Just when you thought you had LinkedIn all figured out, enter Jordan Nelson, a Salesforce consultant and LinkedIn guru who's changing the game. From humble beginnings in the car industry to becoming a force in the Salesforce ecosystem, Jordan's journey is proof of the power of resilience and the magic that happens when you find your voice.
Jordan shares his path from business owner in the car industry to Salesforce expert, giving us a front-row seat to his transformation. His compelling story is a testament to the fact that mistakes are stepping stones to success. He draws on his experiences from his first business venture, focusing on the lessons learned and how they influenced his current Salesforce enterprise.
We also explore the nuances of LinkedIn, with Jordan shedding light on how to master the platform and use it to your advantage. He talks about the significance of consistent messaging, why it's crucial to align your posts with your end goal, and how to foster meaningful connections. Plus, Jordan offers an intriguing look at the future of content creation in the age of AI. He shares his first-hand experience with AI for content creation and his interesting take on human versus AI-created content. This is an episode that will leave you inspired and armed with actionable tips to take your Salesforce career to new heights.
Just when you thought you had LinkedIn all figured out, enter Jordan Nelson, a Salesforce consultant and LinkedIn guru who's changing the game. From humble beginnings in the car industry to becoming a force in the Salesforce ecosystem, Jordan's journey is proof of the power of resilience and the magic that happens when you find your voice.
Jordan shares his path from business owner in the car industry to Salesforce expert, giving us a front-row seat to his transformation. His compelling story is a testament to the fact that mistakes are stepping stones to success. He draws on his experiences from his first business venture, focusing on the lessons learned and how they influenced his current Salesforce enterprise.
We also explore the nuances of LinkedIn, with Jordan shedding light on how to master the platform and use it to your advantage. He talks about the significance of consistent messaging, why it's crucial to align your posts with your end goal, and how to foster meaningful connections. Plus, Jordan offers an intriguing look at the future of content creation in the age of AI. He shares his first-hand experience with AI for content creation and his interesting take on human versus AI-created content. This is an episode that will leave you inspired and armed with actionable tips to take your Salesforce career to new heights.
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.
Josh Matthews:And Jordan Nelson too. What's up everybody. This is your friend, josh Matthews, and I run the Salesforce recruitercom. Along with my co-host, vanessa Grant, we launched the expand exchange and together we host the Salesforce career show, where we like to bring you guests and answer your questions in a live format here on Twitter Spaces and then actually produce it thereafter. So, look, I'd like to introduce Vanessa Grant. Vanessa, what's up, my friend?
Vanessa Grant:How are you doing? Hey, josh, it's, I'm back from Tahoe and I survived despite driving there and back with two small children, so feeling good about myself these days.
Josh Matthews:Well, I'm glad. Feeling good about yourself is an important thing, and surviving too. Tell everybody who you are and what you're doing.
Vanessa Grant:My name is Vanessa Grant. I've been in the Salesforce ecosystem for 13 years, currently an associate principal consultant at a global Salesforce partner, and I'm also a part-time click coach and co-host for this wonderful podcast.
Josh Matthews:Okay, yes, you are All of those things always like seeing you here on the show and thanks for being my partner in crime for these past years. Today is a really wonderful day because we get to spend some time with my friend, jordan Nelson. Just a little bit about Jordan Nelson. Look, I'm just going to hit you with the crazy stuff.
Josh Matthews:Jordan is a Salesforce consultant and he has his own business and he actually trains people who are entering into the market on how to have a better LinkedIn profile or how to improve their consulting, their ability to be good consultants and excellent professionals. He's a contributing author to Salesforce Ben, among others, and we've known each other I don't know two, three years, something like that and in that time I remember being shocked when I saw how many followers he had. At the time, I think. When I met you Jordan feel free to unmute here I want to say you had about 20,000 connections and I just looked and mine got dude, 85,000 followers right now. That's truly incredible. I don't think I know anybody as popular as you. So welcome to the show.
Jordan Nelson:Jordan Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me on. Yeah, don't let the followers fool you by any means. It's been a good ride though. For that kind of purpose of things, I'm sure we'll get into it. I know some people really take that with pride of what they have at their social count. For me, honestly, even from the get-go, I've always just kind of used that as a marketing strategy for myself. I know yourself, Vanessa included. Every time I feel like I look at Vanessa's profile, she's getting another certification. So she's one of those that I look up to that way, where she's always just out there proving her skillset, getting all those things done. That's kind of how it started. Honestly, with a lot of that is, I just started seeing so many different people getting certifications.
Jordan Nelson:At the time when this thought process came to me, I was really new. I hadn't been in the Salesforce industry long maybe like six to nine months and then I just kind of saw the opportunity to do that. Before I got into Salesforce I had a different business I ran. It was completely non-related to Salesforce. It was a vinyl wrap shop for cars. So I was doing that at the time and I'd got really familiar with just kind of posting online and doing it for marketing purposes, for that to kind of get my business running that way. So I was already kind of familiar with it.
