Holiday Encore – How Did a Channel Juggernaut Pivot to Become a Leading Solutions Provider?

Insight President, Dee Burger, Joins Ultimate Partner®

We are bringing you some of the best episodes of 2023 to help you prepare for success in 2024; this one is a MASTERCLASS in Transformation.

Note this interview was recorded well before Insight’s acquisition of SADA, stay tuned as we plan to bring Dee Burger back soon to discuss what’s next!

In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses constantly seek innovative solutions to stay ahead of the competition. One of the biggest game-changers in recent years has been the transformation to cloud computing, and its impact on businesses of all sizes cannot be overstated. This shift to the cloud was a turning point for one solution integrator, taking them from a transactional business model to a leading player in the industry. How did a channel juggernaut pivot to become a leading solutions provider?

In this Ultimate Partner episode, we are thrilled to be joined by Dee Burger, President of Insight North America, who shares with us Insight’s ride and how he is leveraging his vast experience to drive growth and success. Join us as we explore why Insight’s customers and partners trust them to deliver top-notch solutions to achieve their ambitious business goals.

In Insight’s Words

Dee Burger assumed the role of President of Insight North America in May 2022. He leverages extensive IT industry knowledge to help clients maximize the value of technology so they can achieve their most ambitious technology goals. He leads the Insight North America business, including partner management, Insight Public Sector, commercial and enterprise sales, and solutions delivery. Burger drives Insight’s evolution into an industry-recognized solutions integrator, helping organizations accelerate their digital transformation journey.

Burger is a 29-year veteran of Capgemini, where he excelled in various roles. His vast experience includes leading mergers and acquisitions, digital and cloud solutions, business applications, consulting, strategy, and transformation.

What You’ll Learn

• What has it been like for Insigth to pivot? 4.25
• If you get more valuable to your customer, your business will do better 9:46
• What are some of the characteristics of great partners? 20:01
• Can partnerships become practical and tangible to the customer? 22:37
• Whom would you invite to your dinner party? 27:51

Partnering with Insight

Partner with Insight

Quickly Find Interviews with all these Amazing Guests

Partner Ecosystem Leader Episodes

163 – A Partnership Leader Uniquely Growing Hubspot’s Ecosystem Community

162 – How You Can Unleash the Power of Data to 10X Your Partner Growth!

153 – Janet Schijins – Ecosystems & Megacosm

150- Celebrating 150 Amazing Episodes with a Five-Timer Guest, Jay McBain

149 – WTF is an Ecosystem? And How Partner Hacker helps tech companies PartnerUp with Jared Fuller

LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP

Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

insight, partner, world, customers, partnerships, business, partnering, people, integrator, solutions, client, organization, services, capgemini, companies, market, dabo, adapt, years, technology

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Dee Burger, Vince Menzione

Vince Menzione  00:00

How the transformation to the cloud pivoted this juggernaut in the channel from being a transactional engine to becoming a leading solutions integrator. For my next episode of Ultimate Partner, I’m joined by the North American leader for this top solutions integrator in our space, who’s taking this business to the next level to help its customers achieve their most ambitious business goals. This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host Vince Menzione. Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will deburr is the president of insight North America and shares with our listeners. How he’s applying is over 30 years experience that a leading consultancy to help insight achieve its mission and why customers and partners should rely on insight. I hope you enjoy this episode. As much as I enjoyed welcoming D burger. I’m so excited to welcome athletic greens as the latest sponsor to Ultimate Partner friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 20 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being. About five years ago I added athletic greens and now their product ag one has become my go to green drink supplement. Ag one is packed with 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, Whole Foods or superfoods, probiotics and antigens. It literally is replaced every vitamin in my cabinet. If you’d like to give ag one a try. Athletic Greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D and five travel packs with every new purchase. Check them out at athletic greens.com forward slash Vince M. D welcome to the podcast.

Dee Burger  02:28

Thanks Vince happy to be here.

Vince Menzione  02:30

I am so excited to welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Partner. You’re the president for insight in North America, a fortune 500 solutions integrator and accompany with a rich history in this technology sector we all care about. So welcome.

Dee Burger  02:45

Thank you, Vince. Thank you.

