Episode 20, or Part 2 of my #podcast with Caimin McGovern is now out!
I had so much to talk about with this Salesforce Customer Success Director, that we needed to have another recording just so that I had an opportunity to delve more into all things Salesforce and what gives meaning to his life.
Find out how his involvement in the Special Olympics made such an impact since his teenage years, and the values that he holds dear.
Come and listen in, I am sure that you will find a lot of value in part 2 of this conversation.
If you are a #Salesforce customer, and you care deeply about getting the best out of your platform, you might want to listen in on our conversation.
Enjoy!
#OnThePeiroll
Transcript
Pei Mun Lim
Okay, when this is our second part two of our podcast conversation, how are you today?
Caimin
I’m very well, thank you. And I apologize for any continuity gaps as well, by the way, because I’ve moved my desk in my office. So the background might be slightly different. That’s the explanation.
Pei Mun Lim
I was wondering about that. I was thinking, have you gone on holiday, but
Caimin
we have occasionally in Ireland, we get the sun and my desk was facing the window, and I was never getting any light, it was all just blocked by the monitor. So this is a much more, much more friendly way of doing things. I think.
Pei Mun Lim
I was just thinking about our recent weather and the sun that we’re getting, I don’t think you’re going to find yourself just with one side suntan?
Caimin
That’s true. Yeah, that’s true, I might need to rotate over to the other side of the desk. But we don’t get enough selling ready for that to be an issue here. It’s not too bad. Okay.
Pei Mun Lim
So on our last session, we had a really good conversation, and really big topic that we kind of ended on, which I kind of want to pick up again, was, so we were talking about what are the key things that customers face key challenges that they face when implementing Salesforce? And what are the top five mistakes? I asked? And your answer? Both surprised me? And maybe I shouldn’t be surprised? And your answer was, you could boil it down to one, which was lack of executive support. And I loved the fact that you also talked about adoption, in how Marc Benioff started the adoption around usage of chatter, and so on, and so forth. So that was really, really interesting. What I like to where I’d like to take conversation now, from from from that is, so a company has decided that Salesforce is the way to go. They they can see the benefits, and they have strong executive support. How would you advise them in terms of the decisions they have to make around the implementation? Do they do they go down the route of let’s, let’s build a sense of excellence ourselves? Or let’s get a partner? What How do you approach that? That particular question?
Caimin
I think it, you know, it really depends on the size of the customer and the ability that they have to for implementation work themselves. I work with primarily enterprise customers now. And so self implementation is more frequent, but it’s still not a given. I think one of the key pieces of value that a partner brings is experience and implementation. So while while the customer is generally very skilled in their own area of business, typically that doesn’t involve large implementations of software projects. And the partner will have a point of view, or will have a background of doing similar work in similar organizations. And, you know, you can learn from the mistakes of others. And in that sense, there is a lot that a customer can do for themselves. And I don’t know if I use this analogy the last time but it’s, the more knowledge that the customer has about the product and how it works, the better positioned they’ll be able to do it, even just to get the most value out of the partner. If it’s a billable hours contract, for example, you really don’t want the partner, you’d really don’t need the partner doing things like building reports, or building custom fields or custom objects. That’s stuff that you can do quite simply yourself. We really want the partner looking at their, you know, the data model, the integrations and custom code, things that doesn’t really make sense for the, for the customer necessarily to learn to do themselves. So I would look for, for sure, you know, any industry specialization is really useful, particularly where you get to the more specialized industries, for example, like media where there can be a number of different subsections of media, has the partner ever worked in those type of industries before and then the cloud expertise, a lot of partners as well will work with ourselves, you know, to supplement if they they know 90% of the products that they’re installing really well. And then there’s maybe a new product that they’re not as experienced on they might supplement that with an engagement through our services team. So it really depends on the size of the customer and their, I guess their appetite. For that, there can be quite a steep learning curve. So it’s always a case of be save time, or do you save money. And and I would say, you know, particularly for those large transformative projects, having a partner involved will cost you more money, but will save your time, certainly in the short term in terms of the implementation, but also over the longer term, where the product is a better fit.
Pei Mun Lim
Thank you for that. Following on from that, if you look at the customers that you’ve had, and for those who have engaged a partner, what are the elements that make a great partnership between the customer and the Salesforce partner that kind of ensures long term value in terms of the project that’s being delivered?
