Outgrowing The Salesforce Hoodie: Career Growth Advice from the Pros

Embark on a revealing journey through the Salesforce ecosystem as we join forces with seasoned professionals at the Salesforce World Tour in New York City. Uncover the transformative power of retaining a beginner's mindset with the wisdom of Makeda Keegan and other industry veterans. Their candid stories chart the course from fledgling novices to experts, illustrating the invaluable lessons learned along the way. From navigating personal and professional obstacles to seizing unexpected opportunities, like Melissa's serendipitous career leap, this episode is a treasure trove of real-world insights.

As we unravel the threads of career growth, personal branding emerges as a crucial beacon, guiding one's journey in the job market. Listen closely as our guest, Peter Ganza, the 'app whisperer', and others shed light on the art of standing out and the significance of being top-of-mind for coveted roles. Drawing from vivid analogies and their own experiences, they demonstrate how blending unique and common skills can craft a magnetic, professional identity. Whether you're an independent entrepreneur or cultivating a reputation within an organization, these tales of becoming a 'unicorn' in the field will inspire your own professional evolution.

Closing with wisdom and warmth, our panel shares advice they'd give to their younger selves, embracing the essence of stepping out of comfort zones and the impact of mentorship. As we prepare to pause the show, we leave you with thoughts on the joy and authenticity crucial for fulfilling careers and lives. Whether you're charting a new course or honing your path within the Salesforce ecosystem, this episode is your compass to navigate the terrain of professional and personal success. Remember, the journey may be unpredictable, but therein lies the adventure.

Transcript

Josh Matthews: 0:05

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. Okay, everybody, welcome to the Salesforce Career Show. My name is Josh Matthews. I run salesforcerecruitercom. I'm with my co-host.

Vanessa Grant: 0:27

Vanessa Grant. I am the product owner at FinTech Mosaic and I'm happy to be in New York hosting the career show.

Josh Matthews: 0:35

Salesforce World Tour in New York City. So we are also recording this on video. So in a week or two you'll be able to jump onto Josh Force or whatever we're calling the channel at the time on YouTube and actually see what it looks like for a couple of people to host a show from a hotel, and with that we've got a really awesome show. So I'm going to pass the microphone to Vanessa. She's going to introduce our guests, They'll tell you all about themselves and then we're going to dive into a very interesting topic. What is that topic, Vanessa?

Vanessa Grant: 1:04

Our topic today is when your career outgrows the hoodie and you graduate to a trailblazer. So thank you guys so much for coming today. I would love to have you guys introduce yourselves First. We have not Dresh in the flesh today, but Dresh in the Twitter.

Eric Dreshfield: 1:23

Flesh in the flesh today, but Dresh in the Twitter flesh, Something like that I am officially. My title is principal consultant at Dresh for success, which basically means I'm an independent consultant working for myself.

Vanessa Grant: 1:37

Nice Melissa, would you like to introduce yourself? Sure, hi, I'm Melissa Hildes.

Melissa Hill Dees: 1:41

I, just as of two and a half weeks ago, came on board with Agile Cloud Consulting as their digital transformation strategist, and right now I'm in New York City. I'm here, did the AI Now training today, which is super exciting and interesting, and looking forward to World Tour tomorrow and the nonprofit sprint on Friday.

Vanessa Grant: 2:02

Congratulations, that's awesome.

Josh Matthews: 2:05

That's super awesome.

Vanessa Grant: 2:06

All right.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 2:07

Makita. Hey everybody, my name is Makita Keegan. I'm based in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm a Salesforce BA. I've been in the ecosystem since 2012. And I'm also president of the board of directors of Amplify, a nonprofit dedicated to growing diverse leadership in the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond.

Janeen Marquardt: 2:27

And last but not least, janine. Hi, my name is Janine Marquardt Thank you so much for having us here today and I am currently in the Bay Area near San Francisco, and I am also self-employed. I have my own company, strata Solutions, where I do fractional strategy and architecture for other SIs as needed, helping them work out who they are and what they're doing in the ecosystem.

Vanessa Grant: 2:54

Awesome.

Josh Matthews: 3:19

What does it mean? And anybody can pipe up at any time. By the way, if you're listening to, you know, over 30 years long at this point, and this idea of you know, graduating professionally right, because that's really what we're talking about here, you know, going not just from a novice and brand new, but really there's, I guess, stepping into wisdom, right, it's like lots of things will, I imagine, no longer impress you, right, lots of things will no longer scare you or threaten you in the way that they have in the past, right, because we get used to things over time. But I'm kind of curious was there a single moment in your career where you realized, hey, you know what? I think I've kind of graduated and I don't mean done with your career, I think you guys know what I mean, but you've sort of graduated from the hoodie. What was that moment? Anybody can speak first. Go for it.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 4:10

So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to take a little bit of a different take. You know it's funny. I think graduating from the hoodie is exactly what you said, Josh. It's about gaining that wisdom. That being said, you I said I've been in Salesforce ecosystem since 2012,. But I've been in tech since the early aughts. So one thing that I've carried with me, and one piece of wisdom that's kind of helped me push to the next level and graduate perpetually, is to have a beginner's mind. I think when you get started in your career, you think you have to do things a certain way, You've got to follow a certain path, you got to do the certain things and after a certain point you're like wait a minute. That's not true at all. There are a lot of really cool things that I can try and I can learn, and I can take those experiences and apply them forward, and that's where that wisdom comes from. So I think when I kind of figured that out, maybe five years ago actually, that was a big growth point for me.

Josh Matthews: 5:05

Yeah, that's a really exceptional point, right, and look the way that we learn. We begin by learning by rote. Do this, then this, then this. Right, you follow specific steps, you follow the instructions and when you don't know all the things that you don't know, it's so critical to adhere to sort of that format of early days in your career, whether you're learning to fly an airplane or learning to be a Salesforce administrator, you're going to make overcorrections, for instance. Right, it's just like when you're learning to drive a car.

Josh Matthews: 5:37

You don't get that subtle, little delicate movement that you do automatically nowadays when you're headed home, right, it's big moves, big, you know, slamming on the brakes, gunning the gasoline, and this is why same thing in any kind of profession, but you know, absolutely in a variety of roles in the ecosystem here that beginner mindset as a beginner, by the way, is the most critical thing to your success, right? Because so many people, I think. I think they come in and they have an expert's mindset, but a beginner's aptitude and a beginner's knowledge. I mean, have you seen this? Have you seen this with up and comers, younger otherwise, where they kind of come in maybe with a little bit too much arrogance, and it limits their ability to progress professionally a little bit too much arrogance and it limits their ability to progress professionally.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 6:27

Well, I've got Janice's hand is up, so maybe I'll hand that off to her. But I will say this you know, I think we all have that bravado. Initially, like you know, you pass a certification or two, maybe, or maybe you've been working in a certain environment for a few minutes and you're like, oh, I know what I'm doing, and then not having the wisdom to say, like you know, to slow down and really, really understand that you don't know what you don't know, but be open to learning more. You know that that's a critical piece, I think, for anyone starting really in any sort of career, right? But, janine, I don't know if you have any different thoughts about that.

Janeen Marquardt: 7:00

Well, I mean I had a comment sort of in some ways in the previous question which, if you don't mind me going back for a moment, josh, go for it To really kind of think about the beginner's mindset. It's not so much about being the beginner or being sort of later in your career per se, so much as being open to the learning possibilities. I think about the fact I mean much like Makita, I mean, I actually started back in tech in the 90s but I mean, yeah, I had a lot to learn then, obviously. But what's really interesting is I still have a lot to learn. I still feel every day like I have a lot to learn and I try to keep an open mind to those things.

