Rafael Hernandez is a specialist leader at Deloitte and an avid member of the Salesforce community around the world. However, especially in Mexico where students don’t always have the same opportunities in web development, and consulting. Rafael has committed to providing learning opportunities for college kids so they may get involved and be successful within the Salesforce economy.
In this episode, Rafael discusses how coding came easy to him and when he was introduced to Salesforce. He goes into how he started a community within Salesforce and how he teaches students to be consultants by teaching them soft skills.
Rafael is so passionate about what he offers that it almost sounds too good to be true. Listen in to get a sense of Rafael’s excitement for his charitable causes and how he is preparing college students for adulthood.
Show Highlights:
- How Rafael got started in coding and joined Salesforce.
- When and why Rafael began the community portion of Salesforce.
- How he teaches students soft skills and prepares them to be consultants.
- What happens after people graduate from his class.
- The benefit of pairing students with nonprofits in Mexico.
- What the Kerrnandez Foundation is, and how it started.
- How Rafael’s book, “¡Soy Adulto! (¿Ahora Qué?)” came to be.
Links:
- Rafael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafablazer/
- Rafael on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rafablazer
- Rafael’s website: https://rafahernandez.org/
- Kerrnandez Foundation: https://www.kerrnandez.org/
Episode Transcript
Rafael Hernandez:
I wanted to be a magician, but that seems it was not going to be very lucrative.
Josh Birk:
That is Rafael Hernandez, a specialist leader over at Deloitte. 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 sit down and talk with Rafael about his entry into the Salesforce ecosystem and a lot of the great work that he’s been doing within the community, especially down in Mexico, helping college kids get involved and be successful within the Salesforce economy. But we’re going to pick up right where we left off with his early years.
Rafael Hernandez:
And then I got somebody who kind of took care of me, and I called my dad and he’s like one day like, “Hey, do you want to study English?” And I was like, “All right.” So I started studying English back in Mexico and then he was like, “Okay, you want to study computers?” And I was like, “I have no idea what computers are,” right? This is the ’90s and this is Mexico, so, I mean, we are way behind. So I started studying computers and it just happens that it was easy for me, so I started writing code.
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah. Visual Basic, if you remember that.
Josh Birk:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I think we all had that phase where Microsoft ruled the world, and so Visual Basic was going to be in your camp one way or another.
Rafael Hernandez:
Visual Basic [inaudible 00:01:23].
Josh Birk:
Yeah.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah. Clipper. I remember Clipper too, so yeah. So I was good at it. I learned to code at 15, so I just keep on going.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
So I did my bachelor’s on that.
Josh Birk:
Very, very nice. And I was going to say, you went back to school and you got a degree in psychology. What led you to do that?
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah, it’s a good one. Every day I’m like, “Why am I doing this? Thank God this is the last quarter. So I have six more classes and I’m done.”
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah. This goes hand by hand. So coding was something that I always wanted to do too. If I was not a computer engineer, I was like I was going to be a therapist or something. And in the pandemic is like, what do I do with all this free time? I used to fly to LA every week from Minnesota, so that was four-hour flight, and then back, and then suddenly have eight hours that what else am I going to do? And I took the great decision for good or for bad to study a bachelor’s in psychology.
Josh Birk:
Wow. Okay. So first of all, explain to me why were you on a plane for four hours going back and forth between Minnesota and LA? That’s crazy all on its own.
Rafael Hernandez:
I know. I’m a consultant for Deloitte.
Josh Birk:
Ah, gotcha.
Rafael Hernandez:
So that’s what we used to do [inaudible 00:02:35]. Not anymore, but that’s used to be the case. Mondays on the plane and Thursdays on the plane.
Josh Birk:
Got to go where the customer is sometimes. Yeah.
Rafael Hernandez:
That’s true.
Josh Birk:
Has that shifted back now or are you still kind of juggling that?
Rafael Hernandez:
It depends. We are now super flexible. You can decide if you want to fly or not. Normally what we do now, we do meetings that matters. We meet with the customer whenever it’s really important. And then as a specialist leader or senior manager, you have to be there with your customers. So I actually have done a few trips, not as much as before, but yeah, I keep traveling.
