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
AI-Proof Your Salesforce Career: Communication and Leadership Techniques
Discover the secrets to future-proofing your Salesforce career against AI with our special guest, Jon Cline from People First Method. He shares invaluable insights into bridging the gap between technical prowess and successful project outcomes through essential non-technical skills. You won't want to miss our exclusive giveaway of $28,000 in leadership training designed to empower Salesforce professionals across the globe. Plus, Vanessa Grant brings exciting news on Salesforce MVP nominations and what it truly takes to stand out in this rigorous process.
Join us as we explore the intricacies of the Salesforce MVP selection, the importance of geographical diversity, and the need for consistent leadership and diverse contributions. We’ll also spotlight new job opportunities for solution architects and nonprofit-focused consultants, offering a path to growth and career advancement. Our conversation dives into the challenges of adapting to AI advancements and the necessity of setting boundaries in the fast-paced tech world.
Get ready for a deep dive into team dynamics and negotiation strategies that can transform chaos into compliments. Drawing inspiration from People First Method, we unpack techniques that foster a supportive and efficient team environment. Through personal stories and professional insights, we uncover the benefits of A-plus teams and the critical role of communication in reducing drama and enhancing collaboration. This episode promises a wealth of knowledge for any Salesforce professional eager to navigate the complexities of modern work life.
It's very real and it's happening. You know AI is not going to have compassion on you for your prior circumstances in history, right. When I type in things, it doesn't know I was a foster kid and I'm dealing with my own challenges, right. So it's a very good point on our capability of humans that will be unsurpassed.
Speaker 3:And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce Career Show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant. Okay well, welcome everybody to the Salesforce Career Show. We have an absolutely incredible show today because we're going to be giving away $28,000, $28,000 of leadership and communication training. Look, when you've got highly developed leadership and communication skills, it invariably leads to substantially more income. It impacts your team. It impacts your clients in very, very positive ways. One of the things I love about it is it actually protects you from AI encroachment. There are certain qualities about leaders and highly valuable communicators in the Salesforce ecosystem that if you have these skills, you're really future-proofing your own career.
Speaker 3:We're going to be talking to John Klein, founder of People First Method, and giving away 12 free six-month admissions to the next cohort in his leadership and training organization, which is designed 100% specifically for you guys, for the Salesforce professionals in the world. It actually doesn't even matter what country you're in. I know that we're listened to in about 70 or so countries, so as long as you can make the time, you can do it. We'll also be sharing the promo code for how you can be one of those 12 people to win what actually, for each individual, works out to about $2,400 per person. So we're going to be sharing that. So stay tuned for the promo code. It'll be flashing down below a little bit later on into the show.
Speaker 3:We're also going to be sharing with you current openings that we have in the ecosystem, some statistics, some changes in movement that we're seeing in the job market, in Salesforce, and we also have a massive bombshell announcement that Vanessa is going to be sharing. So definitely stay tuned for that. So with that, I'd like to go ahead and introduce my lovely co-host, vanessa Grant, and John Klein, our guest of the day and the individual responsible for dedicating a fortune of education and opportunity to the listeners of our program. So thanks both of you for being on the show today. Vanessa, my understanding is that you've got an announcement related to the MVP program with Salesforce. What's that announcement?
Speaker 2:So a little later than usual. Usually they do this in December, but Salesforce has just opened up MVP nominations and they've also shortened the period of whole section on how you nominate an MVP. So if there's somebody that you admire in the ecosystem, like John Klein or Josh Matthews, you can go onto Salesforce's site, nominate them, say how they've impacted your career and submit that nomination. Then there's going to be from February to April. The nominations are going to go through this big review process. Usually it has to go through like existing MVPs, saying whether they approve or not, also if folks that are already MVPs have to get renewed. And then it looks like it'll be June 2025 when they announce the new class of Salesforce MVPs, but a two-week window to make big decisions for people's lives in June.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and this is a call to action for all of our listeners. I'm definitely going to be nominating Vanessa because let's face it, everybody she's earned it. She has done so much for the community over the last five years. It's absolutely astounding. If you do a little perplexity search on Vanessa, you can even do a little search and say tell me about, give me the top 10 best inspirational quotes from Vanessa Grant, the Salesforce professional, and perplexity will actually just spit it all out. It's accessing our transcripts, it's accessing her sessions that have been posted online and things like that. So she's an absolutely wonderful example of someone who should absolutely be an MVP.
Speaker 3:Now I had a really unique opportunity to talk to someone today who's deeply involved in the MVP ecosystem right the whole setup and I got a little bit of insight. Did you know that some people who are submitting you know getting submitted or getting sponsored? What's the term Nominated, Nominated? Thank you, brain fart. Sometimes some people have 600 people nominating them. That doesn't guarantee that they're necessarily going to get in. It's actually a very complex process and I can tell you that what I learned is that there's really not a lot of favoritism going on. It's an extremely difficult, very in-depth process with many, many layers, and they do an excellent job. The one area I think that they may have missed out on is awarding the MVP to Vanessa Grant. We want to fix that this year and sometimes they'll be like, yes, this person definitely deserves it, but they have to keep the number low, Otherwise it devalues what MVP status is, and sometimes they'll say, look, we really like her, we really like him, let's look at them next year. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think what they look for I mean, besides leadership, it's consistency across years. So, like there have been, I think they've been burned in the past and so they have evolved this process where, like you know, they used to have people that you know would just be really active for a year, get MVP and then, like, fall off the face of the earth and say, hey, I'm an MVP, so they want to avoid that. They also want to make sure that they have a diverse group. I mean Salesforce professionals can be in any country. So maybe somebody who starts the first trailhead community group that meets regularly in, like I don't know, algeria or something, might, might have more, more of a of an impact, you know, as far as the MVP program is concerned, than, like you know, whoever does like five things in the United States in a major city. So I think those are the kinds of considerations that also come into play.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So it's a big deal it's happening right now. The window is a little bit shorter than usual. Do we know the specific URL that they can go to? Maybe you can drop that into the comments or into a banner and we can post it in a little bit.
Speaker 3:I do want to cover very quickly a couple key jobs that we're hiring for through the salesforcerecruitercom. Those include look, I've been calling it senior Salesforce consultant. Really it's solution architect. You'd be running a team of three to five people with a strong focus on sales cloud. This is a smaller SI that you'd be joining. And one of the things I really love about this company they are very, very picky, just like this guy right here, so they're very, very picky about who they bring on. You must be able to develop very clean, clear, extensible designs that are going to serve the client and be able to think outside of the box, not just out of the box solutions. So that's one of them.
Speaker 3:We have another role. It's a lead role. It's for a nonprofit SI or it's an SI that focuses on nonprofit. We get a lot of roles from this organization. We've placed approximately one third of their staff or somewhere around there. I just absolutely love them. They're the nicest folks. It's a Midwest company. You're going to find a family atmosphere, very good income and bonuses and wonderful people, and I know that because we placed them All right.
Speaker 3:So here's the URL. Excuse me, I am getting over a little bit of a cold, so if I cough or sound a little scratchy, that's what's going on. But don't worry about me, I'm just fine. So there's the URL. We'll go ahead and leave that up for a little bit.
Speaker 3:Also, coming down the pike is someone who's going to also work for the same nonprofit as I, and that's going to be a little bit more technical. Someone who doesn't mind really like just sitting down for eight hours and getting into the data. So if that sounds like you, you can go ahead and tag me on LinkedIn. Okay, john Klein is visiting with us today and John Klein's a friend and he's got 20 years of experience in the ecosystem. John, maybe you can just share before we talk a little bit more in depth about the contest and before we dive really into our specific topics today, which, by the way, are going to be around how you can get out of chaos, how you can get out of bad commitments and things like that these are a couple of the modules that people will find if they engaged with People First Method. But maybe you could just give us the quick 22nd uh highlight about yourself and what people first method does my pleasure.
Speaker 1:It's great to be with you today. Uh, so this is my 24th year the Salesforce ecosystem. I have 14 certs, including one a user experience from Nielsen Norman. Um, I'm also a Toastmasters fan and I think you know, and I'm a solution architect, so I'm deep in the weeds in the Salesforce world.
Speaker 1:I love just kind of working with people in the trenches and out of that process and working with people over the years, I found that there are significant gaps in how we bring about customer success. That what we find on Trailhead, though it's tremendously beneficial. I was with Salesforce before there was Trailhead. Those are very valuable, but there's a tremendous amount of depth and skill outside of our technical expertise that actually makes the key differences in a project and its success and, in fact, the top three causes for project failure, looking at over 20,000 projects over the last 50, 60 years, are all non-technical in nature. So really what I'm trying to help with is bring about more customer success, more project success for the consultants, admins, product owners, all the roles out there and ultimately help our entire ecosystem raise the bar as it relates to bringing about meaningful digital transformation for businesses today.
