Ron Piovesan: Building Outsized Value in Every Partnership

‍

[00:00:00] Ron Piovesan: What can we bring to the partner that gives them outsized value? To my mind, partnership has to be outsized value. It can't be incremental value.

[00:00:06] Ron Piovesan: If not, then, I don't think that's partnering. I think partner's all about outsized value. So when we, I wanna bring to the market with a partner, a tech partner, something that, that, that provides outsized value. And then when you arm salespeople with that, they're coming into a customer conversation and saying, Mr. And Mrs. Customer. We're not gonna incrementally make your business better. We're gonna, do a step up and make your business that much better. And that to me is the core of co-sell.

[00:00:35] Chip Rodgers: Hey everyone. Chip Rodgers with Inside Partnering and we're here at Okta headquarters in downtown San Francisco and lovely

[00:00:42] Ron Piovesan: downtown San Francisco at Okta headquarters. Here we are. Yeah.

[00:00:45] Chip Rodgers: Yeah, it's fantastic. A nice looking day, although it's not gonna rain, but it's not quite bright, sunny, like it often is here in San Francisco, but

[00:00:53] Ron Piovesan: I'm actually a fan of the San Francisco fog.

[00:00:55] Ron Piovesan: I might be alone in this, but I actually really enjoy the fog. I'm not a sun, I'm not a sunshine kind of day kind of guy. [00:01:00] So I think fog suits me, so I love being up here.

[00:01:02] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Yeah. Terrific. As I said, we're here at Okta headquarters a, the floor that we're on is a.

[00:01:08] Chip Rodgers: There's a mini golf over there, there's like a fun sort of area. There's a barista behind us and yeah,

[00:01:13] Ron Piovesan: This is our fun floor. Obviously at Okta, we do care about our expenses, so we do a lot of offsite on sites. So we do our offsites. Onsite here at San Francisco. It's convenient for me 'cause I live here.

[00:01:22] Ron Piovesan: It's sometimes a little bit inconvenient for some of the people that constantly have to travel here. But yeah, we got a lot of fun stuff here. It's a great area for us to meet, collaborate come up with new ideas. Yeah, we got mini golf, we got baristas, we got ping pong tables, video games.

[00:01:34] Ron Piovesan: So yeah, we try to keep it fun.

[00:01:36] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. So I am so excited, first of all to be joined by Ron Piovesan. Piovesan Perfect. Excellent. And Ron is head of Technology Partnerships for Okta. Yep. And known in the partnership leaders community. I think you've done, you're regularly speaking and sharing content and things like that.

[00:01:56] Chip Rodgers: Ron, welcome.

[00:01:57] Ron Piovesan: Thank you. Thank you. And yeah, absolutely. You've been, been a [00:02:00] huge supporter for Partnership Leaders. Really excited about what you're doing with Inside Partnering. And I just love the fact that there's so many people now coming in to wanting to share ideas, to discuss what it means to be a good partnering organization.

[00:02:11] Ron Piovesan: Yeah. So yeah, like kudos to you. I love Inside Partnering and all the great interviews and learning so much from all my colleagues, through your interviews.

[00:02:17] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. So let's start, Ron, you've had a long history in technology 10 years now with Okta, which is congratulations.

[00:02:27] Chip Rodgers: Very long time. Yeah. And previously with Cisco and with Mozilla. Yep. Earlier in your career. The other thing that's interesting, I'd love to talk about it a little bit later, is you're doing a lot of teaching as well. So teaching at USC currently. Yep. Previously at Santa Clara. But go to market and, and how to how, students can really learn from your experience and share that to take it forward.

[00:02:50] Chip Rodgers: Why don't we start with your role currently at Okta. Tell us a little bit more, Ron, about your, what you and your team are up to these days.

[00:02:58] Ron Piovesan: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so [00:03:00] much. So yeah, so like you said, I've been at Okta for 10 years, so started. In the pre IPO days and it's been an amazing ride.

[00:03:06] Ron Piovesan: It's been fantastic working at Okta over the course of these past 10 years. I've always been on the tech partner team, but honestly, every year it's been a different team. As the company grows, as the market changes, every year's a new adventure. 10 years ago when we started. Nobody would call me back.

