Salesforce Admins Podcast

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got Leah McGowen-Hare, Senior Director of Trailblazer Storytelling and Developer Evangelism, and Chris Duarte, VP of Content for Trailhead at Salesforce. We’ll learn about their new program, BAM! (Be A Multiplier), based around learning and sharing learning with others.

Join us as we talk about how to give back, what the community has done with the program, and how BAM! makes it easier than ever before the pay it forward.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Leah McGowen-Hare and Chris Duarte (and check out some bonus content at the end of the pod).

The power of BAM!

Leah and Chris have started a program called BAM!, which stands for Be A Multiplier. “We saw that so many people loved Trailhead and they wanted to share it with other people,” Chris said, “and people asked us to give them some tools, tips, and resources that would enable them to share Trailhead with their local communities.”

The result is BAM!, which brings together all the assets and resources that somebody needs to be able to teach a learning workshop powered by Trailhead. “The great thing is that the community was already doing this,” Leah says, “they were BAMing before BAM was a thing.”

Everything you need but the conference room.

“We decided to use these containers called Trailmixes,” Chris says (though Leah doesn’t recommend eating them), “and inside of each Trailmix we put everything that someone needs to be able to run a workshop.” Each one begins with its own Trailhead in the form of a badge you can earn in how to host a Trailhead workshop. There are also badges in how to do public speaking, and resources like a ready-made Powerpoint, an agenda, instructor guides, a sample survey, and basically everything you need to run a workshop.

From a content perspective, there are five BAM! Trailmixes so far on a variety of topics. “We’re trying to make something for everybody,” Chris says. They cover a variety of topics, from how to build a Report and a Dashboard to a ready-made Equality workshop. All you have to do is book the conference room.

BAM it forward.

BAM! has only been out for a couple of months, but there are already some great success stories coming out of it. Annie Shek-Mason’s Trailhead for All organized people around bringing the power of Salesforce to their local communities. Sandi Zellner has already organized an Equality Workshop in New York. Mahat Hussein organized BAM-inspired 8-week virtual training workshop in the UK to teach people Salesforce for free.

“We want people to go out and multiply,” Leah says, “we want them to share their love for Salesforce with their communities in whatever form they want to.” Whether people are entirely new to Salesforce or have been in the ecosystem for a while, you can tailor the content to match your audience. Stay tuned for some BAMnnouncements in the Trailhead keynote at Dreamforce...

Join us for the Salesforce Admins Keynote at Dreamforce!

Tuesday, September 25th at 11am PDT: Parker Harris, Mike Gerholdt, Mary Scotton, Gillian Bruce & special guests will share amazing admin stories, incredible demos, and fun surprises. Join us live in Moscone West or watch online. Bookmark now! http://sforce.co/df18adminkeynote

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Direct download: BAM_Be_A_Multiplier_with_Leah_McGowen-Hare__Chris_Duarte.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:40pm PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re joined by LeeAnne Rimel, Principal Admin Evangelist at Salesforce, to talk about her latest viral tweet: “No matter where you are in your technical skills journey, you have something valuable to share & teach. Get rid of the imposter syndrome that you have to be an ‘expert,’ and find the spaces where it adds value to help others on their trail.”

Join us as we talk about sharing your unique perspective and teaching others what you do know both empowers others and teaches you even more.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel.

Uncovering what you have that’s valuable.

“That’s a conversation I’ve had with a lot of people in person, with people in our community and with my own mentors and teachers throughout my career,” LeeAnne says. “Sometimes, when we’re in teaching or mentorship roles, it’s not just about teaching what you know but helping others uncover what they have that’s valuable.”

You also want to cultivate that confidence in yourself, and ideally, make the internal realization that you’re bringing something new to the table. However, that’s something that’s easy to say and harder to do. What can help is to realize that we can help each other to see that in ourselves. It’s valuable to share how you solved a particular problem, or how you got started on Trailhead in the first place, and the community benefits.

The Curse of Knowledge.

Once we have deep expertise in something, Knowledge Bias can make it difficult to appreciate and understand what it’s like to not have that expert knowledge. We forget what it was like to be where we were in our journey 10 or 20 years ago. “That means that there’s very much a space for people who have recently walked that path to teach,” LeeAnne says, “because there’s that empathy of ‘here’s the things that I learned and how I’m able to speak to you where you are today.’”

At the same time, “it can be really scary to acknowledge there was something that you didn’t know and you learned that thing,” LeeAnne says, “especially if you’re battling Imposter Syndrome or come from an underrepresented group.” There can be a culture of elitism around knowledge in tech, and we’re often looking for every bit of credibility we can get in professional situations. However, that beginner’s mindset is so valuable and can benefit everyone. Learning is cool, and it’s important to encourage that in others and make sure that you’re not falling into those traps.

Why you learn more from teaching.

“When I started as an admin the tools I used to learn were super different,” LeeAnne says, “I bought a physical book on eBay and printed things out in binders.” That means that while she can be supportive of someone learning today, she doesn’t have the same insider knowledge of someone who has become an admin in the last 12 months. They’re going to be able to share which groups they joined, which Trailhead content they went through, or who they followed on Twitter.

