216 – From Startup to Success: Unlocking Cloud Marketplace Growth Strategies

Dexter Hardy Joins Ultimate Partner®

Dexter Hardy, President and Chief Technology Officer of Integral, a company that brings over two decades of IT expertise to helping companies massively shift to Microsoft Azure. Last year alone, Ntegral’s over 300 Marketplace offerings drove over 100 million hours of Microsoft Azure consumption. In this Ultimate Partner episode, he shares his journey from SI to ISV success, unlocking his cloud marketplace growth strategies.

From cloud migration to fostering partnerships in the tech industry, Dexter delves into key topics, including productization, brand building, and community focus for startups, with a focus on leadership, innovation, and adapting to technological shifts.

In this Ultimate Partner episode, Dexter shares invaluable insights on mastering marketplaces, nurturing personal growth, and orchestrating successful partnerships. This episode is packed with actionable strategies for business growth and navigating the ever-evolving tech landscape. Don’t miss it.

What You’ll Learn

1. Partnering and marketplace success with Microsoft ISV. (0:02)
2. Cloud migration, marketplace solutions, and customer needs. (4:58)
3. Business growth and partnerships in the tech industry. (9:32)
4. Productization, brand building, and community focus for a tech startup. (13:53)
5. Leadership, community building, and tech innovation. (20:21)
6. Personal growth, leadership, and company success. (28:31)
7. Mastering the marketplace, nurturing family, and successful partnerships. (34:22)
8. Partner experience and event planning. (41:54)

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos

Summary Keywords

organisation, focus, marketplace, cloud, microsoft, partner, azure, solution, customers, adding, create, build, part, companies, talk, year, isp, centre, product, isv

Vince Menzione 0:02  

Microsoft’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. And I’m finding this buyer intent you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that 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 to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince BenZion, your host, and my mission is to empower every individual partner in organisation to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Today, we have a special guest here in the studio. He’s an individual and entrepreneur that I’ve gotten to know well over the last few months since he joined us in Dallas at our live event. Dexter Hardy is the President and CTO of integral Pinnacle Award winning Microsoft ISV. Dexter, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to be here. Vince, I am so excited to have you here in the studio in Boca Raton. So glad you could join us today for our viewers and our listeners. And we got to know each other at our event, our live event in November in Dallas, Texas. And I was excited to have you here because you’re an amazing organisation on a journey here. And I was hoping to have you share with our listeners, all the great things that are happening and integral and the work that you do. I invite you here specifically because we talk about marketplaces in this marketplace moment and how organisations need to adapt to the change. And your organisation has been a marketplace first ISV from day one. In fact, I was hoping you could share with us first your value and how you got here. Yeah, so I’d have to back up a little bit to say that for 20 years prior to our pivot, we were a small si focusing on app development, data centre moves, you know, supporting organisations across the full spectrum COVID happened and that was the you know, the tip of the spear for us for pivoting. It forced us to rethink what we do we call it consulting to Dotto, how do you do more with less really embodying in embodying that as an organisation. And so we took the IP that we were really good at with our customers created an accelerator in the Azure Marketplace, we released our first solution 2021. And the rest is history as they say. So you start out as a services organisation, you create a product, you create a marketplace solution. And you have a category and perhaps you’re a category of one. And I’ve heard you use the term infrastructure as code as a service. And I’m not technical. So I was hoping for our listeners and our viewers. In fact, you could take us through what that is, and why it’s so compelling to our marketplace right now. Okay, so I’ll start with a non technical explanation of infrastructures, code of service. So whenever you’re trying to do anything in maths, you want to have an assembly line process. So if it’s building a house, or a chocolate factory, Henry Ford, Henry Ford, you want to build the first car? Right? The first one, you build that prototype? Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of things that change you can, you need to build special materials. But if you’re trying to put them out in mass, you need a repeatable process that can guarantee at the end of a certain process, you have an outcome. Yep. infrastructure as code as a service focuses on the outcome of what happens in the cloud. So infrastructure is code. So I’m gonna getting a little more technical as we go into this infrastructure is code is you’ll look at Ansible. You’ll look at TerraForm, Microsoft has ARM templates, AWS uses cloud formation. But those are all technologies in and of themselves, that people are, you know, a mile deep in and you have to really understand, we’re saying, Don’t worry about that. Focus on the outcome. Our platform will get you there through if you can fill out a webform you can deploy to the cloud. And I love the example you use with me when we first met you know, we talked about a specific ISP, a very significant security ISP will go nameless at this point, because we haven’t asked for their permission to use their name. This organisation was running exclusively on AWS is cloud. They knew they needed to get over to Microsoft. In fact, they signed an agreement and started a co selling strategy. They were building out a marketplace offering and they weren’t there yet. And it was difficult for them to get from point A to point B, correct. And they found you

