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The Impact Ladder is a conversational career podcast for technical people who want to grow their business impact.
Each episode, we sit down with someone who influences commercial outcomes in tech companies, startups, or technical ecosystems. Through the conversation, we trace their climb: the roles, the inflection points, and crucially, the skills and habits they deliberately built along the way. Because nobody moves up the ladder by accident.
The through-line: as you became more impactful in your career, what did you have to change in yourself?
Our goal of the podcast is to extract the hard won lessons learned by our guests that can help the next generation of people up-and-coming in their career in tech-oriented companies.
Hey, all. Welcome to the Impact Ladder podcast. Today, we have John Patton on, a senior VP of AI and data solutions at High Tide Consulting Inc. In this episode, John shares what he learned from a twelve year journey at Salesforce starting as a solution engineer and ending his time there as a senior director of solution engineering while leading a team. John also gets into how he's approaching conversations with customers at his current company to help them uncover and adopt new cutting edge agentic AI flows by leveraging the Salesforce ecosystem within higher education and nonprofit environments.
Andrew:Alright. Let's get into it. Hey, John. Welcome to the podcast.
John:Hey. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Andrew:Yeah. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about yourself, career wise. Like, what does your role look like today? What are the sorts of things that you do on a daily basis?
John:Today so I focus on solution design and agentic strategy for nonprofits higher in public sector. Basically, spending my day thinking about how we can make their infrastructure and their technology investments really help them accomplish their mission. Spend a lot of time thinking through what's coming out, how to use it, how to harness it, and how to do so safely with privacy and trust.
Andrew:Interesting. That's that's cool. I got a lot of questions. I actually before I got into tech, I used to work in the social services. So I'd be curious to kinda hear how things plug in at that level just being somebody who's kinda been in the trenches on that side of things with the databases and the case notes and all that.
Andrew:But, yeah, that that's awesome. That's really cool. Now okay. So before we kinda just chat about it, what does rev like, not revenue impact, I guess, but, like, business outcome impact look like if you're doing a good job with your clients?
John:Yeah. It's a great question. So, I mean, everything we do, we try to ground in return on investment or return on impact. Right? Yeah.
John:And so when you're working with a nonprofit, they exist to accomplish their mission and deliver that impact. So for us, it's a function of what are we building and how does that enhance their impact? How does it allow them to do act like an amplifier and do even more with the the funds and the resources that they have? We we are gonna do a project that is, you know, really cool piece of technology, really fancy interface, but actually doesn't help them deliver more tangible impact and and achieve their mission. So for us, that's always front and center.
John:For a higher ed institution, those are a little bit more fragmented. So sometimes you're working with admission, it's a little bit easier math. You're like, how many students applied? How many were accepted? How many matriculated?
John:Right? So that those funnels are a little bit easier to measure than, like, nebulous impact sometimes. But, yeah, we definitely always are focusing on making sure that there's that that outcome at the end of a project that delivers real value.
Andrew:Gotcha. Awesome. I definitely can relate to that. Yeah. If it's kind of a fuzzy goal or more mission oriented, sometimes there's less measurable outcomes, and it just kinda comes with the territory.
Andrew:And, yeah, that that's cool that you're thinking about that, both ways. Now if we kinda go back in time a little bit, how did you get to where you're at today? Because if you well, if you told somebody maybe five years ago what your title was, they'd be like, I don't understand what that is. What's agentic? Like, all that.
Andrew:Right? But I'd be I'm super curious to kinda hear a bit about your trajectory. Like, what happened? What are the steps you took? What what did maybe progression look like to get you sitting in this current current seat that you're in right now?
John:Yeah. Well, I think there's there's kinda two driving forces for me in my career. One is kind of the the progression of my career through the corporate ladder, that kind of thing, and then the other is kind of my overarching desire to be connected to something, you know, bigger and larger than just maximizing shareholder value, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but it, you know, isn't the only thing that matters. Mhmm. So for me, I always wanted to work in a in a place where I felt like I could make a difference and deliver impact.
John:And, you know, nonprofits are profoundly underserved in terms of innovation and really thoughtful approaches. Usually, you kinda get the the not the best and the brightest in terms of the partners that wanna work with nonprofits, which is a bummer. And so, you know, you end up with, you know, a lot of lot of consultants who have, you know, fundraising strategies from 1975 and haven't updated them since. Right? Who charge lots of money.
John:And so what if we actually could could be, like, really helpful, really innovative, really thoughtful, and help this underserved market? So that that's always been, a personal ethos, and, you know, my my entry into that was actually starting a nonprofit myself. It was called Forgo. And the the idea was that I would go to these, you know, paddle raise dinners on the weekends occasionally, and they tell a a beautiful story and, you know, maybe even get a little waterworks going. And they're like, do the paddle raise, and you're like, yeah.
