In this episode, we have a conversation with Marisa Hambleton, owner of MH2X, which helps companies achieve their strategic goals through technology by building solutions and providing consulting services. Although presented with the opportunity to work for a corporate firm, Marisa chose the entrepreneurial route.

This episode is part one of a two-part interview. In part one, we discuss Marisa’s early years and how she was introduced to Salesforce. We also talk about why she chose to own her own company and the pros and cons of entrepreneurship.

Get to know Marisa in this episode, and don’t miss part two in episode 179!

Show Highlights:

  • How Marisa was introduced to Salesforce
  • The incentive to stay in a world of entrepreneurship
  • Marisa’s advice for others who want to branch out on their own
  • Sticking with entrepreneurship and knowing when it’s not working
  • How the pandemic has created new challenges and solutions for her

Links:

Episode Transcript

Marisa Hambleton:
A small child when I had an uncle that brought an old CPM machine over to the house and said, “Go at it. Have fun.”

Josh Birk:
That is once again, Marisa Hambleton. I’m Josh Birk. You’re host of the Salesforce Developer podcast, and here on the podcast you’ll hear stories and insights from developers for developers. Once again, we bring back Marissa’s old episode in hue, a two part full version so that you can get the complete version of our conversation. But we’re going to start once again, as we often do with those earliers.

Marisa Hambleton:
And I think I was just trying to figure out how to use it. I didn’t know what it was. It just was a machine and it had this instruction manual and I was just trying to type in commands and get something to print.

Josh Birk:
Get something to do something. Yes, my-

Marisa Hambleton:
Something to do something. Yes.

Josh Birk:
My earliest programmatic habits were, we had a Commodore 64, and I wanted it to play a game that I was reading about in a magazine. And in those days, they would just print the source code to the game in the magazine. And if you were patient enough and put in all the words right then magically a game was created and I had no idea what I was doing. It was just purely, put the words in the machine, hopefully some weird maze game type thing comes out. I think it actually made me kind of not like computer programming at first because I kept getting syntax errors without even having to really understand what a syntax error was. So thankfully the web brought me back to the fold. So, then if this is what you always wanted to do, how did you get introduced to Salesforce itself?

Marisa Hambleton:
That’s a really interesting story. It was 2009. I had been laid off from IBM. It was one of the big sweeps that they had throughout software group when they were making major cuts in the US workforce across a bunch of different divisions. And my husband, and actually we worked together in the same group, actually a couple of cubes down from each other. And we saw it coming. The economy had just not been doing so well, and we just were kind of biding our time and trying to hold out hope that, yeah, we won’t make this cut. But yeah, indeed, we were a cut. And during the time that we were laid off, there’s a lot of different things that happened, but we went ahead and just decided that, “Hey, we’re just going to take this opportunity. The economy’s in the toilet, jobs are scarce, we’re going to start a business.”
And so we were just out in the neighborhood walking around and saw a neighbor out and yelled over and said, “Hey, we’re both out of work. If you know anybody that needs anybody technical, let us know.” He yelled back, “Okay.” Kept walking, couple of weeks passed by, got a phone call and it was the neighbor, his wife’s former project manager who now had gone and started another business, had another friend.

Josh Birk:
Oh, wow.

Marisa Hambleton:
That needed a technical person. And I know that, again, I think these days “technical” is a loaded term. And so I gave her a call and she was working on some AV programming. And she says, “So do you think this is something you can do?” And I’m like, “Well, I’ve never done any AV programming, and actually, I can code, but that’s not my strong suit. My strong suit is delivery and project management. But let me ask Mike, my husband.” And so we talked about it and he’s like, “Eh, I don’t think that’s really what I want to do.” So she says, “Okay, that’s cool. Well,” she says, “I also have this other project I’m working on with this thing called Salesforce.”

Josh Birk:
Really?

Marisa Hambleton:
So I was like, “Hmm, okay. Never heard of it. What is it? Is it like a sales tool?” And she’s like, “Well, it’s like a CRM.” I’m like, “Okay, sure. Why not?”
And that was it. That was my first project. It was a new implementation for a wealth management firm, a lot of data, a lot of scrubbing of data, user training verification. And of course I was intensely curious because I was like, this is all in a browser. How can this be happening? Is this what the cloud is like? I’ve never seen anything like this. I just came from over nine years at IBM, we were doing embedded Java and all the microprocessor JVMs for embedded devices and the early generation smartphones and smart devices.
And again, this was a whole other thing. I had heard about it, but I never had touched and felt it or seen what it looked like. And so of course, I was looking at view source in the browser, what is this? How is this secure? And I was just really curious. So that’s my first exposure, and that was back in 2009. And I just fell in love. I mean, not in the traditional sense, not the love at first login, but I just was so curious and it was so different from anything that I had ever worked on that I just felt like I need more of this. Where else can I get more of this tool called Salesforce?

