BU BÖLÜM HAKKINDA
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Stacy Jacobs, Partner Ecosystem & GTM Leader at Salesforce.
Join us as we chat about why certifications and knowing how Salesforce works is even more important when AI is helping you build.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Stacy Jacobs.
Why Admins need to see the big pictureCertifications are a rite of passage for every admin. But now that AI can walk just about anyone through how to build a custom object, are they still worth pursuing? I sat down with Stacy Jacobs, Partner Ecosystem & GTM Leader at Salesforce, to find out why certifications still matter and how AI can help you prepare for your exams.
One thing that Stacy emphasizes is that as powerful as AI tools are, getting the most out of them requires a solid understanding of how Salesforce operates within your specific business context. Agentforce can help you put together all of the pieces, but it's up to you to decide what the puzzle looks like in the first place.
Investing in the human in the loopCertifications are more than something you put on your resume to get your first job. Even if you're a veteran of the ecosystem, they can help you get up to speed with best practices for things like security models, native features you might not be using, and how to confidently build with AI.
"We are the gas that's powering AI," Stacy says, "we have the long-term knowledge, the history of our organizations, the history of our industries, our platforms, and we have that common sense that maybe AI is lacking."
Certifications are an investment in the human side of this equation, and by deepening our knowledge of the platform we expand the possibilities for what we can accomplish with Agentforce.
Building the right solutionWith Agentforce, it's never been easier to build whatever we want. But how do you know if you're building the right thing? Are you making an app that fulfills the requirements? Or are you making something that actually solves the problem?
Many Salesforce certifications focus on the soft skills that help you make sure you're building the right solution. As Stacy explains, these skills are more important than ever. In a world where AI can help you build just about anything, admins are there to build the best solution suited to their specific business problems.
Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Stacy for more on certifications and how to prepare for them. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast for a new episode every Thursday.
Podcast swag Learn more-
Trailhead: Salesforce Certified Business Analyst
-
Trailhead: AI Associate
Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking about certifications and with AI making it easier than ever to get answers, build apps, and figure things out on the fly, you might be wondering, does certification still matter? Well, my guest today, Stacy Jacobs has some thoughts on that. Stacy works with Salesforce partners on certification and learning programs, and she's been a part of the ecosystem since the ExactTarget days. We're going to talk about why knowing how Salesforce works is even more important when AI is helping you build. How to use AI to prepare for your next certification and why experience and credentials aren't competing with each other. Plus, Stacy manages to beat me to a food analogy on my own podcast. I don't even know if I've still recovered yet. So let's get to our conversation with Stacy. So Stacy, welcome to the podcast.
Stacy Jacobs: Oh, thanks for having me.
Mike Gerholdt: Well, I think it's a really cool article that you also put out on admin.salesforce.com about certifications in the AI era. And I think I've thought a lot about this. I think we're seeing AI disrupt. Are we still disrupting? I feel like disrupting was a very 2010 word when we were coming out with apps, but maybe AI is also disrupting a lot of things. And certification is definitely one of them, but maybe not in the way that I'm thinking. So first off, I think let's start with what do you do at Salesforce around certifications and how did you get into the ecosystem?
Stacy Jacobs: Oh yeah. So I've been within the ecosystem for several years. In fact, most of my career is within the partner ecosystem outside of Salesforce, and I've always wanted to be part of the mothership, and I've been here about seven years. Came in as a technical architect in ProServe, and now I am running programs to enable all of our partner audiences. And certification is a big part of that. So we run programs throughout the year to help enable, educate, motivate all of our partners within the ecosystem to get certified and learn more about our products. So that is a little of what I do.
Mike Gerholdt: That's really cool. ProServe, what does that stand for?
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah, it's professional services.
Mike Gerholdt: Ah, okay. It's not like the tennis machine.
Stacy Jacobs: No. Never been a tennis player.
Mike Gerholdt: Me either.
Stacy Jacobs: Ball [inaudible 00:02:53].