Speaker 3:I love it, and can you enlighten our listeners what kind of commitment that might look like to join a cohort with your organization?
Speaker 1:That's a great question and I think it's very important for people to consider this because, unlike Trailhead, where I can go and if I want to grab a super badge I just roll up, I can do that. I can plan an afternoon, a week, whatever it's going to take for me to basically binge that and knock it out. Whether I remember all of the details about what I did is a little bit less important than achieving it and getting the accomplishment. I can always refer back to what I did. When it comes to our own personal habits and our ruts and our evasive maneuvers and the ways that we sometimes respond to conversations or react to accusations, those are a little bit more deep in our lives. Many of these things are habits that we've had since we were kids. They're things that, when conflict arises, I kind of put on this particular type of behavior, and it takes a minute to actually find it and ultimately figure out how we are going to move forward and transform and change that. So because of that, we intentionally slowed down the process. So it's on-demand.
Speaker 1:Courseware is the majority of what we do, and though I might be able to get through the entire thing within, let's say, three to four weeks, we wouldn't be able to kind of marinate and get the benefit of our peers who are learning with us and within that cohort you wouldn't be able to benefit from the coach.
Speaker 1:That's actually kind of learning about you, seeing about your responses in the courseware and tailoring the courseware to you and the cohort. So that's why we essentially look at doing one vignette or lesson per week to help you take the courseware in the beginning process. It let it marinate, figure out. Why do I do that, what am I thinking, what are some other options? And then bring that to our one hour meeting every week, which is the only synchronous portion, and now we can actually talk about that to the benefit of our entire cohort, which is a very small we do no more than 12 people with the coach. And that's the goal, because changing our intangibles, changing those aspects that we've had as habits for the last 15 years. Most people don't even recognize a lot of these things on the conscious level and so we first have to surface them, then we process them and then actually we have the opportunity to change them.
Speaker 3:You know I love all of that, john I you know I was talking. I was chatting with a very close friend of mine recently and we talked quite a bit about his business sometimes mine, but mostly about his business and one of the things that he shared with me is full of great quips, but one of the things he shared is that there are certain people in the world who actually have an addiction, an addiction to low pain work, and think about that for a minute. Do you, someone who does? I do. I talked to two people today who should be earning somewhere between 120 and 150 and they're asking for 90 because the markets got them a little freaked out. We'll talk about the market here in a few minutes. But you know, do you envision that some of those folks are perfect candidates for this kind of education?
Speaker 1:They could be and in my experience I've also seen people like that and you know they have such great potential. You see them, you interact with them and I find that sometimes people whether it's out of a little anxiety, whether it's out of fear they often divert to coping mechanisms and just an acceptance of I just I'm just not good with people, you know. I'm just not good in meetings, you know where there's multiple people, I'm just not good presenting Right. And in my opinion, those are all lies, those are all skills. Just like, if I wanted to get better at baseball, I would just need to understand the mechanics of baseball. Right, there's a swing, there's a pitch. I need to just get better at my hand-eye coordination.
Speaker 1:I can be I'm not going to be Bo Jackson, but I can be better. And I think the same is absolutely true with all of these intangibles and the people who are maybe leaning on those coping mechanisms and saying, that's fine, I'll let somebody else do the leading, I'll let someone else lead the solution design, I'll let someone else do this, and they defer. There's such an opportunity for them to step into that role with greater confidence. It doesn't mean you have to know everything, it just means that you have to step up to your next level, and when you can step up to your next level, it opens up a whole new echelon of kind of growth off of that plateau.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely echelon of kind of growth off of that plateau? Yeah, absolutely. I mean just from my personal experience and I did not have a great cohort to teach me this stuff but certainly I think you know what do they say, that growth. You know growth is where happens when you're in that discomfort zone. You know where things don't feel completely comfortable.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of times in this ecosystem I don't know about particularly, but certainly I've seen it a lot in this ecosystem where people have very self-limiting beliefs. I am not this or I am this. I personally have run into this in the oh, I'm not a content creator, I'm bad at public speaking. I didn't have a cohort, I only had Josh Matthews kind of holding my hand and giving me pep talks before speaking sessions, but massive stage fright. I'm not a solution architect is also another one. I'm not technical enough is another one. And I think once people have these kind of self-limiting beliefs and put themselves into these boxes, they're not leaving that opportunity for growth and so being open to evolving and being open to doing things scared is so important, especially if you want your career to grow, if you want to see where, where, how deep that ocean is as far as your, your talents and your and your skill sets. You don't know what. What you don't know unless you try.
Speaker 3:It's a great point. It is a great point. You know, I had a conversation with someone today, just today, an interview and lovely person really, a wonderful guy, very bright, very capable, smart, deeply experienced. You know, I'd classify him as an A-plus higher, except he might not quite get the plus and it's because he has imposter syndrome. And he said a couple of things that really stood out for me and one of the things that he shared was that he's never really wanted to, you know, push too hard in self-promotion. And what I was getting from him is almost this idea that like to do that would potentially be rude, right, or that to get ahead, there's an idea in some people with imposter syndrome or not, but there's an idea that to get ahead or to promote yourself is somehow stepping on other people to get there.
Speaker 3:It's the same way that some people who don't have a whole lot of they don't have two coins to rub together, might feel negative, just in general, about people who are financially stable or financially successful. It's just a thing Usually it comes from childhood, usually somewhere in there. Thing Usually it comes from childhood, right, usually somewhere in there. That's where it comes from, but it should be washed out because it's a different version of having blinders on, or living by a myth, because it's really a myth, right, not for all communities, but it's an absolute myth. Does your program at all address some of these things that we're talking about?
Speaker 1:It does. And just to speak to the example of imposter syndrome, everybody deals with imposter syndrome and the bottom line is imposter syndrome will be present in all of our lives. Until we prove it to ourselves that we are no longer an imposter, no one can tell us. All they can do is give us the opportunity to step into, and so what the program highlights is one. There's two parts of this. One is the individual, me as I traverse and navigate my own professional world, and there's also how can I create a context and a setting that encourages other people to step up and do the very thing that I need to do. Both of those elements can be done at the same time, and they really start with understanding the impact of culture and values on what it is that we're doing. And that's why we call it the people first method, because, yes, it's about technology, delivery, customer success and we're focused on the Salesforce ecosystem, but in order for that to be successful, we have to be people first, in our posture and in our perspective, and absolutely it helps. And the key here is knowing what I need is very common to other people and what they need, so the more that I can achieve that next level status in my own life, the more I can leave a wake of welcome behind me to others to do the exact same thing. To say. You know what? I still feel like an imposter, for example, when I get into solution design with integrations, but I used to feel that with everything. But now I can data model freely around standard and custom objects, around automations, and I'm working on getting better about web services and integrations.
Speaker 1:Other people can walk and follow the same path and our program starts with that element of understanding the vital role of culture and values and teaching people to essentially put on a new set of people first glasses, to have a different rubric with the way that they see the world and the way that they discern what's happening in those conversations, because the same things that are true for you and for me as salesforce pros are absolutely true in every role inside that business.
Speaker 1:So think about at the table there's people who are present, who are, who don't feel like they should be there, or who have had the business tell them their opinion is not welcome, that their role is not respected, that they're just to be quiet and do the work, and then there's people who are not at the table yet. They're not even invited yet. But they should be People from the warehouse the guy who runs the forklift, the gal who does the shipping and receiving. They're the stakeholders of this project and they're not even present yet. So it's our job as Salesforce pros to create that kind of priority and welcome, so that the right people are at the table at the right time and that they're put in a posture that they're free to be transparent and vulnerable, because ultimately, some of them have already failed at this process.
Speaker 3:You know, john that's. You just said something about half a minute ago. You said you know, we teach them to see, we teach them to see things. Now I some of you might already know I was an art major, painting and drawing and sculpture and things like that which qualified me to be a recruiter. But when you, you know, when you're doing art, when you're drawing life or drawing still life or whatever it is, or land, it doesn't matter what you're drawing. You know, a lot of times people are trying to learn to control their hand, but you really have to control how you're seeing things. Right. It's first about your input. And when we think about, we talk about MBTI or Myers-Briggs type indicator on this show quite a bit just because I like it, and so I bring it up a lot.
