RODcast – Salesforce Career Conversations

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, I appreciate your uncle tipped you off, but you also seem like you're someone that fell into it a little bit by accident, again, with using it and getting a bit interested in it from a data science background. That's pretty cool. What was your first real 100% Salesforce role then? Did it happen in a place that you were using it or did you have to then go out somewhere else to get that job? 

Megan: That's a great question. I originally was so determined. I was so motivated by my students, both at Syracuse and UC Berkeley. I was like, "I'm going to do data science too." It's like the right field, but I just pivoted. I was like, "You know what? Never mind." I actually looked for-- I use LinkedIn. I'm a huge, huge, huge, proponent of LinkedIn. I found a non-profit in the area. 

At this time, we were moving in Maryland before we moved to Texas. I had found a non-profit that needed help, and they were using Salesforce. It was a way for me to add it to my resume, get hands-on experience, work with this non-profit that was also working with high school students to teach them tech. It all just fit every criteria that I was looking for. I volunteered with them for a while. COVID hit. 

Then, thankfully, there is a lot of Facebook groups for Salesforce professionals, and a lot of times, people go in globally looking for people to volunteer. At that time, I found an organisation, actually, in London, Oxford area. They were looking for Salesforce consultants to volunteer. They hired a main consultant on but that consultant needed help, and essentially, that's where myself and two other people stepped in. Then we were like a global team. We grew from there. Then that's how I started. Very, very thankful to have two volunteer positions. 

Then a recruiter, after adding that experience to my LinkedIn, reached out. They were like, "Hey, we would love to talk." Then that's, essentially, how I landed my first actual position. 

Lee: Now, so you skimmed over that, but I think we need to probably congratulate you for the fact that you were willing to do that volunteer work because it's no mean feat, is it? To say that I'm going to volunteer and put the work in to get something on my CV. It is a tip that we try and give a lot of people when they're trying to break into the Salesforce space. It's all well and good going and getting certified, but you need the real-world experience. It's like a chicken and egg, isn't it? How did you juggle that? How were you able to go, "Okay, I'm going to volunteer?" What was that like? 

Megan: That's a great question. When I was working my full-time job, what I agreed upon when I took my first volunteer position, the one in Maryland in-person, thankfully, I would dedicate three nights and going there from like, let's say, 6:00 to 9:00 or 6:00 to 10:00 depending on when the high school kids were there, because not only were they using Salesforce, they were a non-profit that relied completely on grants. 

I was motivated not by only the kids, but by the founder. He was doing this all alone. The motivation from the people was what kept me going, but also maintaining just a really tight schedule and committing to myself. When you start volunteering, you have to commit to that organisation too. That's how I managed it. It was being happy about going, really. 

Lee: Fantastic. As I say, it's a tip that we give to people to try and find things like that, where you can get some real-world experience and develop. What was that first project like then when you were working with them? Do you mind? You don't have to go into too much detail, but what did they have you do? 

Megan: For the first position, it got cut a little short because of COVID, but we, essentially, started creating users. We started getting an idea of the kids were the show. They, basically, just separated themselves into departments. These are all kids in tech from, I would say, just high school grades. They would have a business team; they would have an engineering team. They would have a team focused on the drones because they did hackathons. 

The way they did hackathons, they had to get sponsored by tech companies in the area. We worked with colleges and universities and high schools that would, essentially, sponsor them and give them internships. I would have to divide it between here's our campaigns that we're sending out, here's the marketing side that we're going to be sending out, here's how we tracked students that are potentially interested in the people, here are people that we could talk for grants about. Are we meeting our grant goals? Creating reports and dashboards. 

Essentially, the goal was to see the whole 360 version of the company and the non-profit itself but also get the kids involved. For them to be able to learn Salesforce was really cool too. They were like, "Oh, I'm building drones, and I'm doing all this hackathon stuff and all this tech stuff, but Salesforce is really cool, too". It was really interesting to see how that shifted and really seeing their eyes light up almost. Then it did get cut, April. I guess, it was 2020 at that time when the pandemic really came down, so it then shut. I've been in contact; they're doing great but definitely miss it. 

Lee: By the sounds of it, you putting up with the time now to go back and help them if they need you, but it must be nice to get something that complex. I'm not a Salesforce person by any means, but it obviously then helped you in your career, to get that on your CV to go, "Not only have I got Trailhead badges." I'm guessing at that point, did you have any certifications, or did that come after you got that experience? 

Megan: You know what? That's another good question. I actually didn't know or understand the value of certifications at that time. I was so focused on, "Oh, the Trailhead is so much fun." When I started, I didn't fully understand the path that one needed to take when starting Salesforce. I was like, "Okay, well...

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. Did you get the opportunity then with your project management experience? 

Peggy: Yes. I think what happened was I had no idea what Salesforce was. I Googled it, I looked it up and I said, "Okay," I had a very rough idea of what it was. I applied for the job and they did invite me to a job interview. They eventually hired me as well. I realised that it wasn't because I had any Salesforce experience or I had huge project management experience. It was more around skills of problem-solving. Then the can-do attitude, the enthusiasm, and passion probably hiring managers are looking for. I think that's what they were looking for. 

They said, "We needed someone as a project manager who can manage our Salesforce instance and to improve certain functionalities and business processes and just really help with that whole process. I think because of my previous experience that I already had in abroad in all of these, let's call them transferable skills, that's probably why they hired me, not because I had IT background or because I had Salesforce experience at all. 

Lee: That's the interesting thing about Salesforce, isn't it? You speak to a lot of people, not just on these podcasts, but just as part of our day job; Salesforce seems to be quite open to welcoming people that you wouldn't say are “IT people”, that they're business people perhaps that just can come in and, and as you say, with the right attitude and problem-solving skills, they can learn Salesforce, so that's also huge. 

