S3E13: High School Dropout to Salesforce Admin with Zac Otero

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In today’s episode of the Learn to Code With Me podcast, I talk with Zac Otero, a self-taught Salesforce admin at BKD – one of America’s top-tier CPA and advisory firms.

Before Zac became a Salesforce admin, he was a high school dropout working long hours in a factory. He transitioned into tech after speaking to a Salesforce developer and realizing that he was interested in training as an admin and learning more about the opportunities Salesforce could offer.

In this episode, Zac tells us about his journey into tech from an unrelated career. He gives advice on how to learn to work with Salesforce and reminds us to never to underestimate ourselves.

This episode was transcribed with the help of an AI transcription tool. Please forgive any typos.

Laurence Bradford 0:06
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Laurence Bradford 0:52
Hey, listeners, welcome to the Learn to Code With Me podcast. I'm your host Laurence Bradford. In today's episode, I talk with Zac Otero. Zac grew up in Missouri and never finished high school. After dropping out he worked odd jobs and factories until he found out about Salesforce. Zac ended up teaching himself enough to become a Salesforce administrator. The career switch Zac made is so impressive and demonstrates how anyone can break into tech if they have the drive and resilience to keep pushing forward. Remember, you can get Show Notes for this episode plus more information about Zac at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe on whichever podcast player you listen on. If you're feeling particularly generous overview would be awesome too. Enjoy the interview.

Laurence Bradford 1:44
Hey, Zack, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Zac Otero 1:47
Hey, Laurence. It's great to be here.

Laurence Bradford 1:48
So could you introduce yourself to the audience?

Zac Otero 1:50
Absolutely. My name is Zack Otero. I'm a Salesforce admin. I'm completely self taught. I formerly machine operator kind of changed careers a few years ago and I got into tech and it's been a it's been a great ride ever since.

Laurence Bradford 2:07
Yeah, I'm so excited to have you on. And listeners, I recently interviewed Zach in air force for Forbes article. And after I was done speaking with him, I just knew I had to get him on the show because I think your story is going to resonate with so many people. And you really, like came or you know, went against all odds and just transition to the tech and I love the story. So let's kind of backtrack a bit. And you okay, so you were you were a machine operator at a factory and kind of like what led you there initially?

Zac Otero 2:39
Well, I I was a machine operator for about seven years before that. I did some other odd jobs. I was working in a warehouse and that was a popcorn factory if you can imagine that. But I fell into just regular menial work like machine operation and warehousing. From the recession. I there were jobs that were steady and I could hold and they had provide at least some level of benefits. And that was I stayed in that in that industry because it was secure through that through that kind of turbulent time. People were losing their jobs like Well, I have a, I have a job, I better hang on to it, so.

Laurence Bradford 3:12
Yeah, and just for some context, where do you live again?

Zac Otero 3:15
I live in Springfield, Missouri.

Laurence Bradford 3:17
Okay, got it. Yeah. Springfield, Missouri. So for the listeners. That's where that's your base. And that's where you still live today. correct?

Zac Otero 3:23
That's correct.

Laurence Bradford 3:24
Okay, cool. So you. So you were us, you're doing these like kind of odd jobs and your machine operator. And I'm sure we can maybe get to this later. But you you've never finished high school. Really impressive. And so you were working in a machine factory and kind of what even brought you on to tech or Salesforce in the first place.

Zac Otero 3:45
I had a I have a cousin that was a developer with Salesforce and he kind of led the charge into finding out what it what it was and what it could do. And I finally found out about it through him he accepted a job offer For in San Antonio, Texas, and I was just curious enough to ask him what kind of job he had. I knew he had a similar background to myself where he was. I was actually homeschooled all the way through school. I never went to public school. And I knew he hadn't had any formal college education. And most people in this situation, don't get job offers that take them across the country very often. So since I knew we were in similar situations, in that regard, I was just curious enough to ask him what exactly he had stumbled into.

