SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Mostri and Kiro Whitey, will be bringing you real stories, real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Welcome to the TRM Success Show. Today we're talking with uh Peter Schweit, Director of Technology Services at Hope Ignite. So uh welcome, Pete. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

It's good to see you again, Peter. I know we uh first got to meet in person. Uh December Chicago World Tour. It was freezing, if I remember correctly.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

But uh thanks for joining us. So so Peter, just tell our listeners a little bit about your background uh for us. Nice and easy.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

Yeah, sure. So I um I started here at Hope Ignites uh about seven years, almost seven years ago. Um before that, I had a somewhat interesting career. I grew up um around technology. Out of high school, I worked in restaurants, managed restaurants. Um I have a formal degree in culinary arts, um, kind of pivoted back into technology when I started having kids. Um, and and and here I am today. So I've uh been at Hope Ignites for about seven years, started in a um somewhat of a support role, and then um went through two promotions now uh to where I sit today as the director of technology services.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

I don't know if you want to go a little bit further back, Pete, but um you had an interesting journey into tech, let's say, because that wasn't your um you're you're in the restaurant hospitality space, and then you got your break that way. Quickly tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Yeah, so um I was working in restaurants, like I said, for a while. And um when I wanted to break back into tech, um I went to work for a hospitality technology company here in St. Louis. Um, I knew the owners, we they worked with a lot of our restaurants. Um, and my role there was I was an implementation um person, but largely what I did because I understood both restaurant world kind of in this tech world, I was able to bridge a lot of gaps between um understanding how restaurants operate and how and what owners and chefs were looking for and how to manifest that into technology. So that was kind of my um my safe segue back in, if you will. My, you know, um staying comfortable, but also kind of bridging back into technology.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

It's very smart to leverage uh industry um and where your passion, interest, and also knowledge is, right? Um, as a quick segue into tech or Salesforce. I think a lot of people overlook that. Um very cool. So you you did the installation piece, which was like your toast systems and um you know your your restaurant, um, what do they call it? Uh point of sale. Point of sale. There you go. Um, fantastic. And then how do you get into into this role? Or how do you get about go about getting the role at Hope Ignites?

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Yeah, so um about seven years ago, um I so I prior to working here, um, I had been a volunteer for a number of years. I served on the associate board of directors for one of our affiliates. Um, my mom was an employee at the at one of our affiliates for a while. So I had lots of exposure to Hope Ignites. Um, we were back then we were Boys Hope, Girls Hope. Um, so I always been involved in one way or another. And as they were kind of growing and figuring out their next steps, they opened this um support role that I started in. And I messaged the VP that was over that department at the time and said, Hey, love to have a conversation. Um, maybe I know some people that that you know that you could talk to. Um, and then turns out that I fit the role. Um, so I started, you know, a couple weeks after that, and the rest is history. This was, of course, this was 2019, so this was mid-night, 2019 June-ish time frame um before the pandemic. Um, so the role I started in, you know, mid-2019, by early 2020, I it was a completely different role um, you know, than what I started with.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

You want to share how so?

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Sure. So we, I mean, like like many organizations, for-profit, nonprofit alike, um, we flipped to working from home, handling processes digitally, uh, you know, meeting in Teams, Zoom, Google, you know, whatever, whatever your flavor was. Um, and a lot of my role quickly pivoted from supporting the platforms and the functions we had into this kind of um initially a more reaction-based, like, here's our here's today's problem. How are we gonna, you know, how are we gonna adapt this process? Um, and once we kind of got over that hump and realized that um we were starting to look at what could be new normal um in some aspects, we we were able to get strategic at that point and really start thinking through decisions less to um less to rise to immediate needs or or or whatever, and more to like uh we have this new paradigm. We've invested in platforms. Um turns out those platforms are really helpful in general. Um, we could definitely start making some strategic decisions with those that were kind of parallel to the pandemic, that were more focused on org growth and less on you know, rising to meet the needs of our new normal.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Perfect. So Hope Ignites, uh, tell us a little bit about Hope Ignite. Uh, we know they're a nonprofit, as you as you've shared, um, and we know uh you you got your foray into the role through the board director, voluntary type stuff. So that's fantastic. You know, I know people work in the space uh because they want to give back um and don't necessarily go into it thinking they might get something out of it, but in your case, you know, it was a whole new career. Uh so that's fantastic. What do Hope Ignites do? Uh what what is their mission? What is what is their purpose? And you know, how how do they help uh individuals?

SPEAKER_03 6:27

Yeah, so we were founded um here in St. Louis back in 1977, um, originally as a residential program. Um, and the goal was to, you know, to take young people that were motivated, that had talent and gifts, but didn't necessarily have the opportunity to act on those talents and gifts. Um, and we brought them into originally into to solely into residential settings. So we had homes here in St. Louis, these young people come into our homes, um, they would go to schools in the area, we would bring in tutors, um, you know, all that kind of stuff. Um really focusing on bringing structure and resources in. Um, and this was just in St. Louis at the time, um, but our founder, Father Paul Sheridan, kind of knew um right away once it worked, that it could work at scale. Um, and so I think very quickly we started to look at what's next, where can we go? Um, and we expanded across the United States um and to several other countries. Right now, we we operate in the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala. Um, and we split, gosh, I wish I knew what year it was. Um, we split into kind of two pathways at some point. We kept the residential setting for those individuals that really needed that level of um programming, but we also split off into this academy pathway or this kind of after school pathway. Um, all the same academic support, all the same resources, um, just in an after-school format, not in a uh purely residential format. Um, so that's kind of how we exist today. Um, we changed, as I mentioned in the beginning, um, we were Boys Hope, Girls Hope for a number of years. Um, about a year or so ago now, we changed names to Hope Ignites, um, and we continue to grow today. Our our current goal by 2035 is to triple our impacts. We want to triple the number of young people we're serving through our programs. Um, and with that comes a lot of of fun, um, but very meaningful strategic work to get there.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

And that by tripling in size, that would be roughly how many extra uh scholars that you'd be supporting on a on an annual basis?