Mike Gerholdt: That's why I was like, wow, we have a whole department of people that just sell. Nevermind. People that listen to the podcast know there's always going to be a few bad jokes right away and then probably some food worked in somewhere, although everybody's going to be at the edge of their seats to see how I work food into an AI certification podcast.
Stacy Jacobs: Maybe also [inaudible 00:03:14] too.
Mike Gerholdt: Buckle up. Just wait for it. It'll be there. So I think what's interesting is when you first came to us and started talking about certifications and AI, I immediately went to, oh, well, obviously people are just using AI to pass the certification, but I think it's a little bit different than that. It's also getting certified in AI, correct?
Stacy Jacobs: A little bit, yeah. We have a lot of AI aspects to all of our certifications and it is definitely sprinkled in as a common theme around the board for our products. So naturally it's going to be part of our certification process and I think we need to embrace that.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, absolutely. Now, so I was looking back a few years ago because I remember the first time I was introduced to a cassette tape, my mom showed it to me and how you could rewind it with a pencil. So everybody that's my age and older knows what I'm talking about and everybody younger is like, "What are they doing? Thought this was a Salesforce podcast." I also remember the first time I was kind of, I'll call it introduced to AI, and it was Josh Burke got on a team call and he talked about, I forget what it was called, but he's like, "I just told it to render a cat on a pirate ship and here's the image." And I was blown away because up until that point in my life, if I wanted a cat on a pirate ship, I would've had to Photoshop or do some work. And this was just a prompt that he told me. And I look back at that now as like, wow, that's so easy to do because I think my understanding of AI, I know my understanding of AI has increased, but also the tools have gotten so much stronger and so much smarter, I'll call that. How in the certification world do we keep up with certs and the rapid pace of how AI is developed?
Stacy Jacobs: Oh man, one step at a time. I mean, one of my most favorite sayings is asking somebody how they multitask and nobody can do everything altogether. We always do one task at a time. So it may be overwhelming at first seeing how many certifications we have out there, the advances we're making in all of our products. But I guarantee you, if you learn little bits here and there, you can reach any goal that you set your mind to. And I've actually used AI to help study for certifications and I encourage a lot of folks to do that as well. It's not as much of what questions are on the exam and how do I get answers to all the questions on the exam? That is not something that anybody should be doing. But for the matter of gathering all the materials that we have out there to help enable not only any audience out there, anybody looking to learn more, that is a powerful thing that we have now that we did not have back when I started my career. And I was reading PDF documents and printing out papers and taking notes here and there. But now we have wonderful skills in Slack that can help you study for exams as well. So little bits at a time, you can't multitask everything and definitely just do one thing at a time.
Mike Gerholdt: Right. Yeah, no, that's actually a really good point because a lot of the AI, I always feel like I sound old, like the AIs out there. There's a comedian that's like sound old, you just add the and pluralize it. The AIs out there. But they have access to a lot of information and you think of they could pull all of that together and then start quizzing you to really help you prepare. Because I know when I read material, I consume it a certain way, but then I never think back to, well, how will the question come that's going to quiz me on this? So very good point.
Stacy Jacobs: Yes.
Mike Gerholdt: One thing that as we kind of head into this, so it's a brave new AI world, there's a huge maturity curve in our Salesforce ecosystem that I think a company we're just starting to really realize Salesforce is 27 years old. Which is nuts because I remember starting working in the ecosystem and I was like, oh, Salesforce not even 10 or whatever. But because of that, there's a lot of people that have been doing Salesforce for a long time. They've seen the evolution of, they were around when Chatter was launched or Service Cloud and they've seen the tools released, they've seen the features come about. They've implemented them, they've seen them sunset, their skillset is pretty solid. Why would somebody like that go and get just any Salesforce certification, let alone an AI certification?