Josh Birk:
Gotcha. And it looks like you got your start like a lot of us did back in doing web development work, but when did you first get introduced to Salesforce?
Rafael Hernandez:
To Salesforce, it was in 2013, I believe. I was a Microsoft guy, I told you that, and I used to do Microsoft Dynamics, and then I remember they used to have this product in Germany that used to do the same thing the Salesforce communities does with Microsoft SharePoint, SQL Server. And then I start working for this non-profit in Colorado under the Obamacare. And then they were introducing Salesforce for customer management and all the patient information. And I looked at Salesforce like, “Oh my God, what is this thing?” I just fell in love with Salesforce and I actually started doing my own thing, like researching, learning communities back when there were no Trailhead. So that’s when I first started and I fell in love with it, so much that when they decided that the director was like, “We might not be doing Salesforce anymore,” and I was like, “Okay, I’m out.”
Josh Birk:
Gotcha. Right.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah. Best decision.
Josh Birk:
How would you describe your current job?
Rafael Hernandez:
It is great. Deloitte is the companies that you are actually, you get into the toughest projects. We solve some of our customers, most challenging customers. So my job is challenging. I love it. My job is to solve problems. So you have to be ready to solve problems. People are always like, “Oh, we have so many problems.” That’s what we do. We solve problems. Our life is problems. Even if you’re a developer, you’re solving a problem, right?
Josh Birk:
Right. Right.
Rafael Hernandez:
It’s just a matter of who is there solving the problem. So my job is very engaging. I love it. I have a lot of support from the company, I have support from my coworkers, and allow me just to meet my customers’ need, and the same time do all the things that I do around the globe.
Josh Birk:
So let’s get into a little bit of that. Actually, before we get into that, because I want to talk about your community work, I want to talk about charity work, I want to talk about the events you go to, but I did, as you shared some resources with me, I noted an old interest of mine that you used to get into IoT. What got you into that?
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah. Just that, I’m like a cat, I’m always bored. If I’m not doing something I get a stress for not doing anything. So I just love coding and I love IoT and I have done so many crazy stuff. Sadly, I stopped because I started doing the non-profit. So I think I find it more interesting to help others, but I just love IoT. If you see these things, the first presentation that I did at Dreamforce was [inaudible 00:05:31] cajon. If you see that, the musical instrument. So that was fantastic. I presented it twice at Dreamforce, and it’s just something that people are like, “Are you for real?” This guy is just on top of a drum, playing music, and there’s an animation being displayed inside Salesforce. And yeah, it is. It’s awesome.
And the thing that actually, it’s better for me as you are talking to other people and trying to get more developers to join the ecosystem, one of the things that I keep hearing even in my classes is like, “Well, Salesforce is a box, and you cannot do anything.” And I’m like, “Well, let me build you a box to show you that I can do anything.” So that was it. Every time somebody says, “Well, I don’t like Salesforce, you cannot do anything,” I’m like, “Okay, here’s this. What about that?” Right?
Josh Birk:
Nice. Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
And they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” Like, “Oh, well, there is.” So it was very good to attract people. When I wanted to convert a front end developer or backend developer into Salesforce, it was a nice thing to show them.
Josh Birk:
Now dive into a quick detail for me. What exactly is a cajon? Am I saying that correct?
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah, cajon. A cajon. So a cajon, it’s a musical instrumental original from Peru, and then basically it’s a box. It is like a one to two feet box, and then you basically just strum on the front of it, and then you sit on it as well. So you can see that in Peru or you can see it also in Spain when they are playing in a Spain, they have the guitar, the Spanish guitar and the cajon. And it was basically just same rhythm that you do with… like you just playing on the table or something.
Josh Birk:
Gotcha.
Rafael Hernandez:
So it’s actually very cool.
Josh Birk:
And what were you recording in Salesforce?
