Hi everyone.
This is going to be a post without an outline, timeline, or really much connection to anything. This post is a stream of consciousness.
So I got my Salesforce Certified Admin 9 days ago. I worked my ass off during that time to achieve it. It did not come without sacrifice, as I definitely pushed many people away during this time. There were lots of times Scout wanted to do something small that I refused to let break my concentration as well, and that’s my daughter. Do I regret it? Not one bit, I accomplished what I set out to do. Now it’s time to reap its benefits with those who have been by my side the whole time.
To be honest, I both very much deserve this opportunity and don’t deserve it all, at the same damn time.
The difference between doing good and doing great is the level of passion that you put into something. For myself and Alexis in particular, we didn’t doubt for a second I was going to pass first try. Her confidence and offering to put her money where her mouth was for me multiple times won’t be forgotten. That’s as solid as you could possibly hold someone down in this situation, and hard times aren’t as hard when someone is there to assist with the more difficult parts.
My mentor Allie started believing in me strongly when I was putting 2 and 2 together at the beginning of this year. She often was more confident in the process than I was, and more confident in my ability to go out and execute than I was. Like yeah, as a mentor, you obviously have to care about something, but by no means do you truly have to give a fuck about someone. I’m just as grateful for her asking about Alexis, Sailor, and Scout as I am for her telling me what the temperature is up there. It’s the little things she has done that mean a lot to me. Baklava for the family, remembering I like pastries, many other carb-adjacent thoughts as well, all because she wanted to remember them.
I kind of make it a point to dull myself when I first meet someone in that I’ll remain very neutrally positioned about everything and to kind of sniff the situation out. I didn’t do that with Allie, I just kind of told her who I was, and we either would get along fucking great or we wouldn’t. Like I guarantee you she doesn’t understand a lot of what I think or say because it comes from 15 layers of sarcasm, but yet the creative inspiration is there every time we meet up, and she really doesn’t need to ask more than three questions (Who are you doing this for? What are you doing? Why are you doing it?) to flip the switch. That’s a good mentor to understand that less was more right off the bat.
One little bit of advice I want to give to people – care about what you do. That’s really the only advice I can give. I genuinely care about data, I can recite far too much 90s NFL history back to you without a database, just imagine me with the actual shit. I care about music way more than I care about business, so my next plan involves my last 12 years of Spotify listening history, because that’s a story that I can tell through my eyes, can show my experience through, and there’s hundreds of thousands of data points to back it up. That’s what the fuck I’m talking about. Any way I can bring data analysis into the actual story, it brings a level of context to the story that I can get behind. Realism is my compass. I try to maintain a super-agnostic view of the world when it comes to data. Super liberal but also wild wild west about it in the same thought, and I almost prefer a life without tech to a life with it. Let me stop being the old man (32) yelling at all these kids to stop making all the damn noise and get off the lawn.
The overbearing thought after I passed is that it was almost entirely women who helped me on this mission. It wouldn’t have been possible if not for Julie’s encouragement, Brenda’s time and voucher (this cleared my mind to the point I ONLY thought about the system, best case scenario), Allie’s pinpoint accuracy.
Coming into 2024, it was imperative that I make something shake. The miscarriage Alexis experienced in December impacted me way more than I expected, I was already feeling deflated and depleted, and job prospects were looking worse before they were better. I had to appeal unemployment TWICE during this time and won my appeal both times. I had to deal with this bitch-ass hater stalking my profile for months, and called him out on it so hard that Validity ended up getting half the company LinkedIn Premium so they could stalk in privacy. It’s funny though because if you’re not up to sketchy shit you shouldn’t need to be creeping through the night. Just out yourself as a fucking hater, it’s okay. I’ve already done most of the heavy lifting for you.
I’m not one for the social responsibility of networking events – I honestly hate showing up somewhere just to show face, so I would prefer not showing up at all if I wasn’t actively trying my hardest to put my best foot forward. That said, getting involved in my local Trailblazer Community Group made all the difference. I understand that I was fully an outlier when I joined as most people in the group are well established with 6-figure jobs. The difference here was that rather than showing face, I had something to learn, and just as much to prove, both to others and to myself. Getting a volunteer opportunity with org migration and permission modeling was huge for me as I’ve never used the Setup for a practical use case. It made everything feel mad real, and I did way better than I expected to do. I impressed the people who let me handle it, and that’s more than I hoped for, so I look forward to continuing to build relationships with other Salesforce professionals.
My biggest dislike of the Salesforce ecosystem is that there’s a level of gatekeeping to the resources of the ecosystem. I understand why it is done, because Salesforce is a lot to digest, but if Trailheads are to enrich the ecosystem, I would hope for slightly more transparency about the glut of resources available, particularly the Ohana Slack room. My future is going to involve advertising these resources. It’s not the people who have the means to succeed that I’m trying to impact the most. It’s the people that SHOULD be doing this but lack the opportunity to do so. The more walls knocked down right at the start, the less obstacles there will be in the future. Overall, a relatively small gripe, but something that still bugs me enough that I’m going to take action on it.
Still planning on the next big move (Platform App Builder), grateful as hell for everyone who has reached out with either congratulations or project ideas they need with, and I’m going to keep being myself no matter how much the situation changes in life. People don’t have to like it. Heart is largely in the right place, mind is largely in the right place, intention is going to be what makes 100% of the difference for me moving forward.
Thanks for tuning in. I’ll get back to tech writing and storylining soon, been kind of figuring everything out over here.
Love y’all.
Christopher Sauer 