27 - Building Trust and Adding Value in Partnership Programs- Bryan Williams

Bryan Williams, founder of Hockey Stick Advisors, shares his insights on building successful partnerships. 

He emphasizes the importance of building trust, remaining authentic, and helping partners win. 

Bryan also discusses the value of working within app marketplaces and large ecosystems, and how to stand out and build strong relationships within those ecosystems. 

He highlights the growing tech scene in Australia and the opportunities it presents for businesses.

**Key Takeaways:**

- Building trust is crucial in partnerships, and it starts by understanding what the company and the person responsible for achieving their targets care about.
- To stand out in app marketplaces and ecosystems, focus on being the easiest partner to work with and solving real customer problems.
- Partnering with partners' partners and working with other app partners in the ecosystem can lead to accelerated growth and increased visibility.
- Prioritize your time and protect it by saying no to unnecessary meetings and focusing on activities that drive the most value.
- The tech scene in Australia is growing, with various conferences and events providing opportunities for networking and scaling businesses.

**Quotes:**

- "Show me, you know me. Understand what the company cares about, who is responsible for achieving that target, and how they are tracking against it." - Brian Williams
- "Partnerships take time and require an intentional plan to deliver on the promised value." - Brian Williams
- "Consistency is a competitive advantage. Show up consistently and deliver value to build trust and strong relationships." - Brian Williams
- "Partnerships are about people doing business with people. Help sales teams achieve their goals and they will bring you in." - Brian Williams

***Chapters****

00:00 Intro

08:57 Bryan’s optimism about partnerships

18:22 Importance of trust in partnerships

28:18 Building a strong app marketplace

39:34 Discipline and perserverance

42:37 Balancing work and life

49:07 Outro

Transcript

Sam Yarborough: 0:25

Welcome, welcome, welcome friends. We got another great episode today.

Jason Yarborough: 0:29

Yeah, a good friend that I've gotten to know over the past year or so, our first international guest. We are an international show. We're global, baby. Way down under in the Australia mates with Mr. Brian Williams. Yeah. It was great. Yeah, we had a good go at it. Pick up on that line here in a little bit. We're adopting that as a family. Yeah, we've used it a lot this past week since we recorded. We really have. Yeah, it works. We have a go at it. So yeah, so what's, what's going on here? We're off, uh, we're off on our good go jaunt this week, tomorrow. Yeah,

Sam Yarborough: 1:03

very exciting. When this airs, we are both going to be in the Big Apple.

Jason Yarborough: 1:08

In the city. Yeah, Hallmark movie stuff, right? Yeah. But you're doing Salesforce stuff and I'm just Tagging along. Yeah, piggybacking.

Sam Yarborough: 1:17

It's, uh, Salesforce New York World Tour, for those of you that celebrate, um, favorite conference of the year, and Jason gets to join for the back half. We have a mom and dad date for About 24 hours.

Jason Yarborough: 1:32

Yeah, in the city. I, uh, one of those situations where I logged into Delta to find out that I've got a ton of credits expiring at the end of the year. So I was able to, uh, move some flights and stuff to use some credits. So, use this as a reminder, friends, that if you've got unused credits, they expire in two weeks.

Sam Yarborough: 1:50

Wait, I actually am going to use that reminder because I

Jason Yarborough: 1:52

probably do too. I just discovered that and I now get to go to New York. So this is very nice.

Sam Yarborough: 1:57

I learned something every time

Jason Yarborough: 1:58

we record this podcast. It's more for us than you guys. I promise you that. Uh, the podcast though. Without further ado. You'll get a lot out of Brian here. I think he's one of the more strategic. Fault leaders in our space. Very good at what he does with hockey stick advisors, working with customers, clients, whatever you want to call it to teach them how to, you know, strategically implement partnerships. He's advising on that. And we've had a lot of really great conversations. And since we've recorded Brian, I've exchanged a few more messages about that. And I think he's got something really good at hockey stick. And I think you'll think so too. So

Sam Yarborough: 2:31

enjoy the show friends. We'll see you next time. See y'all

Jason Yarborough: 2:34

later. Mr. Brian Williams, our first international guest. Welcome to Friends with Benefits, my man.

Bryan Williams: 2:41

Thanks, Javi, great to be here with yourself and Sam today and, uh, long time coming this one, so I look forward to getting into it.

Jason Yarborough: 2:46

Yeah, it has been a long time coming. Took a, took a little bit of time scheduling due to time zone conflicts and stuff. And, uh, you know, it's funny. Sam asked last night, he's like, he's got an Australian accent, right? And I was like, yes. I was like, oh boy.

Bryan Williams: 3:01

Yeah, I don't, I don't know if we can set, um, subtitles if we need to or we can translate or, uh, work it forward, but hopefully we should be okay.

Sam Yarborough: 3:10

I'm a fan. Our first international guest. We got friends worldwide now.

Jason Yarborough: 3:14

yeah, we're, we're going global, like, we tried to get the, uh, you know, the, the jet to fly over and do this recording in person, but, you know, we were low on fuel.

Sam Yarborough: 3:22

Our sponsorship dollars are not quite there yet.

Jason Yarborough: 3:25

Yeah,

Bryan Williams: 3:25

yeah, I get it.

Jason Yarborough: 3:27

yeah.

Bryan Williams: 3:27

dream big, right?

Jason Yarborough: 3:29

That's it, you know, everything in person, like Rich Roll and Joe Rogan just bringing all of our guests to us.

Bryan Williams: 3:34

Yeah, that's right,

Sam Yarborough: 3:35

Goals. FY25. Here we come. So, Brian, you are a force to be reckoned with in the partnership world, but who is Brian Williams to his friends?

Bryan Williams: 3:50

Yeah, sure. So, as a person or as a business operator, what do you mean, Sam? Go a bit deeper.