Jordan Nelson:I'm happy to do it kind of the more ins and outs of what to kind of try to do to get some attention there. And honestly, that's just where it started and that's still how I look at it today. It's been really cool because I do have the opportunity to talk with people and get to know more people and help people out that choose to DM or that I get to get connected with, like yourself. But at the end of the day, I'm just I try to just continue to post there more of like a marketing strategy for myself to try to pull in leads for whatever it is that I'm doing at that time. So but yeah, it's been a good ride. I've been doing that, for I think I finally hit three years now that I've been posting online.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, so it's been quite a bit of time too. That's incredible, man. Look, I think it's. You know, when we hear these stories of people who have become successful, there's always a backstory, right, An origin story.
Josh Matthews:And when I first looked at your background and understood that, hey, you know what You've already been a business owner, Like that comes with a learning curve, and so when you launch a second business which you did about almost two years ago, right, Almost two years ago you would know, you might actually know the answer to that, but it comes with this, like you've sort of learned how to do things marketing, P&L, budgeting, right, Figuring out a marketing strategy, a messaging campaign, a messaging strategy and really identifying what you want to do, what your differentiators are, and that's difficult to do the first time around, right? Business isn't my first time owning a business, and you know you learn so much. How had I'm kind of curious if you can speak directly to that how has owning a previous business, unrelated to what you're doing right now, impacted the speed with which you were able to, or the ease with which you were able to set up your new business? And then maybe you can tell us a little bit about that business?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah for sure. Yeah, it's helped a ton and I think it's good and bad. There's things that went well at the first go around and there's things that went really poorly, and so I've tried to think of the things that went really poorly and figure out how to do those things better. But I would say, like starting off with just the cons the cons side, I think, is it kind of leaves you I don't want to say trauma, but like it leaves you with some ideas of things that maybe you have that seed of doubt in your mind Because it didn't go well the first time. What?
Vanessa Grant:do you?
Jordan Nelson:mean. Well, a good example would be when I started my last business, I was quick to partner up with somebody that I thought would really help me out this is again non-related sales force, whole different industries with cars and we were. We worked together well. I knew him pretty well. We had some similar People that we had in common before I met him, and so I already had kind of a lot of trust going into it. And then things didn't end up going the way I wanted to with the partnership. It wasn't the prettiest of splits when that time came and it kind of left me in a situation that wasn't great for a little bit, why I was still trying to run the business.
Josh Matthews:Financially, emotionally.
Jordan Nelson:It was probably all the above. So really what happened was we were really starting to hit a A stride of things and so I had a lot of like responsibilities that we had kind of split in half at this point at the car business. So you know he had a lot more like mechanical knowledge than I did. So, quite literally, when for the backstory of like what this business is is basically what you can do if you're familiar with it is, people will come in, they Bring their car to us and there's stuff called vinyl wrap and you can put that on your car and it's a quick way to either change the color of your car a lot of people do it for advertising purposes as well. They'll print something off and then put this whole like basically an ad on your car.
Jordan Nelson:You can also do other things, like you know, clear bra and put that over your car and it keeps the paint color the same but it protects it against like chips and dents and things like that kind of preventative care. So that's more or less like what we did at this business is we would have people come in that were interested in doing one of those things and Then we would wrap their car and take care of it. When you're doing that, well, you have to take things off the car. You have to take, like, the front bumper off, or you have to take lights out or Things like that logos, so that when you're wrapping the actual vehicle you get underneath some of those places so that the wrap doesn't come up Later down the road. It's supposed to last. It can last up to five years, hey Jordan.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, we love the vinyl, vinyl wrap industry, but I'm just gonna kind of get you refocused here real quick, man. So what, what? What actually happened by with the partner?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, yeah, I sorry, I was only given that context so I could tell you. So basically, what I'm trying to get to that point is that when you have all that, you have to take things off on the car. So he was more mechanically inclined, so the responsibilities were kind of split that he had that side. I didn't have that side. I ran more of like managing our employees and finances and customer service, and so when he split, it put me in a bad position of it was pretty sudden. There wasn't really any, what I felt, signs leading up to that and so quite literally when he left it was like okay, well, now what do I do? Because he's doing a lot of the actual fulfillment of the business, whereas I'm just taking care of like some of the operations.
Jordan Nelson:So the second time around, with the sales force related business, I've been kind of hesitant to want to jump into a partnership right away with somebody else. You know I've and even I would say like just partnering up with like subcontractors or People that might want to help out with some of the work, because I have that kind of like seat of doubt. I would say where it's like okay, maybe I do that, I start passing some responsibilities to you and then if something like this happens again, then I'm back in that situation, right? But I think that's how a business goes. So eventually I'm gonna have to figure that piece out as I scale, but I would say that that's kind of one of the downsides for sure.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, the whole idea of partnering in business, especially from the dead go. It's so attractive, isn't it? Like, well, I'll do these things and you don't do those things and we'll share it and we'll be best friends, and it doesn't really work like that, not? I mean, I've worked with so many sales force partners or just clients throughout you know, the last I don't even know what it is 25 years or something like that and and so many businesses that were started started as partnerships, eventually become just soul, soul owner right. There just isn't enough Experience working together with the individual to figure out, like, what's like, is this actually gonna work? Like, what are their faults? Right, and often it's someone's friend Right, and getting in business with your friends it's generally, you know it can be, it can work, but it can also lead to ruining the friendship and I've seen that dozens and dozens of times, whether it's people I know that I'm friends with that got into business with other friends, or just clients that started businesses with friends.
