Google’s Managing Director of ISV Sales Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

Google Cloud is approaching a $30B business, and its partners have witnessed remarkable success in driving bold digital transformation journeys for customers. In this Ultimate Guide to Partnering episode, meet Scott Barneson, Managing Director of ISV Sales for Google Cloud. As the leader of Google Cloud North America’s ISV team, Scott is passionate about helping businesses achieve their objectives by delivering tailored solutions from ISV partners. With a wealth of experience in the technology industry, Scott’s mission is to ensure the success of both customers and partners by aligning the right ISV solutions to address specific customer challenges. Scott brings an insightful approach to partnering strategy and his dedication to customer relevance and technological differentiation. This is how Google Cloud is helping ISV Partners drive customer success.

About Scott Barneson

Scott Barneson is Google’s Managing Director of ISV Sales, where he helps Google Cloud’s ISV partners grow their cloud business in North America. Scott has 20 years of experience building general management capabilities across sales, business development, product management, and engineering. Before joining Google, Scott spent 12 years at AWS where he built several functions and businesses at Amazon HQ in Seattle and across EMEA while based in London.

Two Links We Discussed

Partner Advantage Program

How a first-party data strategy helped Kraft Heinz deliver personalized experiences

What You’ll Learn

• Introduction to Scott’s role.(2:20)
  
  • Scott talks about his role and the mission of his organization.
    
  • Why partners and customers choose Google Cloud.
    
  
  
• What is the fundamental understanding of the cloud and digital transformation? (4:27)
  
  • Why Google is focused on cloud transformation.
    
  • Time to market and customer value are essential.
    
  • Working backward from the customer perspective.
    
  • How to apply precision partnering to drive the right outcomes.
    
  
  
• Google’s approach to Ai and how it drives adoption. (9:22)
  
  • How Google creates a flywheel for customers.
    
  • Google’s approach to AI.
    
  
  
• What is AI’s mission and vision? (12:32)
  
  • Google is focused on delivering enterprise-ready services.
    
  • AI is the ultimate idea.
    
  • The one thing that isn’t taught about partnerships.
    
  • Empathy is the most critical mindset.
    
  
  
• How to find the champion? (17:32)
  
  • People want to work with people they enjoy spending time with.
    
  • Empathy is the most essential ingredient.
    
  
  
• The importance of precision partnering with Google. (19:44)
  
  • The importance of precision partnering with Google.
    
  • The recipe to success with Google Cloud.
    
  
  
• How did you get to this point in your career? (22:16)
  
  • Kraft Heinz and Google live ramp.
    
  • Scott shares his professional journey.
    
  • Mentors and mentors pushed him to think differently.
    
  • The one best piece of advice.
    
  
  
• His Amazing Dinner Party (27:49)
  
  • Three guests Scott would invite?
    
  
  
• How to optimize for success in the coming year. (30:18)
  
  • Optimize for success in the coming year.
    
  • Inject empathy into everything you do.
    
  • Scott gives his thanks to Vince for having him on the podcast.
    
  • Scott shares his thoughts on partnerships.
    
  
  

Exclusively Sponsored By Google Cloud

This episode of the podcast is exclusively sponsored by Google Cloud. Google Cloud’s mission is to accelerate every organization’s ability to transform its business digitally. More than any other top cloud provider, Google Cloud as unique capabilities to meet customers’ needs across four areas. Data, Trust, Open Infrastructure, and Collaboration are all underpinned by Sustainable Technology. Learn more at cloud.google.com

On becoming, The Ultimate Partner™

At Ultimate Guide to Partnering, we bring you the leaders in this industry, the best in the business from the leading tech organizations and the hyperscalers, who drive the greatest influence and impact to our world of ecosystems.

With this exciting new Masterclass Series, Ultimate Partnerships becomes The Ultimate Partner™ More than just a new look, The Ultimate Partner is doubling its commitment to helping YOU become the Ultimate Partner by getting it right. Do you want to be The Ultimate Partner? Visit our NEW website.

