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
Dreamforce Highlights: AI Innovations and Career Transformations with Brandon Stein
Ever wondered how the latest AI innovations can transform your career? Join us as we unpack the highlights of Dreamforce with our special guest, Brandon Stein, a leader in customer experience and strategic marketing with a storied career at Deloitte and Salesforce. Vanessa Grant shares her heartfelt moments of meeting friends and mentees in person, while Brandon recounts his eye-opening first ride with Waymo, a self-driving car service, alongside Josh Matthews. This episode promises a deep dive into the Salesforce ecosystem, enriched with personal anecdotes and expert insights.
The Dreamforce expo floor was a whirlwind of advancements and opportunities, particularly in Salesforce certifications. We delve into the AI Associate certification and the technical hiccups with the Krypterion test platform, featuring Reid's firsthand struggles as a techno-functional architect and product manager. Beyond the technicalities, we emphasize the importance of certifications in creating buzz around pivotal topics like AI. Vanessa and Brandon dissect the transformative power of AI in customer service and marketing, shedding light on its potential to revolutionize industries.
Dreamforce wasn't all smooth sailing, and we candidly address feedback and areas for improvement. From the exclusionary business email requirement for G2 reviews to the need for more leader-focused events, we explore how inclusivity and purposeful planning can elevate such gatherings. The discussion on Salesforce's latest AI innovation, Agentforce, underscores its groundbreaking potential for businesses and careers alike. Wrapping up, we stress the importance of adapting to digital transformations and maintaining robust professional networks, ensuring you're well-prepared for future Dreamforce events and opportunities.
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:Here we come, guys. Here we come Another episode. All right, let's get our show going. I'm stoked about this one because we've got a ton of stuff to talk about. Welcome everybody. This is the post-Dreamforce episode, and I'm here with my wonderful co-host, vanessa. Give them a hello there, vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:Hello everybody.
Josh Matthews:Well, hello to you, and I'm stoked because we are joined by my friend and an absolute master in the ecosystem, someone that I've had respect for this individual from the very first time that I talked to him. Okay, brandon Stein. Welcome to the show, brandon.
Brandon Stein:Happy to be here, Josh.
Josh Matthews:Long time in the making Long time in the making, and so a little bit of background on Brandon. I'm going to go over this, but then we're going to dive right into all things DF24 and have a little bit of a post show here. So Brandon Stein is a customer experience and strategic marketing leader. He's worked at across a number of Fortune 500s, including Deloitte. Lots of years in leadership at Salesforce. He's still involved in practices with MRE. I'm saying it right. I'm not looking at any notes, so I'm hoping that I'm saying that right. And look, when I read your bio, I go yeah, and what about all the other stuff? Right, because he's done work on strategy, on analytics, on digital enablement, on driving sales, on marketing customer experience, but probably, maybe at the heart of it, you're really just like a badass ops guy. I mean, what do you think? What are you? What are you?
Brandon Stein:Brandon, great question. I think you nailed it, josh, and my experience kind of came full circle back to consulting just the passion of getting intimate with clients and living a day in their life. I'm really an ops and digital strategy professional and happy to share my experience and career arc and, obviously, takeaways from Dreamforce.
Josh Matthews:And audience. I got to tell you I am jealous of Brandon's diplomacy and tact. I mean, I don't have it. I've got some, but he's got. I think that's what happens when you work at organizations like Deloitte and Salesforce and don't quit after a year Like it's going to rub off on you. I mean, robert, half, whatever. We were just a bunch of hooligans. It's not the same thing, right? So my Fortune 500 leadership experience is markedly different than, I think, brandon's. That's going to be some of the focus of our conversation a little bit later on in the show. Right now, let's get down to DF24. How did it go? What was cool? What did we learn? What do we think is going to happen in the ecosystem? How is all this stuff going to affect people's careers and and you know what's kind of our general sense of the ecosystem right now? So that's what I'm excited about talking about. So let's start with you, vanessa, just with some really like super easy questions. Okay, what was the coolest thing that happened to you at Dreamforce this year?
Vanessa Grant:Oh, the coolest thing I think that happened to me at Dreamforce. For me it's meeting people that I've known for years in the ecosystem and it's their first Dreamforce. So there were a couple of folks that I've corresponded with online. One person was a mentee of mine for a number of years and she came by and was just so kind and that really meant a lot to me. And then I also met Evelyn McGuire, who I think is Own Backups Person of the Year like Innovator of the Year, and hung out with Evelyn quite a bit and that was a huge treat for me. We've been friends in the ecosystem together for a number of years as well, and she's as good as advertised.
Josh Matthews:That's outstanding. What about you, Mr Brandon?
Brandon Stein:So I have to say, Josh, the highlight is grabbing coffee and sitting down with you face to face.
Josh Matthews:Oh, this guy cut it out.
Vanessa Grant:Oh, can I change my answer? It was when we went to go grab a drink. Josh, yeah, that was it.
Josh Matthews:Okay, you guys get to come back to the show now.
Brandon Stein:I only say that because Josh and I have known each other for gosh close to a decade now and trade notes and emails and calls. And then Dreamforce is just one of those experiences when you get together face-to-face and you get to connect with friends that feels like you've known forever and may not have had a chance to be face-to-face with. So that was super cool. And then some of the other experiences just around San Francisco. I took my first Waymo self-driving car from one venue to the next.
Vanessa Grant:I did too.
Brandon Stein:It was so weird, so did I, it was great, though Like you don't have to talk to anybody.
Vanessa Grant:I mean, it was cool.
Josh Matthews:Brandon tell the audience what Waymo is.
Brandon Stein:Waymo is a self-driving, autonomous Uber, right. So all across San Francisco there are electric vehicles without drivers that you call on an app and takes you from point A to point B, just like Uber without a human driver. So kind of an experience. The first time you get into it, I will say my reaction is it is a very slow and safe ride. Kind of feels like you're riding with your grandfather. Like really slow on the pedals, slow on the brake. So if you're in a rush you probably don't want to take it. But other than that it was safe and sound, yeah yeah, I thought the whole thing was a trip man.
Josh Matthews:I talked to some people and they're like, oh, I'm too scared to try that. I'm like, really like, you know, the thing that scares me are people. You know, this thing knows what it's doing and great, let's rock it and I don't have to listen to their music. You know, correct, you know, when I did it, it was that very first night. It was tuesday night and we were going over to the grand, which was the salesforce bend party, and so I booked it. It was only like a mile away. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do this thing. Well, maybe not the best night, because everyone was going somewhere. I could have walked it in 15 minutes. I was in that Waymo for 40 minutes, you know, and I didn't really ever feel like someone else was driving because I never felt like we were going anywhere. So I did take it a second time. On the way back from the cigar shindig on Thursday night, it was like, oh, ok, I'm, I'm, I'm picking up on this right now. So that's pretty cool.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, for sure.
Josh Matthews:Well, I'm going to answer my own question, that I answered to you, or that I asked the two of you and I got to tell you like my favorite thing, literally like the coolest moment, and there were a lot of great moments. So, if you're like, but, josh, what about us? I'm telling you there were lots of cool moments, but I love surprises and I'd taken this Waymo out to the Grand which is like this you know, bar place, club place, and I'm standing there talking to one of my clients, john Dion. I didn't know John was there. I walked in and within about 30 seconds I get this gigantic Canadian hockey paw on my arm, on my shoulder, and it's John.
Josh Matthews:I'm like, oh sweet, right, and I met John originally out at Florida Dreamin', and so we're shooting the breeze and we're having a drink and we're catching up and he's like you got to meet this guy. Excuse me, I got to send a text Don't go anywhere. I want to. I'm staying by the entrance because Cause you know this guy's coming by. You're going to love him. You got him, you got to meet him.
Josh Matthews:I'm like great, cool man, like I'm stoked and in walks, brandon. So the guy that John wanted me to meet was Brandon, and you know, sure enough, we had breakfast breakfast date scheduled for the next day, so it was pretty hysterical and also remarkable, I mean. I think that highlights so much of what the Dreamforce experience can be like, particularly if it's your second or third or fourth or fifth time, right, because you're going to start running. I ran into more people this year than last year and more people last year than the year before, and so on. So that experience of going to every event and party and running into someone who knows you or has heard of you is kind of a fun experience. I think it's a little bit like going to a hometown for a few days.