Zac Otero 4:33
Well, it turned out it was Salesforce. I remember very distinctly a long conversation I had with him on the phone about he explained to me what Salesforce was what all the opportunities around getting into it without a background, a formal background in it or it training where you think some people think you have to have kind of that, that formal training or that you don't have to have that with Salesforce. And he had kind of done it himself and explained all this to me while that was how I kind of got started. I was kind of skeptical at first as anybody would be. I'm like, you know that that silver bullet? The magic answer? It seems too good to be true kind of scenario. So it took me a little while to do some research and really decide that that's what, that's what I wanted to pursue. But after a little bit of a little bit of time looking into it, I really decided to go for it, so.

Laurence Bradford 5:23
Yeah, I think a lot of people I talked to, and I felt the same way when I first started learning how to code I was teaching myself to, like, yeah, it almost sounded too good to be true. Like, I don't have to go back to school and get a college degree or another degree or even a graduate degree or whatever it may be, and, you know, to make this transition, so I can definitely relate with you with you there. And I'm curious, I'm kind of jumping ahead, but since we're sort of talking about it when you first then begin looking for tech jobs, after you've taught yourself Salesforce and so forth. Did you ever find it be an obstacle that you don't have a college education or I guess even a full high school education.

Zac Otero 6:06
I'm not particularly it's kind of a specialized skill set really. And if a company has a need in that with for a person with that skill set then they're typically not always but typically I'm somewhat prepared to negotiate around those hurdles. I've got my GED A few years after I would have graduated so I'm not completely without it but i do i have that that equivalency but love I'm having come up against a hurdle because of yet so.

Laurence Bradford 6:34
Yeah, no, that's really good to hear. And that's, I'm sure very reassuring for some listeners who may be in a similar situation and thinking that, you know, it may not be possible or it's not for them or what have you. And I know the company I work for, we really don't, I don't even think we ask when people are applying. If they have a college degree, that's definitely something we look for. We look for, as you mentioned, already, the skills and of course being a good culture fit and you know how to get along with a team and all that stuff.

Zac Otero 7:02
Well, when I started out, well, before I started out, I knew several people going back to school was always kind of thought for sure. But it wasn't really a viable option. I knew I had so many people throughout between 2008 2010 through the recession, that that had good college degrees that were working in Starbucks or working at Walmart or working at, you know, regular jobs because they couldn't find work anywhere. And that was really, I was really kind of scared me off of the idea of going back to schools. I don't want to accumulate a mountain of student loan debt and then not be able to find a job to pay it off when we get done.

Laurence Bradford 7:36
Oh, yeah. 100% I actually was, I was thinking of going to graduate school a few years ago and seeing people and kind of similar fields or tangentially related working at restaurants bartending or something, and they had this, you know, mountain of debt from grad school totally scared me too. And I was like, why don't I just learn skills that I can make money with? Right away. St. Louis. Yeah. And there's demand for all these jobs. So yeah, so let's kind of go back a little bit to when you were teaching yourself and how you were learning. So you discovered tech, you discovered Salesforce did some research thought it could be something you'd like to do, how did you begin learning,

Zac Otero 8:18
Um, it was a combination of things. I kind of tackle it from a lot of different fronts all at once. I started out, looking up recorded sessions from dreamforce, which is the Salesforce conference that they have every year. It's actually the largest software conference in the world. A few years ago, wasn't might not have been at that point. But it is now Salesforce post tons of their sessions on YouTube. You can stream for free, and I worked when I was operating machine I actually worked underground or a couple hundred feet below the earth. So I didn't have cell phone service. I couldn't just jump online with my phone, or whatever else. So I actually ripped the audio track off of those YouTube videos, and I would load it onto my phone and I would just Listen to him on a loophole, I was at work, I snuck headphones into my tight work area. And I'd run one up into my ear and turn on those those brain off hours into brain on hours and start kind of learning and trying to get started with it. Some of those dreamforce sessions I listened to probably 10 or 20 times I've missed on a loop. And then after that, I go home and try to apply what I heard and hopefully retained in a Developer Edition of Salesforce, that you can register for a free development edition Salesforce and get in and start orienting yourself and kind of messing with the features and start learning it. And that was I combined the two together and also listen to podcast, I listened to the button click admin podcast, which is the Salesforce admin podcast now, but I was a big one and a few others. So it was it was a combination of several different things. Really, it just kind of went all out.