Rafael Hernandez:
So what I did is I added five PSO sensors. PSO sensors measures the vibrations of something. So I added five into the front of it. So I take the vibration and how hard you strum it. And then what I did, I sent that to Arduino and I think it was Raspberry Pi. And then what I did in Salesforce, I recorded how hard you were strumming. And then I have an animation that have some balls bouncing. So the harder you strum, the harder those balls were animating.
Josh Birk:
Oh cool. Nice. Nice. And I’m totally there with you. First of all, I’m almost positive… It’s so weird. This is 2022, I want to say you submitted that… That was like, we’re talking like 2015, 2016. Is that about right?
Rafael Hernandez:
I think it was around those… Yes, it was around that. Yeah.
Josh Birk:
Having been deeply involved in session management over the years and now talking to you about that experience, it’s just kind of an interesting loop. I’m so with you. Back when we did the IoT Zone and stuff, when people saw the weird little magic of something happening on a device or instrument or something like that, and then it magically appearing in Salesforce, it’s kind of like a magic trick, and it really does open people’s eyes to like, “Oh gosh, APIs are cool. They can do really cool stuff.”
Rafael Hernandez:
Exactly. Exactly. We’re not coding in a box. We can do anything we want.
Josh Birk:
Yeah. Back in my workshop days, I used to prove this point by asking… We used to do app improv, and so app improv was give me a couple of nouns and we’re going to build an application to manage it. Just to show you, no net here, people, I don’t know what we’re going to build, but we’re going to do it in the next two to three hours kind of thing.
Rafael Hernandez:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. No, and I use it with my students.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
It doesn’t happen anymore, but that used to be the theme. On my first class in the university, one of my first kids, his name is Juan, and I say hello to Juan. Now, he’s living in Spain, this guy. So from Mexico now he just went to Spain, but he’s like, “Rafa, I have bad news for you.” I’m like, “What is it?” “There are some rumors in the school. That’s why people doesn’t want to take your class.” “What are the rumors?” “Well, they’re saying that Salesforce is box and you cannot code anything you want.”
Josh Birk:
I love it. I love it. It’s one of the great things about the community, everybody starts to pick up stuff, they teach other people, they learn other people. So let’s dig into this. And I’m honestly, it’s hard to tell where to start. When did you first start dipping your toes into the more community portion of Salesforce?
Rafael Hernandez:
And let me think about it, because even since the beginning I was just concentrated on learning Salesforce and I wasn’t aware of the big community. But then I published a book, and then this book is about soft skills. My passion is to help other people, especially people from Latin America, and then trying to show them the ropes and how they can be successful. And that took me to write a book to attack one of the biggest issues that is education and how do people go to school, and I put that on the side. But that took me to school [inaudible 00:10:14] Yucatán [inaudible 00:10:16] Yucatán a friend invite me to another friend to talk about soft skills, and then I was very smart and says, “I can teach them soft skills, and why don’t I add some slides about Salesforce jobs and career options?”
And when I did that, I gave the conference about what is Salesforce, and everybody was like, “What the heck is this?” And I presented, I think it was one of the first… I don’t think it was the first one. 2015 was one of the first salary surveys that we have in the industry. And then people were like, “Yeah, that’s crazy. These guys trying to sell mirrors or something.” So the people loved the conference and everybody went to the teacher like, “Is this guy trying to sell some kind of pyramid scheme or something?” They’re like, “No, this guy’s for real, we check him out.” And then I was like, “Okay.” And then the university says, “Rafa, why don’t you teach the class?” And I’m like, “Huh, I never thought about it. Let’s do it.”
Josh Birk:
Nice. Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
So that’s how it started. We start teaching Salesforce for the first time in 2015, summer of 2015, and that’s when we taught the first class in Yucatán.
Josh Birk:
Nice. Nice. And how is that spilled out into other events like Forcelandia and some of the Dreamin events that you go to?
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah, it’s so fantastic. I mean, one of the things that I’m so amazed by the community is that you start doing something, and then somehow this community has a way to help you out, right?
Josh Birk:
Mm-hmm.