SPEAKER_03 8:46

Um, so we're about we support about 1,300 young people today. Um, and I'm terrible at math, so you can't see me with my calculator here. Close to 4,000 um young people would be the goal. Obviously, rough numbers, right? Um, but yeah, right now it's about 1,300 young people a year. So the goal would be to triple that.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Amazing. Well, fingers crossed, you uh get there. Um we'll be supporting you from the sidelines. Um but um, or if we can help, you know, let us know. But um so so, in terms of um your role, Peter, um it's a broad role. Uh, it's not just limited to Salesforce, but obviously we do cover, we what we do want to cover a little bit how um Hope Ignites at a high level uh leverage Salesforce. So just give us an idea what what products are you using, how many users, um, and then also second followed question to that is what other areas outside of Salesforce are you responsible for under your role as director of technology?

SPEAKER_03 9:45

Yeah, so um we use Salesforce for a number of things. We came from Razor's Edge um back in the mid-2000s um when MPSP first really kind of started gaining momentum. Um at that time, Razor's Edge was our fundraising database, and Salesforce was a one-to-one replacement of that. Um, that predates my time here uh as a team member, but I was part of that on the volunteer side um back then. Um so initially, Salesforce, like many orgs, um, was focused on fundraising, you know, um, and that's what we did. But then the VP of ops at the time kind of saw potential in Salesforce. Um, because for any of us that are in the ecosystem know. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

They migrated away from Razor's Edge to to Salesforce. Yes. How was that? I haven't done a Razor's Ed migration in years, so that's been a long time.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

I can't I can't speak to how well it went because I wasn't here when it happened, but what I do know that we learned from that migration, and we're still learning from this decision um today is when you when you pull in from Razor's Edge or any platform, we made the decision to pull in fundraising data going back to the beginning of the database. Um, and it ended up being far too much information. Um, you know, and it proved to not be as functional as we had thought. Um, so in the way Razor's Edge sorted information um versus the way Salesforce sorted it, there was a lot to be learned there. One key thing about how we function in Razor's Edge was we have 14 affiliates. At the time, I think we had 16. Um, but you know, you would have a John Smith at five different affiliates. It's it's a different John Smith in every city. In Razor's Edge, that would have been five contacts. In Salesforce, that's one contact with five relationships. Um, and mapping that out and getting all of that pulled together was kind of a unique to us situation because of our affiliate model, um, but definitely some things that, you know, I don't I wouldn't say the migration went poorly. There's just always that hindsight, right? Afterwards of the data, the data data decision that felt good and seemed right. And then when you see it, it's like, oh well, could have gone a different direction on that one.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

So you're saying you had five different razor's edge systems? What why are there five John's Edge Edge?

SPEAKER_03 12:21

We had one Razor's Edge platform, but the way Razor's Edge sorted donors, if I had three, five people, individual, you know, unique individuals, all named John Smith, in Razor's Edge, or no, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. One single individual, one human being, John Smith, but he supports five of our affiliates, he'd have five contacts in Razor's Edge. In Salesforce, he has one that gets shared amongst you know all of our affiliates. Um, and and kind of mapping that data model into Salesforce was was tricky for us. Um, and we're still deduping.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, the matching could be trick could be tricky. I don't remember that about Razor's Edge, but it doesn't matter. Yeah. Um, I I do want to talk about um Nonprofit Dreaming is this week. Um, this week meaning the week of recording, not the week it's airing. So uh unfortunately uh my understanding is you're going to be speaking there uh in the coming days. Um The Power of Intentional Design, I believe is the title. There's no spoilers here because this will air after your speech. So no problems here. So uh let's tell us a little bit uh a little bit about that. What is intentional design and why is it so powerful?

