Mike Boyle: Well, it’s a really cool program, and if you’d like to learn a little bit more about the Elevate program, just go to our website. It’s a-d-v-i-c.c-o-m – Advic.com. Head to the Careers section in the navigation and you’ll find some information about the Elevate program there.

Jeff Jones: Brian, I would just say, want to point, out. We do get a lot of folks from Georgia. Obviously, I went to Georgia, big fans, but we’ve gotten some great talent out of other universities as well. I think Brooke and AJ, out of the University of Florida, would argue that case for you.

Brian Mize: Well said.

Mike Boyle: Good point. So, Jeff, your turn to do a little bit of reflecting on the past ten years. What’s made AdVic different?

Jeff Jones: From my perspective, which may be jaded, right, is one, we pride ourselves on our technical skill sets because they’re really deep and they’re foundational. As I tell people, there’s no sense in dreaming it if you don’t have a way to actually bring it to actualization and build it. But, there’s a lot of shops out there that have strong technical talent as well. For me, as I look at the differentiator, right. we try to pride ourselves on not just being order takers, and I say that, and I believe we’ve heard that from Salesforce itself a lot lately. And the customers that they’ve introduced us to in that we come in and we collaborate with customers and try to work with them on maximizing their strengths, eliminating or minimizing weaknesses, and working with them to think differently on how they’re taking on digital transformation. Right. Because this is kind of the opportunity that lies before them. And I tell people often, like, if you want to do true digital transformation, don’t just take what you do today and do it the same way, whether that be Salesforce or any other technology, right? Leverage the technology and its strengths to change and spring much further forward, because if you just do it the way you’ve been doing it today and you don’t like that, you’re probably still going to wake up and not like it very much. So we challenge people to think a little bit differently and deeper on their approach to digital transformation, enablement, and things along that line. With things like AI coming out and being very prevalent, we’re sending the same message. Right. There are a lot of opportunities there for you to capitalize and move rapidly forward as opposed to incrementally forward. I would also say, and we’ve already hit on this once, but that’s why we have a heavy focus on growing our own talent internally as much as possible. Not that we don’t ever find really good people outside of our Elevate program, but when we bring them in and they’re very malleable and we can mold them and teach that from the get-go, we find they can ramp quicker and they’re very excited about the things we’re doing can bring success quickly.

Mike Boyle: Brian, I want to focus for a moment here on values and principles, things that have been instrumental in shaping the work environment here at Ad Victoriam Solutions over the past ten years. How would you describe what many call a very unique culture here at our company?

Brian Mize: So, at our outset, one of our guiding principles really was the ability or the commitment, rather to just shooting straight, being honest and transparent with our teams, with our partners, with our customers, with what technology can do, with what it can’t do. Jeff mentioned a moment ago, consulting, instead of order taking, doing what we said we would do. M that’s been painful at times, but it’s core to who we are at the earliest. we wanted a place where people who wanted to work hard and succeed had the opportunity to do that and to be given honest and frank feedback on where they were doing well and maybe where we, could improve on. I remember a Salesforce AE once, saying that he likes to work with AdVic because of those values, because, as Jeff said a moment ago, our ability to consult, our ability to communicate, our ability to not hide the issues, but to speak frankly to them, to communicate with the customer, to communicate with our team members, and to help our customers and our salesforce partners really to grow their respective businesses. My hope as we kick off the next decade is that we continue living on, that we continue being transparent with one another. We continue a place where people, who want to work hard, who want to succeed, who want to grow professionally, are given the opportunity to do that, and they’re recognized for doing it. and we continue to build a culture where those contributions are valued, and, frankly, where we continue to do what we said we were going to do ten years ago.

Mike Boyle: Well, that’s culture, which kind of leads us into challenges. Jeff, I wanted to just chat with you for a second about challenges. Every company has one. Can you share any significant company challenges and how our team has overcome them in these ten years?

Jeff Jones: We work with a lot of businesses. Most have a lot more than one challenge. Right. There’s a lot of challenges for us. The very first challenge for us, and it was probably the biggest, was to build something out of nothing. As Brian mentioned earlier, you don’t just kind of hang your shingle when people come running, especially, in today’s virtual world. It took us nine months, I think, to get our very first customer, right. And I was always uncomfortable answering questions like, how long have you been in business? Three months, six months. How many people? Two. That can be very scary for organizations. So finding those first few customers that were willing to kind of take a chance on us, was extremely difficult. But, fortunately, by the time we got to a full calendar year, we had overcome that. And since we had proven ourselves and gained a lot of trust, had a lot of growth in that first two or three years, which was fantastic. We still have growth, but when you’re two people and growing to 10, 15, 20 within twelve months, that’s a lot of growth. And I would say that’s what I tell people is one of the bigger challenges is as you double in size, you almost have to reinvent the company. Not necessarily the core values or things that we’re doing, but how we operate as a business is very different, as you might imagine, from when we were 5, 10, 20, 40 people, and now well over 100. How you handle those things can be quite challenging. Although the challenges we’ve addressed, and as Brian talked about, was kind of building our own team, from the ground up. Right. So that we had that culture built in from the beginning, and I won’t hit it again, but we talked about our elevate program. And then a continuing challenge today, at least for me, is executing on the now while building for what’s ahead. What are the things that are going to be even disruptive to our own business, and how do we plan for it, while continuing to effectively execute on we’re doing today?