Laurence Bradford 9:59
Yeah, that's so awesome. And I love how you made such great use of your time, like how you were listening to podcasts and listening to other like materials as you were on the job and just making the absolute best use of that time. That's great. So and then I also love how you went back home after listening to those resources and actually put the skills into into use and like the developer account that you had.

Zac Otero 10:21
Yeah, absolutely. Because there's some things obviously you can't get from just an audio recording. Without a background, some of the concepts are kind of foreign, I mean, data structure and you think about these, these types of concepts are really hard to get. They're hard to get sometimes when you're when you are online and can interact with it. So being offline completely and just going off of a an auditory. It is really hard, so.

Laurence Bradford 10:46
Yeah, so did you take any courses at all? Or did you read any books or anything like that? Or is it really just podcasts and the going around and in getting yourself acclimated with the account?

Zac Otero 10:57
It was both they had some ebooks that were online some kind of not necessarily the most engaging, leap off the page content but Salesforce provided them their troubleshooting documents and startup guides and things like that. That that they have online. I started to kind of dig into that as well. I have I had a, I have a few paper books, like actual hardcopy guides that my cousin actually snail mailed me that he had gotten from dreamforce, the year that he went, so I had I had those to work through. And other than that, initially, that was all later on. Salesforce launched Trailhead in the fall of 2014. And it really changed the way that that I studied and work towards actually getting my certification for Salesforce. And that was about the middle of about the middle of the time I was studying.

Laurence Bradford 11:48
Yeah, yeah. So okay, can you talk actually a bit about that, like Trailhead? What that is because I'm sure I actually was not familiar with Trailhead until I found out about it through through you and also the Salesforce certification, like what that entails and also is that free? I just started asking you like 10 questions but -

Zac Otero 12:08
It's fine

Laurence Bradford 12:08
But yeah.

Zac Otero 12:10
Trailhead start - let's start the beginning. Trailhead is those forces online trading system. Like I said, a lot of that content was out there, it was just kind of disparate, and it wasn't necessarily cohesive, digestible, engaging. So they really put a great amount of effort into gathering up those those resources, kind of rewriting them so they're a little more engaging a little more digestible for the normal, but for the common man for the layman. And they put it all together in a system called Trailhead. And you could go online with through and use Trailhead for free. It's trailhead.com, it's Salesforce website, and it'll help you start to learn Salesforce in a lot different way than how I learned it. We'll walk through the initial concepts and and through a lot of different features of the Salesforce platform kind of in the right order. And that helped to do a lot of things to kind of bridge that that relatability gap. It has a very simple, Trailhead, excuse me has a very friendly tone, it's very well written, Salesforce puts a lot of a lot of effort into making sure that it's, it's engaging and it's very digestible. It's also kind of helped to gamify it. You get Trailhead badges as you work through the modules to trailhead, and it's very social media friendly, you get to throw your badges up on your Twitter, or on your Facebook, on your LinkedIn, and show your friends all your progress, which really starts to make it a competition and really makes it a lot of fun when you're seeing what you're not only what you're doing, but seeing what your friends are doing.

Zac Otero 13:35
And you could start those conversations around that as well. And so in Trailhead also connects to that development org, as well. It gives you kind of a sampling of data, which was a big hurdle when I started learning, because you can only have test record one test record two and an empty database. It doesn't really help you to understand large amounts of data like data working with data at scale. Very hard to get that that concept in that kind of an environment. So but trailhead provides some sample data and it will actually create those sample records in your, your development org. And you can work with it and it will actually confirm what it's asked you to do by connecting and actually seeing what you've done in that development. org. So it's, it's gives you the sample data that you need, and then it actually tests or confirms that you built what it asks you to, so.

