The Salesforce Career Show
Building a Successful Salesforce Team and Advancing Your Career with Samantha Bragg
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of building a successful Salesforce team and advancing your career? Join us as we discuss these topics and more with Samantha Bragg, the Director of Architecture at Rose Tree Solutions, who boasts 8 impactful years and 21 Salesforce certifications. With her expertise and insight, we uncover the importance of culture, core values, and how to recruit top performers for your team.
In this captivating conversation, we explore the challenges of getting to the authentic individual in an interview, as well as the role of a solution architect in helping businesses develop their strategy, process, and technology plans. Listen in as Samantha shares her work with Montrose Grace Place, teaching Trailhead badges to homeless and housing insecure youth, and exposing them to a potential Salesforce career path.
Finally, we discuss the importance of networking and community within the tech industry, and how understanding the destination and having representation can make a significant impact on one's career. Don't miss out on this inspiring conversation.
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of building a successful Salesforce team and advancing your career? Join us as we discuss these topics and more with Samantha Bragg, the Director of Architecture at Rose Tree Solutions, who boasts 8 impactful years and 21 Salesforce certifications. With her expertise and insight, we uncover the importance of culture, core values, and how to recruit top performers for your team.
In this captivating conversation, we explore the challenges of getting to the authentic individual in an interview, as well as the role of a solution architect in helping businesses develop their strategy, process, and technology plans. Listen in as Samantha shares her work with Montrose Grace Place, teaching Trailhead badges to homeless and housing insecure youth, and exposing them to a potential Salesforce career path.
Finally, we discuss the importance of networking and community within the tech industry, and how understanding the destination and having representation can make a significant impact on one's career. Don't miss out on this inspiring conversation.
And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce career show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.
Speaker 2:Okay, guys, welcome to the show. Another Wednesday, another great afternoon to get into some deep discussions with some really smart people about the Salesforce ecosystem, and I'm really excited that today we have a special guest with us. We have Samantha Bragg with us today, and Samantha is the director of architecture at Rose Tree Solutions. She's got eight impactful years in the Salesforce ecosystem. She's accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience that she's very keen to share with us today, aren't you, sam? And she's boasting a staggering 21 certifications Salesforce certifications and a mule soft certification under her belt. Her expertise in Salesforce is absolutely nothing short of extraordinary. Not only does she do her day job, but she's been a leading voice at several significant events, such as Texas Dreaming and Dreaming sorry, apostrophe and Dreamforce, and numerous user group meetings, sharing her insights, sharing her knowledge with the wider Salesforce community. I think what really sets Sam apart, though, is her commitment to giving back. Through her participation in MGP does trailhead. She's helped homeless and housing and secure youth gain valuable Salesforce skills, contributing to empowering the next generation of Salesforce pros, and we're going to get a chance in a little bit here to talk about that, so stay tuned, we're going to dive right into Sam's journey, unpack some of her strategies for achieving success and discuss her inspiring work in community building and philanthropy as well.
Speaker 2:So we're going to talk to Sam in just a moment, but first a little bit of housekeeping, one thing I wanted to do. I wanted to give a big shout out to Seattle and to New York. Seattle and New York are top podcast listeners on Apple and on Spotify. Our following has been growing tremendously, so if you're listening to this program and you haven't clicked follow, definitely do so. We've got some amazing past podcasts that we strongly recommend you check out, including last week's with Kristin Lengua I got it right this time who's the chief people officer for 10K, and you can check them out at 10KViewcom. And in two weeks from now, we have Mark Baker. Mark Baker is the director of delivery management at Salesforce for MuleSoft, so he's going to have a wealth of information from an insider's perspective with Salesforce. He'll be talking about the layoffs, the impact and some other things that people can do to hopefully future proof their career here in the ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Now one thing that I'd like to do is also just invite people in general. Please go ahead, and if you have a question, all you got to do on this show is raise your hand. We'll call on you. You can ask the question. If you're listening to this podcast and you'd like your question answered live on this show, you're more than happy to do that. I know we've got at least a couple today to cover And to do so you just have to message me. Josh at thesalesforcerecruitercom. Again, j-o-s-h at thesalesforcerecruitercom. Okay, so with that, let's go ahead and jump in here. If anyone has a question again, go ahead and raise your hand. Otherwise we're going to start talking to Samantha here. Hey, sam, hi, josh, all right, thanks for joining us on our show today. Really appreciate it And I hope that you've been having a great week so far. How was that introduction? I hope we got most of the good stuff in there.
Speaker 3:Um, I'm not used to hearing somebody say so many flattering things about me all the time.
Speaker 2:Well, we've got to fix that right. Let's change that. You just send me your list of your best friends and your closest family and I'm going to have some words with them, okay.
Speaker 3:I'll get right on that.
Speaker 2:Okay, Fantastic. So, look, we've had a little intro about you, but tell us specifically what is it you actually do in your current role.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. So in my current role I am the director of solution architecture at Rosetree. We are a Salesforce implementation partner. Um, my role is probably a hybrid between delivery excellence and solution excellence. So I have a large team that I work with. I've got all of our declarative folks roll up under my umbrella, so all of our architects and our consultants and senior consultants and principal consultants and CPQ, fsl, project managers. you know I make sure that we are staffing the right skill sets to engagements for clients so that everybody gets what they need. Um, on both sides of the equation, you know, our team has that fulfillment of doing good work and clients have that satisfaction of getting a good product. And I spend a lot of time reviewing solutions and builds with our teams. you know, kind of taking that that top down look of all of the experience that I've got to say, hey, here are some life lessons we've learned the hard way And I think that's maybe apply those here so that we're not doing the same thing again.
Speaker 2:Man, I like. How do you have time to sleep? or you know, watch, watch some Netflix.
Speaker 3:With all that going on, I have amazing team leaders that help me to keep the balls all up in the air and just a fabulous group of architects that keep all of our projects running really smoothly with really good solutions. That I'm almost unnecessary.
Speaker 2:Well, well, that's, that's amazing, you know. It just goes to show like it really takes a team like the right team, like all of our careers are tied to the quality of the teams that were in or build for ourselves. I mean, if, if anybody doesn't agree with that, i'd be shocked. But it's, it's just a truth and it keeps coming up. Every podcast I listen to, every conference I go to, every interaction I have with business leaders, like a couple of the ones that I spoke to today. It's absolutely critical. And you've been at Rose Tree for about four and a half years now, is that correct? Yeah, that's right. And in that time, i mean, have you guys what you've grown by at least 50% in the last couple of years, sort of a post COVID boom? is that accurate?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've. we've grown quite a bit over the last four years And we went from a team of probably 10 or so when I first started in 2019 to about a team of 50 now.
Speaker 2:That. You know that's incredible growth. I'm kind of curious. I want to, we want to talk about your career and your contributions. But I think it's really important too, because some of the people who listen to our program work They're. They're maybe not listening to the show because they need to break into the ecosystem, or maybe they're not listening to the show because they they want to be an architect although there are plenty of people, plenty of our listeners, in that position. But some of them are clients of mine or people who are running businesses, people who are working at Salesforce partners And they want to know, like, what's the code, like how do you crack the code to grow a Salesforce partner business? And I'm kind of curious are there, are there one or two or three things that you can kind of boil down? what has been sort of the non-negotiable critical few that has led to the success of your organization so far?
