The Salesforce Career Show
From Armed Forces to Salesforce: Navigating the transition with David Nava and Philip Anderson
Ready for an episode that promises to transform your perspective? We've got a special one for you today, bridging military precision with cutting-edge technology. As your hosts, we are ecstatic to bring forth the voices of veterans Philip Anderson and Golden Hoodie, David Scott Nava, who successfully transitioned from their military careers into the Salesforce ecosystem. The episode covers their unique experiences, the skills they carried from the military to their new careers, and their invaluable tips on how to navigate this transition.
The heart of this episode lies in the stories our guests share. From Philip's journey fast roping from helicopters to a Deloitte consultant, to David's commitment in helping others make the same transition, we traverse a variety of experiences. They reveal the unique skills veterans can bring to the job market - problem-solving, quick learning, conflict management - and how to articulate these strengths in a way that resonates with civilian employers.
But it's not just about transitioning - it's about thriving. Philip and David emphasize the importance of networking and relationship-building, ideally two years before transitioning. They provide insights into how to stand out in a challenging economic environment and share resources such as the 'Hiring Our Heroes' program. This episode is not just a guide to transition from a military to a civilian career, it's a roadmap to success. So gear up for a conversation that combines resilience, adaptability, and tech-savviness, all in one.
Ready for an episode that promises to transform your perspective? We've got a special one for you today, bridging military precision with cutting-edge technology. As your hosts, we are ecstatic to bring forth the voices of veterans Philip Anderson and Golden Hoodie, David Scott Nava, who successfully transitioned from their military careers into the Salesforce ecosystem. The episode covers their unique experiences, the skills they carried from the military to their new careers, and their invaluable tips on how to navigate this transition.
The heart of this episode lies in the stories our guests share. From Philip's journey fast roping from helicopters to a Deloitte consultant, to David's commitment in helping others make the same transition, we traverse a variety of experiences. They reveal the unique skills veterans can bring to the job market - problem-solving, quick learning, conflict management - and how to articulate these strengths in a way that resonates with civilian employers.
But it's not just about transitioning - it's about thriving. Philip and David emphasize the importance of networking and relationship-building, ideally two years before transitioning. They provide insights into how to stand out in a challenging economic environment and share resources such as the 'Hiring Our Heroes' program. This episode is not just a guide to transition from a military to a civilian career, it's a roadmap to success. So gear up for a conversation that combines resilience, adaptability, and tech-savviness, all in one.
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:Welcome everybody Very excited about our special military focused episode today. Not only am I here, not a vet, and Vanessa also not a vet, but we've got some amazing veterans up on stage. They are very special guests. We have Mr Philip Anderson and Philip, why don't you go ahead and just give us a quick introduction of yourself?
Speaker 3:Hey, philip Anderson, here Come in. Live from Green Bay, wisconsin. I was on vacation First veteran Deloitte consultant within the government or GPS, and specializing in Salesforce.
Speaker 2:All right, thanks Phil, and we also have David Scott Naba. Yeah, thanks, josh.
Speaker 4:Dave Nader here, lead solution engineer at Salesforce, also in global public sector or GPS, helping our DOD customers discover the wonders of Salesforce. Super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Of course, david, you did forget to share that. You're a golden hoodie. I think most people who know you already know that, but that's an extremely special and rare honor and we're honored to have both of you guys on the show today. But we've got some other veterans on the show too, like Larry Lee. Great to see you, larry. We had a chance to meet at Dreamforce. We've got Jason up here. Jason Zykerowitz is a regular on our program, as is Peter Gonza, so welcome to you guys as well and everybody else who's listening here on the live show.
Speaker 2:And if you're listening on the podcast, we appreciate you joining us today. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please be sure to do so, and if you're listening to this, you can probably figure out how to do that. So what we want to do today is really understand from both David and Phil really how did they make their own personal transitions into the ecosystem, from a career military professional, into technology and specifically into the Salesforce ecosystem? We're going to get down dirty with them on this topic and then also understand some of their specific advice, recommendations and resources that they'll share with us about how you, if you are in the military, if you're active duty, or if you're retired from active duty but struggling to make a transition and interested in potentially speaking too. So let's go ahead and start with Dave. Tell us a little bit about your journey.
