This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking to Nick Lindberg, Senior Business Analyst at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and co-founder of the Twin Cities Nonprofit Salesforce User Group. We learn about Nick’s drag racing app and how that’s lead him to master App Builder.
Join us as we talk about how an app idea can come from just about anywhere, how he used his hobby to help him develop his Salesforce skills, and how it’s lead him to learn more about IoT integrations and Einstein.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nick Lindberg.
“I’m trying to be a pain point picking machine,” Nick says, “taking all those pain points and using Salesforce to solve them.” But it wasn’t always so easy. Right out of college, the nonprofit he helped found as a student, Students Today Leaders Forever, was trying to take the next steps and by paying a fulltime staff.
Tracking everything was quickly becoming a challenge, but they stumbled across Salesforce and the Nonprofit Success Pack at just the right time. However, they needed one of the five full-time staff members to take it over. “Nick knows Excel,” they said, “so he can implement Salesforce, naturally.” Being able to learn the platform and help an organization near and dear to his heart helped him quickly progress from accidental admin to awesome admin, and he realized he could make a career in Salesforce.
Building apps is something that every Salesforce admin should take a crack at, but it can be hard to get engaged if you’re working on something dry. Nick got inspired by Mike’s Top Gear app and decided to create Dragforce. “You can’t drag race in the winter in Minnesota,” Nick says, “or at least not safely,” but he wanted to feed his passion for going fast and furious. A big part of drag racing is keeping a logbook to track your interval times, so he figured he could replace that paper process with a Salesforce app.
If you don’t know much about putting the pedal to the metal, prepare for Mike and Nick to nerd out (more than) a little bit. There’s actually a lot of data to keep track of, and interval times are important because the driver with the highest MPH isn’t always the winner. Not to mention the temperature, the barometric pressure, and almost 20 other weather metrics can all affect your car’s performance, so dashboards are a big help for taking everything in. Along the way, Nick’s passion helped sharpened his app development skills and even got into Visualforce (before Lightning came along).
Moving forward, Nick is hoping to enlist the services of a consultant to take his drag racing to the next level. “In the type of drag racing that I do, it’s not just about fast you go but more how consistent you are,” he says, “I need to know, going down to a thousandth of a second, if the car is going to change between each run.” He’s looking to learn Einstein Prediction Builder as a way to get an incredibly accurate picture of how his car is going to perform.
To make this happen, Nick recently got an IoT-enabled weather station that he’s trying to integrate into Salesforce. He’s hoping to get to a place where he can pull live weather metrics directly into the app and then run it through Prediction Builder to get performance projections with that thousandth of a second accuracy. Along the way, forcing himself to tinker with all of these things will help him build the skills he needs for work and for racing down on the track.
Mike Gerholdt:
Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast where we talk about product, community and career to help you become an awesome admin. I’m Mike Gerholdt and joining me today is Nick Lindberg. He is @NickersUniverse on Twitter. Don’t worry, link is in the show notes so you can follow him. And we are going to talk about building apps for fun as a way to deepen your knowledge, your skill, and your understanding of Salesforce. Now, I have personally used this as a way for me to get more hands on with Salesforce. So, let’s get Nick on the podcast.
Mike Gerholdt:
So Nick, welcome to the podcast.
Nick Lindberg:
Well, hello, hello, hello.
Mike Gerholdt:
Nick, you’re no stranger of mine. And to many people in the universe, I know you were in one of the very first admin keynotes back when we had it in the Hilton, before we were on the big stage.
Nick Lindberg:
The old days.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yes, I know. It feels like a little bit ago, but let’s talk about for those that haven’t met you or ran into you at one of the user groups, let’s talk about what you do and where you’re at.
Nick Lindberg:
Sure. So, I’m Nick Lindberg. I’m an accidental admin and continue to be an accidental admin every day. I’m working for my alma mater right now, trying to solve problems with our different processes. And so whether that be trying to figure out how to connect with different companies or our students or what have you, I’m just trying to just be a pain point, picking machine and taking all those pain points and using Salesforce to solve them.