Peggy: Yes, yes, exactly. I think it's more how you approach things and pretty much the attitude you bring to it and being open to learn something new and to look outside the box and just come up with some ideas and solutions and make things work. Then you will find a solution. You will find out how things can be set up and can be embedded into Salesforce to make work for the business. It's really everything coming together, right? 

Lee: Yes, that company-- we don't have to name names or anything but did they have Salesforce administrators that you could, as a project manager, manage, or did you still have to learn, to roll your sleeves up and do the complicated stuff? 

Peggy: Yes. The funny thing of what happened was that there was this IT guy, he was pretty much the Salesforce administrator. I learned how to use Salesforce and how it worked from that guy and then from my boss at the time. She also showed me what she already knew about the system. They were all relatively new to the system and they just used a very small part. I just did on-the-job training pretty much and just clicking around and just getting to know the system all by myself. Then what happened is that my boss at the time, she asked me if I wanted to attend a Salesforce administrator training and I said, "No." 

Lee: Oh, did you? 

Peggy: No, I don't want to do training. I'm a project manager. Why should I go to training? It's an admin training, but I'm a project manager. I'm just supposed to get the features that people want improvements for and then work with the IT department, like those project management things that you do to put it in that rough sense. No, I don't want to do it. I don't need it. She kept asking me over and over, said, "Do you want to go?" Eventually, I said, "Okay, I'm going to go and do that training." I didn't know if it's really going to help, but sure I'd go. 

I have to admit, as soon as I went into this training class and the way how the training was delivered and we were walking through and all those things I learned throughout this training, they were literally eye-opening. I never thought it would actually be that good, but I realised that I learned so many things through the training in aspects that I would have never learned throughout the job because in an organisation, you always only use a certain part that that organisation needs at the time. You don't necessarily get exposed to features of other areas that the organisation doesn't really need. 

You don't necessarily know what you may be missing out on if you never get exposed to that. That's what I realised throughout that training that-- and I came up with all these notes. I think I can't remember how many pages I wrote down two, three, four, five pages of notes that I wanted to improve. I realised that there were certain things that we set up in the system that could have done in a much better and more effective way than they were set up at the time. It literally opened my eyes and it just, I don't know, open the sky to all those possibilities. 

Of course, you can't implement all of that right away but it just gave me all these ideas and inputs. The funny thing I realised later that attending that training would later literally change my entire career. 

Lee: Wow, okay. We'll get to that because it's an interesting point, I think, that you make. I've definitely spoken to, as you were at the time, I suppose a project manager and project managers would look at the Salesforce admin course and think, "Well, why would I need to do that?" 

Peggy: Yes, exactly. 

Lee: It does sound-- Maybe they should change the title of it because an admin sounds like a huge step down for project managers, isn't it? I think people probably think that if I'm going to go down that road, then people were going to see me as a Salesforce administrator when I think really, correct me if I'm wrong, that Salesforce administrator course just gives you a massive overview of the whole thing, doesn't it? And it gives you just a great grounding to go on from there. 

Peggy: Absolutely. Yes. What I also realised later on in my Salesforce trainer career, with people attending the training that a lot of those people attending were people from organisations in not only administrative roles but also project managers, product managers, business analysts, and all of them came because they wanted to better understand the system so they can better understand what else they can use in the organisation fo

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? 

Dave: Yes. It was a lot more and that continued for probably five, six years with various CRM packages. I spent a lot of time with something called Avaya Interaction Center, and again, the original position that they asked me to do was a technical position, and then I ended up managing the entire project. That was my introduction to real project management, which I thought, "Wow, I quite enjoy doing this," and that's when I'd finished that project. I then decided that I try and angle my career more at project management than the technical side and that's really the sort of widening of the stream there. 

One of the problems as a technical project manager, is that companies tend to use you when things go slightly adrift, shall we say or they don't have the expertise, you suddenly ended up being a techie again. Certainly, in those days, it probably doesn't happen quite so much these days, although you still dabble. 

Lee: The reason I bring that up is because I think if you've had a vast career like you have, and you're looking around or what have you, you see they can sometimes come across as I don't know what this person is, they look they've done a bit of everything and I think hiring managers and recruiters can get a bit confused as to what you are. I'm wondering whether there's a tip there about writing a CV for the job you kind of- 

Dave: Absolutely. 

Lee: -rather than a whole big list of everything you've ever done. Do you know what I mean? 

Dave: Yes, absolutely right. In fact, that is a trap that I've fallen into a few times when I've gone for a, certainly a few years back anyway, gone for a position as project manager or even program manager. They've looked at my CV and said, "Oh, you're a techie." I said, "No, I'm not. That's my background but I'm a project manager". I've gone through the print stuff, the agile stuff, but that is, you're dead right, that's a top tip. If you're going to go for a position, make sure your CV reflects that position. Don't let it waffle on about I've done this and done that in other sectors. Make sure it's to the point. If you're going to be a project manager, you're a project manager. 

Lee: Yes and obviously, without not saying you're saying this, but without fabrication, though you just maybe it's just taken away all the noise that's not relevant to that particular role, or because we do get that a lot actually in the Salesforce space with someone is, let's say, they say they're an admin and they've done some development, and they want to be a developer but the CV smacks of I'm an admin. 

Then line managers, which I'm sure you've been in that situation yourself. You're not reading CVs from top to bottom, your skimming. You're too busy and it's very quick to just go well, that person's an admin not developer or that person in your case is a techie, not a project manager. That's it. That is first really good tip. Thanks very much. I remember then, that you worked for a company called Lagan that were a CRM company, but I'm guessing not cloud, obviously, not Salesforce.   

