➡️ Summary ➡️

In this conversation, Vuk Stajić shares his journey from being an accidental Salesforce admin to founding MVRK, a consulting firm focused on improving project delivery in the Salesforce ecosystem. He discusses the development of the First Line Support app, which is offered for free to help the community. Vuk emphasizes the importance of the security review process for apps on the AppExchange and his non-intrusive marketing approach. He also highlights his passion for coaching through the Salesforce Solopreneur Blueprint program and shares insights on the impact of AI on the Salesforce ecosystem and future predictions for the industry.

➡️ Guest ➡️

Vuk Stajić https://www.linkedin.com/in/vuks/

MVRK https://mvrk.ca/

➡️ Takeaways ➡️

Vuk started his Salesforce career as an 'Accidental Admin'.

The First Line Support app was developed to streamline internal support requests.

FLS is offered for free to give back to the Salesforce community.

The security review process for apps on AppExchange can be time-consuming.

Vuk prefers a non-intrusive marketing approach for FLS.

Coaching others has been a rewarding experience for Vuk.

AI is transforming the Salesforce ecosystem and job roles.

Vuk predicts a shift in the partner ecosystem due to AI advancements.

The first clients are crucial for long-term success.

➡️ Youtube ➡️

Watch this episode on our Youtube channel

➡️ Keywords ➡️

Salesforce, MVRK, First Line Support, AppExchange, AI, Solopreneur, Coaching, Security Review, Marketing, Entrepreneurship

➡️ Hashtags ➡️

#salesforce #isv #appexchange #free #goodwill #solopreneur #ikigai

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Today I'm joined by Vuk Stajic of MVRK Welcome to the podcast Vuk.

Thank you, Scott, man. Very happy to be here. Very happy to be chatting with you. And hopefully you and I can get some interesting topics and interesting discussions that'll bring some value to the listeners of your podcast.

Definitely, I'm very excited because I've learned a little bit about your story. I think it's unique. I think it can provide a lot of value to listeners. just to get started, why you give a little background about your Salesforce experience, MVRK, and then we're gonna get into ⁓ your app on the AppExchange Firstline support.

Sure man, if I talk too much, feel free to say, hey, speed it up, Vogue, speed it up. I I've been known to be a little bit ⁓ verbose.

The beginning of my Salesforce career is similar but different to a lot of people in the sense that I started as an accidental admin. I want to say a decade ago, but realistically, it's almost 12 years ago that I first heard the word Salesforce. And the basic way it happened is I was walking in on my first day at my engineering job as a mechanical engineer. My boss said, Boog, I'm so sorry, there's no seats in the engineering department. You got to sit with sales. And I thought, hey, that's fantastic. Those people are alive and energetic.

Mm-hmm.

scene and pretty well day one I started hearing, is that in Salesforce? I can't get that in Salesforce. Why is this thing not letting me put this in Salesforce? So realized, they're using something called.

Mm-hmm.

Salesforce, right? And being that young, energetic go-getter, said, let me help you guys with the Salesforce thing, because they had some really silly things that they were doing. They didn't think it was that silly, but I thought it was pretty silly seeing them run around with pieces of paper and writing things from Salesforce down instead of, you know, just generating templates. So that's what I did. And thankfully the VP of sales there was incredibly trusting to the point where over the three, four years that I was there subsequently from starting, they gave me hundreds of

of

thousands of dollars to bring in external help and hire ⁓ real professionals to work with me to really grow the platform there. And through that, I realized, you know what? This is a form of engineering, a form of architecture, a form of building that I love because it combined true processes of interesting.

you know, anything you can think of, right? And then facilitating it in a digital workspace, I just, it hooked me, like I think it does a lot of us. And then as we were reaching the end of those projects, I actually sold myself to the firm that had been, that I had hired to work with us and spent about three years selling millions of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars of project hours for three years. Got so frustrated with some of the like ridiculously easy things that were not being done in a true engineering project delivery manner in our ecosystem.

not the fault of the company that I was working for at the time, simply just kind of, feel it was the basic, you know, standard approach to delivering projects with no documentation, no strategy upfront. And I hated it. And I knew that there would be companies that would want that type of a service, believed in it. And thankfully all the hypotheses that I had over five years ago when I started MVRK have either proven to be true or have been proven to be wrong in a manner that almost benefited me. And, you

Mm-hmm.

You know, now MVRK is a small, small but mighty team where we're four fellows that punch well above our weight, work with a dozen fantastic clients and have, like you said, had the opportunity to build an app that is free to the world. That's kind of a little way for us to give back and use some of our knowledge and experience to make the orgs and make the lives of other admins and users better. that, I hope that answers it and about as fast as I possibly could, because believe me, I could have taken a lot longer and I'm sorry. ⁓

that I'm like that. hope, that answer your question, Scott? Is that a good intro?