Mike Gerholdt:
I feel that could be a really cool shirt. Pain point picking machine.
Nick Lindberg:
Let’s start the presses. TrailheaDX, here we go.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah, let’s rewind and think about how did you get started in Salesforce?
Nick Lindberg:
So I got started with Salesforce about a decade ago, and when I had just graduated from college, I had the amazing opportunity to work for a non-profit that I actually co-founded while I was in school. And at the time, we went from a volunteer-based organization to being an organization that would pay our salaries effectively. Being college grads, those were pretty small amounts or just shortly out of college, those are small amounts. We still had to figure out how to pay for those, and so we stumbled across Salesforce and the Nonprofits Assess Pack and the Non-profit Starter Pack at the time, and just saw the power of Salesforce. And because we had a shoestring budget, we needed one of the five of us on staff at the time to implement. And so it was of a nose goes slash the token line was, well Nick knows Excel so he can implement Salesforce naturally.
Nick Lindberg:
And so I kind of, that’s how I started out with Salesforce was kind of taking my knowledge of Excel and what I knew of the, if function effectively, effectively and transitioned that over to what can we do in Salesforce. And so, what our formula fields are, odd objects exist. And so that’s what I served at Salesforce spent five years kind of implementing it for an audition near and dear to my heart and then kind of realize I got the bug of Salesforce, could be a career and continued from there.
Mike Gerholdt:
Wow. A decade ago doesn’t sound like that long ago until you mentioned that you guys started because of an if function. I have a friend that got started because somebody in the organization said, well, they know how to do Myspace. I bet they’ll know how to do Salesforce. Doesn’t it make a decade feel like eons ago, you know?
Nick Lindberg:
Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean it feels like just yesterday at the same time, it’s so, so long ago. Even if you’re like a Salesforce, what is this? A decade ago, workflows were, we were very thankful. We had workflows at the time.
Mike Gerholdt:
Facebook memories always reminds me when I was super excited about cross object workflows, so. So no surprise. Nick and I struck up a conversation, if you know me, about cars. I believe it was at one of the Midwest treatment events. And you told me after we spent, I don’t know how long, talking about cars, you told me about an app that you had built. And the whole premise of this episode and the episode next week is to build fun apps, and build apps that are exciting to you as opposed to, sometimes the mundane stuff of what we go to work for. It’s kind of the hobby aspect of it. But I want to start there because, there might be some backstory to the app. But essentially we were talking about cars and drag racing, and that’s when the app discussion started. So, I’ll let you take it from there.
Nick Lindberg:
Yeah, definitely. So I actually, it’s kind of, it’s kind of funny to think about how the circle of this all goes back to, and I know you’ve built part of the point of taking interest of Salesforce and try to take those hobbies and build things. And you had built a Top Gear app, if I’m not mistaken at some point. And that’s actually the Genesis of the app that I built was inspiration from you. And so it’s kind of a full circle on that topic. And so I had just started a consulting position and had come across your post, and kind of the concept of app building was really kind of foreign to me. I kind of knew of apps and I guess the many definitions for an app in Salesforce, but didn’t really know what that meant. I’d built objects before and things along those lines, but never really under the mindset of an app.
Nick Lindberg:
And so that’s really where the concept of drape force was really started, was for the sole reason of what is an app? How do I build an app, what are the components of that? And so I just started playing around as [inaudible 00:06:23] got me in a second for why do I even do drain force? And so I drag race.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. By the way, you drag race a car.
Nick Lindberg:
But by the way, I drag race the car-
Mike Gerholdt:
I was just bored in Iowa watching it snow. Binge-watching Top Gear episodes. You’re like, “Yeah, I drag race a car. I should build an app.” Of course, you should.
Nick Lindberg:
Sure, sure. Yeah. It just seemed natural that that was the app I would do. But [crosstalk 00:06:48] back up, why didn’t I build that app, right?
Nick Lindberg:
Because if you own a race car, there’s never anything to do.
