Frugal Side Hustle: Salesforce with Brad Rice

I had heard the term before. I've heard people talk about it, so I can't say I've never heard of them. It was not what I thought. I couldn't have explained it to you now that I know what I know, I didn't know. Yeah, So if you have a preconceived notion about the term salesforce, or you're like, I don't do sales, I don't do tech, please give this episode a chance, because I actually learned something. I mean, I

learned a lot that I didn't know. And I've actually used salesforce when I worked for a nonprofit, so like I've known about it since two thousand nine, and I learned more about it today, and I think it's just this hdde gem of a side hustle, especially if you are looking to get out of your current full time employment. This is one that can really take you there quickly.

If we're looking we're if we're looking at timeliness, this is one of those that's going to take you where you want to go quickly, and you want to know what Another hidden gem is our Dead Free Stories season one on YouTube. It's not a sing along or a musical, but I did make it that just now you asked,

we're delivering. We've got ten interviews with listeners just like you who have paid off debt and are not only here to celebrate, but to share their story in the hopes of inspiring you on your own debt free journey. Our third story went live yesterday on YouTube dot com slash Frugal Friends, so binge them all and then you can subscribe to the channel, turn on those notifications, and you'll be the first to know when the next seven go live. This is such a fun endeavor that we

are doing. It highlights you all, our listeners. You get to see our faces. I don't know if that's a treat or not. But Debt Free Story Season one on YouTube. I'm so excited. This is a project we have been working on for a very long time. It's not like a TV show, but we like to make it seem like one by saying season one because yeah, because it's fun and it's it's just something we've wanted to share more debt free stories with you. You ask for them

all the time. You ask for more than we can deliver on the podcast, and so we just created a new outlet for you to binge debt free stories so that you can be inspired and also when it's your turn to share a debt free story, you can celebrate. So it's a twofold that it's just so exciting. We hope that you will, you will watch, listen, share, etcetera, etcetera. Yes, alright, So if you've been following along with our Frugal Side Hustle series, we've had a few of these so far.

We've got episode to fifty seven where we're talking about how to get into freelance writing with Miranda Marquet, and then we also have episode two forty two where we talk about how to get into selling digital products online with l ed Up. So those are really good. Our goal with the Frugal Side Hustle series is to present side hustles that a actually are profitable. They're not things that you are you know, we're not talking about side

hustle apps and things. These are profitable, they are worth your time, but they're also not super expensive to get started with. Yes, you can buy programs online that help you get started faster and more efficiently. We highly recommend those, and we're not going to talk about one that has a program that we wouldn't recommend, because there are some you can spend two to five thousand plus dollars in some of these programs. We those are not the programs

we will be recommending. And we don't specifically recommend products, but we do in general don't think that they're a bad idea. But we're always going to make sure that we recommend things that it's not a requirement, there's no gate keeping behind a paywall to get into these things, because that's usually an indicator of some kind of scam, and and we're not here for frugal scams. We're here

for frugal side hustles. And Salesforce is one of these things that you would think would be gate kept by expensive programs, but it is absolutely not, and there's no one better to talk about it then my friend Bradley Rice. We have been friends for a number of years, and I've just watched all of his success with Salesforce and helping people, specifically helping people get started in Salesforce career. So he's worked in the Salesforce ecosystem for like over

ten years. He has become one of their highest paid sales Force professionals, and now he helps others get their careers started faster and more effectively. He has a Salesforce Career development program which helps people land tech jobs with no tech background, no college degree. Uh. And when you hear about why Salesforce makes this available, you'll understand why. There's always a reason if you're not paying for something, there's always somebody's getting paid in some way. And we

like to follow the money. And we know Salesforce targets mid to too large companies for their profit, so they don't they don't gouge the people who are like working the Salesforce ecosystem, so like it. Just it makes sense why their business model is so favorable towards people who are looking to start salesforce careers. Yeah, let's learn more from Bradley. Bradley, welcome. We're so excited to have you on the show and talk about Salesforce. Yeah, it's a

pleasure to be here. Thank you guys for inviting me to come hang out. And yeah, hopefully we can share some stuff that's valuable to the audience. So let's do it. Oh, I imagine we will anytime we can talk about ways to earn more, increase our income potential, our skill set. We love to learn about all of those things and side hustle. So excited to have you, Bradley. Yes, So I I feel fortunate that I have known you for

quite a while. I got to write a story on you when I was writing for The Penny Hoarder, And like, I I feel like what you're talking about and what you're helping people with is this like little nugget of gold that really does deserve more publicity, really does deserve more exposure. And so I'm finally glad that we can can get you in here to talk about it. So tell us what is Salesforce? Why is there so much

demand and people don't know about it? Yeah, So I think the reason that people don't know about it to to sort of get into what it is is because it's a it's a tool used by businesses, right, and we're all consumers, so we know all about consumer products and consumer goods and the things that we can purchase, but salesforce doesn't really come up because it's not something that you would purchase unless you are mainly a mid size or enterprise size business, and most people simply are

not mid to enterprise size business owners. So hearing about it in day to day conversation is likely not going to happen unless you happen to know someone who is a salesforce professional. So that's the reason I think a lot of people don't know about it, and you know, there's not a lot of people advocating or going out on podcasts like yours and talking about it. So that's really the only way is going to be if we have more conversations like this. Uh, now, what is salesforce?