Stacy Jacobs: Yes, this is something that I hear a lot too, Mike. And first off, I never downgrade any experience anybody has regardless if it's with Salesforce or not. I think that's what makes us human and being a human is a big part of this AI world we're living in. So what I would recommend everyone thinking about, encouraging them to be open-minded about is that you may learn something. If you're somebody who's been within the ecosystem for the 27 years, you might be surprised at what might be under the hood that you can turn on out of the box and all of that. So when you're fine-tuned in one organization, in one org or one mindset, it's really hard to see what you're missing. And certifications really help you hone in on the fuller picture. So understanding more of those security models, the native features that maybe you're not using because we all have bad habits and we're not adopting best practices, but certifications help you stay on top of what those best practices are so that you can scale even easier for the AI future we're in. There's a lot of things that we're building on top of, especially the platform that AI is loving. And if you are using it now and if you can massage your organization into some of these standards, you'll be able to scale and go way further with AI. So that's why you should get certified.
Mike Gerholdt: So let me ask you then, because I can see people sitting back and saying, "Well, I mean, if there's apps out there that'll help me, I could just go to any one of these AIs, ask it a question, how do I build a custom object in Salesforce?" And it'll tell me that and I can kind of prompt my way through building an app. What's the benefit if AI is available to bring us all of that information on demand at my fingertips, do I really need to spend all that time studying for a certification?
Stacy Jacobs: Yes, I think you do because we are the gas that's powering AI. We have the long-term knowledge, the history of our organizations, the history of our industries, our platforms, and we have that common sense that maybe AI is lacking. I don't ever recommend an AI situation where a human is not in the loop. And so us understanding what the platform is, how it works, and being a Salesforce admin really sets you up for success. It sets your organization up for success, and it sets the AI that you are buddying with, becoming your coworker with, up for success too, because you have that knowledge and that experience that you've had for years that you can bring to the table and fine tune the AI logic in ways that even it couldn't even imagine, right? We're in this together. So absolutely, it's definitely worth getting certified.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, and I didn't mean to impromptu put you on the spot, but the other thing I would add to that, again, Josh pointed this out to me, I feel like this podcast is, here's what Mike knows in terms of what Josh has taught him. Mike's learned other things. For a long time, if you asked a model how many Rs were in strawberry, it told you one or two and there's three, and then you'd ask it to spell it for you and it'd spell it with three Rs and it would still confidently respond, "Well, there's only one or two." And I think that's also part of the difference of getting that certification and going through and getting that experience. Of I hear what you're saying the answer is AI to building this app, but you're making this part up because you don't know and you're doing it. And I feel like there's a term for this, I should look it up, but there's a term for when AI tells you something so confidently, even though it's making it up.
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah, it's hallucinating. It's definitely hallucinating. So the way I look at it this, and Mike, I'm going to beat you to this food insert to our podcast today.
Mike Gerholdt: Oh, look at that. That doesn't happen.
Stacy Jacobs: But here's how I think about it. So we are starting to speak the same language as AI. We are definitely in this together. We need to be coworkers, we need to be colleagues, we need to be best friends with AI because you're starting to speak the language of AI. Now, I like to think of this as you're ordering food. Let's say we go to a restaurant, you might have a general idea of how a pizza is made, but if you don't know the typical ingredients, you might really be surprised once it comes out and there's cheese on it. And if you have a dairy allergy, that is a huge problem. So once you know it comes with cheese, once you know you're speaking the same language as the pizza makers, you have a general idea of what a pizza consists of, then you can start customizing it. You can order it any way that you want with, even without cheese, you can add items on there that you enjoy, maybe your audience enjoys. You can customize all of that and get exactly what you need. So AI really works the same way. So let's take this and transfer from pizzas into the platform. So if you ask it to build a flow, if you ask it to design a data model and you really don't know what any of that means, you're going to take whatever it gives you and it might hallucinate. It might pull in personal information that should not be there. So thinking of highly regulated industries, but these are all things that you learn when you go and get certified. You understand the components of the platform, you understand what it's built up, you know what an object is, a custom one, a standard one. You know how it all fits together, and that's how you can work with AI to kind of build your pizza.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. That's a really good analogy. I can't believe you beat me to the food analogy. I'm stumped. So there's a TikTok I keep seeing where a guy walks in, orders pineapple on his pizza. Where do you fall? Are you pro-pineapple, not pineapple?