Josh Birk:
Nice. Yeah. No, I’ve had other guests. I think Corey Snow comes to mind who they just had this aha moment of going from traditional full stack and just the way things were. And then working with Salesforce and just being like, “Of course this is the way we’re going to do these things. It solves so many problems.” From a logistics and product management point of view, did you have that kind of feeling where it was just like, this is what I want to work with for the rest of my career?

Marisa Hambleton:
Not immediately, but it’s interesting. The thing that really struck me is that having been around these hardcore assembler engineers, my husband again, also a software engineer developer, had been working on Embedded C for many years, was really trying to make the shift over to Enterprise Java. He had been working on the micro edition of Java. And so we were just both really fascinated by the cloud because everybody was talking about it, but being able to see it in action, do something and run a business and run this whole application, we just found it incredibly fascinating. And I loved the fact that you could create an application without actually having to write any code.
So when I say immediately, it was within the matter of months, I was actually able to build something, implement it and the business was using it. And to me, that was just revolutionary. In 2009, and then to find out that, oh, this company’s been around since 1999, and I’m mind blown. It’s like, where have I been? And I was like, oh, yeah, I was at IBM. I had my head in a drawer of smartphones and circuit boards, and it just was a whole other universe for me. And yeah, I’ve been lost in it ever since.

Josh Birk:
Well, I think that’s a really interesting angle because I know I have a lot of friends who are traditional Java developers and they come from this world of unyielding power where they can make the server do whatever they want, and if they want to bring back 3 million rows for their SQL server, then gosh darn it, that’s what they’re going to do. And they walk into the world of Apex and SOQL where sales is like, Okay, calm down, chill. We’re going to throw some governor limits your way and kind of build your application within those confines. But you and your husband, you’re coming from a world of microprocessors and mobile and embedded code where it’s like you have to worry about memory limits and-

Marisa Hambleton:
Yes.

Josh Birk:
CPU. And it’s like you can break things if you go too far off the rails. It sounds like Salesforce was kind of a comforting warm fire to sit next to and just build things.

Marisa Hambleton:
Yeah. Well, I don’t know if we thought of it that way, but yes, we were very keen on the resource constraints of the devices and the environment with which we were working. And so yeah, I know for myself, because I was focused more on the delivery side, I had a, well I don’t want to call them my team, but I was a project manager, although my title, we talked about titles right before the call, my official title was a staff software engineer, but my responsibility was bringing in all of the different pieces of this JVM from all over the world. So I had teams in mainland China, in Taiwan, in Korea, in India, in Canada, here in the US. And I had to bring in all the different pieces of the JVM and then get them over to the release folks so that we could release out to our business partners.
And so I was able to see how all these different pieces fit together in order to make a delivery. And the thing that struck me with Salesforce is that it was cloud and it was an app and it was all together, and it’s like instant delivery. Just again, and it really struck me that, hey, this is really powerful. I’ve got to learn more about this and get into it and see how can I build a business on it. And I was going through my MSIM our graduate school program, and that’s when I actually, Peter Coffee was one of our guest lectures.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Marisa Hambleton:
So total fan girl. That’s when I knew it’s like that was the sign I needed that okay, I am on the right path.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Marisa Hambleton:
I’ve got to find a way to do this.

Josh Birk:
I love how there’s people in our community who I just like Peter Coffee, Leah McGowen-Hare and Charlie Isaacs. It’s so many people can credit some moment in their life, and Chris Duarte comes up an awful lot, I shall also say. And it’s just like, how are these people all over the world, even in a virtual world? I keep running into Charlie Isaacs. I think that’s wonderful. I do think it really speaks to the power of the early days where Salesforce is like, no software, you just need your browser. I mean no software feels a little weirder now because we’ve got Heroku and stuff like that. But it was that easy delivery system. Now tell me a little bit, because you have stayed in this world of entrepreneurship and running your own business, what was the incentive there to stay as kind of your own business as opposed to signing up with a big consulting or anything like that?

