In this special first episode, Kris Lande, SVP Marketing & Community at Salesforce, joins Dan Darcy to discuss what it truly means to be a part of the Ohana and takes us on her full-circle journey from being a Trailblazer to now helping support and enable the Trailblazer community. You'll hear insights Kris learned along the way that will help any aspiring community marketing leader, and much more.
In this special first episode, Kris Lande, SVP Marketing & Community at Salesforce, joins Dan Darcy to discuss what it truly means to be a part of the Ohana and takes us on her full-circle journey from being a Trailblazer to now helping support and enable the Trailblazer community. You'll hear insights Kris learned along the way that will help any aspiring community marketing leader, and much more.
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Quotes
”When you become part of this ecosystem, you are part of this lifelong movement. There is so much opportunity - Salesforce is constantly evolving. We're constantly innovating. There are always new things to learn. This is an ecosystem that you can join and grow with for your entire career. We have admins, developers, and people in sales and service who have been using Salesforce and been in the ecosystem for over 20 years… That is the future.”
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Timestamps:
*(1:52) - Meet Kris Lande, SVP Marketing & Community at Salesforce
*(3:11) - What it means to be an accidental admin
*(4:17) - Kris’ Salesforce journey begins
*(9:31) - Becoming a part of the Ohana
*(12:50) - What it means to be a Trailblazer
*(12:50) - Lessons learned on the path to Trailhead
*(14:84) - Best practices for writing articles and blog posts
*(15:30) - Kris’ favorite Ohana moment
*(21:22) - What’s next for the Trailhead Community
*(28:55) - Kris’ favorite Salesforce persona
*(33:11) - Advice for aspiring marketing leaders of the community
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Sponsor
Inside the Ohana is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.
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Links
[00:01:52] Dan: Welcome to inside the Ohana. I'm Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified. And today I'm joined by an inspiring colleague and Ohana sister, Kris Landy. Kris, how are you?
[00:02:03] Kris: Oh, Hey, Ohana brother. I'm doing well.
[00:02:08] Dan: I mean, I wore this special golden hoodie just for you, um, for today's interview. So, um, so yeah, exactly.Go trailblazers. So I want to dive right into our first segment. Ohana Origins.
[00:02:29] Rewinding back about 12 years ago. How did Salesforce first come on your radar and what was your first job at Salesforce?
[00:02:37] Kris: Rewine even further back, more than 12 years ago. So back in 2003, I think is when I first got introduced to Salesforce and I was working at a little startup in Seattle, Washington, and I was doing that thing, but I think a lot of us do at startups.
[00:02:53] You have all of the jobs. I was doing marketing, I was doing events. I was doing sales ops. I was doing all of these things and I was also owning our CRM administration. That kind of situation probably sounds pretty familiar for a lot of CRM admins out there. You have a lot of jobs and a lot of.
[00:03:11] Dan: What'd you say you were an accidental admin.
[00:03:15] Kris: I was 100% an accidental admin. It was that exact situation where I was doing a lot of jobs and my boss came to me and I was like, Hey, we have this CRM thing and we need someone to, to be the admin of it. I don't know what that means, but can you do it? And I'm a yes person. So I was like, of course I can do that.
[00:03:32] That sounds fun. What is CR. First tell me what that is. So that's actually how I got introduced to CRM and we weren't using Salesforce at first. We're using a different product, which I won't name, but I will say it was not easy. And I started petitioning at that point to get Salesforce into our company.
[00:03:52] So finally, after working on it and working with. And petitioning. I got my company to buy Salesforce in 2003 and I did the whole data transfer into Salesforce, which I learned at that point, when you do that process, you learn a product inside it out. Like I learned about databases. I learned how to get all of the information out of our old CRM system and into our new one.
[00:04:17] Dan: That's incredible because you embody. Basically what we're going to get into later, the whole trailblazer revolution and the army that it created, you know, in the first started with the customer heroes, which is becoming a Salesforce admin. How did you hear about Salesforce at first, before you were using the legacy CRM?
[00:04:37] Kris: I did the free online trial and I got my little org set up and I'm like, oh my gosh, Phenomenal. Like now I can add a field in two seconds instead of two hours. And I just had that aha moment, like this is amazing. And that's when I started my petition to me to get my company, to buy Salesforce.
