community, we are connecting people always and there's not. There's not always an immediate like, what's in this for me, but man, you've seen it, I've seen it. We've all seen it, you go out of your way to help people and it just comes back to you in ways you you couldn't have imagined.
Jason Yarborough 3:42
Yeah, and that's, that's really, like I said, our job is to to make sure everyone within our company is happy and everyone that touches our company is happy. And also like that you're really good at recalling these episodes because I do a terrible job of this. Like you just pulled that syndrome thing out of your head and I don't remember those
Sam Yarborough 4:00
at all. The difference between a female and a male brain
Jason Yarborough 4:03
this you have to go back and listen to the podcast Actually, no, we actually talked about I feel like Will Ferrell an old school like a black doll and Athan. So let's jump right into it. You. You've been like we've been doing this now. Three years, four years.
Sam Yarborough 4:18
Three years. Next month.
Jason Yarborough 4:20
Oh, look at the end. We've been married for six years next month. So happy anniversaries.
Sam Yarborough 4:25
Thank you a special episode.
Jason Yarborough 4:28
Maybe by the time this know what era quite an anniversary bit getting close. So three years. You came into the partnership world, fresh, new, innocent, didn't know what was really happening in the space and you figured out pretty quickly. And you go to great program as coming in not having a partnership background. What what do you remember about getting started in kind of figuring this whole landscape of partnerships out
Sam Yarborough 5:00
It's funny to recall this, because for those of you that don't know the story, Jason had my job before I did. Yeah,
Jason Yarborough 5:09
this is a major TV story here, Bravo should pick up the rights.
Sam Yarborough 5:12
Yeah, someone should produce this, it's not going to be us. But um, it's so interesting, because I remember you would come home from work, this is back in the days when we would physically you'd walk out the door with your briefcase by honey. So you have to work
Jason Yarborough 5:28
to go back launched a shoe store, he didn't do
Sam Yarborough 5:31
that. But you would explain to me what you did. And it just it I had no idea. It did not make sense. And then I got this job. And I still didn't really even know what partnerships meant. So it was
Jason Yarborough 5:49
just thought I went to a lot of conferences, blew that I got paid to make friends.
Sam Yarborough 5:54
Not even though like, I don't know, it just it didn't click, it was so confusing. And I think there's so many things to unpack here, because like, I didn't understand. And it took me a long time to talk to a bunch of people to really, like make ends meet to have those synapses connect. And I think there's so much to unpack, because it's like, we enable the heck out of our teams. We talk internally, externally, here's what partnerships is. And if it takes somebody that long, who has a spouse in the field, or who actually is doing the work to like, Wait, we do what to make what happened, then how can we expect our internal and external teams to like, attend a lunch and learn and get it
Jason Yarborough 6:35
fairpoint, especially to the to making your teams understand. And I promise I did as good of a job as I could to explain it while I was doing the job. You know, what I'm what's what's different now, in partnerships versus when you started, there's to see almost 600 people in a convention center last week, talking partnerships was amazing. So your experience started three years ago to now? Like what's different in our space?
Sam Yarborough 7:06
Yeah, and you're just like rubbing it in my face. I have so much FOMO for now, beings on wrist or last week, just home raising your children. But we couldn't burn. Just kidding. I'll just Galavan I also had a board meeting. So I had to be there for that. What has changed? I think so much has changed one. There's more recognition for it on the executive level. Like there's more conversation about partnerships in many rooms, not just it's not on an island, so much as it was, I think we still have a lot of work to go, but it's definitely becoming something that's a must have rather than a nice to have.
Jason Yarborough 7:44
Yeah, just the adoption across the board.
Sam Yarborough 7:47
Yeah, no doubt.
Jason Yarborough 7:49
So it's interesting because we I think we had decent adoption. When I was at PFL. I had roughly I remember the count it was over 40 si ISV partners that I was managing working with along with Marketo and eventually Salesforce, and which what you're doing is we consider you've leveled up to levels we never could have reached and you're doing it with just Salesforce how let's start with like, why why just Salesforce versus the others that we had rolling secure. You're building something really special and noteworthy within Salesforce. So uh, start with why you started there.