Laurence Bradford 14:27
Awesome. And then I asked you and I should have waited until your explained Trailhead about this about the Salesforce certificate and like which you got how long it took to get it. And yeah, just tell us about that.

Zac Otero 14:39
Yeah, sure thing. Salesforce offers several certifications on a variety of things I believe to date, they offer 22 - 23 certifications in total, and different aspects of their, their product and different varying degrees of difficulty. I started off as an admin just a certified Salesforce administrator. It's, I believe is generally accepted that that's a pretty good starting point, unless you're already have kind of a jumpstart on the development side. And that's where you're attuned. But as an admin, everything's declarative. There's no coding really involved. And that was what really made Salesforce itself accessible to someone like me without any coding background, all these declarative features. And all the configuration in the product is is button, click point and click. So, but the certifications are not free, you have to pay, you have to pay for the testing. But there's no prerequisite involved, which was another big thing for me without having any though that it background or having any of the formal education. There's no there's no prerequisite to actually take the exam and become certified. So that was a big plus for sure. I from there, I got my first certification in February 2015. And last year at the dreamforce conference, in October, I got two more Actually, I picked up my advanced administrator certification in my platform app builder certification. Salesforce as well. And they have a great a great resource online to get in and start looking through their certifications. But administrators a great place to, to begin. And it's certainly a skill set that's very in demand right now even globally, not just in the States so.

Laurence Bradford 16:16
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Laurence Bradford 18:30
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you got your first certification in February 2015. You said then you got two more, more recently at the dreamforce conference. When you got that first one, how much time was that from when you started like learning Salesforce to when you got the certification?

Zac Otero 18:46
It was about a year. It was about a year really. That was between I actually failed at once I tried it. I tried it in the summer, and I failed it and got kind of frustrated and didn't pursue it for a month or two in there. But I decided to kind of double down on my efforts and and go for it again. So it would but overall it was but right about 12 months so.

Laurence Bradford 19:08
And when you take the exam or the tests or what have you, is that at a physical location or is that online?

Zac Otero 19:17
It can be both they out they provide the exams that qualified testing centers, they're all over the United States. You can take it has to be in a proctored environment. But you can also take it online and proctored as well.

Laurence Bradford 19:28
Got it. God that's interesting. I wasn't sure about that. Yeah, I mean, this testing centers are like where people will take I think like the G mat the G ri Yeah, and a lot of I think like teachers who have to take tests often as part of like their requirements I think they they go there as well. So okay, so it was it wasn't just like a test online that I and you're in your pajamas, you actually went to like a center or something where it was proctored.

Zac Otero 19:53
Well, actually, I took I took mine at home, I took my Oh, record online, so yeah,

Laurence Bradford 19:57
Oh, proctored online. Oh, but okay. Totally veering off, but it just is interesting. How do they make sure you're not like cheating or something?

Zac Otero 20:04
You have a webcam feed.

Laurence Bradford 20:06
Okay. Okay, got it. Got it. So that's -

Zac Otero 20:10
The rules around that are pretty strict. As I recall, you can't stop at the middle, you can have to be able to see your hands. I believe most the time you can't take notes. It's pretty, pretty rigorous while you're actually taking the exam. I think it's pretty, pretty focused. You're not gonna be doing anything. So I believe it's a live proctor as well so.

Laurence Bradford 20:27
Got it. Okay. That's really interesting. That's what I'm learning a ton right now. How long did the How long did it take to get the certificate? I'm not sure how long I'm sorry that it was worded wrong. The actual exam itself like how many hours was it?

Zac Otero 20:42
It was 90 minutes I was it. It was a 60 question exam, it takes 90 minutes. And the only the only disadvantage at that at that time. I believe they've since changed this. At that time. There was no scoring it was just a pass fail and you didn't actually get your results back, which was kind of frustrating. Especially The one time I did fail it, I just you just either get the information that you passed or you failed, but you don't get your grading on the different subjects because it's broken up into different topics obviously. But I believe now they they do give you your your results, so you know where to kind of focus your effort if you don't, you don't pass it the first time. It wasn't an all day affair for sure.