[00:04:54] Kris: You know, you mentioned this introduction to trailblazers in a community. And that was when I had my first introduction to the community. This is back in 2003, when I was implementing Salesforce, I had some questions. But there was those experts out there that just, they wanted to give back. They wanted to help me. They didn't know me, but they wanted to help me. And I just got that taste of how beautiful the Salesforce community is. And I was hooked. I became one of those people, like when Salesforce did the events around the country, I was in Seattle.
[00:05:25] Then when Salesforce would come to Seattle, I would show up, I would be. Shireen. And I was one of those Salesforce fans and I still am. And I think it's, it is because of the community and because how, how easy it was to become part of this Ohana, even back in 2003, before I worked at Salesforce.
[00:05:45] Dan: I love hearing your passion about this and the community.
[00:05:49] I'm curious though, how did you come to Salesforce? The mothership, and how did that your first job happened at Salesforce?
[00:05:55] my husband and I were looking for a change and we were looking for a move from moving from Seattle to San Francisco. And at that moment I was. There's one company that I want to work for and it happens to be in San Francisco and I'm going to go for it.
[00:06:11] it was a product marketing role for chatter. So if y'all are a member of our chatter product out there, um,
[00:06:21] Kris: exactly. So I had interviewed for a product marketing position for chatter. I didn't get that one. But then soon after I interviewed for a product marketing role for sales cloud, which is our flagship product. So that is the job that I ended up moving to San Francisco for my first job at Salesforce was on the sales cloud product marketing
[00:06:41] Dan: team.
[00:06:42] What, what year was that? And what was the size of the company? So
[00:06:46] Kris: that was, that was 2010. So I've been, I've been at Salesforce almost 12 years now, and I believe the company was right around 4,000 people. So when I started Dan, I think you were, had been there for two years, right? Yeah. Yes. I think, I think there's on 4,000 people when I started.
[00:07:03] And I remember, I, you know, I came from a 30 person company, so I remember thinking like, whoa, This company is huge. It's 4,000 people. And now looking back now we have what, 75,000 people working at Salesforce. And it's just, I mean, it's amazing. The growth that we've seen is just
[00:07:20] Dan: incredible. I remember when you first started.
[00:07:24] Brag on your behalf, because I think one of the things that made you completely different from the other product marketers was that you actually were full on in the product, knew the product like the back of your hand, not saying that the other product marketers didn't know how to do that, but you were one of the customer heroes that we would profile in a lot of the marketing materials.
[00:07:45] And I thought just that sparkle and that differentiation that you brought to the team was pretty awesome. What was your first initial impression? Of Salesforce at the time. Just inside, inside the Ohana, if you will.
[00:07:58] Kris: Once I got past my immense imposter syndrome, when I first started, because I was this, I was the admin girl, like I was a Salesforce admin, and I felt like, oh my gosh, this is my dream job.
[00:08:09] And I'm here. And I'm working with these incredible people. I just remember meeting my fellow marketers, just feeling in awe of all of these marketers and just, I was so excited about. Everything that I had to learn from everyone. Cause I, I was really a self-taught marketer. I didn't get my MBA. I call my startup that I worked at.
[00:08:29] I call that my marketing MBA. I learned everything on the job and I taught myself everything. And so I was really excited to really come to Salesforce and really good at marketing school. Like really learning. Marketing from the best marketers and Danny, I look at you and I, when I say that you're one of the best marketers.
[00:08:48] And when I, when I started, I was just so excited to learn from folks like.
[00:08:52] Dan: Oh, thank you. I mean, I appreciate that. I mean, speaking of marketers, one of your first managers, Scott Holden, who was a Salesforce product marketer at the time, and now he's the COO of ThoughtSpot. His reputation around the office was that he had just incredible and beautiful hair.
[00:09:09] And I guess my question to you was just how beautiful was his hair. And did you ever see not combed at all?
[00:09:17] Kris: That is the best question. So Scott hired me, so thank you, Scott Holden for hiring me. And, and yes, I was definitely intimidated of Scott when I first started, because he does have quite the beautiful mane of hair that is for sure.
[00:09:31] Dan: And it's got, I just love you if you're, if you're hearing this, um, and just wanted to make that little shout out there. So Kris you've really obviously experienced the Ohana firsthand. And when I asked folks about the Ohana, I feel like everyone describes it differently, but I'm curious, how would you describe the Ohana and what does that really mean to.
