there's the ding all right welcome everyone to this week's edition of military Trailblazer office hours thanks so much for taking time out of your Wednesday evening to spend it here in the spirit of community mentorship and learning I'm your host Dave nav I've been absent for a while but I'm back in the in the seat I'm a solution engineer at Salesforce and Military Trailblazer I am able assisted by Jin Hall and Dave albre also military Trailblazers at Salesforce as you may be aware each week we invite a co-host or in this case co-hosts to take part in the conversation so that we can love their experience expertise and unique perspectives the focus for tonight's stuff is making stuff happen how to crush your Salesforce Journey we are Jo joined by a co-host of four Salesforce professionals who have done just that so if you are interested in how to build productive habits the Art and Science of networking and branding and how to create impact and stand out then this is the session for you I'm to stop sharing my screen here and introduce our co-host panel give me one second here all right and it looks like yes Andrew is here excellent so I'd like to welcome and briefly introduce our co-host panel for tonight's session Andrew pel Desiree easterling Jacob reard and kayn Moss Andrew is the director of Technology at Ana group he's also an Air Force veteran with over a decade of experience in strategic leadership and implementation of Innovative Technologies Desiree is a relation manager at quander Consulting Group also a Navy veteran she's a strong project management she has a strong project management background and experien as a Salesforce consultant scrum master and a product owner Jacob is the manager of implementation Consultants at neoo he's an Air Force veteran anme or subject matter expert in cpq and revenue cloud and kayin a self-employed marketing Cloud consultant atmin and admin he's a Salesforce golden hoodie recipient ask him about that if you'd like a marketing Cloud Guru and a mentor for marketing enthusiasts it is awesome to have you all coasting office hours with me here been waiting a long time for this welcome thanks for having me thank you for having us yeah thank you good to see you all good to see you um as we always do it would be great if each one of you could take a moment to further introduce yourselves and share your Salesforce stories Andrew would you like to lead us off yeah of course hey everyone my name's Andrew pul uh it's David Sals in the air force uh air power as I like to call it and uh yeah so I've been in the ecosystem now just over two years uh work over here at INR as the Director of Technology start off as a Salesforce system admin and it's uh been one heck of a journey and ride and and I'll just quickly say you know David helped me break into the ecosystem so I got to give him some uh Kudos and a shout out and uh Kaylin's the one who actually made me interested in joining the ecosystem so here we go full circle with this call so nice to meet you all right some un easterling I'm actually here today because of Andy so it's funny how things go full circle um so yes I'm a Navy veteran as David said um my journey was pretty I mean maybe not standard but I found Salesforce through an email and I was miserable in my job and I just started pursuing the ecosystem I didn't isolated at first and that is not the way to do it once I started connecting with others I realized that there is an amazing Community full of people who wanted to support you so I really think the only reason I got anywhere was because of this great community so thanks everyone awesome thank you Des right Jacob Raa neither one your choice oh yeah sure yeah I've been uh I was in the Air Force for 20 years and you know trying to figure out what to do with my life after that part and uh Salesforce just kind of popped up uh it sounded like I don't know like a pyramid scheme or something when I first heard the name it's it's kind of a weird name when you first hear it but it's been amazing there's a there's a ton out there for vets so it's it's been it's been great awesome if you are interested in pyramid scheme see me after all right Kay you yep I'm right there with Jacob uh I actually was playing NBA 2K if anybody's an a gamer on Xbox or PS4 um I was on spring break uh doing my masters in data science when someone came to me and said have you ever heard of Salesforce and I was like Jacob and I was like I don't want to sell any anything you're trying to get me involved in I'm good uh kept on playing the game and then eventually they kind of they pretty much convinced me that it wasn't a pyramid scheme uh long story short got an internship uh got certified as a Salesforce admin Salesforce salescloud consultant um and then uh my first job after that was uh sort of a hybrid between marketing cloud and Salesforce CRM and uh once you jump into the marketing Cloud side of things you kind of see the world that's available to you um and so I just went Full Throttle with that and uh decided to try to teach other people how to use it and so you might have seen me uh which is how Andrew kind of mentioned uh he probably found me on my YouTube channel um but it's like Desiree said full circle because uh Andrew actually invited me to this uh call here so that's the power of the ecosystem you give back people give back to you um it's really honestly um such a tight-knit community once you have been in it for a while you start to see the same faces over and over um but yeah that's pretty much my story for for now and uh yeah I'll hand it back to you David awesome yeah I I love that because my experience with the ecosystem was also one of community U and support and that's the unifying Factor across here right so Desiree mentioned that she started in isolation and and found that once she brought other folks into her Circle uh it was much more smooth and we're going to talk about networking and branding and how to go about doing that um from each different person's perspective right because my version of branding and networking is different than SE kalin's or desire all are valuable and the reason why we do these sessions is because you can take a little bit of what you like from this person from that person put it all together and come up with your own method for doing things so if we as the MTO multi trer office hours group expose you to a broad variety of folks hopefully you'll have a lot of different tools you can pull from put into your tool bag and then be successful with that's the whole intent so um do some admin and then we're going to get into it for those joining for the first time I always like to briefly explain the purpose of these office hours so if you're joining because you saw my LinkedIn message like 10 minutes ago to say hey come join thank you I appreciate that uh this this little message is for you these sessions are essentially an informal gett together for gathering with both military trailers and allies essentially everyone uh to explore non-technical Salesforce career in branding related topics because we want to help you collectively achieve your professional development and your career related goals so for this next hour this is your opportunity for collaborative mentorship everyone on the call is encouraged to step up and help both ask and answer questions from your perspective and honestly the sessions where we have the most audience involvement where people are raising their hands I'm looking at you Iris asking questions that those are the best sessions the less talking I have to do the better because that means that you are all showing up your present and you're getting more out of the session um than you would if you weren't asking questions do keep an eye on the chat window during tonight's session David has already started posting things in there we tend to collect little Snippets of