Silos Kill Businesses: Salesforce's Vala Afshar on Surviving the Agentic AI Wave

Seven of the ten largest companies on Earth from 25 years ago are gone. Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce, says silos killed them, and in the age of AI, silos will kill companies even faster.

Josh Matthews and Scott Stafford sit down with Vala for a masterclass on what "AI-ready" actually means. Salesforce went from zero AI agents to 300 digital workers in two years and redeployed 3,000 employees into new roles instead of cutting them. Vala breaks down exactly how, and what it means for every company from 30 people to 30,000.

In this episode:

• The four stages of AI maturity — and why most companies are stuck at stage one
• SUDA: the autonomous operating model behind Waymo, Amazon's million robots, and Salesforce's agent workforce
• Why 2026 may flip us from "human-led, machine-assist" to "machine-led, human-assist"
• How to inventory your own job: which work moves to agents, and which work makes you irreplaceable
• Cooks vs. chefs: the first-principles mindset shift that separates AI users from AI builders
• Vala's story — from refugee to engineer to patent-holding evangelist — and why sponsors beat mentors

Whether you're a solo consultant or leading an enterprise team, this is the playbook for staying on the right side of digital Darwinism.

Connect with Vala Afshar on LinkedIn and X (@ValaAfshar).

The Hiring Edge with Josh Matthews and Scott Stafford — helping leaders navigate the age of AI and build teams people never want to leave.

Transcript

Why Silos Fail In The AI Era

Josh Matthews 0:00

Bala, introduce yourself. We're so stoked to have you. Thank you for coming.

Vala Afshar 0:03

Seven of the ten largest companies on earth by revenue are no longer around in the last twenty-five years. I believe it's because of silos. Silos kill businesses, and in the world of AI, silos are going to kill businesses even at a higher rate. My point is that it's never too late to start. You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start in order to be great.

Josh Matthews 0:20

Welcome to the Hiring Edge, the podcast helping leaders navigate the age of AI, create teams that thrive, and build a workplace people never want to leave.

Vala Afshar 0:28

Josh Scott's my pleasure to be here. A title that was given to me by president of engineering almost 11 years ago. So uh, you know, just like yourself, uh, you know, I thought, wow, this is cool, kind of weird, but but uh I I only knew Guy Kawasaki's the only evangelist I knew 11 years ago. Uh he he helped bring the I think the Mac2 to market in the mid-80s. He worked with Steve Jobs. Honestly, I could count on a few fingers, evangelist. Uh sure. So I I I was both excited and nervous about the title.

Josh Matthews 1:07

In your time, you've been there, like you said, almost 11 years, but you've also written three books. You've held uh positions such as CMO, uh chief customer officer. I mean, you've done so much in your life, and you've been at the forefront of comprehending what AI is and what it's doing. You've had a front row seat to it at Salesforce. And I wonder if you could kind of walk people through what those stages, those four stages of AI from machine learning all the way through to number four. Could you just kind of explain if people aren't aren't super savvy or exposed to it yet, kind of what you see as those four stages?

From Descriptive Data To Prescriptive Action

Vala Afshar 1:51

Um I, you know, for those of you who uh especially you too, familiar with Salesforce, I've known Salesforce for uh since 2003. Uh that's the that's the first year. Um when I joined the company, we started our AI journey. Uh Salesforce, you know, invested in in AI, launched our EI AI research team, acquired our first AI company, you know, 12 years 12 years ago, around 2014. And um at that time, you know, for us, it was taking advantage of being able to predict outcomes. It was, you know, predictive use of analytics, using machine learning to be able to not only describe the past, you know, mostly all the data we have is from yesterday or a minute ago. We don't have any data about the future, not 10 seconds from now, not an hour, not a not a day. All the data we have is from the past. And a lot of companies are very good describing the past. They use data to describe things. You go to a quarterly business review and you show year-over-year growth and net promoter score and CSAT and EBITDA and so on and so forth. So descriptive use of analytics. Once you're able to describe the past well, um, you you start to think about well, can I root cause why things happen? So you end up using data to diagnose why the trajectories that you're experiencing. So you graduate from descriptive use of analytics to diagnostic use of analytics when you get really good at root causing why things are happening. Why are we winning? Why are we losing? Why are we staying flat? The business naturally wants you to start predicting what's going to happen tomorrow. So this is when algorithms come in. This and so the first phase of AI has been graduating from descriptive to predictive, uh, to diagnosis to predictive. Now, predicting the winning lottery number for tomorrow does you no good unless you go play that number. So it is the business, you know, the game doesn't end with prediction. You want to be able to prescribe action to your employees and your customers and business partners so that you can do something immediately to help you achieve the goals that you're that you're pursuing. So predict predic predictive and prescriptive use of analytics is all to me that that power of wave one of AI. Now,

GenAI Arrives Then Agents Take Over

Vala Afshar 4:10

in November 2022, the world kind of woke up to wave two, which was the generative machine learning. You know, 59 days later, 100 million people were actively using Chat GPT. Now, OpenAI was launched in 2015. The first white paper on on uh on using language models was with uh Richard Soscher, our chief data officer at Salesforce when he was at Stanford in 2018. So prompt engineering, natural language processing, all the building blocks of generative AI capabilities, we were part of the pioneering group around that. Now, certainly agenc AI is now wave three. So, you know, Salesforce for 24 years, you know, 24 years, we built software. It was a tool, we gave it to you, humans, and you were responsible for using the tool to drop business outcomes. For the last two and a half, three years, we no longer develop tools. We actually develop, as you introduced the show, um, labor, digital labor.

Josh Matthews 5:12

And now Vala, you have 300, Salesforce has 300. I mean, you would call them digital employees, right?

