Meet Josh Sangster, the Director of Product Management at Conga and a true go-getter in every sense of the term. He loves nothing more than seeing his colleagues achieve success, which is why he’s a Trailblazer mentor. In this episode, Josh shares advice for setting personal and professional goals so that you too can elevate your colleagues.
Meet Josh Sangster, the Director of Product Management at Conga and a true go-getter in every sense of the term. He loves nothing more than seeing his colleagues achieve success, which is why he’s a Trailblazer mentor. In this episode, Josh shares advice for setting personal and professional goals so that you too can elevate your colleagues.
Quote
“If it’s not good enough and if it only gets 60% done, the good news is that you didn’t only get 60% done-you got 60% of the way there. It’s a mindset change of driving towards outcomes in an iterative way.”
Episode Timestamps:
*(1:32) - Ohana Origins: Meet Josh Sangster
*(11:18) - What Does the Ohana mean to Josh?
*(15:40) - What’s Cooking: Josh’s Current Role at Cogna
*(25:14) - Future Forecast: What’s in Store for the Trailblazer community?
*(28:54) - Advice for Aspiring Trailblazers Mentors
*(30:04) - Lightning Round!
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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[00:01:32] Dan: Welcome to inside the Ohana I'm Dan Darcy, chief customer officer at qualified. And today I'm joined by Josh Sangster. Josh, how are you?
[00:01:39] Josh: I'm doing great. I'm still confused. Why I'm here. Dan? You said you wanted me to talk about what I've contributed to the ecosystem. And I was like looking around and I was like, I don't know, not too much, but if Dan wants to talk to me, I better go talk to him.
[00:01:52] Dan: Well, I mean, I'm just really excited. We're gonna get into it today. So I wanna dive right into our first segment. Ohana origins.
[00:02:07] Josh: Josh, how did you discover Salesforce and start your. Uh, it's a great question. And it's a fun one. And I think it's relatable to a lot of folks.
[00:02:12] I was working at a mid-size company and in the space that they were in, they're like one of the largest, uh, dental laboratory. So if you go to the dentist, you get an impression made of your teeth. They send the impression to a lab and the lab creates the teeth, sends it back to the doc. Doc drops it on your tooth.
[00:02:25] Out you go, right. Most of these, like dental labs are like six person companies out of like Jim's garage, you know? And it's like, that's sanitary, you know, like, okay. But I worked for one of the larger ones. And so we actually had a sales team and a budget and, you know, a reason to need a CRM. And we were using act, oh man, this thing, like it's an on-prem.
[00:02:44] And we had servers in the building. They were like downstairs and somebody's gonna be like, you had what in the, where? Like just go with it. Okay. They were on-prim in the building and. Act is running on a central database in the building. And sales reps are running a local version of the database on their laptops.
[00:02:59] And so what they would've to do every night is have to go home, sync their laptops so they could get their notes in and then hope that nothing bombed out, because if it bombed, it had to restart completely. There wasn't like a pickup where you left off. It was like, start over. And so you can imagine like their life was hell, which made my life hell as the marketing coordinator.
[00:03:16] And so I started doing some research and I was like, we desperately need like a modern. CRM. And we went with Salesforce. I did some research. I put together a business plan, you know, it was X dollars. And I said, but if we're going in and we're more inform. You know, I think this will help us, you know, work better with our customers.
[00:03:32] We'll know where their cases are. You know, reps are going into offices to see a doctor take 'em to lunch and the doc's going, you've effed up my last four cases get out. Right. And so like, we were having some embarrassing situations and I figured this will resolve it. And so it, and so that's, we endeavored.
[00:03:46] And I think that was the first lesson about the ecosystem. I think many people have joined the Ohana in this way, which is like, I have a problem. I'm resourceful enough to figure it. So I'm just gonna keep going with that, like method
[00:03:58] Dan: let's actually talk through. What year was this when you brought Salesforce into that dental company?
[00:04:04] Josh: Ooh, well, goodly, it would've been 2000 and, uh, 15. Okay.
[00:04:12] Dan: That's I mean,
[00:04:13] Josh: that's incredible. 2014.
