Guess who dropped by the Salesforce Career Show? None other than the Salesforce expert and MVP Hall of Famer, Bill Greenhaw! With a whopping 22 years of experience and 24 certifications to his name, Bill shared his journey and insights about the Salesforce platform. A key highlight was his behind-the-scenes take on the popular community conference, Tahoe Dreaming. We delved deep into his illustrious journey to MVP status and why continuous learning is the backbone of the Salesforce platform.
Next up, we navigated the world of CRM implementations and marketing strategies. We chatted about Salesforce's place as a top-tier CRM solution and the role their early marketing efforts played in their success. When it comes to simplifying processes in today's complex business landscape, no one knows it better than our guest. Advice for those looking to enter the Salesforce ecosystem? Bill emphasizes it's all down to understanding the basics of CRM. We also talked about the joys and trials of remote team building and the impact of excessive meetings on productivity.
Lastly, we had a heart-to-heart about career advancement, passion in career development, and the intriguing Peter principle. We reminisced about our professional journeys, reflected on the importance of company culture, and how our early experiences and natural talents have shaped the careers we have today. The conversation wrapped up with exciting plans for the show and striking the right balance between work responsibilities and personal enjoyment. If you're anywhere in your career in the Salesforce ecosystem, you don't want to miss this episode full of invaluable insights and strategies. Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
Guess who dropped by the Salesforce Career Show? None other than the Salesforce expert and MVP Hall of Famer, Bill Greenhaw! With a whopping 22 years of experience and 24 certifications to his name, Bill shared his journey and insights about the Salesforce platform. A key highlight was his behind-the-scenes take on the popular community conference, Tahoe Dreaming. We delved deep into his illustrious journey to MVP status and why continuous learning is the backbone of the Salesforce platform.
Next up, we navigated the world of CRM implementations and marketing strategies. We chatted about Salesforce's place as a top-tier CRM solution and the role their early marketing efforts played in their success. When it comes to simplifying processes in today's complex business landscape, no one knows it better than our guest. Advice for those looking to enter the Salesforce ecosystem? Bill emphasizes it's all down to understanding the basics of CRM. We also talked about the joys and trials of remote team building and the impact of excessive meetings on productivity.
Lastly, we had a heart-to-heart about career advancement, passion in career development, and the intriguing Peter principle. We reminisced about our professional journeys, reflected on the importance of company culture, and how our early experiences and natural talents have shaped the careers we have today. The conversation wrapped up with exciting plans for the show and striking the right balance between work responsibilities and personal enjoyment. If you're anywhere in your career in the Salesforce ecosystem, you don't want to miss this episode full of invaluable insights and strategies. Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
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:Welcome to the show, everybody. This is your host, josh Vanessa. Go ahead and give a hi here.
Vanessa Grant:Hi everybody, I'm Vanessa Grant.
Josh Matthews:Hi, all right, and I'm Josh Matthews and we are going to be having a great conversation today with our friend, bill Greenhaugh. Bill Greenhaugh has what is it? Bill 24. You can go ahead and unmute. What is it? 24 certifications.
Bill Greenhaw:I think it's 20, 30, but maybe 24.
Josh Matthews:You. Just I don't know if I know anybody who's got more search than you, but you know they are out there.
Josh Matthews:They're out there. So Bill Greenhaugh has 22 years of Salesforce experience. He is a member of the Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame. He's also a Salesforce dot com community conference leader. He has been running Tahoe. He's the founder of Tahoe Dreaming. Tahoe Dreaming, by the way, was my very first dream and event and still just a favorite of mine because it's so special and sweet. So Vanessa and I are going to be having a conversation with Bill today and guess what? And Vanessa work together. So that's kind of cool too. So let's go ahead and have you pipe up here, bill. Tell us. I've told, I've said a small amount about who you are, but why don't you go ahead and share a little bit more about who you are for our listeners here today?
Bill Greenhaw:Thanks, josh. Yeah, so Bill Greenhaugh, like you said, been in the Salesforce ecosystem since 2001, so showing how old I am. There the grays are all over the head, face and the head, but yeah, you've got like really dark hair. What are?
Josh Matthews:you talking about your hair is like no gray in it, except for your beard. You can save that you look 20 years younger. There you go. I'll do that then.
Vanessa Grant:Thanks.
Bill Greenhaw:So I wasn't like an accidental admin in Salesforce. I kind of fell into it more. But I was an accidental CRM person going back way in the time I was doing a sales logics consulting way back in the late 90s and then got thrown into this startup called Salesforcecom to to learn that in 2001. And since then that's that's kind of all I've done, from consulting to working at Ncust where's working all over the place.
Josh Matthews:And Bill you've. I mean, one of the things about your career that's really fascinating to me is your MVP Hall of Fame status. I mean that does not come easily. How many people are actually in the Hall of Fame?
Bill Greenhaw:I don't know the exact number. I'm thinking it's around 50 to 60 people might be a little less than that. So what it is is, if you're a Salesforce MVP for five or more years, you're able to move to the Salesforce Hall of Fame, and so I was a Salesforce MVP for six years and I got moved over in the first class of the Hall of Fame in 2019.
Josh Matthews:That's awesome. Is there a bust of you in Salesforce Tower?
Bill Greenhaw:No, actually I do not even have any of my pictures up there, sadly. I actually got a few invites that I missed to go kind of on those little big pictures they do around Gotcha. I still got to do that. It's one of my goals.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, well, we're rooting for a couple new Hall of Famers. I've definitely put one in for Vanessa this year and for a friend Whitney on that, one Whitney on that one.
Vanessa Grant:Actually, I just put out an article like a couple weeks ago and I had to go into this a directory of MVPs and you can actually filter them by Hall of Famers. So I have an exact count. Okay, there are currently a hundred and seventy five MVP Hall of Fame members globally and there are currently, by my count, 112 Salesforce MVPs worldwide. Oh, wow.
Bill Greenhaw:I was way off. I was way off. Thanks, vanessa.
Josh Matthews:But there's only one, bill Greenhaugh.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, that is true.
Josh Matthews:And Bill. By the way, if you're not connected with him, well, you could join the 30,000 people who are following him on LinkedIn right now, so feel free to go ahead and do that, and that's G-R-E-N-H-A-W. For his name, b-i-l-l, he's got almost twice as many followers as I have, so he's a pretty popular guy for a lot of different reasons, and we're going to find out some of those reasons right now. Bill, let me ask you what inspired you to launch Tahoe Dreaming?
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, great. So anybody knows Tahoe Dreaming is a Salesforce community conference up in Lake Tahoe. So what it was is I don't think everybody might know him or heard of him Eric Dresfield. Back in like mid-2015 to mid-2010s, it was starting to become more popular community conferences called Dreaming Events. Eric started Midwest Dreaming and there's a few others that popped up and in 2015 I was running the Sacramento Salesforce user group and I said, hey guys, should we do stuff like this in Sacramento?
Bill Greenhaw:And everybody goes, eh, and I go, well, how about up in Lake Tahoe? And the whole entire room kind of raised their hands and, of course. So really that's all it was is we wanted to get involved, the Sacramento user group, but we wanted it in a kind of a more destination location, being that, for those that don't know, tahoe is probably like an hour and a half from Sacramento. So that's how it started Went into it knowing nothing about our name of conference at all, as most just you know, most of these community conferences, people start them. It's jumping in head first and and figuring out why you go. So that's the short reason why we do.
Vanessa Grant:You're one.
Josh Matthews:How many attendees did you have? So we did in the winter and we had two hundred and like five. Okay, and have those numbers stayed pretty stable throughout the duration?
Bill Greenhaw:The winter, was winter state about that Then in.
Josh Matthews:we moved to Sacramento one year and that actually got 600 people in 2019.
Bill Greenhaw:Okay, but it's just like a lot of people who are in the community. And then in we moved to Sacramento one year and that actually got 600 people in 2019. Okay, but it just didn't have the same feel and everybody's like. It just didn't feel as nice. So we went back up to Tahoe and we had to do it through COVID year. So we don't count that one. That one was kind of a lower here, but up now we get about 300 to 350 people.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it's terrific, and I think we've got a lot of people who have been in the community and have been in the community and have been doing this and thoroughly enjoyed it, tell me like, let's, let's jump back on the certifications. And actually now so I'm all over the map today let's jump back to the MVP thing. Okay, so you know, can you give our listeners a little bit of an idea about what is involved in becoming an MVP?
Bill Greenhaw:Yes, I mean there's no set criteria. We're really just helping the Salesforce community, but doing it on a continuous basis throughout, you know, at least a year and so when I got it was back in 2013. So a lot different. There's no trailhead or anything yet, but there was Salesforce answers. So I will actually be the first to admit I did not start my Salesforce MVP journey just to 100% give back. I was feeling I was behind on the Salesforce kind of technology stack.
Bill Greenhaw:I was doing not just Salesforce at the time, I was also managing IT department and I went on answers to learn to get what people are asking for and I was then responding when I knew it. And then it became. I was pretty much addicted to it Me and Steve Mo and others at the time, you know, going on a daily basis back and forth seeing who have the most answers, and so then it turned into wanting to help and I saw, wow, this is great helping. But I'll be the first to admit I did it selfishly to learn at the beginning and I tell everybody do that If you want to grow, learn. It's not as popular as it used to be, but people still use Salesforce answers out there in the community. Go there, just read the questions and you're going to find out real world experience of what people are asking and you know you can just figure out. You don't have to answer, Just take what people are asking, do your own research and figure it out and it's a great way to learn.
Vanessa Grant:So, so, so. Actually, I wanted to bring up and it seems like a good time for it Bill as far as like the best examples of somebody who has had a very long Salesforce career but has always really made continuous learning at the core of his career, like even just working with Bill on a day-to-day basis. Now, you know, I see that there's like time blocked off on his calendar to keep learning. So I would love to hear Bill like how, yes, there's trailhead, but how have you managed to still, like, keep excited about the platform and keep learning? And how do you, how do you organize your, your education?
Bill Greenhaw:It's a great question. I'll start off with the last part organize. I'm not good at that part at all. I need to get better at organizing what I need to learn.
