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Listen "224 - How Transcends Marketing Drives Success with Microsoft Partnerships"
Episode Synopsis
Ashleigh Vogstad, CEO of Transcends Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering
With a background rich in entrepreneurship and a mission-driven approach, Ashleigh Vogstad has carved out a unique space in the marketing landscape within the Microsoft ecosystem.
About Ashleigh and Transcends
Ashleigh’s journey to becoming a renowned entrepreneur is nothing short of inspiring. Her early entrepreneurial spirit and impactful volunteer work set the stage for her current success. Transcends, the marketing agency she founded, is dedicated to helping 1 billion people feel more connected. The agency thrives on core values like continuous learning, digital freedom, and conscious connection.
Microsoft Partnership and Achievements
Transcends started strong with Microsoft New Zealand as its first client. The agency has a proven track record of ensuring its clients either win or become finalists in award submissions. This success is built on key strategies, including developing Power BI custom visuals that have seen significant engagement and opt-ins.
Award-Winning Strategies and Storytelling
Ashleigh emphasizes the importance of having a compelling “big idea” and leveraging emotional storytelling to make a mark. An example is the touching story of a hospice maintaining care during COVID-19 using modern endpoint management, which highlighted innovation and empathy. Additionally, meticulous attention to metrics and data hygiene is crucial in validating and amplifying these success stories.
The Role of Teamwork
According to Ashleigh, successful partnerships require multidisciplinary teams that bring various organizational roles together. Transcends excels at conducting in-depth internal interviews to uncover valuable data and emotional stories that resonate deeply with their clients’ audiences.
Comprehensive Content Creation
Transcends is adept at producing diverse multimedia content, including videos, white papers, and PDFs, all designed to support their compelling storytelling and award submissions. This holistic approach ensures that their clients’ narratives are well-rounded and impactful.
https://youtu.be/B-zQkKgRuh4
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What You’ll Learn
The Power of Emotional StorytellingAshley shares insights into how emotional storytelling can transform marketing strategies.
Creating a Strong Business FoundationDiscussion on the essential elements needed to build and maintain a successful business.
Leveraging Data for SuccessThe importance of data hygiene and metrics in crafting award-winning strategies.
The Value of Multidisciplinary TeamsInsights into how bringing together diverse roles within a team can drive success.
Quotes
“Emotional storytelling isn’t just about telling a story; it’s about making your audience feel and connect on a deeper level.”
“Our mission at Transcends is to help people feel more connected, and we believe that starts with a strong foundation of trust and open communication.”
“Success is not just about the metrics; it’s about the meaningful impact you create and the stories you share.”
Transcript – Created by Adobe AI
00;00;00;06 – 00;00;09;09AshleighEven if you have a big idea, if you can’t communicate it to your audience, you really don’t have a big idea.
00;00;09;12 – 00;00;26;08VinceMicrosoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day.
00;00;26;08 – 00;00;30;08AshleighI have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning.
00;00;30;11 – 00;00;52;11VinceThat flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did, this is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Benson, your host, and today I’m delighted to welcome in the studio someone that I’ve got to work very closely with over the last several years.
00;00;52;14 – 00;01;15;09VinceAshley Volk said, is the CEO and founder of transcends, a marketing agency going places in the Microsoft ecosystem. Ash has been working with us for quite some time, and recently participated in a live event that we held here in Boca Raton, Florida, spotlighting some of the work that she does with partners award winning partners to help drive their success.
00;01;15;11 – 00;01;23;22VinceI invited Ashley in the studio today for discussion on what it takes to be an award winning partner. Ash, welcome to the podcast, Vince.
00;01;23;22 – 00;01;25;06AshleighIt’s so great to be here.
00;01;25;07 – 00;01;37;25VinceIt is so great in this conversation. As you know, we’ve interviewed leaders from the tech giants. We’ve interviewed award winning partners, and we had some of those award winning partners up on stage with you, what I like to call Pinnacle Partners.
00;01;37;29 – 00;01;38;26Ashleigh
00;01;39;08 – 00;01;59;19Vincebecause of their rise to the top, I guess is what I would say. you’re, I want to take, I want to take our listeners through a little bit about you though. for those of them that don’t know you and the work that you do, can you spend a few moments on you? Your background transcends. And the mission of your organization.
00;01;59;22 – 00;02;18;00AshleighYeah. Of course. Vince, thank you so much. And I just want to say you have been such an incredible friend and mentor these last couple of years. Partnering with Ultimate Partner has really been a career highlight, and I couldn’t be more excited to see where both of our organizations go in the next few years.
00;02;18;01 – 00;02;19;28VinceI’m excited.
00;02;20;01 – 00;02;43;12AshleighI’m very excited. So a little bit about me. I mean, I’m often asked this question of ash, did you always know you were going to be an entrepreneur? And the answer is absolutely not. It has not been a straight line, but when I think about it and reflect back, there is a narrative there. And I think about the first business I started.
00;02;43;14 – 00;02;45;23AshleighYou probably don’t know that I don’t,
00;02;45;26 – 00;02;47;16VinceTake us back.
00;02;47;19 – 00;03;14;19AshleighI was 11 years old and it was a kids for Saving Earth Club. I love it, and I think about these entrepreneurial moments throughout the last couple of decades. And one of the experiences that I think afforded me so much of the experience that has carried me forward is really volunteer work. And one of the organizations, you know, the thing about volunteering is that they’re under-resourced teens.
00;03;14;20 – 00;03;24;01AshleighYes. So as a volunteer, especially early in career, you’re afforded these opportunities to go well above and beyond your your pay grade.
00;03;24;02 – 00;03;24;26VinceYou’re bootstrapping.
00;03;24;26 – 00;03;39;02AshleighYes, absolutely. Sink or swim. You’re thrown into the deep end and I’ve found, I think one of the reasons I like entrepreneurial ism is that you’re given this opportunity to cut your own path and make your own mistakes. Yeah.
00;03;39;04 – 00;03;40;29VinceYeah. Very much so.
00;03;41;01 – 00;03;46;00AshleighAnd in volunteering, I even had an opportunity to work with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
00;03;46;02 – 00;03;51;01VinceI am fascinated by that. I love, I love I mean, what was that like? What was that experience like?
00;03;51;03 – 00;04;16;09AshleighHumbling. And also, on the flip side, hectic. As a young person, I was leading marketing, which was more in my wheelhouse, but also crisis communications, which I had never done before, and it was my first experience of a digital protest. So we had a hashtag, Be the Village, and unfortunately we had protest groups overtake the hashtag on my goodness.
00;04;16;11 – 00;04;16;29VinceWow.
00;04;17;02 – 00;04;27;00AshleighWow. We had to set up emergency comms and get centers of people going to balance out and bring the positivity back into the conversation.
00;04;27;02 – 00;04;31;04VinceFascinating. So, so okay, so fast forward us Microsoft.
00;04;31;04 – 00;04;32;05AshleighLet’s talk Microsoft.
00;04;32;05 – 00;04;36;23VinceWell, take us how how did you start transcends what what was the genesis of that moment.
00;04;36;25 – 00;04;40;06AshleighSo we’re here celebrating our five year anniversary actually.
00;04;40;10 – 00;04;41;02VinceHappy anniversary.
