Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re bringing you our third and final developer story. We hear all the time from admins thinking about going into the developer career path, or even just adding developer tools to your kit. This week, we’ve got Jessica Murphy, VP of Nonprofit Consulting at ITequality, to share her career journey and perspective on learning to code. This is another interview WITness Success 2018, and since then the Women Who Dev User Group is now called WIT Developers, and the 100 Days of Code event became 100 Days of Trailhead.
Join us as we talk about Jessica’s journey from sign language interpreter to Salesforce developer, how meeting her first female developer inspired to make a career in tech, and her mentality in learning how to code.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jessica Murphy.
Jessica Murphy is a former sign language interpreter and teacher who came to tech about three and a half years ago from when we recorded this interview. During her learning journey, she became a Trailhead Ranger and a Salesforce MVP. While she ran a small consultancy when we caught up with her, she’s just as passionate about the community: WIT Developers, Phoenix Salesforce Saturday, Sassy Tech Social, “I call them extra-curricular activities but it’s because I love the community so much.”
Jessica helped bring Salesforce Saturday to Phoenix. “I was so new to Salesforce, and I really wanted that dedicated time to learn and spend time with others and ask people questions,” she says. When we talked to her, they were doing a internal challenge called Summer of Trailhead 2018, which assigned points for badges, certifications, super badges, and giving food to their local shelter. As Gillian notes, “It’s like Trailhead of Trailhead.”
Jessica also runs Sassy Tech Socials. The game started as a way to connect people she knew in order to share skills. Attendees get bingo cards that list skills they need help with, so they can just go up to other guests and say, “What can you help me with on this card?”
Finally, there’s the Women Who Dev User Group—now called WIT Developers. They get together at events like TraiheaDX and organizations group activities like 100 Days of Code, which is now 100 Days of Trailhead. Behind all of this is a constant search to look for ways that the community can support each other and push each other to learn more. “During 100 Days of Code, I saw some amazing things. I saw women go from having developer titles to architect titles,” Jessica says, “what I wanted to do was make it so that winning could be easy.”
In 2014, Jessica graduated with a Masters degree in Education. “I thought that I was going to spend the rest of my life working in an office of disability services, but that’s not what the universe had for me,” she says. She ended up at a startup event where she met someone from Women Who Code. “I don’t know why it resonated with me, maybe it was because she was a woman, maybe it was because she was the first woman developer I met, but I was just so fascinated by what she said,” Jessica says.
When she went home, Jessica started googling all of the things. She taught herself HTML, CSS, and a little bit of JavaScript off the bat. Then she joined Girl Develop It, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching women code so they can get where they need to go. At a meeting one day, someone invited her to a Salesforce event where she met Chris Duarte, Editor in Chief of Trailhead. “Chris was so compelling that I closed my laptop and knew, that day, that Salesforce was the way,” Jessica says. The next day she got on Trailhead and, eventually, she ended up teaching for Girl Develop It.
As far as tips for learning to code go, Jessica preaches patience. “If you’re a person who naturally understands things easy, code is not that,” she says, “it is absolutely doing it again and again until you get it right.” Many women struggle with perfectionism, and you need to not run away and convince yourself that you’re not good at something just because you don’t understand it initially. “The truth is that you are smarter than you can ever imagine,” Jessica says, “and it’s a matter of doing it over and over until something clicks.”
Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you become a more awesome Salesforce Admin. I’m Gillian Bruce.
Gillian Bruce: Today, listeners, we are wrapping up our brief three-part series on learning about becoming a Salesforce developer.
Gillian Bruce: Now, as admins, I’ve had a lot of admin inquiries about thinking about maybe in the developer career path or adding developer skills to your tool belt, which are all great ideas. I wanted to share these three interviews that I recorded a while ago with all of you to help share and inspire you, maybe hear something that helps you think differently or be encouraged to maybe learn something new.
Gillian Bruce: Today, we are featuring an interview with Jessica Murphy, who is now VP of nonprofit consulting at ITequality, an incredible organization. Jessica has a very unique path to Salesforce. You can hear the spark in her voice as she talks about how the platform has really opened up doors for her, changed her life, and she’s got some really great insights to share in terms of how to learn about code, how to think about code, and some of the cool things that she’s been doing.