Caimin
In a word communication, it’s taking your time doing the discovery, for the partner having a point of view and feeling comfortable in pushing back and we see us where you might have a smaller partner or a partner who’s new to the market, maybe not comfortable in saying to a customer, I don’t think you should do it this way. You know, where they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And the customer has maybe experience of doing things in a particular way. And I’ve seen challenges where a customer where there have been assumptions made, the partner has been reluctant are unwilling to challenge those assumptions. And they haven’t had the clarity that they may need. And they’ve said, Okay, we’ll assume that they mean this. And we’ll implement based on that, in order maybe to get things done quicker to bring it in on time. And then the customer has seen that product and said, This isn’t this isn’t what we probably wanted, or this isn’t kind of what we thought we had asked for. And so that’s a quite a tricky situation to solve, because the partner has done good quality work, for example, but it’s just not the work that the customer is expecting them to do. And I also think, if I can say humility, where the or the partner will say, there is an area of this project that we are not comfortable with, you know, we don’t have the necessary experience. And we may need some additional help. So whether that be through, you know, whether they give that to another partner, or they come and talk to us, and you will find a lot of partners will think we can’t admit that we don’t know this, you know, we are supposed to be the experts. And then whenever that happens, there can be some challenges too.
Pei Mun Lim
That’s a really interesting point. Let me just take you back to the first point you were talking about? Why do you think some partners aren’t able to
Caimin
push back? Well, as I say, sometimes when they’re new to market, or it’s a new, a new adventure, and they they, you know, frankly, they really need the business and they can’t afford for the project to fail. They feel like, let’s just work on what we have. For bigger partners, this is an issue as well, I’m not talking from any specific experience, but there can be a state where a partner might have, you know, five projects on the go. They’re under resourced, they need people to move quickly from one project to another. So where there is a path forward, they take us even though they, you know, if they were working on a single project and had unlimited time and unlimited budget, there are better instincts might say, we really should validate this before we do anything, whereas, you know, in a crunch situation, it could be like, we really need to get this finished, because we have all these other agents of work that we need to move on to. And so it’s sometimes it’s it’s understandable, but it can be a thing of taking shortcuts are hoping for the best. And sometimes it works. But a lot of time it doesn’t. And as I say where you get a situation where if the work of the partner is quantifiably, not up to scratch, when I would get involved, it’s it’s pretty easy to point the finger if you like and say, Look, this isn’t what we expected. And there are deficiencies and you also have a smaller Delta, it’s easier for for me to engage somebody to fix the work or to bring it up to scratch. But where you have a situation where the partner has read the requirements, one way the customer has read them another then it becomes a lot more difficult to agree a path forward because I’ve seen situations for example where the customer would say okay, there is a component of the project that allows for us to get changes made. And we need all of these These changes, and the partner will say, well, that’s actually development work. It’s not remediation, we’re not fixing bugs, we’re actually changing things, you know, wholesale. And it’s just a more, it’s more difficult to salvage the relationship, I think the accepted wisdom is, if there’s an issue in a partnership, it’s always better for that, for that to be fixed. And for the original partner to do the work, rather than bring in our services team or a different partner. But where you have a situation where both sides genuinely feel like they haven’t done anything wrong, and somebody has to pay, it’s a lot more difficult to salvage that relationship, I think.
Pei Mun Lim
I think I’ve been there. So we all have. So as you’re speaking, I’m getting some PTSD flashes. from some of the more challenging project where that has been the case, as you say, I feel that a big part is about the requirements that hasn’t been, as you mentioned, hasn’t been understood or clarified, or articulate, articulated, clearly, in the requirements document that’s been signed off. And I’ve seen sign up documentation with word TBC in it for a fixed price project, which has not gone down. Great. So I can, yeah, I can totally relate.
Caimin
And on the other side of it as well, you know, as a partner, you don’t want to be going back to the customer every 20 minutes. And saying, did you mean this? Or did you mean that, you know, it can be irritating for the customer, particularly where time is an is an issue. There’s a particular customer that I was working with where it was impossible to get time in their calendar to talk about stuff even after the challenges have been identified. And, you know, we had said, we need to have a call with the partner, to just put everything on the table to try and find time in their diary was really difficult. So I had a lot of sympathy for the partner in that situation. So it’s, like you say, it’s, it’s finding that balance of, can we validate what we’ve done, you know, prototypes and demo systems. And here’s an example of the functionality that we think you mean, where you haven’t spent an awful lot of time on it, it’s just maybe just a wireframe or whatever, that that can be super helpful as well.
