The Salesforce Career Show
The podcast dedicated to helping you HIRE, GET HIRED and SOAR HIGHER in the SALESFORCE ecosystem.
Enjoy these live recordings of The Salesforce Career Show from X Spaces and YouTube's JoshForce. A guest + AMA format hosted by Josh Matthews, founder of Salesforce Staffing, LLC, Joshforce and The Expand Exchange and Vanessa Grant, Dreamforce speaker, 9X certified BA, consultant and social media darling. Recordings are 3x per month.
The Salesforce Career Show
Author Spotlight: The Making of 'ChatGPT for Salesforce Development'
Get ready for an enlightening journey across the Salesforce universe with our latest episode, as I sit down with Salesforce MVP Joseph and AI wizard Andy. They're not just seasoned pros; they're pioneering authors who've penned the groundbreaking "ChatGPT for Salesforce Development." Explore their story of transforming the Salesforce development landscape, merging technical knowledge with business savvy, and how their new book is revolutionizing the way we think about CRM solutions and AI.
Ever wondered how a technical guide comes to life, especially one authored with the help of an AI like ChatGPT? Joseph and Andy reveal the highs and lows of writing under a tight deadline and how they, with their publisher PACT, managed to produce a cohesive masterpiece that speaks with one voice despite the division of chapters by expertise. This episode peels back the curtain on AI-assisted authorship and discusses the potential of ChatGPT to shape the future of content creation and technical documentation.
But it's not all about the book — we delve into the transformative power of the Salesforce ecosystem for career development. Joseph walks us through his incredible journey from business analyst to Salesforce star, underscoring the importance of mentorship and continuous learning. Plus, Andy and I weigh in on the integration of AI into our daily workflows and what that means for technology careers going forward. Don't miss out on this treasure trove of insights and our sneak peek at future episodes featuring experts like Adam Mico. Tune in, get inspired, and be part of the conversation that's reshaping the world of Salesforce and AI.
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:All right, welcome back everybody. It is another episode of the Salesforce career show. I'm your host, josh Matthews, and my co-host, vanessa, is not here today. She might be able to make it a little bit later on, but just in case, we've got some amazing backup singers. We've got Fred Kedena and Peter Gansa Happy birthday to Peter, by the way. Not sure how old you are, but you don't look a day over 29. So you're doing something right with your diet. And Mr Fred Kedena, who is famous for okay, now we get the sound effects. I like it. And Fred, who runs Banking on Disruption podcast that comes out every two weeks. And today's a special day. Sometimes we have no guests, sometimes we have one guest, and today we have two guests and they're both authors Pretty amazing.
Josh Matthews:They're both co-authors of a brand new book that came out. It's called ChatGPT for Salesforce Development. It's a concise guide for integrating ChatGPT into Salesforce workflows. It's targeted at developers, analysts, testers. It covers user story development, salesforce flow design, apex coding and debugging Essential for enhancing efficiency, aligning technical projects and business goals in Salesforce environments. And we're excited to hear directly from Joseph and directly from Andy. My understanding, guys, is there were actually four authors on this and we're going to dive into this book and why you created it and what some of the key takeaways are, and a little bit about your careers too.
Josh Matthews:But first let's go ahead and introduce Joseph. Joseph is a Salesforce MVP Kind of a big deal around here, guys and guess what? He's got 40 certifications. Now I think I know maybe one other person who's got that many certifications. So good on you, mate, that's pretty darn awesome. He's also an inventor. He's got several patents. He's a skilled solution architect. He's experienced in manufacturing, health and media industries. He's really strong in agile methodologies, salesforce customization and he really appreciates focusing on effective solutions following the time to value principles. And then we've got Andy Forbes. Andy wrote his very first program in 1977. I'll bet most of our listeners weren't even born then. I at the time was five years old and he is currently focused on investigating the impact of AI, especially generative AI, on Salesforce project delivery. He successfully led numerous Salesforce projects for Fortune 500 clients and he loves talking about AI and just being involved in it. So welcome you two. Say hi, thank you.
Joseph Kubon:Thank you, Josh. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today.
Josh Matthews:Well, you're very welcome and we're grateful to have you on the show. So not much in the way of like big updates here. I want to just dive right into this book. So, chat, gpt for Salesforce development. It's my understanding that there were four authors and it would have been great to get all four, but I don't know who would have been able to get a word in edge wise, who wants to just kind of give us some details about what was the inspiration for writing a book? And I'm really curious, like I've known a lot of authors in my time and you know, most authors I know write books because they've got a book in them, right? Not because they want to go make a fortune, right? So what was your motivation for collaborating on chat GPT for accelerating Salesforce development?
Joseph Kubon:Yeah, thanks, josh. I'll tell a little bit about the origin story. So at Dreamforce 2023 last year, I spoke with Andy Bergman, svp of Trailhead, in a panel about how our roles in the Salesforce ecosystem are going to be at a precipice of evolving with the advent of chat, gpt and open AI and other tools that will impact the ecosystem. And after that presentation I was talking with Andy like really we should think about how we can get the material out there and get ready. And as we were brainstorming, it was Andy who said let's do a book. You know, but that's where the origin was born. We gathered up a couple other people involved, and can I?
Josh Matthews:I got to ask you, Joseph, was this, was this DF 23 or DF?
Joseph Kubon:23? 23, last September.
Josh Matthews:Oh my gosh, you guys produced this book from idea conception to publication in just three months.
Joseph Kubon:Yes, and that's actually, it's actually I don't know. I want to sound humble at the same time that I say it was probably nothing short of miraculous. I think we scared, packed a little bit at how fast we wanted to go. We knew that time to market was going to be essential in the delivery of this book. When we first met with, by the time we had the first meeting with packed, it was mid-October, so it took a few weeks to get the first what's packed.