Janeen Marquardt: 7:35

And so sure, maybe I feel like I'm quote unquote an expert in something in Salesforce because I've been doing it for a lot of years, but also that keeps changing too. And so I try to keep an open mind about the things I have left to learn. And it's not so much about where I am in terms of that knowledge, but so much about where I am in terms of my career. I do need to hold myself a little bit differently now. I am not just starting my career myself a little bit differently now. I am not just starting my career, but I am starting in a different place in my career. I am not a beginner. I might keep in mind and might be always learning, but I am really mid-career. I am really looking for opportunities where I can stay open to new knowledge, but also looking for how do I grow as a person, how do I grow in my career, how do I achieve higher heights?

Josh Matthews: 8:29

Okay, so how do you do that? Be specific if you can for the audience, janine, where do you go to try and improve on those specific things you just mentioned?

Janeen Marquardt: 8:37

Yeah, well, so for me, I'm trying to learn how to be a better speaker. I said, well, how do I improve where I am in my career? What do I do next? I said, well, I'm kind of afraid of public speaking. Maybe I'll try to submit myself to speak at some of these community conferences. So I started taking on some public speaking opportunities last year too.

Josh Matthews: 8:58

Yeah, that's fantastic and it's a critical. I think it's a critical step for anybody who's going to stay in leadership and progress throughout leadership. I mean, look, some people are born to it, right, meaning that they just have an easier time. But, like I think this this woman's sitting next to me here is an amazing speaker and she's still getting yeah, right and she, but she still gets really nervous, right. I mean, there are a lot of pop stars that go on tour and they're throwing up before every single show. This stuff happens. Getting comfortable with it is one thing, and then it's another thing to actually be good at it, to work on your voice, to work on your tempo, all of those things. Eric, I'm kind of curious. Back to the original question. Tell us, was there a moment that you realized you'd sort of graduated?

Eric Dreshfield: 9:44

original question. Tell us, was there a moment that you realized you'd sort of graduated? Well, you know, I'm reminded of a quote that my dad told me the first time I got put into a management role. And you know, some people might think when you get into a management role that's kind of graduating out of that beginner mindset. And I don't think that's necessarily true, but I'll get back to that in just a second.

Eric Dreshfield: 10:03

What my dad told me when I told him I got promoted into management was congratulations on your promotion. Now you're part of the problem. And my response to him was I'd rather think of myself as part of the solution. So I think to some degree, you know it's a mindset no matter what. But I think for a lot of people in what we will call leadership roles or further in their career, I think having that beginner's mindset still active really helps a lot. It helps them be better leaders. It helps them help their clients, their customers, it helps them empower the people that are working for them even better and helps grow those people into stronger talent.

Vanessa Grant: 10:46

You know, I was actually going to add a little something here. So strangely, something kind of came up with my 11-year-old recently where he didn't tell me an assignment until it was like due the next day. And so I think one of the things that you know when you're so early and you just don't realize that there's like this is just a moment in time, that a year from now you're not going to think about this thing. And I think part of the graduating and part of that mindset is the ability to know that you can get past hard things. And experiencing those hard things and knowing, even if I'm having a hard day today, I'm going to get through this, because I've gotten through it before, and I think that kind of that that will change how you approach future problems. So just throwing that out there, because I'm, I guess, mid -career myself as well.

Josh Matthews: 11:34

Yeah, it's almost. You know, I just had this image flash from the movie Platoon, if you haven't seen it. It's a really wonderful Oliver Stone movie about the Vietnam War and there's a scene and by the way, this scene is in almost every single war movie ever made where the new recruits come in and the old, tired dogs, you know, coming off the battlefield and they're walking by each other and looking at one another and, boy, their countenances couldn't be more different, right, and it's in all of these movies. And then I was thinking, you know like, well, what is that? And it's sort of this acceptance that, like you know, it's a good chance, we don't get out of it, and you can sort of come to accept it.

Josh Matthews: 12:17

And it's almost like when you can accept that, yeah, bad things are going to happen, they're going to happen to you, they might happen in your career, they might, you know, you might get hired by the greatest boss in the world and a week later they tell you that they've given notice. And then you inherit just some nightmare, and by nightmare I mean just inexperienced right, which is what we're all trying to prevent from happening to us. So this is why it's all critical. It's like the best way to be a good manager is to be a good employee. Understand how that works, right? I'm curious. That's all good stuff. I think you said, eric, that you're going to come back to some stuff later, so let me tap you for that right now.

Eric Dreshfield: 12:53

My first experience with public speaking in front of a group that was larger than five or six of my coworkers was Dreamforce 2013. I got into a session that was accepted with a couple of other people and we were all user group leaders talking about how to be an effective user group leader. That was the presentation we were going to give and I remember very clearly standing in front of that room watching the crowd walk in and there were probably 60 or 75 people in that room before the session actually started and I was sweating bullets and my stomach was churning and, like Josh said, you know, the rock stars sometimes have to go vomit before they go on stage and I was feeling pretty close to that. And then we started talking and we started presenting our session. We introduced ourselves and started going through the thing that we all had rehearsed so many times and I found somebody in the audience who I knew.

Eric Dreshfield: 13:49

I ran across a familiar face and that was enough for me to calm all the nerves and to realize everything was going to be okay, that I can do this thing and it'll be fine Now, josh, I think you may have mentioned it and it'll be fine Now, josh, I think you may have mentioned it, that even the seasoned people still get nerves when they're going to speak, and I totally agree with that, and that's one of the things that I usually tell people when I'm doing some mentorship around. Public speaking is no matter how much you've rehearsed it, no matter how much you've practiced it, how many times you've even potentially presented the same topic somewhere else, I always feel like if there's not just a little bit of nerves, something's wrong.

Vanessa Grant: 14:31

Yeah, and I think that goes beyond public speaking too. I mean, yesterday I was in San Francisco and I was at a technical leadership meeting, a full day meeting, no-transcript. I was going to pivot for a second, if that's OK. I would actually love to hear about Melissa's job search journey, since you just got a new role, and what is, what does that look like for you at this point in your career?

Melissa Hill Dees: 15:28

Ironically, I was not looking for a job. Oh, so I know that I was not looking. I was a founding partner in the company that I was in and loved the work that we were doing and, ironically, it was a situation where the Agile Cloud Consulting Leadership Team had a meeting and they were trying to line out the holes where they were missing something. You know what they needed and we're actually putting together bullet points right together. Bullet points, right. Not even a job description, just bullet points of the tasks and the things that they needed in their company that nobody was currently doing. Right, and they got this done. And Sharif looked at the group and said this sounds like Melissa and other people on the team knew me and they were like you know, it does. It sounds like Melissa when she'd be interested. And so they reached out to me and you know we're like are you interested in doing this? What so? Of course I was.

Melissa Hill Dees: 16:37

I was very interested but, it wasn't something that I was searching for.

Josh Matthews: 16:43

Melissa, let me ask you something. Sorry, I did be sorry. Sometimes we get a little bit of a lag here. I definitely don't mean to interrupt you, and congratulations from me too on the new role. I'm kind of curious did something happen when you first realized that there might be a new opportunity here for you, where you then it sort of unlocked this door where you're like, oh gosh, if I'm open to this, what else is out there? And you start kind of plinking around LinkedIn and Indeed kind of looking at other similar opportunities? Did that occur for you?

Melissa Hill Dees: 17:14

Because I really, like I say, had no intention of leaving what I was currently doing. I have some work that I'm doing on my own that I hope eventually becomes what I want to do. So it wasn't, I wasn't. I didn't go look elsewhere either.