information across the the weeks you know things from LinkedIn job adverts learning stuff from Salesforce Ben from uh from creatives and influencers we post that in the chat window throughout the session so that you can multitask because we all love to multitask um if you'd like to ask a question at any point during today's session please do so this is your session if you don't feel comfortable speaking up no worries uh you can either raise your hand if you do or if you don't just type it in chat and either Dave or Jin will bring it to my attention and we will do our best to keep those in the order they are received finally last thing last night or tonight's session is being recorded So if you want to share something attribution free uh maybe you're looking for a job and you don't want your boss to know just uh let me know and we can before you before you obviously say it and that just makes it easier for me to ask our graphical editor expert to remove it from the video afterwards so that we can respect um your privacy all right so as you're thinking of your questions um based upon the wide variety of backgrounds that our Co co-host panel has tonight I'm going to kick it off and we've got some prepared topics and we'll jump right into it all right so um the first I guess area that we want to talk about is embracing your authentic journey into Tech and Salesforce and I think all the topics we're talking about today apply equally whether you're military coming in or whether you're not right um every um every journey is unique every transition is unique um and so the thing they all have in common is rapid change so I'd like to to dive into how to make your story how to bring in your story Into Your transition in DET Tech how to own it and how to be authentic um and successful in that regard so in no particular order any co-host panelist can can um jump at this question um how has a embracing your unique background and your experiences shaped your journey in the Salesforce ecosystem I'll go ahead and jump in here yeah um so honestly uh you know as I was coming out of college um in 2017 um the world was all about starting to be all about data all I ever heard was data is the new oil and um you know so I decided to go into a data science Masters I got my undergrad in economics um and I'd never even thought about anything related to you know computers or anything like that like I was an athlete my entire life I ran track at the University of Oklahoma um and I honestly said that I would never even do anything with computers so uh there's you know you don't have to come from a background of doing computer science the your entire life um to be in the Salesforce ecosystem that's just little background but um yeah so I ended up kind of you know growing up in that era of the YouTube well you know like I went to YouTube before I went to anything else whenever I was sort of researching information like a you know I was in macroeconomics and I remember looking up on YouTube what is macroeconomics how does macroeconomics work right I wanted to see visually how to actually learn these these different concepts that I was struggling with in school um so I think David to your question um like how does how does your background how has your background influenced uh your Salesforce Journey um for me I decided to start sharing everything I was learning on YouTube because that was what I was most familiar with um and to be honest with you to anybody listening I would say whether it's YouTube or it's LinkedIn or it's just you know sharing your information oneon-one with another person the more you give to people in general or the more you give to your community and those around you the more you'll see that life gives more back to you um You can call that Karma you can call that reaping what you sew um whatever it may be but it is a true law of the universe and I'm telling you it actually works um so that's really how my uh sort of Journey has progressed um actually got my first Salesforce job by uh actually posting all of the trail heads that I was learning so I was I would do a trail head activity and then I would go and say hey this is what I learned at on this activity um I didn't know this and now I went through this now I know this um and actually someone reached out to me a recruiter um at a company reached out and said hey it looks like you know what you're talking about would you mind coming in for a job interview and um long story short ended up getting that job and uh really haven't looked back since I've just kept sharing um since then online and uh yeah hopefully that answered your question David uh but yeah I think sharing is caring and it gives you way more than you could ever give to you know give um to the ecosystem yeah now that that's really um it's insightful Kaylin and that was my experience as well so it all depends on how much runway you have as you approach your transition as to how much time you have give back and make a name for yourself and obviously the earlier you start doing it the better for me you know I had a year prior to retiring from the military so I used that year to do similar you know to what you did um documenting my Learning Journey and sharing it online and and folks like one of the one of the common questions I get is like well how can I share stuff on social media when I don't know a whole lot myself I'm like well if you've been in the ecosystem for one day then you know more than someone who's not in the ecosystem at all and as you add days to that as you figure things out and you post it right these are questions that people are asking all the time just because it's been answered a thousand times doesn't mean there's not someone coming in behind you that hasn't seen that answer and will benefit from what you're giving so that the the very fact that you are making yourself available and you're putting content out there people like that um it says that you're a go-getter and that you're interested in what you're doing and you're passionate about it and it's going to pay back dividends so great Point um but I'd like to hear from the rest of the panel what are your thoughts yeah i' would say for me um I came from kind of construction I was I was a lineman for Comm for most of my career and then I was a first sergeant so like HR for the last four years so I had a really hard time at first trying to tie that into Salesforce and how am I going to get a job with this you know so I actually just talked to as many people as I could there's a great site called veterati we can go talk to people mentors um I found Maris which hooked me up with a lot of people I am not social online at all I'm horrible at it you guys are uh are awesome and I need to be more like you but getting into the ecosystem all the people that helped me along the way the way was great because they they helped me tie that into it uh like the HR experience um I was talking to someone they said that a huge part of their job is just having empathy for the customers as a consultant you know you have to realize this is hard for them they don't know what they're doing and uh I was just able to tie That Into You know talking to Airmen they were having a hard time and being able to kind of twist that in the interview room and I love building stuff with my hand I love seeing you know constructing whatever a porch well I can tie that in the Salesforce you know you build a flow that you really like and that automation it's a good feeling so you just find ways things that you like and then the things uh in Salesforce to kind of tie into that and it took a while it wasn't easy but yeah just more talking to people yeah no I like that approach of of using your background and things you know and and making it relatable in the context of Salesforce as a way to explain to others and be able to share your knowledge that um that's