Josh Matthews:Just describe what packed is.
Joseph Kubon:Act is, our publisher Got it, and so they have the mechanisms you know to get that book onto Amazon and get your ISBN number, all that good stuff, yeah, okay.
Joseph Kubon:We don't know how to do right, sure, and so we got connected with packed. Andy did that. We had our first meeting somewhere mid-October and they were like, well, the book should be ready in April. And we were like that's absolutely not, not realistic. We need to have the book ready by Christmas. We wanted people to be able to purchase it for Christmas, so we were wanting early December and like we had to wait till December 29. So it was a little later, sure, and we wanted even.
Josh Matthews:Well, that's an amazing feat. I got to ask you how much of a role I mean this is kind of a weird meta question Okay, so how much of a role did chat GPT play in actually producing the content for the book?
Joseph Kubon:Another great question I'll defer to Andy. On that, we clearly we've got a use case. The basis of the book is a use case and we strategized by dividing the chapters, basically three or so chapters per author. So part of it was we divided and conquered. But did we all have to rely on fine tuning? Yes, andy did the considerable amount of work on the setup which is essentially chapter one of the book. Andy, you want to talk about how we aligned the machines to have the same tone and in perception.
Andy Forbes:Well, I still think that the voice used from chapter to chapter varies a little bit based on who wrote it. I would hope so, right, well, exactly.
Andy Forbes:I mean I think we said that in the introduction to the book that it was going to vary a little bit based on who wrote the chapter. I can read the stuff that Paco wrote one of the author in Spain wrote and it's very distinctive, for example. But I will hats off to the people at PAC the publisher because they did a lot of upfront work in helping us understand the entire process and how we were going to get from where we were starting to out the other end, so that we didn't have to do a lot of rework. I'll tell anybody that wants to write a technical book, go talk to the guys at PAC, because the support from them was nothing short of amazing.
Josh Matthews:Well, that's great. Yeah, it's a real learning curve. I've published a book before and it wasn't mine, I didn't write it, but I was involved in it. There's a curve there. If you get the help that you need, as long as you're good at negotiating, so they don't take it all just because they know a few things, then it's a good situation. I'm curious did everybody pick up chapters based on what their primary wheelhouse was?
Andy Forbes:Yep.
Josh Matthews:Okay, yeah, okay. Did anybody ever feel like he got chapters four, five and nine and I wanted nine? Was there any of that in the collaboration?
Joseph Kubon:It's funny. I'm going to tell you this. This is a casual conversation so we can get a few one-liners in there. I've got Andy still telling me to go read the Apex chapters because I believe in Clicks, Not Code. I'm an admin at heart. I was not jealous that I did not have to write anything about Apex. I was happy. But that's my two cents.
Josh Matthews:Okay, fred and I have talked at length on his show and on this show, and we've had David Gillar on here who's been terrific in producing materials for Salesforce admins and helping them break into utilizing chat GPTS early as mid-Spring last year. I'm curious, when you think about your target audience and I did list a handful of professional titles that would probably get the most out of this is it the kind of book that if everyone gets this, you should really read it all? Or is it you only have to read these, whatever half the chapters if you're in this role, or half the chapters for that role?
Andy Forbes:And that was exactly the intent. I mean, there are going to be people that will read it cover to cover, but the reality is that we wrote it so that if you have to do a flow and you want to use chat GPT, if you have to build an integration, if you have to write some documentation or a test case, you can just go to that chapter and get what you need. It wasn't supposed to be 350 pages long when we started but it turned out to be that way and, frankly, you know, I mean you should buy it and you should read it and memorize it, but you're not going to do that. Just go to the chapter you need when you need it.
Josh Matthews:Yeah. So it's a reference guide as well and kind of going back a little bit again, sort of referencing Fred here, because we've talked a little bit about this. I mean, how did you set up your machines or how did you set up not just the, I mean the setting up, the voice and the tone of the writing that you're leaning into AI for? I mean, how much time did that take you Teaching it all out, teaching it, getting it dialed in?
Andy Forbes:Surprisingly little, because we all used the same custom instructions for the chat GPT instance that we used to write. This chapter talks about setting up custom instructions and creating a creative brief. We wrote it and we all loaded up our chat GPT instances that we were each using with the same custom instructions and creative brief. It resulted in very similar language for the parts of it that we had chat GPT write for us.
Josh Matthews:Okay, is there a chance that you're going to get picked up for a script for Hollywood with this book? You think it's going to go big screen.
Andy Forbes:I have my doubts all the way, Joseph. Joseph has said that he wants Ryan Reynolds to play him.
Josh Matthews:There you go. I like that. Who would play you Andy?
Andy Forbes:I haven't even given any thought, I'm afraid. I'm sure Joseph Joseph who should play Andy.
Joseph Kubon:Norm from Cheers.
Josh Matthews:He's a good actor, yeah.
Fred Cadena:No, he's good. I think George Wentz is dead.
Josh Matthews:No, he's not dead. Is he not? He's dead, is he not? What about Cliff? Is he still around?
Joseph Kubon:He's alive as well. Also on the list this week.
Josh Matthews:We saw Carla on Barbie. She's the inventor of Barbie. There you go, all right.
Joseph Kubon:They had everybody but Kirstie Alley on the Emmys recreating Cheers. They're all kicking.
Josh Matthews:I'm not sure what's more amazing that you guys got together and wrote a book in three months or that you actually were one of the 4.7 million people who tuned in to watch the Emmys. One of those is an incredible stat.
Fred Cadena:I'm not sure.
Josh Matthews:I think you mean 4.7 people. Yeah right, yeah.
Joseph Kubon:I saw it.
