If you tuned into last week’s podcast, you heard from Steph Herrera. She is the co-founder of PepUp Tech and helped launch Salesforce Saturdays. All in all, her efforts have made a major impact in the Salesforce community.

Steph is back today for part two of our conversation. Throughout the episode, we talk more about Salesforce Saturdays and how Steph keeps it running with its now 60 chapters. We also discuss a topic that both of us are very passionate about: stress and burnout. 

Show Highlights:

  • What Merivis is and Steph’s involvement with it.
  • The keynote Steph did at Dreamforce 2017.
  • Her tips for anyone preparing to give a keynote.
  • How mental health came onto her radar.
  • Why stress and burnout can become such a problem for people in the tech community.
  • All about the mental health panel Steph is doing.

Links:

Episode Transcript

Steph Herrera:
I had one guy come in and at that first meeting, he was like, “I thought y’all were a cult.” I was like, “All right. They’re going to ask for my first born. They are way too nice. What’s going on?”

Josh Birk:
That is, once again, Steph Herrera, co-founder of PepUp Tech. I’m Josh Birk, your host of the Salesforce Developer Podcast, and here on the podcast, you’ll hear stories and insights from developers for developers. Today we continue our conversation with Steph. We’re going to pick up where we stopped last time. We’re going to talk a little bit about federal Salesforce Saturdays, a little bit of [inaudible 00:00:36] feds, and also a topic that Steph and I share, a passion for stress and burnout. Let’s continue where we just left off with that guy who thought we might be a cult.

Steph Herrera:
He did not trust it for a while, he finally relaxed and was like, “Okay, they’re not a cult. They’re not going to ask for my blood. They’re just really nice people.”

Josh Birk:
Yeah, yeah. I think it was Cory Snow.

Steph Herrera:
Oh, I love him.

Josh Birk:
He went to his first ever developer group meeting, and he raised a question about a project or something like that. And then after the presentation, somebody was like, “Oh, I think I got a solution for you. I can probably help you get that done.” And Cory’s response was, “What?” I’m like, “Why are you going to take time?” Like the hands-on help that he was going to get was just… And then he realized it wasn’t even abnormal. This was just the way the community operated was. We all try to help each other out. And it’s astonishing how that’s been able to be maintained. I mean, 60 chapters around the globe.

Steph Herrera:
Yeah. And I love it. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it blows my mind. But again, it just goes to show when you give people a vehicle to do good with, they will drive it, and they will jump in and do it. Sometimes they just need a little help getting there, but once they’re there, you can’t get rid of them. They won’t go, which I’m so happy. It was really a little weird for me at first, because I’m a major introvert and, again, I do this stuff with… I go, especially helping Merivis and then PepUp Tech. But yeah, it’s been great. Everybody does want to help. It’s wonderful to… They’re just really good people, and it makes me smile just thinking about all… There’s so many of them. I can even list them all, but Salesforce Saturday and the way people have responded to it has instilled hope in humanity for me personally.

Josh Birk:
Nice. Well, speaking of that kind of thing, and you mentioned it earlier, another thing you’re involved with that I love, I think you’re still involved with it, but tell me about Merivis and what they do.

Steph Herrera:
Absolutely, still involved with Merivis.

Josh Birk:
Good.

Steph Herrera:
Yes. So, Merivis is very similar to PepUp Tech. Actually, they were their first. 2015 is when Hector and Kate Perez started it along with Joe Castro. And so they started shortly, a few months after Salesforce Saturday. So Hector lives here in Austin, or he did at the time. So he’d seen what I was doing with Salesforce Saturday. And so he asked and he heard my story, and he asked, me to come speak at their first cohort to the vets there. They were doing a cohort and it was five week program, one week is in person. And so I did an online speaking event with them and shared my story, and honestly was, just like, “They’re not going to want to hear from me. These are people who gone to war. They don’t need to hear anything from the likes of me, I promise you.”