impactful I appreciate that and and something else that you that you touched on right is is the fact that not all of us are social like I I am not an an extrovert I I portray one on these office hours um but like I always you know whenever I have to exert myself which is essentially talking to other people I leave that session by tired right and I may have had a great time but I I only have so many um so much I can do that before I get um I get to a point where like I need a break and that that's you know that's classic introvert Behavior but the point is that there's uh there's a spot for everybody in the ecosystem we had a session on introverts uh and and they are no less successful in owning their unique strengths as introverts and presenting those in the ecosystem both in the community to customers internally at their work site because that's the kind of place that we live and work so great Point Desiree Andrew what about you Dez you want to go no you go Andy I'll wrap it up all right sounds good yeah so what I like to always tell people is you know don't think too much about your technical skills because Evan's always like well what am I supposed to do my my there's nothing that revolves around technology and so uh going back to like what Jacob was saying you know he he used uh what he learned as I guess empathy being that first sergeant in HR so those soft skills and translating them over so I always coach people saying hey what are some of the soft skills that you learn like how do you stay organized how do you communicate how how do you really listen to what someone wants and then be able to provide a solution for them or at least be able to provide them you know a good reasoning as to why you can accomplish something or you know a different path and guiding them to kind of what they want um but telling them in a in a different approach and so those are all soft skills and I feel like no matter what profession you're in I can probably find at least one thing that's going to transfer over into Tech into the ecosystem and so I I if I can just encourage everyone is just don't look too deeply on the technical skills because you're going to learn them and Technology changes so rapidly every day that we're always learning every single one of us and so what's uh important today it might not be important tomorrow and so it's a something that you can just jump into and start learning at any time and any point in your life in your career but something that you can always transfer over no matter what or when is those soft skills so just evaluate those soft skills and start thinking about okay how can we tie those back in the tech and then this is a very strong ecosystem that you can reach out to any one of us and we can help you with that so that that's like my one soft advice is that yeah 100% empathy is definitely a meta skill and universally applicable AC Ross any job you're going to have in this ecosystem great point over to you guys awesome um no I feel like the soft skill piece uh Andy Andrew coached me on that pretty early in my journey and it's it kind of gave me a lot of confidence as well because I remember thinking well how am I going to share what I'm learning like how what value can I create for people I was an echine therapist a year before you know I got into Salesforce and then I was a project manager and I wasn't quite seeing the hard skills yet but then the soft skills come into play and then I also had a conversation with somebody else within the community who had shared that you know you're only like all you have to do is be one step ahead of somebody else and your way of understanding it and teaching it could help somebody just because somebody shared it or hundred people have shared how to do this one thing doesn't mean they've shared how to do it in the same way that somebody else learns or thinks so I think that there's a lot of value in the community and leaning into it um my only regret was not leaning in sooner because I was afraid like you said David um I felt like I was like I don't want to post online and I didn't have the social energy at first but as soon as I started giving into that like putting my energy into the community I got so much back out of it so hopefully question and as you as you learn you know what what hits and what doesn't hit from a social media perspective you can uh obviously update and change and iterate over what you're providing and it's it's a learning process you know like when I first started I had a few likes by the time um you know I was getting ready to retire I had a huge response to my final post as a as a military member and so over the course of that year tons of learning but you can't can't learn if you don't start so you just have to put yourself out there have the courage to get started and go for it and pivot as you see fit all right speaking of pivots we're going to Pivot topics here um and so consistency right one of those I think it's a meta skill certainly a soft skill the ability to um essentially develop habits in learning skill development and career progression over time and maintain those such that you're able to take advantage of the fruits that are that are born so you know in the context of social media right that's one great example how you're not going to get anywhere with you know a post here a post there it's posting two or three times a week every week over a period of weeks and months uh that you'll actually see the results and that's consistency right it takes patience it takes routine it takes habit so I want to dive into that with a few questions um first one what daily or weekly habits have been crucial to your specific success in Salesforce I'll take that first so um something that I knew that helped me was I made sure to block at least five minutes a day just dedicated to learning the ecosystem learning technology just five minutes and the reason why I chose five minutes is because I feel like it's very hard to have an excuse not to have five minutes to do something and so um what I always ran into with people are like oh Andy I just it's hard to get like 30 minutes or they try to do like an hour every single day to learn trail head or to study and I'm like stop thinking so much because I I've realized when people start saying like oh I'm gonna do one hour and then if they don't have a full hour they tend to just skip it all together I'll just do two hours tomorrow right and so my thought process was like okay just dedicate five minutes if you have five minutes and you can go more great if not then at least you did that and five minutes every single day uh is better than you know zero or just not having that consistent pattern right so then that way I know it's going to be a daily habit always doing that and so now with my new role what I do is um I block off time in the morning and I'm learning all about different types of Technologies so I I block off some time I do some reading and then I share it to the team and so I feel like that's important and it's just all about uh just constantly learning I mean constantly learning and so one thing I even in the service I just remember how long I was in and then every year I just felt like I I knew less I was like the the more the more I learn the less I know I think that's a Socrates quote and so I really I really do feel and embrace that um it's just there's just so much out there and so what always tell people is you know just try doing better every single day and that just goes back to that consistent pattern if you can just dedicate five minutes every day I mean you're you know in a year you're going to see how much you accomplish just in five minutes every day and so I I think yeah setting those realistic expectations and just developing that pattern will end up growing into more as time goes on yeah I I love that and there's a ton of science behind that I've