The Salesforce Career Show

How to Speak Like a Leader: Mastering Tone, Confidence & Influence

• Josh Matthews and Josh LeQuire • Season 3 • Episode 65

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In this thought-provoking episode of the Salesforce Career Show, hosts Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant—joined by expert guests Josh LeQuire and Jon Cline—tackle a crucial yet often overlooked skill: tone and professional communication.

Our tone of voice shapes how we are perceived in different professional settings—whether we’re speaking to executives, leading a meeting, presenting at a conference, or conducting an interview. But does a confident tone always mean success? Should you adjust your tone depending on your audience? Is “consultant speak” helpful or harmful? The panel dives deep into the nuances of communication, exploring when and how to adapt your tone for impact while staying authentic.

This episode also marks Vanessa Grant’s final show as co-host, as she reflects on three years of sharing insights, growing her platform, and helping thousands of Salesforce professionals advance their careers.


Key topics include:

  • The power of tone: how musicality, pacing, and emphasis affect perception.
  • When to adjust your tone—and when to stay authentic.
  • Why confidence doesn’t always mean certainty and how to use uncertainty strategically.
  • The difference between effective leadership communication and “sounding smart.”
  • How to improve your vocal presence with a one-minute voice training exercise.
  • A special farewell segment: Vanessa Grant reflects on her journey as co-host.

Whether you’re navigating high-stakes meetings, client interactions, or public speaking engagements, this episode will help you develop a strong, adaptable, and authentic professional voice that commands respect and fosters trust.

This episode is brought to you by Josh Matthews: thesalesforcerecruiter.com

For more terrific content, join our social network and get connected to our Salesforce community.


Chapters:

00:00 - Welcome and Vanessa Grant’s Final Episode Announcement
00:12:45 - The Importance of Tone in Professional Settings
00:27:50 - Confidence vs. Authenticity: When to Adjust Your Tone
00:42:15 - How to Communicate Uncertainty Without Losing Credibility
00:55:30 - The “Consultant Voice”: Does It Build Trust or Push People Away?
01:10:45 - Mastering Tone: Pacing, Emphasis, and the Power of the Pause
01:25:00 - One-Minute Vocal Training Exercise for Stronger Speech
01:40:15 - Vanessa’s Reflections: Three Years of the Salesforce Career Show

Josh Matthews:

Say hi, vanessa, what's up?

Vanessa Grant:

It's the show we're here.

Josh Matthews:

We're here. What are we talking about today?

Vanessa Grant:

Today I would like to talk about tone and the context switching that people have to do sometimes or don't, and the reasons why or why not, when you're looking at different business situations. So there are times that we might sound different when we're talking to our team internally, when we're speaking to a different department, when we're speaking to executives, when we're speaking on an interview, or if we're presenting to, let's say, at a conference if you're a dream for us or whatnot, and so I would love to talk a little bit about the nuance between those and whether it's still a valid thing. Does it matter if I sound super confident because I'm a woman, or is it OK to still have a little hesitancy, like like I'm hesitating right now?

Josh Matthews:

Sure, all right. Well, we're going to get it going. Here we go.

Josh LeQuire:

And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem.

Josh Matthews:

It's the Salesforce Career Show. So welcome everybody. You are part of a very special episode today, because this is, in fact, vanessa Grant's last episode as a long-running co-host. How long has it been? Two and a half years, three years I, I can't it's definitely been at least three years because it was yes, it was quite a long time ago.

Vanessa Grant:

I mean, maybe I could also start with a story of how we came to be, if, uh, if you want to get into that I would love to do that.

Josh Matthews:

Let's touch on that in the second half of the show, for right now we're going to dive into this topic of tone, but I do just want to say you are rad. It's going to be an awesome show. Thanks everybody for joining us live. We've got Josh LaQuire in the wings. We're going to bring him on board. Excellent Thanks for joining us today, Josh.

Vanessa Grant:

I don't think we're going to agree on all of this. So the more the merrier. I think this will be an interesting talk today.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, I'm confident that we won't agree, but that's what makes it fun. So you had an experience recently. It actually got picked up by LinkedIn and got some real traction. Maybe you can start by sharing the whole reason why the idea of tone professional tone in the workplace became of sudden interest to you.

Vanessa Grant:

So, excuse me, I had a client meeting. I'm doing a consulting engagement, and somebody who I work with, who I guess is technically my manager, pulled me aside and said, as a peer, I would like to talk to you about your tone, would like to talk to you about your tone and whether you're and she said that she had noticed it in meetings for weeks, whether it was internal, external, and that she said that I I think it's called like that I uptick at the end, so where, instead of just kind of talking very and then this, that and the other thing, I go and this, that and the other thing. So, as a woman speaker, she wanted to offer me this advice to not do that. And I was then questioning like well, should kind of did want to say you know, do you know who I am? But it was an interesting.

Vanessa Grant:

It turned into an interesting conversation on LinkedIn and I think where I landed and this is where I would love to hear what you guys think where I landed is I'm actually quite happy with my tone and I feel it projects authenticity when I'm not completely confident about something that comes through and I'm happy to talk to that with my clients and I don't want to sound, and I think, but I do think sometimes maybe there are clients that pay for maybe that big four like Deloitte type sounding experience, where we're going to be the smartest people in the room, no matter what, and maybe I'm just not that type of consultant. You're not, though, but you're not right.

