Admin Spotlight Series: Heather Black & Supermums

Like I've said before , I love telling stories and learning from the experiences of others , which is why this week we're going to start the first episode in our Admins Spotlight series . Now , up until now , each week we've had a thing that ultimately is around , something that will help admins grow , and a guest to really speak on those topics .

And while I do believe this series will continue to help admins , I wanted something that is purely dedicated to diving into the story of our guests . So today we're sitting down with Heather Black , ceo of Supermums , and we're going to dive into how they got started in the ecosystem but ultimately , why they continue to grow and give back to the community .

I'm so excited to shine a spotlight on Heather's story , so , without further ado , let's meet Heather . Heather Black is the CEO of Supermums and an experienced Salesforce consultant and trainer . Growing out as a freelancer , she then grew and managed a Salesforce consultancy team and had overseen over 700 projects with 350 clients .

Her consultancy won the EMEA salesforceorg consultancy partner of the year award . Supermums is a global social enterprise which was established to accelerate the careers of women within the Salesforce ecosystem through training and recruitment services . Since 2016 , it has supported over 1,000 trainees and over 200 employers to find super talent .

So let's not waste any more time and dive in Awesome . Well , thank you so very much , heather , for joining us today . I really appreciate you taking time out of your day and evening to sit down and kind of have a conversation with us and kind of put this admin spotlight on you and your company , supermums . So thank you again for being here today .

You were someone who I had met at Dream Forest this most recent year and really got the chance to learn about what you are doing with Supermums and really , really enjoyed the idea of this is a company out there trying to go out of their way not only to help the next generation of admin , but to help mothers , women in tech , and try to grow that ecosystem

and grow that space , which is something that we , I believe , need more of a voice , more of a space in .

So , with all of that being said , I usually like to start these interviews out diving into how you got started in the ecosystem , what led you to be where you are today , and kind of tell us a little bit about of your current state , where you currently are at . So would love to dive into that first .

We download the 10 free licenses and then we sit with those free licenses and have a clue what the system can really do because we don't know where to start , and it was actually through . After having it for a year , another nonprofit demonstrated to me how they used it and that , for me , was the light bulb moment .

I was like , oh my goodness , this is amazing , like we absolutely need to implement this . My nonprofit and I was looking to grow a team and we needed a system where we could see everything that everybody was doing and who we were talking to and tracking everything . And I went through that process of speaking to a nonprofit , speaking to a Salesforce consultant .

I then went on a Salesforce admin course and learned the basics and then , from then , I was really hooked and became the admin myself because I thought it was a really good idea at the time , even though I was running an organization , but I really enjoyed building it and I found that techie side of myself which I'd never had before I did a geography degree .

I went from doing a geography degree into economic development and helping people with economic development . It's about employability strategies and helping people into work and it's about entrepreneurship and helping business startups .

So my background was really helping look at boosting economies around the UK and so I'd work on business startup strategy development and employment support strategies .

And with my first nonprofit , it was about helping young professionals age 18 to 30 start their own business , and so that was the business that I was running at the time and using Salesforce , we were able to track all our interactions with those young professionals and over the course of seven years we worked with 10,000 young professionals and I grew the organization

and I put a lot of emphasis on the fact that Salesforce helped me to grow it . Through using Salesforce , we were able to improve our reporting and our impact measurements and we were able to win more contracts .

We were able to market properly to people , we were able to grow as a team and it actually helped me grow my nonprofit from 100k to 1.3 million in a year and so it was reallya significant lever in helping us grow . And I'm sorry I forgot to point around compliance . It obviously helped us meet compliance requirements for a lot of the contracts we were winning .

So it had , like this , enormous impact on the growth of our nonprofit and we did incredibly well and I built the system through doing the admin .

I did the admin course , I did the advanced admin course and I did a consultancy skills course all within three to four months of starting out , and that helped me understand how to design the system and how to build it and we went from four staff to 40 staff and it was an incredible journey that we went on with it and that's how I really got into Salesforce

and I think it was during that time that I saw other nonprofits really need to know the value of this and to see how it can transform their delivery , how it can help with their fundraising , with their delivery , with their impact reporting .