Brandon Stein:There's this concept, josh, of like a double take, and I think in that instance it was like a triple take for me. Right, just my head was on a swivel trying to comprehend what was happening and that's the magic of Dreamforce, but also just how close it's. A big ecosystem, right, there's so many shades and flavors of folks, but it is still a super small world out there and everyone is a first or second degree connection away. So that was super cool to create that. John Josh Brandon moment.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, and it's amazing too. You know it's not amazing, it's expected now. But you know it's not amazing, it's expected now. But when you know good people, guess what kind of people they know? They know good people too, Right, and so you wind up getting into these circles of really just fantastic people.
Vanessa Grant:I want to say it gets a little frustrating, though, after you get home and then you're in the grocery store and people don't recognize you anymore. Nobody's just saying nice things just because you know I'm a stream force, Like, take me back.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, right, it's right. It's like I pumped gas the other day. No one was like Josh Matthews, I follow you, keep it up. That didn't happen at the gas station. Let's look just one other little highlight. I wanted to just put out there that my co-host, vanessa Grant, put on an outstanding session. I only went to one of her four, but she put on an outstanding session. It was 10 questions to ask your stakeholders before and then you finish it, go ahead 10 questions to ask whenever you have a user requesting a field.
Vanessa Grant:And since I think business analysis should be part of any configuration in the Salesforce in your Salesforce org.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I'll tell you, I thought that you killed it and you guys were really funny. You know you're you generally bring some sort of humor, but this was like watching a Laurel and Hardy routine or or or more. It was like being in who is his wife, you know, just like that sort of old style comedy, you know, couple on stage kind of thing. I thought it was very cute and I appreciate it.
Vanessa Grant:Josh, tom Bassett and I did a session last dream force and we were very fortunate to be invited to do for this year. When I looked at the badge scans in the portal, we had the privilege of speaking to over a thousand people last Dreamforce or the Dreamforce, I guess, last week.
Josh Matthews:Oh, my God.
Vanessa Grant:It's, it's pretty incredible. So I'm, I'm, I feel, very fortunate.
Josh Matthews:Well, yeah, but the fortunate people are the folks who got to listen to you. Those are the fortunate ones.
Vanessa Grant:Can I bring up one cute Dreamforce story?
Josh Matthews:You can bring up 10 if you want. Let's go.
Vanessa Grant:So actually, when I first landed in SFO, it's one of those like people start eyeing each other at the airport just to see if there are other people that are going to Dreamforce there, and I ended up meeting a Salesforce employee who said that they helped write the AI associate exam and they said that it had a 93% pass rate and so everybody should take it.
Vanessa Grant:But there's a lot of ethics questions and so it's a pretty easy thing to pass, and so my, of course, my question was you know, does that mean that the 7% are supervillains? And we made a joke about like well, you shouldn't give them a login, maybe, if they can't pass the AI associate. But it was then announced during Dreamforce that the AI associate and the AI specialist certs the AI specialist is one that just came out in the last, I think, right before Dreamforce it was just announced that it came out they will be free for folks to take until December 2025. And there's even going to be select free classes that people can take in person in London and in San Francisco to prepare for that AI specialist certification, which I think is a great opportunity for folks that are looking to skill up on AI and the Salesforce ecosystem. So take advantage of those certs folks.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, you know what? I saw your post about that, Vanessa, and I thought it was very cool. And so guess what I did? I walked my little, took us over to Trailhead, jumped on and went through the little prep, the little 20-minute prep that they've got Nailed, it Are you?
Vanessa Grant:an AI associate now.
Josh Matthews:Well, I was having some tech difficulties With whatever that outsourced Test platform is. They were, it was. I just gave it a password and it's like password not recognized. I just set it up, guys, and then I got zero response from help desk and service desk and I was just like, okay, I guess it's not meant to be today, but I I'll take it. I don't have a single cert, but I'll I'll have a 97% chance of passing this one. I think I got a hundred percent. It was pretty easy. The answers are in the questions, you know what I mean.
Vanessa Grant:Just pick the least evil thing.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I picked the least.
Vanessa Grant:Is it. Do you want to run away with all of your customers' data, or do you want to?
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it is a bit like that, but you know what it is thought-provoking. I'm just going through that little bit. It was like, okay, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff to be thinking about here. It's common sense. For the most part it's common sense, but I know a lot of people without any of that, so it's probably a good idea to have it right.
Vanessa Grant:And it's a good, you know, feel good thing to get before moving on to the more difficult exam, which would be the AI specialist which focuses more on Salesforce's AI offerings.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, and if you think about search in general, right, it's more than just the certification. Like, salesforce obviously has a business around the cert platform, but the way it creates buzz and marketing around these topics and shows like this where we're talking about the CERT, it just brings relevance to AI and clearly, with this free offer, they want AI to be permeating across every organization, every Salesforce professional and beyond the CERT. It just stands for something more than that. So I think it's a smart move by Salesforce to do that Definitely.
Josh Matthews:We've got Reid joining us. Reid, did you make it to DF this year?
Reed Marquand:I am taking it this Friday night. Oh cool, it's funny. You mentioned the trouble with the Krypterion web assessor. I had a story. I want to interject there if I may. Yeah, go for it, buddy. Or I want to interject there, if I may.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, go for it, buddy.
Reed Marquand:Well, I wasn't sure that my microphone was going to work here. Because that Krypterion experience, I would not suggest using it on your go-to machine. It has actually nerfed my machine because it installs this thing called Lockdown Browser. Oh, no. And I've now spent weeks going through registry and stuff to fix the damage it done. It took away my video, my camera and my microphone.
Josh Matthews:So oh my God, are you on a Mac or a windows?
Reed Marquand:Windows.
Josh Matthews:I probably very new machine. Oh, that's such a bummer man.
Reed Marquand:Yeah, so it's just funny. When you said you had a little bit of trouble, I was like, oh, I got a doozy for you.
Josh Matthews:I was hesitant to even request to speak here.
Reed Marquand:Cause I was like oh, I got a doozy for you.
Josh Matthews:I was hesitant to even request to speak here, because I'm like, I'm not sure the microphone is going to work because I've been so long.
Reed Marquand:Well, I'm glad you're on, reid. Yeah, I know we're talking in full. In what was it? Two weeks?
Josh Matthews:That's right, yeah, so Reid's going to be on the show guys. So, reid, go ahead and give them a little intro on who you are, just a quick 10 second bet, and that way people can let their palate for what we're going to be diving into in a couple of weeks.
Reed Marquand:Yeah, how to describe me. Josh and I've talked about this and I, with many others, it's how to describe Reed. I'm kind of landing on a techno functional architect and product manager. I've kind of been a lot of the lone wolf and my former CEO called me the renaissance man just because I dig my heels into so many things and kind of fill in the gaps in a lot of places. But I've been on the delivery side, pre-sale side, in-house director of IT and all sorts of things. But 20 plus years CRM, cx and the last eight dedicated to Salesforce.
Josh Matthews:It's awesome, it's awesome.
Josh Matthews:And we're going to hear a lot more about you in a couple of weeks. So thanks for jumping on the show and jump in anytime you want. We're going to keep on the DF theme here for a little bit. Okay, brandon, if you could wave a magic wand and you could change anything about the setup, you know what we were talking about, like all this sort of stuff. You know what's the one thing that you would change in a positive way, what's the one thing that you would. I thought it went well. I thought it was better than last year. But what would you change If you could change anything big or small.
Brandon Stein:You know, great great question I. This is, I think, my 11th dream force right Half as a partner, a couple as a customer and a few as a Salesforce employee. The expo floor, the vendors, the partners it's fantastic and I feel like there's been incremental leaps the last few years on just engagement with the vendors right on the campgrounds and the major expo floors. I think they're doing a good job, just making it a little more interactive. The way they capture contact forms and kind of the badge scans and some of the follow-up. It just it seems a little less intimidating. I had a great time Thursday afternoon, spending most of the last day on the expo floor, and I just felt less intimidating, less salesy right, it just felt a little more intimate. So I think-.