Josh Matthews:I mean I list on, you know all five fingers some partners that broke up in the last two and a half years that all started With the best it best of intentions. So that could be a challenge and so so now I was kind of switch gears a little bit. So now you have your own business. Tell us, what exactly does that business do?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, so right now what we do is it's a consulting firm. So Start off with just myself. I kind of made that split from my full-time job. I had some clients on the side that I had been working with, I'd seen some other friends do it, and so I decided to just kind of go that route. First I wouldn't even say I was super interested in like a full-on business, it was more of just I think I can make money doing it this way and have more control over what clients I work with and what projects I work on, and Started down that route.
Jordan Nelson:So, yeah, really what we come in in I would say our bread and butter or the thing we try to focus in on is Automation pieces. So we're really trying to look for, you know, in a lot of cases with SaaS the businesses I've usually worked with full-time they all have like a sales process. As we all know, that sales process will have a lot of gaps in it where they don't have Things automated. A lot of people are doing stuff manually, whether that's, you know, updating marketing stuff and an excel sheet, or they just don't really have a streamlined sales process all the way through to close wanting a deal. So we really try to come in and that's really what the focus is trying to find businesses like that when we can basically come in and do stuff that I've done multiple times at multiple full-time jobs.
Josh Matthews:You're not okay. I like that. You've got that specific automation differentiator right and this. This isn't really brand new to you. You had a career as a BA before you were Involved in sales for us, is that correct?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, so I started off with that. I had a when I worked at Walmart e-commerce. I was a business analyst and it wasn't even really Salesforce related for quite a while. It was just in general and I was over the customer service side really trying to find similar gaps Like how long are we on calls, how can we clean that up? How can we get things fulfilled faster in our customer service department? So, yeah, I was in that role for about a year or so before I eventually got into the Salesforce side of things.
Josh Matthews:Okay, and then now your business doesn't just do that like, you also offer LinkedIn training. Is that correct? Yeah, so I think you're doing that.
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, I still do it. It's not as big of a push. I know last year when I was talking with you guys, it was a little bit more of my focal point. I still had my full-time job at that point. We still offer I still have the course out there and things like that. But we've really tried to kind of double down on just like the consulting side and going more B2B.
Josh Matthews:Okay and I'm kind of curious are you open to if you can just maybe share some highlights about that course and if there's one or two Tips or tricks or recommendations that you can make to help others Improve their LinkedIn game right now?
Josh Matthews:I think it's a worthy discussion and then we can talk a little bit more about the consulting, because that's been a main focus we're one of our primary focuses over the last six months of this podcast is, you know, looking at, looking at all of the opportunities. Sometimes you want to go get hired somewhere right, and other times you want to. You know, once you've got a little bit of experience and you're about jump in and hang a hang a shingle and Launch it on your own. So I know that when we communicated a little bit earlier last week, we talked about that, right like that. There's some lessons that you've learned and I want to cover those. But before we do that, maybe you can just share briefly a couple strong recommendations and doesn't matter if they're obvious or nuance what people can do to improve their LinkedIn game and why that might be important for them.
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, I would say number one if you are interested in posting on something on LinkedIn. Out of all the platforms, I think everybody has their preference. I chose LinkedIn just because I felt like it was easier to identify recruiters and people that you're potentially going to work with. Twitter and Instagram and stuff I'm sure they're still all there. It's just not as obvious because they're not going to have a title typically when you can see that. It's easy. It's usually more of like a personal side. I chose LinkedIn for that.
Jordan Nelson:If you want to post there, I really would say the easiest way I started off was, honestly, just listening for quite a while. What I mean by that is getting on the platform, seeing what people post, seeing how people interact with each other, seeing how they engage and just try to find some people in the industry that do post a lot. See what they post about, see how people interact with it. That tries to, I would say, help you find your voice. I think we all probably have that problem when we first start on social media. You want to say stuff, but you don't know how to say it. You don't want to look bad.
Jordan Nelson:There is this learning curve that you have to go through of like how am I going to post? What do I post? Who is Jordan? I went through that first. I think that's always step number one.
Jordan Nelson:Step number two is just getting involved with comments was the beginning stage for me. I found some people that I enjoyed content from when I would see an answer that I thought I maybe knew I would comment and I would try different styles of how to answer that question or how to interact. Then see what stuck, the things that stuck, the things that people would like a lot on the comment section. I could turn that into a post of my own and then post it on my own profile. The end goal there is to get more people to come look at my profile so that I can hopefully land a job or hopefully, at this point, get a lead for my business, something like that. That's why I would say, if you haven't done anything, that's a really good first step, in my opinion, to get going on the social media side. It'll help you find your voice, help you figure out what to say and how to do it.