[00:03:22] Ron Piovesan: I was calling people up, Hey, you want a partner? Hey, you want a partner? Hey, you want a partner? Nobody was calling me back. Now, Okta's been a massively successful company. I'm very pleased to say that. Partners and partnering has played a role in that success. And it's nice to be on the other side of the table now where some people are giving me a call, and now I'm calling you like even bigger partners. And bigger partners. Yeah. So it's been this really fascinating evolution, just not to see, not just to see like Okta's role in the market. But how the market has caught up to really view Okta and what we provide identity security as a key part of their partnership strategy and really being open to partnering with us a lot more.

[00:03:59] Chip Rodgers: That's a it's [00:04:00] amazing. And I think, Okta has 7,000 integration, partners, if you will. The tech technology is integrated into Okta. Makes a lot of sense. And I know you have a. This model of the long tail Yep. Really operationalizing and making it scalable.

[00:04:16] Chip Rodgers: So that but tell us a little bit about that and the, this sort of, how you break down those the ranges of different kinds of partners that you have.

[00:04:23] Ron Piovesan: Yeah, absolutely. So the one great thing about Okta is we have a very broad integration surface space. So there's a lot of really interesting ways to integrate with us, especially if you want to include identity, identity, security into your offering. And of course, identity and identity security is the number one attack vector. So you need to have a strong set of identity integrations if you really want to be enterprise grade. 'cause it's the first thing that enterprises look for when they're adopting new software.

[00:04:48] Ron Piovesan: And then we're catching up with AI. At Octane just a few weeks ago, we announced a new way to integrate with Okta called Cross App Access, which is a way to help an AI almost give an identity. To an AI [00:05:00] agent, non-human identity, to an AI agent. So now we're not just giving identity to humans, we're also giving them to agents, right?

[00:05:06] Ron Piovesan: Yeah. And so there's a lot of amazing ways to integrate with Okta and embed identity security into your offering now. And that's the 7,000 that you refer to. And those are what we call integration partners. And then as you work more with Okta, invest more with Okta, so you do more and more integrations.

[00:05:24] Ron Piovesan: Not just one, but you have several integrations with us. As you begin to integrate us into some of your go-to market, that's when we begin to say, Hey, you know what? There's a story here. You guys need to help us. The ISV sometimes needs to help us

[00:05:37] Chip Rodgers: articulate it,

[00:05:37] Ron Piovesan: articulate that story, but once they do, we're like, Hey, there's a story here.

[00:05:41] Ron Piovesan: And that's when we start, that's when me and my team get more involved and we start investing more and more in that particular ISV to help further craft out that story.

[00:05:49] Chip Rodgers: And what does that mean? Then it's so to begin with as a early partner, you're, you're working on a portal kind of thing, right?

[00:05:58] Chip Rodgers: And then doing an integration and [00:06:00] doing it self-serve, but then as you grow and you get more joint customers and more potential use cases where you're, doing other integrations, what's the, what's that path? Look

[00:06:10] Ron Piovesan: yeah, honestly and this is true of Okta, this is true of anyone.

[00:06:13] Ron Piovesan: Your biggest ally, not just with Okta. I think in any sort of partnering with any sort of company, your biggest ally is always gonna be your customers. So if, I'll take Okta as the example. If we're hearing from our customers, from our field sales that, Hey, Okta plus this ISV has a great story, has a great in demand story, and customers are asking for it, that's really gonna get our attention and we're gonna start investing in in, in that partnership more.

[00:06:36] Ron Piovesan: But. Okta like any good company, we're customer focused, so we need to hear it from the customers. So that's, they're always your best ally when you're thinking about how to build a partnership. I think, honestly, not just with Okta, but with anyone else. When I'm trying to partner with somebody else and I'm reaching out, I always bring customer stories.

[00:06:52] Ron Piovesan: You gotta bring customer stories.

[00:06:53] Chip Rodgers: Love that. That's, and that's really what it, and then you got a joint, you got a real story. You got a [00:07:00] story to tell.