Vince Menzione  02:47

So for our listeners who may not know you, can you tell us a little bit more about D Berger, and your mission at InSite?

Dee Burger  02:54

Absolutely the me parts easy part because I am the world’s foremost expert on that after 53 years, I got to Insight a little less than a year ago. And my role as you as you said is I run the North American business for insight which is about 80% of insight. Insight is across North America, EMEA and APAC. From my vantage point I spent 30 years at Capgemini. Before this did a very wide variety of things that that have been helpful. So far in my tenure at InSite. I live in a little place called Kiawah Island, which is off of Charleston, South Carolina, which for those of you looking at a map because really convenient to go from Kiawah Island to Phoenix, Arizona where insights headquarters is right outside of Phoenix and Chandler on the Insight side, as you said long heritage insight is 35 years old this year and has a really interesting history from starting off as a product reseller small product reseller got bigger acquired a bunch of companies became a really big product reseller. And now we’re pivoting to what you refer to as a solutions integrator that we think is really unique in the market and something that is going to help us build a an even better future than the proud history so far.

Vince Menzione  04:04

Yes. So a couple of comments here from my side. First of all, cue Island is absolutely a beautiful location. I lived in the Charleston area for a couple of years, just a few years back. So what a great location to be located in and insight. I know so well from my early days at Microsoft are big reseller partner, Microsoft, and we’re early to pivot, right. We were moving everyone was moving to the cloud about 10 years ago and this time of transformation and the business models were changing. And Insight was on the forefront of that and has been leading this transformative time that we’re seeing and you really expanded your footprint. And I was hoping you could expand on with us and with our listeners today on like what that’s looked like how that pivot has happened. Yeah, I

Dee Burger  04:47

think it’s a good one it to me. It goes back to my initial discussions with insight which a little over a year ago, Joyce Mullen is our CEO Joyce had been here predated me by about a year and a Half Joyce had moved from my role now into the CEO role was about 10 days into the journey. And we had a discussion about being a solution integrator, I looked inside, I saw some of the history, I saw some of the different things that go on in the business. One of the questions I had was, why would you be interested in me, we got into the discussion about how you actually can take what has gone on in the product business and the depth that is required to be successful in that business, and pair it with a really successful services model. And what what the integration of that would look like, I had to then go interpret it. And Joyce has a big background, Adele knows all there is to know about that product business and how that works. I knew that she needed to fortify herself a bit in the services area, I had to then interpret what is this retailer model? I was aware of it certainly but but hadn’t spent a lot of time on it. It’s got an image people talking about a bar, and it’s somewhere between a medium and negative connotation when they talk about that. In reality, as you started taking, what is that really? Okay, what is it really for insight when I had to interpret, we got 2000 salespeople with 29,000 customers. So it’s this tremendous set of coverage, we have 500 architects with depth into exactly where the leading product companies in the world are going with their products. And a true understanding how that goes. We have 6500 partners and relationships with them, we have a full scale set of set of capabilities, to manage logistics, configurations, all of that with physical devices, and to perform the physical services go with it, then we have all the things I was used to at Capgemini. We have all the applications go to the cloud and the ability to do it all as a managed service. So a lot of that, for me was being able to effectively interpret what does that mean, and how do you bring it. And so what we’ve done is we’ve put it together as a solutions integrated thing about what it does for a client, right, so we break our client segments largely into commercial, corporate and enterprise, small, medium large, for a small client where we have, we’ve got the ability to access a wide range of technology, they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. And the enterprise had gone all the way to the top, we’ve got the ability to do services, projects for them with a variety of things and and to also be able to do specialized sorts of procurement, that will be harder for them to do where it really comes together is in the middle of that. Imagine yourself as CIO of a $3 billion company, and you’re trying to figure out the latest phase of how you’re helping to evolve your company, there’s a very, you want to do something, you don’t know how to do it, you don’t know what you need, you don’t know how to get it, you don’t know how to get it implemented, you’re trying to stretch your team has been doing a certain thing for a year history, but you’re trying to stretch to a new area, we’ve got the ability to help them figure out the problem, to put ourselves in their shoes to figure out what the best technology choices are, how to buy them, what they should be bought at how to bring it together and a reasonable way how to actually stand it up for it for them. And then and then how to run it as a managed services long term. So when we talk about being a solutions, integrator really is taking all the strengths from the product world and all the strengths from what people think about as the system integrator world, and bring them together in a in a unique way with a level of reach that the system integrators would could never have based on the weight of their models, but would frankly never ultimately attempt to get into because of the way we can we can recognize the sheer number of touch points we have