Speaker 3:But one of the things that one of the four components is like what kind of information are you even taking in? Right, that's so different. I mean, we've all got a friend, a partner, a business colleague, you know, a parent or a relative that when we talk to them there's this disconnect and we're not really, we're just kind of out of sync. And I learned recently that even couples, couples that are perfectly designed for one another, are out of sync about 70% of the time, right? So there should be this expectation that just assume you're going to be out of sync with people a lot of the time. You know it's a little bit different when you're five years old and you're on the playground and you can meet, you know you meet someone and you know within 10 minutes you're running up to your parents and saying this is my best friend. Like it's a little bit different. You guys are in sync because there's just not a lot of modalities or modes to kind of experience the world at that age. But as we become older and more complex, a little bit more set in our ways and in particular set in what kind of information we're actually taking in, boy, does it change. So you know I'm an intuitive and that means that I see potential possibilities. Frameworks, theory makes sense, but I can miss a lot of the details which for a lot of Salesforce pros particularly if you're more on the technical side, but even if you're on the functional side is absolutely critical. There's a reason I don't have my hands on a keyboard building software Like. There's a reason, guys, because I would suck at it right. Like I would not be good at all. So you know, that ability to see and teach people about how other people are actually taking in different information from than you are, so that they can go ahead and make these um, make these different decisions around problem solving, is absolutely critical.
Speaker 3:We're just three minutes away from the top of the hour, which is seven o'clock Eastern, here on the live show. You might be watching this on uh on the recording. You might be listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio or whatever is your platform of choice. So what I want to do now is have Vanessa share a bit of a bombshell of an announcement and then we're going to dive in more deeply with John to talk about a solution to get out of bad commitments We've all made. You know, we've all committed to clients. We've all committed to friends and family. That didn't necessarily serve us. So many people I talk to talk about their inability to say no. Right, I know I think, vanessa, you might be one of those people. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure, a hundred percent, a million percent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you're, but that's something that you're working on. You're like you're getting way better out of it, out of necessity, and one of those things is right now. So let's have it, vanessa, bombshell us.
Speaker 2:Oh, all right. Well, after three plus years, um, I have uh decided to step down. Uh, as a co-host of the Salesforce career show. I still want to like come back and visit I, uh it is, it's been so valuable to me and it it, it it does break my heart. I just I have to just try and, with everything going on, with kind of starting up a new business and also I'm homeschooling my ADHD kiddo these days, Um, I'm I'm just kind of refocusing, uh, some of my time and trying to just focus a bit also on my family, which is going through some pretty major changes right now.
Speaker 2:But, gosh, this show has meant so much to me and you, josh, and even just the relationship that we've built together has meant so much to me and folks that have come up to me and in conferences and said that this show has been meaningful to them is it's, it's it's these kinds of like tough decisions where it's like I wish I could do it all and I just can't do it all and I'm I'm so grateful and I'm I'm so grateful and all I want is the continued success of the show. I just, unfortunately, there's just not enough of me.
Speaker 3:There isn't. And, vanessa, let me just share publicly what it's meant to me to have you on the show. This isn't going to be a long goodbye we might do that on your last episode, but it's been absolutely wonderful. For those of you who are a little bit newer to our program, vanessa came on during COVID, when I was running.
Speaker 3:I launched the show on Clubhouse and it was in an effort to help reduce the. It was basically open office hours where people could ask me anything and I could help them with their careers, but in a very compact two hour once a week program so that I wasn't spending 40 hours a week talking to people that. You know what am I going to do? There's no jobs during those initial few months of COVID, so that's why it got started and Vanessa was a regular listener and started to raise her hand and answer some of the questions that I'm completely unprepared to be able to answer. It might be technical, it might be hands-on, or it might be something just a little bit deeper into the ecosystem than I get to witness in my position at Salesforce staffing. And from that point on and I think you've been on for three years Is that about right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:Three years, lots of changes, including going from Clubhouse to X well, to link to Twitter, that became X and now to more of a video format here on LinkedIn Live and on YouTube. It's just been absolutely wonderful. I appreciate our friendship and, more importantly, I'm just overwhelmed with how much wonderful recommendations and advice and insight you've given to literally thousands and thousands of people through this program. We've had over 20,000 downloads and for some of you who like to watch Mr Beast, that's not going to sound like a lot, but we're not the largest ecosystem and we tend to serve people who are typically in transition. They're leaders who are in transition, they're potential candidates in transition or people who are struggling in their job, or just people who happen to love the ecosystem and get addicted to all sorts of programs like this.
Speaker 3:But you've helped so many thousands of people. I can't thank you enough. You're going to be extremely difficult to replace, but Vanessa and I have come up with an idea that we think, along with my friend Rachel, who really helped spur this idea, which is to create our own little contest for who's going to be the next co-host. Now, this is not going to be like being a lead singer of Journey. It's.
Speaker 2:American Idol.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is not a Netflix special, but we're going to do a couple of things. So the first thing I'm going to share down below is just a little bitly code JoshForcecom. If you're listening, it's very simple. It's JoshForcecom forward slash co-host and you will find a job description and you can apply. You will earn zero dollars and tons and tons and tons of goodwill. Okay, so we don't pay anything. It's a completely voluntary role. You'll probably spend somewhere like the minimum amount is three hours a month or so, but you'll probably spend a couple extra hours helping with promotions and you know talking, talking with me about guests and what the topics are going to be.
Speaker 3:So definitely visit joshforcecom forward slash co-host, and if you think that you've got the kinds of qualities that make for entertaining and informative podcasts that are related to Salesforce and, in particular, to people's careers, then I absolutely want to hear from you. You do not have to try to be Vanessa Grant, you get to be yourself. Everybody gets to be themselves on this show, right? So it's not a competition to try and meet the standard that I think Vanessa has set very high. It's really about bringing whatever your ability is and what your contributions are so you can apply. The top candidates from those applications I'll have one-on-one conversations with and then we'll invite a few of them to co-host separately three separate shows. We're going to take the top three, we're going to run them as co-hosts starting in March possibly a little bit sooner than that if we get the right kinds of folks and then we'll announce who the big winner of dedicating their time for free is going to be.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, you know I I just want to add a couple of things. Um, one, I think our story even just the Salesforce career show is is part of what I've I've talked about on this show, um, where you don't have to be a content creator, and this is where I I had myself in a box for so long of like I'm not a content creator, um, but I started out as a content supporter. I was just somebody who showed up to your show on Clubhouse every week because I wanted to find advice that I could give to my mentees, and by supporting your show and occasionally bring me up to answer the you know which certification should I get next? Or what does an admin really do? Or what is a business analyst? By regularly contributing opportunities presented themselves, and that's how I'm here today and the opportunities that have come up for networking through this show, through supporting people, which is something that I love to do through this show, has been, I mean, more valuable than if you did pay, josh.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm glad to hear it, because we can't afford to pay anything. We should make nothing, but it sure is fun to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's also you know what I've learned so much, even just for my own career, just being on this show. I mean, your knowledge is, I mean, invaluable.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that. I appreciate you saying that, so we'll leave it up for just another moment. We've got the little link joshforcecom forward slash co-host and I think with that, vanessa, john, let's go ahead and dive into the contest. I think a lot of people are listening to the show or visiting excuse me specifically so that they can have an opportunity to join a cohort for free. Again, this is a $2,400 value. That's the typical cost. I sort of feel bad even saying that, because so many people have paid for that already, because you've been doing this for quite some time, john. This kind of investment into their ability to lead and communicate better actually impacts or improves their current role.
Speaker 3:Now let's go ahead and share a couple of basic things. First of all, you will be able to. This looks like we've got forward slash cohort and forward slash co-host, so they're real similar. But joshforcecom forward slash cohort is a quick, easy link to remember, so you can go ahead and click on that, or we'll have it in the bottom of YouTube and you can just write it down, or you can type it in wherever you are right now. So go ahead and visit joshforcecom forward slash cohort. That's going to take you to a webpage that John put together specifically for this promotion, and there is a promotion code which we'll share at the end of our explanation here. So, john, can you describe the types of people that should be applying for this opportunity?
Speaker 1:Yes, and we're very excited to share this with your show and your audience. I love what you've been doing and contributing and, vanessa, thank you. This is my first time being able to share the stage with you, but I stand on the shoulders of something very special and so wish you the best and love your family commitments. I think the best candidates are those who have some experience being a Salesforce professional already. I think the key here is to understand they've been in those situations that have been awkward. They felt kind of they had their, you know, someone kind of manipulated, coerced or otherwise pushed them into situations that they didn't want to be in. Maybe they committed their team to something that forced them to work over weekends and the account became a red account anyway.
Speaker 1:Those aspects are important from an experience standpoint because that's going to help you get the most out of the program. The program, the cohort, is most powerful when people recognize the value it's going to deliver, because it will require emotional investment. It will require contemplation and thinking about those ruts, as you mentioned earlier, that have come from our childhood and if we want something we've never had, we're going to have to do something we've never done, and my job in this program is to help guide you through that process with a set of peers that's supporting you and a coach that has been there and can guide you every step of the way. So I'd say probably at least one year of experience is probably a good you know, kind of a good benchmark.
Speaker 3:Can I ask you, John, is this best for someone who's actually working right now? I mean, can someone who's not working have the same opportunity to apply what they're learning on a regular basis? If they're not currently engaged in employment, they might want to take advantage of a bit of the availability and the downtime to make the most of it From my perspective.
