John: Toni Kent, welcome to our 28th episode of the Partnership Path and the Partnership Path in Real Life. I can’t believe we’ve done that many.

Toni: It’s a nice number. It’s a number that sticks in my memory, John, because my mum used to always tell me she was 28 when I was little. I’d say, how old are you? She’d say, I’m 28. It’s a good number, strong number. Yeah. Wow.

John: Yeah.

John: Why’s that?

John: That is a good number. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you and I have done nine episodes. And then because of the way we’ve structured this, where you and I introduce a topic, and then we have people in the community come on and talk a little bit about that topic, we’ve actually had 16 different listeners come and participate across 18 of those in real life episodes.

John: And I just, I’m so grateful to all those people. Like that’s just been so cool that they’ve been willing to be a part of this. And so I want to give them all a quick shout out. I want to thank Edmundo Del Casillo Soto, Joy Verplank, Pavan Sabarral, Kari Finnegan, Trent Colley, Kristen Marguerite, Michael Johnson, Adriana Gutierrez, Peter Martin, Julie Schradie, Matt O’Donnell, JR Randall, Steve Selany, Karen Richardson, Beth Shapira, and Garrett Kramer. Like, that’s a lot of people. We haven’t been doing this for very long, and we have all these people that have participated. It just, it makes me feel really good that people are getting something out of it and are willing to voice their opinions as well in this thing.

Toni: It is really about community, isn’t it? People talk about tech community and it is, it’s true. I think it’s really true. And that’s evidenced by people saying that they’re willing to come on and spend time with you and share their perspective. So it’s really cool to be part of something that is serving other people and bringing some interest and enjoyment.

John: Yeah.

John: Yeah, I mean, I’ll be really frank with you. I was afraid when we started this thing that no one would listen and no one would come on. So I’m thrilled that we have people that are willing to participate. When you look back at those, at the last four and a half months that we’ve been doing this, what are some of the things that stand out for you? What kind of is your favorite part of this?

Toni: Well, I think kind of seeing it out there because it’s nice to obviously lovely to talk to you, lovely to reminisce and look at how things have changed and how something stayed the same. But I think seeing the content being shared in that forum on LinkedIn, people joining in the conversation and actually helping one another. That’s been the big…

John: Yeah.

Toni: The big thing for me is to go, do you know what, we created something, we put it out there and actually people gone, yeah, this helps me to do a better job. So I’m getting a lot of enjoyment out of that.

John: Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, for me, I say this all the time in my training that like one of the things I love about what I get to do is even though I’m, you know, supposedly the expert or whatever, I’m learning stuff all the time. And having these in real life episodes has been such a validation of that because almost every episode there’s something where I’m like, oh yeah, that’s a great way to think about that. I hadn’t thought about that or whatever.

Toni: Mm.

John: Like the one that just jumps to mind, I think it was with Karen Richardson had the Kermit the Frog moment that she talked about it. Like it’s just such, it’s so cool that people, you know, have these kind of little unique memes or whatever that in terms of how they are effective and how they can be better at their job. So I just keep learning and I’m super grateful to all those people for sharing that stuff, not just with me and you, but with the entire community. It’s really cool.

Toni: I think it is a profession and a skill set where you can think, oh, well, it’s a job. I do my job. But there is an art to and a skill to being a great kind of partner manager, working with partners. So I think there’s a lot to be said for bringing together people, acknowledging that and kind of celebrating.

Toni: Some of the good work that people did otherwise, you’d probably just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I had an okay day today. It’s, it’s, yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a good thing, John.

John: Yeah.

John: Right. Right.

John: I think we’re doing a good thing and I think we should keep doing it. And I wanna call out to the listeners and ask them if you are listening and if you’re enjoying the content and you’re getting value out of it, please spread the word, forward the link or recommend it or like it or wherever you’re listening to it, do whatever is necessary to let other people know about it. Secondly, to all of those listeners,

John: If you’ve got something to say, actually I shouldn’t even say it that way. I know you’ve got something to say. And so we would love to have you on an in real life episode. And all you got to do is raise your hand and we’ll get you on an episode. So if you’re listening and you hear something that you want to comment on, let us know. Or if you have a topic that you think we should talk about, let us know about that. And we’ll do a topic on it and then we’ll get you on that in real life episode.

Toni: Yeah.

John: lets you tell the world kind of how you’re doing that. We would love to have more people involved in and on the episodes. And in fact, we’ve already gotten some suggestions for episodes, which you and I have talked about and kind of launching the next season, we’re gonna start breaking kind of groups of episodes into seasons. So we had our season one, which is sort of partnership fundamentals.

John: I don’t want to call it basics because it’s not basic by any means. It was sort of fundamental. Like you got to do this to be successful. And you and I have talked about a collection of topics that have kind of come in from people that they want us to talk about for this next season that I think we’re going to call go to market together or sales cycle, sell successfully together. We’ll work on that, but we’re going to have a season that really focuses on.

John: kind of the selling side, right? Marketing together, selling together, kind of running a partnership business together to get revenue. And that’ll be our next season. I’m kind of excited about that.

Toni: Look forward to it. I’m looking forward to it.

John: Yeah. And in fact, as you know, we’ve even talked about the season after that, about after we do that seven or eight episodes, and we’ll have another season where we focus on elevating your game. Again, set of topics that have come in from users of, hey, we’d love to hear you talk about this. And so we’ll put together that season kind of towards the end of the year and launch that.

Toni: Careful John, starting to sound like you’ve got a road map. We know how valuable they are.

John: Yeah, yeah, like it’s a real thing almost. Yeah.

Toni: Yeah, well I’m really excited to kind of put these ideas into action. I think having the series is going to bring a whole lot more value to people so they’ve got libraries that they can go to to pick the topic that matters most.

John: Yeah. Well, again, Toni, it’s been a great time doing this. I can’t wait to do a bunch more with you. And to all of you listening, I just want to, again, say, spread the word. If you’ve got a topic or a suggestion of what you want us to cover, let us know. And if you want to be on an in real life episode, please let us know and we’ll get you on an episode. In the meantime, we’ll see you when season two starts for go to market together or co -sell together or whatever we’re going to call it in a couple of weeks.

Toni: See you for season two.