[00:07:00] Ron Piovesan: That's the thing, there are so many stories out there, there's so many ways to integrate. That's been the sort of the blessing and curse of our movement from like on-prem to SaaS and now to agent Power.

[00:07:09] Ron Piovesan: Agent powered a applications. There's gonna be so many ways in which applications can work together, share ideas, share data, share, use cases, but to weed through all that, you need the customer. You need the customer. You're a smart guy. I'm a smart guy. The smartest people out there are our customers.

[00:07:27] Ron Piovesan: If they're actually paying for something and using it. They're the smart people. Those are the people we should be all listening to because if they're saying this is an inter, this is an integration and a partnership and a use case that really moves my business forward or really secures my business.

[00:07:41] Ron Piovesan: That, that's the idea we should all be focusing on.

[00:07:43] Chip Rodgers: And then that's also gonna get the attention of the field, right? The sales team is gonna

[00:07:49] Ron Piovesan: Yeah, a hundred percent. Because yeah I bring something to the field. The first thing they're gonna ask is, okay, can you show me customer references?

[00:07:54] Ron Piovesan: Can you show me customer demand? Actually, I like it even better when they come to me. [00:08:00] I'm gonna let you in a little secret field, salespeople are not shy if there's an integration or a partnership. I hadn't heard that. Yeah, I know. It's weird. You thought they were really like these wallflowers. If there's an integration or a partnership that's out there in the market that's making noise, my phone does not stop ringing.

[00:08:15] Ron Piovesan: My slack does not stop blowing up. They're like, what's our story with X, Y, Z partner? How come we don't have a story? What do you guys do at partnerships? Like, how come you're not doing something? And we get that. And as soon as we get that kind of inbound, we get it from the field. We also get it from product people.

[00:08:28] Ron Piovesan: 'cause product PMs are fantastic. 'Cause they talk to customers a lot. My favorite people. My favorite people are SEs, solution engineers and sales engineers. 'cause they

[00:08:38] Chip Rodgers: know the deep,

[00:08:40] Ron Piovesan: they're at that intersection between sales and technology. Yeah. And if they see something happening in the market I listen to them more than anyone else.

[00:08:47] Ron Piovesan: Yeah.

[00:08:48] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. That's amazing. So true. I think that, they're really and they're also connected to the field as well, right?

[00:08:54] Ron Piovesan: They're a hundred percent connected. They're connected to the field, they're connected to the product. They're connected to the sales motion. And honestly, some of our [00:09:00] best ideas come from Es.

[00:09:01] Ron Piovesan: Yeah.

[00:09:02] Chip Rodgers: Cool. Yeah. Cool. Alright, so now let's talk let's dive a little deeper into one partnership that you're launching actually today. Yeah, just was announced today. Very excited. It was really exciting with Google and Omnissa. Yeah. The new newly announced part of VMware, which is yeah.

[00:09:21] Chip Rodgers: So Okta on this Google. Tell us about it. Yeah.

[00:09:25] Ron Piovesan: Take it away. What we found was really interesting, what, like Google, Omnissa and Okta almost found independently is when you are migrating from on-prem to the cloud, two things you're really concerned about. One is productivity.

[00:09:39] Ron Piovesan: Do you have the right productivity apps? And a lot of times you want to be like, some of the incentive. To moving into the cloud is you wanna take advantage of like great productivity apps like Google Workspace. Yeah. But then when you're doing that, you're like, oh my gosh is this secure?

[00:09:50] Ron Piovesan: All my documents are here, my emails here, like this is, these are like the most important apps. These productivity apps, are they secure? So that's when you need, Okta and Omnissa to come [00:10:00] in to secure that application. So you can, roll out to the cloud.

[00:10:04] Ron Piovesan: Gain all the benefits of moving to the cloud and make your workforce super productive. Yeah. So what we heard time and time again is, look, I need Workspace, I need identity security, I need device security. How am I gonna and device management? Yeah. But I want best of breed. But the downside of best of breed is that you gotta deal with three vendors.