Josh Matthews:

We know that If you were, you'd be at a big four. So there you go. I mean you're true to yourself, I think, and I think that being true to oneself is critical. I also think it's really important to not have too many versions of yourself out there. Talk about being disingenuous. People can pick up on that a lot. Now. You can have a variety of personalities, personas, communication styles, techniques, tones for a variety of different channels or situations, but there's just a single you right. And the more true you are, the more comfortable in one's own voice and content and delivery. That just portrays confidence and everybody's addicted to that stuff. I mean, who doesn't love that?

Vanessa Grant:

I mean honestly, josh. It's something that I think that you are exceptional at the way that you project, the way that you project, the way that you articulate your words. And I'm sure that's I don't know, is that something that you were like born like badass and confident, or is it something that you developed over time? And I'm not saying that I need to start sounding like Josh Matthews, but I do think that it's it. You, in particular, are exceptional in that kind of big four way.

Josh Matthews:

I appreciate that. I certainly have never viewed myself that way. I have spent a little bit of time making sure that I'm comprehending how I'm perceived by others, and I will tell you that started really right around the time I started Salesforce staffing and I was recording video interviews and I was talking to this guy I was actually doing a little bit of coaching on the side too and I was like, hey, john, and he didn't, the guy didn't take to me and I didn't get it. I thought I'm offering so much valuable personalized wisdom that is going to, I think, throttle this guy's career, not throttle it forward, throttle his career forward. And he just was kind of turned off.

Josh Matthews:

And so what I did is I went and watched the tape of our most recent coaching session. I was, in a word, appalled that what and how I thought I was coming across was so objectively different, dramatically different than what I thought it was. I interrupted, I wasn't smiling, I wasn't acknowledging, I had some funny little tics I was doing with my mouth, didn't make me look like a crazy person, but look, I've never seen someone in a presidential debate do that much, less win. And so I had to learn, at a couple different stages to just you know, I mean sometimes I talk really fast, sometimes I talk really slow. It just kind of depends. I don't overthink that stuff.

Josh Matthews:

But I had to add a couple points. Focus on that and I'll tell you, vanessa, I mean both you and I on this program been doing it for four years. I mean both you and I on this program, we've been doing it for four years. That's a lot of hours. It's hundreds of hours of public speaking. It's still public speaking. You're not on a stage, right, but there's an audience, they're tuned in and you're trying to convey something. So I've had a little bit of practice, but I will tell you this, very little. The most powerful thing was the self-examination, that's it, and being willing to relax into the reality that if I wanted different results I would have to change how I talk and how I come across on camera and my tempo and my tone and all of those things.

Vanessa Grant:

Maybe that's part of it then is how are your results? And then examine if you need to change, and maybe that's even client by client, department by department, audience by audience. Are you getting the results that you want? No, maybe tone is just a consideration, then. As far as the okay, what can I do differently?

Josh Matthews:

Sure, absolutely. And I think it's probably helpful to talk a little bit about what tone means. I want to cover this very briefly and then kick it back to you and to Josh and to John to continue the discussion, if that works with you. Tone is specifically the sound of your voice in its musicality. I heard a very famous I think he's a communication expert talk about this once. He was talking about hearing his mother and father through the wall. He couldn't articulate their words, he couldn't decipher what they were saying, but he could hear his dad and it was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And his mom ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba ba. Right, so you've got a musicality to your voice when you talk.

Josh Matthews:

And everybody knows Bueller, bueller, everyone knows what monotone sounds like and it's not very engaging, but what we do know is that's just a little tiny bit of what's coming across. Your words are the things that matter the least. They matter the most, but they're paid attention to the least. Most people who are listening to this program probably already know that. We've covered it a lot, probably done some investigation yourself. There's pacing, so there's pacing, there's the sound of this. That's just like your speed. There's your volume, because I can talk really loudly and it might not sound like this is the right volume for a program like this, right? Then there's the emphasis, which I have an interesting example I can share later on in the show, and then a very critical one is pauses, which I'm overemphasizing right now, allowing time for your words to actually sink in so that people can process it.

Josh Matthews:

I process things auditorily very fast. I'm a slow reader. I'm not a bad reader. I don't read faster than I talk for novels and stuff. So you've got to figure out where are you and you've got to figure out your audience, right? Someone in this room maybe the alpha, maybe the boss in this room of 10 people might need to hear things slowly for them to fully comprehend and make the best decisions. So is your pacing inviting that as well, right? So a lot of things to look at here today. I'm going to go ahead and kick it back to you guys.

Josh LeQuire:

I'm curious, vanessa, the story you told earlier. It sounded to me and we kind of talked about this in our last discussion about describing workplaces toxic, right, this is the term that's been genericized, overused, and kind of blankets a lot of things. Was that criticism more leveled at how you're communicating and the content of what you're saying, or was it leveled at the actual tone of your voice?

Vanessa Grant:

the musicality, as Josh says, right, like I'm curious if you can expand upon that a little further.

Vanessa Grant:

My sense of it was that it was said to me in a this could help you and so I'm just saying this to help you. I don't know that I necessarily agree with their advice, but I think the idea was, when we're speaking to clients, we want to sound like the smartest people in the room, essentially that we want to sound very confident, and even in internal meetings, if we're speaking it was actually also mentioned that in internal meetings too speak confidently. We're completely sure of what you're talking about. And I'm not sure I agree with that, and maybe that's just not me. I think I'm much more of a. If I'm not sure about something or I'm unclear about something, let's talk about it, let's dig into it more, and that way we can be on the same page as opposed to I know that you're paying me, but I don't know, maybe some people get paid. Everything has to be like a percent. You know, I'm completely committed to, even though, like it might be a shit show on the back end, kind of a thing.