Bill Greenhaw:But you know, I have, you know, found through my my age that I just have to put the time across. So, as Vanessa said, I have my calendar every day to kind of go to trailhead and do some type of learning, or not just trialhead somewhere and learn something In the organization listening, please let your employees do that. It's it will go tremendously far to allow them to take it just a half hour day to dedicate themselves to learn. And I mean it's hard for me to do it, but the reason I do it is there's so much Salesforce out there. And I go back to my time, back when I went to be MVP and I got that is, I was starting it to learn because I felt I was behind because I was doing other stuff. So I now continue to learn simply because I don't want to feel I'm behind and at the same time, we're almost always going to be hanging because Salesforce is such a large system.
Bill Greenhaw:Now, right, I mean nobody knows all Salesforce. So I try to keep it and my recommendation to everybody out there is Don't try to learn everything. If you want to be good at field service, Concentrate on that and become the biggest expert on that and continuously take everything you can on that. Like me, I just love to go to architectsalesforcecom always. Try to stay up on that and learn everything they're doing there. That's my newest passion. Just find your passion in that one section of Salesforce and really jump into it and know you're never going to know everything Salesforce anymore, because it's just too large.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's smart man. It's a bit like being a doctor. You can be a GP, right, general practitioner, family doctor, but maybe you want to be an endocrinologist, maybe you want to be an oncologist or whatever it is. It's going to take a little bit of extra study and then, much like Salesforce, you're going to have to put in your education hours every year because Salesforce is moving fast, medical is moving fast, the whole world is moving fast. Right now, it really doesn't matter what you're doing. You've always got to be reinvesting in that time. You're asking good questions, vanessa. Keep going.
Bill Greenhaw:And I just want to add really quick Vanessa, like when I started my learning, there was no trial head yet I wish trial head was there. Oh, you and me both you know, and that's how I tell everybody wow, it's great, enjoy this platform, because it was not majority of Salesforce years. It wasn't there if you look at the age of Salesforce. But I also say don't stop at trial head, because you want to be a differentiator in that market. Go learn some agile methodology stuff outside of Salesforce trial. They have great agile stuff on trial head, but maybe try to get the certification on that as well. So again, learn trial head, do as much as you can there. I'm just saying don't stop there. Go outside, learn other methodologies that work within the Salesforce ecosystem.
Vanessa Grant:I could not agree with you more and that's one of the big things I always talk about and I'll bring it up again. For folks that are looking to get into Salesforce BA careers If you're doing a project-based role for Salesforce like learning agile is super important Get that Scrum Master certification, get that product donor certification and it makes life so much easier. And maybe I'll be a little as a woman in tech and I hate to drop that, but as a woman in tech, it's a lot easier when I'm speaking to very, very technical people to say, oh yes, I'm a certified Scrum Master and I've led Scrum teams of 30 plus offshore developers. All of a sudden, there's a different level of respect when there's a certification involved. It just is.
Bill Greenhaw:That is true and as Josh could probably say better than me, because you live it every day is Salesforce is a hard job market right now. There's a lot out there, so if you get those extras, you can differentiate yourself, in my opinion.
Josh Matthews:Absolutely. We say this almost every two weeks be the obvious choice. Yep, right, I mean, I had two interviews today for a marketing role with my company this isn't even for Salesforce. So Felicia and I both sat down with two people for 30 minutes each and it was clear in just a few minutes who the obvious choice was. And then the rest of the time in the interview was spent for the individual that was crushing it, just letting them talk because we were learning the more they spoke. The other individual we let them talk for a while and realized just how bored we were. We weren't picking up anything else and then trying to just prove those initial impressions of that individual like giving them opportunities to prove the initial assumptions wrong was really critical. So we stayed for the whole 30 minutes.
Josh Matthews:But the obvious choice is pretty clear right off the bat and it can bounce off a resume, it can bounce off of a LinkedIn profile and it can bounce off your ears in the first few minutes of a conversation. So I think this is all very, very good advice I wanted to throw. I love talking about how someone got into Salesforce and this sort of thing, but we've done that so many times. I'm kind of curious. Let's keep it current. There's an article that came out that Salesforce is now going to be listed on the AWS platform on the Exchange, the AWS, whatever it's called. Yeah, have you guys read this or seen this?
Bill Greenhaw:I have not seen that yet.
Josh Matthews:Okay, we have a nice little bit of a lively discussion on it, on Fred Kedenna's podcast Banking on Disruption, which will be released tomorrow. So if you're curious about that, check it out. But for those of you who are hearing it for the first time, just kind of curious, like, what do you think about that? I mean, this is allowing people to just jump online order their licenses without the assistance of an AE. Good idea, bad idea? Talk amongst yourselves.
Bill Greenhaw:I guess my opinion is both depending on. You know I've seen it go well where you know I could order all the you know others that could just get the license and know what to do. It would just scare me new companies coming in that don't understand the different type of licenses types or what sellers first Right, they don't have the direction.
Josh Matthews:Yeah.
Vanessa Grant:What about you, vanessa? I think that it's hard to find the right combination of licenses and then, especially if you're new, understanding what it takes resource-wise, when you're talking about money, when you're talking about the team that you're going to have, when you're talking about the documentation and the ongoing maintenance you're going to need, without some and I don't think an AE is the answer Like, let me just make that clear. But I don't know that just being able to self-serve is going to fix that problem. So it seems like, okay, great, we have more options on how to get license.
Vanessa Grant:But yeah, there's still the ongoing issue of Salesforce is complex and I don't see it getting any less complex. And, bill, I was actually having this conversation earlier in the week with somebody about the kind of the problem that we're seeing in the industry where, of course, implementations just in general don't seem to be going smoothly, like they're always complex, and there's always seems to be problems with the industry that we have and a lot of, I think, people are getting laid off and newer folks that are willing to work for less are coming in and kind of re-screwing up stuff.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, I think you're right. So I'm going to go back to, like, the early Salesforce days. They, Salesforce, had to do a ton of marketing on how they were more successful in CRM implementations than everybody else, Because back in the early 2000s it was something like 86% of all CRMs failed. I mean, it was a huge number. With Sebal Oracle you know early Oracle, all those apps, sales logics, all those apps was just they had bad.
Josh Matthews:So Salesforce, did a great job. Which for clarification real quick. You're talking about CRMs in the cloud.
Bill Greenhaw:No, just CRMs in general.
Josh Matthews:Just in general. Okay, salesforce was the first in the cloud.
Bill Greenhaw:So we're talking like Salesforce was the only one at the cloud. This is like 2003 times, but there's competition. I mean, that's what they had to do. So they did a ton of great marketing to show what you had to do too. So what you're saying, vanessa, you have to do this to be successful. You have to do this Because all they that was their barrier to get into the market, and there was actually.
Bill Greenhaw:I mean, I really think there was a time of, like you know, later 2000s or early 2010s where implementations were going a lot smoother, and I think you're right Now they're kind of going back down and I really wish Salesforce went back to the basics on some of their marketing material, like here's what CRMs are, know the basics before you try to implement.
Bill Greenhaw:Because, as we've seen, there's a lot of people that don't even understand CRM now buying or trying to do Salesforce, because they just heard Salesforce but they don't know what a CRM is. And so, again, I just say I wish they went back to that, because it gets the mindset like, if you're implementing Salesforce, just think of the basics first, and people right now are over complicating things from the start, I think too often. I mean, I can't say exactly why there's more, but I do agree with you, vanessa. It does seem that it is taking that kind of maybe the bell curves going back down where there's more implementation failures, and maybe it's because Salesforce is so big, nobody knows what to do, or I think there's just the whole go back to the basics. In my opinion.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, but the world got more complex. I mean, it's not just Salesforce that's become more complex, right? There are so many new products out there, new or old, whether you're plugging in Snowflake, peter Ganza See, I said it right. Thanks for throwing me under the bus last week, guys. But, peter Ganza, I really enjoyed that, by the way, I'll bet you did. I'm from New England. We say Ganza up there, not Ganza, but I'll say it your way. That's cool. I'll talk Canadian for a little bit. So, as Mr Ganza was saying last week, I mean, there's more business being conducted on the App Exchange than the Salesforce itself, which I thought was incredible. That's definitely one of the things that I learned by listening to this podcast last week. But I mean, with all that complexity, with all of these companies on the App Exchange, izvs and what have you, they're trying to make things simpler. Right, plug it in. Yeah, but what you're saying, bill, I'm kind of curious. What do you think about that? I agree.
Bill Greenhaw:I'm trying to simplify things.
Bill Greenhaw:but talk about that, I think, from the start the very first implementation, when you're first getting Salesforce up, which you're looking at App Exchange, but usually you're just doing the setup. That's what I'm saying. People don't seem to go into it. It used to be very set, almost like what we consider MVP, now an overalbum product. That's how the old implementation You're just going to get Salesforce set up for your core business and then build upon it. Yep, I've just seen too many people try to throw too much at the beginning. Or I love what Peter said and you did is cool. If you need that at the start, use App Exchange. But there's a lot of people that just want to build it in themselves instead of using App Exchange product, which I will fight on my. I'll die on my sword often fighting that. Why are we going to build something when we could just buy it on the App Exchange? Just?
Josh Matthews:constantly out there that debate yeah.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, that's what I see a lot on very big first implementations, phase one. Oh, we need all this to start. So we're going to build a super complicated engine within Salesforce instead of just getting the basics up and then either looking to App Exchange or, if we'd have to build it, okay, let's plan out this. I get it. Companies have to get up fast. No, I agree with you and Peter, use App Exchange more Everything. I have that in kind of my little principles of use of Salesforce. Before we build anything, search on App Exchange just to see what's out there. I don't care what it is, search there first.
Josh Matthews:There you go, bill. Let me ask you this. I mean, clearly, you've got a large presence on LinkedIn. You have a lot of influence through in the Sacramento area and Tahoe in general, with Tahoe Dreaming. What's something that you would like to see candidates for new roles, whether they're experienced or new? What do you think is sometimes missing when you're involved in helping to vet new employees? What's some of the things that are common, things that people are missing, not elucidating on or articulate about in interviews that you'd like to see change en masse.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah. So for me I mean it's kind of multiple different areas depending on the role, but a lot of times is kind of go back basic CRM stuff. A lot of people are on Trailhead or they learn advanced flows and do it. But you ask them like CRM 101, not even sell for stuff. They don't always grab that concept. So I tell everybody, just learn what CRMs are, learn the old basics of what CRM 101 kind of learning is, and then jump into the advanced flows. But I get it, I love flow. But a lot of people try to just jump in right into that without understanding why are you doing that?