John:I care about this, and you raise your paddle. And then I found myself, you know, four or five days later, not thinking about it at all. Like, just I had moved on from that moment. And so some buddies and I thought, well, what if we lived in a way that what we actually said we cared about and what stirred us to give was just a part of our everyday life. And so we developed an application where you would get reminded, like, on Tuesday, hey.
John:Why don't you forego a cup of coffee and give the money you would have spent to that cause you said you cared about? Right? So that was, like, how I got into, like, the nonprofit space. And then the more traditional corporate career ladder was, I got connected to Salesforce early on actually through Radian six acquisition, which is, like was a social media monitoring platform that was built in Flash. That's how old it is.
John:Okay. Old I am.
Andrew:Back in the days
John:where people would tell you, you know, every time you build something in Flash, an angel loses their wings. And and so it was built on Flash, and it was you know, at the time, it was really cool, great people. But it got acquired by Salesforce. And so right as that was happening, I got put into a role at Salesforce. And I was in sales, but what I really liked doing was demonstrating and connecting the stories of how the product could serve my clients.
John:I really enjoyed that part of it much more than the actual, like, contracting and all of that. So a job opened up at Salesforce Foundation at the time, which became salesforce.org an SE to actually do that. And so I came in and was an SE at Salesforce Foundation in 02/2012, was it? Something like that. Mhmm.
John:And then I literally just worked my way up the ladder. Every couple years, I had a new opportunity and a new title until I got to senior director of solution engineering and strategic engagements. So I worked my way up and then left that space and went over to the consulting world. I've the kind of the joke is, like, Salesforce SEs, we get to make the promises, and then the the actual implementers who are in Mac consulting implementers actually get to, you know, cash the checks and deliver the promises. So
Andrew:I thought I've made a
John:lot of promises. I wanna make sure I have the experience of delivering on those promises too. Oh, okay. That's how I made my way over to where I'm at.
Andrew:Awesome. I love that. That's really neat that, Juan, you've had that through line of just nonprofit. You've kinda touched it in different ways at this point. And then also seeing both sides from, like, the, I guess, the Salesforce side of things in that sector, that that's really cool.
Andrew:Are there this might be too in the weeds, but I'm curious. Are there any things that, maybe, how do I word this? Maybe, people who buy into Salesforce struggle with on the implementation side? Like, maybe they think, like, a nontechnical admin can handle it, but they really need somebody with more technical skills.
John:Yeah. Oh, for sure. There are things that people struggle with. I think you you raised one right there. I think the the idea of could and should, you know, the old Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum situations, like, just because you could doesn't mean you should.
John:Right? Like, that's also true of Salesforce. Just because you could build it in Salesforce or build this complex workflow or this complex logic doesn't mean you should. I am a firm believer in using the out of the box capabilities as much as possible and then customizing on the base versus, like, you know, trying to build something totally artisanal from scratch, you know, never before seen. It can do that, but you get a lot more success when you leverage the, you know, billions of dollars of developers that Salesforce has and how they've built the structure and then build on top of that base.
John:So that's definitely one. But I will say, you know, today, the there's always a knowledge gap that had to be bridged historically. Like, how do I do this? How do I troubleshoot that? How do I build this?
John:And, you know, with the tools that are at our fingertips today, the knowledge gap is, like, closed. So as long as you know how to prompt,
Andrew:you can pretty much figure it out at this point. Interesting. Yeah. I imagine that is impacting kind of the solutions world positively and negatively where maybe people are coming forward with more complex things that they can maybe handle until that person who's, like, super ambitious about AI leaves. And that organization is stuck with that thing, whereas, like, the out of the box implementation could have been fine.
John:That's right. Someone else would be able to pick that up and figure out where you are a lot faster. Yeah. That's if your if your team member who is doing the development or administration is not leveraging it to document what they're doing, you're you're doing it wrong. And that's that's officially incorrect at this point.
John:And there should be a a breadcrumb trail for everything that's being done that, you know, you'd be able to unwind and come back to in a heartbeat if you needed to.
Andrew:Awesome. I love that. Now so with your journey, so it sounds like like you were involved in this this monitoring software, social media monitoring, and then you went through that acquisition. You got exposed to Salesforce, new opportunities, that sort of thing. You're in that nonprofit track.
Andrew:It sounds like from what you said, you had passion there. You felt that there was purpose there. You had the experience from, like, your your own startup. All that kinda lines up. Now as you progressed, right, because your what what was your I think it was, like, director of solution engineering was your final title at Salesforce?
John:Yeah. Senior director of solution engineering.
Andrew:Okay. Yeah. So I imagine there's, like, a huge chunk of just learning personal growth, like, hard won battles, like, in that from, okay, you start there, and then you're leaving there. Right? Now what like, was there a specific moment where you maybe realized, like or, like, the business impact aspect clicked for you?
