Episode 16: Salesforce Career Conversations David Massey with ROD. David talks about how he found his way into Salesforce. Originally a Salesperson at a travel company, he was one of the unlucky ones having to figure out a new career due to the impact of covid. In less than two years, David has become a Salesforce Certified Consultant and now helps others to obtain their own certs.
Lee Durrant: Hello, it's Lee Durrant here, with another episode of RODcast. We dive into people's Salesforce careers to find you little nuggets of inspiration that might help you in your Salesforce career. I'm pleased to say that joining me today is Dave Massey, who is-- I've lost count, but multiple certified Salesforce consultant and author of davejmassey.com, a website designed to help you learn Salesforce.
Hi, Dave, have I introduced you right there, mate? Is it author? Are we going to go with that?
David Massey: Yes, we'll go with author and thanks for having me, Lee. It's a pleasure to speak to you.
Lee: No, you too. We haven't spoken before, which, frankly for me, is a bit rare on this podcast because I've played it safe. I normally just talk to people that I know, but I couldn't help, like probably a lot of people in the Salesforce ecosystem, couldn't help noticing what you're up to and thought, from a selfish point of view, it'd be great to get you on our podcast and talk about your relatively short journey so far in Salesforce and the very quick rise to being a little bit of an influencer.
If you don't mind, perhaps giving us a very quick overview of who you are, then we can talk about, I guess, what's happened to you in the last few years if that's all right?
David: Yes, that's perfect. Where I am now is I'm an eight-time certified Salesforce consultant, working for a company called ThirdEye Consulting based out of London. Literally, two years and a week ago, I was actually a travel agent. It was only the 30th of March, I actually discovered Salesforce 2020, so the 30th of March 2020 was the first time I saw it. Prior to that, I'd worked in sales and service for a good 10, 15 years, selling everything you can think of from cars, to windows, to vacuum cleaners, to TVs, broadband, the works. Sold all of it and I found myself working in the travel industry.
I've been really successful. I'd been in it again, for about seven years at that point. I was doing really well with my sales team and when I say travel agents, technically, it's like a tour operator. Everything was custom built, everything was tailor-made, flights, hotels, transfers, trips, seven or eight week holidays, so something quite bespoke.
Again, was doing really, really well. Then COVID hit and as COVID hit, as most people know, in the travel industry, it is essentially minimum wage and then you earn all your money through commission. That's just the nature of the beast in sales, as you know. Yes, I walked into the office after COVID had hit and was just faced with the fact that I'd lost 50% of my commission overnight and all the other commission was going into a holding pot.
It couldn't really be touched, because it needed to be there to obviously keep everything going. It was a bit of a shock to walk into that. I'm married, I've got two kids, we've got a house, a mortgage, I've got a big dog that eats more than me. It was one of them where I had to look around and think, "Right, what am I going to do?"
Lee: You were made redundant, were you? Or what happened?
David: No, I wasn't made redundant. Literally, I just had to work full time through it, working from home because again, particular with the travel industries, it wasn't a case of, "Oh, right. Well, COVID shut down, lockdown, nobody does anything." Because we still had to manage all the flights, the hotels. Again, this is a bit people often didn't realize is we were working behind the scenes for minimum wage, working 10, 12 hour days because we're going through time zones to try and sort things out.
It was in Rochdale, the company I used to work for. From Preston, it's a good hour, hour-and-a-half drive back. Plus, a nice 9, 10, or 11-hour shift depending on how busy you were just to keep wheels turning and all that for essentially a minimum wage, which wasn't ideal. I thought, "I'm going to have to change here." Set myself a couple of things is like, "Well, one, it's got to be something that's going to be future proof." Technology lends itself to that.
I got sick of driving to and from Manchester every single day, it was a pain. Especially on the M61 when you're getting towards that ring road. It's just game over, isn't it?
Lee: I'm getting to know it now I've moved north. Yes. Okay. So you were looking for something where you could work remotely then as well, was that part of it?