Josh Matthews: 17:32

Okay, this thing happens all the time, right, like we'll go ahead and reach out to a passive candidate, just like what happened with you. Like, hey, you know, we've got this new role, we think that you might be interested, let's talk about it. And they get real excited. They're like, oh, this is great. Like I wasn't really looking, but yeah, this is awesome and I'll take a look at it. And then what happens is they're like wait a second, you know I maybe there's a hundred jobs. Like why haven't I been? Like, why have I sat around not looking for the last year? Right, it's almost like they didn't realize that they were unhappy or unfulfilled until someone pointed out that they didn't have to be where they were, if not this time. Has that happened to you at any point in your career?

Melissa Hill Dees: 18:19

Yeah, and so yes, in fact, I think that's an interesting thing talking about graduating right from a hoodie to laser, because I think that's one of the things for me personally, as I matured as a human being, I realized in 2015 that I was not accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish with my life and really had I don't know in the South, I guess we'd say come to Jesus, meeting with myself, right and started exploring what it was I wanted to do and who I wanted to be and the impact that I wanted to have, the legacy I wanted to leave. So I really did all that hard work in 2015. And this is just a culmination, you know, like the next step and that was really what I saw it as right. So just an opportunity to have more impact, help nonprofits have more impact, and this was the chance to do it. So, but I had already done all that hard work, you know, back in 2015. And I think that's part of what that maturity that we've been talking about is.

Melissa Hill Dees: 19:23

You know, when I was 20 and in university and studying computer science and learning to be a programmer, and realized that's not what I wanted to do, you know, I went into sales and had an incredibly successful career in corporate America in sales. But again, iteration Right, and so that wasn't what I wanted to be with my life forever. Again iteration right, and so that wasn't what I wanted to be with my life forever. So it changed and now I feel like I'm at least on the right track and just doing whatever the next right thing is and it may not be leadership, I don't think leadership is always the next step for everybody.

Josh Matthews: 20:00

Well, yeah, there's only so many chiefs, right? You know, it absolutely is not.

Melissa Hill Dees: 20:05

Yeah.

Josh Matthews: 20:06

Yeah, yeah. And what's interesting too I just got to throw this in there because what's interesting is there are actually specific leadership personalities. I talk about MBTI and Myers-Briggs on here a lot. That's just because I find it fascinating and I think others should, so you better like it. But the reality is there are certain leadership types. Most personalities can do some level of management, but actual leadership is sort of for it to not be too challenging, it's kind of reserved for a handful. Oh yeah, you guys just pipe. I see all these raised hands. Don't do that. You're the special guests, so just talk.

Janeen Marquardt: 20:48

Yeah, but I'm practicing, not interrupting.

Josh Matthews: 20:50

Oh well, you, Janine, you get to raise your hand. Everyone else, you just get to pipe up.

Janeen Marquardt: 20:55

I'm just kidding going to say that one of the sort of sure signs that you've graduated to a trailblazer is that you no longer have to job search. The jobs come to you. Like Melissa that people call you, yeah, that's an excellent point.

Josh Matthews: 21:16

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Eric Dreshfield: 21:18

I would totally agree with that. And, janine, I know you know the details of my career progression and how jobs have found me, or one job, one interview, has morphed into a different type of job than the one I interviewed for. But you know, that's been kind of my life story for the last, probably close to 10 years now, in this ecosystem where a simple conversation became a job conversation became a job.

Janeen Marquardt: 21:47

Yeah, and that's exactly it, or it's? I mean even amongst us here in this group, where I see something and I call eric what do you think of this? And I call my friend at this place and I say I have the perfect person for you and I make the connection. It's those kinds of connections that make the difference. It's sort of the difference between when you're just beginning versus when you've been around long enough to know people who sort of help you along the way or just sort of yeah, you know, have you in mind?

Josh Matthews: 22:14

Yeah, network community, all you know, relationship building, proof, right, third party confirmation, all that good stuff, you know. I think the first question I asked was we kind of talked about, like, was there one moment you know where you recognize this graduation? But I'd love to hear what people have to say about, like, what's the quality that that you brought? Makeda talked about even now having a beginner's mindset, but you know we could tell that to someone. It's like have a beginner's mindset. It's like, okay, how right. Like what do I do that sort of thing? So it's 1108, just fixing a little thing here. So you know.

Josh Matthews: 22:55

But specifically, like, what's an attribute that you feel you know anyone here on the panel that you feel like gosh, if I didn't have this one quality, like this one thing and maybe you were born with it, maybe it was something that you developed, but what's that one quality that actually allowed you to go from where you are to this, many years later, being, you know, I would say, like such a very senior, valuable person in the community, not just for the work that you do nine to five or 10 to midnight or whatever it is, but for your work in the community too. What's that quality?

Makeda Warren Keegan: 23:28

I think it really has to do. By the way, I think this can be learned. By the way, I don't think anything. I think there's a nature versus nurture argument for a lot of these things, and I think 99.9% of the things that you need to be successful, and however you define that in your life, can be learned. So I want to.

Josh Matthews: 23:46

I disagree completely, but we can have that on. But we'll have you on and we'll have a debate about it.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 23:52

We should. But I and I will say this I think learning and this was a process you know, learning about myself enough to know that there's a time when, yes, your cumulative knowledge and experience is going to definitely point you to the answer you're looking for, but also knowing when that that that accumulation of knowledge and experience might actually be a hindrance and could prevent you from making the kind of decision that you need to make. And I kind of dovetail that into being able to listen and to be able to weigh sides of an argument or weigh sides of an approach you know and determine, you know what's the best path forward is, but being open to that and not always being adamant that your way you know it's your way or the highway. And I think that's a really important element for me and I think learning that, as a mid-career professional, I certainly did not start off that way.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 25:01

I think definitely helped me sort of in my graduation process. Good yeah, so just a thought.

Josh Matthews: 25:08

I love it. Who else?

Janeen Marquardt: 25:10

I forgot the question. Can you ask again? I'm sorry.

Josh Matthews: 25:12

Yeah, no worries. So you sort of answered it a little bit. You know talking about the beginner's mindset, but I was kind of curious. You know what's the? If there's a single attribute or a top attribute or behavioral attribute that you brought to your career at an early stage that, without it, would have derailed you from basically graduating out of the hoodie right, what was that quality? It could be tenacity. It could be whatever.

Janeen Marquardt: 25:42

Yeah, I mean, I think in some ways, and sometimes I even wonder if I've actually graduated. Sometimes I feel like I put the hoodie back on and then I take it off and I switch it out, and so I go back and forth, sometimes a little bit too, which is interesting because very often I'm finding, especially having come up kind of technically, at least not just in the Salesforce space, but even in the sort of technical space that even in my leadership roles I'm literally talking to somebody now about a leadership role and they're like but we expect you to be hands-on. So I'm like all right, I'll hang up the blazer for a minute here and I'll put my hoodie back on. So it's a very strange kind of position. So I think, a willingness to be flexible, a willingness to stay curious, keep learning and for me especially like you asked about community, I think to keep giving back, that's like it's almost like the heir apparent.

Janeen Marquardt: 26:38

In order for me to retire someday, I've got to have someone to give the keys to of the shop. So I try to make sure that I'm passing knowledge on and by mentoring people, like sometimes I try to remember, like gosh, I want to make sure that everybody knows how to do this so that if they're ever on my project team, I'm not going to go crazy and have to work all crazy hours. Somebody else knows how to do this with me. I can be part of my team and not like that. I don't feel like I've got to do it on myself, so I try to do all those things.

Vanessa Grant: 27:12

Eric, did you have something to say about this?