Pei Mun Lim
When I’m just going to tie it back to what you said in a previous session around strong executive sponsorship, and support. So I’ve had, I’ve had projects about both sides, one was where they just couldn’t make time for us. Absolutely. Even at the discovery stage, right, the beginning, which I thought would spell, you know, quite a bumpy ride, as well as another client, who will obviously still very pressed for time, but where the sales director actually put his foot down and said, You need to focus, you need to make time in your calendar to get this done, because it will help us get better in the long run. And that made such a huge difference for us as a partner in terms of getting time to validate for the show and tell to make sure that we are on the right path. And I think that kind of ties back to strong executive support when you say,
Caimin
absolutely, you know, absolutely. And look, if you were building a 5 million pound house, there is nobody in the world who would say we leave it to the builders, they know what they’re doing, you know, it just wouldn’t happen. And if you’re not invested in it, and I would suggest if you’re working with somebody who is content to let things roll on, then perhaps they don’t have enough skin in the game that they did, they don’t have enough of a stake in the project of being successful, for them to be worried. And maybe you need to go a level up, you know, and talk to somebody else in the organization. And make that clear that this is what’s happening. Similarly, if you’re a builder, if you’re building a house, and you don’t have the homeowner, I would say as a responsible builder, you should stop the project and say, Look, this is something that we maybe need to come back to, because I don’t want to be, I don’t want to build something that you’re not happy with. But also, I don’t want this to go on for six months and for me to build what I think you want and then spend another six months fixing it. So there’s responsibility on both sides. I think
Pei Mun Lim
I am going to steal that analogy because I like it so much. Because it explains the situation so well. When I’m talking about particular on that and just recently on the topic of fixed price And time and materials, and how much clarity you absolutely need for a fixed price project. Versus you know, if your time and materials, you can keep going back to the owner and say, how would you like your doors? How would you like a Windows, your bathtub, so on so forth. But if, if you saying, Here’s 5 million build a house that I want, I want to know exactly how you wanted it before I got started. So absolutely,
Caimin
yeah, absolutely. And then you’ll have the situation where you will have situations where the person in charge will have a vision but can’t really articulate the vision are, you know, they may not. And actually, this is an interesting point as well, I think one of the challenges that I would have is where I get when I’m working with a customer who has tried to map their knowledge of Salesforce on to their business problems, and not the other way around. So I might work with a customer who says, Yeah, I went on trailhead, which is great. And I learned about workflows. And I think we could use workflows in scenario one, two, and three, that’s me is less helpful, if I can say it, then a customer who says this is how our business works, because it’s my job to explain how the functionality maps on to the process. It’s not the customer’s role to understand what functionally, what functionality is available, and how it maps on. And some of the personas that we we have when we talk about admin, so you have your accidental admin, right, somebody who is the sales manager, and congratulations on your promotion, you’re in charge of Salesforce, or you have the also admin who is primarily something else, but also was involved in Salesforce. And for those people. You know, Salesforce is so feature rich, and there are so many resources, it can be completely overwhelming. If you go to the Help site, and type in workflows, you’ll get 1000s of results. So but I always say if you have a success manager, it’s their job to listen to your business challenge, and say these are the key capabilities that Salesforce has that maps on to that we do an exercise called a business value engagement, where we literally just say, as a business, what is it that you’re trying to achieve, let’s say increase profits, reduce costs, reduce time to serve in terms of customer service, and then we start to break those down. And we say, okay, for example, increased profits, you want to upsell to your existing customers, you want to sell to more customers, here are the capabilities within Salesforce. And as a sales manager, or service manager or marketing manager, you’re focused on how do I sell? You’re not focused on how can I help Salesforce? or How can I use Salesforce to help me sell? So in a requirements session? It’s not about Okay, how do we use this product? It’s, you know, and how do we know? How do we how do we take the features that this product has and have implemented in our product and our business? It’s, these are the business challenges that we have, what is it that Salesforce can do to support those? The other thing as well is that if you take that approach, when people actually go to use Salesforce, it’s it just reflects what they’re already doing. It just supports what they’re already doing. Whereas if you have somebody and this happens when I was working with smaller customers as these to happen all the time, where let’s say, we have this report, and it’s copied from a previous report. And what they do is they export it to Excel, and then they move column one and column two, and then they put in this formula. And then that’s the actual data, who’s going to want to work like that, you know, your sales staff are going to look at that and go, this is ridiculous. It’s so easy. He tell me what you want the report to show, and I’ll show you how to build it. It’s much better for adoption to take that approach as well.
