UIPath’s Channel Leader Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

Ultimate Guide to Partnering®, brings you the partnership leaders shaping the future of technology and driving digital transformation. In this episode, I’m excited to welcome back a former Microsoft Partner leader and a four-time guest on the show, who is now leading a fast-growing company in one of the hottest sectors in tech.

Brent Combest is the Vice President of Global Partner GTM at UiPath, the leader in Robotic Process Automation or RPA. RPA enables organizations to automate various business and software processes, increasing efficiency and accuracy while achieving scale. Brent shares how he is applying a growth mindset and his experience at Microsoft to redefine UIPath’s channel program and create value for its partners. A bold path. Can partnership leadership principles propel human achievement at UIPath?

In Brent’s Words

Brent Combest is the Vice President of Global Partner GTM with responsibility for the overall partner strategy, partner program, and distribution network for UiPath.  Prior to joining, Brent spent sixteen years at Microsoft where he led numerous areas of the channel business including global program design, the research and enablement related to cloud transformation of the partner ecosystem, served as the global leader for SMB Channel Cloud Sales, and the $3B National and Local partners group within the U.S. Subsidiary.

What You’ll Learn

• What is being bold? (5:40)
  
• Why is UIPath a leader in Robotic Process Automation? (7:53)
  
• Why do technology partners need to work with UIPath? (15:03)
  
• What makes a great partner? (19:20)
  
• Be Better Everday (28:26)
  

Partnering with UIPath

Become a UIPath Partner

Creating Ultimate Partnerships

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partners, customers, microsoft, automate, technology, people, partnering, processes, automation, understanding, opportunity, business, partnerships, rpa, vendor, channel, company, fast, success, ultimate guide

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Vince Menzione, Brent Combest

Vince Menzione  00:00

Over the last several years, we’ve been seeing a massive transformation in our world and in our lives. And an ultimate guide to partnering. We bring you the partnership leaders who are at the forefront of this industry, shaping the future of technology partnerships, and driving the digital transformation. My next guest on ultimate guide, the partner is a former Microsoft Partner leader, and now four time guest who’s been riding a rocket ship, leading the transformation and change we’ve all been seeing while applying a growth mindset to drive the partnership future for this Magic Quadrant leader.

Announcer  00:43

This is the ultimate guide to partnering the top partnership podcast. In this podcast Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione  01:02

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will rent Candace is the vice president at UiPath. The market leader in robotic process automation RPA. RPA allows organizations to automate many business and software application tasks, helping organizations improve speed productivity, while reducing errors and achieving scale. As an industry partnership leader and frequent guests. Brent is redefining UI paths channel program, taking many of the lessons he learned at Microsoft, including a growth mindset. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion as much as I enjoyed welcoming back Brent calm best. I’m so excited to welcome athletic greens as the latest sponsor to ultimate guide to partnering friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 20 years now. About five years ago I added athletic greens and now their product ag one has become my go to green drink supplement. Ag one is packed with 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, Whole Foods or superfoods, probiotics and antigens. It literally is replaced every vitamin in my cabinet. If you’d like to give ag one a try. Athletic Greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five travel packs with every new purchase. Check them out at athletic greens.com forward slash Vince M. Brent, welcome back to the podcast.

Brent Combest  02:54

Hey, Vince, thanks so much for having me.

Vince Menzione  02:57

I am so excited to welcome you back as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering. This is your fourth appearance on this podcast, you’re getting into a very elite group of people here.

Brent Combest  03:08

I’ll tell you I’m very flattered. Thanks so much for having me. Again, you are

Vince Menzione  03:13

UI paths Vice President for Global Channel Sales and programs. For our listeners who may not know UI path, can you tell us a little bit about your company, the role that you serve and your mission.

Brent Combest  03:27

I love working for companies that have audacious missions, Microsoft certainly embodied that with its approach to wanting to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. And one of the things that attracted me to UiPath was a very similar kind of goal, if you will, of accelerating human achievement. That’s a big lofty, ambitious statement that we take the market and that is very congruent to the type of a company that excites me and wakes me up every day to be inspired to come and to really leave legacies make an impact. For us. We think about UiPath in this first year that I’ve been here, when I first joined, they said it’d be a lot like trying to ride a rocket ship. And that’s that’s very much been the case, it’s been very true. One thing that this company is amazing at managing its way through this transformation and change the amount of innovation, the amount of being bold and humble and immersed and fast, which are our core values. It’s just been fascinating to be a part of that. The role that I have now, as you mentioned is I lead our channel strategy and our go to market. And this channel here is about four years old for us. And there’s about 6000 Odd members that are in that ecosystem today and growing every single month. When I think about our mission, I’m great missions, they evolve over time. And to me they really are intended to inspire the art of the possible. And for us that concept of accelerating human achievement does that for both our part hers and our customers and the partners have seen a tremendous opportunity to come in and expand the solution portfolio of what they offer to customers and do some truly innovative and special things with their customers. So it’s just been a fascinating place to be. I love what you have