[00:04:15] Dan: Yeah. What other things did it help you do? I mean, it sounds like you were more efficient, you know, with, with your daily job, but it obviously brought a new set of challenges, which is becoming an administrator. I mean, so what was, what was your initial impression?
[00:04:27] Just kind of getting into Salesforce that way?
[00:04:30] Josh: Well, I mean, you know, I looked at it and I, I said, okay, well, this is definitely challenging, but I gotta be honest with you, Dan. Like, I wasn't really loving being a marketing coordinator. Like. I got a marketing degree because I felt like I was gonna talk to people.
[00:04:45] Like, I, I didn't know, you know, and then I wasn't sure exactly where that was gonna lead. Right. I wanted to go to Nike and be the next, like big, you know, product marketing guy at Nike. That was my life's goal. And, and then I realized, you know, what that looked like was starting that that career path was like writing these articles about dentistry work.
[00:05:02] And I found that I hated it. To be completely honest with you. I really like solving problems and seeing the results right then and there. And I really like driving towards outcomes. And, and for me it felt like with marketing, I was just kind of like shooting things out into the wind and looking at like click metrics and going that's a win, but, but feeling very empty about the result.
[00:05:21] And so what Salesforce did for me is. While it may have made my job, like a little bit more technical at that company to be completely honest. What it did was make me go, okay, that's that? That's that's me right there. That's what I want to do. This is awesome. I like solving problems. I'm good. Working with computers, you know, this is, this is what I want to do now, now that I know.
[00:05:39] So like while yeah, sure. It made, it made my day to day life easier, but that company wasn't like, it was, like I said, it was a smaller company. This was a big change. I learned a little bit about enablement. Right? I learned some good lessons. And those were things I took with me, but I think the biggest takeaway was personal, which was holy cow.
[00:05:55] This is, this is what I wanna do for a living.
[00:05:58] Dan: And now we're gonna get into your career progression and everything there. But, you know, I want this time right now for you to, to brag a little because of, you know, since, since 2014 you've been working with Salesforce, you know, what, what would you say is the biggest success you've had while working with Salesforce or something that you're just really in incre like incredibly proud
[00:06:18] Josh: of thus.
[00:06:19] One of the world's largest apparel brands is one of our biggest customers on the product that I manage today. And most recently at Congo's customer and partner event called connect. Like last week, I was surprised they, they like the, the customer got on stage and gave me and the account manager on their account and award for customer excellence.
[00:06:35] And I think for me, that has to be, it that's the pinnacle right now, Dan, just, just like, so for me, like my, my approach has always been. I wanna win on merit. Like I want you to want to work with me because like the work we did was good and I want you to enjoy working with me, which it's hard to not, cuz I'm kind of a goofball and you know, whatever pretty good self-deprecating humor as well.
[00:06:58] So it keeps people nice and happy. You know, this is a huge enterprise account and, and having them. , you know, tell everybody, you know, Hey, this is awesome. And you know, these, these people, these folks were part of it and why we're here. And, you know, that was coming off of a massive renewal uptick. So for me, like overall, that was, that's been the pinnacle, I think so.
[00:07:15] And, and it was just last week, so I'm kind of som just kinda riding high
[00:07:19] Dan: on that one, to be honest. Yeah. You're still on the hike. Well, Huge's congratulations on that award and it is always nice when you're recognized for the hard work that. Put into something. And I mean, even, just even what you just said a few minutes ago of you being a, a complete problem solver.
[00:07:33] So, and, and, and seeing that come into action. So on the opposite side of the spectrum, though, what would you say is your biggest lesson learned?
[00:07:39] Josh: Oh, man, there are quite a few. And I think the biggest lesson is a, is kind of like a, a combination of lessons. So like as a young admin and then like, as a young consult.
[00:07:50] your job is to learn how to do the platform and to be, and if you're a consultant, it's how to take notes. Like if you're a new BA and a young person learn how to take notes and I'll hire you like tomorrow, like if you know how to take notes, you're, indispensably like valuable. And so blue Wolf did a great job of like teaching us how to take notes.