Gillian Bruce: She’s also been incredibly active in the community. And just to update from this interview that was recorded almost a year ago, she’s been incredibly active in a community group that you’ll hear her refer to as Women Who Dev User Group, which is now called WIT Devs, Women In Tech Developers. I’ll put a link to them in the show notes so you can find them.
Gillian Bruce: She also talks about Rachel a few times in this interview. That is in reference to Rachel Watson, who’s another amazing member of the Salesforce community. Jessica talks about A Hundred Days of Code, which actually became A Hundred Days of Trailhead. And this was an amazing, organic, community-driven campaign that saw people doing something in Trailhead, or with code, for a hundred days every single day, and there were amazing results. You’ll hear Jessica talk about a few of them. Pretty incredible.
Gillian Bruce: She’s also been very active with helping lead Salesforce Saturday in Phoenix, and creating project teams, connecting those who want to learn about Salesforce with Salesforce experts, connecting those folks with local nonprofits to help the nonprofit, and also help those who are wanting to learn more about Salesforce, those skills. It’s a good combination. She’s had a lot of really great experience kind of combining those two efforts.
Gillian Bruce: Make sure you connect with her social so that you can see and ask her more questions about what she’s doing there. It’s very exciting.
Gillian Bruce: Overall, Jessica just has an amazing passion for the platform. Without further ado, I’d love to please welcome Jessica to the podcast.
Gillian Bruce: Jessica, welcome to the podcast.
Jessica Murphy: Thank you for having me. So excited.
Gillian Bruce: Well, thank you for taking the time out of this incredible event. We’re at Witness Success here in Denver. Gosh, there’s so much great content all day long for the last day and a half. I appreciate you taking a few minutes out of your busy day to spend some time with me to talk to me a little bit more about your story.
Gillian Bruce: Tell me a little bit about who you are, what you do. What are you doing right now in the ecosystem?
Jessica Murphy: Okay, so a little bit about me. I am a former sign language interpreter and sign language teacher. I came to tech about three-and-a-half years ago. In the process learned about Salesforce and was like, “Ooh, this is awesome.”
Jessica Murphy: Three years ago, went into Salesforce, and a lot has happened then. I became a Trailhead ranger, and, let’s see, I became a Salesforce MVP. I’ve got five certifications, all the things.
Jessica Murphy: Now, I own a small consultancy called Geekbella Consultancy, and it’s been a lot of fun. In addition, of course, my … I call them extracurricular activities, but it’s because I love the community so much, Women Who Dev user group, Phoenix Salesforce Saturday, Sassy Tech Social. Those are things that are so close to my heart and those are like my babies in addition to my company.
Gillian Bruce: You just mentioned a whole bunch of other programs that you’re involved in. You just dropped a lot of names out there. Can you give us a little bit more background on some of those?
Jessica Murphy: Okay, great.
Jessica Murphy: Let’s start with Phoenix Salesforce Saturday. Phoenix Salesforce Saturday, we are the second Salesforce Saturday after Austin. There were three of us who started it. It was me, Paula Nelson, and Rachel. Paula Nelson actually approached Stephanie and said, “I would like to start a Salesforce Saturday that’s not an Austin. I want to start one in Phoenix.” After she talked to Stephanie and Stephanie gave her blessing, she came to me and Rachel and said, “I want to do this thing. Will you guys do it with me?” We said, “Yes, we’re doing it. Let’s do it.” Because I was so new to Salesforce and I really, really wanted that dedicated time to learn and spend time with others and ask people questions.
Jessica Murphy: We started every Saturday. We’ve been doing it now, let’s see, I think for two years maybe? Maybe more. It’s been wonderful. I’ve absolutely loved it. I’ve loved the people. It grows. It gets smaller, but they’re my heart. Right now we’re doing this little internal challenge called Summer of Trailhead 2018 where everybody … you got so many points for a badge, so many points for certification, so many points for a super badge, and so many points for actually giving food to the local shelter. We were able to give over 130 pounds worth of food to the local shelter when they said that they’ve run out of food in July. We’re really excited. We figure out who won this next week and I’m really excited about that.
