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Episode 19: Salesforce Career Conversations Megan Tuano with ROD. Super talented Megan talks about her journey to becoming a Salesforce Consultant and her impact on the Salesforce ecosystem through her online media activity.
Lee: Hi, this is Lee Durrant here with another episode of RODcast where we dive into people's Salesforce careers to find you, ideally, little nuggets of inspiration that might help you in your Salesforce career. I'm delighted to say that joining me today is Megan Tuano, who is a Salesforce consultant and content creator, among other things. Hi, Megan, thanks for joining me.
Megan: Hi, I'm so excited to be here with you.
Lee: This is fantastic. It's the first time we've spoken, isn't it?
Megan: Yes.
Lee: It's nice to have you on. I was going to list everything you look like you're doing, but I think content creator and consultant probably sums it up. Perhaps, if you don't mind, give us a quick overview of what you're doing now before we rewind time and walk through your career if it's okay.
Megan: Yes, absolutely. I've got quite a few things going on. For full-time, my employment, I'm a Salesforce Consultant at Slalom. For my part-time jobs, I am an expert author for Salesforce Ben. I create content for Focus on Force. I'm also the founder of Trailblazer Social, where people that are coming into the ecosystem can network with other people because community is absolutely essential. Then I also run a Discord channel, with about 750 members, catering to military members, military spouses but also people that are entering the Salesforce ecosystem. It's just like another sort of a community which they could have when entering.
It's like Slack, but Discord has channels and then sub-channels. Really cool platform. It was originally designed for gamers, but since COVID and everything, everything's really changed. This is more of like a professional platform. I have a community where people can come in and ask questions. They can find out about local events going on.
Then my personal favourite; we have something called a rant channel. If you're just needing help or you have open questions or you want to discuss something going on, where we just have all these different channels, which people feel, essentially, at the end of the day comfortable with. That's the best platform.
Lee: Did you mention Focus on Force, which is your other content that you produce? Cool.
Megan: Yes.
Lee: How did all this start? If we go back to, I suppose the beginning or maybe even prior to Salesforce, what were you doing before you got into Salesforce? What was your first job?
Megan: That's a great question. I had graduated and like many people, I was struggling to find a job. I had worked at my college days for the graduate admissions office. I was contacted by a company called 2U, that essentially run admissions schools in different master's programs. I was called into work for Syracuse in Upstate New York for their master's and data science program. That's where I started breaking into tech. I was able to work with different people within data science.
The real background behind that was that they were actually using Salesforce at the time. I started using it from a sales perspective, where I was selling admissions to students that were potentially interested in the master's program. Then from there, I went to work for the University of California, Berkeley, the same master's program, just a little bit more advanced for those professionals, but they were also using the Salesforce platform.
That's really how I got started. My uncle suggested-- He worked at Capgemini at the time, another Salesforce consulting firm. He was just like, "Yes, you should check out Salesforce, you're using it." It just went from there. Hopped on Trailhead one day, and then now, a Salesforce consultant.
Lee: Yes, among lots of other things by the sounds of it as well. In a way then, -
Episode 18: Salesforce Career Conversations Peggy Schael with ROD. Peggy talks about her career in Salesforce and how she progressed to co-found a training platform to help others to become certified.
Lee: Hello, it's Lee Durrant here again with another episode of RODcast, where, as you know by now, we dive into people's Salesforce careers to find you, hopefully, little nuggets of inspiration that might help you in your Salesforce career. I'm really pleased to say that joining me today on the podcast is Peggy Schael who is the co-founder of WeLearnSalesforce. Hi Peggy.
Peggy: Hi Lee, nice to meet you, and thanks so much for having me here.
Lee: I'm really, really thankful that you've agreed to join. I think I saw what you do on LinkedIn and thought it's quite interesting. We'll see if we can have a quick chat and share some of your story or even all of your story with people that are listening and want to be inspired perhaps as to what happened in your career and how you got to where you are and what you're doing, and maybe how that can help them as well. I was looking with interest. Maybe a little overview for us first and then we'll go back to the beginning if you like. Do you mind just telling us a little bit about what you do right now and then we'll rewind?
Peggy: Yes, yes, of course. I'm more than happy to share my story and I have to add, this is my very first podcast, so please be gentle on me.
Lee: That's okay. I won't ask anything too tough but yes, you fire away.
Peggy: As you introduced, I'm Peggy Schael and I am a Salesforce trainer and have been a Salesforce trainer for many years now, and a bit over, I think two years ago, we founded WeLearnSalesforce, our online Salesforce learning platform where you can go and watch video tutorials and get Salesforce certified or do a Salesforce certification training and prepare for the certification and all of that is provided in video tutorial format. You can watch pretty much any time from anywhere you are. That's where I am right now.
Lee: Where you are right now, brilliant. I'd be interested to find out how you got into it but maybe before that, what were you doing pre-Salesforce? What was your career up to that? I had a look obviously I could see a bit of HR recruitment in there back in the day.
Peggy: Yes exactly. It's probably not what you expect, someone being in the Salesforce trainer role. I pretty much stumbled into Salesforce. It's one of the stories I've already shared and how I got into Salesforce. I worked for various management consulting companies before I moved into Salesforce. They were mainly roles around event management and human resources and recruitment and staffing, and then a little bit of project management. Pretty much roles that had to do with working with people and getting things organised. Mostly what we called back-office jobs where you would just really work behind the scenes and get people out there.
It had literally nothing to do with technology or in IT and CRM systems, maybe Excel spreadsheets, but certainly, nothing to do with CRM systems or anything like that. I thought this is pretty much where I'll be working for the rest of my life. Then what happened was that my partner and I, we moved back to Australia. We lived in Australia before and then decided to go back to Australia. We left our jobs, we left everything behind, and moved to Australia. Then I had to look for a new job in Australia, specifically in Sydney. I was looking around and then I came across yet another consulting company.
They had a job opening for a Salesforce project manager, and I thought, "Okay, I have a bit of project management experience," but Salesforce, I had no idea what Salesforce was.
Lee: Peggy, just a rough idea when this was?
Peggy: This was in 2013. It's been a few years back now. Time flies.
Lee: Yes, well, you're not wrong. Nearly 10 years ago then I suppose. -
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Episode 17: Salesforce Career Conversations Dave Atkins with ROD. Dave has worked in IT since 2003 and moved into Salesforce in 2017. Dave shares his story as both a candidate and employer in the technology space and why money shouldn't be the main motivator when it comes to your career.
Lee Durrant: Hello, it's Lee Durrant here with another episode of RODcast where, as you know by now, we dive into people's Salesforce careers to find you little nuggets of inspiration that might help you in your Salesforce career. I'm pleased to say that joining me today is Dave Atkins, who I've known for a long, long time. Hi, Dave.
Dave Atkins: Morning Lee, are you well?
Lee: Good, good, good. Thank you so much for agreeing to share your Salesforce career with us or your career before Salesforce as well, and then obviously, any little tips you've got along the way will be brilliant. I was thinking perhaps you can, I know you and I go back a long way, perhaps you can give us a high-level intro about you and then before we dive into where it all began, and then bring us up to date. A little intro would be great.
Dave: Sure, yes. Okay, where it all began? Well, I came through a software background, usual sort of development and design way back in the day. I was introduced back in the mid-'90s, to something called CRM. Now, I'd never heard of it. Nobody else appeared to have heard of it, and it was something entirely new. It took some time for that to, shall we say, come to fruition and it was quite weird, really because the first real introduction to Salesforce I had, I was working for a software company, and they wanted to try out CRM. I did a bit of research and came across this thing called Salesforce, which was in its very, very early stages then.
Lee: Yes, if you're talking mid-'90s, they didn't start til '99.
Dave: It was '99. Yes, '99 they started. I think this by then was probably about 2000, 2001 something like that. Strange thing was that one of my colleagues in my present company said the same thing and he described it as when Salesforce was nothing more than a glorified address book which was way, way back.