Josh Matthews:Right, you can add to me first before you do surgery.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, there you go. That's a good way to put it.
Josh Matthews:We're on the medical analogy bandwagon here today. Yeah, let's see if we can keep it going.
Vanessa Grant:Also, you're making me nervous. Josh Bill's, the last person that interviewed me.
Josh Matthews:Well, you got the job, Vanessa, so stop being nervous or crying out loud.
Bill Greenhaw:Oh my God, hang on. What's going on here?
Bill Greenhaw:Let's dig deeper we're also going to add one more thing to that. It's kind of a harder one, but I really challenge new people to do it if they're listening. I came from a database background as well. A lot of Salesforce. You don't learn that on Trailhead I mean behind Salesforce there's still a database. There's a lot of new people coming in that don't understand basic database concepts or thoughts around that. I'm not saying learn SQL and how to do all that, but just learn database 101 of what a one to many is in Salesforce world. That's a child object and things like that. Understand that so that way you could design your Salesforce better from a true database standpoint. I see that often. I've had discussions with people because a lot of old timers we had that background. That's kind of what we came to, because that's what the world was. There's a lot of people coming in that just I'm learning just don't even understand database at all. Again, don't be an expert, but understand the basics. It really does help in your Salesforce career.
Josh Matthews:That's helpful. Where would you point people to to get better at their understanding of basics here and basic database principles, without necessarily leaning into Trailhead? One of the things you shared is go beyond Trailhead to improve your education.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, Trailhead does have a lot of good basics here on 101 stuff. People just don't always go to it. I do say go there first on that kind of just here on 101 stuff For database stuff, just Google like database design, database principles, and they're going to more of the basics of database set up. There's not really one good place to go to.
Josh Matthews:Okay, very cool, I was going to ask a question.
Vanessa Grant:Bill, you've had a really long career in Salesforce, but I'm sure you didn't start off as a solution architect. Can you talk about how you directed your career along the way and how you figured out what you wanted to do and what that title would be along the way?
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, that's a great question. I started, actually, as a Salesforce consultant right away, not even the admin. First I took a little bit different path, did consulting for a long time and then, of course which is a lot of admin work I've led a few teams as a Salesforce manager position all those different things. What led me to the solution architect is was just my passion of what I enjoy. I love solutioning, I love figuring out the best way to do something in Salesforce. Looking at all that architect kind of set up. As much as I get pushed and pulled that hey, go be director of Salesforce this or do that, my passion is being the solution architect. The only reason that I went that way is that's what I enjoy to do. Since I just tell people, go for your passion, go to what you enjoy to do.
Bill Greenhaw:I have a whole thing called people have heard about it the Peter principle. It's an old concept that people get promoted to pretty much incompetence. Meaning if in the Salesforce world you're a Salesforce developer and you're really good at it, so what do they do? They promote you to be the developer manager. Now you're not doing any code and you're managing about developers. More often than not that person fails. I've actually even thought about doing this like Peter principle kind of thing on the dream and events of hey, we all want to grow in our career, we all want promotions, but make sure you're doing it correctly to what you enjoy and you're good at. Have that honest discussion with yourself what are you good at? I've had that myself and it's not easy, brain back and forth, shoulder to shoulder, talking what am I really good at? What do I enjoy? Can I just push back on that?
Josh Matthews:real quick. I just want to push back just for fun, literally for fun.
Josh Matthews:I'm in 95% agreement with you, but I think it'll be a little bit more lively discussion because, look, I've thought about this before. I've had managers that had no business being managers. They were great salespeople and I can tell you for a fact, I was promoted to management, and a big, multi-billion dollar company. I was promoted to management. I don't think I was a very good manager, at least for two, three years and maybe even 10. I don't know, I'm still trying to get better at it.
Josh Matthews:There's this thing that I get the whole Peter principle, but what about the time? Because someone may have been a developer for eight years and now they get a promotion, now they're a manager. If they're not a good manager in the first one or two years, it's like so what they're going to get better? They're not going to get better if they don't study, practice, learn from their mistakes, things like that. Invest in becoming a better manager. Having the organization you're supporting, who's employing this individual, help them become a better manager. It takes time. How much of the Peter principle rests on newbies in a new job where they don't have any experience, and how much of it is actually real? What do you think?
Bill Greenhaw:I think it's a mix. I think you're right. A lot of it is just a concept. With the manager thing, I'm also. That's why I say bring in passion, because there's people that do it just to get a promotion and they don't like being a manager. Let's keep on the developer role. Even if they stick to it, are they going to be good because they don't want to do it. They didn't simply to get a promotion. That's where I lead more. I get it. Everybody wants the more money. Everybody wants a promotion. I blame business for taking a really good developer and not paying them. The only way they can get more money is to move them to this manager position when just pay them more over there. You're 100% right. You're right. I should have a little bit better on that span of yeah, make sure that you want that promotion, because if you don't want it, you're not going to be good at it.
Josh Matthews:Sometimes people think they want it, and then they get there and then they don't want it. But they don't want it because they're not good at it. Yet there are plenty of it. The world is riddled with individuals who think they want something, get it and realize that they don't. It just takes a little bit of time, but by then they're in the role. And what are they going to do? Take a 30K pay cut and say no. I want to go back to my other thing, because you never go up again. It's hard.
Josh Matthews:You're never going to get the promotion again ever, that's it, it's hard.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, it's a hard thing no-transcript.
Vanessa Grant:I was just going to say I think it's also partly responsibility of organizations to make sure that they're setting their people up for success. So, just like you were talking about, josh, are we developing them enough? Are we before one more minute of the poll? Are we doing regular check-ins? Are we offering them training if they're struggling in certain areas? Are we seeing if they still like the role? Are we providing them a budget so that they can purchase books or take a class and further their education? Are we checking in with the people that they're managing to see what the feedback is?
Vanessa Grant:And I think, as a manager, it's really important, just in general, to not necessarily keep your people in their job titles. I always say we're whole people, even when we're at work, and it's important to talk to people about where they see their careers. Are they happy where they are? Are there certain tasks that maybe don't fall into their job description today but they're interested in exploring? And then, as a manager, you see the work that's coming in, to be able to kind of divvy it up in a way so that you can stretch people in the directions that they want to go in, so that by the time they get that promotion, they feel more prepared because it's work that they've been stretching towards.
Josh Matthews:Yes, that, that right there.
Bill Greenhaw:Everything, all that.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, exclamation point when I think about people who've succeeded with advancement in their careers. Oftentimes they're getting the training before they get the title. We don't just take a developer and say, oh, you're a manager now, unless someone bails and just don't want to manage and they're the person who's left and whatever. You've been here longer, so now you manage these two or three folks, whatever it is. I'm just using development manager as an example, but I can recall, at least with my own career path, it was okay, this is what a P&L is, josh. Now I'm still just a recruiter, right. But like, okay, this is a P&L, this is a balance sheet, this is a course for public speaking in case you're going to go out on NBC and you have to pass this little course if you're going to go out and be a spokesperson for the organization, things like that. Right, we talked, I think, a month ago about just carving out like plan some training. Like, okay, I'm not the manager yet, but I'm going to act as if I'm a manager.
Josh Matthews:You say this every single. I swear to God, this comes out every single week whereas responsibility has been abdicated, and do something about it, right. Sometimes you even need training to figure out what's not being done. Now, vanessa, as an analyst, has that down. She knows exactly where the gaps are. You can probably I'm assuming, vanessa, that you can sort of in a very quick way, sort of like Malcolm Gladwell's blank synthesize, where the gaps are very quickly, almost automatically, without actually having to bust out a chart. Would that be accurate in certain respects?
Vanessa Grant:I mean, yes, I think a lot of times when I'm coming into a situation I can start in my head with where I could see improvement, but that's something I've been able to do my entire career. I don't know if that's like a talent or just something I've developed.
Josh Matthews:It sounds like a talent that you have developed. Most of us don't develop too much in the areas where we're not already talented right. That's why, whatever the floutest for the Boston Pops is an ice skater in Las Vegas. You know what I mean. It's just how it is.
Vanessa Grant:It's just to throw out an example. My first job ever, literally, was I was a rank collector. I used to have to like I had like a sheet where I just had every month and I would just literally write a check mark if somebody paid their rent. I was like this is stupid, this is the age of computers, I'm going to build a database. Nobody asked the rent collector to build the database. I was 18 at the time but I did. That is it's the. Where can we see improvement? Where can we see that we can affect change and make things better for an organization? Can you make yourself valuable?
Josh Matthews:I'd never heard that story, but I'm not surprised. People tend to show some genius early on in their life, don't they? You know, Peter, I'm curious. I'll ask you and I'll ask Janine if we can get her online here. Let's find out real quick. Was there a moment in your when you're 18, 19, 20 years old that you realized you had a? Maybe you were younger, that you realized you had a gift for something? Upon reflection, Not actively.
Peter Ganza:No, I mean, I honestly I talked about, you know, in my podcast how I liked technology, right, and I liked computers. It's not that I looked at that and said, oh shit, I can make a career out of this, right. I just I like playing games and my dad brought home, you know, cool computers from the old hydro company. You know we always had the coolest tech and everyone was jealous. It just came naturally to me and, honestly, I just stumbled my way through it. I didn't realize it at the time. Now I was a teenager, obviously, I was in high school.
Josh Matthews:Well right, I'm not saying that you realized it at the time, but upon reflection you can see oh yeah, that makes sense now.
Peter Ganza:In a way, yes, but I just stumbled through it right Like I don't know. If I didn't put an emphasis on that, maybe I'd be a successful actor or a model.
Josh Matthews:I don't know, I could see that. You're a very handsome guy. I could see you doing both of those things. What about you, Janine?