Other Noteworthy Episodes Featuring Google Cloud

https://ultimateguidetopartnering.com/episode/181-how-google-clouds-channel-partner-leader-drives-success-with-precision-partnering/

https://ultimateguidetopartnering.com/episode/180-what-makes-a-great-services-partner-google-clouds-leader-decodes-it/

https://ultimateguidetopartnering.com/episode/179-precision-partnering-with-google-cloud-unlocking-a-30-billion-opportunity-for-tech-leaders/

https://ultimateguidetopartnering.com/episode/159-google-transforms-the-future-of-healthcare-and-what-it-means-to-you/

https://ultimateguidetopartnering.com/episode/146-a-top-google-sales-leader-investing-in-partners-to-fuel-hyper-growth/

https://ultimateguidetopartnering.com/episode/140-one-google-executive-applies-10x-mindset-to-improve-healthcare-outcomes/

Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

customers, partner, google cloud, google, ai, partnership, focused, solutions, market, scott, partnering, talked, opportunity, learn, technology, organization, success, ultimate guide, sales, business

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Vince Menzione, Scott Barneson

Vince Menzione  00:00

with their latest earnings results, Google Cloud is approaching a $30 billion business. This creates a massive opportunity for you as partners. To help Google’s customers take full advantage of their cloud environments by providing the ecosystem of additional services, platforms, and expertise only partners like you can provide. So if you’re a technology leader, looking to learn how to effectively grow your business, then you’re not going to want to miss this exclusive Ultimate Guide to partnering series precision partnering. In this series, I’m joined by the Google leaders driving the partnership business to help define what it takes to effectively partner with Google.

Announcer  00:46

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  01:05

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will Scott Barnes leads the ISV or independent software vendor partner team for Google Cloud, North America, Scott and I have an engaging conversation on our shared conviction that every company’s becoming a technology organization, and that customer relevance and technologically differentiated solutions are critical to success. Scott also explains how Google’s precision partnering methodology, working back from the customer helps align the right ISP solutions to the customers challenge. We also discuss partnering, and the philosophical and tactical attributes he finds critical to success. I hope you take time to listen to this episode, because I really enjoyed spending time and getting to know Scott Barnes listen. This episode of the podcast is exclusively sponsored by Google Cloud. Google clouds mission is to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business more than any other top cloud provider. Google Cloud has unique capabilities to meet the needs of customers across four areas. Data Trust, open infrastructure and collaboration, all underpinned by sustainable technology, learn more@cloud.google.com. Scott, welcome to the podcast.

Scott Barneson  02:43

Hey, thanks for having me. That’s

Vince Menzione  02:44

why I am so excited to welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering you lead the ISV team within Google clouds partner organization for North America. Can you tell us a little bit more about your role and the mission of your organization?

Scott Barneson  02:59

As you mentioned, I’m Scott partisan. I joined Google Cloud January of this year, I lead an incredible team of folks who work across technologies, solution areas, geographies, and industry verticals, all focused on helping Google Cloud customers achieve their business objectives by positioning and delivering customer relevant, technically differentiated solutions that come from our ISV partners. We’re focused on ISVs, I think it’s a really fun place to be we get to target those applications, the solutions that really help power our customers businesses. But of course, we’re part of the Google Cloud ecosystem. So my team works closely with the rest of the partner organization, whether that services or reseller partners to GSIs, I’ve had a chance to meet with a bunch of partners since I joined. It’s really gratifying. It’s wonderful. I hear consistently that this team is a difference maker and helping our ISP partners go to market and accelerate growth with Google super excited to be part of that story alongside the team.

Vince Menzione  04:01

Well, you had quite a bit of excitement. Last week, you hosted an event in New York City of really terrific event, an ISV forum, I could feel the excitement in the room around what Google has to offer and all the things that are going on within your organization. But I thought for our listeners, you could spend a little bit of time here you talked about customer relevance. You talked about technologically differentiated solutions. Why do you think partners and customers choose to work with Google Cloud?

Scott Barneson  04:27

Yeah, I think there’s a really, there’s a couple of things, and I’ll talk you through it. First, there is a fundamental understanding that the cloud in general, not just Google, but overall in the market continues to play this pivotal role and underpinning the digital transformation goals of companies across the global economy. This is hitting all industries, all segments of the market and so starts with this conviction around. Look, all businesses are digital businesses, right? And so how do we accelerate that transformation to get that faster time to market and increase value to customers. It’s really about having a strong strategy around cloud and transformation. The next is Google specifically, we’re really focused on this concept of precision partnering, bringing the right folks from the ecosystem together, working back from the customer requirements, their use cases, their needs to have these low friction, high value solutions that we can deliver through Google maximizing their return on Google technologies. And regardless of where they are in their cloud journey, their level of maturity, the stage of adoption, etc. So creating that environment for customers and for our partners. It shows the investment we have in advancing customer success. And I think you see that we’re in an interesting time. We every headline now is dominated by artificial intelligence, and Gen AI. Of course, Google’s been doing this for quite some time. But I think the strong deep engineering expertise within Google is something that has our partners really excited about partnering with us, they know that there’s a an opportunity for them to level up their existing solutions, adding new functionality that’s again, relevant and differentiated for customers, but also creating totally new businesses, and new revenue streams, the past the market with us.