No, does. No,

that's great. Especially condensing 12 years down, I think you did pretty well. It sounds like you have a typical engineering mindset in that ⁓ you're irritated by inefficiency and allergic to words like can't and won't. So I could hear you were motivated ⁓ early in your career there with the sales folks. And then I can see you also have that entrepreneurial mindset because you see pain points.

Thank you.

⁓ in the ecosystem around you and you immediately want to build solutions to solve that. ⁓ Such as the first line support, which we'll get into. But it's interesting, you mentioned that MVRK is a small but mighty team. said four individuals punching well above your weight. ⁓ Something I want to get into later too is how I think that that storyline, while maybe unique today, is going to become more more common of

small teams being able to take on a lot more workload thanks to AI, right? For sure. But before we get into that, so first line support. You mentioned already it's a free app. I definitely want to dive into that a little bit too. But first, maybe you could just describe what the app does, who it serves, and what problems it solves.

yeah. Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

Perfect.

One thing that I didn't want to do was create a new case record type, okay? Because they were already using cases. I didn't want to confuse their team. So I said, let me just create an internal support request custom object. We'll create a little flow that their team can request. It'll be assigned to your admin. The admin, if the admin is not able to resolve the problem internally, escalate to me. And that's how we'll manage the tasks that are assigned to me. I loved it because it gave my clients visibility in the work that the team really needed.

that was needed of me and then it gave defensibility and proof of the work that I did for the amount of money that they were being billed.

have, yes.

He was looking at what I was doing and he said, what the heck are you doing, man? Why are you rebuilding this every time? Just make an unmanaged package and it's going to be a breeze doing it. And I was like, what does that even mean? What does that mean to do? So, okay, I did a bit of research, right? I was like, okay, a person that I trust that's intelligent is giving me some advice. I'm taking this advice and I'm going to do something with it. So effectively, I made an unmanaged package out of it sometime in like 2021, maybe 2022.

Hmm.

at

if any anytime in the future our clients come to us and they say can you help us build our app and post it on the app exchange I want to have real experience going through that process myself so that entrepreneurial like you said that entrepreneurial drive was really the main reason that that that said you know what it's great as an unmanaged package and people love it and it's easier for us to deploy in our client solutions but let's take this a step further and let's actually put some work in to make this thing a real a real package so

Sure.

over the beginning of the tail end of last year, beginning of this year, we started putting some actual work into that process. right as we were about to, ⁓ I became a partner officially for that side of the business. And then I met Sunny ⁓ Chauhan. I don't know if you ever spoke to him from App Nigma.

He had basically, okay, good, but he's an awesome guy. He's an awesome guy. Big shout out to him. ⁓ basically at the same time as we were about to go through our security review, I saw him post on Reddit basically saying, helping anybody who wants to, you know, post their app or wants to list their app on the app exchange. I recently just left Salesforce. He was working kind of in their partnership space. He was helping partners, ISP partners, publish apps. And he was incredibly generous to spend some time with us, guide us through some of the finer details.

Not personally, not yet anyways.

was there a lot, right? The reality is if you're thinking about publishing an app, there's a lot to know, a lot more than just building an unmanaged package. And with his support, we basically passed the security review with no major pushback. The only couple of times we had to ⁓ resubmit was the wrong type of sandbox. It was always some small little stuff, never actually in the technical complicated details. ⁓

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

That was the journey. So July of this year is when First Line Support, FLS as we like to call it internally, was ⁓ finally made publicly available.

Yeah, that's the story, right? It's really a simple tool. It's designed to say who's your admin or admin team, who's allowed to ask for support, submit improvement ideas and, you know, log errors. It's beautiful because wherever you are in the system, when you submit the ticket, it reads where you were. After you submit, it allows you to submit and, you know, either screen recording or a snapshot of the error or something else or, know, ⁓

back of the napkin idea of where you want new fields or something. And that's really what the app does. It just allows the user base to submit tickets out of the context of cases so the companies aren't needing to change how they're using cases, have a standard.

a new custom object and allow the admin or admin team to respond to those and manage those internal requests and really prove that they are there to support the team. again, for themselves to have some defensibility to say to their bosses, Hey, here's all the things that we're doing to help. So that's, that's what, that's what the app is. It's really intended for their team, for the, for the admin team to be the first line of support for their user base, right? So that it's not always just about spending money externally. So that's the vision of the app.

I again, that was a long story, but I hope it gets to the heart of the question that you asked.

Yes, very interesting, very interesting path. So I want to zoom in on something you brought up that I think it was after a Dreamforce session you said multiple folks came up to you and said, I'm getting a lot of great use of this app. Thank you so much. What I find interesting is the app, at least today, is free. And I think a lot of founders would hear that feedback and think, hmm, is there a business opportunity here?