Dave: That's exactly right. Lagan were a Northern Ireland-based CRM company that dealt exclusively in the public sector. It was an interesting period in my life, actually, because I did a lot of travel all over the world working with different governments and different government departments, companies, countries where we were putting in quite a sophisticated CRM system. Throughout the UK. We put it into just about every local authority you can name. Also places like San Francisco, and the most interesting for me was New Orleans just after Katrina. We put it in there. That was an experience. Probably the details of which are for another day, but yes, it was interesting. 

Lee: No, I didn't know that. That's quite interesting, isn't it? You're getting to see the inner workings of these government systems all over the world. You must have had a high level of security clearance for that? 

Dave: Yes, yes, I did. That came into fruition later on as well when I dealt with the UK security side of things as well. It's strange, you never set out to actually do this and say, right, this is my plan. This is my career path and whatever. It's just how things drop. You've got to be ready to take those opportunities and equally ready to realise your own requirements and maybe even your own limitations. Sometimes you just got to say, no, that's not what I do. That's not what I want to do. That's not what I want to get involved in. Equally, you say, well, yes. When something comes across and you think that sounds interesting then you go for it. You go for it 100%. 

Lee: That's actually really good advice. Especially in this Salesforce world, we are living in probably even more so. Salesforce has always been an industry where there have been more opportunities than there have been experienced people I think that's been exacerbated by COVID and Brexit. More recently, it just seems like if you are a Salesforce person you have any kind of experience there are so many opportunities out there that it's probably difficult to sit still and not have your head turned every five minutes by the likes of me.  

Probably good advice to know what you want and try and tune out the rest of the noise. That would be another little nugget for people. Like a lot of people I speak to they've certainly had a long career. Two things you said that I think resonated, you look back on the career and go blind. It looked like it was all a plan, but of course not necessarily. Also, you didn't plan to get into Salesforce. It just happened to be a system that the company you were working for wanted to implement. 

Dave: Yes, absolutely. John Lennon said that life is what happens when you're busy making plans and that's exactly how it turned out. 

Lee: On that note, what did you think your career was going to look like before Salesforce came along and you then went down that road? 

Dave: I saw m...

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 to try and sort things out. 

It was in Rochdale, the company I used to work for. From Preston, it's a good hour, hour-and-a-half drive back. Plus, a nice 9, 10, or 11-hour shift depending on how busy you were just to keep wheels turning and all that for essentially a minimum wage, which wasn't ideal. I thought, "I'm going to have to change here." Set myself a couple of things is like, "Well, one, it's got to be something that's going to be future proof." Technology lends itself to that. 

I got sick of driving to and from Manchester every single day, it was a pain. Especially on the M61 when you're getting towards that ring road. It's just game over, isn't it? 

Lee: I'm getting to know it now I've moved north. Yes. Okay. So you were looking for something where you could work remotely then as well, was that part of it? 

David: Exactly. Yes. Something remotely. It had to be something that interested me. First, I started looking into cybersecurity because I thought, "Well, if you're talking about future-proof careers, then cybersecurity doesn't get much more future-proof, does it?" I started looking into it and spent a bit of time, watched a few videos. I just sat there and I thought, "I can't do that. That'll bore me. There's no way I could do that all day." 

Then a friend of mine who's actually a Salesforce recruiter in America. He said, "You know what, Dave?" He said, "With your background and your knowledge and your experience," he said, "I know you don't have anything to do with IT." He said, "But have a look, have a look at Salesforce." Everything I thought was, well, one I don't have a degree, let alone an IT degree. I've never worked in technology at all, so I've never worked on an IT help desk or anything like that. 

My experience of IT was essentially selling laptops. Now that was about as close as I got. It was like, "All right, and I'll have a look at it." I still remember to this day, it was one of the last few days of March and I fired up YouTube and I just whacked in Salesforce. I remember watching this video with someone basically putting together reports inside five minutes and then just hit refresh and pulled all this data for it and I was like, "Do you know how long it takes me to do that at the end of the month?" 

I was like, "It's like witchcraft. It's crazy this." I looked at it, I was like, "All right. Well, that's a bit more of a look." Then I started diving into it, found Trailhead, jumps into Trailhead, and just got the book for it really. I kept studying. Again, I was still working full time, but I was studying at night, studying in the evenings, studying early mornings as well before I left the house and then at the weekend. It was a bit of a slog. 

Yes, and then seven weeks later, I sat and passed my admin exam on my first attempt. Four weeks after that, I got my app builder. Then a couple of-- I figure it was about a month after that, I managed to secure a role for a company called Art of Cloud in Leeds, and they gave me a shot. 

Lee: Just to rewind a bit there, how-- I mean, forgive my ignorance, but does it cost a bit of money to get those certifications or to sit the exams?  

David: Yes, so I paid out for them. They were $200 each for an exam, which was why I needed to make sure I passed on the first time because I was digging into whatever money I had. I mean, the stuff that I used to learn essentially use Trailhead, so that was obviously my number one goal. 

In terms of mock exams, I'm sure everyone's heard this before, but Focus on Force was a dream, and that really helped. I did try a couple of Udemy courses, but I just didn't find anything that matched how I learned. I didn't really get too much use out of that. It was mainly Trailhead, and Focus on Force, really. 

Lee: Brilliant. Okay. That's really good in for some people because I think a lot of people and maybe yourself included before you spoke to your mate in America, just assume that Salesforce is IT and that's not me. As you said, I don't have a degree, I would never have thought to get into software and obviously I don't. It's interesting, because I think in other parts of IT definitely is a bit of a blocker, isn't it? The whole degree thing. 

David: Yes. 

Lee: Coming up through the ranks with that, but your experience as you say, with your sales background and your experience with a bit of everything really, isn't it? It's large corporates, it's small startups. 

David: Yes, been there and done it. 