Janeen Marquardt:Yeah, I'm not sure if I recognized a talent for the technical that early. I know that I was technical, but I mean I think it's different, as Vanessa kind of called that earlier. It's different for girls and it was definitely different back then. It's not like we were ever encouraged to take computer classes and honestly, I didn't touch a computer in school until my third year of college and it just wasn't really a thing. So that's not the direction I was really going. We certainly played with it as a kid. My dad was technical and he really liked technical stuff, but it never occurred to me that this was something I would ever be part of. It just didn't exist when I was a kid.
Josh Matthews:But you said some interesting things there. It was in your house and your dad was technical, so you might have inherited some predisposition to it plus early exposure to it. Yeah, what about you, bill? I'm kind of curious if you can reflect back and again, 18, 19, 20 years old. Was there something that happened that you can be like? Oh yeah, if I was looking at, if I knew an 18-year-old kid now who was doing the stuff I was doing back, then I think, yeah, this person might wind up as a senior solution architect in Salesforce or something like that.
Bill Greenhaw:I don't know about that, but just kind of like I was always good at troubleshooting, especially things with computers. Me and my middle brother would love to take our computer and break it and figure out how we could get it working again. And then from there I'm just always just I don't know if it's natural or what, like you said, but even now in Salesforce it's easy for me to go through the steps in my head to troubleshoot without thinking about it. It's just a natural kind of concept of this is how you go about finding the problem and troubleshooting things.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, so one of the things I'm noticing here is it's exposure to whatever the thing is, and then it's potentially a little bit genetic, but certainly exposure, and then identifying that gift early. So if you're listening to this, I'd be curious. If you have a story for yourself, you can go ahead and shoot me a message here on exit at the Joshforce is my handle. You can shoot me a message on LinkedIn. It's whatever forward slash, josh Matthews, something like that. And I'd love to hear from our audience because we're getting about 400 downloads per session right now and in about 26 different countries.
Josh Matthews:So you guys are all over the world. I'm curious, if you look back when you were 18, 19, 20 years old, looking back as an adult, now an older adult, could you sort of witness that? Could you see some of the reasons why you're on the path, the career path that you're on right now? And I'd be really curious if you can look back and recognize like, oh, wow, like maybe I missed my calling because I used to always do ABC and now I'm doing XYZ and it's been a struggle for me for the last six years in my career. Something like that Be kind of interesting to hear.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, and I would say definitely, when you're looking back, think about the things that as soon as you walk into a new job, what is the thing that you gravitated towards at each of those positions? For me, I was really fortunate that I had the ability to do a lot of interning when I was in college, so I did 11 internships in college. It was pretty insane, but oh, my God.
Vanessa Grant:It was a lot, vanessa and I kind of also had the genetic thing. I was a little bit of an overachiever. The genetic thing my dad was an integrity control officer for the NYPD, so there was always a lot of you know, like the striving for process and organization was always the thing I did. So even if I walked into Universal Records and their like inventory room was out of control, like okay, I will clean up these Godsmag voodoo dolls, like let me put them in an organized fashion, let me like that's just what I did and it translates to every industry. You know. It's like what was the talent that I brought to the table that initially I didn't realize was a talent? It was just something that I thought everybody had. But once you start kind of examining stuff, you go okay, I actually do this naturally better than a lot of other people around me.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, god, I love hearing that and it makes me think about. Well, I think it's important for at least some of our listeners to understand that we're not talking about. We're not talking about. Oh, I was born like a gifted Salesforce admin or gifted solutions architect, but you know, as Bill said, you know gifted with problem solving, interested in it to the point where, like, let's break stuff just so we can fix it right. Or, vanessa, like walking into a room and recognizing like, oh yeah, this is how this would be way more efficient, way more reasonable, you know, much better oversight, and so on. So we're talking about concepts, right, behaviors, concepts and aptitudes that aren't necessarily tied to a technology, for instance, right. So can I switch gears here for just a second? I want to ask Bill something about interviewing. Okay, so go ahead and unmute there, bill. Bill, how did Vanessa do in her interview?
Bill Greenhaw:So I'll be honest. We just talked, we just talked. I already knew Vanessa, I knew she would be, I just knew she would fit for the position.
Bill Greenhaw:So I didn't have to go through all the normal interview steps. For me in general, just with interviews kind of like what you said In the pure self-force thing, I could talk to somebody in five minutes and get if they're going to know what they're talking about, and then after that I just want to know their personality. They're going to fit with the team? Are they going to be able to fit with the company culture and stuff like that. That's what I take a lot into when I interview people on different positions.
Josh Matthews:Yeah. What do you think has been the best? What are the attributes of a company culture that you think are the best that you've seen? Universal I don't just mean for you, I mean yeah, I know?
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. This is an RPG show, is it?
Josh Matthews:I can no, it's an R-rated show.
Bill Greenhaw:I have the methodology and I try to stick with as much I can. I don't work for ASSOLs. I think that's the number one Too many people, too many upper management that just If you don't work well with the people below and have that attitude, I'm bigger, better than you, kind of thing, and for me personally, that doesn't work and I don't think that's a good culture, one that listens to their employees. I need to work for somewhere that's just going to listen. For criticism, employees are always going to complain, no matter what. No, on slack, they're complaining to each other and direct messages. So take the criticism and listen and learn from it. I think that's very important in culture.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's good. What about you, vanessa? I'm curious what you have to say about that. Don't work for ASSOLs, check.
Vanessa Grant:I'm going to go back to my. Make sure that you remember that people are whole people, so don't stress if somebody wants to take time off, don't make that a big deal. Make sure that you ask people how they're doing that whole kind of culture of I guess I've run into it over a few different companies where folks just aren't respectful of people's time and I think being respectful of okay, what All of my people have a life outside of here and is what we're doing. We're not trying to solve world peace is the thing that people say all the time. It's the business will be fine. Take care of yourself. And if you take care of your people in general, I think that your people will be, will more likely take care of you, because they want to make you look good. They want to make the company look good if they feel like they're being cared for.
Bill Greenhaw:I want to add on this Josh, I know as a recruiter you're going to be like I'll build. Never say that when you're looking, if you're looking for a job or anything. But I say this I say this I'm loyal to people, not companies, and I don't say that bad to our companies, because if they have good people, I'm loyal.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I get it. I followed Tom Brady to the Bucks. If Charles LeClaire left Ferrari and went to Red Bull, I'd start following Red Bull, because I'm more of a people thing than a team thing.
Bill Greenhaw:That's why I loved what Vanessa just said there because, you have good people, you have good managers. You like it. You're going to be loyal to that company. So definitely, that was great when you said, vanessa, thank you.
Josh Matthews:It was, and how can you ever really know a whole company? I mean, when Stephen and I were working at Robert Half, we were in the Portland office and it's got a Portland vibe. It's got whatever 40, 50 people in there all together at the time. How can we know the whole company other than memos and the occasional visit from a president and the occasional offsite or a Vegas trip or something like that? It's hard to know. The Philly office is very different. The New York office is different from Philly. The Phoenix office is different, salt Lake office is different. It's like saying that you know the company when you've worked in one branch doing one thing in a division of 10 people. You can work there for five years. You'll never really get it. So we can really only talk about that specific experience that we have and everything else is just gossip. Everything else is just like oh, you heard this from this person, you heard that from that person, and usually when you hear stuff it's complaint, which is why a lot of people complain about companies.
Vanessa Grant:It's not even their complaints, they're friends, it's interesting stuff and y'all also throw out the thing. I'm big on transparency and, I guess, maybe a touch of realness. I've worked at companies that have had this artificial team bonding stuff. I find it super cringe. I had this one company, I think, during COVID, that they hired a magician and we're on a Zoom meeting watching this guy do magic tricks as some form of team bonding On.
Caller:Zoom.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, on Zoom, and it was the buildup to Charlie the magic guy or whatever it was, and it was just like I didn't feel any more bonded to anyone around me. I thought the whole experience itself was cringe. I thought the artificial excitement leading up to it was cringe and it just didn't feel representative of what's going on. We're in a pandemic. Let's be human beings, let's be real. Let's talk about the challenges that we're facing. Let's be honest about the things that we actually care about, as opposed to the back conversations being like is this billable for us, is this count against our quota or what?
Josh Matthews:Well, you're highlighting some points that again we talked about on Banking, on Disruption yesterday, on the short takes, which is the back half of Fred's show, and what we do is we basically look at a few articles from the week and then talk about it, and one of them was around job satisfaction this past year versus prior years and according to certain surveys which I think I could blow a bunch of holes in their surveys, but according to certain surveys job satisfaction is down significantly year over year for a lot of people and in particular, amongst millennials. But what they shared was this feeling mostly new employees feeling like they're disconnected, like they don't have a buddy, they don't have a friend at work. I think our remote world has made it way more difficult for people to do that. And we actually talked about events, did not discuss Zoom meetings with magic no thanks, I'll just watch whatever I want on YouTube instead. But thanks.
Josh Matthews:But these opportunities for people to come together and work on maybe community initiatives, maybe you're whatever cleaning up garbage on the beach or you know, getting help, help go build a house for someone somewhere for a day as a team, like the kind of kind of things that actually help other people, but people are not interested, they don't want to do it, like the participation is so low, and yet it's conjoined with a complaint that there's not enough connection. So I'm kind of curious if anybody in the audience and if you are not an active speaker right now, that's okay, you can raise your hand, we'll bring you on the stage. But I'd be real curious what do you guys think are the kinds of events or activities that aren't magic on Zoom but will help people, particularly newer people, feel more connected? I had some ideas and if you want to listen to that, you can listen to the podcast, but what do you guys think?
Bill Greenhaw:You said one I agree with Josh of getting your team together to do some type of community outreach initiative. I've seen those work super well because it's outside of work but you're with your team and you're doing something, you're giving back and I've seen that really really work well with teams kind of bonding.
Josh Matthews:And was that mandated that they have to participate, or did people volunteer on their own?
Bill Greenhaw:When I've done, it's always been volunteer and people not everybody shut up, but majority have shut up.
Josh Matthews:Okay, all right. So do you think that there was a semblance of peer pressure that created enough momentum, or was it marketing and they were just good enough with their communications?