Speaker 4:Yeah, happy to do it Again. Thanks for having me. So I served for 20 years in the military and my whole family was military, from great-grandfather on down relative, sister. So that's really all I knew. And I was planning my transition about five years out because I'm a planner and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4:Initially I thought, like a lot of military folks think, I'd get into project management because that's similar to what we do on the day-to-day.
Speaker 4:And the more I dug into it, the more I realized it just wasn't a good fit. But I didn't know what was a good fit and so I spent some time doing a deep dive in myself, read a few books and luckily found Salesforce and I found it through LinkedIn, through a mentor of mine who suggested it discovered Trailhead, trailhead Military and immediately fell in love and was sold. It appealed to the project management side of my brain, but it also appealed to the sides of my brain I didn't know I had the creative side, the problem-solving side. So I spent the next year or so At that point it was about a year until I retired Upskilling on the platform, volunteering with nonprofits, participating in an internship and ultimately got hired the day I retired to a platinum consulting firm in the partner ecosystem as a junior solution architect building Salesforce implementations for customers. So that's in a nutshell, that's kind of my transition journey and happy, over the course of tonight's episode, to kind of break it down, answer some questions and dig a bit deeper.
Speaker 2:Thanks for sharing that, dave. Really appreciate it, and maybe you can share a little bit too about how you're contributing currently to active and retired veterans.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I do a bunch of outreach. I have a soft spot in my heart for anyone that's trying to enter the ecosystem, because I know that I struggled with it. This was in 2018, it was a time before Trailhead Military existed. It was still in that force. There were resources, but they weren't as varied and as robust as they are today, and a lot of folks that aren't military that are just transitioning into they don't have the same level of resources, and so I wanted to help folks enter the ecosystem and discover the passions that I have with solving customer problems and building things, and so initially I was just kind of ad hoc mentoring for a while, for a couple of years through LinkedIn and then eventually through Venerati, which is an online mentoring platform. It's free to sign up and then I decided I wanted to kind of scale it and reach more people. And the number one problem that you know in talking to folks about transitions whether you're military or not military, anyone enters the ecosystem. I think one of the first things they think is holy cow. There's so many different positions, so many different roles. A lot of them sound the same. I don't even know what to pick. I need some kind of resource to figure it out, and so I kind of made it my mission to provide those resources. And so I talked to Bill Keeler Bill's one of the co-founders of Resource here, which is an AppExchange partner, brilliant guy and he was doing office hours every Friday and he still does.
Speaker 4:Friday is at noon, not Eastern and he said you know. I reached out and I said hey, listen, bill, you do technical sessions. I am technical, but not nearly as technical as you are. He's a developer. I'd love to do a Wednesday session if I could just borrow your brand a bit and talk about professional development. So he said yes, he helped me get set up.
Speaker 4:He's been a staunch supporter ever since, and every week we began diving into a different career path. So tonight we had Salesforce bent on and we were. We diverged a bit from career path exploration. We were talking about layoffs and market downturns and how to survive those, and that was our 99th episode. And we have over 180 videos on YouTube devoted to exploring different Salesforce career paths as well as skill sets required to end the ecosystem, how to get in From all different perspectives. I invite different co-hosts every week. Sometimes it's multiple co-hosts, and so we've had over 180 different co-hosts share their experiences across 4,000 different participants over those 99 sessions. So it's been really, really great to get back to the community and we're still going strong.
Speaker 2:Well that you are my friend, and today was actually the first time I had a chance to show up to the office hours and I thought it was fantastic. It was a great platform. I love that it's on video. You know this is this is also nice, doing a podcast, because I didn't have to comb my hair or put on a clean shirt Don't worry, my shirt's actually clean but I love the format, and that you're able to reach out just on your own and help support so many careers, and especially those trying to enter into the ecosystem, is truly remarkable. We're going to get back to you here in just a moment, dave. I'm curious about Phil's transition also. Now, phil, if I understand correctly, you've been in the ecosystem a little bit less than two years. Is that accurate?