When I was looking at a transition , the reason for my career shift , if you like , was because we were government funded for a lot of the programs we were running and there was a change in government in the UK .

So the funding streams came to a halt , so it became very hard to run the same sort of programs at the scale that we were previously doing , unfortunately , and so I was at point where I was about to have a family move out of the city and needed to transition .

And because I loved learning about Salesforce , I wanted to find out more about how I could help with the nonprofits with it , and so I spoke to other people in the industry , understood what the skill sets were . Having never worked in these skills , I was like what's business analysis ? What's you know ? What is our gel project management ?

And I just did a deep dive and started asking all these questions and researching it all . And because I'd run a business previously and because my background was in business coaching , a lot of those skills felt quite transferable over into becoming a Salesforce professional and help other nonprofits implement Salesforce .

You know we call it business analysis , but in many ways it is asking questions for business and understanding their management processes and their reporting needs , and so I did do a lot more formalised training .

I trained up in change management , business analysis , had gel project management , obviously other additional certifications , but that allowed me to start on my journey of being a freelance Salesforce consultant , and I grew from being a freelance Salesforce consultant and getting more work than I could manage myself .

I then grew a Salesforce consultancy of 20 people around me when we were all working with nonprofits . So over the course of the period of running for consultancy we worked with 350 nonprofits and delivered about 700 projects over that time .

So I learnt an incredible amount , had such a great experience , you know , learnt where projects go wrong , learnt where they go right , you know , worked on all different clouds and solutions and for me , I really loved the variety .

You know I get my personality suits , you know , having different projects going in , learning new stuff , setting it up , coming back out and then sort of allowing them to sort of crack on with managing their system . And so I really , you know , really enjoyed that journey , got a lot out of it .

But what I one of the challenges we found on the way was that there was a in growing my consultancy , there was a real shortage of talent and equally , for the customers where we'd implement Salesforce , they then would also struggle to hire internal admins , for example . So that generated the idea for Supermums .

It was through that sort of mixed experience of going . Okay , you know we need more talent in this space .

There's loads of mums like me who could do this job , work flexibly and earn well , and that's why I decided to launch Supermums , which is seven years ago now , and we started with three people on the first course and now we've had over 1300 people go through the program globally . It just went , accidentally went global we just because the course was virtual .

It just attracted people from all over the world and , yeah , it's been an amazing journey and but I really love teaching and training and helping people , but we've got a team of over 20 and Supermums now globally too .

You've been working with and leading Supermums for seven years . You had lead being a CEO of another non-profit for many , many years prior to that .

In that kind of very eventful journey you are constantly looking for that next thing , next thing and constantly trying to grow and be not only just generally successful , be at the top of the top to be able to see exponential growth year over year . I'm curious , just because I love the numbers you are giving out of .

From the start to finish , you have now exponentially grown the number of projects , number of team members you have brought on . What's your passion ?

To keep moving things and keep seeing that exponential growth , to never slow down and realize , hey , there's COVID in the way or there's a lack of people in the ecosystem in the way , I'm just going to hurdle over that . What's your drive ? To keep pushing that forward ?

But they just naturally did because we delivered well Through the consultancy 65% of our customers through repeat and referral business so we just naturally grew from having a good reputation of delivering well and doing good things . And that's the same thing with supermums . Supermums we've grown .

Most of our new trainees come through recommendations and word of mouth and it's just naturally grown that way , which is fantastic . It's not to say we've not put effort into growing it and wanting to be bigger and bolder . I think one of the things it makes we love having an impact and I think if we're a mission led organisation , we want to make an impact .

It feels part of our DNA to want to reach more people and make a bigger impact . Why wouldn't you want to do that ? But it's not driven by financial goals and we must achieve XYZ . Obviously it has to be financially .

There has to be the financial sort of stack up there to make it all work , but our team are incredibly passionate through both the consultancy and the training organisation .

It is about the impact we make and we love seeing the success stories of where people are and sharing those , and we do a lot on social media , but in turn , that then just attracts more people to it .

I just am blown away at the passion of Even if you're not planning to blow goals out of the water , you still absolutely are . So I think that's so amazing to hear . I want to talk now about where you are now with Supermums . So you started this business . It's been seven years , you said .