Vala Afshar 5:21

Absolutely. This is growing. Software is and it's it's growing. Uh that number will might shock you at Dreamforce uh in terms of the growth in that number. So I don't want to break have any breaking news here. But just think about it. Two years ago, zero agent, now 300. Uh so you know, and and I would say the average company that I'm working with, it's funny, I'd say average is probably around 20, but there are some that are in 100, some that are growing in the teens. Um, let me ask you.

Josh Matthews 5:51

Let me ask you about that for a second. So when we think about, because let's face it, Salesforce is big. Everybody knows that. It's a big company, it's got a lot of resources, it's developing the technology to build the agents. So it's in a really unique position to take advantage of it and test it on itself before deployment. It's it's in such a beautiful position. But what would you say to these companies that are 30, 40, 50 people, right? You know, do you do you envision that two years down the line, three years down the line, these small to mid-sized orgs are going to have two or three hundred agents? Or are they gonna be in the, you know, 20, 30, like you just said, 2030, and they're gonna be still cutting edge, they're still gonna be highly viable. They won't die because they're competing with, as we talked about before, and as you've mentioned uh a lot, I think throughout the year, that if you're not building an autonomous business, you're you're you're antiquating yourself and you'll slowly die on the vine, basically. What do you think about that when you think about these smaller businesses?

Autonomous Businesses And Digital Darwinism

Vala Afshar 7:00

Yeah, I so I I I don't I think it's size agnostic. I don't think I don't think uh Shunub Agentic is um you know uh an enterprise playbook. It's an individual playbook, it's a team playbook, it's a company playbook. That subtitle said the fittest businesses. Uh, you know, Darwin reminded us you didn't have to be the strongest to survive. If you have thick fur, you most likely will survive winter. It was about adaptability. And this is digital Darwinism because you know, you have unlimited labor capacity. This doesn't dehumanitize or this doesn't reduce the impact that people will have. It'll always be people at the center of how you will achieve success. But you know, my my company headquarters is in San Francisco. Um, when you go to Dreamforce, hopefully we'll see both of you there in September. But when you're in San Francisco, stand in the middle of the city, anywhere in the city, and count to 10. Just slowly. One, two, three. By the time you get to 10, a car is going to drive by you without a driver.

unknown 8:05

Right.

Vala Afshar 8:05

It's about 300 Waymos. And now you've got CyberCab from Tesla, you have the Zooks from Amazon, you have Moya from Volkswagen, you have multiple car manufacturers that have cars driving, and it's not it's San Francisco, it's Austin, it's Atlanta, it's Atlanta, it's Phoenix, you know, dozens of cities around the US. When you see that coming in all different form factors to make this car autonomous. Now, Waymo is $150 to $200,000. A Cybercab is around $30,000. Um, but when you get into a cyber cab or an a Zook, it's even scarier because that steering wheel I mentioned, gone. The gas and brake pedal, gone. Safety mirrors, gone. So the car is AI first design. This is why the title was AI first design, because when we announced a month or so ago, or maybe at TDX, maybe a couple of months now, the fact that we're we have a headless um access to our platform because we know it is, in my opinion, the most significant announcement maybe we've ever made. Ever. Because what we signal to the world is that we anticipate the source of inquiries and contact into our platform will mostly come from machines in the future. And machines don't download your mobile app, machines don't read dashboards, machines don't log into your website. So you want the workflows, you want the governance, you want the trust layer, but recognize that 2026 may be the year where we moved from a human-led machine assist world to a machine-led human assist world. And that's a very powerful and I have anxiety when I say it. I have angst when I say it, but I also can see the beautiful outcome of what my company and some of our Trailblazer customers are doing, recognizing that this is an opportunity where one plus one equals three. But we do all have to have a sense of urgency about this. Um we've got significant IPOs that are happening in the very near future. But at the end of the day, as someone who's been in technology for 30 years, you know, a US patent holding inventor, I didn't used to just talk about technology. I used to build it.

Josh Matthews 10:25

Uh yeah, you're an engineer.

Vala Afshar 10:27

I'm an engineer. Um, and my first US patent was uh on Salesforce technology, believe it or not. Um, but but I think this is electricity for the 21st century. This is the most important technology. Uh, and I think it's hard for an individual or a team or a company of any size to compete if they're not taking advantage of these autonomous capabilities. And when I say taking advantage of is understanding the operating model of autonomous systems. The car, Waymo, is an autonomous machine. Factories over the last 20 years have become autonomous. These cars that I mentioned are mostly built by autonomous factories. That doesn't mean you don't have people. You know, 2012, Amazon bought their first robot. Now they have over a million robots, but they also have more than one and a half million employees. So this is a hybrid work environment, machines and humans. But the operating model, when you sit in that Waymo, you realize when that car in front of you slows down or stops, the car, self-driving unsupervised car reacts in real time. Remember, there's been zero fatalities with Waymo, and they're doing, I don't know, 20 million miles a month now. I mean, the numbers are staggering, staggering with zero fatalities. Now,