We adopted that and obviously, in those days, you didn't have the infrastructure around it that you have today so everything we did, we did ourselves, we found that it was very customisable and it worked well, it worked well as a sales tool. Something that we could track customers on, track their purchases, and their prospects but it was a very, very simple system then. I just moved on through.
Dave: This was a company called GAVS. Which I think you may remember.
Lee: I remember GAVS.
Dave: That's right and I was working with them and really, it was an internal system we needed to use something to track sales. That's how I got my first taste of CRM and of Salesforce.
Lee: It fell on to you that it's to be that person to get it to work?
Dave: Yes, I was literally chief cook and bottle washer. Everything, I had to do. We did it ourselves and obviously coming from a software background, it was interesting for me to do that and interesting for me to become involved in the business side of it. How we use CRM.
Lee: As I said before to you, I'm going to go off on tangents here, but I looked at your profile even though I've known you for a long time and I kind of know your profile well because obviously we've worked together for so many years in terms of me either recruiting for you or finding new jobs so I know your profile. More often than not you refer to yourself as a project manager.
Dave: Yes.
Lee: T hat leads to my first question that is a bit off-topic in terms of your career anyway. If you're called a project manager but you're doing what you did with Salesforce, there's so many different things you can call yourself because obviously to do what you've done just to build that from nothing for GAVS, sorry, it's so much more than project management, isn't it? -
Episode 16: Salesforce Career Conversations David Massey with ROD. David talks about how he found his way into Salesforce. Originally a Salesperson at a travel company, he was one of the unlucky ones having to figure out a new career due to the impact of covid. In less than two years, David has become a Salesforce Certified Consultant and now helps others to obtain their own certs.
Lee Durrant: Hello, it's Lee Durrant here, with another episode of RODcast. We dive into people's Salesforce careers to find you little nuggets of inspiration that might help you in your Salesforce career. I'm pleased to say that joining me today is Dave Massey, who is-- I've lost count, but multiple certified Salesforce consultant and author of davejmassey.com, a website designed to help you learn Salesforce.
Hi, Dave, have I introduced you right there, mate? Is it author? Are we going to go with that?
David Massey: Yes, we'll go with author and thanks for having me, Lee. It's a pleasure to speak to you.
Lee: No, you too. We haven't spoken before, which, frankly for me, is a bit rare on this podcast because I've played it safe. I normally just talk to people that I know, but I couldn't help, like probably a lot of people in the Salesforce ecosystem, couldn't help noticing what you're up to and thought, from a selfish point of view, it'd be great to get you on our podcast and talk about your relatively short journey so far in Salesforce and the very quick rise to being a little bit of an influencer.
If you don't mind, perhaps giving us a very quick overview of who you are, then we can talk about, I guess, what's happened to you in the last few years if that's all right?
David: Yes, that's perfect. Where I am now is I'm an eight-time certified Salesforce consultant, working for a company called ThirdEye Consulting based out of London. Literally, two years and a week ago, I was actually a travel agent. It was only the 30th of March, I actually discovered Salesforce 2020, so the 30th of March 2020 was the first time I saw it. Prior to that, I'd worked in sales and service for a good 10, 15 years, selling everything you can think of from cars, to windows, to vacuum cleaners, to TVs, broadband, the works. Sold all of it and I found myself working in the travel industry.
I've been really successful. I'd been in it again, for about seven years at that point. I was doing really well with my sales team and when I say travel agents, technically, it's like a tour operator. Everything was custom built, everything was tailor-made, flights, hotels, transfers, trips, seven or eight week holidays, so something quite bespoke.
Again, was doing really, really well. Then COVID hit and as COVID hit, as most people know, in the travel industry, it is essentially minimum wage and then you earn all your money through commission. That's just the nature of the beast in sales, as you know. Yes, I walked into the office after COVID had hit and was just faced with the fact that I'd lost 50% of my commission overnight and all the other commission was going into a holding pot.
It couldn't really be touched, because it needed to be there to obviously keep everything going. It was a bit of a shock to walk into that. I'm married, I've got two kids, we've got a house, a mortgage, I've got a big dog that eats more than me. It was one of them where I had to look around and think, "Right, what am I going to do?"
Lee: You were made redundant, were you? Or what happened?
David: No, I wasn't made redundant. Literally, I just had to work full time through it, working from home because again, particular with the travel industries, it wasn't a case of, "Oh, right. Well, COVID shut down, lockdown, nobody does anything." Because we still had to manage all the flights, the hotels. Again, this is a bit people often didn't realize is we were working behind the scenes for minimum wage, working 10, 12 hour days because we're going through time zones t... -
Episode 15: Salesforce Career Conversations Charlie Cowan with ROD. Charlie is an Enterprise Tech AE and published Author of "How to sell Tech". Listen to Charlie talk about his career journey, with a surprise master class in selling pipe cleaners. Charlie has sold both Salesforce professional services and products, and talks about why empathy is important within his role.
Lee Durrant: Hi, I'm Lee Durrant. In this episode of RODcast, we're speaking with Charlie Cowan about his Salesforce career to date and any little tips or nuggets he's learned over the years, particularly as a now published author of sales books, I think plural. Let's just dive straight in and say hi, Charlie. How are you doing, mate?
Charlie Cowan: Hi there, Lee. I'm good, thank you. Thank you for having me on.
Lee: Thanks for agreeing to do it. Obviously, you and I have known each other for quite a long time in this Salesforce ecosystem. I did notice your recent news about publishing a software sales book. I thought it might be good to get you on and have a chat for people that are listening about, I suppose, your journey in Salesforce and how you got into it, and all the way through to this point now where you're a published author of sales books, which is brilliant.
Charlie: I'd be happy to share that journey. Hopefully, it's useful either for people that are in sales, but also people that are not in sales and more in either the consulting ranks or interested in what it might take to get into sales.
Lee: Yes, absolutely. It's a growing part of the Salesforce ecosystem, of course, but even the wider cloud software space, I would imagine. It'd be quite interesting to dig into that. If you're happy to maybe give us a little overview of yourself and then we can dive into how it all began, if you like. Fire away, tell us what you're doing.
Charlie: I'm an enterprise tech AE. I've worked in cloud sales pretty much since I started working. '99 seems a long time ago now, but when I left The Agricultural College, which is what I studied in, and just through pure coincidence, the town that I was studying in, which is a town called Cirencester, also had a number of tech companies that got set up there. I was lucky enough to get a job in one, pretty much straight out of uni. I did a quick transition from agriculture into technology. Then I've stayed on that path the whole way through, sometimes selling the tech, sometimes selling services. I spent my career in that space.
Lee: Like a lot of people I speak to, it wasn't necessarily your plan to get into tech, then. Obviously, the agricultural thing that was-- You had a totally different life plan.
Charlie: It was pure coincidence and a little bit of luck. While I was at uni, I was also working in my evenings in a local pub. To get from uni to that pub, I used to drive through a little industrial estate in Cirencester. I used to go past this building there, and it had a little car park at the back of it. There was some nice cars in that car park. There was a Lamborghini Diablo, there was a Ferrari 355. There was some good stuff going on. One day, on my way to work, I had a little bit of time before my shift started. I parked up and I went and knocked on the door.
I spoke to the receptionist, and I was like, "What on earth do you do here?"
Charlie: She said, "Oh, we're a business-only ISP." I said, "I've got absolutely no idea what that means but can I have a job?" I didn't even really ask for a specific type of job. I didn't really know what kind of jobs were available. She put me in touch with the sales director there, a guy called Johnny. I popped in a week later to have an interview with him, and had some initial chats about what I wanted to do and what interested me. I was just like, "I'm a student. Obviously, I want a big telly." That was the only thing I could really remember saying.
Lee: Not a Lamborghini.
Charlie: Not a Lamborghini. Yes, start small. Luckily, -
Episode 14: Salesforce Career Conversations Richard Pay with ROD. Listen to Richard talk about his inspiring career journey and how he bounced back following redundancy in the automative sector to carve out a new career within Salesforce.
