Salesforce Admins Podcast

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Douane James, Salesforce Application Product Manager. Join us as we chat about his Dreamforce presentation about how reducing profiles in your org can enable faster deployments. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Douane James. How permission sets can help you reduce Salesforce profiles in your org Douane’s giving a talk at Dreamforce this year so I was excited to get him on the pod and hear more. He recently went through the process of reducing the number of profiles in his org from 11 down to only 2, so his talk is centered around why you can and should do the same. I know I don’t need to tell you this, but Salesforce best practices change over time. Most Salesforce orgs are built to work right now, which is how you can wind up with technical debt. For example, permission sets have become a much more elegant solution to the problems we used to solve with profiles. Sounds like a big project, but Douane’s here to tell you that reducing the number of profiles in your org is not as hard as you might think. Profile footprint reduction speeds up deployment A few years ago, Douane’s organization started using a new dev ops process. And while this made it easier to identify what needed to be built and do it quickly, he couldn’t help but notice how long the deployments were taking. More often than not, the delays were related to configuring profiles. He realized they needed to do an overhaul and reduce the number of profiles in their org. The first step was to get buy in. For Douane, the key was to emphasize how much quicker his team would be able to respond to requests if they spent time on cleaning up profiles. It also helped that they were committed to gradual improvements over time. Profile footprint reduction isn’t something that happens overnight, but it takes less time than you might think if go step by step. How to move from profiles to permission set groups Douane and his team set out to move everything they could from profiles into permission set groups. They identified a representative for each user role they could interview to make sure everything was still working as intended throughout the process. When you’re looking at your existing profiles, you need to find out: What are the permissions in the profiles? What permissions are common to each job function? Are there any special cases? For users that need a lot of special access, Douane recommends creating a “heavy” permission set that allows you to give them exactly what they need. If Douane has one message for you, it’s that the hardest part of reducing their Salesforce profiles was getting started. And the impact was felt immediately in terms of much quicker deployments and better security. Make sure to catch Douane at Dreamforce and subscribe to the Salesforce Admisn Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailhead Module: Permission Set Groups Trailhead Module: Data Security Best Practices   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Douane on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jason Atwood, CEO and Co-Founder of Arkus. Join us as we chat about how to land your first Salesforce Admin role, from where to find good opportunities to how to prep for the job interview and more. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jason Atwood. How Salesforce Admins should split their learning time We’re talking with Jason because he spends a lot of time interviewing and hiring people for Salesforce roles. So if you want to be a Salesforce Admin, how should you split up your learning time? Jason recommends following the 20/30/50 rule. Spend 20% of your time on Trailhead, 30% on acquiring certifications, and 50% on finding some way to gain experience. This split corresponds to how important they are on your resume. Trailhead: Becoming a Ranger is priority one, followed by getting some Superbadges. Take the time to set up your profile with a photo, a description of yourself, and a custom URL so that you look like you’re an active member of the community. Certifications: When is the best time to take a Salesforce certification test? As soon as possible! If you don’t get it this time, you can use your results to help you prep for the next exam. And if you do pass, you can get the next cert sooner. Gain Experience: Volunteering isn’t the only way to get experience. You can enroll in a program where you build mock projects in Salesforce, or just build something on your own. The important thing is to have projects you’ve built in Salesforce that you can demo in your job interview. Interview preparation and skill assessments When you’re going for your first Salesforce job interview be ready for some sort of skill assessment. Time pressure is usually a factor in these tests, so Jason recommends doing a practice run. Talk to a friend, find out what kind of data they collect, and then give yourself a day to build them an app. It could track the books they’ve read or the distance they’ve run, the important thing is that you don’t know what it’s going to be before you talk to them.  All admins are consultants It’s also important to realize that an interview isn’t just about showing your skills—it’s about showing who you are. It’s a chance to listen and empathize with the person on the other side of the table. It’s a chance to share something that stood out to you in your research about the company. And most importantly, to show who you are by asking questions. Why does Jason place such an emphasis on soft skills in a Salesforce Admin job interview? Because, at the end of the day, every admin is a Salesforce consultant for their organization. You talk to people about their problems to get requirements, come up with a solution, and then iterate on that solution. We touch on a lot more in this conversation about how to look for Salesforce jobs, developing listening skills, and what it’s like to be a Salesforce consultant, so be sure to listen to the full episode and subscribe so you don’t miss out. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Pei Mun Lim on the Skills of a Business Analyst Salesforce Admins Blog: Develop Your Communication Skills as a Salesforce Admin   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jason on X Jason on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript  Mike Gerholdt: I got an idea. How about we tackle the hardest question on the Salesforce Trailblazer community? That's right. This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're going to look for advice on finding your first admin job and doing the interview, getting experience, and more. And we're going to do all that with CEO and co-founder of Arkus, Jason Atwood. Jason and I chatted at TrailblazerDX and really wanted to dive into this topic. Now, before we bring Jason on, I just want to make sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes or Spotify. That way, when new episodes like this one come out, they're automatically downloaded to your phone. But enough about that. Let's talk about finding that first job or even finding your next job as a Salesforce administrator. Oh, I almost forgot to mention we tackle the myth of "but it's just an admin job." So with that, let's get Jason on the podcast. So, Jason, welcome to the podcast. Jason Atwood: Thank you for having me. It's been a long time since we've podcast together. Mike Gerholdt: I know. I was thinking back; well, we were just reminiscing of the days at the Marriott Marquis and the Arkus podcast. Jason Atwood: Yep. You were on an episode of CloudFocus Weekly. We had it as part of our trivia once there was only four or five guests ever on the podcast, and you were one of them. Mike Gerholdt: Snuck in, only proximity. I'm going to say. So catch people up. What have you been up to? Jason Atwood: Well, since then, whatever that was, 10 years ago. Yeah. So I am now the current CEO and co-founder of Arkus. We're a Salesforce consulting firm. We deal mostly in the nonprofit space, and we've grown from that little company back then. We're almost up to 75 people. And now I run around between putting out fires, talking on podcasts, and trying to educate myself on the whole changing landscape of technology. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, it does feel like in the last decade, it's gone from everything we know to a brand new world. Jason Atwood: It certainly is. And I just spent three hours at a Heroku dev meetup and could hang there mentally for a bit, but they lost me at a little point. So it's both fun, interesting, and challenging to stay up with all this stuff. Mike Gerholdt: So one of the things that everyone's trying to stay up with is the ever-changing job market and hiring. We see a lot of the questions in the Trailblazer community from new admins, people getting into the ecosystem that want to become Salesforce admins, people in the ecosystem that are looking for jobs, or maybe have kind of hit a career plateau. And you and I were chatting, and boy, I think it'd be fun to kind of delve into that topic with you. Jason Atwood: Let's do it. I have some experience in hiring people over the last 15 years, so I can certainly talk about it. Mike Gerholdt: A little bit more than me. More than me. Well, let's get started. So let's start fresh. There's a lot of new people. As we were talking about in the intro, there's a lot of new people coming into the ecosystem that maybe don't have tech advice. They are doing Trailhead modules, completing challenges, getting a lot of badges, trying to round out their resumes, and they don't know A, what to look for, or B, what to put on their resumes. So somebody that's hired a bunch of people and been around for a long time, let's start there with some of your advice and where they should go. Jason Atwood: Sure. This is a very common thing, and the first thing I would tell everybody is relax. It's going to be okay. I know it feels daunting, and you see these triple all-star rangers and you see all these, the hoodies, and you see the people with the 15 certifications and 10 years of experience, and you feel like, "How am I ever going to get there?" You will; you'll get there. So the first thing is just to take it easy and not to get too worked up on it. It does feel like a lot. It's a very big community and filled with lots of hungry people for jobs, a lot of recruiters, a lot of activity. When I talk to people about getting started in the ecosystem, and certainly on the admin track, and we can talk about other tracks if you want, but on the admin track, I kind of say all those things matter. So when it comes to certifications, when it comes to Trailhead, when it comes to experience, they all matter. And usually the question I get is, "But what should I focus on?" And so I came up with something, I maybe made it up years and years ago. I call it the 30, 20, 50 rule, or 20, 30, 50. It doesn't matter; you can break it up anyway. And if you're going to take your time, right, you're in the hunt for a job, and you need to do the education, you need to get enabled, you need to build your experience level. I break it down into those percentages. So 20% of the time, I'd focus on Trailhead. And the trick for Trailhead is A, you just have to be a ranger. We don't even look at people who aren't rangers. I had an intern apply the other day, and I said, "No, you're not even on Trailhead. Go get a ranger before I even talk to you." So that, to me, is just a minimum bar. Just go be a ranger, and then if you can go up from there, that's great. And then, if you're still in your Trailhead worlds, the thing that we then look for besides looking at their profile, is it filled out? Have they thought about it? Have they created it like LinkedIn? So second advice on the Trailhead side is treat your profile like LinkedIn: fill it out, put your picture, put your description, do all the things. It'll probably take you no more than a half an hour. Make your URL; you can make your customized URL so people can find you; do all the things so it looks like you're part of the community, right? Make sure that your profile is rich and full. And then the third thing on the Trailhead side of things is to go for super badges. So I can look at double ranger, triple ranger all day long, but if I don't see some super badges and I speak from someone who doesn't have any super badges. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, no. Jason Atwood: I know, I know, it's on my hit list for this year. I know, I know, I mean, I have 15 certs, and so I have some experience, but I'd say, get some super badges. We see that when we look at that as a higher level of dedication and of expertise, because, as you know and as I've been doing them, they're difficult. They show that you have really dug in, and they're more than just answering some questions or watching videos, or getting fun ones. I love badges, but the super badges really show that kind of a deeper level of education and sort of just being in the Trailhead world. So that's the 20%. Then the 30% is certifications. You need to have both. You can't have one without the other. I don't know what that commercial was, peanut butter and chocolate or something, but- Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think so, yeah. Jason Atwood: -You might be [inaudible 00:07:08]. Certifications are important; you should focus on them. What I tell people is you need to get them, but you can't stall. Most people, I think, when we talk to them and we'll find in the ecosystem, say, "Oh, I'm thinking about getting that, or I'm planning to get that one next year." And our advice is, "Nope, go get it. Go get it now. Go take it. Go take the test a couple of times." Do whatever it is you can do to start your certification journey; don't put it off; don't procrastinate on it. You don't have to be perfect; just go get some. And obviously there's a path of which ones you should get, blah, blah, blah. It depends on where you're going in your world, but having at least one or two certs is kind of a bare minimum. So if you're starting off and you're trying to get into the ecosystem, that's your 20 and your 30, and then the 50 is the hardest part. And it's just hard to tell people because it's the experience. The third thing we look for is experience. I want to see that you've done something obviously new to the ecosystem, harder to have the experience, but that's where I say spend 50% of your time trying to gain that experience. There's the old adage: try to go work with a non-profit. Although there's some pushback on that nowadays because of the complexity of the platform, you don't want to hurt a non-profit. There's definitely... Get in in a way, there's programs, there's tons of programs out there that will help you do mock projects and things where you can just get your hands dirty. And even if you have to build your own thing that you're going to demo, you got to get experience because I've not hired people with 22 certifications, and because it didn't add up to any experience, and I've seen people with tons and tons of experience with zero certs, and I would hire anyway, just from the experience. But for me, that's how I tell spend your time: 20% trailhead, 30% certifications, and 50% getting that experience. Mike Gerholdt: I think that 50%, that part that you're talking about is always the part that feels like the hardest to get into. Because if you're not in tech and you don't have any experience and you're trying to land that first job, that can feel like, "If I could get this job, then I could get the experience." And so, part of that lends to my next question is, so you're new, we've checked all the boxes on filling out our profiles and done that part. What should I get ready for when I interview? Jason Atwood: So every interview's going to be different, obviously, but a lot of places are using assessments now. So I would say be prepared for an assessment. That means functionally, they're going to ask you to do something; they're going to ask you to build something or take something they've done and turn it into something on the platform, using Salesforce as the platform. So I would just be ready for that, be prepared, be okay with it. Even do mock versions of it, go have a friend, and I have to given this advice to some people, but go have a friend, sit down with them, talk to them about what they do, and you'll uncover something that they're collecting data. And as soon as you can figure out what the data they're collecting, whether it's books or they collect comic books, or they're a skier or they're a runner, anything you do, you can just come up with, "Ooh, what if I built you an app to track that?" So be prepared to have an assessment of your skills and be able to show that in a short period of time. Meaning it might be a take-home. Sometimes it's a take-home. Like, "Hey, go do this over the weekend." Other times it's, "You have an hour; come back and show us what you did." Mike Gerholdt: Ooh! Jason Atwood: So I'd say... Ooh! Yeah, I know. I've been doing that for 15 years to people. Trust me. I've seen a lot of, oohs. Mike Gerholdt: I would imagine. Jason Atwood: Even had one person pass out in the... Mike Gerholdt: Oh, my. Oh, goodness. Jason Atwood: It happens. Mike Gerholdt: You get an extra hour now. Jason Atwood: Yeah. So I think that it's coming more and more in the ecosystem, because again, when you look at a resume, when you look at LinkedIn, a lot of it's just you can't tell whether they know what they're doing. If you actually do an assessment, you can then assess, "Okay, you know, you functionally know how to do things." So I'd be prepared for that. The other thing is, I think when you're really, especially in the new, just be honest about what you do and do not know. That's really, really key. Don't fluff up your resume; don't put things that you don't know; don't put clouds, don't throw in data cloud if you don't know what data cloud is and haven't used it or can't really explain it. Just because you took a Trailhead on something doesn't mean that platform or know that cloud. So I'd really say be honest with what you know and the clouds, and the products, because that's going to be super important in the interview process. Mike Gerholdt: Wow. How much... In prep work for resumes, there's a lot of AI tools out there, so I'd love to know your perspective on both sides of this one: how much do you, as somebody hiring, kind of look for, "Oh, they used AI to generate most of this resume?" And on the flip side, how much should somebody building their resume that could really benefit from an AI tool? How much should they lean into it? Jason Atwood: So I'm going to be the strange answer on this one, or... Mike Gerholdt: Oh, good. Jason Atwood: Yeah, because I'm going to say, resumes don't matter. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. Jason Atwood: They're just checking a box. When people get to me in the interview process, they're beyond the resume. So yes, you need to have a resume; you need it because that's the part. It's like you have to have the internet; you have to have a way to fill out the form. So you need to have a resume, and it should have your accomplishments and stuff on it. But I don't look at resumes because they're just lies. They're just you telling me all these things, and sometimes I don't know if any of that's really true or not true. So to me, it's like it's just a checking the box. "Yes, you have to have a resume. Yes, it should be okay." Honestly, your LinkedIn profile should be your resume, right? Because that's real; it's on the web. And if you're lying, someone might actually call you out for it. "Hey, you didn't work at that company for 10 years." So I would say focus more on the LinkedIn. Because I'll look at that. If you gave me 10 minutes, I'd look at your LinkedIn first. I would not look at your resume, what you've put on, rather than what your actual history has been. That being said, you want to throw all this stuff on there for this ecosystem. So I do think showing work that you've done and really pointing to problems you've solved, if you really think about any job, especially as an administrator, you're a Salesforce admin, you're basically solving problems all day all. And you're communicating. So two things that I tell people about the resume and the process is how do you show that you've solved problems in the past in your resume, and then how do you show that you are a great communicator? Because great communication, it doesn't matter what, I mean, well, not what job, but certainly in this world, you are basically talking to people, helping them out, doing stuff, re-communicating with them, getting what they need to do, building it, whatever. You might work with different groups or whatever. But that communication skill is something we deeply look at. So again, if you're going to focus on stuff, don't so much focus on your resume as focus on how to be a great communicator. Mike Gerholdt: That's really good advice because I have been at that level where people show up and the resume looked good, but they couldn't facilitate the conversation or articulate any kind of answer in the interview. Jason Atwood: It is a skill that not a lot of people have, but it's a skill, you can learn it. So a couple of things to put into that communication bucket. We'll go down a little rathole here. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, let's do. Jason Atwood: One is empathy. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. Jason Atwood: Have the ability to show empathy, and that means sort of having a conversation with somebody and throwing in stuff that's like listening to them, talking to them, obviously pulling out information about them, but having the empathy when they say something's not going to happen or whatever, they could say, "It's a rainy day." I look for it in every interview that I do. Now this is going to be on the podcast; everybody's going to know this, but I will actually throw things into my talk track or as just the warm-up when you're sort of, "How are you and what's going on?" I will always throw in something to test empathy. I'll say, "Oh, I'm okay, but I didn't sleep well last night. Or I had a bad egg sandwich this morning, or I've tripped over the dog when I came into the room." And I just listened to hear what they react. If they go, "Oh, that's terrible. Oh, yeah, I know dogs can be really difficult. Or you know what? I get my egg sandwiches from downstairs, whatever." But hearing that back of that empathy, super important. Second is actually listening, so I will listen to people, how they listen to me. Are they interrupting me? Are they talking over me? Are they going? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, as I speak, I listen for their real intent and true conversational skills. And so the ability to actually listen, pause, and then answer is a really big; it's a great skill to have. And so the people who can do that, I know that they can do almost any job better because they've intently done that listening skill and they've got it working. So those are two that I throw out to most people when they're trying to build their conversational habits. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I'm listening to you answer that, and I'm playing devil's advocate in my head and saying, "Maybe people are hearing Jason say this because he's hiring consultants." So why do you think this also translates over to people that are embedded in different work groups, or teams, or have stakeholders within an organization and aren't consultants, like for your organization? Jason Atwood: Because basically, being an admin is being a consultant in one organization. You are a consultant. What are you doing? You're talking to people; they're coming to you with their problems; you are getting their requirements; you're satisfying their needs; you're working with them; you're iterating; you're changing it; you're updating things, and then you're presenting it back to them. The thing that changes when you become a consultant is you're paying for someone's time, which then becomes a whole other thing. But also, you might be working with other organizations, and the level of expectation of how you do that and your expertise goes way up. And this is something I tell, I warn people about moving into consulting is that when you're an admin, you have the ability to take some time. Someone says, "Hey, can you build me these three dashboards that I want to track my sales forecasting?" You go, "Sure," and you can go Google it, and you spend a week, and you come back, and you're like, "Here's your three dashboards." They're ecstatic; they're like, "Great, thank you." They don't care that it took you three weeks or whatever, and then you had to ask your friend and Google it or ask ChatGPT to do it for you. In the consulting space, it's different. They don't ask, "Could you build this for me?" They say, A, "What are the options to build it? How long is it going to take you, and can you get it to me by next Tuesday?" So the expectation level of what you're doing goes way up, and they expect you to be expert. They don't expect you to ever say, "I don't know, but I'll figure it out." As an admin, I said, "I don't know. I'll figure it out." "Oh, you want to build some tracker for your feedback form? Sure, let go figure it out." Go away for a week, and I'll come back and show you something. So I think that's part of it, but as an admin, you're still doing all this stuff. It's the same stuff inside the organization. You're just not working with external companies or people; you work with internal people. So you still have Mary from accounting coming over and wants to synchronize with the QuickBooks, and you still have the CEO come over and they want an update to some dashboard because they can't figure it out, and you're doing the same stuff; it's more internal, more ad hoc, generally. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, I couldn't agree more. Also, Mary from accounting, they always want to, for some reason, can't seem to get opportunities flowing through your sales org, but let's integrate finance. Jason Atwood: So true, so true. Mike Gerholdt: But you kind of led into that. So what are the different jobs, or different tasks, types of jobs that admins would tackle within an organization? Jason Atwood: Yeah, I mean, we kind of started in there. You do become an internal consultant, but I think you first off just think of what, especially when you're applying for it, and this goes back to sort of the applying and getting the jobs' thing. When you're looking at the organization, you obviously want to know what their Salesforce landscape is. So if I were in the interview process, what I would do is come loaded with a bunch of really good questions, and I would pepper that person with tons of questions about their Salesforce instance, or, as we call it in the biz, we call it their org. But I would come in with, "What kind of licenses? How old is it? What kind of integrations? What kind of applications do you have? When's the last time you did a health tech? Do you use permission sets or permission set groups? Or did you flip the lightning yet?" I mean, I would be peppering them showing my expertise to get that admin job. So that's just on the interview side; I just want to throw that in. But coming back to what you do, again, it really depends on the organization, and this is actually a myth that is out there in the ecosystem, is that admins get bored and admins don't get to play with lots of different clouds, and admins don't do a lot of diverse things. That's completely not true because it depends on what organization you're with. I was with a company who had 375,000 people. I had a team; I had five people, or five, including me; we were all admins; that's what we did. And we had 12 different production orgs, 12 orgs with production, and I think nine different applications running in them with thousands and thousands and thousands of users. We were not bored; we had plenty to do; we were playing with great, big, unlimited licensing and integrations and projects, but we were admins. At the end of the day, we were admins. Same thing: you go work for a small company that's four... I don't think anyone would hire a full-time admin with four people. But the smaller the organization who's just using Salesforce for one thing and has no chance of expanding it or doing it, or going anywhere. Yeah. You're going to get bored, right? You come in, you're going to help out Mary in accounting, you get that one project done, and then they're going to be like, "Can you reset passwords all day?" So I think as part of the interview process to pulling it back in to that, and when your job seeking, you should be really interested in what their, especially if you want to be a Salesforce admin and you really want to do it full time, what's their Salesforce roadmap? Are they just solid? They have it, and they have had it up and running for five years, and that's it? Or do they have things that they want to do? New stuff you can build? Do you want to do the integration with that? We want to bring in marketing cloud next year. We're looking at how to do predictive AI, whatever. So if I were bringing more questions as the trying to get the job, I would bring in that to the organization. I'd say, "What do you guys, where's your roadmap? Or do you not have one?" And I think that would show as a hiring person; I'd be like, "Oh, they're forward-looking." And it'll also give you the idea of: "Are you going to get bored in six months?" Because you don't want to get bored in six months. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Although maybe a smaller footprint would be really good if you're looking to get that first admin job. Jason Atwood: Exactly. Exactly right. But then you have the counter, right? You have a smaller footprint, but they have 40 users, and they only use it for service. So you get in, you do some work, you do all the stuff, and then you're like, "Now what?" Mike Gerholdt: Right. So you brought up myths of admins, and one is, well, "I don't get exposed to enough clouds," and I've heard that at various events. "Well, we only use data cloud, or I just don't get to see it." And I feel like, and this still exists, all of these articles on admin to something else, as though admin is just the front door; all you got to do is get in and do that for a few months. But the real money and the real challenge is elsewhere. What would you say to that myth of just an admin? Jason Atwood: I think it is a bit of a myth, and it makes admins and being an administrator, Salesforce administrators feel like this... It's like you're the fry person in the back at McDonald's. It's like, "Well, I don't ever go back and cook the hamburgers." I don't know. And it's not true. Mike Gerholdt: Although the fries are kind of the best part. Jason Atwood: That's true. I actually worked at McDonald's, and I was the fry person, so that's why I brought it up. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Jason Atwood: But yes, at some organizations, you could be the one admin, and that could be your role for a long period of time. And you could get bored, and it could just be a starter. At other organizations, you could run an entire group of admins. You could have six or seven admins, you could be part of a team of people supporting a lot of different Salesforce instances, and it could go anywhere from just administrative down to sort of more the solution architect type of stuff, or more towards the BA towards so stuff or more towards the development. One of the things you and I have been in this ecosystem for a long time, what we were able to do 10 years ago on the platform with our clicks and what we're able to do with clicks now, we're programming. Let's be clear: when we're building flows, we're programming; we're just programming with a user interface. But that's programming, and the stuff you can do is stunning, that you just couldn't do with any of the tools unless you're writing Apex. So I think even the idea that admins who are getting that technical acumen and are going into the more programmatic type of world of admin that could go long, there's lots of paths you can go down for that. So that's where I think some of the myths should go away because you're not just the admin who's building a report, adding a field to a page way out, and assigning a permission set. There's many, many different pieces of that platform. And that's before you even talk about the clouds; before you'd say there's now, I don't know how many clouds. There's a lot of clouds. Mike Gerholdt: There is a lot. Jason Atwood: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, you brought up flow. I think back to the days of, "Boy, if I could just stand up like a window pane that a screen that people could input the data into as opposed to just editing raw right on the record." And now we can do that, and you can do that just using the interface. You don't have to try a single line of code, which is... Jason Atwood: It is stunning what you can do with that tool. And it's one of the things that has left me a little bit behind because I'm old school admin. I'm a work-for-rule person. And for that, I would've gone wrote in a user story and had someone written up a Visualforce, and with Apex in the background, and now it's... The stuff that we can produce with flows, screen flows, and even the call-outs. I was watching the call-out today, a flow that made a call-out to a Heroku Dyno that did a hookup to a Postgres database that pulled in AI predictions. I was like, "What?" So yeah, the world of an admin is becoming very, very broad in some ways. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, I agree. And you can also now trigger flows through prompts and have it call AI. And I mean, in a year from now, this is all going to sound like super, "Wow, they were impressed they could do that. Now look at where we are." kind of stuff. One thing we didn't touch on is there's a lot of job places to look at and career stuff. Often, when looking for a developer architect, I think those are a little more defined also, especially with developer, they've got experience in writing developer job titles for other platforms. So it's very easy to translate that over to Salesforce. What are things that an admin should look for in job descriptions? That maybe if the title or description doesn't say Salesforce admin, that will be the role? Jason Atwood: Yeah, it's a tough one because, I mean, the easiest thing to say is look for the keyword Salesforce. Obviously, there's going to be some sort of piece of that. I think you'd have to go a little old-school and think of the platform and what it's doing. So I would start to look for things that were based on what Salesforce, the platform's doing? Is it sales, right? Is it marketing? Is it service? Is it nonprofit? Especially in the nonprofit space, which is for me. So we would look at grant writing, fundraising, and all that stuff, which could be keywords for, we're using Salesforce in the background, but we're using it to do all these things. So I guess the meta hint without giving you the keywords is: What is this organization doing? What is the output of their world? And then looking at what the tool set they're using. They might not be Salesforce, right? There are other ways of saying the word. They might say something like health cloud and a health cloud administrator, and you're like, "Well, that's Salesforce." Or they might say, "net-zero cloud." Or they might say, "nonprofit cloud." Again, not saying Salesforce, but that's what it's based on. So sometimes, as an administrator and as part of this ecosystem, you have to know that there are products that are sitting on top of the platform that don't necessarily say the word in it. Remember when they named everything Force? Everything was Force something Force, this Force, that Force. Mike Gerholdt: We had everything named Lightning for a while, too. Jason Atwood: That too. That was fun. Mike Gerholdt: We like to do that a lot. I think everything's named Einstein now. Jason Atwood: Pretty much. Mike Gerholdt: I'll probably get in trouble for saying that. Jason Atwood: Yes, you will. Mike Gerholdt: But you could do the bingo card of name everything, Einstein, Lightning, Force, and then you're covered. Jason Atwood: I'm going to win that Bingo. Mike Gerholdt: Einstein, Lightning, Force, and then the actual product. Then you're covered. Jason Atwood: Totally. Mike Gerholdt: I was looking through all my notes, roles and descriptions and interviewing and challenges, and certifications, and I feel we touched on a lot. What is something that you feel we missed, that you talk about, that you bring up that maybe people aren't thinking about when they're looking to interview or get an admin position? Jason Atwood: Sure. I think there's a couple of things. A couple more things I would, if I were giving advice, which I happen to do all the time. Mike Gerholdt: You're full of advice. Jason Atwood: I'm full of advice, maybe too much. So one thing, and this is just generic to not Salesforce, but as anybody looking for a job, cultural fit, I think, is becoming more and more of a need. And I think, as people applying for jobs, you should be looking at it both ways. Do I fit that culture, and does that culture fit me? And that's do my values and the company's values or the organization's values align together. And asking a lot of questions around culture is going to become more and more important, especially because we go do remote work and all that. So I think what we used to think of, like, "Oh, we had coffee breaks and pizza parties for every quarter," is now a much bigger discussion. So I would say bring culture into the conversation. Another tip that I hadn't given yet is just preparedness. It seems silly to say you have to be prepared for an interview, but I can tell you the amount of people who show up who are not prepared, they're just not prepared; they don't know their resume; they don't have good questions; they don't know how to talk to their experiences. And I'm stunned when it happens, but it happens a lot. And one of my little pet peeves, I'm giving away all my hints, boy, anybody interviewing is going to be able to nail the interview the next time they get to me. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, you say that, but I bet not. Jason Atwood: Probably not, right? No one's even going to pay attention. But having really good questions is something that I look for. Again, we work in an industry where being able to ask your users what they want and question them, and being insightful is a great skill. So if I get to the end of one of my diatribe speeches and I say, "Do you have any questions?" And they're like, "No, I'm good." I immediately go, "Okay." And then I'm not good because I... So have questions ready at the go; have them sitting in front of you on a piece of paper, on a sticky note in a NeverNote, wherever. It's super important, and don't be generic. Don't say, "Where do you see yourself?" Don't interview the interviewee. Ask really stuff that's based on homework you did. And that's sort of the prepared thing too. When people come in and they say, "Oh, I read your blog post last week about blah, blah, blah. I was really interested about this key point." Immediately, I'm like, "They did their homework; they know what they're talking about, and they're asking me something interesting." Don't say, "How do you guys do raises?" That's not going to be; you need to have the questions about the culture or the stuff. I mean, I've had some really good in the past, but I've had some really terrible questions. And then two more, I'll give you two more tips. This is like the hundred tips for interviewing the Salesforce Ecosystem Podcast. Mike Gerholdt: We'll call it 98. Jason Atwood: There you go. Mike Gerholdt: So there's two. Jason Atwood: Two more is you can never, if you want to get two skills. If I told someone to go get two skills before they get any job to be super useful on day one, two things they should be focusing on: data and documentation. Your ability to understand data is like you need to have it, you have to have it as a skill; you need to know data; you need to know how data interconnects with other data, you need to know how to report on it. It's getting more and more and more important. So I look for data skills, even data nerds, people who say, "I love data." So if you're not that type of person, I would say these jobs are going to be tough. Because I don't know anywhere in the ecosystem that we are not just really crazed about and or dealing with lots of data. It is sort of what Salesforce is, in the back of all of it. So understanding data, taking courses on it, go learn SQL, go learn regular databases, go learn third normal form, learn it, and understand it because any of your skill sets that you have that are based in data will make you better at any job in this ecosystem. So data. Second is documentation, because one of the things you can do very quickly in any role is document things. You need to be able to document; you need to be able to take what people say, summarize it, put it into something, and spit it back out for people to take in. If you're an admin, you've got to come up with a training plan or a training agenda. You are an admin; you have to come up with a user story; you hand it off to a developer or someone to build something. Documenting is, and it's, I know there's Trailheads on it, and you can go to those, but really learning how to document even so much prove that skill when you talk to somebody and you follow up with an email. Follow up with an email that proved that you listened and that you're following up with documentation skills, coming back with key points or things that you wanted or questions, all great ways to show. But I would say two things you could just learn to show up on day one to start working and doing things is know data very well and know how to document things. Mike Gerholdt: Well, that was a really good point. I would hammer on that cultural fit and question part a lot because I always feel like you and I are of a certain generation that we kind of almost interviewed in the hopes that they chose us, right? The best of the survivor, we get picked. But the part that really dawned on me as I moved through my career was I also need to interview that person to see, is this the type of person that I'm comfortable... Would I be excited to get on a call with them every day? Does this feel like the type of company that I'm going to be excited to go to work at? Or do I just want to get in to get in? And I've made the mistakes of going to work for companies and then realizing I didn't ask enough cultural questions. The way things operate here and my expectations for this job are very different than what I had in my head, and it's my fault because I didn't talk about it. Jason Atwood: Yeah. And again, I think it's different. Even again, culture was, I hate to say it, but it wasn't really that much. It wasn't that important. 20 years ago, I wasn't worried about culture; now I think it's above compensation. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Jason Atwood: I think it really is. And I've seen people go to places for less compensation because of a better culture. I've seen people leave terrible cultures that were highly paid. So really bringing that in, and that means how do they work? How do people collaborate? And you can ask these questions in the interview. You can say, "What are the three things you're doing this year to help your culture be better or to improve your culture at your company?" If someone asked me that, I'd be like, "Ooh, wow. Okay." Mike Gerholdt: That's a good question. Jason Atwood: That's a great question, right? You're then learning A; are they doing anything to make it better. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Jason Atwood: Or ask about... One of the things that we take at Arkus as very important is when I was doing my key goals for the next five years, and I was doing some presentations and talking to the staff about it. I had culture as a fifth thing, and then after doing it, I thought, "Wait, no, that's wrong. It's got to be number one." So for me, you ask a company, you say, "What are the main things you're thinking about doing for the next five years? What are the five key things that you're doing? What are your pillars?" Or whatever. And if they don't say culture, then you'd be like, "Oh, why isn't culture there?" And then you'll probably catch someone off guard; maybe they won't hire you there, but they should be thinking that keeping the company culture and embracing it, and making sure that it is... Culture isn't something that you set up and then walk away from. It's not a database system. You don't just go, "Oh, it's set up, and it's running in the corner." It's something that needs to be cultivated; it's something that needs to be put into; it's something that needs to be fed and loved, and thought of, and changed as the ecosystem and the world changes. Our culture changed when COVID happened, right? We had to adapt; we adapted to that; it wasn't the same culture as before. When we were three people, now 75, but the culture's different, but we're adapting to that. So again, it is a really, really big point. It is something you can catch people on, you can ask, and everybody likes to talk about their culture. Everybody will tell you that they have a great culture, but that's how, as an interviewer or interviewee, you should be questioning it and really ask the deep questions. So when they say they have a great culture, "Say, can you give me three examples from last week where you prove that or that you know that it is a great culture?" Mike Gerholdt: That's a good question. Thanks for coming by, Jason, and sharing your wisdom with us. You said you present some of this. Are you going to be presenting any of this at upcoming Dreamin' events after? Jason Atwood: I am. Well, you're catching me on my road tour. I don't know if this podcast... Mike Gerholdt: Oh, there's a road tour. Jason Atwood: There's a road tour. Mike Gerholdt: Are you going to have shirts made up? Jason Atwood: I might. So yeah, I actually- Mike Gerholdt: Have dates on the back. Jason Atwood: -I go to a lot... A lot of things, I will be at World Tour this year. World Tour New York in two days, but I don't think this podcast will be out by then. But you can catch me at Texas Dreamin', I'm doing this year. You can catch me at WITness Success, you can catch me at Mile High Dreamin', you can catch me at Dreamforce, you can catch me at Northeast Dreamin'. And is that it? I think that's it. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, Northeast Dreamin' is kind of the tail end of the year for us. Jason Atwood: Yeah, it is. It's the last one. So I'll be at all those. I don't know if I'll always be presenting this, but you can at least find me if you wanted to. Mike Gerholdt: Right. I appreciate you coming by. Jason Atwood: Thank you. It's been great talking to you. Let's do it in another 10 years. Mike Gerholdt: Or sooner. Jason Atwood: Or a little sooner. Mike Gerholdt: Well, I thought that episode turned out phenomenal. I'm so glad I got to have Jason back, and he is going to be on a road tour presenting and helping admins at different Dreamin' events. So hopefully, you can get to some of those that he mentioned. I think that'd be really neat, and some really solid tips on interviewing, and even I couldn't agree more on building experience when you've never had a job in the tech industry. So thanks, Jason, for coming on and sharing everything. And speaking of sharing, if you love this episode and you've got friends, or maybe you're going to a user group and you'd love to say, "Hey, I've got a podcast for you to listen to on finding that first job or getting your next Salesforce admin's job," here's how you do it. You click the three dots in the corner; most of these apps, podcast apps, have this now. And you can click share episode and you can post it to social; you could send it as an email to somebody, and then they get a link and they can listen to the podcast right on their phone, maybe as they're walking their dog, and even more. Now, if you wanted to look for any links or any resources, everything, everything I'm telling you, start your day admin.salesforce.com; everything is there for you. And of course, we also include a link to the Admin Trailblazer community, which is the admin group in the Trailblazer community, which is a great place and also the place I went to get all of these questions. Now, we'll also include a transcript if there's something you need to go back and read through; that is all going to be in the show notes. So, of course, until next week, we'll see you in the cloud.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Rangsk, a Wordle and Sudoku educational YouTuber. Join us as we chat about how solving puzzles every day can help you sharpen your critical thinking skills. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rangsk. The role of puzzles in critical thinking development I’m addicted to word games. They give me a chance to practice my problem solving skills and, hopefully, get better. That’s why I was so excited for this week’s guest, Rangsk, because he makes some of the best educational content out there on how to get better at solving puzzles. For Rangsk, puzzles are a way to develop your critical thinking skills. They give you an opportunity to think about how you think. “Overthinking has a negative connotation,” he says, “all I’m doing is thinking, and there’s nothing wrong with thinking when you’re solving a puzzle.” Practicing your problem solving skills in a low-stakes environment like a puzzle gives you the experience to fall back on in high-pressure situations. The process over the result A key part of using puzzles to develop critical thinking skills is taking the time to reflect on your thought process. When you solve a problem, don’t just move on to the next one. Instead, Rangsk encourages you to do a postmortem so you can learn something about how you think. Look through each step of a solve and analyze your decision-making. Where did you get stuck or tricked and why? What could you have done differently? And where did you make good choices that got you closer to the solution? If you take the time to internalize what worked and what didn’t work you’ll improve your critical thinking skills over time. How to know when to ask for help When I’m solving puzzles, one thing I always struggle with is when to hit that hint button. Rangsk’s advice is to make an honest assessment of your mindset. Are you well and truly stuck? Or have you hit a snag but are still enjoying the process of working through it? In puzzles and the workplace, we might not be able to solve every problem we encounter on our own. Maybe there’s some trick that we don’t know about or some key piece of information we don’t have. Puzzles help you teach your brain how to learn, and that’s something Salesforce Admins need to do every day. Listen to the full episode for more from Rangsk on his approach to teaching and some other word puzzles you might like if you’re already hooked on Wordle. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Connections and Wordle games from the New York Times are wildly popular. Can they improve cognitive function as you age? Follow Rangsk on YouTube Cracking the Cryptic on YouTube Other word puzzles Cell Tower Squardle Squaredle Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social @Rangsk_YT on TikTok Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X   Full show transcript   Mike Gerholdt: Wordle, Strands, Connections, not just random words, but word games. And I am addicted to them. So, this week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I had to get arguably the best word and logic solver I can find from TikTok and YouTube on the podcast. He goes by Rangsk on TikTok, and I'll put a link below. But David and I are talking about critical thinking and problem-solving using word games. Also, just how that applies to life. This is a phenomenal conversation. Don't be scared about the time because this is such a fun discussion. Also, how looking for answers and the journey of problem solving really applies to just everything that we do, not only as Salesforce admins, but in our learning journeys and as we navigate life. So, this is fun. Let's get David on the podcast. So, David, welcome to the podcast.   Rangsk: Well, thank you.   Mike Gerholdt: I'm glad to have you on. I feel this is one of those times where I'm way more the super fanboy because I have seen a ton of your TikTok videos and your New York Times solves. But without tipping too much, how did you get into word gaming and solving word games online?   Rangsk: Well, it's a long story, but I can give the short version. Basically, YouTube likes to give random recommendations, and one day it recommended me a Sudoku video by Cracking the Cryptic. And I was familiar with Sudoku because it was a huge craze in the early 2000s. Do you remember that?   Mike Gerholdt: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.   Rangsk: Everyone was doing Sudoku.   Mike Gerholdt: On the planes, there were books. Every airport had a Sudoku book.   Rangsk: Yeah. And so, I got into that craze back then, but then I burned out of it. And now, I realize it's because of the way I was solving it. It's because of the way everyone was solving it, it burned out quickly. But I was like, "You know what? Sudoku, I'm familiar with that." I clicked the video and I just immediately got hooked because this was not the Sudoku that I used to do. And I just really got hooked on watching Cracking the Cryptic on YouTube and the various different kinds of logic puzzles that they solve. And then, I actually started creating my own Sudoku puzzles. I crafted them myself. And I would do things like... I would submit them to Cracking the Cryptic. They actually have solved a few of my puzzles in the past.   Mike Gerholdt: Wow.   Rangsk: Featured in front of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, which is great. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to document how I intended those puzzles to be solved and walk through the logic of them. Because I've always been... I had sort of an instructor mindset. I've always liked teaching. I've never been a teacher, but I've always liked teaching anyway. And so, I decided to make my own videos where I walked through how to solve my own puzzles and I just uploaded them to my YouTube channel, which had nothing otherwise. And one day, Cracking the Cryptic featured one of my puzzles, and I commented saying, "Hey, I've got a walkthrough solve of this on my channel if anyone's interested." And I instantly gained 200, 300 subscribers.   Mike Gerholdt: Oh, wow.   Rangsk: And at that point, I was like, "Well, I better start making content." So, I decided, "Hey, maybe I'll start solving Sudoku's on there, not just my own, and see if I can grow that audience." And I was really enjoying the feedback I was getting from that. Flash forward to Wordle becoming popular, I was very much entrenched at that point within the logic puzzle community. And Wordle, of course, really became popular within that community. And so, I decided, "Well, I'm already making Sudoku content. Why don't I make YouTube shorts where I solve Wordle?" And so, that's really where I get started on that. And then, I went from... it had taken me two years to reach a thousand subscribers where I could finally monetize on YouTube. And then, within two months, my Wordle shorts had brought me to 10,000 subscribers.   Mike Gerholdt: Wow.   Rangsk: And so, that was like, wow, Wordle's my thing, I guess. And so, I decided just to... in addition to my Sudoku content, I started making word game content as well.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I definitely was on the sideline for the Wordle wave. I remember it kind of crashing through. And I feel like for me, it was, "Oh, everybody's playing it, so I'm not going to play it." I also was afraid that I would never get a word. "Oh, man." Because my Facebook feed was filled with all of the little Wordle squares that everybody would post. I'm like, "Oh, I know so-and-so." I know some book editors and I know some people that are in the education space, and they were struggling with Wordle. And I was like, "I have no shot. Maybe I just shouldn't play this." But now that I've played it, I confess, today is my 40th day playing Wordle.   Rangsk: Okay. I hope you're enjoying it.   Mike Gerholdt: I am. I also have come now to the realization that I will never get it in one word. So, I have purposely looked ahead to see what words haven't been used as solutions, and then picked my beginning word now pending, the solution hasn't happened. My beginning word now is spoil because it has two vowels in it and it hasn't been used as a solution.   Rangsk: Got you. Yeah. So, for me, getting word in one, of course, it would be exciting, but I would also feel a bit cheated because I didn't get to play that day.   Mike Gerholdt: Yes.   Rangsk: And to me, Wordle... I'm very much a logic puzzle guy. I approach even word games as if they were logic puzzles. And I think that's why I like Wordle so much is because you can treat it like a logic puzzle, where you're given information and then you want to come up with the best possible guess to utilize that information and get as much information as you can more. And you think about patterns in the words, not just, "Here's all the words I know," but "Okay, E likes to be at the end. R likes to be second. These letters like to be near each other. These letters don't like to be near each other." And so, you can kind of think about the patterns that you notice within words. And of course, every once in a while, you get tripped up by a weird word that comes from French or something and doesn't follow any of the rules. But even then, you get there by logically eliminating, it's not a regular word. So, I now have to investigate, is it one of those weird esoteric ones that came from French, for example, or came from a different language? So, yeah, I like to approach it as a logic problem, and I think that's why people enjoy watching me solve it. I constantly get feedback, "I'm better at the game after watching you play it." That warms my heart. That's exactly what I want. I'm not out here trying to impress people. I'm not trying to be a magician. I'm trying to be an instructor, and I'm trying to get people to understand that these games can be approached from a logical perspective. You can learn to get better at it without just going and memorizing a bunch of words.   Mike Gerholdt: Right. Perfect segue to exactly why I'm having you on the podcast, because I ran across one of your TikTok videos on Connections, and I'd never played Connections. And the tone and the manner, now that you say instructor, I joked with a colleague that I called you the Bob Ross of Connections. But your tone was very calming. "And let's work through this, and here's all the words. We have to come up with four groups of four. Let me walk you through the way I'm going to think through this," which your logic or your critical thinking. And it wasn't just, "Well, these four have to go together. Why don't those go together?" And it's like, "No, but let's think about every possible meaning of this one word." Or I love when you, especially on some of the Connections, "What is the, not weirdest, but what is the farthest outlying word? And let's pick that and see how it can connect to other things."   Rangsk: Yeah, I'm glad you recognized both my logical approach, but also the demeanor that I try to give to my content. I've been called Bob Ross by more than just yourself, also Mr. Rogers. Just having that calming presence is really important to me because people have so much going on in their lives. They have stress coming from everywhere, and then they try to escape that with the free time that they have. They're scrolling TikTok or they're scrolling YouTube or whatever it is. And when you do that, you're just getting people yelling at you. You're getting people trying to make you afraid, trying to make you angry. And I want to counter that. I want to be a place where I come up on your feed and you feel like, "Okay, this is a setting where I can understand what's going on. I'm not being yelled at." "Things are calm, things are straightforward and I'm learning, but I don't feel like I'm being talked at." I don't know the best way to put that.   Mike Gerholdt: Or chastise. I mean really, because I think that's one thing, how this kind of carries over to software is critical thinking, but also when you're building applications or you're building programs, it's change that you're going to introduce to somebody. And I've always told people, when you roll out something, nobody wants to show up to work and feel stupid. And the easiest way to feel stupid is by showing them something they don't understand. And you can walk into some of these games and be like, "I don't understand. It doesn't make sense." And then, it makes you feel stupid when actually if you just sit and look at it. To me, I use a few of these games in the morning when I have a cup of coffee to kind of warm my brain up, kind of get me thinking through the day and sitting there thinking, "Okay," so this word for example, and maybe Connections is coat. Okay. So, coat and I started, "Well, how would David describe this?" Well, coat could be a jacket. Coat could be a heavy coat. Coat could also, you coat something with paint. I try to use some of the stuff that you teach to like, how would I talk through this and not just take it as the first thing that comes to mind?   Rangsk: Right. And I get a lot of feedback, which I honestly don't appreciate very much because it's counter to what I'm trying to put across, which means I'm not communicating that effectively enough. But a lot of feedback is like "You're overthinking it. If you'd just gone with your instinct, it would've been correct." And they're ignoring all the times, probably the majority of the times, where had I gone with my instinct, it would've been wrong. Because these puzzles are designed to trick you. They are logic puzzles. And it's not much of a puzzle if it's just find four things that go together and that will be right. And so, the game is all about... I just made a comment today where someone was like, "Overthinking the easy ones is detrimental, but overthinking the hard ones is actually useful." And my response to that was, "Well, overthinking has a negative connotation to it, by definition. All I'm doing is thinking. And there's nothing wrong with thinking when you're solving a puzzle." So, yeah, the game is trying to get you to think. And you can either let it get you to think and follow along with the human creator of this puzzle and what they were trying to achieve in getting you to think about, or you can bash your head against it and try to get lucky, which to me isn't fun. And sometimes I have to resort to that and I feel bad about it. But most of the time, I try to logically approach the problem and also try to see what did the creator of this puzzle intend me to think about? And that's going to be fun and that's going to give longevity to the gameplay.   Mike Gerholdt: Overthinking also comes from a position of I know the answer and you don't. At one point, they didn't know the answer. So, how can I overthink something if I don't know the answer? In hindsight, yes, I can look back at a solution, "Oh, I way overthought that. But I only know that because I went down that path and then I came back." Much like thinking through different situations or different, we talked about software debugging before I pressed record. Can you overthink software debugging? Well, yeah, I suppose. But you only know that once you go down that entire path and then come back.   Rangsk: And I will say there's kind of a corollary to that where you said in hindsight, and I think that's another aspect of my content that you don't see a lot, and I think it's a really important aspect, which is after I've solved it, go and do a post-mortem basically, to use the industry term. Go and look back and say, "What is it that I did right? What is it that I did wrong?" "How could I have thought about this differently to have succeeded when I failed? Or why did I succeed at this? What did I do that I liked that I should try to do more of?" And I think that's a really important aspect of after you've solved a puzzle, or if you're working on debugging software, if you're working on any problem that you're trying to solve, don't just say, "Oh, I solved it. Let me throw that out." You say, "I solved it. Let me now internalize what worked and didn't work so that when I have a problem again in the future, I can utilize that and gain wisdom and gain experience."   Mike Gerholdt: I'll be honest, one of the coolest things, I'll get off Connections. One of the coolest things that you added to your Wordle solutions is you go into a website that somebody create a bot and you kind of, "Okay, so here's the word I put in and we got orange, yellow, and green here. What is the bot say is the next one? What did I guess? Here's what I guessed. Here's this, that. Here's what I guessed. Okay." And oftentimes you're either... it helps you do that post-mortem because with Connections, you have a little bit different, you can see your categories, but with Wordle, you're like, "Was this the next best thing for me to guess to try and get to the solution?" And I love that you kind of walk through that with that bot and the bot's like, "Oh, yeah, so you basically had two choices after this word and you went to this one, which no harm, no foul, it was the other word." I need that bot for everything.   Rangsk: Yeah. And what's nice about Wordle is a bot like that can exist because it's pretty easy to write a perfect solver. I wouldn't say it's easy, but it's viable to write a perfect solver for Wordle. And there's not a perfect solver for every problem you're going to encounter, but you can at least go back and analyze that. And I think an aspect that I thought about while you were describing what I do with that Wordle bot that I'd like to touch on is the question is, did I get lucky? Because a lot of times in problem-solving, there is a luck factor. Did I look at the right thing first or did I look at the right thing after struggling for three days on this problem? And the Wordle bot will answer that question for you. It'll say, "Oh, yeah, you totally got lucky. There were 60 possible words and you picked out the right one." So, what I learned from that is maybe it was a lucky decision, but maybe it wasn't the optimal decision, even though the optimal decision would've had a worse outcome in this situation. And recognize because... I guess to put it this way, if you can't separate what was lucky from what was good, then you're going to depend on getting lucky more and more. You're going to internalize what you did that made you get lucky rather than internalizing what you did that actually set yourself up for success.   Mike Gerholdt: Well, I think that's... some of that has to do with why people gamble. They just feel they're lucky as opposed to working through the, I go back to the... I love the movie Apollo 13. Let's work the problem and go through it. Kind of transitioning that because I obviously could talk Wordle. You also do that really good on the mini crossword, where if by chance you happen to get all the downs, all the downs also solve all the acrosses for the most part. And so, you'll go back through and be like, "Oh, well, let's look and see actually what these questions were that the answer just autofilled back in." I think there has to be something that it does to your brain because it also trains it. You're like, "Oh, now, I'm not just reading this word, I'm also reading the clue that the creator of the puzzle had in addition to what the word is, and it just happened to be filled in for me."   Rangsk: Yeah. If we want to even just touch back on Connections for a little bit.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, please.   Rangsk: Every day I get comments from people saying, "Oh, the first thing I do is shuffle because they put in these red herrings and I don't want to be tricked by them." And I feel like this is just intentionally throwing out information about the puzzle because we've been told that they think very, very hard actually. They put a lot of thought into the arrangement of the words that are presented to you, which means they've added information to the system. And by hitting shuffle immediately, without even attempting to interpret that information, you've thrown out part of the puzzle. And to me, I feel like I can go, "Okay, well, they decided to put these tiles next to each other. What does that mean? Are they trying to trick me? Are they trying to hint me towards the solution? What is the information that they are trying to give me by this placement?" And I would lose all that if I hit shuffle. And so, I feel like it's kind of a short-sighted strategy because you can't learn to overcome the tricks that they're trying to put into the puzzle if you just wipe them clean first thing without even appreciating them.   Mike Gerholdt: Right. Absolutely. Actually, you're the one that taught me that. I was partway through at Connections the other day and I think that two words were iron and steel, and I was like, "Those started right next to each other. I bet those don't have anything to do with each other. I'm not going to fall for it."   Rangsk: Yeah, sure enough, they didn't. Exactly. And had you hit shuffle, you wouldn't have known that.   Mike Gerholdt: No idea.   Rangsk: And you might've said, "Well, iron and steel, those are both metals. Maybe that's a thing." I think they're getting wise to me. I think the other day they actually put three of them all on top of each other that were in the same category.   Mike Gerholdt: Oh, no.   Rangsk: In general, they are adding information when they, instead of presenting the tiles in a random order, just having a piece of software randomize it and presenting it, they are laying it out and they're discussing how they want to lay it out. And I think that's part of the puzzle. You're removing some of the interest in the puzzle by hitting shuffle. And it's the same with mini crossword. Yeah, you can solve it with just the acrosses or just the downs, but you're losing something by not at least going back and looking what was the whole puzzle. Because these kinds of clues are going to come up over and over again and this is a perfect opportunity, while it's fresh in your mind and while you're in the context, to use it as a learning experience for future puzzles.   Mike Gerholdt: I completely agree. So, I think one of the things that fascinates me and I love using, I'll call them word games and maybe they're logic games. You need to tell me the difference. But using these to keep my mind sharp is I feel like it helps me be a better thinker just in general, just at my job, just working through decisions in life. You've been solving games a lot longer than me. How have you seen that kind of help you in your professional career?   Rangsk: It's really interesting that you asked that because an aspect of my day job is actually studying transference is what the psychology term is, which is if you are to play a game and get good at it or do a logic puzzle and get good at that puzzle, does that have transference? Does that transfer to other aspects of your life? Are you just getting better at that game? Or is there sort of a rippling effect to the rest of your life? Okay. If I play GeoGuessr where I'm trying to locate where I am in the world, does that make me a better driver on my commute? Or if I am playing logic puzzles a lot, does that make me better at debugging software? Whatever it is that you're trying to actually accomplish in your life, are these things just games and you get good at that one game, or are these things that are going to transfer to other areas of your life? And that's actually a pretty hot topic of study within psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience. And there's a lot of studies going on right now related to that with mixed results. Some of these things that they claim, "Hey, if you play this game every day, you're going to get smarter. You're going to get better in these other areas of your life." And it may not be true. For me personally, I find it beneficial to just keep using my brain. Think of the brain as a muscle and just keep using it. Make sure those connections are strong. And by practicing it in low-stakes scenarios, when you get hit with a high-stakes scenario, you have this sort of instinct to fall back on for how you're going to handle that. Yeah. Does that-   Mike Gerholdt: No, I'm still processing all of that transference information you gave because I was just thinking about how that applies to other things like prepping for tests. Did you just get good at taking the test, or did you genuinely learn the information? We can also talk about tests, but nobody wants to do that anyway.   Rangsk: I'll talk about it.   Mike Gerholdt: Are you just good at taking the test too? That's the third thing to bring up.   Rangsk: Yeah, exactly. And this is a big topic in education, has been for a long time, which is how much do we lean on standardized tests and how much do we teach to the test? And is the standardized test important because we just need metrics on how students are generally doing, or is the standardized test also something that can direct curriculum? That's a question that every teacher has. And I don't think there's a perfect answer to that, and I'm also not much of an expert on that at all. But in my opinion, I think that anything you learn is good. I've always hated the question, when am I going to use this? The answer is, you use your brain every day. And the more you can teach your brain how to learn and all these cool things, that expands your horizons. It expands your use of your brain. Yeah, sure, you might not use algebra if you're not an accountant or a scientist or a mathematician. Yeah, you might not use algebra, but one day you're going to have the question and you're going to have the curiosity that's going to relate to math in some way. And you either have the tools to think about it properly or you don't, and that's something that you could have internalized, but you decided you weren't going to use it, and so you didn't. But there's the expression, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I have always thought that the more tools you have in your toolbox, the more versatile you can be in problem-solving and just living your life properly. Properly is not the right word. I didn't mean to say it that way, but living your life to its fullest extent, being able to accomplish the goals that you want to accomplish, being successful. It's all about setting yourself up for success. And you don't know what problems are going to arise. And so, the more tools you give yourself, the less everything starts looking like a nail, and the more you can be exacting and fall back on previous experience.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I often think of... it's funny you bring up that algebra example. I was also that kid that was really horrible at math, so I never played Sudoku. But the concept sometimes of how you solve the algebra problem, I think to me, was also more important than what the answer was. And that to me is almost like the first time you pull the cover off a toy and realize there's a whole bunch of gears inside that make the bear move and kind of understanding, "Oh, there's more to this that I need to understand as opposed to just what the outcome is." We had this discussion the other day, outputs versus outcomes. And if your outputs is solved puzzles, are you smarter than if your outcome is no, but I learned the process and I learned how to work through difficult situations. The outcome is very different than the outputs.   Rangsk: I love the way you put that and that's something... I solve The New York Times hard Sudoku every day on my YouTube channel. And my goal is not to say, "Look, I solved the puzzle." My goal is to help the viewers be able to solve the puzzle, but not just that. To understand that it's the act of solving it that's the fun part, not having that completed grid with all the correct numbers in it. And it seems obvious when I say it that way, but I get so many people commenting saying, "Well, if I just go through and fill out all the candidates first, which by the way is super boring, then I can solve it in four minutes, and you took 12 minutes." I feel like I failed that person because now they're going to get bored of Sudoku very quickly. Because who wants the first thing they do when they first receive that piece of paper or the digitally, the Sudoku puzzle, is go cell by cell and do accounting work? The puzzle can tell you a story if you let it tell you the story. And there are ways that you can approach the problem solving such that you are following along. It's like you're reading a book. You're following along the story. And in a sense, it's almost like a "choose your own adventure book" where you can choose where you want to go next. What do I want to discover about this puzzle? And just put a smile on your face every day because you found this really cool piece of logic and you go, "Ooh, that's really neat. It just told me about this cool structure." And people who are like, "Oh, well, I solve it in two minutes and I can just plunk them down, and I don't understand why you're doing all of this." And a year later, they've moved on. They're not doing Sudoku anymore, and they think it's boring. And I'm still doing it and I'm still learning from it every day.   Mike Gerholdt: Right. Because the outcome for you is a lot different. The euphemism is the journey versus the destination.   