Stacy Jacobs: Maybe once a year I'll do pineapple, but only because I'm really hungry.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Yep.
Stacy Jacobs: But I don't order it.
Mike Gerholdt: I've done it once.
Stacy Jacobs: If it's in front of me, I'll eat it just to be polite, but I don't go out and say I want it.
Mike Gerholdt: No, there's five people in the world that crave pineapple and ham pizza. Just made me think of that. You really brought up another interesting point, which is once you're certified, it's kind of like the beginning of your learning because we also have maintenance exams, right? I mean, actually they're Trailhead modules now.
Stacy Jacobs: Right. And they are so nice in Trailhead. And those are really, really important too. I always encourage everyone, if you're going to spend so much time studying and learning and applying yourself to something that stays with you, you better keep it. And these modules only take minutes to complete. They don't take months, in some cases, to study for some of these exams. They can be quicker than that, but keep what you earn and definitely stay up in the know with the latest and greatest because it really prepares you and all of your decisions in the future when it comes to career. Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: I mean, and getting certified, I know the few times I've been certified, getting there and then taking that exam is not cheap. I don't want to scare people away with price, but to your point, if you're going to spend money on the investment, don't just do it for a one-time thing, do it because it's durable and you can maintain it. I think the coolest thing that we did was moving to Trailhead for the maintenance part of it because you can get hands-on and actually see some of it. I know some of it is just multiple choice answers, but some of it you can really get hands-on and do and actually, oh wow, be a part of that. Whereas a hundred years ago, we would just get a developer org that had the newest release enabled, and then it was up to you to figure out a scenario to use it.
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely. It was such a game changer, especially in the marketing cloud world where I come from. But really having everything in there in an easy to digest and kind of a fun format, right? Everyone likes to get points and earn badges and things like that. It definitely changed my perspective and my willingness to go and keep my certifications because it is an important piece of our ecosystem pie here. You know, you have your experience, you have your certifications, and then we have AI and all three together, just kind of a super place to be right now. And that's what motivates me and my role and how important it is for all of our ecosystem to understand we're in this together and all these three things definitely do matter.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. You bring up a point that I can't believe we didn't talk about, but you're not just at Salesforce having been part of the ecosystem and, oh, now I'm on this team and cheering for certifications. You're actually certified.
Stacy Jacobs: Oh yes. Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Gerholdt: What was one of the driving factors for you to get certified even before you joined Salesforce?
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah. Back in the day, I was a marketing cloud administrator back when it was ExactTarget before the acquisition. So that kind of time stamps me here, but I knew there was more that we could do with the organization I was a part of. I knew personalization was really important. I knew because of my marketing background, a target audience and understanding what they want and listening to their needs and what they value in the messages they were receiving. Whether it was marketing or... I'm sorry, through emails or through SMS, I knew that we could do more than just blast emails out, but I didn't have the eloquent ways to talk about it then. I just knew that the platform controlled and had this power that I wanted to unlock for my marketing audience here. And so I decided to step out of my comfort zone, understand what it was the platform was. And mind you, this was way back in the day when Marketing Cloud was acquired by, or ExactTarget was acquired by Salesforce. And so I wanted to know more about Salesforce. And the very first admin or certification I got was Salesforce Admin because I learned the basics. I learned how we could pull in all of this great information about our audience at the time that it mattered and then extend the conversation with Marketing Cloud. So target audiences, hitting them in time periods that made sense, right? I worked for a travel agency company and we had a publication line as well. So print magazines, if those are still a thing out there where you could hold them, you can feel them, you can smell them. We also ran the digital side of all of that. So hitting our audience, the moment really, really mattered when it came to events and travel packages and things like that. And I knew to unlock all of that experience and make it better for the end users, our customers, and better for the business, I needed to learn more. I needed to understand what needed to be unlocked with the platform and core and that I did just that. I studied, I went, I passed, and then I was able to connect the pieces for my team and it was a great experience.
Mike Gerholdt: Wow.