[00:08:07] And, and then the technology side, you just have to like digest it. Right. You just have to like take as in as much as you can. Start adding things to your toolkit, like flow, right when flow first came out, right. Just stick it in your toolkit. And that's hard, but, but what's interesting is like, it's easy to over rotate on solving things that with like a brilliant technical solve, but maybe you've gone too far.
[00:08:26] And, and so what you've done is you've created like a, something that's hard to maintain, uh, something that's hard to adopt, right? So like, these are all things that I saw myself make mistakes early in my career as a consultant. I'm like, no, yeah, I can solve that problem and it'll be badass. And then I, I lost track of just solving the problem.
[00:08:46] Just, just provide a result. And if it's not good enough, if it only gets 60% done, good news is you're not, you didn't only get 60% done. You got 60% of the way there. Right. And so like, it was, it's a mind, it's a mindset change of like driving towards outcomes in an iterative way is probably from what I have experie.
[00:09:08] the better way to go about it, right? Water falling puts too much pressure on you and typically it's wrong and you gotta start over and, and, you know, overbuilding over technical stuff just ends up with suffering, right? So I think the biggest lesson I've learned is, and the biggest mistake I've made is just, just solve the problem.
[00:09:24] First worry about the rest of it later, right? Start with the people, train them up, teach them, learn from them, then go to the process, right? What do we need to do differently to make this work better? And then only then. Do you go to technology and go, now let's customize it. Let's let's change it. Let's build it.
[00:09:43] And that, that's not a principle that others haven't said before, but for me, I really had to kind of, it took a few years to learn it. You know,
[00:09:49] Dan: I, I, I, and I love that lesson. I mean, in another other ways I've heard it said is like launch and iterate. So, you know, just to your point, Solve the problem, launch it and then iterate, cuz things are gonna continue to pop up and go from there.
[00:10:02] Yeah. Now if you, if you could go back to Josh, just starting out with Salesforce, what advice would you give to yourself?
[00:10:09] Josh: God, I think I'd give him a hug probably and be like who buddy you in for a night or two, you don't even know yet. And the other advice I would give would be just like calm down a little now.
[00:10:21] This old boy, it, you know, I think mental health is really important. This old boy has some struggles with it, and I've done a lot to, to kind of move through that. And I think I would've told myself to, to address my personal stuff earlier in my career. I think I sacrificed a lot of my personal health and my sanity sometimes as an early consultant.
[00:10:39] So to be completely honest, the thing that I would tell most people is not about Salesforce. It's not about how to do something better and would be more technical. It's like you cannot perform at your best. If you are not your. And for me that I was not at my best when I was working until 4:00 AM, huffing down a pack of cigarettes outside my apartment, trying to hide it, you know, from, from my, uh, partner at the time, you know, like that's not healthy, like don't do that.
[00:11:00] Don't do that. Young John Young Josh, or other young people in the ecosystem, like get your opportunity and maximize it, but don't do it at the cost of your health, uh,
[00:11:08] Dan: Sage advice. So I wanna ask you about the meaning of Ohana. And I asked this of all my guests because, you know, I feel like everyone describes it differently, but I'm curious, how would you describe the Ohana.
[00:11:18] Josh: Yeah. So I think, you know, this is such an interesting concept. And I remember when they first started talking about an Ohana and I did, so I like, you know, I did a little Googling and I said, okay, well, what does it mean? Right. So webs, our friends at Webster Def defined it as it's a Hawaiian word, which refers to a person's extended family, which can include friends in other important social groups.
[00:11:36] But if I think I sent you in an email, I bolded refers to a person's extended family, you know, I think for better or for worse. We spend a ton of time with the people that we work with and the people that we support as clients or the people that are vendors. Right. I spend an inordinate amount of time every week with people that work at Salesforce or customers of Salesforce or mine.
[00:11:55] And one of the things that I think that's so interesting is that without really even like going out and preaching it and saying like do this, like, but the environment that Salesforce created. this extended family, right? I'm I'm in a slack channel called the, like the Yohan slack channel. Right. I got invited and I watch, I think there's like, I don't even know how many members in there.