When you share what you’ve learned you also learned more. By the time Gillian had finished teaching her first Girl Develop It class, she had learned different ways to describe the platform, make analogies for people who had never touched Salesforce before, and connect information in new ways. “You can talk advanced concepts all day,” LeeAnne says, “but it takes real expert knowledge to meet students where they are. 90% of the teaching and advice I give are things that other people taught me.”

Join us for the Salesforce Admins Keynote at Dreamforce!

Tuesday, September 25th at 11am PDT: Parker Harris, Mike Gerholdt, Mary Scotton, Gillian Bruce & special guests will share amazing admin stories, incredible demos, and fun surprises. Join us live in Moscone West or watch online. Bookmark now! http://sforce.co/df18adminkeynote

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Direct download: You_Have_Something_to_Teach_with_LeeAnne_Rimel.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:04am PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re with Willard Monroe, Industry Solutions Senior Director at Salesforce to hear about his amazing podcast, Ask & Listen.

Join us as we talk about the Salesforce internal (for now) podcast that he hosts interviewing different folks who are traditionally underrepresented in the tech industry to find out how they got where they are today.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Willard Monroe.

Working your way up.

We asked Willard our favorite getting-to-know-you question, what did you want to be when you grew up? His answer was a little unusual (and we’ve heard a few): a criminal psychologist. “I was always fascinated with why people do the things that they do,” Willard says, “I got my BA in psychology but then pivoted a little bit after graduation and went into sales.”

At Salesforce, Willard is in Sales Strategy. He leads the pipeline programs, analyzing Salesforce’s coverage areas and looking for ways to bring marketing and sales together. He started as a Business Development Representative (BDR), essentially cold-calling companies to try and get them to implement Salesforce. “I wanted to get my foot in the door in tech,” Willard says, “so I came in as a BDR to work my way up.”

Ask and Listen.

“I’ve had a lot of great mentors along the way,” Willard says, and providing support for other people looking to grow their careers was a major reason that he started his podcast project, Ask & Listen. His experience as a black person in tech made him wonder about other people who are underrepresented in the industry, and the podcast was a way to sit folks down and hear their stories.

From starting the project, the guests grew through word of mouth. Talking to one person about their story would inevitably bring up another person and their background. Sharing both successes and struggles is so important because “when you are going through something in your life and you don’t see a lot of people that are like you, sometimes you feel alone,” Willard says. Those shared stories, both the highs and the lows, create a stronger community.

Why it’s important to have the conversation.

Creating a place where people can open up and share their stories is easier said than done. “First off, you need to create a safe place,” Willard says, “you need to talk to them beforehand to get them comfortable and acknowledge and know that these conversations are uncharted water in our industry. Five years from now, this conversation will evolve immensely and won’t be as hard to have.”

For now, the best thing to do is to know that these are uncharted waters for our industry, “so be open with how you’re listening because it’s really about asking the question and listening, there’s no action that needs to be taken right away,” Willard says. Having the conversation is an action in and of itself.

Join us for the Salesforce Admins Keynote at Dreamforce!

Tuesday, September 25th at 11am PDT: Parker Harris, Mike Gerholdt, Mary Scotton, Gillian Bruce & special guests will share amazing admin stories, incredible demos, and fun surprises. Join us live in Moscone West or watch online. Bookmark now! http://sforce.co/df18adminkeynote

Resources

Social

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: Ask__Listen_with_Willard_Monroe.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:25pm PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re joined by Jimmy Hua, a Lead Member of Technical Staff in Software Engineering at Salesforce, as well as the founder of Asiapacforce.

Join us as we talk about how Jimmy’s been able to build an app on the Salesforce platform to help make equality a reality, using what’s already there to make something new.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jimmy Hua.

From computer science to sales.

The first thing you need to know is that Gillian and Jimmy go way back, with 15 combined years at Salesforce between them. “When I was a kid I was like, ‘I think one day everything’s going to be computerized,’” Jimmy says, and that was what lead him to software engineering.

Growing up, Jimmy wanted to be a lawyer until he realized that an important part of the job was to argue. “It’s funny though because, as a software engineer, part of my job is to argue about what’s the right thing to do for customers,” he says. For Jimmy, that’s OK because it’s for the right reasons: taking care of our Ohana.

Asiapacforce and the Ohana groups.

“Asiapacforce is an Asian-interest employee resource group,” Jimmy says, “here at Salesforce, we call them Ohana groups.” Their mission is to serve their Ohana: employees, customers, and the community. They do everything from bringing in professors and ambassadors come to talk about what’s happening in Asia to serving and partnering with nonprofits in San Francisco and elsewhere.

Asiapacforce is one of several Ohana groups that we have at Salesforce. These groups work to bring equality to the employee base and the community. “We want to always keep in mind that everything that we’re trying to do is actually Equality for All,” Jimmy says.

Hosting events all over the world.

At Salesforce they have Champion Months, which means every month is dedicated to a different Ohana group, “which lets us emphasize and magnify what’s going on within their community for the rest of our company. That way we can all participate and be allies,” Jimmy says. For Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month in May they threw 8 events in San Francisco, and over 20 internationally across the 14 hubs they have for Asiapacforce spread throughout the globe.