Rangsk: Yes. I'm a big fan of Brandon Sanderson and that's a big thing in Stormlight Archive, which is there's... not to get too spoilery, I won't spoil Stormlight Archive for people. But there is a group of people who basically have a mantra and part of that is journey before destination. We all have the same destination. And when it comes to puzzles, the destination is the solved puzzle, but it's about how you got there. The journey is the important thing. And you can start talking about things, do the ends justify the means? It's much of a corollary to that when you start talking about how you live your life. And I feel like if you start approaching even a logic puzzle that you're doing for fun, if you approach that in a way where you're trying to take shortcuts, that's training yourself to take shortcuts in all areas of your life. And I feel like that's... you're cheating yourself. That's another thing. People are like, "Is it cheating if I do this? Is it cheating if I do that?" And it's like, it's a single-player game. There's no stakes to it. The only person you're cheating is yourself. Are you enjoying the way that you're solving this? And that's the important thing. Okay, if I'm doing a crossword or if I'm doing Connections and there's a word I don't know, is it cheating if I look it up? Well, that's up to you. Do you want this to be a trivia game where you need to be going into the puzzle with a certain set of knowledge, and you want to learn as you go, and you learn from your failures because you didn't know what that word meant? And now you've looked it up and now you're going to remember it? That's one way to approach it. And a perfectly other valid way to approach it is, "Oh, this puzzle has shown me this word that I don't know. This is a perfect opportunity to look it up and have some success because I looked it up." And I think both approaches are valid.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. There's so much to unpack there, but the first thing I wanted to say was the best and worst times of doing any of the logic puzzles or The New York Times stuff is when it's solved is the best because I was like, "Yes, I did it." And the worst is, "Ugh, it's over." Especially a few times with Wordle or with Connections or even the mini crossword, "Oh, I finally got it." And to that other point, there have been times when I was like, "Okay, I clearly..." I don't know some... I think one of the questions was something and it was super pop culture. I was like, "I just need to Google this. That's my mulligan. I'm going to take it, I'm going to Google it and that's going to give me the answer." Because I'm past the point of enjoyment for this game and I need a little boost to get me back and going for that, and it's my game, so I can do that.   Rangsk: Yeah. And it's all about knowing yourself and knowing what you're going to be happy with later and what you might be sad about later. And I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. Are you still enjoying the puzzle? Because that's the important thing. We don't do these because it's our job. We're doing puzzles because it's fun and enriching. And so, it's all about sustainability. What's going to sustain your interest in this hobby? And are you going to be a flash in the pan where you deep dive into crosswords or Sudoku or whatever word game for a month and then you're done with it and you move on? That's one personality style. Another personality style is crosswords are something that I do every morning for 50 years. There are people like that too. There are a lot of people like that. And there's a big difference. Someone who's going to do that every morning for 50 years, they're enjoying it every day and they've found ways to sustain that enjoyment. Whereas there-   Mike Gerholdt: Go ahead.   Rangsk: Sorry, go ahead.   Mike Gerholdt: No, I'm 100% with you. I was going to ask because we didn't touch on it and maybe it's for a reason because it's in beta, but Strands. I think you said it in one of your puzzles, I was like, "I just need you. Can you just tell me if any of the four letters I put together are close to one of the words you want as opposed to just nothing?" And I think that for me, we get some of that. Well, you can tell me more of the game logic. But with Wordle and with Connections, at least with Wordle, I get a yellow. I get a colored square. Regardless of what I put in, I'm getting a color back. And with Connections, oftentimes I'm like, "Please just say one away." But you get kind of that.   Rangsk: But even if it's not one away, it's still information.   Mike Gerholdt: It is, yes. Except with Strands.   Rangsk: Yeah, Strands is missing that. And the reason Strands is missing that is because I really feel like they built the hint system because they knew this was an issue. But the hint system is terrible because people don't want to use it. Some people do use it, but I don't like using it. I think that, first of all, making it a choice. Wordle, you don't have the choice to see whether a tile was yellow or green. It's just going to tell you. It's part of the game. A hint system feels like it's external to the game as like a, "I'm not good enough, so I'm going to press the hint button." And I don't think that was their intent, but I think that's what's happened because they realized that most of these games have some kind of lockstep functionality where you make as you progress through the puzzle and you gain information as you go. Whereas with Strands, you can be sitting there for 15 minutes and know as much as you did on minute one, even though you have found 100 words because you didn't find any of the words that they're intending and you're not understanding what the theme is trying to hit you towards. And it's just frustrating. And so, they probably saw that in the playtest and went, "Well, if you get three words, we'll give you a word." But that doesn't feel good because, first of all, they gave the choice. I kind of wonder what would the game be like? Is it just you get three words and it just reveals one without pressing hint? And it was just part of the game. I feel like more people would accept that rather than opting into admitting that you're not good enough at the game. But also the hint system is just simultaneously not powerful enough and too powerful. And I could rant about this. I feel like it's a bit off-topic.   Mike Gerholdt: No, this is 100% on topic.   Rangsk: All right. Well, I'll rant about it then. Early on, it's too powerful because it gives you... for those not familiar with Strands, it's like a word search game, but they don't tell you what words you're looking for.   Mike Gerholdt: Nope.   Rangsk: Instead, they all follow a theme. Maybe the theme is names of football teams or the theme is pieces of time, so seconds, minutes, hours. And some of them are a bit more esoteric. They might be words that are slaying for money, but are also food was one of them. And so, it really varies in difficulty. And they give you a little kind of crossword style clue hint at the start of what the theme might be. But it's usually not. Usually, it's either, "Oh, I know exactly what the theme is from this clue," or, "I have no idea what the theme is from this clue." There's not much in between. But anyway, what the hint does is if you get three words that they didn't intend, if you find three words, you can press the hint button and it highlights all of the letters involved in one of the words. And then, it becomes an unscramble basically. And then, you find that word. And I think the ideal situation when using the hint is then, okay, now that I know what one of the words is, I've now gained information about what the theme might be and I can try to think of other words that match. And if that's not enough, I'll find three more and I'll press hint again and I'll get another word. But it's too powerful because people don't want to just be shown one of the words. That's literally taking away from the enjoyment of the game because the game is only finding the words. And so, you're literally pressing a button saying, "I want one last word to find please." But then, at the end, sometimes you're down to one word left, it tells you how many words you need to find, and you're down to one word left. And I've literally spent 10, 15 minutes trying to unscramble that word because I can't figure it out. When it was Broadway shows, and I couldn't unscramble Carousel for the life of me because I hadn't heard of that Broadway show, and it's a weird word. Carousel. And so, the hint wouldn't have helped me. If I'd pressed hint, it would've highlighted all the letters. So, the hint is simultaneously too powerful early on and not powerful enough at the end. And then, also on top of that, isn't giving you what you want from a hint. So, I feel like it's a failure in game design there. And what they should have done is built-in ratcheting game mechanics that aren't opt-in.   Mike Gerholdt: What are ratcheting game mechanics? Please tell me.   Rangsk: So, if you think about a ratchet wrench. When you go one way, it doesn't lose progress on tightening, and then you go the other way and it tightens more. That's what a ratchet is. And so, you can make progress without losing progress. So, as you put input into the system and as you find things towards the game mechanics, you have now ratcheted yourself, you've given yourself more information. It's a ratchet-style gameplay. So, like Wordle, you input a guess and you get those yellows and greens and grays, and now you have more information about what the answer might be. And you never lose that information. That information never becomes obsolete. You can always use it. So, in the same way, that's why some of my suggestions for Strands were, "Hey, you know what?" "If I get partial word, maybe it should tell me, 'Hey, you got a partial word. You're on the right track.'" It's ratcheted that information into the system. It's like getting a green or a yellow in Wordle. Or if they want to keep the hint system, maybe one option for the hint system would be show me the starting letter of one of the words. Not the whole word, just give me somewhere to start.   Mike Gerholdt: Where do I start? Yeah.   Rangsk: Yeah. This letter I know is the start of a word now and I can focus my search on that. And so, I wouldn't feel as bad pressing that. But what if that were just part of the game mechanics? It's like rewarding you for finding words. They aren't the right words, but you're still finding valid words that exist. So, why not have those, just add information to the system as you guess in certain creative ways. So, it feels like a failure of game design that there isn't that sort of ratchet other than the opt-in very heavy-handed hint system that they have right now.   Mike Gerholdt: Right. I am so glad you brought up that Broadway Strands because I was about... I'm like, "I think I'm done. I think I'm done with Strands now." It took me so long to get... the first thing I found with Strands is you either get started and it starts to make sense, or you're sitting there and you're looking at these two words and the clue and you're like, "I have no idea what these three things have to do with each other. I don't know what another word to look for." But that Broadway with Carousel, I was stuck on Carousel. I got everything else. Those are the only letters left. I never hit the hint button. And I thought, "What happens if you hit the hint button when you're done?" Because at that point, I'll be honest, the game Joy, it was no joy in Mudville right now. I just wanted to be done. Just please tell me what the answer is. I think I went through... I watched your TikTok. I went through all the same words you did. I'm like, "I don't know what word this is. Just tell me." And when I hit hint, it just put the little things around. I was like, "I know it's those letters."   Rangsk: Yeah, exactly.   Mike Gerholdt: I know it's those letters. Get me out of here. Where is the escape room button? That's the only time I wanted the hint button to just be like, "Nope, we're just going to solve this because we feel bad for you."   Rangsk: And people use my videos as hints. They'll be like, "Well, I'm done with this puzzle. I haven't solved it, but I'm not getting joy out of it. Let's see what Rangsk did." Rangsk being my handle. "Let's see what he did and maybe that'll give me a hint." And that's actually the entire premise of me doing The New York Times hard Sudoku every day in that instructive way is I know that there's always going to be someone who's stuck on that specific Sudoku puzzle because it's so widespread. It's published by The New York Times. They're going to search on YouTube or Google. They're going to search "New York Times Sudoku today walkthrough or hint."   Mike Gerholdt: Solve or something.   Rangsk: Yeah, solve. And they're going to find my video and that'll track them to my channel. And not only will they find my video, but this video is going to blow their mind if they don't know modern Sudoku-solving techniques. And they're going to be like, "Wow, I need to watch more of these because this is way more fun than how I've been solving Sudoku, and I don't get stuck as much." "And if I do get stuck, I watch him until he does something I didn't know, and then I can continue." So, almost using me as a hint button. And I feel like with Strands, there's no strategy. Strands feels like a trivia game to me almost. I've been trying so hard to make it a logic game, which you probably have noticed if you watched my Strand solves, where I'm like, "Okay, corner strategy, edge strategy." And it kind of works, but it's not perfect and there's not a whole lot of logic involved. I will say there are word search games that do feel a lot more like a logic puzzle. One of them that I play is called Cell Tower. And this is probably the coolest word search game I've played. Normally, I'm not a big fan of word search-style games. I'm not very good at them. But to briefly explain this game, it's a grid of letters just as you'd expect a word search to be. And the way that these letters form words is a little bit unique, and that's not that important to describe, except basically you're drawing shapes in the grid. So, you're connecting the letters together in kind of a different way that you'd normally expect. You're not drawing a line through the letters to make words in order. You're just sort of highlighting them, and they have to be connected in some way. And it's red left to right, top to bottom. And so, it's sort of limiting you on... you can't make a word bottom right to top left. You can't just draw a line that way, or you can't zigzag around. Instead, there's a specific logical order to how the letters are going to appear in a word. In addition to that, every letter is part of a word, similar to Strands in that way. So, every letter will be involved in a word, and there is only one solution. So, you can't just go, "Okay, I found this word. Let's lock that in. Okay, now I found this word." You're going to find a bunch of words, but you need to look at how that affects the rest of the grid around it and make sure you're not preventing the ability for the letters around it to also be part of words. And that's where the logic comes in, where you go, "Okay, I think this word might be part of it. Can I add an -ed ending, an -ing ending, an S at the end? Is there a prefix I can add to it to expand that word? But also, how does that affect the letters around it? Am I going to be able to make a word out of these other letters if this was one of the words I use?" And so, you end up with this really logical approach to how you solve it. And you're thinking about how letters go together, how they go next to each other, and how words are formed in general. And you're looking at corners like, "Okay, this letter is going to have to be related to the letters around it in some way because it's in a corner because it's been isolated in some way." And so, it's not that you're trying to just find words that match a theme and the computer tells you, "Oh, yep, you found one of them," or, "Nope, that wasn't what I was looking for, sorry," with no extra information. Instead, you're trying to solve this logically and the computer is not giving you any help at all there. It's just the grid, the full information of the grid being used. So, in a way, it's a lot like Sudoku, but also like Connections where you can't just pick any four words that happen to relate because that might disrupt the ability for the other words to relate to each other. So, that's what really makes a logic puzzle a logic puzzle is you have to take the puzzle as a whole and you have to take steps that are logical. It's not just a trivia game.   Mike Gerholdt: That's so apropos to everything that we talked about. You have to look at the puzzle as a whole. Last question, because I happened to think of this when we were talking about Strands. As somebody that's online solving problems, word games and stuff, how hard, how many times do you just want to hit that hint button? Does that ever come up? Maybe you have the patience of a saint, but have you ever gotten to that point where I know you're creating this for the good of other people and you have to walk through that, but you're like, "Maybe I just hit the hint button because I'm at 35 minutes on this video?"   Rangsk: Yeah, for sure. And there's different forms that that takes in my mind. There's the built-in hint buttons to the game, but then there's also like, "Do I just Google this word?" I did do that once. There was a Connections, and I knew I was about to lose. I was like, "Okay, I've got no mistakes left. And there are three words on the board that I have no idea what they mean. Literally never heard these words in my life. So, how am I supposed to... is it good content for me to just make a guess and lose? Or do I go on Google, look up what the words mean, and continue the puzzle?" And in that case, I decided to do that. And I got mostly feedback saying, "Yeah, I Googled it too. It was fine to Google it, looking it up. What's wrong with that?" But then, I got a lot of negative feedback too about "How's it feel to cheat? You're such a cheater, blah, blah, blah." Just so much negativity. And so, I have to weigh the decision on how much negativity do I want in my comment section here, because they aren't just insulting me when they're calling me a cheater. They're calling everyone else who Googled a cheater. So, people are seeing themselves in that comment when they're reading through the comment section. And that's something I need to figure... it's not something I've solved. I don't have an answer. But what I try to do is understand myself and go, "Okay, am I 35 minutes into this puzzle legitimately, or am I just done with it?" There's a game I play called Squaredle. There's actually two games I play.   Mike Gerholdt: It sounds like all the puzzles put together.   Rangsk: Yeah. There's two games I play called Squaredle. One of them has an extra E and one doesn't. The one with the extra E... so one of them removes the E in square and one of them keeps the E in square when they add the -dle ending. They're completely different games. One of them that I play with the E, it's another word search game. It's a grid of four by four or sometimes five by five letters. And you need to find every possible word other than esoteric ones. They have some list of words that... you know how there's words that aren't really words, if you know what I mean? The esoteric ones, the archaic ones, out of use, highly specialized words. You don't have to find those. They count as bonus words if you do find them. But there's a list of words that it's looking for you to get. And sometimes this list is 60 to 100 words. And this game can take me an hour and a half.   Mike Gerholdt: Wow.   Rangsk: I sit there and I record the whole solve. It's a special occasion usually. I'll do it once every week or every two weeks and then put it on my YouTube where I solve the hardest Squaredle of the week. Because just like The New York Times puzzles, it gets harder through the week. And so, I'm like, "I'm going to solve the hardest one today." And it's a lesson in patience because you have to find every word, and it can take an hour and a half. And that's the kind of game where it's like, "Okay, I'm 30 minutes in, but I'm still solving the puzzle. And that's okay." There's also Sudokus that can take an hour, an hour and a half just because they're that hard. But it feels like you're making progress. If you feel like you're making progress, that's just you're still in the journey. You're still solving it, and that's fine. It doesn't matter how long it's been, as long as you still feel like you're in the puzzle and you're making progress and you're enjoying it. But then, there's puzzles where... the puzzle usually takes two minutes, and you're 30 minutes into it, and you feel like you haven't made progress in the last 25 minutes or ever. And you just have to make the decision of like, "Is this worth my time anymore?" And I've definitely had puzzles where I hit the stop button on the recording and I delete the video, and I just go, "I'm not solving that one today." Or ones where I go, "Well, it's time to get a hint." Literally, I just say, "I have failed this puzzle, but I want to see the end of it, so I'm going to look stuff up." You have to make that decision in your head. And I think you brought up a really important point, which is... I think you brought this point up at least, it became this point in my head, which is you need to decide for yourself when that is and that it's okay. You gave it your best, time to seek help. And I think that's something that's really important in life is that it's okay to seek help when you need it. I think people appreciate when you've put in some effort yourself first, but at the same time, they don't want... let me put it this way. I've been lead of several different teams as a programmer for my day job. And as a lead programmer, I would rather a junior programmer come to me with a problem that I can solve in a minute than spend six hours banging their head against it. But at the same time, if it would've only taken them 10 minutes, I'd prefer them to learn that on their own. So, it's important to learn at what point have I stopped being productive? Have I stopped enjoying this? Am I not in the right mindset and I either need to take a break, do something else, or I need to seek help, or both?   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, I think you're right. The hint button and being called a cheater, you're only cheating yourself. It's what do you need to move on with? And your example is perfect. Is there something that can be gained by that person asking you? But I also think, what level of thinking did they put into solving this before they came to me? And I always look at it as I'm very appreciative of, they came to me because they hit that wall, but they also realized quickly that they hit that wall.   Rangsk: Exactly.   Mike Gerholdt: And now they need to move on so that that learning journey continues as opposed to being frustrated in themselves.   Rangsk: Yeah. And that's a skill unto itself. And that really separates the people you enjoy working with from the people you don't enjoy working with, people who are team players and people who aren't. That really separates them because it's a matter of, "I don't want to be doing your job for you. I've got my own job to do, but also I don't want you sitting there suffering as if you were alone." And there's that balance. And recognizing in yourself when you've hit that state is really important. And I think that... going back to the conversation about transference. That's something that can transfer. If you're playing games, and you can learn in a low-stakes scenario, how do I... be in yourself, be in your body, be in your mind, and be like, "I now recognize what I'm like when I'm in this hopeless scenario where I've given up without giving up, where I'm frustrated, where I'm tired, where I'm hungry." It's something even like children need to learn. Am I sad or am I just hungry? Or do I need to take a nap? That's something children need to learn, but it's not something we stop learning as a child. It's something we need to always know ourselves, know how our mind works, know what our limitations are, and know what our limitations aren't. Is this something I can just continue on, or is this something that I need to use my coping mechanisms that I've learned throughout my life to deal with this situation? Part of the problem has now become my own mind. And that's something you can learn by putting yourself constantly in these difficult situations, like difficult logic puzzles or trivia puzzles, where you're not very familiar with that trivia or whatever it is for you that puts you out of your comfort zone in a safe, low-stakes environment. So, you can learn how you yourself react to that and what that's going to take. And part of my job, implementing things, software. I need to recognize... have you ever had that... I'm sure everyone's had that late night where you've been banging your head against this fog or a thing you're trying to implement is just not working. You go home dejected. You get some sleep. You come in in the morning and you fix it in two minutes. And had you just recognized that you were in that situation where you were not going to be productive anymore, and you'd just gone home and you'd gotten rest and you'd accepted that that's what's happening. And you actually had your relaxing night and you took the time that you needed for yourself, and you got the good amount of sleep, and then you came in the morning ready to go, and you just solved the problem. Those two scenarios look the same from a work perspective, but look very different from a personal hygiene, mental hygiene perspective.   Mike Gerholdt: I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. I think it's also a great way to end this discussion, David. Thanks for coming on the podcast. You gave me so much to think about and here I was just excited to talk about word games. But really a lot of it is how you look at everything in life and how you tackle situations. And really part of, I think, the word game or the game itself is also helping you understand yourself. So, this is a great discussion. I appreciate it. Thanks so much.   Rangsk: Well, thanks for having me on. And if people want to watch my content, I'm just going to plug my stuff real quick.   Mike Gerholdt: Absolutely.   Rangsk: So, I am Rangsk on all platforms. R-A-N-G-S-K. I'm sure there'll be something in the description where you can find that. I'm on YouTube and also on TikTok. And I recently had to split my TikTok into multiple accounts. But if you find that Rangsk_YT account, that's the main one, and you'll be able to find the others through my videos. And so, if you enjoy Sudoku, logic puzzles, word games, that sort of thing in an instructive calm environment, then my channel is for you.   Mike Gerholdt: So, as I write, this was a shot in the dark, I'll be honest with you. I reached out to David after being completely addicted to his TikTok videos on Connections and Wordle, and just thought, "This is really what critical thinking looks like to me." And the conversation, I probably could have gone for another hour easily. I had a hundred more questions in my head, but I hope you enjoy it. I do want you to do one thing. If you enjoyed this episode, go ahead and give David a follow. I promise you it's super rewarding to watch his critical thinking and the way that he solves problems and word problems and word games online. I honestly do think it will make you a better Salesforce admin and a better business analyst in general. So, go ahead and give a click on the links below. Also, if you're not already following the Salesforce Admins Podcast, please do so. We're available on all the platforms. Click follow. Then new episodes like this one, we'll download automatically every Thursday morning.  So, with that, thanks for listening and of course, we'll see you in the cloud.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kate Lessard, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce.   Join us as we chat get to know the newest member of the Admin Evangelist team and her journey through the Salesforce ecosystem.   You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kate Lessard. Giving back to the Salesforce community   Kate actually got her master’s in museum studies, so how did she get involved in Salesforce? “I started at a nonprofit in Denver, Colorado, and my first day on the job they asked me if I had ever heard of Salesforce,” she says, “and I said no and they said, ‘that’s okay but you’re in charge of it now!”   One thing that really helped Kate, back when she was an accidental admin, was finding a mentor in the Salesforce community. That’s why she’s been so focused on giving back through programs like Super Moms, WITness Success, and Forcelandia. And now, she’s the newest member of the Admin Evangelist team. Working behind the scenes Kate takes the stage at tons of events but she also does work behind the scenes. For Forcelandia, she’s the Communications Lead, where she coordinates with speakers and makes sure they have all the information they need to be successful.   The two main lessons she’s learned from this work are that no question is a dumb question and that you balance how you communicate information. For the first one, you don’t want to be the person who shows up in the wrong place when people are depending on you. For the latter, it’s important to realize that some people want one big communication with all of the facts and others prefer it broken down into smaller snippets. Kate is great Kate is excited to join the Admin Evangelist team and share how awesome it is to be a Salesforce Admin. “I’m really drawn to this because you get to still be technical and know how to do all the things,” she says, “but you also get to share the excitement behind them.”   We think Kate is great, and if you want to meet her she’ll be presenting two sessions at Dreamforce this year. The first will be on why admins should learn dev fundamentals, and the other will be a security breakout session. Make sure to stop by and say hello!   Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Developers Podcast Episode: Creating User Stories with Kate Lessard WITness Success Forcelandia   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Kate on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!   Full show transcript Josh Birk: Welcome, Salesforce admins. I'm Josh Birk, your guest host for this week. This week we're going to sit down with our brand new Lead Admin Evangelist, Kate Lessard, and get to know her a little bit better. So let's go straight to the tape. All right. Today on the show we welcome Kate Lessard to talk about, well, mostly Kate Lessard, and the things that you're doing and some of the conferences you're going to be going to. So Kate, welcome to the show. Kate Lessard: Thank you. Excited to be here and to talk about myself. Josh Birk: It's all of our favorite topics. All right, so going into your earlier years, the first thing that I see in your early years is that you studied abroad in France. How did that come about? Kate Lessard: Oh, my gosh, I was so lucky to be able to do that, and my study abroad sister is still one of my very best friends. I just went back and saw her this year. She just had a baby, so that was really cool. Yeah, I studied French in high school and just really loved the language and learning about France. And had the opportunity to go with my high school for a really short spring break-style program, and then went back in college. Josh Birk: I got it. I did like that underneath you listed some of your activities that included gastronomy. Isn't that just a fancy word for saying French food? Kate Lessard: Oh, yeah. We had a whole class that I got credit for in college on gastronomy, which was wine tasting and learning how to cook desserts and cheese tasting. Josh Birk: I had to take PE. Kate Lessard: I know it was the best class. Josh Birk: Not fair. Okay. And then you went on to study art and eventually a master's in museum studies. Where did that interest come from, and what's it like studying museum studies? Kate Lessard: Yeah, I've always loved art, and that was my favorite subject in school growing up, and especially when I went to France and got to see all these incredible artworks at some of their wonderful museums, decided that I really loved art, loved art history, and wanted to find a career in that. And museum study seemed like a cool way to be able to do that, to just be able to experience some of the best artworks in the world and be able to share that with others. So that was where I went into that kind of study path. Josh Birk: Nice, nice. Well, and to put a cap on that, giving you an overview for the, and I'm going to try to get this right, the Pre-Raphaelite female muse in Juliet Margaret Cameron's, Idols of the King photographs. Did I get any of that pronounced correctly? Kate Lessard: That was pretty close. Josh Birk: Okay. Kate Lessard: That was pretty good, yes. My master's thesis, the longest paper I will ever write in my life, hopefully. It was really fun to dive into some Pre-Raphaelite photography. It was one of the first actual times that photography was used as artwork and not just capturing the world around us. So that was really cool. Josh Birk: That's really cool. That's very, very cool. Now, how did you move from French and art and photography into software and computer? Kate Lessard: Oh, gosh, what a journey. So, with that museum studies and art background, I was working for some arts and culture organizations, nonprofits, and I started at a nonprofit in Denver, Colorado. And my first day on the job, they asked me if I had ever heard of Salesforce, and I said, "No." And they said, "That's okay, but you're in charge of it now." So accidental admin is my entry point. Josh Birk: Gotcha. Nice, nice. And I mean, I assume you can talk about it, but your first gig was something about counterterrorism? Kate Lessard: Yes, it was the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab. They had an exhibit space, so that's why I was drawn to it initially, because there was this museum space that still exists in Denver that you can go into and learn about counterterrorism. But the main thing that we did was programs in training up event staff and volunteers about how they could recognize signs of terrorism. And if you see something, say something. Josh Birk: Interesting. So in the age of 9/11, because museums, public spaces, all of this kind of stuff... It's fascinating how our public safety protocol has gotten above flight learning CPR. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. Yeah. Your volunteer job is more in-depth these days. Josh Birk: Right. Now, before we get into your current job, let's talk a little bit about your vast experience in volunteering. We'll start with: How did you get involved with Trailblazer mentoring? Kate Lessard: Oh, gosh. When I was an accidental admin, I was so lucky to find a mentor in the community, and as I got more advanced in my career and was able to be like, "Oh, my gosh, I have kind of crossed this threshold of needing someone to mentor me," which I guess we always need someone to mentor us, but I felt like I was in a space where I could actually start to give back to others, and that's when I joined the mentorship program. Josh Birk: Nice. And we had Heather Black on the DevPod talking about Supermums. Tell me a little bit about that program. Kate Lessard: Supermums is such a cool organization. They are based in the UK, and they actually have a Salesforce class that their students go through, and they have these modules that they work through. And the mentors are kind of like, I almost think of it as like a teaching assistant, because you're not just there to provide career guidance. You are also there to help them develop their Salesforce skills and help them through the training classes. Josh Birk: Nice. Nice. And I know there are similar programs, and they find that it's amazing how much that increases the success of not only gaining the knowledge but knowing what to do when you walk into an office and you have to have an interview for it. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. And being able to have a portfolio of work that you can show someone like, "Hey, I've actually done this; I've built this." You can see it live. Josh Birk: Now you've had a lot of experiences, both on the stage but also behind the scenes for events. You've been a community group leader; you've worked with WITness Success; you've worked with one of my favorites, Forcelandia. First of all, what brought you into that side? Because that is very different from mentoring; it's very different from educational; it's very organizational program management, working with people. What attracted you to that kind of volunteering? Kate Lessard: Yeah, very different, but also a lot of the same group of people. And so, when I was mentoring and becoming involved in the community, I met several people that were involved with the Denver Women in Technology group as well as the Denver Admin group when I was living out in Colorado. And they kind of folded me into WITness Success and were really welcoming and started off just volunteering with the registration table, really enjoying the conference itself, and wanted to just be part of making it happen. It was such a good experience for me, both networking wise and learning wise. Josh Birk: Got it. And speaking of learning, what are some lessons you've learned from those experiences? Kate Lessard: Oh, my goodness. Well, with Forcelandia, I am the communications lead, which means that I am in charge of basically tracking down speakers, communicating with them, making sure that they have all of the information that they need to be successful. And the things that I have learned that I use in just my life project management philosophy is that no question is a dumb question. If you have a question, you should always ask it because you don't want to be the one that doesn't have the answer and isn't where you're supposed to be, especially at a conference when people are depending on you. And also to balance communication, figuring out how people respond. Do they want one big communication with all the facts? Is it helpful to break it down into littler snippets? Just figuring out the way that different people work and how they absorb information has been something that's been really helpful. Josh Birk: Love it. Now talking about your roles, moving on to the stage, and also the skills that you were just talking about. Now you're only about two weeks into the gig, but first of all, welcome to the team. Kate Lessard: Thank you. Happy to be here. Josh Birk: What is your new job, and what's the one sentence or when people ask you, "Wait, what does an evangelist do?" What do you tell them? Kate Lessard: My new job is Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce, and evangelists get to be out in the community sharing how awesome it is to be a Salesforce admin and the very cool things that we get to do. So I'm really drawn to this because you get to still be technical and have to understand and know how to do the things, but you also get to share the excitement behind them and be able to share that with others and get them excited and doing all of the really awesome things that you can do as a Salesforce admin. Josh Birk: Love it. Is there any early content that you're working on that you can share with us right now? Kate Lessard: Oh, absolutely. I will be at Dreamforce this year presenting two sessions and also kind of helping some other speakers get ready for their sessions on the admin track. Josh Birk: So if you're on the admin track, you might be hearing from Kate pretty soon. Now let's go ahead and dive into those two sessions. Now, let's start with the one I'm actually a little familiar with because you presented a version of it at Forcelandia and you talk about jumping into the shoes of a developer and then some of the lessons you learned from that. What enticed you to try to jump into the shoes as a developer? Kate Lessard: A few years ago, I was at a point where I was feeling really good in my admin career and didn't know what the next step was. And I feel like at the time, you were an admin or you were a developer, there was not the amazing options that we have right now to take our career in. They just weren't as widely publicized. And so I was like, "Oh, I guess a developer is my next step." And so I went through RAD Women, which was an incredible training program. I learned probably more in those few weeks than I've learned in much of my life and got to the end of it and realized that the number one lesson I learned was that I didn't want to be a developer. And that there's no such thing as being just an admin, which I think was the big lesson, that you can take skills, and you can continue to learn from different subject areas, and they can just make you a better admin. And that was a really big lesson. Josh Birk: Yeah, because that was my follow-up question. So how long did the developer's life stay for you? Kate Lessard: Oh, yeah, that was shattered pretty quickly. Still very dev curious; I am very fascinated by the things that developers do, and now I have the language to be able to speak and understand, which was one of those really important things to learn. Josh Birk: And I think it's something that's going to become more common because the era you're talking about is the one before we started using phrases like admineloper, which I have been on the record of saying is both my favorite word and also my least favorite word. It's my favorite word because it's like it proves the need. We wouldn't throw that part together if we didn't have to describe people who had to carry both roles, but also, as an English major, it just makes my ears ring a little bit every time I say it. But I also feel like admins are being confronted with... As flow expands into being more parity, have more feature parity with APEX. What I've heard a lot is it's not the exercises that programmers go to when it comes to streaming logic together, but understanding what a variable is and what are these nouns that we're working with. Gives a good framework for using a lot of the more advanced features in flow. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. And it just kind of lifts up the curtain. One of my developer friends always likes to say, it drives her crazy when people say that "Dev work is magic," because it's not magic. Josh Birk: It's not magic. Kate Lessard: It's logic. Josh Birk: Actually, one of my old school jokes was when people found out that I'd gone from English and psychology and I got into computers, and they're like, "Yeah, but you were never very good at math." And I'm like, "Of course I'm not good at math; that's why I have a computer. I'm good at logic; I've got a computer that can do all the math for me. I don't need that." Kate Lessard: That is great. I love it. Josh Birk: Now tell me a little bit about your second session. Kate Lessard: Second session is going to be a breakout on security. Josh Birk: Oh. Kate Lessard: So we're still working out what exactly that's going to look like. So this is just a teaser, of course, but going to talk about building a security culture at your organization. Josh Birk: Oh, I like that. I like that. Don't worry. You still have about 30 days, so plenty of time. Kate Lessard: Thank goodness. Josh Birk: To get some slides together. And then I will be seeing you at Mile High Dreamin'. Tell me a little bit about the talk that you're going to present there. Kate Lessard: Yes, this is one of my favorite talks because it's something that I've used in my own life. I will be talking about five tips to ace your interview. So, whether you're talking to HR, a hiring manager, doing a technical assessment, five tips that are going to help you land that next step, dream job. Josh Birk: Nice, nice. Now, in fact, I'm going to be completely honest here. I'm like, I knew I had Kate on the DevPod, and I'm like, "Wait, what did we talk about?" And so I went back, and it was your case study, like how to write a good case study that you had presented at Forcelandia. So you've presented a lot of different topics over the years, and this is always a kind of a mean podcast trick, because I'm asking you to pick the favorite of all your children. But out of all your presentations, do you have one that kind of stands out that's like that was super fun to do? Kate Lessard: Oh, gosh. I think that changes year over year. Josh Birk: Sure. Kate Lessard: I get really connected to one each year, it feels like. Josh Birk: Yeah. Kate Lessard: So right now I would say the Why Admins Should Learn Dev Fundamentals or Why Admins Should Learn Dev Fundamentals is probably my favorite. I think that's the most relevant- Josh Birk: Got it. Kate Lessard: -To my life. And so, that's the current favorite, but ask me next year. Josh Birk: And I will tell you, as the life of an evangelist, chasing after the next shiny object is actually a very good habit to have. So you're on the right track. All right, well, if people want to hear about the interview tips, they'll have to visit you in Denver for Mile High Dreamin'. For the other stuff, we'll see you at Dreamforce. Kate, I have one final question for you. As a yoga instructor, what is your response when people ask, "Why do yoga?" Kate Lessard: Oh, my gosh, I actually don't know that anyone has ever asked me that. Josh Birk: Really? Kate Lessard: Which is funny. Why not do yoga? Josh Birk: There you go. Kate Lessard: I love to tell people that... People have this whole concept that yoga is this huge big thing, and I like to tell them to take it back a step. And if you're in class, if you're breathing, you're doing yoga. Josh Birk: Nice. Kate Lessard: And breathing is good for everybody. Josh Birk: Right. Yes. I love that. I love that. All righty, Kate. Well, thank you so much for the time and information. It was a lot of fun. Kate Lessard: Yeah, see you soon. See you in Denver. Josh Birk: See you in Denver. I want to thank Kate for the great conversation and information, and as always, I want to thank you for listening. If you want to learn more about this show and being an admin in general, go on over to admin.salesforce.com. Thanks again, everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Lisa Tulchin, Senior Curriculum Developer at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about user learning styles and how to use them to create better training sessions. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lisa Tulchin. Choose the right learning style for you on Trailhead As a Senior Curriculum Developer for Salesforce, Lisa spends a lot of time thinking about user learning styles. That’s why there are two paths to learning new Salesforce skills. You can use Trailhead to go at your own pace or sign up for Trailhead Academy to work in an instructor-led group setting. The best way to choose between Trailhead and Trailhead Academy is to think about what’s worked for you in the past. When have you been able to learn something quickly, and when have you struggled? Remember that it doesn’t have to be an either/or decision. You can always see how far you get working through recommended badges and trails, but consider Trailhead Academy as an option if you get stuck. Breaking through fear in user training Fear can be a major barrier to learning, and it’s often what’s behind resistance to a new process. That’s why Lisa recommends starting your training sessions by “hugging the elephant.” Acknowledge that, yes, this new process is tricky while also explaining how it will make their lives easier. What makes sense to you may not work for other user learning styles—some people want to run down a checklist and others need more context. “Kids are a lot more comfortable making mistakes than we are as adults,” Lisa says, “saying, ‘I don’t know,’ is one of the scariest things for adults to admit.” In any user training, make sure give your users explicit permission to ask questions so no one gets left behind.  Best practices for planning user trainings When she’s writing a new training, Lisa tries to separate what information her users need to know from what would be nice for them to know. She calls it the 80/20 rule. Generally, if you can get your users to 80% with a training, they have what they need to do their job. You can fill in the other 20% as you go. Another user training hack is to break complicated things down into manageable tasks to make them easier to learn. Lisa explains that our brains tend to remember 5-7 chunks of information at a time (for example, phone numbers or ZIP codes). So if you’re writing out a task and the individual steps get into the double digits, you might want to break it down differently so it’s easier to remember. Lisa has tons of great tips in this episode for how to keep up with your own learning and take advantage of the resources out there from Salesforce, so be sure to take a listen. And don’t forget to subscribe for more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast.   Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Elizabeth Bochanski on Starting Learning on Trailhead Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: New Admin Classes from Trailhead Academy with Stuart and Feroz   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Lisa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisatulch/ Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we were talking to Lisa Tulchin about learning and how you can be a better learner, and also, as a Salesforce admin, how you can help teach and educate and drive user adoption with your user. I've known Lisa for over a decade now. She's a senior curriculum developer at Trailhead. She's done both in-person and self-paced learning. She's created both. Mike Gerholdt: So I feel like she's a real expert on this, and we cover a lot because I had a lot of great conversations at TrailblazerDX about learning, and I know admins are always learning, so that's why I wanted to cover that. Now, before we get into the episode, I want to be sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. That way, when a new episode drops like this one, and it's amazing on learning on Thursday mornings, it's immediately on your phone. So be sure you're following that, and then a new episode will drop. So with that, let's get to, this is such a fun episode, let's get to Lisa Tulchin. So, Lisa, welcome to the podcast. Lisa Tulchin: Thanks. It's such a privilege to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Well, we've known each other for a while, but I am unleashing you to the Salesforce ecosystem because I feel like I've secretly held this decade of awesomeness of knowing you and talking about learning. That's what we're going to talk about today, in case you didn't listen in the intro. But Lisa, let's level set because I've had the privilege of working with you and seeing you teach, and create, and do, and that's why I wanted to have you on the podcast. But let's start with what you do at Salesforce and how you got here. Lisa Tulchin: I am a senior curriculum developer, which means I help write content for the product education team. I have been focusing almost exclusively on instructor-led training. So when you sign up through Trailhead Academy or one of the bootcamps before an event to be in a live or virtual classroom with the person. So that's what I have been focusing on, but the group has expanded over the past year, and I will no longer be focusing just on that type of content. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. And so if you think about it, what's great about Salesforce is we have lots of different methods of learning. Lisa Tulchin: Indeed. Mike Gerholdt: And to hover around, I've seen you do instructor-led training and we have that. We also have Trailhead, or what'd you call it? Self-paced learning. Lisa Tulchin: Yeah, so Trailhead is one example of self-paced, and I have in my past at Salesforce as a full-time employee, because I've been here three years, I have actually written a few trails. I may start writing them again. We are still figuring out exactly the roles, but that's just one example of what we'd like to say self-paced. And self-paced really means that you, as an individual, go to the resource and, I guess, take it in, read it, test it on your own timing. The difference with if you're in a classroom, you're following the agenda with the instructor, and you have to do things in a certain order, in a certain pace. But self-paced, and Trailhead is one example. Slack, and Tableau, or other resources that have their own training repositories that you can also take in at your own timing. So that's why we use the term self-paced. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, it makes sense. Otherwise, I was just going to call it instructor-led and not instructor-led. Lisa Tulchin: Exactly. Mike Gerholdt: Like hot dog, not hot dog, right? Lisa Tulchin: Exactly. Mike Gerholdt: Okay, so I feel like here is the question everybody thinks I'm going to ask, and I'm not because everybody would ask, Okay, Lisa, well, then which is better, instructor-led or self-paced? And I'm not going to ask you that question because I think it's the wrong question to ask. I think what the right question to ask is how, as a Salesforce administrator getting into the ecosystem, do I figure out if in-person or self-paced learning is best for me? Lisa Tulchin: I like that question a lot. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, that's why I'm asking it. Lisa Tulchin: Yeah, no, I really like that question a lot. The hardest thing with radio, of course, is that people can't see me thinking literally when I think, I always think my face shows the wheels turning, but I have to remind myself that you all can't see that. So I'm thinking through- Mike Gerholdt: You're envisioning. Lisa Tulchin: Visualize Lisa looking away, and the [inaudible 00:05:01] the hamster in her brain is running on that wheel. Mike Gerholdt: It's smoking. Lisa Tulchin: Yeah, exactly. I think you have to stop and have an honest talk with yourself. What have you found for yourself in the past? We're all adults going into this scenario for the most part, and I'd like to think that by the time we get to that stage, we understand a little bit about ourselves and how we take information in. So for example, if you're just starting out in the ecosystem, not even for example, I'd say the first thing you should do if you haven't already is actually go to trailhead.com and sign up for an account. Lisa Tulchin: It's free to do that, and you automatically then have an enormous number of resources at your fingertip just through that site. There is Trailhead, the slightly gamified, self-paced learning that's available to you for Trailhead resources. There's also Trailhead Academy, which are the classes. But there also is the community, and so your peers. So I think that's one way that you can explore and test out waters. If you're thinking to yourself, I think I could do this on my own. Well, if you log in and you see how you feel after taking a couple of what they call modules, or trails, or badges, then that may be a sign that you're good to go. But if you're doing this and you're thinking I need a little structure, then you immediately do have resources because you can sign up for ILT, but you also have the community. Lisa Tulchin: So you can go there, maybe find a local user group through that site, and ask questions of other people there. So I think that's the first thing is have an honest talk with yourself. See if you can figure out for yourself what your learning style is. I personally often need that instructor. I need that person in the room either live or virtually helping talk me through things, honestly, helping me keep focused on what I'm actually doing. There are other resources there. I sometimes need a map. Lisa Tulchin: I like to have a map and being able to think. I also need to be goal-oriented. So for me, credentials were a natural way to think about things. And even if you're not going to study and earn a credential, there is a section on the site for credentials, and they have, for example, if you were just starting out in the ecosystem, the Salesforce Associate Certification might be a really good starting point, and they have recommended badges and trails to take. So that's what I mean there's some guidance, even if you don't think that cert is for you, you could look at the map to get that cert and follow that along, and take information in. Mike Gerholdt: No, I think, I mean, you're so spot on. I often see a lot of people in the community ask a question assuming someone else has the answer, and I really think a lot of people forget they have the answer inside them. They know what way they learn best. They just sometimes are looking for validation in that. Listening to your answer, I was thinking back to when I had to tackle something big, I really needed that in class sitting next to somebody with an instructor so that I was focused. And it's not that I can't focus at home or at work, it's that I think you probably know this, people sometimes try to do a trailhead module and answer email and maybe watch a webinar, and it's like, stop. You can't get away with that in class. Lisa Tulchin: You can't. Mike Gerholdt: So that's what I find. That's what I find. Lisa Tulchin: Yeah, and I mean, the other benefit is finding a local Salesforce user group can also be super helpful because I think typically they have regular meetings at a certain date and time, and so I find there's a lot of talk about what they call the beginner's mindset and how we all have to have the beginner's mindset, and I think it's really hard and it's easy for us to talk about, but truly being beginners, it's scary. You don't know something, you don't know what you don't know. For me, there's that fear of messing up, and that's definitely something I've learned like teaching adults, and I have also taught kids or, yeah, kids, they were actually kids, and kids are a lot more comfortable making mistakes than we are as adults. Mike Gerholdt: Why do you think that is? Lisa Tulchin: I think part of that is that feeling of, as adults, we're supposed to know everything. If we followed a traditional path, we've gone to college, we've maybe gone on to graduate school, and we're just supposed to know. You're supposed to be able to move and function in an environment. And saying I don't know, is one of the scariest things I think for adults to admit. Lisa Tulchin: And that's one reason why I just encourage a community and peers because there typically are themes for meetings where people go and either someone's presenting or sharing what they know or everyone's there asking questions, and sometimes it's just being in a room and having somebody else ask a question that you've been worrying about. It almost makes you relax a little, feel somewhat more secure. And that's one reason why I would recommend that. Now, I say that as an ambivert, as someone who is very uncomfortable in situations where I don't know people. So it's actually quite challenging for me. It's easy for me to say, go join the local user group. Actually, showing up to that first meeting of a user group is really hard for me. Lisa Tulchin: But once I settle in an environment and I can feel more comfortable, I am very outgoing, but that's what that ambivert talks to, but that first getting me out the door. So if you're sitting here and you're listening to me talk and saying, Lisa, you are crazy. There's no way I'm ever going to join a user group, that's talking to people I don't know. I get it. And that's why, in a way, there's a virtual user group, people can chat. I think every cloud, for the most part, has its own section of the community where people can ask questions and help each other. And as I said, we have all these self-paced environments where you can little by little take on information and take it in without having, if you're truly introverted, you don't need to interact with anybody else. Mike Gerholdt: So flip the coin a little bit from us learning to admins teaching and maybe even user group leaders doing some of this birds of a feather or instructor walking people through stuff. What in your experience in both you've said you've taught children, you've taught adults, what in your experience really resonates when you're trying to walk some adults through new technology or new functionality and have them learn? Lisa Tulchin: There are a lot of different words for this, but yeah, I was thinking about how I was going to answer you while you were asking the question. I came up with three or four different ways of saying the same thing. When we first worked together, it was WIIFM, what's in it for me? I think now they talk a lot about personas or jobs to be done, so I'm throwing these out there in case folks listening have heard any of these. The really important thing for adults is that when they go into training, or if you're trying to think of developing training for them, the training speaks very specifically to what they need to know to get the job done. Lisa Tulchin: When you're teaching kids, you can teach them almost any topic, and they'll be much more trusting about, I don't see the why, but I understand you're telling me, and therefore I need to know. But with adults, it is so critical that they understand the why am I sitting here or why am I watching this video? Or why am I reading this Java? I think figure out the why, and everything should hopefully flow a lot easier from that why. For one thing, you'll have immediate buy-in from the people that you're working with, because if they don't understand the why, they tune you out. Lisa Tulchin: If you have that why you have their attention. I'm not saying they're going to be eager, willing, and able when they're sitting in the room, but they're going to be more likely to be behind you or stay with you as you go through it. And it also will help them remember what you're training them. It can be overwhelming to sit down and learn a new technology. Now, Salesforce, as we both know, has evolved and is constantly, I think, improving what they call the user experience, the way that you as an end user take in the system, but it's still scary, and new, and challenging. So the more that you get what you need to know in the moment that you're needing to know it and not getting a lot of extra stuff, that's another thing that's really important in designing training. Another thing people may have heard or some folks throw around is the 80/20 approach, which is that training should focus on the 80% of what people need to know. Lisa Tulchin: So dividing the focus of the training to be almost exclusively on what they need to know 80% of the time, and maybe if you have time, have an extra session or just provide an additional resource for what they need to know 20% of the time. Part of that is I've learned a lot about the science behind the way we take information in, the way we remember things, and that's another reason to emphasize what they need to know now as opposed to the nice to have for that couple times a year. I mean, think about it, right? If you're a salesperson and you're learning how to use Salesforce, what do you need to know? You need to know how to enter leads. Lisa Tulchin: If you're doing sales cloud, you need to probably know how to do leads so that you can track potential sales. And then you need to know how to create probably an opportunity so you can track an actual sale and maybe how to add products to that opportunity, but that's the bulk of your time, right? Creating leads, creating opportunities, tracking activity around those two records. But you may not close, depending on the type of business you do, you may not close that many opportunities in a year. It may be a lot of nurturing. So focusing training on closing opportunities may not be as important. That's just one example. Mike Gerholdt: No, that's a really good example. So here's why I was looking forward to this podcast. So can I take those two principles and turn them on their head and ask you, do those two apply, and I'll regurgitate those, when admins are trying to learn Salesforce through Trailhead? And those two principles I'm pointing at are they may or may not understand why, and they're trying to focus on the 20% versus the 80%. Lisa Tulchin: So that's a really good question because having from the admin perspective, there's just so much to learn, and it can be overwhelming. I think, honestly, what I had to do, and I'm trying to remember when I was first starting it out, I broke things down. Instead of looking at the whole 100%. What I did was I looked at, now I admit, because I've never sat in the job, I've never sat in the chair as an admin. I was looking at the admin certification, and I was looking at the breakdown of the exam and looking at what the breakdown of the exam was and what had the most emphasis in the exam. And then I was thinking, well, that's probably either what's the hardest or, I mean, I probably was going about it the wrong way from that point of ignorance, but I felt like that's most of what admins have to do. And so for me, I would probably break it down and focus section by section of that. Mike Gerholdt: I think that's good philosophy. I mean, I was kind of sneaking that question at you because I feel like it's one thing to give people advice on how to instruct, but then it's also on, does that also apply to us learning as well? So you tackled it well. How does some of this work? As we both, I mean, we focus on learning and being new, and that applies throughout the years, but is there anything you think of if you are going into perhaps training an older set of users, and so there's median age, obviously companies try to hire for diversity, but some companies have older users, and should you think about how to frame things differently or if you are in that set, is there a way to think through maybe because you teased, and I'd love to know more about the science of what you read on learning? Lisa Tulchin: Oh, yeah. So there are a couple of things popping into my mind with that. One is that there has been a lot written, and I've only read a little bit about generationally differences in learning. So that Gen X, Y, and Z, millennials, I'm not sure exactly the lineup, they learn differently, and the younger employees are having grown up in a much more digital first age, take information in differently. So if you're training older employees, there are a couple of things that come to mind. One is my feeling, oh my goodness, I may be approaching older employee "as a group." But the other thing is that try to be sensitive to what you may encounter as resistance may actually be fear. Lisa Tulchin: There can be a sense with new, technology in particular, a fear of I know how to do things really, really well in the previous system, method, whatever you want to call it. This is something new, and I don't know how to do my job well. And the reality is there is age discrimination and so you could be starting to spiral into a fear cycle. What if I can't catch on? What if I can't do my job? What if I can't "wrap my hands" around this new technology? Am I going to lose my job? So I think there's a level of that that could be behind what you might be perceiving as resistance with older employees that you wouldn't necessarily be receiving from younger employees. For one thing, they're closer to being in that true beginner's mindset where they don't know things and are taking things in all the time. They're less likely to be as insecure about their job and potentially a little more open to systems changing. Lisa Tulchin: So that's one thing that pops into my head. And I have gone and I've trained people on how to use a CRM system when the previous one was paper, and there was a range of employees in the room; they did tend to be older, and there was a lot of resistance to that. So it could also depend on the shift that you're making. If you're going from one online system to another online system, it likely would have less resistance. I kept emphasizing, you're just carrying around an iPad, you're not carrying around stacks and stacks and files and files. Look how much easier this is. And a lot of them though still were like, but everything's in my head. Now you're making me write it down. So I think the reality is change is hard, no matter what. I think it's just as someone who might be in charge of training others, being open to the fact that what you may be seeing as intractable resistance could actually be a fear-based response. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: One thing you said, which is the biggest thing in all of learning, which is change is hard, right? Anytime you're learning something, you're learning something because something is changing. One, and I believe you were part of this project with me, I've always tried to really make it resonate with admins. Hey, when you're rolling out a new app, make sure you're paying attention to all the other changes that are going on in the organization. Because I know the project that we worked on together, we had a big change in the organization on top of a technical change. And you can be focused on, well, we're just rolling out Salesforce, right? Oh, but there's organizational structure, and there's a whole bunch of other changes going on. I think it's one thing, it can be a little hard maybe for an admin to wrap their head around organizational change, although they should. But looking at yourself individually. Is there something to be said for taking an inventory in the amount of change that's going on in your life while you're trying to learn something? Does that affect how you gain your knowledge? Lisa Tulchin: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's a really good point, which is that, and actually something popped into my head, sorry, when you were talking about how when we worked together, there was a big change, not just a technology, is that you may encounter resistance to training people on a new technology because the new technology could be the convenient scapegoat for a lot of the anxiety and fear around change that is happening. So sometimes it's good to just open things up or just acknowledge and be open to the fact. I was in a meeting with someone recently, who I loved the way they opened it. They just opened it with a phrase that they said they'd been taught, which is, "Let's start off by hugging the elephant," was what they said. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, I've never heard that. Lisa Tulchin: Isn't it wonderful? I loved that, and a picture of a baby elephant and people hugging it. But it was really, let's start out by hugging the elephant, which is to just acknowledge upfront that that elephant in the room. We're not going to tiptoe around a topic. So it could be as simple as opening up a training with, Hey, I know there's a lot going on, let's just acknowledge that right out and maybe give five minutes for people to just talk about it and get it off their chest. And then they'll feel better. They'll have cleansed the air a little bit, and you can move into, okay, let's focus on how the system works. But I've noticed myself personally, yeah, if a lot of things are happening and I'm under stress, I could have more trouble focusing, which means that as a learner being in a classroom, it's harder for me to take things in if things aren't paced appropriately, which is a great way for me to seg into the science of learning. Mike Gerholdt: Nice segue. Lisa Tulchin: I took that, and I brought it back where I wanted to go five minutes ago, whatever it was, that was so subtle. So from a science perspective, there's this feeling of, and as a curriculum developer, we talk about the need to what we call chunk things out. So it's break things down. And now, admittedly, my research is a little outdated on this, but when I was first learning it, they talked about no more than five or seven things in any given segment. And I know sometimes, especially with software training, it's really hard because, in order to do a task, you may actually have to do a certain number of steps maybe. But I really try to break training down by tasks. So if I have an exercise, I'll have broken the exercise down into tasks, and if I've written a task out and it's more than a certain number of steps within that task, that's usually assigned to me that this might be too big a chunk. And I go back, and I see, do I have to break this down further? Lisa Tulchin: And every exercise, I should say, is pinned to a scenario. And so it all goes back to the scenario. Okay, in this exercise, it's usually a scenario. Either you are an admin or you're observing an admin who has something to do and they're trying to do A, B, C, and I'm like, oh, well, maybe A, B, and C is too much, too big a chunk right now, and it has to really be A, B, or maybe even just A, and that's the way I approach it because you need to only give so much information to a person, and then you need to shift gears and maybe you need to talk about something else for a while, let them process. It's another reason why a lot of training with systems is around watch me do it. Now you do it. We don't always have the time. I always wish we were given more time for training, but you may not always have the time. So it may be introduce a concept and then have people walk through, but just make sure you're not having them walk through too much at one given time. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, training, unfortunately, is always like the landscaping when you're building a new house. It's the last thing and you have no money left, and it just ends up being here's a flower from the hardware store. Lisa Tulchin: I know, I really wish- Mike Gerholdt: Congratulations. Lisa Tulchin: I really wish we'd be able to have the full landscape architect at all times. Mike Gerholdt: The whole thing. The whole thing, the drawing. Everything. Lisa Tulchin: Tear the yard out, rebuild it entirely. That's what I feel. I mean, that's one reason why it's nice that there is a resource such as Trailhead, and I haven't even talked about it, but when you onboard as a Salesforce customer, there are other resources that are available to you or to companies and to customers, especially if they're on a success plan. There are whole libraries and resources available to them. So I would say, as an admin, find out is your company, do they have a success plan? And if so, which plan and what resources are available to you? And if you have them, take advantage of them. Some of them are one-on-one coaching, I think for Premier. So you have all these resources, and I would say take advantage of all of the resources that are available to you to help you learn and then help you get everyone else working towards using the system effectively. Mike Gerholdt: One thing I thought of as we bring this around to a close. One thing you do that is exactly what admins do, I mean, you do a lot, is approach a brand new feature and have to learn it because you have to write training for it. I mean, you have to write Trailhead modules and all kinds of stuff, and admins maybe don't necessarily have to train somebody else on that, but they have to learn it themselves. I would love to know, based on your experience, when a new feature comes down into your queue and you're like, I got to write a module on this and I got to learn this feature, what's your approach? Lisa Tulchin: I personally might be more of a maximalist than a minimalist. Mike Gerholdt: Please explain. Lisa Tulchin: I want to get my hands on all the things and digest them to try to figure out what is the essence there. Now I admit, Mike, I am learning this not because I'm going to have to use it every day in my job. I'm learning this because I want to understand the full picture in order to be able to distill it down to its basic essence. And so my objective might be a little bit different. I would say that the task is easier if it's something that is new to me because there will be resources that are out there for me to take in. When it's net new, the challenge really can be trying to figure out how something works when there aren't as many resources, but I would definitely say being part of the ecosystem, stay plugged in, keep an ear out for the announcements that happen at the regular events such as the TDX, the conference that just happened. Lisa Tulchin: Big announcements will be made at Dreamforce and at TDX. There are also what we call world tours, which are events that take place in different cities around the world. I know that it's not possible for everyone to attend these, but there is the Salesforce Plus website, and a lot of the keynotes and major presentations from all of these events are available for free streaming. And actually, I think Salesforce Plus has other admin-focused resources that could be amazing right there. And especially if you're a visual or an auditory learner, and by that I mean watching something or hearing something that could be a really good resource because you can listen to the announcements and then they have sessions that focus on different aspects of different clouds, and so you can listen in and hear announcements and sharing about resources. Lisa Tulchin: The Salesforce blog is another good site because there'll be articles published there talking about new resources, and that's kind of how I get my information for net new content. And then they release webinars, and I know as an employee, I have access to all of them, but keep an ear out for resources such like that because they'll share all the changes that are coming and there'll be demos of how it works. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, there's a ton out there. You very much are a maximalist. Lisa Tulchin: I know, man. I know. I'm not saying do it all, I'm saying pick and choose, right? Mike Gerholdt: Thank you, Lisa, for being on the podcast. I appreciate you coming by and sharing resources, and helping us understand the world of learning. Again, you know what's funny? Is if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know how many times we keep mentioning know the why. And I've done podcasts with Kevin Richardson on the five whys. I've worked with the Trailhead team on understanding the why. It really always keeps coming back to the why. But I will tell you this, listening to this episode, I learned something, which was the whole point, but it really sunk into me. The fear could equal resistance when you're doing training. I run into that where people are super resistant, and it was out of fear, not out of the willingness to learn. So I think that's interesting. I really hope you got something out of this. I loved the way Lisa approached training and talking about five to seven steps. Mike Gerholdt: I feel like that was super important. So I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you did, can you do me a favor? Share it on social. Share it to one person, maybe send it to a friend that could be doing training. I promise you, you have to know somebody that's doing training. That, or at a user group, you could share it and be like, Hey, listen to this great podcast about training. And I learned about five to seven steps and the 80/20 rule, but you got to listen for the 80/20 rule. And of course, if you're looking for more great resources, just check out the show notes. Also, everything is at admin.salesforce.com, including in the show notes a transcript of this episode. And of course, we will post this to the Admin Trailblazer community, which is one of the plethora of places that you can go and ask questions and help other Salesforce admins learn. So, of course, until next time, I'll see you in the cloud.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ella Marks, Senior Marketing Manager at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the keys to creating an effective presentation, how to prep, and how to create a strong ending. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ella Marks. Core principles to prep any presentation We’re starting the last quarter of the year and that means it’s presentation season. Whether it’s presenting about the work we did last year or trying to get budget for next year, creating an effective presentation is a core skill for Salesforce Admins. That’s why I’m so excited to bring Ella Marks on the pod. She’s presented on some of Salesforce’s biggest stages, like Dreamforce and multiple World Tours. So I wanted to hear her tips for how to put together a great presentation. The cool thing is that no matter the format or venue, Ella uses the same core principles to prep for every presentation. 1. Who is your audience? Ella’s first step is to identify the audience that you’re presenting for. Who’s in the room? What do they already know, and what are you going to teach them? Your content is going to be very different if you’re presenting to a room full of admins versus a room full of new users. If you don’t know exactly who’s in the audience or what their level of expertise is, just ask them. For example, “Raise your hand if this topic is new to you.” In general, it makes your presentation more engaging if there’s a little bit of back-and-forth with the audience. 2. Make an outline and blue box your slides The next step is to make an outline. Ella recommends starting by making a big list of everything you could possibly say about the presentation topic. Then you can start moving things around, whittling it down, and picking some themes. All of this helps you decide on a call to action. When she’s ready to start creating her slide deck, Ella uses a technique called “blue boxing” to make a rough draft. Essentially, you use blue boxes to rough out what you’re going to put on each slide. So a slide might have three blue boxes that say: Title about why this is important right now Text of the most important point I’m going to say Image to illustrate the point We’re trying to sketch out just enough to see how the presentation flows as a whole. Look for a balance of slides with more text and slides with more visuals because that variation will keep your audience engaged. That way, we’re not spending time looking for the right image or writing the perfect title until we’re sure we need it. 3. Nail the ending Conclusions are always tricky. Ella recommends asking yourself three questions: After my presentation, how do you want them to feel? After my presentation, what do you want them to think? After my presentation, what do you want them to do? These are your three goals, and the secret to nailing your ending is to address them throughout the presentation. Every slide should be aimed at answering one of these questions so that, by the end, the conclusion feels inevitable. Ella has lots more great tips for creating effective presentations, including how to prep with a group and the importance of a good pump-up song, so be sure to take a listen. And be sure to subscribe so you’ll never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailhead: Storytelling & Communication Admin Trailblazers Group  https://sfdc.co/admintrailblazers Social Ella: @Marks_Ella Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike` Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt   Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: So we're halfway through August, and for many of us, that's the start or getting real close to the start of the last quarter of the year, which means we're doing a lot of presenting, either presenting to show our work, what we've got done for this year, presenting to get budget for next year as admins for what we'd like to do or, if you're like me and a few of my colleagues, going to world tours, going to events, going to community events, and presenting. Presenting, presenting, presenting is at the heart of a lot of what Salesforce admins do.   Mike Gerholdt: So this week on the podcast, I pulled in Ella Marks to talk us through and give us some tips on building phenomenal presentations in the art of presenting. Now, if you're not familiar with Ella, she's on our admin relations team, and she has done quite a few Dreamforce keynotes. She's helped coordinate a lot of our release readiness lives at Dreamforce, both on stage and recorded. So she's presented to cameras, and she's presented live on stage, and she's also coached quite a few presenters.   Mike Gerholdt: And I think this is really important for us to learn because no matter how great the app is that we build, and no matter how cool the functionality is, we need to be able to stand up and deliver. And being a solid presenter and really conveying those ideas is key. So that's why I wanted to have her on the podcast.   Mike Gerholdt: Now, just a reminder, if you're listening to this and you really enjoyed this episode, be sure to hit that Follow button or subscribe, depending on what the app is that you're listening to. That way you'll get a new podcast episode every time a new one drops, which is on Thursday mornings. So with that, let's get Ella on the podcast.   Mike Gerholdt: So Ella, welcome to the podcast.   Ella Marks: Thanks so much, Mike. Thanks for having me.   Mike Gerholdt: Well, it's been a while, but I think people have seen you elsewhere in the ecosystem. I mean, we're on the same team together, but for community members that haven't run into you or seen the plethora of work that you've put out, what are some of the things you do at Salesforce?   Ella Marks: I've been at Salesforce for almost seven years now and I've done a lot of different things and I'm so grateful. A lot of the time that I've spent here has been working with the admin community. You may have seen my face before on Release Readiness Live or on the keynote stage at Dreamforce, but I have the privilege of focusing on creating and distributing content for admins like you on some of our new release features and really exciting new innovations like AI. It's really fun. I get to learn a lot about the platform and I'm always really excited to hear from admins and speak to admins and create presentations for admins. So really excited to be here today and talk to you a little bit more about that.   Mike Gerholdt: Cool. I'm thinking ahead and for some of the admins we're getting ready. There's TDX coming up, but also user groups for those of us in the Midwest that aren't snowed in anymore, we can get to user groups and presentations are important there and there's all kinds of stuff that we present. Not to mention that it's probably almost budget season. I got to do some presentations for budget. I got to do a whole bunch of presentations if I'm an admin.   Ella Marks: There's no limit I think to the type of presentations and the amount of presentations that you can do as an admin. Like you mentioned, there's events where you're speaking to your fellow admins and developers, there's internal presentations. And I think the most exciting thing or interesting thing to me about presentations is no matter what presentation you're giving or who you're giving it to, you can go about planning for it and preparing that presentation in kind of the same way. There's some fundamentals that go across every type of presentation that you may have or create in your role as an admin.   Mike Gerholdt: And you've done quite a few because I remember seeing you on the Dreamforce keynote stage and Release Readiness. I feel like you've done a lot of different style presentations too.   Ella Marks: I've honestly had the privilege to be on a bunch of different stages at Salesforce, whether it's a virtual presentation or a webinar on the Dreamforce stage or even at an event. This year, I got to present and connect with a lot of people at world tour events, and like I said, they're all very different. The people in the audience are very different, and so the way that I create content for them, while I might be covering the same things is always going to have a different output because I am trying to tailor it to the audience that I have, but I kind of use the same fundamental principles when approaching any presentation I give, whether it's online, in person, a hybrid. There's a few key things that I really go back to.   Mike Gerholdt: Well, let's dive into those principles. Where do you start?   Ella Marks: The first thing that I do when I'm putting together any presentation is identify the audience that I'm presenting for. Now, this can be super straightforward. Sometimes you're going to know exactly who's going to be in the room. You might be doing an internal presentation at work, the stakeholders, the names on a meeting invite, and you can take the guidance from there. In other times, you may not have the list of everybody exactly who's going to be in the room, but you have a sense of who they are. So a user group presentation, for example, you may know there's a mix of admins and developers and maybe architects in that room.   Ella Marks: And you need to know who those people are in order to build a presentation that is really going to engage them and teach them or persuade them or whatever your goal is. You need to start with knowing who that audience is to understand where that goal fits in and how can I communicate this information best to them.   Mike Gerholdt: But I'm going to play devil's advocate and say, so what if I'm presenting to a user group and maybe I've only been there once and I don't know all the people that are going to see my presentation. What do you do then?   Ella Marks: One of my favorite things that presenters do, and I use this trick sometimes. And Mike, I've seen presentations where I know you've done this too, is you can ask the room. I think it's important for us to not make any assumptions about the audiences that we're speaking to. I think that can lead sometimes to a lack of clarity and confusion. And so if you're presenting to a user group about a topic that you know a lot about, I think it's a great tool. Sometimes even just engage the audience and bring them with you to say, "Before I get started, raise your hand if you're an admin or raise your hand if you have familiarity with the topic that I'm going to cover."   Ella Marks: And that does two things. One, it tells you how you can tailor the rest of your content or your presentation to the people in the room, but it also kind of opens up almost a dialogue between you and the audience. So even if they don't speak for the rest of your presentation, you've created a real human moment of engagement with them that is going to be super important and key to holding their attention for the entire time that you're presenting.   Mike Gerholdt: And much like that, and Ella, I've seen you do this, is if you're going to ask the question, make sure it's data that you're going to actually act upon. Because I feel if you're going to somehow tailor your presentation and make a couple versions, which I've done for user groups because I wasn't sure what the level of interest or the level of knowledge of the topic that I was talking about was, then you can kind of immediately pivot based on that. And I think everybody appreciates when they took the time to raise their hand that you're actually curating the content for that.   Ella Marks: There absolutely needs to be a payoff. If you're someone that's not as comfortable giving presentations, starting with the question at the very beginning and trying to weave that throughout can feel intimidating. And what I would recommend instead is to pick a moment within your content where you can do exactly Mike, what you just said. Which is, you have a slide that hits on, maybe it's a new feature or a different topic. Instead of asking a super broad question that you then need to weave into your story for the rest of your presentation. You can tailor your question to exactly what you're talking about on the slide.   Ella Marks: And that can help you build that muscle to incorporate who's in the room and that audience into your talk track without having to start with that big broad question at the beginning. We have to start somewhere. And I think a great place to learn that skill is really starting with something small, a specific slide or a specific product, and learning from there how to incorporate the questions that you're asking to a more broader scale to cover a whole presentation.   Mike Gerholdt: So sticking on the theme of building content, there's a lot of mechanics to a presentation, but building the content. Depending on the topic you're choosing, it can feel like you're boiling the ocean. "I have all this to show, and I'm on slide 68 already. I can't possibly show "What are some of the techniques that you use to really boil down what you're presenting given sometimes the restricted timeline that you have?   Ella Marks: First, before I go into tips, I just want to reiterate that phrase, don't boil the ocean. That is the number one thing that literally...   Mike Gerholdt: Literally don't. If you have a big death ray, please don't boil the ocean.   Ella Marks: Please don't boil the ocean. Global warming, we don't need that. But I think with presentations, it's super important because you usually have limited time to communicate whatever it is in your presentation you're going to communicate. That's not even considering the fact that people's attention spans are short. So you need to do that work to figure out what are your key points. And one of the things that I really like to do is I create a document and I will just start an outline. I'll start typing out what I think the points are in the story that I need to cover.   Ella Marks: I'll include any important examples, include a CTA, kind of those key pieces of a presentation, but I'm not actually putting it together yet. I'm just making a huge list of everything I think might be included. And then from there, I go in and I kind of prioritize. So that list is usually way longer than what the presentation ends up being or has way more information, but it is a starting point. And that's the starting point that I kind of use to say, "Okay, I'm identifying that I'm seeing a couple common themes in what I've written out here. How can I communicate those most effectively?"   Ella Marks: And what I like about the list is that if you're doing it... Whatever platform that you're using, a Google Doc, a Quip Doc, whatever, it's really easy to copy and paste and move around the order as well to think about not just, "What am I including, but how am I going to start creating this story?" And that gives you kind of a framework to use moving forward.   Mike Gerholdt: I would agree. So you mentioned story, and I think a big part of storytelling is the visual element. How do you balance just not putting paragraphs of text up on the slides and that imagery?   Ella Marks: It's a really good question, and it's something that I ask myself all the time. Because I'm not a designer, I do not consider myself to be good at graphic design. And so when I build a presentation, it can feel really intimidating to think about what are the visuals that I need to create? And there's a technique that I learned at Salesforce that I was taught called blue boxing, and that's really what I use. And the way that it works is once I've gotten to that state, I have my outline, I kind of know what I'm going to put on slides. Instead of jumping right to what is my final slide going to look like, here is the exact paragraphs, here's the exact talk track, here's the exact visual.   Ella Marks: I kind of take a step back from that and use blue boxes, literal blue boxes on a slide to map out what I think it could look like and how I think the content on the slide can reinforce what it is that I'm going to say. So if I know that I'm going to put together a slide that has some tips, for example. I might put together a placement of where those tips might go and think, "Oh, there could be a supporting image for this." What I don't do is I don't dive in and find that image right away. I really take that step of thinking through, "Okay, what is a visual that can support what I'm saying?" And I go through the whole deck like that first and then come back to really hone in on what the message is on that particular slide and pull in those core visuals.   Ella Marks: But taking that step to do that kind of blue boxing framework really helps you identify how the story is going to flow and how those visuals are going to support you. Because I will say there are times when you're going to want more text on a slide than others, and so you want to have a good balance of that. You don't want folks to also just only be reading the content on your slides while you're speaking to them. And so if you take that kind of step to build it out first, you'll have a better idea of what the mix of your presentation is going to look like, how you might use different slide formats to engage people, because we know people have short attention spans, so you want to make sure that we're kind of switching things up.   Ella Marks: We're providing different visuals every few minutes, and I think using design is a very powerful tool to help you do that.   Mike Gerholdt: I would agree. I would agree. Plus pacing, when you're thinking that through, you mentioned people have short attention spans, so keeping the slides moving also helps keep people's attention as well. I think often when I'm reviewing decks or I'm watching presentations at events, and these are outside of Salesforce too, sometimes people have a hard time closing their presentation. I feel like it's either one, they kind of fade off into the distance. It's like an eighties' movie where they just walk off into the beach into the sunset and we never hear from them again. Or it's like a steel door slamming shut where it's like, "Okay, so that's this. And if you have any questions, thanks." Bam.   Mike Gerholdt: And the presentation's done. What's your approach for the closure because I feel like the closure is the most important part?   Ella Marks: I'd agree that if you don't have people with you at the end, I think you've really missed a big opportunity when it comes to creating presentations. The way that I would think about it is throughout your entire presentation, as you're putting together that outline. There are three things that you can think about that you want people to take away, how you want them to feel, what you want them to think and how you want them to act. And I would say that's not just your final slide or the thing that you leave the audience with. That should be at the core of why you're putting that presentation together.   Ella Marks: I think the final slide in that CTA is incredibly important, but I also think that as someone in the audience who doesn't know anything about your presentation going into it, I think that they should know where you're going throughout the presentation. And that's really how you make whatever it is you share, whatever your CTA is super impactful. So I'll give you an example of that. If you're going to do an amazing presentation, let's say it's on new release features and you're going into great depth about... We have the spring 24 release right now, I know that's top of mind for a lot of admins.   Ella Marks: If you go through great content throughout, at the end, to your point, if you don't leave folks with something to do next, they start to question what the purpose was of you sharing all that information. And as a speaker, that is the opposite of what you want. You want to be able to say, "I'm doing this presentation to help you prepare for the release, and I'm going to do that by showing you features and leaving you with either a resource or an approach or tips for you to take and go do this at your own companies or deliver your own presentation."   Ella Marks: And I think where sometimes people fall flat is they think, "Great, I'll throw a CTA in my presentation at the end, and then everybody will go read my blog post or they'll all go follow me on various social media networks." And unfortunately, if you're not working in the purpose of what that CTA is throughout, it's not going to have that same impact. So you need it to close strong, but it shouldn't be an afterthought. Everything in your presentation should in essence be pointing towards your end goal, whatever you want to leave the audience with.   Mike Gerholdt: I've many a times seen an entire slide devoted to resources and thought to myself, "I don't know where to start." There's a lot of resources, but a library is a resource too, and it's full of books, but I don't know where to start. [inaudible 00:16:32]   Ella Marks: It's so common. Well, and that's the thing, it's kind of a double-edged sword, right? Because a lot of times there's so many resources because there are so many good resources out there, and that's awesome. But one thing to keep in mind when you're putting together a presentation is you're presenting because you have expertise or you have a message to share. And so really rely on that. Use that to say, "Okay, great. I know there are tons of resources." But actually share your recommendation. What is the number one thing that you would do. That's something that you as a presenter bring that no one else can that's unique to you, what that next step is.   Ella Marks: We know that where most presentations, if you put 10 resources, people usually don't look at all 10. I hate to say it, but they probably won't look at more than one anyway, so focus on that one thing. And you really use your credibility that you've built with your audience to drive towards something more specific than a laundry list of things that people can do or read or engage with.   Mike Gerholdt: A lot of this content creation focused around a solo presenter, but I think it carries over if you're presenting with someone else. And I see this a lot at our events, even user groups. It's a lot easier. And myself included, the first time I presented at Dreamforce, I had a co-presenter. It's a lot easier to feel like more people carrying the weight of a presentation. What advice or what best practices do you have when you're pairing up with somebody to present on how you divide up content and how the two of you interact during the presentation?   Ella Marks: The first thing that I would do if I was presenting with someone else is have a meeting, get together with them, chat with them. I'm someone that prefers a meeting. I know some folks like to communicate on Slack or other formats, but I just love to chat with someone about this because you are going to be presenting and speaking. And to me, that's the best way to get a sense of that person's presentation style. And in that conversation, we might divide, if we're building content together, we might talk about our own expertise and where we feel like we can add the most value to the story and divide up the content that we work on and the slides and who's speaking based on what we think our strengths are.   Ella Marks: And then making sure that we're having a really open conversation about that. And I think one thing that you can do that when you divide a presentation, a lot of times what you see is, "Okay, Mike and I are presenting together. I'll take one slide, Mike, you take the next one, then we'll go back and forth." And sometimes that doesn't feel super. It feels a little disjointed when you haven't had the chance to actually talk through your content and rehearse. Rehearsing is so important for any presentation, but if you have more than one person, it is absolutely critical because that's how you're going to feel out how that story is going to come together.   Ella Marks: And what you may find is, "Yeah, I'm presenting with Mike, and Mike has a ton of expertise in this one area, but I have something to add there too." And actually switching up who's speaking on a particular slide that can reengage the audience. That's another tool that we have in our toolkits to make sure that people are staying with us throughout our presentation. And all that's going to come down to whether or not you've communicated all of these things with your co-presenter. Making sure that you guys are connected every step of the way is I think the best way to make a successful presentation with a partner or with the group, whoever it is.   Mike Gerholdt: I would agree. And I feel to that point of, I've seen decks and presentations where it's every other slide. Change it up where it makes it most relevant because there is a little bit with the audience of context switching going on where they're trying to understand who's speaking and it should be relevant if the person's speaking and not just, "Oh, well, that means if we go every other one, I'm on this slide and I don't know anything about this." It can also help you regroup content that you're putting together.   Ella Marks: Absolutely. And there's a lot of different ways that you can do this, but I really think that having that conversation with your co-presenter or co-presenters is going to be the best way to highlight how can you use your collective energy to get your message across in the best way possible?   Mike Gerholdt: Right. Stage presence or stagecraft, even in small presentations where boardrooms I think are super important. How do you prepare for that? What are some of the things that you've gone through as you've kind of honed your ability as you were getting ready for a Dreamforce keynote to kind of make sure that your presence was there and it was adding to what the content you were presenting?   Ella Marks: There are definitely a few things I do before every presentation, but I think a lot of it for me personally comes down to some important self-talk and pump up for a presentation. When you're chosen to present at an event or you've submitted something to a community conference, sometimes you need to remind yourself the day of, you get a little bit nervous, you might be scared to present. You were chosen for this, and you have knowledge and expertise to share. And going back for me and giving myself that confidence is probably the most important step that I take before I present anything. I always have to remind myself there's a reason I'm here.   Ella Marks: I have valuable knowledge to share. I'll reset on whatever the topic or the goal is of the presentation. And then my hidden trick, I would say. I was like, "I don't know where I was going with that sneaky trick." I guess. Sneaky trick, my trick or treat tip, which is not uncommon at all, is I love a pump up song. I just love something to help, I don't know, make me feel energized and excited because I know that if I go into a presentation not pumped up, it's going to be really hard for people to listen. A lot of times we present... Internally, we present in a meeting and there's a lot of other people presenting or we're in a lot of meetings that day, or at Dreamforce, people attend a lot of sessions.   Ella Marks: That's a lot of listening. And if you come out there with flat energy and aren't excited to be there and excited to get going, it shows and it makes it a lot harder for people to actually listen and absorb the content. And so going in pumping myself up is actually something that when I don't do it, I feel like I can tell in the presentation that my energy is not there, that I'm not communicating what I could in the best way possible.   Mike Gerholdt: You know I have to ask what your pump up song is, right?   Ella Marks: I know. It changes. A lot of my pump up songs are Lizzo though. I have to say Lizzo. I do love Taylor Swift as well, but I just... Lizzo, the number one song for me last year was Truth Hurts. There's some lyrics in there that I can't repeat on the podcast, but if you listen to the song, I think...   Mike Gerholdt: My pump up song...   Ella Marks: I think you'll know.   Mike Gerholdt: A lot of lyrics I can't repeat on the podcast.   Ella Marks: If you do listen, I think you'll know exactly what part of the song I'm referring to where I walk out and I'm like, "Aha, let's go. Let's get into it."   Mike Gerholdt: So if you see people at community events or at Salesforce events, walk up to the stage with their AirPods in, it's probably a pump up song that they're listening to. I can't blame them. If you were to boil down and think of maybe, I don't know... Let's choose five because five's a good number to remember. What are five things that you always try to include that you really look for in like, "Wow, that presentation knocked it out of the park?"   Ella Marks: That's a good question. As a reviewer of a lot of content, I'm just trying to think the things that have absolutely wowed me. Well definitely first, when it comes to presenting a good title to me, I'm immediately locked in. If there's a description associated with it like it would be for an event or maybe even a calendar invite. That to me is a sign of a good presentation. I know what I'm going to see. I'm excited for that content and I'm kind of hopeful to dive in. The second is probably... This is tough. There's just so many different ways to present, but I think looking for people that engage with the audience.   Ella Marks: So either doing what we talked about before, getting that post-check of who's in the room or have some sort of engaging component to their presentation. That for me, because my attention span is very short, tends to be a very effective way to get my attention. And I enjoy presentations that have that. I think when people also set context by sharing their own expertise, we didn't talk about it in this conversation, but I think one important thing that you really need to do when you present is make sure that you highlight who you are. You need to have an introduction that is, "Here's who I am, here's why I'm here." And that builds credibility.   Ella Marks: So when I hear something or see a presentation that I know the person is credible, that usually also is an indicator to me that it's a great presentation. Mike, I feel like you wanted five quick tips, and I'm giving you a lot longer than that.   Mike Gerholdt: I don't know. I just picked five out of the air because it sounds good. It doesn't have to be five.   Ella Marks: I also can't count, so I don't know what I'm on, but I'll say...   Mike Gerholdt: Well, as a good host, you'd think I was paying attention and counting.   Ella Marks: This is where I would use a visual to reinforce what I'm saying and remind me. If I was presenting this, I would put together a slide and I would have probably five horizontal bubbles on the slide and a few words about each, and that would help me stay on track. And at the end, I would have a super effective CTA, which I think would be one of the things that I look out for. If I know what... If I'm feeling inspired or motivated, or even just know the next steps I have to take after a presentation. That's how I know that it was good and it was effective.   Ella Marks: And then I think my final thing would be, and this may seem counterintuitive, but if I have questions, a lot of times that's a sign to me that the content was really interesting. I think if I want to approach a speaker after their presentation and want to learn more and want to continue the conversation. I have follow-ups or things like that, that's a sign that they did a really good job in engaging me. It could sometimes be a sign that they didn't share the right information. So I think you have to be careful there, but wanting to connect with the presenter, wanting to learn a little bit more and asking a question, I think is engaging in itself. So that to me is a good sign that it was a good presentation as well.   Mike Gerholdt: I go back and forth with questions, but I see your point. I think for me, I mean if I was to boil it to one thing. I don't have a word, but the comfort ability that the presenter has with the content. I really love it when somebody, it doesn't feel like their first time going through the content. And it so bugs me when I see somebody walk through and they click and goes to the slide and it surprises them. You're like, "Really? Okay." I really like it when somebody knows something and the slides are almost happening in the background and they're really paying attention to the audience. That to me, really gets me. And that comes with rehearsals, it comes with knowing the content, everything that you said previously.   Ella Marks: Absolutely. I think a lot of us think, especially people who give presentations all the time, we're like, "Oh, we can win this. It'll be fine. I know the content." But the reality is people can tell when you have not done the preparation necessary for a particular presentation. And so I think it is a great sign of a good presentation and good content when someone isn't overly relying on their visuals or words on the slide to tell the story.   Ella Marks: It's actually a story that they're telling where the visuals are supporting. It's not at the center of everything that they're doing. It's really more of a show that you're watching.   Mike Gerholdt: I often compare presenting to athletes. Some of the greatest athletes that we've had in baseball or basketball or whatever sport you watch, they practice and there's a reason for that. They don't just show up and naturally wing it. Derek Jeter didn't naturally winged being good. It's repetition and it's doing and becoming comfortable with the moment. So it's great stuff. Thank you, Ella for coming on the pod and sharing. This is very relevant for where we are right now. Not only heading into TDX, but heading into world tour. And I feel like community group season, not to mention just budget presenting. I want more things in Salesforce season to my executives and all kinds of presentation times.   Ella Marks: This is definitely super timely. So thanks so much, Mike, for having me.   Mike Gerholdt: So I love that discussion with Ella. That was a lot of fun. And as with anything, presenting, content creation, stagecraft, there's only so much we can cover, but I feel like we could do so much more. And we're heading into Dreamforce. So a lot of people are probably getting ready to present or even if you're not going as a presenter, you might have to do like I did, which was get back and have to present what you learned. So you're presenting one way or another. But I enjoyed this.   Mike Gerholdt: I love coaching people on how to present and Ella's one of truly a few people that can do it super well. So again, if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you give us a follow on the app that you're listening to, and then that way you get new episodes. And of course, any resources that we listed can be found at admin.salesforce.com, including a transcript of the show, so that way you can read it and follow along. And of course, participate in the Admin Trailblazer community that is in the Trailblazer Group. And of course the link to that is in the show notes. So with that, until next week, I'll see you in the cloud.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Cole, Director of Business Intelligence and Automation at 908 Devices. Join us as we chat about why understanding and documenting your business processes is critical for collecting quality data in your org. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Cole. Admins connect the dots Jen recently co-presented at World Tour Boston about business processes and data strategy, and I wanted to get her on the pod to tell you all about it. “Data isn’t helpful if you don’t know your process,” she says, “it’s just interesting facts on a screen that maybe make pretty graphs but what does it tell you if you don’t know what questions you’re answering?” I think a common misconception is that it’s the people not doing the day-to-day work who don’t understand the business process. As Jen points out, it’s often the folks actually doing the process who don’t understand why they need to log data a certain way. As we’ll get into, that’s not necessarily their fault—there’s an information gap. So it’s up to us as Salesforce Admins to connect those dots and spell out why accurate data is so important. How inaccurate data gets in your org Jen often supports sales teams and it’s a great example of how inaccurate data can end up in your org. Now it might sound obvious, but sales teams want to sell things. They don’t understand why they need to log an email into Salesforce or create the next step on an opportunity because they don’t know how that information will be used. So you see a lot of rushing through fields or just filling in a random date because it doesn’t matter anyway, right? And that’s where the problems creep in. Inaccurate data creates inaccurate business decisions. AI tools like Einstein Copilot or Next Best Action turn into useless, expensive toys without accurate data. So the first step is to figure out what questions you need to answer with data. If you can get to the Why behind the business process, you can build bridges across your organization and bring people together. Business processes and getting to why The next step is to explain the Why to the people involved in the business process. For example, “If you log your follow-up calls accurately, we can look at all that data and tell you the best time to make those calls,” or, “Sue from marketing will use this to send a targeted drip campaign that we know makes them more likely to buy from you.” Suddenly, you’ve created a feedback loop that gets the people entering data invested in data quality. Training is the best time to get started with explaining why. When they fill in this field, who else will use that information and how will it help the business as a whole? You need to get them invested in the process and help them see the broader picture. There’s so much more great stuff from Jen about how to look at your business processes and data strategy, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Podcast: Solving Business Problems with Composer and Flow with Jennifer Cole Blog: How to Use Salesforce to Manage Your Documentation Blog: How to Write Great Documentation to Help with Future Problem Solving Podcast: Understanding the Importance of Data Health in Salesforce   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Jen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcole-trailblazer/ Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt   Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Jennifer Cole about data strategy and process. Well, yeah, a little something different because in the world of AI and a lot of tools just in general, not to mention automation tools, it's good to know what you're doing with your data and do you have a process in place to make sure you're collecting good data. Also, I ask her about bad data, so that's an interesting answer. But really understanding what data are you collecting, and does everybody know the process for data collection because as we know, it's going to be even more important to have great data so that AI can give us even better insights. But if we don't know the process, then I think we're in trouble. So Jennifer's going to help us with that. But before we get into the episode, just a reminder that if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, be sure to click the follow button, that way this podcast can automatically be downloaded right to your device so that when you're out on your dog walk, you don't have to worry about downloading it because it'll already be there. And of course, I always appreciate a good review, so let me know how we're doing. With that, let's talk process and data quality and maybe data strategies. There's quite a few things in this podcast with Jennifer. And let's get Jennifer on the podcast. So, Jen, welcome back to the podcast. Jennifer Cole: Thanks, Mike. I'm really excited to be back. Mike: Well, last time, and I'll put a link in the show notes because you won't hear that a thousand more times today, but we were talking about documenting your process as an admin when you're solving things. Jennifer Cole: Yes, good stuff. Mike: I know. Well, I really enjoyed that. I could spend, again, probably another two hours doing that because, first of all, I constantly forget, "What was I doing here?" I should have wrote that down better. But we've since caught up a thousand other times and wanted to expand on that conversation because with AI, there's so many more shiny tools out there. Jennifer Cole: There are. Mike: I know, seriously. Jennifer Cole: A lot. Mike: I'm getting the cart in front of the horse. Let's refresh people about the amount of awesomeness stuff that you work on and what you do in the community. So let's start there. Jennifer Cole: Sure. Yeah. I am Director of Business Intelligence and Automation at 908 Devices, which is a super cool title that basically says, "I am still an awesome admin." I'm building apps and supporting my team. I run a team of awesome admins and have recently been able to co-present with one of my awesome admins at the Boston World Tour last, what, two months ago? Wow, time flies. Mike: I know. Yeah. Jennifer Cole: Oh, so much. Talking about process and data strategy. So that is my sweet spot and what I'm still rocking out at 908. Mike: I feel everybody now is paying attention to data with AI. Data, data, data. Pay attention to your data, clean your data, wash your data, put your data in a dishwasher. Jennifer Cole: Give me your data. Mike: Cascade is going to have special data tabs here pretty soon. Tide's going to have data pods, right? I'm kidding. Jennifer Cole: I was going to ask if they were going to be Salesforce branded, that would've been fun. I would've bought those. Mike: Oh, I know, right? But they only work in the cloud, so you'd have to stand outside in the rain. That wasn't a well-thought-through joke, so that's okay. You can't have a zinger every single time. But you bring up a good point. So what good is data if you don't know your process, right? Jennifer Cole: Yeah. I don't know that it's helpful if you don't know your process. It's just interesting facts on a screen that maybe make pretty graphs, but what does it tell you if you don't know what questions you're answering? Mike: Yeah. I guess in the scheme of things, if we're sitting down and we're looking at our data and we're cleaning our data, we should really take a step back and think about, "What are we doing with our process?" And maybe to your point, and you can expand on this, does everybody know the process? Do you run into a lot of organizations that don't know their process? Jennifer Cole: Yes. Mike: Or a process, I should say. The process, like there's one. Jennifer Cole: Can I choose C, all of the above? Mike: C, all of the above. Jennifer Cole: Yeah, actually quite a few. And I would expect most people assume it's certain pockets of the organization or those who just aren't doing the day-to-day work, but I don't think that's true. I actually experience people that are doing the day-to-day work don't even fully understand the process or why they're doing what they're doing or what information downstream or upstream their process is being leveraged in. So it's everywhere, honestly. Mike: Look, we all go to work. People are probably listening to this podcast going to work, like, "I'm going to go to work and send some emails and do work." And they do things. So when you say they don't know the process, what about that do you... Is it there's no organizational book or they don't know where the data comes and they don't know what they're shipping out or where it goes? Jennifer Cole: I think a little bit of both, but if I think about the group of folks I support the largest amount of my time against is the sales organization. They have an objective to make sales, right? They're in sales. It's literally in their title. And for them, they just want to get the job done, right? They want to make a customer happy, they want to book that order, and they want to move on to the next one. And they don't always understand why they have to log an email into Salesforce or why they need to create this next step on their opportunity, and who is actually using the application field that they're tagging about their customer. I think they get rightfully so focused on what they're trying to achieve, they don't see the broader picture of where their data's going and how that helps the company refine what they're doing or tweak the customer they want to focus on or tweak how we do things to make them more efficient. So I think in that particular very specific example, they're just so focused on their job, they don't understand why or how it matters. Mike: You bring up a very good step in the sales process. If they don't understand why that step's required and the data they're gathering for that step, then they're less likely to do it, right? They'll just do it in a spreadsheet and then when the deal's closed, they'll just go in Salesforce and just bang through the opportunity as fast as they can, right? Jennifer Cole: Right. There's nothing enriching in that. I can't look at a bigger scope of data to understand, "Geez, a lot of our opportunities close faster when they do a follow-up call 20 days after X event." And that would be juicy information to know because then it becomes a feedback loop in the process to say, "Hey, it looks like the odds of closing your deal faster if you do this particular step." But if all of that is being logged outside of the system and we don't know how many follow-up calls there are or face-to-face meetings or customer demos that are taking place, then we can't provide that intel back to help them achieve their goals faster and smarter. Mike: So if they're logging, let's say, a required field, which is an arbitrary date because they're trying to get through to the closed one because they think they're following the process, but they really did the whole thing out of Salesforce, and then it's Friday night and the quarter closes and they're trying to get their opportunities in, by not understanding the process, are they then creating bad data? Jennifer Cole: Oh, bad's a funny word. I would say inaccurate data. I would say data that's going to mislead you. Yes, there's technically bad data, but in that case, it's not intentionally bad. It's more just inaccurate to the true story. And I think that can make it very misleading for the business because they might adjust their workflow based upon the intel they have and it actually isn't improving anything because nobody was being honest about what they were entering. Mike: So CEO goes to, we'll use your example, Boston World Tour and sees the new AI, Copilot and Einstein stuff, and maybe wants to use Einstein Next Best Action, but because they're just putting in arbitrary dates, the new shiny isn't really helping them. Jennifer Cole: No, it just becomes a very expensive toy. Sorry, but it does. It doesn't help them move anything faster, right? Mike: Yeah. And I think it's an interesting concept because we always go back to, "Well, this one thing will just help you do stuff better." But ultimately, before you even look at those things, it's, "But what is the process that you're trying to get to? Do you even understand the process?" Is that where you start with a lot of things? Jennifer Cole: It's where I start everything. When a person comes for an enhancement or wants to report out on this particular metric or get data to understand what's happening with their business, the question always begins with, "What questions are you trying to answer? I understand you are asking for this data point, but why? Is it something you're doing today or you're not doing today and you want to understand how well you are or are not filling that information in or following that process?" Because understanding the process for me and my experience and my team's experience helps us serve our customers better. And when I say customer, I mean internal employees in this case because we're an internal team. We help them achieve so much more when we can get underneath and get to the why. Understanding their why is what drives bigger change for us because it often is not just them who need the help or need the change, but actually other people in the organization have that same why. So process is almost like a keystone in the bridge for us. We have to get to it. We have to understand it before we start building across and bridging islands together. Mike: Man, the number of times understanding the why has come up. I should get a shirt that says that. Jennifer Cole: That'd be a great shirt. Mike: Understand the why. So let me dial in specifically for an admin that's listening. Are there things that you build into your application when you create something, let's say for sales or customer service, that helps remind the end user about the why? Jennifer Cole: Sometimes, yes. Actually, a recent deployment we did was to enable sales to capture who should get automated booking and shipping notifications. And we moved that into Salesforce so that when it replicates over to our ERP, it's auto-fed. It's just more accurate. The sales rep knows who should be getting those notices. And we have those fields there to fill in those addresses, but we did something super simple. We added a little text bubble, an actual text component on the lightning page that explained what field did what, and critical reminders about which field you should fill in and which field you should update this address only. And the feedback we got was, "That was great. I need that. That always will remind me because I can never remember what I'm supposed to do or why it matters." And it was just a really simple little text component on the screen. So we try to do small things like that where we nudge them through the workflow with those gentle reminders, conditional visibility reminders, anything that helps them in that moment for that particular step in the process to remember the critical reason why it matters helps. Mike: Yeah. That's really great because you think about the level of complexity that is getting added to everyone's job. I remember as an admin, I'd spent two, three months with maybe a department or a team working on what their process is and getting their app right in Salesforce. And by the end of it, man, you could have quizzed me Jeopardy-level on what was going on with that team and how the data flowed and I would have nailed it, but two months later- Jennifer Cole: It's gone. Mike: ... no idea. It's gone. Jennifer Cole: What's my name? Yes. Mike: I'll take, nope, I don't know, hodgepodge for 500, Alex. Jennifer Cole: Yes. Real admin life. Mike: Exactly. But somehow you just expect to turn that app over to your users and like, "Oh, I'm sure they'll remember this." So when you're creating an app and have those epiphanies, "Let's add this box that reminds people," how important is it for you? Or how important do you feel it is that admins make sure that their users know where the data that they're working on comes from and where it goes? Jennifer Cole: I think it's actually critical to adoption. Everyone loves to throw this word adoption around, and it's more than just logins. It's actually usability of the system and following the process. And we had a sales meeting, was it two years ago, a year ago? And we were asked to present as a Salesforce team to the sales team about critical fields they need to fill in. And everyone's done those trainings. They're painful for the salespeople. They're just sitting there, "Yeah, okay, I have to fill in the application. Yeah, okay, I have to update my close date. Yeah, okay." And they go through this monotony. But what we found was so successful and an incredible adoption to following the process was when we told them why. We said, "Okay, when you fill this in, here are the people after you that are using this data. Here's your marketing team and how they're using it to refine the drip campaigns to send to your customers. So if you classify them right, they're going to get special content against their industry or application usage." And we found, Mike, it was the coolest thing, we found in our support channel, we use Slack for issues and questions by the business, people after that sales meeting we're just saying, "Now, what if I choose this and what happens if I choose this?" Because they knew who was using the data that they input and where it went, they started to care. And then we just saw greater adoption and questions around, "Well, what happens if I choose the wrong thing? Can I fix it?" And that's a win as an admin in my book when your business suddenly cares about the data they're putting in. Mike: Yeah, especially for salespeople. I did an exercise like that where the salespeople went through the call center. And I remember sitting in the break room and the salespeople sitting down with call center agents and like, "Well, whenever we get this from sales, it says this." And them sitting there going, "Well, we fill it out because we think it's this." But those two people had never talked. And the second they talked, it was like, "Oh, well we could 100% get this." And then the customer service agent is like, "Oh, that would be so helpful because then when they call in and ask, we don't have to spend 20 minutes looking something up." Jennifer Cole: It's amazing. It's powerful. Mike: I'll take ownership of this too, it's the fact that when you sit down sometimes, you work at processes at a stage gate level and you forget, "Okay, well, I did sales and then sales ends here." Well, sales doesn't end there. There's that gray area, and I just didn't bring those groups together. I jumped over to service and obviously everything shipped and it was fine or then they'd call, except that gap in between there is the parts you got to work on. Jennifer Cole: The bridging of the teams and how the data flows between them. Mike: Yeah. Jennifer Cole: I think that's where the secret sauce is. Mike: A lot of it is. So let's touch on this. Automation has always been huge, and I know we've talked a lot with you about integrations and bringing data over. How does not knowing the process really impact automations? Jennifer Cole: How much time do we have? No, I'm kidding. Mike: As much time as you'd like. Jennifer Cole: I think it can have a huge impact on the business in not a good way. I think it could accelerate inaccurate data faster. If you don't understand your process and why you're filling in what fields, you could be filling in fields that mean nothing to your business, that mean nothing to you learning how to change your process, adapt your process to better suit your business and your customers. I think it can actually be an unfortunate waste of energy for your admins and money for the organization if you just don't understand what you want to do and who's doing what and why. Remember the TV show Lost, which is very controversial, no one likes the ending of Lost. But remember- Mike: I remember it. I'm one of the few people that never got into it. Jennifer Cole: Okay, consider yourself lucky. Mike: So I've been told. Jennifer Cole: You've saved so many hours of your life that you've done better things with. Mike: Oh no, I've wasted them with other TV shows. Jennifer Cole: Well, I will quickly say, for the audience that does know the show, there's this scene or episode where this guy just keeps pressing a red button and he has no idea why. And then he leaves and someone else has to take over pressing this red button. And ultimately, it ends up being not as critical as anyone might think, but they're just doing it because they were told to do it and they have to do it, but nobody knows why. And I think businesses, if they don't understand their process, are doing the same thing. They're demanding fields to be populated by their users that are never used, that are never actually aggregated to understand if there's value or something to modify an existing workflow or change the direction of how you advertise to customers. They're just pressing red buttons. So I think it can be dangerous if you don't understand. Mike: Yeah. So is that perpetuated by the fact that a lot of products and services are sold with, "Here's the easy way to fix your X"? Jennifer Cole: Short answer? Yes. And I understand why that's done. They want to show the ease of use of the tool. But I think the piece that's really hard is we can't get underneath to see how it's built to know if it's going to work for our challenging business problems that we're trying to solve. And what isn't really discussed either is why understanding your data strategy is so important and how that tool fits in. I think that's missed. And I don't think that's always understood by the C-suite or the folks that are paying for these tools. They just see this really cool tool like, "Hey, AI is going to do this for you. I want to be able to do that too. Let's just buy it." But somebody has to understand how it works, and somebody has to understand the process so that it actually becomes valuable. It's missed. It's truly, truly missed. And it's hard for admins. Mike: Well, I think you said something that's even bigger than process that I'm realizing now, which is process exists in a world where there is a data strategy. Jennifer Cole: It's a piece. Mike: We've probably not sat down, I've never sat down, have you ever sat down and written a data strategy with an organization? Jennifer Cole: Written it down? No. It's desperately needed, but conversations are a good place to start, for sure. Mike: Yeah, but it's something that we as a Salesforce admin should think about because then we can create a world in which process can exist because data strategy tells me, "We know where the data is going to originate from, how we're going to use it, and what our end goals are." And end goals could be many endpoints. And then within that data strategy world is where we start to build different processes that take that data and transform it into useful things that the business can then use to make decisions on. So we just haven't sat down and wrote data strategies. Jennifer Cole: I think so. And I think that's hard day one. My own experience has been the process that was just built over time because somebody needed this field or somebody wanted to do this. There wasn't a broader conversation of, "Well, who else wants to use this field?" And it's something I need, do you need it too, Mike? Those conversations, I don't think they happen at the beginning because businesses are just trying to get off the ground and they're just trying to get customers engaged. So we're a little bit backwards in the whole process, but it is critical, I think, for businesses to start and stop... Well, how do I want to say this? They need to stop and think about, "We've got all these processes, do they still make sense? Are they where we want to go and do they fit into our larger strategy for what data we want to use to navigate the ship of our business truly?" So I think unfortunately, the data strategy doesn't come until after processes are baked in, but hopefully not too solidified that they can't rip them up and start something from scratch if it doesn't fit the strategy they want to achieve. Mike: Right. Yeah, because I'm thinking early day one, which who knows where people are at, but early day one of a sales process is, "How do you get the widget to the customer as fast as possible?" Right? Jennifer Cole: Yeah. Mike: Later stage day one, as the company matures, "How do we efficiently get the widget to the customer and understand our operational challenges?" Jennifer Cole: It's an evolution, yeah. Mike: We're still shipping widgets, it's just why does the widget sit for six days at this stage? Is that six days lost or is that six days... I don't know. And that's where data strategy figures that out because are we even capturing that data to make that decision to figure that stuff out? And if not, then we need to start doing that. Jennifer Cole: Yes. And it makes me think about how I'm hearing more in the community, which very much excites me, of reverse thinking, "Well, what do you want to measure? Okay, let's go backwards and figure out do you even have the fields to start measuring it. And are you measuring it because you're curious or are you measuring it because it's something you want to bake into your workflow and your process there?" So I'm excited to hear more in the community of folks starting to think about this reverse modeling of, "Well, we want to understand what our customers are doing with our widgets. Now that they're using them, we're super excited we've got this customer base, but should we start to target certain types of customers? Well, what are they doing with our widgets?" "Okay, great question. Are you set up to even track that? And what do you need in order to start tracking it? And then who's going to fill it in and do they know why they're filling it in?" That whole reverse model. So that's an exciting shift that I'm hearing more of in the industry and fellow admins to support that data strategy. But I think you're right, that next step is really sitting down to define on paper what that strategy is and then communicating it to everyone in the organization at every level of the organization because that just goes back to the why. When folks understand the why, they get excited, they want to help. Mike: I'll flip back and forth. So then you sit down, you look at process, you think of data strategy. When looking at tools, what are some things that admins shouldn't be afraid to ask or should really get behind and get their hands dirty looking at? Jennifer Cole: Oh, thank you for the question. I think it's setup. As a customer of Salesforce, your poor sales reps, I'm tough because I always want to see what's underneath. Don't give me the shiny YouTube video, let me play with it, let me get in there. So I would love for fellow admins to be just as precocious and go into setup. Let me physically see my options. And that's super cool what you just showed me, but how did you set it up? Let me in your demo org. And Salesforce demo orgs are incredible, like what your solution engineers build and play with and what's in there. Ask admins, ask for a sneak peek because you, as an admin, not only need to understand how your business would apply the tool, but you need to understand how it works and how it can scale to solve all the crazy problems that you'll come across because in a way, you've got to sell it to your business. Admins are diverse. They're builders, and they're also internal salespeople to their own executive suite. So I would encourage them to say, "Show me how it's made." Mike: Yeah. I also, as an admin, liked showing my users if they wanted to see how I made the app or parts of it that, say sales, for example, if they asked, "Well, what happens if we add a step here?" Well, then I can just go click, click, boom, and now that new step shows up in path and shows up in the opportunity. And it lets them know two things. One, I understand the value of being agile and changing because if we're working on a new process, we've got to be ready to, "Hey, this really isn't working despite what we thought it would do on paper." And also two, when we get to that point, you need to know I have the skill to change the application at the speed of business so that we can make that adjustment and keep moving forward. Jennifer Cole: Yes, I fully agree. And it's interesting too because even my user population loves to see under the hood, even though they're never- Mike: Oh, really? Jennifer Cole: ... going to use it. Oh, they love it. When they like to see those changes on the fly that you were just speaking to, like, "Yeah, I do know how to manage this application. I do know how to customize it. I can improve it for you." When we do on-demand changes for them in a meeting when we're getting app feedback or process feedback that we've implemented in Salesforce, they just think it's so much fun. Number one, they gain a lot more confidence in the team because they're seeing something happen in real-time. But number two, they themselves love to see it and enjoy how quickly we can support the business. And also, it allows them to understand when sometimes it takes us more time because it's more complicated, there's a better understanding. So totally diverging topics on you, but yeah, users love it too. Mike: It's getting behind the scenes, which is digging into process and digging into data strategies. So a follow-up to that, do you regularly share that, and would you recommend admins regularly do that as well? Jennifer Cole: Yes, I would actually. And it's funny, as an admin, we're often tagged as being a tiny bit controlling in our orgs and love everything to be precise and buttoned up. But I think it actually gains business trust when we crack open the org in setup for them and they can see how we click around because there's no risk. If someone wants to join the admin team and they're that curious and inspired by what they see in setup, oh my gosh, come on over. But at the same breath, admins can gain so much trust, I feel, from their business when they expose what they're doing. Because if you think about it, admins are going into the business every day and saying, "Show me your process. How are you doing it? Let me see what you're doing." We're putting our business under the microscope to improve it. I don't think there's any harm in the reverse. It just helps build that mutual trust and relationship of sharing how to build something and what the possibilities are or are not. And I encourage it. I think it would be great. Actually, I encourage my team to do it. They do it in front of our users all the time, and it's been a positive experience. Mike: Well, I can't think of a better way to wrap up the conversation than having brought it completely back around on us where we're being as transparent with our processes, we're asking the business to be with us while we create the technology to support it. Thanks for coming back on the pod and sharing your thoughts on this and giving us data strategies to work on. Jennifer Cole: Thanks, Mike. It was really great. Mike: I'm excited. Jennifer Cole: Me too. I'm excited [inaudible 00:32:28] admins do, have fun out there. Mike: Well, I don't know about you, but I was thinking of a thousand different times that I needed to have a conversation between different departments so that they understood the importance of putting fields in. And really, it was interesting, after the call, Jennifer and I talked a little bit because so much of what we do when we sit down with our users is, "Well, how are we going to document this? What are we going to put in Salesforce?" And we get wrapped up with what we're going to put in Salesforce, which we should, but we forget to talk of why. And that came up in this conversation is why are we putting this down? Why is this a critical stage? Why is it critical that we capture this data at this point? And then who's going to do something with it to make us a better organization? When talking sales, it's not just shipping out the widget as fast as we can, but maybe as efficiently as we can and understanding different parts of our organization so that we can capture data. And I got to agree with Jennifer, boy, it was such a good point, having all of your users understand where the data is coming from and where the data that they create goes, where in the process they sit, and having those individuals meet with each other. I think that was such a great insight that Jennifer brought to this episode. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. And of course, if you did, you can share it with your friends. Just go ahead and click on those three dots. There's usually three dots in just about every application now, and you can share it on social. I would so appreciate that. And if you're looking for resources or anything that we mentioned in the episode itself, show notes are right there. They're also on our website, admin.salesforce.com, which has got everything you need to read, blog posts, other podcasts you can listen to, and a transcript of this show. And of course, you can join the conversation in the Admin Trailblazer group, which is in the Trailblazer Community, that is also a link in the show notes. A lot of people talk in data quality and process there too. All right, so until next week, we'll see you in the cloud.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Elizabeth Awad, Associate Product Manager for Prompt Builder at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how you can use Prompt Builder to simplify users’ daily tasks by integrating generative AI moments powered by prompt templates into their workflows. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Elizabeth Awad. What’s the difference between Einstein Copilot and Prompt Builder? There’s been a lot of buzz around Prompt Builder these days, so I was excited to get Liz Awad on the pod to pick her brain about it. She’s a product manager on the Prompt Builder team, so you could say she knows some things. The first question I had for her is one I hear frequently from the community: What’s the difference between Einstein Copilot and Prompt Builder? “They go hand in hand,” Liz says, “the prompts that you create in Prompt Builder can be connected to custom actions in Copilot.” In other words, Prompt Builder is where you as the admin create custom prompts to write a sales email or summarize a case, and Einstein Copilot is what allows your end users to invoke those prompts. Practice your prompts We’ve had more than a few guests suggest that you jump on an LLM to practice prompting but I wanted to know from Liz, specifically, what she’s found helpful. She had a really interesting answer, which was to try to get ChatGPT to write a birthday text to her mom. If you think about it, that’s a perfect use case for practicing writing better prompts. It’s pretty simple in terms of information but it’s tricky to get the right tone. More importantly, you probably have a good sense of what sounds right and what doesn’t. And so when you give adjustments, you instantly know how well they worked. Liz points out that this process is what people mean when they talk about “grounding” a prompt. It’s the extra bits of information you give an AI to adjust the response, like “That sounds too formal” or, “Here are three other texts I’ve sent my mom.” Prompt templates you can use in Salesforce right now As a reminder, there are four prompt template types that you can use in Salesforce right now. They are: Sales email Field generation Record summary Flex templates Josh Birk and Raveesh Raina went over all of this in detail in their episode last month, so I’ll link below. However, Liz wanted to draw special attention to a new addition to the flex prompt template, which is the ability to use free text as an input. That means you can use something like a chat transcript or a case summary to ground your prompt. It’s super flexible, and the sky’s the limit. There’s so much more great stuff from Liz about what you can do with Prompt Builder and how she approaches her role as a PM, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Podcast: Salesforce Prompt Builder Features Every Admin Should Know Podcast: Get to Know Prompt Builder with Marissa Scalercio   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Liz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-awad/ Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike: Earlier this year, we talked with Melissa Scalercio about Prompt Builder, because she was on the customer side and she had some pretty neat things to say about how they were using Prompt Builder. You can go back into the Salesforce archives there to listen to that episode.  In case you're not familiar, Prompt Builder allows you to simplify users' daily tasks by integrating generative AI moments powered by prompt templates into their workflow. It's really cool. You get to bind a field and put sparkles on it. That's what it's called literally, sparkles. I wanted to talk to one of the product managers that is working on Prompt Builder. That is Liz Awad, who is based in New York. She is helping build the future of Prompt Builder. She not only gives us some really useful insights into Prompt Builder and how she's seeing other customers use it, but also into what's coming with Prompt Builder, and you may have already seen it. Then, fun fact, we get to learn a hobby. I bet it's one maybe that most of you do. I've seen it on a ton of TV shows. But I'm not going to tell you because you have to listen to the episode. With that, let's get Liz on the podcast.  Liz, welcome to the podcast.  Liz Awad: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.  Mike: Well, I'm excited to talk about Prompt Builder. We've talked about Prompt Builder in the past, with Melissa, earlier. I wanted to hear from somebody that's actually working on the product and doing some really fun stuff, because not only is Prompt Builder a really cool tool for admins to use. We're seeing that in all of our AI Now tours. But also, there's a lot of really cool features coming as well. Look, I'm getting the cart in front of the horse, like I always do. Let's start off with you. Liz, how did you get to Salesforce and start owning Prompt Builder?  Liz Awad: Sure. I've been at Salesforce a little over a year now. I'm actually part of a rotational product management program here at Salesforce. Previously, I was on Sales Cloud, and I was working on adoption. Which is actually admin relevant, as a new feature on Sales Cloud is launching soon called Sales Cloud Go. I was part of that development. Then I knew my manager, Avantika. She's the one that pulled me into Prompt Builder, where I am now. Mike: Wow. Liz Awad: I've been working here for around five months now. I'm very excited. It's been a great journey. Things have changed really fast, as you know, in the large language model space. There's new models all of the time. We are, like you said, launching some amazing new features. Mike: Yeah. Just trying to keep up with ... I remember when Einstein came out and we suddenly had to learn large language models as part of our nomenclature. Then now, we're having to learn generative AI, and prompts, and grounding. My most fun word to say is hallucinations. Because you know, hallucinations, what could go wrong there? But that's a different podcast that you can listen about. Prompt Builder, what are exciting things that you can dug into and are happy to work on out of the gate? We'll preface that by saying tell me how Prompt Builder is different than Copilot.  Liz Awad: Yes, great question. Prompt Builder is a low code prompt management tool. This basically allows you to create reusable prompts that are being sent to these large language models. Prompts are just instructions that you send so that the model outputs the correct text.  The way that it's different than Copilot, the way that we view it actually is they go hand-in-hand. The prompts that you create using Prompt Builder can actually be connected to custom actions in Copilot. Then within Copilot, when you ask Copilot a question, it can invoke the prompt that you have created. They're different in that Prompt Builder is this tool that allows you to create the custom prompts. Copilot is maybe one area when your end users actually invoke the prompts.  Mike: Yeah. Copilot's a little more conversational.  Liz Awad: Exactly.  Mike: Yeah. That's also one of the things that, as a former Salesforce administrator, I love about Prompt Builder is it's just a little sparkle button that my users have to press and they get magic.  Liz Awad: Exactly.  Mike: It doesn't depend on their ability to write a good prompt. Liz Awad: No. It's the admins, now you all become prompt engineers. I will say you do need to spend some time reworking your prompts, testing your prompts. In Prompt Builder, you can even change the models. Certain models are better at writing sales emails than others. Depending on your use case, that Prompt Builder workspace is really where you can test. Just so, like you said, your end users just get to see magic.  