Marisa Hambleton:
Oh gosh. Well, I love running my own business. I’m a big DIYer.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Marisa Hambleton:
I love just the idea of doing things myself. I’m very curious. I love figuring things out. I like knowing how things work. And I really loved the process of running a business. And I do have a lot of entrepreneurial friends. Coincidentally, a lot of our IBM friends, the people that we worked with that were also laid off at the same time, they also started their own businesses. And we used to all get together and just talk about how, “Oh man, I got to do the taxes,” and “Oh, I got to go find a bookkeeper.” And like, “Oh man, somebody’s got to get my website up.” And all the little things about running a business. And they’re like, “I just want to code,” or “I just want to build things.”
And I really was fascinated by how to run a business. My husband, because he’s the really hardcore developer. He really just wanted to code all the time, and he wanted to code whatever he wanted to code in. When you work for a very large company, you get told what you code and everything you develop and you create is theirs. The intellectual property part of it. It can be very constraining. And so that was one of the things that we both felt. And I felt that, okay, we can now create something for ourselves and share. And he found for himself that he really liked the whole full-time employment, the regular steady part of it. I on the other hand, oh my gosh, I thrive in the chaos. It’s like that whole up and down where I can get up in the morning and there’s something really great happening and I’m like, “Woo-hoo, yay.” And then it’s something doesn’t go so well. You’re like, “Oh, I’m such a loser.” I’m like, “Oh, I can’t, what the hell am I thinking? I’m never going to get this right.”
But that’s all part of it. And that’s part of why I love it. It gave me the opportunity to also explore things that I had always wanted to explore throughout my professional career. And again, I have always been in technology and I started early in my career working for an energy company that was very traditional in work environment. There was very few women, actually, there’s still very few women, but even fewer women and even fewer Latina women. So just going through all that, the evolution of my career, I never fit in. I loved what I did. I was loving my work, working in IT internally for companies.
I worked for software companies, worked for IBM, I tried some startups and I just felt like being the boss, I could do whatever I wanted. If I felt like there was a better way to do something than what I had been taught. I had the latitude and the liberty to just try it and see if it works, great. If it doesn’t work, well, I guess I won’t be doing it that way again.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Marisa Hambleton:
And I get to make the rules and I get to break the rules and I can bring other people along with me. And it’s just fun. Right?

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Marisa Hambleton:
It’s just fun. And I don’t want to say we all have to work, but most people are not independently wealthy. But even if they are, it’s like it’s nice to have a bigger purpose of how you spend your day, how you spend your time, and how you contribute I think just to your industry and to humanity. And I feel like as an entrepreneur, I have the opportunity to do that, and that’s really enjoyable.

Josh Birk:
Nice. I feel like my arc was almost a complete inverse of that. I was a freelance consultant down in the wonderful city of Bloomington, Illinois for about two years. And I was kind of making a profit, sort of mostly paying rent, and I knew I might be in trouble when one afternoon I successfully designed my letterhead and realizing I have no letters to send to any clients. And I’m just like, that was real big waste of four hours where I could have been calling people or going to businesses and things like that. And then I signed up with another company and we sort of lost a bunch of money and I fled to State Farm into the arms of the corporate world. So I appreciate you having that passion and success for it. Do you have advice for anybody, maybe not even just in terms of trying to do Salesforce consultancy and partnership, but striking it out on their own and maybe wanting to have that self entrepreneur angle to it?

Marisa Hambleton:
Yes. So I’m going to borrow the slogan.

Josh Birk:
Okay.

Marisa Hambleton:
“It’s the toughest job you’ll ever love.” And it’s not a job though. You really have to have a passion for it. You have to be very gritty because it’s not for the faint of heart. I’ve had a lot of things go sideways. The first year I did this, I only made $10,000, but I was profitable. So financially, you have to be in the place where you can do something like this. And I know that there’s a lot of people out there that maybe financially can’t do it. And so I’m a big advocate of side hustle. If you can successfully side hustle and grow that side hustle, then that it might work for you. I think that there’s a lot of people that are very entrepreneurial, but have difficulty making the leap from full-time employment to self-employment.
One of the things that, because I do take an interest in how the business runs, I do have a really deep understanding, and I’m also really good friends with my accountant, the tax laws, and I’m super scrappy as far as how the cost of running the business. I want to make sure that I’m not filing a loss at the end of the year. And so those are things that I think it’s nice to be your own boss, but it’s hard too. It’s hard because you also have to make the hard choices.
I didn’t always feel this way obviously, I’ve been doing this for about 10 years now, and I had a lot of doubt early on, and I kept thinking, gosh, I should just go get a real job. Or I’d have friends of mine, my old IBM buddies that would say, “When are you going to get a real job?” And finally, at some point, I actually did do a little stint where I was lured into a larger consultancy that seemed like it’d be like awesome. And what I realized is that for myself, I do not have the right personality. I’m not enough of a conformist to work for anybody else.