[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]
Lee Durrant: Hello, and welcome to this episode of broadcast with me, Lee Durrant and joining me today is Theresa Durrant. Today we talk to Richard Pay about his career in Salesforce so far. Richard had a very successful 30-year career in sales. Unfortunately, being made redundant in his 50s, not sure what to do or where to turn. He now works as a senior consultant for one of Salesforce's biggest partners in the world. How'd he do it? He explains all in this episode.
Hi, Richard Pay. Welcome to the latest edition of RODCast. Thanks so much for joining us. How are you doing?
Richard Pay: Great, thank you. It's nice to meet you face to face finally. Thanks for having me.
Lee: Yes. The three of us are going to have a chat about your career to date, well in Salesforce, but also before that. I think we should kick off with you giving us a bit of a, I suppose overview, of your career up to the point you decided, a fancy bit of Salesforce stuff.
Richard: I think overview is a good point because there are 30 odd years of it. Yes, I'll try and summarise it. I did a degree in geography and cartography. Cartography is a dying art, isn't it? For people that don't know, it's making maps basically. In those days, you used to draw them with pen and ink and scribing tools and that sort of stuff. I did that and, very long story, but I didn't go into that particular sphere because I was about to go off on a project, mapping Iraq. I got the job and then they told me that the first Iraq-Iran wars kicked off again. It was on a big hydroelectric project, so I was surveying that. The project got canceled in one of those funny turns in your life; I've had quite a few of these. Rather randomly, I didn't go down the route of being a cartographer or surveyor, but I still love that kind of scene. I love all maps and all that stuff.
Theresa: That is like me. There's something fascinating about maps, yes.
Richard: When I drive around in the car, I'm looking at hills and terminal moraines and all that good stuff. Anyway, all good. I did a degree in that, but I didn't pursue that career. Rather randomly again, I got into the automotive business. I had a basic training, if you like, a sort of a management trainee in a car company down in Devon, Cornwall, that sort of area.
I did that and that kind of kicked off a career in automotive and, I, over the last 30 years basically, I've been involved in that world of automotive. I've gone from a used car salesman, if you like, through to being involved in what they call used car remarketing, which is the wholesaling of vehicles out from leasing companies or rental companies into the secondary market, which is usually dealers and that sort of stuff.
More recently that's become quite techie. It used to be done through car auctions, and then for lots of reasons, like everything frankly, it's all gone on, not all, but it's gone online. I got myself involved in the online piece and basically selling platforms around the online remarketing bit. I got into tech that way, but I have always been a business development guy. That's my thing. I'm not a techie person. Probably speak something about that later on, but I am not a techie person at all.
I come out in a cold sweat whenever in meetings, people say, "Well, what's the percentage of sales that you did last week as opposed to the week before?" I'm one of those people that go, "Oh right," don't really get that. I'm not a mathematician guy at all. I did that and effectively did that for quite a long time actually, rose through the ranks up to sales director level and managing director level of a couple of companies. -
Salesforce Roundtable: Counter Offers
Lee Durrant: Hello, and welcome to another episode of RODcast with me, Lee Durrant, and my cohost, Teresa Durrant. Today we're talking to three Salesforce industry legends about the topic of counter-offers. I'm not sure if you've ever resigned from a role only to be counter-offered, or perhaps you've owned a business, and you have counter-offered someone that's looked to resign from your business. It's a hot topic. As of recording this, it's July 2021, we're coming out the back of COVID, but it certainly seems to be very rife at the moment in the Salesforce ecosystem. Counter-offers is a hot topic.
I thought it'd be great to get the opinions of Penny Townsend, Vera Loftis, and Ben McCarthy, who's also known as Salesforce Ben. They've all got some great opinions on all sides of counter-offers, whether they have previously been in a situation where they've been counter-offered themselves, or in situations where somebody's resigned from their business, and they have or have not decided to counter-offer them, and how it went. A great podcast to listen to if you're in that process yourself. Some really good views from the guys. Hope you enjoy.
Lee: Let's welcome our guests on this podcast today. We have with us, Penny Townsend. Hello, Penny.
Penny Townsend: Hi, Lee. Hi, everyone.
Teresa Durrant: Hello.
Lee: Third time you've been with us. Thank you very much. Equally, Vera, it's your third time, I think, with us on this podcast. Hello to you.
Vera Loftis: Hello. I'm hoping third time's a charm.
Lee: They've always been charming. We've got as well, first time with us, but probably his millionth podcast, we've got Ben McCarthy, also known as Salesforce Ben. Hi, Ben. How are you doing, mate?
Ben McCarthy: Hello. Yes, very well. Thanks a lot for the invite. Pleasure to be here.
Lee: Thanks for coming on. This is, as I mentioned in the introduction, a particular conversation about counter-offers. I think it's rife, possibly everywhere, but it's definitely rife at the moment in the Salesforce market.
I don't know if you guys are aware of this because I appreciate you're in the middle of it, but as recruiters, we have noticed because we're in the middle of COVID still or coming out the end of it, it's just been absolutely crazy in terms of people wanting to leave for whatever reason. We'll touch base on that and then basically being counter-offered crazy money to stay where they are. I've never known it's so bad. Maybe it's a good thing, I don't know, but that's why we're talking. Teresa, looks like you want to say something?
Teresa: No, no, no, I was just going to say, yes, absolutely. We know that there's a skill shortage at the moment, and perhaps we can touch base on some of those reasons that we think that's happening aside from, obviously, Brexit having a huge impact on that. Also, I think COVID, where perhaps some skills that were in the UK have now gone back home to various countries across Europe, we've found quite a big impact on that. Just to touch base on why we think that this might be quite a big phenomenon at the moment with the counter-offers going on. Perhaps we'll throw it over to you guys since you're probably hiring or looking to hire at the moment.
Lee: What do you think? Vera, do you want to go first?
Vera: Yes, happy to.
Lee: What's your take on possibly why it's happening?
Vera: It's one of those things. I think, coming out of lockdown, everybody's now starting to breathe again, and people are starting to look. People who were probably not super satisfied in their job, that's probably exacerbated by having to work from home and COVID. Now that it feels like the world is opening up, I think people feel secure enough to start poking their heads up and seeing what is out there.
I think that combined with the fact that, because employers are not back in the office, when you lose people, -
Episode 13: Rohit Kumar Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. Listen to Rohit talk about his career journey, to become one of only a handfull of Salesforce CTAs currently in India.
[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]
Lee Durrant: Hiya. It's Lee Durrant here. Welcome to another RODcast. I'm joined with Theresa again today. Today we're interviewing Rohit Kumar, who is a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect based out in India. He's one of only five CTAs in India which is quite interesting, I think. We get to chat with him about his career. Hope you can bear with us.
Lee: Welcome to Rohit Kumar. Thanks very much for joining us. How are you?
Rohit Kumar: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. How about you?
Lee: Yes, we're good. Teresa is with me.
Theresa Durrant: Hello.
Rohit: Hi.
Theresa: Good to meet you.
Rohit: Same here.
Theresa: Excellent.
Rohit: Hope you're safe.
Theresa: We're very safe.
Lee: We should say again for people listening in that this is May 2021, so still very much in the middle of COVID, and I totally appreciate, Rohit, where you are it's awful at the moment. For people listening, that's where we are. We're very safe here, but how about you over there, mate? How's it going?
Rohit: I think it's going good. The situation is definitely not good and government is trying its level best to see what best they can do for everyone. We are in total curfew as we speak. I'm very hopeful that the situation would improve in the next couple of weeks. Fingers crossed. Let's see how the upcoming weeks would be.
Lee: Whereabouts are you, Rohit? Whereabouts are you in India?
Rohit: I am in a city called Bangalore. It's in the south of India and is primarily referred to as one of the IT capitals of the world. Most large organisations, product-based companies or any companies into advisory, consulting, are primarily headquartered or will have a bigger branch in Bangalore, India.