[00:12:17] It might be five figures with the people I watch. These people help each other solve problems all day long. And I think that for me is really the crux of this community. Like our users, our beneficiaries, our business stakeholders, our executive members, they see the results. They see the front. a lot of times they don't have the opportunity to see what's going on behind the scenes and how we get there.
[00:12:42] And I think this community does a really good job of providing that behind the scenes support. And to me, that's what it means is like the unsung heroes, the trench warriors. Are getting love from the rest of the unsung heroes and trench warriors in the community. I, it gives me chills. I love hearing that you like the trench warrior part, are you gonna make everything combat?
[00:13:01] Dan: Everything's it's funny because it's like, you know, I hear about these, you know, elusive slack channels that you get invite only. And it's like, you know, you know, only one day by get, like, how do you get involved and how do you get invited to one of those? And I think. It's to your point of like getting involved in the community and getting out there.
[00:13:21] Josh: Yeah. I was helping someone solve a problem and they said, Hey, you should join this slack channel. There's a conga channel on there. And I don't think anyone's paying attention. And I was like, well, hell I better pay attention. Like, it's my job to be like the product person leading our Salesforce product initiatives.
[00:13:33] I better be in that damn channel. Right. Like
[00:13:36] Dan: 1000%. Now, before we get into our next segment, are there any special stories or Ohana moments that are a little behind the scenes that you would wanna. Uh,
[00:13:44] Josh: I can share my first ever deployment story. How about that? Sure. So my first ever deployment was for Carfax and we had been building this extremely complex system where every day Carfax goes out and grabs from their, they have an executable service that lives on the computers of all the car shops in America and beyond probably at this point every day, that thing is running and grabbing and they're paying for it.
[00:14:06] Carfax is paying that shop for the data about their cars, right? So it goes up grabs that data and brings it into a data w. They wanted to then populate that data information into Salesforce. So it could be used by different reps to be able to call on different shops, et cetera. Right. It was for the shop side of the business and a project of that scale.
[00:14:24] And that complexity, there was a ton of code, a big batch job that was running every night and it , we were fine in the old adage, right. Or the old story of like it passed in U a T with flying color. And during the deployment, we kept getting a deployment error and it was, you know what, it started at 8:00 PM on a Friday night and 9:00 PM came and 10:00 PM came and 11:00 PM came and then midnight came.
[00:14:47] And my teammate at the time, who, I'll never forget, he looked at me and he's like, I know you're new. he's like, but this is ridiculous. And I think we should just go to bed and figure it out tomorrow. And I looked at him and said, no way in hell brother, we are finishing this thing tonight. Like, we're you and I are gonna get in the trenches and we're just gonna finish this.
[00:15:05] This is my, you know, this is our first deployment with this customer. We gotta make it go. Right. And I think, you know, that, like we talk about mental health and staying up till 4:00 AM to get a deployment done. That's another conversation. But like the fact that my teammate and I just looked at each other and we're like, okay, like we just gotta do this thing.
[00:15:21] I think that for me is probably the defining moment of like what it meant to me to join a team of people and like jump in on team.
[00:15:29] Dan: Yeah. And you guys were in the foxhole and get it done together.
[00:15:32] Josh: Right? We got it deployed. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it went through and we slept great that weekend, but boy, for a while it was rough.
[00:15:40] Dan: Well, let's get into our next segment. What's cooking.
[00:15:52] Dan: So Josh, you are now the director of product management at conga. Talk about how you got to where you are now and what your journey has been like to get to your
[00:16:00] Josh: current role.
[00:16:01] Yeah, I mean, I made a little bit of a joke about and alluded to it before, but I owe, I owe so much of my life and my success to blue Wolf, taking a chance on me. The interview process was amazing back in the day they needed consultants. And, uh, this guy by the name of Lou Fox came up with this program called blue Wolf beyond.
[00:16:17] And the idea. How do you put recurring revenue on services that isn't managed services, right? Cause there's a connotation with managed services that it's maintenance, right? That it's, it's about maintaining the blue off beyond program was about taking very skilled consultants who are both good at strategy and, and tech losing them upon your organization, defined projects to work on, and then building out those projects in your Salesforce environment and to be 20, whatever the hell I was and to be going in and learning that stuff.