You started off with just a handful of people , yourself included , and now you have a full team and you have a group of volunteers who are coming in to help with the training . I'm curious why Supermums ? Why focusing on this kind of space of mothers and individuals and women in tech who are kind of finding that second career ? Why that market ?

So the business I was running around youth entrepreneurship was because I was a young entrepreneur in that market and I think with Supermums it was because I could see I was in that market , I could see other moms around me who could benefit and do that job and just people weren't aware of it .

But for Supermums there's three kind of core sort of impact statements really around why women specifically , one is that there is an issue around women returners and people , women being out of work for a while , looking after kids and helping them get back into the labour market .

That is an internationally recognised issue in that they can be quite often overlooked , which shouldn't be the case , so there is the need to get them back on the career ladder . The second is that we need more women in technology generally , because the gender balance is a bit shocking . So we need to tackle that .

And the third is about gender pay , the gender pay gap . We want women to be earning more , you know , an equivalent to men . I just don't understand why there's even a difference , right , you know , for the same job . It shouldn't even be the case , so it's quite . I just can't even get my head around that it actually exists , but we know it does .

So that's why the emphasis has been on women . But I've also been incredibly thankful that , you know , at Supermums we do welcome everybody onto our training courses and we've had , you know , men come onto the programme . You know who are dads or not dads .

We've had other people come on the programme who aren't parents at all , who very , very much align with our mission and want to support it and be a part of it . And we've had an incredible community of mentors join us as volunteer mentors .

Again , lots of men are part of that because they really recognise the need for Supermums and what it is about and have seen it because of their wives and their situation and even them as a dad right , and so the mission attracts such an overwhelming support from people and I think if we were just a standard programme that was for everybody , we wouldn't attract

the same support and alignment . And you know we tackle four different sustainable development goals which are recognised internationally . So it's important we keep with our mission of what we do and you know , say everybody backs it because we're tackling some very important points 1000% .

of Europe , I'm curious your take on what your first steps were when you were starting Supermums and you were getting into the ecosystem of seeing Salesforce for new admins in the UK , in Europe , and how do you think that kind of has shifted and grown compared to what it has been in America ?

I mean , when I started , you know which would have been back like 12 years ago in the ecosystem we had four certifications , right , and it was over 3,500 pounds to train up because the only way you could train up was through a week-long course that was on site and that was one of my motivations for Supermums .

Trailhead did not exist when I launched Supermums , you know the only way to train up was to spend 3,500 pounds on being a five-day course in an office learning .

So you know that was my motivation for setting up and we took it to Salesforce and said we want to deliver Salesforce in a flexible way , virtually , which means we need to bend your course in a way that works for us . And so we have worked with Salesforce to flex their courses for our audience , which they wouldn't normally do .

So we flex their admin course and we flex their marketing cloud course to be delivered in a way that they wouldn't traditionally do , to be an exception for us . So you know we like to be shapers and influencers to meet different target markets . You know , in the UK we've obviously seen Salesforce continue to grow in .

The latest stats show that Salesforce is still growing as a company and organization . You know their customers continue to increase and we're still seeing . You know there's an element of competition for talent . You know salaries are still increasing . There still isn't enough talent around .

I think how you skill up , though , is really , really important , because there has been a big emphasis on getting new talent into the space , but there has been a lot of a pop up of a lot of different training initiatives that just focus on this , the training in its purest form , and that , you know , do trailhead for free and get some badges and get a cert

and you'll get a job , and what we've seen is people who've just done that not get a job , because , it don't get me wrong , some people will have done , but it depends on their background and their confidence and their transferable skills .

With Supermums , you know we were set up traditionally and , as they , we accommodate and work with , with anybody , but we wanted to design a program that was very much for people who have been out of work .

You know , or I , didn't have necessarily the transferable skills , and so , with our program , we developed a program that included the training , included real life work experience . It provided a one to one mentor for somebody over the six months of them studying and learning , to meet with them every single week . It provided career coaching .

It provides the peer cohort .