Because I gotta tell you, like my main gripe is the name of this platform, because it sounds like you're either going to do cells or if you're not doing cells, you're still going to be doing sells. And it's definitely like an MLM or something like that, because the name of it is literally salesforce, Like it's so confusing, But what it actually is is as a salesforce professional, you

help automate business processes. And that might sound a little vague, So it's imagine something like you have a website and there's a form where somebody can put in their name and email address to learn more about your product, and you might ask for their phone number. Two. So what you could do inside of salesforces say, okay, as soon as they fill out that form, let's go ahead and track them and see did they click on our product page? Did they click on our pricing page? Do they watch

any videos on our website? Okay, so we start to score you, and we go, okay, this is a person who's really interested. They didn't just like fill out a form and then click X and walk away and go do their day. They're really interested in our product. So now that we have their name and email address and their phone number, we're going to consider this a warm lead and let's go ahead and put them on a list to have a sales rep call them tomorrow and

talk to them more about what our product is. And let's go ahead and send them an email about our product and let them know that we notice that they're interested. However, on the other hand, you might do something totally different. If they just fill out the form and walk away. You might just send them an email, maybe once a month, once a week, maybe a newsletter or something like that

to continue to nurture them and warm them up. And that's an example of how you can differentiate something that seems exactly the same but treat people completely differently based on their actions. And that's just one example of what you can do with the tool like Salesforce. And what that allows you to do is say you gotta thousand new leads. Yesterday, I got an amazing website. You got a thousand new leads through that form. Well, now you don't have to assign a sales rep to call a

thousand people. You can assign a sales rep to call twenty people that have seawn repeated patterns of this is the type of person we should call, because this is the type of person who makes a purchase on a phone call. So just one example. And so what you do is Salesforce automates all of that for you, and you as the professional, are the one who figures out

how to make that work. You make salesforce understand how to look at two different leads differently, and that carries all the way from marketing for new leads, to selling, to customer support, to finances and everything you would need

to operate a business. So to answer the third part of your question, why is it so in demand, it's in demand because and I'll just put this lightly and we can get more into it if you think about what smartphones did for consumers, just how efficient it made us, how productive it made us, how much power we had

in our hand. That's what salesforce did for businesses. It took them from having to use thirty different tools to run a small business from mid sized business, and it allowed them to use one tool that there's a mobile app for that they could have everything working in the palm of their hand, or with one log in too, you know, their Google Chrome browser, and now they have everything they need in one spot. And so if you can imagine the impact smartphones had on us as consumers,

that's the impact that salesforce had on businesses. Okay, so I'll be the representative for the population who has never heard of Salesforce before just a representative. Okay, of course I'm an expert. I'm just asking on behalf of others. This is Jill. So is Salesforce something that people could do for work as an independent contractor? Are we talking about employees status? Like, if someone's thinking this sounds really great, what does that intersection look like with Salesforce and who

might they be working for? Yeah, that's a it's a great question. And I'll say that the one of my favorite things about Salesforce is like, I would not be talking about Salesforce on a podcast if it was just

a job, right. And the reason I love this career path so much, um number one, it served me so I was able to get from not knowing what I wanted to do out of college to financially independent my thirty one and got to work from home for my entire career and have like flexible work hours and autonomy over when I worked and as long as I got my work done. And so the beautiful thing about these

careers is how flexible they are. And what I typically tell people is you should expect for year one, year one,

expect to be a W two employee. And there's a few reasons for that, and you're going to be working for could go work for Salesforce directly like the company, the big corporation Salesforce, but in all likelihood you're going to work for one of their over two hundred thousand customers globally, right, And it's because each person are each company who purchases Salesforce to automate their business needs a professional to come help build out those automations and make

it all work effectively. And many of those customers have full time Salesforce professionals on staff, you know, at least one many have you know, multiples, and there are hundreds, if not, you know, probably a couple of thousand Salesforce consultancies across the world. So just companies that have Salesforce

professionals on staff to go assign them to client projects. Now, what that also means is if you get that year of experience, and I say do that because it helps you understand your skills and where you're at and sort of compare yourself to others around you and sort of get a feel for do I really know this stuff? How much do I know? How much don't I know? And then you can go out and like you said,

you can freelance on the side. A lot of salesforce professionals work day jobs and then freelance on the side outside of work. Um. Other people like myself, um and part of my career, I decided to work part time when my daughter was born so I could spend more time with her while she was young, and I still work part time today. So um that that's carried forward

for the last six years. So you just have more flexibility to go to a company and say, hey, look, I'm a meaningful part of your business, like an integral part. I automate your business processes and make your company more efficient.

And so companies are very willing to work with you and be flexible because there's a massive talent shortage when it comes to some of these skilled positions, and if you're one of the talents in that very shallow pool of talent, you can sort of make your own rules to a degree, especially once you get that year of experience under your belt. That's so helpful. What kind of person would this be good for? Like would I need a college degree, tech background, marketing background? Like how how

would I learn sales force? And like how would I know if this might be something that's good for me. Yeah, it's obviously also a great question, Um so who is it? Who is it for? So, so what I would say is, don't worry about a college degree. You don't need one.

If you have one, I mean, it's going to give you leverage, you know, over someone who maybe doesn't have a degree, especially if maybe it's a computer science degree or a business degree or something like that, and all likelihood it's not going to be a degree like that, So it's probably not going to matter much what degree you have. It might give you one little check box on your resume to to maybe look a little bit

better than someone you're competing against for a job. But in reality, you don't need a college degree at all. You certainly don't need any specific background. I mean, we've we've seen a little bit of everything to the point where it's not nuanced anymore. It's not like, oh, this one person had this special situation and they they found success.