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, and this is what I love about having the both of you on is we have someone who's been in it just a little bit longer and and and then someone who's a little bit newer and that recent experience of transitioning from military into the ecosystem is is what we're going to lean on you for today, phillip. So talk to us about what did you do before, what were you doing in the Air Force, and then, how did this transition into Salesforce occur for you?
Speaker 3:So, yeah, so you know, thanks for having me. And so I kind of am the exact opposite of David. I didn't have anyone in my family that was in the military besides, like a cousin who was in Army reserves. After I graduated college, I didn't know what I was going to do. I had bills to pay and I had no direction. So I asked my sister to pick up a recruiters card from the Navy, because you know, everyone wants to be a Navy SEAL and watching videos and realize I'm not a good swimmer. So then I went to the Air Force, because none of the jobs really require that much swimming, or so I thought. Talk to.
Speaker 3:The recruiter knew I wanted to do something more you know running and gunning and shooting. So joined the Air Force, spent 13 years in special warfare and special operations where I was a JTAC and my job was to you know, in civilian terms was I was a consultant in chaos. I was the guy on the ground with the commander telling them the best way to utilize air to ground munitions. So I did that, like I said, for about 13 years and then was told about 11 and a half years that I can't do it anymore because I was pretty broke from jumping out of planes and faster up and out of helicopters, so didn't have any.
Speaker 3:You know, once again, what am I going to do. I've been shooting my whole career field or my whole career. So went and talked to a transition mentor and the whole time she was talking about Salesforce and she was saying, how you know, hey, the, you know Salesforce. We're seeing a lot of veterans go from the military to Salesforce. And for 45 minutes she was saying Salesforce and the whole time I thought she was talking about Space Force. So that's actually how I found out about Salesforce was by a by accident.
Speaker 2:Just a little less risky, just a little.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just yeah. So it's, you know, it ended up working out, so got into, you know, found Salesforce, and then I found out about, actually, david's podcast and I went and did an office hours, spoke to a couple of the participants there that actually were Merivis graduates. So I joined Merivis and they, you know, helped me become a Salesforce admin and from there it was really just networking, networking, networking, finding out which companies, which firms I wanted to work for, what I wanted to do. And yeah, that's basically my story and it's a good one man.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of curious this is just a quick, fun question for both you guys what would be the equivalent of fast roping out of a helicopter in the Salesforce ecosystem? In other words, what's sort of a slightly dangerous thing that you might have to do that doesn't last very long but is critical to being successful in the ecosystem? I know it's a weird question, but let's see if you can answer it. I might have to think yeah, no one wants to go first.
Speaker 3:That's okay. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, there's really nothing like it. Yeah, there's nothing like it. I mean, you're fast roping from 30 feet and you're probably on a rope for five seconds maybe. Yeah, I don't have really have an answer to that.
Speaker 2:Okay, honestly, it was a stupid question. Now, one thing I want to ask about there was a study done by Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families that found that veterans are 70% more likely to be employed in the fields of technology, engineering and math or STEM positions in general, compared to non-veterans. I'm kind of curious what do you guys think about when you think about that little fact or that little result from that study and you think about the folks that you were working between elbow to elbow with in the field before your Salesforce days. Does this make sense? I mean, does it ring true in any way, shape or form? Does it seem obvious, in the same way, that a lot of musicians who can read you know, read sheet music get into coding and development? I'm kind of curious. If that's something that you've recognized, go ahead, david.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think a direct answer is no, no caveat. So coming out of the military and considering a career in tech, this is not something I ever considered entering. I did not consider myself tech savvy. I could use a computer, basic Microsoft competencies, and that was really about it. I had technical experience but it was all military related and didn't really transition at all to anything currently in the tech world, unless I wanted to fly or work with DoD gear. But from the inside now, looking back out, I'd say absolutely, because what you have to realize is tech is all about problem solving. If you like to solve problems, if you're methodical, if you like to apply a structured approach to complex solutioning which most folks in the military, whether they realize it or not, probably do then yeah, it makes perfect sense. And once I was able to reframe it in that context, I realized that it was a fantastic fit for me but it took some doing so.