Speaker 3:Um, short, you know, the number one thing I would say is definitely our culture. You know, we, when we interview folks, when we're looking to add to the team, we definitely interview for culture as well as skill. We want to make sure that you're going to fit in and fit with our core values and our core beliefs, um, because we want to make sure that everybody's trying to achieve the same thing. You know, i like to I like to joke with people when I'm doing an interview that our team is very much made up of high achieving nerds. right, that that's what we're looking for when we're talking to folks, or those high achievers who are those self motivators who want to come in, and they have that passion for the platform. They have that passion to build good things, you know, and so we want others who share in that when we're adding folks to our team.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, of course, like everybody's worked somewhere maybe they even work somewhere right now where they know like there's some dead weight on the team, right, most hiring managers that I work with usually have someone that they want to hire or fire. It's sort of both And it's it's. It's I've seen it myself, stephen, and I have seen it when we work together at Robert Haff What it looks like when you have one person that can just really weigh down the team. I mean, it's, it's like I like to think of. You know, if you got 10 people all hanging on a rope and then there's just dead weight at the bottom, that that rope can snap and it can really undo so much work. So are there certain questions or like like, how do you, how do you figure out the appropriate behaviors of you know, we say culture, we say behaviors, it's the same thing. How do you identify and sort of, to the best of your ability, de-risk those hires when you're bringing them on board?
Speaker 3:You know, the questions kind of vary depending on the role and the expectation, right? So when interviewing somebody for, say, an architect position, we're looking for someone who exhibits more leadership capabilities, that they're able to modify their speech and their language and their word choices to suit different audiences, right? Some of it is some of it comes across in an interview with the body language. You know, is your camera on? Are you looking at the camera or are you looking at your keyboard? and I'm seeing the top of your head, you know. Are you distracted by what's around you And appropriate things in your background? you know, i'm judging you on all of these things when I'm interviewing you, right, because these are the things that clients are going to see. Yeah, it's going to come out.
Speaker 2:It's going to come out right.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And is there a question or two that you like? here's the thing people are often looking for, kind of a silver bullet when it comes to recruiting or when it comes to screening and interviewing, and you and I talked about this the other day, didn't we? Yeah, like, is there, you know what's sort of the bulletproof failproof? I know you're laughing because it's bullshit.
Speaker 4:It is?
Speaker 2:I always think it's. I don't think it's hysterical, i think it's a little bit sad. Honestly, when people are like I've got the best questions, it's like, well, great, but what about your ability to interpret those questions or follow up or identify the pink flags and the yellow flags that are coming with the answers So you can actually get to the truth, right? Because everybody's got a little bit of a persona. I'll admit I have a little bit of a persona. When I'm on a podcast, it's different than when I'm hanging out with a friend having a cigar It's not the same thing, right And so we tend to meet the person that people want us to meet when we're in an interview and kind of breaking through and getting to that authentic individual and really figuring them out right. That's kind of the challenge. Do you have any words of wisdom for our listeners about? you know what are some of the steps you take when you're screening for top performers on your team?
Speaker 3:Sure. So one of the questions that I always ask towards the beginning of an interview and you know, kind of really speaks a lot is I will introduce myself and I will tell candidates up front hey, here's what we're going to go through, here's what we're going to do, the cadence of the interview. We're going to start with some quick introductions so we get to know each other, so we're not strangers on the screen, because that's weird And I will always go first to set the tone. You know I will give a very abbreviated three minutes or less. Here is my background, here's who I am, here's what I do, and then ask the candidate to do the same. You know, having laid out the expectations that we're doing abbreviated intros, you know that I've looked at your resume or your LinkedIn, you know profile, that we've got other things that we're going to cover, and then ask them to introduce themselves.
Speaker 2:I like that You're literally talking about giving them an example of the tabo and pace that you want the conversation to be conducted in.
Speaker 3:Right, And then I look to see you know, are you taking 20 minutes to regurgitate your LinkedIn profile to me, Or are you hitting the high notes Are you telling me all about? here are my best accomplishments, my highlight reel, You know. here are the shining star examples of who I am. your chance to brag about yourself before we get into things, Right. Yeah, do you think?
Speaker 2:like, let's say, if you reflected, maybe, on the last 20 people that you've interviewed, how many of them do you think talk too much?
Speaker 3:Five at least.
Speaker 2:Okay, at least five. So 25% of the people. Okay, right. And anyone who talks too much? is that enough to kind of like sort of set the wrong tone or set the wrong kind of standard in your own imagination for how successful they'll be working on the team?
Speaker 3:It is. You know, i'm usually yes, i'm going to fully going to caveat that and say usually yes, but not always, because there's, there's a few things there. It shows a, you know, a lack of understanding of the situation. It shows a lack of understanding of time management and we're consulting, you know, and so you've got to, you've got to be there in the moment with the clients and the conversation and, you know, be situationally aware.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i hope if no one learns anything other than this, like if you're going to take something out of this. Right, i think you're spot on here from a stats standpoint, sam. You know about 25% of people just they blow it and it's not because they didn't do a good job in their last job, it's not because they don't have the ability in the skill set and it's not because they don't want to do the work Right. It's not simply because they have failed to prepare their ability to communicate the critical few when asked to do so, and particularly in the partner world, i think any kind of consulting type role man, that is absolutely a must. That doesn't mean, just now someone asks the question, just say yes or no.
Speaker 2:You know you got to hallucinate, but this, this too much talking thing I probably talk too much to. But but the reality is, is it's a, it's a big no, no, anything else that since we're giving, since you're sharing some really good perspectives here on bringing people on board When you talk about culture, right, and here's the thing Kristen and I got into this a little bit a couple weeks ago when she was on the show. So the difference between I think it was Kristen, but we talked about the difference, maybe, between culture and behaviors, right, because sometimes we think culture like what's the culture of a company? But is it culture or are they just sort of common behaviors that people share? I'm just kind of curious, like philosophically, what your take is on this.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of it is definitely behaviors. But there's also that aspect of you know, like your I don't necessarily want to say like your morals or your ethics but you're driving forces behind those behaviors, right, if they would based on behaviors and you make a lot of mistakes, then that can be interpreted in a potentially negative light, when it wasn't malintentioned, right, you know. But definitely, definitely, behavior is a big part of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, and that's what I see too. You know, i just I'm kind of asking everybody this about culture versus behavior because I have yet to kind of pin it down, you know there's. So we, vanessa and I talked about it this winter for a little bit And it's, it's really. And, by the way, if you're listening and you're wondering where my co-host is, vanessa is at London calling. So she's at the Salesforce conference in London. I just saw an amazing picture of her looking out the window of a tall building looking down on the gherkin in downtown London. So I think she's having a great time And on the next show we're going to be able to get a nice little recap about how this event went for her.
Speaker 2:Sam, can you spend? I want to talk about your career and how you got into everything and some of the contributions that you're making to the community as well. But since we're sort of talking about you know what partners can do or what you know what you have done to help grow an amazing team, what are some of the things that clients do that you work with that really help you, to help them succeed? Right, like we all know, they're good clients and there's bad clients and there's a bunch of people or organizations in between right. So when you think about sort of that ideal client, what are some of the qualities and behaviors that they're bringing to their partnership with you when you're consulting with them?
Speaker 3:You know, as almost counterintuitive as this may sound, a client who recognizes that it is a partnership, that hiring a partner does not necessarily equate to pressing an easy button. You can't just go. we need to set this up. Here's the access to our org. Good luck to you And off you go.
Speaker 2:Right, because we don't.