Josh Matthews:Those are perfect. That's a perfect tiered approach to figuring out, whether it's LinkedIn or any other social media. You know what the good news is when you're just starting out and you don't have a lot of followers, not a lot of people are going to see your mistakes for real, like who cares If you've got 2,000 followers or 2,000 connections and I forget exactly what the LinkedIn algorithm is but you crank out a post that's kind of a dud. Maybe 20 people are going to see it, maybe 100, maybe Just because it shows that they see it doesn't mean that they actually read it. You know what I mean.
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, for sure. I would even say, taking it further, I still put stuff out that does not work. I still, even with 85,000 followers, I'm still always trying to figure something out. In my case and for a lot of people, I think we all go through this too, where you're going to have different things as you progress in life. What you talk about this year may not be something you want to talk about next year. If you can dial that in earlier, I think that's super helpful because then you stay consistent with your message and you build an audience around that.
Jordan Nelson:The realistic side is we all change and there's things that we might be doing different in our life. For me, changing to this consulting, it's a lot slower because for the last whatever two years, I've been talking about how to get into the industry and how to learn stuff. That's where the following grew, not so much around the consulting side. I would even say that it doesn't matter as much as you think. I think the biggest thing is to pick the goal that you're looking for, if that thing is working. That's what matters For me. If I get leads from stuff I post, I don't care if it got one like or it got 2,000 likes If I got a lead. That's my end goal. I want to get a lead for the business.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, a lead is a lead is a lead. I'm curious, staying on LinkedIn here for just a moment, what are your thoughts about actually calling and cleaning up your LinkedIn connections? As an example, when I launched this business, I went in and I got rid of about 2,000 or 3,000 followers just to make sure that when my message was going out it wasn't being mitigated by going to people that have, at the time, no real interest in Salesforce To capitalize on the algorithm. I'm real careful about who I I mean anybody can follow, but who I'm actually connected with. Did that ever come into mind for you about sort of clearing out who your followers are or who your connections are? Were you careful about it, or was it like, hey, the more the merrier, here it is, I barely. I think we talked about this before. I might sound a little stuttery today. I haven't slept. We got a red eye from Portland and Salt Lake last night and got in at 6 am, so if I'm stuttering a little bit, just forgive me. I promise I'll be better on the next show.
Jordan Nelson:No, no, it makes sense. I get where you're going with it. Yeah, yeah, I've definitely thought about it. I've just been lazy about it and I'll honestly I haven't done it, but I don't know. I think there's another side of it, too, where I don't know.
Jordan Nelson:I've been paying attention to some other thing that I've seen kind of trending more on, like TikTok, for example, where maybe they'll talk about something that's not super related and they'll usually coin this as audience building. They'll talk about something that's maybe not super related to their core message, but the idea there is to find other people that could be interested, and maybe they wouldn't have found you straight up by just me talking about Salesforce, but maybe they're interested in the lifestyle you have, or maybe they're interested in the hobbies you have, and then that leads them down the rabbit hole of like, okay, what does this guy do and what is this thing all about? And then it leads them to being more of a follower. So I don't know, I'm kind of like up in the air on it. I think it could be good, it could be bad. I just kind of left it for that reason of I never know who might end up caring in the future. And again it leads the lead for me, so I just haven't gone through it and tried to clean it up.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, man, I mean that makes sense. I mean I think I probably can claim that I have the most followers who like in the world of people who like cigars, pipes and Salesforce Right, like I've got that market cornered no-transcript.
Jordan Nelson:Yeah for sure.
Josh Matthews:And that's like a good example right, yeah.
Jordan Nelson:They interact with you differently. They know you have the same hobbies and I feel like it makes it more authentic connection and I think when it comes to helping people or businesses you want to work with, or even a job that you want to find, like that's really what you're trying to figure out anyways, you want to try to find somebody that you're really going to mesh with. So the more you can be yourself and find people that may not always care about the Salesforce side, but some of the hobby stuff you have, I think that's great.
Josh Matthews:Right on, man, I like that. So just a little while ago, you posted something you said on LinkedIn. You said making money online is easy, but most people forget this basic principle Minimize the expenses while increasing your earnings. More money earned plus less money spent equals greater savings. In the end, it doesn't matter how much you earn, how you spend, it says it all. Tell us more about that. This can't have come out of nowhere. Is this something that popped in your head that you just thought, yeah, a lot of like you said, most people forget. Tell me about that. What do you think? Why do you think most people forget that?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, I've just been on a kick right now with there's someone called Alex from Mozi. He has some pretty good content around business building so I've kind of been paying attention to his content. So he was talking about something like that recently. So, yeah, I think more so it's just kind of been like the longer I've been trying to do the online stuff and make money online, like it's still just mind blowing to me in a way that, like any of us can actually just advertise some kind of service or product. If it's good enough, you put it out there and that people online will pay for that, which is pretty insane, I'd say number one. That's insane in general.
Jordan Nelson:Once you've kind of played around with that idea and you can see that that will actually work for you, it just becomes like a different game that I think you end up playing More or less. Where I'm going with the one that you're kind of highlighting here is just it's really easy at the same time to like always trying to upgrade your life as you move along with like how much money you're making, and definitely been guilty of that in the past and I think what happens is it doesn't feel like anything changes because maybe you make these like minor changes where whatever right Like you take more vacations than you usually do, or you got a nicer car, or you upgraded the house you live in, or you go out and eat more, whatever it might be and so it kind of just feels like nothing changed, even though that you're upgrading either what you do for a living, the job you got where you're at, because you're just kind of upping those expenses along with it. That's more or less where I was going with that.