00;04;41;03 – 00;04;57;23AshleighThank you thank you. Big milestone. And you know it was back in 2016 or maybe 2017. I started working someone as a CMO for hire for different Microsoft partners. And that was the launch of App Sauce, actually.
00;04;57;26 – 00;04;59;03VinceOh, yes.
00;04;59;05 – 00;05;26;21AshleighSo marketplace, Azure marketplace, app Source. And we created some of the first power BI custom visuals for download that were available in App sauce. And shocking to us, we received 600,000 downloads of these power BI custom visuals. 15,000 of those people opted in to receive marketing communications, and we were able to create a funnel and ultimately build a site core practice.
00;05;26;23 – 00;05;42;08AshleighAt the time, Site Core was Microsoft’s number one Azure consumer partner. That really changed the face of that business and also got the attention of Microsoft. So my first ever client in my agency five years ago was Microsoft New Zealand.
00;05;42;10 – 00;05;48;21VinceThat is that’s that was the genesis of New Zealand. We’ll talk a little bit more about New Zealand because you spent a lot of time there.
00;05;48;23 – 00;05;50;20AshleighBeautiful country. Yes.
00;05;50;23 – 00;05;58;26VinceSo tell us about where your vision is for transcendence and maybe maybe a little bit about what transcendence does as an organization.
00;05;58;28 – 00;06;21;28AshleighYeah. Great. Our vision is to help 1 billion people feel more connected. The feel part is very important to me. And the way that we’re approaching that is through our values and maybe just a couple of those. One is always be learning. And I think about you, Vince, when you get up on stage, you often talk about Satya Nadella story and how he transformed Microsoft.
00;06;21;29 – 00;06;28;05AshleighYes. One of the things he did was bring in mindset and the work of Carol Dweck. I think it is well.
00;06;28;06 – 00;06;29;11VinceCarol Dweck book.
00;06;29;11 – 00;06;29;29AshleighCarol Dweck.
00;06;30;02 – 00;06;42;19VinceWhich was the mindset. And then also Doctor Michael Gervais. Yes, he’s been on the podcast now four times, so we’re hoping to get him down here in Boca. He hasn’t we haven’t been able to get him in the studio yet, but we hope to have him on again.
00;06;42;19 – 00;07;07;03AshleighThis coming. Yes it’s coming. So mindset that’s our always be learning value digital freedom. We’re a remote first business. We’re incredibly proud to be female funded and female founded as an organization. And lastly would be conscious connection. And that’s really about kind of tied into the feel part of our vision. It conscious connection manifests as our value of customer service.
00;07;07;04 – 00;07;15;29AshleighWe really believe in excellence in customer service. And also inside the company with how we treat our colleagues is incredibly important to us.
00;07;16;01 – 00;07;44;12VinceFantastic. You know, we are thrilled to announce our partnership with In Partner Software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally. In partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking, customizable partner journeys, and comprehensive business planning.
00;07;44;19 – 00;08;14;02VinceThese features empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in. Partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like Analytic Studio, designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit in partner.com.
00;08;14;05 – 00;08;33;01VinceYou know, we got we got introduced actually right after I held my first event, I had a Microsoft partner, one of the award winning partners, reach out to me and said, you need to meet Ashley, Boggs said. And that was that was the genesis of our getting to know each other and work together. But I happen to know you do quite a bit of work.
00;08;33;01 – 00;09;05;05VinceWe talk about this pinnacle partnership. You’ve done quite a bit of work here with these partners, and I was hoping today, because partners all crave to be that top of the stack, that top of the pyramid that pinnacle partner, that less than that one tenth of 1% that make it to the top. As a top Microsoft partner, what do you do with those organizations that is maybe unique and different, and what can our listeners and viewers watching today learn about what you do and how the how they can achieve their greatest results?
00;09;05;08 – 00;09;22;27AshleighGetting to the very top. I mean, another one of our values is to be competitive, and we certainly are competitive as an organization. we have never submitted our track record of submitting partners for awards. We have never not had one of our clients win or finalists.
00;09;22;27 – 00;09;25;25VinceThat is fantastic. That is incredible. Actually.
00;09;25;27 – 00;09;44;11AshleighWe are selective around who we work with. And then it comes down to our system. And definitely that system is a huge part. So if I just gave, maybe a couple takeaways from that, you know, I will say the Microsoft Partner of the year award announcements are coming soon.
00;09;44;14 – 00;09;45;13VinceNot yet coming.
00;09;45;13 – 00;09;51;20AshleighSoon. I think we’ll have some celebrations to do at that time, but, a few more weeks to wait on the announce.
00;09;51;20 – 00;09;56;09VinceSo we’re embargoed right now. We can’t talk about anything.
00;09;56;13 – 00;09;57;09AshleighNot quite yet.
00;09;57;12 – 00;09;59;05VinceWhat is the announcement dates?
00;09;59;07 – 00;10;02;13AshleighI don’t know, but it should be within the next 30 days.
00;10;02;13 – 00;10;11;04VinceYeah, sometime in June, usually right before the. Well, we used to be the Microsoft Inspire conference, which is now moved online to, Yeah, RMS start for partners.
00;10;11;11 – 00;10;32;14AshleighYes, exactly. So if I think about how do you get to that very top and how do you become a pinnacle partner? there’s a few things. So we’re a marketing agency and there’s this book, damn good or damn big ideas? Damn big idea. Damn big. I have never heard of this book. It’s a picture book, so it’s great.
00;10;32;14 – 00;10;33;10VinceOkay, I love it.
00;10;33;10 – 00;10;54;10AshleighGive it to everybody. It transcends. And the whole concept in there is that you need to have a big idea. And if even if you have a big idea, if you can’t land that big idea with your audience, you really don’t have a big idea. So when you’re going into an award submission, there’s a good dose of creativity and you need to have that damn big idea.
00;10;54;12 – 00;11;30;08AshleighSo I think about one of our early wins was this tiny partner. And they, you know, I was providing coaching around setting expectations. A finalist would be an out of this world achievement and the story that we ended up telling, if I think to that opening line or paragraph was something like. This hospice was the only hospice in the state of Tennessee that was able to maintain continuity of care for end of life patients during Covid 19.
00;11;30;10 – 00;11;41;10AshleighWow. And they were able to maintain this continuity of care because nurses were enabled with modern endpoint management on their mobile devices to go into patient’s homes and to care for them.
00;11;41;10 – 00;11;43;04VinceThey’re fascinating.
00;11;43;08 – 00;12;01;27AshleighAnd that story, that emotional pull of that story, is an essential ingredient in having a winning, and winning submission or even a winning brand, something that really wakes people up and gets their attention. That’s the dam. That’s how I think of this dam. Big idea.
00;12;01;28 – 00;12;20;08VinceI love that, I love dam big idea. It ties in so perfectly to what we talk about with being in that shiny quarter and the bucket full of shiny quarters. Like, how do you stand out as a Microsoft partner for those who are watching and listening today? it’s hard, right? There’s a half a million partners in the Microsoft ecosystem.
00;12;20;10 – 00;12;32;14VinceThere are maybe a handful, maybe a couple thousand that are managed, and then all the others that want to become an edge and all the others that want the attention of the field organization. So how do you help them get there with this damn big idea?