Andrew:Like, you specifically called out one thing that piqued my interest where you said storytelling is important. And that like, is that maybe something that clicked for you early on where you're like, oh, I gotta be able to tell these stories in a way that nontechnical people can understand? Or, like, what did that look for like for you?
John:Yeah. That's a great question. So I think, you know, people don't under you hear engineering in the title and you think, like, developer, and a lot of people have that preconceived notion and understandably so. But solution engineering is far more about, like, configuration of a platform or configuration of a solution and designing a solution than it is about actually developing. And so, you know, the there's three pillars of solution engineering at least in when I was running those teams, there were three pillars and maybe more now.
John:I don't know. But and it was always it was, you know, like, technical aptitude, technical competence. Like, do you understand technology? Because that is really important, and and people can smell it thousand miles away if you if you don't. Then there is, like, you know, deep product expertise.
John:Right? So technical aptitude, product expertise. You understand your product. You understand how it works, the use cases. And then that third one is presentation storytelling.
John:Right? And what we'd often find is you get really technical people who were developers who were trying to become SCs, and they could, man, they could, you know, explain the platform and why these decisions were made, but they couldn't translate that into the language of the nonprofits that they could actually envision how they would use the technology to accomplish their mission. So we'd have a lot of times where you'd have people have, like, kind of one or two of the three pillars, and you really need all three. One of my one of my favorite things to coach SEs on is, like, sometimes the right answer is yes. Right?
John:Some or no. But, like, people will ask some sort of feature function question like, hey. Can I set permissions at the role level and, like, you know, for the and and the SE who's done all this work to learn the product is like, this is my chance? Like, hey, mom. We're ready.
John:You know? Like, we prepared for this moment. And they're like, I'm gonna show you how to get to the menu and click and click and click click and click. And it's like, actually, that's the wrong answer. The right answer was, yeah.
John:It can do that. And then going on. Right? Because, like, they trust you that you're telling the truth. So for me, like, this whole world of solution engineering is like, you have to be able to in tune it what's going on in the room, communicate effectively, and have that technical aptitude and product knowledge.
John:If you don't have all three, you're gonna struggle.
Andrew:Yeah. Interesting. That trust factor is interesting. And I think, virtually like, I know, like like, the solutions, sales engineering isn't, a traditional sales role, but, like, I think in sales in general, like, you kinda need to earn the client's trust or the customer's trust and then assume it's there and kinda build on top of it. That's how do you like, how would you back then or maybe even today, like, build that trust whenever maybe something is, like, a prospect handed off to you and you're picking it up from somebody who sent you that.
Andrew:Like, maybe they're the one who generated the lead or has built it up to a certain point where now, like, you need to look at the technical details. Like, are you going in or were you going in and kinda, like, gauging the temperature? Is it just, like, an assumption? And it's, like, if they don't trust you at that point, it's just not a qualified lead, and you kinda let it, like, go away. Like, can you talk to that?
John:Yeah. I think I have a we had a whole methodology around how we did this that we developed at Salesforce for or the nonprofit practice anyway. And our whole concept was that we we try not to make the customer repeat themselves. Right? And so it's like, if you've said something to one of us, you've said it to all of us, whether that's the sales team, the sales leader, the SE, the SE leader.
John:It's like, we are gonna share information internally. And so the first step to building trust for me was always recapping what we knew so far. Right? Because there's nothing worse than a customer, like, explaining everything in great detail about what they need. And they're like, okay.
John:Great. I'm gonna book you a call with you know? And then you get on the call, you're like, okay. So what are you trying to accomplish? And they're like, are you kidding me?
John:Are you kidding? I just spent an hour explaining this to someone. So I started building trust right away, and I would usually say something like, look. I'm probably 85% correct here, but what I understand your situation to be is and then I would recap what we had heard and what we had learned. And I had done it so many times that I kind of had the poetry of language to put it in maybe even clearer terms than they had given it to us.
John:So I'd synthesized it into, like, maybe four key pillars or something like that. So just I they could see that I had worked with the information they had given and synthesized it into something really meaningful for them. And then I would read that back to them, and then I would say, please fix what I got wrong. And, yeah, sometimes they did fix it, and other times they're like, no. You got it right.
John:Either way, we're already off to the races that I'm here to understand them and solve their problems, not to just just pitch slap them a product, like pitch, pitch, pitch.
Andrew:I love that. Yeah. Logically, that makes a ton of sense. It shows that you, like, you did the footwork ahead of time. You're not just showing up being like, hey.
Andrew:I'm John. Tell me your story. Right? It's it looks like, okay. You've been engaged with whoever.
Andrew:Like, this is what we know. Fill in the holes here. Like, it's something not enter into the system that I should be knowing, like, all that stuff. That's that's really cool. Now with so today, I know your role looks, a little different.
