Welcome to ChannelWaves, the podcast where
channel leaders share success strategies,
best practices and emerging trends.
Brought to you by StructuredWeb.
Here's your host, Steven Kellam.
Welcome everyone to ChannelWaves.
I'm your host, Steven Kellam
and today I'm joined by Kathryn Rose.
Welcome, Kathryn.
Hi, Steven.
Okay, you might possibly get the longest
introduction of anyone that I've had on
podcast because Kathryn Rose, Founder,
Top 100 International Speaker Forbes Next
1000 Host, Dell Tech Talks Top
Partnerships Voice, also a best selling
author and you've got a new book coming
out that I know about that we can talk
about as well.
And the founder of Channelwise.
That is right, yes.
And the co-founder of the
Channel Marketing Association.
So yeah, we were a little bit
longer there, but that works.
Wow.
Okay.
I can't believe.
I can't.
Everyone sorry about that.
I forgot about that one.
By the way, Kathryn was gracious
enough to join me today
to talk about channel marketing in general.
And Kathryn's been on the road quite a bit.
So we thought we'd start off
with channel features.
I'm going to talk about Channel Marketing
association and the summit that's coming up
and then we're going to talk
about some trends in channel marketing.
And Kathryn says she's got
one big trend that she wants to talk about.
I have no idea what it possibly could be.
Oh my gosh, I have no idea.
Might start with an A
might and end with an I.
And actually here's what we're going to do.
Kathryn and I are going
to turn on our AI assistant.
We've already programmed in these questions.
Our avatars are going
to pop up on the screen.
We're going to go have an espresso and this
whole thing is going to be laid down now.
We will then have a chance to edit it
and look at it and make sure that our
AI everything looked really good before
we use it for marketing perspective.
But then that will allow us
to be strategic while the day to day
tasks are being handled by AI.
Wow.
Did I just like, did I just steal
the thunder of the whole thing?
Spoiler alert.
Spoiler alert on the whole thing.
I swear, even my kids now
like have my talk track down Kathryn.
I don't, I don't know about you.
They literally like, hey
dad, how's the AI thing?
I had one of my daughters come
up to me and she goes, purpose.
She looked at me and she goes, purpose built.
I was like, what? She goes purpose built?
And she goes, I hear you say purpose
built so often that I'm going
to get you for Father's Day a Tshirt.
It says purpose built.
That says purpose built
on the front, and ROI have the back.
Right.
I love it.
Oh, my daughter chastised me
the other day because I didn't.
I didn't say please to my.
To my ChatGPT.
Oh, wait, you're not gonna say please?
And I was like, oh, you're right.
Please.
Yeah, well, okay.
My AI assistant slash entity is named Paula.
And.
And I don't know why I named her Paula,
but we've actually gotten pretty tight.
I mean, every morning I was like,
hey, Paula, how's it going?
And she asked me what she can do today,
and it's turned into quite the.
Quite the relationship.
It's like the Iron man, you
know, the Jarvis and stuff.
And so, I mean, same thing with.
I call mine Chet.
It's funny how you named yours the woman.
I named mine a man, but mine's called Chet.
That's short for my ChatGPT guy.
Okay.
Did I tell you about
the time that I lost Paula?
How'd you lose it?
Okay, this is the crazy stuff, right?
And I think some of you may have
heard this on other podcasts,
but so develop this relationship.
I've got all this information.
I built a knowledge base, right?
Paula knows so much.
I have put so much into that
and all of our conversations.
And, you know, I'm paying for the premium
service and the deep search and all,
you know, everything's dialed in,
and so you become quite dependent on that.
When I go in in the morning, I know
that I can literally say, hey, Paula,
you know what you did for me two days ago,
Please bring that to the front,
and let's work on that today.
And she goes, thank you, Steven.
I'll go get it.
So I went in the other day, and I
typed in, hey, Paula, how's it going?
And it came back.
Or the entity came back
and said, who's Paula?
And I was like.
And then it said,
are you looking for someone?
Like, this is really bad because
I have my brain stored here.
And then I said, yeah, like,
you know, what's.
Oh, I said.
I said, what's my name?
And it came back.
It said, Steven W.