Josh Matthews:There you go. Okay, all right, just keeping it real for a minute, all right. When you think about the impact of this book on a specific individual, sort of think of that ideal persona who's going to pick up this book. When you think about the imagine you've got two, let's just say two developers, andy, okay, so we've got two developers. One of them picks up this book, all right. The other one just tries to go it alone and figure it out on their own. How many hours, how many months, like how long will it take the person who didn't pick up this book to actually get to the same level as the person who actually invested 37,000 to 99, minus 10% discount that I think we'll get to share on the show here? How much longer is it going to take that person to catch up to the one who actually read the book and took it to heart?
Andy Forbes:Well, so I can be full of opinions about that and, of course, if you buy the book, you're going to be experts.
Andy Forbes:The moment you've paid for it, forget reading it. But holding that in abeyance for a moment, what I can tell you is that there have been a couple of different studies now I think Bain and Harvard or MIT, I can't forget which put a study out that said they're seeing about 40% improvement, and that's not just programming jobs, but in general. But what was interesting was that the largest improvement were for the people that performed the worst at the beginning, and what I will say is that for folks like everybody on this call and everybody listening to this call, of course, and Joseph and I, these tools make things a little bit faster, but we know how to do the work. There's no researching. We know what to do, we know how to do it, and the tool can literally write code faster than I can, but I would write the same code.
Andy Forbes:The people that are going to see the improvement are the folks a little bit earlier in their career, when they have to spend half an hour or an hour researching how to do something. If the AI just tells them, they've saved time. So that 40% isn't evenly distributed. Everybody doesn't see 40%. The people earlier in their career are going to see more than 40%.
Josh Matthews:Okay, so it might help me run faster, but maybe Usain Bolt will only help them a little bit is kind of what you're saying.
Andy Forbes:That's exactly it. The earlier you are in your career, the bigger the impact of tools like chat, GPT and GenRDVAI in general Okay.
Josh Matthews:And then I would talk about the impact of that though. Right. So like I'm a developer, I've spent some time with your book. Now, are you saying that 40% improvement in my ability to utilize chat GPT? Are you saying 40% more efficient in general?
Andy Forbes:In general, is what you're saying and again that's not me saying it, that's the couple of studies that have come out now are showing 40% plus or minus improvement on average across the entirety of somebody's job function.
Josh Matthews:Okay, and I'm curious I think Fred will be curious about this why did you choose chat, gpt instead of Bard or Claude or some of these other GenRDVAI tools available?
Andy Forbes:At the time they were the furthest along. Remember we started looking at this late summer and at that point it was a commercially available tool. Vertex Bedrock are a little bit more difficult to get to. Bard Bing weren't quite as far along. The folks from OpenAI right now are the ones that are pushing for they're breaking trail that may not last forever. I'm sure some of the people on the call remember 1995 when Ask Jeeves was the best search engine hands down. But right now the OpenAI guys are the ones that are showing everybody how to do it.
Josh Matthews:What about Clippy? Do you miss those days?
Andy Forbes:I totally miss Clippy. I totally miss Clippy.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, this is for the 50 and over crown, clearly dating ourselves between Cheers and Clippy.
Joseph Kubon:One thing I'd add, josh, is the exponential factor of that 40%, because there are chapters and parts of the book that are meant to help all the roles on the project, not just the developer. There are chapters about how to be more efficient with documentation, how to be more efficient with testing, how to be more efficient with user stories. If you look at that, from getting a 40% lift across a project team, that's where the impact is. That's why and how we felt comfortable with that word accelerating Salesforce development, because you'll get synergy from everybody, perhaps understanding their role, their part and how they're complementing the overall delivery. It's not just meant for hey, can I get a Lightning Web Component out faster, although we talk about that. Can I get a Flow out faster? Although we talk about that. It's all of the roles BAs, product owners, scrum masters across the board.
Josh Matthews:Okay, I like it. I'm trying to think how to phrase this one. Let's imagine there's a date in the future where, if you don't know how to use this stuff, you're not going to get offered the job. Maybe let's just say at 70% 80% of the company's out there, to the point where it just becomes absolutely critical. You've got to know this stuff Because now they want to hire someone let's say they want to hire a developer for $150,000 a year but they want that developer to be 40% more efficient.
Josh Matthews:This is one of those special times in technology where someone can come in, be 40% more efficient, really blow the doors off of the work that they're doing in a really massive and incredible way. Stand out against their peers. Opportunities for better projects, whatever, get to go to their dream force, whatever it is get to work on, get raises, get promotions, things like that. But there is going to be a day where the knowledge of effectively using a product like ChatGPT is going to be a commodity. The expectation is you have to have it. When do you think that day is going to be? Is it in a year? Is it in five years? If you were going to just put your predictor hat on, and I'm curious what each of you think, and I'm curious what Fred thinks and what Peter think on this as well.
Joseph Kubon:I would say those questions are coming up in interviews now and I would say no later then, at least in the Salesforce ecosystem, because that's where I'm currently specialized. I would say no later than dream force. You should be expected to know it. He's got a great quote that I like, yet scares me about AI. Want to share that one, Andy.
Andy Forbes:If I knew which one you were talking about, Joseph, I'd be happy to, but I think the one about the.
Joseph Kubon:You don't have to worry about AI taking your job. Someone who knows AI will take your job.
Andy Forbes:That's not my quote. That's somebody else's quote. But yeah, who is saying that's legitimate? Oh, I'll look while we're talking. Now you're going to make me try to look it up.
Fred Cadena:No, you're okay, I'm not anybody on the internet's quote.
Josh Matthews:Say that again, Fred.