00;12;32;16 – 00;12;55;02AshleighSo a dam, big ideas and necessary ingredient. Part of that might be your better together story. There’s some buzzwords for you. Yeah. The second thing is the metrics matter. You have to do the work. Yes. And those we get acronym crazy here. You know they’re going to check the numbers. They’re going to check the numbers. It’s one of the first things they’re going to do is check the numbers.
00;12;55;02 – 00;13;20;03AshleighPart of your visibility, your opportunity to share your damn big idea is often predicated on those numbers being there. Right? So whether those are, you know, Azure revenue, consumption, again, all the acronyms, the MWR, the Packer, the Mac agreements, all of these things matter tremendously. And sometimes partners even have this success, but maybe just aren’t even recording it.
00;13;20;09 – 00;13;42;12AshleighSo there’s a whole data hygiene exercise in this. The last one I would say is teamwork actually had an ultimate partner event. You, because you’re so amazingly well connected with the ecosystem and you really do help spark the ecosystem. I was on stage with Annie Martin AD go to market leader in the US for Microsoft.
00;13;42;12 – 00;13;47;14VinceYes, we love Annie, by the way. Annie, hope you’re listening today.
00;13;47;16 – 00;14;18;12AshleighAnd one of the things that she talks about in terms of success and this is prove very true for us is multidisciplinary teams. You need to have the right seats at the table. And those are going to be people from across the organization. So when we’re weaving powerful winning stories, we need the input for one single client. This year we conducted nearly 100 internal interviews with hundreds, most likely, there’s usually multiple people in each interview with hundreds of people.
00;14;18;12 – 00;14;27;24AshleighWow. In order to surface the data stories, the emotional stories, to get an accurate read of what’s actually going on. So multidisciplinary.
00;14;27;24 – 00;14;32;00VinceI didn’t realize there was this much involved in this process. It’s fascinating to me.
00;14;32;02 – 00;14;49;11AshleighWe have writers, we have project managers, we have editors, we have designers, we have multimedia producers. Because often times in this storytelling, it’s multi-dimensional formats these days. I mean, just like the success you’re having with the podcast. Yeah, it’s video, it’s PDFs. Absolutely.
00;14;49;14 – 00;14;57;05VinceSo you’re producing videos on behalf of you’re doing maybe white papers, you’re doing all of these elements, but pulling all these elements together for the client.
00;14;57;10 – 00;14;58;28AshleighAbsolutely.
00;14;59;01 – 00;15;23;00VinceSo let’s peel back okay. There’s the process that you take them through. What’s the core. What’s the essentials. Like we had these pinnacle partners up on stage, three organizations that we all know and care about. elastic Integral video award winning partners or each. What do you think it takes to be one of those award winning partners? What’s what what’s.
00;15;23;02 – 00;15;52;00AshleighGreat about the panel yesterday is it showcased a lot of diversity. So we had a global ISV partner. We had a global services advisory partner, and we had a founder led high growth business. Yes. And just like my opening story around modern endpoint management in this hospice in Tennessee, you don’t have to be the biggest. However, the advantage of being the biggest is that you tend to have those metrics what you need.
00;15;52;00 – 00;16;10;12AshleighIf you’re not the best, if you’re not the biggest, is still a strong numbers story, but in your particular niche. And I think one of the things that Dexter from integral, who was on the panel yesterday, one of the things that he does so well is he knows exactly who his audience is.
00;16;10;19 – 00;16;11;15VinceThat’s Eisley.
00;16;11;15 – 00;16;40;15AshleighPrecisely. And he has gone after that like a ninja. so I think that that’s incredibly important if we’re talking about larger partners. Part of is understanding the vision and where you want to place your, your strategic bets with Microsoft. So there’s dozens of categories, I think not including regional award wins. You’re looking at maybe 60 ish categories for Microsoft Partner of the year.
00;16;40;17 – 00;16;46;13AshleighYou need to really choose where you’re going to put your time and effort to get those wins and finalists.
00;16;46;14 – 00;16;50;11VinceYou know, where your strong, your strong suit is, I guess is what I would say.
00;16;50;13 – 00;16;52;06AshleighThat’s exactly it.
00;16;52;09 – 00;17;22;01VinceSo let’s talk about I always talk about these tectonic shifts, right. We remark on all that’s been going on right now in the world, geopolitically, a time like no other. I would say, since Covid, we talked about Covid and the acceleration of technology, the the dominant role of the hyperscalers marketplaces in the forefront. Right. Some of the award submissions, I believe you’ve done or been around marketplace winners like elastic.
00;17;22;04 – 00;17;27;22Vincewhat are you seeing now that you didn’t expect to see? What would you comment about this time?
00;17;27;24 – 00;17;32;12AshleighWe haven’t touched on I, I, I.
00;17;32;15 – 00;17;34;02VinceI was leaving that for you.
00;17;34;04 – 00;17;53;25AshleighWhat? Thank you. I was chatting with Jay McBain yesterday before he went up on your stage to have a conversation with you, and I asked Jay about the impact of AI, and he summarized it perfectly. He said, AI is everything.
00;17;53;28 – 00;17;54;24VinceWow.
00;17;54;26 – 00;18;34;14AshleighAnd I am thinking all from the moment I wake up in the morning, how can I, as a business leader myself, transform my own company with AI? And we’ve been talking about crafting award winning stories for our clients. A huge part of that now is how do we gain efficiencies internally with the use of AI. So even within the last few months, we’ve been using, people might think actually, especially as a marketing agency, generative AI, that we’re using it to produce copy, that’s not where we’re seeing it today.
00;18;34;20 – 00;19;01;21AshleighHow are using AI internally today is creative things like inputting award guidelines and having AI score our submissions and look for gaps and weaknesses in our submissions. We’re using AI to summarize hundreds of interviews for data points that we might be missing with our clients. There’s often a massive data ingestion process, particularly if they’re a brand new client.
00;19;01;21 – 00;19;26;04AshleighBut even our existing clients, we’re collecting videos, PowerPoint decks, RFP, all kinds of information, and that ingestion process is expedited massively. To give a real world example, we used to have a full time person dedicated just to doing the ingestion of assets. So of content that our clients are providing.
00;19;26;04 – 00;19;27;12VinceThe research work, basically the.
00;19;27;12 – 00;19;35;24AshleighResearch work and we have automated and then innovated that process tremendously with AI.
00;19;35;27 – 00;19;45;05VinceSo it’s really streamline your business. It’s made you more effective and efficient. Right? Absolutely. Your ethics, your efficacy rate has gone up dramatically, I guess is what I would say.
00;19;45;07 – 00;20;10;10AshleighThat’s absolutely it. And we’re looking beyond that now to we’re building our own tech internally. That’s been a big initiative for 2024. Thinking about the future, how do we continue to scale and maintain our competitiveness. So working with we’re very fortunate. And I still can’t believe it myself sometimes who some of our clients are, they’re they’re incredibly inspirational.
00;20;10;10 – 00;20;43;05AshleighAnd to get to work alongside those business leaders challenges me personally every day in my work. And what we get a window into is how some of these fortune 500 companies are using AI themselves, working alongside, for example, the top partners who have deployed copilot, you know, how companies are using open AI services in ChatGPT. And I’m trying to figure out what’s the right size fit for an organization like transcends marketing.
00;20;43;08 – 00;20;48;05VinceI can’t wait to hear more about this. You have to come back to the podcast and tell us more about this platform you’re building.
00;20;48;05 – 00;20;50;17AshleighBecause I just like hanging out with you. I love it.