Eric Dreshfield: 27:25

middle of my Salesforce career, the first time that I had taken a job at a company that considered themselves a startup, where previously my roles were at well-established, like 50, 7,500-year-old organizations that were now using Salesforce. So at this first startup that I was working at, the realization or the difference between startup culture and big company life was drilled into me pretty early on by my manager and she pretty much told me don't wait for somebody's approval to do something. If you have an idea that you think is going to work, run with it. Just get something done. I'll stand behind you. I'll make sure that you get the credit you deserve If it works well. If it doesn't work well, I'll help you. We'll learn from that mistake and we'll move on. And I still won't. I'll still help you get the credit for trying. So she pretty much said if you have a great idea, have something that you feel is a great idea, just do it, make it happen, do something A thousand times?

Josh Matthews: 28:24

Yes, eric, a thousand times. Yes, you know, I've. I bet I've said this 10 times on the show in the last three years, right, but now I can't even remember how it goes, but Peterson, jordan Peterson says it often. It's like, if you want to grow, look where leadership and power has been or responsibility has been abdicated, right, where is something that should be getting done not getting done, and then you just go do it and that's how you grow your career. And you do that enough times, you get really good at it, right, and enough times people hear about it, and then you start getting phone calls like Melissa, right?

Melissa Hill Dees: 29:18

thing that I would say is my fascination with people right, human beings are. I'm so interested to get to know people, to understand what makes you tick, I mean that's. I think that's why I was successful in sales. I think that's why I'm successful in building community, because I'm not interested in networking just to build a network. I'm interested in getting to know humans. And you know, if I've ever had any complaint against Salesforce itself, it was in all my sales career. I never sold anything to an account. I always sold something to a human, to a contact. So I could never understand why contacts were not the big object, the big thing in Salesforce and everything else radiated out from that, rather than accounts.

Josh Matthews: 29:57

Well, you know what, melissa? First of all, everything you just said resonates a lot with me because I started in sales when I was 18 and it's, and clearly I am interested in people. It doesn't mean I like everybody, but I'm definitely interested in people and behavior and and relationships and communities and teams and all that good stuff. But Salesforce is a software company and software companies are generally built by people who like things. There's a lot of different ways to categorize people on planet earth, but a really easy one is are you more interested in things or are you more interested in people? And I know where I stand because I'm over on the HR side of things but people who do a lot of coding, people who are inclined towards engineering it doesn't mean that they don't like people or that they're not interested or curious about people, but it's rare that someone has both equally right, interested in both equally, and consequently their capacity and their expertise is going to be modified or moderated, except for a handful of people who have just these incredible minds, incredible capacity for both areas. And, interestingly enough, we talk about women in tech right. Well, most technologists not all, but most technologists are on the things-oriented side of the spectrum and most women are on the people-oriented side of the spectrum.

Josh Matthews: 31:24

And this isn't to say you can't flip-flop. I'm a man and I'm more interested in people, and so you know I'm not the norm, and it's not by a huge margin, guys. We're talking like I can't remember the stat exactly, and it's not by a huge margin. Guys, we're talking like I can't remember the stat exactly, but it's like maybe you know somewhere in like the four or five or six or seven or 8% range, right, it's not like 90% of men are interested in things and only 10%. Like it's not like that at all. It's narrow, but it's large enough to notice, right, and it's large enough to have an impact on where people choose to work and the kinds of work that they like to do. So, yes, you did sales and you build communities Absolutely Fantastic. Thank God for that. But we also need people who want to build things and design things and make sure buildings don't fall down and all that other stuff that I could never do. Don't ever plant your nest in a building that I designed because it wouldn't go so well.

Ty: 32:18

Hey everyone. I've been in the Salesforce ecosystem for like nine or 10 years and I started as a dev. So, Josh, I'm going off. Your point of things are people and I was really into the things of it, but now I'm starting to get back to the people side as I've gotten more to architecture. So I think that's great advice. You should focus on one. If you try to do things and people, you can get really flustered. But you try to learn two languages at once. If you try to learn French and Arabic at the same time, you're going to have a bad time. So does that make sense?

Josh Matthews: 32:53

Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense. Or just even learning one language for me would be a nightmare, right. But yeah, no, it's a really good point and I think, too, what you said makes a lot of sense, and it's a very true thing that we begin to gravitate over time, very slowly, towards that other thing, right, it's almost like well, I've challenged myself with behavioral things and so now I want to challenge myself with more mechanical things, but you'll always hit a limit. You'll always hit a point of frustration where you can, like it's very difficult to push through that. And I'll give you a stupid example I'm learning piano.

Josh Matthews: 33:31

I've been learning piano for about I don't know five years now, four or five years and it's like a nightmare for me. Like I love it and I play, try to play every day, but it's a nightmare for me. Meanwhile, one of my sons is learning it too. He can play stuff in in in. You know that I can't play, and he's probably got 10% as much time at the keyboard, right, he's just partly because he's young and has a flexible mind for learning. But this interest can sway, just like our extroversion and introversion. It can move, and so can the people versus things move as our competency with one thing grows and we recognize the need for the other in our lives as well.

Vanessa Grant: 34:11

You know, I'm also going to add here I think when you move into management, it's important to know both sides, because a lot of times you're going to be managing people who are more thing oriented, and even if you're more people oriented, you need to be able to speak the same language and understand where their challenges are and understand you know where their frustrations might be, and so learning, even at a high level, the thing stuff you know, like I have, I'm many times Salesforce certified. Do you really want me to be the person who's configuring your Salesforce? Or probably not, but I need to be able to understand all those things so that I can be the empathetic manager that I want to be.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 34:51

I am so glad that you said that, because I agree with you a hundred percent, and that's kind of where I mean, that's kind of where BAs live, right, you know, that's sort of what we a lot of us do, you know it's. It's interesting. I started my career in tech as a web developer and ended up drifting towards the people piece because I felt like I needed to understand end users better and you know, and I wanted to understand the business. And now I'm solidly in that column and have been there for a while and, just like I think Ty just said, I'm feeling the pull to get a little bit more technical again. So, but to be able to be a good manager and to be able to be a good leader with different types of people who are oriented in different ways, you know, I think having some kind of understanding of both worlds is really important. So thank you for bringing that point up.

Vanessa Grant: 35:44

Thank you. I'm actually going to pivot a little bit here. So one of the things that I realized as I started progressing in my career was I was moving less toward roles where it was OK I'm looking on LinkedIn and I'm finding a job that sounds OK and then I'm just going to apply to it and more towards jobs where I knew enough people in my network that to Melissa's point earlier where they would look at the job, that or the spot that they needed, the hole they needed, and they said you know, this is a Vanessa sized hole, this is a spot where we would like Vanessa. And those are the kinds of roles that I gravitate to now, where it's not just that they want, you know, a BA or a manager or whatever it is that I'm doing these days. They wanted Vanessa Grant. How important is that to you when you're looking for roles? And I know some of you have moved into entrepreneurship as well, so maybe that is a factor as well.

Janeen Marquardt: 36:41

Yeah, so I would love to fill a hole that only Janine can fill. I don't know that I'm that much of a unicorn, but I don't know that there are. There probably are roles like that, but I do think that there are a lot of things out there that I would become one of. Thank you for the encouragement. I do think that there are roles out there that I am unique enough that I should be one of those people that come to mind when somebody goes yes, that is the exact kind of person we need for this, much like Melissa's recent job, I think the challenge is are you the person that people know? And that's where kind of building your brand comes in getting well known enough so that people do think of you. There may be a lot of companies out there who need a Janine, but do they know a Janine, or do they know Janine?