Speaker 4:I would offer that you don't always know where you're going to end up. You don't always know what's a good fit until you explore it, and so what I tell folks frequently is if you don't know what you want to do, that's fine, it's totally normal. Most people don't. You got to test drive your life. You got to test drive different career paths, and how do you do that? Well, you talk to people first and foremost. You have informational interviews. You talk to people in different roles, whether it's Salesforce or something else, and you figure out what it's like through their eyes. And if you're interested, then maybe you dabble a bit in Salesforce world. It's Trailhead. It's creating your own Dev work and spinning it up and building apps. It's creating experience cloud site and creating your own digital portfolio and other various things. So I would just encourage people to be curious and don't don't think you know what you want, because you may not. You got to have an open mind. Beginner's mindset is something we use often. I firmly believe in that and just explored space.
Speaker 2:Very good thoughts on the subject. David, thank you for sharing that, and I'd like to ask you guys about some common misconceptions that civilian Organizations and companies may have about hiring veterans. Now I've been in, you know, recruiting and staffing for I Think it's 24 years now. It's been a long time and have placed a number of veterans. But I've, more importantly, have spoken to a lot of hiring managers and I've heard them object to hiring Not recently and not lately, and certainly, you know, would never Be a laydown for this kind of pushback but have heard them say, well, yeah, but we need people to think, you know, we need people who aren't just order takers.
Speaker 2:And I think that there might be some real common misconceptions about Veterans joining the civilian workforce. I think that's one of them. I'm kind of curious if you've recognized similar misconceptions, either you know, impacting your own career and career advancement, or some of the folks that you work alongside, or or just you know Brothers and arms from the past, if that misconception is one that's common and if there are other misconceptions that we should take a moment to blow right out of the water right now, once and for all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can kind of take this one. I would say that maybe five to ten years ago there might have been a applause to hire veterans, because you're worried that it's gonna be, you know, early emory. From what's that? What's the movie? The Stanley Kubrick metal jacket, full metal jacket? Yeah, you're thinking they're gonna be just these, these, these guys that are going crazy, and these girls.
Speaker 2:This is my right.
Speaker 3:Well, that's yeah, yeah, exactly, you know we are order takers, we, we we're driven, we, you know, and I would say for companies that that that are looking to hire veterans. You know I always say that veterans and veteran spouses are we're kind of like a, an Untapped rich oil field of experience. We have a lot of leadership experience, no matter what branch you're in. We are order takers and we own what. We own what were, what were given. We're own, we own that job and you know we don't like to fail, we love to, we love to have a successful mission and and it's it's that drive that I think that is really important and and you see, with it's really important to to Let veterans know that their experiences In the military are important to those companies.
Speaker 3:And yeah, but I would say, like the biggest problem I've noticed for me with being a, you know, in the military is I have a as a consultant Now and you know civilian world is I don't ask why. A lot, you know, you tell me to do something and I do it and I don't have that, that that experience yet to ask, well, why am I doing this? And and I think, as a consultant, that is important to do so yeah, I mean, that's kind of how I would answer it is you know, that's it.
Speaker 2:That makes a ton of sense. I mean, vanessa talks about this a lot, right? Just she's in the world of Solutioning, but you know she's the queen of BA and and you pipe up any time, vanessa. But that asking, like why I mean, we've got episodes and episodes dedicated to Specifically that like well, but why do you want to do it that way? Why does this even make sense? And like how do we even know that this makes sense? So that's a critical point. And just so you know you do not have to raise your hand, dave, he just jumped right in.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would. I would piggyback on that to say I think Phil, spot on. It's not as prevalent today as it once was. But then again, I'm not looking at companies that don't have Vibrant military communities. I won't even consider them. So all the companies that I reached out to, I knew for a fact before I even got started they were gonna be supportive based upon their presence in social media, their website, folks that I've talked to that work there. So I had already removed all those companies that maybe have doubts about the military community from my from my scan. I Will say that these days there's probably a greater reluctance then from the veterans. Hiring is military spouse hiring simply because Some mill spouses don't want to self-identify, which is fine. But regardless, when you look at a mill spouse.
