How can partner teams and marketing teams work together to genuinely influence hearts and minds?
Blake Williams, CEO of Ampfactor, joins us to dive into account-based Marketing (ABM). Instead of the spray-and-pray approach that many marketers take, Blake advocates for a sniper-like targeted approach. You can gain trust and drive results by surrounding your prospects with targeted messages and influencers.
Blake also shares how he manages multiple companies while raising four girls. Sam, Jason, and Blake share strategies they’ve used for personal growth and time management.
Highlights:
00:56 Intro to Blake Williams
04:45 What is ABM for partners?
10:45 Give vs. get portfolio
12:30 Influencing hearts and minds
13:15 Get your sellers to come to you
14:53 How to get your C-suite on board with ABM
15:14 ABM starts with education
16:59 Build trust first
18:47 Earn your seat at the table
20:48 Share your ideas, be willing to put yourself out there
22:24 Communication is key
22:54 What is AmpFactor?
29:25 The role of AI in marketing
39:11 Serial entrepreneurship
46:04 Always have an exit plan and a side hustle
48:05 Give 150%
49:47 Personal development
51:55 What does Blake do to practice personal development?
59:14 Work-life balance with kids
01:01:09 Structuring your energy throughout the day
How can partner teams and marketing teams work together to genuinely influence hearts and minds?
Blake Williams, CEO of Ampfactor, joins us to dive into account-based Marketing (ABM). Instead of the spray-and-pray approach that many marketers take, Blake advocates for a sniper-like targeted approach. You can gain trust and drive results by surrounding your prospects with targeted messages and influencers.
Blake also shares how he manages multiple companies while raising four girls. Sam, Jason, and Blake share strategies they’ve used for personal growth and time management.
Highlights:
00:56 Intro to Blake Williams
04:45 What is ABM for partners?
10:45 Give vs. get portfolio
12:30 Influencing hearts and minds
13:15 Get your sellers to come to you
14:53 How to get your C-suite on board with ABM
15:14 ABM starts with education
16:59 Build trust first
18:47 Earn your seat at the table
20:48 Share your ideas, be willing to put yourself out there
22:24 Communication is key
22:54 What is AmpFactor?
29:25 The role of AI in marketing
39:11 Serial entrepreneurship
46:04 Always have an exit plan and a side hustle
48:05 Give 150%
49:47 Personal development
51:55 What does Blake do to practice personal development?
59:14 Work-life balance with kids
01:01:09 Structuring your energy throughout the day
Welcome back to the show friends. We are live ish with another episode coming from the Yarby household in the worldwide web of, you know, technology, Sam. Hello. Beautiful as always. It's a, you know, it's a good day to podcast. Montana is getting a little bit cooler. We had a 30 degree morning this morning and right now it's a Beautiful 60 and the windows open. I can't imagine a better way to podcast
Sam Yarborough:Bye bye garden. We're moving on into the winter months.
Jason Yarborough:Sam's talked extensively about the garden on the podcast and other things she's done out there and this morning We may have lost it. So say a prayer for my wife today, though Man, today, I think we've got the most interesting person in podcast. If, uh, you know, the most interesting man in the world was in partnerships, it would be Blake Williams. And Blake is somebody I've got to know over the last few months, we call it, the last couple of conferences. I had a really great time hanging out, chatting, exploring the future, and just... Really getting real and open with each other, which is what I love about this guy. But if you don't know Blake, he's, you know, doing a lot of great things in the partner space, running a little company called Amp Factor and just making some waves out there, putting out some incredible content and just an overall great guy. I won't get into too much cause, you know, we want Blake to talk about himself here, but Blake. Welcome to the show, my man.
Blake Williams:Thanks guys. I appreciate it. And thank you for the, uh, your overselling on the introduction. Uh, I
Jason Yarborough:Uh, man, it's been a fun couple of months getting to know you. I'm surprised that we've never connected until, what was it, uh, Catalyst, I guess?
Blake Williams:yeah, yeah. It's kind of, uh, serendipitous the way things have come together from a philosophy standpoint, just orientation to life and then things that we want to get done.
Jason Yarborough:Yeah, and this is, uh, your first time, you know, quote unquote meeting Sam, so, you know, we're family now, man.
Blake Williams:that's it.
Sam Yarborough:Yeah. Now it's official. Jason goes and meets all these friends and then he finally brings them home,
Blake Williams:He brings him home.
Jason Yarborough:It's like, uh, you know, we bring him into our, uh, virtual bedroom, if we're keeping the, uh, the pun going here.
Sam Yarborough:Uh, that might be too far.
Blake Williams:Yeah.
Jason Yarborough:don't know, what is it, Nick Offerman and his wife, uh, have, have the podcast in bed with Nick and, uh,
Blake Williams:Oh really? Yeah. Uh huh. Yup.
Jason Yarborough:what his wife's name is, but they, it's a very hilarious podcast. And the very first guest I think was, um, Bill Hader. And they actually recorded the episode in their bed with Bill. Wow, we've really digressed on
Blake Williams:That's pushing it. That's pushing it.
Jason Yarborough:So,
Blake Williams:Right. Uh
Sam Yarborough:back friends.
Jason Yarborough:yeah, welcome back to the show. We'll do the intro all over again. So, Blake, I want to know... As I'm just getting to know you, like, what do people know Blake Williams for?
Blake Williams:Yeah, geez. I don't know. Hopefully, hopefully loyalty. Uh, good ideas. Um, I have a gaggle of daughters. Um, we're up to
Sam Yarborough:Isn't that what you called turkeys?
Blake Williams:Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so four daughters all together. Um, hopefully that, you know, and, uh, and hopefully partnerships and marketing maybe lastly, those things. Yeah.
Jason Yarborough:I like that. It's funny as I was been thinking a lot this week about kind of the things being known for is like it's top of the list always comes down to like Being a great dad, being a great husband and being a successful business person, partner, person, whatever it might be is like so far down the line. And appreciate hearing you say that on the podcast and sharing that. It's like, I really got that sentiment from you the last time we were hanging out, which was in Boston and kind of see that in your bio states, four time girl, dad, first and foremost. So I feel like you really embody that. So love to see it.
Blake Williams:I tried
Sam Yarborough:that's cool though. Cause that's. That's the beauty of, the beauty and the blessing of being in partnerships, is that is the basis. Are you a good human? Do you care about your relationships? And if you can't do that for your personal life, then
Blake Williams:Yeah,
Sam Yarborough:you got some work to do before you can do that.
Blake Williams:that's that's to be sure. And to be clear, I have work to do all over the place for sure.
Sam Yarborough:We all do.
Blake Williams:Yeah, right.
Jason Yarborough:don't, don't we all. I mean,
Sam Yarborough:it's the first step.
Blake Williams:Yes, that's
Jason Yarborough:why we started a podcast about relationships.
Blake Williams:Right. That is it. That is it.
Sam Yarborough:okay. So I have heard a ton about you. Um, as we just talked about, this is the first time we're actually chatting. So my pleasure. Um, but for those of us who are new to the Blake Williams atmosphere orbit, um, I spend some time on the AMP factor website. Um, Can you explain from your perspective how ABM for a partner slash ecosystem teams works, why it's important, and you've built a whole business around this. So why?