Mike Gerholdt:
Right, exactly. And so it was winter naturally so…
Nick Lindberg:
Can’t drag race in winter.
Nick Lindberg:
…can’t drag race in the winter in Minnesota, or at least not safely.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah.
Nick Lindberg:
I was just starting to brainstorm ideas and I started to realize that with drag racing, you have what they call logbook. And what that logbook is effectively tracking each of the runs that you do. So you’d go down the track and there’s Andrade racing. There’s kind of these interval times. So every at 60 feet down the track at 660 feet at the quarter mile, 320 feet, there’s 1320. There’s basically incremental times and also mile an hour that comes into play. And so after every run that you do you, the first thing you do is you look at what they call the time slip you and you look at it and then you write it down in a piece of paper, a logbook. And that was my first kind of transition of what’s that paper process?
Nick Lindberg:
What’s that spreadsheet that I’m using that I could build out in Salesforce? And so I started to realize, well I could build each of these data points for each of these time slip line items into an object in Salesforce and I could even build it into even more of an app where I made all the different race tracks. I made it race different cars at different times. I could build a structure, an app around kind of sole purpose of drag racing.
Nick Lindberg:
And so that was the whole concept was just to start with the logbook and its has blossomed into more of what do I do with drag racing? Going again to one of those different tracks, maybe different numbers. I’ve been trying to get my brother to use Drake force. He has been a slow adapter, to say the least. So I don’t know if it’s the changed management or the system admin error. So we’ll have to have some conversations about that one. We use some coffee chats about.
Mike Gerholdt:
that one. Yeah, I mean it’s not like, people always look at racing as like, Oh its just gets in and stands on the gas. But it’s important to know that 60 foot. Like how fast does your car go, the first 60 foot, because, and I find this especially… For people that don’t follow drag racing, you can have a faster, I mean trap speed at the finish line than your opponent, but you can win because you have a lower E.T.
Mike Gerholdt:
Your E.T is the time it takes you to go down the track. And what you’re trying to understand is at different intervals, as I go down the track, where am I faster? Where am I getting that speed from? Because if you can hit that 60 foot mark faster than someone else, they may beat you in mile per hour, but you’re going to beat them in E.T because you’ve gone the length of the track in a shorter amount of time than they did even though they went a higher mile per hour. Which to me is just, it’s one of those… Wow, there’s so many aspects of it and then to sit down and say, “Well, I’m just going to put this all on a spreadsheet.” Which a lot of drag racers do, or a notebook, right?
Mike Gerholdt:
You get those time slips, some of those time slips, they use that paper, that’s like thermal paper. Drives you nuts, because by the time you get back to the pits, half the printing is all black because you know the car is so hot. And you’re sitting here with an app and now because of Salesforce, now you can start seeing trends, right? Like the little incremental part of this, which is kind of the nerdy part of it to me because I love that you’re sitting down thinking, when I’m not working on the car, here’s how I can take this passion, this excitement part of it. And it’s really, to be honest with you, the most boring part of drag racing is looking at E.T times and mile an hours. Right? But to sit down and say, “Well here’s how mathematically I’m going to beat somebody.”
Nick Lindberg:
Exactly. Going through your point, there’s a lot of exterior factors that can mean that you maybe run a mile an hour faster or we’re racing for thousands of a second and so you could maybe go faster by a thousandth of a second based on a number of factors from weather. So it was, what was the temperature? What was the humidity? What was the barometric pressure? And those different data points that we hear in the weather as other person does their news on their weather report. And we have five, six, 20 other weather metrics that we can be doing in drag racing that can really dictate how fast or slow is that car going to go.
Nick Lindberg:
And so for your point we, we want to make adjustments if we can, if we have real time data where we can go, “What’s the weather?” Maybe, “What was the shift point?” So at what RPM was that have attacking your car? You notice it says something like, one to seven. And you notice once it goes up and the car shifts and it goes back down, well I’m manually shifting and so I may change my shift point differently based on some of those factors. And so having all that data kind of in that centralized location became super powerful cause I could build per your point. I could build some dashboards and go, “What was my 60 foot times? What are maybe some external factors, 60 foot time by temperature, or humidity?” Or those different things that I could do some causal analysis on.
