Brain-hurt Scale = 5/10. Marketers would rather believe Apple’s success stems from a series of brand ads than talk about product strategy and ecosystems - which is the true source of their market power.
Some marketers like to use the term physical availability in conversations, but rarely do they actually know how to go about affecting it.  Most of us will be aware of distribution networks in the physical goods world. Manufacturers, wholesales and retailers. But in the service industry, it can get a lot more complex and nuanced. And almost no one talks about it. 
This episode is the last in what is now a three-part mini-series on building distribution networks via partnerships. And there are many forms of partnerships which is one of the first things we discuss in this episode.
Listen to the first in this series, season 2, episode 3 with Ayaan and Peter from Impact on the topic of affiliates, digital partnerships and content. 
Then listen to season 3, episode 26 where we spoke with Brent Annells mostly about strategic partnerships.
In this one, we’re going to cover some of the same territory but take it a step further to the upper rung of the partnership world. Where we look at scaling partnerships into systems - ecosystems and communities. With examples most relevant to larger enterprise and SaaS tech. But even if your company is small, there's a genesis story and lots of takeaways if you're have a less mature partnership function. 
There’s a running joke about content marketing which says content marketing works the best when marketing isn’t involved. And the core lesson here for anyone that cares, is source message credibility. I.e. a source is more trusted when the brand itself isn’t the direct source of the message.
And on that vein, partnerships, communities and ecosystems tend to work best when we create networks where other people becomes advocates and sell our product instead.
But setting up these systems requires a lot more skill and strategic thought than simply booking a few meetings and trying to sell them a deal.
Which brings us to Bryan and Xero.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should have heard about Intuit QuickBooks and Xero.
Today’s guest, Bryan was one of the original employees who kickstarted the creation of Xero’s partnership ecosystem and community. Which he started pretty much from scratch. Xero is a large multi-billion dollar public company which dominants the category of accounting software in APAC. He has since left but now advises other firms on all the dos and don’ts so they can create their own distributed partner networks.
So we go through his process in a reasonable amount of detail. By the end of the episode, you should be easily able to prevent yourself from making rookie mistakes if you’re going to pursue these growth levers yourself.
And you'll learn what a Champagne beer is
Sound good?
Click play to partner