Should I be charging for this? So I'm curious, obviously you didn't take that path, and I'm curious, did it cross your mind, and why ultimately did you decide to release ⁓ FLS as a free app?

Yeah, of course it came across my mind, right? The reality is that...

The number one value that any founder, any entrepreneur has is their ability to be strategically focused on where they can bring the most value and gain the most value for their business. If I look at MVRK as an engine of revenue generation, what it's good at doing and what we're good at doing is bringing companies who use Salesforce value by ensuring that they're getting the most value out of Salesforce, which is a fair value trade. What we're not designed and equipped to be is

an app development shop and the number one reason why despite many people telling me hey you should make this you know even if it's five dollars a user or ten dollars an admin or a hundred dollars a month for the org you know lots of people had lots of opinions on how much it should cost and what value it brings but the vision that I had and the understanding that I had was MVRK is not a shop that's able to support a paid app and

Mm-hmm.

that fundamentally then changes the road that we're able to take. Because if I make it a paid app, then I have to...

worked really hard to get a lot of people paying me so that it's worth it when people need support because then I have to drop everything I'm doing because now they're going to expect a level of support that comes with an app that is paid. Given that we're a small shop that's focused on helping a dozen plus clients at any given time with their actual org ⁓ and their other related revenue operations needs, we're not perfectly suited to drop everything we're doing to help somebody who's using our app when they need some help.

So that was the fundamental decision around not making it a priced app from a business revenue strategy perspective, right? It's not beneficial to my team and to the core value proposition of MVRK to our clients that pay us if I now distract my team having to support an app that is paid. More emotionally than that, I'm driven to give back and always have been driven to give back. And this was something that... ⁓

Frankly speaking, you could look at the demo of the application and you could rebuild it yourself within a couple of days.

Maybe not all the exact custom programming that we did and the metadata that we built behind it and the custom interfaces for the setup of the app. But the general unmanaged package variant of it that I did, anybody with configuration capability could build quickly. So I don't believe there's any intellectual property behind it, but it serves a very great strategic purpose in the sense that it does allow us to feel good about giving back to this ecosystem that's made our careers a success. And of course, it does bring eyeballs to our business through ⁓

the mere fact that we're listed in the app exchange and people that don't know us are getting to know us by using the app. So that I think is broadly the strategy around that I'm thinking about with the question that you asked and I hope that wasn't an overwhelming amount of information.

No, I appreciate the ⁓ deep insight to the thought process because I think a lot of folks, ⁓ especially that are coming from consulting, initially think, I'll build this app and then I'll release it. It'll go gangbusters. That's all there is to it. But it was ⁓ very astute of you to realize that the development is just the upfront time investment, but there's a lot more that comes down the road. ⁓ Sales and marketing.

And then of course, as you mentioned, support, right? So once you do have a paid application, folks, as you mentioned, do, I think, have a certain ⁓ idea of, regardless of what you might say on your app exchange listing, I've seen freemium apps ⁓ that list no support for the free tier. But even if there's any sort of price tag involved, I do think some folks eventually expect some level of support. I also think, yes, yes. And I think it was a good idea.

Rightfully, rightfully right, like they should.

definitely in hindsight to get it listed on the AppExchange, not only because it can be a good lead gen channel for your consulting, but also these days, a lot more admins and consultants, as they should be, are security focused. And I think the idea of installing an unvetted package, whether it's managed or unmanaged, honestly, makes a little peep.

Absolutely.

people on the easy. Definitely if it's a managed package.

as it should now, right? We've seen enough this year that that

should not be a point. We should leave that behind, That type of strategic deciding and implementation of apps should be left by the wayside because it's not secure.

Yes, yes, there's been ⁓ a few too many headlines on that this year, as you mentioned, for sure. Okay, so, you know, one thing that I think could be valuable to listeners to hear about, there has been a lot of confusion related to free apps on the AppExchange and the security review process, specifically in terms of fees. At one point in time, any app that was listed for free ⁓ on the AppExchange would be granted a free security review.

It did not omit you from the requirement or excuse you from the requirement to go through the review, but the review itself would be free. ⁓ Then a couple years back, they moved to the $1,000 per review fee each time you go through security review. And if you fail, you have to pay again. And I can recall there was confusion around that time as to whether or not free applications would also be charged. So I was wondering if you'd be willing to share.

when you went through the review process, was that ⁓ free for MVRK to go through or did you have to pay to go through that process?