Mike Gerholdt:
Well and you think about it, you get enough runs in to have a dataset large enough for Einstein to start evaluating and now, look what you have versus any other… I mean I’m just thinking of how many columns on a spreadsheet somebody would have because, I mean you just start talking about weather, right? T air temperature, track temperature, right? You know? You know how in the summer when you’re out walking around barefoot and your feet are hot. That matters to a car too, its feet get hot and the hotter the payment, the slicker those tires are. And barometric pressure, right? How many columns wouldn’t some of those people have?
Mike Gerholdt:
You have this all on a page that then you come back, you create, I don’t know, a record. Cause I want to talk about your app too, before everybody just tunes out. It’s like, Okay, listen to Mike talk about cars. But you have all that, you just create a record, you refresh your dashboard. Now think, instantaneously in my head, I’m envisioning these dashboards that you must have that everyone else is like on column a E Z, right. Cause they’re, they’re already 212 columns into this row that they have to adjust for.
Nick Lindberg:
Exactly. I mean I feel like I have a record and everything kind of is the, the nucleus is that time slip object that I have in the system. And so, with that I have all those metric, all those fields. And so we’re probably talking 50, 60 fields somewhere around there. A mixture of date, time fields to, text fields, to a pick list fields to, I have a handful of formula fields even to do some worked in there. And so it became kind of an exercise of when would I use different field types, when do I use say a date versus a date, time or when would I use a say, a text versus a pick list.
Nick Lindberg:
And so going back to that Genesis, this was a way for me to learn app development. It was a way for me to learn what pick list or what field type to use it, make that page less daunting. And now the data, it became a really good place to then go; Oh, because I have it as a pick list or because I have it as a date time field I can make, I can make a report dashboard that could show that data in a slightly different way.
Nick Lindberg:
So maybe, I want to look at it by day or maybe by time of day. You can slice and dice the data in a lot of different ways based on kind of how I initially set it up and learning some of those hard knocks of why you don’t use touch fields for everything.
Mike Gerholdt:
Why you don’t use multi pick lists fields. It sounds like you got really good at creating fields. Like where did you start? Cause I’m thinking, so not everybody’s going to be in a drag racing. Where, where did you sit down and think, well I could make this into a Salesforce app.
Nick Lindberg:
Yeah. So then for me, I had a somewhat of a tangible starting point of, I already had that notebook, I already had that log book, of sorts. And I just started by just looking at what data is being tracked in that log.
Nick Lindberg:
So every run that I made, what am I, what am I entering or what is this log book telling me to enter? And so that was kind of my starting point in terms of what data points does someone else in the drag racing world think were relevant to me, and started to pick and choose of those, what do I want to keep? And at the same time, what type of value or what type of field is this? And so that was kind of my starting point. And then at the same time I started thinking, okay, what else is not being trapped in here? And so for instance, some people have multiple cars, some people race at multiple tracks. And that log book has some of that data, but not all of it. So I started to think through what else would I want to track and started just making a list when I’m going to a different race track, I want to know some different peak data points. For us that interesting data point is the elevation of said racetrack.
Mike Gerholdt:
Oh.
Nick Lindberg:
Interestingly enough, you go faster at sea level than you do a mile high up in Denver.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah.
Nick Lindberg:
So that’s a good data point where even in the Midwest, you know the elevation doesn’t drastically change that much, but you know, we’re talking a couple 100 feet by location. So that may mean the car may chain go faster in one versus the other. And so those are data points that I started to map out going, “What else would we want to know based on maybe vocation that I’m going too?”, Or maybe even the car that I’m working on and me have some kind of conditional types of things. So just started to think more about, what am I doing? What are the if you will, brought up my business process. These, I don’t have a flowchart or anything cool like that to show. I’m just starting to think through at a high level, like what is that process like? What, what does it take to go to a track on a day? What does it take to make it run? What are those key things I’m doing every time and maybe, what do I want to know that me change every time that I’m making a pass down the track.
