Automation Revolution: Powering Efficiency with AI

Learning from other people's experiences is ultimately how I've had the opportunity to grow as much as I have in my career . But taking the time to focus on the technical has been just as important . I know I've said it on the show before and I'll probably say it again , but there are so many resources around the technical .

I don't always like taking this time to have an episode just dedicated to the technical , but what I really like to highlight in these situations are the gotchas . What's going to trip you up ? What should new admins be on the lookout for when they are starting to use these solutions ?

From there , you can go on blogs and you can find how to YouTube videos to really learn the more technical , but the gotchas , to me , are so important and key . So that's why , on this week's episode , we're going to dive into the topic we've tiptoed around for a while AI and how we can use it to automate our work and be more efficient .

Like I've said , it's my passion to tell stories that help people grow and develop . So today we have the pleasure of sitting down with two admins who have truly earned their place in becoming marketing champions .

We get to sit down with Christina Anderson and Steven Stover and hear about their journeys in the ecosystem , but also talk through how they use AI in their day to day , whether it's predictive or generative AI . I'm excited to learn how we can use AI together and help new admins succeed in their jobs and ultimately become more efficient .

So , without further ado , let's meet Christina and Steven . Christina is the marketing strategist at Cercante .

As a certified part-out consultant , salesforce marketing champion , trailblazer , community leader and former host of the part-out life hacks podcast , she enjoys sharing valuable content with the rest of the ecosystem to help others advance in their careers and achieve their goals on the Salesforce platform .

Steven is the VP of digital transformation and innovation at Cessend , leading a team of marketing operations experts to help go to market teams scale their revenue operations From the humble beginnings of accidental admin to SaaS leadership .

Steven has spent his career harnessing the power of marketing automation , ai and Salesforce , trying to make sense of a data-driven world . So let's not waste any more time . Dive in . So thank you both for taking the time out of your busy days to join me for the admins of tomorrow podcast .

I'm really , really excited to talk through today , really just shining a light on your journeys in the ecosystem , but also talking a little bit around a topic we've all been hearing a lot about at Salesforce events and in all the fun blogs you see in the ecosystem about AI .

So AI analytics and how we've seen that Salesforce has had predictive AI and Einstein insights for a long , long time now in the ecosystem , but we're now seeing a deeper rise on the generative usage of AI and some even more advanced predictive insights , insights that are connecting with all sorts of other systems .

So this is really beneficial for the marketer , but it's also beneficial , I believe , for the new admin . So I would love to dive on in , dive in headfirst , as I say , and kind of start off with each of y'all's journeys and how you got involved in the ecosystem .

So , christina , I'd like to start with you , kind of talking through what got you started working with Salesforce and kind of what was your passion to keep diving forward and driving deeper and deeper into the ecosystem .

Way back I was a middle school Spanish teacher , did that for a couple of years that's actually what my original college degree is in and I just felt that it wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and , as a result , a couple of years in , I made the decision and I just said okay , I am going to resign and I'm going to go into business .

So at that point I was really thinking about how could I make these organizations senior something more than a teacher ?

So then I thought I started thinking about all the administrative and office and management skills that I had available to me and I actually started applying for all these different executive , assistant and office manager positions as a result , because if you can manage a classroom of like 24 seventh graders that don't necessarily want to be in your class , you can

manage an office , believe it or not . So doing that , I actually landed an executive assistant position at a tech startup in downtown Buffalo and was there for about a year and the company actually closed and shut down . And at that point my partner who's now my husband he had a position available for his job out in the New England , new Hampshire area .

So I started applying to positions out there and I actually landed an executive assistant position to the founder and chief marketing officer at what many of you formerly knew as Cheshire Impact . And I started working for KC Cheshire and I got to give him a shout out because that's actually where my entrance into the Salesforce Seeker system all started .

So for those of you , some of you may know they were a Salesforce part of focus consulting agency , and so at that time I knew nothing about Salesforce , nothing about Farda , knew very little , like I had , you know , some knowledge of marketing , but not to where I am today .

And KC he took me under his wing as and was my mentor , and then also Jennifer Lynch Schneider she was on that team as well .