Vince Menzione  08:33

what strikes me and that what your comments there are having known the old model before, right, we used to call it the transaction model. Organizations like insight, were very good at going beyond the transaction model, again, applying a level of services to support I think back in the early days of Wi Fi and some of those early implementations of technologies, imaging, computers, things like that, and applying that. And then the SI is we’re doing this other thing up here, right, but then relying on the insights of the world, you bring it all together. Now as I think about it, right? You’re bringing this, you’re bringing the whole solution set together and being a one one place that an organization can go to deliver that and you said the 3000 person organization, they may not work with a Capgemini, they may they’re looking for something extreme or midway between that right and then what they’re seeing on the transaction side is very hollow. I mean, not not to be subject or to look negatively on the channel. But there’s that transaction piece is not getting you what you need to get to an organization’s in this world of SAS in this world of hyperscalers. They’re looking for somebody to bring it all together, right? They’re looking for the ISV solutions to layer on top and create a great stitch together a complete solution for their organization,

Dee Burger  09:45

no question about me. Our premise is if you get more and more valuable to the customer, your business is going to do better in a linear sort of way. So all of that for us is trying to be more effective in solving customer problems. And

Vince Menzione  09:59

you brought up a really into Just one point here, right? Like you don’t look like from your pedigree and your background, your typical person that came out of the transactional world, right? The typical mold, there is somebody who came from that world. You came from Capgemini and spent 30 years in a very different environment. What does that look like to you? And how are you helping to lead that evolution?

Dee Burger  10:20

It’s an interesting one is it to evolution is a good word. So insights got a lot bigger services business, then we’re generally credited as having. So it’s a roughly billion dollar services business that has been built with a lot of acquisitions that would have looked like things kept them I would have acquired along the way, hardcore cloud skills, data skills, application skills, that type of stuff. I will say, when I first got here, one of the comments I made to Joyce was, I felt a little bit like a zebra and a field full of horses. And that is different I was I was the odd one. I feel like there’s a lot more zebras. Now, there are a lot more zebras that just didn’t recognize the zebras. As soon as you got out closer in the field, you realized there were a lot more stripes out there than that, then you realized in our services team. So there’s that I think, I think the two aspects that are unique from from my background that I’m able to bring to insight. One is services is not services is not services, right? So if you think about Capgemini, Capgemini, they had business lines. So doing management, consulting, doing finance and accounting, outsourcing, building an application, assisting with engineering, very, very different things, different buyers, different value propositions, in many ways. That’s what we’re talking about it inside of the solution integrator, we’ve got a wide range of things we can do for customers, very few scenarios would say, All right, let’s stitch them all together in one big pile, right. So it’s about how you have different faces to a customer, you work within their problem set, you put yourselves in their shoes really worked to help solve their problems. And then you go back into the, into the kitchen and figure out which ingredients you need to pull together to do it. So in some ways, that’s a it’s a very similar path. The other one is I got to Capgemini and kept doing when I was small, right. So the Capgemini entered was a part of Gemini consulting in the US and early 90s, it was $120 million. I left when it was, I don’t know, 23,000,000,020 4 billion, something like that. And so a lot of the steps along the way to scaling are things that insight is going through, starting off in a much more advanced position than the Capgemini I entered ultimately. But a lot of the things you do to scale to industrialize your processes to think bigger with regards to client or other aspects that that I’ve been able to bring.

Vince Menzione  12:36

So you brought up, you brought up the bigger picture of Capgemini. And what that was, what is in sight and what isn’t, is kind of the million dollar question there.