Lee: In many ways, even though you probably didn't feel it at the time, I suppose the whole COVID thing you might argue, has done you a bit of a favour and set you on this new path that you would never have dreamed of? 

David: Yes, it's a really weird thing to say, because COVID was horrible and there's no taking away from that. The amount of money it costs me because I lost all my commission was phenomenal. It was battling with kids teaching from home as more people have probably experienced than they ever want to. It was tough, but out of that, it was quite-- I don't know what the correct word is for it, but it was quite-- it was like a sense of freedom to me, because I've been stuck doing what I was doing and working in sales for so long and once you get used to earning that commission and earning that money, then it becomes a bit of a crux and it's hard to walk away from. 

Literally, overnight, it was like, "Well, there you are Dave. There's nothing holding you back now. Now, what are you going to do? Now show us what you're made of." It was like, "Right, here we go." 

Lee: I'm thinking, so when you went to-- Art of Cloud gave you a shot, what can you maybe describe what you did to get-- probably not literally, but metaphorically in front of them because I appreciate, I can imagine that you'd be saying you're trying to explain to them that, yes, I look like a travel agent on paper, but I'm doing all these things. I think that'd be interestin...

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, I'd stumbled into a sales recruitment process that they were going through, and so the following week, he invited me along to a mass interview. They had about 30 people turn up. We all sat down in their training room. Some sales trainer upfront ran some exercises with us, handed out some of these old pipe cleaners that you'd use for art and craft. "Who can sell me this pipe cleaner? Give me some examples of how you might use it." 

Lee: Jordan Belfort, yes. 

Charlie: Exactly. "Sell me this pen." I was one of the 30 and I just thought, "Well, I've got to come up with some ways of using this pipe cleaner." I put my hand up and made myself known. It seemed to go okay and I got invited back to another interview the next week. That was a bit tougher with one of the managers. Anyway, I muddled my way through it, and I got offered a place as a sales exec. I started there the week after my finals finished. I went straight from agricultural finals and then straight into the first day of sales. 

Lee: Fair play. Just to go over that again. It took some balls to walk into a car park full of Lamborghinis and all those lovely cars to do what you did, probably something that I don't imagine many people do nowadays. I have to ask you as well if you can remember, what was your answer then to the "sell me the pipe cleaner thing"? What did you say? 

Charlie: First, instead of walking in through the door, I would say, I've always thought about that since then. So many people when it comes to wanting to get a job think, "Right, I'm going to go to LinkedIn," or, "I'm going to speak to a recruiter," or, "I'm going to hit apply on a careers page." 

Lee: None of that existed. I'm not trying to make you sound really old, did any of that exist then? Probably not. Probably not LinkedIn. 

Charlie: There would have been offline recruiters. 

Lee: Oh, that was around. Yes, they'd been over there knocking the doors for you. 

Charlie: Yes, exactly. Essentially, if you just go in through the traditional methods, you just go into a pile with 100 other people. Whereas if you either literally walk through the front door or metaphorically walk through the front door by speaking to someone that's influential or getting in contact with a hiring manager directly, these are things that separate you from someone that just hits apply on a LinkedIn ad today. Definitely, always think about that as a way of differentiating yourself. Then in terms of, what did I do? I can't remember. I think it was about you could use it to clean something, you could use it to hang something on a radiator. It was just pointless. Pointless ways of using a pipe cleaner. 

Lee: At least you stuck your hand up. 

Charlie: Exactly, that was the thing. It was like, "I've got to stick my hand up, whatever. I can't sit here and not say anything." 

Lee: I think the very fact that you steamed in there as a young man and said, "Give me a job," probably puts you at the top of the list without you even realizing it. 

Charlie: Yes. 

Lee: I said at the beginning of this podcast, we jump all over the place. That's what I'm doing. How could that translate into today's world then, walking into an office like that and saying, "I want a job." Sometimes all you can do is apply on LinkedIn. 

Charlie: You mentioned earlier that I've written a couple of books. Actually, the first one which we carved off the front is really about how do you get a job in tech sales. It's applicable to anything, which is, if you have got a company that you want to go and work for, how do you make sure that you can get a job there. One of the things is to target an individual hiring manager. Let's say you do want to work in sales and you know a particular company that you want to go and work for; it's not difficult to go onto LinkedIn and find out who are going to be the sales managers or the Salesforce practice managers or whoever it might be. 

They're going to be the people you're likely to work for. Then through LinkedIn, you can very easily see if you're connected to that person and you can either get a referral. If you can't get a referral, a warm intro, then it's easy to find people's email addresses. You just literally go to Google and type in company name, email address format, and you'll find something that will come up. 75% of the people at this company have got this email format. Then you can just email that person directly. 

Lee: You've given away a lot of my secrets here for recruitment. We all do the same thing, don't we? That's a bit of, I suppose, just being a bit, especially if it's a sales job as well, more than anything, if it's a sales job, you should be a little bit more creative around how you approach these people. 

Charlie: Exactly. Sales is all about getting in contact with the right people, and if you can't demonstrate that in trying to get a job somewhere, then you still almost fail at the first hurdle. 

Lee: Absolutely. Going back to you then, you got that job, no doubt. You mentioned there in the company. 

Charlie: Yes, it was a company called Star Internet back in the day. 

Lee: You were selling to small businesses via internet? 

Charlie: Internet connections. It was '99. Still small companies were just getting connected to the internet for the first time or trying to upgrade. We are selling ISDN connections or in some cases, for larger companies, leased lines, which we used to call it a pipe back then. It was like, "Oh, these big companies get a two Meg lease line pipe." Now, you think about a two Meg connection for a company with hundreds of employees, you think, "Oh, this is crazy," when we're now on gigs and gigs. That's what it was. That company, we invented a new way of scanning for viruses as well. Viruses were just starting to become a problem and spam as well. 