Dexter Hardy 4:58  

and they they click

It was a quick and by type of situation for them. And since they have moved all those, they’ve migrated all of that technology over to Azure. And now they’re consuming an incredible amount, we will throw in a real dollars at it, but it’s an incredible amount of Azure based on the work they did with INTEGRO. Absolutely. And so you know, when you look at this, we call it a cloud lift and shift, right? Yep. So if you’re on AWS, a lot of vendors will start with Amazon’s version of Linux, Amazon Linux, no harm, no foul, until you’re ready to leave. And now you’re like, Okay, we got to rewrite we have there’s hooks here. There’s a there’s a huge it only runs on Amazon. Well, I did all around him. Yeah. And so, you know, they were looking at having to have their team go in, reverse it, you know, kind of look at the architecture and had to we rewrite this entire thing. And we were like, No, we ported Amazon Linux to Azure, we show you, we’ll show you how to integrate that into your current CI CD pipeline. And you can run it and test it. So instead of taking, you know, 18 months, they are able to do it in a couple of months, right. So you it cuts your time to market

Vince Menzione  6:21 

to a third less than half. It ensures. And again, we focus on the outcome. Like nobody cares about tech. I mean, I’m in tech, but nobody knows about the intricacies or want to get get right mile deep in it, right. They really want they’re focused on if you’re in healthcare, you want to focus on servicing your customers, you don’t want to find out like, how do we become really good IT companies. So, so you’re a digital first digital only today, but that’s going to change. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. Yep. So you have deployed all of these marketplace solutions to help organisations get various permutations of what they’re doing, and maybe one cloud or on prem or in a datacenter environment to Azure, is that the way I understand it, absolutely. Take us through that ideal customer for you, for us. So the ideal customer, so I will say there’s two paths, right, or three paths. One, you’re doing a cloud lifting shift, like our security friend who wanted to move from AWS to Azure, right? That’s one path, then if you have a data centre, you have your data centre, you’re like, hey, we need to move off of this legacy equipment into the cloud. That’s a second very path. And then the third path is if you just want to innovate in the cloud, right? You don’t want to spend a whole bunch of money on hiring Azure specialists to spin up your stuff, you can start with our solutions, that’ll get you 80% of the way. And now you innovate on top of that. So I would break it out into those three. Yeah. And I think about things like Kubernetes, as well, where somebody’s maybe already in the cloud. And now they’re looking at containerization as a next step in their, their transformational journey. Absolutely. And so we really want to make sure that what we do is we meet their customers where they are. So if you’re in a data centre, and you have VMs, running, you can spin up that same equivalent VM in the cloud. So now your team that upskilling that would have been required before. It’s really not there, because they’re dealing with like for like, it’s just a data centre in the cloud, right, as opposed to a data centre that they physically go to or whatever they were used to before. You know, we have been calling this year the marketplace moment, right? We were at our event, we had several executives, Anthony Joseph from Microsoft spoke. And it’s interesting to me the perspective because there are a lot of ISPs in the room that are still earlier in their journey, right? They started off on a different level or path. You you started marketplace, first marketplace only, in fact, as your as your approach. You don’t just have one solution. You have many solutions, right? But it serves the market that you’re trying to serve the markets that you’re trying to serve. Yep. Let’s talk about the marketplace. And also you’ve been featured ISP success we had Yvonne mentioned on the podcast, just recently. You have been spotlighted in that organisation. Talk to me about what your point of view is on this marketplace moment. So the marketplace moment is real. So if you are not