Andrew:Still working kind of in a similar ecosystem, still on the sales side, Salesforce, aspect, not necessarily on the Salesforce side of things, but more implementation and then still nonprofits. Are there specific, like, types of nonprofits that you guys work with specifically? Like, are you looking at people who are like do they have, like, actual revenue outcomes? Are they actual like, is it funding? Like, you're just looking to get more people in the door?
Andrew:Is it like, are you, like, implementing programs to, I don't know, like, build community engagement? Like, are there certain, like, trends there that you guys are kinda most equipped to deal with?
John:Yeah. Great question. So, you know, I think everyone's like, oh, no. We do everything. And and, you know, I think there's some degree of, like, we have a a portfolio of projects that spans a lot of different use cases.
John:So there is that. What I would tell you, though, is that, you know, there are projects that I think we are really good fits for. Mhmm. I would say anything related to fundraising, we are absolutely world class at that. Mhmm.
John:It moves management. And and it's not because I'm so smart or anything like that. It it's really because we've kind of reorchestrated how we go to market in those areas designed to leverage your data and your infrastructure and get to outcomes really, really quickly.
Andrew:Mhmm.
John:So, you know, five years ago, if you had, you know, your data infrastructure across, you know, your Azure, your, you know, Salesforce, maybe some old, like, Blackbaud tools or maybe, like, know, old community portal or so. They have all of these different tools over here. And I'm like, alright. Andrew exists in all of these tools. So, like, you're gonna meet with Andrew.
John:What do you wanna tell him? You'd be like, I mean, I have to look in every place and then try to, like, guess what is right here or what what to do or what to ask. Well, that whole, like, interpret like, collection and interpretation and recommendation, that is like if as long as you know how to do this, and that's not everyone does. But if you know how to do this, you can actually build out, skip all that, and go straight to the here's what you should say to Andrew. Right?
John:Like so we have a methodology around fundraising, which is absolutely best of breed, and that's something where we excel. We do a lot with program management as well, building custom programs. And where I think we excel is is leveraging your data to get predictive. So I'll give you an example. If you are a homeless shelter and you also have a food bank and you also have job placement programs, if someone comes in for food, right, they may or may not also need shelter.
John:If someone comes in for shelter, they may or may not also need job placement. Mhmm. Right? But if I take a little bit of just take a moment upfront and ask the questions about what other services they might need. Mhmm.
John:If I do that upfront, I can shorten the time it takes for them to get self sufficient and back on their feet by addressing not just the momentary need, but the the likely future needs as well. Right? So I build one application for them. I send it to all three programs. They start running that process, and we track that person over time, and we can shorten the amount of time it takes to get them housed in a good job, fed.
John:Right? Because we're doing it all at once really thoughtfully. Mhmm. And I will tell you the traditional world of of solution implementation and building out these solutions, there's really no incentive to do that because you would get to build three custom programs end to end, and you get to build a lot more hours. But in our world, it's like we know there's we're not running out problems to solve for nonprofits.
John:There's a long list of problems to solve. So if we can solve three or four at a time more efficiently Mhmm. We don't view that as encroaching on our potential benefit and revenue. We view that as just the right thing to do for nonprofits. Mhmm.
John:So I think programs, fundraising, we have some really innovative approaches to building out, like, missional dashboards and be able to track your success metrics all in one location regardless of where those are housed. I just think we have a lot of stuff in that space, which is is best of breed. There are projects, though, that we're probably not the right fit for. You know? Like, if you need, you know, six people to do staff aug and, like, document ingestion or something like that, full time full time heads to do that, yeah, it's probably not a good fit for us.
John:You're gonna wanna go to one of the really big consulting firms to do that.
Andrew:Gotcha. That's neat. Yeah. I think things are easier in general in life and in business. Whenever you kinda know your lane and you stay in your lane and you can recognize when other people are in your lane, and, it just it just simplifies a lot of things.
Andrew:And it sounds like from what I'm hearing that you know that lane. I'd be curious. This is maybe boring to some people, but super interesting to me. Like, what does an agentic solution look like in maybe a fundraising scenario? Like, what types of things can you bring to a nonprofit that they would look at and be like, oh, that's helpful.
Andrew:We see that, like, on our profit and loss.
John:Yeah. So I have to I have to somewhat shield my answer, here in terms of, like, our secret sauce For sure. Because we have a we have a really well considered approach here, which yields tremendous results. But what I what I do feel very comfortable sharing is that there is a massive shift from seeing to knowing. And what I mean by that is, historically, when you looked at some sort of fundraising tool, the goal was to be able to see everything in one place.
John:Right? So I see you. I see your giving history. I see your volunteer history. I see who's in your household.
John:I see that you attended our banquet. I see that you, you know, bid on a toaster in our bank or whatever. Like, whatever. Like, and I I suddenly I see you've been to our website. I see what emails you've opened.
John:I see that you're you get text message updates. You're subscribed to our newsletter. I like, all these things about you, and I look at it, I pull up your record, and I just I can see it all. And that was that was Camelot for forever. Right?