Josh Matthews:Felt a little more gamified, didn't it? It's just sort of like more engaging that way.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, more engaging. I think that they've done a better job curating the experiential booths and the giveaways. I think they're just doing a better job personalizing that experience and so I think kudos to Dreamforce for just making that experience less intimidating and kind of open to anyone. Right In the past it used to be a lot of sales guys just trying to push you into deals, which was uncomfortable.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, yeah, and I think a lot of them. Even I was chatting with one of the vendors, a smaller ISV, down on the end, and they had a back corner. You know they, I don't I think it was like a low traffic place and they were like man, it's been great We've got 2000,. You know two 2000 names already and and it was a really good experience for them, worth the cost and I thought they, we had fun, man, Like you know, I played a bunch of mini golf down there. You know mini golf, some wheel of fortune or prices, right, you know spins and I, you know I like how they, I like how they gamified it a lot. I mean a lot of the vendors, you know they sort of can kind of bleed into each other, right, it's like you know. So I get it, but I thought that they did a better job this year of differentiating themselves, if only from like a marketing standpoint. Does that make sense? I?
Brandon Stein:I? I agree. I think it's hard as a vendor to justify is that spend worth it? Right? Are we going to spend five to six figures plus to host three plus days at the expo floor and what ROI do we get out of it? How do we measure success? I feel like taking the sales hat off and just the genuine connectivity, the marketing and some of the unique swag. Like there were some really cool items this year that are highly personalized and very cool. I feel like they made some memorable impressions on me and I've been in the ecosystem a while, so I think kudos to a lot of the vendors for doing that.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I felt like the mood was good, maybe not Thursday morning. I think there were a lot of hungover people in Yerba Buena Park at lunch. I think that's true, I don't know, but I thought that you know it's just a general good attitude throughout. I also want to point out, because we talked about this last year Vanessa, do you remember when you were doing some presentations in the campground last year and we could hear three? We could hear three, you know, three sessions going on at once.
Vanessa Grant:Yes, yeah, that's a little much sometimes.
Josh Matthews:Well, it's just a little much. We're just kind of crammed in some little corner. You know, I thought that they did a much better job of, you know, keeping the audio separate. It looked like when people were having a session. It was a real session. You had a stage and you know there was room for people versus like yep, you guys can. And you know there was room for people versus like yep, you guys can have. You know this. You know this little everyone sit on the floor for 20 minutes.
Josh Matthews:I'm not saying it was that bad, but there were a couple of little ones that were like wow, like we can't hear what's going on, and it felt really crammed. But I think and I don't know because I haven't Googled it, but I think the numbers were about the same this year as last year. Does anybody know? I see we've got Gilda listening. It's good to have you on the show. I shot her a little message earlier because I wanted to pop up and say hi, because I was standing outside of Fong's talking to a podcast listener for a little bit. But she came in and she was rocking these sparkly purples, man, and they look pretty awesome. They look pretty awesome, but nice to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us today. Feel free to jump in if you'd like to Vanessa, anything that you would have just tweaked a little bit.
Josh Matthews:And before you answer, I'm just going to say what Fred shared, because I was on his podcast on Monday. That's Fred Cadena Banking on Disruption, and Fred said he's like no complaints. His only complaint is San Francisco. As soon as you step out three blocks outside you're like oh God, you know, you know this again like it just doesn't feel very clean. Sometimes it doesn't feel very safe. I didn't, you know, I'm kind of used to it. I lived in Portland forever. I lived in San Francisco before. I guess you get kind of numb to it, but I'm kind of curious. Any thoughts like that, anything?
Vanessa Grant:that you would have done different. Are you ready for my controversial takes?
Josh Matthews:Do it.
Vanessa Grant:I've got two and I was pretty adamant about these during Dreamforce. So the first one is I went. So folks may know that I was laid off at the end of August but I had already received my invitation to speak at Dreamforce, so I went. I went to the sales lodge in the service lodge areas of Dreamforce where basically, you have to do a few things so that you can get some swag, and that's fine.
Vanessa Grant:I was following a friend of mine. I'm usually not into the plushies, but I was like sure I'll follow you, let's hang out for a bit and I went and the only way to get the swag, like the blazer or the little plushie, was to fill out a G2 review. And the only way you can fill out a G2 review is by having a business email. Now I could have used like some other email address, like my trailblazer community group leader one or something like that, but it wasn't the point, and so I was very frustrated that one folks like me that were either laid off or folks that are new to the Salesforce ecosystem, that are, you know, only because there are a lot of people that are very new to the ecosystem that come to Dreamforce really to network and to learn that they were going to get shut out of things like that.
Josh Matthews:And like you don't get an email when you're pulling espressos at Starbucks.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, that's, that was the thing, and so you know that it was. You're getting prizes for skewing online reviews of Salesforce products, and maybe it's not skewing. I mean, it's not like they wouldn't give it to you if you're not honest, but that rubbed me the wrong way and then I had to, like, talk to somebody. So, hey, by the way, I got laid off Like you know how do I get, how do I?
Vanessa Grant:I'm still a service blazer, you know. I mean I, you know I helped update exams, like come on, so that was one thing that I would change. I didn't love that. I'd rather much rather it be like hey, you know, let's. You know, maybe you share a post about Salesforce or maybe you do a challenge on a computer, like something like that, to learn about the product, that's all good. The needing a business email and writing a review totally rubbed me the wrong way.
Vanessa Grant:The second thing that I have an issue with and this is for anybody who is bringing a group together at Dreamforce I think at Dreamforce there are people that are traveling from all over the world and when you have people that are coming together, think about what you are trying to achieve when you're bringing them together.
Vanessa Grant:So I don't want to get into like specifics and I will specifically say Gilda, this isn't anything. Gilda had a wonderful event, a wonderful event that I attended, but I went to a couple of different events where I felt this frustration where, especially if you're bringing leaders together, think about why you are bringing those leaders together and what you want them to spend their time on. If it's just to you know, have them socialize, or something, that's great, but if you're trying to bring people together, like you, this may be the only time you have this many leaders in a room together. What are the things that you can accomplish together? What are the things that you want to leave with? What information do you want them to share with each other? And that's where, like I, went to one kind of ropes course, vanessa.
Josh Matthews:They just should have done a ropes course, let's just no-transcript.
Vanessa Grant:support our Salesforce communities more. You know what are things that are working in your communities that I might be able to take to mine and I missed those moments didn't happen and I felt like they kind of got overwritten by things like trivia and that that frustrated me a bit because I felt like opportunities were lost.
Josh Matthews:Okay, yeah, I can see that. I can see that I I did not have any experiences like that, so I, you know, I guess I don't get it. But yeah, I don't even know what to say here. I mean, I connected with everybody. I just sort of feel like you put a bunch of people in a room, give them some cocktails and say, okay, figure it out. You know they'll figure it out, they'll figure it out and that there are. You know, if you're pulling together an actual group of like, okay, we want to have this, like whatever whether it's a beta testing group or a mini think tank or like whatever it is like you can do that with intention and then you're going to get the people specifically going for that specific thing, because that's something that they want to participate in.
Josh Matthews:But I think, pulling leaders you know there are so many kinds of leaders, right? I mean, not all leaders are extroverts, not all leaders want to talk too much because they don't want to give away what they've got going on. Some people there are leaders out there that might be struggling and God forbid that you lubricate them a little bit and now they're saying stuff about their company or about their business or about their prospects and they shouldn't. And it's public, you know what I mean. So I think a lot of these leaders are by design not by design out of necessity at times in certain social situations, going to be a little bit more reserved. Like they got a job, you know what I mean. Like they got the job, they, you know, they're a dream for us. They've got Salesforce, you know, and so the rest should just be kind of fun and connection, but connection of whom they want. But you know, you were there so you would know.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, and I think fun and connection is. If that's the outcome that you're looking for, I think that's also a great outcome. I just it felt like for a couple of different events I went to, it was just like a why are we here to you know? It just felt that we're just sitting in a room together and just missing an opportunity to actually connect.
Josh Matthews:Gotcha, so was this more like a session type thing.
Vanessa Grant:No, this was. Both of them were kind of like Salesforce, like community type things.
Josh Matthews:Gotcha, okay, yeah, I'm not involved in the Salesforce community at all, so I wouldn't know anything about that.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, I don't know. We get pretty passionate, so maybe I'm just kind of off the rails and I should be like you know, as long as we're all just grabbing a drink together, it's fine, but it's you know I'm looking for, especially at a place like Dreamforce. How do we affect change in our Salesforce community? How can we benefit our own communities, our local communities, virtual communities? We have wonderful leaders in this ecosystem and I wish that they would help make us better leaders.