Pei Mun Lim
Fantastic, thank you. I was just thinking about our previous session. And now and I like the fact that your career path has taken you here and built the foundation. So you were a QA engineer before, for example. So it gave you a very good idea about how a production work and how users should use the product in a business sense. So I’d like to turn the conversation back to you. Even though I thoroughly enjoy you sharing so so much wisdom around the best practices in implementing projects, but I’d like to come back to you and your Your path? If you can, if you can share this with me, what are some of the biggest mistakes? You think that you’ve done in your career that you’ve learned the most from? And how did you overcome?
Caimin
Wow, louder? That’s a great question. That’s a great question. And biggest mistakes, I would say, probably one of the biggest mistakes that I made, particularly back in the QA and development days, was hoping the problems would resolve themselves without my intervention, or without me owning up to them. So I had a couple of situations where I made a really bad mistake either in I remember one time deleting the binary directory from a platform that I was using, and not really understanding what I had done. But understanding that, okay, this platform that was Stratos continuum, arcs, really dates me understanding that it didn’t work anymore. And kind of walk away with it, and kind of maybe nobody will know. And obviously, the problem got much worse. Or if I was struggling with a concept or struggling to pick something up, hoping that I will just be able to figure it out without having to admit that I didn’t know what I was doing, or I thought I was really struggling with it. I think throughout my career, I found, if you are honest and open with people, most people will help you. You people are generally quite good. And I think as well, you know, most people understand what it’s like to be, say at the start of your career, and not really knowing what you’re doing. And trying your best but struggling. And they will help you to understand, you know, how you can work better or how you can rectify mistakes. And I think, where I started my career, it was a really technical specialized organization. And I was surrounded by people who, who had worked there for a long time. And I found it very difficult to say, Listen, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do, or I don’t really know how to go about this. When I when I got to that level of maturity. And I would say confidence, where I understood that it was okay to do it, it really changed things completely, you know, it made things so much easier. And now, I’m lucky that I’m in the stage of my career where we have a lot of grads with a lot of people early in their career, and I’m able to repay that, you know, and just give the benefit of my experience. There are a couple of, I would say sliding doors moments in my career where I look at, had I had I I’d have maybe two choices, and I picked one had I picked the other choice, I think my life would be quite different. So at the point where I took the QA role, I had actually been offered a role as a database administrator, which was really what I like to do for a financial services company. And the money in the data, the DBA role was much better twice as much as I was maybe 22. At the time, so it was significant. The reason that I took the QA role was because I thought I’d get exposure on a lot of different platforms, I’d get different. I just get a lot more technical experience. And I felt with the DBA. It’s kind of what I what I know how to do. And even though I was quite early in my career, and I probably would have learned a lot It would have been very focused on that area. And I often reflect on that and think that was one time where I really made a sensible decision, you know, and really just kind of proactively went after something that I really wanted, rather than just said, well, the money’s better, I can do it for a couple of months, I ended up working with that company as well, that the QA, I was there for 15 years, and I you know, I went through different roles, I got a lot of opportunity. I met my wife there, you know, made lifelong friends, which I probably would have done in the other role. But I think had I started as a DBA. In the other role, I would still be a DBA now, whereas now I’m in a role where I love it. I think it really makes the best use of whatever talent I have. And I would never have I’ve never even heard of that role. You know, it never, I mean, it didn’t exist at the time, but I don’t think I would have had the skills to go into that role had I not taken the QA role. And I don’t know if there’s anything else that I would kind of look at as a mistake. Obviously there’s the day to day mistakes, you know where you I’ll Another mistake I’ve seen a team on that one is trying to tell the customer what they want to hear, and making promises that you’re not sure that you can stand over. Because in the moment, you want to provide with the best of intentions, you want to provide some reassurance to your customer that you that you can help them. I learned, maybe not as early on as I should have, that it’s much better to give someone bad news upfront, and then maybe mitigated, then to promise them, everything will be fine. And then two weeks later have to give them the bad news that you should have given them two weeks ago. And again, I think that comes with experience and confidence. And you know, early in your career, it’s difficult to do that. I think as you mature and get a bit of experience, it’s a little bit easier.
Pei Mun Lim
I really like your sliding doors story there. It informs me as your decision making process, in how you’ve approached it in terms of will it give you more advancement versus cash? Although I think that that kind of tempting decision would have been an easier one for anybody else. Is that how you make decisions as a rule?