Sam Yarborough 8:36
Yeah, well, I think we've talked about this a lot on the show, but relational currency and how that's not transferable. So a lot there was a lot of things that played into this. So again, we name these names all the time, but they are worthy every time you have a Roberts built this Salesforce partnership from the ground up and her name still comes up. So she mentioned running today to somebody did a phenomenal job of kind of creating these grassroots foundational experience for PFL in the Salesforce ecosystem. So that's that needs to be said. Then came you know Marni Reed she was the reason PFL has a partnership program. So she you know, did a ton of work and in building the team and and managing you and Andy Cochran and Yabba so that was kind of the foundation and there was a lot going on there in terms of like you just mentioned you built a size and agencies. You ever did Salesforce. Andy was involved in Salesforce two. I never cross paths with any of them other than Marni. Awesome. So when I came in Marty was a team of one trying to build just keep everything afloat, essentially. And then she left and and so it was me. And you know, picking up where you guys left off is not just like a handoff of the baton. And I think that's something that we've touched on but needs to be expanded upon. Because when you just like handoff a relationship, that doesn't just work, you need to like, build those connections and make sure that you know these people on the other side of the company. Again, I always say this, but it's not PFL having a partnership with Salesforce. It's Sam and Alex and Curtin, Payton building those one on one relationships with people who have Salesforce as their job title. And that's where you really move mountains and make rubber meets the road. So there's a little bit of the backstory. Now why did we go all in on Salesforce? Well, when I got here, we were building a platform. And we had no resources to build additional integrations. That's just the fact the truth of it. And so we kind of had to look at what do we have working for us? And where can we go make the biggest impact with the team that we have? And we looked at Salesforce, they were the ones that were definitely giving us like the most leads. But it was pretty reactive in that moment. So we tried to think about how can we make this repetitive, predictable, and build a machine, a flywheel, as we've said, here, before, out of Salesforce. And so that's why we picked Salesforce, that's why we leaned in completely. And, man, it's been two and a half years now. And I've learned a ton. And we are, we've made a ton of impact with Salesforce 100% of our deals closed this year, this quarter, sorry, we're partner sourced. That's incredible, all by Salesforce. But we're just scratching the surface. I think that's the thing with you can't it's not a one and done like we are just scratching the surface. I
Jason Yarborough 11:55
mean, especially if you're focused on building one on one relationships, you've got work for days and years within a company like Salesforce. So let's take a couple steps back and was thinking about like, as you're digging into Salesforce, what is it that PFL does for context for those listeners at home?
Sam Yarborough 12:13
Sure. Yeah, that's that's a good place to start. Um, PFL automates direct mail within marketing automation platforms or CRMs. So
Jason Yarborough 12:24
is it is it helpful that you're you guys are POS native Salesforce essentially requires that, that kind of connection that trigger in to be able to create those direct mail sins?
Sam Yarborough 12:35
Oh, 100%. Yes. And I think that's one thing, like, if you are looking to start a partnership with Salesforce, you need to be on the App Exchange. Point blank, you need to pay to play. I mean, lots of people. Yeah, lots of people ask, like, how do you you know, how do you get started? Well, first of all, you have to have internal buy in across your org to, to get into the App Exchange, do all of this. Security, review all of that make sure your app is native. And that's where you're going to get salespersons attention. First and foremost, if you're not willing to make those steps and do the whole rev share agreement, whatnot, then you're not going to get the support of Salesforce, and it's going to be a very uphill battle for you. So internal buy in for sure.
Jason Yarborough 13:16
Yeah, absolutely. And on the aspect of, you know, paying to play, how have you been successful at getting in maintain that internal buy in when you have to pay out a roadshow? Like, was it 15% these days?
Sam Yarborough 13:29
16%. Yeah. And again, this goes back to Marnie. She set this up, that's a marketing spend. So we just look at that as as comes out of marketing, p&l. Um but it's not that's not just it, I mean, me us as a partner team have a budget outside of that too. So we have a budget to go I'm unable to go provide experiences for the Salesforce team like building these relationships. We've all been there you just went to a conference that is that's the game like you have to be able to bring these people to dinner to you know, go on site and enable them that's all part of the pay to play to that's super important and often overlooked.
Jason Yarborough 14:13
Yeah, no doubt I think budget teen to expand that partnership is another crucial step to it, which we can probably spend an entire podcast just talking about that more so when I start digging into like, really nailing that partnership so outside of the the pay to play having a budget to do all the things you mentioned, you know, building those one on one relationships. Just let's expand on that a little bit because we we get a lot of questions I think around like how do you partner with Salesforce? Like how do you really nail it and you know, there's a lot of people that do the rowshare but not a lot of people that are really nailing it and you won't say associates or listeners like you build the program that even Salesforce is looking at they're trying to treat it like how you Don, what you've done and there's other companies out there who have replicated your model. So like, let's let's dig into, like how you're really nailing that ecosystem and building effective relationships, building process and everything around it.
Sam Yarborough 15:14
Well, thank you for saying that. Before we dive on one thing, too, if you're having a hard time convincing your internal teams on the rev share, one thing I encourage people to look at is CAC. So cost per acquisition for customers. Yeah, so you look at 15% say you sell $100,000 Deal 15% $15,000, your upper management might look at that and be like, that's insane. But let's put it this way. If you have nurtured these relationships, and you source that deal, and 15% is all you're paying from a CAC perspective, yes, you have to think about your salary and all that. But if $15,000 is probably not that high, considering all of the marketing programs and everything else that might go into acquiring that customer, elsewhere. So just, if you're having a hard time with rev share, look at CAC, that may be a good place to start.