SPEAKER_03 13:36

Yeah, so um for us, it's actually uh a unique story to some extent. When I started, um, you know, a lot of our platforms, whether it was Microsoft, Salesforce, um, this or that, they were all kind of that vanilla branding, off-the-shelf, Microsoft logo, Salesforce logo, um, all that. And we were talking about user adoption and kind of is that valuable? You know, how do you drive user adoption? How do you, you know, what are the elements of that? Um, it's very easy to go to training. It's very easy to go to, there's lots of metrics um for user adoption that people tend to gravitate towards. But I talked to our marketing team and we kind of looked at we had a very robust brand as an organization, um, very thoughtfully created, lots of um assets, lots of use cases, lots of design there. Um, and it's a very vibrant, you know, blues and oranges. It was a very vibrant color set. Um, so I started to do some research kind of on how do we bring that brand into you know into our internal systems. We did a great job of branding externally, Facebook posts, website, you know, email signature, all that stuff. Our forward-facing brand was solid, but internally everything was very vanilla basic off the shelf, which is fine, right? The platforms functioned. It didn't impact the ability to do the work. Um, but it didn't feel like it was ours either, right? It just felt like we built, we bought a platform and put it out there. Um, and there's an interesting statistic that kind of ties this all together to some extent. It's 71% of media and entertainment spend, so movies, you know, video, anything like that among diverse groups is driven by whether the content feels like it was made for them. Um, kind of that influencer sort of um vibe, right? Um and that obviously applies to social media influencing, all that stuff. But it the key there was feeling like it was made for them, kind of that sense of I belong with this content. Um and I kind of took that and said, well, I think internally it makes a lot of sense that as a mission-driven organization, our platforms, everything our employees touch should feel like it was built for them, built for us. It should be our platform. Um, Salesforce being very customizable, you know, the old adage, if you've seen one Salesforce org, you've seen one Salesforce org. Um I kind of took that and said, let's make this all look like it's ours. Let's make it, you know, feel built for us. Um, and at the time I didn't think much of it, but our marketing team was like, man, this is great. It looks, it feels, you know, it it speaks the mission. Um, and we saw a steady increase in adoption. I can't say it was 100% tied to that because we did a lot of other um feature improvements as well. Um, but people refer to it, we instead of calling it Salesforce, we call it Hope Force. We've really kind of made it our own. Um and that seemed to resonate with people in a really positive way.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

So do you think it's because it's just getting your user base to more identify with the mission? Or is it just making the system more usable, more friendly, more approachable? Like why do you think this works?

SPEAKER_03 17:11

I well, I think it's both. Um I think that it becomes more approachable because it it just fits uh into everything else that we do. Um, and beyond just colors and logos, we were very, very intentional about help text, uh field labels, descriptions, being very mission-driven, using the language that resonates with us. You know, we don't call our participants kids, we call them young people or scholars. Our employees are we refer to them as team members. So all those sense, all the belonging that goes with that came out in everything we did. So I think I think it really was both. I think it was feeling like it was built for for them, and also just feeling like I'm not entering data into a black hole. I'm entering into this platform that connects to our scholars, that connects to our funding sources, that connects to everything that we do. It just built that that core um that core comfort in the platform.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

So do you feel that it like do you feel the impact is because of the the that comfort level in the platform, or again it just realigning with the mission? I think that I think that's the yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

I think you know, I think it I think the adoption came, I think the other thing to back up a tick is we're talking about our user base primarily social workers, right? Roughly 60% of our users are social workers. They're not sitting in an office, they're not, you know, particularly you're not in front of a computer six hours a day. Um so to connect with them and to make the platforms meaningful to them meant that they had to support their ability to work with young people. They don't want to spend three hours entering reports, logging interactions. They want to do it quickly and they want to move on. And I think by building it in a way that that functionally supported that, that grounded it in that intentional design beyond just look and feel. Again, intentional in when you click this screen, this comes up. When you're collecting data, here, you know, here's what we're collecting. Um I think all of that really played a huge part in it. Um in well-developed training. I mean, SOPs that are written in our language that aren't written in it's not a user manual, right? It's it's talking about things in the context of how we um how we operate.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

And then again, tying back to the mission. Um so like can you give us like another one or two examples of things? Because user adoption is a massive, a massive um topic in the CRM space. Um, and a lot of firms really, really struggle with it, as you can imagine. Um so if they did another trick in your toolbox to help right to help uh uh user adoption, um, it's definitely not a common one. Most people, the most they do is maybe change a lock on screen and put a logo on the upper left-hand corner. Um, and then that's about it.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Yeah, and I think and I I'll be transparent. No, we don't have perfect user adoption. I've yet to meet someone in this ecosystem who can tout perfect user adoption. And the day I meet them, um, you know, it'll be a miracle. Um, but I think the other thing that we did beyond, so this was the core, right? Let's let's build the login, let's build the UI experience so it so it screams, hope ignites. Um, but then we focused a lot, and this is through lots of user feedback, town hall meetings, you know, listening tours, sitting in front, sitting next to people, show me how you do your work. Um, we also make sure that our training programs are getting robust. We certainly have a lot of training resources, we have handbooks. Um, but the other key to user adoption for us was making sure that we have guidance embedded in the platforms. So you don't have to go to SharePoint to find the how-to article on how to do this thing in Hope Force. It's right there. When you go to that scholars page, there's resources there that say, you know, here's the steps for this, here's the steps for that. Um, and we did it in an unintrusive way. So if you know what you're doing and you and you don't need the guidance, boom, just get in the platform and do it. If it's a more episodic task, you're a new team member, et cetera. The guidance is sitting right there for you to take advantage of without having to search for it. This was kind of pre-AI, right? Our long-term goal will be a little chatbot that sits there that knows where you are and can, you know, can guide you through the process. And or agent, I shouldn't say chatbot, agent's the new, the new term, you know. Um, but yeah, something like that would be an end goal, but this predates a lot of that technology being, you know, mainstream.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Yeah, we're gonna end up with uh with Clippy. Right. Clippy wrong. We're still going in that direction. It's just a matter, it's just a matter of time. Um so uh tell me about SOP. So SOPs, uh, for those who don't know or listeners, uh, standard operating procedures. So you got, I guess, um help within the screens themselves, probably tool tips and and other things directly on the screen. Links to the SOPs directly from the screen. Oh, awesome. And then what do you mean when you say when you say like they're really written in a mission-driven way? Like what does that mean?