Rafael Hernandez:
So I remember that I started doing that, and at the same time in the combination with the cajon, if you remember, my first time presenting the cajon was in Uruguay with Aldo. Aldo was the first person to allow me to step on the stage and messed it up my first time, and then-
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
… he’s like, “You want to come to Uruguay? You’re welcome my friend.” So I’m there and I met Angela in Uruguay. So I met Angela, I met Dawn Robin, and then I met Sophia that is no longer with us. And then I started meeting, “Oh, there’s a lot of people doing these things and helping.” And then next thing is I met Larry in Spain. I was in Spain with [inaudible 00:12:23] also showing off the cajon, and they’re like, “Oh.” So that cajon traveled with me to South America, to Spain, and then to Dreamforce and a few other ones here in America. But then Larry and Angela stuck with me and I’m like, “Hey, what are you doing in Mexico? What just happened? Am I’m going to be teaching this class.” And they’re like, “Well, let us know.”
So I start an event. So I was saying, “Okay, let’s do something that is not just teaching a class, because a lot of people are doing that. So what about they actually create a project like you were saying, and then they present that project to the American community?” And to me mostly it was because first of all, English is one of the things that we are suffering Mexico still to be able to communicate properly, and then the soft skills and the presentation, if I can just marry all these things together.
So we start creating an event that we have the nine edition of this last December, and then where I invite people, MVPs, industry people, and they come and they look at the project that the students are doing and give them feedback. So that’s so valuable because these kids are doing already, are having a whole Salesforce implementation under their belt and it get judged by other people, not by me. So it’s people who actually puts their grade. So that have evolved since that, and then I’m very grateful that Angela and Larry have stick with me to do these things. Of course there’s a few perks, like eating very well, getting to [inaudible 00:13:43] places, but I don’t think that has nothing to do with it.
Josh Birk:
Nice. It’s the side perks for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But you can go get good food. Where are you based now? Are you still in Denver or still in Minnesota?
Rafael Hernandez:
I am in Colorado now. So I-
Josh Birk:
You’re in Colorado.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah, I-
Josh Birk:
You got good food there. Yeah.
Rafael Hernandez:
I do have good food. Yeah.
Josh Birk:
And I just love the fact that you met Angela down in Uruguay, and Larry in Spain. Did I get that right?
Rafael Hernandez:
That is correct. That is correct.
Josh Birk:
And they’re both from Portland.
Rafael Hernandez:
That is true. That is true. They are both from Portland. It’s so weird. Every time we have this story, and then there’s a lot of more stories there how with Larry and I ended up in a very nice town in Spain, and people were thinking that we were couples. So I play along. It was magnificent. He was a little uncomfortable, but I don’t mind. Love is love, and everybody… I don’t mind. Everybody was so funny. Anyways, but they been so generous with us and they are always mentoring the team. And then Larry wanted to teach a class, and then it was like, okay, let’s find something. Then he started teaching [inaudible 00:14:48] two years back. And then he’s been teaching events development.
Josh Birk:
Gotcha.
Rafael Hernandez:
And then Angela, finally we are empowering more females. One of the problems that I have from the around 80 people that I had graduated, probably five or eight are women.
Josh Birk:
Oh, gotcha.
Rafael Hernandez:
We’re talking about 10%. So now Angela is going to be teaching a whole leadership academy for females in technology this semester. So I’m very hopeful and I’m very eager to see what’s going to happen there.
Josh Birk:
That’s amazing. That is so amazing. And I love the setup because people who know me well know that I have this sort of long-term hatred for hackathons because I don’t feel like they really produce much other than anxiety and stress and vaporware. But what you’re doing is by kind of, I don’t want to say forcing, but by adding in that soft skills and the presentation, they’re getting that well-rounded experience. What have you seen afterwards, like after they graduate from you?
Rafael Hernandez:
You got it right. And I have this conversation with many people that come to me and are like, “We want to replicate your training.” The training is not about just learning Salesforce. I love Salesforce. I’m a Salesforce MVP. I mean, if I ever going to have a tattoo, it would be Salesforce. I don’t have any. But that would be a tattoo that I would do.
