Thomas Theunen, Head of Commerce at Forward and the first Belgian Golden Hoodie winner, shares practical tips for networking within the Salesforce ecosystem.
Meet Thomas Theunen, Head of Commerce at Forward and the first Belgian Golden Hoodie winner. Thomas is a Salesforce Instructor, Trailblazer, and advocate of building valuable connections within the Salesforce ecosystem. In this episode, Thomas shares practical tips for networking within the Ohana. Hear how he has built his own community and how to start one on your own!
Quote
“You can’t do everything. You can’t know everything. You need to rely on the knowledge of other people and not just within your own company, but also outside.”
Episode Timestamps:
*(1:33) - Ohana Origins: Meet Thomas Theunen
*(9:28) - What Does the Ohana mean to Thomas?
*(15:50) - What’s Cooking: Thomas’ Current Role at Forward
*(19:13) - Future Forecast: What’s in Store for the Trailblazer community?
*(20:04) - Advice for Aspiring Trailblazers
*(21:29) - Lightning Round!
Sponsor
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[00:01:32] Dan: Welcome to Inside the Ohana. I'm Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified. And today I'm joined by Thomas Theunen. Thomas, how are you?
[00:01:41] Thomas: I'm doing great. It's uh, hot weather, but we finally got some rain.So it's good for the plants. Not so much fun for the kids, but it's, I'm doing good.
[00:01:48] Dan: I, like I said, I'm excited about today because you are our first international guest. So inside the Ohana is going international. Where are you joining us from?
[00:01:57] Thomas: I'm joining you from, uh, from Belgium, a [00:02:00] small dot on the world map, but dreaming big dreaming, big.
[00:02:03] Dan: That's awesome. So I wanna dive right into our first segment. Ohana origins,
[00:02:12] Dan: So Thomas, how did you discover Salesforce and start your journey?
[00:02:18] Thomas: My journey started like in 2017, I, we were starting to look at Demandware at the time, just when Salesforce decided to do the acquisition.
[00:02:26] So my discovery of Salesforce was quite abruptly. Like we were looking at Demandware for BDC commerce. And then, so the, yep. We're part of sales. So
[00:02:36] Dan: get, gimme a little bit more details. Let's take a step back to, to understand like, what's your job, you know, what's your title? Where do you work? I'd love to learn a little bit more about that.
[00:02:44] Thomas: Yeah. So currently I am the, uh, head of commerce at forward. I'm in charge of about 60 people together with my colleague head of commerce young, and we have about 60 people just focusing on. B2C commerce cloud. So Demandware still back from the day. [00:03:00] And besides that, we also have a dedicated marketing cloud team and a CRM for sales, cloud service cloud, all other, yeah.
[00:03:06] The force.com based based product. And yeah, with that, we mainly focus on connecting those products. So if we're looking at marketing cloud commerce, cloud CRM to acquired products who are not built on the four.com. We still need to connect somehow and talk nice to each other. And we chose to make that our, our main focus and help get that 360 strict 360 view of, uh, of the customer basically.
[00:03:32] Dan: So you definitely were on the forefront of putting together the different platforms, but I mean, beyond that, you know, what was your initial impression of like Salesforce?
[00:03:43] Thomas: Yeah. So the, in the initial impression was, oh, wow, this is big. There's a lot going on. So many different products. And yeah, especially like three years ago, there was a gigantic boom in amount of products.
[00:03:55] Like order management came out loyalty, cloud vaccination, cloud , [00:04:00] whereas, and things like that, just more and more different products started popping up, uh, some rebranding happening across the way as well. And also in, in commerce cloud, there were acquisitions happening for headless. So there, there was so much information just coming at us.
[00:04:18] It was a lot to take in and a lot to, to look into. And that's when I really had to deep dive into the, into Salesforce, like, okay, what's. Possible. What's not possible. I started to look at certifications, get myself educated on Trailhead. See what's going on, doing some super badges, getting stuck, asking people for help.