Steph Herrera:
But he was pretty relentless. And so I agreed to talk to them, and they were just so kind. Sheldon Simmons was part of that first cohort, I’m sure you know Sheldon. And so they were just so wonderful and kind and just encouraged by what I had to say that I was hooked too. I was like, “Oh, wow.” I mean, I’ll give my time to this organization. My grandfather was in the Korean War. He was in the Army and Marines. He did that. My brother-in-law is a vet. I’ve got a lot of family that’s vets. I’ve got a son that the military did try to come calling for. And I was like, “Nope, lose this number and don’t call back.”

Josh Birk:
Not my kid.

Steph Herrera:
Not my kid. So I feel obligated to make up for that. And that’s how I do it with Merivis.

Josh Birk:
I like it. I like it. I like it a lot.

Steph Herrera:
So I’ve been a board member since 2017. Yeah, I love that organization. I mean, when you think about it with PepUp Tech, it’s from minorities and underrepresented and a lot of that. You can’t choose. You’re born into this. You can’t choose that. You manage and you deal with it. But with veterans, they choose that. They choose to walk that hard path for us. And to me, that speaks volumes. And it’s like, “If I can help them and help them transition and have a better life, that’s a no-brainer. I absolutely love helping Merivis and their mission for that.

Josh Birk:
That’s really pretty amazing stuff. Speaking of some of the things that… Well, what I really like about, I mean, it’s amazing right now because it’s like you have PepUp Tech, and you’ve got Merivis, and you’ve got Salesforce, and you’re managing to help people with very distinct challenges. People of color are facing discrimination, they’re facing lack of visibility. Vets can sometimes struggle with PTSD and returning to normal life, random developer is just trying to figure out the language kind of thing.

Steph Herrera:
And that’s, in this climate, they face a lot of discrimination too, unfortunately.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s move on a little bit to, you have been a keynote speaker. You’ve been on stage with Parker, I believe.

Steph Herrera:
Yeah. Parker Harris and Mark Benioff.

Josh Birk:
And Mark Benioff. What was that like?

Steph Herrera:
That was crazy. That was Keynote, Dreamforce 2017, after [inaudible 00:05:49] had done my film. I knew they were doing a film. After they recorded it, I hopped up plane to India and didn’t really think of it again. I was just like, “Lord, please don’t let it be cheesy.” And that was the last time I thought about it. I loved his team. They were wonderful. That was the summer of 2017, and then Dreamforce 2017. I got a call from marketing team and said that my film was going to be featured at the Keynote and that Mark would pull me up and ask me some questions, but they couldn’t tell me what the questions were because nobody knows only Mark. I was like, “Oh my God.”

Josh Birk:
We just hope Mark does at this point.

Steph Herrera:
You’re right. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, so that happened in 2017 and he did, was a nervous for it because I like to be prepared as I bugged you about like, “Whether we can talk about, I need to be prepared.” I like to be prepared. So that was pretty nerve-wracking for me not to be able to prepare for that. But it went relatively well and it was a great experience. And yeah, he’s very tall. Very smart, very warm and welcoming. And I’m lucky to be able to say that I do know him and just feel so grateful for what he’s created so that people like us can have the opportunity at a better life.

Steph Herrera:
So yeah, I did the Keynote with him and then they had, as they always do, New York World tour a couple months after. And so I did the Keynote with Parker Harris as well about my film and the work that I’d been doing. And yeah, you feel like if you see the pictures of me with Parker Harris at New York World Tour, you can totally tell I’m fangirling him. I got the biggest cheesiest smile on my face. Couldn’t wipe that smile off for months. I was just like, “Oh my God. I’m talking to Parker Harris.”

Josh Birk:
I absolutely love the contrast between the two.

Steph Herrera:
Yes.

Josh Birk:
At Dreamforce, when Mark is on the floor, it is a presence and you are generally alerted ahead of time-

Steph Herrera:
Absolutely. Oh my goodness.