Mike: Yeah. Let me ask. What do you do to get better at writing prompts?  Liz Awad: I was introduced to the concept of prompt engineering, like the rest of the world, when ChatGPT came out in November 2022. The first thing I did was just go to the website and start asking it questions that I knew the answers to already. Or I would be able to tell that's a good response, and that's a bad response. It was as simple as, "Write a text to my mom, wishing her a happy birthday." When the LLM responds, it used maybe a formal tone, or something that I personally would never send to my mom. Then I'm like, "Make it sound more casual. I'm very close to my mom, so make sure you include that." That idea of editing a prompt, and trying to have it fit your tone and your style can be used in an enterprise context as well.  The other thing to think about is, when you're telling ChatGPT or your LLM more information, that's called grounding. That's giving more data to the LLM about the type of response that you want back. All of those things are really important in prompt engineering.  Mike: Yeah. Well, I'll be honest with you. The first time I ever heard the term grounding was when I was doing the Data Now workshop. We talked about building a prompt in Prompt Builder. I think the very first line was, "Acting as," and then you could fill in $user.organization, however that worked. It was literally meant to pull the running user, which is you. I thought, "Oh, that totally makes sense." Then you could pull in, "Here's different information." Because I think back to the way you brought in writing prompts, the rest of the world was just like, "Oh, neat. With ChatGPT I just ask it questions." But here, we can actually pull in and say, "No, I want you to go into my Salesforce org and really pull that data out," as opposed to just asking it for a text for your mom.  Liz Awad: Exactly. That's what really makes it powerful, is that it's dynamic. What you said here is you can think of it as a variable, or a field, that's user.name. When that prompt is invoked at runtime, that is replaced with the actual end user's running the name in Salesforce. That prevents you from having to create multiple iterations of prompts. When we say grounding, all we're really saying is data. It's just a fancy way of saying injecting more data into your prompts. Mike: Right.  Liz Awad: With Prompt Builder, that data can come from a wide variety of places, not just your CRM. It can come from Data Cloud. You could use a flow to inject data. It can get really powerful, which is really exciting.  Mike: If you think about it, if you really wanted to go back in time, this is where a time machine would help to tell our parents, "If I'm grounded, it just means I've got the data. Thanks."  Liz Awad: Yeah, exactly.  Mike: "You're grounded for a month." No, I'm grounded for life because I've got data. That's how you get more grounded. Just realized it, that dawned on me.  One thing that I did for the longest time. I love using the little sticky notes feature on my Mac. When I would write a good prompt for ChatGPT and it would turn something out, it was like, "Oh, awesome." I would copy that and I'd hang onto it. Then I remember sharing stuff with my team early on. They're like, "Oh, how did you do that?" I would share the prompt with them, the text. Liz Awad: Yes.  Mike: Then they would plug that in, and they would get something different. I realized early on, with AI, the learning curve for AI is everybody's different, as opposed to when we were trying to learn Flow Builder. When Flow came out, the admin created the flow, and then the record, or whatever the action was, worked the same for everybody. Then as I started looking at AI I was like, "Boy, this is going to be tough for users," because it really depended more on what is that end user's ability to write a good prompt. Or how do I disseminate good prompts to my users? That all changed for me when I saw Prompt Builder because we can put all that in there, which means the end user gets a solid experience every single time without having to be good at writing prompts. Right?  Liz Awad: Exactly. The end user doesn't need to be the prompt engineer because, as an admin, you are created those instructions every time and it's following that template.  Now I will say you can have different outputs because it's generative. Even if you're invoking the same instructions, the response might be a little different every time you call the large language model. But it should be somewhat the same every time you call.  Mike: Right. Obviously, if it was the same, then it'd just be like email templates.  Liz Awad: Exactly. I do want to say, now that you've brought up email templates, just a small use case or a small story.  Mike: Yeah.  Liz Awad: One of our customers was telling us that they used to use the email templates. Now they're using the sales email template in Prompt Builder. Because it's generative, they're delivery rate was much higher. As in Gmail, Outlook, and these email clients wouldn't mark it as scam. It would actually deliver in whoever they were contacting, that inbox.  That was really interesting for us to hear. That was the first time we had thought about that metric of tracking delivery rate. And how, when you're using generative AI, it's not a pattern, it's not a template. Those words can change every time you're calling the large language model, with the same theme throughout. Mike: Right.  Liz Awad: That was really interesting for us to hear on the product management team.  Mike: No, I like that. That actually leads into the next question I had. Which was where are you seeing admins deploy Prompt Builder the most?  Liz Awad: It's a great question. It really depends on industry and use case. But we've seen a lot of field generation templates, which is what you described, where your end users see that magic button. You use a prompt template to fill in a field on a record.  Mike: Okay.  Liz Awad: We've also seen a lot of sales emails use cases. Case summarization use cases. It's really across the board. The best part is, you as an admin get to be creative with it. Because you can really think of 100 plus use cases, that's why we have flex template to allow you to customize and put in as many objects, or even now strings or free text, as input to a prompt.  Mike: Tell me more about the templates. I forget, there's four types of templates?  Liz Awad: Yes, there are four types of templates. Sales email. Mike: Okay.  Liz Awad: Field generation. Record summary. And flex templates.  Mike: Flex sounds the coolest.  Liz Awad: Yes. Flex, it's in the namesake. It's allowing you to create those custom templates where you can call an invokable action, you can use flows.  One feature that we just released is actually called string inputs or free text. Where, using a flex template, you can have text as your only input. Previously, we required templates to be associated with objects. But we heard from customers, "Hey, what if I have a transcript of a chat and I only want to use that as my grounding data?" Well, that's why we just released this, actually this month. It's very exciting.  Mike: That's interesting. Tell me more about that. Because I think I saw that in one of the release readiness' that you did.  Liz Awad: Yes. The use case here is that, if you want to invoke a template from a flow, or maybe using Apex, and all you want as the input is just text itself ... Another example could be an agent gathers a question from a user in a chat, and you want to use that question as input into the prompt. Previously, you would still have to associate that template with a record, which would just be wasted time. You're not actually using that record as grounding data. But now, you can just have that template with the input as a user question, for example.  Mike: Interesting. Yeah. No, I like that. I think, in the earlier podcast we talked to Melissa, she was using the sales email stuff a lot. I'm curious, do you have any insight ... Maybe this is just me, and I've worked in these overly micromanaged organizations where marketing needs to see every period, and comma, and I that's dotted, which is why they loved email templates so much. You mentioned sales templates. Sales email templates. How are marketers adjusting to AI, where it's not word-for-word every single time?  Liz Awad: That's a really good question. I just want to point out that we still recommend that a human's eyes are on the responses from the large language models before they're sent out. We don't recommend automated generation and sending just yet. Primarily for that reason, just to make sure that either a marketer or a sales rep understands exactly what is being sent to their customers. It's really just used as a tool to help, like an assistant, as opposed to replacing that job of writing the email. It gives you a baseline for you to go in and potentially edit or add certain things that you want, depending on the customer.  Now, like you said, some organizations are stricter than others. Maybe they'll, in their company, have a process which is you still use the sales email template to start, but then someone either needs to check it before it's sent. Or the admin can actually go into the audit trail and see all the generated emails, and someone can review those and make sure that that pass is their standard of quality.  Mike: Sure, sure. Yeah. No, I like that. Plus, you could probably include some stylistic cues in the prompt when you're building that as an admin as well.  Liz Awad: Definitely. That is recommended.  Mike: Write in your voice and tone.  Liz Awad: Yes, voice and tone is definitely recommended. You really want to be as specific as possible. You can even give an example of a great email in your instructions.  Mike: Oh! Well, that works out nice.  Liz Awad: "This is an example of a great email we would want to send to a customer."  Mike: Interesting. I like that. There's so many areas now, I think of Salesforce, to talk about with stakeholders as an admin. Not just features that are coming out, but it's also ... I know working with sales teams, thinking of I've always had that sales manager that would come up to me and say, "So-and-so writes great emails. How do we make everybody a great email writer?" Prompt Builder now has that ability. You can work with that great salesperson to get some of their great email ideas, and use those as some initial early prompts, that you can then disseminate to all of your sales team. Which, to me, I'm sure that salesperson doesn't like that. Salespeople are a little competitive that way.  Liz Awad: Yes, that's interesting. That's true, I never thought about that.  Mike: As a product manager, I guess, admins do a lot of product managing. Is there any advice that you would give that you've learned in your year or so at Salesforce that would help them manage the onslaught of new features or how you balance priorities?  Liz Awad: Definitely. I think the biggest skill that's important in being a great PM is just communication, and over communication. And ensuring that everyone is aligned on not only what the priorities are, but why they are prioritized how they are. Because when you explain, "This is the use case, this is the problem, and this is the solution, and this is why it's important," then you really get that alignment.  As far as how to understand what's being released at Salesforce and all the new features, that is a beast within itself. But that's why we have release notes. That's why we have all of the help docs. I would encourage you to even engage with your AEs and your SEs to learn more and inquire. As product managers on Prompt Builder and Copilot, we are actually aiming to talk to our customers as much as we can, because we learn from you all. Because you all are the ones that are engaging with the tool every day. That's also what helps us prioritize, is engaging with customers.  Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Too often, as an admin, I couldn't communicate enough with all the features that were coming out.  Thanks for coming on the podcast, Liz. I will end by saying it's always fun to know, outside of managing Prompt Builder, which is what admins love, if there's anything fun you do as a hobby?  Liz Awad: I've recently picked up, not recently, but in the past year or two, pickleball. Mike: Okay. Liz Awad: But I'm based in New York, so that requires me to fight over pickleball courts as there's limited space. It's actually turned into quite an expensive hobby recently, because they charge per hour and per court. But I love it. I grew up playing competitive tennis. So this has just been my outlet as I can play tennis and racket sports, but not be too harsh on myself.  Now my brother thinks that pickleball is an abomination. There's really two groups of thought on that coming from tennis players. But I love it and it's been really fun.  Mike: It's about the size of a tennis court, right? From what I know.  Liz Awad: No, it's actually much smaller.  Mike: Okay. But about?  Liz Awad: About, about, about. Mike: But much smaller. Okay. Okay.  Liz Awad: Small enough that- Mike: My neighbors set up pickleball in their driveway.  Liz Awad: Yeah. If anyone wants to challenge me to a pickleball game, I'm ready.  Mike: You should set that up. Do a pickleball tournament in New York. That's what we should have is a pickleball court at Dreamforce.  Liz Awad: That would be amazing. Maybe I should go talk to the event team.  Mike: That would be low impact sort of thing. But there's shoes, right? There's pickleball shoes. I know that you have to have a special paddle. Is it called a paddle?  Liz Awad: Yes.  Mike: Or is it called a racket?  Liz Awad: I believe it's called a paddle.  Mike: Okay.  Liz Awad: I'm actually not sure. Yeah.  Mike: It kind of looks like a ping-pong paddle, just a little bit bigger.  Liz Awad: Exactly. It is called a paddle.  Mike: Okay.  Liz Awad: You can get fancy with it. But you can go out in sneakers and be totally fine. You just have to watch your ankles.  Mike: Sure. Yeah. Boy, I don't know. Well, good luck with that because unfortunately, in New York, it's probably also hard to have an apartment any kind of size at which you could practice pickleball. You should take up ping-pong. It's New York size friendly.  Liz Awad: Yes, exactly. Well, thank you so much for having me on.  Mike: Absolutely. Thanks for being on, Liz.  Okay, I feel like I've been on a lot of television shows lately that have featured pickleball. Am I right or am I wrong? It's just everywhere. I think there was even some sort of deal on pickleball equipment on one of the morning shows I was watching. Good for people playing pickleball. I don't know, do you play pickleball? I don't. But my mom wants to play pickleball. We'll see how that goes. I do think it would be fun to have a pickleball court at Dreamforce. Don't you? We should ask for that.  Anyway, I thought that was a great, fun discussion with Liz. I think it's pretty cool, the stuff that admins can do without writing a single line of code in Prompt Builder. I wish I had this when I was a Salesforce admin. Boy, it'd be really cool. Anyway, if you enjoyed this discussion, I did, I'd love if you could just share it with one person. If you're listening in iTunes, or if you're listening in Apple Podcasts, or any of the podcast apps, usually all you have to do is click the three buttons. There's three buttons somewhere, you get a little arrow. You could share it on social, you could share it with your friends. You could text it, post it to Facebook, LinkedIn. I would appreciate any of those to help spread the word of the podcast. Of course, you can always give me feedback on the podcast if you go to iTunes. I'd love to hear what you think.  Now if you're looking for any of the resources, links to anything that we mentioned, or just great blog post reading and podcast listening in general, that is on admin.salesforce.com. Including a transcript of this show. You can join with other admins in our Admin Trailblazer community. That, of course, is in the Admin Trailblazer group. I'll include the link to that in the show notes. Until next week, we'll see you in the cloud.   

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, it’s another deep dive with Josh Birk as he talks to Bobby Brill, Senior Director of Product for Einstein Discovery. Join us as we chat about how you can use Model Builder to harness the power of AI with clicks, not code. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Bobby Brill. What is Model Builder? Bobby started his career at Salesforce in Customer Success before working on Wave Analytics. These days, he’s the Senior Director of Product for Einstein Discovery, and he’s here to talk about what Model Builder can do for your business. If you have Data Cloud, then you already have access to Model Builder via the Einstein Studio Tab. With it, you can create predictive models with clicks, not code, using AI to look through your data and generate actionable insights. As Bobby says, the AI isn’t really the interesting part—it’s how you can use it as a tool to solve your business problems. BYOM - Build Your Own Model In traditional machine learning, models are trained on data to identify successful and unsuccessful trends, which is fundamental for making accurate predictions. For example, if you want to create an opportunity scoring model, you need to point it to the data you have on which leads converted and which leads didn’t pan out. Model Builder lets you do just that, building your own model based on the data in your org. What’s more, it fits seamlessly into the structures admins already understand. We can put our opportunity scoring model into a flow to sort high-scoring leads into a priority queue. And we can do all of this with clicks, not code. Building a predictive model that’s good enough Einstein’s LLM capabilities offer even more possibilities when it comes to using your data with Model Builder. You can process unstructured texts like chats or emails to do something like measure if a customer is becoming unhappy. And you can plug that into a flow to do something to fix it. One thing that Bobby points out is that building a model is an iterative process. If you have 100% accuracy, you haven’t really created a predictive model so much as a business rule. As long as the impact of a wrong decision is manageable, it’s OK to build something that’s good enough and know that it will improve over time. There’s a lot more great stuff from Bobby about how to build predictive models and what’s coming next, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailmix: Drive Productivity with Einstein AI Trailhead: Learn Artificial Intelligence with Trailhead   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Bobby: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbybrill/ Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt   Full show transcript Josh: Hello, everybody. Your guest host Josh Birk here. Today we are going to talk to Bobby Brill about Model Builder, which is going to allow you to create your own predictive and generative models to use within Salesforce. So without further delay, let's head on over to Bobby. All right, today on the show we welcome Bobby Brill to talk about Model Builder. Do you prefer Robert, Bob, Bobby? What do you like to go by? Bobby: It's an excellent question. So I'm a junior. My dad is Robert Howard Brill Sr. I have the same first middle and last name. He goes by Robert, Rob, or Bob, so I've always been Bobby my whole life. Josh: Yeah, I feel you. My brother is Peter. My father was a Carl Peter and my grandfather was a Carl Peter. Bobby: Wow. Josh: Got very confusing sometimes. Yeah, yeah. So introduce yourself a little bit to the crowd. What do you do at Salesforce? Bobby: That's a great question. I've been at Salesforce almost 13 years. I was a customer of Salesforce for about three and a half years prior to joining, so I've been in the ecosystem for quite some time. Josh: Got it. Bobby: I started off in actually customer success group, actually it was called Customers for Life. So I worked with customers getting on boarded onto Salesforce. I joined the product team back in 2015 in analytics, so we had this thing called Wave Analytics. So even well before AI I've been working with data. The last year I've actually been part of the data cloud team, so I do AI for data cloud, so it's called Model Builder. Josh: Got it. Got it. Were you interested in AI before it blew up, before it got all big? Bobby: Am I interested in AI? I think it's interesting. I think it's really cool technology, but what I really like is how the technology can help our customers solve their business problems. I was a customer, I understood what it was like to just have this tool available and put my data in and what can I do with that data. What I like is showing customers how AI can help them achieve their business goals. I really focus on how the AI helps business goals versus really caring about all the new technology and all the new models that are out. I've got other people that do that. I focus in on how are these models going to be used. Josh: Chasing solutions and not trends. Bobby: Correct. Josh: Like it. Now, before we get into the product, one other question, I just like to ask people this because in technology I find the answers are so varied, was software something you always wanted to get into? Bobby: Yes. I actually had a computer science degree, so I was writing software. What I realized is, while writing software is fun, I actually really like to debug software still, what I really enjoy is coming up with the ideas of what software should do or how it can help solve problems. Product management has really been the thing for me. When I started Salesforce, I just wanted to get into the company any way I could, so I didn't try for a product manager position- Josh: Got it. Bobby: ... but the second I got in, I had to figure out how to get to this position. Josh: I like it. From a very high level, what is your elevator pitch for Model Builder? Bobby: Okay, elevator pitch for Model Builder is build predictive models with clicks, not code. It started with actually predictive models. Now that GenAI is available, it's utilize custom, predictive, or generative models with clicks, not code. Josh: Okay. Now, when we say model, how do you describe that within the input and output of how we interact with an AI? Bobby: That's a great question, I don't think anyone's really asked me this specifically. But I think the way I would best describe it is a model is just a function. You first want to know what do you want that function to do. You have to understand what that function is capable of doing. AI is only as good as what the model is capable of doing. So in traditional machine learning, you would have a model that perhaps could tell you what is the likelihood of this lead to convert. And how did it understand that? Well, it had to get some examples of what did conversion look like, give me some leads that successfully converted, give me some lead that didn't, so the model can understand what are the trends for a successful outcome or a non-successful outcome. That was traditional machine learning. You'd have to train your model. Now, large language models are really good at putting sentences together. It understood text, it's read so much text, it's trained on that, and it knows when it sees certain words, here's the potential. It can predict the next word and the next sets of words to come out. And so if you think of models as just it's a function and you're going to give it some input and it's going to give you an output, what that function can do is totally dependent and there's so many different use cases. But that's I think how I would best describe a model, is it's a function. Josh: Gotcha. Now let's talk a little bit about building models with clicks, not code. I'm trying to think of the right way to ask this. Let's start with what's your basic user scenario of something that they're going to try to build? Bobby: So thankfully when we're talking about models, it's all around business data. We are a company that sells to businesses. They put their data in our systems, and while a model can do lots of things, we try to focus on what are the things that our customers are likely doing. The easiest one, Salesforce has had Sales Cloud the longest, so you would build an opportunity scoring model. And that is nothing more than a predictive model that understands what are the traits that go towards an opportunity that's going to close, or win I guess, versus an opportunity that's going to lose. That's probably the simplest thing, and this is what machine learning has really done over the past probably 20 years. People have been solving this problem forever. But every single customer wants this, and they want to make sure that it's trained on their data. They use Salesforce because they can fully customize how they want that data to be stored, what object. They're going to have relationships across other objects. It's not going to be everything in an opportunity object. It's going to be across multiple things. And they want to make sure it's their data. So why they don't want to use an out-of-the-box model is they don't know what goes into that. Some people like that, but our large enterprises, they like to understand what goes in that. So by giving our customers control and just saying, "Tell us where this data is," we will then go train that model, and we can predict the likelihood of an opportunity closing or take Service Cloud, predict the likelihood of a case escalating or processes, business processes are really important, predict the time it's going to take for an opportunity to close or go from stage one to stage two or service case from the time it was created till when we think it's going to be predicted resolution. These are all things that I think are bread and butter to Salesforce and things that they can predict. And then again, that's your traditional machine learning, that's where you're going to need to use your data to train that model. Josh: I think it's very interesting because as you say, this isn't a brand new problem, these are questions people have had and have tried to answer,. Right now I'm imagining the world's worst formula field that's trying to connect 17 different data points and make a guess about the probability of an opportunity closing. Bobby: Exactly, yes. Josh: How would you describe the level of precision that you're seeing from Model Builder these days? Bobby: The level precision depends on the data. Some models can be really accurate, but if you have a predictive model that's 100% accurate, then it's not a predictive model, it's some business rule. You've basically told the model, "Look at this field. When you see this value, 100% of the time it's going to be a converted opportunity or... " Sorry, I guess a closed one opportunity. "And when you see this variable, it's always going to be a loss." So there's a lot of times this is data leakage. This is very common in machine learning where you introduce something that basically the model just looks at that and it's like, "I know what I'm going to do." So you never want it to be perfectly accurate. And then there's other levels of accuracy. You could say that, "60% accurate, is that good enough?" Well, it's better than a coin flip, so you are already getting some uplift. Josh: Right. Bobby: So then really it's up to the business to figure out what is the impact of a wrong prediction. And a lot of times the businesses, they know the impact of that wrong prediction. If it helps you prioritize the things faster, great. Then start with something that's, let's say, 60% accurate and then work towards something that is a little bit more accurate. It's an iterative process, so try to not be afraid of doing those iterations because you can get some uplift. Josh: Yeah. I'm going to ask you the world's most leading question, but it's something that we keep trying to get people to think about, because when it comes to the data that the model is going to leverage, there's size, but there's also quality. How important is the concept of clean data to getting that prediction model? Bobby: Clean data is very important to getting a good model. However, I don't think there's any company that thinks they have clean data. They all think their data's terrible. I think if you were to look at Salesforce, I mean, we know the data really well here, and I wouldn't say that it's clean. But I think you could argue that you have enough clean data to train these models. So it really depends on the use case. Josh: Got it. Bobby: If we're talking about sales data, you probably have a lot. Service data, that's probably the cleanest data out there. Service processes are very much you got to get the data in, you work on SLAs, there's very much these touch points. That data is really good. So if you ever want to try something like, "Where is my data the cleanest?" I guarantee you it's service. Sale is people don't enter things in right. Josh: Okay, so I really love that messaging because it's not that cleanliness isn't important, but you don't need perfection to start using these tools. Bobby: Right. And then I will say that with generative AI and the ability to process a lot of, I'm going to call it, unstructured text, let's say chats or email, and getting information out of that is perfect for actually cleaning up your data or even putting it into a predictive model. Then the next thing is layer these two things together. There's going to be a data cleanup. You're going to be training a model, but then when you're actually delivering the predictions, you don't want to have to worry about cleaning up that data. That's where the LLMs can be used. Something comes in, you get a signal that says, "Hey, this customer, let's say, their sentiment is dropping." Well, how do you know their sentiment is dropping? Because an LLM is figuring it out and saying, "The customer's not happy," and the models are really good at understanding that, which is pretty cool. Josh: That's a really interesting point. I've actually not tried to really consider that before, because to an LLM, let's take one of the most common data quality problems, if you have, say, redundant fields or you have duplicate data, the LLM isn't actually as worried about that as, say, a standard reporting tool would be. Bobby: That's correct. Yep. Josh: So I think we've been touching on it as we've been talking about this, but where do you see the role of an admin being when it comes to constructing and maintaining these models? Bobby: The best part about Model Builder, which I haven't even talked about, is how it integrates back with Salesforce. What we've tried to do is we give you this tool where you can build this really, really good function. It's got an input, it's got an output. As long as admins understand that there's going to be some inputs needing to go into this and it's going to have an output, you can actually put the models wherever you want. The same way that you're building, let's say, a flow, and within the flow there's a decision tree, admins know how that works really well, or even the admins that can write a little bit of Apex code. So as long as you know how to do that, as long as you know how these different Salesforce functions are coming together, models are going to be just another input to that. So take a flow with a decision. Perhaps it's a case escalation... Or no, let's not even take case escalation, let's talk about leads and lead prioritization. You built a flow, you want to put leads in the right queue. Well, what if before you even put a lead into a queue you can predict the likelihood that this lead is going to be converted. You can say, "Hey, everything that has a score between, let's say, 80 and 100, 100 being the highest score, maybe you want to route that to a special queue. You understand queues, you understand decision trees in a flow. So now all you need to know is, hey, I have this score. How do I get the score? Maybe there's another team that figured that out or maybe you were comfortable enough because you know the data to actually train that model. Now you can just use this as a decision. You don't have to actually show the prediction to anyone. Who cares if that prediction is written anywhere. You don't need that for anything, you just need it at that point. So admins should start thinking about this just says another function. I think flow is a great way to look at it because a process. Something goes through step one, you do this, step two, you do that, and so on. And that model might be just part of that process. Josh: When you're saying that's interacting with flow, are you saying that it's like I have a custom object, I have a custom field, I can make a decision tree based on that? Is it that same level of implementation? Bobby: It could be. You don't have to write that prediction out anywhere. We can actually generate it live within that flow. So let's say a lead comes in, you kick off a flow, so you have a lead form, the lead comes in, it goes through a flow. You're not sure where that lead is going to go. You technically I guess created the record, and then you want to figure out where does this lead go. Well, you don't need to score it and write that score back to the lead. You can actually within the flow call our model endpoint so we can get an on-demand prediction. We're going to give you that on-demand prediction and we can route it somewhere. What's really cool within a flow, you can also call LLM models. So perhaps the lead comes in, you have some unstructured text, maybe you care about sentiment, maybe you want to understand what's the intent from some texts, an LLM theoretically can go do that. And then you get the output of that LLM and you pass that into the model. Now we know more about this lead or this person and then make a prediction, then file the lead away in a queue. That prediction becomes sort of, I'm going to call it, throwaway. You don't need to use it anywhere. Josh: Got it. It's a fun rule [inaudible 00:15:42]. You get the data- Bobby: Correct. Josh: ... on demand and then... Yes, gotcha. Now I think we just touched on sort of two different forms of Model Builder. We have the clicks, declarative generate your own model, and then we have bringing in an LLM, and I think this is what we keep referring to as bring your own model. What does bring your own model look like and what kind of models are we supporting there? Bobby: That's a good question. When I talked about what's the value of Model Builder, my elevator pitch, it was all about building stuff with clicks. And that's because we're really allowing all of our customers to have access to this stuff. But the reality is there's only so much you can do with clicks and then the rest you're going to do with code. We have this idea of bring your own model, whether it's a predictive model or an LLM. You're just connecting these models that live in your infrastructure, customer's infrastructure, whether it's SageMaker, Vertex, Databricks, or maybe it's your Azure OpenAI model, or maybe it's your Google Gemini model. We're giving you the ability to just connect these models directly to Salesforce so you can operationalize them the same way that you would as if it was built on the platform. So you'd have full platform functionality, but the models themselves, they're not hosted in Salesforce. So there's all kinds of things you can do with that. Your data science team can make sure that they have full control. Let's say they fine tune the LLM so it talks specifically in your brand language, for instance. That's a use case. Josh: Gotcha. Bobby: We want to give customers the ability to do this on the platform as well. So the same clicks, not code, we want to bring that to LLMs. That's a future thing. We want to give that capability. Josh: I'm going to make a comparison here, and I'm going to be a little controversial to my artist friends who I've had these arguments with, but I know artists who have actually built their own LLM model based on their own art, and then they're treating these models as their little AI buddy to try different things very quickly and then kind of motivates them in a very specific direction. Is that a quality comparison to what you're seeing people are doing when building their own models? Bobby: It's a good question. I don't know that that's... Well, I don't know. I think what we are seeing, so brand voice for sure is something that people want an LLM to do. They put sentences together really well, but if you are distributing anything to your customers, you want to make sure that the sentences that are generated are on point to how you would speak as if it was a regular person. So fine-tuning that with specific words and phrases, that's what we're starting to see some customers do with their own LLM. But we're also seeing that there's other techniques, retrieval augmented generation, or RAG. People call it RAG, which I feel like is a... I can't just say RAG without saying retrieval augmented generation to customers because I don't want to be looked at like I'm a crazy. But then also- Josh: It is a sort of unfortunate acronym. You're correct, yeah. Bobby: It is. But I guess it's getting common, so I'm correcting it... Or not correcting, I'm not saying the full thing as often. But we're finding that that is another approach to not having to train those models. I think research is still out on which is the most effective mechanism because you can say at the time that you want that LLM to process something, say, here's some examples. So you don't have to train because training an LLM is pretty expensive right now. Josh: Yeah. Both from a quantity and processing point of view, right? Bobby: That's correct. Josh: Yeah. Take that one step further for me. How does RAG change the game a little bit? Bobby: With the ability to quickly find some examples of things that you're looking for... Okay, let's say you are replying back to a customer for customer service, you want to automate it. So customer asks a question, and the LLM obviously can't really answer the question unless you provide it some information. So you could give it some knowledge right away. So first, find some similar cases, find the resolution of these cases, and summarize that and go back to the customer. So simply by searching for certain resolutions and responding back or summarizing those resolutions, you already have brand voice because those resolutions themselves we're assuming that was all typed in by someone who understands how you're supposed to respond back. And then, let's say the LLM responds back, it's already similar, and that gets recorded as the resolution. Now the next you're responding back it already sort of knew how to respond and the next time if you're searching for similar things, you'll probably get the same kind of response back. Did that make sense? Josh: It did. It did actually. Yeah. It's like, as a fishing analogy, you're fishing