Speaker 3:Right, you know it requires a time commitment on both sides of the table, and so the clients who recognize that they do need to be active participants in discovery, that they do need to be active participants in configuration reviews and they do need to be active participants in UAT testing are the clients who are the most successful because they're investing in their system. Right, they're investing in their future. We can build anything, but we need to know what to build to suit that client's specific business process, that client's specific needs. Right, because no two companies are the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an incredible point that you've just made And I'm kind of curious, like if you were to get. Well, let me just backtrack a little bit, one of the consultants I have. He's working for a partner. He's a terrific guy and I've known him for some time And we got into a discussion recently because the client of my client so the client of the partner they're just not, they're dragging their heels on discovery Right In an incredibly slow, slow way. It's just not working for them. They want to do discovery over one hour sessions across 12 weeks instead of knocking it out a couple of days, which they could do. Right, they definitely could do. And so what do you do when you have a client that just isn't? They're just kind of dragging their heels. And I'm going to ask the second question too Do you think that salespeople in the partner system could do a better job of sharing the importance of the partnership?
Speaker 3:I'm going to answer your second question first. I've worked at a couple of consultancies and you can definitely tell the difference when expectations are set up front during the sales cycle, right, when it's explained to clients what goes into a project, what the expectation is on their side, what they need to do to come to the table and be successful. Now, that's not to say that the words don't fall on deaf ears occasionally, but it's important for long-term success of the relationship with the client and for long-term success of the project that every expectation is laid out clearly, right. I have a project manager that I work with at Roastree who likes to say projects are not mystery novels. Nobody should be guessing what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that, that's great.
Speaker 3:So it's important from the very beginning to set the tone of the relationship appropriately Right, to make sure that sales and delivery are in lockstep with what is our message, what are our expectations, so that it carries through the entire relationship.
Speaker 5:I'm just curious, samantha, does that resonate with every customer? Are there ones that just say I just want to get this done?
Speaker 2:This is Peter Gonza, by the way, piping up. Thank you, peter, keep going.
Speaker 3:Of course There's always clients who are like I want to get it done. There are always clients who are they're going to come and they're going to say, well, i don't need a whole methodology for project management, or I don't need my solution documented, or we don't need to do UAT, we just need to get it done. We do our best to explain what the potential ramifications of those life choices will be. We do our best to mitigate the risks as much as possible, but at the end of the day, we can't spend a client's dollars for them. As much as you want to lead the horse to water, you can't make them drink.
Speaker 2:Do you think it's mostly like a price conscious? They can spend whatever it is. Let's say they can spend a hundred grand, but when you throw in UAT and some other documentation now it's 110 or 115, and it's just beyond their budget. Do you think it's mostly a money thing or just a lack of interest in involvement? or they just aren't sold on it yet?
Speaker 3:I don't think it's necessarily one thing specifically across the board. We've worked with clients who have been burned by bad implementations of tools in the past. We've worked with clients who this is their first major IT project and they don't understand that those things are really important.
Speaker 2:Who's never done an IT project being in charge of this?
Speaker 3:I don't get to make those decisions.
Speaker 2:You don't. Oh, come on, sam. It's incredible to me like the sort of mess that people make. I was talking to someone recently and they said look, what we do as partners is we mostly go in and we fix everything that got messed up with the prior partners. I've heard this from a number of different partners and delivery managers or directors of delivery in the past. The one thing that seems to ring true is it's not so much that the partner really messed up, it's that the client didn't listen to the partner the first time. They made mistakes and then were too embarrassed to go back to the original partner and then have to go find someone else to fix the thing that they should have handled accurately the first time around. Do you think that's the case?
Speaker 3:I definitely think that's the case. A lot of times There are clients who you know they'll start a project, and especially the ones who are like get it done, get it done. We say, great, let's do some discovery. Who are we inviting to the table? And the stakeholder goes just me, I know all the things and refuse to bring in more SMEs to provide more insight and opinions and thought leadership around what happens in their business. And so, right from the beginning, a project really gets hamstrung by a lack of true insight into what's going on. Because I can tell you, as as a director, I don't know all the things that my team does intimately enough to say Let me tell you how my business completely runs, from the top to bottom. I don't.
Speaker 6:I'm not involved in those cases Sorry.
Speaker 5:No, i was just going to say so. I talk to partners all the time, and at size typically will take. You know, anybody with a heartbeat And one of the difficult questions I often ask them is you know you have to learn to say no. Right, and that's the question that I have for you. Have you ever said no to an actual client?
Speaker 3:I say no all the time.
Speaker 5:Awesome.
Speaker 3:I do. I say no all the time. I do because when you become an order taker, you stop being a thought leader, right? And clients are hiring partners and bringing someone in hopefully to give them direction on what is the best way to get this done? What's going to work for my business? What is going to be, you know, the most scalable solution? What is going to increase our speed? What is going to allow us to automate more of our processes?
Speaker 3:And most of the time, those clients don't have the Salesforce expertise on staff to say here is the best practice, Here is how we should architect our system, here is what we're doing. They're hiring the partner for that. And when the partner says here is what you should be doing, because this follows architectural best practices, this follows, you know, code writing best practices, this follows automation best practices And a client goes well, that's not what we wanted to do, okay, well, let's talk about that, you know. Or when the client comes to Discovery and they go, this is what we want you to build, the first word out of my mouth is always no, and it's a shock. It's a shock to a lot of clients because they're not used to hearing no, you know, but it gets that attention real quick of every year in the room When you redirect the conversation to say okay, i need you to explain to me what you do And I will tell you how we're going to build it in Salesforce, because that's what you hired me to do.
Speaker 2:So there you go, sam. I love that. In fact, two days ago I was listening to Realist Fuck with Andy Frisela. He's a he's a podcaster and kind of interesting guy And he had a nice little session on all about, basically on like raising standards, holding your standards in your organization and what to do about quote, unquote.
Speaker 2:Yes, men, right, the people who just nod and say yes all the time, and I loved what you said. You just to reiterate or not reiterate, but to emphasize it, i think you just said you know, once you start just saying yes all the time, you're no longer a thought leader, right? I don't say I'm like that's it, that's it, that's a perfect quote. And you know there are so many people in in the world that really struggle with all sorts of things confidence, imposter syndrome right, i just read an article on Andrew McCarthy and how he suffered from imposter syndrome during his years of being in the Brat Pack. Again, i might be aging myself out here talking about him and Molly Ringwald, but you know it's a real thing. We've talked about it on the show before, but this idea that when you just say yes and nod, it doesn't really work out. And you know I say no to clients all the time.
Speaker 2:We probably say no to about half the clients or organizations that reach us out, to us for our help, because they're just not in line or they won't operate within the. You know, basically, the road that we have built that always leads to success. I mean our organization. In four years, we haven't had a single person fired from a full-time job in four years, right, i don't know any other recruiting company that can say that, right, but it's because we, it's only because we say no, it's only because we don't take on every single client, and it's only because the clients that we work with and continue to work with have.
Speaker 2:You know, look, we got to. You got to listen to your clients' needs, right, and you got to do the thing for them that they need. You've got to have an exceptional product or service or whatever it is you do. It's got to be amazing, otherwise you don't get to work with them again. You don't get to stay in business five or more years, right, like it just doesn't. It's not going to happen, but it hinges on this, this idea of the ability to say no when needed, and then, of course, knowing how to say no is critical. So how do you say no Like? how do you have these conversations without necessarily, you know, offending someone or embarrassing someone when you're having these discussions, sam?