Josh Matthews:That makes sense, man. I mean, I always think of video games. Right, it's like you level up. I forget what the game was Destiny, I think I'm thinking of Destiny, Did you? I don't know if you ever played that, but it doesn't matter. Pick your first person shooter game of choice or any Sim City or whatever. And the reality is is like you're like cool, I got the bigger gun, I got more ammo, I got these extra health packs. It's like great, Okay, but now, like you're dealing with bigger monsters and you're you know they need more bullets to die, so you really just play in the same game, the same level, over and over and over again, with just bigger enemies but more opportunities to decimate them.
Vanessa Grant:So, jordan, I wanted to ask because I know a lot of folks, once they get pretty established in the Salesforce ecosystem, they're starting to consider going solo. When did you have a sense that you could do this on your own start? Your own business had enough. Was it a part of the following? Was it the leads that you got? How did you know or feel confident enough to make that leap?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, really good question. Thanks, Vanessa. Yeah, I'll be completely honest about it too. I feel this other people. I just haven't really shared the story as recently yet, but two things happened.
Jordan Nelson:One I started kind of getting some clients like on the side, as I was just growing a following, that people would reach out and wasn't, I would say, full-on consulting, but maybe they'd need some help with like a project. And then I kind of got that part out of the way by taking on a few of those and figuring out some of the small details like how do I invoice people, how do I set up a contract, like what would they expect me to do? What is good quality when I do this? What do I charge? And so I'd done that a couple of times. I was comfortable doing that.
Jordan Nelson:And then, honestly, the last job that I ended up taking, I went from a really established company back to a startup.
Jordan Nelson:I wanted to kind of be back in the scrappy area again and it just wasn't a good fit. It didn't end up working out the way that I wanted it to, and so it kind of just pushed me into, almost like forced me into, the situation. So I knew that I was either going to go find something else or I could give this a shot. And so I talked with my wife about it and then we were kind of we're still in a situation where we don't have any kids. So I know differences for everyone's circumstances, but for mine it was still okay to take a risk like that and I figured worst case scenario is I don't make any money for the next couple of months. And then I got to go get another job. But it ended up working out and I really liked it and it's just been going since. So that's kind of how I ended up in the situation. It was more of like just happenstance by the situation.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's a. It's a significant thing, it's. It's that I always think of um Indiana Jones and the what is it? The last crusade? I think right. And he's with his little buddy and they're trying to cross this chasm. And there's this tenet that, like you, have to have faith in order to cross this like invisible bridge, and he closes his eyes and sticks his leg out and steps forward and it's just an optical illusion that there's nothing there for him to walk on. But there is. There's a platform right there, I don't know. That thing stuck in my head ever since I was like 12.
Josh Matthews:And it does require a little bit of a leap of faith to launch something on your own. Now, had you, had you like, put in a month or two months of preparation, getting a website, getting your contract styled in, or did you just say, screw it, I'm just going to do it right now and then work your butt off to get your first client first and then hit up all of your marketing stuff and your website stuff? Like, in what order did you do it?
Jordan Nelson:There's mainly two of the screw it idea. I my wife actually. She got into Salesforce too. She was in a whole different industry and she ended up getting into Salesforce and part of the first job that she got, somebody had reached out to me for like a project to help out on. I was like, hey, I'm not really taking anything at the moment but, like you know, my wife's starting out. I was like, definitely a junior, but she could help you out with it, and then I would be here for support, like to help you guys with whatever projects she might not know how to do. And so it worked out. And so, as I was making that transition, I kind of let those people know and also, by good luck, my wife had landed her first role. So she was moving into a full role, wasn't going to take the project any longer, and then I was moving out. So the transition that really helped. So I knew I at least had one person, which was great. I just didn't know how many hours they were going to give me and stuff like that, but I knew I at least had one thing to work on Website. Everything else didn't know anything.
Jordan Nelson:There was somebody that I had met.
Jordan Nelson:Hassam is his name. He lives out in New York and he does consulting for Zendesk and he had a business and I had met him earlier that year and so I decided to kind of chat with him about it and he was just like super nice, he's not in Salesforce, but he had the Salesforce spirit of giving and it was like really willing to just help me. So we took a call for about an hour and he just gave me like his whole playbook. It was a little different because it's Zendesk, but pretty much the same on the business side, like how he acquired clients, where he looked for clients, how to invoice people more efficiently, how to set up like a light CRM if I wasn't going to use Salesforce right off the bat and all that stuff. So I owed a ton to him and a while back I made a post about that. I went out there in June and ended up meeting Hassam in real life. Finally he showed me around New York when I was there for the first time, which was great, so fun, man.
Josh Matthews:Yeah.
Jordan Nelson:So it was really cool to kind of see that full circle of like met him a year ago, helped me out a ton and then finally able to like meet up with him, so it was great.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, so you and I we similar thing happened, I mean not with the helping part, but I mean I think we'd been chatting for a year or so and then I got to actually have coffee with you. Yeah.