Fred Cadena:I said I think that's literally everybody on the internet's quote. I've heard, I've heard Joseph say it. I've said it. I think I've seen it on LinkedIn about 100,000 times.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, well, I guess what that means is come on people by the book and, if you're not going to do it like, at least get involved in generative AI in some way shape or form in your career. Figure it out. But if you want a shortcut, this is. It sounds like this is the book and, by the way you know, I saw a little screenshot that I think Joseph had shared, where they were ranked in the top five for books about AI. I did my own search. I typed in AI and Salesforce and they were number one on this. So I don't know if it depends on where you're typing it, but that is a pretty massive feat and it looks like you're already getting some stellar five star reviews. What comes next? You've you know in three months. You guys have formed a team, you've put this together. You've published it. It's the next thing for the crew.
Andy Forbes:I'm deferring to Joseph on that.
Joseph Kubon:I'm torn between devoting some time to use cases, specific use cases where we can begin to capture the attention of leadership and the influencing the value in the roadmap that they can get from these tools. We've started talking about that and then we've started talking about tackling that debate of clicks not code and extending it one level further. We went out and registered the domain name. Already I think we got a working title. That is conversation, not clicks not code, understanding how you converse with the AI, with the tools, and build those things out in a way that your approach is interactive and collaborative with the AI, that they're an extension of your team.
Josh Matthews:Okay, so Fred and I were talking last week I think it was last week, Fred, it might have been the week before, but we were talking about Rabbit, the new AI tool that's coming out of, I think, China. You know what I'm talking about, Fred.
Fred Cadena:Yeah, I don't know where they're coming out of. It might be China it might be China All it does? They took my 200 bucks faster than you would think, yeah right, I mean really really fast.
Josh Matthews:So basically, this is a little machine that fits in your pocket and it basically is like taking chat, GPT, and it ties it into all the apps that you've already got, whether it's Expedia or your bank or whatever. So it becomes way more conversational and I'm wondering is there going to be a day, down the road, as we look deep into the future, where we're getting rid of the keyboard? I mean, is there going to be someday a generation of people that, unless you have some sort of vocal or auditory impairment, like the keyboard's going to be a thing of the past?
Joseph Kubon:I don't know that I will go that far just yet, but I would probably have been surprised at what we could do now and what they make up in the movies. And what you see in the movies from long ago now seems far-fetched, like flying cars, like back to the future. Right Now they're around the corner, probably because now we've got self-driving cars. So I believe that inevitably, you're going to need strategy and vision in order to help build any kind of plan or go anywhere, even with technology right, that's how Steve Jobs got where he was, or any of those things that have evolved over time and dominated the market space. But ultimately it will become commonplace in all of the things we do right.
Joseph Kubon:At one point in time we thought it was nuts that there would be smart appliances and that our refrigerator would tell us things or our dryers would tell us things or whatnot. I'm driving a relatively brand new car. That's just a coincidence. I want to have a disclaimer out there that you cannot afford a brand new car by writing a book. This is not the way to get rich.
Joseph Kubon:No it's not, no, but I'm driving a brand new 2024 Honda Accord. That literally told me when I took my hands off the wheel. I mean, it knew it wasn't necessarily the wisest thing, but still my hands were off the wheel for a brief second and the car knew it and flashed up a warning to put my hands back on the wheel. So think about the possibility with that as the case. I see someone Fred's got a question.
Fred Cadena:What do you want to know. I have not a question, I just want to chime in. Yeah, do it. I couldn't agree more. I can't see a day anytime, really anytime that the keyboard is completely gone. Right, we had writing. We still have typewriters. I still go to offices today and sometimes I have typewriters that are sitting there for specialized use cases.
Fred Cadena:I think it's a percentage question, right, how much? What percentage of time are you going to be using your keyboard versus talking to the machine? I'll give you another one, just to bring another technology in here. I might be the only person in the US or in the world that is excited for the Apple VR headset. I've actually got to put one on my head and they're pretty cool and they have this amazing eye tracking technology that eliminates the need for a mouse or trackpad or other pointing device. But I don't think the mouse is dead right. I'm not predicting that the trackpad is going to be gone in two years. It's just going to be how much somebody can use the trackpad versus how much somebody can use some other controller.
Josh Matthews:Sure, but I mean. So speaking of those Apple headsets, I mean my understanding is short, battery life, heavy, very expensive, going to price a ton of people out. I mean I'm assuming that's just a matter of time, right?
Fred Cadena:You are a celibate hard, heavy, heavy expensive, yeah right. Well, but here's the thing people don't realize.
Josh Matthews:I watch the videos.
Fred Cadena:It's a standalone computer, right? It's not like these other headsets where you need an Nvidia card and something else to drive it. It's like buying a Mac Pro and two Retina displays in your eyes. So when you look at it that way, it's not overpriced. But yeah, I'm a fanboy, I've used one. I think it's awesome. I'm not laying down my money, I'm not going to rabbit it, but it's only a matter of time. To your point, right? This is V1.0. How many people got the iPhone the first time around? Yeah, how many people have one now?
Josh Matthews:Every time I think about these new headsets and stuff, I always think of the movie the Jerk with Steve Martin, right? He invents this handy thing so that you don't touch your glasses when you take it off. It's in the middle, but by the end of the movie, everyone's cross-eyed, including the judge who's determining his future, right, which we all. If you watch the movie, he's a bum. So I wonder, is there going to be some sort of physical cost to the use of these products on your head? Whether it's magnetic waves that cause cancer or going cross-eyed or whatever it is, I'm kind of curious.
Josh Matthews:What, since we're going to look at AI's future stuff? It's here right now and I get that, but I'm curious. We've got an inventor, two authors, we've got podcasters, we've got the Alpwisper here. We've got some really smart people on the show right now. So just kind of broadening the discussion a little bit, what do you guys think If you were to imagine a repercussion of new technology? That's a negative thing, right, but what do you think it might be? What might be the biggest thing that shows up in the next few years?