SPEAKER_03 23:09

So we use what does that mean? We use a platform called Scribe for most of our SOPs. Um, it's a very, if you haven't used it, it's a little capture tool, runs in your browser. You literally like click through the process, it captures screenshots, kind of discerns what's going on, creates your documentation, then you can go back, edit it, annotate, all that kind of stuff. Um, but the key thing is because we were very intentional on field language, on labels, on look and feel, when when Scribe goes to make our SOPs, you know, based on our actions, it's pulling in this mission-driven language already, right? It's it's already, we're already there. It's already built to be mission-driven. So when you pull up the scribe, it looks and feels exactly like our um our application because that's what it was built off. Um, and we've we I'm, I will admit, um, and my supervisors will back me on this. I am not always great at um simplifying technical instructions, um, insert AI where I can just say, hey, take these tech instructions and make them simple. Um, but we we do a lot of work around peer reviewing documentation, making sure that different levels of um of tech understanding can can ingest our documentation and make something of it. Um, and those are embedded in every workflow. Every workflow we have, whether it's Salesforce, if it's in SharePoint, whatever, wherever it is, um, those SOPs are embedded right there.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Uh, you want to give us an example of like a standard flow?

SPEAKER_03 24:59

Yeah. So um one of our more complex ones is our scholar intake process. So um, you know, if we get a referral to the program, they it they come into our um our our purpose-built case management tool as a referral, there's a life cycle involved, you know, in in everything from you become a referral, then you're an applicant, then you're an introductory period, you know, there's there's there's all these different stages um and different steps that go along with that. There's assessments we complete, there's you know, do you fit the program, all that kind of stuff. And all that, all that data is collected through um what we call the PPM or our program participant management app, which is a Salesforce experience cloud site that serves as case management for us. Um so for every one of those transitions, every one of those actions a user has to take, there's a there's a supporting SOP. We have you know one big document that has them all in it, but then bite-sized ones um peppered throughout, you know, the different UIs and whatnot. Um, and our support team has access to all that same documentation. So if a new team member chimes in and says, hey, still learning how to do this, we have bite-sized you know, documentation. We can say, Great, happy to walk you through it. Here's some links, you know, um, here's some resources to really to guide that. Sorry, the other the other cool thing about Scribe that that I focus a lot on. I've been I was at Dreamforce, I don't know, three years ago, maybe, and I attended a session about ADA and about accessibility and about technology that's you know made for everyone. Um, and one of the things that I took away from that, beyond color contrast ratio, all that basic ADA stuff, is this you know, everyone consumes and learns differently. And the way we design our SOPs, you can read it on a piece of paper, click through the steps, you can make a little video out of it. There's so many different ways to deliver that. And I think um that's another key to that adoption success is that that you can consume the content however you want, and it's right there for you.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Um, so to be completely honest, I've read like the standard ADA stuff, and it's like said you should make your website, you know, ADA. Um, what does it stand for?

SPEAKER_03 27:31

Like accessible uh the it's Americans with Disabilities Act. I I forgot yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

And it basically it's like you gotta use color schemes that are friendly to to blind to colorblind people, and right uh it's gotta like speak if you want to, and then giant texts like I like how do you how do you keep something pretty and and like you know, when you're talking about intentional design and and like a pleasure to use, and when you're trying to cover every single handicapped out there, sure.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

Well, Salesforce does a great job of enabling that. Um, you know, the all your field descriptions, all that stuff that maybe some of us, maybe myself, don't always fill out. Um, all those the way Salesforce handles screen readers and all that stuff, um, it drives off all that metadata that's already in your org. So as long as you build fields with help text with descriptions, you can keep the UI clean for anyone who wants to consume it, you know, as it's built. If you use an adaptive tool like a screen reader or something like that, all that metadata is in there. The screen reader takes advantage of that information. It can read it out to you. You can change the contrast of, you know, there's tools in the browser that change the contrast if you have, you know, a vision accommodation, something along those lines. Um so the nice thing is Salesforce allows us to both keep the standard UI but also have adaptable um options kind of baked under the hood. Um, but the key thing about that is you know, screen readers, adapt, you know, alt text, all that stuff is easy. The reason why color scheme matters so much is if you have a vision accommodation and you go in and trigger a high contrast version of your Salesforce org, all it's doing is flipping the contrast ratio of the colors that are in your org. So if your colors don't match the ADA suggestions on aspect ratio and whatnot, when that when that adaptive tool adjusts the view for that single user, it's gonna create a poor experience for them because the colors just aren't compatible. Um, so making sure that you take all of that into account. Um, and the crazy thing, in this session, in this in the session I was at at Dreamforce, the the guy that was talking said, I'll admit, out of 400 users, I have one user that uses all these capabilities that I'm putting in there. But he's like, the cool thing was we thought about it from the get-go. So when that one user came along, instead of adjusting Salesforce to work for them, they were able to say, Hey, we're ready for you. The org is set up, turn your screen reader on, whatever you need, it's all there. Um, and you know, it's it's it's a small piece to a big puzzle, but for that one person, it made all the difference in belonging and inclusivity and being able to be a part of that organization um without you know major accommodation.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

We've we've talked a little bit about making the most of um helping nonprofits profits make the most of Salesforce. Um we know uh from speaking to you before and just in general, the nonprofit space is a very collaborative, uh inclusive uh community within itself. A lot of nonprofits will actively go out there and help one another, um, you know, what's working for us, what isn't? Um I want to ask a flip flip question to that question. Um and um look at, you know, in your opinion, uh, where do you think nonprofits get it wrong uh when it comes to Salesforce? And um maybe if you're able to, um, I'm sure uh Hope Ignite's journey wasn't always like that. Um were there anything in particular when it came to Salesforce that perhaps you guys didn't get right at the first time of asking, uh which obviously you fixed and rectified, but uh curious on that front.