Lee: Fantastic. Before we go into the questions about your career and how you got to where you are at the moment, I was reading today that India has got the largest worldwide concentration of Salesforce technical talent, which I didn't know. It made sense, but it's one interesting stat.
Rohit: One of the advantages we've got is that India has one of the largest talent pools and is also one of the largest countries with many Salesforce consultants and developers, so we see a good amount of opportunity within the country. A lot of organisations has invested either in Salesforce as part of their digital transformation journey or an implementation partner based in India. Ample amount of opportunity as well for the talent in India.
Theresa: Fantastic.
Lee: I think we'll start at the beginning of your career then if that's okay and you can talk us through-- I suppose we haven't started the right way here. If you can just introduce yourself in terms of who you are, what you do so that people will know.
Rohit: Yes, definitely.
Lee: Obviously, we'll share your LinkedIn profile for people that want to have a look at it after this but yes, if you introduce yourself.
Rohit: I'll start from where am I today and how did I start.
Theresa: Yes, perfect.
Rohit: Hi, everyone. I'm Rohit. I'm CTO for Venerate Solutions and one of the board members. I'm also one among very few Salesforce Certified Marketing [unintelligible 00:04:08]. From a career perspective, in the early days of my career, I was primarily engaged more into development of India's first nanosatellite. I was primarily writing real-time operating systems and was involved in the hardcore system development. I always had plans.
Having worked in a engagement where you take three to four years to build a product and launch it, I always had a feeling to explore what's there in the IT industry and how do I work on something where I can bring in agility and reduce the time to mar... -
Episode 12: Goolshun Belut Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. Listen to Goolshun talk about his career journey, from working at Carphone Warehouse to now running his own Saleforce consulting company, including the toughest Salesforce project of his career.
[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]
Lee: Welcome, Goolshun Belut. Did I say that right, mate?
Goolshun Belut: Yes, that is correct.
Lee: Good you asked him before the recording. Welcome to the podcast, mate. Very nice to have you. Theresa is also here with us.
Theresa: Hello.
Goolshun: Thanks both for having me. Pleasure speaking to you after such a long time.
Lee: I know. It has been a while. I don't know how long, but I think it's got to be a good few years and probably one of the last world tours, but been a long time. You've done a lot since we last spoke, and we will get to that, obviously. I don't know whether you've listened to any of these before, but we'd like to go back to the beginning of your Salesforce career if you like, and then.
Goolshun: Back to the origins, right?
Theresa: Yes, absolutely.
Lee: If you can remember that far back, mate. Then we'll go back to where we are today, and what the future looks like, and all that sort of stuff and the journey you've been on through this. Without further ado, I'll let Theresa ask the first couple of questions, and then we'll just jump in.
Theresa: Oh, okay, fantastic. I suppose the biggest question or the most important question, I should probably say, is how did you get into Salesforce in the first place?
Goolshun: That's a million-dollar question, that one. I never planned to go into Salesforce at all. It's just while I was finishing my degree at university, and we had one module around CRM. I think it was saying we had to interview Carphone Warehouse about their own CRM system, but I've never imagined that I'll be working on CRM for my whole career. I think during the last year of my degree, I had a temp job at a company called Truphone. I think they were implementing the Salesforce CRM at that time. I had a basic job at Truphone. My job was literally putting SIM cards into a phone and testing them, and then shipping them. That was quite a mundane task; I was frustrated, and I told people how frustrated I was; I had more talent. One of the directors called me into the office. I thought I was going to lose a job today at that time.
Lee: Really?
Goolshun: Yes, because I was already here looking for a job, and I had a temp job, and I was venting at the office. They called me in the office, and they said, "Okay, what do you not like about this job?" I said, "I could do more stuff." He asked me to bring my CV to his office the next day, and he said, "There's something called Salesforce. It's a CRM system. We would like you to try it out and see if you can work with it. If you can work with it, then you have a job." I had two weeks of heavy Googling. Back in the days, there was no Trailhead; there was no heavy training. It was the initial days of even the certifications, so yes, and more Googling.
Lee: Sorry, mate. Sorry to interrupt you. Where are we?
Goolshun: That was 2010 probably. Just 2010 or 2009. Just approximately about that time.
Theresa: Sorry, carry on.
Lee: I'm just curious how long ago that was. Another question. What were you studying? What was the degree in?
Goolshun: Funny enough, my degree was a bit odd. I was studying multimedia computing, but the whole idea of my degree was to do with filmmaking, multimedia side, and creative side with a couple of modules about IT. I did study computer sciences during my A-levels, which helped a lot, certainly because we did some programming before. Anything that I've learned at university was - probably I wouldn't disrespect my degree - but a lot of things we've learned during my A-Levels itself, especially again, I was brought up in Mauritius, -
Salesforce Career Conversations #11: Vera Loftis
Episode 11: Vera Loftis talks to Lee and Theresa about her Salesforce career growing up in Bluewolf and her next exciting venture with Solution Junkies.
Lee Durrant: Hello, it's Lee Durrant here again with the new episode of RODcast. I'm joined by my co-host, Theresa. In this episode, we spend time with Vera Loftis, who is Salesforce royalty, so you're in for a bit of a treat.
She talks us through her career at Bluewolf, where she rose to be the managing director of the UK Bluewolf before they were acquired, and how she's getting on now through COVID. Her plans for the future with her new company and what she thinks will happen in the ecosystem.
Vera Loftis: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Lee: Thanks for saying yes. I'm honoured.
Lee: I should tell everybody, we're still in the middle of the COVID thing, we're in the middle of lockdown, so this is a chat about your career in Salesforce, which will inspire a lot of people. It'll also have a COVID-related lockdown theme to it too.
Let's talk about your career if you don't mind, up until COVID. What we normally ask is how you got into Salesforce.
Vera: Of course, and I'm probably interesting in that I fell into it. It's the easiest way to describe it. When I was in school, I thought I was going to be this very glamorous marketer PR person. All of my internships in college, I had internships with publishing companies doing PR. I did marketing for a magazine, and it all seemed fairly glamorous at the time. When I got out of school, I was a marketing coordinator for a not-for-profit, which was slightly less glamorous, I'll be honest. It's quite funny because, at the time, I didn't realise not-for-profits work in a very lean environment.
I was young, and I wanted to do all of this ambitious stuff. When I started the role, it was described to me that this is marketing plus. I was like, "Marketing plus? That sounds interesting." What they meant by marketing plus was marketing plus customer service. We ran an alumni club in New York, and there was a part of the appeal for being a member of the club. It had a tiny hotel, I think, 12 rooms - half of my job was giving people tours of the hotel, and answering the call when they ran out of towels, and things like that.
It got to a point where I thought, "I've probably delivered enough towels. I don't think I'm doing the marketing as such." I was just looking for a change. At that point in time, I didn't know where to go from there. I was an English major in school, so I already was confused about what I wanted to do when I grew up. Then when this marketing job didn't pan out to be exactly what I was hoping for, I just started looking around randomly. I was lucky in that my cousin was a consultant, not necessarily in the Salesforce space.
He worked for Anderson at the time, but he said to me, "You should get into consulting." I went to a school where consulting was something that the smart kids did, so I had never considered myself part of that tier of hires.
He broke it down for me; he was like, "Consulting is just problem-solving. It's somebody who can get into what people need, can get people to open up about how they need to operate, and then try to help them do that in a better way. We had a couple of conversations about it, and I thought, "You know what? I'm just going to go for it."
He had put me in touch with Bluewolf. I interviewed at that time with Eric, and I remember I was so scared because I thought there would be all of these consulting questions. I had read online that they were going to ask me all of these strange things. To be fair, he did ask me one, which was how many ping pong balls I thought there were in America? I had prepared for how many tennis balls were on an aeroplane, but I hadn't prepared for that one. I had realised that, luckily, thank God it wasn't about mass. It was about how you work the problem through. -
Salesforce Career Conversations #10: Helle Justesen
Episode 10: Helle Justensen talks to Lee and Theresa about Salesforce Change Management and Digital Transformation. Plus provides her tips for remaining positive during a pandemic.