Andy Forbes:Well, I'll jump in with one I've noted. So I'm in my 60s, my kids are in their late 20s and I was intrigued by the fact that about halfway through school, schools stop teaching them how to write cursive Right. So kids under probably about 25 or 20 no longer know how to write cursive Right, bit by bit. What we take as standard skills for people of my generation they're just, they're gone.
Josh Matthews:Well and Joseph, even when we were learning cursive, we didn't have to be good at it, we just had to pass it. You know what I mean. Whereas if you were in the 20s or 30s, it's like you better have amazing script. You weren't allowed to write like a doctor back then. It had to be readable and pretty too.
Joseph Kubon:That's probably what kept me from being a doctor.
Josh Matthews:It was the blood for me, it was the blood. Yeah, to each their own, you know.
Joseph Kubon:I guess I envision that, the adaptation. I guess, whether with the delivery or technology or the things that are coming around, there's always going to be some level of no adoption. I guess I myself, I have a heavy stigmatism, terrible vision. I would not be able to wear a VR headset because I'd get dizzy and nauseous. So I'm not going to take medicine to avoid nausea, to wear a headset, to be able to get faster at my job Although maybe I don't have that much longer either to work maybe another 20 years but will I be faced with something that's going to take my job technology-wise? I don't think so.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, and what about if you look at some of these new drone technologies, especially the FPVs of the first person basically flying a drone, first person visual with a goggle A lot of these goggles nowadays have you can fine tune your script right into the goggles. I'm curious, fred, do you know if Apple has anything like that, or they just make it glasses or contacts compatible?
Fred Cadena:I'm not sure that I follow when you say fine tune the script. Sorry.
Josh Matthews:Sorry, your prescription, your eyewear prescription.
Fred Cadena:I've got no clue. Okay, yeah, no clue on that. Okay, they do have. It's a solid thing. And then there's cameras on the outside. So when you want to see outside of the helmet, at least the one they're releasing right away, it's using the cameras and then it's recreating what you see in the room on a screen. I imagine you could use software to do the correction.
Josh Matthews:Sure, and I guess it's doing the same thing for your face, right? It's taking a picture of your face and projecting your face on the screen as well.
Fred Cadena:Yes, yes.
Josh Matthews:It's so freaking weird. I mean it's cool, but it's weird.
Joseph Kubon:I woke up to this while I did not watch the Emmys, I did binge watch Echo, and she's deaf. Echo is deaf if you don't know much about Marvel superheroes. And so Kingpin developed a contact lens that she wore that simulated him doing sign language, right? So there are, like I had to think about it. Conceptually, right, that's maybe like they built that for a movie, or let us to believe that was a like possible for a movie, but who knows if there's not some doctor out there who's watched that. And now thinking of the practical application to help bridge that communication and make sign easier for that community, right, maybe that's something we'll see and that could be commonplace. I don't know, but they dreamt it and it could make it possible.
Josh Matthews:That they could. Well, guys, we've been rolling for a good 40 minutes or so right now, so I'm just going to drop in real quick and remind everybody of some fantastic resources for their career. What I encourage everybody to do is jump on the expand exchange and you can go to expandexchangecom. This is a page on my website which is the salesforcerecretercom, but it really it's a directory, and the directory was curated, I'll say, mostly by Vanessa and a little bit by me, to help guide you and give you basically resources so that you can improve your career, whether that is getting more involved with communities like our X, you know, salesforce professionals community, which I think is the largest Salesforce community on X, so you can go ahead and join that. We've got Jordan Nelson on there. We've got podcasters, bloggers, vloggers, communities, training academies. So definitely visit expandexchangecom.
Josh Matthews:Look, this is free. We don't get any kickbacks. There's no advertising involved. This is just for you, people who want more.
Josh Matthews:You're thirsty for knowledge, you're hungry for knowledge? Well, you can go here and you can connect with other people just like you and people who've been in the ecosystem for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, right, who really have wrapped their arms around this the way that, the way that our guests Andy and Joseph have, and the way that Fred and Peter have throughout the years as well. So check out expand exchange. You can also find new opportunities on our careers page there and some good blogs and videos to help guide you into how to have better video interviews, how to have a very good interview, how to actually be able to get to the point where you can extend an offer to the best of the best candidate right and not be held over a barrel.
Josh Matthews:So there's a lot of information, whether you're hiring or getting hired or simply just want to store hire. Check out expand exchange and the salesforcerecruitercom. Now, joseph, when we caught up just a little bit earlier today or maybe it was yesterday, I can't even remember you said that someone had posed a question to you and you thought you know the smart move here is to go ahead and just wait until the show. So do you happen to have that question, andy?
Joseph Kubon:Sure.
Josh Matthews:I do.
Joseph Kubon:I took it down here on an index card. I'd have to go look to find the tweet of who asked it. I will do that momentarily, but the long and the short of it was is to talk about the trajectory of how I ended up as a solution architect with 40 certifications. So that was the gist of his question and I'll tell you. I started as a business analyst and I was a bit that was the start of my career and I was at I Heart Radio.