That really took off. It was before things were called cloud. We called it like a managed service, but it was about scanning your email a...

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. That's how it all started. 

Lee: Quite successful. Obviously, very successful in that industry in the sales side of things up to director, that's about how high you can get, isn't it really? What was the moment where you ever thought, "I might change, I might get off this ladder and start on another one"? 

Richard: I'll tell you a story about that. What happened, I was a sales director of a business and I won't name them. Effectively, we got bought out by a big American corporation. I was happily doing my sales director job and earning a decent wage. It was all good, happy days. I got called into a meeting and I went into the meeting, there was our HR director in there and I thought, "Great. I'm going to get promoted." I knew we'd been taken over so I thought this is fantastic. I want to be head of global sales or some grand job along those lines. 

I went into this meeting. They said, actually, "Thanks for coming, Richard. We'd like you to reapply for your job." I went, "Okay." Had a bit of a conversation around that and came out of the meeting. Long story short, spoke to a fellow director of mine. He said, "Richard, they're making you redundant."  I was surplus to requirements because they had a parallel sales director, so I wasn't needed. Bit of a legal challenge around that. That was the bottom line. Effectively, I was made redundant. 

That was the trigger, if you like. I was at the time, what age was I? I was probably in my early 50s. That's the point in time when you got to start thinking quite carefully about what you do next. Do you carry on down that same path or do you have a bit of a rethink? Without getting too deep about this, when it happened to me, it was a massive shock and obviously to my family and everything in terms of our income and whatnot.  

It happens to a lot of people and I think it's something that is never spoken about. I notice this when we go onto something like LinkedIn, you see people where this has happened because companies are being bought out all the time. There's lots of different reasons behind that. What I wanted to say was, for people that are out there, I've been through that. The people that happens to, what happens is we tend to just go into our shell about this. This is why I wanted to call out on this podcast because we tickly blokes, we're seen as a successful career, he's a successful guy, he's got a nice BMW and all the rest of it, your neighbours and your colleagues and everything. You don't want to face up to the fact you'd been made redundant. It's a huge blow to your ego. 

Lee: Yes, I bet. 

Richard: Obviously, the practicalities as well. At that time, it was a massive shock. Something that I wanted to say to people is that, not say to them, preach to them, but simply like, you're not on your own in that situation. It's almost something that I wanted to try and do something potentially in the sales world, actually, to connect with people that are in that situation. Maybe we can do it through that channel, with this channel. I don't know. It's a really serious thing because it really, really affects. 

Theresa: That's really interesting. I think there's a whole sort of mental health thing that goes around that. Even if we take a step aside for a second and you look at the people that are committing suicide, it's men of a certain age because there is so much of pressure on them to provide for their families. How did you manage to bounce back from that and give yourself a plan of action, because we'll come to your Salesforce career in a moment, but you were very driven around what you wanted to do. What was the moment you said, "Okay, this isn't going to happen. I've got to make something happen for myself,"? 

Richard: Honestly, being pushed by my family, my wife to do something. That triggered it. I've got to recover from this. Not just pay the mortgage but from like you said, from a mental health. I got really down. Really down. I did try and get some help. I did a lot of reading around that particular situation. I did actually finally, through a contact through family, I did go and see someone and have a chat to him about it, what the situation because it was quite serious. Not from a career coach perspective but actually from a mental health perspective. I did investigate that. Actually, I had to say get a plan, do something about it, what the outcome of that was, and a number of other things that says you need to get a plan, what you're going to do. 

Theresa: You certainly had a plan. 

Lee: Well, how many plans are you going to have? I'm sure you didn't just go – or did you just say right this is Salesforce. I'm going for that? 

Richard: No, not at all. I knew about Salesforce because I've been involved in it. One of the companies that I was with, I was tasked to implement Salesforce in the classic days. It was just a job. It was something I did, but I wasn't really heavily involved in it. It wasn't, "Oh, I need to get involved in Salesforce as such." What happened was I decided I didn't want to work for big companies anymore because a couple of-- I've been made redundant from one. It’s that trust thing. Thought, "Oh, actually, there’s a bit of a gap there." 

Plus, to be honest, 50-year-old guys of all of a sudden, there's this-- It's quite hard to get a role of that level to return back into work. It's a really serious thing. I see a lot of people on LinkedIn, for example, who-- I know, personally who are really, really capable people but they're not necessarily wanted back in the world that they've just come from as it were. 

Theresa: Amazingly, a wealth of experience that could potentially come into the company. 

Richard: Particularly sales. You get this thing where people, they seem to want sales guys that are quite young, and dynamic, and thrusting. I think they see experience as actually a bit of a negative. There's that, and there's also this thing about very experienced people they're quite hard t...

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, you are having to interview through virtual or digital means, and there's this anxiety about people going. You want to hold on to the people that you know until things stabilise. I feel like the insecurity with the employer is probably going to last us longer than the excitement and the will to be looking for the employee. Those timelines, I think, are not matching up anymore. 

It used to be a situation where, fine, someone leaves, it's unfortunate, but I can go out and find someone else. I do think that, as the ecosystem gets more and more incestuous, it's harder and harder to replace people. I think that's probably the top of everybody's mind. I think as much as we've been trying to promote self-exploration and training and education during this working from home -- I don't want to say downtime because it's been the opposite of downtime, but periods of reflection. I still think there hasn't been a massive push in terms of upskilling the current environment. There is this skills gap that was there ages ago, and now that the market is picking up, people can't afford to be without resources. They've lost a lot of money in the last year. 

Consultancies are just now starting to get back into the world of projects kicking off. Now's when you need people, there's anxiety that when the money is now coming in, I won't have the people to actually fulfil it, so I'm going to try my hardest to keep hold of them. 