Josh Matthews:Okay, fair enough, brandon. If there's anything that you could change, just push a button, just small or big. What would you want to see different? And it doesn't have to be about Dreamforce, it could just be about your experience and might be like I'll fly into Oakland instead of SFO next time, like whatever.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, just great question. Just quick reaction to Vanessa's feedback and comments. Completely agree, I think you get out of the ecosystem what you put in and I think, from a leadership perspective, that authenticity and those genuine connections are really what a lot of us are seeking, right? I think Salesforce sometimes needs to kind of cut through the marketing fluff and just get to the brass tacks of these types of sessions and what it's for. But remember, dreamforce is a big buzz kind of marketing event in a lot of ways, so sometimes it's hard to escape it when you're in Dreamforce Park or around the area. Let's see, I think magic wand, it's a great. It's a great question.
Brandon Stein:Something funny happened on the expo floor. I don't know if anyone saw. There's a Rover kind of robot trying on passing out issues of time magazine. So the robot and you stop it or tap it at its little lid lifts up and you can take out a Time magazine and someone yells across the floor which I found pretty funny right Like hey, there's a reason, you know, benioff owns Time magazine, so feel free to take an issue.
Brandon Stein:It was kind of a little bit of a jab on why Time is there, but it was a cool kind of rover, a way to pass out periodicals, and the topic on the cover was AI and transformation in AI. So it talked about a lot of tech objectives and AI topics. So I thought that was just kind of a cool different type of thing, but I just thought the comment in the hallway was funny. So, yeah, but yeah, magic wand, no, love San Francisco. I cannot. Honestly, josh, we toyed with this idea when I was at Salesforce and I've heard rumors about if San Francisco doesn't embrace the conference and kind of clean up its act, it Benioff, I think, at one point threatened away from San Francisco. But I just I cannot imagine the conference taking place in Vegas or anywhere else. I just, yeah, man, I can't imagine it being the same.
Josh Matthews:I can't imagine it. I got into this with Fred a little bit on on banking, on disruption Cause his number one thing was like yeah, move it out of San Francisco. And I'm like okay, but where he's like Vegas, I was like okay, can you walk one block away from the conference center and be at Fong's or something like that? Can you be at this great steakhouse? Can Salesforce Ben rent out this restaurant for three days? What about Sir Conte? Can they like?
Josh Matthews:It's like no, you're going to be sweating and huffing it a mile. There's no way you can hit all the sessions inside and have these breakout events, which I think I mean that's my favorite part, right Is the these opportunities to connect, have some food, break bread, have a drink, if you want, and get to catch up. I mean I get to know my clients so much better when I go. I run into them at the cigar dig. I run. I run into them at, you know, at the Grand or like wherever these you know, or at the W or like wherever people are. So I don't, I can't imagine a city that can offer that kind of landscape of Moscone, plus all of the ancillary restaurants you know in San Francisco and hotels and walkable and all of this.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. Yeah Well, let's talk about secret agent force, let's talk about it. That was the big announcement agent force. I felt lucky to actually get into the keynote this year. I always late or doing something the other year, so I was happy to get down there and, just by a show of hands, live audience here who here has heard of agent force has looked at it as, maybe watched the keynote or, you know, went to dream force and got to actually play with it a little bit. Just a quick, some purple hearts here are raised hands. Okay, we've got one. Two, all right, okay, two. I know it's more than that. I know for a fact it's more than that. Maybe you're driving right, maybe you're like changing a diaper right now, I don't know. But I don't think I'm the greatest person to talk about agent force because I don't work in a technical way with Salesforce and with Salesforce products. So I've got a hand up from Mr Reid. Reid, do you want to give us the rundown on AgentForce? Go ahead.
Josh Matthews:Well, that was just my hand up from saying yes, I heard oh okay, Well, you got to pull it down then, so okay.
Reed Marquand:I will say, you know I found it very, you know, compelling and the possibilities. I think about all the. You know I think everyone has mixed emotions about these sort of things, about whether replace folks or augment folks, whether replace folks or augment folks. And you know I'd say the answer is yes.
Reed Marquand:But one thing I've been thinking about writing an article about this is what some glazed over or you know they said it, the loud part, soft was that in order to leverage it, you had to have a really solid foundation to build on. It says, oh, you can use your flow and you can use your Apex and all this stuff. I was like, if it's extremely well built and your system is up to snuff. And so I think what was kind of glazed over is oh, yes, how easy it is, but it's because you have done a lot of hard work to create such an environment that can leverage it. I'm sure there are people out there that says, oh, I'll just fire off this group of people and agent force will do it for me and they're not going to have a rude awakening there. But that's kind of where I'm at with my Okay.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, and look, it doesn't matter what it is like bad data, bad output, right, it's just how it goes. So, yeah, people need to invest in their teams, right, to have good data, and especially these small companies, because I promise you, I know for a fact because they call me and they're stressing and they're nervous and they've got a problem and it's got to be fixed tomorrow and they don't have any staff to do it. It's like, okay, so you know you got to stay on top of your orgs, right, make it run well, invest, get some consultants, get someone to train the team, get someone to write some good flows. Like you know, even if you're little, you can do that. Every company can. No company can afford not to have that stuff working for them. And I hear all the time particularly with the small companies, but sometimes the big ones like, yeah, we spent all this money on sales for us, but you know it's not really being used and I know it's more powerful than what we're using it for and people aren't training. It's like, well, you are short. One to two people on your staff. That's your problem, right, if you had a really good admin who could train or a good BA to figure out if your thing was even set up accurately.
Josh Matthews:I don't know what. You know, low cost. Oh, I lost my job and now I'm at an SI partner, you know, suddenly you know three months later, but maybe not particularly skilled, you know who did your implementation. It's like you got to unravel this stuff and you got to do it. But what I want to do now, because I don't want to mess it up I'm going to share a few points about what agent force is for our audience. Who's listening? Maybe this is the first time that they've heard it or that you've heard of what agent force is, so I'm just going to read it. I'm going to try not to sound like a robot. I am going to put on my glasses. I lost my nice glasses on my way to go see Brandon for breakfast. That's a true story.
Brandon Stein:Okay, check with the Waymo, maybe the Waymo grabbed it.
Josh Matthews:It wasn't the Waymo baby. No, it's what happens when you're wearing a sport coat you put your glasses in the breast pocket and then you get hot and then you fold your jacket over your arm. That's a very fast way to lose glasses, because it just slips right out. Okay, agent Force is Salesforce's latest AI innovation, designed to transform how businesses interact with AI. Here are the key points. So autonomous AI agents.
Josh Matthews:Agentforce is a suite of autonomous AI agents. They can analyze data, they can make decisions, they can execute actions without human intervention, and the idea here is to automate complex tasks across various business functions, like sales, marketing, customer service, what have you? So they can handle a lot of tasks, such as answering customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, optimizing marketing campaigns. It integrates with Salesforce and tools like Data Cloud, so it's actionable. It's customizable. It's customizable Businesses can build, customize and deploy their own agents using really low-code tools like Agent Builder.
Josh Matthews:Mark and the team showed us how to do that. I think it was the fellow from SACS showed us how to do that on the keynote we had a discussion the other day. It's like did they just build their own AI brain or did they, you know, work with open AI or like like you know, how did they build this? I don't know. I still don't know, but Atlas is the reasoning engine. One of the things Mark said is that the the new AI has 30% fewer hallucinations, which is great. The new AI has 30% fewer hallucinations, which is great. So I don't know about you, but when I'm working on some of my AI stuff, it's like how did you come up with that man? Come on Like stop that.
Josh Matthews:And then here's another thing Salesforce established an agent-forced partner network, so that allows customers to deploy pre-built agents from partners like AWS, google, ibm and others. So I think that's great and it's available, it's going to be built in and I think it's pretty awesome. So that's what it is. If you've got any questions about that, I strongly recommend you go to Salesforce and read all about it, watch some videos. You can go to Perplexity and read exactly the same thing that I pulled up when I typed in tell me about Agent Force. And this is what I got. That's what I read to you. Now, this is the career show, and so we've got to bring it down to careers at some point. I think 45 minutes into the program is probably the right time to do that. What do you guys think?
Vanessa Grant:Let's do it?