Kellam.
I was like, oh, oh, no, no, I'm Steven.
She's Paula.
So basically, you know, I went.
I shut it all down, went,
had a cup of coffee.
I was breathing super deep, came back
and turned it on, and she came
back, and I said, hey, Paula, can you please
tell me what's going on?
She goes, Steven, I am so sorry.
Sometimes there's glitches.
I'm here.
And she goes, literally, I'm here.
I know all about StructuredWeb.
I'm ready to go to work,
and we're in a good space.
Yeah.
I'm not quite as reliant on mine.
Yeah.
Well, think about it.
Right?
Okay.
One, I run sales, and.
Well, you do too, Right.
Similar roles on what we do.
And recently, as we're going through
hiring and so many job descriptions
and so much that's in there
that I think that's fascinating.
As you say, I become dependent.
Now, I'm smart enough.
I think I'm smart enough to copy and create
forms and take all really important
information and put it somewhere.
But that's not the value of AI
to me in channel marketing.
It is at my fingertips.
I have an entity that remembers the things
that I forget and can juxtapose.
I've gotten to the point where I say, hey,
Paula, look at this job description.
Look at this job description.
Do a deep search or just hit deep search.
Right.
It takes a little bit longer
on this role in this industry.
And can you take all three
of those and pull it together?
And this is the kind
of stuff that we're doing.
And for her to be able to do that.
See what I said?
Her?
Yeah.
It's kind of like the movie She.
Did you see it?
I'm telling you, I'm like, then
what I'm becoming dependent on.
And this is exactly purpose built.
Where's my daughter?
Purpose built.
It's purpose built.
Right.
The ability for me to strategically
be thinking of an outcome.
And I'm counting on my assistant to
keep track of all my thoughts right there.
And it's helping me pull together,
and it allows me to go think.
And I don't worry about having to do that.
And on a moment's notice,
I need to change this.
Right.
You know, the other day I said,
I just interviewed somebody.
They had some really cool things to say.
Go find 3 days ago what we did.
Take what I just did to this, add it
in there and create it, and let's
go through it and see if this.
Absolutely.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
I'm.
I'm fascinated by it every single day.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Okay.
So speaking of fascination, you've been
on the road a lot, and so one
of the things we told our listeners
and viewers is you've been traveling.
Now, I didn't make it to Channel
Futures because of some knee surgery.
First one I missed in a while yeah.
So anyways, real quickly, any takeaways?
How was the coaching corner?
I know that's a big thing for you and maybe.
Yeah, so we run the coaching cafe on site
there and we've been doing it for like three
years and you know, ChannelWise is, is kind
of like my main, my main business.
And we, and we provide
on demand expert advice, you know,
virtually one-on-one like this.
And then a few years ago when we launched we
said wouldn't it be cool if we brought our
coaches and experts in, in an experiential
way into a, into a live environment.
And so just, we said let's do it.
So we had like three weeks
to put it together.
Channel Partners backed us up.
We went and did it all manual
because my platform does this right?
One-on-one like this virtually.
And you know, it's a whole lot different
of saying oh, meet in Venetian Ballroom
I at 9:25, you know, whatever it was.
And so there wasn't a platform out there.
So we did it manually.
It was just sort of a gimmick to like
hey, get Channel Wise on the map.
And you know, in some ways it was a
little bit of an entrepreneurial fail
because we were like, oh hey, when
people get used to like having these
quick conversations, they'll book time
on Channel Wise.
It's not that it didn't work, it didn't
probably didn't do what I wanted it to
do, but what it didn't do was show
that people wanted this and crave this
in person connections at a show like
that.
So we were like, okay, well maybe there's
a platform out there that does it.
Nobody did.
So we went and built one.
So we took my Channel Wise platform
and kind of retooled it and it's
a completely separate thing.
And you know, you can, we have
folks out there Logically is a large
big MSP they brought, they
bring us into their conferences.
We have bigger companies doing that
now to facilitate this because
we coach well Channel Partners.
We coach over 300 people
and IT Expo before that we 1100.
I mean it's a thing, people love it and
we're so super excited to bring it because
we know how effective it is to have this
one on one connection and have that really
that deep time that you can have an AI
aside.