But the secret sauce for us is that I don’t teach Salesforce, I teach consulting skills. I’m going to build a person that is going to be successful no matter what they’re using. Today is going to be Salesforce, tomorrow is going to be… We have so many things that Salesforce is buying that I don’t know if we’re going to be doing clouds every day. Now you have a Slack, you have so many things. One of my students, she’s doing MuleSoft.
So what I teach them is first to prepare themselves to be consultants. How do you talk to the customer? How do you gather requirements? How do you present to the customer? So I pair my students with non-profits, and I know that people are [inaudible 00:16:46] about this topic, but I’m very careful about this. I pick non-profits in Mexico, and then I am the architect for the solution and I oversee the whole solution from beginning to end.
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
So I make sure that the decision that are taken in the project are solid and as good as possible. I mean, sometimes it’s hard. And then we work with them, with a non-profit for four months. So you get a team of 10 developers, well, 10 consultants to do a project for you for 10 months. So I immerse them there and like, “Okay, if you have a problem with the customer, go and talk to them.” So for example, somebody didn’t finish something and I’m like, “Okay, what are you going to present?” We do Agile, right? “What do we do teacher?” Like, “I don’t know. You guys are the consultants.”
So it’s a great sandbox for them to mess it up. And of course in the back, behind the scenes, I’m talking to these non-profits, I have a good relationship with them, with the directors, whoever is running and says, “Look, this is a win-win. I’m going to let them make mistakes, but I know that they’re making those mistakes.” They don’t know that I know that they’re making mistakes, but that’s the whole thing.
Josh Birk:
You’re like the man behind the man, but the man is both in both instances, I think.
Rafael Hernandez:
Exactly. And the results are being so fantastic. They are not being actually problematic to some degree because my students now, they have a reputation. They know that if you conference for Rafa’s class, you’re going to be good. And then they sometimes are hired as juniors, and what happens is that sometimes these kids are the same level that not a junior and a regular developer consultant, and that’s when it becomes problematic. But it’s a good problem to have. You want people that are very capable and you have it. The problem is you hire them very junior, and then in six months you realize that sometimes it’s hard to keep them and retain them.
Josh Birk:
I love that. Especially because it also solves one of the questions I constantly got on the road was like, “I am just now learning Salesforce. I’ve done the trail or the workbook, whatever it was at the time, but I have no experience on the books and people don’t want talk to me because I don’t have…” Basically it’s the chicken and egg problem that a lot of junior developers run into. And you’re kind of solving that by giving them the egg. It’s like, “Go, here you’ll have experience. It’s non-profit, but it’s still going to be on your resume.”
Rafael Hernandez:
That is true. And I constantly get people… I actually have had five people that are not from the university who reach out to me and says, “Rafa, I want to be part of your class. I want to get experience.” And it says you’re doing it, but my students have the accountability that they can fail the class and they can lose credits. But you need to have the accountability that you need to be in the class, one by one with these kids. You have to study, you have to do it. And I have so many success stories of people that you should know there that they have actually given a year, two years working with me and they making sure that they learn.
And the really important thing is that sometimes you go to a non-profit, but since you don’t have experience that you said, sometimes they’re hesitant because it’s, okay, I don’t know if I’m going to get something good or you’re just playing around with this. In my case, I know what I’m doing. I have been an architect for a long time and a developer, so I make sure that whatever they’re doing, it’s the best solution possible. And the most important thing that I do is I make them document when the solution is not optimal, why they took that decision. Because then somebody else is going to come and say, “Who did this?” “Oh, the students from Rafa.” No, no, no, here’s the documentation and here’s why we did it this way.
Josh Birk:
Right. Wow. Nice. Now, I think we’re talking around the edges of this, but tell me about the Kernandez Foundation. Again, I apologize if I’m mispronouncing that, but what is it? How did it start? How did you get involved?
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah. So I have always been doing all this help to people. I mean, on the side, I have another program where I pay people out of my pocket just to mentor one only person one-on-one. It’s program that I have been doing also for seven years with incredible results. And then I keep helping people, and then some friends were like, “Rafa, when are you actually going to put a structure, a legal structure around this so we can help you?”