Speaker 2:What do you mean by that? You mean they don't want to say that they're a military spouse.
Speaker 4:Yes, there's two trains of thought with that One, if you identify as a mill spouse, some folks feel that you'll automatically be excluded and some folks feel that well, I should, because I'm proud of it and it's not something that I I feel like. They feel like it brings strength and unique perspective to the application process and I would agree wholeheartedly, really, with both. Right, folks do discriminate based upon mill spouse candidates and it does communicate a wealth of experience. The issue is that some employers will look at a mill spouse's resume, linked in profile, and they'll see they've worked in a variety of different employers. Sometimes it's frequently, as every other year, and without digging deeper, without truly seeking to understand, they just see someone that can't hold down a job or someone that maybe is flighty and can't make up their mind. Which could be further from the truth.
Speaker 4:Mill spouses have to move quite a bit and sometimes they're taking care of families and extended families and maybe they also have gaps in employment. But what you have to take into consideration is they've done a wide variety of different jobs. They are masters of flexibility, of change management, of problem solving, of firefighting, you name it. They bring a wide variety of skills to the mix across a number of different meta areas, and those are the folks you want to hire. They're the people that get stuff done. Yeah, military service members and veterans yes, I mean, we get stuff done. But who's holding down the fort when we're off doing the military thing and handling all the issues that come up? It's Mill Spouses. So I would like to see employers be more open to viewing their resumes, their LinkedIn profiles, their credentials with an open mind. Instead of seeing someone that has changed jobs a lot, see someone that brings a welcome experience.
Speaker 5:So today, david, I know you touched on some of those transferable skills, but when you're mentoring folks that are transitioning from the military, what are the most prevalent transferable skills that people develop that they should be bringing up during their interviews, when they're talking to people?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a great question. Skills translation is really tough. Take, for example, me. I was an able flight officer for EA 6Bs, so my job, day in, day out, was jamming enemy radar and communications and there's just no one in the civilian world that wants you to do that. It's illegal. So I had to take those skills and convert them into skills that employers found valuable. And when you don't have a tech background, when you don't have tech skills like I didn't, you don't have a tech network, you kind of have to extrapolate and move from a tactical kind of looking at your immediate skills to more of the strategic. And that's where I get into meta skills, those skills that help you develop other skills, those skills that help you do a wide variety of things.
Speaker 4:So, to directly answer your question, that's things like problem solving. We're really good at problem solving because every two, three years we move to a different duty station and we don't get on the job training. We just have to figure it out and do it, and then you move again, you figure it out and you do it again, and so that breeds the ability to approach situation, assess it, size it up, figure out what the issue is, root cause analysis, solve the problem, triage and manage it. So that's one thing. The ability to learn, which a lot of people take for granted, but it's a skill. How do you rapidly take in information and make use of it is absolutely a skill. And so we have to not just military service members but spouses as well have to rapidly learn new things very quickly and put them into play. So that's another skill that we bring.
Speaker 4:You know, conflict management, going off to war or fighting fires at home, necessarily is very stressful, very difficult, and you have to be able to do it with a cool head. So there's that, and I can keep going on and on and on. But there are these foundational skills that a lot of people have but no one really has to the same degree, the same quantity that the military community does, that we bring to the job space, and that you can't, you just simply can't train them. It would take years and years, and years. You can't train someone to be a problem solver, train someone to recognize and put out fires. So you know, you hire for that and you train the technical skills later.
Speaker 2:Exactly. You know, I love that we're talking about this right now, and those are terrific points, david. I like to think of them less as skills and more as behaviors. Right, you have a behavior of like I'm going to get this done. I'm going to get this done, no matter what. I understand that there's going, there are going to be obstacles in the way. That's why I've got the job is to figure out how to overcome these obstacles and to not stop until I've overcome it. Right, but that's a. That's a, that's an attitude. It's a behavior that that equates specifically to results, regardless of the obstacle in front. Right.