read a bunch of books on micro habits and and it covers everything from what we're talking about here which is Tech to eating right so um what you'll find is that if you can dedicate five minutes to to every day you know um one to your point right Andrew you complete that check in the box you feel good because you actually got it done but in most cases you're probably going to go six 10 15 minutes right so you're usually going to exceed but you're not setting that huge expectation at the front of like an hour and then being disappointed um and you know you can apply that to eating right I'm I'm going to reduce 100 calories a day and over the course of six months right you've dropped a few pounds so it's um like I said ton of science behind it awesome um awesome tip and it's one that I've practice as well and um because you compound it it's like compounding uh interest over time right you get great results uh and then you look back like oh wow you know I didn't even really expend that much effort but look what I've got from it who else who else can share how it I um changed out using like social media on my phone for the Trailblazer um the app I was like What if I just did this instead you know it's very simple we stand in line of the grocery store and we naturally twiddle our thumbs so it was a very simple Habit to change but I said hey I'm just going to learn during this time and most of the badges not all of them but most of the badges are on the app so you can learn bite-sized information in time that is otherwise wasted and a lot of people who are trying to get into the ecosystem at least I know this is my story was that I was working full-time I didn't have you know unlimited amounts of time it was I before work or after work that I was studying um and now that you know I'm in the ecosystem and I'm also learning lots of new technologies for my role um those habits still come in handy because I'm usually reading an article on Garder or finding some kind of piece of information to read and I put it in my phone ahead of time to get me ready for whatever I have coming up instead of just scrolling so I've always got something good to read that is you know a little bit more fulfilling for my time yeah for sure and you can apply that right to social media to to your earlier point you know um five minutes a day thinking up a social media post or creating a post one post a week then over time you you build on that and you see success um awesome Kaylin Jacob what about you I just say as of now where where I'm at you know everyone talks on slack in my company and there's always questions people always bouncing off each other it's it's great that way I hope most of the company are like that but I really tried to go out of my way to help all those people CU When you go in and really start digging into Salesforce what's great about Salesforce is the documentation and the people out there to help you so it's it's amazing going in there and just I am learning every day like there's something that like I just didn't realize like hey on the permission set I didn't pick the record type right so this I wasn't seeing a button like every single day and I've been doing this for years and I'm sure it's same with you guys is I'm learning new stuff and if I need to get into it far I write that down and then I put that into the 20 minutes I do every other day for my own you know self-study work so I find it's I need to have a reason to do it right like I'm not going to Lear learn Japanese if I start right now I'm going to stop because I don't know anyone that speaks Japanese like I'm not going to use it so I I have to have a reason to learn something so find that reason to learn it and then just keep applying and let that kind of roll yeah it's a fair point I earned aert a while back um just to earn it and then um actually never never used it and then someone saw that in my portfolio like oh you know can you help us with this implementation and I was like no I've never used that I have no idea because it changes so quickly so yeah obviously um you know having a a reason behind why you're doing something and the ability to practice that afterwards is is in is integral yep and I'd also add to Jacob's uh comment there about having a reason to learn something so giving a little background uh that's going to tie into what Jacob said was I was actually in Brazil uh in April and I've never studied Portuguese now I've studied Spanish um in the past and they're very closely related they sound a lot alike um but I had no idea what Portuguese um you know any words in Portuguese um but because I was in uh Brazil as Jacob said I had a reason to learn it and this goes to my second Point here is a have a reason to learn what you're learning B surround yourself with other people who are doing the same thing um so Andrew's point I want to also talk about that five minutes a day will get you so much further because as David said you'll go six 10 15 20 minutes and you plan to start off with five but if you surround yourself with people who are on the same Journey as you or who want it's like sports or the military or a workout group or whatever it may be when you immerse yourself with other people who are on the same go uh Mission as you it's almost going to be inevitable because as humans we like to be in these tribes we like to be like the people and that competitive nature comes out whenever you're around somebody that's you know they've done five minutes and you haven't done five minutes you know you're like oh wait a second I want to get six minutes because I'm not going to let them beat me today so I would say number one first and foremost from my perspective is surround yourself around even one or two people who have the same Mission as you whether that means you get in a group chat with them um if you're getting need to get in a slack chat if you want to get onto a phone call with them every day whatever you have to do um I highly highly recommend your your habits and your consistency are going to you're they're going to compound over time if you have people to do it with um I think that's the big domino effect right there because I've seen a lot of people quit on their goals even the five minute rule um including myself I did that with guitar for six months then I just stopped because as Jacob said I didn't really have a reason but I also didn't have a community to stick to it so um I would say highly highly recommend find a community to um to to join in that Journey with yeah and to your point right checking in on folks and and doing kind of those those um those buddy checks to make sure that you're holding them accountable and yourself accountable huge I love that all right well we're going to take a little break here and do a group photo if you'd like uh so totally optional if you want to unmute your video uh feel free to do so if you want to stay in your pajamas and and have your uh your video unmute that's cool too no big deal give you a second to get set up and then I will snap a photo unlike Dave I'll have my mouth closed I might as well just open it right now like an idiot all right grab my software here give you a count of three three two one all right make sure I got it here I did excellent awesome well let's da you would be Ying to if you were studying PSS Cloud right now okay right how's that going well I got my Omni Studio consultant a couple of months ago and I just got thrown on a PSS Cloud project and uh it's not great it's not great uh trying to figure out uh regulatory type ID fields and the business license application and how they they all intertwine so if anybody has some really solid PSS experience I will talk to you after this go look at the erds on the architected website that'll probably help because that'll at least draw it out for you I'll send you a link I'll drop the link in the chat I appreciate