Josh Matthews:Should we do it? Should we talk about careers? Okay, so the big question here is how is agent force going to impact the Salesforce ecosystem, the people inside the ecosystem, and how is it going to impact careers? You know, you know across the businesses that are using, using the product. So I've got my own thoughts, but if I give them first, you guys will be like yeah, what he said, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, so go ahead, let's hear from you, brandon, what's your take on how agent force may or may not impact careers within the ecosystem?
Brandon Stein:Yeah, so I came back from San Francisco and I've spent a handful of days with three or four of our strategic clients and it's interesting, right. It certainly, reid, I think, mentioned this a bit, and you did too, josh. It is a product of many products, meaning if you are locked in the Salesforce ecosystem right, we used to have this term called single cloud or multi-cloud. Single cloud is usually one product with Salesforce. Term called single cloud or multi-cloud, single cloud is usually one product with Salesforce, multi-cloud is two or more.
Brandon Stein:This is a solution that you have to have, I believe, data cloud as an underlying foundation, along with a lot of those other flows and processes in sales service marketing. So it is a multi-cloud product of product, meaning you are locked in the ecosystem and you are now orchestrating agent force. So I think it is for those more advanced, mature orgs. When it comes to the client base, I do think there are some easy to use configuration tools. You don't have to be a techie. There's some config and drag and drop capabilities that looks at themes to orchestrate a lot of these tasks, like there's some kind of easy to use orchestration around it.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, so I try to be as low code as possible on it, correct, there's a tremendous amount of code that's in there. But what you see and what's manifested on the business users and or the admin end is low code. Right, you're configuring, dragging and dropping, but underlying those components is a lot of code. So I think it's well marketed, well positioned. It comes out, I think, in GA in the next month. It'll be, I think, more advanced. I think it'll require customers that are orchestrated in a fairly oiled way today and then kind of be on the cutting edge of what organizations want to do with those complex orgs and kind of advance into this agent force platform. So but I think it's here to stay. I don't think it's a flash in the pan, I don't think it's like genie or some of these previous announcements that were a little bit more buzzy, oh my.
Josh Matthews:God, genie Gross. Yeah, yeah it. It feels real, it feels real and I don't know if it was you or Reed that said like yeah, like yes, is it going to cost some people jobs and is it going to help companies and help jobs, and it's like yes, right, vanessa, what do you think?
Vanessa Grant:I think this is one of those. You know, where were you when I hit your business type deals, just like when Internet happened. I feel kind of old since the Internet happened. But yeah, we have to evolve. I mean, salesforce is whether we want to or not. I think there was a lot of resistance initially. I think there is still a lot of resistance. So Salesforce is trying to find ways. Okay, well, your data's kind of a mess. Well, we have data cloud and ways that you can, you know, put together all this disjointed data so that your AI does work better, so that you can leverage AI. And then also skilling people up so that people are going to start bringing in those ideas to their organizations. Whether you want to or not, everybody's on this ride together and I think there's going to be a lot more of a shift from just jobs are going to change because we have to leverage AI in order to do our jobs more productively.
Josh Matthews:Well, yeah, and to compete, Right, I mean that's the thing we're all like. There's so many gold coins in the world, right, a lot of people, and everybody's trying to get something from the same pile. It might might move around, change hands really fast, and that's generally good for everybody, but if it doesn't like you're trying, you're trying to get your gold and you've got to be on this. I mean, we've been talking about this for two years, right? Do you remember? I want to say it was like a year and a half ago and we had david giller on and he was talking about you know, it was like the chat gpt episode and talking about everything that that's gone on. Well, I sat down with him at New York world tour.
Vanessa Grant:That was such a great conversation.
Josh Matthews:It was such a great conversation and he's like, yeah, nevermind any of that other stuff. Like it's moving so fast, right, it's moving so fast, and you've got to get on the train. And really it's like if all that people did was just like can we just? You know, it's like piano Brandon's an accomplished pianist. You know you could spend 20 minutes on AI for two weeks, 20 minutes a day. You'll be way ahead of the curve. Like if that's all you did, just watch some YouTube videos.
Brandon Stein:I will add this is years and years in the making to what you guys are pointing to, and I think Reid has his hand up so we'll turn to him in a second. But I did draw an interesting parallel to Brett Taylor, the former brokerage to Benioff, who went out on his own to start Sierra, a large language model AI chat experience or bot experience. So you have to think about the genesis of this product roadmap from Salesforce. This was probably years in the making, I believe under Brett right, he went out on his own to start this. But if this was where Salesforce was headed natively with its solution set, ai driven experiences and automation is certainly the future, and now Salesforce is very well in that space and competing with tons of other players in that space. So this is years in the making. So this is just the manifestation of it, it's true.
Josh Matthews:And think about this. Everyone, pick up your phone. I'm holding my iPhone 15 Pro Max right and now remember your first iPod. Like agent force is like the first iPod. Like this stuff's just going to get bigger and blow up. It's going to change the way people work. It already is. It's going to change it so much more than we've ever even imagined I can't even imagine it Right, cause sometimes I'm not in the future. It's like, ooh, that's scary, but you know it's going to change so much. So when you, when we're looking at the last couple of years, it's like you know, whatever the first iPhone that came out, you know. Or when, when you know 56 K dial up right, it's like that was a game changer and then you got high speed and oh, then you got fiber. All right, read it to you, buddy, go for it.
Reed Marquand:Well, I think your initial question was about how this is going to change things for the admins or the people developing and just careers in general.
Josh Matthews:I want to keep it broad. It's the ecosystem. You can talk about the ecosystem or just in general.
Reed Marquand:Yeah, so for the last two days I've been in on the what do they call them? The virtual workshops, post-dreamforce. We had agent force, prompt builder, and then I forget what the next one is tomorrow. But yeah, I'm going to say you better get on board, someone's going to eat your lunch, someone else is going to use it and is going to eat your lunch. You said 20 minutes a day.
Reed Marquand:I think that's an excellent start and should probably bump that up as I'm playing with this and I'm building here I think Brandon kind of mentioned it's kind of where things have been going and it feels familiar. The interface you're building in you know it's in the UI, it's prompt builder is a lot looking like the flow builder or some of the others. When I first saw it, I saw this prompt interface. I said that's a lightning email template on steroids forth and you're building kind of these templates that you could have done years ago. But then there's the brains, if you will, and I don't want to make anyone think that AI right now general AI, but it shows some smarts. It can certainly fool a high school student if you will high school level education into thinking that there's a real person building that and, ultimately, love or hate AI. I think it's to the point where it's.
Reed Marquand:How do I say this? It's a tool that you're going to need to use one way or another. It is going to speed up your life. Do I think it's going to take some jobs? Yes. Do I think it's going to build some? Yes, but I think you and your own person, wherever you are in your level or past, bring it back to the career here. Just life in general. Like all these tools in our pocket, as you mentioned, it speeds up. I've been using perplexity myself and things that I never would have searched for, never would have bothered with in a conversational way with the likes of Siri or any of these others. Now I'm like okay, I'm going to ask it and it's going to give me a reasonable synopsis of what I'm interested in. So, yeah, I mean, I could probably go on and on.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, no, thank you, reed. That's really good. That's really good input, and I agree with you. You know around the job, so I'm going to share my perspective on this. Customer service pros Watch out. Okay, ai is coming for your job and it's going to probably win. Just so you know. That doesn't mean tier three or tier four is in trouble, all right, but if this stuff can be built and invested in, I'm telling you there are thousands and thousands of people in India and in the Philippines, you know, and other places here in the United States that are not going to have a job as a customer service rep anymore. It's going to go away. I don't think it's going to be gone in 24 months and I don't think it's going to be gone for everybody, but at least from the demo that they showed with Saks, I mean, if they can get 80% close to that kind of an experience, you're going to retain so many more customers, right?
Josh Matthews:Because people hate calling support, because it's a pain in the neck. You know that you're being recorded. You know that you can't swear or they'll hang up on you, right, seinfeld? It's just, it's a thing, and you can't get your answer. You can get your answers faster and there's no way. And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's waiting. I hate waiting. I hate waiting in line. I just absolutely it's my, it's my. I don't know what you call it, it's my bad thing, I'm just. If I could jump in here, josh.
Reed Marquand:Yeah, go ahead. I sit here and I you know I've worked enough, helped set up enough call centers and other things. I think what you're getting at there is I know that from my call center experience that there's like a rep that's working four or five different conversations. That's how they work chat right, because they know that you as a customer are going to have to go fumble and find your account number and all this stuff. So they toggle between multiple chats. So I know that in my experience. So I give a little more leeway when I'm on a chat.