Speaker 3:That's a hard question for me to answer. I am a very direct communicator and I literally just say no. I don't leave it as a no or I don't leave it as just a no. For me, it is essentially shut down that path. We're not going there. Here is where we are going and redirect the conversation in the direction that I think it ought to be going. Instead of yeah, when clients are like hey, i need you to build me an object to hold this, i don't think that's a great idea. Let's talk about what you need to be in that object and we will help you find the right place for it to be.
Speaker 2:Right, i love that We've got a hand raised. Jason's like what's up? Jason?
Speaker 6:Yeah, hello Smith, i really like what you were saying right there. I want to piggyback onto that and also about the previous comment about how you'll have an executive who is trying to speak for everyone instead of bringing SMEs there or end users there. My role as a technical trainer I feel that pain when I come to the training and the end users say what about this? We say, oh, that's a great consideration. Thank you for bringing that up. This is going to now send everything in another direction. Being able to bring that further, shifting that left into the project before things are built is always better. I think that's important expertise to bring as far as saying no to someone who's trying to represent everyone right there, bringing them to provide that expertise, just as you were just saying, with the object as well, about the architecture, how they may be thinking of one architecture, and you could bring your expertise, based off of your experience, to provide another architecture, another way to say no, in addition to just being able to explain how things may look and being able to map things over so they could be able to see, instead of a takeover, they can understand the transformation because they could see how it relates. They're able to grasp onto what they already know. So it's not a huge tectonic shift, it's they're able to see how it goes from their level of thinking. Just as how people are, humans are able to learn. We're not thinking machines that feel, we're feeling machines that think. So we have to be able to help people learn incrementally. That's how that goes onto that approach.
Speaker 6:Another one that I picked up from the past Life Fire I've had we're doing community organizing and helping people get registered to vote is with having people unravel their own ideas and concepts by uncovering the Dunning-Kruger effect. So the Dunning-Kruger effect is when someone knows just enough to be dangerous to themselves. They think they know too much. So they have unconscious competence. So they don't know what they don't know and they don't know that. So they have unconscious I'm sorry, unconscious incompetence. Unconscious incompetence, so unconscious they don't know. There you go And, yeah, you just broke down the whole curve of that. It's a curve that looks like a bell, going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. So now you know, oh bong, you realize that you don't know, and then you're learning. So now you're having conscious incompetence until finally you have unconscious competence. So that's where it's just instinctive, oh, it just seems so natural for you, where it looks completely complex for someone else, you don't even realize it. But I'm digressing with that little lesson right there, that fun lesson.
Speaker 6:What I wanted to bring up is that if someone is saying no, they feel like they're an expert. You can and you're trying to explain, but they're just not listening because they're just really completely walled in with their ego. You can ask for them to explain it. Oh wow, you're a bicycle expert. Well, how does a bicycle work? Well, so people realize how little of an expert they are when they actually have to explain things. Or when you ask questions that you could be able to think of, critical questions based off your expertise. You could be able to poke holes, to have them take on your thinking through those questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that one. Jason, You know there's an exceptional book on negotiating by a fellow named Tim Foss, V-O-S-S, called Never Split the Difference. I recommend it for everyone, whether you're. Oh, Chris Foss, thank you, What did I? say Tim.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i'm so crap with names I honestly don't know why I got in this industry, but okay. So thank you, chris Foss. So you've read it, and one of the first things, chapter one, is just a simple question, which is well, how do I do that? Right, i want this done, okay. Well, how do I do that? Well, you just click on the buttons and it's like, right, but that's going to lead to this. Like, what do you think that will lead to? But what if I told you? it's going to lead to X, y and Z. Is that something you still want me to do? You know, like, how do I circumvent my own expertise to do something stupid? Like, why would I do that? You know, and, using plain speak, right. So it's good stuff. And I think too, since we're on the subject of this, of like how you tell people know, or how you give someone, how do you tell someone something that they probably don't want to hear, i'll tell you a quick little story.
Speaker 2:There was this fella came in back in the day. He was looking for at the time, a job in IT. He had a modicum of experience. He'd been a captain in the military, in the army, in the US army. He was a nice guy, a quiet guy, and he came in and sat down with me and you know I was nice and friendly And he kept his leather jacket on during the whole conversation And so at the end I said, hey look, are you open to some recommendations? And, honestly, his face, he said yes, because who's going to say no? right, but his face, his face said no, his mouth said yes, And I told him. I said look, ben, you've got to lose the jacket when you come into an interview. It looks like you're ready to bolt out the door. Now this fella happened to be the fiance of a friend of mine, someone I knew, and I heard through the grapevine that he was extremely offended that I said anything about his jacket. Right, because I think he carefully plans his wardrobe that day. I don't know what the story was, but about a year later he goes and he decides to skip out on tech And he goes to become a state trooper in Oregon And there is this one final step.
Speaker 2:There's like 20 guys up on the stage or something, where I forget exactly what the scenario was, but basically there was a final step to being able to make the cut to the academy And he got to skip that step because he was the only one who took off his jacket for the interview. And he reached out to me and he's like man, I got to tell you thanks, dude, you saved me a lot of heartache. And he was like, i got to tell you I was pissed Like I thought you were arrogant, i didn't want to take your advice, i didn't want to listen to you. Like who's this guy? and I'm a captain and like all of this sort of stuff. He's like, but seriously like.
Speaker 2:Maybe I would have got in anyway, but I was literally the only one out of this whole class of cadets that didn't have to do something, all because I took my jacket off. So thank you. Sometimes we tell people the truth and the benefit doesn't, doesn't get realized for six months or a year or even a few years down the road. So I appreciate that you can hold people accountable to that. Go ahead, jason.
Speaker 6:Yeah, you know, and so actually there is another tip from Chris Voss about that that you can be able to race them for impact by overstate, saying hey, listen, we're going to give some feedback. It might seem a little insulting but it's, you know, taking with the best of intentions, it's given with the best of intentions. So we're going to say something. You know it might feel a little painful, so so to overstate this way you under deliver, you know like it's like really not too painful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's called lining. We call that lining back in my car car sales days back in 96 to 98. Right, you line someone. It's like, yeah, it's. You know what? were you thinking? you wanted to pay for this, like 500 a month, even if you know, even though they could probably get it for four or something like that. So that's, that's lying, very you know, used car car sales, you think. But it's lining, it's priming, it's human behavior And there's so much knowledge that we have about this type of communication, proven studies that have have demonstrated this sort of thing, like even someone looking at.
Speaker 2:I did this with my son, ali, who retested for his SATs on Saturday to just read some really awesome positive things about being successful before he walks in and takes his SAT. Right, because it actually it actually or like sharing some facts about you know the success of students who take this test on a Saturday, like whatever it is. But you prime your brain that you're going to be successful. It's not too dissimilar from power posing, which if you type in power pose, power posing, ted talk you can find something out about it. But it's really about priming your brain to be ready to think about things in a very specific way And I've always called it lining. Some people call it priming, and I love that. You've brought up what what Chris Voss said. I think I used to know a Tim Voss. I think he used to be a client of mine, like 15, 20 years ago, so I think that's why I said that.
Speaker 2:Guys, we're 45 minutes into the show, so we're going to do a quick mini announcement. If you're just joining us right now, you're listening to our amazing guest, samantha Bragg, who is director of solution architecture at Rose Street Solutions, a Salesforce partner. We have with us on the floor Peter Gonza. We also have Jason Psychowitz contributing. Vanessa, who's always on the show, is in London at London Calling right now.