Sam Yarborough: 3:56

As a

Jason Yarborough: 3:56

How do your, yeah, how do your friends talk, what do your friends say about you?

Bryan Williams: 4:00

Yeah, um, I think, uh, I'm probably someone who likes to have a go in life, at various, uh, aspects of whatever I sort of pursue myself, um, or go after. Also, I don't take myself too seriously, like to have a laugh along the way. Which I think we should all do. So, uh, quite a, quite a loyal friend and, uh, I like to look out for people and help people on their journey as well, which I get a lot of, uh, you know, rewards and I'd like to see as well.

Jason Yarborough: 4:25

I like it. A genuine person who likes to have a go at life. I'm going to start using that line. I like to have a go at life. Haven't heard it put that way, but I'm all in on that one, man. That's fantastic. What, what does it mean for Brian Williams to have a go at life?

Bryan Williams: 4:41

Well, I think we've all got an opportunity to do more and be more, whatever that is, or whatever we pursue in and around work or family and, um, You've got the opportunity to influence others around you if you're able to lead with that and take them on the journey with you. A lot of things we talk around partnerships is influencing and, you know, beyond that of what we do day to day. Um, there's no reason why we can't, you know, uphold that same sort of belief system and drive things forward. I like to say to people, the things I pursue is, uh, down here in Australia. You know, when you retire and get old, um, it's quite common to play lawn bowls, which is this pathetic game where you just bowl, you know, bowl this old bowl across the green and then drink half baked beers with lemonade, you know, they call them shanties, right? And, um, my grandad and his grandad and everyone plays lawn bowls just as a social outing. And,

Sam Yarborough: 5:30

I'm moving.

Bryan Williams: 5:30

parent, my wife's parents play lawn bowls and as I go after various pursuits of ad hoc, uh, crazy adventures or do things, I often just say the catch line, like, why do you do these things? And I just say, I'm just, I'm just building lawn bowl stories. So when I'm old and on the green, I've got a bunch of lawn bowl stories. That's it.

Jason Yarborough: 5:48

I love that. You know, you just described our, our summer nights here, except for like bocce ball instead of, you know, long ball or whatever it's called, but we do the same thing out here and we're not even retired yet,

Bryan Williams: 5:58

Yep. Yep.

Jason Yarborough: 5:59

Mostly for me, I always tell Sam that here in, here in the States, you, you can go to like any little diner, you know, corner cafe or whatever in the mornings and a bunch of old guys are sitting around just yakking and sharing stories. And like, that's my retirement goals is just to sit around with a bunch of old guys and have coffee and

Bryan Williams: 6:14

You got to get, you got to get some more stories going to take to those future conversations, right? So, uh, we'll, we'll, uh, we've only got this chance once, so let's make the most of it.

Sam Yarborough: 6:22

I love that. Sounds like you're in the right line of work with that kind of mentality as well.

Jason Yarborough: 6:27

Well, speaking of which, I see you repping the, uh, the swag there. Tell us what you're up to over at hockey stick advisors.

Bryan Williams: 6:34

Yeah. So, uh, I established a company about 18 months ago. Uh, now, um, previously it was over at Xero, which is a cloud based accounting platform. And I had the fortune to lead the ecosystem team across Australia and New Zealand for five years. And Throughout time, um, you know, I went through to grow from about 150 app partners through to about 1200 upon my sort of leaving and I was sort of working out before I left. Yeah, significant. I probably had about 500 different conversations with companies who want a partner and through that lens, I was able to see what good, bad and bad and terrible looks like, what not to do. And, uh, through this little thing called Lockdowns and I'm based in Melbourne, Australia. We were not so fortunate to have one of nearly the longest ones globally. I found myself doing some organic consulting throughout and helping other companies figure out, you know, what is the partnership opportunity? How do you start to think about and build and move towards building a partnership ecosystem? And along with a good network of auto venture capitalists across across the region, I found myself with a with a playbook I organically found and started to evolve and And with full overflowing pipeline of work and opportunities to go help other companies. And so I jumped out to set up the company and I haven't really looked back. And so along with three young kids, which we mentioned at the start of the call, every minute of the day counts and I'm seeing a significant opportunity in the market to really go after. And that's really stemmed from where do you learn partnerships? You can go to a, you can go to a marketing degree. You can do, uh, you know, MBAs, you can focus, you can do mini courses, you can get sales training done, you can build into a sales leader. A lot of the partnership leaders community, you see a lot of so many trailblazers of people trying to figure it out that, uh, and so those who they're learning from are either learning from each other or people who have been operators in business and been through the growth journey. And that's where I sort of come in to help other companies grow through that phase of. You know, where to resource it, what the opportunity is and how to go about it and set up the success. So, I think it's a, there's a time in the market for, for all of us involved in partnerships, wherever we are, to really shine, to showcase the impact we're making and, uh, I'm pretty bullish of where our industry is going, our vertical and the influence it's going to have ahead.

Jason Yarborough: 8:55

That's incredible.

Sam Yarborough: 8:57

I'm just curious for my own asking for a friend here who like, if somebody was going to work with hockey stick advisors, who's your ICP? Like, how do you determine the right type of partners that you help?

Bryan Williams: 9:10

Yeah, it's, it's a funny, as I sort of evolve, I didn't see the same of, of what it is and there's, um. I'll talk about in three buckets. The first one is a seed series, a who they've got emerging partnership opportunities, the CEO, they know people, they've got all these ambitious opportunities, maybe land and expand into other countries. Maybe it's pursue strategic partners and that they're trying to figure it out. And so they'll look in market who can help. And so I'll come in and work with them for a period of time to understand what the opportunity is, what it isn't, what their partnership value proposition is. Should they employ people now or ahead? And what does that look like? The second bucket, which I get the most demand is, is people in community who are in partnerships and they'll come to me with challenges, frustrations or that sort of thing. Um, that's where I bring in partnership leaders community and drive them towards that because what they don't typically have is that I won't have budget. It's their job to do the role. And I can only help them so, so much with support in a, in a scalable way. And then the third, uh, bucket is big established companies. Um, who need to refine their partnerships, motions, maybe refine a value proposition, revise their partner program. Maybe they're progressing into building into an ecosystem and a platform and how do they bring that all to life. So, to answer your question Sam, I'm, so it's getting started and those looking to optimize and refine and set up the next stage of growth.

