Visit your happy place

Every once in a while, it’s good to slow things down. Work life can get very busy as a Salesforce consultant. So every once in a while, it’s OK to go to your happy place.

Your happy place could be the gym, spending time with friends, a particular destination, meditating, or any number of enjoyable activities.… Read the rest

Passing the Salesforce security review

Towards the end of your Salesforce app development, you’ll start shifting your focus on how to list it. There are two main ways to list an app:

  1. As an unlisted app
  2. On the Salesforce AppExchange

As an unlisted app, you simply need to share a published link with your client.… Read the rest

Deciding what features to include in your Salesforce app

When starting to build an app, you probably have tons of ideas about which features to include. But once you start talking to prospects and clients, be open to their feedback. It’s not easy to think of every feature your clients need, and if your clients want something, they will let you know.… Read the rest

Why build a Salesforce app

Salesforce consulting is awesome. There are thousands of Salesforce partners that do it, from single person shops to agencies with thousands of employees and/or subcontractors.

You can build an entire career as a consultant and maintain it until you retire.

However, there are some drawbacks.… Read the rest

How I work: Do good

When I graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering, there was a ceremony. It’s called the iron ring ceremony. It’s only performed in Canada and all students who graduate with an engineering degree attend.

The entire ceremony is secret, but there are a few things I can share with you.… Read the rest

How I work: LinkedIn sales funnel

I’m slowly building this email list. The idea is to eventually reduce working on Salesforce projects and focus on coaching. It’s a long term goal, but one I started thinking about two years ago.

To gain readers, do the following:

  1. I occasionally share these emails with LinkedIn
  2. If it does well, I receive a lot of connection requests
  3. I accept all requests, and message each person with the following:


Thanks for connecting!… Read the rest

How I work: Finding Salesforce projects

One of the largest challenges when working for yourself is being a complete business. You cannot just be a Salesforce architect. You also need to be a marketing team, a sales team, a finance department, and a support team all in one.… Read the rest

How I work: Salesforce projects

Being an independent Salesforce architect, there’s only so much I can do in a week. This means I spend most of my time advising and consulting clients, rather than doing implementation work. This means clients are usually paying for access to my expertise.… Read the rest

How I work: Managing schedules and multi-tasking

There are three apps that I rely on for everyday work.

The 1st is Workona, which is a Chrome extension. It allows me to create a space for each client. So if I’m working on Client A’s project, and need to quickly switch to Client’s B’s project, it takes me two clicks.… Read the rest

How I work: Email labelling details

Another reader asked how they can efficiently use labels or turn emails into action items. These are great questions.

I use a label for each client, and a general label called “Clients” for prospects and other client-related emails. I set up Gmail filters to automatically add the label based on the sender or subject.… Read the rest

How I work: Calendar automation details

A number of readers were very interested in more details about the personal and business calendar sync.

Using a Make scenario, only personal events scheduled between M-F from 9am to 5pm are synced to my business calendar. So it’s a one-way sync.… Read the rest

Introduction to the “How I work” series

As you may know, I do more than one thing. At the moment, I do the following

  1. Advise and consult on Salesforce projects for nonprofits
  2. Design, implement, and support a Salesforce app for nonprofits
  3. Coach Salesforce consultants
  4. Send emails 5 days a week
  5. Host a weekly podcast

Several readers have asked how a single person can multitask so efficiently.… Read the rest

Goals of a discovery phase

Unsurprisingly, a Salesforce discovery phase is about discovering. But what exactly are you discoverying?

The main objective is clarity. You and your client need to understand how things will look like once the implementation phase is complete. Some of the details will be determined during the build, but at least the main decision points should be clear.… Read the rest

Successfully starting a project

As a Salesforce consultant, you usually start working during the design or implementation phase. This means the commercial agreements have been made and sales properly handed off all their detailed documents to you (don’t laugh, this actually happens sometimes).

Your first meeting with the client is hopefully a kick-off meeting.… Read the rest

Creating fake data for demos

As a Salesforce consultant, you’ll often have to host demos of your work to your client. Demos are only useful with data, so at some point, you’ll need to create some.

Now, I’ve heard of an interesting story with a valuable lesson.… Read the rest

Why MS Access is awesome for data transformations

Like Salesforce, MS Access uses a relational database. This means each Access table can represent a single SF object. And once in Access, you have multiple tools at your disposal for data transformation.

The first step is to export data from SF and import it into Access.… Read the rest

Salesforce data management tool

A number of readers asked me for more information about the Salesforce data management tool I built.

It’s basically a MS Access database with a Salesforce Dataloader integration. This means it can be used to:

  • Export data from Salesforce directly into an MS Access table
  • Insert, update, and delete data from a MS Access table to Salesforce

Additional features:

  • Single screen for a better user experience
  • No more playing around with .csv
Read the rest

Cleaning up the data model

One of my favorite Salesforce activities is cleaning up technical debt. With one of my current clients, we’ve been moving data from custom fields to standard fields and objects.

For example, the contact object had the following:

  • A field called Organization, which is different than Account
  • Custom fields called Assistant1, Assistant2, Assistant3, as some people had 1, 2, or 3 assistants
  • 7 recordypes, which all used the same different layouts, but the same fields were displayed

The account object had:

  • A custom field called Street, City, Zip, and State, because they didn’t like the label Billing Address or Shipping Address
  • Sometimes was the name of a contact, as they only reported on accounts.
Read the rest

Something to be thankful for

Today is Thanksgiving in Canada. While it’s not as huge of an event as in the US, it’s still a significant moment.

The origin of the celebration is to give thanks for a good harvest. Since most of us are not farmers anymore, we extended the moment of gratitude to include friends and family.… Read the rest

The two types of knowledge

There’s an well-known anecdote that goes like this:

Albert Einstein was often called to give public lectures on his Theory of Relativity. His chauffeur heard his lectures so many times that he claimed to know it by heart.

At the time, not too many people knew what Einstein looked like.… Read the rest

Ask the best questions, not give the best answers

It starts when a client is explaining their problem. As a Salesforce consultant, it’s easy to want to jump in as early as possible with your solution. However that’s not usually the best approach.

Instead, actively listen to the client’s concerns in full, without designing a solution in your mind.… Read the rest

You have two minds

Deep thinking is about reaching your best thinking performance. But it’s not a race. One way to achieve deep thinking is to actually slow yourself down.

You’ll notice that some of your best thinking sometimes happens when you’re very focused on a problem.… Read the rest

Achieving deep work

As a Salesforce consultant, it’s easy to get distracted while working. It could be a text message, an email alert, a meeting reminder, a colleague tapping your shoulder, or a myriad of other annoyances.

All these interruptions prevent you from being able to achieve deep work.… Read the rest

A peer review without comments

The other day, a friend told me a funny story. He was asked by a colleague to review their work before merging it into the main development sandbox.

The colleague started by explaining the purpose of the feature they designed and built.… Read the rest

Salesforce as an AI company

If you haven’t already noticed, Salesforce is really pushing their AI advancements.

Like really pushing.

I believe they started labelling last year’s Dreamforce (their annual conference in San Francisco) as the “largest AI event in the world”. This year was no different.… Read the rest

Simplifying tax season: the power of a SOP

As an independent Salesforce consultant, I need to submit my taxes to the government on a quarterly basis. This means having a platform in place to record my invoices and expenses.

Since I provide a service, I need to charge local tax on my invoices.… Read the rest