00;20;50;19 – 00;21;08;20VinceI love it, and we’re going to be talking about how we’re going to utilize it to help, streamline people accessing all of the great content that we have in the podcast. Right. We have over 220 episodes, maybe 230 by the time we go live. And, there’s so much great content about what it takes to be an award winning partner.
00;21;08;20 – 00;21;41;27VincePrinciples of successful partnering, just so much great content. So we’re hoping to use AI to our benefit as well. There. It’s important to me that the supplements that I take are of the highest quality. And that’s why for over seven years now, I’ve been drinking Ag1, unlike many supplement brands. And believe me, I’ve tried many of them. Ag1 is consistently looking for ways to do things better at 52 iterations of their formula and counting, their team is always finding ways to make Ag1 even better.
00;21;41;29 – 00;22;10;07VinceQuality for Ag1 isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a commitment. Backed by expert led scientific research, high quality ingredients, industry leading manufacturing and rigorous testing. At every step of the process, Ag1 goes above and beyond industry standards. I know I can trust what’s in every scoop of Ag1 because the team relies on expert led scientific research, sourcing ingredients for potency and efficacy.
00;22;10;08 – 00;22;34;18VinceTaking care of my health shouldn’t be complicated, and that’s why I rely on Ag1, because it simplifies this by covering all of my nutritional bases and setting me up for success every single day. Ag1 ingredients are heavily researched for efficacy and quality, and I love that every scoop also includes important prebiotics, probiotics, and digestive enzymes for my gut health.
00;22;34;24 – 00;23;06;23VinceSo if you want to replace your multivitamin and more like I have, start with ag1. Try ag1 and get a one year supply of vitamin D3 and five free travel packs with your first subscription, go to drink ag1.com/vince m that’s drink ag1.com/vince M check them out. So ash, I’d love to pivot. I have a favorite question I love to ask each of my guests.
00;23;06;25 – 00;23;29;23VinceAnd you’re hosting a dinner party, and you can host this dinner party anywhere in the world. You tell us where you favorite place might be to do that, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past. One person even picked guests from the future to be at this amazing dinner party. Whom would you invite and why?
00;23;29;26 – 00;23;34;16AshleighBig question. I love hosting dinner parties. First of all.
00;23;34;19 – 00;23;37;09VinceCan we talk about menu as well?
00;23;37;11 – 00;24;03;20AshleighMy my brother’s a chef. no. Going back to my vision of helping 1 billion people feel more connected. Connecting people is really at the core for me. And so when I think of a dinner party with three people, I’m I’m going to celebrate the women. I would love to do a ladies night dinner. And at that dinner table, our value again of conscious connection.
00;24;03;23 – 00;24;35;03AshleighI would think about people like Ginni Rometty, the former CEO, chairperson of IBM. I just finished her book, Good Power. It speaks so closely to that balance between competitiveness and truly creating impact in the world. I think of Gwyneth Paltrow, who is out there with this brand goop. She’s doing different things and really seeking to activate people with methodologies that are maybe a little off the wall at times.
00;24;35;09 – 00;24;54;13AshleighBut looking at health and wellness, yoga, meditation. And she has turned that into a tremendous business empire. And then I think about Brené Brown. Vulnerability. Yeah, leadership. I think that would be a conversation I would certainly not want to miss.
00;24;54;14 – 00;24;58;28VinceIt sounds like a fascinating dinner. Can I come along and bring a beverage or maybe dessert?
00;24;59;02 – 00;25;00;27AshleighYou definitely convince.
00;25;00;29 – 00;25;04;28VinceAlly. So where are we having this dinner party? We didn’t we didn’t touch on that.
00;25;05;01 – 00;25;08;20AshleighWell, as you know, I love spending time in New Zealand.
00;25;08;20 – 00;25;10;16VinceYes, I do know that.
00;25;10;19 – 00;25;24;10AshleighQueenstown has become really the place for me. The mountains are just gorgeous. They’re the landscapes and I find being in nature really allows freedom of thought, new possibilities.
00;25;24;12 – 00;25;43;14VinceI love that. Okay, so we’ll be in Queensland for this dinner party. I’ll bring dessert. How’s that? Great. All right. Terrific. So before we go, for our listeners and viewers today, I mean, I can’t believe we’re already on the second half of 2024. This year has just flown by. I was just wishing you happy New Year just the other day.
00;25;43;14 – 00;26;00;29VinceIt feels like. What advice or guidance do you have for all of our amazing listeners and viewers? They’re all trying to achieve their greatest results, working with the Microsoft ecosystem or just within the Hyperscaler ecosystem in general. On achieving their best business success in this second half of the year.
00;26;01;01 – 00;26;02;26AshleighHave a clear vision.
00;26;02;28 – 00;26;05;00VinceHave a clear vision. It’s so simple.
00;26;05;03 – 00;26;28;03AshleighSitting at dinner last night, you connected me with Christine from the network. Yes. And her and I had this incredible conversation around bucket lists. I think my bucket list is up to probably 400 items now. I’ve been doing it for about ten years. And what is become really apparent to me is how important it is to set goals and have a vision.
00;26;28;05 – 00;26;41;27AshleighAnd even today, walking into rooms with CEOs were often setting priorities and a vision for the alliances that they have with hyperscalers. And that vision really starts at the top of the organization. Yes it.
00;26;41;27 – 00;26;44;23VinceDoes. We talk about it all the time. And ultimate partner.
00;26;44;25 – 00;26;54;21AshleighYou do actually. Exactly. That’s one of the reasons, many reasons we work so well together. You walk into a room and you land that point. It’s so incredibly important.
00;26;54;23 – 00;27;13;07VinceTo have a clear vision. have a clear vision from Ashley. Ashley, so great to have you in the studio. So great that you came to Boca Raton. Thank you. You’re you’re jetting all over the world. One day, you’re in Italy, the next day you’re in Queensland. The next day you’re in Seattle, the next day you’re in Boca Raton.
00;27;13;09 – 00;27;17;02VinceSo great to have you here as a guest on Ultimate Guide to Partnering.
00;27;17;04 – 00;27;18;07AshleighThank you so much.
00;27;18;07 – 00;27;40;18VinceThank you. And thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. And thank you for joining The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. And if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to our new YouTube channel. Thanks again for listening to this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. If you’ve been following our work, you know that Ultimate Partner has a unique voice grounded in the tectonic shifts and the role of the hyperscalers.
00;27;40;20 – 00;28;13;25VinceIf you’re ready to accelerate your own success, then I want to personally invite you to join the Ultimate Partner Experience. Whether you’re a Microsoft, Google Cloud or Amazon partner, we’re here to help you thrive. We bring you cutting edge insights, expert advice, and unparalleled networking opportunities through our exclusive media podcast, live and digital events, and educational resources. In this time of tectonic shifts, staying ahead of the curve is more critical than ever.
00;28;13;27 – 00;28;43;04VinceThe pace of innovation is accelerating at an ever increasing rate, and you can’t rely on others for your own success. Now is the time to seize control and shape your destiny. Come join ultimate partner community. Come join Ultimate Partner Experience where we bring you the top industry leaders, groundbreaking content, and a support network that’s dedicated and a support network that’s dedicated to your success.
00;28;43;07 – 00;28;56;24VinceVisit our website at Join up.com and become part of the ultimate partner experience. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. Let’s innovate. Growing. Succeed together.