Laurence Bradford 21:19
Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm thinking like, SAT's are like some of these other tests is like a five hour thing. I'm like, oh.

Zac Otero 21:25
It was quite quite that intense so.

Laurence Bradford 21:27
Yeah, but that's still I mean, still process 90 minutes, 60 questions. And that's great that they are at least we think that they now give you the actual like, grading breakdown, and then questions you got wrong, right. So that's cool. So when you were learning over this period, and as you're taking the certification and all this stuff, how did you stay motivated?

Zac Otero 21:50
Oh, well, it's not easy for sure. But I kind of, I owe that to, to my wife. She helped kind of keep me keep me motivated there for sure. There was a lot of times I wanted to quit. She wouldn't she wouldn't have that but there was also the just kind of the pressure I could feel the need to needed to do something a little more a little bit more lucrative Honestly, I need to have a little more control over my over my career trajectory my my son was born in 2013 that also kind of added to it you start to think about your health benefits and you know, your your retirement savings and all these things become really, really much much bigger concerns after you start to start to have kids but I, I knew that that factory work is always kind of volatile. There's never any any guarantee of Well, there's usually a somewhat of a guarantee, but there's always kind of that that aspect where you don't know if something could change because you're you're not in in a level to know that. So with my I actually had my position. The factory that I worked in was actually closed in the month after I got my certification. You know, in January 2015, I was given 60 days notice that the factor that worked out would be closing. And then the next month was when I actually was able to get my certification. And and after that I was out of a job. So those those those fears kind of really manifested. Oh, yeah. reality.

Laurence Bradford 23:17
Oh, yeah, I'm sure yeah. After hearing you add, you know, 60 days left to your current role, I'm sure that really gave you that extra push at the end before you took this certification exam.

Zac Otero 23:27
Definitely.

Laurence Bradford 23:28
So there was something else that you mentioned when we spoke last time, I would love you to talk about this as well. So while you were learning you were part of a pretty active Salesforce community. I believe you said it was a meetup. Could you talk about that a bit?

Zac Otero 23:44
Absolutely. Happy to, um, Salesforce really is very ingrained to the idea of community and there are huge proponents of have their own community of users and the community of people that use Salesforce and help to And have a role in the Salesforce ecosystem as their admins as their developers as their architects, not just as their their customers and their users. And to that they, they helped to organize and sponsor user groups. internationally. There are several in Europe, there's several in India. There's some I believe in other countries, France and it was a big one Germany, I believe, but all over the states and most major US cities have a Salesforce User Group, which you can find online through the success community of Salesforce, which is success@salesforce.com. And I was lucky enough to have one right here in Springfield in my hometown, and we're one of the smaller ones. in the country. There's only about 20 to 25 members give or take. But I got really engaged there in meeting people and networking and I actually burned up most of my vacation days from my former position I was going to the user group because they'd have meetings in the Afternoon are meetings play for lunch whenever the these people were available. So I take off from from work for the day go home and put on my The only suit that I own. And I'd go over user group and start networking. It was a really strange kind of polar shift from from the morning to the afternoon, but it was it was a really great investment in in building those relationships with those people because that's actually where I met my future boss. And that's how I actually landed the position that I'm in now. But Salesforce is just really committed to that idea of of their community and that being connected and I think that's that I think that's really important myself so as well as their their physical meetups and their their physical user groups. There's a big community online as well, obviously. so.

Laurence Bradford 25:44
Yeah, yeah, I think I totally agree. They're saying how important community is and it's no surprise to me at all that you've ended up finding your first like tech job, your first job relating to Salesforce through a meetup, because I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it's something pretty high that like so many positions are filled through like referrals or people that they know and you know, through their personal network. So yeah, not not surprising for me at all.