Jason Yarborough 16:08
It's a great point. Excellent point.
Sam Yarborough 16:10
So to go back to your to your point about how to really get started and make an impact with Salesforce. Start small to go big. And it sounds so overwhelming and daunting. Like in full transparency when Marnie laughed, I was like, Oh, God, that means I have to take over Salesforce. I was like, it's
Jason Yarborough 16:32
it's a it's a it's a huge, I mean, obviously, it's a huge company. But it's like when you start a party, or it gets really big. So take the inverse of what you just said is like, how do you make a big deal? Small? Yeah, right. So it's, I think there's a lot of intimidation factor to working with him as well.
Sam Yarborough 16:47
100%. And I had it for sure. And I think you look at Salesforce, and you're like, oh my god, it's Salesforce. First of all, how do I even make an impact there? But like the people at Salesforce, how do I how do I get to know them? Like they're there at sales? You know? Well, the thing is, it's it's people doing business with people, and we say that and it sounds trite. But that is that is the truth of it. So it's making individual connections. And knowing your ICP to I think that's the other really crucial part. So we can dive into this, but because of this partner program at PFL, we have kind of shifted our ICP to meet the the individuals and the impact that we were having the Salesforce so
Jason Yarborough 17:35
you guys shifted the entire ICP to align closer to the Salesforce partnership?
Sam Yarborough 17:40
Yes. Correct. So let me dive into that a little bit. So year and a half ago, I got a random email from somebody at Salesforce. And I thought it was just an eighth. So prior to this, I was having conversations with AES, learning about their book of business asking them who's in your book of business? How can I help you grow more ACV? How can I help you create a larger Salesforce footprint? By offering PFL as an integration? That was that was the play. And then once I got an in that it's asking networks there of like, okay, eight, who else is on your team? Can you offer me an introduction, so I can help them win business? Who is your RVP? Can I do a team enablement? Like, don't forget to ask for the referral if you're working in the cloud systems, because that is the way you're going to navigate the system.
Jason Yarborough 18:38
So so instead of asking for intros, the customers are asking for intros to their team members.
Sam Yarborough 18:43
Well, both. I'm asking curveballs.
Jason Yarborough 18:47
We'll get to the point later, yeah.
Sam Yarborough 18:49
So but I got this email from somebody. And I thought it was an ad I took the took the meeting, and her name was Lorraine. She's no longer at Salesforce, but she was a game changer for me. So she was looking for marketing cloud applications in healthcare. And I didn't even understand this at the time, but that was going to be huge. So what that did was open up the doors for me into health care. So many thing happens. So many things happen as a result of this a. It helped us niche. So there's another piece another nugget that I wish somebody would have told me if you are a horizontal partner in Salesforce niche down because if you go to Salesforce and say, Hey, Salesforce PFL we do direct mail. They're like cool. I have no idea what that means. But it was a horizontal partner at Salesforce, okay. Horizontal means we have no target vertical or industry. We serve every industry that Salesforce says which in theory should be good. But because our message was not specific enough, Salesforce AES didn't know what to do with it.
Jason Yarborough 19:58
Got it. Okay.
Sam Yarborough 20:00
Okay, so we went into health care. And I left I went to a healthcare conference was like, how hard can it be? can be really hard? I know nothing about health care.
Jason Yarborough 20:12
I didn't, I didn't get good on that path for a reason. Yeah.
Sam Yarborough 20:16
So we learned so much about kind of what those customers need, what their, what their languages, what they're talking about what their use cases are. And here's the thing. The use cases, if you look, 30,000 foot are not that much different, but the way they're talking about them, and the outcomes they have for their customers, ie patients. Yeah, it's very different. So just learning that nomenclature and being able to speak the speak is really, really crucial. And then you take that and you put it over financial services, or manufacturing, it's all the same use case, but different language, different names, and being able to articulate that is it's a game changer. Yeah,
Jason Yarborough 20:59
I like that. So really finding the motivators and drivers by with these as we're looking forward to how to speak to kind of how to speak to how they speak. Right? Just like when you have to learn to talk to, you know, when we were dating, have to be comfortable talking to the person I'm trying to court or get with, so to say and speak, you know, a language that is representative of both of us so that we are attracted to one another. And understanding what's motivating those A's in a business context. And, again, going back to those the benefits of friendships is like, how are we providing value to them? To get them to entertain? My crazy ask?
Sam Yarborough 21:37
100% Yep.
Jason Yarborough 21:39
Okay, so get into the heart of the podcast, how are you find that effective and efficient ways of building relationships with his teams? You mentioned the one on one relationships, asking for referrals internally? Well, I know you there's other things that you guys do. So I'd love for people at home to hear you're gonna hear your guys's process and building these purpose built relationships.