She took me right under her wing is , yeah , under her wing as well , and so then I was helping out being assistant to the chief marketing officer , helping out with different marketing activities , just started direct like writing for them on social , started it , and then I got trained in creating part emails and then started handling all of their webinar communication

for all their different events . They were doing like a webinar a month and then we did wait even more than that at the time . So I started learning all this and then I started just getting a real passion for it . He at the time was doing the hardcore marketing show podcast .

I then started helping out with producing those episodes , listening to all of those CMOs talk strategy . I started reading all these marketing books and then I started just diving into trailhead and then I got my part of part of that special certification and eventually also got my part of consultant certification . But that and then there's even more than that .

There was a podcast , but I'll stop there and and you hand it back over to you or we can dive into Steven's background . But yeah , that's that's how I got to start .

But I do find it interesting that your journey was accidental , but then it just was . It was all around the marketing strategy . This was meant to be just something that was not as Salesforce focused .

I've talked to a handful of people who you have the accidental admin where they just kind of their company bought Salesforce and they lucked into it and then the other people who actually learned about Salesforce went through trailhead , did the training and then found their first admin , architect , developer job .

So I find it interesting that this was more marketing focused . And then you found that marketing arm of Salesforce and just latched on for dear life Because , honestly , that's very similar to my story . So I really enjoy hearing that that I'm not the only one .

Steven , kind of curious if you're in a similar boat as Christina and me of being a marketer and kind of latching into that , or if you were already in a different kind of neck of the woods .

So I was actually a front end developer . I was a web developer , so I did like e commerce stuff way back in the day . I , you know , I I'm like right out of high school , by the way , so it's like I worked at best by during high school , if you can imagine .

I grew up in Michigan , so this was like a big move for me and it was an internship in the marketing department , but it was a data analyst position . It was nothing to do with the marketing side of marketing it was .

It was all the numbers , spreadsheets and I was reporting on email marketing , so that the metrics of open rates , click the rates , campaign performance etc . And I was like I'm going to do that for part on sales force . So that's how I kind of was introduced to it .

But I actually was not on the administrator side , I was just the numbers guy and I was the intern numbers guys , so like like three people removed from actually doing anything meaningful in the .

So it was an 18 month internship and my manager at the time , who owned part up , ended up leaving the company and they kind of did an audit of who was there at the university at the time and they're like well , all right , steven , you're the next best person who knows Pardot .

And I'm like no , no , no , no , I'm the numbers guy , like I'm not an administrator . So , like , in pure accidental admin fashion , of course , they give it to the three month in intern to be a full-blown administrator of Pardot . And I went kicking and screaming . I wanted nothing to do with it .

But the rest is history , because I , of course , I became the administrator . I just fell in love with Pardot , fell in love with Salesforce . I worked in a few different .

I won't walk you through all the companies I worked for , but I also worked with Chesh a different time than Christina did , but I went through Chesh , which was the first agency I actually worked at . That's where I learned Marketo in addition to a little bit of HubSpot , and then I also applied my Pardot knowledge at the time .

But yeah , I've worked for universities , nonprofits , financial systems . I worked at Credit Union for a little bit startups all the way up to like a multi-billion dollar orgs . I worked at Yellow Pages for about three years and then now I'm at Syscent , which is a revenue operations agency , so similar to Chesh .

Chesh was a little bit more focused just on marketing automation . Syscent were like kind of full RevOps . So we support , you know , in the CRM side , integrations , data services , marketing automation , of course . So I lead the team of RevOps folks at Syscent here and we do integrations and all things RevOps .

We are the people who make sure there's clean data , things are organized .

Yes , there is the stereotypical admin of you're making sure the right users are in the system and the right permissions are given and take it away , but at the same time , like I am the numbers person , I always think analytics and the clean data are so paramount in making sure everything's organized , regardless of what system you're in .

I used to be a HubSpot super user and what clean data in HubSpot does the same thing as clean data in Salesforce . Like you need good , organized information in your system .

But the minute that you need to do a lot I like custom CSS or JavaScript work you typically have to tap another person , which is totally fine because experts in different areas . But it allowed me to kind of be that Swiss Army knife . So when I worked at the startup , like there wasn't a person to tap , it's like I had to figure it out .