Mike Gerholdt:
So let’s think about, because I love, I love building apps for fun, right? Like I just the other day logged into my Top Gear app to make a change on something and had five more ideas that I didn’t have time to implement. So, I had started a little sticky note of all this stuff I want to add to it. I think I’ve since seen every episode of Top Gear. I didn’t want to start at the app, but I’d be curious to know, what is one thing that’s come out of you, building this app for fun, that was very unexpected?
Nick Lindberg:
You know, actually the one thing that was maybe the most sign inspected was, and this might date the time that app initially came up was I, I gave myself a chance to build a visual force page.
Mike Gerholdt:
Oh.
Nick Lindberg:
And so, that was my four way entry point to coding. And so when I initially built this, the idea was okay, I have a page that I could just have a record page that I could enter that data in, but what if maybe I want to make it so it’s a little bit more mobile friendly. And at the time I didn’t want to necessarily dabble down to Salesforce one. So I thought of an idea of, well what if I make a visual force page? And also how can I get my brother to use this as well? It was maybe the other entry point to the real visual force page.
Nick Lindberg:
And so I learned how to copy, paste code of visual force page and what are the starting rates? What are the ending breaks? How do I do some of those values? And with that, I created a scaled down version or kind of a quick create, of a record B of a visual force page. And so, that was one thing that I didn’t even think I was trying to get into was, Hey, I just want to build some table or some objects and some reports, but what else? How can I make this so other people like my brother could see it? And that was my entry point into, what does it take to build a visual force page.
Mike Gerholdt:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Gerholdt:
Wow, and now you’re on Lightening. It doesn’t really matter.
Nick Lindberg:
Yeah it does. Yeah. I haven’t flipped it over to do that. I have other more exciting things I wanted to tackle with this app. So, that’s been moved to the backlog.
Mike Gerholdt:
I actually prioritized it because there was so much visually I wanted to do. And the ability to do the custom pages and the colors and the login screen. It’s the thing that was always missing from my app. I’m a very visual person. So, that’s how that works. So, outside of transitioning it to Lightning, what are, what are some things that you want to do moving forward with this app?
Nick Lindberg:
So you know Mikey, I don’t think we’ve talked about this yet, but I think your comment about Einstein… Maybe we’re predicting really well so I don’t know if you have a-
Mike Gerholdt:
Oh yes, we did. Nice, nice, nice.
Nick Lindberg:
[crosstalk 00:20:42].
Mike Gerholdt:
Using Einstein to predict it, yeah.
Nick Lindberg:
Yeah exactly. So, that’s where my mind’s going. The type of drag race that you do I do, it’s not just really about how fast you go, but more how consistent you are. And I need to know to a thousandth of a second, is the card going to change between each run? It’s okay to change, but I need to know if it’s going to change.
Nick Lindberg:
And so where I’m the two areas that I’m really excited about to use as a kind of a next entry point of what’s that next thing to learn with Salesforce is that A, the internet of things. And so I’ve, I’ve bought a weather station that can connect to the internet and I’m working with a friend that knows how to code. And he’s basically introducing me to how to integrate this weather station into Salesforce where the idea may be at a push of a button, it could pull up live weather stats for me. And I’m transitioning to what’s the next thing I’m wanting to learn would be the Einstein component. And I would love to use this app as a way to learn prediction builder and how can I use that data set of all these runs I’ve, I’ve now accumulated to have prediction builder.
Nick Lindberg:
People literally have these computer eventually computers or weather stations that they can enter it tapes on the weather and the runs and it’ll tell you to a thousandth of a second what the state weather station thinks you’re going to run. I want to try to replicate that in Salesforce via this weather station I bought in prediction builder. And so how I want to combine these two ideas would be, I pushed this button and it gives me live stats and then it would go look at prediction builder. And I don’t have the full structure idea down yet, but it would go and look on all my previous data and basically go; based on this weather condition and the previous runs it’s going to run this number.