Vince Menzione  05:15

to say here, accelerating human achievement is just so bold, and out there. And you talk about being on this rocket ship. I love that as well. I do feel like you have been on a rocket ship, driving change, driving transformation. But you said something else that really struck me like bold, humble and fast. What does that look like? The four

Brent Combest  05:34

values are bold, humble, fast and immersed for us, I think they’re great is an embodiment of where this company has come from. And where we’re going. being bold is it’s all about, in some cases, being fearless, being willing to challenge the status quo, to go after significant aspirational goals and to just go for it. And this company very much has that kind of at the core of the DNA of who we are. being bold necessitates us to also balance that though, with being humble and recognizing that we don’t know everything, and we’re constantly looking to learn from just each other. But our customers, our partners, and even analysts out there, as we shape this new market, we’re at that place in our journey of developing this market that Salesforce was out a long time ago, Microsoft has been at many times, but it’s that kind of Genesis or that still early phases of, of the sector in knowing and recognizing that we should have listening as a core skill of ours to make sure that we’re taking in every touchpoint of opportunity to learn is something that I think embodies as well, the culture of this company. So we’re always in that mode of listening and being curious. And that really, to me kind of embodies being humble. But at the same time, the market is moving really, really quickly in having the ability to be fast in terms of not just being innovative and, and going out and creating new things. But also understanding the concept of how to fail fast and move on from that. That’s something that I’ve I’ve been impressed with, we now have close to 4000 employees, and the bigger the company gets having that capability of failing fast and moving on just becomes harder. But that’s something that we really haven’t lost. And then the last piece around, truly being immersed, I think the culture of this company is unique. And that every single person wants to deeply understand how we can be better how we can develop a platform that changes the direction and trajectory of our customers and bring that into every single thing that we do. And a lot of times people don’t take the time to balance being fast with really understanding the problem statement or the challenge or the opportunity that’s at hand. And I think that we really do a great job. And that starts with our senior leaders of coming in and setting that tone that they want to be able to do all four of those things in concert together. And they just seem to really work well here.

Vince Menzione  08:06

I love it. I love what you have to say here. Clearly innovative and fast. UiPath is a leader in this robotic process automation software category. So certainly, Gartner. Thanks so. But for our listeners, can you explain the category? And why UI path is dominant in the space?

Brent Combest  08:25

Yeah, we’ve been very fortunate to be in the upper right of every quadrant that exists in the market out there today. And I think part of that is, you mentioned there the RPA category, I think one of the elements that those four values I talked about before allowing us to do is even shaped define and push that category further, we actually think we’re moving beyond the RPA category more towards focusing around true automation. And we consider our offerings to be an automation platform at this point, when I think about RPA. And what most people gravitate towards, to in their mind is I think robots. And we have so much more to offer than just that. And it’s more than just using those robots to automate processes. It’s a way of innovating for customers into the future. Early on, when we thought about automation, the concept of it was talked about primarily in the form of optimizing the utilization of labor, right? How do I do more with my people or replace certain activities or functions that they had? But really, it’s shifting away from just that that will stay, of course, but it’s also now adding in this concept of how do I create better customer experiences and employee experiences? And how do I use automation to generate net new revenue streams. And that’s, that’s really where this is going as far as a category and the capabilities of UiPath really have been pushing this forward, I think, in our platform really spans three key areas of innovation. The first is about discovery, and how do we leverage the tools like our process mining application to be able to Go in and analyze system logs to show you exactly how your processes internally are being executed. And then define ways for you to optimize them based on best practices, or based on how people that are doing that particular function most efficiently can be then brought across everybody that repeats that same capability. We also have task mining as an example. This allows you to go in and really track and identify a bunch of different processes in the company and say which ones through the use of AI? Could we quantify more ROI or impact if we were to automate them, and to me, that’s not just about RPA. That’s a true platform that allows you to come in and be able to identify areas of opportunity, areas of innovation, and then that leads into the deployment of the low code development, document understanding and processing, API automation, all those types of things that kind of help us offset, discover, automate, and then the last one is all around operate. And that’s where, from the tool or from the platform, you’re able to extract the insights, that you need to be able to adjust processes that are taking too long, or where we could remove a human in the loop out of the way to be able to do more, do things even faster. And you can even expand that even further into things like testing capabilities to be able to answer questions around how many test cases have I run, how many have passed or failed on something like an SAP upgrade? There’s just so much there across discover automated operate that goes beyond just the concept of the the early phases of RPA with robots?