Joseph Kubon:At that time was Clear Channel Communication, I Heart Radio and I had an epiphany one day that I could and would be an architect. I was sitting in a project room. I had my project manager at the end of the table, some architect making five times what I was making as the BA across from me and different testers getting ready for a project meeting. And Jason, the PM, said Joseph, your laptop's blocking the projector, of which. I looked at the table and I slid and moved the projector into, basically, kent's space. Kent was our architect. And then everybody looked at me and I said well, what Did everybody see? Only one solution to that problem, right, which was close your laptop, joseph. And so at that point I really found a couple good mentors, john Fromm and Moises Quayar, and they took me under their wing, taught me the value of the ecosystem, how the platform, how to develop and slowly just began to build experience. So I spent I have spent time in my career as the BA, as an admin, as an engineer, as a product owner, and I saw out those roles as short as they might have been, in the last 14 years to experience what it would be like from all facets of a team, from an agile, purist at heart, from a development perspective. But I wanted to understand, be able to empathize with all of the roles, what testing would be like, those sorts of things. And then, ultimately, if I were tasked with building something or needing to build something and there was a certification or a learning opportunity on Trailhead, I would explore it and do it.
Joseph Kubon:I had one such project that needed me to help them articulate or develop a solution around PDFs, and this one is actually pretty exciting because I went out and I learned Omni Studio. It was available to be done in Omni Studio, but I went to Trailblazer DX and I went to Trudit, the Core, and I got up there and I'm like, just why the heck is it that we can't produce PDFs inside of Salesforce? Parker Harris was like that's absurd. It's been eight years, we're answering the same question and Salesforce reached out to me and I got to be the BA with Salesforce writing use cases for them and we can now print PDFs on community websites and Salesforce.
Joseph Kubon:So it's a matter of getting involved, getting engaged, absorbing Trailhead networking with the community, with people like you, josh, and our favorite, vanessa right, and learning and delving into all of those resources, because if you want to learn it, you want to grow in the ecosystem. There are people there who will support you on the journey and that's really how the transformation happened Not by myself, but with the help of others who took an interest in ensuring I had the opportunity to learn. Chris Duarte is one of my most favorite people. That's really how you go about doing it.
Josh Matthews:It's a great origin story. Joseph, thank you for sharing that. I've got to ask you, you know, like Vanessa is a assert junkie herself, like she just loves it, right, it's, it's what she enjoys doing. And I've often thought, you know, I think about this whether it's my business or anybody who's trying to accelerate their career Inside or outside of the Salesforce ecosystem, it's not how much you do, it's how much you get done in a certain period of time, right, yeah, because you can get really good at chat GPT. But you know, you'd taken five years to figure it out. You've missed the curve a little bit and now you're behind the ball.
Josh Matthews:There is some something of a race in this world, particularly as they, you know, as it relates to careers, right, sure, people who get more done in a shorter period of time tend to make more money. And so long, so well, let me, let me just dive in on this real quick. So you know you're, it's not nothing to go and get 40 certifications. That takes serious dedication and passion. You know, did you find yourself sometimes on that journey? Like? You know the way someone who's training for a marathon might just be like oh crap, I got a 15 mile run on Saturday and I'm just spent, but you do it anyway Did. Did you approach it that way, or was it always kind of fun and interesting and you never really felt like you were there's needed to be any lag or delay in your education in the field.
Joseph Kubon:Yeah, Hmm, my 40 certifications have taken 14 years. Okay, so you know I started on this. You know the user stories and the Journey with Salesforce in early 2012 and now we're 2024, you know, and I was slow to start with the certifications, but you know I've. It's not a race. It's not about earning 20 certs in one year.
Josh Matthews:Well, there are only so many certs back in 2012 too, right?
Joseph Kubon:I mean well there, there weren't as many back. Yeah, well, but but you know what I've tend to tell people when I mentor them and I mentor people throughout the ecosystem Well over 50 people, typically one-on-one. I have a week where I might be mentoring like eight people in the evenings on Mondays and Wednesdays and I'll go ahead and say if you're, if you're in need of a mentor, you can ping me on LinkedIn and you know we can talk. But you know, I look for people who have interesting stories as well, interesting needs, and it's about, you know, balancing the goals and working towards thing. What I will tell them is a technicians knowledge, a Developer, an admin. Their knowledge is an inch wide and a mile deep. They know a lot of ways to do a lot of things and an architect's knowledge is the inverse it's a mile wide, but an inch deep. You have to begin to know how all of the pieces Work together. What, sir? What? What's the default pieces of Service cloud versus sales, cloud versus CPQ versus field service? How are all of those things different? What do you? You know how. What do you do in field service? That's different in regular service. You know what's the impact of a work order object. You know and you're gonna learn those things by doing and you cannot fake enthusiasm when you're learning and doing stuff.
Joseph Kubon:The Maybe one personal side of that's made my learning journey be involved in long as Essentially an empty nester. My kids are in college and out of the house and the last one is a senior at Purdue and my wife is a teacher, and so I have a hundred and eighty days, roughly from September or August to to June, where my wife's grading a hundred and eighty papers you know a week and doing lesson plans for her math and science students and I do trailheads. There you go. Okay, I learn like I'm. I'm not sitting down binging Everyday. You know I watch superheroes and survivor. Those are basic shows and I put my time into learning, wanting to be part of the platform, wanting to give back.
Joseph Kubon:Like if you really understood and I don't, it's the last thing I'll say and I'll give the floor back to you and some of the others you know really understood my True beginnings like I grew up on food stamps and in a two bedroom apartment that I was a you know, 17 year old kid getting ready to go to college, sharing a room with my eight year old sister. So when you think about where I was in 1988 when I went to college and where I am now, my life is blessed beyond my wildest imaginations. I cannot give back enough to the community, to homeless people, to the hungry. I do an annual Event called meals over Texas. Like I'm just very blessed and fortunate and the impact that I want to have is to help those who are similar, you know, and really like. That's why I would want to write a book. When Andy said, let's write a book. It's how can we help people who need to get that heads up, that start, that 40% improvement, you know, to be competitive or get into the chair.