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: I remember this would've been 2008. I got my first certification and I remember walking into the president's office because I reported to the president of the division and saying I was certified and they were like, "So what does that mean?" And I thought to myself-
Stacy Jacobs: What'd you say?
Mike Gerholdt: Funny you should ask.
Stacy Jacobs: What did you say?
Mike Gerholdt: I told them, I said, "It means that the company that builds the product that we use has faith in me to configure the product in a manner that's the best possible way for our use." And I kind of always leaned against that. I would also say I want to bounce this idea off you because my entire Salesforce career changed and it was like October, ironically. It was October of 2008 because I finally felt like I had the confidence in what I was doing as opposed to just the ability to do it. And so I didn't feel like I was impersonating anybody. I was no longer impersonating a Salesforce admin. I was a Salesforce admin. And I was a Salesforce admin, not because the certification said so, but because it told me back that this is the skill level you're at and it's the skill level measured, not just one you think you can do. I don't know, you think you could run a 10-minute mile, but you've never ran a mile.
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah. I mean, there's a sense of validation in getting certified, especially for those individuals who have worked in an org or several orgs for several years and then they aren't certified. But there's a validation that goes with it and you get to keep that as long as you maintain your certification. And when you are presenting yourself and your brand, it does have volume to it. I'm not saying experience is higher or anything like that than certification. They go together and your exam, your certification definitely doesn't replace experience. Absolutely not. There's so much I have learned by messing up email sends, by using the wrong merge field, but your certification really shows you what you can do on the platform as a whole in any org, right? And yeah, it is a very powerful piece and you need to advocate for that too. I love that you answered the way that you did with your employer because we also need to advocate for ourselves and say, "This does matter. I can do this." And that's what I urge everyone out there listening to just take it one step at a time because it does matter and AI is here and knowing the base where we crawl, walk, run is definitely going to set our whole ecosystem up for success in the long run.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It just felt like, I really felt like it's not that I didn't have to explain myself. I didn't have to explain myself as much.
Stacy Jacobs: Yes. I loved getting my first cert. Oh man, that feeling of relief when I left the center, I don't know if you did. Back then we couldn't do it virtually, right?
Mike Gerholdt: Oh, no. I had to drive-
Stacy Jacobs: We had to get into the center.
Mike Gerholdt: I had to drive an hour and a half. I had to drive all the way to Des Moines and I remember it was, I forget what kind of testing center it was. I was the only one in there because this is also 2008. Computers had barely been invented and they were like, "Oh, you're here to take a Salesforce test." And I was like, "Yep." I think probably that was their third one they'd ever administered. And I got done. And at the time, do you remember this? They used to end the test and yes. And then there would be a preview screen that would come up and it would show you all your answers. And you don't remember the questions, like question 49, C, awesome. I guess so. I picked C back then. I'm still going to go with it. And it would give you all your answers and you're like, "Okay, I'm going to click submit, submit." And it turns for a second. And then it's like, "Before we give you your results, they'd like feedback." So I'm like, "No, God." Because hitting submit, it felt like it's like the first time you pay online with your credit card, you're like, "Well, here goes the whole world."
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah, there's no turning back.
Mike Gerholdt: And then it came back with that prompt of, "Give us your feedback." I was like, "Can I give you my feedback after I find out if I pass?" But I hit that button and I just remembered I stood up. I was like, "Yes, I passed." And the instructors, because it was glass in between us, they looked like they were scared because I knocked the chair over. I was like, "No, I'm fine. I'm okay."
Stacy Jacobs: Oh, wow.
Mike Gerholdt: I'm fine. It's okay.
Stacy Jacobs: Oh, but that feeling, and now it's yours. And how many release cycles have you been through with that one and maintaining?
Mike Gerholdt: Oh yeah. I mean, three a year. Yikes. A lot. But yeah, I mean, I've maintained my certification. I'm sure there's always stuff you can learn, but I feel like having got that first credential, it also... I didn't get the bug like some people of I have to keep getting a lot of credentials. I was good at two or three. Mostly because I really enjoy being proficient and having the credentials in the space that I'm working in the most. And at the time, some of the credentials like your Marketing Cloud, the organization I was at didn't have Marketing Cloud. Now, it wasn't on the roadmap. If it was on the roadmap, I definitely would've sat for it.