Speaker 2:If you are curious about advancing your Salesforce career at all, i want to make a couple of recommendations to you. Number one continue to join us on this show and on this podcast. Make sure that you're subscribing on whatever platform you like. You can just type in Salesforce career or Salesforce career show and it will come up. The other thing that you can do is check out expand exchange. You can just type in expand exchangecom. This is a directory of resources that Vanessa and I put together. It's handpicked, well vetted contributors to the ecosystem, so that if you're an architect or you're coming from the military or you're a BA or you're an admin, you can quickly get to the kinds of communities and support and information that you need to advance your career, advance your knowledge and be a better contributor to the company that you're in and advance your career, even if that means you have to leave your company. Check out those resources.
Speaker 2:The last thing I wanted to share is a couple of critical positions that we're hiring for right now. One of them is actually a director of delivery over Salesforce core delivery. It's for an exceptional partner that we absolutely adore and love. They have hired I think, eight or nine people from us in as many months and everyone there absolutely loves it. I got a text from our most recent placement and he said Josh, these people are great, they're just fantastic. So it's a wonderful place to continue your career and grow.
Speaker 2:But, specifically, this isn't just being director of core. This is also someone who can walk in with those methodologies and delivery practices that are so critical and vital. They do a good job, they get stuff out the door right, but it's not as uniform as they would like it to be, so they want a nice heavy header to come in and drive some methodology change in the organization. So if that sounds like you or if that sounds like someone you might know, make sure that you point them towards me or towards Steven Greger, and you can find Steven with the V-G-R-E-G-E-R on LinkedIn or here on Twitter, and we'll do our best to take care of the most candidates. And then the other position is a B2B Commerce Cloud Pro.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we're looking for engineers, developers, potentially architects. And, by the way, because we do have an international audience, i want to say we're in over 25 countries And so this job you can work anywhere. Anywhere except a couple countries where there's some conflict going on. They're open to consideration. So if you are a B2B Commerce Cloud Pro, make sure that you reach out to Steven Greger or me, josh at thesalesforcerecruitercom, or Steven with a V-S-T-E-V-E-N at thesalesforcerecruitercom, get in touch with us And if you know someone who's interested or might be great for this position, we pay exceptionally good referral fees. Okay, so that's always been the case And it always will be the case, because building this network and supporting us to help people get amazing jobs should always be rewarded, and I think some cash in your pocket is not a bad way to do it. So there we go. All right, and Steven, we've got to get you on here so that you can speak too. All right, yeah, elizabeth.
Speaker 4:Good afternoon, thanks so much. I've had a question but didn't realize I didn't just specifically raise my hand And yeah, good boy. So, samantha, i just started following you, of course, and a few months ago I thought to myself I'm a salesforce consultant now And I am inspired and looking to become a solution architect myself in a couple of years. I'm thinking maybe one or two years, i don't know how long it'll take, but it's something I'm definitely started researching. And my question for you I know, like I said, you're the director And so you lead obviously lots of other architects and things of that nature. So I think my question for you is when you're working with other architects or when you have architects on different projects, do you tend to have solution architects as a separate role from enterprise or technical architects, or do you tend to have them wear multiple hats?
Speaker 3:That is such a great question. We tend to have them as a separate role from a technical architect or from an enterprise architect, because the expectations of those roles are very different And the skill sets for those roles are usually very different for what they bring to the table. A technical architect is going to be very focused on the technical side. They're looking at the system landscape, the integrations, the data migrations, the code, all of the technical pieces of a build. An enterprise architect wants to have a very broad picture of the enterprise in general.
Speaker 3:What is everything that's going on? What is the strategy? What is the long-term goal of your IT and your business? How do we break that out into manageable steps to get there And a roadmap? How do we make sure that there is alignment between departments and between the systems so that everything works together And a solution architect is kind of in the middle. It's the marriage essentially of the strategy and the technology to be able to understand what is the strategy and how do we get there from a more technical aspect than where I would expect an enterprise architect to get to, but still understanding the business part more than I would expect a technical architect to get into, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 4:Yes, it does. That's helpful. As a social architect, i heard you just mentioned where they're helping the business with the strategy. I'm assuming you mean helping to develop. Is it just the business strategy or the process, or just the tech strategy, or all of the above?
Speaker 3:It can really be all of the above. A lot of times we'll work with clients and sometimes it's the but we would assume would be the easy questions that really throw them off because they don't have a process or a plan or even any concept that they need something. It can be as simple as well. How do we know when a lead gets passed from marketing to sales? What's the trigger point? What is the handshake The client goes? I don't know. Or how do we know when to move from one sales stage to another? What is our sales process? How do we hand off from sales to production or to service or to whoever is downstream from that? How does sales interact with marketing? A lot of these different interdepartmental handshake areas where we're passing from one to another.
Speaker 3:A lot of clients struggle with that. They don't know. Or if they have an idea, they've never formalized their process or their plan. So a solution architect sometimes even will go hey, let's map out the process, we're going to come back. It's things that a BA would do even. Let's map out the process and let's make sure we understand. How does your business work? What is your strategy, even at the very basic level of just this specific process, not even an enterprise level strategy.
Speaker 4:And I have. I'm sorry, i've got one more question. Go for it, elizabeth.
Speaker 2:This is great. I mean, look, guys, this is what the show is for. This show started because of all the requests for the time of me or other professionals on my staff from people And we just you know we're like not enough hours in the day. This is why we started this program three years ago. So you keep running there, elizabeth, and I also want to make sure that you get a chance to talk about your organization and what you guys are doing to help the community also, so make sure you take a moment for that.
Speaker 4:Oh, certainly I should be happy to do that, and as soon as Samantha can answer my last question based on what she was just saying, because one of the things that, while I've been researching more about solution architects, i'm trying to make sure I understand the difference between that and a consultant or, as you just mentioned, like a BA right? So there's a lot of business analysis that goes on the strategy side or almost similar to consulting. So can you maybe point out maybe some of the differences between a solution architect and a consultant?
Speaker 3:Sure. So a solution architect is still going to be consultative, right. But when folks move into that solution architect role, there's a certain level of experience that you've achieved. You've worked on a lot of projects. You've gotten that experience of seeing different orgs doing multiple implementations, learning some of those life lessons, probably the hard way.
Speaker 3:I'm sure we all have The first time you ask yourself why do I need a sandbox when you're a first year admin? right, but it's more than just the technical skills. Consultants will come in and they've got some of those technical skills. But a solution architect is more a big picture thinker. Right, they can say what is your need now? What are your needs in the future? How can we architect the framework for your future needs so that what we're building for today's needs don't inhibit you or prohibit you from being able to meet your future needs? They also have more highly developed soft skills, right, it's very important to be able to command the room to modify the language based on who it is you're speaking to, because the story you tell to the C-suite and the story you tell to the IT team, while they tell the same story, they're not written the same way, right?
Speaker 2:You mean? no, doesn't translate to everybody.
Speaker 3:No translate. You sometimes need to use different words for no when you're talking to the C-suite right, No OK.
Speaker 3:But you want to make sure when you're selling. The vision of this is what we're going to build for you. This is how it's going to impact your business. This is where you're going to see process improvements or system improvements or a return on your investment. Because of these changes And this is how we're going to get there The IT team is going to want more of the nitty gritty detail. The C-suite wants the big picture. The business leaders and the department heads want to know what's in it for them and why should they care, And an architect needs to be able to answer all of those questions to those different stakeholders in the language that they need to be spoken to to get that buy-in.
