Forcepreneur

Jocelyn Fennewald's 'winding path' of a career began in school where her passion for science led her to wanting to pursue a PhD in Science. She made a few jumps between science and finance before her current co-founder Machell Enke invited her to Chicago where she joined an IT company as a Financial Analyst.

She spent about three years working with Salesforce, and helping build the back end operations process gave her a great sense of accomplishment. It wasn’t until she attended a Dreamforce event in 2013 and heard the question - "What would you do if you weren’t afraid?" - which led her and Machell to think 'What would they do?' - and they decided to start their own Salesforce company - OpMentors.

Jocelyn highlights the importance of how big a barrier the 'fear of failure' can be when deciding to start your own company, and how the whole Trailhead ecosystem allows for a greater sense of stability whilst learning, hence reducing the risk drastically as compared to other work sectors.

She describes how a COO can really become the person that hold's the whole organization together. How by simply learning to listen, more than talking and reacting is an integral trait of a leader. How by making time and space to just ideate and discuss with your colleagues and work staff can make you the 'think tank' of an organisation. Whatever the agenda, simply providing a safe space where people can come talk, and be heard can help nurture the growth of an organisation in more than one ways.

Being a woman in this ecosystem, Jocelyn shares her experiences and reflects on the importance of the local ohana. It is in this ecosystem where she first learnt that these local communities were much more than just networking opportunities. They are not just seminars to help you get jobs or sell your product, they are platforms to make genuine connections.

What exactly is the role of a 'Chief Operating Officer' and what exactly fall under the purview of 'Operations' in a tech startup. Listen to find out as we learn from our guest on this episode - Jocelyn Fennewald.

Books mentioned -

Extreme Ownership

Jocelyn's LinkedIn

Jocelyn's Twitter

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The episode is PART I of the COO series sponsored by SharinPix. (https://www.sharinpix.com/)

SharinPix gets all the features, components, tools and integrations you need when you have images requirements in your Salesforce implementation.

For the grand finale of the first ever Forcepreneur CTO series, I have the one, the only, Mr. Charlie Isaacs.

If you are in the Salesforce ecosystem, you cannot miss Charlie. He is ever-present and always their to help the community. When he is not helping the ohana, he is busy helping Salesforce customers get the most out of the platform.

Charlie is a real OG when it comes to technology. He studied chip design and is a hardware guy at heart who moved to software because of circumstances. But this gave him a unique quality which was and is rare to have.

In this episode, you will learn, how Charlie works as an "Individual Contributor" on the big ship. His work not only includes helping customer get on the platform but also be on the pulse of latest technological innovations and see how they can be used within Salesforce. 

This is also the crux of his advice to young and existing CTO's. In order to be good at your job, a.) you need to know what's happening in the tech world and b.) you need to first try it out yourself to learn the inner workings of it, before you present it to your team and then your customers.

Further in the episode, we talked about the dissolution of the IoT cloud & Salesforce's blockchain plans. We also discussed the ingenuity of the community on the use of platform events which were actually built for IoT services.

In the end we talked about the importance of community. And Charlie, from everyone in the community, we want to thank you for your never-ending support.

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This is Part IV of the CTO series sponsored by Proton Text.

Proton Text is a complete SMS solution, built exclusively for Salesforce. Place the component on any page or in the utility bar. Link your conversations to any standard or custom record. Maintain security and enable team collaboration.

There is an old saying: There is no more profitable investment than investing in yourself. In this episode, I sat down with Cheryl Porro who has a long history with Salesforce. She was at the right place (Salesforce) at the right time (2005) when the rocket ship was just starting it's ascend.

She grew with the company but it was not all hunky dory. In the episode she shares how she was denied promotion 3 times in a row. But rather than blaming them, she took it upon herself to improve. She listened to the feedback and then got coaching in whichever area she needed. As humans we very easily put the blame on other, rather than looking inwards to acknowledge that yes, maybe we are lacking something.

Currently CTO of Curve Health, Cheryl began her career as a chemical process engineer at International Paper and US Filter before transitioning to software engineering at companies including Amazon and DigitalThink Inc.

Porro also went on to becoming Senior Vice President of Technology & Product Delivery for Salesforce.org, where she grew a team that launched multiple products for the nonprofit and education markets. Prior to that, she spent eight years leading a growing platform engineering team at Salesforce.com. Now she is a Salesforce customer and Admin of her own org.

Cheryl LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylporro/

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This is Part III of the CTO series sponsored by Proton Text.

Proton Text is a complete SMS solution, built exclusively for Salesforce. Place the component on any page or in the utility bar. Link your conversations to any standard or custom record. Maintain security and enable team collaboration.

यह एक हिंदी स्पेशल एपिसोड है जो हिंदी बोलने वालों के लिए रेकर्ड किया गया है। 

इस एपिसोड में गौरव और मैंने भारत एवम् एशिया के सेलसफ़ोर्स प्रफ़ेशनल को ध्यान में रखकर कुछ मुद्दों पर चर्चा की है। 

अगर आपको यह एपिसोड पसंद आया हो तो इसे अपने दोस्तों में बाँटिए। 

With over 20+ years of experience in software engineering, strategic account management, product development & up-skilling teams on cutting-edge technologies, Gaurav Kheterpal is no stranger to the Salesforce. A 6x Salesforce MVP, has the most number of certifications (40) in the ecosystem which are not just limited to Salesforce. A fan of cricket, theatre and literature he currently resides in Jaipur (India). He is currently the CTO of The MTX Group, co-leads the Jaipur Salesforce Developer group and co-organiser of Jaipur Dev Fest.