So yeah, in May and June of this year when we did it, was not free, it was $1. Essentially, the partner manager from Salesforce, I'm butchering the title, I think they have a slightly different title, but the individual who essentially when I applied was liaising with me and ensuring that I was signing the documentation and filling out the necessary information before being approved to even enter the environment to be able to.

submit the app for the review, she was able to give me a coupon code that I use and that discounted the price from $1,000 to $999. If I'm not mistaken, we submitted the first time and I think there was two times that it was bounced back to us and one time I think it was for ⁓ something about a...

something about one of our test classes or one of the one supporting document didn't come across clearly or something. So they, it's funny, right? It's one of those things where the moment they hit one thing, they, send it back to you, right? They're not looking, they're not, they're not looking at everything and pointing out here's the 10 things that it failed on. The moment it fails, they push it back to you. So when we cleared that up and then we submitted a second time, no extra fee, not even another dollar. And then, um,

The second time I think it was the wrong type of test, we gave them the wrong type of test environment for them to use. They gave us the feedback and then we submitted again. Unfortunately, between each of those two, there was like a two week period. So we basically spent about six weeks of the process ⁓ fixing one document and giving them a different sandbox. Right. But at least it wasn't, it was never pushed back to us in a way that was like either.

we, you know, with no clear direction or for something that was, that we felt was unfair, for the application. So for sure it was free. ⁓ it wasn't fast by any means. And I trust, I, and I would, I would find it fair if they don't prioritize free app. So if, if that was our experience, I think like there was at least one time where it was longer than two weeks between the submission and the response. So, ⁓ yeah, that.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I think that answers the question. It was definitely free. I don't know if that's going to change. Nobody's selling me. I don't know much more than you other than it was $1 in May of this year.

Yes.

Thank

Gotcha. Well, that's good to know for sure. It clears up some confusion, I think. ⁓ And it's interesting that you went through that process a few times, and you mentioned the biggest investment, it sounds like, is time more than cost if you're doing a free app. So that's good to know. Though I do think ⁓ it would be a little...

scary if the review process were too fast, right? It's good to know that they actually are taking their time and really ⁓ doing some penetration testing on these applications to make sure that they are secure. So that is good. And I do think two weeks between turnaround time each instance, ⁓ that sounds faster than it used to be. So I think a lot of partners out there might be excited to hear that. But you make a...

Yeah.

Okay.

Our app was simple though, perhaps

our app was simple, right? So perhaps that could play a role in it as well.

Interesting, that's a good point. that is a good point. But it's also, each time you go through it, ⁓ you really need to make sure that you're covering all your bases, dotting all your I's, crossing your T's, because like you said, they won't necessarily give a fully comprehensive failure. ⁓ It could just be, it almost reminds, it reminds me a little bit of a Salesforce deployment where you,

for sale.

You don't

always get 100 % of why the metadata didn't deploy to the org, right? You just get a certain number of errors and then eventually it stops and you could fix all those and you still might not get quite that successful deployment on the second iteration. So it's good things to keep in mind. Free apps are...

Yeah, the problem

is you don't get a lot of face to face with them, right? Like that, the part, the part, and this would be very.

maybe it's different for an app that's got external ⁓ elements to it and more complex. Maybe if you're paying, maybe you do get some face to face time with somebody who is approving your application, but that's not a part of the process. At least it wasn't a part of the process, right? It didn't tell me the name of the person. If I don't, if I remember correctly, didn't tell me like, Hey, this is who rejected you. It was just like a sentence or two. And that was it. Right. So, ⁓ it would be stressful if I was paying for it and, and, know,

Mm-hmm.

and you weren't able to liaise with somebody face to face. So, you know, there's definitely, it's definitely not an easy road, right? No matter what, it's not an easy and fast road. So certainly requires good planning like you, like you suggested.

Yes,

and I know that Salesforce has made some resources available. They have, I think, ⁓ office hours where you can book time with them. ⁓ I believe that's a very, their time gets booked up quite far in advance though, so oftentimes it's not available. But okay, that's great. So ⁓ you've got your free app, you've got it listed. ⁓ I know it's free, so it's not bringing any revenue.

Cool, okay.

I it does.

per se, directly, but we've talked about how can be a good lead gen. Have you been doing any sort of marketing or outbound messaging based on the application itself, or did you mostly just get the app up there and then continue focusing back on purely consulting and the clients that you have and the work that you have?

So as far as a lead generation engine, ⁓ this is perhaps where me and my ethics don't align with what everybody in the world would do. So I can only speak from my angle. The way that I've treated anybody who's been generous enough to click that they are OK with their information going to me when they watch the demo of the app or they try it and they download it. ⁓

I have not treated that as a carte blanche to say that now they want to hear and be pitch slapped about MVRK. So anybody who's looking to explore my app, promise you, you're not landing on a marketing email list. I promise you that is not something we're doing. Anybody who's watched the demo.