[00:10:27] Ron Piovesan: That's a challenge, right? We think it's worth it. Because you're getting best of breed, but that can be a challenge. What we're doing today is announcing the Work Transformation Set. We're eliminating that challenge of dealing with three vendors. So now what you gotta do is if you wanna adopt Google Workspace, you want it secured by Okta and managed by Omnissa.

[00:10:47] Ron Piovesan: You can get it all through one place, one price, and you go straight to your Google rep and they'll take care of you. Yeah.

[00:10:52] Chip Rodgers: Terrific.

[00:10:53] Ron Piovesan: Yeah.

[00:10:53] Chip Rodgers: Yeah.

[00:10:53] Ron Piovesan: So it's almost it's almost like the benefit of an enterprise license agreement, like the ease of procurement, a single procurement [00:11:00] exercise one vendor to deal with the proverbial one throat to choke, but you're getting three best of breed products to make your workforce more productive and more secure.

[00:11:10] Ron Piovesan: Yeah,

[00:11:11] Chip Rodgers: it's fantastic. Yeah, that's really cool. So that's a great story, right? There you have it. And it's just announced today, fresh, hot off the presses.

[00:11:18] Ron Piovesan: Hot off the presses. And I think that what's really the fascinating trend here is, as you mentioned, we're in technology partnerships, right?

[00:11:23] Ron Piovesan: And our primary goal is to drive technology innovation with our partners. We do a lot of co-innovation, but what we're finding is, so co-innovation is great. We're gonna keep doing that. Like co-innovation is great. Yeah. Okta's always gonna be on the forefront of that. But what we get, what we also need to understand is it's not that product needs, it's not like you need co-innovation on the technology side.

[00:11:46] Ron Piovesan: You need co-innovation on the go to market side. The way enterprises everyone from SMB to enterprises, the way they're purchasing is changing. The days of just dealing with a salesperson or just dealing with [00:12:00] a, a VAR those days are rapidly receding. People want solutions.

[00:12:04] Ron Piovesan: They want a full solution to their problem, right? They want ease of procurement. We've all been spoiled.

[00:12:09] Chip Rodgers: Marketplace.

[00:12:09] Ron Piovesan: Marketplace, absolutely marketplace. They want ease of procurement. We've all been spoiled as individuals of going to an app store and getting whatever app we want, or indeed going to, Amazon and just buying whatever good we happen to want right now, that demand for ease of procurement is moving from the consumer realm into the enterprise realm.

[00:12:30] Ron Piovesan: And so I think there's a lot of really fascinating go-to market innovations that's happening in the market right now. And I think the Work Transformation Set, Google, Omnissa and Okta, the way we're coming together to provide a single option and a single solution to customers, I think that's part of that trend of just wanting to simplify, getting your hands on the best software that's out there.

[00:12:50] Ron Piovesan: Yeah.

[00:12:51] Chip Rodgers: I love that it's a it is a it's a combination of. You get the best of everything, right? Yeah. It's the best of breed. But then also it's one, it's an easy [00:13:00] procurement and you got it all in one package.

[00:13:02] Ron Piovesan: Best of breed software. Best of breed procurement. Motion. I know. Who would've thought the younger versions of ourselves that we'd be all excited about, like easy procurement.

[00:13:11] Ron Piovesan: Back in the day we would say yeah what do you wanna talk about when you grow up? I wanna talk about easy procurement. Here we are. But it, that's what's ha that's what's driving the market now, and that is a. It is a purchasing, it is part of the purchasing decision. It isn't just like how good the products are.

[00:13:25] Ron Piovesan: How easily can I access them? How easy can I bring them on board? How easy can I implement them and integrate them? And if I do all that, are they still secure? Yeah. And so what we're doing now is coming to the market with a resounding yes, you can buy the best of breed products, they can be secure, your workforce can be productive.

[00:13:44] Ron Piovesan: And oh, by the way, we're gonna make it super easy for you.