Bill Greenhaw:I think it's good enough with communication and choosing the right type of community outreach to get people excited to want to do it.
Josh Matthews:Okay, all right, and we've got I believe it's Naga Vivek coming online. Go ahead. Do you go by Vivek with Naga, or do you?
Caller:go by Naga Vivek would be good.
Josh Matthews:Vivek. Okay, all right, what's up, buddy? Go ahead and share.
Caller:Yeah, sure, so just with my experience, right, like what works well outside Zoom, so I'll share my experience. Like, when we were in the lockdown, we hired few people, so it was working well with the Zoom. But what doesn't work well with the Zoom is the perception of each other. Like, for example, if you say something, that is a big possibility for someone to misinterpret and misunderstand. So the culture wasn't that healthy during the lockdown, especially when you have new hireings, so people always tend to misunderstand.
Caller:The thing is like I can never get a chance to spend time together, so. But whereas if they get a chance to spend time together, do some puzzles or something, some team bonding exercises with each other, so when they say something, they can actually feel the intention why they say it. Is it they said it out of fun, is it lighthearted or they're really serious about it? You can get a feel of it. So, in order to understand a person, it is easy when you meet them in person and spend some time with them, whereas if it is in online, it might happen, it might not happen, it might take ages, ages and ages, exactly. So I mean like that's the same thing happened even after the lockdown as well.
Caller:So what? From home? Culture is really good right now, so that's good. That's good Like you have flexible working hours, but at the same time, it comes with your cost as well. That's why what I do to my team members is, even though my team members season are in two different cities every two months, fortunately we got budget for the travel, so we have the off site and we get the team members to meet, to meet with other teams, etc. So that's helping a little bit. Otherwise, every time there are complaints no, they are not good Every team is complaining about other teams. Honestly, that's what happened.
Josh Matthews:Interesting. Yeah, yeah, interesting. And I'm kind of curious when you guys do your Zoom meetings, is it required in your company that video is on?
Caller:It is not required in the company, but what I do is like I encourage people to turn on the video to feel more connected.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, comb your hair. Thank you, Vivek. Go ahead, Janine.
Janeen Marquardt:Yeah, I'm not sure we are question more targeted at team building specifically or just general bringing people together?
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it can be a. You know, team building is its own thing, right? I mean, if you want to build a team, you have to hire right. Well, you've got to hire the right personalities. There's got to be enough diversity in there to have new ideas generated. But you actually have to have a lot more commonalities if people are going to work well together. That's at least my belief, and I think science has proven that too.
Josh Matthews:But, so you can take the question however you want. I think we're kind of talking about how do we get to know team members, you know, in a remote world.
Janeen Marquardt:Got it. Yeah, I mean, I guess I was thinking more in terms of talking about getting together with the teams and doing something, maybe for the greater good, and I wanted to talk briefly about something I participated in for the first time that I didn't actually know about as somebody who works primarily in the for-profit world, but maybe the folks who work in more than on-profit world knew something about that. The Community Commons group has something they call Sprint and they get together and I don't know with exact what frequency, maybe several times a year, and it's kind of open to anyone. But we do projects for the benefit non-profits or to benefit sort of the non-profit arenas of Salesforce or the community, and I just participated in one leading up to non-profit dreaming.
Janeen Marquardt:Several projects you can call them like Skunk Works, almost Things that we're doing to kind of keep certain things going. There's like, if anyone's ever used like DLRS, which is kind of in the hands of the community, to keep it going was one of the projects that we're going we were working with like AI prompts to for use in the non-profit world or just different elements of Salesforce that are kind of on the fringes but help out people who use it. But it was a really great experience and nobody's paid to be there. It's a really interesting thing to go participate in and spend your time doing. We definitely did that with the team.
Josh Matthews:And so, janine, this is communitycommonsorg, is that right? Yeah, okay. And so this sounds like this is a site that companies can go to, or team managers or leaders can go to to identify opportunities to bring their work team into a sort of a non-profit supportive whatever event, task, exercise, whatever you want to call it.
Janeen Marquardt:Yeah, great input. I'm sure that they welcome teams of people to participate in with the teams of individuals and I'm sure that that would be welcome.
Josh Matthews:Very good, All right. Well, thank you, Janine. Bill, let's go back to you for a minute Number one advice that you would give to someone in an interview. Okay, You've already shared get better at databases. You've also shared. Really understands CRM's. What recommendations would you give our audience to performing well in an interview?
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, I mean interviews are tough there. I mean I still I'm not good at them, I don't always like them, is you know? Just try to be confident. But also just in the Salesforce realm, I mean it all depends on what you're interviewing with. I always just love passion. If I know this person's passionate about wanting to grow in Salesforce and wanting to learn more, they're already a step ahead of everybody else I've interviewed.
Caller:Yeah.
Josh Matthews:Because again not everybody's gonna know everything.
Bill Greenhaw:I want that person I know is going to continue to learn and continue to grow, Not coming and going. I know everything.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that makes sense.
Bill Greenhaw:And so that's one of my things Just be passionate, show your passion. Explain that you know you are learning, you're on trail ahead. I've never just say how much you've done trial. I'd say this is my path of how I'm always on trial and then what I'm continuing to do. On your interview, say what the certifications you're going for. My goal is to get this certification by the end of the year. I love hearing that. I don't care if you don't have it, yeah Cool, you're gonna try to get it. That's what I personally think goes far.
Josh Matthews:That's really good and folks, I mean for you to be able to say that you have to do it. Not everybody. It's not a natural thing for everyone to you know. I don't know that everybody comes out of the womb or out of high school or out of college or even out of their first one or two jobs being goal oriented.
Josh Matthews:Most people and I really believe that it's most I don't have the data on this, but I would say that most people are not necessarily goal oriented and just look around you, look around you guys, like they're just not, but it can be a little bit of it doesn't make someone bad if they're not. It just means that maybe they aren't interested and they like living day to day. Or it may just be that they are so 100% happy, like they've hit where they want to be, Maybe they've hit the Peter principle and taken one step down right, so they're super happy and confident where they are. That's a possibility also. But oftentimes I think that people don't know, like they don't know how to plan things out and I for one was one of those people.
Josh Matthews:I have a memory of staying up all night long in San Francisco. I was, I don't know, 19 years old, I think, and I was registering for some more classes at San Francisco State, where I went for about a year and I couldn't sleep. I stayed up all night. I wanted to watch the sunrise from this little mountain over by the Castro, and my aunt lived down on 16th and market, so she was right there. So I just sauntered down and knocked on her door and you know, at the time she was probably like 30, 32. And she was a little pissed because it was awfully early, the sun had just come up and she sat down with me and helped me map out and plan how to, how to figure out what my classes were. I had no idea how to do it, I just didn't know how to do it. It was. It made me tired to open up those, those books and to look at the courses. It made me exhausted and I felt overwhelmed. And she showed me how to do it. And, by the way, she was a project manager. She has 2000 people reporting to her now at a massive, massive philanthropy organization. She used to be Gavin Newsom presidential candidate. She used to be Gavin Newsom as chief of staff over at in San Francisco, so when he was the mayor. So she seriously has the skill set. Like, she seriously has a skill set. And what's interesting is my aunt Susie and I have the same, exact same, exact Myers-Briggs MBTI profile. Right, we're both the NTJs.
Josh Matthews:It's just I always had the capacity for goal planning, so I just didn't know how to do it and it took, it, took that moment to figure it out, right. And so if you don't know how to do it, it's okay, just Google how to become goal oriented or how to set goals. Take it one step at a time. Like I'm learning Spanish right now about 20 minutes a day on Duolingo and I'm 10 days in and I'm feeling pretty good about it so far. It's the consistency thing and, bill, that's something that you, you kind of brought up, you know too. When you were talking about how to you know, I asked how do you become an MVP? How do you, you know, become, you know, get into the MVP Hall of Fame? And what I heard more than anything is like do something and do it consistently, do it for a whole year, right? So it's, it's the consistency part.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, and kind of back on your unlike the learning thing from a pure Salesforce world. This is what I recommend to anybody in a team out there, like most of us are in teams. Salesforce out there on trial on epic change, has trail tracker. Where are you installed in your Salesforce org and you could assign trail heads to people so as, like a Salesforce manager, you could help motivate. Maybe you're the people that aren't good at planning like everybody wants to. I'm gonna go trial, I'm gonna learn, do all this, I'm gonna do this. Then projects come. Like you said, they forget Other things. So this trail tracker I find is really good because you could say, hey, we're gonna have this initiative, we're gonna do this new Salesforce product, assign the trail heads for just that one you know, maybe new. Do whatever Salesforce product it is and give everybody you know a quarter to learn it, to take the trial heads.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah and you know it does help people can well, but also gives them time to do it and also a way to track it. I find it very helpful for For teams out there to use that.
Josh Matthews:That's awesome because we're gonna take just a quick moment and share, if we can, a little bit about. Well, just a couple like little housekeeping things, and one of them is that, larry Lee, who is a regular on our show. He's a regular at the Florida Dreaming events and he's a heck of a nice guy. He's known in the ecosystem as cheesecake Larry, and I don't know if you're able to speak real quick, but he just penned a really fun article and so I'm encouraging everyone to go check it out. It's a short read. It's got pictures. So if you don't like to read too much but you like pictures, go ahead and check it out. But it's about how he became known in the ecosystem as cheesecake Larry and, more specifically and I don't want to give too much away about how he kept himself Motivated while educating himself through trail head what his own individual reward system was.
Josh Matthews:It's a great little read. So check out Larry Lee Sales force. You know, type that into linked in. You'll find it. He's penned this recent article and I hope that you enjoy it. If we're not talking, please go ahead and just hit mute for right now. The other thing I want to share is that Larry's well oh my gosh, he just turned.
Josh Matthews:What what today? When did he turn 50?
Vanessa Grant:a couple days ago. Oh my gosh happy birthday, larry.
Josh Matthews:That's awesome. Yeah, larry's a wonderful guy. Beautiful, beautiful family, lives just down the road for me a little bit, a little bit further than just down the road, but he's a wonderful person. If you ever get a chance to say hi to him, whether it's on linked in or at one of the dream and offense, I definitely recommend that. He's a, he's a. He's a gem of a person. So thanks for pending that article. I hope it brings a lot of inspiration to a lot of folks, larry.