So not only was I building the emails and landing pages , I was doing the HTML on the email side , I had to do it in tables . On the website side , I was doing it in divs and doing bootstraps .

So , yeah , being a numbers person and being a little bit more on the technical side , specifically within front end development , I think is invaluable when it comes to , you know , building marketing automation programs that scale nicely .

How do you believe current state AI , Einstein is crucial for the scalable growth of a company ? And then , on the other side of kind of the future of AI , what we're gonna be seeing going forward with some of the more advanced Einstein features , what we're gonna be able to see with integrations into data cloud .

I'm curious for new admins what would be some of the main things they should be on the lookout for . So I'd like to start with Steven on that one .

So like if you're just trying to do some ideation or content generation , like I can't tell you as a marketer myself , like how often I just look at a blank page on my screen and I'm just like I kind of know where I wanna go , but like I don't even know where to get started .

So , having something like AI to create that first draft or you can just type in some ideas for subject lines or body of content , or even now image generation within Salesforce , where you're like I have a rough idea of what I want but like I don't know how to get started , I look at AI and marketing GPT as like the launch point of an idea that you can

then polish and kind of make a little bit more professional or tweak it towards your tone of voice or whatever your branding is . So like I'll like open up a screen be it marketing GPT , or open AI or chat GPT or bar or whatever it is and just start typing like this is what I wanna do .

Write me an email that's 150 words where you're writing in this tone of voice for this company , for X , y , z products . Here's a few product ideas and like this is what I want my CTA to be . And then , before you know it , boom , there's an email , and it's probably not like the best email out of the gate , but it's a starting point , right it's .

You're no noun , you're no longer looking at a blank screen and you can ping pong it against a few people internally and , like now the ideas are flowing and you've made a thing from pretty much nothing . So how I think about it ?

It's like the best 24 , seven in turn to create a first draft for anything , be it subject line , contents , ideation , literally just coming up with ideas , or full blown nurture programs . And Salesforce is integrated and , of course , within data cloud .

So you've got even segmentation now as a way to like have AI powered segmentation and recommendation of who should receive what , not to mention being able to do like exhaust tracking , so like if someone's had too much communication or not enough communication to be able to kind of keep up with that . It's just invaluable .

key account identification that you'll get in Einstein to just use that as variable tags or helping with your dynamic lists . So I like how you focus a little bit more on the chat or they're sorry , not chat marketing GPT side of things , just because the data's already there and it's providing those insights you don't have to have .

I mean , it's good to make sure your database is clean , but you don't need to rely so heavily on a clean database to get that content generated . It's there , it's your helper day one . So I really like that kind of focus . Christina , I'm kind of curious for your perspective . Similar question what do you think marketers should be thinking about ?

What do you think new admins should be thinking about when it comes to getting started with AI in the ecosystem ?

Salesforce is coming out with some amazing innovations , as Stephen had already just mentioned , but even in that marketer , the admin role , thinking about even , like , what other AI tools are already out there , because AI is getting integrated into almost every piece of software it feels like we're using , like if you use Canva , if you pull that up , that has AI in

it . If you're using I don't even know if Asana has it in it or not , but it very well might Just Google Calendar and Grammarly and Lavender , like . I know that they're a sales help or sales email writing tool , but basically , like , ai is here , it's never going away . It's just going to be an integral part of how we do it .

We do and the people that get their start by . If they haven't already started , I recommend that you start even just playing around with it , diving in , because what's going to set you apart is how efficient you're able to be , and AI allows you to be more efficient with your time , as Stephen said , like it helps him get started with generating content .

It like just getting those ideas out . That is just one example of a way that AI can help assist you . But if you look to see , okay , like what are the daily processes that I'm doing ?

And then just start searching what tools are out there , what tools does Salesforce have from an AI perspective that I can start using to help me be more efficient in my job , so then that way I can focus more on higher impact initiatives .

And when you are more efficient in those daily tasks , that also frees you up to be more creative and think of different ways that you can better engage your customers or just innovate a new product Like it just opens up so many more possibilities for you .

There's so many times now where I'm just talking with other marketers and if you look at someone's site and you're thinking , wow , I can clearly tell that chatGPT wrote this . That is not the experience that you want to give to your users , to your audience , to the people that are reading . So again , generative AI is great , but it's not a replacement for that .