[00:13:48] Chip Rodgers: That's amazing. Yeah. And, and marketplace just does that, right? Yeah, it does. It's something that's with the ease of e, ease of transact, global transaction, currency convert, all those [00:14:00] kinds of things, local laws and all those things just makes it just very smooth and easy and procurement teams now are getting more and more looking for that.

[00:14:09] Ron Piovesan: Yeah. Everybody wants the simplest deal, right? It's complicated. Like enterprise software, getting your hands on the best enterprise software shouldn't be as complicated as it is, right? And I think, marketplaces have proven that, I think ELAs have proven that enterprise license agreements.

[00:14:25] Ron Piovesan: I think this sort of this ingenious notion of having commits and then drawing them down. You look at MSP models, outcome, outcome based pricing, like PLG motions, product led growth motions. There are so many ideas out there right now about how do we just make it easier for customers to get their hands on what they need to be successful, right?

[00:14:45] Ron Piovesan: And the market's changing so fast, right? You can't have if the market's changing so fast, a customer can't be delayed. And, achieving their end goals. 'cause they're getting caught up in some procurement cycle or they're getting caught up in some negotiation, or who knows what they're getting [00:15:00] caught up on.

[00:15:00] Ron Piovesan: They're like, I see the value of your software. I see how you can help me as a customer, move my business forward. Just make it easy for me to do what we all want to do. And that's for me as a customer, to buy your software. Just make it easy for me. Yeah. So we heard Okta, Google Omnissa, we heard that loud and clear and we're like, yes, we are gonna make it easy for you to access like best of breed productivity, best of breed email with best of breed identity, security, and best of breed device management. Yeah.

[00:15:29] Chip Rodgers: Terrific. Yeah. Yeah. Congrats on that. That's ex, that's exciting.

[00:15:32] Ron Piovesan: Yeah. Yeah, it's good. It's good. And again, that's just the fun of this. That's, I, that's why I think partnering is so much fun, right?

[00:15:39] Ron Piovesan: Because now you know when, when we started, like years ago, partnering was. A press release, a joint happy hour. And don't get me wrong, I like the joint happy hours. If you wanna do a joint happy hour, gimme a call. But I still like all of that. But now we're really impacting what is the product direction?

[00:15:55] Ron Piovesan: How do we integrate with other partner, with other vendors? What does a go to market direction? How do we innovate, [00:16:00] and come up with new go-to-market strategies? So really the role of partnering has moved from this kind of this side project that's fun. And, yeah, there's some benefit to.

[00:16:08] Ron Piovesan: Wow. Geez. We're like, we're changing the product, we're changing our go-to market motion. This is

[00:16:13] Chip Rodgers: how we do business.

[00:16:14] Ron Piovesan: We do business, we like and things are changing and I think it's only gonna change more. And we're in the, we as a discipline are in the middle of it. That's why I love I love everything that, that you're doing is like surfacing all these great ideas.

[00:16:27] Ron Piovesan: So now we can all contribute and be like, yeah, these are all these great ideas about how we can work together. To really conquer the market. I love it. Yeah,

[00:16:33] Chip Rodgers: it's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Ron, let's talk, so we talked about co innovation. Let's talk a little bit about and go to market.

[00:16:39] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Talk about co-sell and how Yeah how you're. What does that look like at Okta? Working with partners either with, cloud providers or with other ISVs?

[00:16:49] Ron Piovesan: Yeah. Yeah. It, for us related to what we were just talking about the customers co-sell starts with the use case.

[00:16:56] Ron Piovesan: What can we bring to the customer that [00:17:00] really isn't just I'm gonna use a cliche, isn't the one plus one plus two, but it's the one plus one equals three, right? What can we bring to the partner that gives them outsized value? To my mind, partnership has to be outsized value. It can't be incremental value.

[00:17:11] Ron Piovesan: If not, then, I don't think that's partnering. I think partner's all about outsized value. So when we, I wanna bring to the market with a partner, a tech partner, something that, that, that provides outsized value. And then when you arm salespeople with that, suddenly they've got, they're walking into a partner with a really amazing story.

[00:17:28] Ron Piovesan: They're coming into a partnership sorry. They're coming into a customer conversation and saying, Mr. And Mrs. Customer. We're not gonna incrementally make your business better. We're gonna, do a step up and make your business that much better. And that to me is the core of co-sell.