it and this is what we do we help folks out all right next and that good good CT by the way I got that as well certainly earning searchs is is funner than digging into programmatics um all right so this is something that I've actually personally struggled with um and I think the longer that you're in the ecosystem the more applicable it is and the question is how do you stay motivated and consistent when learning new and challenging Concepts so we all know that we have to be continuous Learners right the ecosystem changes rapidly yet there's a cost for that right there's a cost every time you have to learn something new there's a cost every time you have to take a new exam uh and it's fatigue and so over time it becomes more difficult in in my experience to remain on that Cutting Edge to remain always on to remain a continuous learner so what are some ways that you cope with that that you have found to get around that and then uh you know maybe I'll share one of mine but we'll see we'll see what we got I'll start fresh air um planning in like skep so going back to habits from earlier like knowing that I have to stay up to speed knowing that there's always something new to learn in technology and there's always going to be something new to learn and sched in that into my day or a couple times a week that are just specific to learning something new um that's applicable to you know emerging technology or a new feature that is going to impact all my clients and I have to figure it out tomorrow um so I make sure that when I've got those things like if I get off of work I go for a walk first or I go to the gym first before I jump into that because I know it takes a lot of energy to go to the gym or to go for a walk but it also fills my cup up so if I you know have that I feel like I've got I'm just starting at a much better place than if I'm just right off of work where I sit in this exact spot all day and then I'm in this exact same spot studying I have no energy but if I go get some fresh air and some sunshine even if it's only for five minutes it's still better than zero yeah recharging absolutely awesome what else folks I got I got two approaches and they're both kind of the opposite of the other and so it just depends on how I'm feeling um but my two are well just telling myself you know adapt or die essentially and so going back to like that military thought you know your enemies are training so you better get out there and train right train your mind um and more this is more just like competitive nature so it's like okay how how much do you want in your professional career and how much are you willing to give right and so uh just knowing okay other people are working right now and you're not so that's my first approach is kind of just like almost suck it up and keep going uh but the second approach also the opposite now is saying hey you know this doesn't have to get done today and understanding when to do self-reflection and take a break as well right and so I have an unhealthy habit of redlining until I'm just burnt out but then I know when I'm burnt out and then I like to pause and just take a break away from everything and in fact I took the whole week off this week and I haven't had a lot of time off in a few years um and I've been and I've been redlining and so that's what I'm doing now um so for like the last few years I've been having that suuck it up mentality but then last week I was like all right you know you're not as optimal and I start learning that what I used to be able to do I see that I'm not I'm falling short so I'm giving 100% of my 80% right because I'm so burnt out and so that's when I'm like okay Andy you're not you're not that special you know you're not that important you need to relax and take a step back and take a break right and so that's what I'm doing this week um but th those are my two things and and like I said I I don't I don't know if it's healthy um I've been operating like this my whole life so I don't I don't think I'm going to change um but at least that's that's my been my Approach my whole life is those two things so yeah I think that's fairly common in the military I I found that I operate very much the same way um I will work 110% and then there'll be a day where i'm like wow I don't really enjoy what I'm doing anymore what's going on and and you know and there's Peaks and valleys right so I'll go oh I'm burnt out so what can I do to desire's point I'll program some you know some recharge time into my calendar um you know take a break uh practice self-kindness but over time I I've learned that this happens in cycles and so I always like to to better myself and part of bettering myself in this regard is being more attuned to myself so that I can predict those burnouts before they actually happen and get ahead of them um by modifying my schedule and that way right maybe I'm not getting down to 80% maybe I'm dipping down to 90 and then popping back up to 95 or 98 uh but it's it's a constant thing and it's it's to your point Andrew it's it's one of those things it's gonna happen time and time again it's Sneaky you you know you'll wake up one day and be like uh I did it again like I'm I'm burnt out and you don't always want to be behind the curve when it comes to that you want to be able to spot it when you can and take action to address it before it becomes a problem and Dave and I have this conversation all the time um it's it's one that in a high-paced you know environment that is the tech industry it's G to come up so what is your plan for it you got to deal with it good points yeah unfortunately I don't know everyone always says this but we drop the things we need to do to keep our cut full first you know like we don't we have too much to do at work so we're not going to work out we're not going to take that walk and that's total wrong attitude um so yeah never drop those at least give yourself five minutes for each but really just the way you look at things too like the continuous learning I don't know like I like to work with tools like having the right tool to do the job is just so much more satisfying and it comes out better right well that's the same way in Salesforce there's so many ways to do everything um just finding out the best way and how everything ties into each other just every time you're taking a trail head you're putting more tools right you're getting the right tool for the next job is is the hope so it's it's fun like they said it's continuously changing so the guy that's been doing it for two decades you know you're kind of on even kill with him after not too long yeah for sure this definitely a great um equalizer Iris I see your hand raised can you hear me yes oh good okay sorry I had to maneuver the things around because I was looking after dogs and now I can't figure out how my whole setup goes again um first of all thank you guys so much for just showing up and um sharing what you do to just get on the in the ecosystem and I think it's so vitally important like right now when so many people are struggling like there's people who are knew there's people who are um possibly a little bit further on their career but just facing those challenges um I just want to add that when it comes to keeping yourself motivated I really feel like keeping the why and it's not my thing it's like I spoke to Elio a couple of weeks ago and he said to me and I was like okay I love that but finding your why and keeping it at the center of everything you do whether it is about studying that next SE or take making sure you're taking the time to go to the gym that finding your why just really keeps you grounded and um centered I think yeah and it that's a great Point Iris and it goes back to a comment made earlier about you know if you're not going to use it then um it may not make sense to learn and so when I approach learning um I have found