Because I have a lot of people who help me, a lot of people who wants to help me, and some people are like, “Well, you’re not a non-profit, so I cannot give you money.” I’m like, “All right, but would you give me money if I have one?” “Heck yeah.”
So on 2020, also in the pandemic, besides raising for psychology, in the meantime, the classes [inaudible 00:21:03] like, “Why don’t I start my non-profit?” I couldn’t do anything else. It was my 40th birthday and I’m like, I need to do something good, but I couldn’t. Like, well, next coolest thing will be to create a non-profit. So I started doing research, I fill all the paperworks. I was like, “I need to make this something that people can relate to and can help me.” And I submitted everything. And it took from May to May, almost. Almost one year for the IRS to approve it, but I got it the first try.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
So I was very impressed. Yeah, so I was like, “Oh wow, I have a non-profit now, so what to do.”
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah. So last year was the first one that we decided. So I gathered with… My wife is the treasurer because she’s very good with money. If I have money it’s because she makes me not spend a lot. So she’s perfect. And then I have my former mother-in-law, which is from Mexico too. She’s very passionate about helping people. I really love her and I invite her. She’s helping me. We actually going Hidalgo in two weeks to do more conference down in the mountains there. And then one of my friends who worked with me in this non-profit when I met [inaudible 00:22:14] she’s an IT guru.
So between the four of us, we take care of the computers, donations. We do a fundraising every year here in Colorado. And we have a sponsor three years in 2022, three students, sorry, three students in 2022, I actually am just redoing our website to post the kids and the changes in their lives. And this year, I’m so happy because we are having three kids. And when I say kids, I’m sorry, I have to explain because my wife always says, “You call them kids, they’re not kids, they’re already in college.” So they are over 18. They are from 18 to 23. That’s their ages. And we have three kids from a very, very small town in Hidalgo in Mexico called [inaudible 00:22:57]. I have no idea. This university, it took me six hours to get there from Mexico City.
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
It was a terrible drive. And I like offroading, but this was a whole different level. So a lot of kids with a lot of hunger to succeed, and they got the scholarship. So the kids get like an [inaudible 00:23:17] card where you receive $150, which is around 3,000 pesos. And they can use it to buy groceries. Because one of the problems that we have with students who are anemic, people who are anemic, and then they cannot succeed. But they also get a brand-new computer. We delivered the computer last November.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
And then they also get internet. We pay for the internet for a whole year. So once you put in their arms a computer, internet, and then food, it’s just up to them to be able to succeed that year.
Josh Birk:
That’s awesome. I mean, that is. It’s incredible just this constant theme. You identify blockers and then you just kind of kick them down and then keep going. How do the kids find out about this? Is it through the university?
Rafael Hernandez:
Yes. So I do very strategic partnerships. A lot of people, I have a Facebook page, I have not a lot of people following me, but I have quite some people and they’re like, “I want to be part of it.” And I’m very strategic because I want to make sure that I have somebody in the university is giving me feedback, somebody that I can relate to to say, “Hey, what can we do to help this person?” So the first one is in the university in Yucatán where my friend invited me five years ago to give a conference with him. I help him and then he sends a broadcast to everybody, and they apply. Surprisingly, so you’ll think that people would jump at this. Every time I give them a conference, like, “Hey, who wants to make 3,000 passes a month and have a new computer?” Everybody raise their hands, and when you send them an email, only two people apply out of 1,000.
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
It’s surprising, right?
Josh Birk:
Yeah.
Rafael Hernandez:
I mean, you put these opportunities. Anyways, we did the same thing now. I have a friend who went to college with me and now she’s a principal in the university here in Hidalgo. So she’s my contact there and she’s like, “Can you please help us?” And I say, “Okay.” And then we expanded the scholarship to them, and then they want to know.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
They are so eager, so hungry that now they’re going to be these kids in there in the university. And then we have 16 applications from that university versus two from the other one. So you can see the difference.
Josh Birk:
Yeah. I’m also going to point out, I think you might have a theme of offering people something that sounds too good to be true. So there might be a marketing angle to determine there.