Writer .

I was talking with someone just last week and they were saying , yeah , we have budget to hire a new copywriter , but we opted just to go with chatGPT instead to save some money , because we really need to say yeah , that's exactly what I said , stephen . That's an oof moment .

You could be like , hey , is 1 plus 1 2 ? And it'll say , yeah , it's 2 . And then you could say no , I don't think it is , I think it's 3 . And then be like , oh , I'm sorry , you're right , it is 3 . So , like , the amount of how easy it is to trick AI is not very difficult . So , yeah , you need to fact check it .

And then I would almost say the context behind your prompt is almost more important than the prompt itself .

Right , so you can say , hey , write me an email that hits on this product , this product and this product , but unless you give it the context of the tone of voice , who you are , what the company is , what the products and services that you offer , before you ask it to write the email , you're going to have a really bad email and you're going to be able to

look at it and tell immediately that it's AI .

It just reminded me of that presentation and how you almost have to think of your prompt as like the formula that you're giving to the AI tool for it to then spew out that answer for you . Okay , so the better you are at writing that prompt , the more high quality of a response you're going to get . But then to Steven's point .

Yes , fact checked , fact check .

So I have had to like look into getting some assistance from from friends who are copywriters , but also like getting started with chat , gpt and using the session to kind of put things in perspective of oh , it can easily churn out one plus one equals , and I think I would . I'm with you 1000% , both of you , on that .

You , you do have to be cognizant and you can't rely on chat , gpt , marketing , gpt to replace your copywriter . You can't copy and paste it to that end . Kind of pivoting a little bit on the similar topic , knowing that AI can do so and we do need that human element . This is more for Steven . What do you think ?

Some say governance , but kind of what standard should be put in place for kind of teams looking to implement AI to make sure they are following proper best practice internal rules from , like a data management side ? But also when you're using this AI , you are making sure what you're putting out is accurate .

So I'm curious your take on kind of governance and standardization on that front .

That's a good question , and I think that this is being defined like right now , not only in every organization , but even within like our governments , like our governments right now are assigning like I think it's like chief of a , like AI or AI , or like I think the UK was one of the first to actually appoint a minister of AI , so like this is all being

defined right now . So I think , at its at its core , like , if you have a dedicated DPO , a data processing officer within your organization , go talk to them . If you don't , don't listen to me , or if you listen to me , go talk to them . Yeah , first , let you know , get your direction from internal . But I think there's a few things to consider .

One where your base determines regulations . So like , if you're in the EU , you got GDPR , so you should not be feeding any sort of PII type data into artificial intelligence . And what I mean by that is , if you're having it process data or you're having to augment your data or correct data , be very mindful with the type of data you're giving it . Right .

If you're going to give it email addresses and you're asking AI to validate an email address , that that might raise a concern . But if you're feeding it something like state information or zip code information or country information , that might be okay .

Just be careful not to send it like IP addresses and first name , last name email addresses , so that would be like thing . Number one is just be mindful of where you are . If you're in the UK , of course GDPR .

If you're in Canada , you've got Castle and of course here we've got can spam , which basically is you can do whatever you want in comparison to GDPR .

So duplicate contacts , duplicate accounts , like it's like getting back to the basics , like you can't use this . You shouldn't even be thinking about using AI If you've got a data problem and you have a data integrity problem within your , your database . So I would I would definitely say , audit that .

You should , you should already be auditing it , probably on a quarterly or at least a semi annual basis , making sure that your contact database is clean and everything is related the way that you want it to be .

Otherwise , getting utility out of AI is going to be a little bit of a nightmare when you plug something like advanced , like Einstein analytics or you know those . Those dashboards aren't going to mean much if things aren't connected properly .

Oh hey , I'm an admin , we have a team of 500 and we have about a little under a million records in our database and things aren't clean . Oh , I'm just a standard admin but I'm also having to be the person to clean all this data and I'm a solo adminning a huge org with a lot of data and things aren't clean .