Sam Yarborough: 10:31

Makes total

Jason Yarborough: 10:32

Yeah. Yeah. Big, big swath. They're a big bucket within some of those like that. You're helping get started. We, we have, I feel like we have a lot of, um, those partner managers getting started that, that listened, that I talked to at least what sort of timeframe do you typically see for someone to, to achieve a, you know. Yeah. An ideal path of value. So they're looking at coming in and saying, Hey, 3, 6, 8, 9, 18 months. Like, what are you typically advising them on from a timeline standpoint?

Bryan Williams: 11:01

Yeah, I'd probably take it a step back and make sure the leadership's all bought in and knows what it is and what it, what it isn't. So, any, any engagement I do, I. I'll make sure I do our initial workshop with all the leadership team and I'll just go through some fundamentals and make sure they understand. Firstly, the strategic opportunity of what it can be, how they can build a competitive advantage, a moat around their business. They can build out the business and don't have to have everyone on their own payroll and understand that it takes time and There's a graph, I think, uh, the great man, Robert Superglue, did one of his, uh, his memes or graphs of, you know, sales, you can put, yeah, there you go, um, resident neighbor, just, uh, next door, right? And, uh, you know, like I try a lot to roll back and forth and one of his ones was really struck a chord to myself was, you know, you can pour in a sales team and put in five AEs and try next month, try and get some sales in and stagnate and you've got huge payroll costs. Whereas partnerships, it takes the ramp time to be able to build that muscle, to be able to trust the relationships, to work out that wedded relationship, how you can help each other win, to then actually realize the benefits down the track. So, if the leadership team doesn't get that, and if they're not invested in that properly, strategically, you know, overlay model, as Jared loves to say, sales, marketing, CX, and what all that goodness looks like. Then that partnerships person which comes in is, is they're going to do two things in a year. They'll, they'll end up getting fired or they'll leave frustrated, under resourced, you know, lone wolf and quit. And what, what gives me the shits is when I see companies who grabbed their best salesperson, who's just killing it, might do say 60 percent of the target. They're like, you're great. You go do partnerships. We know this company out of here. Like, they're going to be great. Go. And then they give them a sales target to go extract. Let's go, let's go and just grab everything and then that person tries to take a sales target. No partner value proposition, no understanding of it. And a year later, they get, walk out the door and they quit and say it didn't work out or something. And they were previously your best

Jason Yarborough: 12:58

that all too often. Yep.

Bryan Williams: 13:00

common, right? So, I try to, I try to make that not

Jason Yarborough: 13:04

a lot of them.

Bryan Williams: 13:05

Yeah, right?

Jason Yarborough: 13:06

We need, we need more of us out there that can keep that from happening and keep the, uh, the partnership name and good graces.

Bryan Williams: 13:12

Yeah, that's

Sam Yarborough: 13:12

you, I, I'm so curious on this because we've talked about this a lot. Um, you start working with somebody, is it like a prerequisite that you meet with their leadership team? Is that like a, a go or no go?

Bryan Williams: 13:27

Right. Um, they've got to be have product market fit, basically have a value proposition of their own offering. They're not still figuring it out. The leadership team has to be bought into it. They're well funded to invest in partnerships and in a sustainable way that it takes a while to get going and curious around how to resource it. And bring it to life. So if it doesn't have those parts, and it was actually just last week, uh, there's someone down here and emerging company doing really well. And the leadership team just didn't get partnerships. And despite the other team members all trying to rally behind it, they said, Oh, we can't get the buy in. I said, Oh, you're not the right fit for me. And it's not going to work. And it's not going to work for you either. If I don't believe in partnerships and trying to go down this path, if they want to go direct, if they want to go outbound and they want to do that, That's their choice or how they're going to go to market and it's not going to work for them if they just try and Put it off to the side. They're just going to fail. We've all seen the playbook, you know

Jason Yarborough: 14:23

Yeah. Yeah. Seriously.

Bryan Williams: 14:24

plays out.

Jason Yarborough: 14:26

seeing the same thing out there and people that I'm talking to is like, you know, I've talked to. Jared, everybody else about this, like Nearbound only works if you can get it outside of the partner organization, like you've got to get fully incorporated into the sales teams, into the marketing teams and get them utilizing the data, the strategy and everything else. And like, there's no way to scale if you don't, otherwise you're just going to be in this little silo as an experiment. And always referenced to as like, Oh, the partner team will handle that. Like, no, no, like let the sales team work the, yeah, this is a, this is a whole, you know, organizational thing. But yeah, no, ran for another time.

Sam Yarborough: 15:04

well, first of all, I think your list for your ICP is also a great list for partner professionals before they take a job. So do your research to make sure you're, you're walking into a. A role that you'll be successful in. Um,

Jason Yarborough: 15:18

Those three things.

Sam Yarborough: 15:20

yeah, curious from your experience when you do meet with this leadership team, how much of your role is like enablement with them? Or is it just like ensuring that they have buy in? If that

Bryan Williams: 15:35

Yeah, so yeah, that does Yeah, so the enablement comes after you've got the buy in if once they've got that aha, I get it So then it becomes the how do we do it? How do we do it? And how do we go to market? So if I, I spend most of my time working on the front end partnership strategy of answering those first initial questions, and then I play a supporting role in the enablement piece to bring it to life. Um, one of the questions, like the simplest question to ask across the business and like this afternoon in Melbourne, I'm presenting, um, to a company I'm working with to their team is, is just one question. Why would anyone refer you leads and just be quiet and just let everyone go just, you know, take a moment. And the usual answer to an uninformed audience is they'll say because we're awesome because we're good at our job, which no one cares about at all. No one cares, right? You said before, right? If you're not helping that sales team person close their targets. If you're not helping them alongside their workflows, if you're not adding more value to the customers, if you're not helping them hit their own KPIs, commissions on that on an individual level and working out a way to do it, then they're not going to care and the partnership's not going to work.