Dexter Hardy 9:32  

in the marketplace, you’re going to get left behind. I would say think of it in terms of we talked about cars. Yes, Ford earlier. There’s a lot of blacksmiths that were still like, you know what, I’m gonna, I’m gonna keep this. I’m gonna keep this talent and I’m gonna work on it and then nobody needed horseshoes. No, no, no, I think the marketplace is a is a pivotal moment like that, in that companies will be able to skate at a at a pace that they were were not able to do before they’ll be able to add value. Globally, like I said, when we started, we were a regional consultancy, supporting maybe three to four different states around the metro Atlanta area. Now we have customers in over 100 countries. Yeah. So you know that, that changes the playing field. He changes your reach her Sure, absolutely. And it changes the trajectory of your company. And I’ll share I know, I know, some numbers, but I think you said somewhere in the neighbourhood of 19,000 customers now. Absolutely. So you go from a handful, a small amount of customers. And now you have 19,000 customers in 120 countries, how many countries the number changes, there’s only a I think there’s like 187, the last time I checked now the reason I looked at that number is because we were we were getting close. I’m like how many countries is there? So last time I checked, we were a little bit over 150 ish. But you know, and this has all been in over a fairly short period of time since 2001. That was March 2021 2021, which, you know, has been through we talked about these tectonic shifts, how COVID accelerated things.

Vince Menzione 11:24  

If you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view, I sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I build growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders ISV, sellers, s eyes MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is, it’s noisy, I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard, we’re getting ready to open the doors early at a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder, and innovator or leader, visit our website. If you have been, we talked about being featured as a Microsoft partner, have you also been part of you’ve gotten to know a lot of the people in the partnerships world at Microsoft and outside of Microsoft. You’ve also participated in countless sell, say, accelerators and training. What was the biggest challenge you needed to overcome? And what was the one piece of wisdom you share with other Microsoft partners looking to achieve what you achieved? Okay, so I will start with the accelerators, the very first thing they say is what is your superpower? Yes. And so, you know, coming from a world where you’re an SI you don’t you’re doing a lot of different things. But what is the one thing that you would say, I’ll stand up against anybody in the world. And that’s our, that’s our, that’s our go to what you do differently, better,

Dexter Hardy 13:29  

faster, stronger, better than anyone in the world. So we focus. So being in those accelerator programmes being a part of that executive coaching. And then thinking about it in terms of a billion dollar organisation like Microsoft, how can you add value, right? So you can’t come to Microsoft and say, We can do everything, they’re gonna look at you and say, That’s impossible. We, the scale that we were talking about is, you can’t do that as small organisation. However, if you put that in the hyperscalers Cloud Marketplace, turn on a digital first motion. Now you’re adding value at the scale of Microsoft, right? Because there are, I don’t remember the final numbers where there’s like 4 million or more active users in the Azure Marketplace. Yeah, somewhere in that number. Yeah. And so now you’ve, if you’re adding value at that scale, just do this the law of large numbers if you’re focusing on 10% of those 40,000 customers, that are now transacting with you, and again, we’re just starting to scratch the surface we have 19,000 We still have a lot to go but I think that’s where if I were a small organisation, I would focus on what is your superpower, understand, what is your key differentiator and then amplified

Vince Menzione 15:00  

that. And then what you’ll do is what we’re able to do now is now you can actually go in and start back, adding on those additional services if you want to, because you’re the tip of the spear isn’t, hey, let’s go through the sound, let’s go in and talk to the customer, let’s understand where you are, you know, and there’s all these different motions you have to go through. Now our customers are in the marketplace, we see the value. So digital transaction and they’re moving. In your help, you’re creating value, you’re doing that value creation is what I would say your organisation does differently. Absolutely. So let’s talk about that. Like, what do you think you do differently? Like, what are the things that you were challenged with? And what did you apply? What were the principles you applied to get to get to where you are today?