Vince Menzione  06:28

I’d like to unpack here a little bit, you said several very important things. She talked about some of the economic headwinds, some of the headwinds, this time of digital transformation that we’ve been seeing, and time to market customer value are of utmost importance during this age of transformation. You also talked about working backwards from the customer perspective, and I got to meet one of your ISP sellers. Chelsea Bellucci, I believe is her name. I’m just interested on how that works. And I had the impression that Chelsea is in the field working with customers on behalf of the ISP, your ISP team and helping to drive that. How do you think about from a customer’s perspective, applying precision partnering to drive the right outcomes?

Scott Barneson  07:13

Yeah, it’s a fascinating challenge, because we have over 100,000 companies in the Google Cloud partner Advantage Program. So incredibly robust ecosystem of partners. Now, if you’re a field seller, and you are aligned to the territory, let’s just say it’s, you know, New York, or you’re aligned to an industry vertical, like healthcare and life sciences, how do you know which partners are going to be the most impactful for your customer workloads? And so Chelsea’s team is focused on mapping to either a sub region, a geography, a territory that has sales leadership, and sales teams and customer engineers, or to those industry verticals. And by doing that they can get really deep and understanding what is the landscape look like in this given sub region or this vertical? What is the language that these customers speak? What are the top priorities for their business, whether it’s regulatory compliance, or improving their operational efficiency or getting to market faster, as we talked about previously, and so her team really are the translation engine using people from here’s the catalog of what’s possible, which is exciting, but can be overwhelming to hear the targeted use cases where we have, through this precision partnering initiative, we believe, really compelling and low friction solutions that we can bring to market in a repeatable way. And so it really is common sense. And in a sense that, of course, we’re going to start with the customers challenges, and we want to meet an unmet need in the market, if you will, but it requires a lot of discipline, and really high caliber people. So you know, Chelsea’s been doing a phenomenal job.

Vince Menzione  09:02

And what I think I heard is identifying the customer’s challenges may be looking back towards your solution areas. And we’re gonna have Rebecca Potts on this podcast as well to talk about what her team does. And then applying the right partner methodology, this precision partnering methodology to help the customer achieve their greatest results.

Scott Barneson  09:20

Yeah, absolutely. You nailed it. And the thing that this creates a bit of a flywheel, right, we’re starting with the strong technology differentiation that we have at Google Cloud, and then we’re layering on the solutions that are provided by ISVs, or from our services and consulting partners. And that combination is what builds that customer relevant, technically differentiated solution, which drives adoption. And as we drive adoption, we get more of those inputs as you described around. Well, what’s next? What do they need? What are the challenges they’re facing, which help us focus and prioritize the next thing for us to build or new features to add So we believe that creating that flywheel is a really powerful driver of sustainable economic value for our customers. And when our customers when our partners win and what our partners win, that’s when we win. So it’s it’s a really beautiful thing when it all comes together.

Vince Menzione  10:18

And you talked about differentiated technology. And we’ve talked about security and how important that is right now, the data cloud that Google exudes, and the great work that Google has always done in the world, the data, and then AI, and one of the highlights for me from your event was Dr. Patricia flurry. See who discussed an amazing array of capabilities within the Google Cloud, can you expand on Google’s approach?