If I see their name and it's attached to a company, I'll look up their name and their company and I'll add them on LinkedIn or send a request. and if they accept, I'll probably say something to the effect of, so I looked at my app. What'd you think? Right. And it's Jen, it's generally genuinely for wanting to understand why, what interested, what made them look for an app of that type.

Mm-hmm.

and what they thought about what they saw because if they can give me some feedback that can improve the app for the future, I'm ready and willing to take it. At no point in time did I try to make it about selling my services to them. And then the people who actually have installed the app and have been using it, I've gone after them.

10 % more aggressively quote unquote to say, Hey, can we jump on a call? Because I really want to see if you have any feedback. And for the few folks who've talked to me, it was always something that they were doing something a little bit different in their system.

than we had imagined or they tried to use the app a little bit differently than we intended for it to be used. And of course, a lot of them are wanting for it to be a little bit more customizable. But as you and I both know, sadly, managed packages, applications like that, you can't configure, right? So it's not easy for them to add a different type of support request or change the value. Somebody was like, I don't really like priority, high, medium, low. We typically like to use colors or we typically like to use temperatures. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

So it's always interesting to hear how people are trying to use it, how people are wanting to use it. So the conversations that I've been having with folks who are coming through that.

lead funnel that Salesforce generously sets up and gives us a free Salesforce environment to ⁓ receive those leads. None of it, even if maybe technically I'm allowed and they've implied consent for them to be marketed to, I've not treated it as an inbound marketing engine. But more broadly, more strategically, I think it's giving us a good name and I think it's being well received by the community and it's bringing value to some

companies and that's to me more valuable to my brand than having somebody that I can spam with without bound messages.

I am a hater and rapid deleter of any type of email that comes in my inbox that I don't know why it's in my inbox. So over the last five plus years of running MVRK, it's never been a strategy with or without the app to do outbound cold emails. I'm not trying to put anybody down that's doing it. I just operate the way that I would like companies to operate with me. And if I don't see a value and would never engage with a cold email from somebody that I accidentally implied consent and didn't realize I was about to be pitch slap.

⁓ It's not something I like to do. But obviously, people should be encouraged to reach out to their user base and Salesforce makes it very easy to do so. ⁓

Again, as long as you have some ethical bounds within yourself that you're not desperately trying to convert every single person that breathes on your application, ⁓ it's more than fair for you to reach out, you know, it's more than fair for you to reach out and make those connections. Like I said, the way that I've been doing it has been a little bit more ⁓ natural, a little bit less forced and a little bit more interested in their actual experience rather than interested in putting them into some kind of a sales funnel, right?

Yeah, well it sounds like you're building up a lot of goodwill with your approach, which I think is more valuable in the long run for sure. And I think also that's the great thing about being a founder, right? And starting your own company being a, well I know you're no longer a solopreneur, but in the early days being a solopreneur because you can run the organization however you wish. Maybe if you are all about pitch slapping, then have at it if that's your thing.

⁓ And if you're allergic to it, like it sounds like you are, then you can follow your own path that way too. ⁓ And speaking of ⁓ solopreneur journeys, I know that another avenue that you're very passionate about is coaching and mentoring through your Salesforce solopreneur blueprint program. So maybe you could ⁓ chat a little bit about that.

for sure.

Dang, you okay, yeah. Totally separate topic, but something that I absolutely adore talking about. like you said, coaching, you what is a coach, right? A coach is somebody that, ⁓ in my mind,

embeds themselves in a way of being. I come from a martial art background, so I'm a Judo Black belt, ⁓ I was competitive before my injury days. ⁓

I still train, still try to keep those skills sharp and learn and grow. And the best way in any martial art that you learn and you grow is by demonstration. It's by putting your skills out there in combat and demonstrating the skills that you have and helping others learn the same skills and the techniques and the way of being that you possess. And that's something that I felt was missing in my life, in my professional career.

And being somebody that is passionate about sharing knowledge, passionate about giving back, deeply entrepreneurial.

You know, I had to find that Ikegai. I don't know if you know what that Japanese ⁓ saying is for the audience. Maybe you do, but for the audience, it doesn't. In essence, it's when you combine your passion and ways that you can generate revenue for yourself and things that you love and things that benefit the world at the center of all those things together is the of Ikegai. And for me, building the Salesforce solopreneur blueprint has been the true professional version of Ikegai because it's

combined my deep desire to build a freedom driven, value driven business that doesn't rely on overhead of giant corporations that doesn't treat clients like a commodity, but like a partner.

Combining that with my deep desire to help others, to see others grow, to advance other people's careers. And then with the entrepreneurial spirit of building something of your own, of having a vision and building strategies and actually getting out there into the field of battle that is sales and building a business. Combining all of those things and over the last two years building a curriculum that's...