….
With a background rich in entrepreneurship and a mission-driven approach, Ashleigh Vogstad has carved out a unique space in the marketing landscape within the Microsoft ecosystem.
About Ashleigh and Transcends
Ashleigh’s journey to becoming a renowned entrepreneur is nothing short of inspiring. Her early entrepreneurial spirit and impactful volunteer work set the stage for her current success. Transcends, the marketing agency she founded, is dedicated to helping 1 billion people feel more connected. The agency thrives on core values like continuous learning, digital freedom, and conscious connection.
Microsoft Partnership and Achievements
Transcends started strong with Microsoft New Zealand as its first client. The agency has a proven track record of ensuring its clients either win or become finalists in award submissions. This success is built on key strategies, including developing Power BI custom visuals that have seen significant engagement and opt-ins.
Award-Winning Strategies and Storytelling
Ashleigh emphasizes the importance of having a compelling “big idea” and leveraging emotional storytelling to make a mark. An example is the touching story of a hospice maintaining care during COVID-19 using modern endpoint management, which highlighted innovation and empathy. Additionally, meticulous attention to metrics and data hygiene is crucial in validating and amplifying these success stories.
The Role of Teamwork
According to Ashleigh, successful partnerships require multidisciplinary teams that bring various organizational roles together. Transcends excels at conducting in-depth internal interviews to uncover valuable data and emotional stories that resonate deeply with their clients’ audiences.
Comprehensive Content Creation
Transcends is adept at producing diverse multimedia content, including videos, white papers, and PDFs, all designed to support their compelling storytelling and award submissions. This holistic approach ensures that their clients’ narratives are well-rounded and impactful.
https://youtu.be/B-zQkKgRuh4
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP
What You’ll Learn
The Power of Emotional StorytellingAshley shares insights into how emotional storytelling can transform marketing strategies.
Creating a Strong Business FoundationDiscussion on the essential elements needed to build and maintain a successful business.
Leveraging Data for SuccessThe importance of data hygiene and metrics in crafting award-winning strategies.
The Value of Multidisciplinary TeamsInsights into how bringing together diverse roles within a team can drive success.
Quotes
“Emotional storytelling isn’t just about telling a story; it’s about making your audience feel and connect on a deeper level.”
“Our mission at Transcends is to help people feel more connected, and we believe that starts with a strong foundation of trust and open communication.”
“Success is not just about the metrics; it’s about the meaningful impact you create and the stories you share.”
Transcript – Created by Adobe AI
00;00;00;06 – 00;00;09;09AshleighEven if you have a big idea, if you can’t communicate it to your audience, you really don’t have a big idea.
00;00;09;12 – 00;00;26;08VinceMicrosoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day.
00;00;26;08 – 00;00;30;08AshleighI have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning.
00;00;30;11 – 00;00;52;11VinceThat flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did, this is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Benson, your host, and today I’m delighted to welcome in the studio someone that I’ve got to work very closely with over the last several years.
00;00;52;14 – 00;01;15;09VinceAshley Volk said, is the CEO and founder of transcends, a marketing agency going places in the Microsoft ecosystem. Ash has been working with us for quite some time, and recently participated in a live event that we held here in Boca Raton, Florida, spotlighting some of the work that she does with partners award winning partners to help drive their success.
00;01;15;11 – 00;01;23;22VinceI invited Ashley in the studio today for discussion on what it takes to be an award winning partner. Ash, welcome to the podcast, Vince.
00;01;23;22 – 00;01;25;06AshleighIt’s so great to be here.
00;01;25;07 – 00;01;37;25VinceIt is so great in this conversation. As you know, we’ve interviewed leaders from the tech giants. We’ve interviewed award winning partners, and we had some of those award winning partners up on stage with you, what I like to call Pinnacle Partners.
00;01;37;29 – 00;01;38;26Ashleigh
00;01;39;08 – 00;01;59;19Vincebecause of their rise to the top, I guess is what I would say. you’re, I want to take, I want to take our listeners through a little bit about you though. for those of them that don’t know you and the work that you do, can you spend a few moments on you? Your background transcends. And the mission of your organization.
00;01;59;22 – 00;02;18;00AshleighYeah. Of course. Vince, thank you so much. And I just want to say you have been such an incredible friend and mentor these last couple of years. Partnering with Ultimate Partner has really been a career highlight, and I couldn’t be more excited to see where both of our organizations go in the next few years.
00;02;18;01 – 00;02;19;28VinceI’m excited.
00;02;20;01 – 00;02;43;12AshleighI’m very excited. So a little bit about me. I mean, I’m often asked this question of ash, did you always know you were going to be an entrepreneur? And the answer is absolutely not. It has not been a straight line, but when I think about it and reflect back, there is a narrative there. And I think about the first business I started.
00;02;43;14 – 00;02;45;23AshleighYou probably don’t know that I don’t,
00;02;45;26 – 00;02;47;16VinceTake us back.
00;02;47;19 – 00;03;14;19AshleighI was 11 years old and it was a kids for Saving Earth Club. I love it, and I think about these entrepreneurial moments throughout the last couple of decades. And one of the experiences that I think afforded me so much of the experience that has carried me forward is really volunteer work. And one of the organizations, you know, the thing about volunteering is that they’re under-resourced teens.
00;03;14;20 – 00;03;24;01AshleighYes. So as a volunteer, especially early in career, you’re afforded these opportunities to go well above and beyond your your pay grade.
00;03;24;02 – 00;03;24;26VinceYou’re bootstrapping.
00;03;24;26 – 00;03;39;02AshleighYes, absolutely. Sink or swim. You’re thrown into the deep end and I’ve found, I think one of the reasons I like entrepreneurial ism is that you’re given this opportunity to cut your own path and make your own mistakes. Yeah.
00;03;39;04 – 00;03;40;29VinceYeah. Very much so.
00;03;41;01 – 00;03;46;00AshleighAnd in volunteering, I even had an opportunity to work with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
00;03;46;02 – 00;03;51;01VinceI am fascinated by that. I love, I love I mean, what was that like? What was that experience like?
00;03;51;03 – 00;04;16;09AshleighHumbling. And also, on the flip side, hectic. As a young person, I was leading marketing, which was more in my wheelhouse, but also crisis communications, which I had never done before, and it was my first experience of a digital protest. So we had a hashtag, Be the Village, and unfortunately we had protest groups overtake the hashtag on my goodness.
00;04;16;11 – 00;04;16;29VinceWow.
00;04;17;02 – 00;04;27;00AshleighWow. We had to set up emergency comms and get centers of people going to balance out and bring the positivity back into the conversation.
00;04;27;02 – 00;04;31;04VinceFascinating. So, so okay, so fast forward us Microsoft.
00;04;31;04 – 00;04;32;05AshleighLet’s talk Microsoft.
00;04;32;05 – 00;04;36;23VinceWell, take us how how did you start transcends what what was the genesis of that moment.
00;04;36;25 – 00;04;40;06AshleighSo we’re here celebrating our five year anniversary actually.
00;04;40;10 – 00;04;41;02VinceHappy anniversary.
00;04;41;03 – 00;04;57;23AshleighThank you thank you. Big milestone. And you know it was back in 2016 or maybe 2017. I started working someone as a CMO for hire for different Microsoft partners. And that was the launch of App Sauce, actually.
