My 2017: A Year Of Growth & Community

First and foremost, I haven’t written a solid post in close to 3-4 months. Crazy, right? The time off from the blog wasn’t intentional, but with how busy things got, it was close to impossible to focus on the blog.

But instead of just catching up with what happened in the last few months, i’ve been reflecting on how awesome 2017 was.

I started my Salesforce journey in January of 2016, taking my first Salesforce role in March of the same year. In late 2016 was when I took my first Salesforce Admin role where Salesforce was 100% of my job.

2017 marked the first full year of my life in a Salesforce role, and fully out of a career in Sales for good. That alone is something for me to celebrate. Its a pretty big freakin deal. I spent the last 14 months or so of my sales career thinking I hit a dead end and things would never change, and then the Ohana hit and changed it all for good.

2017 opened with me as a full time Salesforce Administrator, 2 certifications under my belt (Administrator and App Builder), having attended my first Dreamforce, and starting to get more involved in the community.

I really only had one goal for 2017: growth. And if you want to grow, you can’t be complacent, and 2017 was not a year of complacency.

• Started a Salesforce Saturday group that just celebrated its 1 year anniversary and has close to 100 people on the email list with an average of 10-15 attendees monthly
• Obtained 4 more (now 6 total) Salesforce certifications : CPQ Specialist, Sales Cloud Consultant, Service Cloud Consultant & Advanced Admin
• Was able to give back to the local Philadelphia community with some great volunteers from the local Salesforce community by partnering with a local non profit and teaching kids the basics procedural code (using legos!), and Salesforce at the first ever Philadephia #Trailhead4All
• Was honored to be nominated as a Salesforce MVP (still cant believe it’s real!)
• Moved on from an #AwesomeAdmin role to join the team at CSS Tec, a Registered Consulting Partner, as a Salesforce Solutions Engineer
• Was able to speak at Dreamforce 2017 on Salesforce CPQ . The link takes you to my presentation & deck, but the timer wasnt working for some reason for my session so I ran REALLY fast. I apologize for the brevity.
• Was able to sit on a great panel with the Salesforce AppExchange at Dreamforce 2017 for “5 App Stacks You’ll Want In Your Org” 
• Honored to have been able to mentor a handful of folks to kickstart their journey in the Salesforce ecosystem. Some i’ve helped get jobs, some certified, some still in the early stages
• Was able to finally meet a lot of people in the community in person for the first time at Dreamforce 2017, lots of hugs and handshakes (and a drink….or 5) were shared
• My wife and I are now expecting our 2nd child (due in April 2018)
• Self taught myself about personal finance, and how to properly invest
• Started on a path of minimalism, donating, selling or pitching a large quantity of my worldly possessions to pare down to what matters most : people and relationships
• Removed several pacifying distractions from my life including personal social networks – removed Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Cable TV, and found myself happier, more productive and less time spent scrolling through endless drivel and commercials

Yeah…so…that’s a lot, right?

2017 was truly a year of awesome. Great career growth, great personal growth, ability to give back and make an impact, and just the sense that all is right in my life for the first time ever. I was able to take the full year to process what happened in my career in 2016 and keep the pedal down to keep moving.

So, what about posts on…ya know…Salesforce?

Yes, I know, the last few posts in this blog have been personal and introspective, I promise i’ll cut the crap with the sappy stuff (soon). The reason I keep writing posts like this is in hopes that someone out there that is stuck in a job they hate, a relationship that is toxic, or just generally unhappy in their state, and comes across one of my posts. I hope that when reading one of my posts that person realizes that even the smallest change can make a huge difference in their lives to help change their state.

I heard a story recently about a little girl who challenged a professional cyclist to a bike race. The cyclist laughed at her because she was no older than 8-10 and he was this olympic cyclist. She challenged him to a race and he accepted knowing that he would beat her (yeah, he was a jerk). However, when it came time to race, she gave him a tricycle and she had an olympic cycle. She beat him in the race.

The moral to the story is that it isnt about what you have accomplished, its the drive and tools you use to succeed. You have the tools available to you in the age of the internet, now you just need to drive.

In 2016 I was just some sales rep that was sick of the grind and Salesforce MVP’s encouraged me to start my journey, and then later write about it. I’ve rebuilt my life, hopefully inspired a few others to do the same, and made some great friends along the way. 2 years later, my life is changed for good, for the better, in every way.

You can do it. The dream is free, the hustle is sold seperately.

TLDR: Don’t say you don’t have the time to change your state. If you have a video streaming account, then you have the time to work.