[00:16:45] That's insane. Like looking back, I. They gave me the keys to the kingdom and I'm not sure they even knew if I knew how to drive yet. Like that's crazy. But I think that experience in of itself, despite being very hard, you know, was, was a very defining experience because the thing that I learned in a very early age in consulting and has always served me well, It's driving to outcomes.
[00:17:05] I learned that global folks were really heavily recruited, so I didn't stay there very long. Cause I had recruiters just knocking down the door. I went to a software company for a little while, was kind of did a lot of things, learned how to do, you know, technical pre-sales traveled a bit built. Some partnerships had a very interesting role, but ultimately my heart was just stumping to go back to Salesforce and to be back in the ecosystem.
[00:17:25] And so I took a job out here in Denver, came out here to work with a company at the time called Satera now called. Uh, globe, they went through two acquisitions, so it wasn't, AVIT now it's globe. And that's when I really got plugged into C. and so I took the same methodology and mindset and said, yeah, let's, let's go figure out problems.
[00:17:40] Lawyers are an interesting group to solve problems for. And so you're working with GCs and you learn very quickly, like what the word, like what litigious language sounds like when things aren't going well, , you're like, wow. I think I just got walked into a contract to dispute, but you know, I think the GC and the legal operations group has been a really interesting space to live in for me.
[00:18:00] And it's really built my career because I just said. , I don't really care what I do as long as it's on Salesforce. I'll figure it out from there. Now I, you know, I walked into a, a specialization in a niche that, you know, seven years later, it's in high demand and it worked out really well. And now I now I'm help helping chart the course for Congress products on Salesforce and, and beyond.
[00:18:20] And I think it's an incredible experience that I've had. The thing I would say, Dan, that I think is most important to recognize is like, I've been very fortunate in my life and I've definitely, there's definitely privilege that I have as a person. But it, that privilege resulted in opportunities, but I chased the opportunity down.
[00:18:36] And if there's anything that anyone in this in the Ohana needs to hear, it's that the Ohana lets that actually happen. I haven't worked really anywhere. That is such a merit based community in terms of advancement recognition, skill sets. Right? I mean, just look at Trailhead. Does anyone else have anything like this?
[00:18:51] Does anyone else lets you talk about who you are on a standardized level about how good you are than like a basic certification. It's a, it's a revolutionary. And so I. You know, when I look back at that, I think of just how fortunate I was that I picked Salesforce over sugar, or like, you know, what, what could have happened different.
[00:19:06] And I'm, I, I, I run from it. I'm like, I'd rather not think about it cuz I love my life now. Right. So yeah, I think, you know, the, the beauty of going through that consulting, I guess maybe I'm biased, but I would, every young person that's getting an ecosystem, I'm like go be a business analyst at a consulting implementation firm and cut your teeth.
[00:19:23] Cause that's what I did. And I think it's the best way. Right. But maybe not. But I think, I think that there's a lot to learn about those, that outcome driven. And I think thinking about that, whether consciously knowing it or not, because I really didn't start consciously digesting that outcome thing until recently that was seen by leaders.
[00:19:39] And that's what ended up giving me the opportunities that I have.
[00:19:42] Dan: You are certified. And you also have been part of the trailblazer program. I mean, why don't you talk a little bit about your certifications? And trailblazing.
[00:19:53] Josh: Yeah. Thanks Dan. Thank you for this opportunity to pump this up. This is something that's near and dear to my heart.
[00:19:57] First off, I used Trailhead to teach myself everything I know about initially about Salesforce. So I sit here today because Trailhead exists. Otherwise, I, would've never been able to figure out what to present in the blue Wolf interview process, cuz their interview is like build something and tell us why you, why, why it matters.
[00:20:12] Right? So like that's huge. And then the trailblazer program is new and I've been very fortunate. Uh, I signed up to be a mentor. I was selected and I've got to work with a few people and I've seen of those people, uh, you know, two of them or one of them works at conga. Got his admin cert I'm so freaking proud of him.