Rafael Hernandez:
That is true. That is true. And then I’m too optimistic when I’m talking. So at some point I need to cool it down, because I have given conference… I gave one in Portland, actually, in Forcelandia, and somebody yell at me, “Already you sold me. Tell me how to do it.”
Josh Birk:
Just take my money, right?
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
I need to tune it down.
Josh Birk:
Love it. So I want to circle back because I don’t think I realized how early in your career you did this, but it makes a lot of sense. But you’ve published a book. When did you think to yourself, “I have this knowledge and a book is the way to go”?
Rafael Hernandez:
I think that actually, it didn’t happen. What it happens is that I was aware that education, it’s important, and it’s terrible in Mexico. Just to give you some statistic for everybody who’s listening and understand this concept in Mexico. So by the age of 17 in Mexico, you have to know what you want to do with your life. And then our careers are like you go five-year degree or four-year degree for the most careers. So for example, for me to be a software engineer, by 17 and a half, I already needed to be applying for universities.
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Rafael Hernandez:
And I was going to stick to that university for five years.
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
So for example, out of 100 people that apply for a university, only 20 are going to get in.
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
Only 20. And then out of that 20, only four are going to graduate. So you’re talking about 20% getting in and 20% getting out.
Josh Birk:
Getting out.
Rafael Hernandez:
So you’re finished with out of 100 people, only four are engineer. And this is what Salesforce is awesome, because I have a lot of people who didn’t finish who are very successful right now, but I’m not going to change topics. But anyway.
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Rafael Hernandez:
So one of my friends [inaudible 00:27:15] he’s like, “Rafa, I’m confused. You’re 17. You are so worried, thinking about so many other things. My mom wants me to be an architect and I want to be a software developer. How can you help me?” So we start exchanging emails and writing back and forth about this issue to the point that we start realizing what a person at 17 years old was going through. This is a very important thing. So those emails start becoming a chapter of a book. And then he’s like, “Hey, I have decided what I want to do. How do I make sure that I get in school?” And then we started talking about that, and it just happened in another chapter. And then he’s like, “Hey, I made it. Thank you. How can I stay in the school?” And then I was like, “Oh, well, that’s a bigger animal. Now you need to know how to be good at taking tests. You have to be good at reading your teachers.” Because in Mexico it’s about whatever the teacher says, that goes.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
So you have to be very political, you have to have soft skills. So I start writing all these things in chapters, how to be successful in the school. And then it was so funny because it’s been like five years and I’m like, “Okay, now that you’re graduating, what are you going to do? What do you do? Do you get a job? Do you get a master’s? Do you get both? And then how do you find a job? How do you open your own company?” And all those things and those questions are becoming chapters and chapters, and then suddenly we have a book.
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
And I took it to somebody Mexico and says, “Would you guys to publish this?” It was a small publisher. I’m all about trying to do a win-win.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
So my first publisher was a small company in Yucatán and I was like, “I’ll help you guys and you can get your startup running with my book.” So we tried for two years. It was not a good experience. I also have bad experience. So that was me. My wife [inaudible 00:29:00] trying to help people, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. So this doesn’t work. We took three years, and when we finally published the book in three years, it was a total disaster. And talking about version control, they used the version of the book that was not correct.
Josh Birk:
No.
Rafael Hernandez:
So we printed 200 copies of a version that was terrible.
Josh Birk:
No.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah. So we all make mistakes and learn from them, right?
Josh Birk:
Right.
Rafael Hernandez:
But when you talk about, I’m talking about soft skills, the next thing I did is when I talked to him, he says, “Rafa, we don’t have the time. I don’t think we have the skills to do it.” And I say, “Okay, that’s fair. Okay, no problem.” So what I did, I was so sad, and when I remembered I was in a Starbucks in Mexico and I was walking like I’m sad, this is a disaster. Three years trying to get this book, and then nothing. And then I start walking into a plaza and I suddenly find a bookstore in the plaza. And this is one of the biggest bookstores in the peninsula. And it goes to Cancún, to Yucatán, and all these three states that are in the peninsula. So I go in with a copy of my book that it was a terrible copy of the book, and I put on their stand and I take a picture of it and tag them on Instagram and it says, “Soon to be sold in this bookstores,” that they were also publishers.