So it's a very , very robust learning and support program and in order to kind of help people successfully launch their careers to meet these jobs in the USA or in the UK or anywhere else in Europe , it's really important that we have good qualified talent , because sales forces and company in the products will stall if they're not implemented well or if they don't

have the right talent . And so it's been incredibly important to make sure that you know , as talent providers , we're generating really good talent because we want the salesful's recommendations to be really successful , because that's going to power the growth of the industry , you know , here or wherever it is in the world .

So you know , we have seen that sort of , I suppose , the appetite for training , the appetite for upskilling , you know . But that has happened in different ways . Different people have taken different paths , but we see from them as we continue to deliver our core program because we think that really sets people up for success .

You mentioned earlier one of the things you , when you were going through your training , you got project management training and you had other pieces of that to help with the soft skills that are really needed to be regardless of if you go into consultancy or if you are an in-house admin .

You really need those soft skills to be ultimately successful , to scale for growth . So , with that being said , you've mentioned and kind of also in that moment of plugging all the amazing things that you do with SuperMoms .

You have a podcast , mums , on Cloud 9 and you also have a book that has come out , becoming a Super Salesforce Consultant , which are two amazing resources for anyone who is kind of interested in diving into the ecosystem .

Again , talking through the idea about being a consultant versus an admin , for people trying to get , just regardless of the job type , getting into the door . You have these amazing resources . You've given so many trainings and implementations and been a mentor for so many high level new admins .

What would be the top three things you're trying to recommend to your clients , your podcast listeners , to help them get their first job , to help them kind of take that first step in the Salesforce world .

With SuperMoms , people come out with three references they get reference from the trainer , the reference from their mentor and the reference from the person that oversaw their work experience . So it's really important to have those things on your CV and get work experience , because it's incredibly hard to get that first gig without it .

So join a program like ours or something similar to sort of start building that resume . Beyond just getting the admin cert , I think the next stage is to think about which career path you want to go down and to not again just don't rely on your admin cert to get your foot in the door .

If you're wanting to go down as an admin and develop as an advanced admin and develop that track , then you'd want to do your app build during advanced admin certifications , which are pretty next step ones that is relatively easy to get after you get in your admin .

It's the hat trick skills that you need there If you're wanting to work into an organization where you're the solo administrator or you want to go into consultancy and to take the responsibility for gathering the requirements and prioritizing them so they meet the time and budget available , then I'd be definitely recommending getting those consultancy skills , which we also

teach at Supermums . We added this in as a course after a couple of years because we just realized that people needed these skill sets very quickly , but it could also mean that it would get them another 10k pay rise right , so it just made absolutely sense to provide it to them .

So doing business analysis and agile project management training and change management training , I would say , are required if you're going to take that responsibility .

On Working as a freelance salesful consultant , I just quickly realized that I couldn't do projects without them , which is why I invested quite a bit of money in getting that training , those certifications , behind me . And the third thing is to really build your network through your network on LinkedIn and building your profile . Start to share knowledge and experience .

Start to connect with other people in the community . It's one of the things that we always say with Supermums is we've got this massive alumni community and we're like right , go and connect with everybody else in this community .

Build that network , because they're the ones that are going to be patting you on the back when you get your certification and liking and celebrating with you , and we really need that to motivate ourselves and to just feel that sense of satisfaction .

And I think that's one of the things that a sales source Ohana is absolutely amazing at is just patting everybody else on the shoulder and sharing knowledge and expertise , and I think the more you can lean into that and be part of it and embrace it and use it as well , you know , in the best way for yourself , it's going to build your confidence and make you

fly . So they're my three tips for people really starting out .

A lot of times , you'll see the people go on like fiverr or upwork , and they'll go on and they'll say , hey , I'll work for free to get that , and I think that is that's usually why I've recommended to people If you don't have enough previous job experience to get you that first job in the ecosystem with your certs and trainings , just try to find a free gig

, implement something , figure out how you can complete a project , just to have it on your CV .

With that said , though , the thing that I like , how you called out , is get the referrals , get the references , be able to have written confirmation and or verbal confirmation from those people that say , no , no , they did do a good job , and let me explain why they did a good job and let me explain how they helped you grow , and I really think that's not

talked about enough . The other thing that you highlight in there was about the community and how being able to find people who you can learn from and help build you up and find your own personal Ohana . With that being said , especially with women in tech and those kind of smaller niche groups within the ecosystem .