[00:09:50] this company and the folks around me have truly become my family, all of them.
[00:09:57] Kris: Like I look around me. I'm like, all of my friends are people that I've. At Salesforce. And I, you know, the customers that have met too, like some of the, some of our trailblazers, our customers are lifelong friends. Like I get holiday cards from them. I send holiday cards to them. And so it is, you know, we talk about Ohana.
[00:10:16] We talk about family and for me, that has been. My experience, this has become my family. And I think we've all gone through something special together. You know, when I, when I started going from a 4,000 person company to 75,000 people and all of the, the growth in between there, like there's really special experiences and memories that we've all been through together.
[00:10:37] And I do truly. I feel like this is my family. Exactly.
[00:10:41] Dan: I mean, and that's where I find it so hard to describe to folks. And that's what the mission of this podcast is really all about, is just trying to help people understand what being part of the Ohana and being an experiencing the Ohana is all about.
[00:10:56] So I want to, I want you to brag here, Kris, because you've been a part of some pretty incredible launches over your time. It was sales cloud, the Salesforce one mobile app and Trailhead. What would you say is one of your biggest successes or something that you're most proud of thus
[00:11:12] Kris: far So I was working on Salesforce, one, our mobile app. I was working on Salesforce, one marketing, and I moved over to the admin relations team. And I really viewed this as like, wow, I'm kind of coming back home, like from my admin past. Now I get to work with our Salesforce admins and I am, I feel really proud of. Everything that we were able to do for our admin community.
[00:11:34] You know, we, we created this whole program of the content that our admins needed because we really didn't have, we didn't have a program at Salesforce that was directly talking to ourselves. First admins. We had this for our developers, but our admins are so important to Salesforce, so important to our customers.
[00:11:52] And we needed a team that was just focused on that. I know we talked a lot about, you know, good stuff, no fluff admins do not like to be marketed to, they want to know what the product does, what it doesn't do, how to use it. And they want, they want that good stuff, no fluff. And that was, that was like a really great learning lesson for me.
[00:12:10] And I, and I really learned audience marketing and I learned the importance of really lifting up and empowering our customers, our trailblazers. And that was when I first learned, you know, what we call troubles as your marketing, when you. You have a trailblazer or, or an admin or a developer, you hand them a mic and you get out of their way.
[00:12:30] You let them talk about the product and the way that they want to and their words. And they do the best marketing for us. Like. They are, they are way better talking about our products and we are, and that's something I just really learned is like the power of our customer voices and our marketing. And that was something that I hadn't learned before.
[00:12:50] Dan: You've mentioned now, trailblazer. I've mentioned it as well.
[00:12:53] And we've mentioned admins. We've mentioned, you know, coworkers. I want to explain for the audience what a trailblazer is, how do you define trailblazer and how do you think about it? How would you describe that to the audience?
[00:13:07] Kris: I define a trailblazer. A leader, a learner and an innovator, and someone who is doing the magic on the Salesforce platform and they are driving their career there.
[00:13:17] They are making change in their company. They are bringing change to their community. And these are really like th they're the change. They are people who are driving the future forward. They are using digital first skills and they are really. They are poised for the jobs of the future. Um, and these are, these are the people who are leading the way.
[00:13:38] I think a lot about, you know, the hoodie that, that you and I are both wearing. Dan, you know, this was something where, you know, we, we really wanted to put that identity of trailblazers front and forward. Like, you know, a lot of times you'll see, we put a brand across like sales cloud or Salesforce. We put a brand across, but we really wanted to lift up and impact.
[00:13:57] That identity and the products are still there. You know, we have, you have a Trailhead on the hoodie, you have a sales cloud or Salesforce on the hoodie, but it's really the person and the identity and the products are supporting them. And that's really what I, how I picture with trailblazers. Like it's all about the people and the products support them and help them do amazing things.
[00:14:17] But it is about the person.
[00:14:18] Dan: I feel it too. It's, it's one of those things. When you put on this hoodie, you feel part of a bigger collective of amazing people. And it's something that, you know, it's hard to describe again, as well too. Now on the opposite side of the spectrum of, you know, talking about some of the things that you're most proud of, what would you say is one of your biggest lessons learned at.