Gillian Bruce: That is so cool.
Jessica Murphy: I know.
Gillian Bruce: You’re like Trailhead of Trailhead. It’s beyond Trailhead of Trailhead style. That’s awesome.
Jessica Murphy: Let’s see, the next group is Sassy Tech Socials. Sassy Tech Socials came out of this situation where I had a friend who said, “I want to meet this recruiter, but I’m afraid.” I was afraid too, but I said, “Let’s do it.” We went over and met the recruiter.
Jessica Murphy: It also came out of Mary Scotton also because she talked about the power od one-to-one connection. I thought it important that my friends met my friends. I would hear people say, “Well, I need someone who knows UX.” Or I would say, “I need somebody who knows this.” And I was like, “I know somebody like that.” Eventually it became this thing where we meet about twice a year in Phoenix, but then also in other places sometimes. It’s just women in tech. Across all of tech.
Jessica Murphy: Through that, I started a networking game. The networking game is basically come up to someone and say, “Hey, what can you help me with on this card?” The card is like, “Do you know JavaScript, or do you know this? Or do you know that?”
Gillian Bruce: This is like the Bingo cards.
Jessica Murphy: Yeah. I did one of these at one of your events. Gosh, I think that was Southeast Dreaming last year or something like that, right? Actually, I brought the Bingo game to WWDUG because I thought it important to be able to do that. Also, Salesforce themselves have used it for the Equality Event before TrailheaDX. I’m pretty excited that this thing is kind of having a life of its own.
Jessica Murphy: Then the third thing is… so that’s Sassy. Sassy is all women across all of tech. Then last is Women Who Dev User Group. I’m a co-leader of a Salesforce User Group, and I just loved them so much. They are all these women who are developers across the Salesforce ecosystem. We just get together, and every month we have something related to code.
Jessica Murphy: Then also, we had these amazing get togethers. We have these get togethers at like TrailheaDx and Dreamforce, and even this year at Connections. We get together and we meet each other and we just have fun and we learn together. That’s the most beautiful part. They are an amazing group who are doing amazing things.
Jessica Murphy: We did a hundred days of code earlier this year, and I have some other things in mind. We’re not going to spill the beans, but I have some other fun things in mind that I’m going to implement for the group. I’m pretty excited.
Gillian Bruce: Gosh, I mean, I’m sensing a theme of constant kind of finding fun ways to involve people using ideas, gamification. Gaming the whole thing to incentivize people to do things and that a hundred days of code.
Gillian Bruce: I remember seeing your posts. That was an incredible effort. Can you tell me a little bit more about that hundred days? What did that do for you? What did you learn? What have you seen in the community with the a hundred days of code? I mean, I just remember seeing the post and being blown away.
Jessica Murphy: Okay. Let me go back to why I originally did it. I knew that the 100 days of code existed outside of the Salesforce ecosystem, right, because I’m a member of Girl Develop It and women who code and all these others… I knew it existed already, but for some reason, it was right before Christmas. I got that flu that everybody got at Christmas and I was so sick. I was so sick I had a fever and I popped up and I said to Rachel, “We’re doing a hundred days of code.” She went, “Go to bed.”
Gillian Bruce: That’s the fever talking.
Jessica Murphy: I was so excited by this idea because I had just stopped long enough to have an idea outside of how I normally think. I was so excited by this. I started writing down all these resources that people didn’t know how to code, and I started writing all these things down. Before Rachel could say no, I just went ahead and announced it.
Gillian Bruce: When you name it, it makes it real, right?
Jessica Murphy: Right. Exactly. Basically, what happened is that we started on January one and it started with something as simple as a tweet saying, “I’m doing a hundred days of code with WWDUG.” Everyone was invited. It wasn’t just women who [inaudible 00:09:41] group, it was also all of WIT. It was everyone in the ecosystem if they were learning to code.
Jessica Murphy: Basically, over the a hundred days, I saw some amazing things. I saw women go from having developer titles to having architect titles. I saw people getting certified left and right. It was just amazing. People whose skills improved, people who had been in Rad Women Code, who were able to continue what they were learning in Rad Women Code and just work out through that hundred days.