Sense Understand Decide Act At Scale

Vala Afshar 11:46

for an operating system, I call it autonomous Suda, SUDA. This car is sensing data. So autonomous systems, whether it's a machine or a factory or a company like Salesforce, those 300 agents is helping us sense signals from our customers and employees and partners proactively. We're not waiting for somebody to tap us on our shoulder. We're we're proactively seeking information. And then we're understanding the signal that when we talk about like Scots building data 360 with lake how lake lakes with unstructured data and warehouses with structured data and all these snowflake and data bricks, and we don't care where the data sits. We found ways to move the process to the data versus data to the process. But there's that understanding that happens, there's reasoning that's happening. So it's not just understanding, but it's deciding what to do. Sense, understand, decide. And the last thing is act. And the car stops when the car in front of you stops. That Suda in a Waymo is in real time. That signal comes into your business. So if you're an employee now, Salesforce just hired you, Google hired you, Metav hired you, you know, these these AI-powered companies, their expectation is for employees over time to be able to reduce the time it takes for them to receive information and for them to act. Now, with agents, that time is converging to near zero. Um, but so you have this agentic uh velocity, speed, and direction that companies are adopting. But that means humans have to elevate their ability to sense, understand, decide, and act. And I want to talk about that. Oh, sorry, keep going. When Waymo promises you to take you to a certain destination with a given time, Josh, I'm gonna get you to where you need to go in 20 minutes. And you're in stop and go traffic, and the car realizes that you're gonna be late for that 20-minute promise I made to you. The car unsupervised changes lanes and picks a different route. That's not situational awareness, that's horizontal awareness. That's not just stop and go and safety. That extends that contextual understanding of what the machine's job to be done, getting you on the promised time to your destination. So this A Suda means employees in marketing are going to be aware of what's happening in sales, what's happening in customer service, what's happening in HR, what's happening in RD. Signals are being shared so that situational and horizontal understanding for us people are also expanding. And this is something we've never experienced in business. Um it's it's it's it's uh orchestrating one signal coming into your company. Somebody opens a case in your call center and your service agent informs your marketing agent, informs your sales agent. The sales agent knows that the person just opened a ticket has an open opportunity with a with a commit close of this month. The sales agent now informs the service agent, escalate this to humans as fast as possible. Right, right. Because if we don't solve this case in a timely manner, we might not close that ACV that we promised to the business.

Reskilling People Instead Of Cutting Them

Josh Matthews 15:12

Let's talk about that right now. Okay, so Salesforce has done an incredible job. You guys moved 3,000 people into sales roles without hiring externally, right? You you this sort of great redeployment of uh you know workers that maybe, hey, okay, that job's going away. That's now an agent, right? But let's find a new opportunity for you. But what would you say to these folks about what they can do to be the person that's going in there, interacting with the agents, going from you know, Salesforce consultant or going from uh junior salesperson or from business analyst into being highly competent, being able to articulate that to the folks at Salesforce or to a partner or to a hiring manager.

Vala Afshar 16:01

Yeah, great, great question, very deep question. Just recognize, and and I'm gonna move away from the car analogy, but all three of us started our driving experience with hands on the wheel. We had to, hands on the wheel. Then we got in our lifetime, cruise control was introduced, self-parking was introduced. So hands were now ready, but the car semi-autonomously, like cruise control operated. Uh, but you still had a steering wheel, you still had gas or brake. When you do talk about full autonomy, our hands are now off. It's it's not hands-on, it's not hands ready, it's off. Um, so so you can only redistribute talent when you've evolved to a hands-off capability in your business. So when our help.salesforce.com website over months and months, it took us like six months to ground the data to get to that point. You know, people don't realize the effort that goes into having agents produce 71% resolution rate. That took six months of ragging the system. But we got to a point where we felt comfortable hands off. Like agents can now deliver support better than we ever could uh in the past, 26 years. Uh um, and that's when we were no longer responsible for driving the car. So you have to mature to a certain level before you can shift your resources. Uh, and so it is about redistribution of human effort where you can add the most value. So, what I would say is if you look, be honest with yourself. If the work you're doing is routine, it's well specified execution work, that over time is gonna move to intelligent software. So if you're doing repetitive, deterministic work, that is gonna move to uh to intelligent software at some point. So, but what that doesn't mean is that judgment and governance and and validation of work, that's gonna become core job. And we talked about relationships at the beginning of this, that R and C R M. And when I say be honest with yourself, like inventory the work you do and say, how much of my work is transactional work? How much of my work is relationship building? And really double down on the relationship part. Because, first of all, the longest uh research on health, happiness, and and wealth uh was an 87-year-old study at Harvard. Harvard, eight decades ago, followed a thousand individuals. Over time, they expanded the number. And they kept in touch with these individuals for 80 plus years, and the healthiest, happiest, and most successful people, it was not fame or fortune or reputation, it was the quality of the relationships they had, was number one uh predictor of health and happiness and longevity. So think about, and and when you talk about making a decision in a company to move thousands from one function to another, this is not technology transformation. I actually think the technological transformation is a lowercase T. The capital T, big, bold, underlying T, is relational transformation. And for the last couple of years, to be honest with you, all we've talked about has been a narrative around subtracting, less people, more productive, squeezing more.

Josh Matthews 19:27

Efficient, efficient, yeah.

Vala Afshar 19:28

Yeah, efficient, efficient, efficient. And but honestly, that's a lack of leadership, imagination, and creativity. And so, you know, when we first redesigned, there's actually seven R's. When we first redesigned the system to add an agent, and we got to a point where we enhanced the operational envelope of an agent to say it can really do not just one task, but series of tasks to a point where it can do a role. It can actually do frontline support. Um, we we now have to figure out whether we we have a choice at that point keep our talent and redistribute or remove the talent. We chose as a company to keep the talent. And so that immediately requires a reskilling effort. So the second most important R is reskilling because chances are you're gonna move from one line of business to another. And for us, it was moving service, customer success to distribution our sales. Like you said, 3,000 added to sales without actually adding 3,000 to our headcount. Now, that reskilling, to be honest with you, we've been doing trailhead for 10 years.

Josh Matthews 20:32

I know it's not like you don't master the art of reskilling, right?