Scott Barneson  10:44

Absolutely. And I couldn’t agree with you more that Dr. Patricia is a spectacular human being so thankful to be at a company that attracts this type of talented, and that she had the time and energy to be on stage and talk through the Google story. There are a few principles to think about as it relates to AI. And so starting with the fact that as part of Google Cloud, we’re really leaning on taking advantage of Google’s deep, proven experience with AI. This is something that we have been focused on for a very long time and has shown up in Google’s products just not necessarily branded as AI, all along the way. So we’re combining industry defining research, we talked a little bit about that earlier, along with the hardware and software innovation coming out of Google Cloud to responsibly and that’s an important more responsibly advanced the opportunities for consumers and for companies to create real value, actual tangible value with artificial intelligence. So what we’re seeing from customers, and our partners, this is really rare combination, all of this excitement, it’s in the market. It’s all anybody wants to talk about a strong sense of urgency. So not only is it exciting, but we got to do something about it right now. But then also clarity. Oftentimes, when you have excitement and urgency, you create motion and anxiety, but there’s a lot of clarity. And it all comes back to what are the customers needs, again, what are they facing, where’s their real use cases with real requirements and real budget, to grow their businesses or solve customer problems, take cost out be more efficient using this new powerful technology. So that’s thing number one. And think number two, the other key and this is a critical one is Google’s focused on delivering enterprise ready services, extending the value of their data, the customer’s data without risk of losing their IP. So we are utilizing the customer’s data to extend the models we have without using that data to train Google’s models. And that’s a key important point for anyone who’s trying to understand what’s the right path for us, as an organization need to be thoughtful about how do I make sure I’m maintaining ownership around my IP, so we’ve been innovating around AI and machine learning for for decades now. I’d say it’s still early days for what’s possible. And our approach is we’re focused on long term success for customers, we’re not going to sacrifice that responsible approach for a potential short term gain. But it’s an exciting place to be in some of the use cases that you see coming to the forefront. It’s across industries, it’s across segments. And there’s so much more to come. So it’s pretty exciting place to be

Vince Menzione  13:40

very exciting. And you announced a few partnerships or partner motions around AI at the event. I don’t know if you’re if this is privileged information, or if you can share some of those announcements that you made.

Scott Barneson  13:52

Yeah, there’s a bunch of knows more every day and spanning both the services side with companies like Deloitte and cognizant, as well as with our ISVs. And you saw announcements from SAP last week. Obviously, there’s a lot that can be done around the kind of open data offering, simplifying all of the the assets that organizations have that that new value can be unlocked with AI. What I’m really excited about is the GitLab announcement. Again, I think this was a couple of weeks back thinking about utilizing generative AI in a way that augments developers, I think folks are trying to understand what is the role of AI in helping extend the capabilities of their current workforce, there’s many more and I think the capabilities that AI will bring to market to help the billion plus people around the world who are working through accessibility challenges. It’s going to be really gratifying to be part of and look forward to seeing how that develops.

Vince Menzione  14:53

such exciting times. Good. So we’ve talked about AI. This is the ultimate idea partnering. And you and I both have been around partnerships for quite some time. Is there one thing that you believe isn’t taught, but you believe to be true around successful partner?

Scott Barneson  15:11

I’ll give you two answers. I’m going to cheat and give you two answers. One is philosophical. And one is tactical, I think philosophically, the most critical mindset, you know, you can talk about growth, mindset and value mindset. But to me, it’s all about empathy, and empathy and all directions. So having conviction and clarity as to why the partnership is beneficial for everyone involved, the end customer, for the partner, for the sellers, for the brand, for the supporting ecosystem, for the folks that are doing the technical support, once you have a solution, the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the stakeholders and consistently evaluate what does this partnership bring to those to those folks? How do we articulate and express that? And how do we track the impact if you can do that? Well, consistently, and that’ll show up differently for different partners, then in my experience, you can be much more effective, much more successful cut through a lot of noise. So that’s a philosophical answer that I’ve used to kind of remove some of the friction and noise around partnerships. Tactically, I’ll tell you something that that people don’t teach. And, and frankly, it’s also difficult to manifest. But I found that finding a champion, someone who cares disproportionately about your success as the partner is a real difference maker and landing and growing that partnership. And there have been times in my career where my named or natural counterpart, that the partner organization, for whatever reason, just they’re not particularly motivated, or they don’t see the same value. Or maybe the dynamics in the market are such that they’re not really pushing for growth, or maybe their compensation plan and their goals, etc, don’t align with what we’re trying to drive. And that’s a moment where you can choose to be frustrated, or move on. For me, just finding someone who does care, maybe that’s an engineering team, or the customer success, or one of the sales leaders and the geography where there is an obvious fit can be the difference maker. And so having the grit to go find that individual, demonstrate the value and grow the partnership over time, I think is one thing that probably is known but isn’t taught, as I like to say humans still matter. And so building those relationships. Turns out actually people want to work with people that they enjoy spending time with who they see share the passion for customer success. That’s probably the one that that sticks out to me the most. So impactful,