Vince Menzione  11:32

So take me back for maybe for a listener who may not understand this, when you look at processes, you’re looking at how people are you looking at keystrokes? Are you looking at various applications? Like where do you go to get the data?

Brent Combest  11:45

You do? So the first thing you do is you track the process that’s in place today? And then you monitor? What are the keystrokes? Or what are the intakes even when we use document understanding features to be able to ingest different form factors of data from unstructured unstructured sources to be able to pull that in. And then based on how that process is being run by different individuals and how they’re interacting with different tools, you can then start to say there are steps that can either be removed, are there steps that can be automated and done by a robot or AI technology that a person doesn’t have to be involved in. Or you could see four or five people that run the exact same process. But do that differently, and find out what is the most happy path for us to be able to follow and then make sure that process is followed routinely. And then within that, what are the areas that could be automated so that it’s not requiring human labor or the costs associated with it to execute?

Vince Menzione  12:45

And where do you gravitate to what is your ideal customer look,

Brent Combest  12:49

with customers across every industry, I would say anybody that needs or has the ability to automate something is a great fit for us. But appeal on that back then. So we’ve got customers in banking and financial services that have reaped tons of opportunity, hundreds of millions of dollars of cost savings annually by leveraging this technology and some large insurance companies, large banks, we have health care providers and payers that leverage our technology to automate what has been a very cumbersome, and paper intensive process of the past. But that flows through to manufacturing, customer service organizations inside of tech companies. It’s everywhere the opportunity is really limitless.

Vince Menzione  13:30

Yeah, it sounds like and you left an incredible career at Microsoft. So what attracted you most,

Brent Combest  13:35

the number one thing was, I’d spent 16 years there and loved every minute of it. I truly would not trade that for anything. The joke that I’ve made so many times, and I think I’ve even made it with you before is when Microsoft called being a Seattle kid. It was like the Yankees calling you go and play for them without a doubt. Right? And it was I couldn’t have had the life experiences that I had there, the mentors the on the job learning like that anywhere else. But I wanted to take that knowledge that experience and be able to share that in a different way. And what was interesting to me about UiPath is they were when I started a year ago, really in a congruent place to where we were at with cloud at Microsoft back in 2010 2011. And that window of time where market was being created. Partners, were seeing that potential opportunity, but really need a little bit of help and need a little bit of framework for how do they capitalize on it? How do they build the business around it. And so that knowledge and experience I gained of being a part of helping partners go to the cloud on that journey. I’ve been able to bring a lot of that over here to UiPath and share that and being able to make that journey here has been really an exciting thing for me to to bring that value over it bring that experience and so that’s really what drove that change.

Vince Menzione  14:55

You know, you bring back memories of bringing or trying to bring the partner ecosystem on Long with us during that path to the cloud. And so I want to ask you in an analogous way here, right? In building your partner and channel ecosystem strategy, why should partners want to work with you and your organization,

Brent Combest  15:13

I think there’s a few things that really leap out to me, I think any technology service provider that’s looking to work with a vendor should first look at the culture of that vendor in relation to their channel strategy. And here, we’re a company that’s very committed to the channel 70 odd percent of our revenue goes through with a to a channel. So it’s very much aligned to seeing the channel as a force multiplier, or a growth multiplier for us. A lot of the people that are here in senior leadership positions have come from Channel friendly companies, there’s a lot of Microsoft DNA here, there’s a lot of Dell DNA here. And so that’s that, to me was something that I think was attractive for me to want to join this company, because I knew that we could succeed. But you know, we very much are, I think the other thing, if I were a channel partner today that I would find attractive about our platform is of all the solutions that I’ve dealt with. And I’ve got a history of selling Azure and Office 365, and Dynamics CRM and ERP, even before I came to Microsoft, I sold CRM and ERP within the channel to end customers, I’ve never seen a product, that it’s easier to build a business case and quantify the impact as the solution and the platform that we provide today. So when you think about being able to go out into the market, and translate value, and quantify the impact for your customers, there’s nothing even close in my mind, in terms of the ability to put numbers behind this, that the automation platform can do. So that to me is another really interesting factor for partners to think about. And I think that third one is, we’re at this interesting point, kind of like Cloud was 10 years ago, or 12 years ago, where there’s a huge profitability opportunity. But this is still a cutting edge technology where there’s a price premium for it. gross margins on services tend to be quite healthy amongst our partners, being tied to a new segment with innovation technology, and a vendor that is where we’re at in terms of the analyst reviews, I think is a great bet to place and something that can really help to grow the overall economics of your company, not just for today, but for the future as well.