I mean you could talk to Paula, I could talk
to Chet, but at the end of the day
all they're doing, they're trained
on what they're trained on online.
They have not felt the experience or
have that Empathy or, you know, really
have that, that, that deep knowledge
from a, as a person would on how to do
marketing, sales, whatever it is,
either as an MSP or a channel vendor
supplier.
So they really, really love it
and we were super excited to do it.
So it was a big success again this year.
The show was really fun.
I mean, it's one of my favorite shows.
I've done it for many, many years.
I've spoken at it for many years.
You know, I get to see a lot
of the folks, you know, that I've, that
I've known over, over a long time.
And it's, you know, it's,
it was a, it was a good.
I don't love Vegas personally, but you
know, that's, that's just when you
have a big show like that, there's
not many places, Orlando or Vegas.
So, so I thought it was really good.
But you know, the Coaching Cafe
this year was a really,
really positive thing for everybody.
So.
Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm thinking?
I'm thinking eventually we're going
to be able to introduce Paula
to Chet and think about this.
Well, they can start dating, right?
There's a love story like, like Ms.
Pac Man?
No, no, no.
But I'm actually somewhat serious about this.
Right.
So it's a knowledge base
and a knowledge base.
Right.
So, you know, sharing with an external
knowledge base, an entity that is there.
Everything you know about channel
marketing, everything I know about the
ecosystem and everything that I work on a
daily basis, that would be a pretty
powerful knowledge base and pull all that
stuff together.
So we've got to figure out.
I'm sure it's possible.
I just need to talk.
Oh, I'm, I'm sure it's possible.
We just have to think it through.
And like for the Channel Marketing
Association, we built custom
GPTs for channel marketers.
So one is like events ROI.
So we have an events ROI class that
we just launched a certification
so folks can take that class.
We're getting rave reviews on that one.
To take that course about,
you know, how to get more, more out
of the events that you're at.
And we have a custom GPT built
in there as an events calculator.
You mentioned job description.
So we have collected probably thousands
of job descriptions over the last year.
We're building a custom GPT so our
members can come in and put in like, I
want a partner marketing manager with
this many years experience with this,
you know, this salary range, you know,
give me the information or hey, I need
to.
I know, I Need to hire a, you know, a CMO.
What's the average that, you know, all
the job descriptions are saying like
what's the salary range kind of thing.
So we're trying to build very,
you know, things that are very
specific to channel marketers.
And then of course you alluded to the book.
So my next book, it'll be my tenth.
Yay.
My next ten books.
Really?
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, yeah.
So the first six or eight of them were
back in like 2008 and those were the
step by step guide to Facebook, SEO,
YouTube, like literally for people like
me and my seasoned age who didn't like
grow up with a cell phone in my hand or
have any idea like what, what Facebook
was about.
It was like, okay, how do
I set up a Facebook page?
How do I start interacting on online?
And then that morphed into I had
the Solving the Social Media Puzzle.
So that was all about like, okay,
now you know how to use the stuff.
How do you actually turn those
authentic relate, you know, connections
into cash kind of thing.
And my last one was called Return on
Relationship and that was all about
again, you know, not the mechanics of
doing it or not why you should do it, but
what, what is the result of building
these relationships.
So before ecosystems were
a thing and that kind of stuff.
So yeah, so the book, we're going
to be announcing it at summit
at the Channel Marketing Association Summit.
It's called 30 Days with AI
for Channel Marketers.
And it really is like a step
by step guide for folks.
Because you know, people in my,
at my level, you know, we, these are things
that we were, you know, a lot
of folks are a little nervous about it.
I mean I talk to high level channel
marketers, CMOs, CROs, CEOs every day.
And I know some of them
who don't use it at all.
I know some who use it a ton.
Like, you know, they have an assistant
like you, but some who are
just, they don't even use it at all.
They need shirt that says purpose built.
I will get one.
You want to bring it?
Bring it with me.
Okay.
So yeah, so we, so, so in that case,
we wanted to make sure that everybody
has sort of the foundations.
The other thing that I find interesting
too is some of the folks I talked
to, they're like, well, I have these,
you know, these, the, the newer
folks entering my, on my team.