[00:04:36] And that's when I really started to discover what was going on. Now, we had our community in commerce cloud, but I discovered a whole bunch of people on that other side of the acquisi.
[00:04:47] Dan: So you just dove right into Trailhead. You started getting your hands dirty, starting doing all the hands on projects with the super badge.
[00:04:54] That sounds, yeah. Awesome. And then that's when you just, it opened your mind up to. All [00:05:00] of these other things. How about, you know, the Trailhead community and the trailblazers, like, tell me a little bit more about your experience
[00:05:06] Thomas: there. First, I was just asking questions had a lot to learn. I'd never seen the core platform before, and we were starting to do our first project in service cloud.
[00:05:15] So I had to figure things out and there were a lot of helpful people. Like any question. At like free people within half an hour, like, okay, that's quick. I wasn't, I was expecting an answer in like two free days, like with other platforms where ask a question, hopefully within a week or by the deadline, you got an answer and no matter the day or time you, you got.
[00:05:36] Someone helping you out, which was awesome. Like once I felt comfortable, I said, well, I learned a lot over the past years and I see people repeating the same questions, but not always getting answers. Maybe I should get that trail blazing, Ohana feeling also within commerce cloud, because it's, it was not known.
[00:05:52] Like if you talk about Trailhead or trail blazing in the general sense, not a lot of people were interested in [00:06:00] that. If you look at the community in BTC commerce cloud. So I'm hoping that. Well in the last year, some of that has changed to get more people involved saying, Hey, let's go to Dreamforce. Let's go to an event.
[00:06:11] Let's talk a bit more. We got to, we got our first coffee chat, like last month. So hopefully we can get that feeling of, of trailblazing, Ohana feeling in there as well.
[00:06:21] Dan: Yeah. So you're trailblazing in the B2C commerce. So, um, that sounds great. And you're trying to create that community. So, Thomas, I want you to, I want you to brag a little, cuz it sounds like you've had such incredible success with Salesforce, you know, but what's one of the biggest successes that you're most proud of thus far.
[00:06:39] Thomas: Yeah. So I talked, talked about the company a little bit and what we focused on and I think one of the biggest successes is actually connecting all of those products together. Look at our projects. We have quite a few where we do the 360 customer view. And yeah, it's been working out great. I mean, we've been able to connect, connect all the dots together [00:07:00] and build our own connections.
[00:07:01] So there were some products available by Salesforce, but we decided to go our own way because there were some problems, unfortunately, and we've. Figured out our own route. And so far it's been working out perfectly
[00:07:12] Dan: On the opposite side of the spectrum. What would you say is your biggest lesson learned?
[00:07:14] Thomas: The same thing? It's been a real challenge, uh, when working with customer data and getting a free 60 view, especially with GDPR, et cetera, and all of those different rules. There's a lot to keep in mind and we missed a few. I mean the first iteration, we didn't catch all of the different scenarios that you could think of.
[00:07:33] And we hit the wall a few times, but we overcome the overcame, those, those consequences, and we found solutions. And you can only learn things when you're yeah. When you're in trouble, like when you need to learn new things that you've never done before and not everything will work out perfectly. And that's what happened, but you need to just step up and take on those challenges and just climb over those walls.
[00:07:57] Dan: If you could go back and talk to. Just [00:08:00] starting out with Salesforce. What advice would you give yourself?
[00:08:03] Thomas: Do networking? get to know people. Don't try to fix everything on your own. You're you can't do everything. You can't know everything. You need to rely on the knowledge of other people and not just within your own company, but also out.
[00:08:16] Side. There's a lot going on. I've said this multiple times to people like you live in a shell within your company, you have your projects, you have your way of doing, but there's a lot of people out there working with Salesforce, working with multiple products, doing it their way, and maybe we can learn from each other.
[00:08:31] Uh, and I should have done that earlier. Get to know people outside of forward. Uh, just don't ask your colleagues sitting next to you ask maybe like with the, within the community, like we're trying to do this and we're trying to do it this way. Is this the correct way? Just asking that open and if nobody answers that's of course, if there's privileged information there that's okay.