Speaker 4:OK, that's perfect. That's really helpful. I appreciate that, Samantha. That helped me a lot because, again, I was just trying to make sure I understand the difference between the two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question, Elizabeth, and a really terrific response. Sam, You've been so quotable so far this evening. Truly, we're one hour in. We'll probably have a hard stop in 30 from now, but it's just been terrific. So thanks for such an eloquent response on that And honestly, I never really thought about it. I mean, I guess this might be one of those unconscious competence things where you can't necessarily articulate it, you just get it already.
Speaker 2:Elizabeth, since you are here and have been brave enough to jump in and be a speaker, could you do us a favor and please tell us a little bit about Black CRM Tech.
Speaker 4:Certainly, josh, i'd be happy to. Black CRM. Tech is something that I started gosh over a year ago in some change. I initially started on Clubhouse and moved over here to Twitter And I like being able to try to have a platform specifically to address the needs of Black professionals in tech, especially, of course, specifically Salesforce, as CRM is kind of the hint there. I decided to start doing that because I was, of course, having difficulty finding others in the Salesforce ecosystem like myself as I was trying to learn to grow, to meet and network with other individuals, and it really just started gravitating more to having safe spaces. So, although I may not have done Twitter spaces in quite some time, we started with just having safe spaces for asking questions similar to this, but also different, because, again, there are different needs for our community, but a lot of times are unaddressed or just not even asked about, and with that, a lot of times.
Speaker 4:I'd like to focus on hearing stories from other Black professionals who have started making their way in the Salesforce ecosystem, the Ohana, and also being able to share resources, as one of the messages that Salesforce keeps talking about that you do not necessarily have to have a college degree. I said, well, you know what. There are a lot of folks that may be working in retail or education I'm a former teacher from way back when a call center done that too And I've done a million things But the point being that folks with or without a college degree, of course, as you all know, can be able to get into a lot of these different Salesforce career roles, but have no idea about that, where to start the resources, Of course, now Salesforce has made a lot more career paths a little bit easier to understand, but still there are folks who need help bridging that gap and even just becoming aware of what's out there, because tech is so fast, but just providing just a little bit of those resources to consider Salesforce as an option, as a way to start getting into the technology roles. So that is where I try to step into that gap. A lot of times.
Speaker 4:I do a lot of mentorship, looking at resumes, linkedin profiles, of course, as well, and it's been a great journey so far in speaking at conferences too. So next week, dreaming in color, first Salesforce conference, or is the second year actually Salesforce conference, specifically Black Tech Professionals, and I like to speak on career development, which is why I love listening into the career show when I have an opportunity to do so, and last year I talked about career sponsorship And this year I'll actually be addressing what it's like to get into Salesforce consulting, especially at a big consulting firm. So that is a little bit of, as y'all can imagine, coming from industry versus consulting. A lot of folks, as y'all said, ask some of these questions And this is a great opportunity to share that with different groups. So that's a little bit of my spiel on Black, seattle and Tech.
Speaker 2:That's great, elizabeth, and where can our listeners who want to connect with you or want to be involved in the community that you're building, where can they go to do that?
Speaker 4:Oh well, certainly So, of course, here on Twitter, Elizabeth's doing that Same on TikTok right, Gotta reach people where they are, which is key and important And, of course, same on LinkedIn as well. Elizabeth C Knot, it's the same across all three platforms And, of course, each of those platforms have links to my link share as well that provide a bit more information on some of those same resources, but those are the best ways to reach me. Again, as I said, that's where the people are.
Speaker 5:Everybody should follow Elizabeth. She's amazing. Hey, elizabeth, one of the things I wanted to one of the many amazing things you just said I wanted to reinforce was when you were talking about college degrees and university degrees right, and I got hired into Salesforce for a role that required right In quotes, air quotes, air quoting here but you can't see Required a bachelor's degree And I've had that challenge my entire life. So there is a past there And I'm really glad to see that the industry is finally starting to recognize that It wasn't by choice. I'm not downplaying education at all. I think it's quite valuable. Just the circumstances. In my case I wasn't able to do it. But Salesforce took a chance and I had a great champion, the person that brought me in And I was actually able to get into Salesforce without any kind of a degree. No-transcript.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, i absolutely love that. Peter, thank you for sharing that, and that's what we need more stories of and more companies doing more of. My company I was on an initiative helping with putting together an apprenticeship program. The applications had just closed, but we're doing specifically just that, and there's a lot of other companies that are helping with things like making. There's lots of fellowships, internships, all kinds of stuff, and I like to share those things because that's important We want to. Salesforce is so focused on equality and inclusiveness And I think there's helping to set that trend for roles in this career 100% agree.
Speaker 5:One of the things that it speaks to the most is and I'm not telling you anything you don't know already, but diversity. And one of the things I loved and valued so much about working at Salesforce was there was diversity. And it's not just about different, whatever groups of people that we might call it, but people that are educated, people that are not educated, because the interaction of all these different upbringings and experiences, that's true diversity And it being extended to education, it's just a logical thing. So I really value that And I love everything that you're doing, And I wish I could have sponsored the first conference that you put on it. I remember we spoke really quickly but it didn't come together, So I missed it, but maybe next time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Thank you, Elizabeth for sharing here And thank you, Peter, also for sharing your story. Go ahead, Jason.
Speaker 6:Yeah, so, elizabeth, i'm very excited about this because so there's a website That is linked on my Twitter and on my LinkedIn So I could message it or post it, but it's you know, i already sent you a connect, just sent you a LinkedIn connection request, but if you go on my LinkedIn and my Twitter, i created a website that's a Salesforce career navigator. That came out of me having to try to explain Salesforce careers to. This is a class I got to teach to New York City high school and community college students who are considered at risk by the NYPD based off of the region that they're living in, and so I think it's, you know, very important to make sure that we're providing equitable opportunities, and I say this very passionately because a lot of people, if they do, they're told to go to college. If they do go to college, if they have that opportunity, what are they studying in college? College is a very unique opportunity as a privilege. That should be, really, if it is taken, it should be taken appropriately and it should be taken by taking those directions, with thinking of the destination, beginning with the end in mind, and this is something that me personally was very I've taken missteps in my learning journey of going to school and, even before that, thinking what should I be pursuing? And then I wound up getting a degree that was in sustainability, something I very much love, but realizing, oh, there's no careers in sustainability, so you know, at least not yet. And so that's where I did my networking to learn about Salesforce careers.
Speaker 6:And so this is something I'm very passionate about is helping people to get a motivation by understanding what they should be moving to and to be able to have that representation, projecting that representation, because if we have a, you know, like a lot of young adults who want to be artists or musicians, myself included, it's because that's what they see. Representation, it looks fun. But other professionals we'd be able to help expose them to, so they can be able to understand the creativity, the productivity from careers, the accessibility of that. So that's what I think is a great part of networking If you know there's some job you're interested in, some professional you're interested in, go talk to people who are in that role, and so being able to help map that out, being able to define everything, that's what the career navigator website is for, but also more than happy to present it, it's built as what I call a site deck in that it's a website. It's retained there. But I give presentations where I click through the website like a slide deck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for piping up here, jason, and I love what you know all you guys are doing to support the community. This is what makes the Salesforce ecosystem undeniably the most community focused tech stack in the world. I mean, it's just incredible And I've been involved in a variety of tech stacks and recruiting, head hunting and leadership since 99 and never seen anything like it And to be able to get leaders such as yourselves all in one room here to have a little discussion about these types of things is just nothing short of incredible. And to have the technology to be able to do it and broadcast without needing to show up, you know, to a local radio station and not necessarily actually hitting the people that are going to benefit the most from the conversation that we can record it, have it as a podcast and share it You know your voices, i think is absolutely incredible. And look, it's not a bad idea for us to have a program focused on education or talking about college. I can tell you I've got one.