Dexter Hardy 15:49  

So the biggest challenge that I was faced with is figuring out how to productize that IP, because that’s going to be your biggest challenge as a company who’s implementing? Like, how do you come up with the process to create the factory? Yes? How do you do that? So for, for me, it was a scenario of just pick one, like you have to pick a area to go. So again, around the focus, pick an area that you’ve added the most value in as an organisation, and then productize, that one, in the process of creating that product, you’re going to you’re going to learn about the marketplace, you’re going to learn about your internal process, you’ll see what the value is, but then go ahead and put it in the marketplace. Don’t do analysis paralysis, because the market place will tell you if it’s valuable. Right. Right. We put our solutions out there when we first pivoted our website had nothing about our products. But you know what? Because we put it in the marketplace and the product added value people downloaded it anyway, found it. People found it. What was that first solution? The first solution was actually SQL server running on Linux SQL Server on Linux. Interesting. And that was that was that was popular, I guess, for lack of a better term. Yeah. So people were because when Microsoft moved away from the windows, and it was core windows, but it still was running a little more cycles than a lot of companies wanted. They had there had other resources running on Linux. So they were like, Okay, our teams, can we move our have this SQL server running on Linux? And so that was our first product. We actually created a container out of it. And we had some pretty big name, petroleum companies and other financial institutions that, you know, vetted out and like, Okay, this is, this is the right thing. So you help them optimise performance of SQL Server. Yeah, moving into Linux, and then moving in into a container approach, right? That was the biggest.

Vince Menzione 18:13  

So I want to do a deep dive here we met, because you were part of the black partner growth initiative. And Microsoft for male Mitchell introduced us, in fact, another good friend of both of ours, yep. As a black entrepreneur and CEO. At that, I want to dive here on like, challenges that might be you faced in the business, and in creating a company and brand. Okay. So

Dexter Hardy 18:38  

I would say it’s going to be across the board, regardless of race or ethnicity. Focus on value first, you first, the fact that you have the bat, I’m a black owner, that’s an additional attribute to how we think about what we do as a company. But the first thing is, are we adding value? And so that’s at the premises of everything that we do whenever we create a solution. The second piece is the challenge. Well, it’s brand building. And so what I would recommend to a lot of companies, a lot of the people that we supported in our MSI role were marketing agencies. And so if you look at 10, if you look at the top 10 companies, most marketing companies want to work with two through 10, not one through 10. Because you can show how you’re improving in any of those other positions. If you’re number one, the only thing that you can see is down if you go down, alright, so So I would say, and in that you have to build a community, you have to build a network and they call it a groundswell approach. So we focused on the groundswell approach we focused on DevOps, we focus on the people that were like us, they would resonate with our message, they would understand the problem, we would they would, that they were faced with and challenge. And so by staying focused on that, staying focused on building that community, that is the thing that gives you the ability to now build your brand, because it’is genuine, right? You, you understand the challenges they face with the things that they were doing on a day to day basis.

Vince Menzione 20:29  

You and I we first met had a car very early in our conversations, you talked about generational leadership. And perhaps and maybe this is where the whole black end entrepreneur and CEO piece comes in. I have a sense about I’d love to learn more about your personal mission, professional mission, personal mission, and where you hope to take the world.