over time uh that there's just things that I'm not able to learn because I'm not interested in it right and so um for example I was I was studying for a shirt and I kept putting it off and I kept putting it off and I noticed that I was getting no closer to my goal and so when I dropped it and said you know I practiced some self-kindness and said okay I'm just not going to earn this C I don't necessarily need it and I picked something that I just enjoyed right something that I that I I dabble in at work something that was fun and this was Omni Studio consultant and I worked on that and it and actually um it paid off I was able to very quickly earn that CT where I had spent like six months you know flirting with this other CT that I still don't have and and may not ever have because I just you can't force yourself to be interested in what you're not interested in so if you find yourself burnt out um and you will right go back to those activities that recharge you whether it's setting for a s that you're passionate about or whether it's giving back and program more of that into your schedule um and those those uh those things to Des raor earlier point where we fill your cup kayin do we I don't know if we if we came to you on this question I was just going to add that I think David and I are saying that you might need some fun lessons David NAA so I I will um I've been good I actually I I program time into my schedule to go diving so before work starts I'll get up with the sun and I'll I'll go diving and then I'll I'll show up like in a customer meeting and and I'll have shorts on and I'll be covered in salt because I've just got out of the the ocean but I'll have like a polo on right so they can't tell and then I'll have my customer meeting but I feel good because I got I exercised right um and and then the rest of the day I've set that tone to where I feel good and and that translates into everything you do so to to Andrew's point right if you find yourself at 80% people are going to notice especially people that know you um it's going to translate into your customer meanss it's going to translate into your work life um and you know so if you can if you can refill your cup like I did this morning all the better to uh to recharge and to to get ahead of that burnout before it occurs any thoughts I don't know if we got to you on this question yeah um I honestly really love what iris said um which is start with why um really start with why you're doing this I've I've met so many people that I've you know talked to about in the Salesforce ecosystem and they start it out just for the money or they go and do a search just for the money and they have no interest in doing technology or they have no interest in getting the certification that they're studying for or you know they did it because somebody said it was cool you know because Tech is the biggest thing right now right and I have to tell them hey look you if if I was in landscaping and I told you that there was a ton of money in landscaping and that there was you know all these different Pathways that you could do in in the Landscaping world and you came in just for that I would tell you to stay away right because if you start running into the first challenge it's like like the military or it's like sports you're going to run into things that are going to beat you down to the point where you're like you're you know Blood Sweat and Tears where you're sitting there thinking is this actually worth it and if you don't genuinely love doing this um then this it's not not a bad thing it's just this isn't the thing that you should be doing right and I think that's the one thing I try to give to people all the time is that we're all going to run into roadblocks you know St studying for certification as Megan said trying to figure out um you know a difficult challenge trying to put together database I I forgot what you said Megan but it seemed very difficult exactly what you were going through but if you go through something like that where it's literally you know so frustrating that you don't you just feel like giving up then you either love what you do and you're going to keep going in spite of that or you don't really love it that much and you're going to say you know what this just isn't really for me right and so I really don't have a I don't have like a here's what you need to go do besides what Jacob and Desiree said which is you know get out set some time go to the gym give yourself some time to meditate give yourself some time to let your mind relax um you know those aren't those are my two biggest things get some sunlight but other than that I I'm just like straight up with it and I just say if you don't love it don't do it um but if you do really love the game then you'll stick in the game and you know the advice that we gave as far as like going to the workout going or going to the gym getting sunlight diving like David said you know getting into the ocean surfing um those things are going to really help out but I think everybody kind of knows what those things are when they really love something they know what they need to do to really um you know give their mind a break so uh yeah that's what I've got no I appreciate that and I would just sum it up and close out this topic to say you have to continually re-evaluate your state of being throughout your career not just when you switch to a different rule or when you jump on a different project um because like I said it can sneak up on you and if you're not maximizing those recharge times or thinking outside of the box to creatively construct your calendar to provide that you can do that whether you're a consultant right some of the folks to call or in Consulting and we know that it's extremely difficult and your your ability to say own your schedule is less flexible than it would be for me who's a solution engineer who I don't have things in production that may or may not be breaking on a weekend right but there's still things that you can do with your team with your manager's approval to think outside the box and to carve out time for yourself that recharges you but only if you ask for it right you have to be your own Advocate you have to be continually evaluating your professional existence to see when you need those things and how you can put those into your schedule so I'll just remind you evaluate that whenever you can don't let it sneak up on you um we're going to Pivot again to a different topic we got about 14 minutes left so a couple more topics and then I want to end with some general guidance from our co-host panel one of the first questions that that I get asked and this is gonna everyone's gonna kind of nod their head and chuckle and go yeah um when I in mentoring folks which I do several times a week people that are you know sometimes leaving the military sometimes they're they're leaving college sometimes they're just transitioning into Tech from a different part of of the the job space is like hey what should I do right and that's why we do this at MTO we we explore different career paths one of the things that we do so that we can provide them with um kind of a test drives of those different paths but also you know it's um hey Dave should I you know should I go for this broad broad role say like Salesforce admin or Salesforce consultant right at large or should I specialize um and there's pros and cons to both of that so in today's job market specialization can be an extremely powerful tool but you have to be careful with it right it's a risk-based decision because if you over specialize and then that becomes out of favor then you have a highly specialized set of skills that no one needs to use so I would ask each of you how do you identify your particular Niche within the Salesforce ecosystem whether it's Specialized or not and what impact has that Niche had upon your career