Managing that many events made keeping track of the budgets and planning pretty difficult. “I was sitting there and saying to myself, ‘I think there’s a software out there that could help us do this…’ and then I realized I work on the platform every day,” Jimmy says.

Using what’s already there to make something new.

“As an engineer what I normally do is jump in and try to do something,” Jimmy says, “but I have to remember that this is something that someone will have to use, so I took a step back and asked myself what my number one pain point is.” What he settled on was visibility of events— with thousands of emails he had no idea what was happening on any particular day.

From there, Jimmy started thinking about all the ways that coordinating events can get tricky. You have to manage money, coordinate schedules, rooms, approvals, and even things like marketing materials and communications.

“One of the biggest things I try to do is to not reinvent the wheel— we want to use other people’s work to build even more things,” he says. Once he looked at his needs, he realized that managing an event works a lot like campaigns. He built out the Salesforce Instance into something called Ohana Network. One of the other Ohana groups was complaining about the same challenges Asiapacforce faced, and even the Office of Equality was doing budgeting with spreadsheets, so Jimmy started adapting it to solve those problems.

A platform for Equality.

Today, they’re working on adding more metrics and reporting to Ohana Network to measure impact and see what’s working. “As you continue to grow,” Jimmy says, “you add more stuff to the platform.” Once you’ve built the tool, you can be agile and adapt it to meet your growing needs.

Next up, Jimmy is working with the Office of Equality and a coalition of employees from across the company to create the Ohana Tech Council to innovate around the company for equality. They’re working on custom apps like Ohana Market, which connects people trying to leverage their skills to push equality forward. “The big thing is figuring out how to innovate on top of a platform that does a lot of the work for you,” Jimmy says.

Resources

Twitter

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: A_Platform_for_Equality_with_Jimmy_Hua.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:10pm PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got David Ries, Salesforce Administrator at TELUS and Salesforce World Tour Toronto’s golden hoodie winner, to hear his amazing journey through Salesforce.

Join us as we talk about how Dave transferred his love of building into a career as a Salesforce Admin with a few important stops working in sales along the way, and how those experiences have helped him create a more effective org.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with David Ries.

From computer science to sales.

“When I was a kid I was really interested in science and technology,” Dave says, but even though he’s grown up to work in the tech industry, “it was not a straight, A to B path.” Coming out of college with a computer science degree, Dave started his own software company that made physics tutorials for high school students. “Unfortunately, schools don’t have a lot of money so I ended up going into sales and sales management for the next 20 years,” he says.

“As more years ticked by I figured I’d missed the boat on what I really wanted to do,” Dave says, “but one day our sales team started using this platform called Salesforce. It was a game changer for us— not only did it make the sales reps more effective but it made me a more effective sales manager because I could see in real time what was going on in the field.” A couple of years later, an opportunity came up for a Salesforce System Administrator at his company and he jumped at the chance.

Learning by building.

Before Dave was even an Admin, “I was a power creator of reports and dashboards to analyze all the various data,” he says, and as a manager of the sales team, he was already working closely with the team supporting the platform. He would need to make changes to the business requirements and was impressed with how easily the platform could keep pace.

The admin team also pointed Dave to the online training available at the time (this was in the Pre-Trailhead Era), which gave him admin access to his very own org and the ability to play around and experiment. By the time an opportunity to be an admin came up in his company, he was able to go to the hiring manager and make the case for getting the position. “I was able to show them things that I built, proof of concepts for how I could help the business today,” he says.

Creating a more effective org.

“When I joined the team it was an older org that had changed hands a couple times,” Dave says, “so for a while, I felt a bit like a solo admin. I realized there wasn’t a whole lot of structure around the business processes for how we support the users— there wasn’t a method to the madness.” He set about trying to automate and clean up his own team’s workflow.

Dave’s org had a high turnover of users— they were doing upwards of 200 activations and deactivations a month. The first thing he did was create a flow to guide sales managers through the process of collecting information and creating a user record, which the admin then just needs to review and activate.

“At first, our process was just a giant whiteboard that sat behind my desk,” Dave says, with incoming requests going up on the board and getting crossed off when they were accomplished. “That wasn’t very sustainable,” he says, so he implemented cases. Emails would go out to update people on the status of their case, and they also created a dashboard that was visible to all users so they could see where their request ranked amongst everything else in the organization.

Onward to Lightning!

The next goal for Dave and his team is to transition to Lightning. It’s a legacy org, so getting it ready to go is a slow process, but they’ve already started onboarding some teams. These groups are new and don’t interact with other user groups, so they were a great opportunity to test out the org’s Lightning readiness. “For the users, Lightning has been a game changer for their ability to work and consume information,” he says.

Resources

  • Automate Your Business Processes with Lightning Flow Trail on Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trails/automate_business_processes
  • Create a Process for Managing Support Cases Project on Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/projects/create-a-process-for-managing-support-cases
  • Make the Move to Lightning Experience Trail on Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/trails/lex_admin_migration

Twitter

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: A_Builder_at_Heart_with_David_Ries.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:04am PDT

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