A fundamental blueprint of how you can do this as a Salesforce expert has been possibly the most rewarding thing that I've done as an individual, possibly the biggest project that I've ⁓ built from ground up. it's unbelievable to have 10 students currently that ⁓ trust me, that have invested in their journey with me, are attending weekly sessions and learning and building their businesses in front of my own eyes.

taking some shortcuts and avoiding some potholes that I had to of trudge through in the first three, four years of building my own business and kind of showing them, hey, here's a bridge over all of those gaps and chasms and issues and mountains and mistakes.

Seeing them kind of bring their own flavor and apply those techniques is the same reward that I get when I see a student win a match in a juro competition, right? Seeing them apply a technique that you've demonstrated, but doing it in their own way and moving their body and moving their mind and...

exerting their creativity with your guidance is, I don't know, it's beautiful. It's the kind of thing that, ⁓ like I said, brings me immense joy. I didn't expect for us to talk about it today, but thank you for giving me the opportunity to brag a bit about the joy that I've had in ⁓ building this project. It's amazing. It's something that I'll never ⁓ give up on because...

It's a true way to impact this ecosystem, right? The taking people who are professionals, who are scared of the unknown, of what it means to step out on your own, but behind that unknown, they see the life that they want to build for themselves and saying, Hey, here's a flashlight and here's the map. I don't know, man. It's awesome. know, I could, could, if you, if if you, if you don't say anything, I would keep talking about it forever. So I'm just going to pause there and take a drink of water.

Sounds like I...

Well, your passion really shines through. That is so cool. I I agree with you that one of the great ways to grow yourself and continue your own learning journey is by giving back and teaching others. And sounds like you've really found a way to thread that needle with the program. So that is so cool. And you said you've been doing that for about two years now, which, OK.

I've been building the program for two years,

So the program, when you're working a full-time job, it's not easy to dedicate the amount of ⁓ effort that's needed to build a true curriculum, a rich portfolio of resources to go back and...

find all old examples of conversations, meetings, documents, things that I did to show people how to really do this. You know, some crazy stuff. Like I went back to my journal from the first 45 days of starting MVRK, from the day I quit my full-time job to the day I got my first client and I picked out like 10 days of that journal and put them together. Like even just crazy. it's, it was a, it's been a massive undertaking and then convincing people to actually jump on board with, on board

it when it was ⁓ a completely new idea and you know that's what my summer was deeply focused on finding that initial cohort which was eight people and then since then we've added three sorry I said ten but it's eleven so yeah it's amazing but the actual cohort itself the actual actual ⁓ lectures themselves they started in the fall of this year we've done I think now nine lectures but

It's not something that you can, you know, in any martial art that's worth its weight in self-defense is, ⁓ you're not a black belt. They won. You can't be, right? So even though I felt two years ago when I started building the curriculum that I had lessons and skills that I could teach, I knew it would take more time of me actually building my own team as well.

Mm-hmm.

going through some more of those battles to have more stories and have more techniques and really prove techniques that I'm going to teach. So yeah, I was building it for two years and only in the last three months has it truly been alive. And it's amazing, it's scary. The same thing with building an app or building anything, building your own business, building a paper airplane, everything that you build, right? The time that you spend building it, the more intentional you are, the more lift it has.

I think that's a nice way to of wrap these two stories or these two topics that seem relatively separate from each other. Building an app or building a ⁓ coaching program, at the end of the day, all of it, what matters is the intention, right? And if we approach things with a strategy that's aligned with our ethics, that's aligned with an end goal that we have for our life and for our way of being.

then the work you do is not hard, right? The time you put into it is not wasted and the lessons that come from it, no matter what the result, are fantastic, right? The app could have flopped, we could have hit a bunch of roadblocks and we could have been thrown out of the partnership program and still it would have been worth it to learn those lessons. This program, I could have not convinced anybody to invest, to be a part of the program and still through writing out the...

over 50,000 words of curriculum that I wrote a true university course, know, volume of information that I distilled. Even if nobody ever believed in it enough, just doing it made me a better consultant, a better solo programmer myself, right? So... ⁓

I think that's where think your podcast kind of inspired me when I heard you talk to recently to Adam Zuckerman. That's how you and I got connected. Adam is somebody that I've known for almost five years. I was, he was one of, he was a.

⁓ provider in a client ⁓ of mine. That's how him and I met. And thanks to him when he was on your podcast, that's how I found you. It's a wild thing this ecosystem is. So all of us are learning and trying and building. And that's the beauty of the power of our ecosystem. And you know what? I think one thing that you and I wanted to talk about that...

It is.

that dovetails nicely into his AI. But I will let you talk about the way that you feel it's accelerating us and our abilities. First off, go ahead.

Yeah, well, so first off,

that's amazing. Thank you ⁓ for sharing that. I also just wanted to, you touched on this very briefly, but I wanted to say what a great resource you have that you had that journal to fall back on. that something you practice daily or weekly keeping journal entries in your professional development? Is that something you've been continuing? Because that is...