Speaker 1:I mean, we had one of our graduates from the last cohort last year who essentially got hired and got promoted within eight months and they had never had a Salesforce career prior. They came out of organizational leadership and ultimately this was that they actually came from one of the other tactical programs and needed more, and so they came to our program and really accelerated what they were looking to do. So I really think it's that attitude that we talked about earlier. If you're wanting to step into a role and think about, you know, upskilling and upthinking to your next role. Maybe you're an admin and you want to try and move into a role and think about upskilling and up thinking to your next role.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're an admin and you want to try and move into a senior BA role, or you want to move into a product owner or maybe even a junior architect. There's aspects on the people first side. That's what's going to get you there, because Salesforce, we have 400 pages of release notes three times a year. Nobody knows everything about any of it. That stuff can be grown along the way.
Speaker 3:Very good, okay. So there you go. Super easy to apply. We're going to go ahead and share the promo code now. The promo code for all you listeners out there is SFCS. That's Method, okay. So SFCS 2025 PFM and it's going to be the first 12 people that qualify will be accepted into the program. Is that accurate?
Speaker 1:That's correct, and when they go to the form, you please type in the promo code. And then it also talks a little bit about qualification details and I think we would love to understand your goals, what you're looking to do and accomplish. As you know, Josh mentioned, there's going to be a really good sweet spot for many people and we want to identify who are the people who are going to be the best candidates, not only to just join the program, but we want to track this cohort and validate that, the successes that these people have over their history. And so if you could add a few more details there and essentially I will be following up with everybody, providing some detail to put an event on my calendar and then we can have a conversation. We want to really help people and find the best candidates to get into this cohort conversation.
Speaker 3:And we want to really help people and find the best candidates to get into this cohort. I love it, guys, we're. We might, uh, talk a little bit about this a bit later in the show, but for now you've got what you need right. So it's joshforcecom forward slash cohort and it's S F C S. Two zero two, five PFM is your promo code. Go out, do your best, go grab $2,400 of awesomeness for free.
Speaker 3:And, by the way, I can tell you this and I know this for a fact because I'm continually trying to get better, you know, with my own communication skills, and one of the things that I am working on, john and audience is I can get pissed off. I get pissed off pretty fast. Everyone's got their own triggers, trust me, I got a bundle. I got a bundle of them, and so how do I like experience that? And now, old Josh not old right now, I am old, but not old. Old Josh, I mean younger Josh. Younger Josh had zero and still, to an extent, has zero problems saying what I think to whomever I think should hear it Right, and that's one of the things I think that helps me to be successful in the role that I'm in, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 3:But anything maximized too much, any good thing maximized too much, does become a liability. And I had an experience where a client this week pushed back on me, you know about, about something to do with a candidate and it just kind of pissed me off. It's sort of, you know, I start, I start having these thoughts like, well, I've done 15,000 interviews, how many have you done? And I thought this stuff is just swirling in my brain and I'd be like, don't tell me that. Like I know, you know that's a myth. You don't like, you don't know what you're talking about, Like all this stuff. And then eventually I'm like, take a breath, get on. And I'm like, hey, I totally get, that Sounds good. Right, I couldn't do that 10 years ago. I might not have been able to do it five years ago, right, so you're never too young, or, excuse me, you're never too old to get better at these things. That will help you, help your business, help your relationships and further you along.
Speaker 3:And so the point, the long point that I'm trying to get to here, is that the sooner you invest in these communication skills, right, and in your leadership skills, the more it will be amplified over time. It's just like dropping. Like, if you're 25 and for some reason you've got a hundred thousand dollars to drop into an index fund, you know you're going to have I don't know what it is $400,000 in 20 years, something like that, right, so you know, make the investment in yourself. Now this is, by the way, this is not a sales pitch. You don't have to join people first method. There's tons of different ways to go about getting better at your communication skills and your leadership skills. God knows, youtube's full of it, linkedin's got tons of stuff, but what I like about your system is it's controlled system, and I've gone through cohorts before with recruiter education, excuse me and I've absolutely loved it.
Speaker 3:I'm still friends with people. This is six years later. Seven years later, I'm still friends. We're still bouncing ideas off of each other. In fact, the only reason why I've got a YouTube channel at all is because of these friends right From a cohort from six years ago. So it will pay dividends. We have on the stage with us Kimberly Barnes. Welcome Kimberly. How are you today?
Speaker 4:I'm good, I guess I'm a friend of the show now.
Speaker 3:You are a friend of the show. Kimberly was invited by Vanessa to join us and we're very grateful that you're here today. John's going to dive in a little bit, but we want you to feel fully free to share your input, ask questions and just be a little bit of a part of this next little segment in our program. And so with that, actually, why don't you just tell us who you are and what you do before we dive in?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely Might as well. It's nice to meet you all. My name is Kimberly Barnes I also go by Kim Barnes and I am from my own company, lipstick and Tech, where I help entry and mid-level tech professionals launch into Salesforce careers. It all kind of started from a blog this is actually pre-pandemic where I told myself you know, I really wanted to get into content creation, but what's something I actually myself? You know I really wanted to get into content creation, but what's something I actually know about? And that was really just trying to get more women into tech.
Speaker 4:I didn't see a lot of people of color who were in the Salesforce group and, lo and behold, there were. There were communities. I just wasn't like as tuned in, and my hope is to you know, it's just kind of grown more into welcoming more folks in the industry, and so I've met a lot of incredible people through this journey and hopefully I'll have some stuff to share. I resonate a lot with being almost feeling like my soft skills were stronger than my technical skills, so a lot of what you're saying is really resonant and it can take you pretty far in the tech industry, where sometimes the hardest thing is people, not even the tech solution. So welcome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, we're complicated, right. I mean, people are really. You know, we're really complicated.
Speaker 2:And you know we're really complicated. We're like, okay, it's okay, I could just run, you know, my emails through AI and that'll do it, or I can figure out what questions I should ask in a discovery through AI. And having this kind of the coaching where you can actually develop these skills is going to be able to understand what it means to read people's facial expressions. It's not going to understand that when you walk into a room as a consultant the first time, that person is going to be scared that you're going to impact their job and it's not going to ask questions or phrase them appropriately to accommodate that empathy. Leave room for those feelings, and that's where can AI do great things. Yes, is it going to develop these soft skills in a way that will get you further in your career, where you are the person who is leading the AI and not the AI leading you. That's where making sure you develop these soft skills is so important, especially with this AI future coming.
Speaker 3:Absolutely and coming. I mean it's here, it's here. Sorry, we were saying that two years ago, 2.0. It was a year and a half ago that, or I guess it was just over two years ago that ChatGPT came out. Is that about accurate Two years? I think? I don't know.
Speaker 4:No one knows.
Speaker 3:Comment below Let us know if we know what we're talking about At least two years.
Speaker 4:But the company itself, I think, started quite a while ago.
Speaker 3:We'd hope so. They had to build a lot.
Speaker 4:Well, and you know, not to mention, you know, now, now, all the AI tools are competing, so now they're all competing for attention. We all. You know I'm pretty versed with prompting these days, mostly in quad, but I know you know I started with chat GPT. I'm learning Genesis. I'm a Salesforce consultant. Why am I learning this stuff Right?
Speaker 3:It's here. Yeah, it's here. Yeah, I want to say it was a year and a half ago. We had David Giller on and David was talking about I mean, he was giving us great insight. And then we ran into him a year later at New York world tour and Vanessa and I sat down with him and he was talking about what he was doing and how he was utilizing it. And I know two people, like I'd say, david Geller and Mike McCool are the two people I know that have glommed on to the AI thing so well. I mean I look at them and like, wow, you guys, this must be your hobby, right, it's their hobby.
Speaker 2:Ian Gotts too.
Speaker 3:I would also say oh yeah, there you go. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:You can't write a post on LinkedIn these days without you got commenting with like here's my white paper.
Speaker 3:Well, let's go ahead and dive into a little bit of the meat. Our show is going to wrap up at least by 7 PM tonight, so that's 40 minutes. So let's talk a little bit about a solution to get out of bad commitments and to say no by saying yes. John Klein, you have the floor.
Speaker 1:Awesome, so welcome. And I'll just have one comment on kind of role erosion by AI, because it's very real and it's happening. You know, ai is not going to have compassion on you for your prior circumstances in history, right, when I type in things, it doesn't know I was a foster kid and I'm dealing with my own challenges, right. So it's a very good point on our capability of humans. That will be unsurpassed. So let's get some background here, just for the circumstance. So imagine you're a business analyst and you're working on a release, right. You're kind of putting together a demo. You're putting it together with the client and you go through the process, you tell a great story with the demo and in the demo are two additional people that you've not met yet, and so you give the demo. Your stakeholder says, hey, this is great, love the way this is looking. And then the other two stakeholders you find out are the CFO and the newly hired CTO, who you haven't met yet.