Josh Matthews: 37:34

Yeah, and Peter Gans is a good example of this is that as the app whisper? And, by the way, peter, feel free to pipe up anytime. We love having you on the show and we'd like your perspective on on this as well. So you know, eric, what about you? I mean same question, oh well, oh sorry, makita's got her hand up. We'll go with Makita first and then we'll go with Ty. Eric, next time buddy, next time Sure.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 38:11

Okay, go ahead. Makita, that I've been in, I do know that I'm you know, people know my strengths and I have been named, you know, called out by name. So, like, okay, mckee's been the perfect fit for this particular project because you know she's got this skill set, that skill set, and it is part of building your brand. But I just wanted to, you know, agree. First off, janine, you are that kind of a unicorn, so stop it. Second off, you don't have to be necessarily hanging your own shingle to be able to be that person, and that's actually really important to me, because I know, when I get called by name, you know for, you know either, like even internally for an organization I'm working for, that means that my reputation has preceded me in a positive way and it means that it's an acknowledgement of the expertise that I've managed to accumulate over the years. So I just wanted to chime in on that part.

Josh Matthews: 39:05

No, and I'm glad you did, and it's a really, it's a really fair point. You know we talk about unicorns not too often around here because there aren't that many of them. But you know, when you get old enough, when you've lived long enough, when you've had enough years at the computer doing a variety of different things, in some ways we all kind of become unicorns, right, whether it's because someone is gifted at communication and technology, or maybe someone knows these, not just Salesforce, but these three other things that they need to manage as a. You know leadership over business systems or whatever it is. But given enough time and enough, you know randomness, or or maybe even not random, but pursuits and experience, you know, we all become unicorns.

Josh Matthews: 39:50

I'm a big fan of saying that unicorns are made, not found, right, and so finding that unicorn for for you as an individual look, I mean I won't say it's a, you know, it's a fantasy is what it is right. And then once in a while you just get really lucky, because fantasies do come true, right, but it can be quite that thin. What's more likely to happen is that you'll join a company and then the role will begin to evolve around what you're interested in, around what you're good at right. It's much more likely to happen that way than you just walk in and it's like, oh my God, it's the Josh show company. Everybody's just going to do what Josh wants, like it's not going to happen. You know, you got to build it around you. So, ty, you, ty. You've had your hand up patiently for a while and I hope your shoulder doesn't hurt, but go ahead.

Ty: 40:41

You brought up fantasy, so I'm going to start dropping some Dungeons and Dragons analogies to help us answer Vanessa's question. I heard, if I can rephrase it, you talked about looking for a job where they're looking. Looking for a job where they want looking like I, looking for a job where they want tie. Did I hear that right? Yeah, I have a way to answer that, if we change the question a little bit, which is can I find a company that wants tie, who is a devops engineer or who is a developer? I like adding titles to my name because I'm kind of like a fantasy character, and so it is with Salesforce. We all have these different roles and you can become your own. As Josh said, we can become a unicorn, but what makes us a unicorn is, yeah, the unique things, but also we need common things as well too absolutely.

Josh Matthews: 41:38

Thanks for the input. Ty, we've got peter thanks everybody.

Peter Ganza: 41:41

This is quite an interesting show. I just wanted to chime in on this topic and say, like, when we, when you said that I, it hit really home for me because I didn't want to be the, you know, app exchange, app exchange, whisperer right, I, that was a big challenge for me, right, going out basically on a limb and saying that, right, of course, you know, josh, you know this all too well, but you know I'm too humble at times, right, but that was difficult for me to just go out and try this, right. Not that you know, there wasn't a job that people wanted, peter Ganza, I'm not saying that but you know this was a big challenge.

Josh Matthews: 42:20

It was difficult, it was high risk, high reward is what it was Right, and you usually were faced with a handful of those through our life right when we have to make that choice and sometimes it works out. It did for you. Sometimes it doesn't, and then we learn from it and so maybe it works out anyway.

Peter Ganza: 42:35

Did for you sometimes it doesn't and then we learn from it and so maybe it works out anyway. Yeah, but it did work out. I'm just saying you know what? That was actually one of the more difficult career branding-ish decisions you know that I've had to make very good man.

Josh Matthews: 42:48

Well, thanks for piping up, eric. What about you?

Eric Dreshfield: 42:53

yeah, so you. Throughout my career, as we kind of discussed earlier, some jobs have sort of found me and, going in this unicorn conversation, one of the roles that I had about halfway through well, maybe a little earlier than halfway through my Salesforce career as it stands now, I was at an ISV partner that I decided I wanted to work for, simply after seeing a demo of their product, and about a year and a half later a job finally got created at that company. After many interviews with a lot of people, they created a role for me in their marketing department, basically to do for them what I told them I wanted to do, which in today's terminology we'd call a product evangelist. That wasn't the title I had back then because that term really wasn't used by anybody other than probably Salesforce back then. But that was effectively my role and this company was a huge sponsor of Dreamforce. The couple of years that I worked there and they were. They had presences around the whole campus, all over the place, and the VP of marketing told everybody Dreamforce is not a marketing event, it's an all company activation. So we had a spreadsheet where she tracked everybody in the company and their roles and what they were doing at Dreamforce and where they needed to be and all that kind of stuff.

Eric Dreshfield: 44:15

And my row on this spreadsheet simply said ask Dan. And nothing more. Dan was my boss at the time and about two weeks before Dreamforce, while we're trying to finalize all this stuff, I keep seeing this ask Dan. I finally am in a meeting with him and I say hey, dan, what's that mean? What am I supposed to do for this company at Dreamforce? And he said well, eric. He says you know, you do a lot as an MVP, you do a lot as a user group leader and you do a lot just because of who you are. We want you to do all of that stuff still, but if you happen to have a free moment in time when one of our customers or one of your colleagues is presenting in a session, get in the session and tweet about it. Do the thing that you do best. And I kind of paused for a second and I said so, dan, you really just want me to be me. And he said well, that's exactly why we hired you.

Josh Matthews: 45:08

I love it, man. That's so fantastic. What a great story.

Eric Dreshfield: 45:12

Oh yeah, you know sometimes what you are or who you are or the traits you have is enough to get you there, and that was a blast. I love that role, and several of the roles I've had since have been very similar in nature. I remember one I was in a session at Dreamforce presenting with Corey Snow and a couple of other people, and Corey had a question that he posed to everybody as part of this session and he said what's your superpower? What's your Salesforce superpower? And anybody that's ever heard me talk knows I have zero certs. I'm not very technical, I'm not very hands-on with Salesforce, but I'm all over the place in the platform talking about it all the time. And what I said to Corey was well, I've been building communities since before communities were a thing.

Eric Dreshfield: 45:57

2011 was the very first year I held Midwest Dreamin', so that probably tells you enough right there. There weren't many community conferences back that far. I built that conference simply because I couldn't go to Dreamforce one year and decided I wanted to bring Dreamforce to me. And now, 10 years later, 10 events of Midwest Dreamin' later, it's more than 10 years. That event draws a thousand people a year versus a hundred that very first year. There's a lot you can do to make a name for yourself, to build your own brand and kind of take your career in whatever direction you want it to go.

Vanessa Grant: 46:30

Yeah, and I personally consider you, eric, part of the Salesforce welcoming committee. Like welcome to the ecosystem. Have you met Eric? Part of the Salesforce welcoming committee? Like welcome to the ecosystem. Have you met Eric Dreshfield?

Eric Dreshfield: 46:39

Yep, and I think there are a lot of people who connect with me early in their Salesforce journey and you know what I always tell them is you want to talk about the ecosystem or the community or potential jobs and where you are today and where you want to go? Just hit me up. I'm happy to have those conversations.