00;04;57;26 – 00;04;59;03VinceOh, yes.
00;04;59;05 – 00;05;26;21AshleighSo marketplace, Azure marketplace, app Source. And we created some of the first power BI custom visuals for download that were available in App sauce. And shocking to us, we received 600,000 downloads of these power BI custom visuals. 15,000 of those people opted in to receive marketing communications, and we were able to create a funnel and ultimately build a site core practice.
00;05;26;23 – 00;05;42;08AshleighAt the time, Site Core was Microsoft’s number one Azure consumer partner. That really changed the face of that business and also got the attention of Microsoft. So my first ever client in my agency five years ago was Microsoft New Zealand.
00;05;42;10 – 00;05;48;21VinceThat is that’s that was the genesis of New Zealand. We’ll talk a little bit more about New Zealand because you spent a lot of time there.
00;05;48;23 – 00;05;50;20AshleighBeautiful country. Yes.
00;05;50;23 – 00;05;58;26VinceSo tell us about where your vision is for transcendence and maybe maybe a little bit about what transcendence does as an organization.
00;05;58;28 – 00;06;21;28AshleighYeah. Great. Our vision is to help 1 billion people feel more connected. The feel part is very important to me. And the way that we’re approaching that is through our values and maybe just a couple of those. One is always be learning. And I think about you, Vince, when you get up on stage, you often talk about Satya Nadella story and how he transformed Microsoft.
00;06;21;29 – 00;06;28;05AshleighYes. One of the things he did was bring in mindset and the work of Carol Dweck. I think it is well.
00;06;28;06 – 00;06;29;11VinceCarol Dweck book.
00;06;29;11 – 00;06;29;29AshleighCarol Dweck.
00;06;30;02 – 00;06;42;19VinceWhich was the mindset. And then also Doctor Michael Gervais. Yes, he’s been on the podcast now four times, so we’re hoping to get him down here in Boca. He hasn’t we haven’t been able to get him in the studio yet, but we hope to have him on again.
00;06;42;19 – 00;07;07;03AshleighThis coming. Yes it’s coming. So mindset that’s our always be learning value digital freedom. We’re a remote first business. We’re incredibly proud to be female funded and female founded as an organization. And lastly would be conscious connection. And that’s really about kind of tied into the feel part of our vision. It conscious connection manifests as our value of customer service.
00;07;07;04 – 00;07;15;29AshleighWe really believe in excellence in customer service. And also inside the company with how we treat our colleagues is incredibly important to us.
00;07;16;01 – 00;07;44;12VinceFantastic. You know, we are thrilled to announce our partnership with In Partner Software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally. In partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking, customizable partner journeys, and comprehensive business planning.
00;07;44;19 – 00;08;14;02VinceThese features empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in. Partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like Analytic Studio, designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit in partner.com.
00;08;14;05 – 00;08;33;01VinceYou know, we got we got introduced actually right after I held my first event, I had a Microsoft partner, one of the award winning partners, reach out to me and said, you need to meet Ashley, Boggs said. And that was that was the genesis of our getting to know each other and work together. But I happen to know you do quite a bit of work.
00;08;33;01 – 00;09;05;05VinceWe talk about this pinnacle partnership. You’ve done quite a bit of work here with these partners, and I was hoping today, because partners all crave to be that top of the stack, that top of the pyramid that pinnacle partner, that less than that one tenth of 1% that make it to the top. As a top Microsoft partner, what do you do with those organizations that is maybe unique and different, and what can our listeners and viewers watching today learn about what you do and how the how they can achieve their greatest results?
00;09;05;08 – 00;09;22;27AshleighGetting to the very top. I mean, another one of our values is to be competitive, and we certainly are competitive as an organization. we have never submitted our track record of submitting partners for awards. We have never not had one of our clients win or finalists.
00;09;22;27 – 00;09;25;25VinceThat is fantastic. That is incredible. Actually.
00;09;25;27 – 00;09;44;11AshleighWe are selective around who we work with. And then it comes down to our system. And definitely that system is a huge part. So if I just gave, maybe a couple takeaways from that, you know, I will say the Microsoft Partner of the year award announcements are coming soon.
00;09;44;14 – 00;09;45;13VinceNot yet coming.
00;09;45;13 – 00;09;51;20AshleighSoon. I think we’ll have some celebrations to do at that time, but, a few more weeks to wait on the announce.
00;09;51;20 – 00;09;56;09VinceSo we’re embargoed right now. We can’t talk about anything.
00;09;56;13 – 00;09;57;09AshleighNot quite yet.
00;09;57;12 – 00;09;59;05VinceWhat is the announcement dates?
00;09;59;07 – 00;10;02;13AshleighI don’t know, but it should be within the next 30 days.
00;10;02;13 – 00;10;11;04VinceYeah, sometime in June, usually right before the. Well, we used to be the Microsoft Inspire conference, which is now moved online to, Yeah, RMS start for partners.
00;10;11;11 – 00;10;32;14AshleighYes, exactly. So if I think about how do you get to that very top and how do you become a pinnacle partner? there’s a few things. So we’re a marketing agency and there’s this book, damn good or damn big ideas? Damn big idea. Damn big. I have never heard of this book. It’s a picture book, so it’s great.
00;10;32;14 – 00;10;33;10VinceOkay, I love it.
00;10;33;10 – 00;10;54;10AshleighGive it to everybody. It transcends. And the whole concept in there is that you need to have a big idea. And if even if you have a big idea, if you can’t land that big idea with your audience, you really don’t have a big idea. So when you’re going into an award submission, there’s a good dose of creativity and you need to have that damn big idea.
00;10;54;12 – 00;11;30;08AshleighSo I think about one of our early wins was this tiny partner. And they, you know, I was providing coaching around setting expectations. A finalist would be an out of this world achievement and the story that we ended up telling, if I think to that opening line or paragraph was something like. This hospice was the only hospice in the state of Tennessee that was able to maintain continuity of care for end of life patients during Covid 19.
00;11;30;10 – 00;11;41;10AshleighWow. And they were able to maintain this continuity of care because nurses were enabled with modern endpoint management on their mobile devices to go into patient’s homes and to care for them.
00;11;41;10 – 00;11;43;04VinceThey’re fascinating.
00;11;43;08 – 00;12;01;27AshleighAnd that story, that emotional pull of that story, is an essential ingredient in having a winning, and winning submission or even a winning brand, something that really wakes people up and gets their attention. That’s the dam. That’s how I think of this dam. Big idea.
00;12;01;28 – 00;12;20;08VinceI love that, I love dam big idea. It ties in so perfectly to what we talk about with being in that shiny quarter and the bucket full of shiny quarters. Like, how do you stand out as a Microsoft partner for those who are watching and listening today? it’s hard, right? There’s a half a million partners in the Microsoft ecosystem.
00;12;20;10 – 00;12;32;14VinceThere are maybe a handful, maybe a couple thousand that are managed, and then all the others that want to become an edge and all the others that want the attention of the field organization. So how do you help them get there with this damn big idea?
00;12;32;16 – 00;12;55;02AshleighSo a dam, big ideas and necessary ingredient. Part of that might be your better together story. There’s some buzzwords for you. Yeah. The second thing is the metrics matter. You have to do the work. Yes. And those we get acronym crazy here. You know they’re going to check the numbers. They’re going to check the numbers. It’s one of the first things they’re going to do is check the numbers.