Speaker 1:And this is their first engagement with you and they say this is really great. We're excited with what we see here and I know we have a new renewal coming up on the contract, because this is the CFO renewal coming up on the contract, right, because this is the CFO. All we need to see is ABC added to that demo, maybe a transformation, a little automation. From their perspective, it's simple, should be no big deal. We just need to see that in our next demo, which we'd like to see before our board meeting in five days.
Speaker 3:Can you do that? And so, john, what you're talking for for some people who might not be you know they might be Salesforce professionals, not necessarily working in an SI right, or not necessarily pitching clients, internal stakeholders, right. So you know it's it's work for free. Usually it's work for free is what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in this case, right, it's work for free or it's work over the weekend, right, you had a wedding you were going to attend, right, with your family, and now you have to stay and it's not just you In order to put that demo together. You have a developer you're working with. It doesn't really matter the circumstance of whether it's an internal staff or external Salesforce partner or SI, the same is true. Ultimately, you found yourself in a predicament where that executive is asking something unreasonable of you, and this happens all the time.
Speaker 2:If you don't mind, I'll even share something that happened to me really recently. So I'm going to be traveling soon for work, and so I had a manager say well, since you're going to be traveling that day and it's going to be a long trip, we're just going to need that deliverable sooner. And I'm like okay, so it's, you know, it's the do more with less. And so I was telling somebody about it and they're like yeah, you know time is finite unless you're in Salesforce consulting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know time is finite unless you're in Salesforce consulting Right yes, it's a good point. And the more you think about this category, you start to find that there's people who I call this boundary jumping. People are totally fine to jump your boundaries, and as long as they get what they're looking for and sometimes people aren't even conscious that they're doing this They've just been having this habit that this is how they treat their lower staff people, their consultants, whoever it might be. I just get stuff done. This is how I get done. I grind people and I boundary jump.
Speaker 3:It's an assertive nature. I'm just going to jump in. It's an assertive nature, quality right, and oftentimes, typically people who are more assertive make more money and and rise in leadership. It's just a fact, right. But again, anything maximized too much becomes a liability, and I think that's the case in this situation.
Speaker 1:Agreed Right, because there's there's cultural and relational dimensions that are essentially eroded and degraded with this. So, given the fact that this is a reality, this is going to happen with this. So, given the fact that this is a reality, this is going to happen, I want to ask a question. Let's say that right, that BA or that admin. In that scenario, she responds to the request and says I'm sorry, I can't do that. What's the emotional response of the two stakeholders that are there, the CFO and the CTO? How do they feel?
Speaker 3:Well, people who are in leadership positions tend not to like to hear the word no, you are correct, right, I mean, this is negotiating 101, right, oh, not negotiating again, josh.
Speaker 2:That's a start shriveling.
Speaker 1:Yes. So they don't like to hear the word no, and, in fact, when they hear the word no, commonly what happens is they stop listening to anything else you might say, because now they are so frustrated what did you just say? But they're not going to say that. But that's what they're thinking, kind of like. The moment you had Josh, when you just had all the things swirling in your head, there's an aspect of like wait, did you understand who I am? All of this? Okay, so my recommendation is I encourage people not to say no, and we provide a simple formula. So this is one week's, which is one week's lesson, and the program, particularly this lesson, is called. This is what I can do, and it's essentially a formula. Many of our alumni have told me that they take a post-it note and they stick it right below their monitor so that when they get in these situations and their heart rate goes right when that happens, because they feel the tension and they don't like it, and they're hospitality oriented, they're people pleasers, which is a beautiful thing in the right context. In this context, though, they're about to commit their entire team to work over the weekend by saying yes, and they really need to be empowered to figure out how to get out of that situation while preserving those relationships.
Speaker 1:So the formula that I recommend, after presenting the background, is we need to do three things. First thing we need to do is we need to validate the ask. We need to tell them, you know what. What you're asking for is really valuable. I see how this is really going to impact the business and I'm really glad. I'm really glad you brought it up.
Speaker 1:The second thing we do is we validate the assignment. You know what. I'm really glad that you believe in us in such a way, because that's a really tight turnaround, and I'm really happy you have confidence in us that we're able to accomplish something of that measure and significance in such a short amount of time. So I validated the ask, I validated the assignment and now I make my offer of compromise. You know, thinking about it, I need to connect with my team, but what I can do is I know we have a little time on Friday that we can open up and we can explore this more deeply and really figure out what the finish line looks like, and we can take some time early on Monday because I know the team has a meeting that I can push to the back of the week and we can open up some more time there.
Speaker 2:How does that sound a?
Speaker 1:meeting that I can push to the back of the week and we can open up some more time there. How does that sound Now? I never said no, but I also never committed to anything more than I was willing to commit to, and the benefit there is all the executives in the room. They're still listening to me, they're still hearing and they're processing what I said. And there's an aspect where me, as the technical professional in the room, where there's mystery, there's margin, there's a phrase right where there's an aspect of I know more about what it's going to take, who is going to be involved, what the actual downstream elements are around testing and UAT and all of the aspect of how they've been doing. I know way more about that than they do, and so that mystery becomes my asset in this arrangement.
Speaker 1:But the key here is that I was able to focus back on my storytelling and my demo and keep the meeting back on track. I never said no. This is my first time meeting these two people. All they heard was yes to something, and we'll do that. And now we'll help define the finish line and I'll reserve the difficult conversation when we go to figure out the finish line and say, great, running a marathon is too much, but running a sprint is probably likely. So here's what we can do again, and I basically reapply the same principle over and over and over validate the ask, validate the assignment and make my offer of compromise.
Speaker 4:I love that too. I and again I also raised my hand with, having seen that literally a few weeks ago in my line of work One of the things that you know when you are at a lower level you think, oh, I don't have the authority to speak to it. But the reality is, even if you're not in a leadership position, anything you say, the client will hear it and then say, oh, they said they could do it. Now you almost devalue your work if you say yes to everything.
Speaker 1:You're right.
Speaker 4:If you go into that room and say, oh, I can complete this, you set yourself up for a deadline and if it's not the highest quality you wanted, you never gave yourself even an opportunity to say, hey, you know, can we just like frame it in a way that will like deliver more, like, if I'm given X time, the value of me spending the extra time is you'll actually meet your goal. So so much of what you said was like so true, and one of the things you know, know, how did it make you feel? Uh, what was the question that you asked on? And for me it's like, oh my gosh, he's not a team player. He just dismissed any of my requests and feelings and and, frankly, just I don't want to talk to you anymore. I want to talk to your leader.
Speaker 1:Maybe your leader will work with me and I want to highlight one thing you just mentioned there, which which is really good. So, this is essentially a theme across all of our vignettes is the ability to leverage communication as a recon device, and you just highlighted an example there. So, first of all, if I'm looking to move to the next echelon of my career, I want to get a 20% boost in my next salary negotiation. Is that more likely, by me saying yes or by me saying no?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean yeah, we're not going to have too long a pause, but yeah, it's a redundant question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, by me saying no and recognizing that I'm the one who actually understands this, and you put me responsible for this, and so I'm going to take responsibility. The second aspect is exactly what you highlighted, by me putting myself out there and stating my offer of compromise. I wait and listen and just put up my antennae and I know what kind of people am I dealing with. Are they people who are attuned to relational dynamics? Do they recognize that I'm a valuable part of this organization? And if you continue jumping my boundaries, I am out of here, because there's 10 companies behind you who want me, and if you're not one of them, I'm happy to move on to the next, because I am qualified, I am skilled, I am capable, and I'm not going to be put in an environment where I am put under someone's thumb, as though everything is negotiable and all of this is just magic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love it. I keep thinking of the really straightforward chapter one. Chris Voss, never Split the Difference, favorite book on negotiating. And when he just says, you know, like, yeah, that's great, but how am I supposed to do that? Right, and getting the getting the other person to come up with the actual solution instead of saying yes to what they think is the right thing you know to do first, and I think, too, you bring up a really good point. I mean the validate, validate, validate. I mean you guys do that when you're building product, aren't you? I mean, you're constantly validating, so why wouldn't you do it in a human context? Right, it's absolutely necessary.
Speaker 3:And making certain that people feel heard, that you have a clear understanding of it, is critical. And, sabrina, uh sorry, um, kim kim barnes, kimberly barnes, kim barnes, um, you know you said something in there. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was, but it but, uh, the idea that you may devalue the quality of your work or the perception of your capabilities by saying yes to everything, and I absolutely believe in that. And the reason. There's a reason behind that. How is it being devalued? Well, people are picking up these subtle inputs that you're not discerning If you can't protect your own time, how can you protect theirs? You know, if you're a pushover, how good a quality are your ideas actually, if you're able to be. You know, I don't want to use the word bully, but I can't. Yeah, you don't want to be a pushover or wuss wimpy. You know anything like that, right?