John:It's like, ah, I can see everything. But the problem is it's still on me looking at your record to know what to do with all that information. Like, what's actually actionable? And the problem is that if I have thousands of constituents, right, everyone's gonna have a slightly different amount of their profile filled in with slightly different things. And so it's really hard to develop a methodology around what you should actually do with all that information that you have.
John:Right? So the shift is from seeing everything to knowing what to do. And knowing what to do leverages an agentic solution where it looks at all of the data and it separates the signals from the noise. And it just targets the signals, and it says based on the signals about Andrew, here's what you should do next. Right?
John:And it's evidence based, data driven recommendations on what you should do next with Andrew. And if it doesn't work, guess what? That actually informs the model. So it's actually improving the more you're taking its recommendations and actioning those recommendations. Mhmm.
John:So the model gets better over time and is already better than it would have been for me seeing everything on that single pane of glass. Mhmm. Single pane of glass. Right? That is, like, a, like, a it's so different than what we could've done even a year ago in fundraising.
John:So I don't I can't necessarily articulate how we do all of that because we got some pretty, I think, phenomenal secret sauce in there. But I will share that that is it. Right? The the idea of going from seeing to just knowing what to do. That's the sense.
John:I
Andrew:love that. Yeah. So it sounds like the opportunities are being surfaced, but then also that plan is being surfaced with it. And, that's that's powerful. I I can definitely see how that would have impact, right, at the end of the day.
Andrew:Plus it means that, like, more, like, more highly impactful decisions can be made and less of the administrative stuff, which is still really important. But, yeah, like, kind of handling that sort of stuff programmatically, that that's really cool. I like that a lot.
John:Well, and if you if you kind of, like, go down the rabbit trail with me here for a moment, the next thing is, like, do it for me. Not just knowing what to do, but now do it for me. Right? And so, hey. This person needs to get invited to this event.
John:Okay. Invite them to that event. Right? Okay. They've been invited.
John:You're like, okay. Great. Perfect.
Andrew:That's very cool. And then so oh, okay. Sorry. Go ahead, John.
John:I was saying that allows me, if I'm in if I'm in the fundraising department, to focus on where my highest value activity is, which is making a human connection with that person. Right? Like, my highest value is not sending them an an invite to to our banquet. Right? My highest value is meeting them at the banquet and having a conversation and and really understanding what drives them, right, to to wanna participate financially.
John:That's that's that's hard to AI. Right? The human connection can't AI that. So let's let AI do what it does, and let's let people be people.
Andrew:I love that. So yeah. So it sounds like from what I'm hearing, maybe I misunderstood it a little bit, but almost like that conversational aspect where, like, the AI is, like or the system's surfacing things, and then, yeah, you're actually engaging with it and pushing things forward in that manner?
John:Yeah. Exactly. So maybe the recommendation is give them a phone call. And in that case, you know, you're not gonna have AI call them for you. Right?
John:But Right. But if if it's something tactical, like, make sure they get included on the invite list as we send out this massive mail invite. Like, that's not a high value activity to add them to the list for a person to do. The system should be able to do that on your behalf. Mhmm.
John:Right? So that's it. Like, you gotta have those, like, who does what, when, how, and why rules for AI, and that's, you know, that's a whole separate conversation. But but, yeah, absolutely. Once you know what to do, making sure you know what the best way to execute on that and and take all the busy work out of someone's day whenever possible.
Andrew:I love that a lot. That's, yeah, that's powerful. Now so this might be going back in time a little bit. It will, for sure, be going back in time. But whenever you made the shift, I I imagine I'm guessing here.
Andrew:I imagine the shift maybe happened whenever you, went from, like, the social media monitoring into Salesforce. Like, what changed in your life or your attitude or your approach in general whenever you realize that, oh, I need to now influence revenue. I need to influence impact and real outcomes.
John:Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, when you go from being responsible for yourself to being responsible for a line of business, that is different. And and that's that's exactly what I did. So, you know, when you're in charge of of hiring and and ramping up, that's a that's a different thing altogether.
John:I I am fortunate that I had very good models of leadership to follow. Mhmm. I had a I had a boss at the time who was just really a phenomenal leader. Mhmm. And so it was you know, he was authentic, gave, you know, gave bad news quickly.
John:Like, you know, I always say, you know, don't spit on my foot and tell me it's raining. Right? And and, like, he wouldn't do that. So if there was bad news to share, he wouldn't just, like, tow the company line and pretend it was good news. He'd be like, no.
John:This is this is a tough one, but we're gonna get through it. Right? Mhmm. And so I felt fully free to to be real and honest with my team the whole time. And I think that was a really big deal.
John:And then it allowed me to build trust with my team in a way that, like, I could tell them what I needed to have happen. Like, hey. I need it to look like this. I need us to log this. I need us to do these things.