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah. Marketing Cloud is one of the harder ones to get in, but with our newer products and whatnot, Trailhead is really the place to be for all of our products now. But I do remember that same feeling back in the day, especially with Marketing Cloud engagement, having your hands in an org. Oh, it was like gold. It was a wonderful place to be. But we have made strides to get Marketing Cloud more hands-on, and that's part of where my role here at Salesforce comes into play too, is making sure that we can get enabled in these products. And we have safe places to do that too. I think a lot of it is having that safe place, your Sandbox, a different business unit. Now we have data spaces. All these things matter and just keep looking. If you're not in there, I would always recommend folks who wanted to learn Marketing Cloud. Where can I get started? How can I do this? Well, now there's a lot of options out there. And I definitely remember that survey pop-up as well as trying to find your-
Mike Gerholdt: You thought it was your score for a second. You're like, oh, no. I feel like I need to fill this out. Maybe you guys got to calculate some stuff back there.
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. But to your point, you bring up something interesting, and I do get asked a lot about this as well is, well, what's next? I can go get my Salesforce Admin certification, or maybe I already have one that's in Marketing Cloud or Tableau, but really what's next? Where should I go from here? Because we have several paths to follow, and I think you need to start with your persona. What are you comfortable with? It doesn't all have to be technical. You don't have to know a single piece of code to get certified in many cases, but we also have our technical paths as well. So I think it's coming down to what you want to specialize in. Marketing Cloud, I have a small bias towards it because it has powered my entire career up from that first... Surprisingly, my first certification was not Marketing Cloud though. And so it really propelled me forward. And I think you need to look at where your comfort levels are, the industries you're interested in and where you want to specialize. Because those basics like the Salesforce Admin, Data Cloud is a great place to be, those AI specialists, all of them have value, but perhaps looking at what you want to specialize in would be my recommendation. But I don't know if you have any extra insight on that or what you say. What do you say is the next one?
Mike Gerholdt: So I think a couple of things. One, I would read into the certifications because I think everybody thinks they're all technical. And one thing that I learned with Sales Cloud Consultant, I don't know if that's what it's still called, what I really enjoyed about that certification was it taught me how to ask better questions of my users and it taught me how to almost act as a third party when working with my company and not assume answers. And all of that was in the certification before we ever got to anything technical. And I think that's the part that makes you a little bit more whole is the certifications aren't just, do you know the clicks? Do you know the config behind it? But it's, do you know how to get there? And do you know how to get there in a way that the organization is going to really be useful from? Are you going to create an app that is exactly what they ask or are you going to create an app that peels a couple layers deeper and actually uncovers the problem that you're going to find out three months later? And I think that's what the certification did. The other thing, and this is kind of attuned to what you said, a lot of people look at it as, well, I have the experience. I could just top off my life with the certification. It's not the end. When you graduate from college, you aren't like, cool, all done learning work life stuff. That's the beginning. Because now you're going to shop around that college degree and get jobs and then build your career. And to me, that's the same thing as the certification. Once you have that certification, cool. Now the really fun part begins because now it's you have something really firm to stand on and build the rest of your career upon. As opposed to it being the capstone of your career. It's not. It's where you go to build the rest of your career and you use it as a foundation because you can just say, well, I'm certified in these three things as opposed to, well, what does it mean when you say you have 10 years of Salesforce experience?