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, really similar.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, yeah, which was terrific. So did. By the way, you can't tell from his picture Jordan's quite tall and quite buff, just so you guys know. I got to tell you he's got those sweatshirts on.
Josh Matthews:This guy lifts and he's you know I wouldn't mess with him. So look guys, we're at the top of the hour, so I just want to do a quick recap. We are here talking to Jordan Nelson. Jordan Nelson has his own Salesforce consulting practice. He's well known in the Salesforce ecosystem. He's one of the folks who has the most followers in the ecosystem, but like at all. So he's doing something right. He's an incredibly helpful person, very nice person. He's sharing insights today on what you can do to help accelerate starting your own consultancy, and then he's also shared with us some terrific tips on how to improve your LinkedIn game overall.
Josh Matthews:Now we're doing this show in two parts, like we have been over the last couple of months, and so we're going to be wrapping up part one here in just a moment, and then part two is going to pick up. Like, if you're listening to the live show, don't go anywhere. It's just going to be a continuation of this program, but we found that it's real helpful to push the podcasts out in two parts, part two really being Q&A and general discussion. So if you've got a question and you'd like to ask in person, don't go anywhere If you have a question and you can't stick around, that's okay. Send it over to Vanessa. She'll read it aloud and you'll be able to hear the response on the podcast.
Josh Matthews:If you are interested in following, if you're listening to the live show and you've not checked out the podcast, all you've got to do is go to your favorite platform. It looks like Apple podcasts and Spotify are the most popular ones and if you type in Salesforce career or Salesforce career show, you'll find me and Vanessa having a big old party right on our little image there. So click on that, and I'd like to ask everybody to do us a favor. You know we produce these things. It takes time, it takes some energy.
Josh Matthews:We love to do it because it helps people, but we just want to help more people. We really do. We love it and the thing that you can do, if this has been a show that's been helpful for you, if you've picked up a good golden nugget of wisdom on any of these episodes or any of the live programming over the last three years, please go to your favorite podcast platform and write us a review or give us a thumbs up, right? Or give us five stars. That will really help. So that's all I wanted to just pipe up and share that. Okay, Vanessa, go for it.
Vanessa Grant:Cool. So, Jordan, I wanted to ask so you've been through a BA role, even if it wasn't Salesforce, but you get the gist You've been an admin, Now you're consulting. Was that transition intentional, and how did you know where you ultimately wanted to land? Because I think folks in this ecosystem get a little bit stressed about should I go into consulting? Do I want to be an admin? Do I want to be a BA? What is the role that fits me?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, great question I think you're really good at. It is where I would start, vanessa. I think everything I see with the content you push, I think is always awesome, because I think you really try to push people to just go for their strengths and, in general, go for it. And I see public speaking. I'll pick on that one. You're really great at just being able to coach people into doing it and going for it and trying to not care so much about what other people are going to think or their hesitancies around it. If that's something they've ever dreamed of doing, then you're always awesome to just push for it.
Vanessa Grant:Well, how did you know your path, though? How did you figure yours out?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, so I think similar for that though that's kind of where I've leaned towards is I didn't really try to get so caught up in the title itself. Like you said, I've been a BA. I've been an admin, senior admin, then consulting, and as I was going through that journey, I'd had jobs in the past and done stuff in the past where I've had to talk with a lot of people and socialize that way, and I felt like that was always something where I stood out in my admin roles. For the jobs I had, I felt like I was always fairly great at being able to simplify things, get the project to stay on track, or simplify complex things down to whoever my project manager was. Those kind of always just seemed to fall towards me for responsibilities when I had my full time role.
Jordan Nelson:So when it came to the consulting side of things, or even when I took the admin thing, I'd already been doing that as a BA, so I was comfortable in that spot and then, okay, cool, obviously this is something that I must be so many decent at because I continue to get this responsibility. And so when it moved on to the consulting side same thing it was like, okay, I'm not going to be awesome at this. Maybe I will. I've seen proof in the past that I'm okay with speaking to people and being able to simplify things and keep stuff on track, so I felt like I had that skill set and that's kind of what led me to just kind of go for it.
Vanessa Grant:Awesome. So the other thing I wanted to ask and this one so you have 85,000 LinkedIn followers, I know, at least in my journey and I expect in yours, that there comes a point where you're starting to receive more inquiries and opportunities and questions, people asking for help. Then you know how to, or that you have time to actually manage. How do you? How did you deal with that?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, good question. I ended up buying LinkedIn premium at one point and it was mainly so that I could set up an auto message to go out to people basically explaining that, so that people didn't think I was giving them the cold shoulder. Basically just kind of says like hey, thanks for reaching out. Don't always have time to like get to these. If I can, I will, but like here's some quick places you can go and get help if you're wanting it from me, which is like newsletter or you know the website with like my blog and stuff like that on YouTube videos. So I tried to redirect it that way and then the the ones that I can get to. I just try to make sure that it's like a good interaction. It's not just like a hey, I do this or like, hey, I go to this, like the ones that I do pick. I try to take the time to really figure out how to help them the best I can.