Caimin
Yeah, it’s, I look at the analogy that I always use is it’s a lower rung on a on a longer ladder. And I think my primary focus is I like being helpful, right. And I like working with customers and explaining how they can solve problems that have been given them challenges. And I think I tend to gravitate towards roles like that, when I moved into the role that I’m in now. It was definitely, you would be the most junior person on the team, the one where you know, I tenure in Salesforce, but not in that role. But I was excited to do it, because I felt ultimately this will get me closer to, to what I want to do. And so yeah, that would be I would have no problem. And I think as well, if this is another thing that comes with experience, I don’t really worry too much about titles or rank or seniority or, you know, things like that. I’ve never really been concerned about I need to be the most senior person in the room, or I need to be the most knowledgeable person in the room. I’m happy just to it sounds kind of conceited, but I’m happy to be focused on how do we get the best outcome out of this sweater that involves me or somebody else, I don’t really mind. And that’s given me a lot of freedom, because it allows it allows me to consider roles that if I was purely focused on my career, and let’s say I wanted to be an RVP or SVP, I said, Well, I can’t really take this role, because it wouldn’t get me closer to that role. But it’s, I can look at it and say, Well, actually, I think I would enjoy this more. So I can, you know, I can look around and consider that. So it would be part of the decision making process. What what would make me happier, you know, and that’s a really nice position to be in, I
Pei Mun Lim
think, is that something that drives your decisions? What would make me happier? Because that sounds?
Caimin
Yeah, definitely. a throwback. When I left college, I, back in 1991 or two, I took a role. That was completely the wrong role. It was, I could we could do another two hours on this role. But it was basically worked for a software company where the owner was more concerned about profit than about quality. And I was straight from college. I was writing payroll systems for some of the biggest companies in Ireland, completely and totally over my head, like, absolutely over my head. I was working like literally 16 1718 hour days, seven days a week. I remember I worked on Christmas Day. And all the time had this horrible sense of the way that I described it at the time was you know, what, if you’re on a bike, and the bike starts to wobble, and you know, you’re going to crash, it’s only like, Can I can I find somewhere soft that I’m going to depression, and all you see is concrete. Even just thinking about it. Now, I know you’re talking about PTSD, I really got it. And I was too young. I was too immature to say this is not right. And you know, to make things worse, I was getting paid like 100 pounds a week, which even at the time wasn’t amazing. I was getting paid by cheque, the checks would bounce. It was crazy. I went to a meeting with a customer. And the customer basically threatened me with jail. He said you’ve taken all this money. Our legal team is bigger than your whole company. We’re going to do you for fraud. I was now 2020 years old at this point. And I just was sitting in that meeting going this isn’t this isn’t what I’m supposed to do, right, so I quit the job. At night before I had, I was actually in hospital with, you know, I developed type one diabetes, which doctor says was brought on by stress, it was horrible time. But it was great that that happened to me so early on because I resolve then there’s no way I’m ever going to go through that again, you know, there’s absolutely no way I’m going to put myself through that again. And I’ve been really lucky with the companies that I’ve worked with. And the companies that I’ve worked for, where the culture in Salesforce was very much people first. And any my last company as well, it was very much people first they really looked after you and it was very stable. It was very structured. And I I you know, that’s exactly what I needed. But I would look at and I, you know, I talked to friends of mine, that are in a similar situation, but they’re in it now. And now they’re kind of stuck, because they have a mortgage, they have kids, you know, they think it might be difficult to find another role and they can’t walk away from that position. I was really lucky that I could I was living at home and my parents, I had no outgoings. So it didn’t really matter, you know, I could, I could just walk away from it. But that definitely informed my decision making process for the rest of my life and will do for the rest of my life. And we’re really lucky, we live in rural Ireland. Passive living isn’t really high. So if I wanted to, or if I needed to, I could take a job, I will be happy to say, if Salesforce ended tomorrow, I’d be happy to work in a hotel, or I, you know, do whatever, quite like to work as a consultant with nonprofits. But I don’t need to worry about I need to earn a certain amount of money, you know, to maintain my standard of living. We can we can live cheap as chips, but that was part of the decision making process for moving here was how do we ensure that we’re not in a position where we have to take a job that we you know, for my wife as well that we have to take a job? That’s like that first job I ever took? I just I wouldn’t put myself through that again.