Josh Matthews: 46:58

You know Eric. I've never asked someone, hey, do you know Eric? And had them say no. So I think it says that says something right there. Yep, how about a quick round robin? I'd love to fire off a couple of quick questions that can be answered very quickly and everybody can just unmute and let's go. Does that sound fun? Okay, awesome.

Josh Matthews: 47:22

But first, this show is brought to you by the salesforcerecruitercom, which happens to also be my company. So if you are in the data cloud space at all, or in development or engineering management right now, we might have some opportunities for you. So definitely hit me up. Or, even better yet, you can hit up Steven Greger, who is on the show right now. I think Is he there. Yeah, he's still here, so you can tap on and DM him or you can reach out to him. It's Steven with a V G-R-E-G-E-R, I think. Did I get it right, steven? I did no, o-r. I got it right this time, so hit him up on LinkedIn. He's a wonderful guy and he'll look after you. Okay, do you got a quick question that you can ask him? Sort of the one thing, this sort of thing, yeah.

Vanessa Grant: 48:04

Oh, I don't know if it's a one thing. But so to Eric's point earlier I was wondering how do you guys actually start keeping a list of companies that you're interested in? Because I think when you're at a certain point in your career you have a little bit more. I guess you can decide almost, I think to a certain extent like which companies you want to target because you are bringing all that experience. Do you guys keep a running list?

Josh Matthews: 48:28

Or have you in the past?

Eric Dreshfield: 48:29

Yeah, 100%, absolutely.

Josh Matthews: 48:33

I don't at all okay, that's one for one. What else?

Peter Ganza: 48:39

yeah, I used to but I don't anymore okay, two to one I kind of do.

Janeen Marquardt: 48:44

I did used to have a list and then I sort of do now. But the just too many companies to even track.

Josh Matthews: 48:52

That's okay, it's a it's just a quick, it's a quick one. So, okay, okay, awesome. What about? Yeah, go ahead. What's that? Oh, did Makita go yet? No, okay.

Vanessa Grant: 49:03

Makita Nope, okay, so it was mostly no yeah.

Josh Matthews: 49:09

Mostly no, nothing wrong with that. Look, I knew this guy. I still know him, wonderful young man, and I think I met him when he was about 25, 26 years old and he hit me up and he said Josh, these are the eight companies that I'm interested in joining and this is my number one, right? And so I went out and tried to, you know, get agreements with some of these companies and be able to present him an offer. At the end of the day, I did get him an offer and it was a very good offer. But the number one company that he that was at the top of his list, which at the time was Conga this is before the acquisition, several years ago, before the acquisition invited him. Now, this guy made it a goal. He made it a goal from the time he was about 22, 23 years old. That's the company that he was interested in, that's where he wanted to go and he built his experience and the things that he did so that he could be a super viable, obvious choice option for that company. And guess what I mean? He met his goal.

Josh Matthews: 50:03

We can get lucky in life, we can kind of trip through life and good things can happen to us, bad things can happen to us. We can also plan, and when we plan, lo and behold doesn't always work out, but we are more likely to hit those goals that we wrote down, that we actually put effort into. So if you are listening to this and you aren't researching companies, if you don't have a list, it says one thing it says for sure. It says you're not particularly interested in other companies and how they're run. Now, not necessarily Okay.

Josh Matthews: 50:36

There might be some outliers on this, but in general it's not like if you've got free time you're gonna start Googling companies and reading their websites.

Josh Matthews: 50:43

I mean, unless you're in sales, not a lot of people do that. But if you did start to do that, if you start to track these companies, I think that you're gonna start to hone in on some general qualities that make sense to you and, by the way, you can actually go into something like Perplexity possibly ChatGPT I would recommend Perplexity and list all of these companies that you might be interested in and then ask them what are the similarities between these companies? So you can begin to create your own framework around the types of companies that clearly make the most sense for you. Now, it does not mean that you'll have made a good choice. It doesn't mean that because until you've worked there, until you know people who've worked there and it's been sort of socialized and you've walked the halls and this kind of thing doesn't necessarily mean you're right, but it will show you minimally what you're attracted to and then you can apply that for further search.

Melissa Hill Dees: 51:37

I was going to say that I do have a list of companies I would not work for.

Josh Matthews: 51:44

Yeah, there you go.

Melissa Hill Dees: 51:47

Sure Me too. Yes, and that has come from. Especially in the Salesforce ecosystem. People forget how small it really is Right and a company that does not treat its employees well. That word gets around very quickly. And so it's much easier for me and I won't do it on air for obvious reasons, but there are companies that, if you brought me the best offer in the world, I would say thank you. No.

Vanessa Grant: 52:17

Yeah, and maybe specific people I wouldn't work for as well.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 52:23

Yeah, I think that's important to say as well. But I love what Josh said about having a plan and having a plan for me. I don't necessarily take a look at companies what's the companies I want to work for? Usually I kind of approach it what's the next progression in my career and what kinds of things do I want to do and then I look at where I want to do them. So that's sort of the progression for me. But I agree 100%, like if you know having, not having a plan is have it by default, is a plan, and that plan is not to have a plan like you're making a choice, no, even if you think you're not making a choice. So I love that point.

Janeen Marquardt: 53:02

But I will say that, having come up through a very volatile time in the San Francisco startup community, I will say, like you can, pre-salesforce some of the most interesting jobs I had were from companies I've never heard of, and the most learning I got from places I'd never heard of before. I mean taking chances on things like Financial Force, psa. I hadn't heard of that at the time and it got me into the Salesforce world. So I just don't always know and you don't know what you don't know. Sometimes you just have to take a chance even though you've never heard of the company.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 53:35

That's so true, I mean a couple of years ago. I mean I've made most of my career in higher ed, higher ed tech, and a couple of years ago I jumped verticals to financial services. And you know, that's a radical shift for someone who's been in one corner as opposed to another. But that was completely unplanned. But you know, sometimes taking that leap is definitely something that you should be prepared to do as well.

Melissa Hill Dees: 54:03

Well, and to having a plan, and I agree about having a plan. Of course, my plan was to work one more year with Hands On Connect and then start my own business in a year. I have a side hustle that I'm doing that Agile Cloud's well aware of, and had this conversation with Sharif before I ever accepted the position there. But that was my plan right. And then this happened. That was a much better plan than what I had planned initially. So you know, being able to recognize I mean, for some people I think it's stuck in their plan and don't recognize when it's a better plan, better plan opportunity, yeah, yeah.

Janeen Marquardt: 54:42

Flexibility, because you never know what opportunities might present themselves.

Josh Matthews: 54:46

Yeah, all really good points, really terrific points. Okay, I think Vanessa's got another question and then I've got one more, and then we're probably going to start to wrap it up or at least open the floor for questions.

Vanessa Grant: 54:57

Yeah, I was just going to ask you know and I think Melissa actually already may have just answered it but considering where you are now, what are your next steps? How do you approach the next part of your career? If you could share a little bit about what your mindset is on that.

Melissa Hill Dees: 55:15

I don't see retirement anytime soon in my future. I don't know what I'd do. My husband's already retired and so I finally have the flexibility and the leeway to do what I want to do. And right now, what I'm doing is exactly what I want to do, and as long as it is, then that's what I'll continue to do. Is then that's what I'll continue to do. If it comes to a point where being an entrepreneur which is something I never intended to do until recently becomes a more viable situation, then that would probably be my next step. But as long as I can do what I'm doing, increase the impact of nonprofits, then I'm happy doing exactly what I'm doing until I can't do it anymore.