Vala Afshar 20:36

We and by the way, we make that available to anyone.

Josh Matthews 20:39

If you have internet access, you can go learn how to be a prompt engineer, how to what would you say to the 50-person company that doesn't have their own trailhead, right? That doesn't have their um, you know, what would you say to the to our listeners or to the the public at large who's running a you know 30-person company or even a 150-person company, and they simply can't afford or they don't know how, or they don't have the bones or the backbone for um actually reskilling certain employees. So, you know, when people are thinking, guys like me, you know, when I'm interviewing and I'm screening and calculating, is this person going to be a fit? And are they gonna be a fit not just now, but in three years? Are they going to be able to adapt? What would you share with everybody are the qualities beyond intellect, beyond intelligence, beyond IQ, um, that are really going to help set people apart to give those folks who have it more confidence that the future is okay for them?

Hire For Attitude Then Train Aptitude

Josh Matthews 21:37

Sure.

Vala Afshar 21:37

Scott, did you have something you wanted to add?

Scott Stafford 21:39

Yeah, we had a comment just come in right as you asked that question, and it was Daniel Gordon, and he said empathy is his immediate.

Vala Afshar 21:47

Yeah, absolutely. Daniel, he he lives that. That's those are more than just words for him. He he is he's an others oriented person. He's a giver. First of all, I don't subscribe to you, don't have the, you don't have the you can't afford or you don't have the budget or You don't have the time. I don't subscribe to that. Excuses are bricks used to build a house of failure. And I don't mean to be harsh about it, but you need to have agency. And I don't I don't no pun intended. I don't mean agent. You need to look, I'm an immigrant refugee. So once you, once you, once you leave your country, whether it's by choice or otherwise, and for me it wasn't choice, that's the most disruptive thing that can happen in your life. Um now at the time I was angry, I had resentment, I was too young, too immature, didn't have wisdom to realize that's perhaps the biggest life lesson. Because I quickly realized at age 10 that nobody owes you anything. The world doesn't owe you a thing. So don't blame your manager, your budget, the size of your company, the school and your degree and your friends and your family circle. Um, some some of us have had great fortune. You know, you sadly your zip coat is the biggest uh dominant factor in terms of whether you're going to be successful. So where you were born, and perhaps the color of your skin or or the or the or the family uh uh wealth that that that you were born into, obviously all of us are very lucky, very blessed. But at the end of the day, you have to, and but there's nothing I can say, nothing you uh on uh in your podcast can say to someone to put them on a path of success. That choice is theirs. That choice is theirs. Now, 100%. You want to you want to create a gravitational pull? Uh, character does come into play. Now, you know, what I I've always, as a hiring manager, most of my career, I hire for attitude and I train for aptitude. So attitude to me matters. Attitude to me is do you show high rate of learning? Do you show agency? Um, are you self-aware, which is a superpower? Most people are not self-aware.

Josh Matthews 23:44

It is a massive superpower. Accountability, self-self-actualization.

Vala Afshar 23:49

And and trustworthiness. And Rachel Botsman had the maybe the best definition of trust that I subscribe to. Rachel Botsman, lecturer at Oxford, says Um, trust is competence plus character. And she said, competence is reliability and capability. So when we look to position someone into a new role, give them more responsibility, they have had to have demonstrated to us that they're capable and they're reliable. Both. You can't be a capable person and be unreliable and vice versa. Character is integrity and benevolence. I love the word benevolence. Benevolence is your intentionality. Why is it that Scott actively, weekly, almost daily, on multiple platforms, promotes others. When he's uh his presence, it's all about promoting the good work of others. What's he motivated by? Most of the people he's promoting can't do anything for him. Uh, you know, their peers, he's he has a higher architect level. So so his intentionality for doing what he does is because when he celebrates people's achievements. And that's why folks like me and others gravitate towards him, because we understand his motivation and it's to share a positive light onto folks that are trying to, as Steve Jobs used to say, put a dent in the universe. So the people that we invite to Salesforce, and you know better than anyone else, Josh, one and a half million people annually apply to work at my company. So it's harder to get into my company than just about any company on earth. Um, so you know, character does matter. Um, and and and you know, I I tell you what, I didn't have a CV when I when Salesforce reached out to me, and I had a pit in my stomach because I never had a CV. I I I was gr I was recruited from grad school and and and I didn't have a resume because I want a graduate uh research competition and I got a job offer at the at the competition. Uh so I never had a CV. So when Salesforce executive recruiter is talking to me and says, we need your CV, and I had a pit in my stomach because I'm like, I have no intentions of recapping 20 years of work on a one or two pages. And by the way, I've I've written a book, I have a podcast, I blog, I'm on act, I'm on social media every day. Like if you're asking about my CV, you don't know what I do. Yeah, right. But but but that's a natural question for an executive recruiter to ask. And even though the conversation was about 10 seconds, I thought I'm not gonna get an offer by letting him know. And as soon as I said, I don't have one, within literally 10 seconds, she's like, no problem, we can find out about your achievements. And that was a signal to me, this is a cool company. This is a really they don't, they're not looking, they're not looking to recruit like how my grandfather was recruited. Right. You know, I put my best foot forward on two pages. Um, some people have six, seven, eight, ten pages, which blows my mind. And and and get into get into a job. So I'm not, this is not a humble brag, although it sounds like I'm humble bragging, but my point is you started by saying some people in small companies may not be able to afford to invest in

Invest In Yourself With Daily Tools

Vala Afshar 26:53

themselves. And I say bullshit. Invest in yourself first and then do your best to help others win. So download that cloud co cloud co-work, work with Slackbot, work with Notebook LM. Like, how many of the folks in the audience have active language models and agents that they're using on a daily basis?