Josh Matthews:The other thing I wanted to share is, if you have, if you're listening to this episode, but you did not have a chance yet to listen to our last published episode. Vanessa and Peter Gansa had a terrific discussion about the app exchange, about ISV's, and Peter, who is the app exchange whisperer, brings a wealth of experience, ten years experience to the ecosystem, and I learned a lot listening to that. I couldn't be on the show, but you know in in many ways I'm glad that I wasn't, because I feel like I, just by being able to sit back and put the Podcast on when it was all done and listen to it, I found it really enjoyable. So if you're listening to the show and you like the show. Guess what? I know why. It's kind of fun. Definitely check out that, that podcast.
Josh Matthews:We will only be having one more live show before the end of the year and we haven't even figured out exactly what that's going to be. But the new year of January is going to bring some new things to this show. One thing that we're hoping to do is get the show on YouTube, which would be at the Josh or what is it? Is it just Josh force? So that's my YouTube channel, so you can check out Josh force on YouTube. I haven't put anything up there in like forever, like maybe two years, I don't even know but we'll probably put some of our podcasts on there, some of our favorite ones, and if you're a YouTube listener, you can definitely check it out there. And we're also talking about possibly Switching this format, maybe to LinkedIn, maybe we keep it on X.
Josh Matthews:I know that politically, a lot of people are frustrated with the, the owner of X and some of his decisions. I just want to tell you I understand, I fully get it Okay, but it's still a viable platform and it works well for this show. So if you would rather see us on LinkedIn, then on X. Let us know again. You can DM me on X. You can DM Vanessa. You can message either of us on LinkedIn.
Josh Matthews:I will not give you my email lessons for business purposes, because that thing is just like filled with lots of messages I'll never get to. I think I'm 1200 deep and I work. I try to get through three or four hundred a day. So it's, it's just too much. So try and keep it on LinkedIn or on X and we'll definitely look at the numbers. So what do you guys think? Linkedin X a different platform. We'd love to hear from you.
Josh Matthews:All right, and if you haven't checked it out yet, please this is a little plug it do check out the salesforce recruiter comm. That is the website that I have with Steven and and Jesse they're on the show right now and, and Felicia, this is where we, this is our portal to the world. So if you're looking for new opportunities in the ecosystem, just go there, and if you're looking to hire people, go there as well, or you can just hit me up. You, if you're looking to hire people, are Allowed to email me. All right, I'll leave it at that, vanessa, any other sort of like housekeeping things, and then maybe we can answer some questions here before we move on for the rest for the next couple of weeks.
Vanessa Grant:Well, actually, you know what I'll? I'll throw in a A little, a little announcement. Actually it's not it's not all you know still signed in the paperwork, but I just Two years in the making. I've had a goal in 2024, but I I first made this request in November 2021, but I just got approved to create a trailblazer community group virtual for business analysts.
Josh Matthews:That is awesome.
Vanessa Grant:So that is gonna be the focus of my 24. I've always wanted to build the committee that I wished Existed when I started on this path, and so I'm really, I, really I couldn't be more excited, and to have to work for something For over two years and finally get the green light like I'm, gonna make it as awesome as I possibly can.
Josh Matthews:Well, that's gonna be incredibly awesome. Congratulations, vanessa. It's so stoked about that. So when do you think, like how much time until you think this thing can actually get launched, and do you have an idea?
Vanessa Grant:I'm sure it'll be 2024, especially with the holidays, and I would like to you know it kind of project planning. I need to figure out what my MVP is going to be and and how I get the word out. So, and really kind of what my charter is. If it's a virtual group, I want to make sure that it's global friendly I meant for the A's all over the world and I want to make sure that I'm I'm being inclusive, I'm doing the right documentation. So I have a to kind of create my laundry list and start checking some tax. But, man, I'm so psyched like this is. It's a really, really big deal for me. I didn't think I would get it done before the end of the year, but I'm really glad.
Josh Matthews:Congratulations so stoked for you truly, and I hope that you don't have to do this all on your own. You have some good people to offer support and building this out. Oh.
Vanessa Grant:You know I've made such great friends in the ecosystem you and Bill included, and I'm I definitely had folks Approach me because I've been talking about this thing for years now. You know offering support in various ways. So I do feel supported and, man, I just feel really good. It's one of those good community things where, just to Bill's point, you know it, getting involved with the community and you're part of your, as part of your continuous learning journey, like I learned so much from other people Through connecting with folks, and so I'm really glad to kind of expand that.
Josh Matthews:Well, it's a big it's. It's the big step. Vanessa right, and Bill will know this for sure. Having having launched Tahoe dream and what is it? Nine years ago, I think you know it. It's one thing to participate, it's another thing, like it's one thing, to sort of Absorb information, be a part of a community, and it's another thing to actively Participate in the community and it's a whole other thing to create the community. So Congratulations on that. I'm stoked. This is a the obvious next step in your own personal career progression and you know, community progression from that, that Wonderful little voice who would pop in and ask a question and answer something a few years ago, to multiple dreamforce speaker, podcast host and and so much more. And now having a community developed and created purely by you, I love it, congratulations.
Vanessa Grant:Thank you and I my last little question for for bill, more on the silly side, but it's happened to me a lot. How many times do you think that you said Tahoe dreamin, but people have heard taco dreamin.
Bill Greenhaw:I Never thought of that, but maybe I don't have to ask everybody. That's a good question. I'm about to edit said the survey out Asking for what people want. The next one. I'm gonna put that in the survey to see there you go so on that note.
Bill Greenhaw:If you don't mind me, josh, now I'm gonna plug in Tahoe dreamin. So anybody you know Tahoe dreamin, calm, not taco Tahoe and dreaming with no g at the end calm. So it's a community conference. I love everybody. Come to it. It's july 25th and 26 next year. Take it to go on sale the beginning of the year. Go to the website. You can see it, info about it. Just take it. Start there till next year. But also, just Going back to what we were just talking about, if you can't go to again, I'd love everybody to be there. Go to your local community conference. You know there's I think from 30 of them right now. They're. They're growing each year back after COVID. They're a great place to get, especially if you're new in the Salesforce ecosystem. They're a great way to network and get involved. Dreamforce love. It could be a little overwhelming, especially for new people.
Josh Matthews:These these smaller Expensive yeah yeah.
Bill Greenhaw:So I do recommend. And then kind of what we were talking about, what piggybacking off Vanessa, just on the community conferences and Finding your way. Yes, community conference helps you continuously learn. That's why a lot of us give back. Why do I run the conference? I don't like Going in leading sessions. I'm not. It's not my forte to be up there talking for an hour doing a session. I Like running the event better. That's me. So when you see these, you want to get involved, though you don't have to be a session to get involved. There's all other types of things you could help you know it, with the community conferences and still give back and help, because not everybody's good at sessions like Vanessa's great at. It's not my forte. I like being behind the scenes making sure it all happens. So Look, you know, look, if you're really trying to get involved, reach out to your local and see if they need any help.
Josh Matthews:It's a great recommendation and and yes, I know, vanessa and I and Janine and you can all attest that Tahoe is a very special, special event. It's a special Location and it's filled with really special people too. So, if you can make it next July, definitely go.
Bill Greenhaw:And I was gonna call him out and he just dropped off. Michael force was on it and I was gonna call him out that he was gonna have to come in and talk next year. No, okay, and it looks like he unfortunately had to drop, but I'll try to get him there.
Josh Matthews:There you go, and we did have a hand raised by sheba. Hi sheba, it's nice to see on the show again. Go ahead and pipe up.
Caller 2:Hi Josh, hi Vanessa, and many congratulations on getting approved for your community group. So I call community groups actually third spaces. You have your home, your office and this is like a third space, a very. You can actually Interact with the community and grow your skills. So I really value it and I think it's really nice that you can consistently contribute by calling speakers and even practicing your own speaking skills.
Caller 2:So there were a couple of things that came to my mind while I was listening to everyone. So, talking about third space, there there has been some initiative, like you said, josh, that Millennium's how do they interact in this Remote workspace environment? So a lot of initiatives have been made to create like third spaces, like, for instance, in San Francisco there was this experimental Company. It was Expensive, I don't know they've heard it and I know that lot of youngsters used to go and, including my son, every day, seven o'clock, back up his bag and go do expensive five and they it was like a free bar kind of system and just to just to draw people in and kind of research on this in-person experience.
Josh Matthews:But after, like often, Guys, I'm sorry if I'm interrupting anyone, but my audio is completely gone out, or there we go. Yeah, we lost, she buys it.
Caller 2:I think it was my hubby. He was calling me, so Okay, it had like truck cross the last sorry, I this Think this.
Josh Matthews:I mean everything's brand new, all my equipment's brand new. I don't know why it's bugging out, but sorry about that. Keep going, shiva.
Caller 2:Yeah, so what I meant to say was that expensive five we work on. These are supposed to be like the third spaces, where milleniums and youngsters they go and they interact and they even have hackathons and, you know, especially on the trending technology like AI etc. So it's not just Salesforce, it's like all the different types of technology so you can interact with people and work on some kind of projects together, so and also just to interact and just vibe together and in an informal setting, just, you know, kind of Interact yeah, I'm right by together.
Josh Matthews:I like it yeah.
Caller 2:Yeah. So they kind of got lost with the remote setting and it does have a burnout For sure, because you can't be in just four walls and thrive. You usually try with people and with the peer group. It really helps to. You know brainstorm and bounce ball of each other. It helps you to grow as a professional and as a person.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, get some reality check going on too.
Caller 2:Yeah, and then somebody suggested about you know that how there's a lot of passive, aggressive kind of feelings that come in through remote, remote environment in the office setting. So I had a chance to present on digital body language the stream first and this article is on my LinkedIn profile and Basically I came up with a sports concept which mean which has like that this if you adopt this pause Concept, you would be able to Generally how companies should create some kind of communication models so people are not misunderstood, so it's easy for employees to actually interact safely.