Teresa: Yes. Okay. What about your opinion, Penny and Ben? Do you agree with that, or do you have some different takes on it? 

Penny: Yes, I do. I agree very much with what Vera is saying. I think that this is a challenge that's been on its way for several years, actually. That probably Brexit and COVID have just exacerbated a problem that was already there. When I think back to when I was working in Conga, I felt that there was a big difference between the Salesforce SI space in Paris compared to London. 

In Paris, there were a lot more evenly sized boutique firms, where junior people could learn their skills and grow through their careers. If we look at the UK, especially over the last 18 months, there's been so much consolidation of firms that there aren't enough places for people to learn skills and grow. 

I really appreciate Ben's take on this, but I think a lot of the most experienced people then end up going out either contracting on their own or starting up maybe their own company, either as an SI or as an app partner. That effectively takes them out of the game as mentors and teachers for younger people in the industry. That just exacerbates the skills gap that was already present, I think. 

Lee: Yes, Ben, do you have a take on it? 

Ben: Yes, I completely agree with Vera and Penny. Obviously, I used to run Empower, so I've got knowledge of the SI world from then, but I do speak to quite a lot of SI's, mostly in the small and medium-sized area. I think a lot of people struggled a lot throughout the past 12 months during COVID, but it has picked up so much. 

I know quite a lot of consultancies have got some really big deals now. Then these smaller consultancies, you've got a few individuals, which are really key. If these individuals want to go, then it can really cripple the consultancy and cripple some of the deals they've been working on. I think that's one of the reasons that it's probably counter-offers, I suppose, are rife, but I also think there are so many good opportunities in the ecosystem at the moment. 

Some of the ISVs that are floating around, the amount of investment going to these ISVs is crazy at the moment. I know a lot of people that are moving to these ISVs are also moving to end-users like unicorns that are using Salesforce now. It's a very different world working for an end-user, maybe possibly lower stress, but still working on quite a lot of Salesforce products and learning quite a lot. I think there's probably a few reasons, but that's my take on it. 

Teresa: Okay. 

Lee: Yes. Sounds about right. I think it would be interesting to now talk about whether you guys have ever been involved, and I'm sure you have. You've all been an employee, but also as someone who has hired people. Do any of you have a particular scenario when you've either been counter-offered as a person looking to leave or, on the flip side, the person that has decided, I don't want to lose this person, I'm going to obviously counter-offer them and how that went? Vera, are you ready to say something? 

Vera: Yes. I always love a good story. I'll go with a personal experience first. Just to put it out there, I'm against counter-offers, but you're not going to hear that in any of my stories, so just to be clear. I was at a stage in my career where I was looking for a pretty dramatic change. As you do, you start looking around, and then you think, "Oh, something quite interesting has come up". I wasn't in a place where I hated my job. I loved the organisation. I just needed a change. Part of that actually was… This was back in my early consulting days while I was on the road constantly. I was travelling 48 weeks a year. It was both a lifestyle thing and just a career progression component. I got an offer, went to my boss at the time and said, "I'm leaving". It was one of those situations. I think that as people start to evaluate leaving an organisation, you have to mentally make some hard decisions there. You shouldn't be playing with fire in terms of negotiating, like, "I'm going to go out and get more money so that I can get a counter-offer." That's when this all gets very dangerous. 

I had the true intent of going to this other organisation, and it was that time actually that Bluewolf came back and said, "We've got this amazing job". It's what moved me to London, but they're like, "We've got this amazing role, we were going to put you up for it anyway, but we weren't sure with what was happening when the timing was". 

It was one of those opportunities that was net new. It wa...

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 market, et cetera, and contribute quicker. That's where I started my career into Salesforce and this is somewhere around 2010. 

My initial days of my career when I was training and learning myself and I was working with one of the [unintelligible 00:05:13] partner in India. For a couple of months, I should say that I felt quite disappointed and I felt that maybe I've made a wrong choice. I thought the platform to be very simple and sleek. This is again, 2010, where a lot of stuff were still coming on the platform. 

Within a couple of months of me having that feeling, once I start getting deep insights around the platform and the part of possibilities, I was very sure that I made the right decision. Looking at how easy was it to solve complex business problems and contribute towards different organisational needs of basically transforming them and moving away from legacy apps and all this was just wonderful. 

Lee: Sorry to jump in, but were you always technical? Were you doing computer science at college or university or something like that? 

Rohit: Yes. I was always technical. I've done my engineering from a computer science background. I've got a couple of research papers published in Science Direct, et cetera. 

Lee: Brilliant. 

Rohit: I've got couple of papers that was published in the International Science Congress. Initial days of my career I've been primarily more of a techy. I worked primarily more on complex system design and development. I moved to IT after having done a lot of work around I would say design of an operating system, et cetera. That's why having seen the other side of the world and then after looking at the ability to do a fast-paced application development, I really enjoyed what the platform has to bring in for everyone. 

Just moving ahead, I joined a consulting company called Wipro. I was there with them for a couple of years. I worked in Europe for a good amount of time. I had associated myself with different organisations primarily in pharmaceutical domain and helped them a lot in different transformations that they could bring in within their sales and marketing processes. That is when Veeva was coming up. Veeva is one of the prominent application change partner. 

Worked on that for a couple of years, then I was back in India for some work and Salesforce happened. I got an opportunity to work directly with Salesforce. I spent a good amount of time working with Salesforce in India. Worked with different customers in Australia, UK, travelled quite a bit. Again was engaged in one of the first field service implementations for UK. 

Lee: Oh, really? 

Rohit: That is back somewhere around 2016. I became CTA while I was there working with Salesforce somewhere around 2018 and that is the year when I decided to pursue my entrepreneurship journey and I decided to move ahead and try something new, try something again from start even though the tech stack was the same but the experience and the journey is completely different. 