How many people should be on my team to clean this up ? What should I be thinking about ? Can I do this alone ? So I kind of want I had an answer for that question , but I want to pivot that back to both of you on this one kind of what is your take about we again we talked about earlier the admin role has been seen in the ecosystem

. As you are admin , you are owner of all things Salesforce . How should a solo admin take on database cleanup and installing admin and kind of being that data management cleanup person ?

Because this is what happens the admin goes to their manager and they're like hey , I want to spend a week cleaning it up , some of the database , like you know , some data that's messy . Their manager says no , there's no , like you can't dedicate a full week just to do data stuff . You know , work on this instead .

And then that admin goes like , oh , okay , with their tail between their legs and they focus on other stuff and it gets punted down . You know , the can keeps getting kicked and then at some point you grow in in the organization to the point where it becomes such a big problem . And then all of leadership is like well , wait a minute .

Like we can't do forecasting for pipeline because there's six opportunities and they're all closed one and they all have the same value and it's skewing a really like like what the heck ?

So I think that we got to be very clear on what the issues are and then really communicate the impact right , instead of just going to your manager and saying , hey , I want to clean up data . It's like hey , there's this problem , it's impacting this , this and this , which is going to cause this problem down the road .

I want to mitigate this before it becomes a real issue . Let me just dedicate seven days to clean this up and then we don't have to worry about it later . Then your manager can make a little bit more of an educated like . Oh , okay , like I understand that . Like go ahead and go clean that up .

So we just got to start communicating this , I think differently across the organization and then for bigger organizations you know there's other admins involved like you need to all get in a room and agree that there's a problem and then like fix it together .

You know , if one source of data is causing the headache , it's probably being shared with three other systems . So making sure those other you know those other system administrators are also on board .

But yeah , if you're a lone wolf , like try to at least once a quarter or maybe like twice annually , review the data and kind of go through that exercise and try to clean things up .

For one admin , that equates to 500 users and X number of records in the system , and there needs to be some sort of formulaic way of knowing that if you're going to be sane and have work life balance and make sure you aren't so burnt out that you just hate your life , then you have to automate things but also put things in a way so that you can manage

that formula . It's going to be different for every company , but it's not realistic , and I'd like your point of you have to be able to communicate that , though , to leadership , that it's not realistic , because a lot of times , people are going to come back and say that's your problem , not mine , and that's just the unfortunate reality .

I think that any hallmark of like , a really good system administrator is a very curious person , and what I mean by that is , let's say , you spend an hour a week fixing a state value because you state codes internally , right , but then this like full Texas TEX yes , like pops up , right , but you use TX for your routing role and you spend an hour a week

fixing that value . You could continue to spend an hour fixing that value every single week . Or if you were curious enough , you'd be like now wait a minute , where are these records coming from ? And then fix it at the source .

So I think do yourself a favor and follow things downstream or I guess it would be upstream and correct it there , versus continually spending time doing manual work .

Like if you're auditing your week and you're spending five plus hours doing manual things , I think it's worth noting those , documenting them , and then , like Kristine mentioned earlier , finding ways to be more efficient with your time .

And if that includes AI , great , or maybe it's using up works or hiring an intern or hiring another person , like what you would recommend , but like unless you really truly know where those issues are and what's causing problems ? Like you can't fix them .

So we have all this wonderful data , we're automating it , we're letting AI help us out , but then we actually are putting that into numbers , putting that into things that are measurable .

Turning it to you , kristina , kind of thinking through the analytics side and how for marketers , for admins , what are some of the main challenges you think people are facing , we're going to be facing , when it comes to taking this information , analyzing it and then putting that into actionable process , actionable uses for teams to grow and be successful ?

How fast are people going through the funnel based on the campaigns that they're heading ? Those are the underlying questions that should essentially guide you in setting up your analytics in your reports in a way that you can understand and try and glean insights from . So then that way , you know okay , where should I be spending my money ?

Is , if we are a little slow on our forecast , like if we're behind on our forecast , is there a campaign , a type of campaign that we can spin up quickly that we could get the most bang for our buck , because we know that when people interact with this type of campaign , they're more likely to become a closed one customer or opportunity within a month .

So that's probably what I would say

as well . I know that not everyone is as knowledgeable about the analytics tools that are out there , like marketing cloud intelligence , crm analytics . I understand that it does take a little bit , but I don't know If you need to go to a workshop . There are training tools available and courses available out there .