Josh LeQuire:

It sounds like you're speaking. Somebody was afraid that you said something that could damage your client's perception of you. Is what I think you're saying.

Vanessa Grant:

I think yes, I think that's correct?

Josh LeQuire:

Is that person projecting their own fear onto you? You said you didn't agree with the feedback. Your intuition, didn't align with it.

Vanessa Grant:

No, and I think this is where some of the LinkedIn conversation went, where I think so. Somebody had posted as a comment on my LinkedIn this three-minute video by Steve Jobs talking about how his challenge with consultants has historically been that these consultants aren't used to actually owning the thing. And I think where I come from as a consultant oftentimes is that I've been a product owner. Salesforce has been my baby within a company before, and so when I speak about Salesforce things, I'm not.

Vanessa Grant:

I think it's really hard, when you're talking about Salesforce and you're talking about configuration things that aren't built yet we're not down to that user story level, to be completely confident that everything is going to be this particular way. There's a lot of different ways to skin a Salesforce cat. I think there's a lot of different ways to solve problems and oftentimes I'm confident about the direction, but maybe I don't know the specifics and I'm okay having a little bit of uncertainty when I'm explaining something because I'm sincere about how confident I am that it's this thing. Maybe I'll be confident when we're like you know, in in UAT, like that's the time I'll be like yes, it's working, we did the QA, it's all good.

Josh Matthews:

Right, I wonder. I'm just going to throw this out to the panel for a second. Vanessa just said some really interesting things, right. Very interesting, it's the idea that you can communicate at times with a little bit of appropriate doses of lack of confidence. The question I'm going to ask the panel and we've got John Klein and Josh LaQuire with us today is is it better for someone to communicate confidently but then express words of uncertainty versus words of confidence and tone or affect of uncertainty? Does that make sense?

Jon Cline:

It does make sense.

Jon Cline:

I think I would tackle it and, like in typical consultant form, it depends.

Jon Cline:

The first thing I think is, vanessa, you highlight this idea of being a know-it-all as being an expectation of a Salesforce leader or consultant.

Jon Cline:

I personally think that's somewhat uninformed, although being a learn-it-all to me seems to be a much more appropriate posture. And, additionally, recognizing where our gaps are, what we don't have sufficient information in, where we feel that there might be gaps and where there are potential areas of the map that have not yet been illuminated, to me should bring a lot of confidence to the team, because the knowledge of what we don't know is almost more valuable at times, as it relates to risk, than the knowledge of what we do know. And so I think our posture of how we go about that and encourage other people to participate goes to your second question, josh, which is should we ever have elements where maybe our tone of voice, instead of ending on a lower note, one of confidence, we end on maybe a slightly higher note, one of less confidence, so that we encourage other people who might be feeling the same way to jump in and participate with us and not ever feel like that it's a disagreement or they're having to differ from us in order to participate in the conversation.

Josh Matthews:

Agreed. Really good insight, john. I wonder if we can do a quick example, right? So let's think of a statement. Someone come up with a statement that we might say.

Josh LeQuire:

I need to look at a forecast of revenue for my company.

Josh Matthews:

There we go, okay, and who wants to deliver it with a con? I mean, I thought that was pretty confident, josh, but who wants to deliver it?

Vanessa Grant:

and maybe exaggerate a little bit so the effect can get through the radio waves. Here I need to look at a forecast of my company.

Josh Matthews:

Okay, so that's a question. Yeah, that's not very confident. John, you want to give?

Jon Cline:

that a show? Sure, we might say. I'm thinking possibly we might want to look at the revenue for our company and think about slicing and dicing that in various ways.

Josh Matthews:

Okay, I thought that was very good. I'm going to critique that, though, a little bit. John, are you okay with that? Of course, always. I think that possibly that's too many words. The more you use verbosity to make a clear point, the less confident it will come across, right? So I think we may need to look at blah, blah, blah Right Versus the preamble words, which are really used to buy time, so you can think more. And people know that subconsciously, wasn't? My role, I don't need a nitpick, I just want to.

Jon Cline:

No, it wasn't my role there. It was one of the points just wanted to make tonight. Yeah, it wasn't my role to be the less confident person there. Oh, what's that? I thought.

Vanessa Grant:

Yeah, yeah, I don't think that's actually John. John would definitely have said that more confident.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah.

Josh Matthews:

Josh, let's hear your most confident but professional, not crazy version of that.

Josh LeQuire:

I want to kind of make sure I understand what you're asking, because I think we're talking about a lot of different things here. I am playing the role of the consultant talking to the client, right? Or is this a different type of role that we're?

Josh Matthews:

having a conversation. You're the consultant. You're going to just say the phrase that you came up with and we're going to look at it.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah.

Josh LeQuire:

So I'm going to kind of preface this real quick that, for folks who are watching this and looking at their own careers, when you administer or develop Salesforce for a company, you are a consultant. Whether you work for a company or on their payroll or you do it externally, your job is to help the business to use this platform and technology in the most effective manner possible to achieve a set of objective. Now, going back to this chat, if I'm a consultant and I'm talking to a client and I want to project confidence, but also I think John, you said this really well you don't want to be a know-it-all, you want to be a learn-it-all. I'm going to I love that, yeah, because your job is not to come in with the false confidence and confidence. I know everything. By the way, you're going to get a lot of people in the room to shut down and be quiet if you already have all the answers, because, guess what, they're not going to want to talk about it. Why am I going to tell this guy? He already knows everything? What you want to do is warm people up enough to say hey, I think there's a lot of different ways we could solve this problem. Help me understand better.