Now we are there in India and UK, me being a CTO of Venerate. We're trading in UK and India including Bangalore and we've got a branch in another city called Mumbai which is the financial capital of India. 

Lee: We need to go back. It's a good overview obviously, what you've done and where you've been, but it would be quite interesting to go back to the beginning. 

Theresa: We're just curious I suppose, what was the first thing that got you into Salesforce but more importantly what was the first Salesforce project that you worked on? Obviously, you don't need to share company names or anything like that but can you give us a bit of an idea of that journey for you? 

Rohit: My first project on Salesforce was for a large client, a global customer headquartered in US. From a cloud perspective, it was more around Sales Cloud that we had a lot of solutions built to help them do and plan their sales, to find their sales strategy, do their quarterly target planning, do SWOT analysis and other stuff. I started working with them, spent a couple of months engaging, working and delivering the solution for this client in the US. 

Post that, I moved to work with another customer, a global customer with a strong presence in Europe, headquartered in the US that [unintelligible 00:10:38] to me. With them, I think I've worked for a fairly long time, and what really worked the best was apart from understanding the technology, when I started working with this client, I got an exposure to their business processes. 

When you understand the business of a specific industry and how things work and what the pinpoints are, the chances of you advising them on something, which will be very apt for them is really [unintelligible 00:11:10] and that's what [inaudible 00:11:11] 

Lee: Awesome. Forgive me if I'm asking probably a stupid question, but when you are in India and you're working on a project that's in America, what's the communication like in terms of who's speaking to the client and getting those requirements and how tricky is that for you to do? 

Rohit: This is based on my working experience, concentrating on software conditions and department. You don't have to, first of all, be with the client throughout all the phases of software development life cycle. Typically, when you are working even from India, what happens is, you work directly with the client and you work from their office for a couple of weeks or months. 

Before you understand what is it they need. If I have to split the phases, primarily, the consulting and discovery phase is something that happens on-site. You would have a specific member of your team who would always be there with the customer on-site, hand-holding them, understanding the [unintelligible 00:12:30] process, helping them define the 2D process, and then convert those 2D process to the right platform. 

Once that has been converted, it's more about building the apps, which normally does...

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, this is where I did my A-Levels. It was a tougher A-level at that time. We had to learn very old-school programming languages like Pascal, Fortran, COBOL back in the days. Funny enough, when people ask me, how do I know these languages? I said, "Yes, I did some work on them when I was in college." They ask my age; I'm not that old. It's just we were using very old-school systems when I was growing up in Mauritius. 

Theresa: Good foundation, though. 

Goolshun: Indeed. It does help a lot. I think you understand the foundational aspect of programming, so it does help. 

Theresa: Okay. Going back to this first job then, you've been told, "Yes, I can give you something." Your boss said, "I've got a job for you." Talk us through what happened after that. 

Goolshun: Again, it's good that Google existed, or else probably I wouldn't be able to pick up Salesforce. Looking at help files, find ways to learn the system. They managed to put me as an admin on the system, even though I didn't know how to even use the system. The directors themselves didn't know, so they didn't hire anyone to do the work externally. It was all done internal, so a lot of people didn't have the right skills, including myself. I had to learn it fast. Salesforce is such a system that -- it's a very interesting story because the first version of Salesforce or the initial version of Salesforce was based on an Amazon type of interface. 

You've probably heard about the whole story about Marc Benioff; he wanted to create a CRM system, which is as easy to use as you would shop on Amazon. He created the whole system. It's true because it's free, easy to set up, easy to use. The back-end system at that time was not that useful versus the front end or the UI where people use the system. I had a baptism by fire, really, because I managed to delete the whole database in the second week of using the system. Then, I thought I would lose my job again, but then I've managed to see a recycling bin in the system. I managed to undo what I've done. It was a scary time, having to play around with a system that you never heard of, with not much help around. That's how it started in Salesforce and how I fell in love with the system. 

I did some CRM systems before, which is open-source CRM like Vtiger 5 before, and anything to do with custom CRM because I used to do a lot of web design stuff. This one was so perfect. Funny enough, I think it was my third month. One of the developers in the company was working for the billing department and asked me, "Can you create a filled-in Salesforce?" I said, "Yes, I can." They said, "Okay, how much time is it going to take? Is it going to take about three weeks?" I said, "No, it's going to take me five minutes." He was so confused. He says, "You're joking, right?" I said, "No, it's going to take five minutes." Because they’re so used to the back-end heavy hardcore systems, they never heard about Salesforce properly. I was a Salesforce guru. People loved me for that, but he wasn't really behind it. It was just Salesforce is such an easy system. 

Theresa: I was going to say he didn't even realize that included the logging on time. 

[laughter] 

Theresa: It really is that quick. 

[laughter] 

Goolshun: It was. 

Lee: It does seem crazy that that was the norm back then, wasn't it? The simplest little change could literally take weeks. 

Theresa: Yes. 

Goolshun: Yes. It's amazing how cloud computing changed the whole landscape of business. Before, we used to have coders to program in mainframes and even to create small files. In a small enough organization, it takes some time, and then the testing and all of that. In Salesforce, you create it. You don't like it; you delete it. 

Theresa: Yes, I love that. 

Goolshun: It is not as straightforward as that is now, especially if you work in a big organization, but the system allows you to scale very fast and make changes very quickly. 

Theresa: Fantastic. I guess the question would be, when did you know that Salesforce was for you or that you wanted a career in Salesforce? 

Goolshun: Interesting question. When I was researching on Google about what Salesforce is about, I watched a lot of helpful videos. Then I started to discover Marc Benioff, what he was saying, the whole history behind Salesforce. I thought, even though I'm a technical person, I do consider myself to be a lazy person as well because I do remember when one of the journalists ask Bill Gates, "What type of person you would like to hire?" He says, "I would like to hire the lazy ones because the lazy ones will really work harder to make things simple because they don't like to work that hard." 