[This interview with Helle has been transcribed for your benefit. Please ignore any rogue typos. Thank You.]
Lee Durrant: Hi, and welcome to RODcast with me Lee Durrant, joined today with Theresa as well. We're both going to be interviewing Helle Justesen today, who is in the Salesforce ecosystem, but this one's more about her experience as a transformational change specialist and a business and life coach and how she sees the future after COVID-19 and all of the lockdown issues we've been all going through. Well, this has been recorded in the middle of lockdown, but I think hopefully you'll all see some positive messages there from Helle about how life might change, but also how the Salesforce ecosystem will potentially thrive in the future, so I hope you enjoy it.
Lee: Hi, Helle. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Helle Justesen: I'm fine. Thank you. How are you?
Lee: I'm okay. Theresa is with us as well as you know.
Theresa: Hello.
Helle: Hi. Theresa, how are you?
Theresa: I'm good. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to this day when - I don't want to use the word normal - but looking forward to the day when we can actually be a lot more social with people and not feel like you got to keep your closest people at arm's distance. Looking forward to those times. [chuckles]
Lee: Before we dive into it, are you okay just to give us a little introduction of yourself in terms of… Just introduce yourself if that's okay.
Helle: Yes, [laughs] of course. My name is Helle, Helle Justesen, and I am 43 years old. I want to put that in there because I'm proud of my age. I'm still alive, so that's good.
[laughter]
Helle: I have a feeling that we don't celebrate the fact that we get to get older enough. That's one of the things that…
Theresa: Yes, I love that, and it's the wisdom that comes with it. Why not shout about it? Absolutely.
Helle: Yes, exactly, and the fact that you get another year to do the crazy things that you want to do. I'm a transformation change specialist with a background in a bit of management consultancy, and I've worked in a multitude of different industries and things like that. The thing is there's always these similarities between each industry and everybody thinks that they're unique, but to be fair, we're really not. [laughs] We're all creatures of habits. That's one of the things that you can always take with you when you're on your life journey and things like that.
I'm very much a holistic person as well. I see us as living a life not necessarily having a career. I think sometimes that when people face a crisis and a crisis can be losing a job, which a lot of people are in that situation right now, or going through a divorce, which also a lot of people are facing right now.
[laughter]
Helle: Because of being at home with the family and things are coming out right now as well.
Lee: Theresa's laughing quite heartily at that one. It's a bit worrying.
Theresa: [laughs] You're so worried.
Helle: The thing is, with that, it's instead of seeing it as a tearful goodbye to something, then seeing it as an opportunity to actually go out and do the things that you've always dreamed about doing. Sometimes a crisis needs to happen for us to actually wake up and change what we're doing. It's the same thing with illness as well. It's like if you've gone down a road where you've been living an unhealthy lifestyle, then something needs to wake you up for you to actually alter that lifestyle or else we go through life mindless.
It's not really a conscious road that we're taking. We're not conscious of the present moment. We either dwell on the past and it's never a good thing about the past. -
Salesforce Roundtable: Covid-19
Listen to some of the brightest minds within the Salesforce ecosystem talk about the impact of Covid-19 on them, how they are utilising their time during lockdown and predictions on what the future of Salesforce may look like. Also they give tips on how you can utilise your time for when you are backing looking for Salesforce jobs after the lockdown is lifted.
Lee Durrant:
So, hi, guys. Thanks for joining us. We're obviously humbled that you gave us your time, and we're really grateful for that, so thank you very much. I guess we'll pick one and we'll just go for some introductions if that's all right?
Lee:
So, Vera, as you're top on our screen, would you like to introduce yourself first?
Vera Loftis:
Absolutely. Hi. Vera Loftis, I run the Capita Salesforce practise, but I've been in the ecosystem for over a decade now. So many, many different forms, but always Salesforce focused.
Theresa:
Thank you. We've got Simon. Do you want to go ahead?
Simon Thompson:
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Simon Thompson, CEO and co-founder of Improved Apps. I've been working around the Salesforce ecosystem for 13 years, since 2007. I worked at Salesforce for six of those years before founding Improved Apps. And we're helping customers drive adoption of Salesforce.
Theresa:
Lovely. Thank you.
Lee:
Gemma do you want to go next?
Gemma Blezard:
Sure. Gemma Blezard. I founded Ladies Be Architects during my time at Bluewolf, when I was working with Vera. Recently broken away to start my own advisory consultancy business, focusing on architects. And I've been working with Salesforce for 12 years.
Theresa:
Fantastic. And then we've got Toby.
Toby Heath:
Hi there. Hi everyone. My name is Tony Heath. I've recently been working at Heathrow, previous to that it was Gatwick, and previous to that was a company called SITA who were based out in Geneva. I've been working in the Salesforce space for about eight years now, on and off in different guises. Yeah, that's me really.
Theresa:
Thank you.
Lee:
Brilliant. Thank you. And last but not least, Penny and your Muppet. Do you mind introducing yourself?
Penny:
Yeah. Hi guys. Yeah, my colleague. Times are getting desperate for colleagues. So I'm Penny, I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Pracedo, and like the other guys, I've been around doing Salesforce for ages, so about 12 or 13 years, and I've been the customer at other consultancies and the ISVs, so a little bit of most of the space.
Theresa:
Fantastic. Thank you very much guys.
Lee:
Yeah, okay. Well we'll just dive straight in. I know I sent you some questions that we're curious about, and obviously I want to thank you all for doing this and thanks to Gemma as well for being there when the idea hit us both. We thought it'd be a good idea then just go through some questions about how you're all handling the current situation and obviously what you think might happen in the future, so that people can hopefully see some light at the end of the tunnel.
Lee:
So the first point I think we'd like to cover, and I think I might start with...
Lee:
Who shall we start with, Jenny?
Lee:
Okay, well actually, Gemma, because your situation is quite interesting, I mean all your situations are very unique, but how has the current COVID-19 situation affected you in that you've just started a new business, and all that sort of stuff?
Gemma Blezard:
Sure. It's been interesting because the conversations I've been having have varied in that regard. So I started up the consultancy in October and began the year full of optimism around, come March, we'll start building all our relationships and go on a world tour. We can start getting the word out and everybody's going to be kicking off digital transformations and we know we're needed, et cetera. Nobody could have predicted this in any way at all I think. So I'll be honest, -
Salesforce Career Converstions #9: Andrew Hart
Episode 9: Andrew Hart talks to Lee about his 2.5 year journey from zero Salesforce certs to #202 CTA of around 302 (last time he checked).
[This interview with Andrew Hart has been transcribed for your benefit. Please ignore any rogue typos. Thank You.]
Lee: So, Andrew Hart, hello. Thank you for taking the time to speak to us. How are things going?
Andrew Hart: Yeah, thanks, Lee. Things are going well, thank you. Busy as ever with work and family and everything else that we have in our lives, but well, healthy.
Lee: Good. That's good in this current time. So I am... Ordinarily, I would go on about giving an intro for you, but why don't you do it yourself? Tell everybody mainly I suppose what you're doing now, and then we can rewind time and go back to the beginning. Okay?
Andrew Hart: Yeah. Of course. So I am Andrew Hart. I'm a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect. I'm the lead Technical Architect for the Accenture Salesforce group in the UK. I always describe my role as having three pillars. A bit of pre-sales, so using the CTA cert to get in front of customers quite often, helping shape and sell projects.
Andrew Hart: Delivery, so helping to deliver the projects, and in my case, that's usually around delivery assurance or high-level support or engagement at the sort of technical executive level. The final bit is team development, so looking after those who I consider in my care, and that's the technical team for the most part—so looking out from hiring, upward to training and enablement support when they're on projects and just general set of ears and a brain if they need it and feel that my brain can help them on their projects.