[00:08:50] But if someone says, well, we did it this way and that actually worked better, you learn something new, you learn a new way of doing things, and you can only do that by, by being open, [00:09:00] connecting with people and just, yeah. Having fun, just not just talking about work, getting to know people actually.
[00:09:05] Personally as well. And hopefully after two, three years of COVID, I can finally meet a, a lot of these people. I met a few already on connections this year, but hopefully now with Dreamforce, there's a bigger gathering coming over there. I can meet a lot more people that I've been chatting with video conferencing with in, in, in the flesh.
[00:09:25] Dan: Yeah. So I wanna ask you because a, about the meaning of Ohana, because I asked this of all my guests and people describe it a little bit differently here and there, but what is Ohana mean to you?
[00:09:36] Thomas: Well, for me, it's, well, the family outside of, of, of your regular, the bigger picture, the community that you build around you, that's Johanna for me, the people you get to know either in a professional or a semi-professional way on Twitter, on Trailhead, on, and just, yeah.
[00:09:54] Keeping a connection, not just one, one touchpoint, but a lasting connection. Just the [00:10:00] same people popping up every time on, on your Twitter feed or the questions or in your email. Like that's, for me, Johanna is like a group of people that you actually know. But yeah, it's, it's hard to describe
[00:10:12] Dan: I mean, but let's talk about like those connections that you've made, you have global connections. Where would you say some of your trailblazing friends?
[00:10:19] Thomas: I, I met a lot of people working in commerce club, both within Salesforce and outside of Salesforce. Some people even moving to the mothership and also met amazing people at conferences and also yeah. Became part of the shirt force. Yeah. Tell us more about that.
[00:10:33] Dan: I would love to learn. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about that.
[00:10:35] Thomas: Yeah. So I, I, I knew that existed. Like I, I ordered shirt like in, I think 2020, like the one I'm wearing right now felt like this is great and it's supporting it. So it's. And every shirt you buy, all of the profits go to a nonprofit that changes every four months that's selected on a Twitter poll.
[00:10:55] And once the war in Ukraine broke out, I was like, okay, I [00:11:00] wanna do something, but why reinvent wheel, if there's already stuff going on? And I thought, okay, maybe one of the ways to integrate commerce more into the Salesforce Ohana is maybe we should actually do a commerce flavor. T-shirts as well for. For shirt force, because there were none, you had data tribe you had for yeah.
[00:11:20] Metadata at the core platforms, shirts for that, but nothing actually related to B2C or B2B commerce cloud or anything related to commerce in general said, well, let's submit some designs and try to get some. Some vibe going to, to support a good cause to help people escaping the war or to help them find safe passage to other countries.
[00:11:42] And that's why I just contacted Todd and said, well, I couldn't contact America. I contacted sure force and said, I have this idea. I want to submit some designs and can we get the profits going to something to support Ukraine? And then in next vote, I pushed everyone. Hey, votes for something to, to support for this cause.
[00:11:59] And we won. [00:12:00] And I, I submitted to those, those commerce designs. So I think I have two on my name now, one world, one Salesforce, Ohana rocks, and actually makes sense. We did quite our best to make sure that it, it was according to the rules of world and one for headless.
[00:12:15] Dan: And yeah, you are one of the people representing what I'll call the trailblazer community. And like, this is just another Testament to the value of the community doing good out there. So before we get into our next segment, you kind of touched upon this with your. With your trip to connections that you didn't even know why you're being flown out to Chicago, but are there any special Ohana moments that are a little behind the scenes that you wanna share?
[00:12:40] Maybe your hoodie story.
[00:12:42] Thomas: Yeah. So the Salesforce MVP program is where the community can actually submit people who contribute to the community and help others and have the trail blazing and Yohan feeling. And our multipliers as they call it, like they share their knowledge and they help people with their careers or their personal lives [00:13:00] and people can vote.