In this episode he shares with us his humble beginnings as a developer, his time in France in early 2000's and how he moved to Salesforce (which he initially dislikes). Later we discuss what was the journey like from developer to CTO and what were the stepping stones along the way. According to him, a Salesforce CTO should aim to become a Certified Technical Architect but not everyone is cut-out to be a CTA. 

Listen to this episode to learn more about his thoughts on things a CTO should and shouldn't do, especially at a young Salesforce startup, what are the right reasons to be a CTA, how to nurture talent and how hard work and perseverance leads to success.

This is Part II of the CTO series sponsored by Proton Text. Proton Text is a complete SMS solution, built exclusively for Salesforce. Place the component on any page or in the utility bar. Link your conversations to any standard or custom record. Maintain security and enable team collaboration.

Design Patterns book: https://amzn.to/31VlTqD

Gaurav's Twitter: https://twitter.com/gauravkheterpal

A 30 year veteran of the IT industry, Keir is the CTO of BrightGen, a Salesforce Platinum Partner in the United Kingdom. He has been building solutions and applications on Salesforce since 2008 and holds multiple certifications including the coveted Technical Architect. He is 10x Salesforce MVP, author of the Visualforce Development Cookbook, frequent blogger on all things Salesforce and speaker at events such as the Salesforce World Tour and Dreamforce.

When I thought of doing a CTO series, it was obvious that Keir was going to be a part of it. In this episode we discuss his beginnings as a consultant and then climbing up the ladder to reach the top job in tech world. Continuing on that, we discuss what are his job-responsibilities as a CTO and is it important for a Salesforce CTO to be a CTA?

Later we discussed our main common love Salesforce Functions and how that can be a game-changer (i.e., if Salesforce gives it the right price). Lastly, he shared how he leads the team and nurtures upcoming talents at BrightGen.

This is Part I of the CTO series sponsored by Proton Text. Proton Text is a complete SMS solution, built exclusively for Salesforce. Place the component on any page or in the utility bar. Link your conversations to any standard or custom record. Maintain security and enable team collaboration.

You can follow Keir on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bob_buzzard

Salesforce pretty much revolutionised the software business by offering it as a service with monthly / yearly fee rather than the traditional one-time purchase trend of the mid-to-late 90's.

This philosophy of recurring revenue is what attracts the app developers to the platform. The theory is simple: Build an app that fills a gap in the platform, keep your expenses fixed and start building your customer base. Try to keep your churn (customer who discontinue your service) low.

If you keep adding new customer regularly and manage to keep your older ones, soon enough you will hit a point where your expenses are equal to your revenue.

After this is the green zone 💸

I remember Leah McGowen-Hare speaking at the dinner the night before FrenchTouch Dreamin 2018 and said: "If you meet Jean-Michel once, you cannot forget him". I did not know what she meant that time but boy is she was correct. Over the next months, I had the opportunity of meeting JMM at many Dreamin' events and he always has this energy which is energising & infectious. You are not the same after meeting him and I mean it in a good way. 

In this episode, Jean talks about his humble beginnings as a C++ developer and then rising to the ranks of CIO. Later, he talks about how he find no solution for pictures on the platform and this gave birth to SharinPix. 

He is strong believer in the idea of AppExchange and recurring revenue. His company SharinPix has now broken even and he believes there is a big-wave coming because once everyone has implemented Salesforce, they will need apps to do daily business.

Enjoy the episode and let us know on twitter what do you think about recurring revenue.

My first Salesforce startup was an ISV. We called it a "pivot", but in reality, we got attracted to the consulting money and lost focus on product development. Therefore, the apps eventually went down the drain. All the hard work lost.

Selling on appExchange is hard. Time and again I have heard that ISV's get offered consulting gigs because customers believe if they can build an app they should know the platform and rightly so. But my and every smart ISV founder I know has the same advice: If you are building an app, do not accept consulting offers. Keep your eye on the ball.

In this episode, Chuck talks about his struggles with the same issue and how he overcame them. 

A developer and consultant on the platform for the last decade, Chuck comes from the trenches of enterprise Salesforce development. On this episode of the Forcepreneur podcast Chuck shares with us about his startup Valence, going through the inaugural batch of the Salesforce Incubator, how he approaches work, being on the road teaching and speaking at conferences, living and working in Hawaii and more.

Listen to the episode to learn more about how to focus on your product and not worry about the money. If your product is good money will follow.

Chuck's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckliddell/

Valence: https://valence.app/s/

I have heard this advice before and frankly speaking, I was sitting on my idea since 1-year, so this advice could not have come at a better time. You can have the best ideas, but can you really execute. What separates the best from the rest is their relentless pursuit of the idea.

Well, I listened to his advice and started executing, checkout: https://skillproof.cloud

Ted Elliott is the Chief Executive Officer at Copado. Before joining Copado. Ted spent 18 years as the CEO of Jobscience, one of the first ISV partners to Salesforce, until the company's acquisition by Bullhorn. On this episode of the Forcepreneur podcast Ted shares with us the many challenges he has faced whilst constantly striving for new innovations on the Salesforce platform, his learnings and some profound insights on how he approaches work and life.

My take-aways from this episode are: It's all about execution, if you are afraid of competition (from Salesforce), you not should be in the ecosystem and offer services to non-profit because they will give you the best feedback and lastly know your numbers.

Ted's twitter: https://twitter.com/tedelliott

https://www.copado.com

Silicon Valley way book: https://amzn.to/3rj9sQw