Dexter Hardy  20:52  

Okay, so I’ll go back to statement. A leader is someone who creates leaders that builds other leaders. So if you look at the lineage around that, if it just ends with you, were you really a leader? Yeah. Right. But if you’ve created again, creating that process of now you’re instilling in someone else, if you’re a leader, then you’re going to push it three generations down, or three. That’s what creates a legacy. That’s what creates something that’s going to last a lifetime. Or several, right, because it’s no longer resting with you, you’re investing in someone else. You’re seeing, you know, their human, the human traits, and you’re, you’re helping them become the best version of themselves. So

Vince Menzione 21:44  

where are you taking integral? And how do you bring that mission? And this generational leadership to fruition? Okay, so,

Dexter Hardy 21:55  

first and foremost, we focus on community building. So we’re an ally of women and cloud, we’re part of bcpa. And we’re plugged into our local community. So first and foremost, staying a part of the community is key. For me. The second piece is we actually invest in giving scholarships and or internships, to help people learn technology and understand, you know, a lot of people if you can’t, if you’ve never seen a person do it, then you don’t know that it’s possible. So the more people that we can create that are women, minorities, that are in tech and being successful, now you’re inspiring someone else to do those types of things. And so where I see that that’s, that’s building on top of that community that’s building that legacy. But then the third piece of that is, Well, where did it take integral? I think, by building that community continuing to build on that groundswell. It only elevates us as an organisation, because now it’s no longer we’re trying to sell you on, we’re good. No, we’re genuinely wanting to see everyone in a better place. The second piece is we’re adding value, because we understand your issue. So now it’s, again, you’re not choosing us because, hey, this is the latest, greatest thing that’s out there. It is pretty cool. But it’s really to address the issue that you’re faced with on a day to day. So you’re

Vince Menzione 23:30  

a category of one today, you’re doing something that I don’t think any other organisation is doing with these solutions. You’re driving through the marketplace. You’ve got 819 1000. Now, customers, you’re driving, can we use real numbers here to talk about Azure consumption? Hundreds 100 million hours of Azure consumption? Yeah, so was astounding. Yeah. So we,

Dexter Hardy 23:54  

through December of last year, we actually had customers consuming about 100 million Azure consumption hours crazy. And this first quarter, we’re on target to be within the next six months, they’re going to do 100 million in six months, our goal on

Vince Menzione 24:10

the path to be 200 million this year. So what I’m thinking maybe possibly,

Dexter Hardy 24:14  

well, we’re actually trending a beat to be around three to 400 million by the end

Vince Menzione 24:20  

of this year. So what does success look like with that? Like, where do you go from here?

Dexter Hardy 24:25

So success looks like, again, just being coming from a no name brand, to actually not having to introduce yourself in the room anymore. Right? So we’ve, we’re kind of doing that within our own right within the market within the DevOps community. Now, the second piece is, well, customers, so we’re still going to stay customer focus. How do we enable you to innovate in your own field? Right, what does that look like? So that looks like our automation of our product. Right? So now you can spin this up in the cloud. Well, now you’re not spending six to nine months doing that plus another 12 months training someone, and then the technology is Oh, no, you’re starting, you know, a month earlier, six months earlier, 12 months early, and now you can focus on the innovation in your specific industry, you’re not thinking about technology problems, per se, you’re actually solving problems within your own vertical.

Vince Menzione 25:37  

So let’s jump into that future state. What does that look like for integral? You’re you’re taking on us on a path here, I believe, right? We’re, we’re looking at about it’s a click, click by click Try by basically today. And now you you’re saying we’re, you’re also going to help those organisations accelerate their path or their growth? Yep. What does that look like? And what are you going to be offering?

Dexter Hardy 25:58  

So the way we looked at that is tip of the spear. You see the value? Second thing is we’ve introduced what we call our concierge cloud. Cloud. Yeah, so concierge cloud is, you mentioned, we have about 300 solutions, that solutions that continues to grow, because we’re always, you know, things change, people are updating things so that content continues to grow. But in concierge cloud, instead of having to do each is or pay as you go, we’re saying, Hey, you get as a annual subscription, you get access to everything in the library. Plus, we give you an A technical architect to kind of help you understand how to both maximise your spin in the cloud, how to maximise your lift and shift, whatever those things are. And then we add some additional, like customer success, you know, just making sure handholding. So it goes from, hey, this transactional based relationship to a more back to what we did before more consulting consulting advisory.