Dee Burger  12:47

I think it’s a good one. We’re never going to attempt to be Accenture, right, put Accenture out as the goal to Accenture’s got 800,000 plus or minus people now, doing all kinds of things. Where our unique opportunity is, is the way we fuse our two worlds together. Like if you if you go back and think about a Santa Monica, you go from selling to architecture to partners to warehousing and logistics to configuration to physical services, applications, managed services. There are companies in the world that compete with us in every one of those markets in no one of those things, are we the biggest company in the market, but there are no companies in the world. They’re bigger than that than us and each of those, right so our ability to provide balance our ability to solve problems in a more holistic way in the system integrator world, when you think about infrastructure, most of the time, that’s something the clients dealing with. That’s right. There’s a project plan and there’s an element in that project plan that says at some point somebody buys stuff, right? And in the reseller world, it really is all about you starting with the product just starting with what do we have to sell? You’re not starting necessarily with what the client’s problems are. What do we have to sell and how do we get them to buy more we’re we’re able to bring it together, start with the customers problems bring the right ingredients each time, the secret to Insight success, both now we’ve had a very good run of late but but even more so in the future is how to bring all that together. And that’s where our very resolute focuses.

Vince Menzione  14:21

Many organizations are learning to do more with less. And as you think about how you’re going to reach your revenue targets this year, I recommend you check out partner tab. A founding sponsor of Ultimate Partner partner taps pipeline discovery and CO selling platform will help your channel and sales teams to hit their revenue targets faster. Even with fewer resources. Partners app gives your team’s the new automation and partner data. You need to source more pipeline and close deals faster with your best partners. You can find out more information At partner tap.com. So focus on the customer, how are you training or evolving your sales organization to be more of that versus the old model?

Dee Burger  15:12

It’s an interesting one, we talked about this one a lot. Part of the answer is, there’s still a lot of specialized selling, right? It’s not like with, with a couple 1000 salespeople and 29,000 customers, it’s not like each of the 2020 9000 customers has to have the full conversation about everything. And so we’re really starting about thinking about in tears, we are we are a different insight to different tiers of the market. And we want to make intentional choices about customers, and where we focus. So at the top, call it 100 clients, we want to bring the full insight, we want to ultimately be in their strategic roadmap, we want to think about that relationship, not just next month, but next year, or three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, what role do we play in our clients business? And how do we help them along bringing what we have, ultimately, we’re not doing that for 29,000 customers. And so so the sales team really has to evolve with a range of people that are specialized in the different things we do, and then have a reasonably limited set of people that are expected to bring it all together and have a different type of kind of connected discussion. But it’s, but it’s important, the sales team that I met when I first got insight I was blown away by and I was really surprised not I didn’t have a negative expectation was gonna see. But the professionalism was, was absolutely fantastic. The question for us and the way we strategically position the business is always going to be balancing that specialist generalist line. And getting that in the right position to make sure we’re talking to our clients about the right things.

Vince Menzione  16:47

Yeah. And I’ve seen it firsthand. I mean, I’ve been to your facilities in Tempe and been close to your team over the years that I was at Microsoft, let’s talk about these times we’ve been living in right, there’s still some headwinds. I mean, we we call this a time like no other when we were going through the COVID pandemic. And now, we’ve been dealing with the economic headwinds, right, what are you seeing now that you didn’t expect to see during these times? And how are you achieving success during these times?

Dee Burger  17:14

I agree in that, no matter how crazy you think the world is, today, the odds are, it seems is going to be crazier tomorrow. You know, and it has been, it has been truly a wild ride for, let’s call it the last three years, doesn’t appear to be settling down anytime soon. So we don’t really bank a strategy upon that. The key way I think about it, and framing it is you go back into the old old days of 2019, the world was, for the most part in a series of equilibriums. Right there were there were enough PC shipments for people that needed them. There were enough lifeguards, for beaches, there were enough restaurant workers for restaurants, there was enough whatever for whatever, right, it had largely gotten into a into a balance. In 2020 2020. Everything was disrupted, immediately every equilibrium in the world was thrown off translated their market. So you take the end user devices, they actually, you know, in a strange sense shot straight up, right, you know, in a market that usually grew in line with population or GDP in some in some proportion, minus of innovations and product releases and stuff like that, all of a sudden, when when you’re actually working from both home and from the office, you need new devices, that market went crazy, that’s now kind of crusted and trying to find its own equilibrium services in the very beginning of that almost shut down. I remember sitting around thinking, you know, what, if this market gets cut by half, what do you do? How do you manage through that, and then had a huge boom of a couple years as as customers and companies realize that the people that and a time of uncertainty, like COVID was the people at the biggest disadvantage were those that had not invested in their technology, and that weren’t on that curve. And so there’s an over investment for a couple of years and services, probably the last two years have probably been the best two years in the history of the services industry that’s going to normalize as well. So when you look at that, you say, All right, it’s going to continue to be unpredictable, we’re not really going to know exactly what’s going to happen. What do you do? First thing you do is you focus, focus on the customer, if you’re doing a great job for your customer. And if you’re really delivering value into their business, you’re not going to be the one that that gets reduced, you’re going to continue to grow. The second one, though, Against this backdrop is how do you build resilience into the business model so that as things shoot up, or shrink or modulate over time, how do we make sure that we’re along for that ride, and really doing a good job and being dynamic with it. And then the third one is you just keep paying attention and you’re, you’re ready to adapt, as you need to adapt and aware that the things you take for granted one day may or may not be the same market conditions you might face next week.