Lee: There's a lot to what you're doing obviously. It's been a wild ride I think, correct me if I'm wrong, going back to the beginning. When I say the beginning, I kind of mean slightly before Salesforce. Again, please tell me if I'm mistaken here, but is it fair to say that your background didn't necessarily lend to being what people would associate with a CTA, sort of a Technical Architect? Am I right with that?
Andrew Hart: Well, I mean, I've been a consultant my whole... More or less my entire working life, and I think as a consultant, you play several different roles, project to project, customer to customer.
Andrew Hart: I've never been... You know, I'm not a classic TA path if you think computer science degree, software engineering, product development type background, but I've always been technically leaning. But I very much feel that technology is an enabler for solving problems, or it should be business-led, and that starts with conversations.
Andrew Hart: I've always approached my role in that way. I encourage TAs that I work with to work in that way as well. We are never... In the consultancy space anyway, we're never just building an academic, technical solution. It's always solving business problems, and it can't be lead by technology.
Andrew Hart: In Salesforce, you see this in their go-to-market as well. It's all about business benefits, and it's KPIs in either service or sales or whatever other clouds they're pitching. It's never just about “look at this cool tech”. It's always about looking at the problems it can solve, and I've approached my career that way.
Andrew Hart: I acted on some advice I was given maybe 15 years ago from a manager I had at the time within Oracle, which was, you know, we can offshore development, we can offshore testing, we can offshore a lot of things. We'll never offshore someone looking in the customer's eyes and asking what their problems are. There always needs to be someone to have those conversations.
Andrew Hart: I wouldn't say that radically changed how I approached my job, but it's always been in the back of my mind, that a lot of skills can be outsourced or sent elsewhere, but somebody in the room to understand a customer is always going ... -
Salesforce Career Converstions #8: Adam Weekes
Episode 8: Adam Weekes talks about his Salesforce journey from CRM Manager, to owning his own Consultancy and now being the Chief Visionary Officer at Aotrom.
Lee Durrant: Hello, it's RODcast time with me, Lee Durrant. Today's special guest is Adam Weekes, who's been in the Salesforce ecosystem for 12 years I think. So, we’ll have a good old chat with Adam about his career and how we got into it, and the difference for him in working as a contractor, then permanent. Loads of tips for you guys - looking into the Salesforce ecosystem for those of you that are in it and want to listen to someone who's risen to the ranks of Director as a Salesforce customer.
Lee Durrant: You'll be pleased to know I have a little bit of a cold, so I won't be talking quite so much in this one. And apologies if I'm slightly more nasal than usual, but hopefully it won't spoil your enjoyment of having listening to this podcast. Thanks. So, Hi, Adam. Adam Weekes, welcome to the podcast mate, how are you doing?
Adam Weekes: Thank you. I'm well, thank you.
Lee Durrant: Good, good, good. Thanks for joining us today, I know you're really busy as you have been for many, many years. So, I think you've heard of these before, I asked you to have a little listen, but just to let you know, this is really about us talking about your career in Salesforce. How you got into it and what's happened to you since, and perhaps any little tips or thoughts along the way that people listening could use, really. So, usually, the first question is actually, ‘what are you doing right now?’ And then we'll go back to the beginning.
Adam Weekes: Yeah, I suppose, right now I'm still in my home office where I spend an awful lot of time, chatting with you about Salesforce. That's probably the highlight of my day, because I'm quite an evangelist about the Salesforce ecosystem. And if anybody's ever met me at some of the events, they'll know I can talk the hind legs off a donkey when talking about Salesforce and the associated exciting pieces about that. But that wasn't really answering your question, I'm sure.
Adam Weekes: So, what am I doing right now? I'm helping organisations to implement Salesforce, which is quite a broad topic, of course. So more specifically, when you see particularly smaller, you look at the SMB side of the market there; you see this propensity to think, you've got a choice between Salesforce, which sounds expensive and it looks maybe complex, and then you've got... I won't mention any, but there are plenty of other CRM solutions that you can look at that all have a variety of strengths and weaknesses. Some of them are really good in certain areas, and you know, some in particular around the implementation are really simple - you pull out your credit card and 10 minutes later you're working. But there are limitations to that.
Adam Weekes: So, when you look at the difference between Salesforce as a CRM solution or as a platform really, and some of those others are more entry-level solutions, as I would view them. The big difference is that platform piece, you're buying into a whole ecosystem there. But what that does mean is, you can't just switch it on and say, ’Great, now we've got a CRM’. When you look at the Salesforce website, they'll tell you some fantastic metrics about... you'll see a 41% uplift in sales and your efficiency will go up, your costs will go down and everything, all of those things are potentially true, but they aren't necessarily true to be fair of any CRM mouth box.
Adam Weekes: So, you can instal any CRM and then think, "Fantastic, we're now going to be super-efficient: we've got CRM," the reality is you're not. What you're probably going to see is actually a drop in efficiency because you've got new processes to learn, new systems, new ways of working, et cetera. So what I try and do is work with my customers to think about their processes, -
Episode 7: Ian Moyse Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. Is Ian the busiest man in cloud? Not only is he the EMEA Sales Director for Natterbox, he is also a Non-Exec Director for numerous cloud companies and bodies. Listen to his story on our latest RODcast.
Lee: Hiya, it's RODcast again with me, Lee Durant. Today's very special guest is Ian Moyse. This is going to be a long introduction because Ian, as you'll find out by listening to this episode, is many things and does many things. A very busy man. He's currently Non-Exec Director for Digital Leadership Associates, who are experts in social media; a company called ZAR, who are a managed cloud and IT services provider; FAST, which is the Federation Against Software Theft, and Assure Data, who are a GDPR training firm.
He's also an advisory board member to SAAS Max Data, an SAS applications platform. He's a governance board member of CIF, which is the Cloud Industry Forum. And he still has time for his main role, which is the EMEA Sales Director at Natterbox - Natterbox being the most integrated Salesforce telephony experience.
This is an interesting episode because Ian talks about his career but also talks about the wider world of Cloud Salesforce and how it's gone since 2001. So, quite a long, in-depth one, but hopefully you'll learn a lot about Ian's experiences of the wider world of Cloud as well as Salesforce, and of course Natterbox.
Hope you guys enjoy it.
Lee: So, Ian, thanks very much for joining us today. How are you doing?
Ian: Good, Lee, thank you for the invite as well.
Lee: No, I appreciate it. You've got to be probably the busiest person we've had on so far because I was thinking initially, "Oh EMEA Sales Director for Natterbox, you’ll be busy enough doing that."
Ian: Yeah.
Lee: But then I noticed you're an advisor and Non-Exec Director, a speaker and presenter. There's so much else you do as well. Could you just do a little introduction on yourself for everyone listening and explain what it is that you currently do. That would be great.
Ian: Sure, the day job, as you quite rightly say, is EMEA Sales Director at Salesforce Cloud Telephony provider Natterbox. So that's the core piece. But around that, over the past number of years, more by accident than setting out to do so, I've ended up involved as a Non-Executive and things like that in industry bodies: Cloud Industry Forum, Federation Against Software Theft, as a Non-Exec at different times and some other firms in and around the Cloud sector. And I speak, I'm a CLAT School Speaker; I speak at a lot of events, and I get asked to blog and social influence for a lot of major corporations in the technology, and specifically the Cloud, sector.
Ian: So, what I've found is, the more you do it, the more you get invited to do it. If you do a good job of providing value and insight to the audience, whether it be at a speaking event or through a blog you've written, other people tend to spot it.
So, I tend to get inbounds every week through social media direct messages, "Oh, do you do this?" or, "Could you help with this." or, "We noticed this, could you do something for us?" Which is all nice, but as you say, time's limited, so it's a bit of a game of shuffling stuff in, and often, I find a podcast like this or a blog comes out and it's four months later because people schedule stuff ahead in their content library. And I've forgotten I've even done it!
Ian: But it's a bit of a game of doing stuff in front of the TV in the evenings or weekends, if you're in between meetings.
Ian: And the great thing about the social side, the input of some of it is, you can do it on the move in a taxi, right? So there's an element of that.