Jessica Murphy: It was a wonderful learning experience for us all. Basically, what I wanted to do was I wanted to make it so that winning could be easy. I made it so that if you tweeted everyday you could possibly win.
Gillian Bruce: I love it.
Jessica Murphy: This year I’m going to have to make a little this next year I’m going to have to make it a little bit harder. I think I want everybody to do a project, and I would like for it to be a hundred days of code and a hundred days of Trailhead so that both of those things… so everybody feels a little bit more like it’s something that they can identify with. The tweets were amazing. What people were doing, it was amazing.
Gillian Bruce: That’s so awesome. I mean, congratulations and thank you for doing that because I saw some of the Twitter storm as a result and it was phenomenal. Phenomenal.
Gillian Bruce: Let’s back up a little bit, and let’s talk about how you actually started to learn Salesforce. You say you’ve only been in the Salesforce ecosystem for what, three and a half years? Something like that? Tell me about your journey to Salesforce.
Jessica Murphy: Okay. This actually starts in 2014 interestingly. In 2014, I graduated with a master’s degree in education. I thought that I was going to be working in an office of disability services for the rest of my life. That’s not what the universe had for me. I couldn’t find a job. The one interview that I had, they wanted to offer me, I think it was $35,000 a year.
Jessica Murphy: It really wasn’t much for…
Gillian Bruce: After a master’s degree.
Jessica Murphy: After a master’s degree. I was kind in the state of what do I do now? I was at a startup event. This woman said, “I’m from Women Who Code, and I love teaching women to code.” I don’t know why it resonated with me, maybe it was because she was a woman. Maybe it was because she was the first woman developer I’d ever met. I was just so fascinated about what she said. I thought, “Okay. I need to meet her and I need to talk to her.” Her name was Sheena, and she is an amazing human being. She pointed me in the right direction.
Jessica Murphy: I went home and I was so excited that I actually googled everything. I googled code. I taught myself HTML, CSS, and a little bit of JavaScript.
Gillian Bruce: Oh my gosh.
Jessica Murphy: Yeah.
Gillian Bruce: That’s amazing.
Jessica Murphy: Yeah. Then I joined Girl Develop It. Girl Develop It is this amazing non-profit organization, and their entire focus is teaching women code or teaching them [tech 00:12:26] so that they can get where they’re going. I mean, all of my initial classes about tech were in Girl Develop It. Because of Girl Develop It, and because the member of Girl Develop It was actually the leader of Women In Tech, her name was Paula Nelson, because she was at one of the meetings, she was like, “Hey, you two.” She was talking to me and my friend Rachel, and she said, “Hey, do you want to come to the Salesforce thing?” Okay, so this was my thought, right?
Jessica Murphy: My thought, “Salesforce? What’s this Salesforce thing? I’m not doing sales. I’m not a salesperson. Are you kidding?” Rachel’s ears perked up because she was in sales at the time. I went thinking that I was actually supporting her.
Jessica Murphy: The first thing was a dining demo, and that was interesting enough, right? The next day was so cool, because the next day I met Chris Duarte.
Gillian Bruce: Oh boy, that’s a familiar name on a podcast. Chris Duarte, editor-in-chief of Trailhead. Amazing community leader.
Jessica Murphy: Yes. Okay. She starts talking about her career. She starts talking about how she’s done it. She starts talking about the platform itself. This is really the truth because I was like, “I’m in a boot camp.” I was trying to JavaScript project, and Chris was talking and I’m looking up at what she’s talking about the platform, and I thought, “How much code did that take? Wait, you could do all the stuff and you don’t have to start from the beginning?”
Jessica Murphy: Chris was so compelling that I closed my laptop and knew that day, that was it. Regardless, I was going to finish my boot camp, and I did. I knew Salesforce was the way. That was what I was going to do. I knew that that was it, and fell in love that day. The next day I got on Trailhead, and I’ve been doing Salesforce ever since.
Jessica Murphy: I didn’t like the way I said that, ever since. Southern accent.
Gillian Bruce: It’s good. We like, we like accents on the podcast. It’s all good. It’s all good. All right, so Girl Develop It., It was your first exposure and you are still involved with Girl Develop It, correct? Tell me a little bit about what you’re doing with Girl Develop It now.