Speaker 2:And so, for those listening, whether it's live or on the podcast, when you are considering making a transition or trying to figure out, like, how do I? I mean, how do I transition, or how do I specifically describe? You know, like Phil, for example, like you know, I'm on the ground, targeting specifically where, where the Air Force needs to drop ordinance, right, like. But what were the behaviors, attitudes that I had to use, an approach, what was the tempo of my thinking? What was I competent, what were my competencies under extreme stress?
Speaker 2:Right, and being able to articulate those behaviors, articulate those attitudes, I think is a really great way to at least begin figuring out those skill sets. You know that those key words, buzzwords that people are looking for, ai scanning on your resume that you can really articulate when you're sitting down face to face, either in person or maybe on a Google Meet or a Zoom meeting for your first interview. And when you, when you've developed the ability to articulate those behaviors or those meta skills, you're going to be a lot more confident going into this, into the session, into the meeting, and truly stand out. So really great points, let's let's ask Phil for a second how did you translate what you did to getting to the point where you were able to obtain a whole new career as a consultant? So what I would do is I would.
Speaker 3:I looked at like my EPRs and I really kind of got down to what exactly I was doing, like, case in point, being a JTAC, you know, calling in airstrikes, doing all that stuff Like what was I actually doing to? To do that I was doing, talking to the ground commander, talking to the on scene commander and saying, hey, sir, you know, ma'am, this is what is going on, this is what I recommend, that is, consulting You're, you're finding a solution to a problem, you're giving the client a what your recommendation is and they can either buy it or they can you know, hey, I don't, you know disagree with it. So that was how I kind of figured out being a JTAC was being a consultant. You know, I was also a battalion air liaison officer. Like I was, I was in charge of five or six individuals and so I had to think about it Okay, so I'm a. You know we called ourselves Baylows. So I'm a Baylow, I'm a. You know, I'm in charge of these people. What am I doing? I'm managing these people. So I was a manager.
Speaker 3:And then, once you kind of figure out that, like Rosetta Stone of military to civilian comparison, it became really easy. That being said, it wasn't easy figuring it out. It was always that challenge. So that was you know what I would, what I did, and I would also reach out to veterans that were working at firms and companies and ask them for their resumes and hey, can I see your resumes, can I see what verbage you use? And figure out what they did.
Speaker 3:And that helped me a lot, just getting out there and talking to veterans, because you know we're 1% of the of the population and we're all, we're community and we're always going to want to help each other out. Like you know David, you know he's probably helped out thousands upon thousands of veterans and and spouses, and you know that's that's. One thing is you're not, you're not going to go through this journey alone. You need to, but you have to be willing to ask for that help. So that's kind of how I did it. I figured out what I did and, if I didn't have a good answer, just reached out to people for help.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a smart move, man, right? Because it's not the how, it's the who. Half the time, right? And and I think a lot of times people are like how do I do this, how do I do this, how do I do this? And really it's like who knows this? That's the shortcut. Who knows this shit already? Let me go talk to them and figure out what they've done. And you guys know this stuff, which is why you're on the show, so I'm glad that you're able to be here and share this right now. Yeah, I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 5:I was actually just going to throw in just to add on to the the point about reaching out to people.
Speaker 5:So from my experience I know at my company we are part of the hiring our heroes program and several times at this point as so I'm sure David and Phil can probably explain the hiring our heroes program better than I could I can certainly talk through my experience of working with folks once they've already joined. But part of what it is is that there's a few different programs that are offered. They get to work over the course, I think, of 10 to 12 weeks at a company and then at the end the company decides that they're gonna move forward and hire that person. But what I thought was great was when folks reached out to me, like they just found me on LinkedIn, noticed I had worked at one of the organizations that was part of the program and asked me about my experience at the company, just so that they could get an idea of what the salaries were like, what the promotion path was like, what the program was like if they chose my company to join. But for sure, reaching out to people just want to echo how important that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the difference between job and no job. Often times, right I can't tell you how many times people reach out to me every single day I probably get around like 20, 30, 40 invites a day on LinkedIn, and not all of them, but enough of them. Maybe 25 to 30, 40 percent have a question, right, like how do I do this or how do I get into that, or how do I do this and that? The other thing, which, of course, the whole reason why we started this show a few years ago was to give people that platform. Now you've got a platform, david, for military folks.