Sam Yarborough 22:03
Yeah, so I have to say my team is phenomenal. We have Alex Dayton, who owns the Salesforce relationship really, he's in there day in and day out. He's phenomenal. He's not for hire. She came over to the partner team, from the BDR team. And he was he was choosing between a partner. I brought him over to the dark side of
Jason Yarborough 22:30
the wood. Oh, there was a light. So it depends on how you look at it. We have fewer
Sam Yarborough 22:34
resources. But he has been a game changer. And so you know, that's one thing I think about often I'm like, Man, I wish I at one point in my career could have been a BDR. Because the skills the drive, the hunger he has is so crucial. And he just shows up day in day out. But he has shifted a little bit too because it's not just like, hit my number. Now he has started to see like, these are relationships that I'm building. And because he's trained as a BDR, he has a very good hunger for like, Okay, now that I have this relationship, how do I make sure we get the most out of it, not only from a personal perspective, but from a business perspective. So he's looking at asking for referrals and networking through the system. Like truly, if you go on LinkedIn, and you find a Salesforce contact, there is a high likelihood that Alex is connected to them. And he's done a phenomenal job, but that
Jason Yarborough 23:29
would have what is he tasked with on a daily weekly basis within Salesforce and what is the metric Don?
Sam Yarborough 23:38
Yeah, so that's been a learning process for us when we started this, that was a new role. So really, how this how this came to be, and I I'm gonna mention Kurt and Peyton here really quickly, so I can talk about the team at large. So Kurt and Peyton are marketing only. So we have two marketers. And then we have myself and Alex that's the partner team for for those counts. Yes. So when we brought Alex's role into the fold, it was brand new. We never had somebody whose sole job was to go network with Salesforce. I guess that was your first job but I was starting from scratch because I Never overlapped there. So at first we were like let's let's do meetings booked and customer intros
Jason Yarborough 24:24
meetings booked with Salesforce employees. Yes.
Sam Yarborough 24:27
Thank you for the clarification. And then customer intros from set employees. So source deals. That was a great place to start because it really got boots on the ground and and got him meeting as many people as possible. That was the carrot of like, get this many meetings a month, and he got paid on an per meeting basis, and then a customer customer intro basis. What we learned from that is it didn't necessarily align with the greater good of the company, which is pipeline And also, he got to the point where he had he was meeting great people, but because his metric was new meetings, he wasn't able to go back and nurture the relationships that he just built. Got it. So we took a hard look and said, Okay, let's relook at this. And now it's pipeline. So and that's, that's, that's for the greater good for everybody. It's good for the company. Because we weren't drive pipeline. It's good for Salesforce, AES, because their deals are now in pipe. And that's how they get paid. They have to be closed when, of course, but everybody's now aligning more towards a true No, yes,
Jason Yarborough 25:37
I think that's actually good. crawl, walk run approach, right? As you as you set up someone new and partner account management, like, how many people can you sit meetings with within your partners? How many people can you meet and connect with and build relationships with because you can really, effectively build pipeline without those relationships, though those connections without having people actually know who you are, what you're doing what your company does, and brings value to? So I liked that as a as a beginning stage of getting people into partnerships,
Sam Yarborough 26:06
no doubt. And I have to give him credit, too, because he would book meetings with people want to be like, You got a meeting with what? And they were like high up people in Salesforce. And that goes to show how great he is. But he was like, Yeah, but I have no idea what to talk to them about. And I was like, I'll join that one.
Jason Yarborough 26:23
That's awesome. I like that. That's a really good good model and good approach. And now you've kind of operationalized the program, the relationships, that give us a quick synopsis on what you're doing there from an operational standpoint.
Sam Yarborough 26:38
Yes, so this is where marketing comes in. So we have all these relationships that Alex and myself are building, and we're tracking them in Salesforce. But how can we instead of this is where it goes from one to one to one to many, this is how you can scale. Alex and I can only have so many conversations in the day as you would imagine. But because we're tracking these people in our Salesforce system, we now know, I think we've created 350 Salesforce relationships this year, meaning we've built relationships 350, Salesforce, employees that could be solution engineers, industry leaders, AES, you name it. We have them segmented in our sales force based on engagement. So whether or not they're new to us, they barely know who we are, or they're pretty mature. And they've given us a lot of customer intros. We've also recently started to segment by industry, so they work in healthcare or manufacturing. And now with that data, we can market to them appropriately. And that's where Kurt and Peyton come in. So we're surfacing when stories given the industry that they're in, or even like events for going to given their location. So we really are looking at Salesforce itself, the partner team as our customer. So all the tools that your marketing team is doing, how can we basically pull that back and put it towards your partners?
Jason Yarborough 28:09
Yeah, and I don't know if this is proprietary information or not, but you have an entire Salesforce instance, dedicated to your Salesforce partnership? Yep. Very, very meta, if you can kind of tell us what you're doing. They're just in a quick highlight. Like, that'd be very interesting.
Sam Yarborough 28:26
Yeah, I mean, I just kind of touched on it. But when we when we meet somebody at Salesforce, we want to track that because as you can imagine, 350 people, it's really hard to keep track of that on sticky notes are in your in your brain. So we create a partner relationship in Salesforce. And now we have track of which accounts they own, again, which industry they're in, when we met them, you can take notes, just like an AE or BDR would on an account. And so now we can go back and we can be like, Okay, I haven't talked to Jason in a while. Let me look at what counts, he owns what our last touch was. So we really can create kind of these personal relationships and keep track of that kind of stuff. Because otherwise, it's not scalable, you do lose track of all of it.
Jason Yarborough 29:15
Now, for those listening I, the process she's built for you haven't seen it, but some time because it's very impressive, especially considering the fact that you can't use a reveal or cross beam to map with Salesforce. A funny story. I met Salesforce calculus last week, and you never got down the path of you know, data sharing account mapping solutions. They just laughed at me. They're like, yeah, sorry about that.
Sam Yarborough 29:41
I didn't I have yet to hear about that conversation. It was
Jason Yarborough 29:43
it was all it they just kind of laughed and just yeah, sorry about that. And it was one of the things I knew instantly what you were talking about data sharing with Salesforce. Good luck with that. Yeah, it's a it's an incredible process. I really liked the the CRM instance you've got built out and how you you've come in and strategically thought about the partnerships in the guts always, since I've known you Your strength is his kind of strategy. And you think differently than most people, which is what I love, you know, working alongside of you and playing alongside of you, which kind of leads into the next topic. Your other partnerships with me? Oh, yes, we have a in about what is it 10 days, we would have been married for six years. This is true. So let's talk about our work life. Partnership. We are old time, even, most recently from our next door neighbor's car. I know you're listening about how we actually kind of work together. And live life together. We, for those who don't know Sam, works three feet behind me at her does.
Sam Yarborough 30:52
My commute for the podcast was Yeah, long.
Jason Yarborough 30:55
We do the podcast, we essentially do everything together. And parent. And we have two kids, Jack and Nora, four and two. Just got back from Yellowstone, by the way, took Jack and Nora for their first trip to the Yellowstone National Park. That was awesome. Got a video coming out soon. Very fun.
Sam Yarborough 31:11
Highly recommend. Yeah, it's
Jason Yarborough 31:13
great. So let's let's talk about how we we manage that. And apparently, it's not a very common thing for spouses to to work in the same room and do all the same stuff together all the time. Yeah. How do you manage this partnership?
Sam Yarborough 31:29
Well, I think it's a it's a joint pen engineering
Jason Yarborough 31:31
magazine. That's key. There's a really there's a great joint value prop minute. Yes.
Sam Yarborough 31:35
You know, I think the biggest thing is, you show up day in and day out. But I'll start back at my friends with benefits definition. Communication is so key. And you've always been pretty good at that, at least since I've known you, thank you did some prep work to get there, you've helped me with that.
Jason Yarborough 32:00
You've got to be open to yourself to to allow others to be open to who you are. Right. And if you're going to both open to one another, then like the relationship is, is just it's kind of next level. Right. And what I mean by that is like, the more you self respect you have I think the more respect others have for you and let you both find that common ground and respect for one another than like being together all the time. isn't that big of a deal? Because you're going to understand and get each other?
Sam Yarborough 32:29
Yeah, and I think you if you know what you need, or I know what I need, then we're able to articulate that and better for each other. Yes. Which makes for a good experience. And so we've been married six years, we've been together eight years. And that's definitely been a learning process. I used to be a very passive aggressive person who wouldn't ask for help. So if I mean,
Jason Yarborough 32:56
it's still not a strength of yours? Well, I mean, I've gotten
Sam Yarborough 32:58
better. If you see me forcefully shutting cabinets or putting dishes away very forcefully,
Jason Yarborough 33:07
and if we've got the airsoft cabinets, you know that
Sam Yarborough 33:11
something's wrong, and I am not doing a good job articulating that, oh, we we've gotten better about it. But I think it mean it is it's especially working in the same industry. Which means there's a lot of overlap in terms of like conferences we need to go to, or people we talk to. So we really, I mean, truly, we really do consider this our group of friends, because this is where we live and breathe. But from a personal perspective, I think it's definitely a give and take like you went to catalyst catalysts last week, which I joke. It's like, yeah, I have FOMO. I do. But that's fine like that. It made sense for you to go to that, to that conference. Salesforce is my people. Right? That was not Salesforce conference, you are get revealed, that is a conference you need to be at. And so those are the types of things that we just need to like, work through. And, again, it's major communication. We have two small children, we can't just like pick up and leave and go to Denver for the week. So how do we how do we make sure that we're both succeeding and growing in our careers, but also in our marriage? Most importantly, and our marriage and our family? Yeah.
Jason Yarborough 34:26
I think too, there's there's a level of selflessness that ultimately gets kind of overlooked, I think, and in any relationship, you have to be extraordinarily selfless. I think we do a really good job of really, genuinely caring about each other's interest. I think I care more about your interests and some that I care about mine and not some feel that from you a lot of times and I think that's what makes the the at home partnerships work right when you're, you think less about yourself to really bring value and benefit to the other to your partner. Right. And I know you, you embody that with me, I buy that with you. So we're trying to teach our kids about, you know, I think we tell them every night that we're kind to everybody. And we love people, because we're yarborough's. That's what we do. And we're beginning to teach that to them. Right. And I think there's, there's a lot of that that's overlooked in a lot of relationships, because people are thinking about themself. I, you mentioned some of the work I put in, like, way back in the day, I realized that, you know, I was just trying to look out for myself and getting, you know, what I could out of life for myself. When in actuality, when I took a step back, like I was just trying to get something for me, because I didn't have internally what already needed, which was self worth, and self love. And like, once I began to understand that and see that, like, the whole world opened up, and I could really begin to see like, I've got everything I need. Inside, I really like I love who I am, I've got so value self worth. And I began to see that I don't expect anything got to other people. So I can give more of myself, honestly and genuinely to others, without expecting anything in return. It was just, you know, I met you shortly after going through that word, like genuinely curious and interested in who you were, and didn't expect anything out of it. Obviously, I wanted a girlfriend and eventually a wife, fun, quick salary. A good at home relationship stories. I feel I fell hard quick, I fell in love very fast. To the point that I think it was 39 days into our relationship. We were having dinner on your patio, and I was like, this is gonna sound crazy. But I think I love you.
Sam Yarborough 36:50
This is true. And I didn't respond.
Jason Yarborough 36:53
I remember your response is like, wow, that was quick, amazing time to think about that. And I didn't expect a did not expect anything in return, I just had to let you know goes I was falling very hard and still am to this day.
Sam Yarborough 37:08
But I think there's something there. And that that's the crux of all of it. It's intentionality and vulnerability. So not being afraid to hold things back whether they're good or bad. And know what no one benefits from that. And I think you have to bring that to your partnerships. Professionally to like, if there's a problem, a dress, yeah, you don't have to, like be aggressive about it. But like when you hold things back, or if there's a when a dress it um, I think that's the base of having a good relationship is just communication. And then the other part that we haven't talked about is intentionality, especially in our day to day life when we sit in the same office. And like, you guys were insane. We literally like go pick the kids up together there, there is no drop off together, or separation here. But I think it's because you have to pay attention to the little moments and be intentional about making them count. So in the morning, waking up and giving each other a hug, not just like waking up and going straight to your phone and straight to your day, like your home is the most important relationship you can have. So it's paying attention, it's making eye contact, it's making, making those moments count having dinner together, you know, checking in on our day, like seriously, I don't need to ask you how your day was I was sitting right there for the whole time
Jason Yarborough 38:29
you hear when I get animated or flare under my breath or on New Age or whatever.
Sam Yarborough 38:35
But it is it's checking in because the experience of your day that you had is very different than the day that I had even though there were three peat part. And if we can't connect on those moments, then they're at a loss.
Jason Yarborough 38:46
That's good. Oh, there's there's a lot of value in checking in on each other's day. Just checking in in general, maybe if we didn't work in the same room together is like a thing that sets the tone for how things are going to go at home, how things are gonna go in your relationship, we spend more time I think working than we do with our families. So be able to check in and you get an understanding and being vulnerable enough to tell how your day was or your day was like or about like, really can begin to set the tone for how things go in the house. No doubt, and I think a lot people just don't really care to talk about it. Had a shitty day, had a hard day, whatever. Just leave it there like oh, let's let's talk about it. Let's be honest for a second. Yep. How could we made a better? Do you need somebody to talk to you about it? He just wants me to listen. What is it? Yeah. So you were mentioning intentionality and vulnerability and bring it to people. For those that follow us on LinkedIn, they may have seen a slight tweak in some of our posts on LinkedIn. You know, we're sharing a bit more. Getting a little bit more intentional with what we're sharing, trying to encourage others in different ways beyond just like a five extra partnership how to grow 20% This quarter louder, but more around like, you share, like, Where were you coming from some of your new content around your, your gardening or your art? Or is you as a self?
Sam Yarborough 40:13
Well, I have to give you credit for this. Parts partially.
Jason Yarborough 40:16
I'll take partial credit, okay.
Sam Yarborough 40:20
We were kind of in a, I wouldn't call it a rut, but we were in a program, we would wake up, we would go to work evaluated. What? No, it was just like, this is the way things are. And we weren't really being intentional about thinking about it, you know, it's like, you wake up, go to work, you have done with kids, you put them to bed, we watch a show, we go to bed, and then repeat on Groundhog's Day, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that it was fine. Nothing was you know, but there was nothing in bigger writing about it either, right. And so you started working out again, and you stopped drinking. And I was like, I'll get out of bed. And one thing I do want to focus on for a second here is like you found what worked for you. And I've had a little bit of like self shame. I used to work out really hard. I used to lift weights five times a week and would run half marathons. And that was great for that time in life. And it's taken me a moment to be like, You know what, I am a mom of two small kids, that is not the life for me right now. I'm going to do yoga, and I'm going to invest in meditation. And that is what works for me right now. And also, it's amazing. And that's what I'm going to do. And so we've both kind of taken our own separate paths of like, alright, what is investing in our own personal selves look like so that we can be better for the whole, the whole being us, our family, you all as a community. So it's not only like stopping and drinking and working out, but how can I like, create more. The irony, and what's happening right now, I'm trying to say, more stimulation for my mind, right. Um, I know for myself, I'm a very creative person. And I've totally lost sight since we had kids. And I also think there's something to be said, for having grace with yourself. Our kids are two and four. And I feel like we're just coming out of the like, survival mode, that
Jason Yarborough 42:27
finally getting the point where they're playing together, they're having a good time, we get a little bit more mom and dad time, a bit more individual time, still not as much time as we used to have, but we're getting there.
Sam Yarborough 42:37
But this goes back to our partnership to have like, let's, let's create that space for each of us to explore what a whole human looks like, again, right. And that means you can step away and go run on the weekend, and I'll take the kids and vice versa. And we're all better for it.
Jason Yarborough 42:56
And it's been really intentional with your time. Part of it is having a four year old and a two year old is like, I want to be present and intentional with them. I don't want to be so busy or glued to a phone or hungover or whatever it might be that I can't really be present with those little babes who were just the best. So there's a level of intentionality that you have to begin to live life with and know like, what's important and what's not. Like, what what experiences do we want to pursue? And what do we kind of what do we want to be known for amongst each other? And amongst like the art community that we're building?
Sam Yarborough 43:33
Yeah. And Adrian talks about this in her episode too, about setting those boundaries and guardrails. And I think that's something when we were single, it didn't matter. But now it does. So you've gotten really good at having a morning routine, and you cherish that time. And I think that's something that as we go through life, you have to just reevaluate. So now it's like, we work during work hours, outside of that, we hang out with our kids. And in the mornings, you have your time, like making sure you carve those out, and you're really sticking to that because no one's going to do it for you. And then you go five years go by, and you've stopped working out, you've lost touch with your creative cell, you have nothing except for sitting down and watching Netflix every night and getting into a program like we found ourselves in.
Jason Yarborough 44:20
How have you found yourself achieving different levels of this whole journey started with God with the Joe Grom peak performance, which actually became a whole monitoring thing, but how have you found yourself like, different throughout your day at work? Kids with me, but you know, being more intentional and pursuing this, you know, quote, unquote, peak performance mindset.
Sam Yarborough 44:45
Well, for me, it's mindset. That's been the biggest thing I had recently. Well, no, it has been a few months now. I started meditating pretty frequently. And at first I was like, this is kind of crazy and woowoo and nuts. And it is still but man, it's awesome and think taking the time to center yourself and understand that you truly do have control over the way that you perceive the world and that the world perceives you. Like, what power is that and that's amazing. So waking up every day and choosing positivity, choosing opportunity, choosing abundance, and man, it changes the way the world works for you. Yeah, I've
Jason Yarborough 45:27
obviously seen it firsthand how it's like changed our life, our conversations, our pursuits, like we now have, you know, a different level of Gold Drive, to pursue things, you know, beyond ourselves, bigger than our day jobs, and really trying to bring purpose and intention to to our lives and, and also how, you know, going back to your economy, like how we show up for other people. Yeah, I love like, where our conversations have gone recently around, like how we're trying to show up for others and really help others achieve their best selves, their whole selves, and whatever that may look like, love, you know that for you, you put a post up about this on the den that it's, you know, working in our garden, in our backyard or, or painting or finding your thing. I think, you know, a lot of people would haven't had the opportunity or desire to pursue their thing. But I think there's a lot of you and I talked a lot about, there's like a lot of purpose in experience. Now, I have read a book right now by Steven Kotler. He talks about experiences. gathering more and more experiences are what opens up our creativity. We're these these creative thoughts and things are put into you. Just like you're plugged in. Creativity only happens by getting multiple experiences. So like you doing your art and gardening and me doing my whatever things like, you know, the cruiser fishing and playing outside like, those are experiences that I begin to gather that allow us to unleash our creativity begin to find our things.