Vanessa Grant:And is there anything that that somebody would do or could do that would maybe catch your eye a little more where you'd want to have that deeper interaction?
Jordan Nelson:Oh, yeah, for sure. I think you guys probably experienced it as well. I don't know why it happens, but there comes a point where you start getting some of the messages that are more like demands than questions, where it's like do this for me, or like I need a job, get me a job, or something like that. And it's not that I don't want to help, I don't want to set that tone, but it's also I don't even know who they are, so I've never interacted with them, I've never seen them before.
Jordan Nelson:And then when you're just like casually, trying to go through all these messages that you might have, you know it's usually not like the best candidate when it's up against somebody else that has done their research or done the work so that you're not spending as much time going through the basics, you know. So when I get a message that's in comparison, it's like hey, I've been reading your newsletter. Or like I've went and watched these YouTube videos. And it's more specific of like I saw that you posted about this and this is what I'm doing. Like do you have any guidance on how to do this better? Or like what did you do in this situation? That is a lot easier for me to respond to and Kind of shows that they did their part to of trying to figure it out on their own Versus just like starting from scratch with somebody I don't know, and it's more of a demand than a question.
Vanessa Grant:Cool. One last question.
Josh Matthews:I had actually let me just let me just jump on that real quick before. Yeah, just stay, just stay on topic with that. This is a big deal, guys. Like what Jordan just said is critical.
Josh Matthews:So if you're just getting your LinkedIn game kind of dialed in, look, I'm I'm right there with Jordan. I get messages. I don't know how many messages I get every day, but it's a lot, and a lot of it is like hey, josh, here's my resume, can you help me get a job? And I'm thinking, well, I don't know, like maybe, but I'm not going to open the resume. I've got a portal for that. You can upload it. This way, all the recruiters can see your information too. Like, have you been to the website now? So well, why not? Like it's right there, you know, have you checked out Any articles where we've already put together a lot of really great information on how to get a job or how to interview?
Josh Matthews:It's like, to Jordan's point, tap the resources that the individual has already Put time and energy into, so that you don't have to just get like sort of watered down live version when they're not going to have an hour to basically read, you know, and train you on this article that has already been put together. So it's not asking, you shall receive. It's like connect, and Then you can ask and you feel receive right, connect, make a connection there. I understand that the people that you're reaching out to look if you even know about them and you're going to them for advice this is a really good thing to remember they're really busy. But they're really busy. Jordan, are you a busy guy?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, I am, and yeah, I mean that's for all of us too, right? Yeah, I wouldn't even say you have to have all these followers. I just think in general it's like I yeah, I do Salesforce, but it is like a part of my life. You know, I have this whole other life that I go home to. I have a wife, I have other things I'm dealing with and family, and so you have all this other stuff You're also worried about too. So I think there's outside too, that it's easy to forget that when you're going and asking somebody else, but yeah, to remember that on the other side of the screen they're also just living their life, trying to get things done and and yeah, just yeah, I think there's time, I think is a big one it is and it's you know.
Josh Matthews:Same goes for Vanessa. I mean Vanessa's flying all over the world over the last two years, you know, giving speeches and helping out, helping to create new certifications, ba, one writing article both you guys write for Salesforce and I've done one article myself and it's it's busy, like it takes time. So just make sure that you're trying to just consume, consume people's content before going to that person individually. I think that's a really just good general rule. And and then to your point, jordan, it demonstrates that they've actually invested. You know it's. I'd much rather get a question and maybe Vanessa, you're the same way Like I'd much rather get a question like hey. In that article you said blah, blah, blah, but I was a little bit confused. Can you clarify that for me? It's like oh, yeah, yeah, sure, that's cool versus hey. Can you teach me everything that you already wrote an article for?
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, I totally agree.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, what else? You've got another question there, vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, since Jordan's been doing this for three years, a lot's changed in the ecosystem, especially when it comes to jobs. Since we're now three years from the start of the pandemic, what has evolved in your career advice when people reach out to you over these three years? Has anything changed from three years ago to now?
Jordan Nelson:Yeah, I would say in general, so many people are ambitious coming in now and I know talent stacker, they turn out a lot of great content too. I think that whole idea that I originally had where it was like it didn't seem like a lot of people posted on LinkedIn maybe there were, but at the time when I started I didn't feel like a lot. Now I feel like my feet is just like everybody's just killing it. Everybody always just has something to do or say or breaking something down, and the content is so much better. I love Ike's content and how much time he takes to put it into all that kind of stuff, all the skits that he's doing. It's just awesome.
Jordan Nelson:And I've seen more than that. He's the first one that comes to mind, but I've seen more. I've seen people turn stuff into poems, how to teach people through even stuff like that, which is mind-blowing to me. So I think I used to be able to get away with just being like, yeah, just share what you know, put it out there, and I don't think that's a bad place to start, but it's definitely evolved to more of like you gotta kind of think a little more outside of the box, I think at this point of, like man, how do you actually get attention now on LinkedIn, cause so many people are doing it and it's just become another one of those things where the bar is now there for that, and now it's you gotta do that, and on top of that, you gotta make it good too. So how do you do that? So that's one that's definitely, I think, has changed.