Vince Menzione  19:57

You brought up a really good point first of all focusing on The customer is super important here. But I picked up on what I like to refer to as agility. Right? And I think it’s I think it’s a characteristic of great partners or great organizations that understand how to partner is having those listening mechanisms like how do you how are you listening to the customer? How are you listening to the market? And how are you pivoting? When you need to? Is there anything special you think about when you think about agility?

Dee Burger  20:22

That honestly, I think you said, it’s, there’s all kinds of noise, right? So several 1000 People talking to 10s of 1000s of customers, everything’s out there. The question is, as an organization, are you hearing it? Are you are you hearing it? And are you interpreting it? Or are you acting on it? My view of it, and some of the things we’ve adapted is creating sort of a periodic forum, so that you turn it into a discipline around how you adapt. The good news for me at that insight is I’m still so new, Everything’s new. Right? So I haven’t had time to get into some sort of rhythm where we’re things could get stale yet. But we talk about it as we a very tight knit leadership team, we talk a lot about the dynamics in the market, we review it as a team, at least once a month, have those discussions talk about where to adapt. And so I think the key is make sure your ears are open, you’re you’ve got the ability to interpret and you’re willing, a big part of it is the willingness to adapt.

Vince Menzione  21:20

So valued advice there. And he talked about I think, was 6500 partners, with an ecosystem. So you’ve been around this world of partnering for quite some time working with, we talked about Microsoft and all the major hyperscalers all the major software publishers, what do you believe in this world of partnerships? What do you see from the best partnerships that you work with?

Dee Burger  21:44

I think it starts with, there’s a real reason for the partnership, being a partner for the sake of being a partner. It’s not like, it’s not it’s not like being friends in middle school. You know, if you think about it, there’s a real reason, our business reason and the end, the partners business reason need to intersect in a way that we know how we drive value for each other. And we’re honest about that relationship. We’re honest about how it works, because I think you can do you can do an awful lot from that vantage point. I think the other one is, there’s a lot of partnerships that are rooted in corporate relationships, which is necessary, but nothing actually matters, unless there’s a field relationship. And so it’s that balance of, are we aligned strategically? Do we understand what we’re trying to do? Are We Connected in the right way? But can the folks that are actually dealing with a particular client or client situation? Can they get aligned? Can they work to take the aspects of the partnership that we thought about in a strategic way, and make it practical and tangible to a customer? I think that’s where an awful lot of partnerships struggle, is that it is it is hard to be able to run it on two separate levels, it’s two separate sets of people. It’s two separate incentives. And frequently, it’s two sets of discussions.

Vince Menzione  23:00

So what do you see from the best of the best there in terms of getting that level of alignment from the corporate conversation down to the field organization?