John:And even if those tasks weren't fun in and of themself, they would do them because they understood the why behind what needed to get done. So I think for me, you know, hiring people, building a team, building a culture of the team came very naturally because I was able to just kind of copy what was done ahead of me And I put my own tweak on it. I'm a lot funnier than my my boss was. His name's Travis. If he listens to this, I'm a lot funnier than he ever was.
John:And so, you know, what he did plus humor down the way. The other piece which was interesting and the one off experience I had, which I think is is is germane to this is at the same time, my my colleague was a sales leader who kinda just went out for personal reasons. And so I then kind of got to look over a lot of the sales that were happening as well and do things like, you know, pipeline updates and forecasting updates and kind of run. They didn't report to me, but they kinda dotted line into me. I was the the highest leader in that in that whole division.
John:And so I got the experience of actually trying to, like, work through enablement and go to market and all of that with a sales team, not just the solution engineering team. And I will tell you that is that is among the hardest I've had to work in my career to kind of span both of those and do it in a way that was authentic, do it in a way that, like, was removing blockers from people beneath me so that they could thrive. My goal wasn't for me to thrive. My goal was to make sure the people that I was responsible for were thriving, and that's that's different. And I will tell
Andrew:you that
John:I don't think I could work in an environment where the leader wasn't focused on helping his team be successful or focused on helping her team thrive. Mhmm. Yeah. But I unfortunately, when you kinda look out in the ecosystem in the marketplace today, you see a lot of people that are focused on their own personal thriving and their own personal success and really don't care about their team.
Andrew:And that's a really interesting perspective, and I I definitely resonate with that. I've had a similar trajectory where I've lucked out with my prior bosses, and everybody's always been, like, had that mentorship mindset where it's like you can tell they not only do they care, but they're like, here's what worked for me, or here's how you can handle that, and here's how you can kinda keep pushing forward. So that that that is really cool. I like that. Now how is AI changing the way you work or kind of, like, the way your role might be defined?
John:Oh, man. How much time you got? So the AI is upended almost every industry except for the industry that I'm in. It feels like like I feel like, you know, it's like we've we've we've always made typewriters. We'll continue to make typewriters.
John:I don't think this computer thing is gonna catch on. Like, I really feel like that's kinda like the the attitude in the industry I'm in right now, especially working with with the firms that work with nonprofits. Mhmm. And so, you know, I'm in this really interesting situation where I'm trying to figure out how to do things cheaper and faster. I'm not trying to figure out how to leverage AI to charge my customers more.
John:And that is, like, just a totally different thought than other firms in the space. And and so for me, you know, I look at this as, like, we have the like I said earlier, nonprofits are not gonna run out of problems to solve. They just they aren't. So if we can use AI to be way more efficient with how we deliver impact, how we group and and solve multiple problems at once, how we deliver, boy, oh, boy, can we make a huge impact and a huge difference. And I'll I'll give you one example.
John:I always think you know, they say drink your own champagne now instead of eat your own dog food. It's much nicer. So how do we drink our own champagne? I we, of course, use Salesforce. Right?
John:You can imagine we're a Salesforce partner. I don't log anything in Salesforce anymore. I don't have to. Wow. Because AI looks at my calendar, looks at my notes, and then uses natural language processing to unpack my transcribe my transcriptions, my notes, looks at my calendar, looks at our instance of Salesforce, and logs it all for me automatically.
John:So my Salesforce is more up to date than it's ever been with more information and more notes and no effort on my part whatsoever to keep it up to date. So, like, that's the kind of stuff that really moves the needle. Right? So our our our clients that we work with that are doing program management, you're like, hey. Hit the record button here on your laptop and then just talk to the person.
John:Mhmm. Right? We'll index everything. We'll make sure the records get to the right place in your program management. We'll we'll create the new case.
Andrew:We'll up we'll do all of that stuff that you would have
John:had to click through and do historically. Mhmm. All you need to do is make sure that your conversation is being recorded and that you're describing what's happening to some extent. Right? Like, I think of it like the surgeon.
John:It's like, alright. We are opening up the patient. You know? Like, they describe what they're about to do. Right?
John:And, like, as long as you're doing that, yeah, we can really remove a lot of the barrier and the manual work to using enterprise technology. So it's greatly changing our world on the daily.
Andrew:That's really cool. And, yeah, I can definitely see a future where that just becomes the norm, and it'll be interesting to see which sectors adopt it the fastest, and I almost feel like it's gonna be, like, the heavy tactical ones. Like, we're already seeing that. Like, the big tech companies, like, they it's their world. Right?
Andrew:Like, they absolutely can dive deep, but I do feel like the nonprofit sector is also kind of ready for adoption. Like, it's gonna take probably longer to get, like, saturation because it's filled with kind of nontechnical folks. But the amount of value that AI brings like, if a frontline social worker gets us, like, double the amount of high impact meetings they're doing because they're automating this stuff, like, that's genuine impact on humanity. Like, that's that is like Yes. Yeah.