SPEAKER_03 31:41

Yeah, um, so we have a very we have a couple um learn from our mistake stories. Um the most, I think the biggest one was we're in our second Salesforce org. Um we deployed our initial version, our initial iteration of Salesforce using some managed packages, using some different um different ways to to utilize the data inside Salesforce. And the primary focus was on reducing license costs. We were using portal managed packages to try and you know ingest data, work with data without having to purchase a bunch of platform licenses, largely driven around budget and the fact that nonprofits by nature have to be um cost. Frugal. Yeah, frugal, scrappy. I like to say, I like to call it scrappy, right? We find those solutions that that sit in the middle. Um, I think what we learn from that is there's value. You don't want to overspend. You don't we don't want to waste money. Um but there's value in spending money well and in and making investments that that do make an impact. Um, so you know, we ended up flipping to a more um at the time there were communities, now it's digital experiences. We we flipped into a more experienced cloud focused deployment, and we really went all in on buying the right licenses and deploying the right technology. Um so saving money was great, but it kind of ended up costing us, you know, um, in the long run. So we had to we deployed a brand new org, migrated our data, brought in a new partner and kind of you know, redid all of that. Um, so I think making the right investments is key. Um, I was on a podcast a couple of weeks ago where we talked about, you know, the cost of Salesforce goes far beyond paying the bill to Salesforce. It's not just about buying your licenses, it's your partner, it's your managed packages, it's investing in your team, whether that's professional development, scaling up your team, all that kind of stuff. Um you have to make the right investments, and it will cost not investing in the platform will end up costing you more in the long run than it would than it is just to make the right investments the first time. And it's hard to know what those are. We failed. We had to redeploy, we had to change course, but we're much better because of it. Um, so it's okay to fail, to make mistakes, right? As long as you get back up and you know, and learn from it and keep pressing forward.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

So today's org, um, how big is that and what products within the Salesforce suite are you using? Any additional managed packages that you have uh included within that as well?

SPEAKER_03 34:34

Yeah, so we're we teeter, we have about 300 or so employees across the US and Latin America. Between 150 and 170 of those employees interact with Salesforce through a license, whether that's platform or community. Um, and that's all pretty standard stuff. MPSP is our um is our package we're using. We're obviously evaluating Agent Force, nonprofits, MPC, that kind of thing. But right now, MPSP is what drives a lot of our fundraising, kind of that core functionality. Um, as I mentioned, we we leverage um digital experiences for a lot of those more purpose-built functions. Um, our HRIS platform is completely baked into Salesforce, our case management platform. Um, the entire technology team runs inside Salesforce from asset management to case management and um knowledge management, all of that. Um, and that's all leveraging for the most part native features um to the platform, add-on packages here and there, but largely native features. We just recently moved all of our event pages, donation pages, fundraising to class, to um they were classy, now it's GoFundMe Pro. Um so, and that's been a great success for us. It's really leveled up what we could do with fundraising. We were using custom built visual force pages for fundraising, and it was great up until the point, but when you want to take it to the next level, you had to go back and rebuild Visual Force, and there's limitations there in look and feel and whatnot. Um so, and then a couple other plugins. I mean, obviously, we have our backup, we have a DevOps tool, all that kind of stuff. Um, we use a tool called FormAssembly to do a lot of our data collection. So, of those 300 or so employees, the ones that don't directly interact with Salesforce day in and day out via a license, they're either feeding data in using form assembly or you know, interacting with with that content um via form assembly. And those are really roles where it's uh they don't their jobs don't really revolve around the data that's there and and we can get away with using that tool to to pull data in.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

And and then um in terms of um, you know, to to kind of wrap up this topic power of intentional design. Um I'm I'm curious, uh I want to know like where did it stem from, the idea, and then also um you shared with us in in the um podcast brief something you're working on on GitHub, which people can access as well. Yeah. Um do you want to just uh tell us a bit more about those those two areas?

SPEAKER_03 37:30

Yeah, so um my co-presenter in Charlotte later this week um is a good friend of mine, Ali Marin. We're we're cut we're colleagues here. She's our brand and design manager. Um and in the other half of intentional design was I had the the vision to use our branding internally and kind of and maximize that. But I also it also became a partnership with her and in the marketing team of you know, whenever whenever something we built came out, they were confident it was well built, it was designed, you know, it was gonna look great. Um, and that partnership really became fruitful in a lot of ways. Um, we collaborate a ton now on aesthetic on a lot of different things and share feedback back and forth. And what that built in and of itself was this culture of functioning across teams and collaborating and really respecting the work each other do and the and the value in you know, what tweaking a hex code by 10% makes all the difference. And your average tech director may not value that or care about that. But once you see it and you can see the impact those individuals have, you know, it's it's night and day. So it went way beyond for me, it went way beyond just, you know, look and feel into this kind of building this partnership together. Um, and then every project we do with the marketing team, whether it's public websites, this or that, there's this, there's this fruitful relationship now that you know we trust each other and we can um they can collaborate and do great things, all because we put some intentionality down and really, you know, focused on working together.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

So so basically you put together um yeah, and we're gonna share the link when your podcast uh airs, but basically you put together a framework that others can others can kind of basically copy and paste and implement into their org around some of the branding um pieces we've we've we've spoken about.