Josh Matthews: 55:59

Yeah, I love that, you know I mean, you're really in a fortunate position. Not everybody gets to say that, but if we work hard enough and you know we pay attention and we help enough people along the way, then we all get to do that, which is wonderful. Well, look, let's. I want to do some more fast stuff because we want to get some good information out of everybody and get everybody's kind of perspective. I would love to hear and let's start with Eric this time, eric, and then we'll just go real quick one-to-one If you could go back and talk to your 25-year-old self to help collapse the time right Sort of help collapse your journey a little bit, or to have possibly accelerated it a little bit faster. What's the one thing that you would share with your 25 year old self?

Eric Dreshfield: 56:42

Oh wow, I would probably say don't be afraid to try something new. Okay, I think back when I was that little, that young, I got into a job and I wanted to just stay there. I got into my comfort spot and felt good and just wanted to stay there. And the magic happens outside that comfort zone.

Josh Matthews: 57:05

Yeah, I mean it absolutely can. We all strive for some level of certainty and some level of uncertainty, and we're all balanced a little bit differently. But yeah, if you're clinging to certainty, then stretching to the uncertain, like the risks that Peter was talking about, it's really great advice. Makita, what would you say to your 25-year-old self?

Makeda Warren Keegan: 57:25

I would say trust your gut more.

Vanessa Grant: 57:28

Okay.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 57:30

For me, honestly, I started in tech with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. I wasn't going to go into tech.

Josh Matthews: 57:35

You mean, you didn't want a job?

Makeda Warren Keegan: 57:38

I did not. No, I actually was planning to go to law school. That was the impetus of the philosophy degree. But yes, but I always had a fascination with technology. But you know, a lot of my teachers and a lot of other folks were just like, oh no, you're just so strong with the liberal arts, you're just strong with it, you really should lean in here. So I did and it's great, and I still very strongly humanities based. I've got a PhD in public policy. I still get to use that sometimes, usually about looking at tech policy and ethics and all that good stuff dovetails well with what I do. But just shutting those other voices out, go with my curiosity, go with my gut. Yeah.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 58:23

I love it, don't be afraid. Yeah, that's what I would tell myself. And also, you know, find yourself some mentors a little earlier in the game and stuff that you're interested in kiddo yeah.

Josh Matthews: 58:32

Yeah, you know like. So what you said, part of what you said and part of what Eric said are almost the same thing, which is don't be afraid, right. It's like take those risks. I love it, janine. What about you?

Janeen Marquardt: 58:51

Yeah, I was going to offer almost the counterpoint to Eric and a little bit to Nikita, which is settle the F down, because for me I'm like bouncing off the walls. I'm like bouncing off the walls and that's kind of who I am. It was like, oh, this isn't working, I gotta go. Oh, this isn't where I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go. And I think, kind of, looking back, it's kind of haunted me in my career and really held me back in a lot of ways and it's something I feel like I'm constantly explaining. This risk taker in me, can you guess my Myers-Briggs? Take a guess. Take a guess you can do it.

Josh Matthews: 59:24

No, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it right now. You're right though. Okay, but you're right yeah.

Janeen Marquardt: 59:30

But if I could have just found the thing that I thought was like this is okay, I can stay here for a minute, settle down, give yourself a chance, make some achievements here and grow yourself here and, to Makita's point, find a good mentor. And that's part of why I'm so passionate about mentorship now. It's something I never really had, because anytime I did start to show any promise anywhere, I was held back.

Josh Matthews: 59:58

Are you a TJ by chance?

Janeen Marquardt: 1:00:01

I am.

Josh Matthews: 1:00:02

Yeah, yeah, and that's really annoying, and so am I, like that's a really normal thing. We still have to get to Melissa. If you could ask your 25 year old, or tell your 25 year old self, give her some wonderful advice that could hopefully help progress your career maybe faster than it actually did, even though it's been a great career what would you share?

Melissa Hill Dees: 1:00:21

Don't get married. You don't have to get married.

Josh Matthews: 1:00:25

Okay, do you have children?

Melissa Hill Dees: 1:00:27

Well, I do now, but this is my third husband the one that I had the child with.

Josh Matthews: 1:00:31

Okay.

Melissa Hill Dees: 1:00:31

And I mean but, and I did. I married at 19. I was an idiot, and I say all that but without any regret whatsoever, because if I had not made all the mistakes that I made over the course of my life, I would not be the person I am today, and I like me.

Josh Matthews: 1:00:49

We like you too. Hey, peter, what about you?

Peter Ganza: 1:00:52

man similar to what I think was Melissa just said in that I career wise. I wouldn't tell my 25 year old self anything because all of the shit and the nonsense and the bad managers, silly companies, the brain tumor, I mean you name it Right that that got me to where I am now, that there's not one single thing I could pull out or slide something in. I wouldn't want to change anything like that. I mean, outside of buying some Apple stock, let's say early on or whatever, not having to work Salesforce stock yeah, I had some, I worked there. Trust me, let's not go down that rabbit hole.

Vanessa Grant: 1:01:38

Oh sorry.

Peter Ganza: 1:01:38

Go on, Peter. No, that's literally all I was going to say. I wouldn't, career-wise, I would not tell myself anything because I wouldn't want to, you know, detract from all of the nonsense, because that all those failures and all those follies got me to focus more and be more passionate and just try harder and I don't see any other way.

Vanessa Grant: 1:02:01

But that's just me, you know. I'll throw in my two cents here because I probably would have given myself quite a lot of advice at 25. I echo what a couple of panelists said early on is you know, don't necessarily settle in one spot. I was very concerned initially that I wouldn't be good enough somewhere else, that I already knew my job so well that if I moved I wouldn't be any good. And so I stayed at my first job for 17 years, which is like unheard of these days. I definitely would have given myself some, you know, pushed myself to maybe try some new roles and try some different, some different organizations, so I could build up my own confidence. And then the other thing I would have told myself was network sooner, get into that, so especially for Salesforce, get into the Salesforce community sooner. I feel like I wasted a decade not getting involved in the community earlier.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:02:50

Oh yeah, me too. I wish I knew about it.

Josh Matthews: 1:02:52

Yeah, right, for real. Well, since everyone else has gone, I'll share mine too. Look, I'm with Peter. You know, apple stock. That would have been. That would have been great. You know, invest more when you're young.

Josh Matthews: 1:03:05

But I think if I could really go back and talk to my 25 year old self, I would tell him and this is a vulnerable moment I would tell him to go to therapy. Honestly, I would say go to therapy and stick with it, even if you're feeling better. I'd say, just stick with it. I feel like things in my career or how I operated as a manager in my 30s I feel like everyone around me probably would have benefited so that I didn't have to take such a long road to adapt and learn some important life lessons and get comfortable with certain things. So that's what I would tell my 25-year-old self comfortable with certain things, so that's what I would tell my 25-year-old self. So, vanessa, any more questions for our esteemed panel? Or should we open it up to questions, or do we have some questions that have popped up and then we'll be wrapping this up in just a few minutes.

Vanessa Grant: 1:03:53

No questions have come in other than a comment. If you want me to, yeah, so we had Sally say that she was joining an opportunity where they would be looking to have her. Where they would be looking to have her is the best, because it gives her the sense of stability and confidence that allows her to feel capable to speak louder and propose things more and more, as she doesn't need to keep proving herself, and it saves her the couple of months that she would spend on random jobs.