Jason Yarborough: 16:45

not at all. And they're always, they're continuing to ask like, what's in it for the partner? What's in it for me? And until you show them the path, show them the way.

Bryan Williams: 16:52

Mm

Jason Yarborough: 16:53

So I, I've, I've read somewhere about your, your three step framework around building trust first. Love that also like my first step. So, and then remain authentic and then to help your partners win. I want to dive into, like, when it comes to building trust within a partnership, right? What does that mean to you specifically? And something that's something we obviously we all try to practice and we all have varying degrees of what that means. So, like, what does building trust first building trust with your partners look like to you?

Bryan Williams: 17:26

Yeah. So I like the way Jill Rowley says it of show me, you know, me, you know, and there's various iterations of that. And I often work through the framework to answer that. But you're saying what does the company care about? Who is the person responsible for achieving that target and how are they tracking against that? And so to show me, you know me analogy and building that trust of I'm here to support you to try and get to your target to get you promoted to amplify your brand to to champion you as a person. How can I do that? And how can I be in that? In a circle of someone you'd call for, you know, Intel, all the things right that we know to be true. So if you can't get that level of buy in that you could ring someone and ask them for Intel for a deal or something, then if that trust doesn't exist, then how are you actually building up the partnership? Uh, truly right to help each other win, which goes both ways.

Jason Yarborough: 18:19

Yeah. So if you're, if you're coming into a program. And you're looking to get those early trust wins first, get that relational equity in the bank. Like what is, what is, what does Brian Williams start by doing?

Bryan Williams: 18:32

You've got, you've got to add value immediately. And, and, um, one of the takeaways from Catalyst was from Chris Casey, who's at AWS. Um, one of his points, what he encourages his team for, and I continue to use this quote is how fast can you show value to your partners? So from the onset, is it someone you can connect them with? Are they tracking on target? Is there a way that you can add contribute, make connections, Intel influence? Is there a way that you can actually showcase or highlight them initially without asking for anything? You need to actually take that quantum leap to build forward, to make them have that ah ha moment, that you're there to actually help them achieve what they personally care about and moving towards. So, once you get that buy in,

Jason Yarborough: 19:19

yeah, I like that. I think a lot of, a lot of early programs miss out on like just simply asking. Like, what do you, what do you need out of a partnership? Like, what's going to be most valuable to you, right? And there's, you know, simple questions you can ask to understand like what they actually are looking for and what they need and where their other partnerships are failing, you can come in on your, you know, your, on your white horse riding in to save the day and show them like, if you, as long as you can deliver, like there's, there's a lot of opportunity to just get that trust and build that value early on by building exactly, you know, what they need.

Sam Yarborough: 19:53

I think I love what you just hit on to though, Brian, because from the lens of a new partner person, it can often look like value only comes in the form of leads and revenue.

Bryan Williams: 20:04

Mm hmm.

Sam Yarborough: 20:06

yes, that's the goal, but that can take time. And so, to your point, it can come in other forms too of like, Making intros, um, you know, helping drive marketing value, helping drive messaging. Like it doesn't always have to be leads and revenue.

Bryan Williams: 20:23

No. Yeah. But, if

Jason Yarborough: 20:26

early on, it's probably not going to be that.

Sam Yarborough: 20:28

exactly. Yeah.

Bryan Williams: 20:31

If you know, when we talked about earlier, making sure that leadership understands that we need to earn our way in and that we need to go through this over investment early in over index, it's it's more outputs that we need to put out and make sure we're showing that value and building that trust before we can expect the inputs of the leads of revenue to come back in return. Right. And, um, chatting to Logan at teamwork and you know, I know some of the work they've had success working with HubSpot. Yeah. Right. There's big players, monday. com and click up and smartsheet and others and teamwork's the upcomer, you know, secondary player out of Ireland of all places. And they've got buy in and cut through with, with HubSpot because Logan does such an awesome job on his own podcast and the content that he punches out that they help support HubSpot and HubSpot's now promoting to their massive audience about teamwork and through that stuff as well. So teamwork shouldn't being that conversation on a customer for customer size around it, but there weren't no way in another way around it. And I think it's a, it's a really good example of it's not always leads and revenue if you have a small upcomer. And I work with a lot of emerging companies are coming through and I'll, I've, I've got me saying, we say, all right, well write down the biggest partners you want to work with. And you say, okay, uh, AWS, Hyperscale, you know, Google. Right. Okay. And the next question I say is right now, get your pen and just. Just put a line for it. Just forget about that. Okay. Cause they don't care about you. I don't care. You're at one of 15, 15, 000 and they're like, all right, well now what do we do? Okay. Well, who I was emerging alongside you, who's similar size aligned values, similar size company, similar size team, who's on the bus to go with you. And if it was a company, you only got a hundred customers, but you work at type relationship with someone else who's got a hundred customers and they provide a lot of introductions. Isn't that more better than pegging a logo onto a slide pack to tell your investors and hopes and dreams Spending two years of work and not much materializing whatsoever at all.

Jason Yarborough: 22:23

100%.

Sam Yarborough: 22:24

So I have a question for, we keep going back to this, like making the case for partnerships. And we've talked about this before, but I'd love to hear your perspective on this. Um, A new alliances leader comes into a role and they report to the CRO and the CRO immediately is like, you have a source to number you have an influence number go. How do you suggest this alliance leader makes the case to that leader? This is going to take time. And here are the leading indicators I'm doing to get there. How would you advise somebody?