Josh Matthews:Oh, I'm gonna check that out. I love that stuff. Yeah, and good for you for for getting picked to speak at Dreamforce on such an interesting topic. I know like I mean who here has people in their life that if you text them or slack them and you don't include a smiley face, they're gonna take it the wrong way right, yeah, yeah you know, these are actual Add-ons and if you don't include it, it looks like you're angry.
Caller 2:Lot of Misinterpretations happen by if you're just interacting digitally Because people don't know you and they're not going to be. They don't give like if your manager calls you. I mean they talk to you in a certain way, all caps, and you know they talk to you in a certain way. You would be scared. Oh, am I gonna be fired?
Josh Matthews:Yeah, yeah, or they could just say some words like just a word pattern, right, I need you to do this. Blah, blah, blah. Well, every time that they were, you know whatever at any age, maybe it was their last boss any time they heard those words, they were yelling, right. And so now they're reading I need you to do this, and it feels like they're angry and they're. You know, there's all this missing. You know behavioral signals, because we're not getting visual. So let me, and let me just say this people, put your freaking camera on when you're on zoom meetings.
Josh Matthews:You are, you are robbing yourself of being understood, right, you're stealing From other people by not having that. You know, just, your voice is fine. If you're gonna have a conversation, you're really good at it, like that's great. But if you're gonna have a zoom meeting or whatever kind of meet, google meet, put your camera on Right, get up five minutes early and comb your hair and put on the camera, because if you're not doing that, you're really robbing what I forget what it was 70%, 80%, 90%, it's more than your words. You're robbing people of the real communication, right, and if you're tired, it's okay. If you look tired, people can. Then you say hey, you know you're right, look a little tired, you need a break, you know? Are you bummed out? Is there something I can help with? Right, instead of keeping it all to yourself? So, anyway, that's my little recommendation bill go ahead, you don't have to raise your hand, buddy.
Bill Greenhaw:Oh yeah, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna thank you there for me on the Peter principle, I'm gonna kind of yeah, 90%, 95%, agree, I throw the 5% out there. Do it there? Zoom fatigue For those, and I'll use Vanessa as an example. She's had like 40 meetings already this week. If you're in meetings all day Sometimes you just can't be. I can't, you know causes that fatigue, so I throw it back at companies for having too many meetings. Well, yeah, you know.
Josh Matthews:But if you're only meeting with people three times, like you know, yeah.
Josh Matthews:Our company. We have a team meeting three, two times a week, right, and everyone's always on, you know, open. And then there's multiple calls, you know, during the day. I mean I pink Steven earlier, I'm probably pink Steven two, three times a day and Jesse wants it I don't know what it is, but they're short and so we get on zoom and we get on. You know, just slack, get on the huddle. You know it's only five minutes. Yeah, if you're gonna be on those six hour meetings, yeah, you might need to take a break. But what you want to do is give your team at least a couple, two, three hours of visual time, or five hours of visual time In a given week. I think that's pretty reasonable Something like that I never said I was.
Bill Greenhaw:I was being, like you know, the far, the full. I'm glad that.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I'm glad that you did because that's a real. You know, I don't. I'm not in tech, I'm in staffing. It's different, right, it's really different. And I've walked in on. I mean I can't tell you how many times I'd go to a client, go to a client site where I had maybe 20, 30 people working and I'm sitting down with the, with the, you know, head of the PMO, and she's on a six, seven hour phone call and it's just droning in the background. We're having a meeting. I get that there are meetings like that and sure you know those meetings will, back in the day were on the phone, now they're on zoom and yeah, like, I totally get that you can't get anything done if you're in too many meetings. So fair enough.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, really, the broad is companies have less meetings. You don't need to have a meeting today.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I always liked that. What was it? Churchill never wanted a meeting to be longer than 20 minutes. It's like if, if you can't have, if you guys can't figure out what's going on and get to the point, then you didn't do your preparation. That's awesome. That's you know I yeah, good luck with that. The 20 minute meeting yeah, I guess it's okay if you're the Prime Minister of England, but if you're everyone else, maybe it's a little harder to pull that off.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, I think I'm more in the camp of companies shouldn't mandate cameras on. I don't even think they should set a culture of cameras on. But I think, as an individual, if you feel comfortable and safe and think it would help your cause by turning your camera on which in most cases it will then that should be kind of the encouragement. Again, it's the whole. I just don't know what people are going through at any time. Maybe they did have a horrible night, maybe their baby's working in the background, or whatever it is. I hesitate with the mandatory part or it being part of the culture. I think it's the. Do you feel comfortable? Then we'd love to see you.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I'm totally disagree. I think companies have the right to mandate that stuff and I think that they should mandate it for a certain number of hours or meetings, based on what Bill just said. I think it's ridiculous. No offense, because I'm going to come hard, but I'm saying yeah, of course, but it's, I think.
Josh Matthews:Look, you have the luxury of not having to pay for dry cleaning. You've got the luxury of not having to pump gas in your car or plug it in extra overnight to drive to work. You have the luxury of not causing traffic jams or sitting in them. That's a luxury that we have in the modern world and there's a cost to that and that cost is human connection and it's not insignificant, it's extremely real and it's extremely painful and hurtful for a lot of people, particularly new people in companies. And when we're not giving even a couple hours, two, three hours of face time in a week I think five is even better. If it's more than five, I get it but if we're not giving that to our peers, coworkers and the people that we're working with, we are absolutely robbing everybody. So I think if a company can mandate someone to show up like hey, this job's on site, you got to show up, then I think that they can mandate having your camera on because you have this luxury and it's a luxury. Never forget that. That's exactly what it is. It's a luxury of our modern age. That's been completely already. We're already sort of like what's the word? Taking it for granted. I mean we are Remember five years ago, remember 10, remember 15, remember 20, it's a luxury.
Josh Matthews:And if they want to mandate it, I think that they should for a certain number of meetings, because it's very, very, very difficult for the teams to be built in the community, within an organization, to be solid. I mean, here's just a fun fact when you have friends at a company, you're less likely to leave and it's easier to make friends when you can see their face. So there you go. You want to keep people longer, have your cameras on and if it is an optional thing, at least do it. To Vanessa's point and I think it's a good point. Phil brought it up too Like if you've got Zoom fatigue, I totally get it. Like I totally get it, but at least when it's just with your teammates for some of the time, so that they get to know you Go ahead, janine. Oh sorry, hold on Before Janine pipes up Vanessa rebuttal go.
Vanessa Grant:Oh no, I think I said my part. I still stand by it, but we're allowed to disagree on it. Yes, we are.
Bill Greenhaw:I just want to say, Josh, that means you have to say that after you actually put clothes on or get like you know, like you said, go my hair and stuff Like you. Really, I have to do that, yes.
Josh Matthews:Oh man. Yes, yeah, you actually have to wash your clothes and put on a shirt and, if you have hair, comb it. I know it's such a drag being a human. Go ahead, janine.
Janeen Marquardt:And I can certainly argue this either way, because I am somebody who does try to put my camera on whenever I can. But as the person who's sitting here now with the flu, yeah, I'm perfectly happy not to have my camera on, so you don't have to watch me blow my nose and cough Sure, and I really look terrible. So I think that there's, I think that there is a time and a place for it. Zoom fatigue is real. I do try to put my camera on whenever I can. I do like to see the face, and there is an argument for having the camera on, especially for those of us who are we've had this conversation before a little neurodivergent. We need as much help as we can with additional nonverbal cues when we're not very good at some of those things. We need that help to understand context because it's really really hard for some of us. Absolutely.
Janeen Marquardt:Everything that's happening. So we do rely on people's facial expressions and what's happening. But we also do understand that we can't always be on that call, we can't always be on camera, and I was actually just talking to somebody the other night at my community group as we did the mentorship. I find having Zoom on during my interviews to be really valuable, because what I didn't have in an interview in real life is I couldn't see that I had a resting bitch face and now I can look in my Zoom and make sure that I've got just the right amount of smile.
Janeen Marquardt:Yeah, I've got the smile in the right way, with like cute dimple shows and that I'm looking interested in attentive and things like that, which is great for an interview because of my resting bitch face.
Josh Matthews:Yes, so I don't have a resting bitch face, I called it resting cop face and I've grown a stash now, so I really look like a cop, like I really do, which is kind of funny. So I have, like you know, rcf resting cop face and it's not, you know, a fenced to cops.
Janeen Marquardt:I love you guys, I thought you said something different. By the way, I thought you said that to me too.
Josh Matthews:I'm going to throw that out there, you naughty, naughty people, resting cop.
Janeen Marquardt:C-O-P face yeah.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I think I talked about it six months ago when I was started recording coaching. You know I used to do life coaching, sales coaching, career coaching, and I started to record these sessions and I'd watch them back and I'd be like I wonder that dude didn't like me. I looked like a jerk, I just didn't look very happy. It's absolutely helped me tune in to make sure that what's on the outside is actually what I'm feeling on the inside. We need to be trained on that, sometimes for real. One thing I wanted to bring up talking about, you know, with what Shiba had brought up, like with using emojis when we were doing the podcast with Fred yesterday. He uses a different platform. I don't even know what it's called, but it, like Zoom, now has these things. Maybe it's built into the Mac OS system.
Josh Matthews:I hadn't seen it before, where you know you give a thumbs up and then a thumbs up emoji comes up and I did this thing of sort of like you know whatever rock and roll, devil hordes, and then you know all these awesome neon lights in my fake background I don't have a, I don't run backgrounds typically, but this fake background of like awesome, like neon lights came up and then he did this other. You know, one of the other folks did this other move and it was fireworks. Like two thumbs up created fireworks. So it's, it's weird how the our physical bodies, you know, are now creating these sort of you know, silly effects. It's like a version of an emoji when you're already there, like we know what two thumbs up means you don't need fireworks. But it's kind of interesting how, how that sort of pervaded now into into what the hell are we talking about? Zoom meetings? Okay, we got to wrap this show up. It's getting late.