It's it's overwhelmingly that really. If you just pick up and you start doing training to get your first certification, and I'll sort of talk through that process, um, but you put in the work with free training online and you get in the right community groups, and there are plenty out there, and there are a few that are just really exceptional, then I would say within four to six months you should expect to find if you can put in maybe ten hours a week of you know,

self guided study in preparation, then in four to six months, at ten hours a week, I would expect that you're going to land a job making right around seventy thousand dollars entry level. And if you have a four year degree and I'm just gonna pick history for example, or you have no degree at all, then you're still going

to start out at about seventy thousand dollars. Because in tech fields in general, but specifically salesforce careers, companies are more interested in your sells for skills, not your I guess structured education from you know, when you were in your teens um So it's it's not that interesting to them how much you know about history or geology or oceanography, because they need you to be a salesforce professional, not tell them how the layers of the earthwork, if that

makes sense. Really that's not in sales doesn't come up as much as you might think. Dang Okay, so let's get into So it sounds kind of like if you like project management or maybe like chaos coordination, then this could be something you might find enjoyable. Is that right? Is there any other thing you find like people tend to enjoy that enjoy salesforce? Yeah, I would say what I do is is I would say number one that there's a lot of reasons why you might move from

what you're doing today into a salesforce career. And it's not because you're necessarily going to enjoy being a salesforce professional. Because I don't think there's many things that I could do forty hours a week where I'd be like, I enjoy my job without just toxic positivity. So I might I might say that, but do I really mean it? Um?

Maybe not. So there's a there's definitely a line between what I'm doing today and whether or not i'll shift and if that thing that I'm going to do next needs to be something I enjoy versus something that's better than what I'm doing today. So let's start with who

might actually like truly enjoy this job? All right, So we talked a little bit about this before, but you need to actually enjoy understanding business processes, so that what I mean by that is you could actually have a conversation with a business owner and say, how do you guys go about figuring out who your next customer is going to be? Like? Who is your next lead? Like? How do you find them? As it a bill board? Is it a website? Is it a conference that you

go to? Is a shaking hands at a networking event? What is it? Like? How do you find is it? Is it TikTok or Instagram or YouTube? Like, how do you find your next customer? And that's actually an interesting conversation to you. Then that might be a cue that you might really enjoy this if you think, well, how do you get them from watching a sixty second TikTok clip to purchasing a two thousand dollar product? How do

you do that? And what's the process to get there? Um, Once they purchase your product, how do you make sure that they love it and they share it with their friends and family and they want to buy more of it? And then how do you handle you know, man, that

sounds like a lot of nuances. How do you go from then purchasing a product and supporting them to actually hiring employees and making sure that they're assigned tasks to do, and keeping up with all the events and things that you have to do for your business, Like how do

you do all that? So if if you're actually interested in und standing how a business works, and you would like to talk to people about all the little nuances of their business and how it works, then you're probably really going to enjoy this, like truly, You're going to show up to work and be like, I had a fun meeting today where I talked to people about the nuances of how the Seals team tries to get better at converting prospects to paying customers, Like that was an

interesting conversation, so you would enjoy it now. On the other hand, I had one of our you know what, one of the students that we worked with. Uh, she she told me something and it's stuck with me, and it was choose your heart. And a lot of people say that, you know, my job is hard, I don't like my job. My manager is toxic, I don't like the people I work with. I don't see a clear

path to getting a promotion. I don't see a clear path to making you know, maybe a little bit more money year every year, but I'm never going to make tens of thousands of dollars more than I make today, and I feel stuck a little bit. And you might just getting to a point where you've been in a career for ten years or twenty years and you're just like, you know what, I don't want to do this until sixty,

Like it's just I want to try something. Isn't there something more I could do with my life that maybe it doesn't pay more, maybe it's just something different, because I'm just tired of doing the same old thing and I can't imagine doing it for another ten years. Um. So there's a lot of reasons and going back to choose your herd, it might be hard to pivot into

a salesforce career. You might have to put in four to six months or ten hours a week and learn something new, and that's gonna be hard in its own way. But it's also going to be really hard to just stick with what you're doing and keep showing up to work with an employer that you don't really like working for. Maybe they sell a product that you don't really believe in. Maybe you have to commute and you wish you out

a remote job. Maybe when we talk about the average salesforce professional, you know, with three years experience, makes about dred and thirty five thousand dollars. Like when we talk about things like that, you might go, it's so, I kind of I'm all right with what I do today. I don't love it, but it sounds like there's a big upside to trying out something new. So, um, all getting back to whether or not you're going to enjoy

your salesforce career, I can't really tell you. If you love business processes, then cool, But whether or not it sounds better than what you're up to today, um, that could be a completely different conversation. Yeah, that's such a helpful framework because there's always going to be difficult parts to it, but which parts are worth it for? Maybe the overall picture. You've thrown out a lot of numbers,

which I appreciate and I'm intrigued. Can you talk a little bit more about income trajectory, what that looks like and what the different variables are in that, like what someone could reasonably anticipate and what factors bear weight on that for sure? So so I'll just run through averages from basically the people that we've worked with. And that's right. Now, we're people, so we're not talking about like forty people. We're talking about a lot of people, right. So, um,

what we're seeing for our averages. And I'll tell you why I think it's important to talk about our averages versus maybe what you might see in the open market. And that's because when you have guidance on anything, it tends to impact your trajectory. Right, Like, if you try to do something by yourself, that can be rewarding and you can find success and it can be really cool to look back and say, like, I didn't have any

help and I did this all myself, and that's cool. However, it stands to reason that if you have like truly quality guidance behind you, your outcomes are probably going to be better. Hopefully they should be better than if you

did it yourself. Um. And so the reason that's why I make the distinction of what you might see in the open market versus what we've seen with two thousand plus people might vary, um, and it and it should vary because if you're only talking to your spouse or friends about a career path that they know nothing about,

then you're probably not going to get much good guidance. Um, it's gonna take you longer to land jobs, it's gonna take you longer to get raises, it's going to take you longer to understand where you should move forward in your career. And I think community groups can be really really good for that. Obviously I advocate for the stuff that our services, but a lot of people simply don't want to afford or cannot afford services from professionals. And