If you are working with a third party expert partner , bring the questions and the reporting goals that you have to them , so then that way , they can help collaborate with you in terms of building out a reporting process in a system that is standardized across your team . So then that way , you can all get what you need .

Ai aside or not , those are the fundamentals that are going to help you get the best insight from your data .

When we look at AI and all the reports that are coming from AI and all the analytics you're going to get from AI , I worry and think to your point that people are getting kind of overwhelmed and they're not remembering what are the actual things I need to measure to be successful .

What data does my business need for me to know if things are good , bad or we need to review and work on some things ? So I like how you over viewed that and you dove through the kind of we have to get back to the fundamentals and we have to remember what the end goal is and how all of this relates back to a KPI .

On the similar end , of how the AI and how the data points feed into your reporting analytics . Same thing for integrations and other systems that can plug into Salesforce , whether they're AI related or not . You made a call out earlier in the episode , which I liked , of you don't have to use . There's so many AI tools out there .

Whether it's Canva , which I've used personally , photoshop has AI functionality . They have all these softwares and things that you can integrate AI with . I'm curious your take on what should add new admins and marketers keep in mind when bringing those systems into Salesforce and trying to bring them in to your strategy .

Bring them into your reporting and analytics and combine that all together .

But one thing that I would think about , too , is like so , if you're bringing it into your overall marketing processes , first of all , just be careful how you're integrating it to Steven's point , just like that trust that you have with your data , making sure that you're not sharing confidential information .

And then also , too , if you are using generative AI for any type of content generation . I mean , I have also already seen marketing teams start to actually call out when they use it and why they're using it . Yeah , for example , I subscribed to this newsletter called the Schim .

They were doing this whole wrapped overview of 2023 and how AI was just so present and everyone's conversations , it was everywhere and they actually just said , okay , we're going to do . We asked AI to create this summary paragraph of its journey and its presence in 2023 .

And it was hilarious because then they wrote their own version of the paragraph and showed the difference . And , stephen , I actually think you had this idea before when we were back at the send , and correct me if I butchered this idea , but I think you said what if we had generative AI ?

create this email campaign and then we had a human , create the other email campaign and then you ate and then you test them to see which one performed better and then you share those results because it'll show the difference between the two , what the discrepancy is where .

But that was a very fun way , or fun idea , to be able to engage the community about , like how we're using generative AI and content and what you should be careful of , and like what is the difference between like the human and the AI .

So those are some things to be thinking about too , that if you are going to use it in your marketing at all , like actually thinking about when it might be right to actually to like full out , blown , call it out and and think about how that could add to the experience .

So like if you say , write me an email that's going to get me the maximum number of opens , you might get a subject line that is very different than what you probably would think is the right subject line . So I think you need to kind of put everything through the lens of AI .

Isn't like the silver bullet to get you high opens or clicks or you know whatever it is . You have to make sure you give it like the right tone of voice and like you actually have a document and your business for what your tone of voice within your organization is to feed to AI , to give it the context it needs .

You can't just unleash AI to an intern and have them start generating emails because , to Christina's point , you're going to be able to tell it's written by AI , because it's going to be just so generic and robotic sounding . That's a good call up .

The focus again of this podcast is all about the admins of tomorrow , and so I always like to end on this question because it's a nice little way of trying to highlight something that future admin can learn from and not make some of the same mistakes we did went through . So I'll start with Christina and Steven .

You be thinking about your question , but it's what would be your one main regret you had when you were first getting started in the ecosystem that you wish you could go back and change .

But one thing that and I still haven't done it yet , but I'm hoping to possibly do it this year is one thing I wish I would have probably done sooner is speak at a community conference or or even just a user group , because I got involved early in podcasting and then doing a virtual user group .

When COVID hit and started up the , it was back in that day , it was a part of life X user group .

But I always felt that , especially because I was the marketer like before getting to Sir Conte , before that , I was the marketer that was at the consulting agency Right , and the consultants , they are technology experts and they like sleep and read this stuff all the time .

So because of that and to your point about imposter syndrome , jacob I always felt that I was always second guessing Any time . I felt like I was answering a question in the community .