Josh Birk:
Okay. That’s good to know. I feel like that’s good self realization right there.

Marisa Hambleton:
Yes. I am too much of a contrarian, and I really marched to the beat of my own drummer. And that does not always bode well in a workplace because there’s a certain level of conformity that’s required and rule following and the way things are done. And that’s not who I am as a person. So again, I tell people that, Hey, if you think you want to start it, just do it. Right? The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t work out. And then you move on, you shut it down and you move on. And there’s no shame in that whatsoever. I feel like, again, as a business owner, there’s times that things go really, really well, and it’s awesome, and sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t, you have to tie it up, learn the lessons, and then move on.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. And when they don’t, I love that part that you have to love the toughest job because I feel like even when it’s kind of got you down, you still have to love the game a little bit, I guess, because otherwise, how are you going to stick with it, right?

Marisa Hambleton:
Yes. And know when it’s not working. Because I think that there’s two sides of it. There’s the financial part of it. We all want to be able to be paid well for the work that we do, but if it starts feeling like a job, that’s the other part of it. And I think as an entrepreneur, a lot of the people that I know that are self-employed or they run their own businesses, I always hesitate calling it work. Because to me, I love what I do. I would, and with a community, the Salesforce community, one of the reasons I do that is because I really enjoy it. I love doing it. I don’t need to be paid. So for my business, Oh, it’s really awesome that, Hey, I actually get paid to do this. I get to do this every day. And it’s awesome. And I love that.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. I have heard some other people who do self consultancies or entrepreneurs, they almost describe it more like a lifestyle choice than a professional one.

Marisa Hambleton:
Yes, it can be. And sometimes I’ve had people kind of give me that like, “Oh, so it’s a lifestyle business.” And I’m like, “Oh, hell yes. It’s my lifestyle. I’m loving it and I make money.”

Josh Birk:
I love it. So I want to talk about that community angle of it, but I also want to just pick your brain really quickly because you have tons of experience in architecture, project management work, you’re just working with global teams and all of this kind of stuff. How has the pandemic created new challenges for you, and what kind of solutions have you been able to employ around them?

Marisa Hambleton:
So that’s an interesting question. The pandemic for myself hasn’t changed a lot of what I do or how I do it, other than I feel like I’m at an advantage because I’ve worked remotely for so many years.

Josh Birk:
You were already distributed? Yeah. Gotcha.

Marisa Hambleton:
That transition for me was really easy. I feel like it just put me in a place where I know how to listen. If there was people that I would meet with in person in the past, and I don’t have the ability to do that anymore, I can still really listen and really understand. And I’m very empathetic to business struggles, right? Because I feel like I’ve been there. And I joked with my sister because we also had a lot of family stuff going on during this time. Her and I joked we’re like, “We’ve been preparing our whole lives for a moment like this.”

Josh Birk:
Of course, yes.

Marisa Hambleton:
But it’s like we joked about it because it’s sad, because there’s a lot of tragedy happening right now, but at the same time, it’s because we’ve been in these, again, 10 years ago when my husband and I were laid off, our children were still young, you have kids in diapers and daycare, and our incomes weren’t what they are now. And so financially, we were afraid like, “Oh shit, we really do have to think about our financial health,” at that time. And it just really makes you think differently about how you’re doing what you’re doing. And so I bringing those lessons to this time with clients and knowing that they’re afraid for their businesses, that there’s the problems that they need to solve really do have a great impact because it could be the viability of their businesses if their solutions aren’t implemented properly or if the solution that they’ve got isn’t really doing it for them.
And so it’s really been about anything new. Again, I’ve worked currently in manufacturing and healthcare, and healthcare not in the pandemic sense, but just regular healthcare. And the solutions just need to work, and it needs to do what it’s supposed to be doing so that the businesses can be viable. But there hasn’t, again, just in the work that I’ve been doing over the last 12 months, for me again, it hasn’t changed as much.

Josh Birk:
And that’s our show now. Tune in next week for the rest of the conversation. Marissa’s favorite non-technical hobby. I want to thank Marissa for the great conversation information. And as always, I want to thank you for listening. 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 you. Favorite podcast service. Thanks again everybody, and I’ll talk to you next week.

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