Salesforce Trailblazers We Love: Kathy Waterworth
The Salesforce Ohana is truly something special, isn’t it? Join us as we introduce you to some of our favorite trailblazers. Today we introduce intuitive and highly knowledgeable Kathy Waterworth, who shares how she got her start in the Salesforce ecosystem, her favorite Salesforce resources, the best-kept Salesforce secret, her Salesforce prediction, and more!
Visit Kathy here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathy-waterworth-977aba35/
…and while you’re here: if you’re having Salesforce user adoption challenges, we have a brand new guide that takes you step by step through the principles of teaching adults technology, and drives you to develop a plan for implementation. It’s got room for you to make your own plan – check it out: https://cloudadoption.solutions/teach…
Contact us with your Salesforce challenges at info@cloudadoption.solutions – we love to help!
Cloud Adoption Solutions is a 100% woman-owned registered Salesforce partner, specializing in implementation, integration, and optimization for Technology, Healthcare/ Life Sciences, and Financial Services/ Professional Services organizations in the small and mid-commercial sectors.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
SPEAKERS
Andrew Duncan, Kathy Waterworth
Andrew Duncan
Hello, everybody, thank you so much for being here today. We have a really exciting installment of Trailblazers we love. My name is Andrew with cloud adoption solutions. And today I’m joined by our good friend, Kathy. Kathy, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I know, you go way back with cloud adoption solutions. And Shannon our owner. So could you just tell me a little bit about your start to the Salesforce ecosystem? Like what brought you here to this moment?
Kathy Waterworth
Well, it actually started with my husband, who has been in the ecosystem since about, I think 2012. And he went to Dreamforce in 2013, and said, Do you want to come to San Francisco with me? And I went, sure, I love San Francisco. So and basically, I ended up somehow getting a ticket for one of these x free exhibition tickets, not the paid ones.
And I did that in 2013. And sort of went, Oh, well, this is cool. And did it again in 2015. And then in 2016, he actually brought home a Trailblazers hoodie, from Dreamforce. I didn’t go with him that year. And I decided at that point to start learning trailhead for kicks at the time. And then a couple years later decided, why am I just learning this? I like it, I can do it. Why not turn this into a career, which is
fast forward to now I’m working as a virtual system admin, freelancing on contracts with clients, both in the US and in the UK. And even though I live in Canada,
and yeah, and I’m multiple, have multiple certifications. I’ve started a Salesforce Saturday group, and I also run the first architect group in Canada, which is just incredible. I think, what a fun way to like kind of kick off your Salesforce journey in Salesforce is Mecca. You know, San Francisco, like, what a fun place to kind of discover Salesforce for yourself. Yeah, so it was, it was totally overwhelming. And to be honest, I didn’t actually totally get what Salesforce really was until I started learning it. Even though like I said, I attended to Dreamforce is in a way it was like, Yeah, okay, this is all just cool.
Andrew Duncan
Yeah, pretty colors of lights and shows and celebrities like this is fun. Yeah, yep. Definitely. Well, as somebody who has made their journey from Dreamforce, on into being the expert, that you are in a group leader, what is to you when someone comes and asks like the best Salesforce resource, like where do you send somebody when they want to begin their journey,
Kathy Waterworth
Trailhead? Every time that is like my first and foremost resource that I use. And then I also recommend, depending on what they’re looking for, there’s the admin podcast, the architect, podcast, the
moon,
the admin resources, yeah, of course. And then I just start saying, network, go to the community groups, even if it’s outside of your, your particular realm. You know, learn about the different sides. If you’re an admin, learn a bit about developing an architecture, if you’re an architect, make sure you keep up on the admin stuff. And if you’re a developer, definitely learn how what at how admins think, yeah, I think that’s wonderful advice because it just would make such a more well rounded Salesforce journey, which we don’t always see people get really into like their one kind of thing that they’re doing. So that’s excellent, very sound advice. And as like an expert, as a consultant, somebody who spend so much time in other people’s words, what to you is like that underrated Salesforce gem that product that you’re like, hey, everybody should be using this and not enough people are freaking out about it. Um, anything that helps you look at the permissions so there’s the one the Heroku comparator is one of them. And things like field trip to help you take a look at the fields that they all do. And I’ve I work mostly with nonprofits most of them never ever, unless I tell them to or the I do it for them ever look at optimize Salesforce optimizer or health check. And both of those should be a regular, regularly scheduled
item to work on. Absolutely.