Dee Burger  23:07

I think it’s I honestly think it’s a it’s a focus question. So if if we go again, 2000 sales executives, 6500 partners, if we say, hey, hey, team, let’s focus on our 6500 partners get going, they have no idea what to do with that, right, and you’re leaving it to chaos. And so we work to be very targeted around which partners in which markets for what reason a lot of the architect community I talk to you about earlier, that architect community is that translation. Ultimately, we’ve got to be with our clients, giving them the very best we know about how to make their fortunes better. At the end of the day, that’s our reason to exist. That’s why our business is here. And being able to do so means that you’re able to focus a message a lot better with with who you’re working with, and what areas and you know why. And I think that translation gets gets down very well to a sales team. I think it’s when they’re left to their own devices. And your partner with partner a over here, Partner B over here and Partner C over here, and it just happens to be who took who out to lunch last? It’s it can’t be left purely to randomness.

Vince Menzione  24:13

So what I think I heard you say here is you’re relying Yeah, you have overlay resources that are supporting the organization from a solution perspective, right, their solution specialties. And when there’s a need from a client, you’re pulling in the right resources, the right partners to to address that customer’s needs.

Dee Burger  24:29

Absolutely. Right. And we know in advance the why to it.

Vince Menzione  24:32

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So conversely, when you’ve seen partnerships fail, what would you say to them now? Like what what was the kryptonite that got in the way of a successful engagement?

Dee Burger  24:44

I think a lot of it is adaptability. So there’s a strategic partnership that gets set. Let’s, let’s say, as we sit here in April of 2023, that somebody in January 2022 decided, hey, what’s the partnership going? Let’s go on this area. And the world is adapted a bunch, and the team is still in the old mode. Without having really thought about how the market is so dynamic. The partnerships also have to remain dynamic. The relationships have to be to be fostered, certainly at both those tiers, but the whole discussion about why we have the partnership, what we’re trying to do for customers, how it actually flows with the latest and greatest developments, I think that the key there is to be very dynamic, keeping that purpose in mind and keeping the two tiers the relationship in mind.

Vince Menzione  25:33

Yeah, good. Points. Cindy. President inside North America, it’s a big deal. I mean, you’re a publicly traded company, a big organization, very well respected in our industry. What got you to this point? Like, was there a pivot? Was there something a spark that happened to get you on the right track that got you on the track of success, both at Capgemini. And now here,

Dee Burger  25:56

I think I think the most important, I go all the way back to the beginning of my career. So I started with Gemini consulting, I was 22. And I went to my onboarding class, and everybody else was 30. And it was a unique situation, where if, if you designed an org chart, it was literally a diamond, there’s Zeos single point up here, a bunch of people doing a whole bunch of stuff, single point of the bottom, right here. Um, I was a research associate, I was hired, be I knew somebody Gemini consulting, they gave me a chance. And fairly quickly, I got put in a position where I was managing, and I started off attempting to manage the work really well, without an understanding that what you’re really managing is people. Yeah. And I think the key to to, if I look at my career, the thing that has helped me the most is an understanding of leverage, you know, if I, as an individual can make myself 50%, better, great. If I could make 10 People 10% better, that’s twice as good. If I can make 100 People 5% better, that’s another two and a half times as good as that. Right? So the idea of a recognition, particularly you take a company against a big company, right? If we can make if we can do small things and provide the right context and the right framework and the right, morale, boost assistance, whatever, to make 12,000 People marginally more effective. It’s better than anything else I could ever do that day, you know, and I think I’ve had a lot of experience the time over time running large organizations that but I think that principle is the key. And I think that what, what allows a success in a large organization,

Vince Menzione  27:32

focusing on their on your people. So it’s such an important lesson for all of us, right? Like you said, managing

Dee Burger  27:38

to help and not manage, yeah, help. Managing is one thing, right, coming up with a better idea for how they might do their job. That’s one thing. But to actually help, really is far, far more valuable.

Vince Menzione  27:49

I love what you have to say there. So we’re gonna have a little bit of fun. This is like one of my favorite questions I get to ask are our most amazing guests and you are hosting a dinner party dinner party could be anywhere. It could be a beautiful Kiwi Island, it could be in Tempe, Arizona, any of these locations would be fantastic. But you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. Who would you invite, and why?