growth that space that you occupy how has that impacted um your professional development I'll go with this one um so I actually like I said earlier started off as a Salesforce admin um and my manager two weeks into my first job asked me if I wanted to learn marketing cloud and uh she said it would probably be one of the best uh decisions I make for my Salesforce career and honestly I can say a marketing cloud has taken me around the world it's taken me to Singapore it's taken me to Brazil it's taken me to the UK it's taken me to Greece um and you know I was a kid from Pulsa Oklahoma uh living in Oklahoma City and the first time marketing Cloud took me out to Los Angeles I was like this is it I'm I'm doing this because it was middle of winter um it was you know probably 20 degrees outside in Oklahoma City and um you know I went out to the Sunshine State right I know they call what is it they call Florida that but it's I I love I love California and it was sunny blue skies and I think from there I realized okay I'm gonna take this a little more serious because I saw the opportunities that were opening up because just so few people knew how to use marketing Cloud at my company um and to be honest with you it has it I've taken I've I've d dove into it it's taken me so far um as to your point David you can get to the point where you specialize so much that maybe that specialty does isn't needed anymore but I would sort of just look at things sort of like an economist I mean I've got that background so I kind of look at it like that I look at peanut butter and jelly for example this is an economist uh example that they use all the time the when the price of peanut butter uh goes up the price of jelly usually goes up because they're usually bought together right they're compliments to each other now the thing about marketing cloud is that it's a complement to so many other tools in the Salesforce ecosystem so Salesforce CRM whether it's service cloud or sales Cloud if a company has that they probably are going to use marketing Cloud for all of their marketing efforts whether it's text messages email messages mobile push messages um so I look at it kind like an economist in that sense um so that would be my advice is to kind of look at whatever you're interested in diving a little bit deeper on um see if that complements what a ton of companies are already using or maybe just look at the general consensus of where Society is going right I mean everything's all about AI at this point so maybe start doing things shifting to more towards artificial intelligence maybe data Cloud right something like that um that where you know the United States and the world economy is headed more towards because at the end of the day your value is predicated upon our businesses using this and are you know are we needing this as an economy um and so that would be my biggest piece of advice um if you are specializing in something that you can tell is actually falling out of favor like David said then maybe that is your your your wakeup call to kind of say you know what let me let me reroute myself to something else but um I would say the more you specialize uh in a specific given field from my experience the more opportunities you're going to have um the more in demand you're going to be um whether it's in the job market or at your company um so that's just been my experience hopefully that helps somebody you had me at peanut butter kayin um full attention no um I think the theme there was spot the Gap right look what's missing either internally your your boss was good about saying hey we need this hint hint um but you don't always get that um you know that Insight directly provided to you you have to come kind of sometimes go out and find it yourself so you know spot what's missing in the ecosystem and then be the person providing that at your organization um and only good things can happen who else yeah I kind of went the specialization route when I was decided to come into Salesforce and I talked to a couple different people that had already you know were in the ecosystem and they had said that the cpq and billing were were pretty hot at the at the time and they wasn't much out there for CTS not much to learn so I just kind of was like that's what I'm going to do if I can get this CT then I have something to show I'm Different right that's standout so that's what I did and then uh I got a job just off that sht so it kind of worked but everything does change right now now we're going towards rlm and that my cpq and stuff's kind of going away so you never know exactly where the environment's at so I guess just just ask people right that are already there if you are worried about it um but it worked for me because it gave me Focus sales Sports does have a lot of different Avenues to go to and if you can't focus and kind of move towards it you might get lost so yeah definitely ask other people if that's the spot you're in yeah great Point Jacob and also be willing to Pivot and and recognize when it's time to Pivot to your point um Iris question or comment I was just going to ask um what you said about the cpq thing because like cpq was like so hot like about a year ago and apparently now they're retiring it and St a new Revenue cloud or something could you diverge a bit more for us oh I don't I don't know a ton on it I just know that they're going more towards uh what are they call rlm Revenue life cycle management system so it looks good actually looks like it's going to be a lot easier to work with um but yeah I haven't gotten my hands too much that's that's my new Focus to grab as much info on that as I can we may be tapping you up in a little bit Jacob awesome uh Andrew Desiree yeah I mean I mean David and Iris I know you uh engaged with me since the beginning of my journey in the ecosystem and so for me I've always been like this I don't know since a little kid I love being very strategic mapping out things you know and so uh when I got into the ecosystem I loved leveraging technology to solve business issues right that's what I like to do um and so what I like to do and especially at my level because I'm I'm at a senior level on our org and so I'm not in the weeds and I'm not building anything um but I'm always reading and evaluating and and listening to issues that we have in our organization or understanding processes so that we can Leverage technology to create efficiency so creating automations right I mean you have no idea how many times I mean this probably happens with all of you you know we have people just because a red box isn't popping up doesn't mean that you don't have an issue with your system or you're not doing it in a more efficient manner and so I'm always having these conversations and you won't believe how many times I see people like doing double data entry and I'm like why why are you doing that we can automate that for you right um and so yeah I I feel like I just I started as an admin and I was like man how how can I get into a more strategic position um and you know I saw like there different levels in the ecosystem I'm like okay being like a senior solution architect or something's going to take a long time but then I learned about project management and I was like oh okay you don't really need to know too much like on the technical side depending on what type of PM you are and you can learn enough um but not have to have so much experience and so I kind of took that path which is now um led me down this path and I think a lot of people don't realize that there is that leadership path in technology too and doesn't mean that you have to be like a complete technical leader either and so that's the the path I took was the non-technical route I suppose um but that's that's how I found out yeah my my Niche so here we are today awesome yeah and that's a question I think we all face at some point