Andrew Duncan
Yeah. Couldn’t agree more couldn’t agree more. And you know, as somebody who’s so plugged into all of these organizations, and I know that you work really closely with the community, I know you’ve talked to a lot of people within Salesforce like what do you have a prediction for the journey that Salesforce has ahead? I know there’s a lot of grumblings about AI and like, where things are going, what do you think is going to be a big focus, especially going into this year? 2024?
Kathy Waterworth
Well, I mean, you can’t escape the fact that focus is going to be AI. And I think Data Cloud, I think between the two of those, that will be a lot more of the focus, let’s move on to like moving away from chain sets, which, by the way, I don’t do big things. So I tend to still like them. But I do understand the positives that can come out of using data cloud. And so I think that’s where the focus is going to be. And then with the changes, especially in education and nonprofit clouds, they’re going more towards the industry. Related side. That is going to be a big thing. Especially since I work with golf. It’s it’s a lot of things I got to be dealing with.
Andrew Duncan
Yeah, I know, we have a lot of nonprofit fans who like watch us on YouTube and our clients of ours. So I think this will be a perfect conversation for them to hear to kind of like okay, this is where things are headed. Maybe I should take a look. Outside of Salesforce. What are you into calculate tell us like, what is something just for people to know what you’re into? Like? What have you been watching listening to? Is there anything that you want people to know about?
Kathy Waterworth
Um, I love reading and I, I have, I have a Kindle, and a Kobo and books.
Yeah, all three of them. So I just read and I just a lot of the times, as much as I try to read industry specific books, I tend to read the junky novels just because I want to date this connect.
And I really, I really wish my NPR worked. I’m on an antenna. So I don’t get great reception on all my channels. But I do miss like the America test kitchen and cooks country, they’re probably my favorite cook. I like cooking shows. Because I keep wanting to be inspired to cook something different than you know, everything I cook all the time.
Those are ended up I’m behind the time on everybody else. I’m just catching up on all the podcasts or all the binge watching that everybody else’s done and just finished the crown and need to start on I don’t know, I think it’s Charlotte or Queen Charlotte or whatever that whatever. I don’t know, I just I just binge, whatever I happen to catch. And so
Andrew Duncan
sounds great. I mean, reading seems to be a big trend that people are going back to reading, which is really cool. I know a lot of young people are like really into reading right now, which is awesome to see. So thank you so much for your recommendations and telling us by yourself, Kathy, where can people find you? I know that there’s gonna be more watchers. We’re gonna say I want to get in touch with Kathy, I want to join the user group. I want to join whatever she’s into. So where can people find you out there?
Kathy Waterworth
Okay, well, in the Trailblazer community, you’ll probably find me under the name Kathleen, as opposed to Kathy, long story with web assessor. But
it’s Kathleen waterworth, I’m obviously on the Trailblazer community. My user groups are the York Simcoe, Salesforce Saturday group and of the Newmarket architect group.
Both of the community you can find them there. I’m on X or Twitter, or whatever you call it today, as well as LinkedIn, the LinkedIn and Twitter both still as Kathy. And those are probably the best places to find me. And I’m also on the Ohana, Slack and the very end, you know, amplify slack and a bunch of the other community slack groups as well.
Andrew Duncan
Perfect. Well, we’ll put some links down in the description below so that people can reach out to you and join your groups and see what you’re up to and learn from you hopefully,
Kathy Waterworth
Yeah. Well, I welcome the chance. Just if you do connect, please leave a message to say where you heard me from because I tend to be really reluctant to just do cold acceptances on everybody. So
Andrew Duncan
if you heard it, reach out with a message.
Kathy Waterworth
Yes, please.
Andrew Duncan
Please like, yeah,
Kathy Waterworth
that’s a good, that’s a good practice, especially on LinkedIn, make it make a comment of where you got the name from. Yeah.
Andrew Duncan
And that’s the whole point of connecting. Right. So, you know, thank you so much for being here, Kathy. I really appreciate it. You know, and thank you for being a continued source of inspiration for our company. To our viewers out there. Thank you so much for joining us. We’ve had a pleasure having you. And if you would like to learn anything more about cloud adoption solutions
What Kathy is doing or anything else from this series, please feel free to watch our other videos and follow us at cloud adoption solutions.com. But thank you so much for everybody joining us today, Kathy, thank you for being here.
Kathy Waterworth
Thank you for having me. It was it was a lot of fun and glad we finally managed to get the time.
Andrew Duncan
Yeah, absolutely. Everybody’s busy these days. But thank you for making the time to our viewers. Thank you for taking the time to watch us have a great day.