Blake Williams:Yeah. At, uh, I'll start with, I'll kind of tell the story and it'll make sense. Um, as I started to, I left a venture capital fund and I was helping big brands think about how to launch portfolios of eight figure startups. So they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars and how do you spin out? You know, groups of these software companies and go acquire their alpha, beta and delta customer. Um, then I was spinning up ABM. I was like, this is too hard. There needs to be a, you know, a unified model of practice, a technology structure that other people want to rent, um, at the same time and just get to business outcomes instead of spending a year to get there. So I went and built that and that's how Amfactor started, but how ABM. Kind of gleaned its way into relationships was I, my first customer was a big 4 billion company and they were hiring enterprise sellers and it was like, I'm going to hire John. Cause John has sold to progressive eight times. Right. And he's going to sell to him, sell to them again. It's going to be a one. They have one account that they have to manage period. And that's their whole job is to work their way into that entire account, which is a massive job. Um, And instead of just like going off of some seller's wish list, which is kind of how it started, I said, why don't we just build digital programs around where these sellers are already going to go out to and soften the dirt for them? Let's see if we can be an accelerant. Let's see if we can't open up, you know, multiple points of entry and get multi threaded as quick as we can. And, um That went well. And I was like, well, where else can we replicate this? Cause we were kind of running out of enterprise sellers. There's like seven on a team. Right. And it's like, we need to scale this. We can scale the operation. How do we do it? So we look for partners, partners, our access to other enterprise sellers in a way that we can give. Is to say, Hey, we'll put a digital wrapper around any, any, uh, current opportunities or anybody that you're trying to close and we'll try to accelerate. Just talk to us about the intent that you can't go source from Bambora or zoom info. Tell us like the real deal of what they're dealing with in the account and we'll formulate a narrative around that. To either put the wind at your back or get ahead of some risks and those kinds of things. Um, so before I knew about Reveal or Crossbeam, I was doing just VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP in, you know, just MBA, basic stuff inside of Excel to get to these, these lists. What I ended up realizing is, one, now we're leveraging partners. Two, if we want intent data that you can't go source from anyone, we can go manufacture it by working with the other partner teams and asking them to ask a couple questions,
Sam Yarborough:Yeah.
Blake Williams:right? Well, they won't give us the time of day because we're nobody yet. They are who they trust to kind of look out for them and provide insight, recommendations and guidance. So we leveraged that and that really started to be kind of our Accelerator in terms of where do we invest? Where do we double down? And how do we pull our money so that we have that LTV to CAC ratio payoff that we're looking for over the long run? So it's kind of, it's kind of landed there. And that's kind of officially what near bound data is, right? Is not just, is there an overlap? Is there an opportunity? Sure. It's in pipe. Okay, great. Can we manufacture intent data? Awesome. What does it look like from an ACV perspective? Can we get any, any windows to the soul? Cool. Of what's happening in that buying group, right? Without having to actually go approach them so that we can. basically formulate that perspective of, uh, you know, uh, uh, a high dollar restaurant. When you go sit down at a nice restaurant, it's kind of like they expected you. They anticipated your needs. They thought about the things that you would want and need or like and love before you got there. And that's kind of what I think of as a buying experience and partnerships allows the air for You know, opportunity for consideration and ABM is the methodology that we, that we use to deliver it. Sorry for a long answer, but that's the, that's the windy road.
Jason Yarborough:Oh, good. What was the, uh, kind of initial impetus to, to start exploring with partners and going down this track as you were already building out ABM campaigns, looking for more revenue, like what caused you to say, you know what, we should look in this partner closet.
Blake Williams:Uh, yeah. Um, there's only so long that you can run enterprise ABM campaigns before an executive says, okay, this is enough awareness and engagement bullshit. We need opportunities. At the end of the day, we need sales qualified opportunities and, you know, mother, you know, necessity is the mother of innovation. So I was like, okay, we're, we just started thinking and I was like, okay, we got to solve this together because the entire market is from terminus to six cents in demand. Makes everybody's telling you to run your programs this way and that this is success and it's not success by the business's definition by any way, shape, you know, any stretch of the imagination. So we got pushed to the limits and then we had to produce. And I was like, where are those relationships at?
Jason Yarborough:Nice.
Sam Yarborough:I also love this because, I mean, we talked about this last week on our episode with Jill about how, so Jill and I both live and breathe in the Salesforce ecosystem and we don't have the luxury of a reveal or a cross beam because Salesforce isn't going to buy it, but we have created our own internal systems of like creating this data and tracking the relationships we have with partner people, but building that bridge between our partner sellers and our sellers and That's the gray area still, but you kind of just talked about that. Like, I love your analogy about the restaurant of we're ready for you. We've been expecting for you. We already are three steps ahead of you. Um, it's brilliant.
Blake Williams:Well, I actually, so on this very topic, um, there's a, uh, A mentee of mine over in Denmark, and she is operating in a world where she has to compete against Adobe and Salesforce, um, who are partnered up with G. S. I. S. Like Accenture with local offices there, and, um, she is trying to manage, um, just, you know, a small pool of 27 solutions, partners and three technology technology partners. And. They, their give port, I call it a give portfolio and a get portfolio. Their give portfolio of deals that they give to their partners is way bigger by like four or five X than what they receive historically over two years. And we were talking about strategies to, to flip the script. And she was like, well, how can I use my newsletter? What am I, what am I going to change about my field events? And so, and I think, you know, I always come back to this. Uh, the sellers are the ones who I don't care what the incentives look like for the business. The sellers are the ones who choose where that referral goes 100 percent of the time. It just so happens that right now, influencing and being a sponsored influencer is in, and there's not a company in the world that will come out against that saying, Hey seller, you can't be a sponsored, um, uh, influencer talking about whatever your point of view is. So I advised her to go and find the. Folks at the top of the leaderboard at our top five partners and then sponsor them, pay 1, 500 a month, right? Pay them to create content for both of your shared audiences. And it's a hearts and minds. And again, I don't care how much Salesforce is paying to the company in commission for that, that Salesforce seller wants to, wants to grow their brand, charge more for influencing and be more relevant to their audience all day long. So it's a, it's a hearts and minds play. It's not expensive, but it's super strategic. Right. And doing what you were just talking about.
Jason Yarborough:I think that's great. And, you know, as far as StageNine as a partnership, how involved, you know, is someone like her in what that content looks like? Are they giving them free reign? Is it, you know, hey, here's 1, 500, go create. Just tell our Better Together story?
Blake Williams:Oh, no, negative, negative on that. Uh, yeah. So for her, I was like, uh, she, she kind of said the same thing. So we just give them 1500. How do we track that? I'm like, no, you wouldn't go to, go to the Ukraine, find that, find a company for 2, 000 a month. We'll do all your post production. Right. And then go out and get five of those sellers and then get a contract, one page contract, say, let's decide on what our point of view is going to be. Let's decide on, you know, and they're going to, they're going to share what accounts they're talking with. Why is it relevant? Why does their point of view need to be that this month? What accounts are they trying to influence? And that's the whole point of the content is that even though we don't have reveal or cross beam to tie us together, those sellers are going to come walking towards us, right? And it'll build loyalty all day long. If we stand by them now, they're helping us put content where people learn, right? Share and grow. And we got to redeploy some LinkedIn ad spend that's probably not producing anywhere near the amount of effectiveness that this actually will. We'll be way closer to the money, right? And, um, so put rails around it, shape your content pillars the way that you'd like, and then distribute it.
Sam Yarborough:No doubt. Um, So I keep bringing this up. It was a great conversation with Jill, but last week when we talked to her I love that she was talking about how like as a partner person you have to remove yourself from the story and You aren't the hero. This is not about you. You are out there building relationships and making other people look good I've heard you say that if a CMO partners well With partner teams and partner ecosystems, they can become the hero that empower sales CS and I agree with you. Um, so clearly hearing you talk about ABM, you are a marketer, you come from this for maybe partner teams who are a little more removed from their marketing teams or who don't have the full vision. How can you elaborate on this and how partner teams should be approaching marketing leaders to get on board?
Blake Williams:Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, it takes a little bit more. There's probably a full clinic that needs to be put on, uh, for, for just this practice.
Sam Yarborough:Coming soon.
Blake Williams:right, yeah.
Sam Yarborough:Heh heh.
Blake Williams:still LinkedIn near you, for sure. Uh, uh, and, and again, to level set. It's the whole you got to think about it from an executive's perspective, right? If you're an executive or you're thinking about putting yourself in their shoes, they feed their family with their decisions and how they manage and what, what results results they produce. They're not going to take on willy nilly. Some just because it's all over LinkedIn. I'm not going to introduce a new process to my team, reshape rev ops, and then sacrifice potential that I, at least I have a known double over here, even though it's not. Not producing as much as I'd want to, I'm not going to reallocate those resources to go kind of test and figure this thing out. And that goes for probably 60 percent of executives, right? They're probably going to be reserved. So from their perspective, the unknown, right? If they don't know anything about how to monetize with partners, it's, it's a bomb. Like, why would I pull that pin? So part of your journey needs to be about education, right? It's not going to be a single conversation, but it's repeated drum beating education to teach them about how, how should we think about this data? And they'll come to the ideas on their own better than you could as a partner leader on how to mobilize that data, how to, how can they leverage it to subsidize their own inefficiencies, right? But this is your first ecosystem that you need to influence is those functional leaders around you internally to get your body and to do all, make all the other stuff worth worthwhile. Yeah. Right.
Jason Yarborough:Yeah, I mean, it's essentially like change management, and it requires, I think, the same, you know, skills that you would go in with change management, right? And, you know, in your experience, you know, how have you helped coach, you know, partner programs to effectively lead that change management? Because this is something that I'm, I'm also, I'm completely in agreement with you, but I've gone through it myself and believe it has to happen, but it's not quite there yet.
Blake Williams:Yeah. At the beginning of my journey, you know, there was a, There's two things that kind of compete for what to start with. There's the painstorming and gainstorming, right? Find out where each of your functional leaders are hurting and where, find out where they feel like the biggest opportunities are for them to make a leap forward, right? And then look at your partner program and partnerships or partner opportunities and find out how you can align and structure there. Um, And then there's the whole business case aspect of it, but nobody gives a shit about your business case if you don't have context, right? So they need education before the business business case, and they're not going to painstorm and gain storm with you unless they respect or know you. So somebody needs to spend some time together. Right. There's really no fast way to truncate this. There's just the hard work of kind of thinking about things together, building credibility in your program, which comes through rigor, which comes through a point of view that is respectable and well articulated. I think those are those are probably your best. That's in terms of making advancements or cracks in the dam find out when you're trying to do change management You're trying to identify who's the naysayer? Who's a risk who doesn't like change and who's hungry for it if you can create another champion and multiply yourself Right then silo off on that person and then get educated spend some time one on one time And then now it's both of you fighting that fight right and you've kind of 200 you've two extra Your effectiveness.
Jason Yarborough:yeah, I always encourage anytime, anytime anyone starting a new program or starting a new company, like your first 30 days so critical in building those relationships and getting to know those people and that's your, you know, your first impression to get them on your side, right? Spend your first 30 days getting to know the teams that you're going to directly influence.
Sam Yarborough:I think this is some, we haven't really talked about this on the podcast either, but this made me think of it. It's well, first of all, empathy, which we have talked about. So what are these leaders trying to accomplish? You touched on it, Blake, um, and where are they coming from, but also executive presence. So being able to like level up and speak their language and ask for a seat at the table and earn a seat at the table. And that's not, I haven't heard that talked about much in a partner lens of executive presence. But it's. Absolutely crucial because to your point, if you don't have those internal relationships, your external relationships don't matter.
Blake Williams:Right. Right. You can't get them funded. You never get off the ground. Yeah. And how, and how do you, there's no masterclass. Maybe there are some masterclasses for it of what does it sound like, look like and feel like there are executives or partner executives absolutely out there doing it, but it takes a lot of business acumen. Right. Cause you're trying to retranslate everything that, you know, from partner speak into general business acumen, the way that it reads off a balance sheet or makes sense from a finance perspective.
Jason Yarborough:Yeah, you learn how to speak revenue, talk, speak CRO language, right? Talk revenue mix and all that fun stuff. And
Sam Yarborough:And product and marketing and all of
Blake Williams:yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there is something to that. The revenue revenue talk, that might be like the USD of the world. Where all foreign currencies get, get banked in that, right? So maybe all functional elements get banked in revenue speak. So if you can at least get there, they have a bridge to, to cross from, right?
Jason Yarborough:Yeah, absolutely.
Blake Williams:in theory. How, how have you guys seen it done?
Sam Yarborough:I mean, I'm thinking back to like everything you just said, I'm like putting through my lens and. It's exactly what you said. It's like I actually became really close with our CFO of all people. I am not a finance background person at
Jason Yarborough:person you want to get friendly with real fast.
Sam Yarborough:Yeah, and I started to be like, look, here's how we're gonna scale. This is how we're gonna grow and you know, that was the bridge of like Breaking into the executive team. And now I'm on the executive team, but it is, it's finding those internal champions and making your case through the lens of what they care about, but also how you're going to grow the business. Have a plan. Come prepared. That's it.
Blake Williams:That is it.
Jason Yarborough:Be willing to, to jump right in and share your, your ideas and like where you can make your mark within the company, as you're meeting these leaders. I mentioned like the first 30 days are crucial. Again, when I was at the last two programs I led, the first, the first 30 was just about getting to know the team, 80, 90 percent of the time was spent just talking to, to the leaders, like getting time with the CRO, CMO, CFO, find out who exactly needed to be on my side to, to help me get, you know, what I needed accomplished, right? So it, you know, it drew up to learn real fast that, you know, it was kind of the head of finance and he controlled a lot of the keys and, you know, he became a main guy to, to get to know really well. Get on my side, and you know from there It was like I got you know buy in across the board and then obviously CRO who I reported to and letting them understand very clearly What my vision was for the program how we're going to to accomplish You know the goals we had established and showing them what those steps forward were like Come in get to know the team make it as plain as possible so they can understand because most of these departments Don't understand what you're doing. They don't understand partnerships. Well, you don't understand product. All right So you got to make it plain and really, you know, all intents and purposes dumb it down
Blake Williams:I think that's, uh, I think you hit the nail on the head right there is that if you can make the numbers work, you can make it make sense. You can retranslate it back to, to marketing or customer success or customer marketing sales. You can walk those numbers back, but as long as finance agrees, that's, that might be the anchor, right? In the, in the team for sure. Cause that's the go, no go gate.
Jason Yarborough:They're like the The key keeper and what is it matrix? He has all the keys all the doors like yeah, those guys they have it all
Blake Williams:I got it all for sure. For sure. For sure. Yes.
Jason Yarborough:yeah, so no doubt. Um, so let's, let's talk a little bit more about Amfactor and curious to know, um, kind of your, your experience and what you've been building and kind of what you're learning from it. So as you've been building for what now, about five years. I
Blake Williams:Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, we incorporated in, um, while I was at the venture, you know, what's funny is I haven't really told this story before, but, um, while I was at the venture capital fund, I was managing director there and, uh, I had an idea and while we're talking about executive buy in, uh, I pitched the idea and I needed 160 K for it. And, you know, Uh, I like executing, so I got one no, and then it's not that I'm not willing to sit there and, and try to win you over over a couple of months, but I got better shit to do. Um, so I went home that night and had a couple of drinks and I incorporated a company. That company is called the growth age, uh, growth, HQ, LLC, DBA and factor. And that happened that night. It was May 19th, 2019. And we didn't start, I quit. In November and then started selling in February and we've been going ever since. So that's kind of how we really got around and I wasn't going to call the company 160k, but,
Sam Yarborough:Ha ha ha.
Blake Williams:cause I got that kind of energy in me, but, uh, uh, either way. So we started with ABM, general ABM, and then we shifted niched all the way down, right? There's riches and niches. And we niche all the way down to ABM between partners. And now it kind of ABM is. It was the execution component, but now it's more describing the methodology of being very thoughtful, intentional, and considerate about the motions that you're about to get into, not just because of the business case, you know, year one, it was like, give us your wishlist. We'll be as targeted as we can possibly be. And we'll send whatever messages you have right down that pipe and it doesn't go well because the shit going in and shit going out. And as you can see, we can get awareness and engagement, but it doesn't drive convergement. Or convert, uh, or conversion. Um,
Jason Yarborough:traffic, but No
Blake Williams:right. And now I won't even sell display ads in any way, shape or form. I'll just be like, if you want to just give me the money, you can give it to me, but I'm not going to spend it
Jason Yarborough:programmatic advertising and ABM kind of
Blake Williams:I'm just not going to do it. We're not that kind of party. And to tell you the truth, you probably don't have the ABM maturity, unless you're a snowflake, you don't have the ABM maturity to operate at that level. Right, which means that you are not generating enough strategic value in small plays to actually have a reason to scale it that wide. You haven't tested your messaging, you haven't tested your narrative, you haven't created these iterative loops that actually turn over value. Sure you can do gifting and sure you can do all these other things that have micro pops of ROI. But as far as programmatic ROI and being able to move across a vertical in named accounts and then show penetration and then win those accounts, those are the kind of things that we get involved in. So ABM for us now is that methodology. We use paid influencers. We use, you know, putting people in communities and placements and things like that. And we're using all the different things that make just an integrate, a smart integrated, it doesn't even have to be expensive, demand gen program, right? What we really try to focus on is like. If you create something new and different and unique, then all of this stuff is tactical. It's barely strategic, right? It's just the things you would do because it makes sense in 2023 Q4, right? But you've created something unique. And that's the other reason why partnerships are. So valuable because they subsidize the brand that you don't have. So if it takes two partners, three partners, four partners, you can keep subsidizing the brand and the uniqueness that you don't have when you stand alone in this unique package that says, Hey, you know, a company, a, b, c, and d all come together to sit over top of single workflow, integrate, and then we add so much value. It's one. Decision to buy right and not this massive, uh, procurement process. So
Jason Yarborough:I love the approach of kind of like the, um, intelligent penetration of where the accounts are actually spending time. So actually infiltrating with relationships of where people are, like you mentioned communities and placing people in those communities to target where those accounts are spending time and really building effective relationships around those communities. And that's a, that's a unique, that is a unique play for an agency, especially when most agencies are just chasing the media dollars. I mean, there's, Obviously millions in, in advertising dollars you could go after and bring into the business. But instead, like that's actually find where we can make the biggest difference and actually get some real conversations because in most ABM efforts and kind of been around this for a while, like most people, it kind of drop off, meaning the companies run in ABM drop off when they actually get the engagement. It's like, Oh, what do we do now? Now we just started calling them. But no, there's other better tactical ways of actually creating engagement and advancing that pipeline. Obviously partnerships would be in one. And it's a great opportunity to really accelerate what you're building in pipe.
Blake Williams:that's it. That's it. I mean, that's when the stuff gets fun because I mean as a marketer Um, uh, I feel like the creative aspect of it gets lost in trying to do these massive programs and like how do we do something? special like rent a truck outside of somebody's global HQ on the day that they know they're having a conference or something like that like that those targeted things are only possible because something You've earned your way that deep into the pipe. You've spent 5, 000 doing influencing and small, small level demand. Now it's an opportunity. Now you can go back to finance and say, look, I need 25, 000. We just use that five X or five, five K to create an opportunity. We're gonna use this 25 K to lock in this 500, 000 opportunity, you know?
Sam Yarborough:I think it's so, I mean, In the world of MQLs and click through rates and email opens, and it's all just vanity metrics that the world has like gotten used to hanging their hat on, but you're so right, like, if you really break it down, the cack for a customer when you're doing all of that is so high and so unpredictable and so
Jason Yarborough:Long.
Sam Yarborough:it, yeah, it's like, so that's the way. I have a very left turn question.
Blake Williams:Send it.
Jason Yarborough:Ha
Sam Yarborough:I hear you're a fan of AI.
Blake Williams:Yeah.
Sam Yarborough:Okay, so
Jason Yarborough:Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Sam Yarborough:you said you're working on thoughtful, intentional, and considerate plays. How do you feel that AI is going to play into this and change the future for that?
Blake Williams:Yeah. Yeah. Uh, thanks for asking that. Um, so. So the, the AI that I'm kind of getting behind is, uh, interactive AI, right? And you might hear it called human in the loop. Um, but I don't like the, I think we're too nascent from a global perspective in terms of our AI being able to produce content, black box, kind of, I give it a prompt and then it automatically generates something that wows me. That's, you know, from a quality perspective is better or more advanced than human expertise could deliver. Right. And so. Rather, instead of using AI as that magic machine, why don't we use it as, uh, A facilitator to conduct normal workflows, expert workflows that consultants typically use to pull information out of their clients, right? Even though they don't know the right answer, they know the tactical information or the tacit situational information that we want to pull out, interpret and then reformulate back to them, right? Good marketing is always. You know, you can be successful if you can articulate your customer's problem better than they can. And we're kind of doing that same thing from a better together story standpoint, where it's like, just give us the raw input. We're going to facilitate you through a workflow where we gather the raw input from you, but also from the website, any links, any documents, any content that you can share with us. And then from that architecture, we'll love, we'll leverage the generative AI to say, okay, we have this big horsepower behind us. Let's put a fine point on it. Now, and then let's start showing you snippets of the content that we might use in your collateral and you pick a or B. And as you pick a or B, you're kind of dialing in the way that you want to see that story come together. So it's we've gone from wide aperture down to. We've been fed relevant content and structure, tone and voice to you've now approved along the way micro pieces of that and taught the AI to produce content the way that you like to see it. Now we can generate landing pages, blogs, ebooks, you know, recruitment decks. All within the partner world, right? Um, we're not trying to be a Jasper AI where it's, let's create content for all use cases. We only have 10 or 15 use cases that we need to ever solve for. And we just need to be really, really good at authorship and then. You know, on point delivery from a pixel perspective. How does it come across from a design standpoint?