Speaker 2:He's just wrapping up his first year and another one that's going to be starting to apply here soon, and I launched my career without my degree yet eventually got it, but it's an art. I was an art major and I truly didn't know what was out there, i mean, in my world. I thought, well, you could be a realtor, you know. you could be an accountant, you know, i think you can own a restaurant. I mean, like you know, i know you could own a gym. Like I didn't know, like what did I know Nothing? Like you really didn't know. And I think a lot of people go to college simply for that reason, to figure it out To your point.
Speaker 2:Jason, it's great to go to college with the end in mind. Of course it is, but sometimes all you need is that degree to kick open the door. And there are certain jobs where it's necessary engineering, architecture, things like this, that like look you better, get the education. But then there are other, more general liberal arts degrees that can lead to a variety of places, including, you know, salesforce, even if what you did was paint pictures and draw naked people for two years or four years, right, that's the deal. So it's cool stuff. Guys, we only have about 15, 20 minutes left in the program And I want to make sure that we have some, because it's special for us to have Sam on the show right now And let's just go ahead and tie it right in with everything that we've been talking about for the last 20 minutes or so. Sam, you're involved in MGP, does Trailhead? Can you tell us what that is and what your involvement is with that program?
Speaker 3:Sure. So Montreuse Grace Place is a nonprofit here in Houston that works with homeless and housing insecure youth, mostly in the LGBTQ community, and so a handful of years ago a guy named Scott Loua Cart if anybody is familiar with him started this program. Mgp does Trailhead And once a month we go to Montreuse Grace Place and we work with the kids there. We work with the youth there to do Trailhead badges and to learn more about Salesforce and to explain more about a Salesforce career path to help them learn some of those job skills that, even if they don't go into a Salesforce career, would still be beneficial, even as a Salesforce end user, even as a working in a call center, working in any. I mean Salesforce is used in so many places. So shameless plug. If you are interested and you do want to see more, there is an episode on Salesforce Plus and I don't know if it's out yet or not, it may be coming Where they interview Scott and the crew came to Montreuse Grace Place and filmed and you can see everything that we do.
Speaker 2:You know what you're doing is so important, sam. It truly is like we used to do back in Portland do a fair amount of volunteering for a family homeless shelter, and one of the takeaways that I had from working with that organization was a stunning stat that I had no idea, which is that the number one predictor of whether or not someone is going to be homeless is that they grew up homeless, right, it's just like we were talking about careers and what do you know? We tend to walk these automatic paths in life, And so anytime we can break that cycle and it needs to be broken, because homelessness is a severe problem, particularly in every city, right, but it's very visible in some of the West Coast cities, like Los Angeles, portland, where I spent half of my life and almost all of my adulthood Seattle it's just incredible how much it has grown, and so kudos to you for doubling down, getting involved in exposing these people. It sounds like Elizabeth is doing it, sam's doing it, jason's doing it, peter's involved in it.
Speaker 2:It's just awesome what you guys are doing, and if there's something that we can do to help and support and Elizabeth, you can just pipe up. You don't have to raise your hand anymore. If there's something that we can do from this side, from Salesforce stuff, and you just definitely let us know what we can do to help support any of these causes, how did you actually get involved? Actually, go ahead, elizabeth. And then I'm curious how you got involved.
Speaker 4:No, i was just about to ask the same thing. I'm also in Houston, so I mean I definitely want to make sure I have an opportunity to connect with you, and your sugar doing sounds amazing, so I'm so happy I guess I was able to listen in on the show today and make a new connection, find out hey, we're both local and you're doing something just astounding, so I wish about that. So anything how this came really came into being for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's one of those things that I just happened to fall into it. So Scott Leucard started this back in 2018, 2017, i don't know a handful of years ago, but Scott lives in Austin and so when he was getting involved with Montrose Grace Place and wanting to start this program, he reached out to the Houston User Group leaders to say, hey, is anybody interested in coming to help with this? And they broadcast it out to all of the user group members of hey, there's this program that's getting up and started. Are there other Salesforce professionals who are interested in coming to help teach these skills?
Speaker 3:And volunteer work is something that I've always been passionate about. I've done it probably all of my life and giving back because I realized that I've lived a privileged life, and so when I saw that, i was like you know what? I think I had been an admin for a couple of years and I'm like I think I know enough to maybe help somebody do this. Trailhead was still relatively new at the time, and so I said me, i will go. And I didn't know anybody. I had never met any of these people that I was working with. We all showed up at the time and place that we were told, and here we are, five, six years later still doing it.
Speaker 2:So Outstanding and we haven't really talked about your own career progression, sam, and how do you feel about taking a couple of minutes to just kind of let us know? what did you do before Salesforce, what got you into it, how did you get the bug for it? Did you get a bug? And what is some additional advice or recommendations you can give to people on top of what you've already shared with Elizabeth about How do you grow from? what are the actual steps to be taken to grow from consultant to architect?
Speaker 3:So I spent probably the first 15 years or so of my professional career working in the industrial manufacturing space and in a variety of roles, mostly in accounting. I've got an accounting degree, but I had a knack for computers and so when we had any sort of IT project that needed to be done, i worked at a large global company And so for our particular office, anytime there was an IT project, they're like you, this is yours. So, implementing BI solutions, implementing ERPs Because I worked on all of those projects and one of the ones was okay, now corporate wants to implement Salesforce Great. And so after we got Salesforce up and running and I was not part of the implementation team I was essentially the power user for our location. After we got all of that up and running, corporate then decided they were closing our location and we could all relocate to Florida if we wanted to or find new jobs.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's nice here, It's nice here.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 3:So that was not in the cards for me, and so I found another job doing what my primary role was at the time, which was data analytics. I went to another company to do data analytics and probably sometime around the second week there the boss went hey, new girl, you know about Salesforce, right? I'm like, well, yeah, we just implemented it at the last company that I was at. I was like I am familiar with Salesforce. Great, salesforce is your problem now. So we've rolled it out to the US, but I need you to roll it out to, like, the rest of the manufacturing facilities across the country. We're going to be our admin, okay.
Speaker 2:That's an introduction.
Speaker 5:Hashtag accidental admin 100%.
Speaker 3:So there was a lot of and this was before Trailhead became a thing. So there was a lot of learning on the fly. Life lessons learn the hard way. I can tell you that I 100% learned the hard way the value of a sandbox and why we don't develop directly in production, but spent a few years adminning the org, the company that I worked for. I worked in one division. it had three divisions. Other divisions started getting Salesforce and they're like hey, you know more than any of our other things. So anytime we need something that rolls up to corporate, you have to go do this And all of the orgs. we need you to admin all the orgs And it. You know we had all the all the sorts of bells and whistles that we were having at the time.
Speaker 3:So I did that for a few years before I made the jump over to consulting. I didn't even know I was interviewing for a consulting position, was just talking to the gentleman who owned a consulting company And at the end he was like I'm going to offer you a job. I'm like, oh, that is unexpected, but sure, let's try consulting. That was probably one of the most unexpected job interviews of my life, and so I spent a few years going consulting and architecture and became the director of solution architecture because I told our managing partner. I said I want the director job And he went. What I said I want the director job, it's mine And he went. Okay, there was slightly more conversation to that, but essentially, let me.