Speaker 1:Well, another key point on this is that this habit is also important with your own team, because even people who are on your own team will sometimes look to push you and jump your boundaries. So one of the common things I hear from alumni who come through our program is that when I go to my management and when I go to my team leads and I say, hey look, I can't sustain 75 hours a week, I can't do this. I understand the deadlines have been set by the customer and and there's these boundaries, or you know, like we have these release deadlines right, like I can't sustain this, like I have to have a family life, and the common response they get is this is just kind of the way it is in consulting or in the Salesforce world. There's this kind of status quo expectation, which I personally totally disagree. I think there's an aspect of empowering people, with even their own team members, to leverage the same method of offering an offer, while validating the ask and the assignment is also something that people should be.
Speaker 1:It's a rinse and repeat process whenever you need to protect your boundaries because you're saying no by saying yes, and it's very difficult. It's like Tim Ferriss says, when you want to negotiate something really, really challenging. You always ask does that sound reasonable? Because who can say no to that question? Yeah Right, because it sounds so reasonable. And that's really the goal here is to come up with something so reasonable that it just becomes irresistible and you get your boundary protected and ultimately that protects your team and people start to love being with you and working with you because you lead with this example and take on kind of a mama bear, papa bear sentiment when it comes to protecting people's world, and that brings out the best in people, in my opinion.
Speaker 3:John, I'd like to ask you something about this before we turn into the next little segment, which is going to be about turning chaos into compliments. Do you have any recommendations for the audience if they've made a bad commitment already and they need to get out of it?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and this will happen from time to time. Sometimes the courage to stand up and do this will come after the fact, and so, for me, I would always recommend you can leverage the same principle, just by going back and highlighting this is what was asked for, this is what we committed to, and often I would highlight that the new element of clarity that's been received since that conversation. Maybe I've thought through my calendar now. Maybe I talked to one of my associates or my teammates and found out some additional information. I talked to one of my associates or my teammates and found out some additional information. Leverage that additional piece of information back into the conversation and highlight and say I prematurely committed to that and I I want to make sure that I respect the time of my peers. In the same way I would want to respect your time, and so this is what I can do. So you basically walk through the same process with the new offer that you can make to them in light of that new information.
Speaker 3:You know, you, just you. You just brought up something very powerful, which was pulling in third party, right, Pulling in other people, right? This, this is a way of reducing the heat on you, right? You're demonstrating that you're looking out for others and that the impact of what they're requesting isn't just an impact on you, but an impact on many people, and they're not in a position. The person we'll call them an opponent, the person that is making the request isn't in a position to negotiate with all of those people. And so, when you're showing up as the team lead maybe you're not a team lead, but you still know that your decisions are going to impact that team You're demonstrating care for the team and you can leverage that with the person that you're negotiating with.
Speaker 3:Right, such as look, I'm very clear that if we do this, if we say yes to this, it's going to impact about three or four people immediately. There's going to be a ripple effect to all of their families over the weekend, right? So we're talking about 25 people that are going to be impacted by this enhancement to the demo that you're looking for, and we haven't known each other long. You seem like a really nice person. You also seem like the kind of person that probably doesn't want to negatively impact 25 people this weekend. So I've come up with an idea, a solution that I think is going to get you really, really close to what you're looking for but keep the goodwill, not just for me, but everyone else on the team and everyone else that they go home to.
Speaker 1:That sounds reasonable, doesn't it Right? Yeah, that's a great appeal to collaboration, appeal to compassion. There, I totally agree and, I think, highlighting that, because sometimes, as a recon device, you'll find that the person was totally non-cognizant as to what the impact would be, which is very common in the Salesforce world. Right, it's the Salesforce that you told me. I can just point, click, create a field and it just happens right.
Speaker 1:I don't know about all this custodian stuff and all the automation stuff and all of our governance programs and I don't understand any of that. I just thought it was actually for something simple, because that's what I was sold, and so leaning on that idea that people are probably coming to this not in a nefarious way but really in an innocent way, and having that attitude and that kind of grounding initially is really really valuable so that they can respond and be like thank you for sharing that with me. You're right, I would never want to ask for all of that, and so let's put it on the backlog and figure out when we can put it into place right In a more reasonable time and then you learn a lot about that person.
Speaker 2:So I I think the scenario that I run into, though maybe more often, is and again coming from a probably a good place, still, like you know, they're not. They're not looking for everybody to have to, you know, not spend time with their kids all weekend so that they can finish something, but a lot of, especially in the consulting world, they don't want to deliver bad news to the client and it's easier to, you know, lean into the team and get them to work overdrive rather than tell the client no. And that's where I think it is a little bit challenging, because it's like, well, I mean, I'm sorry it's all hands on deck because we don't, but they just don't want to tell the client. That's not the best way to move forward, that's not the, and I find so many consultants are just kind of yes people to their clients to a certain extent, rather than being realistic about how much things actually cost and how much, how they maybe shouldn't be doing these certain things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I'm going to jump in here, vanessa. I think it's been exacerbated by the, by the market of the last two years. Right, there's there's fewer opportunities for SIs. Sis, there are smaller teams at salesforce, customers everyone wants more or the same to get done with fewer people. There's a fear of uh, client loss. Right, there are a number of I don't know how many new, how many SIs came up in the last year. We talked about it in our year end show about four weeks ago. It's like 700,000. I mean, it's like a ton right, and many of these people don't need to make a lot of money and can still do a good job, and so they're afraid of getting undercut, they're afraid of losing the client, they're afraid of losing future business with the client, and so they all become yes-men. I don't think it's a healthy thing at all. People like transparency. They want to know what's real. You've got to show them the value. And one last little thing before we jump into the next mini segment here is a moment ago we were talking about bringing in other people right, talking about the team, talking about the team's family and things like that.
Speaker 3:I do this with emails sometimes. If I need a faster response. I've messaged a client, or I've messaged a candidate or a vendor, and I'm not comfortable with the tempo with which they're responding. I will begin to send them follow-up messages and I'll drop all my employees in there. I'll just make a show out of it. Maybe there's two people, maybe there's five people, but I'll just drop in a bunch of CC'd people, because there's that social pressure then to respond quickly. L so leveraging social pressure to get the kind of information that you need when you need it is a very valuable little trick that you can utilize in these types of situations as well. So, john-.
Speaker 3:I'll add one tiny thing before we move on yeah, go for it, Kim.
Speaker 4:The only thing I'll say is when I don't have an opportunity to negotiate with the customer, because you actually have to have a better idea of like what that customer is looking for like that. But that takes interactions to figure out whether they're the kind one or the. No, I need this now, customer. But what I was going to say was you can't negotiate with customer, you can negotiate with your team. I work at a company with great company culture. We're like yes, there will be days where I'm working relentlessly, but then, like Friday, I have off Because I invested all that time earlier. So there's always opportunity to negotiate. That was my last thought.
Speaker 1:That's a great reciprocity example, right, you feel good?
Speaker 3:about that. Very good. Reciprocity example, right, you feel good about that. Very good. For our last section that you're going to be sharing with us is how to turn chaos into compliments. This is one of your modules. What do you mean? Turning chaos into compliments?
Speaker 1:So it goes to that example of, let's imagine, right, whether an admin or we're a consultant, but we are at the table and we recognize that there's some people at the table right. There might be an office manager. There might be, you know, like a warehouse manager. Maybe there's, you know, could be a clerk, or could be what some would perceive in the business as a you know, kind of a lower level frontline staff person. All right, and in my experience I've not found that those people are the most well-respected, most esteemed people inside the organization, although they should be.
Speaker 1:The other aspect is there's people on the team recognize when they hire a Salesforce consultant or they make a hire for a Salesforce, you know, expert, an admin, an architect, the business has likely tried to solve whatever problems or innovations that they're trying to do. They've likely tried to solve it already and have not been successful, which is why you me may be there. So it's important to understand that there's already a level of potential embarrassment, potential vulnerability. People are putting their masks on, they're putting their protections on. They don't know if, as somebody mentioned earlier I think it was Kimberly right that we might be coming for their job. That's what they think, right. So all these things are already present in the room before we ever get there. We have to understand that.
Speaker 4:So there's, a setting.
Speaker 1:there's an environment there that is not conducive for people to be transparent, to be open, to be essentially to share about their scabs, their wounds, their bruises right. For example, most Salesforce adoption problems actually are not technology related either. There's a tremendous allergy inside the organization of something prior that happened. Maybe it was the first release failed, maybe it was the prior system was crazy, maybe it was. They just get berated and mocked by the technical people, like we've heard about the ID10T errors that people get in their technology right. That spells idiot, by the way, so these are terrible ways that people get Now I feel like an idiot.