Dee Burger  28:16

So I’m gonna give you an answer to this guarantee you’ve never had before. And we’ll never have again, my three. The first one the easy one with my background. So I went to Clemson so it invite Clemson’s head coach football Dabo Sweeney, unbelievable guy, I’ve got a watch him a bunch. Watch his philosophy. He’s been a extraordinary success at Clemson. Interesting personal history, all the stuff he’s ever come the positive attitude, the leadership, a lot of that actually met him. I mean, interesting enough. So I met Dabo walking around on the streets of New York City. I’m Joe Blow. I run into Dabo. I was left with a colleague, we’re going out to meeting at 50th and fifth in New York City. We were just grabbing lunch had to be back. I ran into Deborah walk on the street, had a chat with him. The conversation ended with Coach Sweeney. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. We’ve got to get back to our meeting. He sat there and talked to us for 20 minutes on the street didn’t know me from Adam. But as nicer guys, you ever see vegan in the conversation, his enthusiasm for what he was building was so obvious, and it’s a big part of why he was successful. So Deborah’s got the first seat. The second one would be a guy named Tim urban. Tim urban started a blog called Wait, but why I found him I was doing a role at Capgemini where I was responsible for our global digital business. So part of it was how do you organize 30,000 people doing work with data and cloud and everything else and pulling that together? Part of it was What does digital mean to the future of our business? And so in that I read everything I could trying to educate myself on I ran across Tim urban with an incredibly interesting take on how AI was going to evolve. Given how they would go Elon Musk, strangely enough, also found Tim urban thought he was so interesting. He invited him out to spend two or three days following him around. Teach him about neuro link and all the different things going on. So at Tim urban next to Dabo, and Tim urban, and the third one would be iron Rand. Yes. Who wrote Atlas Shrugged and the fountainhead she’s probably been gone for 50 years now. But I’ve read Atlas Shrugged about 10 times. And I think when you’re when you’re thinking about clarity around the purpose of what you’re doing, truly being valuable sorting out sorting out all the puffery that goes on in the world from from actual progress. I’ve always I’ve always loved that book. And I’ve used it as a way to center myself. So it’d be a very odd discussion at the dinner party. I’d have a great time. I’m not sure what the others would think of each other. But I would certainly have a great time in such an environment.

Vince Menzione  30:52

I think it’d be a great party, I might want to come Come join you. I’ve also read Atlas Shrugged and the fountainhead so I was a fan back in the day, I know you’re reminding me I need to go back to those lessons. There’s some really great lessons in our books. So

Dee Burger  31:07

they’re, they’re great books. I mean, the only issue with them at all is I think, Atlas Shrugged is about 1100 pages. So it’s not for the faint of heart.

Vince Menzione  31:17

I had a president of the company I worked for many, many years ago, who recommend the book, I purchased the book and it sat on my bookshelf for probably a year and a half before I finally cracked it open. Yeah, it took I think it might have been a summer project to read that book.

Dee Burger  31:32

He has better in the Kindle version. You don’t want to take the physical one on airplane, because it’s all you’re gonna take. You almost have to check it.

Vince Menzione  31:38

Yeah, it’s pretty thick. says this has been great day, I really enjoyed this conversation, getting to know you a little bit better here and welcoming you to our guests, any words of advice for our listeners, many of which are in this partner world, many of which partner with your organization on optimizing for their success throughout the rest of 2023? Well,

Dee Burger  31:59

I mean, go back to what I said before the world is resetting the world is resetting from a crazy, crazy shock. And I believe that right now, we’re in a volatile world winners and losers separate from each other, right? In a world where everything’s great. Everybody wins. Mediocre companies can do really well. I had a guy say before he described it as in a hurricane, even turkeys fly. But when the wind stops, gets who hits the ground first. We’re in a period where the wind has stopped. And it is a time for companies to differentiate. I’m really happy with where insight is and how we’re going to compete in that market and how we’re going to invest in our growth during a turbulent time. And I hope everybody else thinks the same way.

Vince Menzione  32:42

Right? Well, I’m rooting for your success as well and 2023. I love the progress you and the organization have made. Joyce has been doing an amazing job. I knew Joyce from her days at Dell when I was on the Microsoft side of that equation. So rooting for your success. excited to have you on board today. And thank you for joining our listeners.

Dee Burger  33:02

Thank you, Vince. I really enjoyed it.

Vince Menzione  33:03

Thank you. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Partner. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner, executive and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it. We all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail. And that ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Partner.com.

Announcer  33:56

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Partner.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partner. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner