Ever wondered how to navigate the complexities of LinkedIn and boost your career in the Salesforce ecosystem? Brace yourself for an enlightening conversation with Vanessa Grant, Fred Cadena, and Peter Ganza, as we navigate these topics and more. We dive into the vibrant Salesforce community, the upcoming Dreamforce event, and the ins and outs of successful networking in this dynamic field.
We delve into deeper waters, discussing the significance of the 'Open to Work' feature on LinkedIn and how it can shape perceptions amongst potential employers and recruiters. We uncover the importance of authenticity, crafting a unique voice, and leverage Vanessa's experience from her contribution to the Salesforce Talent Ecosystem Report 2022 by 10K. Join us as we explore the ever-increasing demand for business analysts and the skills necessary to succeed in this role.
Finally, we tackle the technical and functional career paths in Salesforce, offering valuable insights for both novices and seasoned professionals. We share anecdotes from our personal career journeys, from selling cars to product management, and offer advice on the steps to take in starting a Salesforce consulting firm. Be prepared for insightful career advice, tips on overcoming barriers, and learn how to make smart decisions that will propel you towards success in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Ever wondered how to navigate the complexities of LinkedIn and boost your career in the Salesforce ecosystem? Brace yourself for an enlightening conversation with Vanessa Grant, Fred Cadena, and Peter Ganza, as we navigate these topics and more. We dive into the vibrant Salesforce community, the upcoming Dreamforce event, and the ins and outs of successful networking in this dynamic field.
We delve into deeper waters, discussing the significance of the 'Open to Work' feature on LinkedIn and how it can shape perceptions amongst potential employers and recruiters. We uncover the importance of authenticity, crafting a unique voice, and leverage Vanessa's experience from her contribution to the Salesforce Talent Ecosystem Report 2022 by 10K. Join us as we explore the ever-increasing demand for business analysts and the skills necessary to succeed in this role.
Finally, we tackle the technical and functional career paths in Salesforce, offering valuable insights for both novices and seasoned professionals. We share anecdotes from our personal career journeys, from selling cars to product management, and offer advice on the steps to take in starting a Salesforce consulting firm. Be prepared for insightful career advice, tips on overcoming barriers, and learn how to make smart decisions that will propel you towards success in the Salesforce ecosystem.
And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce career show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.
Speaker 2:Okay, welcome everybody. We are with the exact same live audience as the last podcast, because it's the same live show. It's just we tend to do this about 90 minutes or a couple hours at a time. With me is my wonderful co-host, vanessa Grant. Go ahead and do a quick intro, vanessa.
Speaker 3:Hi everybody. It's Vanessa Grant here to support folks on their Salesforce career journeys, as I've been doing for a number of years, but my background is consulting product ownership and I've been doing Salesforce for 13 years.
Speaker 2:Terrific. And we've also got our friend Fred Cadena, who has his own podcast. Go ahead, fred, say hi to everybody and share your podcast as well, hi.
Speaker 4:Josh, thanks for having me. As always, podcast is Banking Night Disruption. We talk about FinTech and its application as Salesforce, and we'd love if anybody could listen. Also, I'm at the airport, so I'm going to be on mute most of the time.
Speaker 2:All right, well, safe travels to you, fred. We also have Peter Ganza. Go ahead, pete, Hello everybody, peter Ganza.
Speaker 5:I'm an alumni and turned to the ecosystem and, long story short, I'm now the Epic Change Whisperer. I'm helping partners do better on the Epic Change and go to markets, and I met Josh last week for the first time and I have to say he's exactly what I pictured a gentle giant.
Speaker 3:As good as advertised.
Speaker 2:That's so kind of you. I never viewed myself quite a giant. I'm 6'1". I know guys are a lot bigger than me.
Speaker 5:Well, look at the picture. Look at the picture and it's pretty clear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. Well, thank you, peter, and it was fantastic meeting you too. I'm looking at for those who are listening to the podcast and have never visited our live show here on X I'm just going to start saying X instead of Twitter from now on who have never come to our live program on X, which is every other Wednesday at 5.30. Like I'm looking here, I see Vanessa, fred and I have never met in person, but we will, because Fred and I are both going to be at a fantastic event, Probably the day that this podcast is actually released, on the 13th of September at 2.30. You can register to meet me, fred, vanessa and a host of other fantastic folks, including Jonathan Fox from his YouTube channel. We've got folks from LadiesBee Architect who are going to be there and other content creators. It's just two blocks north and if you want to register for this event, just go to attheg JoshForce on Twitter. That's my handle, and if you just scroll down, you'll see two opportunities to connect with me and also with Fred and Vanessa, and they include a live broadcast of this program from the Marketing Home Tent at the Pink Elephant Alibi Restaurant sponsored by Sir Conte. That's on Thursday at 2.30. And then the content creators meet up, which is going to be at 2.30 on Wednesday in San Francisco. So looking forward to getting to meet a lot of you there.
Speaker 2:So we've just finished our first part, one which was hopefully you listened to it it was last week where we had Janet Elliott on board. Janet is a fantastic Salesforce MVP. She's involved in lots of different groups. She helps mentor people who are going to be doing speeches and presentations in the Salesforce ecosystem, so definitely listen to that. And then Vanessa, just so you know, just a quick recap. She's got four sessions at Dreamforce. So if you're listening to this right now, and it's Wednesday the 13th, you still have a chance to see her live in San Francisco on Thursday, live from the Cow Palace. I was wanting to say that.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to be very nervous with four sessions. I'm very open about how scared I get when I'm presenting in front of people. For, like, I'm usually fine on here, I'm fine in Zoom presentations, but you throw like a PowerPoint presentation behind me on a stage and like I lose my mind. So if you see me just wandering around, lost, you know, maybe get me a beer or something. Cup of coffee.
Speaker 2:A beer and a hug. How about that?
Speaker 3:That sounds good.
Speaker 2:Okay, you got it. Well, I'm giving out free hugs to Vanessa all week at Dreamforce and I think you're going to do just great. I know that because I've seen you speak multiple times and you do a fantastic job, so can.
Speaker 4:I say one thing, just if you can listen you can't get enough of Vanessa. She's actually a guest on Begging, on Disruption. We're recording tomorrow afternoon and on that episode is going to drop for Thursday after the part one of this drop. So the Thursday before Dreamforce. So you can't get enough of Vanessa before Dreamforce. Please tune into that episode.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, vanessa, have you ever thought about, you know, having some merchandise Right, like for real?
Speaker 3:It's funny because, like, going into this, you know kind of sales force, I'm going to cringe as I say, like you know, influencer thought leadership, like I can't say that without a weird voice, but like it's, there's always that concern that people are going to get sick of me, and I actually had somebody say you just never know how deep that ocean is, and so I'm just going to keep going until people stop listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think people are going to stop listening to you, Vanessa, at all. Right, you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, look at everybody's being thrown up some smiley faces for you. Yeah, you're a true gem. And at real quick, just to backtrack real quick, like I'm looking at all these folks here and it's like, well, okay, jesse and Steven they're both from the salesforcerecretercom, which is the company I run, and these guys are fantastic. You know members. Steven's the director of recruiting, jesse's a senior recruiter on our team. See, casey I see Casey all the time because we live together. I see Stephanie, who has been, I think that on this show, stephanie, you might be right there with Vanessa as a longest listener and contributor. So thank you for being on the program. It was an experience last year to witness you sort of trying to break into the ecosystem, landing your first job, getting that under your belt, gaining even more skin, getting your second job, getting even more income and even greater responsibility. So I always love to see your face here on the show and if you want to pipe up and share, just raise your hand. We'll add you to the panel here.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're going to go ahead and jump into some listener mail. Listener mail Speedy delivery. So, vanessa, I know that you had some questions shared, but let's quickly just announce that if anyone's listening to the live show that would like to come on the stage and ask a question, just raise your hand, we'll bring you up. Also, if you're a little bit bashful and shy and I get it this is a career show, which means that we not only talk about how to advance your career and do better in the job that you have, but maybe how to leave the job that you hate and go get a better job, and so, if that's the case, you might want to stay a little bit anonymous, in which case you can DM Vanessa right here on Twitter. Sorry, X, I promised I'd say X. Okay, on X. You can DM Vanessa on X. Ask her the question. She'll read it aloud and we will do our best to give you the best response. So let's hear it. Vanessa, that's a question that we've got this week.
Speaker 3:So the first question is what are your thoughts on the open to work ring on LinkedIn profile picture? I've always been worried that it might look a little desperate or unattractive to any potential employers or recruiters. Am I overthinking it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you want me to go first on this.
Speaker 3:I think yours is the response I'd want to hear on this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't like them. I don't really like them that much. Look, if you're brand new in a high and let's just say, nevermind Salesforce if you're brand new, it's totally cool to put that up. If you're in a sector where identifying top candidates is very, very difficult, you may want to put that up. But if you're at in a senior role, maybe you're not a manager or director, but you're an experienced, talented professional I think it sends the wrong message. It really does. It's like going to a party and people wearing hats that say I'm free, I'm available, I'm single. It's just a little bit tacky and it takes away some of the mystery. So I'm not saying that I think it's not a bad idea. I think LinkedIn made a good move to do that, in particular for certain industries. But once we get to a certain level in our career, I would tell any manager who comes to me for a consultation who's looking for a new opportunity to get rid of it, because then it just begs the question why aren't you working?
Speaker 2:There are legitimate reasons to not be working. The economy tank that was last hired, last on first gone. We went through a merger, 30% of staff was let go. But or I'm brand new. I'm looking for my first gig. Those are all totally cool, but God, if you got fired for performance, something like that, definitely don't do that. I'm not saying be dishonest. Absolutely in no way would I ever encourage dishonesty in the job acquisition space. Never do that. Then I'll ruin your career faster than anything. But that level of transparency in a first meet I don't recommend it. What about you, vanessa? What do you think?
Speaker 3:I don't have any strong opinions about the open to work thing, but I'm also not an HR recruiting and from when I've been a hiring manager that didn't exist. So I'm going to stay silent on this one.
Speaker 2:Okay, look, it's different. It's different if you're high and we'll get to you in just one second, fred. It's really different if you're a recruiter versus maybe just a hiring manager. Not, I don't mean just a hiring manager, but a hiring manager. So if you're looking for the best of the best of the best, when we place people, almost always they're already working, they have jobs, they have careers, they weren't let go.
Speaker 2:Now, that isn't to say that people who are looking for work, that there's anything wrong with them. By no means does it imply that. But it does imply that there's going to be more things wrong with people who've got that ring on than people who don't. So it's just a. When we're de-risking the hiring process, we want to know someone is working, that people like them, that they can communicate, they know how to perform their job responsibilities, and people who are still employed are demonstrating that automatically by continuing to be employed.
Speaker 2:But again things happen. I've lost a job before. It's no fun, it puts you, you know, just kind of put your back against the wall. You want to do everything you can to try and acquire a new role quickly. But if you're at any kind of senior level, in other words, if you've got three or more years of experience in the industry that you're working in. I don't know. I don't think it's a good look and I do think it kind of comes off. It doesn't smack of desperation but it triggers something in the brain that reminds you of desperation. Does that make sense? I'm kind of curious what you think here, guys.
Speaker 3:Makes sense to me, Fred.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, it makes no sense to me. You cover through what I was going to say. The other point I was going to make is you know and listeners probably have similar experiences you know recruiters are going to reach out, whether or not that's on your profile or not. You know, and I'm always open to having those conversations, even when I'm happy you know somewhere. You know those are good connections to me. The other point I was going to make is this, which is LinkedIn does have and, josh, you're probably a better expert on it than I am lots of other settings that you can use to encourage recruiters to reach out to you or anyone to reach out to you, including having an open profile. That, I think, is significantly more effective than that green photo frame.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, you don't want to trash your beautiful face with a green ring, the green ring of, you know, joblessness right.
Speaker 4:That's only for people like you that have attractive faces. Whatever I can do to cover my face is a what is it?
Speaker 2:What are you talking about, man? Oh my God, you're this handsome masculine dude Like. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, peter, go ahead.
Speaker 5:Well, I mean I don't disagree with anything that was just said. I feel like it's not as big of a deal, like it's not a. Fred just said it's not really like a setting. It's not really going to change. You know anything in terms of a big impact on, let's say, the algorithm? But the others do make the impact. You know where the recruiters see my stuff or that I'm looking for. You know open profile there's a whole bunch of. There's a couple of actual settings that you need to have enabled. Open to work ring thing I honestly I don't care. I really don't think it's a big deal. What's in the person's profile is what matters. But just my opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. But again, we're talking about first impressions, right. So you know, like that's all. I'm not saying I wouldn't hire someone because they had the ring on it far from it, right. I mean, we've placed people who've got the green ring or blue ring, purple ring, whatever color it is. But you're right, there are settings both you guys shared. There are settings where you can share that you're open to recruiters, but it somehow protects your Anyone from the company that you work at from seeing it, if that makes sense, okay. The other thing that you can do to be found more because this is about trying to be found, right? So, setting when most recruiters who are using LinkedIn as their key source of you know, as their key platform for sourcing talent, they're going to find you if your profile is full, if you have hashtags in your about section, if you have a compelling mini elevator pitch description of what you do, instead of like Salesforce administrator, right, nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really say how you solve a company's problem. So, having a good tagline, having a good photo and checking all of your settings and having a nice, you know, robust description of your accomplishments we talk about this almost every week Get your accomplishments in there right, you'll still be found by recruiters.
Speaker 2:Now, if you are a contractor, I'll say maybe. I don't agree with anything I've said if you're a contractor. If you're a contractor, I don't see any issue with that ring, because that means you're ready to work and you don't need to give two or three or four weeks notice. And if someone needs like we've got a new client, they need two developers. Might as well pitch this. By the way, you can check out the salesforcerecretercom forward, slash j-o-b and find some of our open positions. A lot of them get filled first before we even get it posted, and so we've got a couple new ones for a couple developers to work on a service cloud project for the next three months. Now, if we didn't have candidates that are ready to go and we do, but if we didn't I think as a recruiter I'd be looking for those people who have that open ring and are comfortable with contracting because they're going to be ready to rock tomorrow, and oftentimes that's what is demanded by the client. They need someone fast. So that's the only caveat I put in there.
Speaker 5:FYI for anybody who wants to find that I was just poking around. It's actually not in the settings. You have to go to your profile and click on the open to button and then finding a new job and then you'll see all the settings in there. So profile open to first button is finding a new job. That's where all the settings are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool. All right, I think we've got at least one or two other questions, right?
Speaker 3:We do. We actually have three more questions. I'm not sure how many we'll get to, but Okay. So can you cover how people can build a brand of value on LinkedIn and why it's important for their career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll tell you what I'm going. To make it real easy, go back two episodes on our podcast and listen to the one with Jordan Nelson, and that gets answered ad nauseam. Because Jordan Nelson has, at the time of the recording, 86,000 LinkedIn followers and his career has blossomed. Some of it is because he's just a young, smart, energetic, bright, kind person, right, but that has certainly been magnified through the continual work that he does on LinkedIn and getting regular posts. So I mean that's my short answer. But why don't you guys dive into some of the other stuff if you'd like to cover it for a little bit longer?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, for me, I think I'm starting to get to the point in my career where I almost kind of get angry when I see folks just kind of posting what sounds like chat, gbt, word salad, and so I don't find value when folks are not being authentic and don't really have a viewpoint.
Speaker 3:Even kind of referencing back to the last episode with Janet, but I think it's important to focus on what you are passionate about and besides being a person with a viewpoint and sharing your opinions, I think it's also, I know, when I started my kind of LinkedIn branding journey, I wasn't super comfortable necessarily being a content creator, and so I initially started calling myself like a content amplifier, where if there were other content creators that I resonated with that had, I thought, really important things to say by helping amplify their voices.
Speaker 3:Initially it helped build my brand as well, where it was like I was aligning myself with people who had similar viewpoints and I sort of started developing my own voice on LinkedIn from there. But for me, I mean it was also finding a thing that people were interested in hearing about. For me, that ended up being Salesforce Business Analysis, where I don't know that there were a lot of people in the ecosystem talking about it and it was something that I was passionate about and there was an audience for it, and that's kind of how I started building up my things, initially just amplifying other folks and sharing my learning journey. So when I was at the beginning of it, anytime I heard something cool and new, sharing that and then also developing my own viewpoint on things as I gain more experience.
Speaker 2:You're talking about something we've talked about a lot, right, which is sort of the little stages that you go through. First you like stuff on LinkedIn right. Then you comment on it right, or share it, and then you start writing your own stuff and, like I said in the last episode, it's okay to not be the best writer in the world when you're starting out. It's okay. This is when you're going to start learning what works and what doesn't. Should I include an emoji on the top line? Should I tag people so that they can click on it, and this kind of stuff. So it's just a learning process. But you brought up something really cool. You brought up something really critical, which is, if you just sound like ChadGPT gibberish, you're just adding to the noise God knows, there's enough noise out there in the ecosystem, right. And I'm not even talking about opinions, I'm just talking about regurgitation of the same stuff that everybody says all the time, and it can be a little bit boring after a while and it makes it harder to find the real content that's going to actually elevate and motivate you and get your career pointed in the right direction.
Speaker 2:Now, one thing I did want to share, vanessa, because you just brought up business analysts. We recently just got an early release of the Salesforce Talent Ecosystem Report for 2022 from 10K. Okay, and 10K advises that if you guys go back about two, three months, you'll see we had a fantastic session with Kristin Languas from 10K she's Chief People Officer so she reached out, asked us to go ahead and just share that. This is a report I like to read every year. This is the fifth year that they've come out and business analysts saw the highest global supply growth 34% year over year and the highest demand growth that's 55% year over year, suggesting that administrators are sort of leveling up into more specialized roles, and I'm reading that right from this report.
Speaker 2:Now, if we're lucky and I think we will be we'll get Kristin back on the show here and maybe in a month or so and we can go into great detail about this report, because it is about the Talent Ecosystem and Salesforce and, after all, that's what we talk about. But, vanessa, you've been really critical and kind of, I think, at the forefront of some of the reason why the business analyst sector is growing so much, including contributing to the certification and what that should look like, as well as hosting multiple sessions across the country and across the globe really about BA. So thanks for doing that, because you're definitely making a difference.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and with AI kind of coming at us fast and furious in the future, there's a real importance to and value in keeping up with those business analysis skills, because really, if you throw AI on something without having those business analysis documentation, your business processes documented, your data clean, without having that business analysis foundation, your AI is not going to give you the results that you want. And so a big part of my session at Dreamforce is how can you leverage those BA skills so that you can set your org up for success when AI is inevitably going to come in, and how do you increase your productivity?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a real good point. I was just reading a report this morning that chat, you know, chat GPT, what is it? Usership, I don't even know is down right, like it's actually starting to wane off. People like mess around with it and then kind of say goodbye or switch to a different AI platform. But you got to remember everybody, this is pulling from the internet. Okay, that's what it's pulling from. It's not pulling from someone's genius mind, it's just pulling from the genius minds and the ungenius minds alike that have flooded the internet. And so when you type in a very basic prompt, you know, hey, tell me about blank. It might be very thorough, but you're getting a combination of genius people and not so genius people that are developing that information. It's not necessarily fresh, it's not necessarily new, and the way that it's written is not going to be in your voice unless you spend, you know, three or four days really coaxing your AI, your chat GPT personas to deliver the communication in the way that your voice actually is. This is not something I've done yet, by the way, so I can't speak too much about it, but you've got a great point about AI, noise, all of these things.
Speaker 2:I'm a big fan of dividing the herd. It's okay, you know, don't? You don't have to be Lady Gaga and wear a meat suit to the Grammys, right, and you don't have to. You don't have to be Howard Stern, shock, shock. But there's nothing wrong with dividing the herd a little bit and taking a strong perspective on something and writing about it, and even if it's unpopular, I got to tell you it's kind of fun, right, it's kind of fun. I say a lot of unpopular things and actually I won't say that they're unpopular, I'll say that they're. You know how would I put it? Yeah, maybe it's unpopular, Maybe it's just an unpopular way to talk about a thing, but still a good idea. Go ahead, peter.
Speaker 5:I was just going to say Vanessa nailed it when she said at the beginning be authentic, right, if you look at, let's say, chat GPT, it stopped looking at stuff like two years ago almost, or something like that yeah, it's 2021. It's not ingesting anything anymore, right, so keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:Good points, go ahead, fred.
Speaker 4:Sure, I think I go back to the original question and just respond with a why? Nobody really kind of questioned why do you want to become a LinkedIn influencer, linkedin content creator? What's the objective? And I think if you start by really defining what it is you're trying to get out of it, are you looking to create a platform or are you looking to set up a product, to be an education force? Are you looking for a new job or are you looking to, you know, be invited for speaking opportunities? Going back to the last show, and then I think that'll help you craft what you want to do. And the answer can be everybody doesn't need to be a LinkedIn influencer. So I'd probably just start by challenging the original premise. Going back on you guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it's necessarily about being an influencer, so much as does your LinkedIn. Does your social media have a perspective? Can we get a gauge of what your, where your passion lies? I mean, and these are things that I think that the people talk about during their interviews. Even so, what is your voice, what is your perspective and what are the things that you want to be known for?
Speaker 3:I did a session in Florida dream and Josh was there, but we started off with you know what are the, you know what's the the three things that you want somebody to know about you when they leave the room. I mean, they might not remember your name, but if you know, for you know Larry turned into Cheesecake Larry. Larry's in the audience, but you know, I'll always remember Cheesecake Larry, like he is memorable now to me and and I don't know that he meant that to be part of his brand, but it worked out for him. You know, everybody knows who Larry is now and so it's. It's not necessarily. You know the.
Speaker 3:I think the you know wanting to be an influencer so much as what do you want people to leave remembering? Do you want them to remember that you're looking for a job. Do you want them to remember that you're looking for the specific job? Do you want them to remember that you're passionate about flows? I think those are all things that are that are important to make sure that you, you have some continuity in your, in your social media so that when, when an opportunity arises, they think of you. And a lot of my opportunities in my career have come up because people have gone. Business analysis oh, you know what I should call Vanessa, or speaking sessions I should call Janet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are. These are fantastic points, and I love what you said, fred, about. Well, do you even want to be an influencer? Like, why? Like what's the benefit? And the reality is is I would say that the people that I know in the ecosystem that are making the most money, like literally like dockets and dockets, buckets of dockets, okay, tons of money Like they're not influencers. They're hard workers who make good decisions, right. But if you're trying to get, like land your first job, or you know, or you just find it fun, like I love, like, I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:This community has meant so much to me in so many ways. You know, when I get on this show and I look and, by the way, guys, you can go to Twitter right now. I just posted I didn't tag it because I couldn't do it because we're doing this live show, but I threw up a picture of me, peter Gansa and Eric Dressfield, and then I threw up a picture of me and Cheesecake Larry Lee also. So if you just go to my profile at the Josh Force right now, you'll see us hanging out at Life Sciences Dreaming, but it's meant so much for me. You know, casey and I moved 3,000 miles away from home. We have some friends here, but very few because you know we don't have kids in school here and you know we work from home and that whole thing and you know, and we don't golf. So like we spend, or I'll just speak for myself I spend the majority of my time and my my sort of extroverted energy at work, and if it's not at work, it's with people that I'm working with, and if it's not at work, it's with people who are somehow involved in the work that we do, right, whether I'm shooting the breeze with Peter or Fred or catching up with Vanessa and or, or you know, like Stephen and I on my team we had a really nice chit chat yesterday and Jesse and I will have nice chit chats Like this is where most of my friendships and relationships are that I'm experiencing now, other than you know, my crew of dudes back home, you know, in Portland.
Speaker 2:So you can get a lot of support in these communities and if you're out there trying to make connections, meet people, go to these events and make connections. It's a real thing, like it's one thing to go to a go to a, you know, say like a Tahoe dream, and or a Florida dream and or a Midwest, midwest dream and or something like that, and it's your first time and maybe you know someone right. And then when you go the second time and you know 15 people right and you go you know two years later and you know pretty much everybody Like. So that's a there's. There's something really special and and friendly and supportive about that. So it makes sense to do it. But just know what your reasons are. What's the why?
Speaker 3:To Fred's point and actually I just want to point out I just throw a link onto our show but Tristan Lombard, who's been, I would say, really critical in my journey just as far as you know how to, how to brand myself and how to do speaking steps sessions, tristan, you know, is hashtag stage mom for me has a great article about how to holistically engage folks in social media and it's on talk base. I threw the link on Twitter, but definitely worth checking out and definitely, I would say, give him a follow if, if you're interested in diving into this little bit more.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and thanks for joining us here today. Tristan, by all means, just raise your hand and bring it up on the stage if you'd like to share some of your thoughts about this question. What's the next one, Vanessa?
Speaker 3:The next one is I'd love to hear your opinion or insight on deciding to pursue either a more technical route in the ecosystem or a more functional route.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's just a behavioral personality question. Like you are, you're not Okay, so I'll give you a quick example. The majority of men are interested in things. This is proven. So you know you can. I'm doing that thing that we just talked about in the last show on I Like, so you can dissent, but it's a fact, so just go over it, okay. So men tend to be more interested in things, and that's why most engineers are men, right, and women tend to be more focused on people and relationships.
Speaker 2:I'm generalizing here, right, I like things. I'm a little bit of a gadget head, but I'm way more interested in people and that's why I work in an HR you know, recruiting function, which is, you know, a very it's all people, it's all it is. It's barely things. I mean I've got a couple of things I'm holding on to a phone right now. I've got a podcast, a little box that I researched for days and finally bought. You know some kind of into things, but but I'm mostly interested in people, so you got to figure out which one you are. One of them is going to require you to talk more to other people and that means that you're going to have to have to be successful to be competitive, a pension for those types of activities right?
Speaker 2:Growing up, my best friend he was the son of one of the lead engineers on the Hubble spacecraft and I remember driving down to his how I say driving I rode my bike. You know he lives about six miles away. I rode my bike down to his house in high school and he's got this new remote control car. I'm like, oh, my God, man, that is so cool, where do you get that? He's like oh, I made it. I was like what do you mean so well, I had some spare balsa wood lying around and my dad had this old transistor radio, so I made a remote control car. He's an engineering mindset, he's interested in things and he eventually became a mechanical engineer and then after that moved on to become a chiropractor. Just, still, it's people oriented, but it's still mechanical thing movement in your back, okay. So that's a really good example of someone who would be more technical versus someone like, for instance, me or Vanessa, you know, doing her BA work. Right, it's functional. You're talking to people and you're trying to understand them and help them to feel comfortable and gain trust so that you can get the right kind of information out of them, because without the trust, the information is bad. It's like having a bug in your data, right? So a lot of what I do, a lot of what Vanessa does, a lot of what Steven does, a lot of what Jesse does, is just trying to debug the information so that we're getting the real clarity there. So that's kind of what I think.
Speaker 2:I guess the person who's asking this question, if they're not certain themselves, if they're thinking and I get it, if you're new, oh my God, I'm trying to like point my rocket ship to the moon. You know either the moon or the Mercury, and I'm not sure which direction to point it to. You know I would. I would just say, like, ask yourself, what are you into? Okay, like, are you into people or are you into stuff? And you can be everyone's on the spectrum somewhere, but where does it lean? And I'd also say, like, if you're, in fact, I had a conversation with someone the other day.
Speaker 2:She's fantastic. She's also a dream and presenter. I think she's a fantastic person and we were talking about a couple of her family members and they're on a track for their PD one both of them and had some questions about that as a career and the first thing I did is like well, like, how are they technical? Yeah, they both. You know they come from a long line of engineers. Okay, so that's a genetic trait that can be passed on, right? So look at your family. If you don't know yourself yet, look at your parents, look at your family members, and then look at your room what's in it? Look at your books what are they about? Look at your YouTube feeds what are they about? Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and actually I'll second the YouTube feeds and webinars and things For me. I discovered my route by seeing people that were in functional roles and I found myself agreeing with them and kind of almost kind of white knuckling my chair because I was so into what they were saying. So find people that are talking about those paths and see which one resonates with you more.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you might eventually marry it right, like you might find that you're somewhere in the middle. Well, welcome to the solution architect role, right, or welcome to the lead consultant role, because those are really good examples, I think, of a nice balance between the two. Peter, you've got your hand raised, let's hear it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, a great topic. I love this question and I think it really comes down to having a starting point. A lot of people make this more complicated. I'm going to pick a path and I'm going to be stuck there. You're not going to do that, right? If I think for myself, this is just from experience, right?
Speaker 5:25 years ago I got sick of building computers, which I thought was cool at the time, and I was good and I made a lot of money in my basement, right, and I started a tech support job at Symantec. I had no idea how tech companies worked. I was shocked and surprised. I stumbled my way through. I did great at tech support. I saw these people that would come in late, were always dressed down, were always smiling, frilly and they were always bringing cool stuff and I thought what do those folks do? Because that's the job for me. I'm obviously just joking, right, but it turns out they were product managers.
Speaker 5:I pivoted to product management. That was cool, that was exciting, right? I got tired of arguing with developers about how many pixels the blue button should be and where it should be placed, and requirements and traceability, and I grew into more of the exterior role and I pivoted to strategic marketing, competitive intelligence, product marketing, and now I can say I'm a marketer. If you asked me 25 years ago if I would ever imagine me saying I was a marketer never right. But I had my starting point and that was I liked computers, so I was selling them, and that I just started a tech support job and figured it out as I went right. I didn't have any, I didn't know where my destination would be. I still don't. But you're good at something and you get in and do it and you'll. You'll find your way right. Just be good at your job, do the work, be authentic, network, and where you end up is where you end up.
Speaker 2:That's a great story, peter, and you know I'll tell you I had sort of this weird little blip in my career. I was, you know, I didn't have my college degree yet. I was selling cars for Subaru out in Portland, Oregon. I wanted to get into an office job. I was pulling 12-hour shifts, standing out in the rain, getting a sore back, talking to people who didn't want to talk to me, and it wasn't a lot of fun. To be honest. I was still successful at it, but it wasn't a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:And I took a look at, you know, becoming network engineer and network admin and I looked at this ITT program and when I went down there and I looked around and I saw what they were doing, I mean it took all of about four seconds until my eyes glazed over and I felt like going to sleep Because you get technical like that and start putting graphs and crap like that in front of me. I'm just like dude. This is let me give this to my friend, tom, who builds his own you know BalsaWood remote controls, control cars out of BalsaWood Like forget it. So if you look at something and it makes you tired, that's not the job for you. Okay, you got it. And we've got other shows that we talk about introverts and extroverts and that kind of thing. But that's not the same thing as being technical or non-technical. But if something makes you tired, if it makes you exhausted, it ain't for you guy or gal, it just ain't right. But if something gives you energy, if you like you know both for Peter and Vanessa's story you start latching. Oh, these are the people I like, you know what are they doing? Well, now you've got a real interest. It's a natural interest and you're going to spend a lot more time on it, right, like I was an art major, guys, by the way.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, like, not technical at all, not business-y, like at all. And you're like, why did I do it? Because it was fun for me. I used to just draw pictures from time I was little, and because it was fun for me, I did it a lot and I got good. Now I can draw and paint and do sculptures and all that stuff and it's a lot of fun. In case you can do it too, fantastic artist, right. But I did that stuff because it was fun for me and I spent time and that's why I got good at it.
Speaker 2:So if you pick something that you want to get good at, but it's not interesting enough. Exciting enough, it doesn't like. It doesn't just make you want to do it for free. Right, that's really what the question is Like, do you? Would you do this stuff for free just because it's fun? And if the answer is no, maybe you should look at other opportunities. So that's all. I'll just leave it at that. All right, vanessa? Well, I know we've got one question from Ibrahim, who's, I think, a first-time listener here, but do we have any others from other?
Speaker 3:We do. I also want to note that we were recently joined by Tristan, so I would love to introduce Tristan.
Speaker 2:Let's do it, hey Tristan.
Speaker 7:Hello, hello. I want to say thank you so much for holding this space for others. I think it's so important. Originally, vanessa was like do you want to share some things about building a brand of value? So, but I know that conversation is to as kind of steered. One thing I did want to go back to, though, around advancing your career, just as a quick point for anyone is that I know that oftentimes there is a big barrier for people. They want to contact other people, they want to learn from them, they want to network, but they're afraid to reach out.
Speaker 7:That resource that Vanessa shared. It's part of a series. The first part is around holistic engagement, and it can give you all some steps about how to reach out to someone who you don't have a prior relationship with that you do want to connect with. So I would just say that I don't want to steer the conversation back and take away from others, but such an amazing, amazing show. If anyone ever has any questions about career advancement and or personal branding to help advance your career or networking, let me know. I'm a stage one person foremost, and I love people. I would just say. I would just say not to make a said D-roll. I love that, tristan.
Speaker 2:I just saw that on your LinkedIn. I think that's cool.
Speaker 7:It's real. Thank you, christian, our ruthless major of the Kardashians, but for any part of your delivery team. But I will just say the one thing I will continue to push back on is this kind of false dichotomy of technical versus non-technical. As a recovering social worker with 60 plus case that opponents youth with mental wellness challenges that fell into tech and a highly, highly technical product, I don't believe in technical versus non-technical and I think the disparity there is a lack of curiosity to learn, and so I just always encourage people get out of that false dichotomy. If you're curious, there is an barrier. It's something that I think a lot of people put in place to create hierarchies and protect themselves. It's not needed. It's not needed, that's all.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting perspective, tristan, and I value that. I thank you for bringing that viewpoint on here. For sure. I don't think it's an if this, if this, then that, or one or the other I agree. But I do think that the science says that there's a spectrum here right of ability, thousand percent.
Speaker 2:And it's just the way your brain works. It doesn't. I could probably go learn to be a network engineer. I'd just be really bored and tired and probably fall asleep on the job. Right, it doesn't mean I can't do it, it's just yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know, I would say when I was, I got stuck at a certain point in my career. It was around 2019. I was a docusign consultant and I wasn't sure that there was a place for me in the Salesforce ecosystem and I did ask myself that question am I technical enough for this? And I think that there may be a perspective of what the word technical means. And just because I do have more of a functional role, it doesn't mean that I'm not technical. I am technical. I speak to technical people every day. It was just a matter of I did see that kind of invisible barrier initially and until I discovered business analysis and realized that I had a place on these very, very technical projects, that I realized that you know, I guess that the technology was in me all along.
Speaker 7:We love to hear it Proud of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so cool. And you know what, probably the most successful people that I know, in this ecosystem anyway, are both right to Tristan's point. The folks who can communicate with others are curious about what other people think and I don't mean think about them, I just mean their thoughts, right, and what their goals are and then can use that information to help create technical solutions and be a real guide to them, a real voice to them. You know they do very, very well. In fact I had a guy come in to interview this was back in the Robert Half Days, early days I'm talking like 2005 maybe and this young guy came in, adam Urie. Adam came in and interviewed to be a sort of a junior developer.
Speaker 2:Now this guy, if I'm recalling he was second in his class from Rensselaer and very, very great computer science program, very, very smart, funny as shit, like made me laugh so hard, right, and after about half an hour I was like why don't you be a recruiter man? Like I'd hire you. I'd hire you, like why don't you come work here? Anyway, he did, he hired him and he was great and he didn't last very long, right, he was like three, four months. And then eventually he's like can I go work for Fred Meyers, which got bought by Kroger, which is based in Portland, and so that's where one of Kroger's headquarters is. So we actually placed I placed one of my employees in one of our open jobs, which was really interesting, and he was there for years.
Speaker 2:I think he might even still be there and eventually he found the perfect role for him, which truly married the technical work that he's doing but it's a lot more high level versus hands on right, because the coding got boring for him. But he got to work with the CEOs really high level stakeholders and still figure out these amazing technical solutions. So if you're listening, adam and I'm sure you're not high you're an awesome dude. But that's just a little story. I like that kind of shares Someone finding he was probably 22, 23 at the time finding his way and eventually doing so by trying different things out. So try, try, try, try, try again.
Speaker 5:Can I just add one last thing? Of course I just want to call it the universe doesn't care about your plans. And the reason I can say that confidently is coming up on 11 years ago I had an orange size brain tumor, 38 staples on my head, and that came out of nowhere, right? So the universe doesn't care. You just got to roll with the punches and get back on the ball and keep going, that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your story is truly inspirational and let's have you on as an actual guest, not just a panelist, sometime, beater, and you can go ahead and share your full story, because it's truly a remarkable one, and we are also glad that you're still alive. So thank you for being here and being alive, kicking on the show. So, guys, I think we've got maybe less than 10 minutes. Okay, I know we've got a question from Ibb Vanessa, do we have other questions from our audience from before?
Speaker 5:Yeah, sorry, I was trying to mute. I just wanted to say thank you for saving my life, because everybody on the call and everyone that listens helps save my life. All of the products, services, you've paid taxes, that you spent money on, all of you have fed this astounding ecosystem that gave me a second chance at life. So thank everybody.
Speaker 2:You're a sweetheart of a guy, peter, thank you. Thanks for being on the show and thanks for being alive and thanks for sharing that. Okay, vanessa, we're going to knock out a couple more questions. What have we got?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I'm going to whittle this one down to how wise is it or not wise is it to start your own Salesforce consulting firm without ever actually having a job in the ecosystem? This isn't the first time I've heard this question. There are a lot of folks that come into the ecosystem because they're looking for that flexibility of starting their own firm. But how wise is it to just start out the gate that way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not wise at all. It's one of the dumbest things someone could do. That's what I think. I'm not going to hold back. Don't do it. That's a dumb move. If you really want to have freedom and whatever work off of your boat part time, you can do that. One of the things you can do is go live overseas where it's cheap and then go start some little e-commerce company, because there's no reason why anybody who's listening to this program can't spend three months learning, figuring things out, doing good research and starting some sort of e-commerce company that's going to pay their bills. You don't need a mentor for that. You can get a mentor for that, but you don't need a mentor for that.
Speaker 2:But what you're touching as a Salesforce professional and as a consultant, is the heart of a business, the beating heart of the business, or the lungs of the business. Without experience, without having had a job, you're going to learn all of your mistakes at the cost, and the person who's going to pay for it is your clients. They're the ones that are going to pay for it. Then, eventually, that's going to kick back. That hot wind that burns your face is going to kick right back in your face and burn you and scald you. It's going to make you really ugly for other people to want to bring you on board because you don't have a good story anymore. I'll tell you, I've got a client of mine. I think the guy's fantastic. He actually just sold his business for a very nice profit and they were clients for years. And he was young. He did this all by the time he was 30. I think he launched this business at age 24. I'm going to say some things here that I would say to him directly and I know I would because I have in fact said it to his face.
Speaker 2:The reality is, you're like 22, 23, 24 years old and then you just go launch a business. Yeah, you can do it. You're going to be limited because you're not going to have the appropriate mentorship, leadership and modeling behavior that's necessary to actually be competitive. This is the core of it all. Guys. It doesn't matter what you do. What are your competitors doing? That's your competition. We are in a Darwinian meritocracy here in the United States. If you are better than other people and other people say something about that you're going to be fine. You're going to be successful. That's if you start your own business.
Speaker 2:The reality is is most businesses fail in the first one to two years. 80% to 90% fail in the first five years. By the way, we're hitting our five-year anniversary October 1st, so we're excited about that. Something like 96% of businesses fail it's 90 to 96%, I can't remember fail within 10 years. Why did they fail? Well, there's a lot of different reasons, but mostly it's decisions.
Speaker 2:Usually, if a business fails, it's because someone didn't make the right decision at the right time. It's as simple as that. The reality is, you're going to be competing with people who had mentors, who know how to do it right, who know how to market. They've learned their mistakes from others. You're going to spend years and years and years you might spend five years to learn as much in five years. That might take you a year, year and a half or two years learning under a mentor. You're decelerating your success by not investing early on to build that rocket ship the right way. That's what I think. I think you're a fool to do something like that. If you're going to do that, do it for something that's not going to screw up someone's company. Go ahead, Fred.
Speaker 4:I love everything you said. I think one thing I guess I would ask back to the person. We don't have a lot of context in the question. The assumption you made was that they're net-new to the ecosystem, they're net-new to consulting, they're net-new to technology. I think I put an asterisk in there that if you came from you had a successful HubSpot business or a successful Adobe business that you sold it. You exited that. Now you want to try your hand at Salesforce. You're at least coming to the table, understanding what it's like to run a consulting business, understanding how billing works and delivery and all that kind of stuff. Can you pick up the Salesforce stuff along the way? Sure, but your point, if this is all net-new to you, going out and starting from scratch and not having a mentor and not kind of learning, the growth of how the business works, is a recipe for failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I watched Alex Hermosi On YouTube the other day. I don't know if anybody here has ever heard of him before, but you can go to acquisitioncom and check him out. This was about wealth. This session that he ran is about 50 minutes. I spent half my time listening to him and half my time wondering how the hell in the world His legs got so goddamn giant, because the guy looks like a powerlifter and he is a. He's an interesting guy. He's a young guy. He was valued around a hundred million dollars by the time. He was 32 years old and so you know, clearly he's had some success. So I thought I'd pay attention and I did. And If you watch this video on YouTube and it's probably one of his most popular videos, because usually, usually it's the popular ones that get Dropped into your feed, but I would watch this and he talks about and Felicia is the CEO of my company, she, she was talking about that what this curve was about, this, this idea of, you know, uninformed optimism, and you're like, yeah, I'm going for uninformed optimism.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, you kind of get to a point where you're like, shit, this is hard, this is really difficult to do Right now. You have Informed pessimism. You're like I don't know if I want to do this. Okay, now you're facing the difficulties of the market, or cash flow problems, or your marketing, you know, stopped working because Google changed their algorithms or whatever the hardship happens to be and then from there you have sort of two choices. You can either move into a place of informed optimism Now you know what the roadblocks are and like that book that I I like to mention a lot the 10x principle, which is not about you know, getting 10 times as much shit for half. You know, you know, for a tenth of the effort. It's about everything that you want is going to take 10 times more effort than you actually think it's going to take, right, and so if you can kind of 10x, at that point you won't be one of the majority of people that just crash and burn and lose their business.
Speaker 2:The other thing that you don't do is you don't have four or five or six different businesses All at once and you know that are only moderately successful. You focus all of your energy on to one. That's why we only play Salesforce people in my company. I knew if I was going to open up a shop that competed with Robert Haff, technology and Tech systems and K-Force. Forget it, man, because I don't have 500 million dollars to hire 30,000 people and compete with them. It's not going to happen. Right, it was me.
Speaker 2:And how can I sort of recycle candidates if I've got 17 different? You know, I've got IT engineers, sys admins, tech support, salesforce people, hubspot people, web designers, ui, ux and on and on BA's, pm's, leadership like, forget it, you can't do it all Right. So you got to go niche, got to go specialized and, to Fred's point, if you were HubSpot Pro and you were questioning it, Well why would you leave HubSpot? Because you can make a multi-million dollar business out of that and it's not going to take you an extra two to five years of Trying to figure out and learn all of these lessons, right?
Speaker 2:So I love the uninformed optimism, because I'm one of those people in fact, all of us are at some point until things get hard. But if you've got to know that, you've got to get past that Informed pessimism to get back to informed optimism and actually get the thing done right. So I I love this question, but I really recommend people challenge themselves why, why, why, why, why, why, why. You know everybody's heard about the five wise, but for real, like why do you want to do that? Because you want money, you know.
Speaker 3:I can actually for this particular one. It was because they've had trouble breaking into their first full-time paid gig in Salesforce.
Speaker 2:Got it. Okay, so that's a problem. So if you're, if you can't get a company to hire you full-time, how are you gonna get a consult, a client to hire you? So what they've got is an image slash, marketing slash, messaging, problem, right, combined with market conditions, which is gonna make it feel worse, and the way the market is right now, which is not super shiny, rosy, it's not horrible, but it's not great, right. Read the 10k, read the 10k report on talent and, and you'll see what's going on.
Speaker 4:Okay, so Josh, I love all of it. I'll just say I'm also a big Alex fan. I just finished his book, the hundred million dollar lead book phenomenal. If you haven't read it, oh nice, you'll answer. You'll get the answer to why his legs look so big. He started out as a gym owner. We then came up with a gym marketing system.
Speaker 2:Oh well, there you go. Okay, see, I didn't even know. I'd never heard of him until like Thursday night. Okay, dead air. Jason, you got your hand raised, let's hear it.
Speaker 6:Well, yeah, here, josh, I'm interested in about what would then be your advice for that situation. I have my own thoughts About you know. There's the chicken and egg, how? So it seems like Vanessa for interesting. The question correctly, it's how do we get experience if we don't have experience? This person's proposed solution was start being your own consultant, but, josh, you quickly Swatted that one down. So what would be your thoughts? I have some my own, okay, so you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:This is a consult. This thing requires consulting, right. It requires some personalized recommendation and advice and some direction, you know, sort of mapping out what they can do for their career. So First thing I would do is I would engage a really good resume writer, right. The reason why people aren't getting jobs are Generally three reasons. One, your resume and LinkedIn profile aren't attractive enough to your phone interviewing, or your ability to write and email people and convey Convey your value to people is limited or need some improvement. And the third reason would be you're not very good on an interview, right. So all of those qualities that we can hone, work on and develop to acquire a new job, really, you know, it requires work.
Speaker 2:And look, we've got we've got Stephanie Smith here and we mentioned her in the last show, I think. I don't think it was this show, maybe it was earlier in the show. You know, stephanie is a wonderful example of someone who is patient, didn't stop looking, knew it was gonna take a while and didn't quit. When you get, when you kick the quit out of you, great things happen, right. It I always think about. You know that that bear analogy, right. Like, you don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the next person. I'm thinking about this.
Speaker 2:In the marketplace I'm looking at Mason Frank was fired 30% of their staff in the last six months. That's the largest sales for a staffing firm. Like. We haven't fired anybody, but they've fired 30% of their staff. What are they trying to do? They're trying to survive cash flow, they're trying to make it. There's nothing wrong with what they had to do, because when the market, when the economy gets a cough, recruiters get pneumonia and some of them die if they don't make good decisions. I think it's a good decision that they made Right. But the reality is is like you've got to make really good decisions and you've got. That means you have to take a good hard look at yourself and ask yourself Maybe I'm not as good in an interview, maybe I've never recorded myself, maybe I should do some practice runs. Maybe I should, you know, work on not talking so much. Maybe I should watch all of Josh's videos on Josh for us on YouTube.
Speaker 2:Right, like, invest some time, go to expand, exchange comm there's a ton of resources on there, people you can connect with. But the first thing you got to do is work on your resume and then you got to work on your interviewing, and then you got to work on your patience and you got to feed yourself and you got to feed your family while you're doing it. So be working, just work. Have a job. Any job, wait tables, push a broom, it doesn't matter. Be working and that's gonna do something for your Emotions to, even if it's a job that you hate. What's that gonna do? You hate your job. You want to get out of this dead end. You know, roll, that you're in Keep going to that job and then every time you come home, you'll be motivated to Focus.
Speaker 2:Get your certifications and your belt. Connect with people. Spend time on LinkedIn, go to events right and watch YouTube videos. Get good at presenting, get good at talking, get good at communicating. Clean up your speech. Cut out your arms and oz.
Speaker 2:Stop the excuses, and that's the biggest one. Most people who are struggling have tons of excuses and they're pointing outside, outside of them, for why their life is the way that their life is and the reality is, oh God, I got this great quote. I'm trying to pull it up. Where is it? Where is it? Oh yeah, our lives are not shaped by our shapes, not by conditions, but by decisions. I love that quote so I set it into my little Surrey and recorded it. So it's not the conditions of the market, it's your decisions.
Speaker 2:That's why you're having a hard time now. You might have some logistical issues, you might be desiring a job, but you live in a poor country in Africa and the opportunities just aren't there. And you're trying to land a job in America. That's gonna be hard. You've got harder conditions than someone who's living in, you know, san Francisco or Chicago or Atlanta. Right, it's gonna be harder. So you've got to work with the conditions that you've gotten and make the best decisions.
Speaker 2:But usually when people aren't successful it's because of two reasons one, they're impatient and two, they make dumb decisions and don't learn from their mistakes. So stop doing that and you're gonna be fine, and then you'll actually get the mentorship that you need. There's no reason to go start your own business as a Salesforce pro without any experience. You're way better off picking some sort of you know, like Alex's point, like we're a roofing company, or become a plumber or something. Do something. Do some career where you can get mentorship and you can learn from experts Doesn't have to be Salesforce. Salesforce certifications and Salesforce careers are not a panacea for all of life's ills. It's just a way to make a living and it's a really nice community while you're earning your living. That's it, but it's not the only one. There's a lot of different ways to have a great life in this world. It's just one way.
Speaker 6:Here also, I want to chime in with that because I think we're the person's close to Coming on idea that that I came across. What I love about Tech whether that's Salesforce or web design or coding it's the accessibility for it to be a meritocracy. And so we're a community. And so where it sounds like the person is close to Hitting the target is saying, okay, well, if I can't get hired by a group, I'll just make my own group. But so you're trying to get experience. Without experience, you don't have to have a real group. Just give yourself your own project. How you could track your cheesecakes, right, larry? Right, so you can make creative Projects. That's the beautiful thing. It could be silly, it could be practical and, and this way you're getting that hands-on experience. So it's just what really you're looking for. But you're not enduring someone's business when you're doing it, and and it's Something you can be able to show off, for you know the resume, or just at least you know a posting sharing with others. It's. It's a story that people remember. So I think that's the most important thing is just give yourself your own experience.
Speaker 6:Don't know, start your consulting. Don't volunteer either that's an idea that some people have out. There is is to Volunteer to get experience. Nope, because you're hurting the nonprofit, who doesn't have any budget to fix any errors that you do. So just do your own project for cheesecakes or your own Sierra like. That's one thing put out. There is just the Salesforce is a Like, it's a CRM. So if you are looking for jobs, tracking jobs, use a CRM to do that Salesforce. You spin up a sandbox and you know keep that data in there. It's enough data for you for that for free.
Speaker 2:Thanks Jason. Good points, Vanessa. What do you think I?
Speaker 3:Just lost connection for like the last five minutes.
Speaker 2:So oh, we were saying we were saying really smart stuff. That's a bummer. You're gonna have to listen to tune into the podcast, vanessa, you'll hear exactly what.
Speaker 6:I love, josh, the recommendation for tax rule. I just put that one on my book list and check that out from the library. So I'll be listening to that audiobook Because I think that's also a thought about if you do want to make that career shift or career start Into tech, to know that is a marathon for anything that you you see worthwhile. It's gonna take a while so to understand that. 10x.
Speaker 2:Principle yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:And in money guys is optimism.
Speaker 2:You've got to invent like it. I know it's hard when we're hungry, when we're broke. I mean I remember the first time I had a thousand dollars as an adult. I had a thousand dollars saved because the next time I accidentally dented someone's car I wasn't a good driver back then Casey might laugh Maybe I'm not a good driver now, I don't know. But I remember being young in my 20s, living an apartment with friends right and Having a thousand dollars in the bank and I was so excited because I knew the next time I had to pay Insurance deductible I wasn't gonna have to put it on a credit card, right, like it was a milestone.
Speaker 2:You don't have to like Totally, like crush it early on, you just it's like baby steps, right. But having a little bit of money can help accelerate the time with which it can take to get a job. So if you've got three or four hundred bucks, that means you can afford a really good resume writer. If you've got three or four hundred bucks, that means you can afford, you know, one, two, three hour session with someone you can coach you on your interviewing right Now, none of it works if you're not receptive to what people say and if you're not moderately self-effacing and don't recognize, if you're so afraid of your own fault or so scared that people are going to recognize your weaknesses, you're at a disadvantage. That means spend the three or four hundred dollars and go see a therapist for four or five or six sessions or 20 sessions. Whatever you need right.
Speaker 2:A lot of our, a lot of what we need is not the thing that we think we need Right. We think that there's a solution out there for us, but oftentimes the solutions that we create become the problems. Like, all of a sudden, I've just spent five thousand dollars on a little website For my own little company and I only have 700 followers on LinkedIn and I have no way to get a client. You would have been way better off spending two, three grand and going to town stackers and getting you know, some boot camp in and getting some projects under your belt and Positioning yourself with the help that you need. That's what you've got to do, and if you don't have it, then put it on a credit card. If you don't have a credit card, check your credit and see if you can get one, and if you don't have any of that, go to friends and family and make real commitments to pay them back tenfold or whatever, so that you can get the launch that you need. But no one's going to give you that money if they don't see the passion in you and the drive and the quality decision making that's necessary. So, start making really good decisions.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, because I'm assuming that this person is either listening live or will listen later on, I want to say, because I was quite stern in this response, I just want to say hey, look, it's a great question and you're doing the right thing you're asking. So you're already doing the right things. Whoever you are Like, congratulations. Like you're already on the path. My friend, okay, as long as you can take the medicine, you're gonna be great. This is a little bit of, you know, this potentially distasteful medicine right now, but if you can take it, you're gonna be great and everything's gonna be fine. Right, it's hard, but it's okay, right, all, right Now.
Speaker 2:I know that we had a question from Abraham and I want to make sure that that we get to that. So, if it's okay, he's written it down. You're welcome to come to the stage and read it a lot. Read it aloud. And here's what Ibs said. He said hi everyone. I'm actually star struck right now being on the same platform with Salesforce Professionals. That's very sweet of you. It I'm not yet certified. What advice would you give a novice like me? Thank you so much, vanessa. Can you take this one?
Speaker 3:As long as my internet holds up. Yes, you know this pesky la internet, somebody who's not certified. First thing, get on trailhead and Start. I always say, no matter which path you're going on, I think getting that admin certification, or and at least the, the knowledge on that admin certifications, going to be really valuable, and so if you're not certified, start working on that certification.
Speaker 3:I feel like that's really the ticket to entry for for a Salesforce career. No matter which path, whether it's functional, technical, you know project manager, and just all of it will help you in your career.
Speaker 6:Vanessa, what are your quick thoughts on the associate sir? I think that one is wonderful because the admin, I think, is the hardest, because it's so broad and vague. That the associate sir Did I think is a great new welcome certification to be able to validate a person's introduction to the Salesforce concept.
Speaker 2:So Vanessa might be having some issues with the Internet. It's okay, look, let me take. Let me take this one. Anyone with an associates is going to be competing with people who have their admin, sir. Okay, like they just are, because there's a lot of people who've already had their admin cert and they're still looking for a job and and the admin sir trumps the associate one right.
Speaker 6:You need many X to get to that. 10 X, one X at a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what one X at a time. So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. Just know that, like it's just like we talk about this on the show all the time the cert Unlocks the door but it doesn't open. It. Experiences what opens the door. And then personality, professionalism, ability to interview, ability to communicate is what helps you walk through the door. So you get the key first right, whether that's the associates or the full admin. I think if you get the associates first, that's great. Now, like, what do you set up for? Maybe you can do with some support work and things like that. I don't really know, but yeah, it's a good way to go and that'll certainly make getting the admin a little bit easier. And then, if also share with you, go to expand, exchange, calm, and I'm going to tell you, if you go there right now, it's not going to be the prettiest thing and it's going to be a little bit slow, but the information on there is great people that you can connect with, the slack channels and slack communities that you can go to. We are launching there our brand new. We're good, we're doing QA testing on our brand new website on Friday and our hope is that we get a live launch of our brand new website sometime next week. The current sites four and a half years old, right, so it's a little bit slower. So the new one should be fantastic. But go to expand, exchange, calm. You can also go to Josh. For us it's going to talk about interviewing and some skills that you can develop there. You can also go to our Our insights page or a blog page where we have videos and articles that can help support you.
Speaker 2:But the most important thing is just take the first step. There's nothing wrong with taking that first step. My friend and You've done it today by being on this show. So we appreciate you and there's absolutely nothing to be in awe of here, because we all just breathe the same air as you do, all right. So I appreciate all of your lovely comments. It's very sweet of you, very kind of you. We all put our pants or skirts on one leg at a time, so you're good now and just just continue putting that first step forward.
Speaker 2:Get it to Vanessa's point Go to go to Salesforce. What is it? Salesforce dot trailhead, calm, you can actually go. I think I've got a short link that I created. Let me double check. I think it's For anyone who wants it, the quick one, let's see. Yeah, josh, force, calm forward, slash trailhead. That'll take you there, okay, and you can get set up and just start working through some of the modules and I think you're gonna find it really fun and you and and then stay connected with this community. You're welcome to be on this show and ask questions. We're happy to help guide you in whatever way we can, every couple weeks, okay.
Speaker 6:And another ex all along the way too, is about working up the ladder, thinking about if you have heard about Salesforce but you've never worked with Salesforce. Work with Salesforce is a step in the right direction, just finding roles where you could be a Salesforce user and this way you can be able to get that experience and also perhaps get your foot. Your Now have a foot in the door where perhaps you can be able to move within that company or at least, you know, rub shoulders with the admin or development team.
Speaker 2:Good point, jason. Good, sorry, I was a little far from the mic. Good point, jason. Okay, vanessa, do we have any last questions? Otherwise, we're going to wrap up what has been a two hour and 20 minute yeah, live show session.
Speaker 3:Now we're weird, we're complete.
Speaker 6:Okay well, I thought we're talking all the way till dream force.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, almost. Look, guys, I do want to share a couple quick announcements as we wrap up this show. And again, this show is probably gonna get published during dream force. So if you happen to listen to it then and you're wondering why we're not having a live show on that day, it's because we're gonna be pushing out our live show one week Because of dream force. Now we're going to record a podcast on Thursday, the 14th, but we will not be doing it live here on Twitter spaces. That's gonna be filmed and recorded at the marketing home, or home for marketers, sponsored by Sercante, just north of the Moscone Center, at the pink elephant.
Speaker 2:We hope you can join us for that. If you're just kind of tuning in right now, you can find a registration to visit. Visit with me, vanessa, fred and a bunch of other content creators At our little party that we're gonna be having at dream force. That's at 2 30 on Wednesday, and the live podcast session with a live audience. That's gonna be at 2 30 on Thursday. If you go to at the Josh force or just click on my face here if you're listening to the live show, that'll take you to my Twitter feed. I don't post a ton on there, but I did just post a couple pictures of me, peter and Eric, as well as me and Larry, from our last Dreaming event, which was last week, and then, if you just scroll a little bit below that, you're gonna find two links so that you can register and get some free drinks, free food and a lot of conversation and hopefully some fun entertainment from a live podcast and I've meeting some of your favorite content creators. Okay, vanessa, any parting words?
Speaker 3:No, it's been real, guys, thanks. Thanks so much. It's been a fun show.
Speaker 2:It's been a really fun show and I got to tell you guys, I am sweating bullets because I turn the air conditioning off when we have these shows so that it doesn't like make a lot of noise in the mic and all the windows are shut. So I can't wait to crank a fancy and get myself a nice cold drink cool down. But boy, this has been a powerhouse of a session with some amazing guests, amazing panel, fantastic questions, amazing co-host and terrific audience. Thanks everybody for joining us. We will be back and I guess live show will be back in three weeks from today. So plan on that and then expect new podcasts to be released Every single week up until then, and there is no new release of a podcast today. Okay, so if you're, if you're listening, that's what's going on there, all right, thank you everybody. Have a wonderful week.