SPEAKER_03 39:38

Yeah, so on GitHub there'll be a um a whole repo full of um a roadmap essentially of you know low impact, medium impact, high impact, um, and and kind of how to think through all of that. It's part tech and kind of click here, click there, etc. And the other half of it is kind of leading that intentional design conversation of before you go pick a color in your Salesforce org, think about this, think about that. Um, and there'll be lots of other resources on there on sample image sizes, um, all the stuff we did. And the goal is just to it's all configuration based. We're not talking about Apex, Visual Force, LWCs, anything like that. We're talking about going to setup and you know, and do these things, um, these minimum things, and and make a difference in how your, you know, how your folks see your org.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Yep, love it. Um, all right. Well, thanks for that, and thanks for putting that together. We'll make sure that people who would like access to that can have access to that. Um, so we always like to talk a little bit about um, especially with individuals that are fast-tracked into director-level roles pretty quick, like you have. Um, we always like to ask and spend a little bit of time talking about how exactly you achieved that. So um one of the things that um we see is there are there are two types of people, right? Um one is those that you know just get there from grinding away over years and years and years of experience, 15, 20 years, etc. Um, you know, and the opportunity kind of fell in the lap and they they excelled. Um maybe that wasn't always a career path, but when the opportunity came, they took it and the rest is history, right? The other type of leader we speak to is somebody that knew from the get-go, this is what I want, and this is how I'm gonna go go about getting it and achieving it, and being a bit more, I won't say aggressive, that's maybe the wrong word, but being very proactive about making sure they get it, right? Um, I'm I I I would like to know which side of the fence, if any, you sat on. Um, you know, because you've gone from kind of being an individual contributor to to director leading a team, not just Salesforce, but all these different other initiatives um in six years, five years, maybe even a bit less, uh, as you've had that title for a while. Tell us a little bit about that. Where do you where was your experience and kind of what side of the fence did did you sit?

SPEAKER_03 42:07

Yeah, I was somewhere in between those two fences. Um even going back to my restaurant career, I never really cared. I was never someone who got hung up on title. Um, I was always just very focused on let's get it done. If the goal is, you know, to rock through a dinner service or deploy a new application or build a brand, you know, whatever it is, let's do it and let's bring the right people in to do it and kind of uh and keep that moving. And I think that naturally lended itself into leadership roles because I had the attitude of just let's get it done. And if someone needs to be in charge, then I'll be in charge. And if we gotta get, you know, if we gotta go find the right people, then I'll go find the right people. Let's build the team, let's let's do the work. Um and as I kind of alluded to also, like coming into the role I came into and then having to pivot into the pandemic response allowed me to be strategic in a way that I don't think I would have had had the pandemic never happened. Um, because it went from support to having to be strategic and be innovative pretty much overnight, right? We got the call, take your laptops home, you know, get the food out of your desk drawer, like we're done. Um so that allowed me to kind of push that vision forward and in and be a leader and be strategic because it we had to respond and it was gonna be my department that did it. Um so that's kind of how that grew. Um, almost, you know, like by necessity. Um but then I again I've always kind of had that that knack to lead. Um I like to be on the the um the innovative side of work. Um My my boss, who we have a fantastic relationship, uh often has to remind me that you know, new and exciting things are cool. Um, but there's some mundane stuff we gotta keep doing. So there's there's um some growth and humility in that leadership, but that was kind of how it manifested.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Um in terms of the humility aspect, right? Um, so I know today about 60% of your time is spent um supporting and extending the Salesforce org. Uh, the other 40% is on these other areas that we've we've touched on um earlier on in the intro. Um was there perhaps one thing that you overlooked when it came to management that you thought shouldn't be as hard as it as it is, but it was. Um, and and and also I know your your team expands globally as well. So um, yeah, what what was one thing you overlooked?

SPEAKER_03 44:58

I think uh, you know, gosh, there's a lot of things I overlooked.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Well, tell us it doesn't have to be just one then. You tell us a couple.