Josh Matthews:It you know. So thank you, joseph. I mean, that's a. That's a. It's a powerful story, you know, and often when we grow up in those sorts of circumstances, we really do Try very hard. I had enough years growing up as a young kid also on food stamps. I know what that's like and I know the other side of life too, and it's, it's a. Really it's a powerful thing, and I think the people that I know that are wealthy, whether that's wealthy and family wealthy, and in finances wealthy, and and you know their activities and their, their community so many of them are driven not necessarily by Wanting to replicate where they came from, but trying to create something different than where they came from. You know that that drive is so strong and powerful and we see, you know, we hear them, we've heard them throughout our lives. What you know from our ancestors who came over on boats, you know Whether it was back in the 1700s or the 1600s or in the early 1900s or late 1800s, right, so it's powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing that.
Josh Matthews:I do want to open the floor To questions, so if anybody's got any questions, I want you to feel free. Like you can raise your hand or you can DM, peter or Fred, and they'll go ahead and read it Aloud. If you don't have any, that's okay. I know we're answering a lot of questions anyway right now, but before we go I would like to get just a little bit of a micro origin story, also from Andy. So, andy, you know what's the what's the quick one to about, you know what inspires you and and and how you came to be involved in the ecosystem.
Andy Forbes:Well, before I get into that, I want to be fair. It was the Boston Consulting Group that came up with the 40%, not BAME. I don't want somebody from BCG to call me and go okay.
Josh Matthews:That was us. Okay, exactly, ron, ron reference. All right, good deal.
Andy Forbes:Well, the problem now is, I feel like anything I say will just not compare well to what Joseph just said.
Josh Matthews:Well, it's not a competition. And the thing is, and what's nice about this show is the reach of this show is broad I think we're listening to, and if I look back it's somewhere around 70 or 80 countries last year, right. So that means we're hitting a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds, and what Joseph shares is going to resonate, I would think, with a lot of people, but not everybody. So let's hear it, my friend.
Andy Forbes:Yeah, honestly, the interest was and as you said in the introduction about me, I first wrote a program in 1977. That means my career has survived mainframes turning into mini computers, turning into PCs, turning into network PCs, turning into PCs connected to the internet, to mobile devices and now AI. It's helping people prepare for what's coming. You can wait until it gets up in your face or you can start to get a little bit of a head start, and I think that's really what we tried to do in the book was say, look, this isn't where it's going to end. It's not like you learn this and you don't have to learn any more AI ever. But if you want to get started here we tried to write, as Joseph, I think, said, it's use cases. There's nothing theoretical in that book that is applied AI, as much as we could make it to help people with the problems in front of them today.
Josh Matthews:Well, thank you for sharing. Andy, let's check in with Fred and with Peter here. I mean, we've covered a lot of material here today and, Fred, your session at Florida Dreaming was specifically around AI. It's definitely a field of interest for you. I mean, was there? I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are about everything that you've heard right now, or anything that you'd want to add or know more about.
Fred Cadena:No, I'm super curious about the book. I looked on Amazon and I am super disappointed to see that there's not an audible version available. Difficult for me to find time to read a paper Kindle version, but I will probably get around to doing it. I love the concept of the book. I went through and I looked at the chapter summaries and there's a ton of great information in there. Josh alluded to my presentation that I gave to a couple of the different Dreaming conferences, including Florida Dreaming last year, which kind of looked at the other side of it, which is, I think, the premise of this book and authors correct me if I'm misunderstanding is from the perspective of somebody that already knows how to do something. How do we accelerate getting that done, Like, how do we get the flow configured faster, how do we get the apex code written more quickly, et cetera.
Fred Cadena:I was trying to look at a problem from the other side, which is Salesforce is broad and wide. Like both of you, I've been in the ecosystem for quite some time. I first had my first Salesforce contract 17 years ago. It was a very different system then. I can honestly say that somebody could have probably known everything about Salesforce at that time. Nobody could know everything about Salesforce now, and a big part of my focus was when you get asked for that education, when you get asked for that, like Joseph. You made some field service references and some of your answers I didn't know anything about field service. I'm a financial services guy. We don't use field service. There's very few use cases that make sense. But if I were asked about it and I needed to come up with something cogent, how could I use AI for something like that? And so I don't know if you guys have explored that or have any opinions on how AI can be leveraged to better to do solutioning rather than executing on solutions.
Andy Forbes:Now I have an opinion and I think one of the chapters in the book we actually explore, using it for ideation, and certainly outside of the book I've used it to say okay, a client's asked me to figure out how to keep SAP and Salesforce account records in sync. Hey, chat GPT. List every possible way you can come up with to do that. So yeah, I mean I think we talk about it a little bit and I definitely think it's a fantastic tool for that, whether it's again Bard or Bing or chat GPT.
Joseph Kubon:Cool, I don't have anything to add there, fred. I think I would tell you, ultimately, the context and the prompts and the setup of how you organize chat GPT will be important. Oddly, there will be middle schoolers who try to use it and they get their papers back and they turn them in with words they don't understand the definitions to. So I think that the refinement that you do when you're idea, when you're running through versions of your idea, ultimately will get you to something innovative. But you're right, the platform's too vast to know everything about it and I don't know that even Google knows all about it.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, and you don't. I mean that's why there's millions of people who operate in it, so that's the good news for sure. Peter, you've been real quiet this show and I am assuming that's because you're just absorbing so much. But I'm curious about your opinions. Anything you've heard tonight that sort of felt like a surprise or anything that you'd like to add to the discussion before we point people in the right direction on how to get connected and what we've got coming up in a couple of weeks.