Vince Menzione  17:26

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Brent Combest  18:30

we have a mix, to be honest. And it’s really similar to what I witnessed that at Microsoft, there’s a lot of success with the global systems integrators for sure. They’re They’re definitely out there, they have the capabilities to speak the language of automation, and to speak the language of business outcomes, which that is a great skill that will help them to be successful. But we also have a lot of boutique partners or automation specific partners that have found great success, great growth, great health, great profitability as a result of it. And they do tend to buy as Vince towards professional services, managed services, and even some commoditized IP that’s being built there. I think the business model is a lot like what we saw around a strong data nai partner on Azure, or a strong dynamics partner. And I would actually say that partners that are in those two cohorts that I just mentioned, would be fantastic. partners for us. Matter of fact, many of our top partners I know from the Microsoft days, and they do have those skills. So yeah, that to me, that’s a good logical alignment there. But and when you think a little bit more broadly about what makes them really successful, I think that for the most part, these folks are very good at selling to the C suite and to the board. They understand how to translate technology into business outcomes. When you walk into the bank and you talk to a CTO or a CFO, understanding their business model their vernacular, the metrics that matter to them and being able to articulate how the technology that is being provided through automation can match to those goals. I think that’s the real secret to success.

Vince Menzione  20:10

It also strikes me too. And you start talking about some of these segments like financial services, healthcare, payers, providers and the like. That there’s an opportunity for application software vendors, particularly, to embed the technology to help automate the processes. Am I right? In that assessment,

Brent Combest  20:28

you are from a tech a tech vendor standpoint, it’s not just on automating the processes, but it’s also the connections through API’s, right? Rather than having to go through and do deep technical integration of API’s, you can sit on top with the automation layer and be able to manage the connections between those two systems without nearly as much effort, right. So that’s another use case for it. And then there’s also the testing element, right? So when you’re going to roll out a new product offering, are you going to roll out a new upgrade or something of that nature, you want to have it tested the right way? And that’s the testing platform that we have can really enable that type of activity.

Vince Menzione  21:02

You know, Brent, this is the ultimate guide to partnering. And you’ve been around partners, pretty much your entire career, right? Having been a partner spent 16 years in Microsoft, what do you believe makes a great partner? What does your ultimate partner look like?

Brent Combest  21:19

I don’t think my perspective has changed. I think it’s the same three core guiding principles that I see here driving success among our top partners as I did at Microsoft. And the first one is, you’ve got to be comfortably uncomfortable, meaning healthy state of paranoia is something that I’ve lived by for a long time. My old boss at Microsoft, David Smith coined that term. And I love it, it’s something that is very central to me. And that really revolves around having a comfort with being a continuous learner having comfort with evolving over time, and realizing that what you consider to be a competitive advantage, today won’t be an 18 to 24 months, and you’re going to have to constantly be looking at ways to add more value, reinvent yourself, do things a little bit differently, to maintain that level of competitive advantage. The second piece is all about how can you as a technology provider, with your knowledge and understanding of customer outcomes, especially now that the buying patterns and the control and the power of the buyer has shifted away a lot from, you know, technical side to the business side? How can you translate with simplicity and elegance, what your solution and your offering is going to provide to your end customer and be obsessed with that absolutely obsessed with it? Right? Because it does a couple of things, not only does it help you win that initial deal, because you can speak their language and relate what your value is going to be in their terms. But you can also understand how to measure your impact, and then prove that you’ve delivered upon what you said you were going to do. And that opens up the next door, the second or the third door, the fourth door. Because there’s no longer in most cases, these monolithic deployments that are taking place, it’s come in and prove yourself solve one or two problems for me. And when I see that value in the realization of it, I’m gonna give you the keys to the next door. And you’ve got to be able to do that. And that starts with being customer obsessed, and really understanding that business that’s getting away from the old school generalist business model of being a Swiss army knife to everyone, and really pivoting towards having differentiated value and understanding. Where am I really, really strong, where to have history and success, and how can I capitalize on that. And I think the third element, beyond just being customer, customer obsessed is continuing to learn about what factors are driving not just transformation in their business, but potential strain and stress on their business through regulations, competition, a whole bunch of other areas, because to the degree that you can stay ahead of those types of influencing factors, you’re able to be on that tip of the spear of how you’re supporting them as a value added provider to transform and drive advantage over the long term. So it really is just those three things. It’s being comfortably uncomfortable and constantly looking for ways to innovate and stay ahead of the curve. It’s being customer obsessed and understanding that when you can align your aspirations and your goal to your customers, that’s a formula to win. And then that last one is making sure that you’re staying ahead of the curve with what your customers are seeing in terms of items or elements that are impacting their business and you’re able to react to those and lead them into new areas as opposed to being dragged along by the customers and hoping that you can provide what they need.