Jessica Murphy: Okay, so Girl Develop It we have… as you know, Girl Develop It does have a national office, but they have different, smaller…
Gillian Bruce: Like chapters.
Jessica Murphy: Chapters. Exactly. Chapters around the country. I’m a member of the Phoenix chapter, and we have a lot of things that we still do. We do a lot of code and coffees where we kind of sit around and we talk to each other and we talk about code and we drink coffee.
Jessica Murphy: Another cool thing that we do is the Salesforce class is. We have another one coming up in August and we are really excited. Usually, for the Salesforce class, we do the Battlestation. I think it’s going to be fun because it gives all of these people this new exposure to Salesforce and they get to see all the things that you could do so fast, right? Yeah, I’m still involved. I went from actually being a student to now I’m actually a GDI instructor.
Gillian Bruce: That’s awesome. That’s fantastic. I remember Mary Scotton, referring back to Mary, she actually pushed me, I think this was two years ago, to teach my first ever course at GDI and teaching the Battlestation project. It was a huge challenge for me because I had never taught in that kind of environment. I never taught something really technical like that. Obviously, sent me off to the races to do all kinds of other things. Yeah, GDI is an incredible… it’s an incredible platform just in of itself and the way that it’s structured and what it does for the community. I mean, thank you for… I mean your, your journey from student to instructor, that is really fantastic. You should feel really proud.
Jessica Murphy: I am. I’m very proud. I love the fact that I’m able to give back in this way because this was my beginning. If I can give back and if I can encourage someone else to learn Salesforce or to be a part of the ecosystem, I’m not gonna lie, I’m Salesforce biased. There’s so many things that you could do at GDI. You can learn JavaScript, you can learn Java, you can learn… those were my first touches. JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, all these things. All of us was through GDI, the one that clicked was Salesforce.
Gillian Bruce: There you go, and here you are. I did want to dig into your developer specific story a little bit. Tell me, what was one of? The hardest things about learning how to code? You obviously didn’t come from a computer science background, right? So tell me about what were some of the things that were really hard for you to understand in the beginning?
Jessica Murphy: In the beginning, some of it was terminology. In the beginning, it was this understanding that you keep on having to work at it. If you’re a person who naturally understands things easily, code is not that, right? It is absolutely doing it again, again, and again until you get it right.
Jessica Murphy: That was a bit of a struggle for me. I think more so than any of those things, it was this idea of perfectionism. A lot of women are perfectionists, right? They feel that I don’t understand this and since I don’t understand this, I’m going to run, right? Not running and not self-sabotaging.
Gillian Bruce: That’s why a lot of girls stop learning about math, right?
Jessica Murphy: Right.
Gillian Bruce: I mean, I was one of them. Took me forever to get through calculus, and I just convinced myself I wasn’t good at math.
Jessica Murphy: Right. There’s nothing that’s farther from the truth. The truth is that you are smarter than you could ever imagine. It’s a matter of doing it over and over until something clicks. Then also, it’s the self doubt. I think that specifically for women, that’s the number one thing that I see that allows them to talk themselves out of either becoming a developer, or continuing to become a developer. Me included, because I initially did try to talk myself out of it. There’s also a part of me that’s pretty persistent, and I kept on coming back even though some days I felt that I failed horribly. I kept on coming back until it was something.
Gillian Bruce: That’s awesome. Well, thank you for being brave and continuing to do that because you can show all the rest of us that hey, this is possible. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. What’s next for you? What’s your next thing that you’re working on that you’re excited about?
Jessica Murphy: All right, so Phoenix Salesforce Saturday, I love taking that group and making it into something that it would not normally be. Like I was talking about, doing this gamifying of even them getting batches.
Jessica Murphy: What we are thinking about doing is creating… Okay, so we have people at different levels in Phoenix Salesforce Saturday. Some of them are like, “I want to apply all of this stuff I’m learning to something.” What we’re thinking about doing is creating an app for a school store. It was also because we have several parents in our Salesforce Saturday. I had one in particular that was like, “I really want to teach Salesforce to my child.”