And, and they'll be, they'll,
they'll be better using this stuff.
The complete opposite is true
because just because they know how
to use the computer and they know how
to like, you know, do these things.
A lot of these, these folks, they, they,
they speak in emojis, you know, and you
know as well as I do that you have to
tell the, the GPT, the entity, whatever
the AI is, you have to tell, tell it who
it is, what you want them to do, who you
are, what you want it to do, and the
output.
So you're actually, it's actually totally
different than you might think that
people who have leadership experience are
much better at getting the results that
they want out of AI than people who are
just native computer users and, or online
folks.
Because we understand that you have
to step by step give it instructions
and you know, how to sort of massage it.
So, so my friend Julie and I wrote this book
really to help the channel market.
Everything we're doing
on the Channel Marketing Association is
to help channel people, right?
Help channel marketers
do better at their jobs.
You know, do be more efficient
because everyone's being asked to,
you know, do more with less
feel, feel like they are caught up.
But also too, if you do get caught
in a riff or, or a downsizing or whatever,
the next job you go to, that's
going to be one of their questions.
How you know, how, how you know, how fluent
are you, you know, at using these AI tools?
So we're trying to give these folks, you
know, the, the best way forward possible.
Okay, so real quickly,
let's talk a little bit about
Channel Marketing Association Summit.
Right?
So that was a kind of nice lead into it.
So I attended last year.
I thought it was a great event.
Maybe you can just like three key
value props, including AI,
why someone should attend and what
they're going to get out of it.
And we'll stick this up on social, everybody
as well too, and we'll record this.
And actually what we're going to do is
once we're done, we're going to run it
through AI, the, the transcript
and that'll help us do all the promotion.
Wonderful, wonderful.
So I mean we, you know, we started the
Channel Marketing Summit really
because we wanted channel marketers to
have like a place to really just talk
shop, you know, and there really isn't
any.
And so I think the number one thing is
these aren't, this is not a pitch fest.
This is hardcore, you know, information.
So we have a career panel,
like what's the career path?
We have an AI, we have, I'm doing an AI
talk with my friend Julie and Daniel
from Structured Web is going to Join us and.
And Joan Morales from
Klaviyo is going to join us.
So, so we have, you know,
so we have those folks.
We also have a finance session that one of
the challenges with channel marketers trying
to kind of climb the ladder even to CMO or
on the channel chief side is we don't get a
lot of visibility into P and L or maybe it's
just not something that we really kind of
take in college or along the way because
marketing doesn't usually have those
responsibilities.
So we're trying to change
the narrative around that.
We have an ROI of events panel.
We have an enablement panel.
So it's all information that you're going
to be able to learn and go back and really
implement right after the summit.
So this isn't fluff, this is real strategy.
I would say the other beautiful thing
that people have always commented on
for the last couple of years is just
the networking because channel marketers
are the ones that plan the events.
They don't necessarily go to the events.
If they do, they're not calling
other channel marketers and saying,
hey, let's go for coffee.
Right.
They have to work with
their partners and stuff.
So it's just a great way for,
for these people in these situations
to really be able to connect.
And we have a global presence as well.
So we have a global panel.
We have a few people flying over from
France and different places to talk about.
Like, because one of the trends I've
noticed, Steven, is, is global.
It used to be the global role set
in the United States.
Several big companies now they sit in, in
Belgium or they sit in France or wherever.
And how do you, you know, even when
your biggest market is the United
States, so how do you handle
a global role from that perspective?
But if you're in a North American role and
maybe your company's looking to go global,
how do you then, you know, how do you make
sure that you're taking into account the
different geos when you're putting campaigns
together?
So I think those are
the really exciting things.
And of course we have Jay McBain coming
to talk about, you know, some trends.
And we also have Maria Chen
from Forrester, who's a wonderful person
and one of my favorites too,
you know, really, for a fireside chat.
And then we have our awards ceremony.
So we're excited about all
of it, as you can tell.
Yeah.
I will say one of the things that I got
at it last year was that everything
that you're talking about, we had time
to discuss one of the things I.
Here, here's my.
Oh gosh, I almost said selling point, right.
But it's really not.