Josh Matthews: 1:04:17

Yeah, I like that, you know, and that whole idea of like having to prove yourself. You know there's this, there is this thing that happens. I was just talking about this with my son, charlie, the other day about you know, there's that. There's this moment in your world, as you age, where you stop trying to impress the world and you're trying to and now you're looking for the world to impress you. For me it came, or came sort of in my early 40s, I would say. I think it was right around then, maybe my yeah, probably my early 40s, and it's just a thing. It's like this idea that we have to prove ourselves, prove ourselves, but we have to ask ourselves who are we actually trying to prove it? To? Like, what's the thing that we're going to get from it? Are we going to get some sort of you know accolades, you know third party recognition, you know compliments, and it's basically status, right, is what you get. You work hard, you know people notice and then your status goes up and it's a real thing, right. But when you get really comfortable with yourself and you stop trying to prove and instead of trying to prove, you just are trying to do a good job for the sake of doing a good job versus trying to prove something.

Josh Matthews: 1:05:29

You know, I saw this little thing on YouTube shorts the other day. It was a coach, like a personal coach, life coach was talking telling a story about a client that he has. And this young, this young I think she was a young woman, this young woman. He asked her like, hey, you know what's the big thing that you want in five years? And basically she said, like I want to have a hundred million dollar company. And he said, okay, well, why? And she said, well, I want it so that I can go back and I can prove to all the people who said you'd never do it or you'd never amount to anything. Look what I did. And he's like well, look, right now you've got an $8 million company and that puts you in the 0.02%, right, 0.02% of people in business and people's incomes. So guess what? Girl like you already made it right, and so many of us right now, I think the same thing could happen and I'm not talking money here, but we're trying to prove something, we're trying to stress to the world. And look what I've done. Or look, am I working hard enough and get that, what we call validation and we talked about.

Josh Matthews: 1:06:30

We had the validation episode, by the way, listen to the validation episode that Vanessa ran. She did a great job. So when you stop looking for that outside validation, you can start working on the inner validation. You know the inner validation. You're the judge, you're the jury, you know. But you got to be careful because you got to be kind to yourself. Not everybody's really good at that, right, not everybody's really good at that.

Josh Matthews: 1:06:52

Anyway, this has been an absolutely wonderful show. I'd love to hear last parting words of advice from each of you before we sign off until two weeks from now when we'll be back on. I do want to before we jump into that last little closure is share that there is a new episode that got released yesterday of the podcast. So if you're listening to this live, it's now available on your favorite platform, whether it's Spotify, apple FM radio or whatever it's called iHeartRadio. It's on all of them and we had special guests Fred Cadena and Ana Pappas and it was really a wonderful episode.

Josh Matthews: 1:07:27

Also, very soon you're going to see a video come out on JoshForce on YouTube and that's going to be an interview with a fellow who lives over in Spain part-time and we talked about what it's like to be a digital nomad. So if that's of interest for you and you get to work remotely, or even if you're not working remotely, he gives some wonderful advice about how you can actually create that in your life and sort of build a life that allows you the freedom to travel around the US or travel all over the world and continue to get paid. So with that, let's hear some closing remarks. Melissa, any final words of advice for how to outgrow the hoodie?

Melissa Hill Dees: 1:08:04

Be true to yourself. Find what makes you happy, what brings you joy, and work toward that, because you're never going to make everybody else happy. You're never going to make anyone else happy. You have to be responsible for your own happiness.

Josh Matthews: 1:08:17

Yeah, and with that comes an abundance of energy for the pursuit, doesn't it?

Melissa Hill Dees: 1:08:23

It does.

Josh Matthews: 1:08:23

You know, it's not hard work anymore. You're happy to be doing it. Yeah, that's great.

Melissa Hill Dees: 1:08:28

If you don't love what you're doing, do something else.

Josh Matthews: 1:08:30

Yeah, yeah, makita.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 1:08:32

I think Melissa stole my thunder. You know, I think the one piece of advice is to be your own person. Yeah, Be. He's part of advice. He said be your own person.

Josh Matthews: 1:08:39

Yeah, be your own person. Yeah, you know, yeah, you're just amplifying it, that's all. No one stole anything. You're just amplifying it. I love it.

Makeda Warren Keegan: 1:08:48

There you go. Thanks for the product placement. It's on brand, but also a shout out to people like Eric Dressfield and everybody in this room really network, get into the Salesforce community. These people want to see you succeed, absolutely To help you.

Josh Matthews: 1:09:04

Absolutely Do it, do it. I'm going to shut up now. I love it.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:09:11

Janine, yeah, I would say you can't necessarily expect the journey to be a straight line. It will have its ebbs and its flows, its ups and its downs. But if you're doing what you love and being true to yourself, it will eventually lead to where you want it to be. And if you're, as Josh says, making a plan and your eyes on the prize, you'll get there. But it might not be the straight road that you're planning for it to be.

Josh Matthews: 1:09:38

Yeah, you're going to bob and weave a little bit, no doubt about that. Yeah, I think that the career paths are more like a dirt road in the woods, a lot more than it is a highway, right you know, like you can't see what's around the corner, and it bumps a lot.

Janeen Marquardt: 1:09:53

Yeah, and for me, apparently, it's mostly the path not taken, but it sometimes leads to unexpected and interesting places, so it's okay, it works.

Josh Matthews: 1:10:03

I love it. And Eric, how about you?

Eric Dreshfield: 1:10:07

I'm not sure there's a whole lot I can add to what everybody else has said to this point. Do what makes you happy. Try something new. If you don't, if you've lost your happiness, get out there and meet people and just have good conversations with people and have fun.

Josh Matthews: 1:10:40

And it doesn't make them happy and because they don't stick to it long enough, they don't get the benefit of realizing oh, this is really like now I'm getting good at it. Now it's a lot of fun. I mean, whether you're picking up an instrument, like you know, learning to drums, it's like you want to cry. You know four limbs aren't doing the. You know, working together it's a nightmare, it hurts inside your body. And I was teaching Oliver, my youngest, drums and he, session after session, he would have tears. It was hard. It's so frustrating.

Josh Matthews: 1:11:04

But you, you've got to give things enough time. I'll give you another dumb example. Not a dumb example. I'll give you another example. I gave myself this rule like I'm not going to any book I pick up, I'm going to. I'm going to not put it down, I'm not going to not read the book until I've completed at least 20% of the book, right, I give every book at least 20%. But that I don't waste my time if I'm not into it after 20%. And that might be 200 pages or 300 pages for some books, right? So if I'm not into it by then, forget it, I throw it across the room, I get on with my life and I protect my time, right? Yeah, and I have. I've. Literally I threw some dumb Grisham book across the room. I was like this is stupid. So understand that.

Josh Matthews: 1:11:44

This advice that we're getting, do what you love. It's so important to remember. You might not yet know, especially the young folks out there. You might not yet know what you love and you might not know that you love something until you've done something long enough to develop some level of capability. Right? Because whatever you're doing, whatever you start something, just assume it's going to be hard.

Josh Matthews: 1:12:05

Everyone's first month on a job isn't? You know it's not a cakewalk. It's hard, it's difficult. You know you're overwhelmed. A lot of things to learn, a lot of things to know. It's going to sap your energy. And same with any activity, any hobby and even relationships and friendships. You know it's a little bit more work at the beginning, isn't it? And sometimes in the middle it gets even harder. But it's just how it goes. So do what you love. But if you're young and you're trying to still find what you love, expect it to hurt a little bit along the way.

Josh Matthews: 1:12:32

Okay, all right. Guys, this has been the Salesforce Career Show with Josh and-. And thank you to our esteemed panel. You guys are welcome back anytime. It's so great to have you here and I can't wait to see you guys tomorrow at the show at the New York City World Tour. Thank you, new York, thank you, audience. And, by the way, please like subscribe, do all that normal stuff that gives the show some credibility and lets us reach a larger audience so we can help more people. Okay, and lets us reach a larger audience so we can help more people. Okay, all right, bye for now. Everybody, take care.