Jessica Murphy: After he’s finished with a few Trailhead modules could we create something? And I was like, “We certainly can.” We got to thinking mowing lawns, does anybody even do that anymore? Any of those types of things. Then we thought about selling candy at school. Well, the thing about that is that most school officials don’t exactly approve of that, but there is the school store where kids can get candy from the school itself.
Jessica Murphy: Connect all of these things in Salesforce. Since we have people at different levels, we will have everybody working on a different part of it, and those of us who know how to code, we’ll connect things using code, or do whatever using code. We haven’t exactly figured out exactly how this is going to work.
Jessica Murphy: We will do that. If all goes well, then maybe it’s something that we could teach to a local elementary school for Trailhead for all. What my desire is, is for it to be something that we can do at the elementary school level so they understand. Then if we teach high school students where they can build it out even further and make it more complex because they understand technology a little bit better than the little ones.
Jessica Murphy: I’m pretty excited about that. I actually hope that we’re able to make that happen. We are currently talking with Salesforce Saturday about making that happen.
Gillian Bruce: That is awesome. I love how that [inaudible 00:21:01] creating your own project team essentially of a Salesforce Saturday folks, and acting as your own development team and figuring out where people fit in and learning about the process overall. Then letting kids then take part of that and use that as a learning tool.
Jessica Murphy: Well, there’s this interesting thing. Most of us in our Salesforce Saturday are entrepreneurs and we’re usually by ourselves. I know that when you work on a team, you can sometimes acquire skills from other people that you don’t have. That’s our way of coming together, making a project that could really, really be amazing in the real world, and also being able to glean information from other people who might know something different than what I know.
Gillian Bruce: Absolutely. That’s great. I love that. All right, so what’s one piece of advice you have for someone who is a little nervous, a little intimidated about maybe learning how to become a developer?
Jessica Murphy: Okay, so one, you don’t need to be from a development background. I think that that was one of the biggest lessons I had to learn personally. I consider myself more an artist, and I was still able to do it. I think also, I would say, if you’re going to learn code, learn it from reputable sites. There are plenty of sites with old information.
Jessica Murphy: For example, JavaScript is now ECMA six and I personally learned ECMA6, and I personally learned ECMA5. If someone went to an ECMA5 site, they will learn the basics of JavaScript, but it wouldn’t be actually what they need to actually learn JavaScript. To me, one of the very, very best places to learn and start really learning these things is Trailhead. Trailhead has it all. It does.
Gillian Bruce: That’s great. Great pieces of advice. Thank you. Well, before I let you go, Jessica, you’ve shared so many amazing things, so many cool things that you’ve worked on and are working on. I have to ask you a lightning round question.
Gillian Bruce: Okay. So since we’re doing a little bit more of a developer theme, I’m going to ask you to developer theme lightning round question. What is one of the weirdest developer terms you have heard? You don’t know? There’s so many weird… maybe when you first started, what was one of the terms you were like, “what is that?”
Jessica Murphy: ECMA. Okay, so everybody thinks that JavaScript is actually JavaScript, and they did try to use JavaScript to kind of sound like Java, but the real name of Java script is ECMA.
Gillian Bruce: Do you any idea what that stands for?
Jessica Murphy: Google.
Gillian Bruce: Google. See, this is why I ask because I don’t know any of these things. Google is JavaScript. Got It.
Jessica Murphy: ECMA is actually JavaScript. That was one of the things I found very, very strange when I started out. Of course, I’m Googling, right? By the way, if you are a developer, this is your best friend. That is Stack Exchange. Let me see, [inaudible 00:23:50] ES6, ECMA script, which is actually JavaScript.
Gillian Bruce: It doesn’t even tell you what it is.
Jessica Murphy: No it doesn’t. It’s like [crosstalk 00:23:57] Wikipedia. They have all these words, but they don’t say what ECMA actually means. Let me see.
Gillian Bruce: That’s pretty funny.
Jessica Murphy: It is pretty funny. Nobody really actually knows what it means.
Gillian Bruce: Well, then there you go. We all just learned something together on the podcast. Thank you. Look at you educating people through the podcast. That’s great. That’s good. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. You’ve got so many amazing things you’re doing and I really appreciate it and I appreciate all you’re doing for the community.