Speaker 2:But I'm curious, do you have a recommendation for the people listening here right now who may be active duty?
Speaker 2:Or maybe they just, you know, they just got off base and they're exploring a new career in the civilian world, whether it's Salesforce or another tech company or just neither but a professional career in the civilian world. You know there's there's a challenge, I think, for veterans coming out of that very I don't even want to say insular because it's so big, but making that transition from military to civilian, which is the network right, when you go from your network or the majority of your network or other military professionals versus civilian professionals? Would you, for instance, recommend that even if someone's active duty and they're going to be, they've got a couple more years to go before they transition? For instance, would you recommend that they get a LinkedIn profile now and start exploring as early as a couple years before a transition happens and start just kind of getting used to the technical speak and the way civilian communication in business is different because it is than in the military? Or do you have some other advice of what can people be doing now before they even exit?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So short answer 100%, absolutely. The one thing you can't do is rush relationships. You can't build relationships in a vacuum. You can't build them very rapidly and, you know, create them in an emergency. You have to have them already built in order to access them and derive value from them.
Speaker 4:So I always tell people start two years out, even if you don't know what you want to do. It takes a long, in some cases a long time to figure that out. Start two years out. Create a LinkedIn profile. You know dress for the role that you want. So you probably shouldn't have your military photo in there if you're going to be transitioning and getting out. If you're farther out than that, sure have your military photo in there, but change it later on and start putting your experience in there, translating it as best you can, because it's a skill that it takes time and practice to master, translating those skills and beginning connecting with people. But have a purpose right. Have an idea of where you want, you know. Have an idea of the end, of the end of mind and where you want to go. So don't just like what I did, as I was. So I'm like, okay, I have to have a LinkedIn profile, so I created one.
Speaker 4:A couple years out, I began connecting with everybody across all industries. Essentially, that becomes useless, right, because your feed is going to be filled with noise. You need to figure out at least an industry. If not, if not an industry, then go even narrower and figure out exactly where in that industry maybe even a company that you want to work at, or several companies and begin connecting with everyone in that industry, at those specific targeted companies immediately and start creating content, start interacting with their content, ask for informational interviews, build those relationships, put the time and effort into it and it'll do a couple of things. And you're going to gradually, after having conversations within your desired industry, learn the industry language and be able to translate your skills much more easily, because it is a different language than one you're not well equipped to speak if you've been talking military speak your whole life. And two, you're going to have those relationships that you could then leverage when it's time to actually transition and you're looking for work.
Speaker 4:So I would absolutely start early, start a couple of years out, build the network and every day, what I would do is I would get up in the morning early and I would connect with 15 different people every single day.
Speaker 4:I'd send them a targeted LinkedIn message to say, hey, dave Nava, transitioning such and such date prospective Salesforce professional would love to connect with you and add you to my network.
Speaker 4:And I had a little template that I had and I would copy and post it into the message and then add their first name and maybe add a couple more personalized details, because you got to be able to do it quickly it's 15 after all, not like two, but that's how I generated by the time I was getting ready to retire thousands of connections and I began having conversations with people and informational interviews and creating those relationships. So I'll pause after this. But I think a mistake that a lot of people make whether or not you're military or not, applies across the board is they wait too long, like, okay, well, I'm six months out, now I'll start thinking about creating a network and not it's too late. I mean you can still do it and, by all means, if you're six months out and you're like I don't have one, start now, but you really should start as early as you possibly can because it takes time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really does. Everything takes time, right. I think a great way to approach it is to be thinking about whether you and this applies, by the way, for everybody, it doesn't matter if you're listening to this and you're not military and you're wondering if all of this advice, recommendations and insights being shared apply to you. I'm telling you it does. Of course it does 100%, and Dave just threw up 100%. So, yes, 100%, it does Right.