Josh Birk:
Everybody, clean your desk Mark’s coming. And he’s got his crew and the security people, he just has this thing aura around him.

Steph Herrera:
He does. He really does. I was sitting there in the front row prepared. I was like, “I’m ready.” And he’s talking and he walks by and he points at me and winks and I lost my goal. I was just like, “Oh my God, Mark Benioff just winked up.” I said, “I’m done.” I don’t even know what my name is anymore, I forgot my name, it’s just like, “Who am I? Where am I?”

Josh Birk:
Well, and I think the last time I talked to Parker was the second IOT zone or something like that. And I’m just at… We had this train, this little train or the smart city thing, and I’m just there and I think the guy who was putting it together was off to the side. And I look over and Parker’s next to me, and he just says, “I think I broke your train.” It was just like… You know what I mean? Totally unannounced. Like just boom. “Oh, hi Parker.” There you are. If he ever listens to this show, a huge, huge Parker fan.

Steph Herrera:
So am I. But he’s known it. He knows how I am. I’ve told him a couple times.

Josh Birk:
Nice, nice.

Steph Herrera:
A huge fan of Parker Harris.

Josh Birk:
Very nice. You’ve also been yourself a Keynote speaker several times. Do you have any notes for people who may have made the mistake of accepting a Keynote and are now panicking?

Steph Herrera:
Don’t panic, Josh. You’re going to be amazing.

Josh Birk:
I’m fine. I’m fine.

Steph Herrera:
You’re fine. And I’ve seen you at Forcelandia. No, if you can do it, do it. It’s an amazing experience. Even though doing the Keynote with Parker and Mark was mind-blowing and surreal. Probably my favorite keynote was when international and I went to Cambridge in the UK, and was opening Keynote for Inspire East and the King, and the event was taken place in Cambridge right outside of King’s College. The taxi dropped me off at King’s College, someone who didn’t get to have a college degree. It was surreal when I said yes to it, I didn’t know where it was going to be at. I had no idea. And I’m a nerd. I’m a straight A student. And to be walking the path that Stephen Hawkins rolled on, or Sir Isaac Newton breathing the air that he breathed, it was just going into a pub where they ran in and announced that they had discovered DNA. To be just in that space.

Josh Birk:
Oh, wow. Yeah.

Steph Herrera:
It was mind blowing for me. As someone from West Texas is like, “How did I end up over here?” And I didn’t know that all that was going to happen. And Sarah made me feel… So Sarah [inaudible 00:10:23], she’s the one that asked me to do it, and she’s like, “Yeah, sure. Are you sure want me to be your opening Keynote?” “Okay.” I didn’t just say yes and then worry about it later. So that, there you go. Say yes and worry about it later.

Josh Birk:
I like that. I like that. I like that advice. Keynotes are interesting, I think because it’s a chance to totally break out of, if you’re somebody who’s gone to developer groups or you’ve spoken at Dreamforce, you’ve done the breakouts, you’ve done the theaters. Keynote, it’s one of the few formats where you can just throw all of that out and think, “If I just wanted to get up on stage and just talk, what would that look like?” And I found it actually a very liberating like, “Oh, wow, I can do a style of presentation I never thought Salesforce would send me off the drill.

Steph Herrera:
It’s very creatively freeing for me. You get to be creative with a Keynote. Yeah. It’s creatively freeing. Yeah.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. Okay, well, shifting gears one more time. So next week you’re going to London and you have a panel that you’ve assembled to talk about specifically mental health first. When did that start to get on your radar?

Steph Herrera:
So that probably got on my radar, probably actually at the beginning of lockdown when we went on lockdown. It was a real concern for me. Prior to lockdown my life was amazing, wonderful. I was answering to nobody. I was going where I wanted, getting to do what I wanted. And then we went on lockdown. And that in itself was a hard transition for me. I lived by myself. I just moved into my own place to live by myself for the first time ever in my life, ever. And I wanted that because I’d been raised with siblings, then I got married during high school and lived with him and his family, and then got married again, lived with them and my family. So I’d never lived by myself. I was like, “I want to do this.” And then we go on lockdown a month after.