Josh LeQuire:

If you want to look at revenue and forecast revenue, what's most important for you to see how should this work? Who wants to interact with this information? When does it need to be published? You can start asking questions that show that, hey, this guy knows he's clearly asking very specific questions about the question I just asked, but not going in and asserting knowledge of what's asked, but not asserting I already know what you need to look at.

Josh LeQuire:

This is going to be a time series. This is going to be a total revenue by month forecast and we're going to use Salesforce forecast to do this or we're going to use a pipeline report. So, yeah, to kind of go back to what you asked earlier, josh, in this role as an internal consultant, external consultant, we have a need stated by the client. They want to look at a forecast of revenue for the company. I would more posit it as well help me understand a little bit better who's using this, how do they need to use this? How do they need to see the information? What information do they need to see? I would start asking questions and kind of leaning into a line of inquiry. That would sincerely help me understand the business better so that, as an admin or as a developer, I can bring the right solution forward, because, to your point, vanessa, there's a million ways to solve a problem in Salesforce. What's the right way to solve this problem?

Jon Cline:

Sure, and can I highlight a little bit of the political layer that is on top of a simple question, like Josh just asked?

Jon Cline:

Of course you can so for example, a manager might say something like I need to have a forecast of the revenue for my company. They actually might be new in the role and not really have a clear idea on what they want, but somebody told them over coffee yesterday that if you want to be successful in this role, you better go ask for this. So they're asserting something and requesting it to their consultative Salesforce lead right, whether that's an in-staff person or otherwise, that's a great point, and they might actually not know what they want, but they don't want to be put in a embarrassing or compromising position where they have to disclose that. So what you did, josh, is great, because when you start asking questions about it, sometimes there's a mutual discovery happening where your stakeholder isn't actually the expert on this topic. You are more of an expert on the topic, but you want to leave them and keep them in the position of being the stakeholder and never kind of change the reins there.

Jon Cline:

And so by asking those questions, it gives them the ability to save face while they go through, never having to disclose that they actually didn't know in the beginning what they wanted, but now you can talk about and say you know what all data has meaning and meaning has motion, and so what that means is that this data comes from somewhere, somebody is a custodian and an owner of it.

Jon Cline:

It is more or less accurate as it moves along, and then it comes into kind of your scope of purview about what you're going to do, what are the actions you're going to take from it, who else needs to know anything about it? How long does it have relevance to us? Are we going to compare it back to something else in the future? And now you're giving them bite-sized abilities that they can say I didn't know what that entitlement of this big report, but I know each of these little questions that you're asking me, and you start to now compose a sheet of music, one note at a time where they actually never knew how to play the instrument in the beginning. And it's a great mutuality of how you're bringing the client or the stakeholder to the position they need to be in and letting them save face in the fact that they probably didn't know what was going on anyway, that's good, john.

Josh Matthews:

It's a really deep insight into it. It's basically, if you lack confidence, ask more questions is sort of the shorthand of it, so that you can really understand. And you said something. You were talking about music and kind of talked a little bit about tone. I want to make sure that we're talking about tone today, that we're talking about verbal communication, how your voice projects, how you communicate a sense of confidence to the people that you need to at the appropriate times. This is a professional show, so it's about people in their profession.

Josh Matthews:

There's lots of videos out there for how to talk to your spouse or your kids or your friends. So when you talk a little bit about music, it instantly made me think about a video I'd seen I think it's probably four years old, I can't remember, but a video I'd seen. I think it's probably four years old, I can't remember, but a video I'd seen and this person was talking about voices and he said you know he held up. You know a hammer is. What do you do with this? You use it. You know he held up a, a wrench. What do you do with this? You use it, right. What do you do with this? And I could. My room's a mess, but I'd show you all my musical instruments over here. What do you do with that? You play them, you play them. You don't use your voice, you play your voice. Right, it's a true instrument.

Josh Matthews:

And I recently recorded a song with my son, oliver. He sat drums and lead guitar and I did rhythm and bass and did the mix. And when I was singing the song and I'm not a good singer, but I'm going to give everyone a little trick so that you can have a better voice for your meetings and a better voice for your conferences and also for singing. So stay tuned because I will share that little warm-up that is highly effective and takes less than a minute to do. And when I was singing this, when I listened to my first recording, it dawned on me that I don't open my mouth wide and I don't. I kind of keep it all up in the front and I don't enunciate. I think I look silly when I really broaden my mouth, so I tend not to do it. I don't love my teeth. I think my teeth are fine, but I don't love them, and so I kind of people will hide their teeth. They won't open their mouth so much, not as much air comes through and it's way harder to get that kind of range right. Like I can sing a range of about eight notes. I am worse than Neil Young. I'm a terrible singer. I'm probably somewhere close to What's-His-Face from Velvet Underground God, what's his name? Someone remind me?

Josh Matthews:

Anyway, you don't have to have a big range in your talking voice. You need to have more than one note and you probably shouldn't have 400, right, like it's fine if you're Will Ferrell or Jim Carrey, but in a professional setting you don't have to have a lot of range. You do have to be able to project, you do have to be able to take pauses. You do have to be able to enunciate, skip unnecessary words.