Josh Matthews:I'm with you there, man, and I think this AI thing is changing content as well, Right, Anybody can jump in, put in a few little prompts into chat, GPT and voila, you've got a sort of general and probably not a half bad baseline blog or article or post. But we're starting I don't know if you guys have noticed this I personally started to get this sort of spidey sense of what's an AI or a post, Of what's an AI article versus what's actually driven by the real author. Someone actually typed it out or minimally helped to create a persona with AI which I haven't done yet but to create a persona with AI so that when the article or the content's being created, it actually sounds like the real person wrote it. And there are these sites you can go to. You can just drop in a link or copy and paste some information and you'll get to fairly good degree of accuracy. How much of the article was human versus AI, Right?
Josh Matthews:And I think that people are gonna start doing that more and more and more as we start getting these sort of spidey senses of is that even real, Right? We're all doing it with our emails already. I mean, how many people here just by throw up purple heart on your app here. If you can see the format of an email and know it's spam or someone targeting you for wanting you to buy products that you don't want, you can just see the format. You don't even have to read a single word and you already know what it is. Throw up a little heart. If you guys are getting spidey senses already on emails and spams and things like that. Okay, a bunch of hearts. One, two, three, four, five, yeah, yeah, a bunch of them. So I think that that's gonna be coming to the sort of wired, innate sense of what's AI driven versus human. So keeping it human is really critical and really important. So good stuff. Anything else, Vanessa, before we wrap up this segment and dive into the open floor, Q&A with Jordan.
Vanessa Grant:Well, you know, on that topic, if we wanna end it off Jordan, have you used AI for any of your LinkedIn posts?
Jordan Nelson:I messed around a lot with chat GPT when it first came out. I never was really able to dial it in the way I wanted it to. I've written a lot of content, especially like on my newsletter, and I felt like I had a pretty decent way that I was breaking it up in the way I liked that it sounded and flowed. So I couldn't really get it to create that for me. So I really haven't. I've definitely tried.
Jordan Nelson:I ended up moving more tours and this is more of like a business decision for me, but I ended up moving more towards working with a ghostwriter on one off stuff. So it was just getting a little too much for me. So I had him start working with me and just really trying to mimic my voice and he and I meet up. Now I think it's like once a week and just kind of review content that's gonna go out and he still has me improve everything. But that's been a big time saver and I feel like that one's still kind of been hard to replace like a ghostwriter with AI, because they can really dial it in and ask me a bunch of questions about how I would do it, how I would say something or how we would talk about a topic.
Josh Matthews:That's so cool, that's very cool. Yeah, it's like next level stuff, right. Like, oh, what about when AI starts asking you those questions instead of just talking it up and you say, no, do it like this, no, do it like that? Right, I'm actually saying like, hey, look, this is what I wrote, but I don't know. I kind of want your input on these three sentences or on these topics, like that'll be, that'll be the next level that comes out.
Josh Matthews:I imagine yeah, oh, yeah, for sure. Well, guys, this has been a fantastic segment. Don't go anywhere unless you're on a podcast and can go wherever you want. But if you're on this live show right now, stick around, because we're going to be continuing our conversation with Vanessa and Jordan, and we also have Peter Gons on the stage, we've got Fred Cadena on the stage, we've got Stephen Gregor on the stage, cheesecake Larry's here with us, anthony Rodriguez is here with us, we've got Janine Markhart, you've got Vanessa, we've got Casey, like it's just our. I love this crew. You guys are awesome. I love our little crew. It's so much fun.
Josh Matthews:I always look forward to these Wednesdays, so I'm looking forward to part two. Now I'm going to try something here on my like little pod track, p4 Zoom. Casey sent me a message. I guess it didn't work before, but I'm going to try and drop in our new intro. But before we go, just a very huge thank you to Jordan Nelson for being with us. Of course, massive gratitude for Vanessa for showing up every single week, whether she's in a car or, you know, getting off an airplane or at a conference Like. Thank you so much for that. Again, please make sure that you're subscribing to these podcasts. They're coming out every single week now We've got wonderful guests lined up.
Josh Matthews:If you missed the show two weeks ago, part one and part two are out, so go check those out. And in the last one, the one that just got released today, I put it out, is a fantastic show. We had a lot of smart people contributing, talking about disabilities during job applications, right and we shared real life experiences. We discussed the importance of transparency, institutional bias and equal employment opportunities. We also talked about what are the top, most trendy but probably very positive certifications that you should be looking at. We answer those questions. Fred Kedena weighs in heavily on that, as does Vanessa, and then also Jason Zeichelitz, and then Anthony shares his perspectives on some of these topics too.
Josh Matthews:And then we also just talk about how to break into the world of being a consultant. Maybe you're an admin, maybe you're a developer, but you want to move into a Salesforce partner role and be a consultant. And, by the way, if you're really interested in investigating Salesforce partners, you can check out the Salesforce Ben article that I penned. It's called Salesforce Career Checklist and that will tell you exactly how to read and you can use it. You can use this for Salesforce partners, but really you can use these research techniques on any kind of company, no matter what industry you're in. So be sure to check that out. But thank you again, everybody, and stay tuned, we'll be right back.