[00:20:27] For making a giant life change in his, you know, mid thirties, you know, he just completely said, screw this, I'm done doing this. I wanna do this. And he got his cert, he did trail, he got into our technical support group, and now he's in our professional services group at conga. And I'm like, it's amazing to see how that works.
[00:20:43] And it does work. And like, if you're out there and you're thinking maybe I should pick this up. If you've got even 2, 3, 4 years of experience, you are a trailblazer mentor. This is a young community, please. This is like very passionate to. This old boy would not have this job, this life. If someone didn't take a chance and offer up some mentoring, some coaching, whatever it might have been.
[00:21:03] If you look at me on paper prior to Salesforce, I'm very unimpressive. very unimpressive. Oh, come on. I don't know, brother. I don't know. I don't know. It wasn't great. Like, you know, put myself through school by working at McDonald's. You gotta do what you gotta do kind of thing. Right. So it wasn't great, but like, you know what blue Wolf said?
[00:21:20] I think there's some soft skills. And they gave me an opportunity. So take some people under your wing that, that sign up for this program, teach them what you need to know about the ecosystem. Tell them your story, give them examples of how you got to where you are. And let's bring more people into the ecosystem, into the Ohana, because to be completely honest, now that I'm in a role where I look at hiring, it's very, very dry.
[00:21:40] And if friends and family are asking, you know, how are you doing this? How are you living this sustainable and great life? And like, cuz I know like I live a wonderful life now because of. Help bring some folks on their journey. You know, I think it's, life's greatest joy to, to see people grow from where they, you know, what station they may have been born into in their life and see them go somewhere else.
[00:22:01] To me, that's life's greatest freaking joy is to watch people grow and get to be a part of that with the trailblazer program. It's pretty sweet.
[00:22:08] Dan: that's one of the special things that why I love Salesforce in the entire community is, is the, the way that people help lift each other up. And you, you did talk a little bit about the mentor program, but give us a little bit more around what, what exactly is it, like you said, there's an application process.
[00:22:24] If I were just listening to this, you know, and I'm, I'm sitting there in a different role, not in Salesforce. Like how, how would I take advantage?
[00:22:33] Josh: That's a great question. I think, you know, what I think you can do is you can go right to the Salesforce website or type in, you know, trailblazer mentorship program in your favorite search engine.
[00:22:41] And it's gonna bring you to a landing page to walk you through, getting to be a part of that. And I recommend giving it a try. There's no commitment other than trying it, and then being a good mentee by showing up to the calls with your mentor. There's an entire program that Salesforce has put together.
[00:22:55] It's not like they're not just a bunch of MES running around just free, you know, just freewheeling it and doing whatever we. There's a whole program. There's a feedback process. There's lessons, there's there's there's stages. And so you get a great plan of how to get into the community. That's just like a nice template, but you also get the personal touch of a mentor who can help guide you through that process.
[00:23:14] Dan: and, and I love hearing your story, Josh, because you know, just like you, you know, I, I didn't come from much and I, I didn't have Trailhead back then. I had what was called help and training back in the day, uh, when I started to learn Salesforce, you know, uh, as an, as a, a young budding admin, but it is incredible what has been built for a lot of people out there.
[00:23:35] Now, now, going back to your. You know, at, at Congo, what challenges are you seeing now and how are you applying what you've learned from Salesforce to those challenges over the
[00:23:45] Josh: last five, six years, we've gone from working with the GC and a paralegal to the VP of legal operations and their team. And that's a different change.
[00:23:56] And I think what's happening in the ecosystem specifically in the legal space is what people have realized is that this, this there's actual, there's a lot of value to gain and. In the contracting process and people are starting to see more and more of that. And what they're realizing is there's a systematic way to approach this thing.
[00:24:13] And if you do that, you can really reduce risk. But what has gotten harder is what do I do once I have a contract? What people haven't done yet. And man, I. I'm I know sir, that somebody, any of my competitors out there, you can come and get it now, but I'm, I'm gonna go ahead and share a little love here for you.