Pei Mun Lim
It’s so sounds like you’re very fortunate to experience it so young,
Caimin
because Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. An absolute blessing, you know, absolute blessing. And I look back, and I think if I could change things, what I? I wouldn’t, because it was the it was the wrong experience, but at the right time. Yeah, for sure. Yes,
Pei Mun Lim
I think that’s a good way to look at experiences like that, and either informs you for the future, or it beats you down. So
Caimin
yeah, absolutely. And I you know, even with my children, when they were talking about what it is that they want to do, and you know, all I say is just find something that you enjoy, you know, not even something that you can tolerate, find something that you actively enjoy, that gets you out of bed in the morning. And look, I know, not everybody is in that position. I genuinely know how fortunate I am. But I also think that it’s not 100% it’s maybe 90% luck. But 10% of it is me learning from that area experience and putting myself in a position where, you know, I’m not dependent on that kind of role. And, you know, I’m delighted that I’m in the situation that I’m in now.
Pei Mun Lim
Fantastic. Thank you, it muesli very nicely to the next question, because you’ve already given some clues. What are the kinds of things that bring you joy?
Caimin
Well, in professionally, it’s the aha moment, I really love. As a specific example, I remember working with a customer by business a couple of years ago, but I still remember it. And I was able to show them a trick in Salesforce that would save them 20 to 25 minutes, and they were like, Ah, you know, and that’s the, that’s what I love. And explaining how I really believe in equal opportunity or equal access to opportunity. That’s my, my thing, right? And, and I really believe in software as an enabler for smaller organizations, particularly nonprofits, they’re very kind of niche nonprofits that have a significant impact on the people that they work with. But don’t have a very wide reach and could help an awful lot more people if they had a wider reach. I do truly believe in the power of software to help them to get there not just Salesforce, but all software really. And so that experience of being able to help people help others I think is great, you know, it gives me an awful lot of satisfaction. And I’m I work with Special Olympics, which has been one of the most overwhelming positive experiences of my life, and I started as a volunteer with them. In 2003, when we had the World Games in Ireland, and it was the most magical five days, I promise I will ever experience outside of the birth of my kids, you know, that kind of thing, but, and then we had the National Games in 2014. So I went down with my basketball team there, we’ve recently moved out. So I haven’t attached myself to a club up here yet, but I’m open to seeing because again, that’s just one of those things where you put in, you know, 60%, and you get 200%. Back, it’s, it’s incredible, you know, so, and in my personal life, just, you know, watching my kids grow up, listening to my daughter sing along with the radio, and I think is one of the most joyful experiences I could ever have. You know, looking at my son, as he’s, you know, getting into the world, and he’s four minutes own is 10. Now, so you know, he has his own opinions on things. And up to now, he liked the same football team, as I did like the same movies as I did, which is nice. But it’s also lovely to see him develop his own interests. So, you know, just the simple things like that. Now, just hanging out with my family, and spending time with friends is great.
Pei Mun Lim
That’s really very heartwarming to hear. Can you tell me how you got into the Special Olympics? How did that? Yeah.
Caimin
So when I was 14, there was an organization and the team I grew up with, which gave respite care, to families who had a child of one child with a mental disability, and it will just enable them to take their other kids out for the day, it was first Saturday of every month. And a friend of mine, volunteered and asked me to come along, and I loved it, you know, wasn’t anything too engaged, it was just playing football with people and stuff like that. And so we have an organization in Ireland called St. Michael’s house, who are our specialist schools, for children with mental disabilities. So I volunteered there. The summer that I turned 16, I spent a summer working in two schools, which was incredible, you know. And then I was asked, If I would help out with the Special Olympics team that was affiliated with the school, which I did. And then, as I say, in 2003, we had the, the National, the International game, so from all over the world, athletes came in I registered as a volunteer. And then literally, once I was in the database, I was contacted to say, could you help with this team? Could you help with that team, and I’ve always been, you know, happy to do that. It’s generally, you know, maybe a couple of hours a week. But it’s, it’s really just showing up, you know, it’s, it’s, I come back every week. So I’ve been involved with badminton, basketball, and bachi, which is like bowls. So I’m obviously stuck it in the B section of the database, you know, I can’t think what’ll come next. But yeah, it’s, it’s lovely. And it’s, I think it’s, I bring my son, with me. And he really, when we were in Dublin, you know, he really bonded with the team with a great team of guys who are maybe aged between 20 and 30. And they kind of adopted him as their mascot. I think it was brilliant for him, you know, to see how people with different abilities and people that are not the people that he sees every day, how they are, you know, as engaging and as funny and as opinionated as anybody else. So it’s been, as I say, one of the overwhelmingly positive parts of my life, for sure.