Speaker 3:Thanks, john, thanks for telling it out buddy. Yeah, just just you know that's like Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1:Remember the guys like move, right, yeah. So what this? The goal of this is, is primarily two things. One is we have to create an environment that people are willing to share with us. They don't know who we are, we're intimidating, we're like the high priced person coming in the room thinking that we know it all. Right, like the consultant on the on the office or office space. We have to create an environment where we can connect with people so that they'll share with us, because unless we get to the truth, unless we understand why this failed and what the allergies are and what the you know, the elephants in the room and all of these things, right, like you know, like the people, politics process, profit, product. We got to be able to get the truth on all that. If we don't create an environment where people can share, they won't share and our project will be compromised because we never actually got to the real problem.
Speaker 1:So, in order to do that, the temptation for a consultant who comes in and wants to establish themselves. They want to show people they really know what's going on, and so they see one person open up. They're demoing this crazy Excel spreadsheet with, like, colored cells all over. We've all seen it right Greens and reds and all kinds of stuff. What's the temptation? The temptation is to exalt myself by potentially denigrating what's here. I can't believe you guys are using this. Oh my gosh, you guys have been able to get along with this right Now. It's not always, sometimes it's behind closed doors or whatever, but the point is is that there's the risk of even accidentally denigrating someone's effort for the sake of exalting the fact that we're bringing a new solution and we're doing it in.
Speaker 3:Someone built that.
Speaker 1:That's their whole job and we have to recognize that, in fact, not only is it their whole job, but when they were put into this position, the boss said sink or swim, figure it out. And this is the evidence and the artifact of them figuring it out. And so not only should they not be mocked, but they should be applauded, and the business hasn't been doing that. The business has likely disrespected them, saying what is this crazy thing? I don't even like to see it so.
Speaker 1:Chaos to compliments is a strategy where we go into the situation, one to put the people at ease and to validate the hard work that they've done to basically get to the point where they can do what they were hired to do and whatever it is that they've invented that actually is getting the job done. We want to highlight specific aspects of that that are great. That's a great insight, that's a really good thing you're doing for the customer. Oh wow, I can't believe you spend so much time doing that so that you can deliver on what the customer needs. That's the first thing we validate that while we're doing this, we are modeling to the rest of the business that this is the posture that we will be leading with in this project. You've hired us or you've either hired me as a staff person or as a consultant to lead this project. This is the ethos by which we will be leading this process. We will be modeling that and demonstrating it to everybody.
Speaker 3:John, I'm going to jump in real quick. Casey and I, casey's my girlfriend, four years. Casey and I talk about this sometimes and we call it a PTP or a positive transitional phrase, me being a dyed in the wool, entj, just pick out any a-hole from any TV show. It's me right. Like it's Jon Hamm in Mad Men, it's Napoleon, it's Michael's boss in the office. It's like they can bowl people over and they can just be like, yeah, no, like they might be smart, they might have really good ideas, but they can be challenged to recognize other people in the moment before they're like trying to be the smart guy or the smart gal in the room. So we call it PTP. And now it's just like.
Speaker 3:You know, she might say something and I'll be like, well, blah, blah, blah, I'm going to do this, and she'll be like PTP. I'll be like, hey, that's a really great idea. I like that it does this and that I didn't even think about that. And it slows me down too. Like it slows me down. About an hour ago we were talking about seeing, like, what information are you actually taking? And it'll, it slows you down and allows you to take in way more information while maintaining really goodwill. So this is just me saying like I get it, yeah, I love it, and.
Speaker 1:I want you to think about the dynamics in the room because they're likely not the only person who has something to share or who is potentially embarrassed or has been mocked previously about what they've been doing. So once they see that hey, here's a risk taker, they chose to go first. And now look at the way the Salesforce pro is guiding this conversation, affirming them, validating that and, in fact, finding future anchor points. That's a future lesson we have, but essentially those anchor points that we will want to put into the future Salesforce solution to maximize adoption, because it's something that customer loves and it's something that really is part of the secret sauce of what they deliver. So we want to capture that and make sure we don't denigrate it in a rip and replace as though nothing in that is valuable.
Speaker 1:There's a lot that's valuable in there, though it might be cloaked what I call it's a rough diamond. It's a rough diamond. It's not yet been cut, but when it's cut it's going to be amazing and beautiful, and my job is to not to discard rough diamonds, even though they look like rocks, right? So when that's happening, the other people at the table who were afraid initially to share something, all of a sudden guess what? You know? That's interesting because I, and now they, are encouraged and all of a sudden we have this popcorning and bubbling up of latent innovation that the business again a recon device that the business has not been welcoming from these people because they don't have respect for them. They don't think that they're at the level of strategic advisor or whatever it might be, but they are the frontline experts. They hear the customer complaint every day. They are absolutely the right person to bring this wisdom to the table and we have to create the environment to give them that freedom.
Speaker 1:So when they know, I want to be next up for chaos to compliments.
Speaker 4:They're going to line up and they're going to just lay it all out and they're going to be like, hey, even though I was the one who tried to make Salesforce work and I couldn't do it.
Speaker 1:I'm so happy that you're here and I'm so happy to show you what I've done. And I did this and I have this Excel spreadsheet and this access database and I have this legal pad and I mean whatever, and we just give compliments on all of that, no complaints, because it's all raw materials full of rough diamonds.
Speaker 3:John, thank you so much for sharing this. This is wonderful insight into what People First Method does. It clearly demonstrates you've been through the ropes, man, You've done it. I imagine you've done a fair amount of investigation and personal development yourself to be able to even come to this. Oh look, I'm. I'm doing the chaos to compliments right now. It was unintentional but I am. But, like you've clearly had to spend hours and years putting this kind of information together that you're able to share it with people, share it with our audience. Today we are so grateful, and we're really grateful for the most gracious gift this show has ever got $28,000 worth of education and training for our audience members. We're excited about the Salesforce Career Show cohort with your group. At the very end of the show we're going to flash those back up on the stage. Oh, there we go right now. Thank you, Vanessa.
Speaker 3:I want to take just a couple minutes because we announced it at the start of the show that we'd be sharing a little bit of information from some polls that we've run recently, and I also wanted to share just a small amount of insight as to what's going on in the Salesforce ecosystem. Now I will tell you I have not looked at this today, but a key metric that we track here at Salesforce staffing is how many job orders are there that have Salesforce in the title. That's a pretty easy metric to track and I've been tracking it for years. I know that we've probably announced some of this stuff about four weeks ago in our year-end show. And, by the way, folks, if you haven't planned for 2025 yet, if you haven't done that yet, I strongly encourage you to check the other video or the most recent podcast, where we share a multitude of mindsets, tools, tactics, techniques for you to get the most out of 2025. So definitely check that out. So I'm just going to share one poll today. We've got others. I think that we can share those in the next episode, which will be airing two weeks from today at 5.30 Eastern, 2.30 Pacific.
Speaker 3:So we asked the audience in LinkedIn. We asked, in your opinion, what is the biggest advantage of having a small team of A-plus players, and the options were ability to attract additional talent, less internal drama, reduced turnover or easier to manage. I'm kind of curious. Before we go ahead and announce the results, I'd like to hear from John, Vanessa and Kim. What do you think is the biggest advantage? Ability to attract additional talent, less internal drama, reduced turnover or easier to manage? John, this is from the company's perspective, your perspective. There's an advantage of having a small team of A-plus players versus a larger team that incorporates or includes a lot of B and C players. Sorry to sit in judgment, but let's face it. Not all employees are equal. They just aren't. Some people will run circles around others. I'm a huge advocate of people spending more money on fewer staff, but picking better staff, and I'm not just a fan of it. So Steve Jobs, so are a lot of very, very successful people in the world. So what do you think is the greatest advantage? Anyone can pipe up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well you call on me, I'll answer. I think it's absolutely the first one the ability to attract good people, and I would include the attract and retain good people, and that tends to solve the other three, in my opinion, because with good people you have less drama, you have a lot of these other aspects and it means that your customer feels that sense of culture and values alignment that your team does, which is going to be a big one.
Speaker 3:Very good, thanks for sharing. What about you, vanessa?
Speaker 2:What was the second one again?
Speaker 3:Less internal drama, reduced turnover and easier to manage.
Speaker 2:I think easier to manage Okay.
Speaker 4:That's what I would have said too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think when you've got a bunch of A-plus players I was actually just reading a post from Sarah McNamara, who is a LinkedIn influencer that I really like, and saying how when you've got those rock star employees, sometimes you just have to let them do their thing, and when you have a bunch of A-plus people together, they're going to push each other just naturally. I think they will brainstorm, they will come up with things that you didn't even think of, and so if you're trying to overmanage those types of people, you're just going to hold back. Um, and so, of course, you have to structure things in a way and put systems in place so that you can focus their you know, focus their, their, their, harness their energy, focus their, their uh efforts. But I think that's where the most value is.
Speaker 3:Very good. Well, I think they're all great answers and I'll show the results. It was 22% for ability to attract additional talent. It was 8% for reduced turnover, 27% selected easier to manage and an overwhelming 43% chose less internal drama.