[00:24:30] Maybe I'll give you an idea. Maybe you can catch up. I don't know. The thing that I'm seeing is that we don't do a great job. Anyone of like what is actually in the legalese and that's the challenge because once we figure out and we're, we're scary, close. I, I know y'all watching, sir. I see you, boy. We're scary.
[00:24:49] Close on. Being able to understand lead the legalese. And extract those obligations. And now you're not, now we're talking about something different. We're, we're, that's where it's gonna go. And that's, what's gonna be really interesting in our space because you're gonna see the ability to quantify the value of what we're doing at a much bigger rate.
[00:25:09] And I think you're gonna see that more prevalent soon.
[00:25:14] Dan: What is next and how are you shaping the future?
[00:25:17] Josh: You know, it's so important to me. that all these people I meet in legal ops, like the clients that I've met, these folks like these, they work really hard and like their jobs aren't easy, right?
[00:25:28] Deciphering what lo lawyers have said in a contract and then arguing about it is not an easy job. And I want to see that work, the value that comes outta that work kind of come to the forefront. So my goal and what I'm working on is really just making sure that that middle office stuff is not missed.
[00:25:44] Salesforce can solve so many challenges. So many people look at it and like, they go, you know, sales force and I'm like, well, the contract is part of the sailing process, but I don't care. I have built a budgeting app, a personal budgeting app on a Trailhead org one time, just for fun. Right? You can solve all sorts of problems with the platform.
[00:26:04] So really what I think I'm doing is just trying to be a good evangelist for like, Hey, this is a great place to solve problems, to have a single system that solves as many problems for a business as possible. And I think the other contribution I'm gonna make in time over time will be. We'll call it the concept of an obligation and a contract.
[00:26:20] I think, I think I might. That might be where I, this old boy strikes gold, to be honest. We'll see.
[00:26:26] Dan: Awesome. Well, let's get into our final segment, the future
[00:26:29] Josh: forecasts. So where we headed, where the forecast predict of future.
[00:26:40] Dan: Now, what do you envision as the future of the Salesforce ecosystem?
[00:26:44] Josh: So what I see is like what I'm trying to do and what I'm seeing out there in the ecosystem with like this monday.com is the, their second biggest value prop is that there's 200 plus out of the box, potential business process templates that you can just use at your own leisure.
[00:27:00] And I think that's, that's what you're gonna see more of is this middle ground between like Salesforce code. And then a managed package, which has managed package code and you can't touch either of them. Right? You can't really mess with it. But what we're, what I might see in the middle is packages of, of flow some fields, maybe some con product in there to be able to drag a goal.
[00:27:23] You know what? I am a Salesforce CBQ customer. I think it'd be nice to know. What conga recommends is the out of the box contracting process. So I'm gonna click a button and that's gonna deploy metadata templates, all the things that I need for a full solution. And then I could just plug in my template and now I've cut my implementation time down three quarters, and I did it in a sandbox.
[00:27:43] So if it doesn't work, I can uninstall it or just delete it and start over. Or if I want to customize it, there's a place for me to start from. And I think this is what we're gonna see more of is like, so more,
[00:27:52] Dan: more componentization of, of like use cases and flows if you will. So I, I love that. I love that vision.
[00:28:00] Now. Now, can you give us a prediction of what you think the trailblazer community is gonna look like in the future?
[00:28:05] Josh: I think we're gonna see more in person kind of events. The other thing I would say is I think we're going to see the rise of the individual contributor. Most other ecosystems have seen.
[00:28:16] you know, think of fiber.com. Right? Think of, think of like these kind of methods. I think soon enough, you're gonna start seeing individuals on the app exchange or in the trailblazer community who have their own process charts or their own, like I just said, right. Their own deployable out of the box methods.
[00:28:33] And I think the individual is going to have the opportunity to maybe, maybe rev revenue make, make some revenue with that or to build their personal brand. Right. I don't think everyone's gonna have to be a consultant at a consultant shop anymore. And my I, my SI friends are coming at me. I can see them running towards me, but you know, I, I just,
[00:28:53] Dan: I love, I love that vision.