[00:13:01] To get people selected into the program and then Salesforce filters out because they get so many D so many submissions. There's still a council. I think somewhere behind the scenes that picks out people either for reelection, because you need to be reelected every year, I'm think or new people to do the MVP program.
[00:13:18] And suddenly I get a message saying, well, are you going to connections? No, I chose Dreamforce. Like I, I went to connections in 2019. I wanna give other people the chance to, because for us Belgium, to the us to go to these convent, it's not a cheap undertaking. It's not, if we have one in Brussels, it compared to one in Chicago.
[00:13:37] Well, it's a lot, a lot of difference in time and cost. So I said, no, I'm gonna let someone else go. And then a week later I got a message. Yeah. I need a meeting. And I go to the meeting of expecting maybe a question to submit some sort of talk and still go and said, You need to come. I can't tell you why, but you need to come over.
[00:13:55] The compelling offer was made. I couldn't say no anymore. And I went not still, [00:14:00] not, not knowing. So they said, we're gonna have you put on the keynote. You're gonna have a four minute interview about you, trailblazing telling your story. Try to put five years into four minutes is not an easy task, but I said, okay, I'll be on a keynote.
[00:14:12] I, I can't say no to that, but. I got some meetings beforehand and I should have put the dots together, but I still didn't. I had a one hour and a half prep for four minutes. um, went to connections and just sitting there waiting for my four minutes, which became three minutes or was five minutes and became four minutes, just like a minute, a half hour before I started.
[00:14:36] Just telling my story. And then suddenly after I was done, it's like what fits with a t-shirt because I was advertising shirt for as usual. So what goes with a t-shirt's like a hoodie and then suddenly just coming up with that hoodie is like, okay, technically I already knew a, a minute beforehand because they put it on the slides.
[00:14:54] Like you can see the slides when you're sitting there for the next and they actually put good golden hoodie [00:15:00] recipient Thomas, before I actually went over as like sitting there. And in front of me, usually they put some golden hoodies there it's like with thumbs up, like, eh, it's like, and I was like, okay, act surprise.
[00:15:12] this is happening.
[00:15:13] Dan: That's I love it. That's incredible. And how did you feel after you got it?
[00:15:16] Thomas: Amazing. I never got so much attention in my life. so, and a lot of people touching the golden hoodie while walking by. So there was quite special occasion. Like I've never expected that that to happen. Like it's a nice recognition for the amount of work or time spending in helping people.
[00:15:34] It's not my goal. It was never the goal to get this golden hoodie, but it's an amazing experience just being on stage alone and then getting that golden hoodie. Pretty amazing. Well, huge.
[00:15:46] Dan: Congratulations on getting the golden. Hi, thank you. Is definitely quite an honor. Let's get into our next segment. What's cooking.
[00:15:58] Dan: All right. [00:16:00] Thomas you are now the head of commerce at Ford. Talk about how you got to where you are now and what your journey has been like in your current role.
[00:16:06] Thomas: Well, beforehand, let me go back 11 years while I was still a Java developer for inter shop at different e-commerce platform.
[00:16:13] I did that for six, seven years and then made the switch to Demandware because I was looking for something new after six, seven years of doing the same development, I thought I wanna try a different e-commerce platform. See what's up there and ended up with Demandware then becoming Salesforce, BDC commerce cloud.
[00:16:27] So we went. From in five years, from five people to 100 about, uh, going to 120, uh, soon. So we grew quite rapidly, which meant that some people needed to take a lot of people under their guard. And I was already. Using my time, uh, that I, I, I was not working on tickets to share knowledge within the company. I was already helping other people.
[00:16:52] I was making sure everyone had all of the tools. They needed to answer questions from customers, et cetera, with the remote work. And then I [00:17:00] basically went from looking after a team of five people and they asked, well, would you look after everyone in the commerce cloud, which is now. Even after I took on the role last year, which when it was still 20 people, I now have 60 people to watch out for it.
