We Built a Conference Where No One's Allowed to Pitch

Sixty-five GTM leaders. Tents in the Montana wilderness. No pitches, no name tags, no one asking what anyone does for a living. This is Arcadia, the leadership gathering Jason Yarborough built with his wife and co-founder Sam after years of watching partnerships get treated as an afterthought everywhere he worked. Three years in, they finally let us behind the curtain.Jason walks us through why the whole event is built around trust instead of transactions, how the programming has quietly flipped from almost all go-to-market content to nearly all personal development, and the four blunt questions he asks every partner when a channel stalls out. We also get into where AI is genuinely earning its keep in partnerships (it's not where you'd guess), why he thinks imposter syndrome is really just self-sabotage wearing a different name, and what it takes to run a company with your spouse without ever fighting about it. Sam joins near the end to talk about what three years of watching leaders show up and disconnect has taught her about trust.If your partner team only hears from sales when there's a lead to hand off, you'll want to hear how Jason fixed that.We discuss:Why partnerships still isn't treated as a native GTM functionThe four questions that turn around a stalled partner channelWhere AI actually helps in partner identification and enablement, and where it doesn'tBuilding a trust-first community instead of a pitch-first conferenceChapters(00:00) Introduction(12:50) The anti-conference conference(13:36) The community before the content(17:22) Three years of programming: from all-GTM to all-personal(21:27) Vetting who gets into a 65-person room(26:12) Imposter syndrome is just self-sabotage(27:32) Why partnerships still isn't a native GTM function(28:30) Where AI actually helps in the partner channel(30:18) Running Arcadia (and a family) with his wife(35:21) The science behind why this actually works(35:50) Uncensored questions: dream vacations and decompressing after Arcadia(39:59) Monday morning move: the four questions that reinvigorate a partner channel(41:27) Sam on trust, and what's next for ArcadiaWe are proudly supported by Nooks - One unified workspace for outbound! Learn more about Nooks today at https://www.nooks.ai/gtmuncensored