Jason Yarborough:Nice. So really automating the, the process behind going to market, uh, and, and the, the, the materials needed therein, you know, accelerating the time that you can go to market with partners and allowing them to focus on the, more of the strategy and the relationship, which kind of goes back to the conversation we have with Rob Rebholz, like being able to automate, you know, to build better relationships.
Blake Williams:Right,
Sam Yarborough:Yeah. And thinking of it as an assistant and not a replacement.
Blake Williams:right, right. As that, that assistant that makes you better. Right. Um, if, uh, yeah. And from an automation standpoint, like one of the hardest things I think if you've ever co sold before automating. That just the term of it is a misnomer. You don't automate that, right? Uh, if the deal is worth anything, you're not automating it. You may automate the process leading up to it, to some extent, the exchange of the volley of emails, those kinds of things, but the creation of those opportunities and for me, the content. I feel like has to be specific and relevant to that one, that one deal that, or that one partnership, that one use case, whatever it is. And that's kind of, that's the world I'm trying to live in. And I feel like what Rob's building and what I'm building will eventually probably end up coming together nicely where we, you know, we create the content, they get, they get mobilized in multiple playbooks, right across their workflows and that kind of thing. Um, if I'm
Jason Yarborough:It's kind of just like what we were talking about with ABM, right? You, you programatize everything up until that point of engagement. Alright, so as you're co selling with partners, you're putting material out there, and, you know, Nitav and Justin Keller have run a ton of partner ABM efforts in our, in our time, so we built all these plays, and once they got to a certain stage, like, you know, they're on the chatbot or whatever, then it becomes like human element involved, and like it goes from programatized to actually
Blake Williams:Oh yeah. You were at Terminus.
Jason Yarborough:Yeah, I was running these partner AVM plays, uh, around the time you were incorporating.
Blake Williams:it. You were one of those hype masters. All right.
Sam Yarborough:Uh
Jason Yarborough:yeah, I remember, I remember 20, I guess it had been like 2020. I went to Keller and I was like, I got a crazy idea. We've got this, we've got this platform, Terminus.
Blake Williams:All right.
Jason Yarborough:I've got this partner data coming from ShareWork that's now Reveal. And I was like, what if we put this data inside of our platform? And Keller and Tavro, yeah, Keller and Tavro did the same thing. And they were like, huh. It's a good idea.
Blake Williams:Yeah.
Jason Yarborough:we started running some partner AVM plays, and like, you know, the rest is history. Me and Caitlin Matchett, who's also now at Riviola, we really, you know, 300 percent growth in that program over the course of a year. You know, part of that was, you know, the market initiatives they're in. So like we, we saw it scale and we saw what the benefit of partner ABM and really doing it right. I also remember to like, I'm not here to talk about myself, but it was funny because I, my buddy Charles, I was working with Bambour at the time as well, like as a partner of Terminus and I would take all the share work data. Manually pull it into Bambora from a spreadsheet, pull that intent, anything over a score of like 80 would pass over to marketing, run some plays on that, cycle it back up, get into the AEs. So
Blake Williams:Yeah. Yep.
Jason Yarborough:there's a lot of magic there.
Blake Williams:There is, there is, uh, there's very few people that can, uh, go around and talk about the, the actual tactics, right, of, of getting the things done. They can say automate stuff at a high level and that kind of thing, but piecing it together is a different thing, for
Sam Yarborough:No
Jason Yarborough:to do as little work as possible.
Blake Williams:Amen.
Jason Yarborough:Like we are in the year of
Sam Yarborough:God for
Jason Yarborough:and we've got, we've got AI now and automation and platforms. Like let's put this stuff in there so I can focus on like the strategy and the relationships.
Blake Williams:Now, Sam, I got a question for you. When I said you can't, you shouldn't automate co sell, I saw the, the color go out of your face a little bit. So what was that about?
Sam Yarborough:No, I agree completely. I
Blake Williams:Oh,
Sam Yarborough:Everything you guys are saying, up until a point, a human has to be involved. Um, and I think that's where people fall short, is if you don't have the human to human, the relationships that are like pushing things forward and actually driving value, then you're gonna fail. So, I agree wholeheartedly.
Jason Yarborough:How much do you think a relationship needs to,
Blake Williams:All right.
Jason Yarborough:I was like, how much do you, how much do you think the relationship needs to support that level of automation? Meaning like, do you feel like you have to have a, the proper level of relationship with another partner or teams in order to say like, we're going to put this on automagic and we're going to let it do its work? Or is it just like,
Blake Williams:No, it's
Sam Yarborough:you mean to say auto magic?
Jason Yarborough:I did, yeah.
Blake Williams:So Allison, uh, Allison Monroe and I always talk about this. Like if you're going to automate stuff, your shit needs to be earned, which means that you've gotten to a certain point of doing things manually that you've. Proof like the automation doesn't prove your, your business case. You've already been successful. You've tested, you've gotten some things done. It's not going to, it's doing more shit faster is not going to be what breaks the mold in terms of creates the outcomes that you need. It will absolutely exponentially multiply them, but if you're not getting to outcomes in a manual process, automating is just, it's not going to do the trick. You know what I mean? From my perspective,
Sam Yarborough:No, I think you're so spot on there. If you don't have the foundation, if people don't know who you are, if you haven't built that trust, then that's absolutely step one. You cannot from the get go start automating it because that people see through that in a second.
Blake Williams:right? Right. And not only that, like there's so much that needs to align from both partner sides that like the other partner team needs to be willing, the functional areas need to be willing to carry some of the laboring or as well, right? We're not going to get buy into just light shit up and start messaging each other's customers. That's not going to happen. You know what I mean? The only way you get there is from trust, from both partner teams, having earned that buy in and a lot of partner teams don't have it. I'd say I've run around, run across 50 percent of partner teams that can't go to their customer success person and. Have that conversation today through slack, you know what I mean? It would have to be a meeting about we're trying a new initiative, you know what I mean? Um, where they're trying to introduce something different.
Sam Yarborough:Yeah. So there's definitely steps to building that foundation before you can start this process. So, I'm super curious because we've talked about, you kind of alluded to it, how you started AmpFactor when, May 19th, is that
Blake Williams:yeah, yes,
Sam Yarborough:Um,
Jason Yarborough:000, please.
Sam Yarborough:yeah, sorry. For the true fans, it's 160K.
Blake Williams:that's it.
Sam Yarborough:I've also caught wind that you bought an HVAC company. Um, you're starting another company. So
Jason Yarborough:things from our conversations.