[00:17:15] So that's becoming a lot. luckily I have help from my colleague, but still two people to watch. 60 people is still, uh, still quite, quite task. That's why I started the blog. I started answering people's questions. I saw that as a way to keep myself involved. I started teaching for Salesforce as well for the architect course for B2C commerce cloud, which will force me to.
[00:17:36] Up to date with what's going on. So from a technology
[00:17:39] Dan: perspective, you know, what challenges are you seeing now at forward and how are you applying? What you've learned from Salesforce to those challenges
[00:17:46] Thomas: from a commerce perspective is the move to headless. So we are now splitting up, going from a monolithic architecture, going a bit technical here, but going from basically everything in one platform, which is Salesforce to [00:18:00] a more composable architecture, which means combining.
[00:18:03] Multiple products from Salesforce and also products outside of Salesforce in a correct way, which is the more products there are, the more challenging they become. So what is next for
[00:18:14] Dan: you and how are you shaping the future?
[00:18:16] Thomas: Yeah. So we are looking at different products within forward, but I am really diving deep into the headless, the PWA kit or the composable storefront that it's been rebranded to this or last week.
[00:18:28] Was it last? No last week was rended and that's my main focus for now because it, it offers a lot of technical challenges for me. And I do love a challenge. And heading into that composable way of working is something new for, well, not new. I've been doing it a little bit for the past 10 years, but digging into that more deep diving is, is what I'm gonna be doing and helping people along the way.
[00:18:50] I'm writing blog specifically for this topic, because it's a challenge for a lot of people to head that, to that composable PWA kit slash composable storefront area. [00:19:00] And I'm sharing my learnings within forward. And. It's great to
[00:19:03] Dan: hear that you're obviously contributing back to the community that you obviously learned quite a bit from.
[00:19:09] So, uh, I love hearing that let's get into our final segment, the future forecast.
[00:19:16] Thomas: So where are we headed? Where the forecast predicts the future.
[00:19:23] Dan: What do you envision as the future of the Salesforce?
[00:19:26] Thomas: E. Oh, it is gonna grow in the future. If you're still looking at the amount of different products that have been added to the ecosystem, it's giving a lot of people, more options to join the Salesforce ecosystem in different segments, not just what the products were five years ago, which means that it will attract more people and a lot more questions, because like I said, the ecosystem is becoming more and more.
[00:19:49] Complicated a lot more products added and a lot of requests are to combine all of these products together, which comes with complexity, which will require a lot of experienced people or [00:20:00] people willing to take on those challenges head on, but there's still going to be a growth.
[00:20:04] Dan: Yeah. What advice do you have for those aspiring individuals that wanna join the
[00:20:08] Thomas: community?
[00:20:08] Yeah. I said this earlier, get connected. Don't stay in your bubble. Put yourself out here. Ask questions, join a community, ask a question. There's physical meetings happening again. So all of those trailblazer communities on physical locations are happening again or remotely. There's coffee chat that you can join, where you can ask questions.
[00:20:27] There's Salesforce organized coffee chats or webinars where you can ask questions. Those are. Those are the places to be. Don't stay within your bubble. Don't be afraid. Those ask a dumb question. There are no dumb questions. So put yourself out there and if you don't get an answer, okay. Then nobody knew the answer.
[00:20:45] So you're not alone. Yeah. But looking at the amount of people, helping each other, you should get your answers pretty quickly or be pointed in the right direction. So put yourself out there. There's a lot of different channels to choose from. You have discord, you have [00:21:00] slack channels, you have chatter groups.
[00:21:02] How many
[00:21:02] Dan: slack channels are you a part of? I'm curious.
[00:21:05] Thomas: do you mean in one, one organization or the amount of orgs that I'm part of? Yeah. The amount of orgs that you're a part of. Yeah. About 12 and probably around 60 or 70 channels that I'm monitoring for interesting stuff to happen or probably even more.