that's cool. So join a community group and there are a lot of people who will help you. And there's groups on Facebook called we have a group called Salesforce for Everyone. We're writing about eighteen thousand members in there, and that's a great group to join. And we call it the Ohanna because it's basically a group of people who quite literally will hop on a one hour phone call with you to talk to you about your needs and they're never going to ask you for anything. It's

just part of being out of a true community. Um. Not everyone's going to do that, but a lot of

people will. So I'm actually gonna answer your question. So, so income trajectories, So what we see average entry level, So entry level, meaning no experience outside of maybe some of that ten hours a week that you do for the four to six months might be getting experienced, getting your first certification, getting on LinkedIn, and getting your what we call professional branding right, getting your resume up to date, talking to other people in community groups about what they

do at work, because they may already be salesforce professionals and a lot of them are. You can talk to them about what they're up to and the kind of the problems that they see in the real world and that kind of thing. Um. So, with no experience other than just your community and your your ten hours a week,

you should expect about seventy thousand dollars. The average that we see is just over seventy two dollars, so I think it's fair to say somewhere between sixty five and seventy five thousand dollars is what you should expect for an entry level job. Now, the kicker is that with our alumni, within eighteen months, that's about the time frame.

Twelve to twenty four if you want to range, twelve to twenty four months is when you should expect to hit six figures UM, So you're gonna hit that jump from seventy thousand in less than two years, you're gonna jump up thirty thousand dollars to a hundred thousand dollars.

All right. By year three, you should expect to see another considerable jump that maybe three to four years, you're gonna see another considerable jump up from around that hundred K mark to around about a hundred thirty hundred forty K mark, and you'll see that cap out. Usually around your five to seven in the space, you're probably going to hit a cap and that's gonna be around a hundred fifty thousand dollars, maybe a little bit more unless

you get into specialties. And I don't know if we really need to go that deep, but there are a lot of specializations and the Salesforce ecosystem. I say you need one certification, the Salesforce Administrator certification is what you need to make employers look at you seriously and go, Okay, you've put in some work yourself, you're serious about this

career path. All right, we'll take you seriously. There are forty believe there's more than forty different certifications total now and the Salesforce ecosystem, and those are different types of specialties you can get into if you really love marketing, if you really love sales or support or anything in between. And if you get into some of those niches, um, you can definitely get paid way more than you know, a hundred and fifty two hundred thousand dollars a year.

And if you get into management, where you're managing a team of salesforce professionals, obviously you can get paid more. So there are ways to increase your pay beyond that. But if you just want to be a nine to five worker, UM, showing up getting your job done, going home at five o'clock or leaving your home office at five o'clock, then you're probably going to cap out. I would say, expect to cap out around a hundred fifty two eighty thousand. Wow. And those jumps, what are the

factors that cause those jumps every year? Is it just experience or is it something else you're quiet airing It's mainly experience, like that is the kicker is the experience? Um? Now, quality of experience does matter. You can't really tell quality

of experience from a resume or a LinkedIn profile. That's typically going to come out in the interview is when people are asking you questions and it's like, huh, you don't really seem to know much more than an entry level person, but you have fifteen months of experience, and then they'll start digging in on tell me what you do at work, like tell me some of the problems

you've solved with your sales force skills. And if you can't really elaborate on that, um, And that's where interview coaching comes into play, Like you need people to help you because sometimes people do have really good skills and they just haven't prepared well to communicate that effectively because they don't really know what they're supposed to be saying. So all of that to say, experience matters the most.

But what I would expect, like if I were hiring a salesforce professional, I would say, if you have a year and a half of experience, I'm gonna be a little taken aback if you still just have the one certification, because it's going to show me you're not like pushing yourself or challenging yourself. UM, So I would expect by eighteen months, UM, you should probably have you know, maybe three certifications something like that. If you're acquiring a new

certification every six to nine months. That would be that would be pretty well expected. Is that something you pay for yourself? Are you investing in your own training? Usually employers are going to pay for that because it's valuable to them, especially if you work for a consultancy. And we don't have to get into deep, but certifications are part of their score, their partner score as a consultancy. So then so if they have consultants who work for

them that have more certifications, it improves their scores. So when they talk to clients, they can say, hey, we have this score and these are the number of consultants that we have that are certified. So they'll actually put you in little like internal boot camps at the company

to help you quickly get more certifications. I've seen people get you know, five six certifications in one year because maybe the company doesn't have a project to put them on right now, so they'll put them in a you know, a two week boot camp to just get them another certification. Um so, uh, certification sort of play a role in the salesforce space. Typically employers are going to pay for that. But the truth is it's like it ranges from about a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars to pay

for an exam for a certification. And when you're making even you know, seventy tho dollars injury level, you know, shelling out two hundred bucks to advance your career is is usually not a big bite, but it does help when employers are willing to fit the bill for you. Yeah sure, yeah, that's uh, that's way less expensive than a lot of other industry ce And and there's no upkeep that there is upkeep from a educational perspective as far as like you do have to take an upkeep

exam uh three times a year. They're they're they're small, um and you can wait the whole year and just do all three of them at once and it'll probably take you up an hour or two something like that. But there are no fees associated with those up keeps like you see in a lot of other industries. Um, So salesforce isn't trying to keep you from continuing to be a professional in their space. And you know, really

they want you to continue to be a talent. And that just sheds more light on there is a massive talent gap and salesforces doing everything they can to try to get more professionals into the space with you know, free training online, I mean really good free training. If you go to trailhead dot org. Actually it might be trailhead dot com now, so don't quote me on that.