Vince Menzione  17:47

you had to sit here, Scott. So first of all, you reminded me about finding the champion, somebody’s got to be rooting for your success and pulling you along helping you navigate to your point, the partners got to find those champions, they need to develop those champions, right. It’s not about reads and speeds. It’s not about other things. From a technology perspective, it’s about the personal touch, as you mentioned, and then I love what you had to say about empathy. Because we missed this right? We talked about mindset, I talked about mindset at your event. And empathy is the most important ingredient to whether it be a growth mindset, a partner lead mindset, a value mindset, can you teach empathy?

Scott Barneson  18:24

I think so. I think so I’ll tell you personally, I’ll give you a two sentence story, I had an opportunity in my last company to spend two years living outside of headquarters based in the UK with a team spread across Europe, Middle East and Africa. And I’d say I learned a bunch of being away from HQ, in cultures with different languages and understanding the different dynamics and challenges that they had getting the work done, they needed to and some of the challenges around communication and time zones. But it does require you to be open minded and, and to desire to grow that muscle. It’s I think it’s easier to be selfish. But as a citizen of this universe, empathy is a skill and a characteristic that that all of us all of our teams aspire to grow. And it’s one of those that you’ve never done, right. There’s you don’t hit a it’s not a checkbox, it’s journey for all of us.

Vince Menzione  19:22

Now, I’m gonna add to this, I think empathy allows you to build better champions by being empathetic to the other side. Yeah. 100%. So lots of excitement, as we’ve talked about. And for the partners that are listening today that 1000s of partners that are out there that want to work with Google,

Scott Barneson  19:41

how do they start? Yeah, yeah, well, we’ve talked a lot about it. I mean, there’s the process and the tooling and the programs and those are all important, but to me again, it all starts with the customer. This concept of precision partnering, putting the customer in the center, understanding their needs, their use cases, where they’re currently P hitting roadblocks and bringing together a compelling solution comprised of the Google technology combined with an ISVs application, and may even be aspirational, right, we’re building a solution, we need to do the technical integration to deliver features and capabilities that will solve those customers problems. But focusing on a specific customer area, the specific use case where we know there’s unmet need, and budget is the most critical. One of the pitfalls I find with ISVs. Looking to partner with Google is it feels more natural to say, hey, good news. We have a platform and our platform does everything for everybody. So no matter where you’re selling, we can sell with you. Can you introduce me to all of your sales reps? And, of course the answer to that as well, it’s yeah, I’m going to lose momentum and credibility with the sellers if we’re not really focused on the customer problem or solving. And they’re having to learn all the Google solutions plus and number of partner solutions as well. So taking a focused, targeted approach, working back from where we’re most likely to win, whether that’s a vertical, or geography or a sales segment, getting the momentum going. And then expanding. From there. We see time and time again, that is the recipe to success for scaling partnership with Google Cloud. I think there are so many great examples where this happens. And I’ll I’ll just share one, really briefly, we had an opportunity with Kraft Heinz, where Kraft was looking for, hey, how do we utilize, there’s so much data, but historically, in retail, that data was distributed, it wasn’t necessarily perfectly organized in a way that gave the telemetry and the visibility and the characteristics of the customer base, because they’re going through wholesale and through distribution and stuff sitting on retail shelves, etc. And so the market need the customer need was how do we use this first party data, this Goldmine we’re sitting on to better understand our customers to provide more focused, personalized experiences that those customers now come to expect, right? Any new brand that’s launching today, this is day one, this is number one, on their strategy is we’re gonna have a direct relationship with our customers, so we can deliver a specific targeted messaging to them. So Kraft, Heinz, they knew they had this challenge. And they worked with a great ISV partner live ramp in collaboration with Google to unlock the value of that data. By providing this unified view of the customer. It’s great to see the journey for how the customer in this case, Kraft Heinz thought through what’s important, why a partner why Google Cloud, but ultimately, it was about better serving their customers, which when you do that, well, things like conversion rates get better, and business improves, etc. So I think that focusing on retail as an experience for live ramp was one of the ways that they built that momentum with us in the field.