Ian: The hardest thing for me is writing blogs because you have to really give it some thought. I get the ideas quicker than I get the writing it. So I've probably 20 or 30 blog draughts of the headline and a couple of bullets all written out, -
Episode 6: Salesforce Career Conversation with Jackie Heath and ROD. Jackie started her career as a trainer in Siebel and switched to Salesforce when she thought her career was over. Thirteen years later she is the Director of the Trailhead Academy at Salesforce.
Lee: Hi, everybody, and welcome to the latest edition of RODcast. In today's episode, I'm chatting with Jackie Heath, who has worked in the Salesforce ecosystem in the UK for 13 years now, as of recording in October, 2019. She's risen through the ranks to her latest role, which she's got a very long title, at the mothership itself, and has got a fantastic career where she can help guide you with what she's done from training to being a contractor, to working with an end-user, to working at partner, to now working for Salesforce. Hopefully, you'll really enjoy this episode. Thanks a lot guys, and hope you enjoy it.
Lee: Joining me today is the ... Let me get this right, the delivery director for the Trailhead Academy at Salesforce, Jackie Heath. Hello.
Jackie: Hello. Hi, Lee.
Lee: Thanks for joining us, I really appreciate you doing this. Did I get the title right, because it is a mouthful, isn't it?
Jackie: You did. It is a mouthful. It's a bit longer, so you've used the abbreviated version.
Lee: Wow. Yeah, because it was the EMEA bit that I didn't add onto that. So as you know, and you may have heard in some of the other ones, this is a chat about your career to date, really, as you've been in Salesforce for, I'm blushingly groping for ... It's over 10 years, isn't it?
Jackie: It is over 10 years. It's coming up for my 13th year, in fact, in the ecosystem, not necessarily working directly for Salesforce. But yeah, 13 years.
Lee: That is fantastic. As you well know, my prior question will be, or my first question will be, what were you doing leading up to getting into Salesforce?
Jackie: So I'm going to show my age here a little bit, which is embarrassing. But when I graduated, the world was really moving from DOS to Windows. So that does really date me. Before I got into the world of Salesforce, really, I was kind of in IT training and IT support roles, primarily for law firms, before I started my journey with Salesforce.
Lee: So even ... Because you went to university, I believe.
Jackie: I did. I went to ... Well, I'd say I went to Oxford Poly. It is a now a university, but when I was there it was a Polytechnic. My degree is completely and utterly unrelated to what I do now, really. My degree was in hotel and catering management. I'm often asked how did I make that transition? One of the things I would say about my degree, whilst it was based on the hotel and catering industry, it was very much a kind of business studies degree, applying it to hotel and catering industry business type things. So I had a friend who did do a business studies degree as well, and we did almost identical topics. Except when she had some coursework to hand in, or a project to do, she could pick any industry she liked, our industry always had to be something related to hotel and catering management in some way.
Lee: I don't want to put words in your mouth, but did you sort of all into the training side of things then?
Jackie: I did. I did, completely and utterly. So whilst the world was moving from DOS to Windows, it was also, when I graduated, a recession. For graduates, it was really quite challenging to get jobs as graduates back then. I know many graduates might say that sometimes it's quite challenging today, as well. But I applied for a job to be a graduate trainee trainer, and I got the job, because what this particular company had set themselves up was to basically help people, again, law firms, typically, moving their legal secretaries across from typewriters and Word Perfect for DOS over to the Windows world, and using a mouse, and using a GUI user interface.
Jackie: So I got that job that way. I have to say, -
Episode 5: Salesforce Career Conversation with Penny Townsend and ROD. Penny reflects on her journey from Salesforce Programme Manager to Chief Operating Officer of a growing Salesforce Consulting Partner.
Lee: So joining me today, is Penny Townsend. Hi Penny, how are you doing mate?
Penny: Hi Lee, I'm great thanks. Thanks very much for having me in for the chat.
Lee: You're kidding aren't you? I'm very grateful that you said yes. I know how busy you are, and it's great to have you on the podcast. As you know, we're doing this because it's our ten year anniversary and we had this... Actually it wasn't me, our marketing department had this idea that it would be great for us to speak to people that have been around the Salesforce ecosystem for as long as we have, or even longer in some cases. Which I think might be you. So yeah, it's kind of like take ten years of being in this space, and great to speak to what we're calling Salesforce legends, but I what I like about your profile is you refer to yourself as a Salesforce veteran, which is nice.
Penny: Yeah, and it frequently feels like that.
Lee: Yeah I know. So yeah... So thanks for doing it, and I appreciate you're doing this kind of off the cuff as well, which is really exciting I think, because all we really want to chat about is your career, and how you got into it. We'll break it down, but how you got into it, what your first experience was in Salesforce, and then sort of the journey that's taken you from getting into it, to where you are today. And obviously, if you want to give us a little overview of you, and who you are, and what you're doing now, then we'll just sort of get going from the beginning if that's all right?
Penny: Yeah, sure. Thanks Lee. Well I saw on LinkedIn, because you did a conversation like this with Gemma, and she shared it. And I saw that Frances wrote on there, "Oh, yeah I think Lee was the first ever recruiter I spoke to as well." And I was going to put a message on there saying, "Yeah, Lee was all our first." And I thought, "Lee won’t thank me for that."
Lee: No you're right. As we say, you were the veteran, yeah you sort of feel like it don't you?
When did you get into it though? When was your first experience of Salesforce? I've obviously gone through your LinkedIn profile trying to remember, but perhaps you can let us know?
Penny: Like a lot of people, my first experience of Salesforce was by accident. So that must be about 12 or 13 years ago now when I was working at the Carbon Trust, who were an early not-for-profit customer of Salesforce.
Lee: Yes.
Penny: So back then, Salesforce really only had more than a handful, but certainly not hundreds of customers over in EMEA. And Carbon Trust were quite a good brand for them to win, and their not for profit space. And I was working for the Carbon Trust Standard, which was a subsidiary, and we were using an old database called ACT. So I'm showing my age here, it was a-
Lee: Oh, yeah I've heard of that as well. So yeah, I'm with you on that one.
Penny: Yeah and it was really... It's perfect for keeping track of people's names, and addresses, and birthdays, and stuff. But it didn't really provide much functionality. And the standard company was growing really fast, and given that core Carbon Trust had Salesforce, the decision was made to roll out an org for the standard company. So, my initial experience was, as kind of the product owner I suppose, the end user. So we got our consultant in, and I worked with him on defining the requirements, and I was initially incredibly sceptical about what Salesforce could deliver, and then was really blown away by seeing it in practice.
You know, back then, having the stages, having the process flow, having the workflows, all of that was really radical, and fantastic to be able to see that. So, that was my first experience there, and we actually had a couple of really innovative things. -
Episode 4: Salesforce Career Conversation Richard Ferriman with ROD. After twelve years in the Salesforce ecosystem, Richard talks about his journey, which includes running his own Salesforce consulting company and now heading up sales for a growing consultancy.
[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]
Lee Durrant: Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of RODcast. In this episode, I am having a chat with Richard Ferriman, an industry legend whose been around Salesforce for about 12 years, as of today's recording. It's quite an interesting one for you guys if any of you are thinking of starting a business in the Salesforce ecosystem. Richard started his own Salesforce consultancy company many years ago. He talks quite openly about what it's like to build a Salesforce consultancy from scratch, the ups and downs and quite honest about the mistakes that he made, and if he could do it again, what he would do. You know, the 18 hour days... what's it's like to interview people in the Salesforce ecosystem, which there's always opportunities out there for those guys.
This is what it's like really to start and grow a Salesforce practice. And also he talks about his passion for what he's doing at the moment. So it's a really good chat. Hope you enjoy it.
Hello, and welcome to RODcast with me Lee Durrant. This is the podcast where we learn how Salesforce experts started their careers many years ago, and get under the skin of what it's like to work in the Salesforce ecosystem. Ever wondered how someone rose to the ranks of a head of practise at a consultancy or perhaps became a CTO? Then this is the podcast to listen to. We'll also get some real-life tips from them, and advice on what you can do in your Salesforce career. So yeah, hope you enjoy.