Blake Williams:yeah, yes, yes,
Sam Yarborough:things are evolved. Some things are not, um, some would say you categorize as a serial entrepreneur. Is this,
Blake Williams:That, or it's like, uh, I like to, you know, the way my brain works is that, um, Having multiple things to focus on keeps me fresh, keeps me, keeps my brain working in different ways. It keeps me energized all throughout it. Um, if I had 40 hours to just spend on a single thing, um, it's fun, but, uh, eventually I do get bored. Right. Um, and there's a. A long-term wealth strategy to it and digital stuff as we know, has it just changed changes so much and I can't count on my, I'd love to say that I'd be able to be in front of all the things as they come. Uh, this one just happened to luck out that, and I mean, pure luck that Simon from Avaya said, my biggest opportunity for a b m is inside of partnerships. And I was like, I don't know what that is, but I'll do a deal there. So, um, That's how I started in partnerships. And I lucked my way in. Um, the HVAC thing is about, um, taking the cash that we're throwing off. Yeah. I think it's your duty to pay taxes. It's your responsibility to avoid them, avoid them. And you avoid them by investing in assets that leave no money left to tax. Um, so you take that, take that money and flip it over into a different opportunity. For me, HVAC is something that's tried and true. So we looked at the distribution of the customer population between customer residential and kind of the longterm contracts. It was a 19 year old company. Um, so like all the current relationships were there, there was an operator who was interested in, you know, earning equity where you hadn't had any before. So we're able to keep something in place, maintain an absentee ownership status, and then continuously find a place to flip our cash. Right into a place that we're not going to end up paying a bunch of taxes on through trusts and things like that.
Sam Yarborough:so as an absentee owner, how involved are you in that or are you not?
Blake Williams:Uh, I'm, I'm involved enough because they didn't really, that's why we bought it is that they didn't have a ton of marketing, um, happening. So there was a bunch of digital footprint refresh and all kinds of enablement from a customer success, uh, standpoint and a customer service standpoint, tracking and that kinds of thing. But other than that. You know, we get, we, we have all the teams in places place to kind of report out to us. I have an agency that we hired. I know an agency hiring another agency, but they specialize in HVAC. And I just, I just know the big questions to ask you. Right. I can see through the bullshit. Right. And we get down to brass tacks and they execute really well.
Sam Yarborough:I love that you found a company that could use your skills, and I'm going to assume you're not an expert at HVAC, maybe I'm wrong, but
Blake Williams:I can build a house from the ground up, but I can plumb. I cannot HVAC anything.
Sam Yarborough:okay, well, that's more than most people.
Blake Williams:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm dangerous with a hammer and a nail for sure.
Sam Yarborough:If all else fails, you got plumbing on your,
Blake Williams:I can go stand up houses.
Jason Yarborough:how much of this, uh, serial entrepreneurship allows you to kind of bring some sort of, um, association, you know, from each business you want into the main revenue driver, right? There's this concept in flow or like. Neuroscience at least around like association from different experiences make you better like in the main thing that you do and you're able to connect the dots and bring you know some of that strategy and um ideas to the table through creativity.
Blake Williams:yeah, yeah. That's, uh, that's something that keeps playing over again and again in my life. Um, after my MBA, um, at Clarkson, uh, I got recruited by the Goodyear tire and rubber company to go into procurement and I've had like 15 minutes on procurement at that point. And I was like, okay. So they gave me 400 million to manage and financial services contracts. But. And I was like, man, I hated that job. I hated it. Uh, the organization, 70, 000 people, they move like pond water. Uh, big triangle people of an organization. No one they hired to retire. Um, I was there 13 months and But what I learned about contracting in negotiating all these financial services agreements allowed me to never be in sales and never be, never be in marketing and spin up an agency and start doing enterprise deals with sales cycles less than 90 days because I knew how to throw my weight around in a contract and you had to structure risk. I knew how to frame the deal, uh, for an executive and you had to frame it so that you could pitch it and get it funded. Right? And that was kind of the heart and soul. If I can get things funded, I can, we can do anything. We can breathe all day long. Um, and that's ultimately how we got up off the ground. Uh, so that, that does continue to play again and again. And then, you know, there's, I was in the army, right. Uh, before college, and there's a certain level of bullshit that just doesn't fly when you're at war. And. Um, you know, coming into the corporate world after school and stuff like that, and I look at models. I'm just like, fuck, you know, we're in business. All we have to do is change our minds and shit's different tomorrow. Right? Um, and that's just, and it can just be that simple. It doesn't have to be way more complicated than that. So when I look at how things get done, the first things that come to my mind are the simplest, fastest ways that we could possibly do them not. And I also have the, the, uh, the blessing of not knowing incredibly well how it was done in the past. Right. Right. By not having, not being steeped in 15 years of you should run ads first. You know? That'd be the first thing you
Jason Yarborough:it's best not to know.
Blake Williams:right? And now I don't know. And I'm like, really, we should just go talk to the people that we know and see who could they, who, who they can shove us into. That seems like the fastest way to start up. Yeah.
Sam Yarborough:especially right now, because the status quo is so low. Thank you. Oversaturated
Blake Williams:yeah.
Sam Yarborough:and it's just not, man, I like got giddy when you're like, it doesn't have to be this way. We can change our mind. That's
Jason Yarborough:Absolutely.
Sam Yarborough:God, we overcomplicate things.
Blake Williams:that's it. That's it. Yeah.
Jason Yarborough:I've brought this book up a few times on the podcast. I feel like the author should sponsor us at this point. But Range, uh, talks about, you know, being a generalist. And I feel like, you know, all partner people that are, should be a generalist to some extent. They should have a wide range of experiences and knowledge. And I saw you put a post up the other day mentioning that, you know, everyone should really kind of have a side hustle. Right. Whatever that is, whether it's revenue generated or something that you're passionate about, but again, it allows you to come to the table with more creativity, more connections and associations to how it's going to impact your job. And so I think, you know, to, to what you're getting at here is that you're, you're the ultimate generalist and that you've kind of, you've been in the army, been in the VC world and you know, you've, you've worked for good year and, uh, all over the place and table and starting things. And so you kind of bring a level of complexity to the table that most people. Just can't or don't understand.
Blake Williams:Yep. And I, and I feel like there's like, um, I think there's this continuing trend that some people acknowledge and some people are not acknowledging, but everyone's grappling with it or the effects of it. And it's this, uh, like people, the Ukraine just went through something where their illusion of safety and nonviolent activity happening on their front doorstep evaporated in a heartbeat, right? The same type of security that you feel like you think you have in the economy today. And I'm not trying to, you know, I don't have any conspiracy theories, but you're asking me fired tomorrow, right? And they're gonna put your job description out the next week if funding turns back around and they're not calling you, right? They're gonna just replace you. So the, the, the illusion that you have that you're secure, you're safe, that other people are watching out for you, they are. Insofar as they can, but not so much beyond that. And you need a way to count on with yourself, with your friend group, with your, the local way that you make money, right? You need to weigh, you need a way and resources to, to marshal, to preserve yourself and your family. For your own mental preservation, right? Um, there's only so, so long that you can live after you go through a couple layoffs that you stop, stop to trust that, stop trusting that model. All I'm saying is like, you should build a back door. Even if it's a 1, 000 a month, 2, 000 a month, don't be left hanging out with just one, one step or one degree away from the breadline. You know what I mean? And everyone has savings, but you don't want to count on that for a year. You
Jason Yarborough:Exactly.