[00:14:39] I, I really think it is as a marketer. You know, I've been, I've been a marketer for years now. And I think as a marketer, that, that vital switch of putting the person first. The person first about the product it's about the people.
[00:14:54] Kris: It is about the identity. It's about what they want. It is not about, it's not about how your product and getting your product in their face. It's about who they are and how to empower them to do better. And the product will follow. And I think that was a really important lesson for me. And one that I didn't, I think when I was back working, working in product marketing, and even in my startup, I didn't know that lesson.
[00:15:16] I wasn't, I wasn't always putting the person in the identity first and it is all about the people in the community. It is their community, and we are here to, to support that trailblazer community, but it is all about the people at the end of the day. And that's been, I think, one of the most important lessons that I've learned over my 12 years.
[00:15:35] Kris.
[00:15:36] Dan: One of my favorite stories from the early Ohana days was the protest of the cloud. Must go on. Can you tell the listeners out there about this entire story? I'll definitely add to it along the way, but I want you, I want to hear it from your point of view. Oh,
[00:15:54] Kris: it is. It is an amazing story. So well, part of the story happens before I, before I came to sell.
[00:16:00] So thank you. And before you were at Salesforce, Salesforce has been known for what we know. We like to do guerrilla marketing. We like to really make a statement and years and years ago, it was probably, I'm going to guess in maybe 2000. Three, 2004, Salesforce picketed outside of one of our competitors conferences.
[00:16:21] And we had, there were signs that people were holding like protest signs, and it was just this amazing, amazing kind of marketing or guerrilla marketing effort that they did. And then fast forward, gosh, probably eight years later. So when this was my first year at Salesforce, this was 2011. We had something similar happen where it was one of our competitors conferences and Marc Benioff.
[00:16:49] Our CEO was meant to speak at that conference. And then somehow the night before his keynote got canceled. And so we decided to go back to our roots, go back to our guerrilla marketing and we decided to stage a protest. And that next day we overnight, we made these signs that said things like cannot stop the cloud.
[00:17:14] And the cloud must go on. We showed up outside of the conference and we got back to our. And we protested and it was, it was one of the number one, it was my most fun day I've ever had at Salesforce, but it was also just like an amazing guerrilla marketing effort. Um, and Dan, you were there. I know this was, this was so much fun.
[00:17:35] We just, we loved
[00:17:36] Dan: it. What I loved about that so much. You know, we were supposed to do deliver a keynote at this conference, but since it was canceled, we were like, we still need to deliver the keynote, but where are we going to go? Well, we had, uh, we rented out the restaurant at a hotel across the street and.
[00:17:55] We actually streamed and delivered the keynote they're full on with live demos, the guest speakers seating and the protest was happening just right outside. I think it was one of those. That's an Ohana moment to me that. Really stands out and, you know, as we were talking, it just, it came to mind where I'm like, oh my gosh, you were front and center, Kris, you were, I think you like you and Sean Alpert were on, you know, TV, picketing.
[00:18:24] And, um, we
[00:18:25] Kris: made up a cheer at one point.
[00:18:29] Dan: That's awesome.
[00:18:30] Kris: I love that moment. Yeah, that was, you know, it was really fun. And I think when you, when you think about. Just the, the memories that we all have and some of the great things and innovative things that we've done together, that that is top of mind for me and, and how quickly we can.
[00:18:45] Act together. That was something that I got the email or texts about this, I think 8:00 PM the night before. And we showed up there at 8:00 AM. The next morning signs made, ready to go. T-shirts I think we had umbrellas too, cause it started raining and it was, it was. Just phenomenal. The power of, you know, a group of people who are passionate, who are innovative and can roll fast together and cheers to you, Dan, for getting together a keynote and a whole new venue in one day.
[00:19:15] Just incredible.
[00:19:17] Dan: So that was the entire team, but, but thank you. That was an incredible Ohana.
[00:19:21] Let's get into our next segment. What's cooking.
[00:19:33] So Kris. How you got to where you are now, and what's your journey been like to get to your current role?
[00:19:41] Kris: I have had many roles at Salesforce actually. I'm, you know, I'm someone who I get excited about a lot of things. I'm passionate about a lot of things, and that kind of turns into a lot of yeses and it kind of guides you there.