Yeah.

No, have

not been, I have not, you know, so because I've been doing so much writing every day to build the curriculum, that writing kind of fell, fell to the wayside. ⁓

But I think anytime you're doing something new, it's incredibly valuable to keep a journal of it. And I regret ⁓ not having been consistent enough with it. When I was building MVRK and strategizing about it, I was always writing, always writing, always writing. And then when I started actually getting close to doing it, I wanted to keep a daily journal. Not for any reason other than I wanted to be able to look back in a year and see the trials and tribulations and the emotional toll that it took on me.

to get to the end result. And it wasn't easy, right? Those 10 journal entries over those first 45 days don't just show somebody who is ⁓ super sure and super successful and super driven and super motivated. They show somebody that's a human, that had some difficult days, that had some close to regrets, that had some, you know, did I do the right thing type of questions, right? But ultimately, it's a story of somebody that

the triumph, right? And somebody that found some buoyancy and, you know, if I think back correctly, my first client signed for $6,000, right? Not some big project, not some major thing, but at that point in time, that was an infinite amount of more money than I generated by the business from when I started, right? Could have been a dollar, it still would have been infinitely more than zero, right? So.

Very exciting.

So the, and the most important thing that I'll say to anybody in solopreneurs is those first clients that you get, you have to treat them like gold because they are the number one reason you're going to succeed.

And I'm proud to say that that company that was our first ever client still to this day is our client. They haven't paid us every single month of the last five plus years, but every time they've needed something else with Salesforce, it's us they've come to and nobody else to the point where now we were building a totally separate from Salesforce custom app that links their engineering team with their ERP team because they've got some disconnected systems, but those teams don't use Salesforce. They don't want to increase their Salesforce budget and train those people. So we built them a custom database that feeds from their ERP.

important info and engineering comes in and provides it. You know, so, and that's another tool that we've built heavily using AI, much expedited building using a tool like lovable, right? So those first clients that you get, they are, whether it's your app clients or whether it's your own independent consulting clients or your clients mowing lawns, whatever it is, those first clients are the number one most important clients you're ever going to have in your life. And if you don't bring value to them above and beyond what they ever expected, you're doing yourself a disservice.

service and that's the way I approached it with that company and those are my friends. Those are people that I will work with for rest of my life whether it's professionally or not. Those are contacts that are never not going to be a part of my life and I love them for, again, just like the initial cohort of the Salesforce Solar Print and Blueprint, the first clients that trusted MVRK are the reason why I'm here today in front of you. ⁓

Yeah, huge shout out to those folks that have trusted me. ⁓ I like to think I'm trustworthy, but it's one thing to be trusted and it's another thing to actually deliver on that trust. And that second piece is the one that we cannot forget as entrepreneurs. We have to deliver on the thing that we promise.

Yeah, I love what you said the early days. Those first few clients turn into your referral engine down the road. And hopefully, if you're lucky like your case, if you really over deliver, then there'll be clients for life, which sounds like you've got, is just amazing. And these things snowball. So even if it starts out like a little bit of a smaller project, it doesn't matter. No matter what the price tag is, you should over deliver in value and it'll come back to you in spades. It's kind of the goodwill.

Of course man.

that you all are receiving from FLS in just kind of a different format, right? So, yeah. So, we've touched a little bit a couple times on AI, I wanna, especially specifically the Blueprint program, I was thinking about how when you started MVRK in 2019, of course, machine learning and neural networks existed back then, but AI wasn't really in the vernacular the way it is today.

Always man, help first, right? Then sell.

We didn't have LLMs available to the masses. Fast forward to 2025, I'm sure you and your cohort discussed how folks can be using AI as solopreneurs to move even faster than you did at MVRK. And I'm curious your thoughts. I know you've even released a recent video. You have lot of thoughts on how AI is going to transform and has already begun transforming.

Yeah.

the partner ecosystem ⁓ for Salesforce partners. So I'll just stop there and let you share some of your thoughts on all this.

Yeah, that video. ⁓ some of those, some of those predictions that I made certainly, you know, we're a little bit grim. ⁓ but they don't come from a place of pessimism. I think for me, they come from a place of, ⁓ the ability to be tied to reality and, and in any revolution, right? There is things that become defunct. And I think that

AI is going to do that to every industry. It's going to find ways to, through its capabilities, remove the need for certain things that will become unnecessary. And in my video, I predicted that administrators are especially just clickers, right? ⁓

people that are not doing a ton of thinking, not doing a ton of strategy, they're not doing a lot of analysis, people who are just clicking some buttons in the back of the computer, in the back of the configuration, right? They're kind of going to go. And ⁓ realistically, the only way you're going to enter this ecosystem is ⁓ as an analyst.