in our career do we keep doing what we're doing from a technical perspective as an individual contributor or do we Fleet up so to speak and assume that role of that mantle of leadership understanding that it's going to be a different Dynamic and we're not going to be as Hands-On keyboard as we used to be and are we okay with that and that's that's a question that that I faced and ultimately I chose the opposite path right I love building I love nerding out and I found that maybe I don't get paid quite as much as a manager um but there is a dollar value to happiness and so you know choosing to stay at the individual contributor level for me was what made sense and I think either path that you take in the ecosystem you can be um really successful at do close us out on this one and then we're gonna have one more question and we'll close out the session awesome yeah so I you know started as a technical person and I'm slowly getting closer and closer to the leadership management side of things so I kind of have a little bit of experience on both of these I think that breth over depth is great if you're going into management but also if you're going to really specialize in something um then it's important to know what that business goal is regardless of which path you're taking because you know maybe the platform or the technology or the certification name is going to change but the problem that it's solving for the clients typically Remains the Same so when we look at marketing those issues don't really change too much over time I mean they do evolve but the technology is going to change a lot more rapidly than the general problem so I think if you understand if decide to specialize really understand what business problems and value you're providing for your clients will help you in that area versus just like I'm really good at this you know one certification it's I'm good at this whole industry and I understand it very well and I think that's something you can fall back on so yeah for sure being being um the term escapes me but essentially having limit of experience across a broad variety of areas to be able to provide more of that full package when it comes to interacting with customers def makes sense um so we have just a couple minutes left we've got time for one more question um and and it's this if you could go back to the start of your career what is one piece of advice that you would give your entry level self I that's yeah I mean I I'll just say um I I'll definitely say this you know um definitely definitely understand in the sales for ecosystem that the trail heads are just like scraping the surface and understand that uh whatever you're learning you also need to tie it into that business right and so like yeah whatever platform you're using it's not going to be the same across organizations and so understanding what they have built and just being having that open mind right of just hey you know there's a lot to learn it's okay that you don't know it all don't expect like just because you get this certification you're an expert right away so that's that's what I would say just take a step back yep great Point who else it's don't be afraid to look stupid and ask stupid questions like I think um that helped me get so much farther in my career in the last year than anything else saying I don't understand that can you break that down for me or going to people around me and being okay like knowing what I don't know is not a bad thing it's a good thing you're not supposed to know everything that's why you have a team you're not supposed to know everything that's why you have a community lean into that team lean into that Community because people are here to help you if you try to do it on your own you are just sabotaging yourself yep and no matter how senior you are no matter how long you've been to the ecosystem you're going to have questions and and it's the folks that ask those questions that are the most successful they're not outing themselves because they don't know what they're doing they're trying to refine their knowledge and provide better service to their team or their customer so that everyone always respects that caylor or Jacob oh I I was I wish I would uh track and I started to just track all the issues I've had and then the solutions as I went along um you'd be surprised the amount of times you'll be like I know I've seen this before and you know what did I do to fix this and I I wish I had that backlog there so yes keep a journal yep um David and I do do that in Salesforce we created an App um because we found that we were solving the same things a lot and we were like how do we get chat you know to work with flow and Community ah and so we would write we write articles now knowledge articles with those Solutions and then they're searchable and it's in our own little org that we can share so excellent point and that's that's a great tip Kaylin close us out yep I'd say the same thing um once you do that you start to systemize your workflow you start to systemize your life really because you know I always most of our uh day working right so if you can systemize your work um then you've systemized pretty much most of your day and I think that's the key is um you know thinking about your work as you know you want to improve right you want to be improving that it doesn't mean that it doesn't always just mean you're just studying for a new certification right improving means you're refining your processes maybe you built a flow maybe you built an automation or a journey and Market marketing Cloud you want to figure out okay how did I actually do this what code did I write um so um and how did I actually like complete this task uh and to your point David I've been doing the same thing for the past two years now just writing on my blog all the lessons that I've been learning each week and that really more than anything has helped me systemize exactly what I've been doing that way I can go back and other people can look at it and say this is how he did it this is how I should at least use as use it as a framework um so Jacob and David I definitely agree um and desire to your point to definitely um be okay with asking questions it's it's not if you have the question I guarantee you somebody else has the same question as well um and they think they're going to look stupid by asking it so that's that's what I've got um and uh yeah that's all I've got great Point great close out um it is you know ultimately it's about conserving time right we only have so many hours in the day so if you can provide ways to do things quicker whether it's favorites whether it's superbly organized Google Drives or one Cloud drives you know whether it's um having an app that you store knowledge articles with so you don't have to look up how to build that flow over and over again um and then I would say evaluate that over time because as your work changes as you maybe rise into a leadership role or you do you slide into a separate functional role your systems on how you process information will change I know when I changed from Consulting to solution engineering I had to throw away everything I knew about organization and start completely over because there's a lot of parallels there but it's a dramatically different job and what I was doing my my assistant for organization as a consultant while it was great for Consulting not good for solution engineering so I redesigned it much happier that is all the time we have tonight folks before we do close I would like to thank all of you for attending tonight appreciate it as well as Andrew Jacob and kin for co-hosting tonight's session spending your time with us and providing some awesome guidance to our audience and to our extended audience on YouTube thanks so much hope to see you here in a couple weeks be safe thanks thank you all thanks see you [Music] he [Music]