Bryan Williams: 22:57

Yeah, how'd you frame it up? So firstly, I would set the clear expectations that I need time to go do my research I need to understand what the TAM, SAM, SOM is around how my approach is going to go about it and I need that window and The confidence and support to allow me to go do a market assessment You can't. It's not a case of day to get on the phones, bang around and say you've got all these logo meetings going nowhere because you've jumped to solution mode. You haven't actually worked out what you can offer, how you can help people who's to prioritize top 10 partners. So make sure you've got that buy in to be able to do that from there to be able to come back and report with an intentional plan that these are the top 10 identified partners. This is our approach of how we're going about it. This is the song within those partners. What is the next sort of 30 to 90 days to then be able to confidently come back and say, well, we know the partner source opportunity in here to partner influenced opportunity, but now I need these resources to actually enable that to bring it to life. So if you want, if you want the promised land of this revenue number of partner source and partner influence, then. That new high should be able to actually look at that number and talk to it with confidence because if it's you want to say get partner source leads from 20 to 40 percent then you're going to need things to be able to get there. It's not a case of just hire a person and send him in the field and think that there's going to be a fire hose of customers to lead in and where I see there's a. A sales leader with a strict sales background of outbound or building IE, IE, IE, and then they put partnership person in that role and say, you go extract 12 months for a person's gone. It doesn't, it doesn't work. So it's, yeah, I'll keep coming back to that leadership buying and understanding of how it works. But the intentionality, if you want to try and get to a plan and then deliver on it and stand behind that number. But you've got an assessment of who the partners are, what resources you need, then you're running, you are the entrepreneur running your own P& L to actually go and deliver against that.

Jason Yarborough: 25:00

100%.

Sam Yarborough: 25:01

I love that too, because I feel like partner teams are often put in this role of like, go deliver and you know, no, I hope, but no sales team is ever just going to call. We're going to close 300 mil this quarter. And they have no pipeline, no plan to get there, no strategy. Like we as partner leaders need to toe the line on building those expectations around our programs too, because just like marketing, just like sales. We need a pipeline. We need a strategy. We need to be able to forecast these things. And to your point, Brian, that takes time and planning.

Bryan Williams: 25:37

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Jason Yarborough: 25:38

Getting the, getting the trust, building the value takes time. And one question I did have for you is like in all this leadership, uh, consulting and getting the buy in and talking to the leadership about getting buy in and stuff like that. Do you ever lead them down the path around the value of like, just simply building the relationship with the partners, with the new partners and like, how do you, how do you get them to think about that? Cause most cases, like the CRO is really not going to care about that. Nine times out of 10, I would say maybe, maybe a little less, but you know, it's, it's important, right? You know, we, we joke that we, we get paid to make friends and, and, you know, sell against those friendships sometimes. So how do you talk to the sales leaders while you're getting that buy in around like the importance of building relationship with partners?

Bryan Williams: 26:26

Yeah. I like Jocko Willink's book about, uh, you know, he goes on his rant about managing up that sort of thing, Javi, and setting those expectations around what do you need to set up for succeeding around it. It's, um. Your leader, my leader, everyone else is working in a company, despite what the targets and what the boss, you know, whoever it might be, implement or expectations, they also don't want to fail themselves. So how do you present the case that you're set up for success, your team set up for success to be able to hit the number, you know, the great leader will set up their teams for success and then get out of the way and give them what their resources to do it. And they're not giving you a target in isolation to To go fail. So then they fail. So when they go report to the board and said partnerships was a failure, that's on them. So if you're able to outline what you need to be able to get to that promised land to hit the target, to hit the number. To be able to do it. It's a very different conversation than just saying, Oh, I can't do it or I don't know how or I've got all these logos I'm chatting to. I've got this ghost pipeline of logos, which with no substance behind it. It's a very different conversation.

Jason Yarborough: 27:38

It is a hundred percent. And, you know, go back to your initial points. I get it. You got, you got to base those, those projections and everything based off the amount of trust that you've got with those partners and who's most leaned in and who's, who's there that you can call for that Intel or influence or intros and getting them to take that quickest action. So leading, leading into like that, that relationship conversation, like you, you come from an extensive background and like, you know, at marketplaces, obviously, um, I think that's, that's a, that category is a hard one for a lot of people to get right. You seem to have had a fair amount of success in there. So like, how do you, how do you advise people to build strong relationships that get you noticed within these app marketplaces and large ecosystems?

Bryan Williams: 28:25

Yeah, so I see companies that you grow from one to one from partnership into an ecosystem and you put a partner program in place in lots of, in lots of ways to manage scale, right? How do you have any new milestones and your steps and partner programs are always built, been building, never built, and they're evolving. And how do you stand out amongst a sea of choices, either in a hyperscaler market or working with platforms? And if there's 8, 000 apps, why does anyone care about you? Well, there's a few ways, so, if you live solely on the platform, and you're an Atlassian only, you're a Salesforce only, you're a HubSpot only, then the table stakes to play and participate in that, like doing your taxes, is just to play by their rules. So that's 101. You need to just, okay, get an integration, get a webpage. Do all the basics around it. And from there, from there to be able to progress and move forwards to, you know, aspirationally, you want to be the partner of choice. And what I mean by that and what I see is how can you be the easiest partner to work with? How can you play by all their rules? How can you generate and solve real customer problems, then build truckloads of reviews on the back of it? And and build it along, but what companies often fail if they're building only on one platform is what they are is that they've got no influence with those partners. In reality, they're one of thousands and they're dependent on them. And so sooner or later, you will stall your growth depending on what that platform allows to participate. If it's not an in product experience, that's part of a contextual workflow, which some platforms do to a degree. Man, you're a number within their app store or within their directory. And so the broader opportunity, um, there's two ways, and I work a lot of companies in this space because they're, they've stuck, they've limited their growth of however far they get.