Vince Menzione 27:05  

And we talked about these 18,000 or 19,000 customers? Where does this apply? Give me a scenario give me a customer scenario, like applied to like, I know, we were just talking with one of the big, large global s eyes here just a little bit before we started our conversation. Give me an example that might apply there.

Dexter Hardy 27:23  

Yeah. So if you’re a global Si, right, the the top three things that you’re going to be faced with is being competitive in price, right? upskilling your resources, right, you can’t have a bench because now you’re into your bra, and then product product profitability, or, in this instance, your consulting profitability. So what did you say you’re going to do? Can you actually do it for the amount that’s on that? So? Right. And so again, focusing on that outcome, our solution gives you one, the upskilling component, I’ll focus on one at a time upskilling component. So instead of now having to go in spin, you know, months training, and then getting their feet wet on whatever the new technology is, they can actually get the outcome completed. And then learn at a small edit at a at their own pace, as to like if you’re moving to Azure, you deployed in Azure. And now you can learn the nuances of Azure without impacting the delivery time on the project.

Vince Menzione 28:31  

So maybe I take one workload, and I move it to Azure. And I’ve learned from him what to learn from that. And then I moved the next workload is that is that sort of the example you’re setting here? So

Dexter Hardy 28:41  

So the example is, it’s that, but is that on steroids, because again, if you’re an SI, you’re doing multiple workloads, and we have 300 solutions. So you can pick and choose if it’s databases, if it’s, you know, other web applications, containers, Kubernetes, those things become, you can, you can focus on one if you want, and then get that you gain the benefit of you could actually reduce the amount of people on your team that is required in order to deliver the same quality. Right? So and that’s where that IP, that’s where our thought was put into the product of, you know, as a technical architect, you’re sitting there, you’re trying to figure out, well, you know, here’s the best practices for the deployment. Well, because that’s baked into the solution. Now. That’s time that you get back. Right? Time is time dollars. time equals money. So

Vince Menzione 29:40  

you’re Yeah, so you’re accelerating my like, time to creation, correct. I value cycle. I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson. That’s drink 80 one.com. Forward slash Vinson, check them out. So Dexter, you strike me as someone deeply centred and purposeful. In fact, I recall, maybe it was a conversation we had about meditation, Freedom very centred as a person where you’re always this way, we always this deliberate? And how did you get to this point or path in

Dexter Hardy 30:59  

your career. So I’ve always taken the time to either reflect, or pray or meditate. Throughout life, I think one of the things another benefit of COVID, the world was still, so you had time to rest in your thoughts, you had time to reflect on what’s important to you to revisit what your core values our proposition is, and then don’t let your resume be your eulogy. Right? I had a lot of you know, a lot of people were no longer with us because of that. So how do you how do you, you know, like I said, that caused me to reflect on all of those things. So definitely, I’m more mindful of, you know, what I invest my time in, around who you allow to be in your space, because that changes, you know, if if you, they always say if you smile at the world, the world smiles back. And so really just focus on being purposeful and intent about being kind being, you know, being nice being that person that no matter what the circumstances, you’re going to do the right thing. And then, you know, again, at the end of the day, I sleep well at night, you know, there’s peace of mind, you know, that you’re adding or trying to make the world a better place. And so that’s what I focus on.

Vince Menzione 32:25  

Is that your personal mission? What is your personal philosophy or mission?

Dexter Hardy 32:30

My personal philosophy of position is just be 1% better every day. 1% better every day, everyone, you know, you can go out whether it’s workout, whether it’s, you know, meditation, whether it’s, you know, whatever the thing is, instead of trying to go and create these really outlandish goals, just say, I can, I’m gonna do 1% better today, it’s the compounding effect that will add and propel you past everyone

Vince Menzione 32:59

else. So my son myself tomorrow was 1% Better than myself today. Correct. I love that. I love that. And then getting 365 days later, we’re, we’re that’s how you get to a trajectory we talked about? Absolutely. And what about for INTEGRO? Right, where are we going? What’s the path for integrity? We talked about, we talked about these new services, but what is your ultimate outcome for the organisation?