Vince Menzione  22:57

I love this, we’re gonna put a link in the show notes to this case study. I appreciate you sharing that with us. And if our listeners these ISV organizations, have they hadn’t been working with your organization today? Whom should they reach out to? Is there a contact within your organization? Or is there a way to get them to the right path to success?

Scott Barneson  23:17

To me the right answer, the fastest path is to join the partner advanced program if they haven’t already, we have partner advisors that will spend one on one time with each partner and identifying where are you in this journey? And what is the opportunity we have together, the team that I lead, we focus on a number of ISVs, where we have solutions in market, they’re ready to go to market. And we’ve identified the opportunity that’s ahead of us. And it’s really about going and making it happen. And so clearly, that’s a subset of the 100,000 Plus partners that are in the program. But that’s where the foundation begins. So I’d encourage them to check out the partner Advantage program, if they haven’t already.

Vince Menzione  23:59

Yeah. And we’ll put links in for partner advantage as well in our show notes. But perfect. Scott, there’s been great conversation around partnering. But as you might know, from listening to other episodes, I’m fascinated with how people got to this particular spot in their career. And I wanted to focus on your personal professional journey a bit. You’ve had an amazing career in this tech sector, working with some leading organizations. Was there a pivot point? Was there an inflection or a spark that got you to this spot?

Scott Barneson  24:28

Yeah, I have had a non traditional career path. If you look back at my history, starting in the field and direct sales, I mean, my first job out of college I was Jim Halpert. From the office selling paper door to door is not glamorous, but I learned a lot about sales at that time and had a chance to do m&a. That was inflection point. Number one, I had a mentor and I’m in the office. I’ve walked by this guy’s office every day and he was always in a good mood, and his feet were up half the time and I stopped one day said hey, I’m just curious. You know what it is you do for a living. And he talked me through his role he was in business development working with partners. And he was the person that really pushed me to go try to get into mergers and acquisitions, which is something I felt wildly unqualified to do. But that nudge was enough to get me to think about it, and position myself when I was able to make that career transition. So that’s number one. And, and then I’ve, I’ve just been blessed with some amazing mentors along the way that pushed me to think differently, who pushed me to accept opportunities that I, again, didn’t feel particularly qualified for, that’s how I ended up doing product management and leading PNLs and owning engineering teams. So to me, it’s there’s lots of them, but they they pretty much all have a few things in common, of course, luck is the first one. The sense of community building relationships, to me has to be grounded in in something real. And when you have a sense of community, whether that’s a sports team, or a philanthropic organization, or just the local community you live in, those relationships tend to be more meaningful than just LinkedIn requests, if you will select community have the courage to take on something new the humility that you need to learn. For me that’s been a constant state of being upside down in terms of what I know versus what’s expected of me. And then the grits just keep going. So I feel incredibly fortunate to have combined some of those ingredients into a lifelong career of learning alongside just unbelievably talented, inspiring people. So I hope I’m leaving a positive legacy behind I try to think about those characteristics when I meet individuals who may be at that point in their career when I was walking by that guy’s office, hopefully, the little tiny corner of history I lived in both away and Joe judge me to have been a positive influence. But that’s what I think about

Vince Menzione  26:53

what a fascinating journey I love it was there like one best piece of advice along that journey?

Scott Barneson  26:59

of it, I will say I got married very young. Yeah, my wife is much smarter than me am is more organized and worked harder. And and dad’s computer engineer undergrad and was in technical sales for a long time. So I always felt she pushed me to think bigger than the moment I was in. And so it wasn’t necessarily aligned. But when you have I had a fairly technical degree operations and management information systems. And if you asked me when I went into college eight is your ideal job, going door to door selling paper, I would have said that won’t be me. But the reality of the situation when I graduated, there weren’t a ton of jobs. And so that was the one that that helped me pay the bills, but she’s the one that was constantly pushing me to not just go through the motions, right. Once you’re in that situation, what are the things you could control? What are the opportunities that you can manufacture and and then always having the support, so that I could say yes, and have that courage, knowing that I had her support behind me. So tons of gratitude for the impact she’s had on me.

Vince Menzione  28:07

So this is a favorite questions, God, you are hosting a dinner party, and this dinner party could be anywhere in the world, we could discuss locations after but you can invite any three guests for this amazing dinner party from the present? Or the past? Who would you invite Scott? And why?