So trailhead dot com actually, and if you go there, you can set up a free account and it's like incredible free training that you can take, and Salesforces for tens of millions of dollars into that, And it's like, why would they do that? That That should be paid training, And it's because if they're getting new customers at like breakneck speed and there's not talent in place to go get hired by those customers and help them use the tool,

that's a problem for them. So they have a big incentive to make sure that a lot of free resources are available to people who want to break into this. Yeah, that was the most interesting thing to me is that the training to get these certifications, Salesforce gives it for free. Uh,

and it's always helpful. This conversation has got me like thinking back to our interview with Mandy Wood or Santos, who was really advocating when you're trying to increase your income to find mentorship to network and and that's when you do that, you definitely progress faster. But like, all of this is available no matter what your income level is right now. Uh, and if you're in a time crunch, you can always invest to get more guidance in all

of this. But nobody, like Salesforce, is not trying to make a profit on selling their training. They're just trying to get people in so that the businesses have resources to set up salesforce step and then if they make their customers happy, more customers will buy their products. So that's their right. It's not that they're not doing it for the good of the world, right, it's a business play, and if they can get more talent in the space,

they'll get more customers and they'll make more money. So it's a it's a win for them, and it's a win for us as the professionals. So we're benefiting from the fact that they make their money from businesses, not consumers. So this is like a truly frugal side hustle. Really, what are the things you would pay for It's like the certifications, yeah, so so mostly it would be that again, you only need one certification to to land your job.

So if you're just looking to pivot in, then I would say there's there's usually coupons available, um they call them like boucher codes or whatever. And there's there's always one available for forty dollars off. So it's a two exam, there's always one available for forty off, so you can get it for one sixty. But a lot of times they'll do like a hundred dollars off or buy an exam,

get your next exam free kind of thing. Um. So, so there's a lot of different things they do just trying to you know, pique people's interest and get them incentivized to get more certifications. I would expect, if you're gonna d I Y approach this, there are some very inexpensive resources that I would recommend um for getting certified. And so I would expect to maybe spend about thirty dollars on some just online self guided certification training. It's

just it's a no brainer. If you have thirty dollars, just please go pay for you know, some of this training and it just fast tracks it for you. And and so then maybe you pay a hundred and sixties. So I'd still say you're gonna stick to two dars or less um, and that cost is going to come specifically from getting that first certification. The rest um you can you can do it for free, right like you can interview prep on your own and watch YouTube videos

and find guidance through communities. That I would say that the pillars of getting you your first job are going to be getting that first certification, trying to get some hands on experience, whether that's just through like a pretend project that you create for yourself, which can be difficult if you don't know really what to create for yourself. You might volunteer with a nonprofit. You might find somebody who works at a company already and maybe ask if

you can shadow them or just intern with them. UM, hands on experience is key if you want to beat the typical competition, Like even just having three or four weeks of experience at ten hours a week is going to be massive because you have infinitely more experienced than the people who don't have any The other thing is going to be your LinkedIn, Like people overlook LinkedIn. It's sad, but you know we've ran the stats and and just over thirty percent of our members land jobs through networking.

So there was never a job application, there was never anything to click apply on. It was just hey, i've seen you on LinkedIn. We've communicated a few times. My company has a position opening up. If you want to interview for it before we post the job, would that be interesting? And it's like yeah, of course, and you go interview. So you would think, like again a nuance situation, like yeah, I'm sure it happens every now and then, and happens just over thirty percent of the time, which

is sizeable. So if you're not on LinkedIn, if you're not a networking, if you're not active in the sort of salesforce LinkedIn community, then you're basically taking thirty percent of the jury level jobs off the table for yourself.

So LinkedIn, your resume and interviewing, like if you are not doing interviewing prep, we we call it falling at the finish line because it means you've done everything else right, Like your resume got you the interview, your linked in, your networking, your certification, like all the work you've put in got you the interview, and then you didn't prepare for the interview. So all that work was for nothing.

Because you can't cross the finish line. Um, so I would say those are the big things that go into actually landing a job. And there's a little we could talk about job search strategy, like don't just click apply now that's what everybody does. Like that gets into networking and talking to people in private messages and community groups. Again, Um, that's where the networking pays off because you can sort of slip in the back door instead of going through

the interview stack. Us. Do you know what doesn't require a lot of prep whatsoever, and people easily cross the finish line. You can always enter through the front door knowledge whatsoever. The bill of the week. That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill

of the week. Oh perfect, We're gonna yell at you. Good things come with no barrier. That's great. Yeah, no preparation. I mean we did, I mean we gave you more than what we normally give people. Thank you telling you we were going to yell at you all right, Bradley. Every week we invite our listeners or guests to give us their bill of the week, and so I know you've put a little thought into yours, so I look forward to hearing it. Yeah. So, yeah, my bill of

the week. I knew. I you know, I've listened to many of your episodes and everybody always seems to have a solid answer, or at least they seem to do better than what I had in mind if you were going to put me on the spot. So thank you for letting me prepare. So for me, it is my tax bill, and I don't know if that's my bill of the week, but I think about it probably every week. Um. So you know, I'm not one of those people who

like I want to pay my taxes. I want to do the right thing, but I also want to pay the least amount possible. Uh and still not go to prison. That's like my aim, Like I'm not in Yeah, it's it's great, it's a good goal. So I was just going to share the I know you guys work with a lot of people and give a lot of advice around side hustles and freelancing, and you know, different ways to make money on the side, and that typically involves

ten ninety nine income, which is your side income. And so if you haven't already, like if if you have not done this, like please look into a solo four oh one K. I know that this guidance has been shared, you know, repeatedly, but if you're still overlooking it. Um the cool thing about a solo four oh one K is that you get all the same benefits. Like a lot of people are like, oh, I need a full time job because of the retirement benefits. It's like not really, Because you can do a four oh one K on