Speaker 2:See, I don't know, I feel like when you've got a bunch of A-plus players, you might end up with more drama, just because they all feel like they're very good at what they do, and so when there is a butting of heads, it's it's a little bit, maybe more complicated. You're not going to just have like one leader and a bunch of sheep that are like okay, cool, whatever that person says.
Speaker 3:I can understand that when it comes to, say, an NFL team, right, where they're simply being judged on their actual performance, but on the sidelines they're a fricking nightmare. Okay, like, we've all. Like, everybody knows that is what happens and everybody knows that getting rid of that is why the Patriots, you know, had the most killer dynasty of this century. Right, it was because they got rid of that. They got completely rid of it. But I would I would pause it and just push back slightly to say that if they are on the team that and they're behaving that way, they are automatically not an A plus player, right? So an A plus player does not necessarily mean like, oh my God, they're just like the greatest architect known known to man. Right, that's certainly a wonderful skill set to possess. But are they really an A-plus player if they're pissing everybody off while they're doing it? No, and if I'm interviewing and I'm picking up on that, if I'm picking up a level of arrogance or resistance to others' ideas, they're not gonna get a 111A rating from me.
Speaker 3:And I do rank people. Sorry if you don't like that, but I do it because I can't remember everything. We've got 80,000 people in the database. We have to do something right. So I'm with you. You have to watch out for star power to a degree, like you can you? You have to watch out for star power to a degree. But star power and a plus uh, a plus team member Isn't the same thing. Does that make sense?
Speaker 4:That's fair, I will add, though I mean I think ultimately, you know, I get along with my siblings, I can, we're all a plus siblings, but we're going to bicker Sometimes. I'm having a really terrible day and then it just ruins myicker. Sometimes I'm having a really terrible day and then it just ruins my week.
Speaker 4:So I guess it's fair that I don't think drama is unavoidable. I don't think drama is unavoidable. You do not have the ability to avoid it ultimately, at the end of the day, the reason why I still you don't think you can avoid drama.
Speaker 2:Are you still seeing drama?
Speaker 4:a hundred percent of the time I think, I think drama is a very strong word for what I'm describing here, but like even bickering or like a really heated conversation. As far as I'm concerned, to be a little drama. So again, part of it is like definitions here.
Speaker 4:Maybe is where I think you're right, but ultimately, management means that, like there's some cohesiveness and everyone's going with the flow, some of my like best work has happened where, like I was like five steps ahead nearly I was like two steps ahead of my colleague who was working on another random part of it and just like, somehow, without talking, we knew, oh, you're going to take up this part. Well, I'm going to take up this part, and it's obviously easy to manage if you don't have to delegate. So that was my logic going into it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, look, all reasonable, and I think it opens up the door for a very long conversation. I mean, I could sit around and talk about this for another hour, but we're not going to. Those were the results, and I think in my experience look, I've always run not always, I have deigned to run a team of A players for many years and we have zero drama. And we have zero drama. None, I mean, if anyone's creating drama, it's me, you know so. But as far as, like, the team goes, nope, no drama, no infighting, nothing like that, because everyone to be on the team has to be an exceptional communicator to begin with, and so the way that they're communicating is is highly effective, very inoffensive and supportive and understanding, but still they're able to make their point and put their foot down and be strong about where they stand.
Speaker 3:You know, if it's necessary, and I think too, if you hold, look, anytime we start to internalize things, make things about us. That's where drama comes from. Right, we're feeding into some sort of fear, right, I'm not enough, could be one. Or I need this recognition, right, somehow I built up like, if I do this, I'm going to get this certain amount of recognition, and that's going to be key to my elevating, to my next stage, or making me the obvious choice for the promotion or whatever. And so when we start to lose a grip on that, when we're seeing it start to slip away, then we're living in a state of anxiety or fear, right, and then we begin behaving in a state of anxiety and fear and then drama happens, right, I mean it just does. But when you've got people who are thick-skinned, by the way, I think being an A-plus player means you have to have thick skin. I don't know anyone who's achieved a high level of success that hasn't had to develop a layer where things will just bounce off of them to a degree. Right, they might go home and they might feel it later on, right, but at least for like the purposes of team communication and interaction, they're able to let certain things slide. Anytime you get a lot. I don't know that there are a lot of thin skinned A plus players. Let me just put it that way. Right, because thin skinned people tend to resist recommendations, they tend to resist constructive criticism or feedback. They can view it as an attack instead of an opportunity for improvement. And I can tell you I know this because I'm talking to. I don't know how many people every single week I'll recognize something's'm talking to. I don't know how many people every single week I'll recognize something's going on.
Speaker 3:I talked to a guy today and he was doing this in his chair. Just subtle little thing, just a little wiggle. Just a little wiggle in his chair, a little swivel in the in the butt, and I happen to not think that that's a very professional thing to do during an interview, right, I don't care that he's doing it with me, but I do care if he's going to do it with clients, right? And so I first ask permission Are you open to feedback? Yes, you might not like what I have to say, are you okay with that? And they'll say yeah, no, tell me, josh, josh, no, tell me, I want to know, you probably know, so tell me. And sometimes they're like I don't know. I guess it kind of depends on what you have to say. Well, now I know something about these people, right, and I'm typing up what I know about them in that moment so that I know what kind of environment can I actually put this person in, or can I not put them into any environment that my clients possess? Right, and I shared.
Speaker 3:I said look, when you wiggle around a little bit, it's a self-soothing thing. That's what we do, you know. Like it's like rubbing your hands, it's, you know, touching, you know scratching your ear, it's like playing, fiddling with your hair and when it's not flirting, right, so like there's all these little things that, excuse me, me, that we do to self-soothe. But what it does is it shows someone that someone's uncomfortable, they're trying to, they're trying to soothe themselves, and that can show I'll just say it can show weakness. Is it really weak? I don't think so. There's nothing wrong with it. But could it show a stranger that? And that person won't even be able to articulate why they just don't want to hire that person. They won't even be able to know what it is. I can see it because I do it all the time, but they won't even know. And so I'm always asking that permission and I'm always shocked at how many people are like I don't know.
Speaker 3:I guess it kind of depends. Like, what, what's going to happen here? Like I don't know. I guess it kind of depends. What's going to happen here, what are you going to do? You want to hire the people that are like yeah, tell me. What can I do better? I'm a glutton for this. Tell me, help me be better. I don't know everything. I think I'm really good and here's why. But I also know that I've got this much further to go, and the only reason why I'm even here where I am right now is because I've kept an open ear and I've listened to people that I think probably know something that I don't Right, and so if we're talking about A players, I think A players always have that kind of attitude. Right, all right.
Speaker 3:Sorry to slam the final word on this, but thanks everybody. This has been a wonderful show. Let's do a quick to say no by saying yes. We learned about turning chaos into compliments. I love both of these topics, by the way. John. Like great selection for our program. Today we learned that our highly esteemed and lovable Vanessa Grant is going to be a guest on our show this year, which we're really excited about, but by the end of April we'll be vacating her seat and giving someone else a turn to co-host the show, and you can learn more about that at joshforcecom forward slash co. -host.
Speaker 3:We're also giving away $28,000 worth of leadership and communication training. The promo code for that is SFCS2025PFM. That's Salesforce Career Show 2025. People First Method. We also I'm going to throw up, not throw up, I'm going to show the link. It's joshforcecom forward slash cohort and that's where you can go. Make sure that you're including some information about yourself so that John can make a very good, calculated decision about whether or not you're going to be an excellent addition to the Salesforce career show cohort at People First Method.
Speaker 3:Okay, and we also got introduced to Kim Barnes. Kim, you haven't been on the show before, but I'm glad that you're on today. You're welcome back anytime. Thanks, everybody for your time today. Thank you to our audience and, just as a favor, if you could do us a favor, I'm going to invest a little bit into the Josh force channel. Right, I've got my, my, my guy, heart, uh, heart Bosch. I can't say his name, but he's a nice guy. I've known him for years. He's going to be doing some stuff to the to the um YouTube channel. Go ahead and sign up. Go ahead and subscribe to Josh force, right. That way, you can access these videos at any time.
Speaker 3:We'd love to get to over a thousand subscribers this year. Right now it's I don't know what it is five, 600, something like that. So let's make a little bit of a push. If you've enjoyed this content, go ahead and subscribe. I'd really appreciate it. But more importantly, I just think it'll help you stay updated on our latest content and with that we'll be back in two weeks. Subject unknown because latest content and with that we'll be back in two weeks. Subject unknown because we've had to move our next guest, whitney Ferris. She will be visiting with us at some point this winter. She's a wonderful person. She's got a lot to share. But we'll be updating you by next week what the content of our next show is going to be and we hope to see everybody here again. Bye for now, everybody. Have a wonderful, wonderful week.