Josh Matthews:

I really view this whole thing, vanessa, as confidence right. People who act confident get what they want and people who act unconfident get what they want. That's a technique learned generally. By the time you're three years old, you have learned a technique to get what you want by not projecting confidence right. If I go into enemy territory, whatever that may be, and I act like the big man on campus, it's probably not going to go so well, right? There are times you want to make yourself small and times that you want to make yourself tall and the situation will dictate it. You'll feel it.

Josh Matthews:

You know that feeling, vanessa, when you get up on stage and you're just like it's just that's. You're so good at acting like you're not having any nerves when you're on stage and I know that stage fright was kind of a big part of your experience on the speaking circuit for some time. I don't know that you've overcome it, but you've absolutely magically dealt with it because no one in the audience and I've been I don't know how many of your speeches plus sat with you here 25 times a year and you can't tell, right. So there's something about practice and confidence that people want that. But you can play up to the lack of confident thing that works. People do it all the time and it's generally nefarious and it's generally underhanded or childish, right, or symptomatic of challenges in your upbringing. Right Versus coming across like you don't have to come across as arrogant. Arrogance and confidence are conflated. They aren't the same thing. Why wouldn't? Everyone, I think on this panel will have a feeling about what comes to mind when I say salesman.

Vanessa Grant:

Yes.

Josh Matthews:

Right, yeah, usually it's not good.

Vanessa Grant:

So I'll give you a part two to the story.

Josh Matthews:

Can I just finish this one part? I feel like I've got a dangling participle here.

Vanessa Grant:

Oh yeah, sure.

Josh Matthews:

The idea that there are really great salesmen who help you uncover the product that you need. And then you get that product and it serves you for the purpose. But you say the word salesman, people have an automatic visceral reaction of like now. Why is that? It's because the vast majority of salespeople that most people have interacted with are at a best buy or a gap. They're 22-year-old. Kids are 18. They don't know how to sell. They can be pestering. You get telemarketing calls. So you have a visceral response to the word salesman.

Josh Matthews:

But you like salespeople because when they're really good, you don't even know that they're selling. Do you see what I mean? So there are certain times that, even with your voice, you need to go in and just be like I'm feeling tight, I'm feeling small and I'm going to fake the shit out of this thing until I get my first laugh or I get my first nod of anyone in the audience, and then I'm just going to look at that person the whole time because that's my source of confidence. I'm going to keep doing that. So thanks for letting me finish, vanessa.

Vanessa Grant:

I'm passing the torch to you. No, no, apologies, I thought you were done because I wanted to kind of jump off the salesperson. I don't know, jump off is probably not the right word, but either way, because I think that's part of the thing where a good salesperson is consultative. And I think that's where, as consultants and again to Josh's point, josh LaQuire's point, the idea if you're doing project-based work, whether you're a business analyst, whether you're an admin, whether you're an actual consultant, you are having to be consultative in a lot of different ways.

Vanessa Grant:

But when your consultative tone sounds more arrogant and more of that salesman type, I think, particularly for certain audiences, it the most confident person in the room tone, Because I think, especially if they're trusting me with something technical, it's again it comes across like more believable. And maybe that's an audience thing. Maybe for executives, you kind of want to do that super confident thing. But if you're speaking to the IT team at your and that they do IT projects all the time, you're not going to want to. And my part two to the story was we spoke to somebody else that was more on an IT team and they said oh, I like this much better. None of the consultants speak, and so the word consultant speak, I think, is the same thing that you're just referring to as, like that salesperson speak. Where it's the I'm not sounding authentic because I'm trying to sell you something, either trying to sell you my like, the illusion, or the how I want you to see my expertise, or I'm trying to actually sell you a service.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, it always makes me think of my buddy, Damien Heald, who's been one of my best friends for decades and we sold cars together at a Subaru dealership in the mid nineties it's quite some time ago and I learned a lot in that job for a couple of years. Damien was always number one and I know I probably brought him up before we might've even quoted him about a month ago with some of my favorite D quotes. But I remember going to this gal that we worked with named Vivara and I was like what's up with Damien? He started maybe three months before me. He crushed it hardcore right, Like he won every Christmas contest. He got the trips to Hawaii. I got the computer right.

Josh Matthews:

I came in number two, which is like steak knives, and I asked Vivara two, which is like steak knives, and I asked her I was like what does he do that helps him to communicate so effectively? And she said he just talks to them like they're friends. Man, Like that's it. And I remember recording some video something for the website, I don't know a couple years ago and the best advice I got was when I'm looking at the camera, to just look at the camera and talk like I'm trying to explain something to a stranger I just met in a bar. Right, I'm not swear, I swear a lot. So I'm not swearing, I'm not over emphatic because there's nothing at stake for me here and I'm just communicating like the person has reasonable intelligence and I can tell them what's what, and because I've got a beer in my hand or old fashioned, probably not talking too fast either. So just something I thought I'd throw in there a little bit.

Jon Cline:

That's good. I certainly think that we may have misnomers about what it means to be confident. I mean going back to your earlier example of music. I think breathing is actually a really important part of maintaining good tone because, for example, I'm not a huge fan of roller coasters myself, like I go to magic, mountain and stuff and I go to the animal shows. I'm not a thrill seeker in my life. So when I'm going to get on a roller coaster because my family wanted me to get on it, or whatever, I can physically feel the fact. I'm like, okay, this is making me nervous, maybe my breathing is becoming a little shorter. I'm definitely not relaxed and so I'm letting that situation really impact my ability to kind of maintain that even keel tone.