your own through your side business. That is not some benefit that a company has. Now, if they match you, that's cool, but really look at how much of that match is giving you each year, and you might be surprised by what a small benefit that is overall. Um, So, solo four oh one K. The cool thing here is that as your income scales, you have a massive cap. Like if you're going through an employer, I believe the

cap is around twenty thousand dollars um. It varies, so I'll just leave it at twenty thousand dollars because it changes like every year. Now with a solo form, Oh one K, your cap is fifty seven thousand dollars a year. Okay, so there's like a I know, that's not a big concern to most people. They're like, I'm never going to

hit the twenty thousand. What are you talking about? But one day if you follow the guidance from your frugal friends, then eventually you may find yourself in a position where you can invest more than twenty thousand dollars a year. And if that's coming from to income, then you can invest fifty seven thousand dollars a year and that's tax sheltered income. Uh. And you can do the same for your spouse. So if your spouse works for your business and that doesn't mean much in reality, you can shelter

another fifty seven thousand dollars. So imagine the first hundred fourteen thousand dollars plus the current standard deduction of K. You can shelter the first one hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars of your income. So I know, again, not a big deal to most people, but the solo forewn case awesome. Um. The other thing is if you have that to ninety nine income, hiring your child and again.

I know people are like crazy, They're like, oh no, I'm gonna get audited and they're gonna put the cuffs on and then I'm going to jail. Like I'm not a tax advisor, but just go google the amount. Go try to find the trending video of the person getting arrested for having their child labeled as an employee the company. Like, find that video. It's not a reality. Like, you might get a fee, and you might be surprised by the fees.

Like if you were to get audited and they were able to prove no, your child is worthless and does nothing, um, then you might pay a couple hundred bucks. Okay, So the cool thing about hiring your child is that you can open a roth ira for them if you want to, So you can pay them six thousand dollars a year and go ahead and get their their investing started. We could get into this, but roth iras are It's excellent.

You can use it to buy your first them. You can use it to pay for college whenever they get to college. You can use that roth ira for a lot of things, and those are all penalty freeways. You can spend that roth ira a or they can spend that roth Ira when they get to that point in their lives, or they can save it until they're fifty nine and a half and they can cash it out and they're going to have u tax free growth. So it's an excellent way to sort of put some money away.

And your child can also take a standard deduction, so you can pay them. I forget the exact number right now. I believe it's just over twelve tho dollars a year and that is all standard deduction for them. So the cool thing about that is you can pay them how do your income and are out of your business income and you don't have to pay taxes on that, but you get to keep the money in the family. So that's a beautiful thing. Uh So those are just a couple of the things that I would advise and you

can save. You know, you can shelter with the standard deduction on top upwards of fifty thousand dollars a year completely legally, and it's it's fun to us to pay your taxes, but don't pay more than you need to. Who knew we'd get an extra little mini investing episode. Who knew within the bill of the week. My goodness, great stuff, Bradley. If you all listening, want to also share about striking the balance between paying taxes and not going to prison. Oh, that's a lovely balance to strike.

Or you know, if you've just got like a normal bill of the week for us, you know the kind, visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash bill, leave us your bill, and now it's time for righting. I wish, I wish this week's question was something about prison, but we did not have the foresight with a question I should have. I love that. I love that. That's why when Kai is able, I'm gonna hire him as my

executive assistant and have him bring me my coffee. Have you not had an episode on prison five like no wow, getting getting your investments in order and then going to prison and not having any bills? Bring one for the wrong episode? Do we bring you one for the wrong topic? I don't the next side Hustle episode. I'm so sad. Uh. Well, we'll just have you on again to talk about that.

I don't know why that. This is totally separate and I won't talk about it for long, but reels are starting to show up in I don't know wherever I watched the various reels, and more and more like tips on prison life are showing up for me. Is this happening for anyone else? The algorithm knows, I don't know what. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is common. I'm like no, I'm getting like a lot of prison hack videos and you're about to go to prison, you know.

But then I'm like, well, I don't want to pass these two quickly because I might need to know this stuff. You did not strike the balance with your taxes, well enough, it ain't her taxes, m other reasons. Well, well, I know, right. Uh So for our actual lightning round question, that is far more boring than the conversation we're having now, But we can always incorporate prison into it should we need to. We're talking about our favorite life hack about side hustles,

working part time, working from home, whatever. Initially I was like, this sounds like the question like, where's the weirdest place you've ever worked from home? So that if you have that answer, I'd also love to hear it. But yes, that is the actual question. But let's get weird, I mean, get as weird as you want. So let's start not weird. And we'll just like cap it off with weirdness. Um, okay you you as our guests can go first. Oh

thank you. Yeah, that's Southern hospitality coming out, all right, So be I would just say that for the people out there who are not sure about remote work, like I've just seen, you know, people say whatever on social media. So I've seen the comments that are like I could never work from home, you know, I've got to have my space to you know whatever else. And I don't know what they say. It doesn't make sense to me.

But but let's assume that those are realities. And what I would say is that when I got my first work from home job, that the thing that blew my mind the most is, you know, like if you go into an office and you work, there are inefficiencies, like you spend way too much time getting water, going to the bathroom, and like working to the next walking to the next building for a meeting or something, getting coffee like six times for no reason. Like these things happen alright.