Andrew:That is just, like, textbook impact.
John:100%. And so the the question is, in what you're doing today, what are the duplicative or high friction or difficult parts of what you're doing today? And then how can we reduce the friction, make it nonduplicative, or make it less difficult? Right? How can we do that for you?
John:And the answer historically in a lot of cases would have been some sort of, like, massive custom application that, you know, was like, alright. We're gonna build this thing for eighteen months, and then there's gonna be six months of training. And it's like, now that it's like, actually, I think we could build this in, like, six weeks and can leverage the infrastructure you already have. And what do you want it to look and feel like? And, you know, like, all this stuff is so much more possible today than it ever has been.
John:Mhmm. And and if it if it we measure, like, hours given back is one of our most common metrics that we use. And, you know, so to your point, it's like, okay. If you in a eight hour day, if you have four hours of conversations and four hours of admin and maintenance, if I can cut your admin and maintenance down to two hours, you now can have six hours of conversation. Right?
John:That's 50% more meaningful conversations you can have. That's a that's a really big deal. Like, that's a really big deal, and it scales across all of the social workers. Right? So, you know, that's what I care about.
John:That's what I wanna talk about, you know, the, you know, the the fringe, like, agentic, like, oh, look. This thing's really cool or it can, you know, help me answer my homework. That's all fun. But, like, there's real meaningful ways that AI can help you achieve your mission and your impact, And it's not about everything you're doing today is wrong. Mhmm.
John:Because that's we hear that a lot. Like, everything you're doing is wrong. You need to reimagine it all through AI. It's actually much more like, actually, what you're doing is probably very, very good, and how can we make it more efficient?
Andrew:Yeah. I love that. And there there's definitely one thing I see like, I see that what you just described. I also see people, like, actively not adopting it because of this message that's just been kind of, like, piped into the world of, like, oh, we're gonna replace everyone with AI. Right?
Andrew:And it's like, okay. Well, maybe I'm not so motivated to contribute to that. Right? And it feels like now, at least from my perspective as a technical person, it's like I've kinda seen the dust settle. It feels like we're kind of getting through kind of the first, you know, maybe second hype cycle.
Andrew:And, we're seeing, like, where the real use cases are, like you're describing, and it's that augmentation. It's not Yep. It it fundamentally changes literally everything. Like, if it in my opinion, if AI hasn't impacted your role, like, you're gonna lose against the person who's using AI. Right?
Andrew:And it's just a reality. It's here to stay. It's not something that's like even if, like, the AI bubble, quote, unquote, pops, it's still sticking around similar to the, like, the the .com bubble. Right? That popped.
Andrew:The Internet's still one of the most important inventions in the world. Right? And, so that's really, really cool to hear how that technology can be applied in such a meaningful area of the world. Right? And one thing, just in case there is somebody who maybe they work at a nonprofit or maybe they know somebody who works at a nonprofit, like, who who should be reaching out to you about this stuff?
Andrew:Like, is it, like, is it somebody who's on the technical team? Is it the marketing team? And is it people who are already using Salesforce? Or what if they're on, like, another CRM? Like, would they have to migrate?
John:Well, I think, you know, we are if you're a nonprofit, a higher ed, or public sector, I seriously doubt you're gonna give me a scenario I haven't run across multiple times and we haven't built before. So I do wanna cast a wide net there. Like, I think we really can be helpful. And I think just the the way we approach it is so different than others in this space. You know, our goal is not to lock you in for eighteen months and do some beast of a project.
John:Like, we're really happy to give advice, create, like, really quick wins, and create value, like, rapidly. Like, that's that's our focus, and we can do that because we're like a a niche consulting firm that's highly specialized. Right? This is what we do. I don't have 75 people sitting on the bench where I'm like, I gotta figure out how to get them in this project.
John:You know? So I think, you know, that would be my my wide net. Is anyone in that space, we definitely have probably run into a use case before. But I also would say, you know, you said something earlier about people worried about being replaced, and I think I think you're really onto something there. The the number of jobs for, like, software developers has gone up, not down.
John:And and it's not necessarily because we need people to develop software. Right? But it's because you know how to deploy code, and you know how to, like, manage code repositories. And, like so there is a, like, okay. Like, I probably am not gonna hire someone who knows how to write HTML code to build my website anymore.
John:Like, yeah, that crap's over. But I definitely want someone who knows how
Andrew:to
John:modernly like, in a modern way deploy my HTML content across my web properties in a way that's got really well considered, like, protection against the like, you know, like, there's a whole entire different industry that comes out of this, which is when you have all this stuff being generated and written, how do you manage it successfully and securely? Because if your CMO is writing code, I mean, like, that's, like, actually a little bit scary. Right? Like, we need to make sure there's guardrails. And so I would say, you think of the AI as not a replacement.