Jessica Murphy: Thank you so much for this opportunity.
Gillian Bruce: Huge thanks to Jessica for taking the time to chat with us at witness success a while ago and share her wisdom. Now, Jessica is incredibly passionate and it was great to hear about her journey from being a sign language instructor into Salesforce, about getting so inspired by meeting her first female developer, realizing this was something she could do, googling all the things, getting plugged into Girl Develop It, and then getting so inspired by our very own Chris Duarte, who’s our editor-in-chief at Salesforce of Trailhead.
Gillian Bruce: Immediately from then Jessica said, “You know what, Salesforce is what I want to do, so I’m going to do it.” Some of the things I thought were really important that she shared was that if you’re somebody who learns naturally and kind of gets things pretty quickly, be prepared because learning how to code is not that way. Be patient with yourself. You cannot be a perfectionist as you learn how to code. You can’t self sabotage, don’t run away. It’s the kind of thing you need to really practice and do over and over again to truly get, and just know you’re smarter than you think you are. So trust yourself, just give yourself time to get it. It really does take repetition.
Gillian Bruce: Also, I love how Jessica points out is you don’t have to be quote unquote “a developer” to be able to develop and code. You can still be Salesforce admining, so be an artist. You could still be a marketing manager. Whatever you identify yourself as, these are just skills that you can add to your tool belt no matter what your role is.
Gillian Bruce: She also says that the best way to learn is with Trailhead. We’ve got lots of great resources for you to do that. I put some in the show notes. One is a link to that Build a Battlestation app, which is what Jessica used in the Girl Develop It course. It’s a great way to get a quick overview of what Salesforce can do and build a quick app start to finish.
Gillian Bruce: There’s also the Developer Beginner Trail. If you’re really thinking about pursuing this, definitely take a peek at that trail and start doing some modules. You never know what might click.
Gillian Bruce: Also, connect with your local Salesforce Saturday or local developer user group or local community group. There’s so many ways that you can get dialed into the Salesforce ecosystem and start learning.
Gillian Bruce: Now, before I get to the standard closing, I have a special announcement for all of you listeners. As some of you may know, I have been cooking a little baby Bruce inside my belly for the last few months, and I am about to go on maternity leave to welcome my first kid into the world. I’m very excited about that. I’m excited for the adventure that that holds, but that also means I’m going to be taking a little break from the podcast.
Gillian Bruce: Never fear. The podcast will still be delivered every single Thursday with a familiar voice. If you have listened to the podcast prior to 2018 you will recognize the dulcet tones of Mike Gerholdt who will be returning as your host while I am on maternity leave. He’s got an amazing lineup of guests coming your way from product experts, admins, and community leaders to help you be a more awesome admin. He actually started this podcast back in 2013 as the Button Click Admin Podcasts. You are in fabulous hands.
Gillian Bruce: He’s also going to be assisted by our amazing producer, Celia Belarde, who joined us about six months ago as a Year Up intern. Has taken the reigns on all the production in terms of planning and executing and publishing. She’s been an incredible help. Between Mike and Celia, you are in very good hands and keep the feedback coming. The more you provide feedback and ideas for the podcast, the better it gets.
Gillian Bruce: As you may have seen, you can nominate a guest’s idea for the podcast. You can see on my Twitter profile also on the Salesforce Admins Twitter profile, there’s a link to fill out a form.
Gillian Bruce: Don’t fear. I will be back. It’s going to be on the other side of this adventure, but for the next few months you are going to be enjoying the dulcet tones of Mike Gerholdt as your host.
Gillian Bruce: Now, if you want to learn more about being an awesome admin, make sure you go to admin.salesforce.com. Our blogs, webinars, events, podcasts you can find there. Make sure you subscribe and share the podcast with all your friends. Like I said, every Thursday you’re still going to get a brand new episode.
Gillian Bruce: If you want to follow us on social, I highly encourage you to do so. We are at Salesforce Admins, no I, on Twitter. Our guest today, Jessica Murphy, is also on Twitter at Jessica R. Murphy, and you can find myself at Jillian K. Bruce. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and we’ll catch you next time in the cloud.
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