Reed Marquand:I don't become a Karen, if you will. No offense to the Karens out there but I know that they're bouncing between conversations and lose context. Right, they pasted in the window something that was meant for someone else. But I think what you're getting there with the speed is yes, sometimes you click this and you think, oh, the prompt took 4.25 seconds, good Lord. You're comparing that to a CSR that's in four different conversations and they're not going to see yours for a minute and you're going to forget that you're even in that chat, yeah, or five minutes.
Josh Matthews:I mean, I just went through this with I forget what product it was the other day one of those platforms, some platform. So, yeah, like, watch out, that's not the career to invest in. It's great if you're making the jump from the gas station to the customer service and now you're going to go get an office job you know what I mean like you can do that, steven, you did customer support, I think, for a little while, and tech stuff, um, back in the day. So nothing wrong with the job, it's just it's it's repetitive, um, and predictable. And if something's repetitive and predictable, you can automate that right. So I would watch out there.
Josh Matthews:I think that we're going to have to be paying attention to marketing, right? Marketing is already changing, guys. The life of a marketing initiative seems to be collapsing much faster. And I'll give you an example. I used this the other day on Fred's show. You an example. I used this the other day on Fred's show.
Josh Matthews:But you know, I get I don't know 12 to 15 emails a day that say Josh comma. Quick question Could you use six to eight more clients a month? Right, they all are saying the same thing they're getting the same thing Cause they all asked the same AI. You know, large language LML what do you call it? Large language LLM? They all ask GPT or perplexity or whatever. Like, hey, I'm a marketer, I need to sell this shit and you know I need to. I want a series of you know five long tail email string. This is what I'm trying to do. Give me the very best one and it's going to come out. Josh, comma, quick question. And so it doesn't take but a couple months of seeing this stuff fall through to see it go from like, oh yeah, that's a good idea, that, hey, that's a good subject line, and now you're seeing it multiple times a day. What was that? Three months Now, everybody's doing it. And then how do you get AI off of that? It's almost like it gets a perseveration right. It's like this idea that this is the right message gets not just will knock around in AI's brain, you know, forever, and so you keep getting the same garbage out. So I'd be pay attention to that.
Josh Matthews:I think, with products like Jasper and, of course, gbt and some of the you know, claude, and like some of these other products, just marketers in general are are you know you can crank out a podcast. You can crank out a podcast. I forget what it was called. My friend sent it to me Eric who's on the show with me and Fred talks about this and he tried it out. It's some new Google thing, google something and he, you know, put in a few prompts and dropped in a bit of information, turned that into a blog, took the blog, dropped it into this other product, recorded his voice a bunch of times and now there's a podcast of someone having a conversation in this podcast and he didn't have to say anything and it took like I don't know 18 minutes or something, or 10 minutes, and now he's got a 20-minute podcast. It's just all produced by AI with some inputs. So we're going to see that more and more and it's kind of crazy.
Josh Matthews:So careful marketing. You know someone's like oh, I want to get into marketing. So what kind? Well, what are you going to do? Oh, you want to do copyright and like no, like I would be like don't do it, don't do it. I mean, if it's your dream to write copy, then go for it. But you might be. You know that that job might be similar to like trying to get work as an actor in LA, you know like some people get to do it, but not most people, so I'd be careful of that.
Josh Matthews:Let's talk about the ecosystem Now. I asked a lot of people and I'm hoping that I can produce another podcast from my interviews at Zoe cocktail on on Howard, just just down the road from the event, and I got a chance to ask a lot of smart people a couple of the same questions. So I'm going to put that together and we'll be exploring this a little bit more. But I don't think that there's going to be an immediate impact on the ecosystem. Okay, as far as like admins, like fewer admins, certainly right now we already know that there are. You know there are a lot of admins and not as much demand as there was one or two years ago. In fact, it's very low compared to two years ago. So I don't think it's going to affect too many folks. I really think it's going to affect the others.
Josh Matthews:Right, the marketing, potentially sales Like it's going to be very good at sales for small ticket retail type items or even maybe small subscription things. But you know, if you're selling something that's 20, $30,000, and you're not talking to a real person, good luck. I don't think it's going to penetrate that market, but it may help. It may qualify leads right, or it may warm people up to penetrate that market, but it may help. It may qualify leads right, or it may warm people up to the idea to buy your product or service. So there's changes coming, but where they exist, it's going to be a different rate, a different pace. Right Banking, I already know, is way slower. On AI, it's way slower. Right Versus somebody who's trying to sell t-shirts or whatever. Okay, that's all I had to say about that. What do you guys think? Vanessa?
Josh Matthews:sorry, I couldn't find my mute button oh okay, I was like oh my god, I just got ghosted on my own show.
Vanessa Grant:That's weird I mean, I agree with everything you said. We're talking about the it's. I don't think it's going to change admins like immediately. I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, businesses that run Salesforce need to clean up their data first. That's the thing that I think we get all excited about, all the bells and whistles, but it comes down to they need governance first so that it doesn't go haywire, and that they need to clean up their data and we're not focusing on that enough and that's why it's going to take some time. But it will get there, because the companies that do clean up their data, that want to get ahead and are going to start bringing in those business analysts.
Vanessa Grant:I was talking about Data Cloud a little while back with Ian Gotts. I did a panel for Elements recently because I just passed my Data Cloud cert and like 90% of implementing data cloud is going to be using business analysis, because you have to be able to understand how your data is supposed to work. You know you need to ask the right questions so that you can architect it properly. 90% of that is that, and then 10% is the actual implementation. The actual implementation, and so I almost feel like maybe it is going to be the era, finally, of the business analysts, or like the folks you know, the team soft skills, who can craft you know the things well, that can craft the prompts that we need, that can think through strategically like the strategizing portion of it, I think, is going to be more and more valuable as we start moving more and more into this era.
Josh Matthews:That's a soundbite right there, vanessa. That's good, that's really good stuff, brandon.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, I'm a firm believer that it is another solution in the toolkit. I don't think it's going to replace jobs or underline responsibilities. I think the expectations out of a business analyst or an admin are just that much more elevated now. Right, the expectation that you're a digital athlete, that you can know enough about all these solutions to connect the dots, and so you don't have to be an expert and certified tomorrow, and Asian force and AI and everything that is the AI platform. But you need to know, to Vanessa's point, how you would go about it. How would you tackle it, what would you look at? What type of research would you do? How would you think about data governance? And so I think it's just another tool in the toolkit to become a digital athlete, and I think customers and partners expect that, especially as their tech stack.
Brandon Stein:You know, when Salesforce started 20, 25 years ago, one, a single cloud or multi-cloud customer took many years to kind of leg into those multiple products. But now you're seeing tech stacks at organizations that are 60, 70, 80, 100% Salesforce right, so that that means they're on five, six, seven, eight, 12, 20 different applications all within Salesforce. So the ability to be that athlete that can connect the dots is gone are the days of just a general admin that's doing password resets and building reports. But you have to be, to Vanessa's point, a business analyst on top of an admin with some light development skills, whether that's declarative or a little bit of code. But the expectation, I think, is that you can navigate this ecosystem and you can approach these different topics and research them and then provide readouts back to your clients, your executives, your team. So I think this is going to challenge folks to kind of stay on top of the curve.
Josh Matthews:I like it. You know, I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a young guy who has an AI startup and their idea is managed services. It's they build. They have built some sort of AI machine that acts like an admin, and so what they would do is they have a live person interfacing with the client and then that person takes direction, connects their system to the customers, they put the inputs in and then the AI admin does the rest. So what might take someone a week, it can do in a day. It's going to be faster.
Josh Matthews:I think that there's a lot of problems with it, but you know that probably haven't been fleshed out yet, but that's coming too right. That is not what agent force is designed to do. Agent force is not to replace an admin, but there are people out there right now with fields and fields of code monkeys cranking out products that are actually designed to do just that Right, and I always felt like at some point the admin in the way that we have known it traditionally, say up until about two or three years ago. Not this badass BA, slash consultant, slash admin, super admin, but in the terms of just like yep, I'm the admin. Just like going back to old sysadmin days in the early 2000s. That position would at some point be commoditized by AI and I think it's starting to happen. I don't know how fast it's going to happen and I'm not sure that it's going to affect a ton of people, but if it takes less than 10% or 15% of the market, I'd be shocked. You know it's going to have some kind of an effect.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, and I think the expectation to do more with less applies to us in Salesforce roles, as Salesforce consultants or Salesforce BAs or architects, is you have to know enough, on the surface, of all of these different solutions to be valuable and dangerous.