Peter Ganza:Thank you, sir. Yeah, I've been absorbing everything. It's a great combo. I definitely want to check out the book and digest some more. Honestly, I really don't have anything to add. I was agreeing with what everyone else has said before. You know my opinion. I think it's still the wild wild west and everyone said, well, 2023 was the year of AI. I call it bullshit because I think it's 2024 is going to be the year it's all going to come together or fall apart. We're not sure which or how, but some things will happen. It will be packaged up and Lord knows what that priority will be in terms of the industry and use cases, but you're going to start seeing, without actually knowing that there's some AI behind this thing, things there from a consumer perspective, sure, the same way.
Josh Matthews:IoT is operating in a lot of homes and you don't even know it.
Peter Ganza:Yeah, similar story. I remember hearing about IoT when I was at Symantec in 2001. People don't talk about it anymore, but I got an instrument to that. I got the protect CEO detector and stuff. Yeah, that's IoT.
Josh Matthews:I remember sitting in I think it was at the time the eighth floor of the coin tower in downtown Portland. I was sitting there and my friend Tom, who I'd helped bring on board. He's an amazing recruiter. I'm not sure if he's still recruiting, but he's a fantastic recruiter. He's like okay, I got one word for you. I was like okay. He's like it's called cloud. I was like okay. Then he starts describing what the cloud is.
Josh Matthews:We'd never heard about it before, but I remember the moment I heard about it. Looking back, that was probably 2006,. I'm guessing maybe 2006, something like that. Maybe I was a late bloomer and had been around for a little while, but everything with chat to you, it's the same thing. It's like where were you when this came out? We're going to have that memory down the road, but for now we're going to have to wrap up the show and do that. I'd like to let everybody know that we're going to be back in two weeks. This probably not going to be an episode released. This episode will be released certainly by next Wednesday, which is I don't know what is that the 24th. Then we'll be back live on the 31st with Adam Maiko. Adam is a data visualization, enablement and fluency leader. He's a 2x Tableau visionary, a 4x Tableau ambassador. We're really lucky to have him. He's also a Golden Hoodie recipient from not this past year, but the year before in DF22. Join us Vanessa, fred Peter and Adam Maiko in two weeks from today.
Josh Matthews:If you'd like to connect with Joseph and Andy, you can. They're pretty easy to find. In fact, I'm going to share with you a couple of ways that you can connect with them. The first way would be to type in chat GPT for accelerating sales force development. Go ahead and just type in the name of their book in LinkedIn. That's a public group. You can go ahead and click and join in. You can get you know, dump in your reviews and follow what's going on or any updates that are going on. You can also connect with AI for well, it's the same thing, but it's a newsletter. Joseph, tell us how we can subscribe to that weekly newsletter that you have. I believe it's AI for accelerating value. Is that correct?
Joseph Kubon:Yes, it is. They're very similarly named. We hope the newsletter spans the life of the books we've planned, whereas the news, the current version of the public group, is specific to ask your questions about the book If you find like, hey, tell me a little bit more about this, prompt on page 216. We're happy to get in there and have a dialogue with you, but I did want to make sure, josh, if you have just one more second to give everybody the discount code.
Josh Matthews:Oh, that'd be great.
Joseph Kubon:Please do. I did promise you that for you and your listeners, it's a discount code that they can apply if they go buy the book on Amazon, and I will have to start with this disclaimer in the US store. It is not a global discount code, but it is 20 AFPJ, as in Andy Forbes, pablo or Philip and Joseph 20 AFPJ and that will get you 20% off the book when you purchase it. If you have any trouble with the discount code, it's good. Now, through February 10th, feel free to direct message me on LinkedIn and I will help you with a link that applies the code, but 20 AFPJ will get you the 20% off our book.
Josh Matthews:That's terrific. We'll go ahead and include that in the description of the podcast when it is released. If you're driving and you can't write it down right now, don't worry, we'll get it to you. You just visit our Buzzsprout site. Just type in Salesforce career show. It'll come up on Google and you'll find it right there. If you want to connect on LinkedIn with Joseph, it's Joseph Kuban, k-u-b-o-n. The third. You can connect with him there. Then it's Andy Forbes, a-n-d-y. Forbes, just like the magazine F-O-R-B-E-S. You can find them both on LinkedIn. If you're connected with me, you're probably only one degree away from being connected with them. If you're not connected with me, we'll go ahead and do that, or at least follow. You can also follow them or do a full connection if you like. All right, okay, fred. Any final words? Any final thoughts, peter? Final thoughts, great episode.
Fred Cadena:Thanks for inviting me.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, great to have you guys here. Thank you so much, peter.
Peter Ganza:Hi, I'm its Vanessa, but you guys are okay.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, well, we feel the same way, but you know what? This is still an awesome robot show without her. But yeah, having Vanessa on is awesome. Okay, andy, final words from you Buy the book, buy the book. Can I invite you guys to come back in, say, six months? What I'm thinking is, what I'd love to find are people who are listening to this show that were inspired by this program and by hearing you discuss your origin stories and your reasons for creating this fantastic guide to helping people in the ecosystem get more out of chat GPT for their careers. I'd love to find someone who goes out and buys the book this week or this month and sits with it for some time. Have them on the show with you six months from now to really hear from them what happened, like how their career changed, how their workflow changed, and whether or not that actually made a significant difference. It's going to make a difference. How much of a difference has it made for them? I'd be really curious about that and love to have you guys back.
Joseph Kubon:Yeah, that's a great ask. I'd love to do it.
Josh Matthews:Fantastic. All right, well, we'll get it booked. Thank you to me from the absent Vanessa, from Fred, peter, joseph, andy and the rest of our crew and everybody who's involved in producing this podcast. We thank you so much for listening. Do us a favor, hit the bell, go ahead and subscribe, give us a five star rating and sound effects I always like that and we'll be back in two weeks. Okay, everybody, have a fantastic week.