Steph Herrera:
And all of that was very hard for me and I was feeling it. And then I think because of that, when you go through stressful situations, you start reflecting. And it took me back to my childhood and I was having to deal with a lot of stuff from that. And I just had this fear of like, “Oh, no, people are going… They’re going to be locked. They’re basically going to be locked up in their homes.” And for a lot of people, places like school is a safe place. School was a safe place for me. A lot of people, home is not a safe place for a lot of people. So that is a thought that went through my head and not only is home not a safe place, but a lot of these people, the reason home is not a safe place is because they don’t know how to handle stress.

Steph Herrera:
They haven’t been given the tools to deal with some of the challenges that life throws at them. And so now it’s going to be intensified. And that is what started making me think about it on a larger scale and what people are going to be going through as we went through lockdown, and how people deal with that, and how they manage that.

Steph Herrera:
And everybody dealt with it and managed it differently. But then as we started coming out of it and people are working differently, and again, there’s been a lack of talent for some time, but I still feel like everybody’s still dealing with lockdown and what they went through, whether it was good or bad experience, and carrying that with them back into the workforce. So I just feel like that there’s this… The air’s being sucked out the room for some people and that there’s just weight and pressure, and we’re not talking about it. And we’re just going back into the to work as though nothing happened the last three years. You know what I mean? And just get back to work and not only get back to work, but we’ve got 10 times more work for you to do on top of that.

Steph Herrera:
And I can see it. I went out on my own in October and I’ve been doing contract gigs and working with different teams. I can see it. I love working with people and just having one on ones with people. I can hear it in their voice, I can see it in their eyes. But people are afraid to speak up. And that’s where it falls on leadership to create a space. I mean, when you’re a manager and you manage teams, your number one job is to provide air coverage. I don’t think a lot of managers know that, but it is.

Josh Birk:
Yep, completely agree.

Steph Herrera:
Your job is to provide air coverage and protect your team. That’s your number one job. Now, but there’s another layer added to that. And it’s going to be the mental and emotional aspect that they’re going through. That they’re not going to be brave enough to raise their hand and say, “Hey, I need help.” They never are. You’ve got to go and get it out of them. And it’s not a question of, do you need help? It’s a question of how can I help you? And it’s getting into that conversation and that is the reason for this panel.

Josh Birk:
Nice. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve talked to people who feel like they can’t, and I think tech makes this really hard. And especially I… Well, I’m not just going to say, especially from a developer point of view. Because I don’t think that’s fair. I think it’s really in tech, we’re supposed to be trustworthy, smart, responsible people. And stress and anxiety can break down some of the core components of that. Oh absolutely. It can make you start procrastinating and doing all of these things, but you can’t go to your boss and being like, “Well, you can.” Sorry, let me rephrase this. You can go to your boss. And say, “I’m feeling these things and that’s why. I’m not good.” But I feel like we’re in our demographic. You’re not supposed to be that person from a cultural point of view.

Steph Herrera:
Oh, absolutely. Especially because we’re problem solvers by nature. Regardless what your role is in the Salesforce ecosystem, we are all problem solvers. We fix a problem, we’re not the problem,

Josh Birk:
We’re not the problem.

Steph Herrera:
We fix them.

Josh Birk:
Exactly. Input output machines give us some input. We’ll output the solution, everybody’s happy. But first of all, I totally agree with the pandemic as well with my talk with Joe Stern. Joe is like, “I don’t think we’ve ever experienced this level of global grief that we’ve all lost some of that.”

Steph Herrera:
I love that. Global grief. That was a great way to put it yet.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. And then there’s statistics coming out there that there’s more lot more people suffering from anxiety and suffering from stress.