Josh Matthews 27:11

Yeah, if you have a perplexity computer, start your own open cloud. I got that running right over here somewhere. You know, like if you just spend a hard weekend knowing nothing with a couple windows open going, I don't know how to do that. I'm gonna do it like this. Oh, what about this? Do it like that. And you will learn, you will learn. And you know, my challenge to everybody, and this started for me, my AI journey really started 18 months ago. It was February. And I said, I gotta get a handle on this. My friend's like, check it out, Josh. I'm I did this open claw and you're gonna love it. So I'm like, okay, will you build it for me? He's like, Well, I can build it for you, but I was like, F it, I'll do it. And I did it, and I was like, oh my God, oh my god, oh my god. Now I got a 40-page rubric on how I talk. You know, I've got like my own web app.

Vala Afshar 27:58

See what you're doing right now, Josh, what you and Scott are doing now. This is you're staying teachable by first of all being generous enough to share your wisdom. You just inspired a bunch of folks listening that 20 hours can get to 80, but it's of value. So, you know, most of my career, most of my life, actually, the first 44 years of my life. And I say 44 because my first ex post, Twitter was tweet, I was 44 years old, my first book, I was 45 years old, my my first podcast, my first blog, everything happened in my mid-40s. So I had this silo mentality, you know, like capture resources like knowledge, fancy titles, salaries, budgets, headcount, capture, protect those resources and extract value. It's a 5,000-year-old practice. That's how farmers kept growing corn and grain and so careers, businesses. This is why 65% of Fortune 500 companies have died since year 2000. Seven of the 10 largest companies on earth by revenue are no longer around in the last 25 years. I believe it's because of silos. Silos kill businesses, and in the world of AI, silos are going to kill businesses even at a higher rate. My point is that it's never too late to start. You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start in order to be great. And I will tell you, it comes as simple as this. Write more. Write more. I read to improve my writing. I write to improve my thinking. I can't tell you how often I sit down to write something, immediately recognizing I don't know enough about this topic. Yeah, right. Which immediately forces me to pressure test my anemic thinking to a point where I feel comfortable. By the way, three best-selling books, thousand news articles, uh, and I still consider myself a shitty writer. Um, I because I read enough to know what good writing looks like. Um I gotta say, these books are amazing. You are not.

Speaker 2 29:46

Well no, you you're very kind. You you give me some great, Mike. I and you I get it, right? Yeah.

Vala Afshar 29:52

No, no, no. But it it's difficult for me. Let's just say that if I feel like when to me, it's like a root canal. Like it writing is not easy for me. But I will tell you to answer your question long-winded, how do you land at a company like Salesforce or other any success? First of all, you have to be comfortable with intentionally struggling, you have to be uncomfortable with the unknown, you have to invest in yourself first. Sounds selfish, but it's that put the mask on before you help your passenger. That's that's kind of a life rule. Um, and at the end of the day, when you write and you're like Scott and yourself, you're others-oriented, you show generosity, you show benevolence, you're not doing it like you're not, you know, we don't have any exchange. You were kind enough to invite me to your show. I I I love the work you do, so I felt like it was an honor. Um, but that was generosity from you. Um, so extending a hand and helping people, I think is super, super, super important. And in this world of algorithms and machines, I think companies and individuals who show humanity and do it with purpose and mission and humility and humility. Like often, you know, you guys know this because you're in the Salesforce ecosystem. For me, often I'm the least smart person in the room, and I know it.

Josh Matthews 31:06

And it's the best place to be, Vala. It's the best place to be because that's how we elevate. I mean, I mean, Tony Robbins used to talk about this all the time, and I know he's changed his mind in the last 10 years. I think I think he's gonna be a dream force this year.

Vala Afshar 31:18

But smart people change their mind often, by the way.

Josh Matthews 31:20

Yeah, they do, they do, right? Because they're open to it, because they're always that beginner mindset. It's like, that's right, oh, maybe uh maybe Thor isn't the reason for lightning. Like I just a thought or Odin, right? Like it's possible, it's possible. So uh and he would talk about how you know you're the average of the company you keep, right? Look at the five people you spend the most time with and just ask yourself, are you the average? Now, I think he's kind of changed some of that thinking, but for me, it sure rang true for about 20 years. And I think about that, and I cut people out of my life that shouldn't be there anymore, and it helped, you know. I think I think a lot of what you're saying, and I I I've been thinking about this for like the last 24, 48 hours about your immigrant experience, about being 10 years old, about being coming over here and not speaking the language. I know that you were good at math, and that that helped you. Um decent. Decent, decent. I you're an engineer. Okay, so I'm not. So but when people are thinking about, well, what do I do now? Because I think the number one thing that I'm running into when I'm talking to people, like smart people, technologists, accomplished people, they're feeling overwhelmed about how to even get started. It's the it's the block, right? And we all have blocks. And by the way, I ran into one the other day. I I've been working hard. I probably got about 800 hours into a project called Undersignal. And it's a it's a web app that I'll be announcing in about 30, 45 days. And I jumped on. Thanks. I I jumped, it's a narrative intelligence tool that breaks down the rhetoric of any article, speech, anything, and scores it. Um so I gone on to GPT. I use GPT for more like, hey, buddy kind of conversations and claud and perplexity are the are the rest. So I'm like, hey, buddy, it's been two weeks since I've touched it. I've been busy placing people and working with clients and this sort of thing. And I feel like I've lost some wind. I feel like I've lost a little bit of motivation. I was driving 15-hour days, seven days a week, and cranking, and I feel like some of my steam is gone. What should I do? And it's like, okay, dude, calm down. Everything's cool. This is normal, right? Like, you can use AI just like that. It's like, all you're gonna do is turn off the phone, 90-minute session. Just do a 90-minute session. Can you do that? I'm like, yeah, I could do that. It's like, okay, go do that and come back. So, like, yeah, we all can feel overwhelmed, particularly when it feels like, well, particularly when it feels oppressive, the AI revolution, this wave that some of us are riding and others are caught inside and they're gonna get get the water smashed on them. And I think the message that I I just want to convey the one little thing I want to say on this show is just do the just do the one small thing. Just do one thing. Just break, you know, pay the 20 bucks. Just pay the 20 bucks. Get the slightly better version. If you can afford it, pay the 200 bucks, get the really good version, have friends, someone who's doing it, talk to them, go for coffee, share ideas, and get used to it.