Brandon Stein:but you don't need to be an expert. You don't need to be certified and have Reid's experience. You know implementing contact centers, you know a dozen times through. But you need to know enough about these solutions and products to be agile and an athlete right, because the ability to be broad but also have some level of specialization it's there right. And when you get hired or you're interviewing customers or they're looking for that specialist or they're looking for that general athlete right. So you can't just be a generic. You know functional admin anymore right, for better or for worse.
Vanessa Grant:So can I? So, brandon, I see that you're like a digital transformation guy and I actually really like your like digital athlete. You know it's like not even like Salesforce specific. So, this being a career show where, besides AI because I think it's obvious that certainly at some point everybody is going to have to incorporate AI as part of their learning journey in their careers learning journey in their careers as far as digital transformation goes, because I know a lot of people, especially with the layoffs that have happened and the market the way that it's evolving what are some other areas outside of Salesforce that you think would be beneficial for folks looking to move up in their careers?
Brandon Stein:Yeah, that's a great question. I use that term, digital athlete. I've used it for years to kind of think about my own experience. But even at these blue chip you know, mckinsey, bcg, bain worlds, where they're wanting that relevance across the tech stack, it's the functional use case relevance, vanessa. So you're seeing every function, whether it's finance, marketing, sales, service is becoming productized or digital, right.
Brandon Stein:So if you have relevance in a single function, like customer service or marketing, I would challenge you to find an adjacent function, right. If you're a marketer and there's a lot of scrutiny on marketing, how do you justify ROI? How do you value that spend? Maybe finance is the adjacency? I would just challenge you to find an adjacent function whether it's ops, finance, hr, you name it and just get relevant from a use case perspective in that adjacent function. So then you're no longer just a marketer, right, but you're a marketer that can connect the dots to finance and articulate the ROI of why we should invest in this marketing campaign, for instance, just to give an example.
Brandon Stein:So I think when I use the word digital athlete, it's the functional and use case relevance around technology, but not being so individually siloed within a function, because I think when companies are hiring. Today you're seeing just a blurring and Josh sees more of this than I do, but at least on the consulting side and in my experience you're seeing a blurring of the lines across functions. We want a marketer, but they can also do sales and service automation, or we want a customer service guy that also can speak to finance on ROI right. So you're seeing this blurring of the functional silos and I think if you can be that dot connector and understand how what you do in your role impacts the adjacent functions, that's where you start to become really valuable and that's where you start to become that digital athlete that I was speaking about. So that's just some advice and maybe filtered or unfiltered, where I would kind of think about your career. If you're in a functional, single, functional role today, love that. Hopefully that was helpful.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, of course it's helpful and I love that term too. I don't know if you coined it or not, but if you did, you know you should go get a trademark buddy, because that's a very cool term. We're going to be wrapping the show up in just a little bit, but everyone stick around, because what I want to ask Brandon now it's a little bit more about Brandon and general career, much like the question Vanessa just asked. So, brandon, you've had this storied career and in my eyes, you're still young. You know you're in the meat of your work days, but you're still young. You've accomplished an awful lot in your work life so far. If there is one or two bits of advice or maybe moments where you were faced with critical decisions that you had to make and you made the right ones, maybe you could just share what your experience was like. Or maybe the best piece of advice you ever got as far as career, whatever. That might be Kind of curious. Yeah, it's interesting because you hear this got as far as career, whatever. That might be.
Brandon Stein:Kind of curious. Yeah, it's interesting because you hear this term early in your career and I started at Deloitte Consulting, a blue chip consultancy, and they teach you the value of your network and you are starting your personal and professional brand at a big four. You don't start to see the value of those relationships in that network until you start to progress in your career and it starts to become a little bit more who you know than what you know, and so that becomes more real with each job transition or each company. So I would say, just nurture that network and spend time reconnecting and connecting with former colleagues, friends, mentors, etc. And then the other thing that I've developed over the last decade is a mentorship or just trusted guidance counselor, sounding board, someone that's unfiltered, that I trust, almost like a brother or a father that is going to tell me the truth and sort of be my gut check when I'm thinking of this role, or I have this opportunity, or hey, my startup's not going well. Should I give up? I think, having that trusted circle of advisors and it can be two, three, four people it doesn't have to be a lot that you sort of look up to and keep. You give to it as much as you receive from it. I think that will go such a long way in your career and sort of be that sanity check that you're looking for. And then I'll leave.
Brandon Stein:The last piece of advice, josh and I think you know this about me is anytime you can open up a career door for someone, whether it's an opportunity, or just introducing them to Josh Matthews, or just getting their resume to the recruiter, or just introducing them to a friend who you know is hiring, even if it doesn't directly lead to a job next week or next month, people will always remember when you've opened up a career door for them, and it is something that is life changing, right.
Brandon Stein:It will never be forgotten when you find a career path or career opportunity for someone and they feel like they can never pay you back in any way, shape or form, and so it's something that sticks with people for the rest of their lives, and so I think it's one of those powerful kind of secret cheat codes that teaches you, especially in this job market that's highly transient and highly fickle and kind of all over the place, right, josh, especially in our ecosystem, if you can just do that and open up that one door for someone, it'll pay dividends for years and years down the road in ways that you least expected it right. There's situations and experiences I almost completely forgot about and 10, 15 years later come full circle and say, hey, brandon, remember when that and kind of my memory and it's sort of like tickles my heart and it makes me think about you know, hey, you really do get out of this ecosystem what you put into it.
Josh Matthews:So just don't forget about putting in that effort and time to help others that are looking magnificent. I mean it's, that is wonderful. I just want to like echo that a thousand times. It is the most powerful thing that you can do. Look, helping someone, helping someone, whatever it is right, like John. We were hanging out with John. My son, my youngest, goes to University of Tampa and they all just evacuate, right, because of this storm that's coming, and I'm standing there talking to John and John's like brother, I'm five minutes away from there, he needs anything. I'm five minutes away like whatever you need, cause I'm like three hours away, right, he's anything. I'm five minutes away like whatever you need because I'm like three hours away, right, he's like whatever you need, I'll be there like to offer that. People don't offer that and not mean it. Yeah, people who wouldn't mean it would never, ever say that. And people who say that I mean you think I'll ever forget that about john. There's no way now. That's not a career door, that's looking after my kid. It's like I can feel more secure that if someone needs to go help him out of a jam or whatever like that, john's there and I trust John. But it's the same idea you open up a door for someone's career.
Josh Matthews:I remember I probably told this story before there was. What was it? It was like you know someone's, you know friend's husband. He just left the military. He was a captain no-transcript, he didn't like me talking to him like that. I mean, he'd been a captain, probably got a lot of respect for a lot of years in the military right and he didn't like that, thought it was trivial. Well, I found this out. It was three years later.
Josh Matthews:I ran into him at some party and he comes up to me and he's like dude, do you remember meeting me? I was like yeah, buddy. He's like do you remember how you told me to take my coat off? I'm like yeah, he's like I was so annoyed with you, I didn't like you at all, he just said it. He said then he went and became a state trooper and he was with his group of whatever 20 recruits and he was the only one who went into this one part of the interview where he took his coat off. He was the only one who took his coat off for this one interview and they looked at him and just said, nope, you're good, you're fine, fine. And everybody else had to go through another hour of questions and he said he asked him he's like, well, what's the deal? He's like, you took your coat off, you got comfortable, you got real. So he you know he's telling me this at a party of like something that annoyed him three years ago, that I just happened to say whatever, I'm just trying to help the guy out Like not a big deal, but it made a big difference for him. He would have been a state trooper anyway without Josh Matthews. I know that, okay, it would have been fine, but it just made him feel better and it separated him out of the crowd and probably in the eyes of those folks too, and that can have impacts that last in a career like that. So I'm with you, man, and I love that advice. I'm so glad we had you on the show today. I'm so glad I got to spend time with you at Dreamforce. So glad I got to spend time with Vanessa, with our clients, with our prospects.