SPEAKER_03 45:06

Um, you know, I think when I first started, I kind of assumed that everyone was on board. The the job I was doing, you know, it was kind of again in that pandemic era, it became very essential very quickly. And I think out of I did have to prove a lot of worth because we were solving problems at at lightning speed. So the value was there. Um, I think coming out of that and into this, into our world now, I spent a lot more time around planning and and being thoughtful on these deployments and and building these plans that maybe beforehand I would have, you know, executed and and and asked questions later. Um, so that thoughtfulness, and then um I think the other thing that that my current the current um org chart at our organization supports today is I'm a I'm an executor, I'm a doer. I can jump into a situation and and jam through it with little guidance, little, you know, we'll figure it out. Um and my boss and and really less honestly, I mean, she supervises me, but really we've been working together for so long, it's really just more of a lateral working relationship. Um, but she has to rein me in sometimes, you know, and and it's perfect because when I've gotten too far in the wrong direction, she can politely steer me back, knowing that I had the right intentions, but I went off in the wrong direction, you know, went off too far in the wrong direction. Um, so have I think having the humility to to accept that and to also say, like, hey, why am I not doing why is what I'm doing not working? Why is this user frustrated? Why is this platform not being adopted? Why are they why are these people confused? Having the humility to say, I'm not the smartest person in the room by a long shot, but tell me what I'm doing wrong, or tell me what you observed I could try differently. Um, I think that's just a huge a key to leadership is that you're not gonna get it right. You're not gonna get it right 10% of the time, right? But but soliciting that feedback and and striving to do better every time is the only way you're gonna you're gonna um grow from that.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

A couple of quick questions, uh Pete. Um so uh first is what benefits have you seen directly um by expanding your responsibilities beyond Salesforce?

SPEAKER_03 47:52

Uh the the the biggest benefit is it's a it's a blessing and a curse to oversee so many platforms because I don't have three different departments, a CRM department, a Microsoft department, a Cisco department. I don't have that. They all come through me, um, which can be a lot, but the blessing is I can also make very quick decisions on integrating those platforms together. Um, I think because of where I sit, we ended up with a much more integrated technology ecosystem um than other orgs may have, because everything runs and collaborates through me and my team. Um, things like user provisioning, you know, data flow between Microsoft and Salesforce, all these things that you have to have knowledge on knowledge and alignment on both sides of the table for. Um, for me, it's all one table. You know, it's all um for better or for worse, it's all it all sits with me.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

For um an individual contributor who maybe it maybe is like a senior admin, CRM support, uh RevOps, you know, go to market consultant, whatever it might be, the title, but let's say they're in a similar org setting, two to three to four hundred users. Um, what would be your bit of advice uh to them who are thinking, man, I would I would love to get into management and I've I've hinted at it to leadership and you know, just they said they'll have to create a role and it's maybe not gone anywhere. It's maybe maybe they feel like their career's plateaued a little bit, but they they want to move into management. What would be one bit of advice you would give those guys and girls?

SPEAKER_03 49:33

Um, you know, uh a leader said to me a long time ago, be irreplaceable, approach your role in a way that makes you unique. Find something you're good at, find find something you can contribute to that intrinsically changes the work you're doing. Um, be seen, but in a humble way. This isn't a brag. This isn't a you know, rent a billboard. This is solve a problem, um, meet a user where they are, and really just just show that value. And it goes a long way to show value and show worth versus asking for responsibility, asking for you know, a title, a role, whatever. Um a well-run organization will see that value. I mean, sometimes you gotta get it in front of the right people, you know. Um, but you know, as a hiring manager, when I look to hire people, I don't look at a resume and say, great, you've been a director for 12 years at five organizations. You know, I I want to know what did you do? How did you change that organization? How did you what what makes you unique and how did you get to that role? Um, or if you're coming to us, you know, why do you want to grow? How can you know what motivates you to grow? I think those are the key things to remember is people care far less about what you put on a resume and far more about what you can demonstrate.

SPEAKER_02 51:06

So um pivoting back, you right, you you had a restaurant previously. Um, how would you compare running uh a restaurant to running a technology group in terms of even dealing with employees or dealing with customers as opposed to user base? Yeah, give us the highlights and low lights.

SPEAKER_03 51:27

Restaurants are controlled chaos on a good day. The most well-run restaurant in the world is controlled chaos. Um, and technology can be that controlled chaos in a very similar way. You know, at a restaurant, you might have people calling in sick, a pot of soup burning, a dishwasher that's broken, a sinker, you know, you're gonna have all these outside influences, but in in technology, you're gonna have all those same, you know, this platform went down, this, you know, AWS is out, now half our ecosystem is not talking. It's all controlled chaos. And it's it's just about being able to prioritize and be able to respond quickly to the highest priority item and kind of orchestrating that chaos in a way that people feel confident that, yeah, Salesforce isn't working right now, but it's okay because Pete and his team, they know it's not working, and and that you know, they're gonna make it work again. Um, I think that was the the set that what I what I learned most from hospitality was that keeping things moving, keeping people confident, um, and and that customer service aspect of like, I think, you know, I when I was bartending, you saw people on their best day, on their worst day, on a regular day. When you're talking about working with users in this service-focused jobs, it's the same thing. It could be your worst, that cut that that end user's worst day, and they can't get something to work and they're calling in, they're coming in frustrated, or they could be having a great day. And and knowing how to adapt to that and and make sure that you don't belittle the user, you comfort them, you know, and and build that confidence. Um very very lots of segues, much more than I would have thought if you'd have told me 15 years ago that I would compare running restaurants to running technology teams and that they would they would have so many parallels. I would never have thought that, but definitely true.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

Yeah, so uh yeah, tell us about about about I won't say parallels, but the um the the skills that would carry it over. Yeah. Um yeah, and like really helped you. So what so so what in the restaurant business made you, let's say, a great director?