Vala Afshar 34:21

Great advice, all of it, all of it. Great advice.

Josh Matthews 34:24

Yeah, just do that. Just tiny little bites, and you'll you'll wake up. You'll wake up in September. You'll wake up at Dream Force going like, oh my god, Paul, you'll never guess what I did. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is so cool. And check out what happened to my company, and this is what I did. Now I've got five agents before I had none. And look at me now, right? So just take tiny, take a tiny little freaking step, you know. And when I think about you, because I started talking about this about your background, you didn't have a choice. You had to learn the language, you had to adapt to a new culture, you had to um, you know, uh uh operate in a brand new environment.

Refugee Lessons On Agency And Resilience

Josh Matthews 35:03

Are you from where are you from? Lowell?

Vala Afshar 35:05

Yes, uh Lowell. Uh no, I'm uh I grew up in Arlington. Uh Arlington, okay. About 30 minutes from Lowell. Yeah.

Josh Matthews 35:11

Okay. Lowell is where I went to school. Yeah, and I grew up in Amherst. Yeah. So so so not so not too far. I think if people can start putting themselves in the position like they just landed here.

Speaker 2 35:24

Yeah.

Josh Matthews 35:25

I just landed here. I don't have a choice. I'm going to, it's adapt or die. It's like the one little snippet I ever did on a YouTube short that got the most. It was just like adapt or die, AI, adapt or die, right? So, like if they can put themselves mentally in that position, like, I don't have a choice. Now you all have a choice, but if you can get your mindset into the position of, I don't have a choice, this is what I have to do, right?

Vala Afshar 35:50

Yeah. You will feel and and also uh a proximity to to wonderful people who live a recommendable life. My father was a senior executive um in Iran before the revolution. So I'm 10 years old, so I had no idea that he was a prominent man. He was just dad. I didn't I thought picking up being picked up by a helicopter to go to work was everyone's dad. Well, um, yeah, he was he had an incredible job. He comes to the US in mid-40s um during 1980 time frame, and he can land a job. So he ends up working third shift midnight to a security guard. He went from running a 10,000-person organization as the top guy to running security. Now he went to Northeastern University for his undergraduate and graduate. So it was fluent English, so language wasn't a barrier. He was just a middle-aged man from Iran. And you can understand 1980s, you know, hostage crisis, burning US flags, not gonna get a not gonna potentially land his dream job, and he didn't. He left at night, came back in the morning while I'm going to school, and when I come back, he's resting to go to work. So he did this seven days, 20 plus years. Always smiling, always happy, always supportive. And so, yes, it was hard to speak a new language, uh eat new food, played sports I've never heard of. Imagine you're Boston-based 1980s, Celtics win, uh Larry Bird just gets recruited, and we're soccer basketball. I've never held a basketball. So I'm the last guy picked in gym, boys and girls, because I'm running with it, throwing it, not dribbling. Um, I made varsity as a freshman. So that tells you motivation of being rejected so badly. But in any event, my father, his mannerism. So for those of you who are lucky enough to have a good mentor, more importantly, even a sponsor, a sponsor actually has a bigger impact on your career. A sponsor who's higher in the org chart puts her political social capital on the line to give you the budget you need, to give you the presentation opportunity you need, to actually give you space to grow, earn a sponsor. And then when you see people doing remarkable work, like Josh mentioned, the coffee meetings, how many of you randomly have meetings with folks outside of your team? Seek random collisions. Why? Because everyone you meet knows more about something than you do. Everyone you meet knows more about something than you do. So if you build that muscle of seeking random collisions, learning, listening with the objective to learn, and then connecting and building that network of people that inspire you, that help shape your character, you're in a good position. You're in a in a great position. And um and you know, I don't wish anyone to have a refugee experience. I'm not trying to glamorize this. It actually sucked. It was really hard. What's harder than that? But it it it it helps you build resilience. And I will say resilience is is is is super important. You need to be resilient in a world of converged uncertainty. Right now, from tariffs to wars to political crisis to machines and future of work and recruitment, and the fact that young young folks in their career feel like their jobs are being squeezed. Um, this is I've I've never had as much uncertainty and angst. And I don't think I say angst, you know, I uh who was it? Uh Andy Grove of Intel, uh when it was Time magazine person of the year several decades ago, he said uh a little bit of um anxiety or urgency is not a bad thing, you know.