Speaker 2:Let me dig into this piece a little bit here. Okay, because earlier today we were talking about behaviors, right, and saying that you want the director job that exhibits a type of behavior, right, that demonstrates what we would call reduced agreeableness, right, even though it's agreeable, it's just a way to describe it, right? So, like, how, like, i'm a big fan of believing that. You know, it's not just one, although one or two big decisions can, of course, change our lives, but it's a lot of small decisions, right. Like, if we want to lose 10 pounds, it's not.
Speaker 2:I've decided that I'm not going to whatever eat past 10 at night, or I'm going to stop eating sugar. No, that's like, five, six, 10, 15 times a day. You have to make a decision. No, i'm not going to eat that, right Or no, i'm going to grab this packet of celery Thank you, casey, for putting those in the fridge right, like, whatever it is. But it's a lot of little micro decisions that lead to the end result and create habits. So, with this in mind, what type of habits do you think you developed that helped you to get to the level that you are right now, because not everyone's just going to be so lucky to be the accidental admin and then suddenly get a job in consulting right Some of that. A lot of people fight for years to try and get that and they're still in that, you know, on that track. So, but you've developed these habits. What are?
Speaker 3:they? Um, that is a really good question.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, I'm a recruiter, right? That's all we're supposed to do is ask your questions. That's hope They're good questions.
Speaker 3:So some of the habits that you know I had started developing before I told my boss that I just wanted to be the director was that I, i just started taking on some of that work, right, we did not have a director at the time. So when there were questions around, is this a solid solution? Great, let's review that. Right, i will review that with you. Let's talk through the pros and cons. When we were looking to hire new recruits and add people to our team Great, i'm going to come and do the technical interviews and help to vet candidates. When there were decisions to be made around, you know well, should we do this or do that, or is this the right tooling or things? Great, i'm going to invite myself to the table and come be part of that conversation. Right. And so by the time I had that conversation with my boss to say I want to be the director, i practically invited myself into the chair by that point anyway, because the name was there and nobody else was filling it.
Speaker 2:Sam, this is okay. Everyone take note of this. What Sam just said. Jordan Peterson has described it as you look for where there's a vac, where responsibility has been abdicated, and you fill that void Right. That's what you're talking about. It's the way to grow your career Period. You want to do something. You want to grow your career. You want to go from consultant to architect Right. You want to go from admin to consultant. You want to go from director of delivery to vice president of all things, sales force, whatever it happens to be. You must find out what's not happening in the business right now that needs to be done, or what's something that maybe two or three people could do, but you insert yourself in, and you insert yourself into the business early and often and assume those responsibilities. When people talk about going above and beyond, this is exactly what they mean. They don't mean anything other than this, don't you think, sam?
Speaker 3:100%, because the easiest way to convince somebody you can do the job is to do the job Yeah.
Speaker 2:You just do the work. And here's another thing that goes along with it You don't bitch about it, you don't complain about it, you don't whinge, you don't whine Right, you can expect, if you want to grow in your career, that you're going to have to do things that other people aren't doing because, let's face it, there's very few at the top, a lot of people at the bottom. I was talking to someone today who we might bring on the show at some point, because he's an interesting guy. He does business development for an organization called LEAF. We had a chat because they're interested in some support for their organization. What they do is they basically finance training for underprivileged people so that they can do everything that Elizabeth's talking about. Jason was talking about, sam was talking about how people to lift themselves up out of poverty and using the skill sets that people in the sales force world utilize to have great careers. We were talking about all of the different kinds of positions in the ecosystem and I likened it to a chessboard. I'd never even thought about this before, because I don't tend to think if my mouth's not moving. It got me thinking.
Speaker 2:And if you look at a chessboard, you've got one king, one queen. You've got a couple of rooks, a couple of bishops. What else is on there? A couple of knights, a lot of pawns. The pawns move forward, nice and steady, but they move forward slowly. They're on that single track. If you want to turn yourself from a pawn into a bishop and be able to go into different directions and go further, just like a piece on a chessboard, you've got to start just pretending to be, act like a knight, act like a bishop, act like a queen, act like a king. The sooner you start adopting that, the sooner you get to be king or queen. It's just how it goes. If you say, no, i don't want to do that, or no, i'm not going to do that, or that's not in my job description, If they don't pay me enough to do that, then you will remain that pawn, moving forward one step at a time.
Speaker 2:You're the front line. That means that you're first to get fired. That's what that means. What do you guys think? 100%.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was just about to say yeah, being general or generalist is okay, as you're starting out in the beginning, but I quickly learned that finding ways to specialize in a particular area, however you want to do it, is really the way to go long term. You want to be known for something and not be a jack or jill of all trades and telling people, yeah, I could do anything, and not really figuring out a path forward which again keeps you in the same place you've always been. You have to figure out something new in order to grow.
Speaker 2:I mean, look, if you love working at small companies, there's nothing wrong with being a Swiss Army knife. There's nothing wrong with it at all. There is a place for that. Not everybody's going to be a CPQ specialist and you can't have a board full of Kings, Queens and bishops. It's not going to work. If you have the desire to break out, Elizabeth, then definitely you should absolutely do that and figure out where you can assume more responsibility.
Speaker 2:Guys, we're coming to the end of our show. I just wanted to pitch a couple little things real quick. Again. In two weeks we have Mark, director of delivery over at. I hope I got that right. I'm not looking at my notes right now, but Mark is going to be on the show. Mark is with Salesforce. In fact, I've got my notes right here. Yeah, Mark Baker, director of delivery management at Salesforce for MuleSoft. That's in two weeks. Make sure you tune in. If you're not following us yet, make sure you click on the bell or whatever it is, or subscribe to not only our Twitter spaces, which you can't really do, but you can do it with our podcast. It seems like Apple Music is the front runner, followed by Spotify and Google and about 16 other platforms. Make sure you do that Two weeks from now, so in four weeks, we're going to have a special military episode that we're looking forward to.
Speaker 2:We have Bree Hintz. Bree is a military spouse. She works in Market. She Runs Marketing out of Oklahoma City for Salesforce Organization. Then we have Phillip Anderson, who's a wonderful guy. Phillip spent over 14 years in the Air Force doing special ops. He's a really interesting guy who transitioned from military. Now he's an MBA candidate and he's a consultant at Deloitte.
Speaker 2:We're going to get the perspectives from both military professionals and military spouses on what options there are for you if you have served in the United States military or possibly any military organization. That is, How can you break into the Salesforce ecosystem? What's some of the changes that you need to do in your style of thinking? What are some of the ways that you can communicate your ability and effectiveness to perform the job in a really great way? This guy was calling in airstrikes. How do you go from that to consultant? Who's going to do his best to go ahead and let us know? I'm really looking forward to that episode As much as I've been looking forward to this episode. It's everything I was hoping it would be, Sam, Thank you so much for being on the show, and also for our key contributing speakers, Peter Gonza and Jason, Syke Wittz and Elizabeth Knott. Thanks everybody for being on the show here today, Samantha. Any last words of advice before we sign off.
Speaker 3:Yes, come see me at Midwest Dreaming in August.
Speaker 2:Okay, perfect. All right, guys. Thank you so much. We're going to go out with a little Stereophonics again. Have a wonderful, wonderful couple of weeks And please do us a favor, tell your friends about the show. Share our posts on LinkedIn. Let's get even more people involved, because the more people that come to this program, the more people that we can help. Whether they're in served communities or underserved communities, they need a little helping hand with their careers, and that's what we aim to do here. Thank you everybody. Have a wonderful, wonderful week.