Jason Yarborough: 30:18

it. Yep.

Bryan Williams: 30:21

who, who is the partners, partners, you're in the HubSpot ecosystem, who's all their agency partners around it, then what are those agency partners care about? It's usually two things. Number one. If they want net new business, if you're small, you probably can't deliver on that. And secondly, can you add more services revenue or add more value for their current clients? So how do you deliver against one of those things and build an offering around it? And secondly to that, if you're going down the agency route for carrying on off my point is what else is selling to those agencies? What else are they doing? Is it HubSpot plus plus plus what? And you need to elevate yourself to make sure that they care about you more than those other partners around that. Right. So that's on the, how do you work with the partners, partners, the platform. And then, and then the second point is how do you work? And I mentioned this before with other app partners also in that ecosystem who are buying for the attention. So if you both play to the table stakes and say, all right, this is the HubSpot rules Glassian. And you say, all right, well, rather than try and wait for them to unlock opportunities and this firehose of customers. It's saying, all right, well, we're going to do stuff together. Now we're going to use near bound principles and bring that to life. We're going to share leads lists. We're going to Intel influence. We're going to go to market where, um, OPM other people's money. We're going to use our own sales product marketing and work together to grow together. We've got these better together narrative and, and the easiest way I work with companies to do that is just, just ask your customers, just ask the survey. What have I used before and after you, that's how you'll prioritize your partners, build out your partner value proposition away again.

Jason Yarborough: 31:58

I love a lot of that plays. I was actually just having this conversation the other day with someone in the HubSpot ecosystem. And I think there's so much value and it's often overlooked of like, to just work within that ecosystem. Like, how can you connect the channel partners that work with your tech partners and that work with that, that alliances partner, right? So how do you create turnkey ecosystem is what we called it when I was a terminus around all these people that are working within the same technologies and the same services. So I think there's a ton of overlooked value there that that people tend to miss out on especially as they're getting started In these bigger ecosystems.

Bryan Williams: 32:35

Yeah. Well,

Jason Yarborough: 32:36

that.

Bryan Williams: 32:37

yeah. And, and furthermore, every picture of HubSpot agency partner, they're right now going to have a certain amount of team size, resources, and capability to go produce their own revenue as an operating business. So if you want to get into that mold, then you're straight away a distraction, a pain in the ass, option 700 to them. So once again, you come back to what do they care about? What does the company care about? Who's responsible for it? How are they tracking against it? You need to build your value proposition to actually help them add layers to it. So is there someone there looking to drive additional revenue? Are they trying to do upsells? Do they have a churn or retention problem that you can slot in? As a part of it. Can you do you have a better together value proposition with HubSpot insert platform, right?

Sam Yarborough: 33:28

I love what you said there about just assume from the get go you're a pain in the ass because it's true.

Bryan Williams: 33:34

Yeah.

Sam Yarborough: 33:35

That's the baseline for everything. So, you know, if it wasn't already obvious that you have to add value from the get go, you are a pain in the ass. So you need to start to change that perspective.

Bryan Williams: 33:48

Yeah.

Jason Yarborough: 33:49

Yeah, absolutely. I do have like, you know, hear from a little bit from your experience. So you, you, you scaled your, your. Ecosystem to 1200 partners. Obviously there were some smaller people in there, but can you recall a time where, you know, someone new or maybe smaller, like got your attention and like what they did to do so, and, and, and made you kind of take a look at someone that you met that may have been overlooked by something they did.

Bryan Williams: 34:15

Um, I think, um, it was a few companies I can think of top of mind who just really wrapped. They built a community around our community and so all of our biggest advocates and evangelists and early adopters, they went hard at bringing them close to themselves. And so they removed their alliance on the zero platform by actually building. Our advocates is theirs and running with them. And so they got all that brand advocacy endorsements and running. Well, um, pretty quickly. Um, that's pretty smart way to

Jason Yarborough: 34:43

attention and your team's attention by working with the same people that already had their attention.

Bryan Williams: 34:48

Yeah, and then they start. Yeah, right.

Jason Yarborough: 34:51

squared.

Bryan Williams: 34:52

Yeah. And then all of a sudden we were nearly like forced to sponsor or get involved in events because I had captured all our community and not, not taken it, but shifted it as well. And so we're around it, right? So then they get accelerated upside and they get the virality, the network effects, and all of a sudden they've got an accelerated growth path to do it. So, but, but a really, a really interesting takeaway is every, every big company platform's got a partner program of evolving key accounts. We'll work more at the top, spend all our team up here, get them humming. And everyone else ends up in a queue. Oh, you're here, you're in this box, or maybe this box, and you'll get some half baked benefits as you progress, right? But interesting takeaway is the partners which groove are fastest. We're the ones who helped the Xero sales team win. Funny that, right? Partner program aside. Oh, we've got all these. No, we work with these partners. We do more here. We're going to do webinars and our co marketing our efforts. And we're growing a whole team of care. Hang on. No, no. Xero sales team. What are your KPIs targets? What is your month? Are you tracking against that? What's your quarter? Suddenly, organically, the apps which help them convert more customers, migrate, go faster, help their customers win. They've got this accelerated upside partner program kind of in the trash. So there's other ways to go about it and it comes back to our point at the start of the call. Think of making sure you know the workflows, how you fit in, help the agency, help the other app partner grow, you know, and then away you go.

Sam Yarborough: 36:20

I

Jason Yarborough: 36:21

back to that, that V word

Sam Yarborough: 36:22

on though. Yeah. I mean, I live and breathe Salesforce and this is what we preach to people all the time. It's like top down is only going to work if you also have a bottom up approach. And that's exactly what you're talking about. Like partnerships. If you remove all of the fluff is people doing business with people and if you can help sales teams drive their individual goals, they're going to bring you in. That's how you're going to create the flywheel and it's so simple, but it's so overlooked. So it has to be bottom up and top down.