I'm curious to take on what do you find the most valuable thing about being a part of the community outside of just the traditional networking ?

I think people being involved in the community means that they're either being a mentor , they're writing blogs , you know , they're contributing to podcasts , they're sharing information internally and I think if you , if you delve into that community , you're just going to be learning things all the time , and I think it's about minding the gaps .

I invest a lot of time and money in learning from others and it helped me obviously avoid mistakes and to get it right . But sometimes it's come , you know , gone oh gosh . I need to learn that because I've realized I don't know something or I've made a mistake and I'm like how do I do that better

? So I think it's about leaning in and learning from as many people as possible . So you are the best you can be and that's why I wrote the book you know , become a Supercell Souls consultant because I wanted to share everything that I'd learned in a very digestible form on an affordable basis . That you know , this is the A to Z of running a project .

These are things you need to know and you know , for people that follow me . They can obviously take away the knowledge I've got , but I'm one of , like many others in the community that are giving away knowledge and expertise .

So it's just about leaning in , learning from them , you know , and through those learning opportunities I mean certainly through people joining Supermums they've found job opportunities together and networked between each other . So it's a way of finding jobs .

It's a way of building new friendships and peers , because maybe it's a completely new industry and you don't know anybody . It means you can go to local events together . You know , it's just about lifting you up and making you know the more successful we are in our jobs , the happier we are . Right , and it's all about being happy at the end of the day .

We do all of this to find that happiness and to find that joy , and it is amazing that so many of these ecosystem find that joy myself included in giving back and finding outlets to help , whether it's someone who is struggling with a technical flow or Apex solution when it comes like development , architecture , or it's just help For me .

I find that I can help best if I'm giving back to the next generation , the people who were me 10 years ago when I first got my foot in the door .

And so , with that being said , the whole premise of Supermums and kind of your enjoyment about that company is the concept of mentorship and being able to have people come in , whether they are an employee or they're volunteering their time , and they are helping someone get started out . What do you think makes a good mentor in this ecosystem ?

There has to be that commitment and accountability for the mentor that they can make that commitment , they can understand the homework , they can report back on it . So that is part and parcel of a good mentor relationship .

I think mentoring programs and ecosystem have failed before because there hasn't been a formula of how a mentee and mentor works together , which has then sort of lost the momentum . There's no structure or anything like that . So we've always had a very structured program and some of our mentees were just doing mentor awards actually .

But some of our mentors have mentored 13 people over the years , which is phenomenal . So they're like our top winners at the moment in terms of the number of mentors . I suppose we call it a winner . They will win .

We don't know , can't obviously disclose who they are yet , but it's about giving time , it's about committing time to it , it's about understanding what they're trying to do . We also at Supermoms teach the mentors and how to be a mentor and also coaching skills , so we provide a whole toolkit on how to be a mentor .

So we require everybody to go through that content before they start mentoring , because it tells them how to form a relationship , how to set the foundations , how to communicate back and forth , particularly being mindful of different people's learning styles or maybe their emotional state .

And from the mentors that we've , the mentors I've spoken to they quite often change their style and their technique depending on the mentee that they're with right , because different people are very different in their learning style and what they're needing and whether they need more of a confidence boost or whether they're more technical , and so it is about being

amenable to that . But I think it's about having that opportunity where you learn how to be a great mentor and a coach and with that they can be skills you can take into your own job roles , going forward to help you get that promotion and things like that as well . So it's not just something that I think you should do , ablib , and it's a minimum effort .

Really , I think certainly if you want to do it well , you kind of have to put two feet into the ring and I've certainly been amazed . We've had over 160 people sign up to be a mentor over the time with us globally , and hats off to them . They've done an amazing job , meeting with our trainees one to two hours a week over six months .

I mean that's an incredible commitment and we're incredibly thankful for that support they bring in . But they come with their two feet in the ring because they want to give back and they feel like the proud parents . I feel like a proud parent to 1,300 people . They feel like a proud parent to their mentees and they've made friends . They go on holidays together .