[00:21:20] And that's just the slack channels. well,
[00:21:23] Dan: I mean, that is definitely the power of the community, but before letting you go, let's have fun with a little quick lightning round. You,
[00:21:30] Thomas: the lightning, you like, like, like a best,
[00:21:37] Dan: your
[00:21:37] Thomas: favorite Salesforce product. P E commerce cloud
[00:21:42] Dan: favorite Salesforce
[00:21:43] Thomas: character roof.
[00:21:45] And why? Well, she she's one of the latest editions, but the architect, which is what I profile myself most with. So once she came out as like, yeah, that's the character. I mean, you could see her right behind me right there in that I know couldn't order or I [00:22:00] couldn't order it in Europe. It's not available.
[00:22:01] I'm not sure if it's now available all of the roof. Memorabilia slash swag is not available, unfortunately, in Europe.
[00:22:08] Dan: Well, you should bring another suitcase with you to dream for just an empty one. Cause I'm sure you're gonna get a lot of swag. That's a pro tip
[00:22:16] Thomas: right there. Okay. Yeah. I've heard that.
[00:22:19] Especially because last time there was like the big Cody, I think. Yeah. Yeah. People had to, I mean, I mean, you
[00:22:25] Dan: could see, you could see the big, you know, as Astro behind me and the big Sasse. Yeah. Favorite brand of anything besides
[00:22:30] Thomas: Salesforce, favorite brand that. Good one actually probably. Ooh, that's actually a good one right now, apple, but I switch my favorite brand, like, like coffee brands as well.
[00:22:43] So the, I usually go all in with a specific brand. Like I, I make a pick, like, this is the best for me right now. And then just go all in
[00:22:52] Dan: awesome. Secret skill. That is not on the
[00:22:54] Thomas: resume. I can actually. Cook desserts quite well. I have taken [00:23:00] evening classes for chocolate baking, cookies, cakes, et cetera. So I can create quite a lot of desserts.
[00:23:07] well, maybe
[00:23:08] Dan: that suitcase you're bringing a dream for. You should bring a lot of goods and bring it to your friends. You know,
[00:23:12] Thomas: that's gifts. Yeah. Belgian chocolate is always a winner.
[00:23:17] Dan: Oh, 1000%, uh, you just won front row seat tickets to your dream event. What is it?
[00:23:22] Thomas: Actually, I am not so much for an event goer, but if I got tickets to go to Japan or anything in Japan, I would go immediately.
[00:23:30] I'm not, not a concert going person or an event going kind of well, an except for the last year. But if I could go to anything in Japan to give me an excuse of going there, I would just sign up immediately,
[00:23:44] Dan: maybe. Um, You know, the Trailhead classes you're teaching needs to be. To the community in Japan.
[00:23:51] Thomas: I, I already gave some hints, like when are the physical, uh, teaching moments going to be, uh, reinstated, but, uh, they did it that they didn't bite it.
[00:23:59] for [00:24:00] now. We'll see what happens.
[00:24:02] Dan: Well, Thomas, this has been so much fun, but before I let you go, let the listeners know where they can find you. And is there anything else you'd like to share or anything to. Yeah.
[00:24:10] Thomas: So you can find me on multiple locations on the Trailhead community. You can look up my profile, which contains links to my blog, my LinkedIn, my Twitter.
[00:24:18] So you can find me mostly active on Twitter or LinkedIn if we're looking at social media and yeah, the regular Trailhead channels. And also on the unofficial slack. So there's a, like I said before, there's an unofficial commerce cloud slack available where you can just apply for where there's a lot of people helping answer questions and sharing knowledge.
[00:24:38] There's people from Salesforce, people from other, from, from other companies, customers, partners, et cetera, which I would really, if you're in the B2 commerce space, I would suggest you. And of course search force. So if you wanna help a good cause please visit search force, buy a commerce related or any other t-shirt do you liking to wear at Dreamforce?
[00:24:58] Now's your chance to support a good [00:25:00] cause? Thomas will thank
[00:25:01] Dan: you so much. And I'll see you at Dreamforce.