in the sea that you already have. You're bringing in examples that have already been contextualized within your data and you're just like, "Go ahead and just start there." Does that sound accurate? Bobby: Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly it. And then the other thing is, as you're responding back you could... Because when you're talking to an LLM, you have to generate this prompt. I know this isn't part of the subject here, but Prompt Builder is another great tool that's on top of Model Builder where you basically tell the LLM what you want do. You program that LLM, and you can insert the retrieval augmented generation wherever you want. It's like you're building an email template and you're just saying, "Hey, here's some similar cases." And then around that within the Prompt Builder you can say, "Here are some examples summarized like this." Josh: Got it. Bobby: So you're using this LLM as if it's an assistant that can go do something for you and you give it a bunch of instructions and you put that all in one place. It's pretty cool. Josh: Yeah, no, it's okay. I still get another nickel if we say Prompt Builder, so it's a good advertisement. Bobby: Perfect. Josh: And on that note, so I'm thinking of the Prompt Builder interface and where you build out the prompt and then over on the right we've got like, "Here are the models you can use." So are we going to make that portion transparent to Model Builder and be like, "Oh, hey, my data science team created this specialized model based on our marketing, our brand, our voice. Please use that instead of, say, OpenAPI... or OpenAI 3.0 or something like that." Bobby: Yep. So that's actually in there today. So if you're using Prompt Builder, when you look at the models, there's a drop-down. The default is going to be the standard model. There's a drop-down there, you can change that to custom models. Once you change that to custom models, it's any other thing that shows up in Model Builder. So this could just be, let's say, OpenAI 3.5 turbo and you've configured it slightly, you've changed the temperature, one of those parameters. We have a model playground that allows you to do that. Or it's a LLM that you brought in. So whether it's the ones that we have, GA today or the ones that are coming, it's a model that's your own and you have full control. So then that just shows up in Prompt Builder and you build the prompt. In the future, we're looking at how to, I don't know, give you more controls over which LLM should show up in Prompt Builder versus the ones that you don't want to have show up. So while today it's everything, we know that our customers want that finer granularity, so we're thinking about that. Josh: Got it. Well, let's touch on those two points. What is availability for Model Builder looking like today? Bobby: Model Builder, it's actually packaged with Data Cloud. So if you have Data Cloud... I didn't say buy Data Cloud because Data Cloud is now being packaged with many different things. It's a consumption-based pricing model, so this is new to a lot of our customers. But what's cool about doing a consumption-based model for pricing is this tool can just be there. We want Data Cloud to be an extension of the platform, just like you're building custom objects and things like that, we want Data Cloud to be as easy as that. It's just there for everyone. It's a tab called Einstein Studio within Data Cloud. That name may or may not change in the future, so just bear with me if it does. I know we're talking about Model Builder and we have a tab called Einstein Studio, and we like to say Einstein 1 Copilot Studio. I love marketing at Salesforce. It's fun because it changes and I'm like, "I got to just go with it." So Einstein Studio, it's packaged with Data Cloud. So you get Data Cloud, you go into the Data Cloud app, you find Einstein Studio. But it's just a tab. So just like you can find the Reports tab and any app that you want, you can put Einstein Studio in whatever app you want. So if you're an admin, it's just a tab, you'll find it. It's only there if you have Data Cloud turned on in your org, but that is currently how it's packaged. If that's the future, whether it changes, who knows? Josh: Who knows? I do feel like if there's one thing our audience has learned if they've been in the Salesforce ecosystem for even half a second, is that all things might change. They might change their name, they might change their location, they might change their pricing. So if you're listening to this and you're interested, please check out your health documents or talk to your account executive. Speaking of things that might change, anything on the roadmap you want to give a shout-out to? Bobby: Model Builder itself, I mean, there's lots of things we're doing with Model Builder just in this release. Actually here, this is really important, for all you admins out there, we are working as fast as we can to get features out. We are no longer on the Salesforce three-release cycle. We are going to be coming out with stuff on some monthly cycle. You're going to see that across all AI. You're going to see that across Data Cloud. We're coming out with things just on a different cycle, so please bear with us. I know how difficult it is even to keep up with our three releases, so just bear with us. We, in fact, have a release coming up very soon with Model Builder for some of the predictive AI stuff. We're making it easier so that you can build models with clicks even easier than you could before. I would say there's nothing earth-shattering there, but we're making it easier. You're going to see a lot more LLMs that you can bring. You're also going to see a lot more default LLMs, ones that are just shipped. We have a handful of models today from OpenAI and Azure OpenAI. You're going to start to see ones from other vendors as well. So they're just going to show up, everyone just has access to it. Josh: Got it. Bobby: And configuring those models within flows and prompts and all these things, it's just going to get a lot easier. So please bear with us. Keep up with the release notes because release notes are only three times a year. We're just updating release notes mid-release, which is weird. Josh: Got it. Bobby: Trust me, I know this is weird because I've been around a long time and I keep asking myself, "Should we be doing this?" And you know what? We're doing it, so here we are. Josh: Not to panic anybody, it feels like a fundamental change that Salesforce might be evolving to in the long run. So everybody obviously can keep your eyes on admin.salesforce.com, and we will try to keep you in the loop as those changes make. And Bobby, do we have Trailhead content on this? Bobby: Yes. In fact, we just came out with a Trailhead for Model Builder, just the predictive model piece. I think there's some coming for LLMs in the future, but just the predictive model piece that just shipped, so take a look. Josh: Sounds great. Bobby, thank you so much for the great conversation and information. That was a lot of fun. Bobby: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Josh: Once again, I want to thank Bobby for joining us and telling us all the great things about Model Builder. Now, if you want to learn more about Model Builder and of course Salesforce in general, head on over to admin.salesforce.com, where you can hear more of this show, and also, of course, our friend Trailhead for learning about the Salesforce platform. Once again, everybody, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mehmet Orun, GM and Data Strategist at PeerNova. Join us as we chat about why data health is easier than you think and what you can do to get started. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mehmet Orun. Healthy data drives business outcomes We talk a lot about getting your data ready for AI, but there’s a simpler question you need to ask yourself: is your data driving business outcomes? After all, AI insights are only as good as the data they’re based on. That’s why I’ve been looking forward to this episode with Mehmet Orun. He recently gave a presentation about all this and more, entitled “Harnessing AI: Strategic Planning & Data Best Practices for Salesforce Success,” and I was able to grab him for a quick conversation how you can improve data health in your org. Questions for a foundational data health check If you’re cooking, you want to make sure that you have the basic ingredients and enough space on your countertop. And the same is true with your org. You need to have your data health squared away before you can cook up something tasty. For Mehmet, a foundational data health check starts with asking three questions: Do you have any objects that are close to or past their limits? Are you retaining too much data in your CRM that you don’t use? Do you have unintentional duplicates in your solution and do you know where they come from? You want to zero in on which data matters for which specific business need. You don’t need it to be perfect, you just need a solution that is good enough to do what you want it to do. How to get started with data cleanup Every org is going to have some duplicates, and Mehmet recommends thinking through a few things about how data works in your business before you merge everything. Is there a business reason to have duplicate records? Do you have other information in objects or fields that can help you decide whether to match or merge? Above all, Mehmet wants you to know that obtaining good data health in your org isn’t as difficult or time consuming as it sounds. There are free data profiling tools on AppExchange that can help you get most of the way there. So what are you waiting for? There’s a lot more great stuff from Mehmet about what to look for when you’re doing a data health checkup, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Video: Harnessing AI: Strategic Planning & Data Best Practices for Salesforce Success Podcast: Why Clean Data Is Non-Negotiable in the AI Era with Lizz Hellinga   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Mehmet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehmetorun Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt   Full show transcript Mike: We talk a lot about data readiness and getting ready for AI, but let's take a step back. Is your data really driving business outcomes? So that's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast, and I am bringing in Mehmet Orun, who is the GM and Data Strategist at PeerNova. I mean, just looking through his LinkedIn profile, he has a ton of publications and a ton of patents. I actually don't think I've ever had anybody on the podcast that has had patents. And I should have asked him about that. So spoiler, I don't ask him about patents. But we're going to talk about getting your data ready to drive business outcomes. You know what? Even if you're not ready to use AI, this is still a good podcast for it. So with that, let's get Mehmet on the podcast. So Mehmet, welcome to the podcast. Mehmet: Thank you, Mike. It's a true pleasure to be here. Mike: Yeah, well, you ran into colleague of mine at World Tour London. And well, I mean everybody's talking to AI and you're talking to AI and data. But before we get into that, why don't you give me a little bit of a brief history of how you got into the Salesforce ecosystem? Mehmet: So before I was a partner, I was a Salesforce employee. Before I was an employee, I was a customer. I worked for Genentech, which is a biotech company, for a period of time. And what was interesting about Genentech was our CEO was a scientist. We looked at problems like they were clinical trials. You formed a hypothesis. In a safe way, you chose to assess if that hypothesis was going to be true or not. And then we would look at how can we solve it at greater scale. What that meant was when we were getting ready to launch a new set of products, and the enterprise architecture was going to be shifting from 150 or so disconnected applications, this is 20 years ago by the way, and the story today may sound much the same for many customers and companies, we wanted to bet on a new CRM solution, rather than the homegrown or the older technology ones. And Genentech became the first life sciences company to chose Salesforce. Because the idea of not needing to spend time just working on an upgrade, rather than solving business problems, made a lot of sense to us. There were a few challenges, like a contact model didn't really work for life sciences, because we are really engaging with a doctor or a prescriber who may teach at a university hospital, they may see patients at a different facility, they may have their own practice. By the way, this is why person account was born. If you're curious about the trivia, happy to dive into the details. Mike: You need one of those shirts. "I'm the reason person accounts exist." Mehmet: Yeah, I'm not sure how popular it may be, but maybe I'll submit to shirt force. Mike: Yeah, you never know. Might try. So I've had Liz Helengo on the podcast, we've talked about data quality. And you have a great presentation out there, Best Practices for AI Ready Salesforce Data. Do you think people's Salesforce data is AI ready? Mehmet: From what I have seen, and I do engage with many organizations still, neither the data nor metadata is AI ready, vast majority of the time. Now the question of readiness is interesting because it depends on how far you want to go. What is it that you're trying to solve or accomplish? If you just want to see if you can get recommendations, it's a proof of technology, great. You can definitely use it. If you're trying to get consistent answers based on reliable data, and make sure it is behind the trust layer, at a minimum, organizations need to do an assessment of the current state of their data and metadata, and make sure that their architecture is going to meet their needs, not just today, but on an ongoing basis. Mike: One of the questions that you ask, and I think this is pretty paramount, because anytime we talk about data and data cleanliness, is oh, I've got to look at everything. And there could be some objects that have two 300 fields on it. Lord knows why, but there's a lot of fields, right? Because we're capturing everything. One of the things that you point out, is how do I know if it's good enough data to drive business outcomes? And I think that's second part, that clarifying part, is really important. Because when we're looking at data, yes we need to look at everything. But what is the data that we really need to have perfected to drive a business outcome? So what should admins be looking at? Mehmet: Before diving into data that matters to business outcomes, one of the things I suggest is what is the foundational data health of your org in general? And I use cooking or dance analogies. Usually I'm [inaudible 00:05:27]. Mike: I use cooking analogies too. Mehmet: Great. So if I'm getting ready to cook a big meal, I want to make sure I have the right ingredients, and the ingredients I have are also fresh. They haven't passed their expired date. I want to make sure that I have enough space on my countertop. Not everything has to be cleaned, not everything has to be put away. I don't need to have every single ingredient up there, but I need to have just enough. So when I mean a foundational data health check, we should always know, do we have new objects that are close to or past their limits. You mentioned two or 300 fields. I have seen 900 custom fields, which is the upper limit. Mike: I was trying to be nice. Mehmet: Salesforce platform is incredibly flexible. We can add packages from AppExchange, which we install [inaudible 00:06:21] custom fields at times. And then after a while processes change, people change, new people come in, we stop using fields that we used to. Or perhaps fields were added, but we weren't quite sure what they were going to be. User adoption head gaps. I think you can find many parts of this, but if your org is more than five years old, your foundational objects, account contact case opportunity probably have 25% of custom fields or more that haven't been used in the current last one or two years. So one aspects of foundational data health is about understand if any of your objects are nearing or at their limits. Number two is are you retaining too much data in your CRM org, because that is going to be part of what data you want to act on. If you have rubbish data or if you have data that has outlived its usefulness, archiving solutions are great. And the third piece to be mindful of is do you have unintentional versus intentional duplicates in your solution. Just looking at those three areas is going to give you a sense of data consistency, data completeness, data relevance risks. Once we look at that, then it is a matter of looking at what is the fields that matter, What is the data that matters to add specific business need at a point in time. I'm happy to dive into more details, but do you have any questions on the foundational data health outline I just gave? Mike: Well, I think you mentioned duplicates. So I'm an admin, I'm looking at my data, and I find duplicates. Where should I start talking to understand are these intentional and good, are these intentional and bad, do I need to deduplicate? What are the types of questions, who are the stakeholders that I should be looking at to understand if we should have duplicates in our system, let alone not even talking about looking at other systems? Mehmet: Yeah. When I talk to people, let's say that you're an admin for... You can make up a scenario. Mike: Sure. Mehmet: So how did you find out about the duplicate problem, and can you describe to me what is the problem these records are causing on your end users? The reason I start with that question is I am listening for the answer that is telling me whether stakeholder impact is well understood, and what is the nature of that impact that can really help drive the type of solution we could put in place. Time to value is something that's going to be quite important, as well as seeking to avoid nonreversible fixes. Because many solutions are not going to be 100% right. Especially when it comes to match [inaudible 00:09:23] type scenarios. A common challenge is let's say that it's a call center operation and we have a lot of context, but the data is distributed, which means it may be out of state, information may be incomplete, I would often ask the question, "So what if regardless of how many duplicates you have, every single record you click on shows the exact same transactional history? Would that solve your business need?" Or if it's a marketing challenge and they are concerned about consent and compliance, and they are unsure about which of these values should we pick, I would ask a question, "That's great. Do you have the policies in place on how would you approach these different related records?" And the question that I get incomplete answers most often, is, "Do you know why you have these duplicates, and if you are supposed to have some of these duplicates by design?" Mike: I can only imagine the look on people's faces when you ask that. Mehmet: Well, their examples help. I've written a few articles on that and I sent people pictures, and asked them how this could relate to their line of business. One of the things I love about how Salesforce talks about solutions is they put a person in the middle surround by the icons of the era. Every industry can use that mindset and think about their interaction with an individual or with an organization. The reality is, whether you're a nonprofit, whether you're a consumer company, you are a B2B company, you are likely to encounter the same individual or same organization in more than one business context. Mike: Yeah, Very true. Mehmet: There's a high risk in being overzealous in approaching duplicates, that I worked for Salesforce in the past, I worked for Genentech in the past, I work for PeerNova now, I'm involved in the trailblazer community. I Mehmet as a single human being, have at least four different business contexts in my engagement and relationship. So if you try to combine and merge all four of the records into one, first off, which email address do you take or keep, given the nature of the CRM data model? But what is some of the interactions were contact specific, account specific? Are we going to introduce more risks or would we be better off recognizing all of these records are associated with one person, and then use the contact record when it makes sense, use the individual record when that makes sense? Is the example helpful? Mike: No, it is, because I think that's what a lot of people run into, is you run reports and you look at the data very, I don't want to say abstractly, but you try to look at it very black and white, and say, "Well, there is four Mehmets, so we should merge them. There shouldn't be four." But you bring up a very important point, is the associated, let's say account for this person, really brings context to what you were discussing with that person at the time. Which is lost when you merge it all. Because to your point, all of those activities would just merge together, and it's like it wouldn't make sense. It's like, so we talked to them one minute about partnering and the next minute about this, and it's like, wait, why was this happening? And you're losing the context of where this individual contact was employed at. So I think that's important. Those are the questions that people have to have, is yes, that is one person four times, but the context of what was our relationship with them is very important. Mehmet: One of the other aspects is when we're looking at the records. I think people jump into, "Oh, I know they are duplicates because they have the same name and email, or they have the same name and address, or they have the same name and LinkedIn profile. Whatever it may be." It is incredibly important to look at the object as a whole, to look at the fields as a whole, for three reasons. There may be fields, record types, types, some other custom field for classification, that actually indicate this person, this organization is playing a different role. That may be the basis of what else to include in a match role. So if the context is different, you may want to match them, but you may not want to merge them. Or you still want to match them, but you want to create a unified profile in data cloud. Number two, there may be other fields that you can use, that increases matchability of that particular record. When I talk about account matching, I often say account matching is not a string matching problem. You are not trying to match Salesforce to salesforce.com or Salesforce Inc. What you are trying to do is understand Salesforce in San Francisco at 1 Market Street, which is the old address, is the same location as the new headquarters. Salesforce in Bishopsgate, London is part of Salesforce corporate hierarchy, but it's a distinct entity and subsidiary. By the way, Slack in San Francisco, completely different name, is also a legitimate distinct but related account record. If you don't have the depths of the B2B domain, let's say that you're a new admin, but you profile your account object, you may discover there are other fields that are not standard fields. They were brought in by a managed package, let's say D&B connect or BVD Connect, but then you see fields like dance number, global ultimate dance number, that have a high population rate, but low distinct rate. Maybe you can use these fields as part of your match rules also, and discover that you have a lot more attributes at your disposal than just name and contact points. Mike: Right. Yeah, it's really diving deeper. Mehmet: Absolutely. And the third and final reason, and I ask this question to everyone, "Mike, what is your favorite fake email address or phone number?" Mike: I can't tell you. Mehmet: Without exception, every single org I've analyzed, either had invalid or fake contact points in it. What is invalid? Maybe it is sales@companyname.com, or supportedcompanyname.com. They didn't have an email address, it was a required field. They just put a group email, or perhaps they put their own. Na@na.com. Noemail@noemail.com. If we do not discover the data content that may also throw off our match result, not only we may over merge where the contacts needed to be separate, we may actually incorrectly match and merge accounts and contacts the way they should never be. So we started this from duplicate management. I know the session is for data reliability and not just for AI. At the end of the day, we want to discover what is knowable with statistical techniques with data profiling, as much as we can. And once we determine that we want to define what an experiment would look like, how would we know for certain is this the outcome we're looking for, and then drive it forward? Mike: Yeah. No, you're right. One thing you bring up, and I'm going to ask, maybe it's a bit of a facetious question, but I'd be curious what your answer is. Do most organizations have someone responsible for data quality? Mehmet: I think most organizations have someone that cares about data quality, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily responsible or empowered. Mike: What's the difference? Mehmet: I have been in orgs where let's say there's a data quality manager, it's an independent role, it reports to the business, sounds great, but it is outside of the org hierarchy where the CRM administrator is reporting into. Even if they get long, if the CRM administrator cannot act on requests, unless it is associated with a specific project task, there tends to be delays or friction. Because I don't see a lot of organizations saying we need to launch a data quality initiative. Most of the initiatives are business initiatives where data quality assessments, verification, and as needed improvement should be a part of it. But if your job is to ensure data quality is good, if you are not authorized to be able to initiate projects that can then be prioritized, you may not even be able to get an AppExchange package installed in a quick and timely manner. Now on the flip side, you may be an admin and you have the rights and you are close to the system. You may not know that there are tools and techniques out there that helps you discover whether that field that was so urgent that you just edit and rolled out, is being used at all. Tracking user adoption of fields be rolled out, pick list values be rolled out, is something admins ideally would and should do if they're informed by effective techniques, and if their [inaudible 00:19:26] allow them to not just add a field but put in place the processes to monitor the usage of that field. Honestly, one of the reasons I'm most excited to be on this podcast is to be able to talk about these things being not only possible. But fairly easy and not time-consuming. So we can broaden the conversation on how do we make sure the good work admins put in is actually being impactful. And admins can even be more empowered to monitor what is being used, what is not being used, what is being used poorly. To be able to raise these to their stakeholders and drive that level of awareness, so they're being more impactful on any line of business. Mike: No, I understand. Okay, so if I'm hearing this, depends on how big my backlog is and my requests are for new features, in your opinion, how much time should admins be spending ensuring data quality is happening in their org? Mehmet: I don't know that I can answer that with number of days or percentage of time, as opposed to when should they look at their quality and act accordingly. Because each work is going to be a little bit different. One of the things I believe in, is if I'm a new admin, and you mentioned this earlier, she has a great LinkedIn post she did on what is the first thing you look at as a admin in a new org, and the answer is very broadly, "I like looking at for the foundational objects, what can I tell about the usage in current plus one year versus the life of the object?" That's a starting point data profiling scenario for me. And the reason is when I look at accounts, contacts, opportunities, and cases alone, or let's throw in leads for good measure, it's going to give me a sense of how well adapted is this org. It's a really good baseline. I want to know what fields are not used or no longer used, what fields appear to be used but not really used, because they only have the default value. The number of times I see 100% populated fields with one and only one value, is pretty significant. And to me that means it either is driving code somehow, or someone has set up a field with a default value and never looked at it again. I then look at what is my foundational health, and with the right tools on AppExchange, you can get much of these insights in a single business day. Then you have the ability to have a conversation with your manager, with your stakeholder, that is about starting the job and having an understanding of the foundational health. The other piece I look at, is if I'm starting on a new project, and my role as an admin is supporting the needs of that project, I'm going to focus on a scenario that is specifically for that. Maybe we have HR cases, customer cases, and partner cases in our org, but this project is just about customer cases. I'm going to want to look at what can I tell about the cases that are coming in that have caused successfully or unsuccessfully, whatever is the definition for my business. And I want to look at the fields that are being consistently populated with high fidelity, and then compare the difference between successful and unsuccessful outcomes. The way admins can minimize the amount of time they are spending analyzing data, is reports are great, but creating reports just on field rates are incredibly time-consuming and not scalable. There are great free data profiling tools that are 100% native on AppExchange. Start with one and start running different scenarios to see what you can tell about the state of your data. And then the best way to make sure that you don't have to keep checking is, set up and monitoring scenario. Salesforce CFJ has been talking about the importance of profiling, cleanup, and monitoring for a long time. When I go to roundtables, I see almost no one monitoring their data reliability. And with flow, with the right profiling tools, it is something you can very easily configure, and detect deviations whether your sale rates are going down, or you used to capture an active pick list value, it's no longer being picked up. Send a targeted alert based on understanding the fields that matter to a particular outcome. And I think three to six months, from the beginning of this journey, people are going to start noticing a higher level of either user or admin engagement. Mike: Yeah. I also like you point out the idea of a data owner. I think that's important. That's something that admins when they're meeting with stakeholders, can sit down and really kind of empower one or two, maybe multiple people, within a team, along with the stakeholder to really kind of be the overseer of that data. And these can be that next level admin, maybe people that are looking to move up into the organize, and take ownership of that. I think that's a powerful idea. Mehmet: And the nice thing about what you mentioned, is it could be an admin who wants to increase their scope and impact. It could be somebody in a line of business. At Salesforce, for example, the owner for account and opportunity fits within sales operations. Mike: Makes sense. Mehmet: Yeah, because that is where you're going to be closer to it. And if I recall, the ownership for contact and lead, set in the marketing organization. Because that is where you're wanting to make sure you have a holistic understanding from lead to contact, and you're also being consistent and compliant. For shared entities or when you are starting new, an admin would make sense, especially admins that are close to their business, and know what data matters or not. It is about increasing impact. And for anyone that doesn't know, you can capture data owner along with data sensitivity as part of your object manager and CRM metadata. A lot of people do not seem these attributes exist. Mike: Yeah. As we kind of wrap things up, we talked a lot about the doing. And sometimes ironically we get caught up on the doing, and we forget to actually look at what the goal is. And so how do you define success when you're doing data cleanup? I mean, I'm sure there's multiple ways to define it, but what are things that admin should look at in terms of creating that definition of success so that they can show progress to the stakeholders that they're making their way towards AI ready data? Mehmet: I was lucky to have a mentor that would say, "Unless you can define how you're going to demonstrate success at the end of your project, you're not going to start working on it." Now, we don't always have that luxury, but part of it is to be able to say what do we need to demonstrate differently. We started the conversation with duplicate management. And if people are seeing too many duplicates, and the concern is inconsistent data when they look at one record versus the other, perhaps the definition of success is they see consistent, complete, correct data. Which makes it not about merging anymore, by the way. It's about data consistency and correctness, which is what is impacting the end users. And if you think about it that way, we can now start taking about hiding records over time. Because everyone is already looking at information the same way, rather than taking the riskier task of merging records and then worry about, "Can I on unmerge?" If it's about an AI outcome, how would we know and users are going to be able to rely on the information? AI is not just one flavor of technology. We have deterministic solutions, we have probabilistic solutions, right? We have Einstein Discovery as well as Einstein Copilot. So at the end of the day, can we define a process that is human repeatable, to then demonstrate how this is being automated at scale? This is one of the things that AI is very good at. If it is going to be about judgment calls, an AI may or may not be as good at it, so we need to look at what is that feedback loop that can also be provided back to an admin. And sometimes data readiness is about having just the right data and just the right metadata you need for completeness sake. Einstein Copilot leverages the field description metadata in finding what fields to look at for information. Sensitivity classifications are also important. And sometimes you need to add a few additional fields in order to inform what AI could do for you. Just last week, gave a brief presentation on what if we can leverage copilot to inform end users that while their opportunity cost probability is at 75%, because as you move it along the stage, it updates the probability percentage, AI could tell you when that opportunity was actually at risk. It says, actually your risk of closing on time was 50%, 75%, whatever it may be. The idea of adding formula fields that most admins know about, to assess record level data quality, is something you can actually define, and then feed into your prompts, so you can look at information completeness at the record level, and then use that to inform your end users. The key message here is sometimes data completeness is about knowing what to remove, and sometimes it's about knowing what to add. And it all has to be about specific business use cases and specific business outcomes at the point of customer engagement. Mike: Yeah. Oh, there's never a simple answer, is there? Mehmet: Rarely, and I think this is what makes this a fulfilling journey. None of us have all the answers, but there are positive patterns and anti-patterns out there. I love reading the admin blog and listening to this podcast, I love reading articles on Salesforce Ben, going to Trailblazer community events, and in person get togethers. Because we shared stories, we complain, but then we make suggestions on, "Have you considered this way of approaching it?" And this is how we keep learning and how we keep being better. Mike: Yeah, I would agree. I think it's much like when earlier this year I talked to David about puzzle solving, and sometimes it's like you literally just have to sit down, put the puzzle down, give your brain a break, and then come back to it refreshed, and with a different perspective, and that changes everything. So I would agree. Mehmet, thanks for coming on the podcast and talking about a different perspective to AI readiness, than what I've already covered. Because I feel there's a lot to cover, so I appreciate you sharing your insights, and getting us hopefully AI ready. Mehmet: As you said, it is a journey. I hope this conversation helps all the listeners on what are some of the things to consider, right? It is not visual, we are not pointing to a roadmap. Much of this is really a mindset. And if anyone is curious about furthering the conversation, I am happy to be a part of that conversation. Feel free to reach out to me. Mike: So that was a fun conversation with Mehmet. I love the idea of a data owner. I don't know why I haven't thought of that. Somebody that works with the stakeholders in every department, and kind of owns the data, right? It's like when you get a puppy, making sure that somebody is always going to keep their bowl of kibble full. I guess the kibble is the data in this scenario. That's the best I can come up with, but I really like that idea. I think that's something that we and Salesforce administrators are doing our quarterly check-ins with our stakeholders, and talking about business objectives. I think that's something we should start bringing up, and really having that conversation even with the larger organization, as we branch out and maybe bring in data cloud, and have the conversations with IT. Data owners. That's the next thing we need to be talking about. But anyway, if you love this episode, and I did, I thought it was great. Because it's more than just really reducing duplicates and figuring out good data and bad data, as you heard. But let's go ahead and just share this episode. You do me a favor, just share it. Just click share in whatever podcasting app you're listening to, and then that way you can send it to your friends who are maybe thinking about doing some data stuff. I promise you everybody's doing data cleanup. Now, Mehmet mentioned some things and some links. I'll be sure to put those in the show notes as always. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, there's tons more episodes. Everything can be found admin.salesforce.com, which is just your one stop for everything Salesforce admin, including a transcript of the show. Now, if you want to join the conversation, there is the Admin Trailblazer group, and that of course is in the Trailblazer community. Of course, the link is in the show notes there. So with that, until next week, all of you data fans, I will see you in the cloud.