They maintain their relationship , in many cases over six months . I love hearing all these stories . It's lovely . It's not just a task , it becomes part of your life really .

I'm loving the comment you made about their taking a holiday together and they're going on vacations and everything . That is too amazing and I love that you have created this in the ecosystem . I really really enjoy it . Shifting back to , though , kind of I want to talk a little bit about your book Becoming a Super Salesforce Consultant .

I have this podcast for admins of tomorrow . It's for the freelance consultant , but it's really for anyone who wants to be an admin , whether it's in-house or not . I'm curious your take this is the tagline for the book , which I find really fascinating is Supercharge your Career with this A to Z guide on how to lead a Salesforce project .

I love that because we say Salesforce Consultant , but it's really for anyone and everyone under the sun trying to implement something within Salesforce , whether it's in-house or not .

That being said , there are certain skills that you've highlighted earlier in the episode about being a consultant versus just an in-house admin , I'm curious what do you believe the skills that you get from this book , from consulting ? Where are some of the skills that you get from that that you think admins should pick up on and really really run with ?

Now the skills you need for that whole journey have to include not just how do I build Salesforce in a flow . They have to involve business analysis , agile project management and change management and DevOps as the four key hat trick skills which I talk about , which work quite nicely .

Abcd you couldn't really make that up if you tried , but then I was super impressed . I mean , the whole point is is we go into implement new processes for an organization , so we have to have a process about how we implement Salesforce and so sitting down and thinking about the A to Z .

I'm also equally proud that I did manage a chronological process from A to Z of implementing a Salesforce solution , and so the book flows in that way .

The book flows from looking at the core skills that you need and then looking at all the steps you would take , from inception through to adoption and roll out , and then appraising your how well did I do and what should I do next in my career and so I take people on that journey and I've had some absolutely amazing feedback from people reading the book .

I had some people who were my sort of test readers , if you like , and they ranged from a complete newbie in the ecosystem and they were like , oh , this is amazing because it just helps me understand everything that I'm going to need to do or learn .

You know , whether I do it now or in the future , I can understand , like the whole process to more experienced consultants who you know it was like a therapy session for them . I think I found it like quite therapeutic writing the book because you know it's not , as you mentioned earlier , it's not easy .

You know there are lots of things that can go wrong , and so on every section of the book , a to Z , I talk about the problems that could you could be faced in each of those areas and say this is what could go wrong and this is how to get it right . And that's how I start every single chapter , because it makes people aware of .

You know , if you just tell them this is how you do it , people don't always listen as to why , why should I do it this way , whereas if you explain , the consequences are what could go wrong ? Because many of us have probably experienced that because we didn't mind the gap or we didn't know . You know , it's not , it's not our fault .

We don't always know these things obviously in advance , because we go , oh , actually I could learn how to do that better . But you know , the reality is that we , you know people can mind the gap by reading the book and just being really you know , sort of go get that oversight early on . And so we have to . We have to practice what we preach .

We have to deliver a process to the client for delivering his elsewhere project , and this A to Z takes them on that journey .

What is that kind of reason for focusing on the consultant terminology as opposed to the admin , and what's that kind of benefit of thinking of things from that consultant mindset ?

There are four roles , the four hats that you need to wear , and there are four details you should be doing on a , you know , daily , weekly , monthly , quarterly basis . It's much more practically applied from you know how you manage a system .

Now , obviously , there's no overlap between the two because some of those , those four hats one of them is the BA project management hat , right , so there's no overlap between the two books , but with the sales force consultant one , I think those consultancy skills lend themselves to a whole range of different job roles .

You know you could be the sales force consultant , you could be the admin , you could be the product owner , you could be the executive sponsor and you will . You know there's so many different job roles but actually , at the end of the day , you are operating as a sales force consultant . A sales force admin operates as a sales force consultant .

They might not call themselves that , but that you know , principally they are if they're leading a project through that whole life cycle . So it that this current first book focuses more on those key consultancy skills , whereas the second book will focus more on the admin practicalities .