Josh Matthews 39:33

Um, it's not a bad thing. I remember I was going out to, this is two years ago, and my youngest was just going into college, goes to University of Tampa, and I got this little thing. I got this like little pamphlet like for the for the parents, right? And it had a target. It looked like target, like just like the company with a circle. And it's like, okay, inside here is total stress, this inner circle. Okay. And then this outer red ring, this is like complete, you're a bum. You're a you're a lazy bum. You're not paying attention. You're you right. And then in this other circle is the tension between you gotta have a little bit of angst, you gotta have a little bit of a fire behind you or a carrot in front of you, or both ideally, to keep you moving. Just you don't wanna get any sores from the whip. You know what I mean? And you don't want to, you don't want to finally get to the carrot and realize, oh, it's a freaking carrot. Like, that sucks. You know, this isn't the carrot I thought it was gonna be. So you just find that middle, that middle circle to keep motivated. It's it's magnets. It's a magnet pushing you, it's a magnet pulling you. And I'll tell you, it's it's all it's all about balance. It's okay. Like easy to hear, easy to comprehend, really hard to put into terms. And I the one thing I would say right now to the audience is if you're not where you want to be right now, and if you don't think that you're actually gonna get to where you want to go, then I promise you, you're either not working smart enough or hard enough. It's one of the two, right? Or you or you're not aligning with the right people, which is part of working hard enough or working smart enough, right? If you feel like you're right on the right track, keep going, but check in. Check in with others. Am I on the right track? Am I doing the right thing? Right. Sure. And then whatever they say, if your internal uh compass is there wrong, you might be onto something because following the pack never really served uh never really served anyone except for the sheep. So like be careful of that. Be careful of falling too in line. It's okay to be different, it's okay to think differently, it's okay to have big ideas, to express those ideas, it's okay to push back, but don't blame other people when your big dream, you know, crashes, because that's that's the risk you take. It's all risk reward. But don't don't not move, move the ball. Nothing happens until something moves.

Vala Afshar 41:57

Even if you have to throw it double dribble, yeah. And I will say, yeah, yeah, I I was really picked last. And I I don't blame the middle schoolers who thought I was terrible because I was.

Speaker 2 42:07

Um I was terrible too.

Vala Afshar 42:10

You you can you you can also do everything right and still lose. Yeah. That's life. Yeah. So so you could write the perfect blog, you could host the perfect podcast, you could prepare for the perfect interview and perform and crush it, and another person gets the role. So, you know, um remarkable people have scars. Like, don't be ashamed of your scars. If you're gonna if you're doing something really interesting, really unique, and and and really powerful, you're most likely gonna fall down. Like doers make mistakes. Oh my gosh. So smart doers make original mistakes. Like the second time, exact same thing, that's a decision.

Josh Matthews 42:56

Yeah, yeah.

Vala Afshar 42:57

So so don't, you know, you you might fail and you've done everything right. Don't get discouraged by it. And uh look, I've made more mistakes than you don't have enough time on your podcast for me to list all the mistakes I've made career-wise. I did marry up, so my my best decision was that.

Speaker 2 43:13

Congratulations.

Vala Afshar 43:14

Yeah, yeah. No, you know, look, who you marry, where you live, and where you work, those are the three most important decisions in life. And I think I did a good job with those three. And then fourth is deciding whether you're gonna have children. So those four decisions, you know, I think I did a good job. But as far as like career mistakes and people I worked for that didn't quite appreciate my effort and and people that, you know, did push me to discover things that I didn't realize were hidden capabilities that I should tap into, like an engineer becoming an evangelist, that was a complete accident, complete luck. Um all three of us are very lucky. You know, the fact that we're on this platform giving, sharing our our experiences, that you know, that automatically. It places us in an incredibly fortunate place. And um, but the journey's hard and it's not, you know, it's it's it's it's you just have to have uh I think I would expand on that and almost say that we're all lucky.

Scott Stafford 44:13

Sometimes I reflect on the period of time that we are, and we're asking, what do we get to do as humans? What's the future of work? Right. That's a really cool question to be able to ask, because that means we get to decide. You know, and no other time do we get to say, hey, we're free to decide what comes next. Someone would say, here's the broom, someone has to clean the floor. And now we can actually say, well, there's a robot that could do that. Now we're can I add more value? We're gonna have a greater impact. So we're all very, very lucky at this period of time.

Vala Afshar 44:45

Where does your source of optimism come from, Scott? Where is what do you what do you how do you what fuels you uh other than of course I've had the privilege of virtually Scott's incredible that way, like jealous of it, yeah. Same, same. I have to say that I when your presence, both in person and online, first of all, it's it's the same, which congratulations. You are who you are, and you don't change based on where you are and the platform you're on, but um incredible optimism, positivity, um um, gratefulness, um uh gr uh and and generosity. Generosity. Keep motivating all of us, my friend.

Scott Stafford 45:29

You're uh you're this is not discussion. I do really humbly appreciate that, but I'm really nothing special. I think all of us, right, are special.

Josh Matthews 45:40

We are that's you're proving his point right now, Scott.

Scott Stafford 45:44

You're just we're all make a lot people. That's that's that's the human experience, right? Is yeah, is the love.

Vala Afshar 45:50

Yeah, that's what I'm gonna expect. I'm receiving a compliment from someone.

Speaker 2 45:54

Yeah, yeah, you are. Okay, okay, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I look forward to seeing you in person. Tons of enthusiasm.

Vala Afshar 46:02

I wanted to add for sure.

Slackbot As Your Thinking Partner

Scott Stafford 46:04

One advice that I want to make sure that everybody hears is it's a little bit about the Salesforce, you know, technology. We're always talking about the new agents, you know, and everything out there, but I want to recommend something the Slack bot. The Slack bot is incredible and it's gonna give you an opportunity to do the next level. You're gonna be able to work from agent to agent and have that interaction and then actually work to build, you know, your super agent. So I I want to just make sure that everybody says, you know, you hear about Slack, but the Slack bot is next level and it's it's incredible.