Bill Greenhaw:Well, I just want to hit on what Janine did, like you know. She said like the facial clues. I know I don't get on video enough. I'll admit that and I probably should, because I have a really bad habit of being sarcastic, probably more than I should on meetings, and if I didn't have a video on, yeah, probably not everybody's maybe always getting much sarcastic.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, you need that fourth. You know, break the fourth plane with the pantomime right Like you need to look at the audience and be like get it, that's a good point. Who's going to look? Let's just do one last call for any questions. We haven't done a bunch of AMA today. It's been kind of a smaller audience and that's okay. But if you have a question, now's the time to ask. All you got to do is raise your hand, and if we don't have any hands raised here in the next couple of minutes, or Vanessa, do you have some questions that maybe came up over the last couple of weeks?
Vanessa Grant:I have one, but I feel like we covered it over the course of this podcast.
Caller:Oh, yeah, yeah, what was it?
Vanessa Grant:It was how to manage taking on more slash, different responsibility, which is maybe good when you're considering promotion potential, but takes you away from doing what you actually really enjoy the most.
Josh Matthews:So was that the question? Like that's the question verbatim yeah.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, the verbatim is basically how to manage taking on more slash, different responsibility, which may be good regarding promotion potential et cetera, but takes you away from doing what you actually really enjoy the most. So how do you balance the? I want to make more money, but I know that the responsibilities of a promotion based on the promotion path that I'm on means that I will not get to do the things that I love.
Josh Matthews:Got it. I've got an unpopular answer, but it's my real one. If you'd like to hear it, I'm happy to share. Please, work more hours, like it's just.
Josh Matthews:I don't know anybody who got a promotion by not putting in a little bit more time, more energy and more effort. Now, if you are already sapped, if you're plugging in 60 hours a week or you've got four kids at home and 45 is all you can do, like whatever it is Like. I mean, everyone's got their own individual case, but from what I've seen across the last 30 years has been that when people want a promotion and there are extra responsibilities and they don't want to drop the stuff that they love to do right at work, then you must drop some of the stuff that you like to do at home temporarily. Right, most people want a promotion because it leads to more income, more you know. Then they get to stop doing things that they don't like. I mean most people I know who want a promotion do it for that reason. You know the person who's like oh, I can't wait to get off the sales floor and just manage people, whatever it is right, or I can't wait to stop, like, doing admin work. I want to do bigger solutioning work. This admin stuff's getting boring for me. Most people are trying to run away from their responsibilities. If you're already doing something that you love into Bill's point if you're already loving it like, why do you even want to get a promotion? Like, what's the point there, except maybe once you gain some competence in it you'll really enjoy it?
Josh Matthews:I know some people who love they can love doing things that they're not good at, just because they love to see the progression of zero to hero or even zero to moderately competent. That's me with languages. I've always been terrible at learning languages. I just I'm not very good at it, but this dual language shit's working great for me. Don't ask me any questions in Spanish, though, but for me that's a cool thing. I know I'm not good at it, but this system's working for me and I enjoy it. So I'm seeing progress, but I'm not giving up something that I like for this right Nothing at all. So you either have to give up something at work or you got to give up something at home. Generally, you're giving up something at home because you still have to do everything that you have to do for your job. Kind of curious if other people have a different take on this Crickets.
Caller:I think you're getting that yeah.
Josh Matthews:What about you, Vanessa? Do you have a different take on it?
Vanessa Grant:I think? No, I don't know that I do. I mean, having always kind of been a little bit of an overachiever, I always get kind of nervous taking on new opportunities when I'm not convinced that I will be freaking amazing at it. Yeah, that I'm absolutely going to love it, because I'm scared that I'm going to do poorly. But all I can do is kind of look at my track history and go, you know, I've never really botched any jobs so badly that it's gone poorly and so much of my job enjoyment is based on who I'm working with.
Vanessa Grant:And I kind of feel like, even if I'm you know, I don't know putting widgets together, as long as I can kid around with somebody, you know, even if it's just making fun of the widget company together like there's joy in that, and so I think it's not necessarily getting focused on what tasks am I doing and will I enjoy them? But how do I find enjoyment with what I have? And if I can find a job that has more money or there's greater opportunities or it's at a better organization and I can find my own joy or create my own joy when I'm there, then that's kind of what I focus on less and less on, you know, oh, I'm not going to be able to do this other thing that I really like. I mean I could always change jobs again.
Bill Greenhaw:Yeah, and that's what I was thinking kind of on is what you were saying, and you know Vanessa is saying is like, but my only comeback would be not all jobs are giving you the ability to continue what you like if you're taking something new. Yeah, yeah, but what I say there is and I'll go back to like. When you asked me how I became MVP, like I said I was on Salesforce answers, answering questions then I would push people to be like go to like Salesforce forms, go to, you know, reddit, the Salesforce Reddit, go to the Salesforce answers and then push yourself there at night. You know it was hard on.
Bill Greenhaw:It was my girlfriend time wife now when I started doing that. She'll tell you every night I opened up my laptop when he got home. We'd watch TV together and I would do that for a couple hours while we were just sitting together. She didn't always like it, but I was able to convince her going look at, this is good for me. I'm learning, I'm going forward. This is going to get me in my career. So it is like you said, it's temporary, but you sometimes just got to do that extra step and that's all I'm saying. People, push yourself in areas outside what you even used to go find those Salesforce answers. Go find just forms where people are talking, because again you're going to see real world questions. Trollhead's great but it's very structured, you know. Just get those random like wow, okay, I've never thought of that one and it's going to make you think, trying to help other people you don't answer, it's going to make you try to have figured out and it's just going to help you career.
Josh Matthews:I love it. Yeah, guys, it's about sacrifice. I mean everybody. If you want everything, you can't have it. Sorry, that's the reality news that everybody gets.
Josh Matthews:If you want more of something, you have to do more of something to get it Right, and that generally means you have to give up something. You might have to give up. You know, watching two episodes of psych every night. I'll never give it up, Just kidding. But like, you actually must give up something and it might sometimes even be something that you really like and you really enjoy.
Josh Matthews:Now, if it's something that's really healthy for you, it's really good for you, Right? Like going to the gym. Going to the gym for me is very good for me. Don't play in drums or piano, it's very good for me emotionally, Like seriously. If I don't have that, I'm a little bit grumpier with either of those. You know I'll give up something that's actually giving you the energy and sort of the brain power to help you accomplish so much more. Right?
Josh Matthews:I know years ago, five years ago, when I launched this little company, I was dawned on me like I don't have enough energy to do everything I'm going to have to do. I must make changes changes in my diet, changes in my sleep habits, changes in my exercise and my exercise routine, changes in how I approach problem solving, how much time I stick with things. I'm going to have to improve my focus. I'm going to have to do all of those things. That's what I worked on first, getting my habits down so that I could have the energy to perform 90-hour weeks for years in a row. I did, and it sucked, but I did it. I don't have to do it anymore. So just figure out your energy. Figure out.
Josh Matthews:I highly recommend people check out AsianEfficiencycom or go to the Productivity Show, which is a podcast. On whatever platform you're listening to this on. I promise you the Productivity Show is on there too. Some very, very smart, bright people have figured out, so that you don't have to, how to get either more time or energy or more attention the T-framework that will help you hopefully be able to include the things that you enjoy doing as well as the things that you feel you need to be doing in order to grow your career. So start there and then watch yourself take off. I think you'll do great. Whoever asks that question is a smart person. It's a great question.
Bill Greenhaw:Josh, what was the dot com you said?
Josh Matthews:AsianEfficiencycom, a-s-i-a and AsianEfficiencycom. When you can just Google them. You can just type in AsianEfficiency, or it might even be A-Ecom, for all I know right now.
Bill Greenhaw:No, I thought it's AsianEfficiencycom.
Josh Matthews:Okay, yeah, great, I'm a lifetime member. It was like a thousand bucks, but you can just join for a little bit and watch some cool things about how to be better with your email. I'm going to revisit those for my comments earlier today how to be better with your email, how to get more rest, how to create automations on your Mac or your Windows machine all sorts of things to help you figure out where you can get more efficiency out of your day. And guess what, when you do that, you get more done and you're more successful and you probably feel better about yourself too and you get more time with your family. Awesome, bill Greenhaugh, it's been a real gift having you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been lovely to know you the last few years. I'm so glad that you and Vanessa get to work together. I think it's fantastic, so I appreciate that. Yeah, she's such a gem. So thank you to everybody. Thanks to my team for sitting in on this session today. It's great to see you. Guys Really appreciate you being here too. Thanks for all of the input. Chiba, for your input. We had a couple other folks pipe up. Appreciate you, larry. Thank you Everyone. Good to see you, cory Tlaing. Great to see you again For more information about how you can well, not for more information.
Josh Matthews:Let me scratch all that. Listen, guys. Do me a favor. Do Vanessa a favor Go ahead and like this podcast. If you could do that, that'd be great. The more likes we get, the more we crawl in the rankings. It's just how the algorithms work.
Josh Matthews:Most of you are listening to us on Apple Podcast. A lot of you are still listening to us on Spotify. Share those platforms, google, whatever you're listening to us on, just click like. If you can leave a review, leave a review. You just got about almost two whole hours of really good conversation here. It didn't cost you a thing, just cost you your time. So if you can take another 30 seconds, 20 seconds, and do something that supports this show, that'd be great. We don't make money on this, by the way. This is all just for the community, it's just for fun and it's for success. That's why we do it. We love to do it. That's how you can help support us. So, thank you. If you can all take a moment and do that right now, we appreciate you.
Josh Matthews:We'll be back in two weeks. I don't know if we have a guest. Maybe we'll do a year on special, maybe we'll have a special guest, I don't know. But Vanessa and I are going to catch up and we're going to hopefully, in two weeks, be able to share what 2024 looks like for our brand new season two. We've had about 33 episodes 32, 33 episodes this year podcasts this year, which is sweet. We're probably going to have about the same amount next year, but how we do that and where we do that might be called into question. But we'll answer those questions next session, in two weeks from today. Vanessa, any parting words?
Vanessa Grant:I'll just thanks everyone. It's been a great chat.
Josh Matthews:Great chat. Congratulations on your new community too. Whatever we can do to support you, just let us know. Okay, all right, folks, no exit music today. Everybody, have an awesome one and enjoy your week, enjoy the holidays and enjoy those tricky leftovers if they're already Bye for now. Thanks, john, thanks.
Bill Greenhaw:Vanessa.