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it doesn't tell me if you have a certification, it definitely does not tell me how you handle those real world, real org situations. How do you handle the unclear requirements? And I love those consultant exams because they absolutely do what you said. They get you to think more about the holistic approach to how this product or this scenario fits into a use case. And so that's something certifications don't give you. They don't give you a clear road into how you handle gathering requirements, technical debt, all of these things. But that's where all the experience and you being human with judgments come in. And so when I meet somebody and we're talking about their career paths and we're talking about what's next, because to your point, we get degrees, we earn our accomplishments, but it never stops. Learning never stops. I really treat certification as a strong starting signal. It is something that you dedicated yourself to. You learned, you earned and you've kept it. And then I want to hear how you've applied it. So I'm always looking for those wonderful scenarios and I learn a lot by making mistakes. So I also want to learn how you've made mistakes on how you've applied that certification thus far. And yeah, that's a very, very good point. Those consultant exams are great at handling some of those logical thinking points.
Mike Gerholdt: Right. Yeah. There's no exam that sets you up for everything you can possibly run into. I equate it to driver's ed. They can't possibly teach you how to handle every situation on the road. And passing driver's ed and getting your driver's license doesn't mean you'll be a good driver. But what it does mean is they've at least equipped you with enough of the critical skills and ways to think through solutions and challenges that when something does come up, rather than it being completely foreign to you, you're like, "Okay, I have a methodology to work through." There's a place in Denver that has, I want to say it's like a six-way stop or a five-way stop. I think it's five, five points. It's the neighborhood. I went to a jazz festival there. There's no driver's ed manual that tells you what to do at a five-way stop.
Stacy Jacobs: No, there's not.
Mike Gerholdt: Who goes? I don't get who goes. You on the left? But at least you have a methodology when you get there to say, "Okay, I should always yield to the people on the right or yield to the left." You have at least something to start with to work through that problem as opposed to nothing.
Stacy Jacobs: You have a general idea.
Mike Gerholdt: Well, you got to pull up your phone and ask Claude, "Hey Claude, I'm sitting at a five-way stop sign. What should I do?"
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah. You have a general idea of how the pizza's made.
Mike Gerholdt: Right. Whether or not it's coming with pepperoni.
Stacy Jacobs: Or cheese or white sauce or red sauce.
Mike Gerholdt: I was shocked. You went to cheese first. I was like, "I never really thought of it being an option to get a pizza without cheese, just a slab of dough and sauce."
Stacy Jacobs: I know, right?
Mike Gerholdt: Man.
Stacy Jacobs: And then we layer AI on all of it. I mean, before we know it, robots are going to be delivering all our meals.
Mike Gerholdt: I mean, yeah. I feel like that's probably a whole thing, those little food delivery things getting stuck everywhere. Well, Stacy, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and beating me to the food analogy. You win.
Stacy Jacobs: Oh, thanks so much.
Mike Gerholdt: Not that it's a contest, but I can't believe you beat me there.
Stacy Jacobs: Well, it is now.
Mike Gerholdt: I suppose I'll take that. That and I need to know how many people like pineapple on their pizza. I'm not opposed to it. Of all the fixings, it seems to be the most controversial.
Stacy Jacobs: It is, yeah. I also want to know how many people know about this five-way stop sign.
Mike Gerholdt: I think it's five points. It is the coolest area outside of Denver. I was on a vacation in Denver and I stumbled on a jazz festival and I had to look it up when I got back to the hotel room. But yeah, I want to say it's five points and there's five streets that converge right there. They had a whole festival. There was two stages and food trucks.
Stacy Jacobs: Fun.
Mike Gerholdt: It was awesome.
Stacy Jacobs: That is great.
Mike Gerholdt: Well, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Stacy Jacobs: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Mike Gerholdt: Big thanks to Stacy Jacobs for joining me today. One thing that really stuck with me from this conversation is that getting certified isn't the finish line. It's really the starting line. I mentioned how getting my first certification back in 2008 changed the way I thought about myself. I didn't suddenly know everything about Salesforce, actually far from it, but I had the confidence that I knew what I was building and more importantly, I had a foundation of knowledge to build on. And I think that's more important even today. Yes, AI can give you the answer, but you still need the knowledge and experience to know whether it's the right answer. So whether you're thinking about your first certification or wondering what comes next, I hope this conversation gives you something to think about. And if you know somebody who's been putting off a certification, well share this episode with them. Until next time, I'll see you in the cloud.