John:The gosh. I need a more mature analogy than this, and so apologies for the juvenile analogy forthcoming. But I think of it like Tony Stark in Iron Man. It's like AI is the Iron Man suit. It's still Tony Stark in there making decisions.
John:It's just that he can lift a really big boulder with the suit on where he couldn't lift it without the suit. Right? But you still need a person in there making decisions and and executing. Because, you know, if you lose the human in the loop, you start, you know, getting this kind of AI slop not really well considered. And if you're gonna be dealing with people in moments of crisis, like, we can't have it where it isn't human.
John:There's no human connection. We just it won't work. Right? It doesn't seem There's a reason why when you pick up a suicide hotline phone, there's a person who answers and not like an algorithmic robot. Right?
John:There's a reason there's a human there. And so we don't lose the humanity at all, but we do think about augmenting. So if you're in a space where you've got high friction processes that are painful, you're like, this should be easier. You're right. It should be easier.
John:Give me a call. We'll help you figure out how, especially if you're in that higher ed nonprofit public sector space, then
Andrew:we're Awesome. Yeah. That's awesome, John. I love that. There's, yeah, there's just so much ground for you guys to cover.
Andrew:There's so many solutions that need implemented. That's really cool. Okay. So now as we start to wind down, what is one challenging period in your career that ultimately made you better?
John:Oh, I've had multiple challenging periods in my career. I think the one I referenced earlier about kinda covering for the head of sales who was out was definitely one. I've also worked at places where the the there was no operational layer. It was just like someone would dictate and say, like, we're gonna do this and, like or this is gonna solve all our problems. And then there was no, like, follow through.
John:And I have this real challenge of not feeling good about, like, not a no follow through. Right? That's a that's a personal problem for me if someone says something and then they don't actually follow through on it. That that creates tension for me because I just kind of expect people to do what they're supposed to do. Right?
John:Like, I do it. You should do it too. And so I think, you know, I've been in places where people are constantly changing the direction so rapidly that you can never really progress. It's really hard to, you know, drive the boat if you don't know what star you're pointing at. So I think that's that's I've had that in my career.
John:I've also had it where I had some people on my team go through really difficult personal situations. And then the the balance of empathy and professionalism, I think, is always it's a delicate balance. It's a tightrope. So, yeah, those are some that I've had that are are really tough.
Andrew:That's interesting and, yeah, super insightful. Thank you for, sharing that. Okay. Final question, and then I'll let you go. What is one, like, resource or even just, like, thing?
Andrew:Right? It could just be mentorship, like you alluded to earlier, but what is something like maybe it's a book, a podcast, a course, something you'd recommend to someone trying to kinda break into your line of work?
John:Oh, in my line of work today, I would I would recommend you actually just go out there and get your hands dirty in in different platforms and different tools. I mean, I what's available to you today is, like, nothing I've ever seen or heard in my entire life. This realization that no matter how much I know, I'm always gonna be an idiot compared to OpenAI. Right? Like, it doesn't matter how smart I think I am.
John:I'm so dumb compared to what it already knows. Right? And so this humility of, look. You're not gonna become a master at anything more than OpenAI or Claude already is. So get in there.
John:Try it out. Ask it. Like, hey. Tell it to be really critical. Like, what did I do wrong?
John:What should I have asked you to do that you didn't do? What am I missing? Right? And just get your hands on it. If you wanted to get into, like, the SE line of work, which is, like, a little bit I'm a little less in that side, but there's some really phenomenal resources out there that that, you know, I always refer people to.
John:One of them is called the presales collective. And so if you Google presales collective, yeah, you'll see that. They they have really great resources. There's also I often recommend technical people who don't know storytelling or don't know how to connect with customers. Just do a Toastmasters.
John:I know that sounds crazy, but if, like, if someone comes to me and they're really technical and they're like, but I know you're worried about my ability to tell the story. So here's my Toastmaster certificate. I'm gonna feel like, oh, great. You you saw your gap, you know, and you filled your gap filled the gap. You're you're gonna be great.
John:So, yeah, definitely do something to show that you're really good at presenting and speaking. There's also a phenomenal organization called Demo to Win, which works with people building out impactful presentations using, like, core communication principles. You were a communication major, you know the core principles like I was in my undergrad. So, like, they use those core principles, and they kind of transform that into a corporate environment for for product selling. So presales collective, demo to win, Toastmasters.
John:And if you're trying to get in my line of work right now, which is, like, compiling solutions and building custom solutions, like, get your hands in Claude code. Get your hands in Codex. Like, get get going. It's it's unbelievable what's available to you today.
Andrew:Awesome. That's that's great advice, John. I really appreciate that. Now we'll put your LinkedIn link in the show notes if anybody wants to reach out to you. And, yeah, thanks so much for just still openly sharing all the information with us today.
Andrew:Appreciate it.
John:Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was great chatting with you.