[00:19:52] And I think that's been a little bit of my career. My career journey at Salesforce is I get excited about something. And then I'm like, do you need help? Can I work on this? And that kind of guides you into your next path. And I started. Um, self cloud, product marketing. I got really excited about our events.
[00:20:09] I think Salesforce does the best events in the industry. And that actually brought me to working on what we call our campground, which is our presence of Salesforce at our events. I started working on our campground that led to my next role. And then I got really excited about the things that we are doing in mobile.
[00:20:27] This was something from my past role. I knew how important mobile was for our customers. And I got really excited about this mobile app that we are launching. And again, I was like, this is really cool. Can I work on this? Can I be part of this? And then I joined the mobile team. And so each thing of kind of like, I get excited about something and it kind of leads me into my next role.
[00:20:47] And that's the same thing that happened when I joined our admin relations team. I had heard about this, this admin relations team being started up, there was just a couple of people on the team and I knew the person who was running it. And I go to, I went to her and I was like, I think you need help and I can help you.
[00:21:04] And I'm really excited about this. And I used to be an admin. I speak their language. And that really led me into this whole audience marketing realm,
[00:21:12] Dan: And what are you
[00:21:13] Kris: working on currently? So today my, my role is trailblazer ecosystem and what that means is helping anybody become a trailblazer in the Salesforce ecosystem and see success, whether that is getting started with Trailhead, getting into our community.
[00:21:28] Becoming an admin or a developer. So any, anything that gets people excited and into our Salesforce ecosystem, that is the thing that our team works on. And our whole goal is to empower more people to become
[00:21:43] Dan: trailblazers. And how do you do that? I'm curious, how do you, how do you attract new trailblazers to the.
[00:21:51] Kris: Yeah. So a lot of our job is just, you know, sharing the opportunity. I, I shared, I was an accidental admin. It kind of fell in my lap and so many different trailblazers in our ecosystem have that same story where they kind of accidentally fell into it. And then they're just, they're so thankful. Like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe I fell into this amazing opportunity.
[00:22:10] And what we want to do is we want to make that less accidental. We want this to be a opportunity that people can choose the path pursue and go after it. And our team is working on. Creating those pathways, whether that is free learning through Trailhead or joining our community through mentorship. So finding those pathways for anybody to become part of the Salesforce ecosystem and find that success and change their lives and change their careers.
[00:22:38] This is what we're really all about. Like we want to empower more people. To have success with Salesforce. You know, we have so many great stories of trailblazers. Like you've probably heard the stories of folks like Zac Otero, who went from factory worker to analytics, admin, or. Tony. One is one of my favorite trailblazer stories.
[00:22:57] He's a new trailblazer. He worked at a sandwich shop. He lost his job during the pandemic. He found Trailhead and our community and he learned Salesforce. And now he's an admin and earning an amazing salary and he just completely turned his life around and we want more people to be like the Zakho Terros and the Tony winds of the world.
[00:23:17] And to see that success with
[00:23:18] Dan: Salesforce, shout out to Tony. Actually that he passed his service cloud consultant certification. So that was, yeah. So I just want to say a huge shout out to Tony. Congratulations. And that's pretty awesome. So, you know, Kris, we talk about the trailblazers being the change makers, especially in the Salesforce ecosystem.
[00:23:39] I'm curious as to, how do you think, what role does the trailblazer community play in the larger part of the whole.
[00:23:47] you've probably heard this, the IDC stats of 9.3 million jobs being created in the Salesforce ecosystem by 2022. And these jobs are being built and created because of trailblazers and they're being built and created because of folks like you, Dan, like I look at qualified is an amazing trailblazer in the Salesforce ecosystem built on Salesforce.
[00:24:07] Kris: And it's just, you look at the success that qualified as had, and you are growing, you are hiring people, you are creating more jobs in the Salesforce ecosystem. And that is what we want more of. Like those are, those are trailblazers that we want more of that are, that are. Nope, not only building their own careers on the Salesforce ecosystem, but creating that opportunity for other people, creating jobs for other people that is like the true trailblazer factor and scale that gets us really excited like that, that scale and that multiplier effect in the Salesforce ecosystem.
[00:24:41] Dan: So Kris, let's get back to your role. What's next for you and your role and how are you shaping the
[00:24:47] Kris: future? So top of mind for me right now is our TDX conference, which is our Salesforce developer conference. So we're bringing it back this year. So our team runs and leads this event. And I could not be more excited about we're doing with it this year.