Dexter Hardy 33:23  

So the ultimate outcome for the organisation? You know, I have to think about the end began with the end in mind, right? You know, because we’re scaling at the rate that we’re going, you know, definitely think about acquisition and or, you know, becoming part of another organisation. These the, the other pieces, do we acquire other organisations because, again, we’re, we’re growing at a exponential rate. And, you know, just looking at that value, how do you unlock that value? Obviously, it’s a, an acquisition, or you acquire, or, you know, those are the two things that we’re we’re looking at.

Vince Menzione 34:05  

So there’s a lot of viewers and listeners to this podcast, Ultimate Partner that are looking to get to the path that you’re at right now. What would be the secret sauce, or the one piece of advice you would give them on how to what they need to go do better or

Dexter Hardy 34:21 

differently? Master the marketplace? So master,

Vince Menzione 34:25  

so talk about that with us? Take us through

Dexter Hardy 34:27

it. So find again, once you have identified it, get a solution in the marketplace. That will give you that recurring revenue model that will give you the ability to do things differently. If you are traditional si and you’re going from south to sow, doing work, that’s great. Until you don’t get that next that’s right engagement. However, if you’re adding value through the market Lace, that becomes a transactional model that as long as they’re using it, you’re making revenue. So now you’re not forced to sell that next deal, you can actually think about, well, how can we add more value here? Nice, you know, for our key customers, you know, again, the concierge cloud, that’s how that came out. It’s like, well, you guys are using this, you know, we have all these other things that you can use, instead of making all these payments, we give you a discount on, you know, getting the entire library. And so that becomes an annual subscription. Right?

Vince Menzione 35:35  

I love what you have to say here for a lot of organisations that are still trying to figure out the marketplace, master the marketplace. So I have a favourite question. When I asked almost every guest, because it’s just like, I love the way it unpack sometimes. But you’re hosting a dinner party. And you can host this dinner party in anywhere in the world, we could talk about locations as well here. You can invite any three guests from the present, or the past to this amazing dinner party party that you’re going to host I’m sure because you seem like an incredible host. Thanks. Whom would you invite?

Dexter Hardy 36:09

And why? So only three? Let’s see, I would do Barack Obama, Barack Obama. I would do Nelson Mandela, nice Nelson Mandela. And I would do my great grandparents. Into the reasons about them. The reason that I say that is, I grew up in the South. And if you go back that time frame, yep. They were on the cusp of slavery, Jim Crow laws, there was a huge talk about a glass ceiling. It was it was more than a glass ceiling. Yeah. And just to let them see what their prayers, what their hard work, what their foresight to kind of plant the seeds to their generation and kids. What that actually created would be, you know, there’s, there’s, that’s why I want them to know that that effort that love that care that they put into their offspring, what was able to be achieved by that?

Vince Menzione 37:21  

So the two fascinating leaders, obviously, Nelson Mandela in prison for 27 years, walks away from it, and ends apartheid in South Africa. And does it peacefully. Right. It was this incredible time. And then Brock Obama first black president, yeah. Any questions for them? Like? What would like how would you spark this conversation up with your great grandparents?

Dexter Hardy 37:46  

So with my great grandparents, the question, you know, this conversation would be, can you believe this? Like you like literally, it’s like, you see what you did you see what you were able to sharecroppers or whatever they

Vince Menzione 38:01  

were back in those days, you

Dexter Hardy 38:02 

see what you were able to create? Yeah. And again, what we’re talking about right now was not even marketplace, selling to globally, none of those things were even on the table. So you know, that’s one for me, that would be a really resounding yes.

Vince Menzione 38:19

What do you think they’d say to their great grandson?

Dexter Hardy 38:23 

Good job, baby. That’s my parents, my grandparents, they always everything was Baby’s like, you know, supporting you always there to kind of be there, backing you. And so the there I could

Vince Menzione 38:39 

see them saying that that will be your very nurturing individual. I’ve gotten to know you better over the last several months. And I’d say that that trait lives on in your family.