David: Exactly. Yes. Something remotely. It had to be something that interested me. First, I started looking into cybersecurity because I thought, "Well, if you're talking about future-proof careers, then cybersecurity doesn't get much more future-proof, does it?" I started looking into it and spent a bit of time, watched a few videos. I just sat there and I thought, "I can't do that. That'll bore me. There's no way I could do that all day."
Then a friend of mine who's actually a Salesforce recruiter in America. He said, "You know what, Dave?" He said, "With your background and your knowledge and your experience," he said, "I know you don't have anything to do with IT." He said, "But have a look, have a look at Salesforce." Everything I thought was, well, one I don't have a degree, let alone an IT degree. I've never worked in technology at all, so I've never worked on an IT help desk or anything like that.
My experience of IT was essentially selling laptops. Now that was about as close as I got. It was like, "All right, and I'll have a look at it." I still remember to this day, it was one of the last few days of March and I fired up YouTube and I just whacked in Salesforce. I remember watching this video with someone basically putting together reports inside five minutes and then just hit refresh and pulled all this data for it and I was like, "Do you know how long it takes me to do that at the end of the month?"
I was like, "It's like witchcraft. It's crazy this." I looked at it, I was like, "All right. Well, that's a bit more of a look." Then I started diving into it, found Trailhead, jumps into Trailhead, and just got the book for it really. I kept studying. Again, I was still working full time, but I was studying at night, studying in the evenings, studying early mornings as well before I left the house and then at the weekend. It was a bit of a slog.
Yes, and then seven weeks later, I sat and passed my admin exam on my first attempt. Four weeks after that, I got my app builder. Then a couple of-- I figure it was about a month after that, I managed to secure a role for a company called Art of Cloud in Leeds, and they gave me a shot.
Lee: Just to rewind a bit there, how-- I mean, forgive my ignorance, but does it cost a bit of money to get those certifications or to sit the exams?
David: Yes, so I paid out for them. They were $200 each for an exam, which was why I needed to make sure I passed on the first time because I was digging into whatever money I had. I mean, the stuff that I used to learn essentially use Trailhead, so that was obviously my number one goal.
In terms of mock exams, I'm sure everyone's heard this before, but Focus on Force was a dream, and that really helped. I did try a couple of Udemy courses, but I just didn't find anything that matched how I learned. I didn't really get too much use out of that. It was mainly Trailhead, and Focus on Force, really.
Lee: Brilliant. Okay. That's really good in for some people because I think a lot of people and maybe yourself included before you spoke to your mate in America, just assume that Salesforce is IT and that's not me. As you said, I don't have a degree, I would never have thought to get into software and obviously I don't. It's interesting, because I think in other parts of IT definitely is a bit of a blocker, isn't it? The whole degree thing.
David: Yes.
Lee: Coming up through the ranks with that, but your experience as you say, with your sales background and your experience with a bit of everything really, isn't it? It's large corporates, it's small startups.
David: Yes, been there and done it.
Lee: In many ways, even though you probably didn't feel it at the time, I suppose the whole COVID thing you might argue, has done you a bit of a favour and set you on this new path that you would never have dreamed of?
David: Yes, it's a really weird thing to say, because COVID was horrible and there's no taking away from that. The amount of money it costs me because I lost all my commission was phenomenal. It was battling with kids teaching from home as more people have probably experienced than they ever want to. It was tough, but out of that, it was quite-- I don't know what the correct word is for it, but it was quite-- it was like a sense of freedom to me, because I've been stuck doing what I was doing and working in sales for so long and once you get used to earning that commission and earning that money, then it becomes a bit of a crux and it's hard to walk away from.
Literally, overnight, it was like, "Well, there you are Dave. There's nothing holding you back now. Now, what are you going to do? Now show us what you're made of." It was like, "Right, here we go."
Lee: I'm thinking, so when you went to-- Art of Cloud gave you a shot, what can you maybe describe what you did to get-- probably not literally, but metaphorically in front of them because I appreciate, I can imagine that you'd be saying you're trying to explain to them that, yes, I look like a travel agent on paper, but I'm doing all these things.