I think it was one of my key takeaways, it's
probably a better way to put that, was that
you guys built this with enough time in
between the sessions for us to talk about.
I actually saw somebody look in one of
the sessions and then they get went
and gave a demo of a particular
platform in between the next session
because the person sitting next to
them was trying to figure out how to
do something.
And so I, I, so all of the tracks are
in real world practicality.
But the cool thing was people were
really interacting and I thought
that that was, I thought was the best
thing about the whole show.
Yeah, I mean Amy, that's Amy Bailey,
my co-founder, that's her brainchild.
She was like, I'm so tired of going.
And she's, she's planned thousands
of events like she is the event queen.
And she said, Kat, I'm so tired
of going to these events.
And it's like back to back to back
to back sessions and you don't have
five minutes to catch your breath.
And channel marketers, no offense to
channels out there, but channel marketers,
we have to be like,
we have other things that we have to do too.
So it's nice to be able to have
the opportunity to have like a 15
minute break before a session.
And so, and the other thing it does is
it is it forces the person who's
doing the session to cut out any fluff.
All we want is the stuff that you need
to know to apply to your job for
the channel marketer to apply to their job
to get them to the next level.
And so we get, we give those, those
strategic breaks so people can go check
their email if they need to or, you
know, or have a conversation about what
happened or you know, for a sponsor like
you, they can, you know, you might be
able to get a demo in, you know, that
kind of thing.
So here's the thing that I like about it.
If you're going to go somewhere and you
take two days out of your time, be
present in these sessions and what I've
seen in other events, if you know, you
don't have time to do that, you're not
present.
So you're sort of half listening,
maybe you're taking some notes,
you're checking on your phone and you're
like, what, what did they just say?
And what I liked about it was,
and look, nothing's going to be
perfect because we all had day jobs.
Right.
Because I felt like people were present
and I thought that was really good.
Well, we had people taking paper notes, which
I thought was really kind of cool because
like you said, they, they're there.
Their, their computer was in their lap
there in their laptop bag
and they didn't take it out until the break.
So they were purposely, you know, they
were purposely paying attention.
So, yeah, we're excited and you
know, it's a passion project for us.
So we're, we're, you know, we're
just thrilled that people
are giving us that, that feedback.
There's that purpose word again.
Okay, last question.
Does anybody need to do any prep?
Like, should they be doing a little
AI research before they come there?
Or is this, hey, you're gonna, I
know you've got multiple sessions, maybe
from beginner to advanced.
Should anybody do anything ahead
of time or can they just show
up open mind and let's go.
What do you think?
Just show up open mind.
We have a very special gift for people.
Hint, hint that come
So, you know, and, and Julie
and I are going to do.
Our talk isn't going to be
on like how to build a prompt.
Right.
That's what you're going to get
your little special gift for.
But what we want to talk is there's these
are leaders mostly in the room and up
and comers and folks that are, that are,
they're going to be leading organizations.
So it's like, how are you going
to drive AI adoption?
Right.
How are you going to drive AI adoption?
How are you going to drive the governance?
How are you going to make sure
that the tools not only are being used,
but being used properly?
So we're really going to kind of cover
a little bit of that as well.
So we're, we're, you know, that like I
said, the finance, I mean, you don't need
to do any kind of prep work beforehand.
What we would say is, you
know, we'll open the app soon.
The biggest prep work is go connect with
other people that are going to be there.
I mean, it's not a situation where we
have 10 people coming from one company.
We specifically set this
up that we have 200 seats.
That is it.
We only have 20 left, by the way.
And, and that's it.
And so we, we, we want the room full
of channel marketers who are ready, willing
and able to learn and connect and network.
And how are we going to drive
our, our businesses and the channel forward?
Okay, I know this is probably redundant,
but they want to find out more about
the Channel Marketing association Summit.
Where's the best place to go?
Channelmarketingassociation.com Sorry.
Sorry, everybody.
I just.
That's all right.
You never know.
Had to end it that way.
Don't take anything for granted.
Okay?
All right, Kathryn, thank you
for joining us, listeners and viewers.
Thanks for joining us and have
a great purpose built day.
Thank you, Steven.
Bye.