Bryan Williams: 36:58

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Fully agree.

Jason Yarborough: 37:02

think that's why I love to, like, my, my focus has always been like, how do we get the sales team more involved? Once the sales team gets involved with the sales team, they'll work on each other, helping them hit their goals. And that frees us, the partner leaders up to really focus on, you know, go to market strategies, the relationship and providing that, that value out to the partner. So we're not so much focused on like being a glorified BDR. But we're more focused on like the bigger strategic initiatives that need to get done to push these programs forward and to bring on new partners. And it's like, I'm going to die on my deathbed preaching, getting, you know, partnerships out of the partner, you know, silo, but that's, that's, that's where it's at, man.

Bryan Williams: 37:40

yeah, yeah,

Jason Yarborough: 37:42

So let's, let's take a quick, a quick, hard turn here as we, uh, bring this home, you and I got a chance to meet in, in Denver at Catalyst, went on a lovely morning run with our, actually the, our previous, uh, guest, Justin Zimmerman and crew. We had a nice little run around the lake and then decided, you know what? We want to do some more running. Let's just keep going because we're crazy like that. And brownies have a good go at it. So we ran an extra three miles. Uh, so I'm getting at here is, uh, I was reading up on you a little bit as we were preparing for this, this. Um, podcast and you entered an Ironman triathlon a few years ago. You had no bike. You weren't a strong swimmer. Most of you would probably be like, Brian WTF. Like what's wrong with you? You know, what, what

Sam Yarborough: 38:29

given a go at life.

Bryan Williams: 38:31

yeah, comes back to, yeah, yeah. So, uh, I mean, it was a, yeah, a chapter in my life and I had, um, someone else I'd seen do it the year before and, uh, they were a bit older and they said like, well, what's stopping you if you don't do it now before kids, then the amount of time and commitment and training. You're required to be able to get this done. It's got a pull the trigger, right? So, uh, yeah. So, uh, yeah, that was a big year of learnings and, uh, I think a lot of that discipline, grit, perseverance and is, you know, in running my own business or building the future of what I hope to sort of achieve is a part of that, right, and translates over. I

Jason Yarborough: 39:13

Yeah, no doubt. And I was very curious to hear some of that as well as like, how have you seen that kind of translate into your everyday life? Like I started many years ago training for a triathlon. I know the work that goes into it. I decided that I didn't want to do the swimming part. So I was like, you know, triathlons aren't for me, but you stuck with it. You had the determination, the grid, like how, how are you, you know, leaning on some of that, that grid of, of training and enduring such, you know, the triathlons are hard, man. Like, how does that, you know, play into your everyday life now?

Bryan Williams: 39:44

think everyone working in partnerships is hard. Everyone's got big lofty targets. You've got internal stakeholders, external stakeholders. You're trying to, you're trying to actually reach ambitions and goals, which, uh, you believe in, but you've got to get buy in around it and you've got to do the work, right? So, you know, the discipline to train for a few different events and with a goal in time, call it a QBR, call it annual planning, a target to deliver the event is quite translatable, right? So, you know, for me, as I. You know, as my kids sleep incrementally better by 0. 01%, you know, uh, monthly, as we were talking about at the start, you know, I've got sort of a chance to, to get out the door a little bit more now and I, I see it as a competitive advantage to, because I want to be a sharp operator and dialed in, um, in order to sort of how I think about growing my business too.

Jason Yarborough: 40:40

I love it. And I love like the mentality that people like Jocko and David Goggins people bring to the table. And when I'm working out in the mornings or doing something stupid, I'm thinking of Goggins thinking that we, we only put, we, no one really puts their body to a stress level of 40 percent of what we're capable of doing. And I got to believe the same is true for like work or pushing ourselves to, to, to our exceed our expectations. We might think we're, you know, pushing hard, but maybe we're at a max 40%. There's so much that we can give and push. And so like, you know, as I'm in my garage at like four 30 in the morning, I'm thinking about that. And I find that a lot of that, you know, perseverance and that grit and the ability to just keep on, you know, being consistent plays into everything else in life. You find that you're more disciplined in your diet, more disciplined in your daily work, or you have to be disciplined in your sleep. And all that factors in to like how you show up every day.

Bryan Williams: 41:35

that's right. Yeah. Consistency is such a competitive advantage in itself of just showing up. Right. And, you know, like to take it to the next level. I remember was chatting a tie and he was talking about his time at deal and saying that when you get a partnership going and truly get heading in the right direction, he used to encourage his top his team there to have those meetings and ask the question. How can we 10 X this partnership? If you've already got the motions going, but what a great ambitious target to sort of To put it out there on a whiteboard session to actually imagine a five extra partnership how how you both win on both sides. It's It's we know partnerships takes a while and it ramps up But you know, we know we've all seen at work and we know what it can and should be but how do we get there?

Sam Yarborough: 42:18

Agreed completely. So. I also saw, I love this, that you are a weekend warrior. Now you've mentioned your kids a few times, um, since we've been recording. Can you tell us how many kids, how old they are, all of

Bryan Williams: 42:34

yep. So yeah, so we've got a five year old Henry, you know, we live in Melbourne Australia like I said and We also got nearly three year old twins as well. So a boy and a girl, Archer and Poppy. So it's a constant chaos weather. Actually, everything really is constant chaos what it is. So, uh, yeah, that's, uh, definitely keeps us on our toes, um, ongoing.