Mike Boyle: Well, that’s a really good point, and it leads me into my next question for Brian. It’s about staying ahead of the curve. How has AdVic adapted to changes in the Salesforce ecosystem and the broader market for the future?

Brian Mize: That’s an interesting question. I think overall, I think we’ve done a good job most of the time in recognizing shifts in the market and in technology and in talent and, a lot of the other challenges, frankly, that pop up. We’ve done a pretty good job of being ahead of those, of recognizing when they’re coming and then adjusting to them. One of the differences in AdVic that, maybe a lot of other places don’t have is that we’ve got technical skills. Jeff mentioned earlier that he was an integration architect. From him all the way through the newest person that we have on our delivery teams, and our leadership teams, we have a lot of technical skills, a lot of technical background, and that, frankly, gives us a different perspective. It’s allowed us to shift our stance sometimes, in a way that it doesn’t neglect our customer base, but it does enhance our ability to deliver on new technologies. Key to that is remaining abreast of the landscape, remaining abreast of technologies as they’re coming down the pipe, and staying in tune with advances, that are being made faster sometimes than maybe we even recognize it, as a whole. Not being complacent with where we are, but stretching ourselves to flex into those new spaces. AI is a great example of that. So was our commitment to B2B earlier on, and even to Elevate, going back to that, being ahead of that change as it was, coming down and training up some amazing talent. The key to it all really has always been to not grow complacent, but to maintain a solid level of situational awareness, of self-awareness of our company, of our people, and of what we have coming down the pipe.

Mike Boyle: It’s funny, I just kind of noticed this. We’ve talked about two words that begin with “C.” We talked about culture, we’ve talked about changes. Jeff, I want to talk to you about the third word that begins with “C”…  that’s communities. Many successful companies engage within their communities. How has AdVic been involved in community initiatives, and why has this aspect been so important for us?

Jeff Jones: Yeah. So from our perspective, it’s important to us because it’s kind of not kind of. It’s part of our core value system, right? A lot of the reasons why we started the business is I’d been in consulting for a long time, and the perception is consulting can be very much a sweatshop. But it is intense, and there’s a lot going on, but we always want to make sure that we looked after the people that worked for us and provided more. We became a B Corp back when people thought it was a little fringe. It’s very middle of the road maybe now for people to talk about the things, that we took on back in 2014 and 15. But as it relates to community itself, we kind of break it down into two ways. Right. We have a lot of people based here in Atlanta, but we also have a lot of remote team members, too, and we find people will get much more passionate about getting involved if it’s local to them. So we provide, all of our team members up to 40 hours a year of, what we call VTO, which is volunteer time off, to go do things that they’re passionate about in their own communities. and it doesn’t account against PTO or their bonusing or things of that model. And then organizationally, since we are based here out of Atlanta, and we have a big team members, a lot of team members here. What we have is we support a group called the Georgia English Bulldog Rescue. A lot of our team members are very focused on animals and pets. so that’s a cause that’s very near and dear to us. We support the bulldogs battling breast cancer. We’ve adopted a rhino, and then we adopted a road locally. Once a quarter, we try to get a number of team members together. We go pick up trash on the side of the road and then go have drinks and dinner that evening. So those are just a couple of examples of how we try to get everybody involved in, community affairs.

Mike Boyle: Yeah. And I’m attached to, the Marketing department here, at AdVic, and we just finished up a volunteer program, where we rebuilt the website for the Barkville Dog Rescue. So, those are just, fun things that we’re able to do here at AdVic, and, I’m really grateful that we’re able to do those things.. Brian, looking ahead, at the company’s aspirations for the next decade, how do you envision the company evolving and making a positive impact or continuing to make a positive impact in the Salesforce ecosystem?