Plus you look at your personal emails, I mean, you pull open an app on your phone. I could go on. These things happen and at home. The cool thing is instead of like piddling in the break room. You can actually do things like maybe order some groceries online and have those delivered to your house and grab them while you're at work, and you can get your grocery shopping done. You can wash your dishes, you can do your laundry,

you can clean your house. I would take lunch breaks and go outside and cut the grass and then come back in and get back to work after my lunch break. Like, there are so many ways that basically when you get off work, let's say you work nine to five, you get off work at five o'clock. Instead of coming home and having all those things lined up for you to do, they're already done. And it's an amazing thing to really

improve the flow and efficiency of your life. So remote work, to me, no brainer because I can get everything done around my house during those inefficient times at work. Now getting weird, I don't think it's too weird. It's it's it's really kind of the different places that I've I've

worked remotely. Um So, we did an RV trip where I did not take any time off for work, and what I would have to do is when we got to a new location, I would have to check for internet quality and make sure that we had good internet, and then backup plan was google the word WiFi and just sorry in like Google Maps and try to find locations that had reviews for how exceptional their WiFi was in that area, and usually that was a coffee shop

or something like that. However, we were at a state park and there was nothing within an hour and a half that I could find, and I ended up hiking for about two hours until I found signal with Verizon and then came back down. And the next morning to go to work, I had to strap a camp chair on my back with a laptop and a portable battery and hike for two hours until I could sit up on a pretty nice spot. But it got pretty hot also because I was in direct sunlight, and uh, it

was interesting. So I worked from there for for four hours that day, sitting in a camp chair on top of a little peak. So quite interesting. I wouldn't recommend it. That's so funny. Most people will hike to get away from technology, and you had to hike to it. Hiking too. Technology that's a must stay connected. That's it sounds so fun, but it also is so stressful when you're not certain. You know, you've got work to do and you're not

certain if you're going to find a spot. Well, it's life on the edge though, and it sounds like Bradley, you like it? You know, will I go to prison this year? Will or won't? I? I don't know. That's right, that's right. We like to do. I have to hike for WiFi. Yeah, that's it. No, at the end of the day, worst case scenario. What like the managers like brad where were you yesterday? And it's like, listen, it's okay, and you're gonna be okay, Okay, listen, it's okay. Listen.

What about you, Chen, what's your answer to this? Oh gosh, So I think the weirdest places that I've worked are probably just outside. I hate working outside. Actually it's my least. I love going Jill to your place and your covered porch screened in. You know, it feels it's outside, but it feels inside. That's kind of the extent. But I also hate camping. I'm more of a hotel girl. So that's every place. Anytime I have to work outside it's

Starbucks or something, it's weird for me. I mean, it's always loud, it's always buggy and windy, and so I don't do it. But I am one of those people that sometimes I will get too distracted by chores at home and I will have to I work at a coffee shop once a week because it's weird to like get up and lay down at a coffee shop, which I will do at home, especially being pregnant, and it's weird to do that in public, and so I use that social dilemma to keep me on track. So I

do that. It's not weird in public, but it's weird in my head. That's why I do it. And I think my favorite hack it's so it's not really a hack. Maybe it's like a little word of wisdom. Yours was a word of wisdom. So I'm gonna follow a suit. I have found that when I started side hustling, it was because I felt stuck and I wanted more, and I really thought that that first thing I did was going to be the thing that did it for me.

And I found that it was not, but it was necessary to get to the thing that did it for me. I wouldn't be here if I didn't start there. So like, instead of thinking the thing you start with is the thing that you may stick with. Same with Salesforce. Salesforce could just be a route to something different. You have to do these things that are stepping stones to get you to where you really want to, because you may

not know where you really want to be. Podcasting was not on my list of things that I wanted to do with my life, and I would have never known if I hadn't been tricked into starting this by jillan Eric. I totally agree. Uh. Similarly, I don't have a hack with it. It's well, maybe it's advice and maybe a hack. I don't when it comes to side hustles, I don't think we have to look far or stretch for it. I think we can look to what's already in our

hands or what's already in our space. And you've described well, athlete, you need a computer and internet to be able to meet some things too. To get started with Salesforce. But similarly with really kind of anything else, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's the what do I already have? I know our listeners have heard me time and time again, but you know we had speakers and microphones and computers, so we were able to DJ on the weekend, and I had plants in my backyard, so I was able

to sell them. Didn't make a ton of money with that, but it's just that what do I already have? I already had a microphone, and I had a friend named Jen, so mine as well start a podcast. It was that simple, And I think just the creativity and play that side. Hustles give space for that. They can be something totally separate from what you're accustomed to doing, and yet maybe even something that you enjoy doing. And so it's life giving.

And since everyone's answering this question, my favorite place to work is the airport. I get my most deep focus waiting for my flight. I don't know if it's like the hustle and bustle of everybody else kind of going places, but it's like so much hustle and bustle that I can drown it out. And there really isn't anywhere else for me to go except for weight at my gate. So my husband and I will often get to our gate early and just sit there and pound out some work.

It actually makes a little sense. It's like so overwhelming you may as well just work. Yeah. Yeah, airports are overwhelming to me in general. But I have been to the airport with you and Eric, and I think it's that that lounge access also have some lounge access. So yeah, that you leave in that little detail out, but it helps. I'll tell you about the Cleveland Crawl later. Jen, Oh no, I cannot wait. But first, Brad, where can people find

more from your mentorship community all of that? Yeah, I would say for especially the people here, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, I bet you're a podcast listener, just something something I thought might be true. Sometimes they are, they sometimes could be. So we do have a podcast called Salesforce for everyone, so I would highly recommend checking that out and just start with episode one.

I would say episode one through eight we designed to be understanding Salesforce all the way through landing your first Salesforce job. So those eight episodes should really put you in a headspace to figure out what's going to go into this and do I really want to do this. My other recommendation, if you want to get in touch with me, you can find me on LinkedIn. I do respond to all of my messages, so feel free to

message me there. I think that link is linked In, dot Com, forward slash in forward slash brad Force, or you can just search Bradley Rice in the bar and my background pictures like this crazy bright orange situation, so I can't really miss it. Um, those are the two best ways to sort of find more information. Yeah, yeah, I know you have a five day challenge to Yes, so what's in that? Yeah, we have a lot of

free resources, because again this is very communal. If you have, like, if you want to spend money on our program, you can do that. But I also understand that a lot of people don't either number one, they don't have the disposable income or they just don't want to spend money

because they're frugal. And so if you try out the five day challenge, that's a talent stacker dot com forward slash now the five day challenges there, And what that does is that walks you through getting your first certification, It walks you through getting your LinkedIn profile set up.