[00:28:54] I think that's an incredible vision for even Trailhead to, to think through. Now, what advice would you have for aspiring individuals?
[00:29:01] Josh: Like I said, at the beginning first and foremost, be the best version of yourself, please. I can't watch anymore. Colleagues go through hell. Like I just can't, I can't stop a kid for them and I don't want to, I can't do it anymore.
[00:29:14] I can't watch any colleagues go through the 60 to 80 hour work week and call me crying and you know, a cigarette hanging outta their mouth and they don't even smoke. Right. Like, I, I can't do that anymore. Please don't do that to yourself. Take care of yourself. Number one, number two would be, uh, ask for opportunities, be as hungry as you can, and don't be afraid to make a.
[00:29:34] I got the opportunity at blue Wolf and had no freaking idea what I was doing. All right. I had no idea. I stay up till 4:00 AM. Ripping six. Here we go. Again. 4:00 AM ripping six building like this, this demo for them and just going on Trailhead going. Yeah. That'll work and throwing it into the environment and trying to figure out how I'd make it work and make it come together.
[00:29:51] If you gave it an opportunity, stay up before I am ripping six. No, I'm kidding. Go full in on the, on the chance to, to get into this ecosystem and don't hold anything. You know, a little bit will go a, a long way
[00:30:04] Dan: now before letting you go, let's have fun with a quick lightning round. Yeah,
[00:30:08] Josh: I, I was looking forward to this one.
[00:30:09] This'll be good. You
[00:30:10] Dan: lightning,
[00:30:11] Josh: you like lightning best.
[00:30:18] Dan: Okay. You ready for this? Alright, let's do it. Favorite Salesforce product.
[00:30:22] Josh: Ooh. Flow by all means. I built my whole career on it. Classic
[00:30:26] Dan: or lighten.
[00:30:27] Josh: If you say classic, you're wrong at this point? Lightning favorite Salesforce character. Um, I can't remember the name of the bear, but we called him swimmy bear, cuz in like, sorry, co it's.
[00:30:37] Cody. Cody. Yeah. Cody was like, we called him swimmy bear cuz in the summer when he was like paddling around.
[00:30:42] Dan: Favorite brand of anything besides Salesforce.
[00:30:45] Josh: Ooh. Now my number one shoe brand is Nike always in forever. I love my shoes. That closet right there behind me is literally a shoe closet, cuz I have a problem.
[00:30:55] Dan: Secret skill, not on the
[00:30:56] Josh: resume. Ooh, I am a mean, mean smoked barbecue chef I'm from the Southeast. Now I was born with it. So.
[00:31:04] Dan: Uh, I mean, one day let's let's do it. You just won front row seat tickets to your dream event.
[00:31:08] Josh: What is it? Oh, man, I think I answered this in the email and I don't even remember what I said.
[00:31:13] Cause I was like, no, it was so good. I, I like sat and cried at the fact that I wasn't gonna get to do it. Right. But no, it's sitting at the green, uh Greenside you know, front row of the Greenside at 18 at Augusta during the masters. And if I could do it at any time, I'd like to go back to when tiger came back in.
[00:31:28] It was on my 30th birthday when he won that, when he came back for his last masters, I wanna be right there in the front so I can cry like a baby in the front row and watch him do it, Josh. I
[00:31:36] Dan: mean, this has been so much fun, but before I let you go, can you let the listeners know where they can find you?
[00:31:41] And is there anything else you'd like to plug?
[00:31:43] Josh: Yeah, I think, like I said, the trailblazer thing is my biggest and most important thing than I can plug the E the ecosystem needs more people and I want to meet you and I look forward to it. Oh, and you can find me on LinkedIn. Do Twitter or it's stuff, but you can find me a Dreamforce.
[00:31:56] If you see me just say hi, I'll probably be wearing an obnoxious shirt with birds on it and making bird noise. And, uh, yeah, it's find me a Dreamforce. Find me on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to talk to anybody. Well, thank you so much,
[00:32:05] Dan: Josh, for your time
[00:32:06] Josh: today. Yeah. Thank you.