00;12;55;02 – 00;13;20;03AshleighPart of your visibility, your opportunity to share your damn big idea is often predicated on those numbers being there. Right? So whether those are, you know, Azure revenue, consumption, again, all the acronyms, the MWR, the Packer, the Mac agreements, all of these things matter tremendously. And sometimes partners even have this success, but maybe just aren’t even recording it.
00;13;20;09 – 00;13;42;12AshleighSo there’s a whole data hygiene exercise in this. The last one I would say is teamwork actually had an ultimate partner event. You, because you’re so amazingly well connected with the ecosystem and you really do help spark the ecosystem. I was on stage with Annie Martin AD go to market leader in the US for Microsoft.
00;13;42;12 – 00;13;47;14VinceYes, we love Annie, by the way. Annie, hope you’re listening today.
00;13;47;16 – 00;14;18;12AshleighAnd one of the things that she talks about in terms of success and this is prove very true for us is multidisciplinary teams. You need to have the right seats at the table. And those are going to be people from across the organization. So when we’re weaving powerful winning stories, we need the input for one single client. This year we conducted nearly 100 internal interviews with hundreds, most likely, there’s usually multiple people in each interview with hundreds of people.
00;14;18;12 – 00;14;27;24AshleighWow. In order to surface the data stories, the emotional stories, to get an accurate read of what’s actually going on. So multidisciplinary.
00;14;27;24 – 00;14;32;00VinceI didn’t realize there was this much involved in this process. It’s fascinating to me.
00;14;32;02 – 00;14;49;11AshleighWe have writers, we have project managers, we have editors, we have designers, we have multimedia producers. Because often times in this storytelling, it’s multi-dimensional formats these days. I mean, just like the success you’re having with the podcast. Yeah, it’s video, it’s PDFs. Absolutely.
00;14;49;14 – 00;14;57;05VinceSo you’re producing videos on behalf of you’re doing maybe white papers, you’re doing all of these elements, but pulling all these elements together for the client.
00;14;57;10 – 00;14;58;28AshleighAbsolutely.
00;14;59;01 – 00;15;23;00VinceSo let’s peel back okay. There’s the process that you take them through. What’s the core. What’s the essentials. Like we had these pinnacle partners up on stage, three organizations that we all know and care about. elastic Integral video award winning partners or each. What do you think it takes to be one of those award winning partners? What’s what what’s.
00;15;23;02 – 00;15;52;00AshleighGreat about the panel yesterday is it showcased a lot of diversity. So we had a global ISV partner. We had a global services advisory partner, and we had a founder led high growth business. Yes. And just like my opening story around modern endpoint management in this hospice in Tennessee, you don’t have to be the biggest. However, the advantage of being the biggest is that you tend to have those metrics what you need.
00;15;52;00 – 00;16;10;12AshleighIf you’re not the best, if you’re not the biggest, is still a strong numbers story, but in your particular niche. And I think one of the things that Dexter from integral, who was on the panel yesterday, one of the things that he does so well is he knows exactly who his audience is.
00;16;10;19 – 00;16;11;15VinceThat’s Eisley.
00;16;11;15 – 00;16;40;15AshleighPrecisely. And he has gone after that like a ninja. so I think that that’s incredibly important if we’re talking about larger partners. Part of is understanding the vision and where you want to place your, your strategic bets with Microsoft. So there’s dozens of categories, I think not including regional award wins. You’re looking at maybe 60 ish categories for Microsoft Partner of the year.
00;16;40;17 – 00;16;46;13AshleighYou need to really choose where you’re going to put your time and effort to get those wins and finalists.
00;16;46;14 – 00;16;50;11VinceYou know, where your strong, your strong suit is, I guess is what I would say.
00;16;50;13 – 00;16;52;06AshleighThat’s exactly it.
00;16;52;09 – 00;17;22;01VinceSo let’s talk about I always talk about these tectonic shifts, right. We remark on all that’s been going on right now in the world, geopolitically, a time like no other. I would say, since Covid, we talked about Covid and the acceleration of technology, the the dominant role of the hyperscalers marketplaces in the forefront. Right. Some of the award submissions, I believe you’ve done or been around marketplace winners like elastic.
00;17;22;04 – 00;17;27;22Vincewhat are you seeing now that you didn’t expect to see? What would you comment about this time?
00;17;27;24 – 00;17;32;12AshleighWe haven’t touched on I, I, I.
00;17;32;15 – 00;17;34;02VinceI was leaving that for you.
00;17;34;04 – 00;17;53;25AshleighWhat? Thank you. I was chatting with Jay McBain yesterday before he went up on your stage to have a conversation with you, and I asked Jay about the impact of AI, and he summarized it perfectly. He said, AI is everything.
00;17;53;28 – 00;17;54;24VinceWow.
00;17;54;26 – 00;18;34;14AshleighAnd I am thinking all from the moment I wake up in the morning, how can I, as a business leader myself, transform my own company with AI? And we’ve been talking about crafting award winning stories for our clients. A huge part of that now is how do we gain efficiencies internally with the use of AI. So even within the last few months, we’ve been using, people might think actually, especially as a marketing agency, generative AI, that we’re using it to produce copy, that’s not where we’re seeing it today.
00;18;34;20 – 00;19;01;21AshleighHow are using AI internally today is creative things like inputting award guidelines and having AI score our submissions and look for gaps and weaknesses in our submissions. We’re using AI to summarize hundreds of interviews for data points that we might be missing with our clients. There’s often a massive data ingestion process, particularly if they’re a brand new client.
00;19;01;21 – 00;19;26;04AshleighBut even our existing clients, we’re collecting videos, PowerPoint decks, RFP, all kinds of information, and that ingestion process is expedited massively. To give a real world example, we used to have a full time person dedicated just to doing the ingestion of assets. So of content that our clients are providing.
00;19;26;04 – 00;19;27;12VinceThe research work, basically the.
00;19;27;12 – 00;19;35;24AshleighResearch work and we have automated and then innovated that process tremendously with AI.
00;19;35;27 – 00;19;45;05VinceSo it’s really streamline your business. It’s made you more effective and efficient. Right? Absolutely. Your ethics, your efficacy rate has gone up dramatically, I guess is what I would say.
00;19;45;07 – 00;20;10;10AshleighThat’s absolutely it. And we’re looking beyond that now to we’re building our own tech internally. That’s been a big initiative for 2024. Thinking about the future, how do we continue to scale and maintain our competitiveness. So working with we’re very fortunate. And I still can’t believe it myself sometimes who some of our clients are, they’re they’re incredibly inspirational.
00;20;10;10 – 00;20;43;05AshleighAnd to get to work alongside those business leaders challenges me personally every day in my work. And what we get a window into is how some of these fortune 500 companies are using AI themselves, working alongside, for example, the top partners who have deployed copilot, you know, how companies are using open AI services in ChatGPT. And I’m trying to figure out what’s the right size fit for an organization like transcends marketing.
00;20;43;08 – 00;20;48;05VinceI can’t wait to hear more about this. You have to come back to the podcast and tell us more about this platform you’re building.
00;20;48;05 – 00;20;50;17AshleighBecause I just like hanging out with you. I love it.