Sam Yarborough 47:06
I think the other thing, too, that I am really learning is you have this vision for your future. And sometimes it can seem so like, far, or distant or unattainable, even. And the path to get there is not clear,
Jason Yarborough 47:22
narrow. There's no playbook for really,
Sam Yarborough 47:25
yeah, there's no playbook for any of it. The only playbook is to do the next best thing as Glen and Doylestown do. And that's going to naturally carve out your way forward. Whereas if you just sit in, and you're paralyzed by what to do next, nothing is going to happen for you. But if you take the next step, you're going to learn. And that might not be the way you want to go. But at least you took a step, and it's going to show you the next one. And that is the way forward. And so whether it's you know, the other thing too, I'm learning a lot is I've always been I don't have time, I have two small kids, I have a full job, I have this I have that. There is always time, right. It's just how you choose to spend it. And that also goes back to your partnership, too. We you know, we are very privileged, we have a wonderful relationship, we have great jobs. But it is it's being really intentional about I'm going to pick up painting again. And that means I'm going to need your help a little bit more, or whatever that is. So it's just getting started and not trying to get to the finish line. But where you take the first step.
Jason Yarborough 48:37
No, that's great and doesn't do that. You're really great about encouraging me excited. As you know, I get very much what is it analysis paralysis? Yeah, we're all just overthink and it just don't start. Yep. We've been talking about this podcast for a very long time. So this is one of those things like let's just start Yep, you know, nothing, you know, it's you that was gonna push in and droppingly Let's just start let's just start and you're you're great at that and as with me like like I gotta have it all put together we got to understand it got to see the big picture. I gotta have the domain the website the stuff this that the other thing but you know, this has been props to us. We exactly don't have a we got a landing page on partner hacker. But
Sam Yarborough 49:18
yeah, well, thanks to the partner hacker team like truly that's, that's, that's
Jason Yarborough 49:21
that's about it. So we just got started and sort of putting this together. Thankfully, you have a graphic design background, put together our artwork through all that fun stuff. You know, I did some of the the intro music. You provide the other half of it. That for those of you who have not figured that out yet we are the intro music by the way, did it so we just got started. We didn't have intro music. We wanted your music. So we made it
Sam Yarborough 49:47
and it works just fine. People love it.
Jason Yarborough 49:50
I think I was again callous last week and Mike stocker walked up and he was humming the tune is it Yeah. Oh
Sam Yarborough 49:56
my god. I love that guy.
Jason Yarborough 49:58
It's picking up out there. Yeah, if they don't have the podcast, they love them intro music or at least have that horse. Alright, so should we should wrap this thing up reshard
Sam Yarborough 50:07
people are probably getting bored of listening to us make it if you listen to this long, and you want to talk more clearly, we're passionate about this. So, yeah, let us know,
Jason Yarborough 50:20
we can talk partnership for days, but we'd much rather talk about you understand you and how we can help. I think you and I spent as much time helping others understand partnerships and there were also the worker nodes to be the best self. I for whatever reason, find myself in a lot of those talks. And that's the intention that I set out to that's kind of you know, your, your mindset or your manifestation aspect of things like when I help people. So you find ways that I guess it finds ways to work itself into his conversations with me is that always naturally comes up. So I guess I'm trying to say is like, if you were to talk to us, if you were to talk, if there's things that you want to be doing and pursuing outside of your daily work, just start doing it, just start you know, finding ways to bring it up in conversation, and it will find its way to you a promise. All right. So let's wrap it up with with some questions. I think this is a good opportunity for me to do some research before your, your favorite. Okay, with to two questions, your favorite type of date night
Sam Yarborough 51:38
experiences, so meaning, not just like your traditional dinner and whatever, but something out of the blue we did this last summer and I loved it we would alternate date nights and every other one you would be in charge of and I would be in charge up and we did some fun ones we did. Wine dancing, Axe Throwing fly fishing.
Jason Yarborough 51:58
We went to the Montana Science Center and oh, yeah, we
Sam Yarborough 52:02
3d printed. That was fun. Yeah, yeah.
Jason Yarborough 52:06
So we are our date nights are also nerdy. But fun. We love it. I kind of knew the answer that question so much research.
Sam Yarborough 52:14
I hope he answered all these questions. Otherwise, we're going real disk here.
Jason Yarborough 52:18
This one. This one made. I don't know. What's your most memorable day night? Can you recall one over the last eight years?
Sam Yarborough 52:24
Yeah, our first date? No, I mean, seriously. You took me to a nice dinner. And I mean, it was the sounds so cheesy, but it's true. Like I think both of us in that moment were like, oh shit, this might be the real deal. Yeah, but he took me to a fancy dinner and then I said let's blow this joint and go to a dive bar. So I took you to Smokey Joe's and on Charlotte it
Jason Yarborough 52:47
was one of those dive bars in deep North Carolina that you could actually maybe smoke in I can't remember. Well 100% That was I was I was told you I loved you the very first night if they give me that die boric is my jam, you know, drinking PBRs and playing pool, but a fantastic unit. Yes. So well. As always.
Sam Yarborough 53:07
Thanks, friends. Hopefully we didn't bore you. There will be more guests coming. But we appreciate you all immensely. You are our community. So thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