Sam Yarborough: 42:59

I mean, we have two kids, um, we do not have three kids, let alone twins. Um, being physically active, which like you're very committed to this. Running your own business, being very active in the partner leaders community, being a committed dad. That's a lot. How do you prioritize and give your 100 percent to all of these facets? Mm

Bryan Williams: 43:25

It's a constant juggle and there's an opportunity cost always, right. Sam's like, to your point, so you know, to yi's mentality of if I go running, I'm going early at like 5:00 AM and getting it done, that's my window to lock that in. And, but if I'm running then, then I've gotta prioritize to get the bed early and if have a bad night sometimes case of suck it up and keep going. Uh, I say no to a lot of things of one-on-one meetings because I can't, for scale, especially for the people working in partnerships and. What I do for one on one catch ups is I spend a lot of time going to conferences or speaking is in the month leading up as people are coming through in the industry, I say, Hey, let's catch up at that conference. So next week, partnership leaders, Christmas drinks here in Melbourne, uh, for catch ups that I've had sort of over the last month, or I was at an event on Monday night here, rather than have that time one on one half an hour, I have one to many. I can go to an event and have all those meetings and crowdsource it there. To go with it. So yeah, you've got to really protect your time for all the things because yeah, I do want to be around for the kids and, and I want to get my exercise in because it makes me everything else sharpened up as the Yabi's points. And I want to be, you know, a great husband and still spend time and families. And already we've, we've got all of our vacations booked in next year. You know, I've got my plans and the conferences and the plan and, and there's windows to do it, but I don't have. I don't have time in my day. I don't, you know, my tt I don't watch tv, I don't have time. I don't, you know, so I prioritize. And so, um, I'm always thinking about scale on the business front and how can you reach a broader audiences. And I spend a lot of time talking to podcasts like this or presenting to VC portfolios. And it means I don't have coffee catch-ups, I don't have wasted meetings. There's always an agenda and I'm purposeful around how I approach my day.

Sam Yarborough: 45:14

Yeah, I love that. I remember when we were talking to the McBain's on this show, they said something similar, but they took scale from a business perspective and they talked about how they can implement that in their personal lives. And I think they were talking about like, get your groceries delivered, somebody does your laundry, and I was like, what?

Bryan Williams: 45:32

Yeah.

Sam Yarborough: 45:32

Mind blowing and life changing, so agreed.

Bryan Williams: 45:37

yeah,

Jason Yarborough: 45:38

it all.

Bryan Williams: 45:39

yeah, yeah, where possible. Like what can you automate to a degree, right? So I'm spending time with the kids during kids time and I'm not at the shops doing groceries or other things around there, right? So, um, yeah.

Jason Yarborough: 45:52

Yeah, no doubt. So I was, I was privy to one of those messages from, from Brian Wood and says, Hey, you're going to be at catalyst. Let's catch up. Uh, curious to know, uh, what, what conferences you're, you're targeting next year, which you're going to be attending.

Bryan Williams: 46:07

Yeah, so I'll be back stateside for Catalyst whenever that is in August. So look forward to sort of catching up with everyone there. Um, down here in Australia, each state has their own. Tech based conference. Uh, this year in October, we had South by Southwest Sydney, which was the first time it's international. It was in Sydney. And, um, that was quite a, that's quite a big week. Uh, I've had about 10, 000 people along over the week and across four different streams of what it is. Um, and there's one from like, there's a conference in the Great Barrier Reef, the Tropical Innovation Conference, which is a good time. Uh, there's one happening

Jason Yarborough: 46:39

one to the calendar, Sam.

Bryan Williams: 46:40

Yeah, there's one happening. There's one happening this week in Perth, which I couldn't make called Tech West. There's one down in Adelaide Hills called South Start. Um, the government's here. Invest Victoria, invest New South Wales and Queensland have got conferences and teams helping enable and building tech and scaling that out. So there's definitely a growing scene down here, um, across the regions and once again, where there's an opportunity for me to present at scale, you know, to an audience is at scale. It's me living in market. You know, uh, driving value outwards, and then as a result, opportunities come, come, keep coming, and we've got the flywheel spinning.

Jason Yarborough: 47:18

Love it. That's great, man. I look forward to seeing you at Catalyst again next year and going on a couple of runs. So, uh, let's, let's bring this one home with our, our final out of the ordinary question. Uh, if you were to, so in typical, you know, Ironman triathlon form for Brian Williams and having to go at it. If you were to try one extreme sport without preparation, what would it be?

Bryan Williams: 47:42

Oh, that's a good question. Um, I like that there's this event in the, uh, Swiss, Swiss Alps all around. I think it's got like one of the Red Bull series, and you hike up a mountain, and then you jump off with a parachute. And then see how far you can paraglide, and then you hike to the next mountain and do it. And it goes on for about a week, but it just sounds pretty gnarly. And, uh, that'd be a pretty good, you know, lawn bowl story in years ahead, right?

Jason Yarborough: 48:05

absolutely. I love that.

Sam Yarborough: 48:07

full circle.

Jason Yarborough: 48:09

For a second there. I thought you were going to go with like, is it in Switzerland where they roll that wheel of cheese down the wheel and you got to chase it. Whoever catches it first, like wins that like, but

Bryan Williams: 48:17

Nah, it's in the UK. Yeah, it's in southern England. Yeah, I know it won't. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Yarborough: 48:22

Another

Jason Yarborough: 48:22

this is awesome. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this has been fantastic. Thanks so much for hanging out with us, spending some time. I know it's a morning for you afternoon for us. Uh, but it's been a really good conversation.

Bryan Williams: 48:36

Yeah, thanks guys. Uh, great to sort of, uh, share, share war stories and definitely what, what things could and should be ahead. So, uh, love the chat.

Jason Yarborough: 48:44

Yep.

Sam Yarborough: 48:44

So for friends who are looking to find you, is LinkedIn the best place?

Bryan Williams: 48:49

Yeah, uh, LinkedIn, I'm pretty active on various partnership musings or where I'm popping up at relevant events or, you know, check out hockeystickadvisory. com, um, as I'm continuing to sort of grow out the business.

Sam Yarborough: 49:00

Awesome. Well, Brian, thanks so much. Friends, we'll see you next time.