Sam Yarborough:further than that, like the skills in the. The grit and all of it that you'll learn is just gravy on top. I think there's so many benefits to it. So
Jason Yarborough:I mean, and most of us listening are in partnerships. We should know how to build a side hustle and incorporate partners to get you there faster.
Blake Williams:That's it.
Jason Yarborough:use your knowledge.
Blake Williams:I don't set up that model. Apply it. Yeah. Uh, for yourself so you can eat. It's uh,
Sam Yarborough:repeat.
Jason Yarborough:Yeah.
Blake Williams:you, you, uh, you hit on something real quick though, uh, Jason, uh, Sam hit on something, the grit and determination, the craftsmanship that I feel like a lot of people lack right now. Um, and I'm not saying that I have any. Any amount of expertise in it, but I feel like I do try to hone my craft. I try to articulate things in a certain way and I continuously try to get better. There's a lot of people who are, you know, that have work life balance, right? We'll say, um, and what I mean by that is that they're, they do clock in and out. And they're not giving it 150 percent pushing the limits and thinking about things and being at the forefront of their industries. They're just kind of in the middle of the pack, kind of getting pushed along with the current, right? So the grit, determination, having a side hustle will awaken that energy inside of you where there's just so many things that need to get done that you have to start thinking differently and it'll impact your job for sure, right?
Jason Yarborough:Absolutely. Anything. Novelty, complexity, all those things, you know, kind of fuel your, your grit and your determination to continue growing, especially on a personal trajectory, which kind of leads me into kind of my next question is like, you know, I feel like you and I are kind of on the same path of self discovery and becoming the best version of ourselves and the best, you know, man, father, you know, Husband brother kind of thing and, you know, exploring peak performance type stuff. Like, what, where did this originate for you? And I feel like, you know, in our conversations, it's kind of a newer track you're going down and it's become evidence, maybe your LinkedIn posts. Like, where did this start for you? Ha ha
Blake Williams:Uh, I don't know. I turned 40 and shit, three foot away just started to get real blurry and, uh,
Jason Yarborough:ha
Blake Williams:and it's like, what's going on here?
Jason Yarborough:That's amazing.
Blake Williams:Who am I? Right.
Jason Yarborough:no, when did I get old?
Blake Williams:It caused all these, uh, self actualization type questions. And I think that's more of what I think it's just hitting a level of, um, awareness. I feel like I've always been introspective, but not to the point that I'm considering, um, really what I'm instilling in my daughters with my words, my behaviors, my looks. Um, and then where do those things come from? And then are they tied to baggage? Are they tied to the way I used to view myself or are they tied to an old experience? Is that who I am now and trying to really force myself to reconcile my personality, my behavior, my word selection with. Who I am and who I want to be. There's this book that's like a personality is impermanent and emphasizes the most of those things that I just talked about where you can kind of make a decision about who it is that you want to be and start being that. Right. Again, tomorrow's a different day. You start being that person and you are that person, right? Um, and finding ways to work on that. And I think working on it probably means that I'm trying to specifically or accurately articulate what is actually the source of the problem and be right at the same time, right? Of, uh, when I say problem, whatever it is, I feel about myself that isn't up to par. Cause I'm, you know, I don't feel like I'm living up to who I, who I want to be most of the time. Probably. Right. And it's an, yeah, there's some kind of perfect vision I have of myself that I'm pushing for, uh, to be for my daughters, for myself mostly, but also, yes, for my daughters. Um, but yeah, that's kind of,
Jason Yarborough:What does it look like for you to actively work on that? Like, what are you doing as an individual, not a business person, but as a man, a dad, who's kind of working on becoming that best version of yourself?
Blake Williams:I try to think of it, um, the same way I work in the gym only because I'm a. I'm a fan. I want you to find a practice that works for you, you know, try to leverage it. Like you said, parlay that into many different things. So I use a thing called weak point training, right? If you're, if your hamstrings are weak, then the second, the first thing you do when you go into the gym is you're going to hit hamstrings, right? If it's, if it's lower body, then that's the first thing you're going to tackle. You have the most energy, the most, the most, um, the most focused, right? Uh, the most hydration, that's what you're going to touch on first. And so I try to. Constantly take inventory of my strengths, which is not a strength of mine, um, and my weaknesses, which is a strength of mine. And then I try to prioritize which one of these is kind of weighing the heaviest on my mind or right now or in my behavior because I feel like it ebbs and flows. So I try, my approach of working on myself is taking inventory, identifying those weak points and going after the ones that are most impactful for me, uh, and relevant right now.
Sam Yarborough:think you hit on something, I mean, you've said it multiple times under different context in our conversation here about change your mind and, and that's the truth. And I think that's step one is like, who do you want to be knowing that putting some thought around that and then consistently coming back to it? That's 100 percent within reach. You just have to choose that every single day with every single behavior.
Blake Williams:That's it.
Sam Yarborough:as you show up to work and, you know, your day to day, you can lose track of that. And
Jason Yarborough:But it starts with like, being aware. Yeah, and most people aren't, you know, in the daily talks that I have, most people aren't aware to that level of like, you know, where do I need to improve, or do I need to improve? They're just kind of, you know, moving throughout the day. And to become aware, I think, is to, you know, If you want to get philosophical, it's like to become alive, right? And really become your best version and bring that into everywhere you go. And Sam and I talk about this all the time. It's like, what does it look like if you bring your whole self into every situation?
Blake Williams:Mm hmm. Mm
Jason Yarborough:think, you know, there's, there's a lot to learn, especially in the business context. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but what do you think it would look like if more of our peers started going down this same journey as well, and you know, started showing up and living like this and addressing their weak points and wanting to become their best versions and become more vulnerable and talk about it out loud.
Blake Williams:Oh, man. I don't know. I'm the wrong person to ask cuz you know Half of me I had this I live this battle with you know, what? No one gives a shit about your shit, right? Right and keep it to yourself. Like I you know, not my whole life has been about you know just show up and get the job done and then Knock it out of the park, hit your goals, walk out, and get, you know, take all your other baggage with you. And then the other side is like, and this is the part I think I'm trying to change, but I'm also resistant against it too because like, when you go into a room, like no one writes a one million dollar check to a dude in jeans. I don't care if that's yourself or not, right? You better have your ass dressed up like you're going to ask for a million dollars, period.
Jason Yarborough:Unless your Mark Zuckerberg.
Blake Williams:Unless you're Mark Zuckerberg. If you, yeah, if you have, you know, a thousand million dollars, then yeah, you can,
Sam Yarborough:another one?
Blake Williams:you can throw your weight around. Yeah. But if you don't, uh, then you need to dress like you're there for that role so that, and that is a version of bringing your whole self to work, which I'm also kind of doing. So it's like, how do you balance being vulnerable without. Exposing yourself far too much because you don't want to bring, we don't want to see all that be vulnerable, crack a window, don't open the door. You know what I mean? Um, but bring your whole self, you
Sam Yarborough:I think there's a time and a place for it. Cause you say people don't care about your shit until they do, because they have the same shit that they're not talking about. And that's where I think you can really move mountains is if you open up and somebody is like. Me too.
Blake Williams:Yeah.