Jon Cline:

And I believe a lot of people do this, a lot of people that I work with. This happens to them. They get short of breath. They are much more focused on being finished with whatever they're going to say, even if it's not that effective, they just want to be done. Even if it's not that effective, they just want to be done. So if they hustle through it, if they stumble, if they stutter, if they skip a few words, but then they finish, they can check it off and be like okay, I did it.

Josh Matthews:

Totally, man. That's that happened. That's a great insight. That happens all the time. They can't wait to get off the stage right or out of the meeting or have their turn. Do you guys remember being in school and they'd be going around doing roll call? Remember that feeling when you get three names away from you? I mean, I've never asked anyone this. I always started to get like heart palpitations. I'd get an adrenaline dump. Now I'm sitting there with 15 other seven, eight, whatever it is 10-year-olds or 13-year-olds. I'm probably on good terms with pretty much all of them, they all know me. But here comes my name and the heart starts to flutter Just because you have to speak out loud, the word here or present. I mean, it's crazy what nerves do. And breathing is absolutely key, john, I love to. I wonder if this is a good moment to just take a small pause from this very, uh, enlightening conversation and share a little bit about the show what's coming up. I think Vanessa wants to tell a nice story about how she got started and then we're going to come back to this program.

Josh Matthews:

So first announcement I am looking for a marketing cloud architect to work on an implementation. It's probably in the 110, 150k range. Interestingly, offshore is okay, so I almost never do that, but there's an opportunity for that on this project. And I'm also looking for solution architects people who love sales cloud and have competencies in running projects and architecting for solutions that are half a million and up. That's with a small SI, great benefits, smart people, work hard, play hard kind of environment. So if you're interested in those, definitely get in touch with me. You can apply at the salesforcerecruitercom forward slash job. The marketing cloud role is not up yet. You can just hit the general candidate a little link there and add your information. Our program is going to be 45 to 60 minutes moving forward. We have spent years running 90 minute programs. We're going to tighten it up a little bit. What that means is we have about 20 minutes left in this show. I think it's going to be nicer for people to have more of a commuter-friendly track that they can listen to every couple of weeks, bring them up to speed on career things oriented with Salesforce, communication efficiency and the greater ecosystem at large.

Josh Matthews:

I also wanted to share that I'm launching a new blog. It's just because I thought I'd try it out and why not? And I like spreading myself. Then on mediumcom. I could be found there as Real Josh Matthews. Again, it's Real Josh Matthews with two Ts. I've got one blog up so far. I'll probably be adding about one a week, something like that, so you can check that out. So what would you like to do first, vanessa, would you like to share your story, or would you like me to share a technique that people can use to sing better, speak better and hopefully have a little bit more confidence?

Vanessa Grant:

You first.

Josh Matthews:

Okay. So this is something that I learned from a very world renowned. I can't remember his name, I'm notoriously bad at remembering names. This is an individual who has trained some of the top names in show business, in the sports industry fame speeches. They're 15, 20 minute hall of fame speeches. This is the guy that's probably been coaching them for three months for that one speech, and it's a very simple thing to do.

Josh Matthews:

I'm not going to, I'm just going to cover part of it. There's a lot about breathing and breathing deep and breathing into the side of your rib cage, which singers know about. Common folks like me don't. But this one thing, it was so cool. He had all of us sing a song like happy birthday, and then we did this one exercise. We did it twice and then we sang again and, oh my gosh, it was incredible what an easy trick this is.

Josh Matthews:

So if you're watching on video, I'm going to describe it for our listening audience. But if you're watching on video, I'm going to zoom in on little old me for just a moment and show you. You're going to take one of your hands and you're going to put it on your chin, on your jaw. You're going to take a nice, deep, fluid breath filling up all of your lungs, as many of them as you can. You're going to tilt your head back and you're going to make a sound like I'm going to share with you just now. You might want to mute it. It's not a real nice sound. It goes like this and you do that twice. I'm going to do it a second time just to annoy the people who muted it and thought I was done. Now what I'm doing with my hand, that is kind of cupping my chin as I'm stretching it, pulling it down and pushing it back, and that's opening up some of these tendons around your throat and in your jaw, and then I can sing right, but it comes out like way better. Now I can't sing, but when I do that I do. I do a little bit better and I would encourage everyone, after this program, to give it a shot. And, by the way, if you really want to wow yourself, get on your photo booth on your mac or whatever you use, get on your phone and record yourself visually and with sound and listen to the before and after. And if you can do this before you go into work or before a big meeting, I think you'll feel better, I think you'll be received better, I think you'll sound more confident and I think you'll reap all of those benefits. So I'm some of the folks didn't get a chance to see cause it was just solo on me. I didn't get a chance to see some of the giggles I was getting here between Josh, john and Vanessa trying it out.

Josh Matthews:

Let's do it real quick. Okay, I want everyone we're all going to sing. Let's all sing happy, everyone on mute. We're going to sing happy birthday to you. I'm not going to do it myself, I want the three of you guys to sing happy birthday to you, just like the first couple of lines. Okay, here we go. Okay, you're hired. No, you're not. Now, let's do this. We're going to keep the sound on and we're going to actually do this exercise again, grabbing our chin, breathing deep, hopefully, into the sides of our ribs. You can do this, laquire. Sit up straight, sit up tall, big, deep, loud, as high as you can go to as low as you can go. Here we go.

Vanessa Grant:

I don't think I've sounded more masculine in my entire time in the kitchen.

Josh Matthews:

I should do this before I go to sleep. Yeah, you should. You can't smile and do this exercise. We're going to do it one more time. We're going to win guys. Here we go. One, two, three.

Josh LeQuire:

It's a really wide open. Anybody who's just tuning in there's a really wide open.

Vanessa Grant:

And there's a reason for this. It's not.

Jon Cline:

It's not it's not a prerequisite to be hired or anything.

Josh Matthews:

I don't know if I need to say it's okay, all right, let's sing happy birthday on three one, two, three.

Josh LeQuire:

Happy birthday to you.

Vanessa Grant:

Happy birthday to you.

Josh Matthews:

Happy birthday to you, okay and team, so I think everyone sounded better vocally.

Vanessa Grant:

I don't know. You've got to work on the tempo and the pacing Tempo Parts of, I think, the conducting. Maybe I'm limited to conducting.

Josh Matthews:

All right, that was a fun one.

Jon Cline:

Well, this is a great example is a great example of right you have. Sometimes it's like in sports you got to miss a shot to make a shot. That's right. And this is a great example. We're putting ourselves publicly out there, right For potential embarrassment, because we trust each other, we trust our listeners and it's so good to be able to step out, try something new, take a risk right, get feedback and this kind of an exercise a great example of that of thank you for sharing that, as I've never even contemplated. I've never been a singer or anything like that myself, and so I will try and use this more often just to see, because I felt like when the second singing version, I did feel like my voice was more in its kind of natural range and I had a little bit more throughput on my words. So thank you.

Josh Matthews:

You're welcome, john. I'm glad everyone did it. It was pretty fun. I've got one more small announcement. Then we're gonna segue right into some Vanessa podcast stories and I wanted to do a small thing. We've been giving some things away. John's been incredible. He has actually pulled together the cohort. I've just thrown it up on the screen. They're kind of hidden, but we've got a full cohort up right now, which is fantastic, and we're looking forward to getting an update on that on the next show, after everybody can kind of get into it for a little bit.

Josh Matthews:

I wanted to do something for my friend, rachel Minion. Rachel has been an incredible support to me over the course of 2024. She heads up Rockstar, which is a marketing group that I work with. They're very helpful to my business. They could be helpful to yours, but, more importantly, one of the things that I work with, they're very helpful to my business. They could be helpful to yours. But, more importantly, one of the things that I really appreciate about Rachel is her desire to give back. Of course, that's what we're trying to do on this program with you, but she helps out people who are going through cancer. They're going through chemo. She has a non-profit and I'm actually going to put up her. If I can find it here under banners, I'm going to go ahead and share her email address. It's rachel at beyondbasicneedsorg.

Josh Matthews:

So this is a non-profit providing support to cancer patients wherever they are in their journey. Their chemo care kits are designed to inspire, uplift and help those undergoing chemotherapy thrive. 100% of donations go directly towards providing these kits free of charge. A chemo care kit is designed for cancer warriors undergoing chemotherapy. Each kit contains a port pillow, comfy socks, lip balm and a variety of goodies that these warriors deserve. So if you would like to donate in kind, if you have products and it can be anything, I listed a few but if you are in manufacturing or surplus or distribution, if there are seconds, misprints, things like that of products like these that you believe people going through the very difficult challenge of chemotherapy would benefit from, please reach out to Rachel at beyondbasicneedsorg and start a conversation with her about how you can help support all of the many patients that her organization has been helping for quite some time. Little public service announcement, and now back to Vanessa. All right, vanessa, you've got some stories. We want to hear it.

Vanessa Grant:

I just wanted to kind of go back this being my last show as a co-host, it doesn't mean I'm going to be a total stranger. I wanted to maybe look back at some of the maybe, how I got here and also what I've learned from part of that experience. So it was lockdown time. We were doing Clubhouse. I had just gotten onto Clubhouse because that was one of the ways that we could connect with people. Clubhouse was a platform that was on an iOS where you could kind of do kind of a radio show, kind of call-in style. People would listen and then occasionally they could raise their hand and you could bring them up onto the quote-unquote stage and it was more like call-in radio show style. And Josh had started a Clubhouse show with a couple of other Salesforce recruiters.

Vanessa Grant:

I was part of the Trailhead Mentorship Program at the time. I had a few mentees and so I was there every week listening just because it was gold the things that I was hearing as far as things that I could pass on to my mentees. Because, yes, did I know Salesforce? Did I know how to run Salesforce projects? Yes, but did I know the best way to act at a Salesforce job interview? Did I know how to did. I know how I should structure a resume, and these are things that I could take the nuggets from the show and bring them to my mentees, and I think the one of the first lessons is showing up.

Vanessa Grant:

I showed up every week and so a lot of times when you're connecting and you're networking with folks, I think it's important to not just ask for things. I think part of it is also being supportive. You want to be a content amplifier and so being excited that I was going to be listening to the show, supporting the folks on the show, and I just ended up raising my hand a lot because I had something to say or additional advice, especially when the advice was in regards to certification, something that I knew more about, where I don't know anything about a resume or an interview at the time, but I could certainly support you guys in speaking about resumes. And then, as the show kept going, it kind of turned into a natural progression. We met in person at Dreamforce 2021, the one that was like 1,500 people.