Speaker 2:One of my sons, my youngest son, is looking at colleges. Right, he's going to be a senior this year. I've got one at U of O in the business program already. But when you start thinking about colleges and this is difficult for 14-year-olds is to start thinking about college when you're 14. That's impossible. You're trying to figure out how to maybe it's how to not get beat up in the hallway or how to even do homework or have some level of success or define your social group and figure out how to communicate with your parents differently, even though you're sort of this half adult Like there's a lot of stuff to figure out at that age. But if you're not thinking about college when you're 14, it's unlikely you're going to have a top 20 school offered to you, much less a scholarship, if you're not thinking about it that early, because every year of grades counts, right, and it's no different in the civilian world.
Speaker 2:I was speaking with someone earlier today just to kind of tie it into the civilian world for a moment. I spoke with someone who works at a Salesforce partner maybe about 1,000, 1,500 person partner and they're in the account executive field and he was curious about the market and we'll be talking about the market here in just a few minutes. But he was talking about the market and what should he do? Because he's not making the money that he once was. He worked at a very large, well-known software sales organization doing enterprise sales and in his best year he made $800,000, just absolutely an incredible salary plus commission to earn. For anybody Like it's an enormous amount of money.
Speaker 2:And so he was feeling a little bit frustrated and the advice I gave to him is like, look, wherever you are, you've already got the runway of a year and a half of this company right. So if you're not getting sales, maybe it's the market, but maybe it's you, maybe there's something that you haven't figured out yet. If you'd go and try and go get a new career at a different company right now and you don't have the stats to support that. You're a badass for the last two years in a slightly wonky market. Why are they going to take the risk on you and why is there an expectation that you're going to start actually making more money there than you would in the role that you've already got a year and a half, two years under your belt width? Right, you have to start thinking about that now. So, in short, cut this short. My advice was figure it out and get some really awesome sales under your belt over the next three to six months and then you can really start looking, because if you don't have those successes, if you can't articulate your successes, then it's just a. It's not a compelling story. Right For someone to take a risk on you, and anytime someone hires anybody, they're taking a risk. You're taking a risk too, all right, it's a shared risk and everyone's trying to figure out how to de-risk it the most. That's why we have interviews, that's why we do reference checks and that's why every single step of the process to landing a job whether it's going from lead solution engineer, you know, in one organization to director of delivery in another organization or whatever that jump is going to be. You have to have some proof and some successes to capitalize and be able to articulate and the time to start thinking about getting the next job. If that next job is six months, 12 months, a year, two years out, well then you better have some bad ass references. So what can you do in your current role right now to create some massive, massively powerful examples and stories around how you are a successful person, no matter where you are. So, all right, that's my little, that's my little diatribe.
Speaker 2:We're coming up on 45 minutes, so we're going to wrap up this section of our live show and we'll also kind of bring a close to this podcast. But if you're listening to the live show, don't go anywhere, because we are going to be launching part two. We're doing things a little bit different. Because these shows tend to run long and because people's appetite for podcasts tends to be a little bit shorter than the length of these shows, we're dividing it into two. So stay tuned.
Speaker 2:We're going to be back in just a moment with David Nava and Phil Anderson and Vanessa and, by the way, we'll get a chance to introduce ourselves to Vanessa, because either of us introduced ourselves on this show, but let's do a quick little wrap up here and then we're going to come back and start tackling some questions like what the heck is going on in Salesforce economy and the tech economy in general, or the general economy in general.
Speaker 2:What are some of the things that you can do to stand out from the crowd to actually land a job in a difficult slightly difficult economic situation, which we actually are in right now? Hiring has slowed and we need to adapt, so we're going to do that. So, dave, thank you so much for being on the show, phil, thank you so much for being on the show, and everybody else. Don't go away and if you're listening to this on the podcast, make sure you hang out, because in less than a week, the second part of this show is going to be on and you're going to want to stick around because we've started to some very important and interesting subjects. Okay, all right, everybody, thank you so much, thank you.