Dexter Hardy 38:46 

Oh, for sure. Yeah, I haven’t operational. I have three young kings, I call them nice. And so I always tell them, I love them. There’s I say, you know, I serve the right to be upset if you do something, but always know that you’re gonna come you’re it’s a safe, it’s a safe landing space. And I think that builds trust. It helps them build character, because again, you’re going to be in scenarios where you’re upset with someone, it’s part of life. But that’s not the end state. That’s just a moment in time. Right? So a person isn’t just one bad thing or two good things, right. It’s the sum of all your experiences. And so that’s what I like to teach my kids. So

Vince Menzione 39:37  

this is the Ultimate Partner. Yep. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk to you about partnerships. What do you see from the best partnerships and when you see partnerships fail? What you wish you had told those individuals or partners I wish they would say

Dexter Hardy 39:54  

so. Stay genuine. When you see partnerships fail, it’s usually there was a mal alignment or misalignment in what the outcome was supposed to be. Right? Is, as they say, if you are a partner, it is a mutual scenario, if at some point it becomes a non mutual scenario, so I’m I win, you lose, right? If it becomes adversarial, that’s where you start seeing a lot of the decay. And really, it really kills community. So what I would say to most people is stay genuine, stay true to your initial mission. Don’t let money be the reason for what you’re doing. Have a passion around it. And I would be one of the examples like, do what you love, the money will come. Right. And so you know, I would say stay focus on that. Because again, that value that relationship, knowing that somebody else has your back. You can’t you can’t put $1 amount on that. You seem to love what you do. Absolutely love. Yeah, it comes across really loud and clear.

Vince Menzione 41:15  

So we have these many Microsoft viewers and listeners with us in the room, what message do you want to share with them on how they can optimise their success this year?

Dexter Hardy 41:29  

Yeah, so there are several programmes. If you are a Microsoft partner, I would focus on the ISV success programme. The BP gi programme is a great organisation. And again, it’s got to go back to it’s going to sound like a broken record, get involved in the community. Those are communities Yes, join the Microsoft Partner programme if your Microsoft Partner come

Vince Menzione 41:54  

to ultimate partner experience,

Dexter Hardy  41:56

to the ultimate partner experience. Because again, I love what you guys are doing here in with the ultimate partner, it’s not just we have a whole bunch of content, we’re just gonna throw it to you know, you’re being very curious curated information. It’s the secret sauce to like how to navigate quickly through, you know, a big organisation. And so when you’re starting out, or you’re just trying to figure figure what path through, it could be, you know, like drinking from a firehose, I mean, you’re just overwhelmed with all the information. But your organisation definitely does a good job of like, here are the salient points for where you are right now. And this is what you need to

Vince Menzione 42:39  

do. And I didn’t ask you to say that or pay you to say that, so I appreciate that. Thank you.

Dexter Hardy 42:44

Oh, no, that’s like I said, it’s being genuine. I mean, it’s, that’s what you do.

Vince Menzione 42:49 

It’s been so much fun having you here today. I appreciate you making the trip down here to Boca from Atlanta. And we need to do this again. Hopefully, you’ll be back in the room with us again soon. Awesome. We have an upcoming event in May, little plug there for our partners watching listening. May 30. We’re going to do something here. You’re going to be here in the room with some experts from Microsoft, some other leaders in the industry. So I’m excited to have you back here in Boca not too long a period of time. So some of you awesome really looking forward to so excited to have you today. Thank you so much for being an incredible are an ultimate guest on ultimate partner.

Dexter Hardy 43:26  

I’m trying to become the ultimate party.

Vince Menzione 43:29

I think you’re already there. I think you are what do you think bugs, the ultimate partner. All right. Thank you, sir.

Dexter Hardy 43:35  

Thanks so much.

Vince Menzione 43:36  

Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partner