[00:17:41] Ron Piovesan: We understand that story. The partner understands that story. They understand how we're gonna sell together, like what I just said about procurement, like the actual mechanics of selling. And that's where, and that's where, and honestly that's where co-sell becomes effortless.

[00:17:54] Ron Piovesan: Because as a partner person, what I don't want to do is, I don't wanna berate [00:18:00] salespeople. Have you called your partner? Have you, have you talked to your rep on the other side? Have you co sold? Nobody wants to do that. Salespeople don't wanna hear from me. I don't wanna be bugging salespeople about it.

[00:18:10] Ron Piovesan: Absolutely not.

[00:18:11] Chip Rodgers: You want them leaning in,

[00:18:12] Ron Piovesan: you want them leaning in. And how do you do that? You provide value. You show look, this is how you're gonna provide outsized value to the customer, and hopefully, ideally, this is how you're gonna win the deal that much faster. It should be, like you said it's not a push, it should be a pull.

[00:18:27] Ron Piovesan: You're pulling people in. To the partnership, not pushing the partner, not pushing the partnership on top of somebody else. Yeah. That never works. Yeah. And I would even, sorry. No, go ahead. Is that okay? Yeah. I would even hasten the ad. You wanna do that in co-innovation too. You don't wanna be berating part product people and saying integrate, integrate feature.

[00:18:44] Ron Piovesan: Like they don't care, right? They got too much to worry about. Whereas you wanna do it as a pull. Here's a partnership. We've heard from the market that people want us to work together. They have a great product. We have a great product. We should be working together.

[00:18:57] Chip Rodgers: Love that. Yeah, that's great.

[00:18:58] Chip Rodgers: [00:19:00] Yeah. Ron, this has been fantastic. I'd love to try you talk a little bit about your experience and what it, with teaching. Sure. 'cause I think that's really unique. Think about your background and what you're currently doing. Tell us a little bit about. What that is and why you're doing it and what's the benefit to you and to the schools?

[00:19:18] Ron Piovesan: Yeah, absolutely. So I've been teaching on and off part-time, evenings, weekends probably for about 15 years, actually for a very long time. Started, I think I started at Stanford Continuing Ed and have just moved to other places. Santa Clara University and now most currently USC, University of Southern California.

[00:19:36] Ron Piovesan: And yeah, partner. Teaching is just it's just a massive part of my life. Both my parents are teachers. I come from a long line of teachers. My wife was a teacher for a little while, so I actually view this as kind of part of my DNA. I view this as part of my heritage. It's something I need to execute on.

[00:19:49] Ron Piovesan: Yeah I love teaching. I teach mostly master's level and I was teaching in the MBA programs as well as the marketing communications programs. And and actually, actually that kind of stems from [00:20:00] my earlier past. 'cause I actually started my career as in pr I was in PR for about 10 years before moving over to partnerships.

[00:20:05] Ron Piovesan: Yeah. So I think from that's where I get my passion for communication. Make sure you're always communicating the value that's coming of a partnership that's coming back from my, my, my PR days. Yeah. And the one thing that I really love about teaching and teaching specifically marketing.

[00:20:19] Ron Piovesan: Is, and I'm gonna tie it back to partnerships for a moment, is people come to the discipline of marketing and PR and they think, okay, I wanna do social media marketing, or I want to do events or something like that. And that's all great and that's fine, right? We teach all of that, but I actually teach I actually bring in the notion of partnering as a marketing channel and partners as part of your marketing plan.

[00:20:41] Ron Piovesan: Don't do the blogs, do the press release, do the social media marketing, but make sure your partners are talking about you in the same way. And there's so

[00:20:48] Chip Rodgers: much value. There's so much value. That's right. It's half the cost and twice you're doubling your reach or whatever. If you've got a partner that's really excited about Yeah.