So, hello Richard and thanks for joining us mate today on the podcast. How you getting on?
Richard F.: Yeah, very well thank you, and you?
Lee Durrant: I am all right, yeah, looking forward to this one, because you and I go back a long way. I don't know how long, but it's got to be more than 10 years, isn't it?
Richard F.: Lee, I think we're about 12 years or so man.
Lee Durrant: Oh my God, blimey. And I think people would listen to this and quite like your journey because you've done quite a lot of, correct me if I'm wrong obviously, different things in the world of Salesforce.
Richard F.: Yeah.
Lee Durrant: So that's what this is about really. It's just a bit of a chat about your journey, from how you got into it, and what you've done to be where you are now. So, yeah, I'll fire some questions at you then. The first one would really be, what, actually what were you doing before, well what was your career plan up until the point where you got into Salesforce, if you know what I mean... did you get into Salesforce by accident, and the sort of journey before Salesforce, if you don't mind?
Richard F.: Yeah, absolutely, so, I started out in Visio, before it was a Microsoft product, so worked for Visio. From Visio, with them, took that through to it being bought out by Microsoft. I was part of that transition team. Went over to Seattle, working with the Microsoft team there, and then came back and promptly went and worked for IBM Software Group.
Lee Durrant: Yes.
Richard F.: So Microsoft wasn't at that point where I wanted to go, but I like the ethos of IBM, I liked the branding of IBM and even now, I still can't go to a meeting without a blue suit and a white shirt, which was very much an IBM way of doing things. They taught me a lot, taught me a lot about process, a lot about sales, a lot about how someone like me can get the most out of a meeting, and a really enjoyable part of my career.
I then fell out, was offered something even better, and the grass is greener and took that, but actually, I jumped a few times through different emerging technologies, which was okay, and it was good, -
Episode 3: Mitesh Mistry Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. One of only 300 Salesforce Certified Technical Architects on the planet discusses his career and how he got there.
[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]
Lee: Hi there guys.Welcome to RODcast. In today's episode I'm chatting with a Mitesh Mistry. Mitesh currently one of only a few hundred certified technical architects in the world and he's going to discuss with us in this episode his journey to becoming a CTA. His favourite project to date in Salesforce and what it's like to also work at the mothership of Salesforce and, and what he's excited about for the future. So hope you enjoy.
Hello, it's Lee Durrant here. Welcome to RODcast, the podcast where we get to meet and chat with some truly fantastic people from within the Salesforce ecosystem. My goal for this podcast is to help and inform people who either already perhaps work in the Salesforce ecosystem or maybe you're thinking of breaking into it to understand what's good about it, what could be better, and where there are opportunities. And what some of the most amazing people in this space, how they got into it and where their career took them and what their plans are for the future. Hope you enjoy it. And please help me to reach as many people as possible within Salesforce by leaving some comments and sharing, all feedback welcome. So yeah, hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: So hello Mitesh. And welcome to our podcast, which we're calling RODcast. Thanks for doing this, mate. How are you?
Mitesh: I am good, thank you. How are you doing Lee?
Lee: Yeah, yeah, getting there. Getting there, mate. Wish the weather was better but, not bad at all. But again, really appreciate you doing this. Quite exciting for everybody listening, because correct me if I'm wrong, you are a certified technical architect now aren't you?
Mitesh: Yes, that's correct. So I'm a Salesforce CTA as of May, 2018.
Lee: Last year. So that's fantastic. Obviously as you know, as I explained to people listening before that that this podcast is all about the journey of Salesforce experts. You know from different sides of what you guys do. But someone like yourself, it'd be quite interesting for people to hear about how your journey began if you like with Salesforce and all of that. And then what led you to where you are today? Cause I'd be quite interested to find out if this was all planned at the beginning or whether it's just happened organically as you've gone on.
Really. So if that's all right, I'll fire away with a couple of questions to get started. And then the obvious first thing to ask you is actually in the lead up to getting into Salesforce what, what were you doing? You were at university before.
Mitesh: Okay. So I mean, let me run through my background. So I studied software engineering at the university of Edinburgh. And as part of my experience there, I got a chance to spend a year overseas. So I worked for a company called Sun Microsystems who are now taken over by Oracle and I was looking after the global labs team there. So had a really good experience for one year out in the US that was my first technology role, looking into IT. Sort of hardware networking systems and understanding how they work.
And I also do a small role with the Royal Bank of Scotland where I was building some internal applications for them. As part of my work experience as well. So I had a bit of experience before graduating. And when I graduated I got a role working for Deloittes in their graduate consulting programme.
And my very first project was more doing Java development, a bit of Selenium testing as well. And we're building a digital rights management solution for a really large media company in London. And after doing that build for three months, they wanted to use the salesforce.com platform to be able to capture different members, different musicians, -
Episode 2: Amanda Beard-Neilson Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. From accidental Salesforce Admin to CTO in ten years. Follow her journey here.
[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]
Lee Durrant: Hello, it's Lee Durrant here. Welcome to RODcast, the podcast where we get to meet and chat with some truly fantastic people from within the Salesforce ecosystem. My goal for this podcast is to help and inform people who either already perhaps work in the Salesforce ecosystem, or maybe you're thinking of breaking into it, to understand what's good about it, what could be better, where there are opportunities, and what some of the most amazing people in this space, how they got into it, where their career took them, and what their plans are for the future. Hope you enjoy it, and please help me to reach as many people as possible within Salesforce by leaving some comments and sharing. All feedback welcome. So yeah, hope you enjoy.
Lee Durrant: Hello, and welcome to RODcast, with me Lee Durrant. In this particular episode we are talking with Amanda Beard-Neilson, who's been in the Salesforce industry for 12 years. Her journey has gone from Accidental Salesforce Admin, to CTO, which is unbelievable. Obviously I wanted to understand how she got into Salesforce, and what her journey's been like, and if there're any tips for you guys out there. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy the episode.
Lee Durrant: So hello Amanda. Welcome to our podcast, and thanks for agreeing to do this. How are you mate?
Amanda: Hello Lee, thanks very much for inviting me to do this. I'm really well actually. It's a nice summer's day, so what's not to like really?
Lee Durrant: Yes exactly. And, as I say, just been talking to you off the podcast, but just to let you know, and people listening as well, this is a bit of a podcast to find out the journey of people like you and your sort of legendary status in Salesforce, and kind of how it began, and what's happened to you over the last, I want to say 10 years, I'm not sure exactly how many years-
Amanda: It's 12 years actually I've been playing with Salesforce, so quite a long time.
Lee Durrant: Yeah. So that's what the questions are aimed at really, just so people listening can understand how you got into it, and what's happened since, and all that sort of stuff. So really I'll just get straight into asking you some nice questions, and obviously, your Salesforce journey starts at the beginning, so what were you doing in the lead-up to Salesforce? So what was your career, and what was your perception of what your career was going to be before Salesforce fell in your lap?
Amanda: Yeah, very very different actually. I had a sort of sales, marketing and PR background before Salesforce came into my life. I didn't have at all any aspirations of IT. My background from my studying was business studies. So I had a very business-orientated starting of career, and I worked in sales, I was classically trained in sales. Really understood the whole methodology of two ears and one mouth, and use it accordingly, which has really helped actually for a lot of those life skills, when it comes to talking with clients afterwards as part of this world, and really helping to understand what their pains are, what their requirements are. Listening's a massive skill for that, so even though you might come from a different direction, it doesn't mean that you can't change direction. And they also now say that, when you have a career now, you might have very different careers, maybe up to five different careers as part of your whole career journey. So even though you've started from a different background, it doesn't mean that you can't change direction. And I think it's also very healthy for a person to change direction because it can keep you sparking, and keep you interested in doing something. And keep you learning as well.
Amanda: Yeah. No, so that was my, - Visa fler