Or like providing a solution and saying but like , oh , like so and so might have a better answer , because they've been in hundreds of thousands of orgs and they have dealt with companies of all different shapes and sizes .

So to that I would say that get involved in your local community conferences , like if you and find something that you're passionate speaking about , the passion has got to be there , because when you're passionate , it will show , you'll get excited .

You'll naturally get excited about what you're speaking about , and then your audience is going to be that much more engaged . And you never know who in the audience is going to learn something for the first time from you or just even sharing your perspective . No one has had the exact same experiences as you .

So , like in my firm believe that everyone has something to learn from everyone . So , yes , if I could go back to my former self , younger Christina , starting out right out of Fishtail , the single source ecosystem , I wish I probably would have taken an opportunity or had like submitted to speak , but hopefully I might do that this year . We'll see .

So going to a user group event , going and writing a blog , going to a conference and just kind of putting it out there and it's for . I love your reasoning .

No one has had the exact same life experience as the one you have had and you have insights , you have stories to share that can help other people and know to our like , and just being willing to give that back to the ecosystem is so important . So I love that call out and I hope future admins take something away from that . Steven , your turn .

But in more serious , I think , permission to make mistakes you know I joke about that one email is probably my biggest mistake I've ever made in my kind of email . We've kind of all sent that email by accident . That was mine right .

So , like permission to make mistakes , I kind of joke 50% of what I know is from me failing at something and then the other 50% is someone else failed on my behalf and I learned from them . So not being so hard on yourself when you kind of hit up against the wall .

And then also a lot of what I learned was because I said yes when I wanted to say no . Someone asked me to do something I was super uncomfortable with . They asked me to build an integration and I had no idea how to do it in Zapier , right .

But I said yes , I figured it out , I learned Zapier and then , sure enough turns out , I got a thing for integrations and that really took my career in a different path , a single zap . You know , five , six , seven years ago . So , yeah , like , get comfortable being uncomfortable .

Say yes when you want to say no and don't give yourself such a hard time when you make mistakes , because that's how you learn .

So like , if you have an opportunity to work at an agency , you will experience like hyper growth , Like it's a catalyst for skill use cases , seeing different organizations and how they're structured . So if I was just starting out , I would actually go back to Steven and also say , like you know , take that opportunity to work at an agency . Luckily I did .

I worked at Chesh but like every person who I consider just a master at what they do maybe not all of them , but almost all of them at one point or currently work has worked at an agency .

So you get to see so much stuff and you get to work in so many different tools that you wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to have if you worked at a single company . So I would also slip that in there .

do a lot of different things and you also get to be a part of starting a lot of first time processes and or even just implementing new orgs and setting up new integrations Like that as an admin and getting your processes down .

At that state too , if you can't , if you haven't been able to get into an agency yet , that is another good way to really start to develop your craft .

So again , thank you both so very much for being a part of the podcast . I really appreciated y'all's journey , y'all's insights for the new admin , as well as your take on AI and how things are going to be shaping up for the better in the ecosystem with it .

But also we have to be prepared for all the hassle that comes with managing good , clean data and being on the lookout for junk data we may get thrown in front of us . So thank you both again so much . I appreciate your time and hopefully we'll be chatting more in the near future .

When I'm just looking at a blank word doc and nothing's coming out , just like Steven explained in the show , we just have to remind ourselves that what's generated shouldn't be copy and pasted directly on to our blog , on to our email , and I really appreciate that reminder to use AI as a starting point and not for the entire piece .

So if anyone's interested , you can connect or follow both Christina or Steven on LinkedIn to find their most recent blog posts and content in the ecosystem . Thank you again for taking the time to listen and support our podcast .

If anyone has any feedback , questions or topic suggestions , we would love to hear from you . So please don't hesitate to connect with us on LinkedIn , twitter or email us at infoadminsoftomorrowcom .

Also , if you or someone you know would like to be on the podcast or would like to give a shout out , please go to our website , adminsoftomorrowcom forward slash , share your thoughts and fill out our form to be on the show or give someone a shout out . Now .

I say this every week , but it really does mean the world to me that we've had so much support and so much engagement over the last two months .

We appreciate you for listening to admins of tomorrow , trailblazing the next generation .