[00:20:55] Chip Rodgers: What you do and the better together story

[00:20:58] Ron Piovesan: And the thing is yes, it [00:21:00] obviously exists in B2B. A lot of students relate more to B B2C, and you just put it in their context like, okay, how do you hear about a brand? They're like, okay, I hear an ad. I get something from social media. Oh, I hear something through one of my favorite online retailers.

[00:21:13] Ron Piovesan: I read a, I see a display at my favorite brick and mortar retailer. So another user tells me about it and they realize it from a B2C perspective as a consumer. They're surrounded by both the brand as well as the brand's partners like retailers and co-sponsors and so on.

[00:21:30] Ron Piovesan: People, they do co-sponsorship with other brands. They realize that they're hearing about certain brands from multiple angles. And when you say look, we gotta take that. And bring it into the business realm, the B2B realm, they begin to realize oh yeah, I can bring these sort of consumer marketing concepts into the B2B realm.

[00:21:49] Ron Piovesan: And that actually powers a lot of our conversations in the class.

[00:21:51] Chip Rodgers: And it all builds trust and interest, right? Oh gosh, I, why am I hearing about that everywhere?

[00:21:57] Ron Piovesan: Yeah, exactly. And ultimately isn't that our business? We're in the trust [00:22:00] business. Trust me. You want to, you our, our product can make you successful.

[00:22:03] Ron Piovesan: Whatever your product happens to be. So ultimately, when it boils down, we are in the trust business. And so we need to partner with internally, we need to partner with, our colleagues in marketing and colleagues in PR to make sure we get that point across. And then that's what I like teaching too.

[00:22:16] Ron Piovesan: I like saying look, don't just think about community communicating to customers through one. Narrow lens of TikTok, which is a favorite of TikTok. You gotta, you don't realize. But yes, you're getting some of your news from TikTok, but you're also getting like brand information constantly, no matter where you go and what you're doing.

[00:22:33] Ron Piovesan: And you gotta think in those much broader terms. That's one of my favorite things to talk about. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:37] Chip Rodgers: That's fantastic. Have you, I'm just curious, have you had an experience where, you're teaching a concept I'm sure you're interacting with the kids all the time.

[00:22:46] Chip Rodgers: Have you, are there things that they, that has helped they've brought to you or asked a question that you're like, changes your thinking or?

[00:22:53] Ron Piovesan: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great question actually. It, we are in a time of [00:23:00] such flux, and I know it's kind of cliche to say that, but it's so true.

[00:23:04] Ron Piovesan: And I think what we hear, what I hear from students is, the media landscape is changing, the trust landscape is changing. There's a lot more, there's a lot more cynicism coming in. There's a lot. Some of it's skeptical, like healthy skepticism, which I think is great. Some of it is starting to border on cynicism.

[00:23:23] Ron Piovesan: So I do think like to the point of trust, like for any brand regardless, B2B, B2C, it doesn't matter to start building that trust, it's a much harder path than it has been I think even five years ago, to be honest. I think I've noticed a pretty discernible shift. I think brands think, okay, let's do some.

[00:23:43] Ron Piovesan: Let's do good and let's try to be, let's support some issues and stuff. And I think that's great. I'm not knocking that, but also be aware that I think even around like issues based marketing, there's a lot of cynicism around that. And then there's just skepticism about, when I as a student enter the market, is there gonna be a [00:24:00] welcome market for me?

[00:24:01] Ron Piovesan: And I think there's even some stats about while, top line unemployment is relatively low in the United States. Unemployment for new graduates and younger people is actually quite high. Yeah. And that's definitely seeping into the classroom I bet. And that sense of skepticism, like I said, starting to move towards cynicism is really starting to creep in.

[00:24:19] Ron Piovesan: I wish I had a good news story for you. You do try to talk about, there are cycles, so maybe we're in a down cycle and hopefully we'll come up into an up cycle. So you try to give them some benefit of experience. But I would say, yeah, in the past I'm gonna call it five years.

[00:24:32] Ron Piovesan: You definitely see that shift within students for sure.

[00:24:35] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Gosh, thanks for sharing that. That's really interesting. 'cause you're really tapped into that, that, the zeitgeist

[00:24:44] Ron Piovesan: that way. Just, I actually, I was teaching class, so I with Southern California that's another thing I teach online.