SPEAKER_03 53:49

Um, you know, there's the there's a role in the restaurant, there's the guy that stands, guy or gal, that stands at the head of the kitchen and is the person in between the food coming out of the kitchen and the servers that are taking it to the table. And and in that role, you have to know what's going on all around you. You have to be able to know how long it takes that steak to cook, and that steak is coming with the salad and this and that. There's all these components that all have to work together. At the end of the day, when you want that plate to go out, everything should be hot, nothing should be overcooked, it should all be right. And that requires orchestration to make sure that all those pieces come together. Um, and at the time, to me, that was we call it expediting. That was the role. You were the expediter, you got the food out. Um, but what that really was was project management, right? It was, it was, it was 12 times, you know, if you have 12 orders hanging up there, you're managing 12 projects, and you have individual contributors, you have all these different pieces coming together. And your job is to make sure that everyone knows what they're supposed to do, when they're supposed to do it, and how those dependencies come together to form that that plate of food, that that experience for the guest in the restaurant. It's the same, you know, when you look at a um, when I think about tickets and I think about, you know, um the mini projects that come in, the user experience stuff. It's all the same thing. It's it's all project management on a macro or a micro scale. Um, but it all goes back to to knowing where your people are and make sure they know how to bring it all together. Um, very, very, I mean, there are days where I could close my eyes and pretend like I'm standing at the restaurant again and orchestrate, you know, the happenings of the day.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Cool. Well, um, I could think of many more examples. Um, I would love to go into uh those customers that don't tip or or or say their their food uh uh is is cold and and who they relate to in a sales force talk, but we can we that's a conversation for another time. Um in talking of time, I'm conscious of time. So, what's next for you, Pete, in terms of conferences, any other speaking gigs lined up, um any other cool initiatives you're working on in terms of Salesforce?

SPEAKER_03 56:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:15

Um 16 hours.

SPEAKER_03 56:18

So besides um nonprofit dreaming later this week, uh, I'll be at uh Dreamin' and Data in Chicago in May. Um, and that presentation is all about the title is Rent the Brain, Hire the Heart. It's about evaluating and finding that balance between a Salesforce partner um and hiring you know internal team members and kind of finding that balance. Um, albeit um AIM, the um in Baltimore in gosh, March, I think, talking about SOP development and kind of how well thought out SOPs um can motivate your technology team. Um and that's all I know for now. I'm sure there'll be more, but for now that's that's what I got for speaking. And then in terms of initiatives, uh we're all trying to wrap our heads around AI and kind of what what how will AI, whether it's agent force or co-pilot, how will that be a part of um our future? I think there's no question it's gonna be a part of our future. Technology is the key to growth in this space. Um, so figuring out the data strategy behind it, the um all of that, that's I think our biggest project. And that kind of that sits on multiple planes, and there's there's tons of mini projects kind of all baked in there.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

Uh just uh interesting, I guess it's a small word, factoid. Um, one of our previous guests, uh, who I think just aired this morning, Susie, uh is is running Dreaming and Data or Data Dreaming in Chicago. So you can meet up with her there.

SPEAKER_03 58:03

Susie's actually a really, really good friend of mine. We text almost daily and and we we met at a conference years ago and and have been fast friends. So um oh awesome. Yeah, I actually think uh Susie, did Susie recommend you for this podcast?

SPEAKER_01 58:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:21

Kara and I met with yeah in Chicago on that blustery cold uh whatever it was, December. I forgot what year what month it was.

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Yeah, awesome. Yeah, so um so we'll we'll keep an eye out for uh your sessions. Will you be at Dreamforce this year? Is that on the cards for you?

SPEAKER_03 58:37

Probably not Dreamforce this year, um, maybe next year, but we'll see. I never you know, never know until we get there.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

Very true. You might get a last-minute uh free ticket or something, and that might change things. Um, so so one of the things that um I happened to stumble across on your LinkedIn post, um, I just want to give it 30 seconds. Um you've got a fundraising initiative um for um Hope Ignites, it's a walk to hope. Just tell us about that. Um, and you know, again, we'll include the link. Both myself and Maz are gonna uh put put up put put something there from this from the podcast from the CRM Success Show. But um if others would like to get involved, what is that in aid of? Where does money go? Um how can they support?

SPEAKER_03 59:20

So it's one of our only network-wide fundraisers, um, and it's a virtual step challenge. So through the month of May, um, you know, you'll pay to register kind of like a 5k um and there's an app from Charity Miles. You you log activity, running, walking, cycling. Um, and the goal is just to log you know as many miles as you can. There's kind of prizes along the way for um most miles, most dollars, that kind of thing. Um, but the goal is it started in the pandemic when we couldn't have in-person fundraisers. You want to have a virtual walk around the network. Um, so it's it's become a very fun fundraiser. And my goal um as an employee, I created the um Trailblazers for Hope. So I'm trying to get all my Salesforce friends and and and other friends, right? Anyone who's willing to support us um to join the Trailblazers for Hope team and see if we can be a top fundraising team for Walk to Hope. So if you're interested in participating, walktoHope.org is the link, and we'll make Carol, we'll get it in the, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

We will indeed. We will indeed. Um, thanks for that. And um, you know, I I think that's a good, good, uh, good note to end on. Um, so we'd just like to say thanks, uh, Pete, for your your time. Um, we massively appreciate that. It was great to learn a bit more about you, Hope Ignites, and um, you know, some of the some of the uh interest areas that are close and near to your your heart as well. Um, you know, keep up good work. We we appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:51

Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a pleasure to chat.