Vanessa Grant:

That's right, and then we started getting together for the Twitter show, which then evolved into a podcast. So another lesson learned there for me was I had always said, I mean, for years I said, oh, I'm not a content creator. I mean, for years I said, oh, I'm not a content creator. And I think there's also something to be said besides being a content supporter, besides networking in a way of supporting the folks that are providing good things out there, because makes them more inclined to build a relationship with you, and that's kind of how you and I started building this relationship. And then also the idea of not having self-limiting beliefs, the I'm never going to be a content creator.

Vanessa Grant:

Then look at me. I'm like we're a year into doing a podcast. We've supported I don't know how many people in the Salesforce ecosystem, which has been such a blessing and such an extension of the mentorship that I started out doing all this stuff. And plus, I mean, of course, the most valuable thing is the friends you make along the way too, like you and Casey have been such a gift to me in my life. So I just wanted to touch on all the great lessons that I've learned along the way, how you've empowered me to support others in the ecosystem in a way that I didn't think I would be able to when I first started listening to your show and just thank you so much for this journey together. It's been really quite remarkable.

Josh Matthews:

It's been really quite remarkable. Wow, vanessa, thank you so much, and I mean for the words you just shared, but for these past several years of being so consistent, so ready, so willing to help, and it's been a beautiful thing. I've never seen it before in my whole life I've never watched someone from the outside growing their following, finding their voice, achieving big goals. I mean I've seen people achieve big goals. But I just mean Vanessa is a social media darling and when I met her, she was simply a guest on my podcast and it's been an incredible. I feel like I found an early star To your point. It was such a natural thing. You just started raising your hand. You could answer things that I couldn't and still can't, and it's going to be. We're going to be making some adjustments to the show. As we know, no one's going to fill your shoes or your own. We're going to bring in a couple, we're going to bring in another pair of shoes and I expect that parts of the show will be different and feel different, because how could it not so? From the bottom of my heart and, I think, from all of our listeners 70 plus countries, four years, thousands and thousands of downloads and sharing. I thank you, we all thank you. You have helped so many people. You better get that freaking MVP for crying out loud. If you don't, I'm going to be pissed and we're going to have to launch a campaign in April. Apparently, that's what you need to do. We're going to launch a campaign in April. You are always welcome on the show at any time. You'll always have an invitation. We are really looking forward to having you back when some of these crazy life changes that you've been going through for the last few months settle down, you get into the swing of things, and when you uncover a great topic or something of significant value, we hope that you'll come on and be a star guest again, as well as a panelist. So thank you, vanessa.

Josh Matthews:

I do want to say I had a lot of grandiose ideas. I kind of went into Leslie Knope creative idea land and, oh, I can create a montage of all the best things that Vanessa has said, and I can create a montage of all the best things that Vanessa has said and I can splice it, and I thought that is a 50 hour project. Matthews, maybe you should just say thanks, and so that's what I'm going to do Thanks. And, by the way, she doesn't need a montage. You might, though, and if you want to make your own montage, you would start by going to some of our first episodes and starting to listen. Start listening to this very intelligent woman and all she has to share with the ecosystem.

Josh Matthews:

Okay, so with that, we've only got a few minutes left, and I'm going to bring our friends back up to the stage and just ask what have we not covered? I mean, this is a big topic. Right, it's a really big topic. I think that we could. You can dedicate your whole career to this one thing. We're definitely going to have to revisit it, but what have we not covered that each person feels we really have to convey, and we have a hard stop in about three minutes, so, so, 30 seconds max. Josh LaQuire go.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah Well, I think you hit not just on tone but the power of effective communications and building trust, knowing your role in the room, knowing the culture of your company, the culture of your client, the expectations of what that culture is, which is really hard to read. These are intangibles, also coming across and taking the learner's mindset, and it's okay to ask questions, it's okay to take risks. Don't try and necessarily mold yourself to what you think people want you to be. Who you are, speak your voice. I think those are all pretty salient topics, so-.

Josh Matthews:

Time's up. I'm sorry, buddy. We're going to crank through Mr Klein.

Jon Cline:

Whoops.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, I think similar.

Jon Cline:

I would suggest not fulfilling someone else's vision of what leadership and confidence looks like. It's really recognizing your own fingerprint, your own DNA and your own point of view in that meeting and just being able to be in a position where you can confidently deliver your own point of view in a way, and just being able to be in a position where you can confidently deliver your own point of view in a way that encourages others to interact. You don't have to be the one who's right in the room, but you can start the right conversation, and it's a different focus and it's one that draws people in, because you your ability to draw that out of people is what people are going to really appreciate. So the way I look at it is you want to be the favorite person on the team, that people just play better when you're on the team. You don't have to be the one who scores all the points.

Josh Matthews:

Thank you, John Klein. All right, Vanessa.

Vanessa Grant:

I think the big thing is keep practicing. So keep checking in with yourself, so understanding how you come across, looking at videos, to josh's point, but also don't be afraid to speak up and if you get it wrong, offer yourself some grace. The more you practice, the better you'll be able to read a room and read what tone is going to come. Naturally, that will that.

Josh Matthews:

That will come with practice I think that's been some wonderful advice from three very intelligent people. We'll'll be back in two weeks. We have some wonderful guests lined up for, I think, the next month. We'll share more details. Make sure that you're checking out the Salesforce career show, or it's just salesforcecareershowcom for what's coming up. And thank you, vanessa. We love you. Have a wonderful, wonderful week, everybody. Bye for now.

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Josh Matthews

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Vanessa Grant

Co-host