Josh Matthews:Thank you everybody, anyone who's listening to this show, who came by and said hi to Vanessa or gave her a pat on the back or went to one of her sessions. Thank you, anyone who you know, shouted my name or whatever, saw me and gave a wave and said, hey, keep it up. I can't even tell you, like, what that means, cause we, you know people don't say that on the show and you know, once in a while we get a like on the podcast and that's nice. But hearing it in person from a real person, gosh, that may makes my day and I'm going to do a special shout out.
Josh Matthews:Whoever it was and you might be listening whoever it was that hollered out to me, walking past me at the Pink concert. I thought that was really cool man that made my night. The concert I wasn't too into, but that made my night and I'm glad I went, if only for that. So thank you very much. It made me feel good for the rest of the night. Any last parting words here, vanessa, before we peel off away from Agent Force and Dreamforce and other forces.
Vanessa Grant:Just to echo what you and Brandon were talking about, I happen to have a 12-minute recording on my phone from when a dear friend named Josh Matthews helped me sort through some career stuff last week. So thank you, josh, for being part of my crowdsourcing of good judgment when it comes to careers. You know, I think that is super important. Thank you, You're welcome.
Josh Matthews:You're welcome, Brandon. Any final shout-outs to the DF crew who might be listening to this.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, I just really enjoyed finally, after so many years, josh, joining you on the Infamous podcast, and it was so great to reconnect with you and so many other friends and colleagues at Dreamforce, happy to be a resource and a sounding board for anyone. At any time, feel free to contact me. I'm sure Josh will tweet out or post contact information, but love doing this, would love to do it again and, josh, whatever I can do to support your efforts and ecosystem, please let me know.
Josh Matthews:Thanks so much, brandon, and thank you, too, reed, for coming on the show. We're going to have to talk man, because I just registered for Life Sciences Dreaming up in Philly. I'll be there the 9th through the 11th. I'm going to be on a plane during this show, so we're going to have to figure out what to do. I'll also be at Florida Dreamin' next week in Clearwater. I think that's from the 5th through the 7th, or I don't even know what the dates are. I'd have to look here. Yeah, it's the second through the fourth, so I'll be at Florida Dreamin.
Josh Matthews:If you'd like to come to what is going to be a live recording of this podcast, we might have it as an augmented episode, an additional episode, within October, but I'm going to be recording live AMA Salesforce career show from Florida Dreamin on Friday morning. So if you're in the area, you want to swing by. If you're traveling to Florida for the event, I promise you this is a great time to hang out with me and some other smart folks. I know I just accidentally called myself smart. Okay, I am a little bit, but not too much. I'm not the smartest guy I know for sure, definitely not, but me and some people who can help you with your career or help you with your team or help you with your hiring or just help get your head on straight, that thing right. Because, let's face it, this has been a challenging year in the ecosystem for careers. Can we all agree on that? Let's see a show of hearts real quick. Yeah, look, salesforce Ben. He's got a new, you know world report on the state of the ecosystem. 10 K advisors you can find their report. You can go to 10 K viewcom. They've got a new report. They've got their annual salary and compensation report and what we're seeing is about 80% down. Demand is down about 80% from like two years ago. Okay, that's what's up, that's what's up. That doesn't mean that there isn't hidden demand. Maybe, you know, they just say, hey look, we can hire people, but we can't afford to advertise on Indeed or we can't afford to advertise on LinkedIn or keep it on the DL, or I only want to talk to people that you already know. Like, we don't know what that, what the real number is. We're still in business, so it's not can't be that bad, right? So you know it can't be that bad, but it's not what it was and it never will be right.
Josh Matthews:That post-COVID bump that everyone rode for a little while. That's over. We might see something like that in 15 or 20 years, I don't know. I don't expect it in the next 10. I definitely don't expect it in the next 10 unless something crazy happens. So if you're brand new, explore a lot of different options. It's one of the things that Ben McCarthy says at Salesforce. Ben, we got to hang out for a little bit this past week. He's such a good guy and I really love this article about. Should you even get into the ecosystem right now? I think it's a very good blog. Just go to sfbencom and check it out.
Vanessa Grant:One quick little DF24 funny thing. So Salesforce Ben McCarthy actually DJ'd at this big party, the club thing that they had the DJ before. That was not that great and probably the best line I heard all of Dreamforce was. We were like man, when is DJ Salesforce Ben going to get on? Because right now this particular DJ is like the soundtrack to my last Salesforce project and as a salesperson that was my favorite line of Dreamforce I think right there it was so bad.
Josh Matthews:That's pretty funny. I wasn't even paying attention. So you were upstairs, Vanessa, and I was downstairs talking to Brandon.
Vanessa Grant:Oh yeah, it was that event. Yeah, it was that event.
Josh Matthews:I'm glad the bad DJ did not distract your conversation.
Vanessa Grant:I'm glad the bad DJ did not distract your conversation.
Josh Matthews:I'm glad too, by the way, vanessa can always be found at the highest floor of whatever the event is, because she was. I was trying to find her at pink and she was like way up. I'm like I don't do third tier at concerts. What are you doing up there? And then I guess she was second floor at the bend thing. So, yeah, no, I don't mind stairs, I just don't like the view. So there you go. All right, guys, last couple little housekeeping things. So we've got these events coming up. By the way, brandon, vanessa, reid, if you guys are going to any upcoming events and you want to share where people can meet you in person, go ahead and share right now.
Brandon Stein:I will be at the Dallas Dreamin' in December is the next kind of road event I have. I believe it's December 10th and I'm looking at potentially the Florida Dreamin' event to see John actually Josh.
Josh Matthews:Oh, really. Oh, that'd be so fun.
Brandon Stein:Yeah, I think that's in October, so it should be Florida Dreamin' and Dallas, that's next week. Oh, it's next week. Okay, that's next week, that's next week?
Josh Matthews:Oh, it's next week. Okay, it's next week. Yeah, I might try and get us a boat if we can get there a little early and go on a little boat ride down the road. That'd be kind of fun. Cool, yeah, sweet. No real events for me. I'm going to stay home for a bit. But certainly, if anybody wants to join my Salesforce BA virtual community, we're going to be doing an event on Tuesday, but we're also going to be doing events every month now. So come join. I love it.
Josh Matthews:And if you are a bad ass developer you've got some solutioning chops, you know some a fair amount of solution architecture chops and you're looking for full-time contract, probably six plus months contract, with a very interesting robotics company, then I encourage you to apply. You can find that job at thesalesforcerecruitercom. Forward slash J-O-B, it'll be right there. You can also send reach out to Steven Greger directly. It's Steven with a V-S-T-E-V-E-N at thesalesforcerecruitercom.
Josh Matthews:Please, green cards and citizens only for this. This is not going to be a third-party thing. We really prefer if you're a citizen for this role, based on the nature of the government contracts that they work on. So you probably actually need to be a citizen, possibly green card, and if you live in New York City. If you live in New York City, all the better. If you live in Pittsburgh, that works too, because they've got opportunities at both locations. If you're in neither of them but your east or central time zone, that's fine. We'll talk to you. We'll talk to you and we'll see what's up.
Josh Matthews:We're also on the hunt for a nonprofit consultant or an NPSP consultant. Someone who's probably been around the block a couple times knows what's up, has worked at an SI for at least one or two years. At least one year, no SI, no jobby for you. Okay. So you got to have some actual consulting experience, and this is probably going to be in that like 120, 130, 135 plus bonus kind of range, is our guess. So that is still open as well. So check that out and gosh, what else can I? What else can I share? I guess nothing. So, oh, here we go.
Josh Matthews:Dongson Panon, who was our very first person in the audience, is inviting all of us to the inaugural conference of West Africa Dreamin. I think that's so cool, man, thank you. Thank you for the invite. I'd love to make it. I'm not sure if I can, but I think that's so awesome Way to go, bringing the dreaming events all the way to the dark continent. I love it, my friend. Good for you on organizing that. That's fantastic. Okay, that's it for tonight, guys. Thanks for listening and be sure to like, subscribe, comment, share all that other gobbledygook. But it's a real thing, because it actually helps us to reach more people, and more people nowadays need more help than they did two years ago. So let's do a good thing Like, subscribe, comment all that fun stuff Until next time and read I'll get in touch with you about two weeks from now. We'll figure it out until next time. Bye for now.