And then you , I believe , just had this book launched . I believe it was in November of 2023 . Is that correct ? So this book is fairly recent . You already have the next one lined up , ready to go planned out . You're getting it ready . What's the ?

Again ? Continuing to the thing we talked about earlier , you have this drive and passion to keep doing amazing things in the ecosystem . What was your passion to write these books ?

So I've been writing blogs for our website every single week and we distribute those through what we call the career boost bulletin , which it kind of you can sign up to on LinkedIn or via our website . And so we I write these blogs and share the content online and through the salesals community .

And what I realized is that you know I'd written all this content but once it's kind of gone out there for the week , as a blog people we certainly have some blogs that are optimized and get found through Google , but quite a few that might not get optimized .

And I've written all this content and I thought , well , actually that could all be turned into a book pretty easily . And so I sat down and in within three hours I had 30,000 words that could sit in the book . It was that easy .

So that I sort of took a lot of that content , you know , repurposed it and tweaked it , obviously have a very similar style for each chapter .

But we had a lot of the content and actually the additional content I didn't have was content that I could or should write anyway for the blog , and it was all in my training course , because I deliver the consultancy skills training course at Supermums , and so I pulled out some taster content from that .

Obviously , we don't give away the whole course in any stretch , but some of the content I had written is part of what I teach , so it's sharing some tasters of that .

And you know , it's been amazing actually having people who've read the book have now come on the consultancy skills course because they're like you know , if I've got this much from the book and imagine what I'm going to get from the course .

I had some amazing feedback from people all over the world about the book and now they're on my course , which is fantastic .

So I was just like , actually , we create all this content and it's really important to you know , not let it go to waste , and so by producing the book you know it's out there for people to buy it's in a much more consolidated format , it's obviously got a very clear structure to it and I think it's a much better way of presenting it and obviously giving

value back as part of it . And it's similar with the podcast . Really , I mean there was some podcast episodes of content that I pulled into the book and I have a plan .

I mean I've got two books to do , still one become a super sales force admin , and we've got , you know , a lot of content I can still pull into that , as well as more content to write , but also about becoming a super mum in its own right , which is more about the career and work-life balance piece , because we do talk about that as super mums as an

organisation , because I think it's really important that we don't get burnt out and there has been talk about burnout in the sales force ecosystem , because I think we have to blame ourselves , to be fair , because I think we have to manage our energy , our boundaries . We have to know where to say no .

We have to know , you know , that we're skilled enough to do the job . I think we have to take responsibility , and I did get burnt out on my sales force journey and that's because I wasn't managing my own stuff . And so I talk about the ambitious women mindset .

We've had quite a few blogs and podcasts about the ambitious women mindset and about managing work-life balance and how you do that . So I also want to do a book around that as well , to just kind of help . I mean it will be called Become a Super Mum , I imagine , because it will fit with the theme . But there's something to that degree .

But it's about managing those elements . So they're the things that I love to talk about , and it's just we can repurpose it and then I speak about it as well , right , so I speak about it on other podcasts and user groups and so different audiences . So you know it is what I enjoy doing .

I just had Kate Godley come onto the podcast and kind of talk about her journey going through the ecosystem , dealing with burnout , dealing with anxiety , dealing with all the stresses that come with being in the ecosystem , regardless of where you are at in your journey . So I definitely think more and more content in that realm is hugely needed in this ecosystem .

It can feel really overwhelming to people , and I think it's really important to find your lane and to kind of focus in on your niche and to just to feel confident in your goals and what you're doing and then you're able to not feel pressure or nervousness about what other people are doing , but to be able to celebrate them , but to know your journey and , to

be fair , it's one of the reasons why a lot of people join our course because they get that parallel , parallel , parallelist , as I say that word at Trailhead . They get overwhelmed , they don't know where to start , they go down rabbit holes and they're not feeling like they're producing stuff .

So they come on the superman's courses because they've got structure and accountability in that peer group .

And I think that's what people are finding is that they need to find that sort of structure for themselves and that support network and to have one path to look down , because otherwise it can be overwhelming , and so I think there's a real risk of that and it is . And also you know you're finding .

Going back to the admin job , you know people are then adding business analysis into it , they're adding devops into it and you know these different products and people are expecting , I think , far too much for just an admin salary .