Nick Lindberg:
And so that’s really where I’m hoping to go and it’s going to be a really a fun territory is to try to flip from the reports and dashboards are really cool and colors to, what can we do with this, this methodical Einstein analytics tool and some of the prediction builder tools that are coming out. So I’m excited to utilize some of the spring ’20 release. The prediction builder functionality is coming out there, that we all get the token prediction builder. One token prediction builder so I’m excited. That’s really the one I build.
Mike Gerholdt:
I like that. Of course, it’s probably just a tweet away from Charlie Issacs, to getting you to help out with the internet of things.
Nick Lindberg:
Exactly, exactly. We’ve talked well loosely and maybe I was dreaming about this idea and he kind of steered me down. There’s a weather station that [inaudible 00:23:50] do what you want to do. And so he’s kind of helped me a little bit, but I’m excited to go back to the finished product and go, “Hey, let’s have some fun with this.” Maybe I can get him to come to a race track or race and who knows? Maybe we’ll get the bug and buy a race car. But that’s only a dream, right?
Mike Gerholdt:
Race cars aren’t cheap. They’re like boats.
Nick Lindberg:
Exactly. It’s a, it’s a passion. A hobby of passion and love. Not necessarily of necessity.
Mike Gerholdt:
A good way to, I forget what the saying is. A good way to part of man with his money is to buy a race car. Yes. I love it.
Mike Gerholdt:
Well, Nick, thanks for coming by the podcast and chatting. I love the idea of building apps that aligned to your hobby and using it to track different things. And I’ve heard so many different ideas for apps and I think it’s a fun way to continue your learning outside of Trailhead and, and it forces you to tinker. You know, that’s the biggest thing. Like I love to get into my Top Gear app and just tinker with stuff and try things out and be like, how do I make stars appear so that I can rate an episode? You know? And it’s sometimes like what you brought up, it forces you to think about things you wouldn’t normally, have come up in a conversation, right? Like how do I use Einstein to predict something or how do I bring in IOT in a weather app? Fascinating. Love it.
Nick Lindberg:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Gerholdt:
So thanks so much for being on the podcast and good luck come spring.
Nick Lindberg:
Thank you. Thank you.
Mike Gerholdt:
It was great to catch up with Nick and I am super excited to head to Midwest dreaming this summer. And I’ll have chance to see how his drag racing career is going and hopefully get to see this app that we talked about. So three things I learned from Nick with our discussion. First, an app idea can come from anywhere. I mean look at Nick, it was literally a time slip sitting on the passenger seat of his, of his drag car that gave him his idea to start building a fun app using the Salesforce platform. Second, your app is going to drive excitement into your career and hobby. If you ever have a chance to run into me and ask me about the Top Gear app, I promise you I’m going to light up and you could hear it in Nick’s voice too. How excited he was talking about his drag force app and all of the features. And I mean he was excited to tell you about the 50 fields that he had created in the app and not to mention all of his improvements, which leads me to the third point.
Mike Gerholdt:
Your fun app that you’re going to build is just going to peak the curiosity for other parts of the platform. So Nick is looking at IOT, as a way to bring weather data in and we had the discussion about Einstein as a way to make the app even smarter to give him predictions on the times that his car is about to run. That’s insane. That’s something a spreadsheet would never do.
Mike Gerholdt:
This has just been a super, super fun conversation. I really hope you enjoyed this. We’re going to have a great conversation like this next week when we talk with Donald who also has a racing app. But I do want to remind you, if you want to learn more about all things Salesforce admin, go to: admin.salesforce.com to find more resources.
Mike Gerholdt:
And as a reminder, if you love what you hear, be sure to pop on over to iTunes and give us a review. I promise you I read them all and some of the great ones I even tweet out, you can stay up to date with us on all things social for the Salesforce admins. We are @Salesforceadmns on Twitter. No “I”. And you can find me on Twitter as well. I am @MikeCarroll, so be sure to stay tuned for the next episode and we’ll see you in the cloud.
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