[00:25:04] So we are making it bigger, making it better than ever. We're bringing it back in person. So it would be in-person and online, and we are really elevating TDX to be for all Salesforce developers are all the ecosystem. You know, traditionally TDX has been for core Salesforce developers this year. We are open-ended up and making it for.
[00:25:28] Slack developers for MuleSoft developers for Tableau developers for every single developer in the Salesforce ecosystem, because there is so much innovation and so much to learn in the Salesforce ecosystem. We really wanted to make this one Salesforce Devcon. So we're, we're elevating it. We're actually changing the name this year.
[00:25:47] We're calling it trailblazer DX because we really want to focus around that identity and that persona and the people. And so we are, we are rebranding, we're elevating it and we're making it for all developers in the Salesforce ecosystem. That's what we're working on right now. And we're very excited. We discussed the, save the date out today.
[00:26:04] So we are pumped.
[00:26:06] Dan: And when is the save the date?
[00:26:08] Kris: So TDX will happen in San Francisco on April 27th and 28th. So market in your calendars, it's going to be great. Well,
[00:26:18] Dan: I can't wait to be there.
[00:26:23] Let's get into our final segment. The future forecasts.
[00:26:36] Kris, what do you envision as the future of the Salesforce ecosystem?
[00:26:40] You
[00:26:40] Kris: know, the Salesforce ecosystem, I think is number one. I think there's just such incredible opportunity in the Salesforce ecosystem. When you become part of this ecosystem, you are part of. This lifelong movement. And there is so much opportunity.
[00:26:58] You know, Salesforce is constantly evolving and we're constantly innovating and there's always new things to learn. So this is, this is an ecosystem that you can join and you can grow with for your entire career. We have admins and developers. And people in sales and service who have been using Salesforce and been in the ecosystem for over 20 years.
[00:27:20] And that is amazing. They built their careers on Salesforce. And I just, I think what's exciting for me is just that is the future. Like it is going to continually evolve, continually innovate. We acquired slack last year. That is a whole new set of skills for those in the Salesforce ecosystem to learn.
[00:27:39] I'm sure there'll be future acquisitions in the future where there's more new skills to learn. And it's just, it is an ecosystem that you can always grow and evolve with and you can be part of for your entire career. And that's, that's what I'm most excited
[00:27:52] Dan: about. And we've spoken a lot about the trailblazer community.
[00:27:55] How do you see that evolving in the future? Is there maybe a platinum hoodie that's coming out? Like any, any spoiler alerts for the trailblazer community?
[00:28:05] Kris: No platinum hoodie that we're planning right now. I think gold is kind of where it's at. Dan. I know you've got, you got the gold heady. We just, I think there as we continue to grow and evolve the community, there's more focus on more personas.
[00:28:21] I think we've done a really great job. You know, creating some great community around, around admins and developers and marketers. And I think the future is really building up more of our, of our personas, our key personas, like bigger community for sales and service. And it, I think that is really the future for us is just that magic that, that we've seen bringing that trailblazer magic to all of our personas and having everyone have that home and that community.
[00:28:49] And, and just really adding more fuel to that is the future for the communities.
[00:28:55] Dan: You brought up personas, which, you know, we didn't even touch upon here. And, you know, I, you know, I, I actually brought Ruth here and people don't understand, you know, they think it's crazy. Oh, Salesforce is just making a lot of mascots, but I want you to explain, you know, what are these mascots?
[00:29:12] And for example, who's Ruth
[00:29:15] Kris: and I have, so I have some friends back here. If you can see, I have, see, I have Cody and I have. Cloudy over here. And I have, oh, I have Ruth as well and Astro and maximum mule. And, you know, I think people see these and they're like, okay, so they're they're fun, but, but there is, there's so much more to our characters than that.
[00:29:35] Our characters really embody the values, not only of Salesforce, but they embody the values of our community and they all stand for something you just held up. Ruth stands for our Salesforce architects, and we have COVID. Cody stands for our developers. We have cloud. Yes. You have Cody there. We have cloudy who is, um, county.
[00:29:57] The goat stands for our Salesforce admin. So all of these characters mean something and they really embody and they reflect our community. You'll notice we have, you know, there's male characters, there's female characters, there's gender non-binary characters because they really reflect the incredible diversity that we see in our community.