Now they have to appreciate that there's these additional skills and that's a different additional salary , but equally might be more than one person too . So you know there is a role educating end customers and people who are hiring talent to make sure that they're just not expecting too much from somebody and , you know , making sure they've got a blended team .

So really , really valuable topic .

It's less about telling them , hey , we need to hire someone else , and then they'll come to you and say , shove off , you're silly , I don't got the budget for that , but it's being able to truly sell and say this is why . Because I am an admin , this is the role of an admin , this is why I should be doing .

If you need me to do more , look at increasing my salary or we hire a second person on , because that's not realistic for me . In this admin bucket , my knowledge set to be doing things that are two other career paths . So we're nearing the end of our time .

I can't express how appreciative I am of you coming on to the show and kind of telling us your journey and telling us about super moms in your book .

The last question I end the show with for all my guests is something that I find very , very helpful for that next generation of admin again taking it back to the premise of the show , I always ask people what is , what was your biggest regret when you were first getting started , that you wish you could go back and change , and hopefully that's a piece that

maybe another admin can go and say oh , I'm in that situation right now . Maybe I'll pivot and not go into the same things .

I think my , in some ways , growing a Salesforce consultancy made me step away from the thing that I loved , which was actually doing the implementation for clients , because growing a consultancy meant that I had to step back from delivery and manage a business and do marketing and sales . And you know I have worn , you know I can do those hats .

But it made me almost step away from developing my Salesforce sort of hands-on skills . I mean , don't get me wrong , you know I was overseeing projects and being hands-on and I did a lot of hands-on projects . I did over a hundred of my own projects and then I sort of took a more senior role .

But you know , I think people , if you're growing , if you end up growing a consultancy because I know people say to me oh , you know , I want to grow real life that's probably going to be , you know , the stock of your Salesforce expertise because you're going to have to step into running a business mode and you know I love , you know I'm running a business now

, but it's really important to me that I have the trainer side , like I absolutely love delivering training still and delivering content and being able to have that interaction with , like , the audience , the customers directly , because I'd lose , like part of you know , my soul if I didn't have that , if I was just running a business .

So I think it's just been really mindful that you know if you love doing the Salesforce work and actually implementing that , stick in that lane . You know , if you want to grow a business and step back from doing the technical stuff and move into , sort of you know , managing teams and doing sales and alliances with Salesforce , then grow a consultancy .

I think you know I say I went through that journey but if I could take it back I probably would have missed out that bit and just continue to deliver my consult , you know , deliver projects myself and then develop the training arm if I was to reel it back a little bit . But you know I learned so much on the journey too .

But then you also have to remember you're marketing yourself , you're marketing your business , and you have to , you have to grow , you can't just let it stagnate . So I mean , it's not necessarily a regret , but it is a good call out for people trying to get into the freelance and or start their own business space .

So Well , thank you again for taking the time out of your your day to your day and evening to come and be on the podcast . For anyone interested in getting Heather's book is available on Amazon again . It's become a super sales force consultant .

It's reached the number one slot in eight different categories across the US , uk and Canada and Australia , and it's number 10 in India . So definitely get yourself a copy while it's still on the virtual shelves and be on the lookout for the new book becoming a super sales force admin whenever that's available , and also check out the podcast Mums on Cloud 9 .

It has a lot of great episodes . There's , I believe , five seasons of it available on Apple podcasts and Spotify , so definitely give it a good listen . Heather's , or anything you want to call out before we jump off .

Even though we do , we always have a little competition around how many web hits we get from the USA versus Amir , because it's actually 40 40% split , so we're definitely a global brand . So if you listen to us on the website , the USA may win the competition for the week .

If anyone has any interest in learning more about Supermums or Heather's story , you can find more information at supermumsorg . Remember that is supermumsmumsorg . If you'd like to purchase the book become a super sales force consultant , you can find it on amazoncom or on the Supermums website . Thank you again for taking the time to listen and support the podcast

. If you have any feedback , questions or topic suggestions , we absolutely would love to hear you . So don't hesitate to connect with us on LinkedIn , twitter or email us at info at adminsoftomorrowcom .

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