Lee: I like that. 

Theresa: [chuckles] Why is that? 

Goolshun: I had the same mindset. I like to keep things simple. The system allowed me to play around quite a lot with it, and it was all cloud. You could do it on your phone, on a laptop, no software required. It was so easy to just create a process, for example. I think I liked that idea because I became the Salesforce internal guru without much knowledge about Salesforce myself; I thought, "That's quite a powerful system." Because people don't know about it, I'm the only one who knows about it. I just dug deeper and trained myself online, and after a couple of months, I've managed to get myself on a Salesforce training. That's about six, seven months. 

Theresa: It's important to remember that Trailheads didn't exist back then either, so most of the learning-- I self-taught as well. Most of what I learned has come from YouTube and places like that. 

Goolshun: Exactly, that's the best repository of learning. To be honest, even though Salesforce does great training, all these trailheads, it's all brilliant stuff. It's gotten me further; it's getting people more interested in the platform. At the end of the day, what you want to know is that you want to be solving a problem. The system gives you so much ability...

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. 

I went back and googled the number, and I was about 50 times off. Luckily, that didn't keep me from getting the job. From there, I just fell into it. I remember my first day at Bluewolf; I hadn't heard of Salesforce.  

I started, and they put me straight on to an admin course. I think I came home that first day and thought, "Oh my God, I've done something wrong. What have I done?" I did not understand what people were talking about at all. At the time, Bluewolf did official admin training for Salesforce, so there were many partners in the room. There were people who had worked on Salesforce for a long time. 

They're asking these questions, and they might as well have been speaking a foreign language because I was utterly confused. 

Lee: Sorry to interrupt you. Can you timeline this? This is around 2007. I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile. 

Vera: Yes, it must've been. 

Lee: You got an idea of how it works right at the beginning of it? 

Vera: Yes. This is a good testament to Salesforce, a little shout-out here. By the time I finished that week because the admin course back then was a week, I came home on the Friday, and I was like, "Pfft, I get this. This is great. I could go do this." It was a completely different attitude towards it. In that week, my perspective on not only Salesforce but I think technology completely shifted, which was amazing. That was the first moment where I thought, "Yes, I think this is going to be a good move." 

Lee: That's usually my next question. That was when the penny dropped, and you thought, "Yes, this is me"? 

Vera: Yes, which is funny because if you had asked me when I was younger, what I thought I was going to be when I grew up, and you had told me it was going to be A, a consultant, and B, in technology, I would have laughed at you. People who work with me can tell you I'm not necessarily the most tech-savvy person. I struggle on a Zoom call, but I do know how to configure Salesforce. I don't know what that says about me. That was the beginning of what will inevitably be the rest of my career. 

Lee: You mentioned Eric. Bluewolf had an interesting policy in the early days, in that it didn't look to hire experienced consultants, from what I've heard. 

Vera: That's absolutely true. I remember because I was quite young and quite green back then, I remember my first day on the job, Eric came up to me, and he's like, "What do you think you're going to do for us?" I was like, "Oh my God, I was hoping somebody was going to tell me what I was going to do because I have no idea. I don't know what you people do." It did take a little while for Bluewolf to work out what to do with me, just because I was so out of my depth, I think. It was interesting because Eric took a chance on a lot of young kids at that time. 

It's down to what you make of it. I think those companies are amazing for the people who are self-motivated and can just work things out. Remember, because no one knew what to do with me, I was doing database entry for my first couple of months. We had a system called OpenAir, which was for time tracking. I was just literally going through and cleaning up data, and calling PMs, and saying, "You've got two hours left on your project. Is that an accident? Do you want to close it out?" Then I quickly realised I hate this. I cannot continue to do this. 

I would loan myself out to the other architects and salespeople. I would just say, "Look, take me on your meeting. I'll go, I'll take your notes. I'll do all the stuff you don't want to do. I'll do all of your config, all the grunt work." Then eventually, that turned into a role, and then that was the birth for us, at least, of what the business analyst role became. My job in the early days, I ran something called BA University, which was all about trying to repeat that process in an accelerated way. 

How you take kids either early in their careers or right out of school and turn them into productive consultants by teaching them how to configure, take notes, and act in a meeting. All of that useful stuff, which was quite fun because you did get to see people, almost become a completely different person in the span of six months, which is inspiring. 

Teresa: I suppose an unusual way, but a very good way of doing it because it's almost the people that are self-motivated like you where you're just thinking, "I cannot do this data entry role for the rest of my life". It spurs you on to want to go and learn more and do more. I suppose from a consultancy point of view, you want those people that are motivated to go out and do that and seek out the projects and the challenges. It's a foundation. 

Vera: Definitely. 

Teresa: Just out of interest, do you remember the first Salesforce project you managed to get your teeth into? Does that stick in your mind at all? 

Vera: Yes. It's funny. I can tell you about almost every project I've been on. I get quite personal with them, which is not advice I would give to anybody else. I can remember my first big deal. It was funny because we went through a process. It was quite a big oil and gas company, and they had a lot of due diligence, as you would imagine. I think they interviewed seven or eight PMs. At the time, I was maybe six months into that role specifically. They'd interviewed everybody by phone. Thank God for me, because I looked about 12. 

They put everybody through the wringer and then told Eric, "We've picked Vera to run the project." I remember we kicked off in our offices in New York, and they came. You could tell the shock on their face when they realised who they had picked. The smile on Eric's face when he saw their reaction was hilarious. To be fair, they had done massive amounts of due diligence. I think we had to interview two or three times, so they couldn't go back and say, "We didn't want a kid."  

It was intense. Probably it went on for a year, which back then, Salesforce projects just did not last...