Brian Mize: Well, for the next decade, I would hope that we would continue to develop and grow, great talent, and people, putting people on track to personal and professional growth, maintaining that, touch with the changing landscape, iterating on the needs of our customers, all of those things. But as we look at the marketplace, as we look at the next ten years. As we look at how fast technology changes, we have to recognize that in ten years a lot of what we’re talking about today will be antiquated. But what’s not going to change are the people that are going to be needed to develop, to innovate, to listen to, and deliver on the needs of the customers. So growing that talent, giving people the opportunity to succeed, putting them and the company in a position to partner with Salesforce, to partner with our customers, to continue to grow their technology so that they can continue to maintain their spot in their marketplace. And I got to tell you, I’m really excited about where we’re headed. I’m energized, by the team, by the people that we have in place, by the new technologies that are coming, by Jeff’s vision and his leadership on leaning into the technology and making the decisions that help us to fill those gaps. It’s going to be a great next ten years.

Mike Boyle: And Jeff, I just wanted to wrap up with you and get your thoughts on, people who might be aspiring to enter the Salesforce consulting field, like you’ve done, especially in this era of AI, which is so exciting and changing by the minute. what advice do you have for those folks in terms of skill development and staying relevant in the industry?

Jeff Jones: Yeah, so obviously we’re still very bullish on Salesforce, and the Salesforce ecosystem. They are an extremely innovative company. So we’ve been very happy with our choice to be near it. What I would tell people though, is you have to understand that it is continuous learning when you come into technology, right? It’s not learn it once and that’s all you’ll ever mean. I guess there are still opportunities if you don’t want to, but if you want to excel and kind of embrace and grow with it, you have to understand it’s continuous learning and change. so be prepared for that change because we’re in the business of change management for people. That is, digital transformation is change, for people, or at least they should be embracing that change to make it most effective. And I would say like team members who joined even just a few years ago had no concepts around things like prompt engineering as it relates to AI and generative AI, and so forth. So as that comes rapidly, they’ll need to embrace and learn those things and how they apply, and how they can best leverage them. So what I would tell people is that the opportunity is in the chaos. Right. Don’t get overwhelmed about the chaos. Recognize that when you have a lot of change coming, that is the opportunity. And a lot of people have heard me say here recently, and this is where I’ll age myself a little bit, is that a lot of what we’re seeing today, especially as it relates to AI, reminds me of the early days of the Internet. Like a lot of buzz in the early days, but initially, you couldn’t even order a pizza online, right? It was very static. But for those people who had visions of what could be in the idea of commerce online and buying things that people hadn’t really gotten their minds around, that’s where the opportunity lies and it can be very exciting. And I feel like we’re in one of those exciting inflection points right now that people know, embrace, and enjoy. 

Mike Boyle: Brian, anything you would add to that?

Brian Mize: I would really echo, what Jeff was just saying about, it’s not enough to just anymore. It’s not enough to just go for example, and sit, through a 40 hours training and get an admin or a sales cloud consultant certification and then, have the idea that you are on top of the game and you’re able to step right in and make a big difference. If one wishes to go into Salesforce consulting today, the minimum has to be pretty high. You have to engage in a lot of research, across the marketplace on what changes are coming. What are customers, seeing, what is the marketplace saying? Jeff talked about being able to order pizza and that example is still, really relevant today on customers who want to enable their customers to be able to order things online and to be able to customize them and paint this panel that color and make so many changes there that if we just check the minimum box, we aren’t going to be in a position to be able to consult with them, to be able to lead them to the next level of their technology. And we’re not going to be in a position to grow ourselves personally either. So to move into Salesforce consulting, I would say, you really got to aim high and you have to continue to challenge yourself and to develop yourself because the technology is just changing that fast. Salesforce releases three updates a year, so it’s adjusting and changing three times a year. You have to stay abreast of that. You have to be comfortable recognizing you aren’t going to have the answers. Is going to take some research.

Mike Boyle: Jeff Jones is the CEO of Ad Victoriam Solutions. Brian Mize is the President of Ad Victoriam Solutions. Thank you both for joining us today to talk about Ad Victoriam Solutions as we celebrate our 10th anniversary here in 2024. Guys, can we make a date? Can we do this again in ten years? What do you say?

Jeff Jones: Well, that’s what I was thinking, Mike. That you’ll get me on one of these again in maybe ten years.

Mike Boyle: Brian, your commitment.

Brian Mize: I’m down. let’s do it in ten years. Let’s do it in five years. Let’s make Jeff uncomfortable.

Mike Boyle: All, right, there you go. Book it, guys. Book it. Thank you so much to the audience. If this is your first time listening to our podcast, I would be very grateful, as would Jeff and Brian, too, if you’d consider giving this podcast and all of our podcasts a five-star review. You can do that on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and you can also subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to a podcast. I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions. Thank you for listening to the Salesforce Simplified podcast from Oceans. Our next episode is just around the corner.