Zac Otero 26:12
And I think it's really I think it's really central to connect with people to kind of speak the same language, sometimes, especially in my position where I was doing most of it on my own. If I could find somebody that even knew what I was talking about, was really the kind of have the same priorities and the same issues. It really helped a lot to kind of reinforce my resolve you asked about, about what was motivating well, but the motivation starts to dwindle, you connect with those people that speak your language, and that that really reinforces your your commitment, and not just be a lone wolf. out there doing it on your own.

Laurence Bradford 26:41
Oh, yeah, hundred percent. I had a guest on the show, I believe last season, Quincy Larson. He's the founder of free, Free Code Camp. And he was saying I'm kind of paraphrasing, but some of his advice for people learning was to hang out with other developers, because I mean, just from being around People that are already in tech, they're, you know, these languages, they're, you know, especially if you're brand new, they're probably more senior than you. You're going to hear their conversations and just from that alone absorbs so much like, even if you go to an event where maybe you don't really totally understand what's going on or how you were listening to those podcasts early on about Salesforce, you still were picking up on like the verbiage and what people were saying and kind of getting this like, understanding of the community and like the fundamentals and whatnot. Absolutely. Yeah. So what are you doing today, Zach?

Zac Otero 27:31
Oh, well, I work with I work for a CPA and advisory firm here in the Midwest, have a large national presence in the Midwest. So I work in the marketing division and I help help support group of users that use Salesforce. I love in Salesforce. I love all the process automation that you can do and and some of the cool tools that they have. More recently, I've started to kind of actually attempt to learn Apex which is Salesforce. programming language, so I'm actually moving towards actually being a real coder. Yay. And kind of trying to get my head around trying to get my head around that that's certainly not certainly not easy. But I think, as I say, nothing drives a learning drive learning new things like a good use case. And once you have a use case to learn something, then it's a little more a little more reachable. A little more attainable.

Laurence Bradford 28:23
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I definitely can relate with my own with my own job and gain to learn on the job is awesome. So, kind of Lastly, do you have any parting advice for others who are trying to transition into tech right now? But from like, a totally unrelated career?

Zac Otero 28:41
Um, yeah, absolutely. It's, it's not impossible. For sure. That's, that's the first thing you get. It's totally doable. I'm living proof that it's possible. You have to be willing to work hard and you can't be afraid to work hard and invest those those extra hours and in learning a skill set for sure. I'd say don't don't estimate yourself you might be might be surprised what you can what you can actually accomplish what you can understand and and what you can attain if you if you really commit yourself.

Laurence Bradford 29:08
Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much, Zac and where can people find you online?

Zac Otero 29:12
Oh, that's the pretty primarily to Twitter. My Twitter handle is ZachOtero. Z-A-C-O-T-E-R-O. I'm the only one. Only one on there. I know. So if you want to connect, feel free to follow me on Twitter. I don't. I don't tweet everyday so I won't be in your in your feed all the time annoying you so.

Laurence Bradford 29:30
All right. Thank you so much, Zac. Thanks again for coming on.

Zac Otero 29:33
Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.

Laurence Bradford 29:41
I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Again. The Show Notes for this episode can be found at learntocode with.me/podcast. If you're listening to this episode in the future, simply click the search icon in the upper navigation and type in Zac's name. His full name is spelt like Z-A-C, and his last name, O-T-E-R-O. If you like this episode, head on over to my website, learntocodewith.me where you can find even more awesome code related content, like my 10 Free Tips for Teaching Yourself How to Code. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll see you next week.

Key takeaways:

  • Don’t worry if you don’t have a college education; a lot of companies don’t ask if you have a degree. Instead they’re looking for the right skill set, a good culture fit, and someone who will work well with their team.
  • There are no prerequisites for getting certified with Salesforce. Don’t let not having a degree stop you from taking that step.
  • If you want to apply for a job within Salesforce, it’s important to network with the community. So many positions are filled through referrals and networking!
  • Even if you aren’t a natural learner, as long as you aren’t afraid to work hard and put the hours into learning a new skill set, you can transition into tech.

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