Pei Mun Lim
I think it’s amazing that you’re exposing your son to things like that it will be experienced, that he will not get elsewhere in our daily lives, I think.
Caimin
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, he, when we, when we moved up, he was quite sad, like to say goodbye to the guys, but I think it’s, it’s just one of those things where, ordinarily, you may have no interaction unless there’s somebody in your family or somebody in your circle of friends, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not an experience that he would have. So really, the idea is, you don’t have to treat the guys on the team any differently than anybody else that you would treat. You know, I remember actually, one of the training sessions that we did for the volunteers, one of the Masters was that you don’t call them kids and I had slipped into that habit, as a lot of volunteers were, you know, these are adults. 25 3035. And we tell you know, we’re working with the kids and it’s, it’s just something that you fall into, but I think it was important for my son to learn that these are adults, you know, these are, you know, humans that have the same value as anybody else. And it goes back to that thing, you know, that equal access to opportunity. I think Special Olympics is fantastic as a given people who normally wouldn’t have that access, you know, they can step onto a national stage into an arena. Filled with six 700 people and play a game of basketball and get the applause that their efforts deserve. And I think that’s, you know, it’s, it’s wonderful.
Pei Mun Lim
And like this podcast is making me very happy. Just hearing all these stories. Okay, I’m just going to shift the gears slightly and ask you to share, what are some, some raw, unfiltered truths about yourself that maybe no one else knows or realizes about you?
Caimin
I would say I question myself daily as to whether I am equipped to do the job that I’m doing, which is probably the same as everybody else. I think I have a talent for saying things and sounding confident, which by the way, my son also has inherited, he can talk the most absolute rubbish. And it sounds like it’s, you know, straight from a Harvard professor. But I think, yeah, it’s that self doubt and imposter syndrome, I would say, you know, imposter syndrome is difficult to overcome, I think, I’ve struggled with anxiety since particularly since the lockdown started. And at a subconscious level, I would say, I wasn’t aware of it, and haven’t spoken to people who go through it as well. I think that there’s anxiety that you are aware that you’re feeling, and then there’s anxiety that you’re not aware of that that manifests itself, as, you know, in physical ways, you know, pains in your chest and, and things like that. And I think that that’s been a real learning experience. And I’ve done from the stage of, I can just pretty much live my life the way I want to, and everything will be fine. to now being more guarded around, I need to carve out time to exercise, I need to carve out time for mindfulness. And if I, you know, if I don’t do it, I will suffer the consequences. It’s, I think it’s difficult to do something that keeps you feeling normal, or keeps you feeling well, as opposed to something that makes you feel better. You know, for me, it’s if I don’t exercise, I will, I will feel bad during the day, if I don’t take time out to to practice mindfulness, I will feel anxious. And it can be very hard sometimes to motivate yourself to do that. But I’ve learned, particularly over the last nine months that if I need to do anything else, I think as well, I want one thing that I feedback that I get from my manager a lot is I need to push myself forward more, I need to be more assertive about the stuff that I am good at. And I think the roles that I’ve had in the past in terms of like a technical support consultant, and things like that, while they’ve been enjoyable, I’ve always been predicated on somebody coming to me, and asking me for help. Whereas the rollem, and now is more about me going to somebody and saying, I think you need my help, you know, and it’s particularly working with enterprise companies where somebody is obviously very successful in their professional life. And they’ve spent a lot you know, what can I tell them about running a business, I can’t tell them a lot about running a business, but I can tell them a lot about how Salesforce can help them, get more time back, spend time doing what they what they’re interested in. And that is a struggle for me to push myself forward and say, you know, I can help and I think you should listen to what I have to say. But it’s, you know, it’s something that I’m working on, and I say I enjoy the process, but I can’t see myself making progress. So yeah, that’s been that’s been positive, too.
Pei Mun Lim
Okay, thank you for that. And you shared a few of this already, but I was wondering whether there are any more so I’d like to hear what some of your core values are.