[00:24:49] Ron Piovesan: So now you don't even go into classrooms now it's all Zoom teaching, which has its pluses and its minuses. But I showed some very, what I thought were very powerful. Issues based [00:25:00] marketing examples, students just rolled their eyes. They were like, yeah, I get it. It's fine. Why is this brand telling me that?

[00:25:09] Ron Piovesan: And again, I'm not suggesting that we, we say this to shy away from that sort of marketing, but I'm just saying it, that trust, I think it, it doesn't

[00:25:15] Chip Rodgers: always land.

[00:25:16] Ron Piovesan: It doesn't always land. And we gotta work harder as an industry, regardless of the industry you're in. But whatever your industry is in, you gotta work harder now.

[00:25:26] Ron Piovesan: To build that trust with customers because we are in an era where trust is a super value com valuable commodity, and it's really hard to earn. And yeah, I think that's true for partnering. It's true for marketing, pr, just general, the way a business conducts itself in the market. Trust is hard to gain gained, super easy to lose.

[00:25:47] Ron Piovesan: Yeah.

[00:25:48] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. I've heard, I've I think of the saying, trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets, right? It's just boom. Oh

[00:25:54] Ron Piovesan: God. Yeah. And now it's even more because Yeah. Agreed. And now it's even more. But [00:26:00] you always look for the hopeful signs and just just how sharp some of these students are, like how aware they are of the world around them.

[00:26:06] Ron Piovesan: You know how they're beginning to open up and really welcome things like ai, they're not afraid of it. They're trying to dive into it. Sometimes honestly, as a teacher you're like, okay, maybe there's a bit too much ai, but that's a whole different story at the moment. Did you really write this? Did you really write this?

[00:26:20] Ron Piovesan: And the good schools have policies around that, and we do too, but yeah. But. Their ability to just like soak in information, soak in and their ability to soak in change like this, like I think the coming generations, they're hugely flexible, hugely adaptable. And I mean that in the best positive way.

[00:26:34] Ron Piovesan: Yeah. That they're ready to take what sort of the, what life and business and the market throws at them and they're willing to switch and change and move it up. And again, I'm not saying that we should do that to make their lives more more, more difficult. 'cause it's hard enough as it is being a student and coming into the market, but.

[00:26:50] Ron Piovesan: I think what's gonna happen is we're gonna find that there's gonna be a, the next generation of leaders is gonna be super resilient, super adaptable pretty [00:27:00] tough to deal with 'cause they're gonna, like they're gonna have their skepticism so you gotta earn their trust. But I think there's an exciting group of people that are coming into the market and I hope we can find opportunities for them all.

[00:27:08] Ron Piovesan: 'cause they're really smart people. Yeah.

[00:27:10] Chip Rodgers: That's fantastic Ron. Really appreciate. That perspective and a sort of unique perspective in the partnering world, but also tying it back to partnerships and trust and all that. So that's fantastic. So Ron congrats. Thanks again. This is a big day and with the announcement and everything and thanks for sharing, sharing that and so many other things.

[00:27:30] Ron Piovesan: Thanks. And again I was just say congratulations to you. I think what you're doing with Inside Partnering is fantastic and to, to all my colleagues out there in the partnering world. Let's keep the discussions going and let's keep the ideas flowing because we are becoming just more and more core to a business.

[00:27:42] Ron Piovesan: So let's make it happen. Yeah,

[00:27:44] Chip Rodgers: that's terrific. Chief partner Officer is the is the next? Yeah, next

[00:27:48] Ron Piovesan: one. Next one. Yeah. Yeah. Where's the upstairs, where's the ceo? CEO's officer. Upstairs. Chief partner Officer.

[00:27:54] Chip Rodgers: That's fantastic. Ron, thank you again for taking some time and and thank you all for joining [00:28:00] another episode of Inside Partnering and we'll see you next time.

[00:28:03] Chip Rodgers: Thanks everybody. Take care.

[00:28:05] Ron Piovesan: Bye.

‍