Josh Birk:
Really?
Rafael Hernandez:
I thought then. Next thing I know, they contact me. We get in their contract, and in three months my book is up and running. Yeah.
Josh Birk:
Well, that’s a wild variation on the chicken egg problem right there.
Rafael Hernandez:
I mean-
Josh Birk:
Wow.
Rafael Hernandez:
… it is like the rubber duck. Like, what am I going to do? And I start talking to myself with this problem and I’m like, “Let’s try this.” Sometimes crazy things work.
Josh Birk:
Oh my God, I love it. I absolutely love it. Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
And that was a year and a half ago, and we already sold the thousand copies that we published, we sold them out.
Josh Birk:
Nice. Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
Well, that description makes the title even more profound. I thought you were just kind of being slightly witty, but the title of the book is I’m an Adult, Now… or wait, I’m an Adult, Now What? Is that right?
Rafael Hernandez:
That is correct.
Josh Birk:
Okay. So we’re going to get links to all this stuff into the show notes. I got a couple of follow-up questions. One is, you have done a lot of different presentations around the world. Do you have a personal favorite?
Rafael Hernandez:
It has to be the cajon. That’s my favorite.
Josh Birk:
It has to be the cajon, right?
Rafael Hernandez:
It has to be the cajon. And I haven’t found something like… I do a lot of soft skills, architecture calls, and I even… Actually, I presented one at Forcelandia last year when I loaded a million records on a map inside Salesforce in one second. That was also cool. Yeah, that was very cool. It was a piece of code using RGIS, and then sometimes you think, how can you load millions of records? And it was awesome. I used maps, I use RGIS online and I show the display inside Salesforce, and then you can also communicate because you can grab a record and then pull more information from Salesforce, augment the data. That was also cool, but not as cool as the cajon.
Josh Birk:
Not as cool as the cajon. But then walk me through that a little bit more. You’re loading a million rows into Salesforce itself as custom objects?
Rafael Hernandez:
No, no, no, just on the screen. On the screen.
Josh Birk:
Okay, got it. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it.
Rafael Hernandez:
If you want to see who are my customer, who needs something. And then you-
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Rafael Hernandez:
And I just put a million just to be… I wanted to show off. And then you can see that all the data actually has correspondent ID in Salesforce, so you can actually go to that record and navigate inside Salesforce.
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Rafael Hernandez:
So it was a solution to a problem that I have.
Josh Birk:
Very nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
So it was like I want somebody to have access to millions of records [inaudible 00:32:38].
Josh Birk:
Right. Nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah.
Josh Birk:
And a very in line with Forcelandia type topic too, so beautiful.
Rafael Hernandez:
Exactly. Exactly.
Josh Birk:
Beautiful.
Rafael Hernandez:
I guess that’s what they accepted it. But it’s Portland. You never know with those guys.
Josh Birk:
You never know with those two crazy people. You never know what’s in their heads.
Rafael Hernandez:
That’s correct.
Josh Birk:
Every now and then they’ll just throw somebody up on stage to talk about their nervous breakdown, from what I hear. So that stuff is crazy.
And that’s our show. Now, before we go, I did ask after, Rafael’s favorite non-technical hobby, and, well, his hobbies are his hobbies.
Rafael Hernandez:
So my hobbies are hobbies. I do love photography.
Josh Birk:
Oh, nice.
Rafael Hernandez:
Yeah, I have a professional camera. I like to take pictures. That’s one of my hobbies. I don’t make enough time for it. But at the same time, I love biking. I love hiking. I love snowshoeing. I have been trying to learn the guitar for the last 10 years. I have one right here.
Josh Birk:
I want to thank Rafael for the great conversation and information, and as always, I want to thank you for listening. Please check out the show notes for today’s episode if you want to learn more about how you can help his charitable causes. Now, if you want to learn more about this 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’ll talk to you next week.