Steph Herrera:
Oh, yeah. They don’t even recognize it.

Josh Birk:
They don’t even recognize it. To quote David Foster Wallace, it’s water. It’s the water, which you’re swimming it.

Steph Herrera:
Yep.

Josh Birk:
How are you framing the panel? What’s your goal for panel?

Steph Herrera:
So my goal for the panel is just to have a conversation with leaders within the industry who I know have been part of teams, who are leaders within the community, who are seeing what I’m seeing. And this is in London, so we have cultural differences there in the UK and here in the US I’m hoping to do the panel in the US as well for another event and to see the differences, but to hear and see what they’re seeing, and just to normalize and talk about it. I’m hoping each of these leaders will share their experiences of what they went through and how they’re dealing with it, and what they’re seeing, and how they’re managing it.

Steph Herrera:
So that is just having a very fluid, honest conversation. And then giving people within the room and the opportunity to speak up and share their stories. But it’s just starting the conversation. Like I told you, before, I don’t have the answers. I’m just doing like I always do, I’m going to jump in and figure it out. I’m just going jump in and figure it out. I’m going to ask and questions and we’ll figure together. Because that in itself is therapeutic, just to be able to know, “Hey, somebody else is going through this too.” It normalizes it a little bit for you, so it takes that pressure off and then you’re figuring it out together and there’s just something very warm, and comforting, and connecting about that. And we need that more than ever right now.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. There’s actual science behind being able to be honest and have a conversation about it, allows you to work through an experience without actually having to experience it. And so it gets you away from that potential trauma of… You don’t have to relive the pain necessarily to talk about it sort of thing.

Steph Herrera:
Yep. Exactly.

Josh Birk:
And I think that’s an awesome approach because I also think just pure transparency, letting everybody know in the room, this is normal, this is the people go through and if you had a cold or a flu or you broke your leg, you wouldn’t get into your mind about like, “How you should treat it.” This is not that different.

Steph Herrera:
Yeah. That’s the goal. And to be able to share what I went through. Everybody thinks it. He thinks I have all the answers. And I was like, “No, I don’t.” And I went through this and luckily or not, luckily, one of the ways I manage stress is I love to work out and the gyms were taken away, so I had to get creative. And so I lived in the apartment and there were stairs, five flights of stairs. So I started running the stairs in my apartment.

Steph Herrera:
And I had a panic attack for the first time ever in my life. And I didn’t know, I thought I was doing fine and it happened on the stairs, I couldn’t breathe. And I was like, “What’s happening?” And that’s when I realized, okay, I’m not handling this as… Just because I can run stairs for an hour. I thought I’m good. I know COVID lungs here, I’m taking care of myself. But that panic attack let me know that on the outside I might be fine and I look great because I’m running stairs an hour. This is few times a day, but on the inside it’s not going as well.

Josh Birk:
Your nervous system was trying to tell you something.

Steph Herrera:
Yeah. Exactly.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. And that’s our show. I want to thank, Steph, for the great conversation, information. And it’s always, I want to thank you for listening, but before we go, I did ask after Steph’s favorite non-technical hobby and she answered like this.

Steph Herrera:
Oh, there’s a life outside of tech. What? Nobody told me that.

Josh Birk:
It happens. I hear it happens. Yes.

Steph Herrera:
Okay. My favorite non-technical outside of tech is probably dancing. I love to dance.

Josh Birk:
Oh, nice.

Steph Herrera:
Dancing and reading. Yeah. Those are my things. Dancing and reading. Yeah. I love to dance. Dance is probably my first language. That’s how I really… I can get lost in dancing. I love to dance and reading.

Josh Birk:
That’s amazing.

Steph Herrera:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
Now, if you want to learn more about the show, head on over to developer.salesforce.com/podcast where you can hear old episodes, see the show notes, and have links to your favorite podcast service. Thanks again everybody, and I will talk to you next week.

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