Vala Afshar 46:38

Absolutely. It is. I can't say this about any time at Salesforce where I would say this is something I use every day. Um, and I 23 years I've used the platform, but I didn't use the platform every day. I use Slackbot every day. It's um and it's uh it's it's it's um it's amazing the conversations I have, and it's amazing how much it knows about uh my blind spots and and it how much it pressure tests my thinking. Um so it's it's you know, um I romanticize, you know, and I and I'm a nerd and I say that affectionately. So when I think and this movie came out 20 years ago, some of you may have not watched Iron Man, but when I see Tony Stark and Jarvis going back and forth, I romanticize about being able to build a superhero machine, you know, uh uh uh outfit with with a machine helping you.

Speaker 2 47:33

Yeah.

Vala Afshar 47:34

I do remind myself that Tony had a strong mathematics background, mechanical engineering background, computer science and data. It wasn't just an ordinary person asking Jarvis to pressure test a suit with all those precious Shelby and Mustang and Ferraris behind him, like priceless cars, and he's building turbo thrust. Uh, we could destroy these precious uh collectibles he had. This guy was incredibly knowledgeable, had strong foundation, and that's how that beautiful exchange between a human machine. So you do have to invest in yourself. You do have to build the competency so that when you are engaged with Slackbot or any other agent of your choice, you bring your A game because that's how you create your boundless potential. Uh, you have to invest in yourself.

Josh Matthews 48:23

Yeah, absolutely do. And you have to understand, and you said this earlier, know your look, know your capabilities, know what you're capable of, know what your limitations are. I know what my limitations are. That's why I'm not a professional ice dancer, right? Like, I I get it. Like it's not gonna, it's not gonna happen, right? It's why I'm not a mathematician or a physicist as well. I spend my life talking to people and listening to people. So it's a very different thing. But know your limit, know your limitations. Understand and be okay with with what God gave you, right? Like it's okay to be you. You don't have to be someone else. None of us have the minds like an Elon Musk that can actually have this sort of visualization, there, there where their visual cortex can imagine physics in ways that we like we can't do. We're not all born like that. But know what you're capable of and your limitations, and then just go just full send. Just full send. Go for it. The worst thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna learn something, right? And the best thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna inspire others and help others along the way. Love that. Do that.

Vala Afshar 49:27

Love that. Last thing I will say, and yes, not most of us are not polymath, and we're not, you know, we're not, but I will say um most of my career I was a cook. Um, as an electrical engineer, you gave me a functional spec, I follow the functional spec, and I will build the product and do a good job. Um, so if you gave me a recipe, I could make you a delicious meal. But I was learning by analogy most of my career. Elon Musk learns based on first principles. Elon Musk operates like a chef, not a cook. A chef tastes ingredients, a chef experiments with ingredients. A chef has the courage to make something that tastes awful, but over time understands. So, in an absence of a recipe, a chef can combine ingredients and create a delicious meal because a chef learns by first principle. Now, in the last 20 years of us working with a platform like Salesforce, cloud, public cloud, um, social media, um, you know, uh mobile technologies, quantum computing, distributed letters and blockchain, 3D printing, uh, natural language processing, uh, computer visioning, uh, agentic AI, uh, autonomous vehicles, all of these ingredients have been introduced really in the last two decades in terms of business adoption. If you're a cook and you're using old recipes, if you're not willing to taste, Josh decided he was going to devote 20 hours to taste a new ingredient. He loved the ingredients so much he went to 80 hours. But he was able to build agents. He was able to build a coworker he can dialogue back and forth with. We have to stop operating like cooks and we have to start operating like chefs. So, no, you can't be an Elon Musk, but you can always learn using first principles. And that means more ingredient tasting than following a recipe. You do that, you're on your path of potentially doing some percentage of what Elon Musk has been able to do. And in my case, that would be one one thousandth of a percent. But I'm still happy that I'm now learning by first principle. I no longer learn by analogy, and that's shifted the way I approach my work.

Scott Stafford 51:30

That's what that's an opportunity we have at Dream Force, is actually because there's so much different technology. Charlie Isaac's going to be there with the right robots. You can taste that, right? You can try Headless, you can try Slack, right? Go ahead and sample everything out there. I I'm always encouraging myself for people to look to the future, look a little bit bigger than where we are. Don't just think about, hey, this is clawed code, what it can be. Think of where it's going, taste everything, see, see what's going to be actually happening with the robot. So it's just an incredible episode.

Vala Afshar 52:02

I'm a Michelin star chef, Scott. You're a, you're a you definitely are a chef, that's for sure.

Chef Mindset For The AI Future

Josh Matthews 52:10

Paula, thank you so much for being on the hiring edge today. Uh, your latest book, go ahead and share the title. Do you have it right there, Scott? Scott, I know you've got it. Hold it up. Hold it up.

Scott Stafford 52:20

His former two are here. Okay. We don't know the new color, and we don't actually know that the official title yet, but it is coming.

Vala Afshar 52:29

The new book will come out uh next year. Scott uh and Josh, I'm sending you a signed copy as soon as it's available. Give me the first 10 people to get it. First 10.

Speaker 2 52:38

All right. I love it. Yeah.

Scott Stafford 52:40

I want to actually say these books are incredible. There's a lot of people that pick up books and they don't read them. I'm telling you, read the book. It will change your life. Right? These are really amazing books, right? If you look in my books, right, they are highlighted and outlined, right?

Vala Afshar 53:00

I went through these books and they're going to cut this last minute and go and show it to my mom and dad. Because uh yeah, this is this is you just made my week. Thanks, God. I appreciate it. I really do. This is a superpower. He lifts people and uh keep doing what you're doing, man. I appreciate both of you.

Speaker 2 53:20

Yeah, appreciate you, Volet.