Vince Menzione  24:45

I love what you have to say your brand. And as I was thinking about your theory, I was thinking about how well they weave into what I like to refer to as agility. Because agility you have to sense right you have to sense the To actors, and you have to be comfortable with the factor. So I have to be uncomfortable with the uncomfortable. And then those factors are coming to you from customer like your your customers are telling you. And then you’re translating it with simplicity and being obsessed with the customer to drive the right outcomes for them. Exactly. What about partners that don’t get it? Right? What do you wish you had said to them? To get them on the path to success? And what would you say to them now, if you could,

Brent Combest  25:29

you know, I think over the last 10 years, especially whether it’s cloud or even some of these more advanced workloads, like we’re experiencing with automation, the solution provider market is crowded, you’ve got to find a way to be able to differentiate, especially if you want to be able to go out and engage in the vendors, cosell activities or be a priority in terms of the types of partners that they invest in. I look at many of the vendors may even us with 6000 partners, it’s crowded, right? And so if you want to come in, you want to co sell with a Microsoft and AWS or Google or UiPath. Being able to make sure that you can have value that displaces an incumbent would be where my mind was at. That’s the joke I always make is, if you want to come in and and cosell with a mature vendor, you have to treat it like you gotta displace Derek Jeter at shortstop, right? They’ve already got partners they’ve worked with for a long time that are extremely talented and have a wealth of customers, and are deeply entrenched with their Salesforce, how are you going to provide something different, something new that they don’t have already, and that should be the baseline for how you engage with any vendor. And to me that that starts with differentiation, right? It’s being able to come in and do that. And I think that the second piece is, understand how what you provide connects with the challenges your customers are facing when you go into a bank, for example. And they’re dealing with two or three macro level problems, they’re talking not just to you, they’re talking about 345, maybe even 10, different technologies, that in a connected fashion are going to solve those problems that they have. And so having an awareness of where you fit in that equation, and potentially even forging relationships with those different technology providers and vendors as well, to be able to bring together even either a total solution or understanding where you fit into that is really, really important. So many times illegal until digital transformation opportunity. And we’re talking heavily about automation, there are four or five factors, or four or five other different technology platforms that are connected to what we’re delivering. So it’s not just about the the one piece of solution that you have to offer. And having an awareness of that and, and knowing how to connect and talk to that I think is really important to

Vince Menzione  27:44

great nuggets for partners out there, Brent, what you just said about what makes great partners and what partners need to do differently. It’s just in itself an episode. But I’d love to pivot. As you know, I am a big believer in mindset and personal philosophy, we both had the great fortune of spending time with Dr. Mike Turvey, who has been a guest here three times on the podcast, you now have beat him four times, and about how applying your personal philosophy is just so important to your world, your life, your personal life and your professional life. How are you applying your personal philosophy to this new role as Vice President and a UI path?

Brent Combest  28:26

My personal philosophy, you know, we talked about it before is better every day. And that’s something that really helps to drive me and keep me focused as well. And here, as we develop the sector, and we drive incredible growth, the last two words of that philosophy, they become even more important to me than they were before. Because the way that I have to think the time horizon is even shorter being better every day man and Microsoft making small, incremental improvements here, it means I’ve got to be able to make sometimes even leaps within a day, right? So I’ve got to be able to come in and think about how do I go fast, like we talked about before, it’s one of the core values of UiPath. And so the time horizon of this concept of everyday has has changed a little bit for me to where I need to be able to go not just even faster, but I need to be able to solve bigger challenges in a more efficient way. And to be able to do that, you know, when I think about how I’ve been able to adjust a little bit, it’s all down to prioritization. For me, you know, being better every day doesn’t mean you do everything in a day, it means that you have the ability to know what matters the most in that moment. And be able to prioritize that and devote all of your attention and focus to that, to make sure you’re successful with it. And so this combination of being able to prioritize things and be able to move just a little bit faster with bigger ambitions everyday that’s, that’s the big change that I’ve had to kind of make as an adjustment for me. And then the last piece is I would say being better isn’t Ness necessarily just about your agenda, you have to bring others along collectively to be better. And that includes ensuring that you stay open minded to learn. And it’s not just about you thinking through to solve the problem. It’s it’s balancing that element of how do I leverage others in that same vein. So that’s, that’s really the adaptation of better everyday over this last 12 or 13 months for me.