[00:30:16] And we want our community to see themselves in those characters. That's really kind of the thought behind the characters and what they really mean to our community. It's been incredible. Seeing the community embrace the characters. You know, people have gotten Astro tattoos. We see people making their kids birthday cakes with the characters on them.
[00:30:35] It is incredible to see how the community has just embraced the characters and really made them their own and, and really see themselves in the characters. now moving back into the segment of the future forecast, can you give us a prediction of where you see the tech industry and the CRM industry as a whole headed in the future?
[00:30:53] You know, some, uh, a trend of course, that we've all been seeing the last two years.
[00:30:58] Everything has gone digital first. And that was just, you know, the pandemic forces, everyone was kind of slowly moving there, but then two years ago overnight, we all had to go digital first. And I think that's, that's really where everything is going, is thinking digital first and every single thing that you do.
[00:31:16] And when I think about that, you know, I think about trailblazers and the people that help us get there help us, all of our companies, all of our customers. Become digital first. And you know, it's learning these skills, whether that is learning how to digitize processes, learning how to set up AI, learning how to build e-commerce platforms are learning how to build chat bots, to do customer service.
[00:31:39] These are all the skills of the future, and that is where CRM is headed. And, you know, when we think about the future of CRM and trailblazers and their role in that, it is. Learning those skills. And we, we teach those skills for free. Like we have Trailhead where anybody can learn these skills and anybody can learn those digital first skills and get one of those jobs of the future.
[00:32:01] That is where I really see, I see everything going. I see serum going there and I see trailblazers being the ones who are leading us there and having those skills to take, take our customers, take the companies using Salesforce into the future.
[00:32:16] Dan: And what is the future of Salesforce look like? I mean,
[00:32:18] Kris: Salesforce is growing like crazy.
[00:32:21] And I mentioned, I mentioned the stat of 9.3 million jobs created an ecosystem by 20, 26. And I think that, I mean, that. Absolutely phenomenal. Like you just think about that economic growth that Salesforce is creating as part of our ecosystem. And this is, you know, this is not just Salesforce jobs. This is jobs at partners like qualified.
[00:32:44] This are, these are jobs that trailblazers are creating. That's. I mean, I think that opportunity is the biggest opportunity that we have in the Salesforce ecosystem is just creating this whole new economy that people can be a part of and can literally change people's lives that can give them a new career.
[00:33:02] It can help them create generational wealth. They can write. Changed their lives for themselves and for their families. That's I think where the future is, and it gets me really excited. So
[00:33:11] Dan: last question. Any advice for an aspiring marketing leader of community?
[00:33:16] Kris: I would say my advice is this is, this is a lesson that I learned along the way, but is always thinking audience first, always thinking what your, what your audience needs, what they want and what they're saying and listen to them.
[00:33:33] You need to listen to your community, you need to follow where they're going. You need to follow, follow their lead and do not go against them because you're not going to go anywhere. And so just like saline, follow the wind, follow the waves, follow your community and listen to them.
[00:33:48] Kris: And that is going to be how you're going to get to the right place faster. And that's been one of the lessons that I've learned is just the importance of putting your audience first, listening to them and putting their needs first.
[00:34:00] Dan: I love that advice. Thank you for sharing that, Kris, this has been so much fun.
[00:34:05] I mean, before I let you go let the listeners know where they can find you and if there's anything else, is there anything else you'd like to share or plug with the community?
[00:34:13] Kris: So, first of all, anyone who isn't part of the trailblazer. Can join@troublesitatsalesforce.com become part of this amazing community that we're talking about.
[00:34:23] Part of the Ohana, which is what this talk is all about. And of course, um, I'm happy to help you along the way. You can find me at Twitter at Kris Landy. That's K R I S L a N D E. And I, you know, I love hearing people's stories of how they are succeeding in the Salesforce ecosystem and succeeding as a trailblazer.
[00:34:43] So please share your story with me. I love hearing that. And I can't wait to hear from you. Thank you so much, Kris. Thank you. Inside the Ohana is brought to you by our friends@qualified.com. The conversational sales and marketing company. That's on a mission to transform the way B2B companies sell. Go to Qualified.com to learn more.
[00:35:06] If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment to rate and review it and tell a friend. Thank you for listening.