It literally shows you how to create a linked In profile and what matters, It shows you how to get hands on experience before you land your first job, and it walks you through what you're up against, like some of the obstacles you might face and how to be prepared for those so that they don't get in your way as you're going through this four to six month process of landing your first Salesforce job. Excellent, awesome, Bradley. I am going to be now forwarding you to your

LinkedIn account all the prison tip videos so sweet. That's perfect. Who knows I might need them? You might when the see saw goes out of balance first, it's like a second. It's like they always say, you never know when you might be going to prison, you know people say that. They always say, it's like my grandpa always told him. That's right. Yep, that's our subtitle. I think the show you never know when prison comes a knocking. Oh, it's been fun, Bradley. And and now I know, now I

know more, and I'm a little tempted. They're right. It's always tempting what to hear the income opportunity and to know that it's all stuff that I love. But I've already started this freaking podcast, you know, so I don't have time for a Salesforce career. That's the thing for me. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't love it, So I gotta I'm gonna plow my own way out here. Oh we'll figure it out. But man, I thought some takeaways from Bradley. I didn't comment on this, but toxic positivity. I'm gonna

chew on that one. Ponder that a bit. Choose your hard that's a great little reminder that Pittle in the break room. I love when you you actually emphasize that in the outline Pittle in the break room, and I appreciated that too, So I hope everyone listening also got those nuggets. Even if you decided maybe this isn't for you,

but it's such an approachable thing to learn. And again, maybe what you do now won't be what you do in ten years, but you're also not bound to the thing you chose ten years ago to do as a career. You can always pivot. It's your story and you can always throw in a plot twist. That's why I love any of these side hustles that are low cost for entry, because then you don't feel so bad when you do make a pivot. You can train for free, don't even take the exam if after you've gone through the training

you realize, oh that's not for me. So many of these things that you don't have to invest tens of thousands of dollars to start a business. You can just start and then you you don't have a whole lot of at least financial skin in the game, so you can make those pivots and make changes and it's not a huge deal. So yes, well, thank you so much for listening. Many of you know we have a membership for our listeners who are paying off debt where we

have monthly challenges. We post videos of these expert interviews for you to uh, you know, look back on and easily access, and then we have a bunch of different courses that will help you pay off your debt faster and go beyond that. So we want to congratulate one of our members in our membership for a big win. Corey. She says, it's official. I have reviewed and cleaned out all of my photos and videos on the cloud. It has decreased from two hundred They span from two two

thousand thirty two. Took about ten hours total. Oh my gosh, Corey, this was from I know this was from our Simplify challenge, because we ran a Simplify challenge last year. Because when you simplify, you can streamline and that helps your finances and gosh, twenty nine thousand, that sounds like you were probably having to pay for storage too, so probably saved

you money on that, Corey, So congrats. Yeah. I think when we talk about minimalism and decluttering and simplifying, we often go to, and understandably so, our physical spaces, but realizing it's also digital too, as the more cluttered our digital space is our phones, our computers, the more that takes up our own mental emotional capacity. And like you're mentioning, Jen, like sometimes it costs money to hold storage on all these digital things, so cleaning that out can be such

a weight off. And yes, help us find all of these things where whole people, they help us financially too, maybe not in direct ways, but absolutely indirect ways. Congrats Corey. Yes, uh so, if you want to check out our membership like Corey and join her and all a lot of other community members doing courses, watching these interviews, doing challenges, then head to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash club to check out what we have in the membership and

see if it's right for you. See you next time. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Syrian. Okay, the Cleveland Crawl, Jack, Okay, tell me about it's what we call it now. Okay, So I say, Eric and I love to work at the airport because well, we are able to do that a lot. We're flying a lot multiple times a month usually, and Cleveland is one of the places that we fly too often because my sister lives there. And Cleveland has

two lounges available with our credit card. One is a restaurant that we both get like twenty eight dollars off of our meal, which usually covers our entire meal. And then there's an actual just lounge lounge with the bar and kind of buffet style food. And so we now anytime we fly out of Cleveland, come back to our home in Tampa, try and get there just a little bit earlier so we can do what we now call the Cleveland Crawl. And the Cleveland airport isn't massive, so

it literally is just like a short crawl. You could do it on your hands and knees if you need to. And so we go to the restaurant first and we get ourselves a nice meal, and then we go to the lounge afterwards and we get ourselves a drink and maybe some extra snacks, and you know, we work along the way and we're just preparing for our flight and we come back home to Tampa all fat and happy. Yeah. I remember I saw you guys that after the Cleveland

Crawl and Eric was stuffed. He was stuffed. Yeah, that is fun. I like that. I have benefited from your

twenty dollar boucher. Not in Cleveland, but I can imagine you telling your sister like, oh, yeah, our flights at like noon, when really it's at five, and she drops you off at ten, and you guys are just eating and crawling around at the Cleveland Airport, just spending the day Cleveland Airport, I know, right, And then you're telling your sister, oh, our flight gets in at five, when really it gets in at noon, and you're just at the lounge drinking. There have been times where I'm like,

take your time getting us. We're just hanging out at Bar Simon at the Cleveland Airport, Cleland. If you were to ask Eric, if he were to be on this microphone right now, he would tell you the wings at Bar Simon and the Cleveland Airport are some of the best wings he's ever had. It is one of his favorite meals so while done in Cleveland Airport, Well done, Cleveland