Vince Menzione  30:23

I wonder as I listened to you, does it sometimes mean that you have to go slower in order to go faster?

Brent Combest  30:30

Yeah, I think that’s fair, I don’t know that it’s so much about being slower, as it is about being more deliberate to take the inputs that you need to get it right. You know, we recently announced in the launch in May, a complete redesign to our channel economics across incentives, discounting, deal registration, all of those elements. And that was really uncomfortable for a lot of our folks, our field tellers had become accustomed to the structure of that our partners understood how to monetize their, their business around the structure of our discounting. But it was creating challenges for us financially. And we needed to make a significant change to that. And I had to be thoughtful about making sure that I got that message, right, because I would wind up wallowing with a lot of people on the why, without having that well thought out quantifiable justification for change. And once we nail that down and understood that the flow of change in the be bringing people along just become infinitely easier to do.

Vince Menzione  31:34

I think Dr. Mike would be proud. I think you’ve taken your personal philosophy and the way you’ve applied it here. It’s just it’s a great case study. Thank you. Appreciate it. So we’re in the midst of 2023. I mean, it’s flying by like that rocket ship you talked about right? And it’s in high gear, what words can you share with our listeners to help them optimize for their success? In 2023?

Brent Combest  32:01

I think the first thing that I’ve tried to stay centered around is this current economic climate won’t last forever. It’s a bit scary at times, there’s always the headlines of what’s happening in the tech sector. But I think like most things, it’s a great reminder and an opportunity for us to focus on what says what sets us apart, what we’re great at, and where we can add value into the market. And I think that that’s a chance for us to recenter ourselves around that. And that would be probably the biggest takeaway. The next one would be, where can I innovate? Next? What is the next chapter for me? Because tomorrow is going to come no matter what, no matter what the situation is today, tomorrow is going to hit us. And so that evolution that I talked about before and that healthy state of paranoia, I would say, what does 2024 look like in 2025? And what’s your business plan? How are you right now building to be successful in that phase? And maybe it makes sense to have one or two different scenarios inside of there. But I would be thinking about now, what does that look like? How am I going to define success? How am I going to measure success. And then the last thing I’d say is we’re also in kind of a unique moment where unfortunately, based on what’s happened in the tech sector, there are a lot of people out there looking for their next opportunity, their next great challenge. And I think it’s an interesting moment where as you think about what your next area of innovation is going to be, you can start to source some of that talent. I’m personally right now going through and looking at all of the colleagues that have been impacted and proactively reaching out to them to look at how I can bring them into our plan into our approach to make sure that, you know, we’re capitalizing on the talent that’s out there. Because I think it’s kind of an interesting moment right now, where there, there are folks out there that are incredibly talented, have a wealth of experience and have a tremendous amount of value to you. I would be proactively capturing them.

Vince Menzione  33:56

Wow, really great, great words of advice. Sounds like you’re hiring as well. So maybe we should put that out there in the show notes.

Brent Combest  34:04

I’ve just asked three people in the last week. I love to

Vince Menzione  34:07

hear that. And then there are some great, talented people out there. So so great to see that you’re doing that, Brett. First of all, I want to thank you. I knew this would be a great episode, and really enjoyed this conversation with you today. And I want to thank you because I know you’ve been super busy. I know you just came back from a big trip. And delighted to have you back. One thing I’ll say five timer gets a robe. You become a member of the five timer club, and there’s only two people in that. So we’re gonna have to have you back, Brent.

Brent Combest  34:37

I definitely want that robe. I’m coming back for sure now.

Vince Menzione  34:40

All right. I love it. Thank you so much, Brian, for joining us today on The Ultimate Guide to partnering.

Brent Combest  34:45

It’s been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Vince Menzione  34:47

So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Guide to partnering. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner executive and hearing my voice Chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail, and that ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com.

Announcer  35:38

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partner and we’ll catch you next time on The ultimate guide to partnering