00;20;50;19 – 00;21;08;20VinceI love it, and we’re going to be talking about how we’re going to utilize it to help, streamline people accessing all of the great content that we have in the podcast. Right. We have over 220 episodes, maybe 230 by the time we go live. And, there’s so much great content about what it takes to be an award winning partner.
00;21;08;20 – 00;21;41;27VincePrinciples of successful partnering, just so much great content. So we’re hoping to use AI to our benefit as well. There. It’s important to me that the supplements that I take are of the highest quality. And that’s why for over seven years now, I’ve been drinking Ag1, unlike many supplement brands. And believe me, I’ve tried many of them. Ag1 is consistently looking for ways to do things better at 52 iterations of their formula and counting, their team is always finding ways to make Ag1 even better.
00;21;41;29 – 00;22;10;07VinceQuality for Ag1 isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a commitment. Backed by expert led scientific research, high quality ingredients, industry leading manufacturing and rigorous testing. At every step of the process, Ag1 goes above and beyond industry standards. I know I can trust what’s in every scoop of Ag1 because the team relies on expert led scientific research, sourcing ingredients for potency and efficacy.
00;22;10;08 – 00;22;34;18VinceTaking care of my health shouldn’t be complicated, and that’s why I rely on Ag1, because it simplifies this by covering all of my nutritional bases and setting me up for success every single day. Ag1 ingredients are heavily researched for efficacy and quality, and I love that every scoop also includes important prebiotics, probiotics, and digestive enzymes for my gut health.
00;22;34;24 – 00;23;06;23VinceSo if you want to replace your multivitamin and more like I have, start with ag1. Try ag1 and get a one year supply of vitamin D3 and five free travel packs with your first subscription, go to drink ag1.com/vince m that’s drink ag1.com/vince M check them out. So ash, I’d love to pivot. I have a favorite question I love to ask each of my guests.
00;23;06;25 – 00;23;29;23VinceAnd you’re hosting a dinner party, and you can host this dinner party anywhere in the world. You tell us where you favorite place might be to do that, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past. One person even picked guests from the future to be at this amazing dinner party. Whom would you invite and why?
00;23;29;26 – 00;23;34;16AshleighBig question. I love hosting dinner parties. First of all.
00;23;34;19 – 00;23;37;09VinceCan we talk about menu as well?
00;23;37;11 – 00;24;03;20AshleighMy my brother’s a chef. no. Going back to my vision of helping 1 billion people feel more connected. Connecting people is really at the core for me. And so when I think of a dinner party with three people, I’m I’m going to celebrate the women. I would love to do a ladies night dinner. And at that dinner table, our value again of conscious connection.
00;24;03;23 – 00;24;35;03AshleighI would think about people like Ginni Rometty, the former CEO, chairperson of IBM. I just finished her book, Good Power. It speaks so closely to that balance between competitiveness and truly creating impact in the world. I think of Gwyneth Paltrow, who is out there with this brand goop. She’s doing different things and really seeking to activate people with methodologies that are maybe a little off the wall at times.
00;24;35;09 – 00;24;54;13AshleighBut looking at health and wellness, yoga, meditation. And she has turned that into a tremendous business empire. And then I think about Brené Brown. Vulnerability. Yeah, leadership. I think that would be a conversation I would certainly not want to miss.
00;24;54;14 – 00;24;58;28VinceIt sounds like a fascinating dinner. Can I come along and bring a beverage or maybe dessert?
00;24;59;02 – 00;25;00;27AshleighYou definitely convince.
00;25;00;29 – 00;25;04;28VinceAlly. So where are we having this dinner party? We didn’t we didn’t touch on that.
00;25;05;01 – 00;25;08;20AshleighWell, as you know, I love spending time in New Zealand.
00;25;08;20 – 00;25;10;16VinceYes, I do know that.
00;25;10;19 – 00;25;24;10AshleighQueenstown has become really the place for me. The mountains are just gorgeous. They’re the landscapes and I find being in nature really allows freedom of thought, new possibilities.
00;25;24;12 – 00;25;43;14VinceI love that. Okay, so we’ll be in Queensland for this dinner party. I’ll bring dessert. How’s that? Great. All right. Terrific. So before we go, for our listeners and viewers today, I mean, I can’t believe we’re already on the second half of 2024. This year has just flown by. I was just wishing you happy New Year just the other day.
00;25;43;14 – 00;26;00;29VinceIt feels like. What advice or guidance do you have for all of our amazing listeners and viewers? They’re all trying to achieve their greatest results, working with the Microsoft ecosystem or just within the Hyperscaler ecosystem in general. On achieving their best business success in this second half of the year.
00;26;01;01 – 00;26;02;26AshleighHave a clear vision.
00;26;02;28 – 00;26;05;00VinceHave a clear vision. It’s so simple.
00;26;05;03 – 00;26;28;03AshleighSitting at dinner last night, you connected me with Christine from the network. Yes. And her and I had this incredible conversation around bucket lists. I think my bucket list is up to probably 400 items now. I’ve been doing it for about ten years. And what is become really apparent to me is how important it is to set goals and have a vision.
00;26;28;05 – 00;26;41;27AshleighAnd even today, walking into rooms with CEOs were often setting priorities and a vision for the alliances that they have with hyperscalers. And that vision really starts at the top of the organization. Yes it.
00;26;41;27 – 00;26;44;23VinceDoes. We talk about it all the time. And ultimate partner.
00;26;44;25 – 00;26;54;21AshleighYou do actually. Exactly. That’s one of the reasons, many reasons we work so well together. You walk into a room and you land that point. It’s so incredibly important.
00;26;54;23 – 00;27;13;07VinceTo have a clear vision. have a clear vision from Ashley. Ashley, so great to have you in the studio. So great that you came to Boca Raton. Thank you. You’re you’re jetting all over the world. One day, you’re in Italy, the next day you’re in Queensland. The next day you’re in Seattle, the next day you’re in Boca Raton.
00;27;13;09 – 00;27;17;02VinceSo great to have you here as a guest on Ultimate Guide to Partnering.
00;27;17;04 – 00;27;18;07AshleighThank you so much.
00;27;18;07 – 00;27;40;18VinceThank you. And thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. And thank you for joining The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. And if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to our new YouTube channel. Thanks again for listening to this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. If you’ve been following our work, you know that Ultimate Partner has a unique voice grounded in the tectonic shifts and the role of the hyperscalers.
00;27;40;20 – 00;28;13;25VinceIf you’re ready to accelerate your own success, then I want to personally invite you to join the Ultimate Partner Experience. Whether you’re a Microsoft, Google Cloud or Amazon partner, we’re here to help you thrive. We bring you cutting edge insights, expert advice, and unparalleled networking opportunities through our exclusive media podcast, live and digital events, and educational resources. In this time of tectonic shifts, staying ahead of the curve is more critical than ever.
00;28;13;27 – 00;28;43;04VinceThe pace of innovation is accelerating at an ever increasing rate, and you can’t rely on others for your own success. Now is the time to seize control and shape your destiny. Come join ultimate partner community. Come join Ultimate Partner Experience where we bring you the top industry leaders, groundbreaking content, and a support network that’s dedicated and a support network that’s dedicated to your success.
00;28;43;07 – 00;28;56;24VinceVisit our website at Join up.com and become part of the ultimate partner experience. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. Let’s innovate. Growing. Succeed together.
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In God we trust