Sam Yarborough:Where did that
Jason Yarborough:saw something, I saw something the other day that I really liked and it was kind of talking about like, you know, If you show up fully aware and fully displaying, you know, the scars that you've gotten over time, right, and you're okay showing those and being open enough, then you make other people feel safe enough to show up with their scars as well and like, letting them feel like, you know, they can be accepted for what they're going through as well. Most people just don't know that others have gone through the same shit as, as the others, right? So if you show up, if you show up wearing your scars and proudly displaying them. Like, hey, I made it through this, you know, you can too. Then it makes everybody else feel like, you know what, I can make it. And there's probably something to learn from this guy or woman.
Blake Williams:Yeah. Yeah. It's uh, yeah, I struggle with that. I was told Actually that catalysts two different great experiences one I was telling the story about how I bought that HVAC company and then a woman made a comment and I won't mention her but she was watching everybody else respond to me as I said that and Like three guys disengaged from the conversation. She could see them physically pull away And in a different conversation, I was talking about how I grew up poor and I used to have to cut down trees and you know, I, I can build trucks and work outside and all this other stuff. Not because I want to, because that's how we grew up. You know what I mean? Um, and I, and that's a story I don't share, uh, as well or as often. Um, and people pulled into that. And the same person noticed very different behaviors. And she didn't tell me until later to the same day, two different conversations. But it's weird. Like you said, was that
Jason Yarborough:It's
Blake Williams:it is, it is buying HVAC isn't, isn't relatable unless you run in that circle,
Jason Yarborough:relatable.
Blake Williams:right?
Jason Yarborough:Yeah, unless you know what you're doing and why that's important. Like, I understand, like, the purchase of an HVAC. We talked about this. But, like, if you come to a table and you're relatable, then you can really, you know, relationship is about relating.
Blake Williams:But the function, the function of the HVAC, yeah, we talked about it. The practical application is that I fucking cut down trees and 24 quarter wood. Cause we couldn't afford to buy heat oil. The HVAC company makes sure that my kids don't have to do that Right. ever again. That's why I say one separation between you and the bread line. But what I really mean is one separation from me, from where I already came from. You know
Jason Yarborough:Yeah, they don't understand the HVAC company is about to drive.
Blake Williams:That's it.
Sam Yarborough:Okay, so let's let's talk about your daughters and your your life there as Jason mentioned front and foremost on your LinkedIn for four time girl dad
Blake Williams:Yes.
Sam Yarborough:This all kind of comes together I was listening to Brad Stolberg talk about separating himself from the outcome and you just talked about this with your HVAC company of how as a person you can have different rooms in your life One can be a father, one can be owner of Amp Factor, one can be owner of HVAC, and it's important to be able to sit in all of these rooms and, you know, have those things for yourself. But four kids, oh my god, we have two.
Jason Yarborough:ha
Blake Williams:Yeah. I know.
Sam Yarborough:How do you balance all of this?
Blake Williams:Yeah.
Sam Yarborough:are you working on improving things? Do you feel like you've got it nailed?
Blake Williams:Uh, I feel like I have, I have my life pretty well structured. I mean, um, I didn't always, and it took years, but just in just this year I was, I woke up and I was like, what the hell am I doing? Like I'm, I would get up at sometimes four o'clock in the morning and I'd start working and I wouldn't stop until seven. You know what I mean? And sometimes it takes that. Um, but. As of like the past six months, um, I try not to take any meetings before noon. Um, I try to take nothing on a Friday and almost nothing on a Monday. And, uh, I get up, we do the breakfast thing. Uh, we do lifetime fitness after dropping my oldest off. We go work out and then we come home and breakfast. And this, it's a very relaxing full day. I get six hours, six waking hours with them. Cause everyone gets up at 6 15 here. Um, when the. Yeah,
Jason Yarborough:Can
Blake Williams:get six, they get a full six, uh, working hours, uh, with me. And then I sit down and I start doing AmpFactor stuff or an HVAC stuff is just always extra stuff. You know, if I wasn't working more than 40 hours a week, I'd be bored. So, uh,
Jason Yarborough:Random question, but how many hours a night of sleep do you get?
Blake Williams:um, I probably run around five, uh, five to eight, five to
Sam Yarborough:Ooh.
Blake Williams:net, never more than eight.
Jason Yarborough:a range.
Blake Williams:Six is six is six and a half. Six 15 is probably my average. I can go to bed at midnight, get up at 6 15 and be ready to rock.
Sam Yarborough:Oh my God. I can't, I can't hang.
Blake Williams:Yeah. And I don't know if
Jason Yarborough:to bed at like
Sam Yarborough:up at 7 30.
Jason Yarborough:7.
Blake Williams:I don't know if I'm shaving years of my life off or, or not, but yeah, uh, that's, uh, that's how I do it. That's how I do it.
Jason Yarborough:Amazing.
Sam Yarborough:it was a journey for you to get there though. It sounds like,
Blake Williams:Yeah. That's recent. This is inside of six months that it's been, been that way. And business didn't go down. Um, conversations haven't stopped. Nothing, nothing really changed other than how I was structuring my energy. Um, deployed throughout the day.
Sam Yarborough:And it comes back to exactly what we were talking about before. It's awareness and, um, just choosing that. So good on you for making it happen.
Jason Yarborough:Yeah, I like that structure and energy.
Blake Williams:Mm hmm.
Jason Yarborough:Use that one as well. So let's, let's wrap up here that we're at time and I appreciate you hanging out with us and spending your, your Friday of no meetings in a meeting. But, um, let's take a wildly different direction. Let's say, uh, you know, you're very much into your own, your, your fitness. You know, you're in this big journey right now, you know, health and wellness and in shape. You're on a desert. You're on a desert. God, I can't talk. You're on a deserted island. The only food you can have is your favorite dessert.
Blake Williams:Oh,
Jason Yarborough:What is that dessert, and are you going to survive on that alone?
Blake Williams:Uh, let's see, I think my favorite dessert would be ice cream, which has enough protein and calcium and, uh, yeah, and carbs. It's probably pretty, and fats, actually, so yeah, cookie dough ice cream or peanut butter ice cream. I could probably live on that. As long
Sam Yarborough:like that though. Cause that means you have to have a freezer, which means you can go kill me. You can put meat in the freezer,
Jason Yarborough:Hey, that's not how this goes.
Sam Yarborough:thinking ahead,
Blake Williams:have any tools. Like, well, I'm kind of limited. You can, you pick dessert, right?
Jason Yarborough:We'll give you the cookie dough ice cream. I'm going, uh, I'm going cookies and cream,
Blake Williams:I thought you were going to say like tool, you know, like, is it a hatchet or a line of
Jason Yarborough:No, no, no. It's getting to really what matters. Like, you know, dessert on a deserted island.
Blake Williams:that's it. Right.
Jason Yarborough:have some sort of, some form of happiness if you're gonna be stranded.
Blake Williams:That's it. That's
Jason Yarborough:Man, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. I look forward to, I think we're getting ready to hang out in another city at another conference soon. So I'm stoked about that. But thank you again for, for hanging out. It's been a great conversation.
Blake Williams:Thank you both. Great questions. And I appreciate you for indulging me.
Sam Yarborough:Our pleasure, Blake. Thank you so much. Hopefully we'll get to meet in person one day, but friends, thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you next week.
Jason Yarborough:See ya.