Caimin
Yeah, I think I strongly believe in fairness. And it really irritates me when, when if I don’t get a service that I paid for. And I don’t expect our customers to have that experience either, you know, somebody has, has invested in our platform, then it’s incumbent on us to do everything we can to help them be successful. If for selfish reasons, that then any altruistic reasons, it makes complete sense. But I really dislike when I see people getting shortchanged. Not that it happens too often. But you know, it’s it’s something that motivates me a lot. And I guess coupled to that is integrity. I really do strongly believe that you need to be who you say you are, and do what you say you’re going to do. I think you can do that 100 times. But if you fail to do at once you undo all your good work. And I find it very difficult to trust somebody who says they’re going to do something, but then doesn’t do it. You know it? I guess that would be one. Yeah. And again, Authenticity, I think, I have no problem with somebody. If somebody says to me, you know, look, I’m not really that interested in this, I have 101 other things to do. I don’t really care whether this works or not, that’s something that I can work with. But when you have somebody who’s saying, Oh, yeah, you know, I’m committed, I’m going to spend the time and, and, and then they clearly don’t, it’s very frustrating as well. So, yeah, I do those three things, I guess, are quite interlinked, you know, the, the fairness, integrity and authenticity, but they would be the things that I would, I would consciously try and work on and remind myself, if I ever see myself slipping, you know, these things are important, and it’s, it’s worth making the effort.
Pei Mun Lim
Okay, and for one final question, I want to be very respectful of your time. Were other what is the thing that excites you right now? What What, what are you looking forward to? Do you have a project? Or do you have something
Caimin
I have. So at the moment, I’m nearly one year into this role. And I find that things are getting easier. My unbuilding, you know, really strong relationship with all the customers, I’m going into meetings, looking forward to catching up with people, you know, personally and professionally. Ultimately, for me, what I would like to do is move into the consultancy world, and I think work with smaller customers, where I have more of a direct impact. So the work that we do now is great, but it’s over three to five years, you know, where you start to see the impact of it, there’s a lot of stuff that you can do immediately. But when you’re really talking about business transformation, or business value attainment, it’s over the long term, I miss working with smaller organizations, where from day one, you have a significant impact. And after an hour, the customer is in a much better position than they were before that hour. So my project is, or my, my kind of midterm goal is, I want to get as many certifications as a can, I want to experience the world of enterprise customer success, so that I can take what I learned from the big companies of the world, and give smaller, maybe nonprofits, you know, smaller startups, the access to that same information that the bigger companies have that that’s kind of where I see myself, in the next three to five years, I would say,
Pei Mun Lim
it looks like you have a very big affinity to charities and not for profit, and that your knowledge and your wisdom will bring so much to these organizations,
Caimin
I hope so I have huge respect for people who, you know, they make that their life’s mission to do things like that. And as I say, I really enjoy working with the real niche, you know, like things like music therapy, where it’s so helpful to a to a very, even a small community, but for that community, it’s it’s completely life changing. And I really see it as if I can help them to do that, then that’s what I should be doing. So
Pei Mun Lim
yeah. So that’s the first time you mentioned that, I’d like to hear a bit more about this particular music therapy niche that has caught your interest.
Caimin
Well, this is a it was an engagement that I did last year, as part of our pro bono program, it was a an organization and London, I can’t remember the name of it now, which is terrible, but the basically, you know, provided music lessons, musical instruments, it was primarily to autistic children, who found it difficult to express themselves, you know, through conventional methods. And it was just one of those things where I thought this is not necessarily something that you know, bigger charities or bigger nonprofits could could help with, it’s obviously it was run by somebody who was a musician themselves, you know, they had a passion for it. And it was, again, it was one of those things where, you know, there are a lot of organizations who will help respite care with clothing with, you know, with nursing and medical needs or whatever, but this is for the for the people who are impacted by this charity. It’s the difference between being able to express themselves and not or being able to have fun and Maybe not. And I think that’s really, I love to hear stories like that. So that’s the kind of thing that I’m thinking of is finding those charities that are those nonprofits where it’s like two or three people working, really passionate about what they want to do, and just helping them to reach a wider community without having to spend all their time, you know, working on fundraisers, and things like that, I think that’s where Salesforce can be really powerful for them.
Pei Mun Lim
Thank you very much for that. And on that note, I just want to thank you so much.
Caimin
It’s been such a pleasure
Pei Mun Lim
for your time. On these two, these two sessions, I’ve learned so much not only about what you do, but also what people can do organizations can do in order to become more successful in the way that they implement the platform. And also got to know you and yourself as a person a lot more. I like the fact that you have such a bent towards charity and helping others the Special Olympics is an interesting one that I’ve not been exposed to so much. So came in thank you very much again for your time.
Caimin
Absolute pleasure. Anytime. Thanks very much.
Pei Mun Lim
Thank you.