Scott Barneson  28:25

I feel like there’s like a trap that any answer is insufficient, right? Because you’ve got this incredible population to draw from of important historical and impactful individuals from past to present. So I’m not going to play the game where I’m gonna get in there, right. And so I mentioned the impact my wife’s had on my life. So my wife number one, I know that’s cheesy, but it’s happening. And then I’m gonna just have a good time at this dinner because people smarter and more important than me would pick perfectly and pass on those lessons, but I’m gonna have fun. So I’ve picked two of my favorite comedians on planet Earth. I pick Ricky Gervais, who I think is just a brilliant comedian and an interesting character and a great person. And then the classic Jerry Seinfeld. So we’re gonna have Jerry and Ricky, I don’t know that we’ll learn the origins of the universe or solve some of the problems that face mankind, but we’re gonna laugh a lot and have a good time. It’s gonna be a party, and she’ll hate that answer if she ever listens to this podcast. So sorry, calling him being a little bit selfish and enjoying this dinner party, my magic wand dinner party, but I think, thankfully, you asked, I think you asked this question to others. So they will probably pick historically significant individuals, they’ll learn lessons and then they can pass those lessons on to the rest of us and make us better people.

Vince Menzione  29:44

I love this dinner party. Scott, if you’re okay with it. Where are we having it by the way because I’m getting on a jet and coming over to see you.

Scott Barneson  29:52

I don’t know. I’m not fancy. It’s probably because it’s Jerry and Ricky. Neither of them are like clicking it. Right, Jerry is gonna want it to be in New York at a diner. And Ricky’s gonna want it to be in Hampstead somewhere in the UK. So I’m good with either.

Vince Menzione  30:08

Okay, I love by the way, I’m a big Jerry Seinfeld fan, I just, I could just veg out on old episodes. And Ricky’s pretty cool too. And I’d love to meet your wife. So I’ll bring a beverage as that perfect. You’re in. Scott, you have been such a fun and amazing guest. I have so been delighted to get to meet you at your event. And looking forward to your success for our listeners. How can they optimize for success in the coming year working with Google Cloud?

Scott Barneson  30:38

Yeah, I would say number one is just embrace the chaos we’re all experiencing. It’s one of those situations where there’s risk, there’s uncertainty, there’s these headwinds that we talked about. And at the same time, there’s opportunity, there’s innovation happening, this ability to create tomorrow. So I like to tell my team look, you can either be irritated or excited. My belief is those that acknowledge those challenges, acknowledge some of the friction we face, but embrace the opportunity and the innovation and really focus on utilizing your energy to make forward progress, like for our world that’s really about helping our customers. But those that use their energy for good, if you will, are going to be best positioned to grow and find success. And I think Google is really a great place to be right now. It’s a great company to partner with, given this environment, staying hyper focused on our customers and our ecosystem. We’re going to create this environment where customers when our partners win, and Google can win. The last thing I’d say I mentioned this a few times, I’d be really stubborn about understanding that differentiation. Every time I meet a partner, I like to ask them, Hey, what is the one or two sentences that makes our relationship Google Plus you compelling and different in the market? And it’s a little surprising how often I get the head tilt and a little puzzled look. So we got to have that answer. Because it’s important, the customers care that we’re investing, we can articulate that in just one or two sentences. So that’s where the magic happens. If you have this compelling solution aligned to a set of customers where there’s unmet need, you can really have fun, I think maybe the last final thing is we talked about, just inject empathy into everything you do simple as that as the magic recipe for growing as a person removing friction and noise from relationships, and focusing on what matters. So thank you, again, Vince, for having me all the best to you. Thanks again for being at our event last week and presenting it was so cool to meet you in person. And I’m glad you had a chance to experience all the energy we have right now with our ISPs and the ecosystem. So all the best to you all the best your listeners appreciate you having me,

Vince Menzione  32:48

Scott, first of all, such great advice gave so many great lessons for our listeners, and so great to meet you the excitement, the energy, it really is infectious. And I look forward to your success. We are in the tech sector have such a great opportunity and perhaps an obligation to lead at this time. And I’m certain that the work that you’re doing will lead us in that right direction. So thank you so much, of course.

Scott Barneson  33:09

Thank you.

Vince Menzione  33:11

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 at 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  34:02

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 partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The ultimate guide to partnering