Right? That's going to, the BA is going to be kind of the first step. The people that can give good information and translate business to inputs for AI, think are going to be, of course, always needed. ⁓ And then of course, I did make a big claim that large partners are going to be shrunk from the bottom up because junior resources are no longer going to be needed. Right? Senior resources are going to be able to use AI instead of junior resources to do the building for them. And I fundamentally believe that Salesforce will release its own agent force tool. I'm calling

at Agent Force Implement is what I would call it if I was them at this point in time, given their naming structure, right? That's effectively going to displace work that's done by ⁓ partners. But in the meantime, those of us who are working independently are going to have a lot of cleanup to do because the initial early adopters of this technology are going to be overly trusting because of the marketing dynamics of pitch it first, build it later.

right, which we're seeing heavily in AI, I think is going to result in a lot of companies misstepping, misadventuring with AI. That's going to create some need for us to come in and fix it. And then as this technology gets better, like you said, an individual that's capable, that's a good architect, that understands business processes is going to be able to deliver the same value that a team of four or five, six could have done. ⁓

a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. to tie back that video, to not leave it an unmentioned topic, that's kind of my general thoughts on where the direction is going. Now, when I started writing the curriculum, now over two years ago for the SSB, there was no mention of AI, and I was a very early...

hater of LLMs because I don't like somebody speaking for me. I never have. As you can tell, I love talking. ⁓ I never felt like it had its own voice or that it could adapt to my voice. But what I did learn to do is to use it as a sounding board, right? So by now,

In the curriculum, there's a whole chapter about how to use AI. The first things that I tell my pupils to do is all of those resources that I've given you for how you want to structure your business, how you're thinking about your ideal client journey, how you're thinking about who your ideal clients are, how you're thinking about the way you want your brand to be represented, all those resources that I've given you. First, always start with your voice and then give it to AI and say, hey, what do you think of this? And use it as a conversation tool, right? So that's one thing that I love about LLMs.

And a place where I use that almost every single day is in conversations with my active clients, potential clients, both for the SSB and for MVRK. I am analyzing the absolute.

finite details of all of my conversations with Gemini because any recorded call that I have with the transcript I can do and I can kind of coach myself because I know the weaknesses that I have in sales. can ask it how much what percent of time did I speak versus the client? What percent of what's the longest run-on time that I had speaking right and I'll go to those places and I'll try to review and say next time what can I do better? Where can I take a pause? Where can I leave more breathing room for the other person to speak because that's something that I've always struggled with in my

selling in my professional life and my personal life, right? Being the person to absorb a lot of air out of the room has been something that I don't like about myself because it doesn't give me the opportunity to connect with people as good as I should in those spaces. So that use of AI for me is immense, right? Being able to coach yourself and have it coach you and evaluate certain communication. ⁓

patterns about yourself in general patterns about yourself and the work that you do is beautiful. Right. And one place where I'm noticing I'm, I'm already falling behind in the AI train. And I talked about this in the video as well is I'm not a coder. I'm not a developer. I don't know how to use a cursor and Claude and, and, and MCPs in, in VS, VS code, all of those things. You know, I, did a little bit of it in my engineering education and I never liked it. And already I'm feeling like, you know what?

I've fallen behind, right? There's people who now can, in a half an hour, put together some really complex solutions in our ecosystem that with three weeks, four weeks of trying to learn, I wouldn't be able to do myself because I don't understand the fundamental elements of coding. So there's a big advantage to people who are coding and using AI. So it's impa... I think...

I went on a little bit long there. What I'm trying to say is it's in every element of our lives. But the number one rule that I have for myself is it's my voice first. It's my thoughts and my ideas first. And AI is there to sharpen, bounce, and provide feedback, not that it's the one setting the direction. And I think it's pretty obvious when people are just spouting what AI is giving them instead of actually sharing their own ideas. I think

Mm-hmm.

humans are forever going to want that human element. At least I hope they will. And the people that I want to be around, I hope will. I don't know. I'm going to stop there because AI is a huge topic. I'm going to stop there.

⁓ for sure.

No, I think I agree with a lot of what you said there. mean, AI, it's funny because I know you would not be a fan of this, but so many folks out there, seems like, are leveraging AI to accelerate their own pitch slapping, right? And rather than bringing an authentic voice like you ⁓ naturally do, they're...

leaning more and more on just automating all that they can in the hopes that it's just a volume game and if they can reach out to more and more people, then they can get more more sales. But I think the opposite, we're starting to see the opposite happen where everyone's just shutting down because they get so many automated emails and bot messages that are so clearly written through AI that folks are desperate for actually more.

human interaction and true connection. I think MVRK and ⁓ reaching out with an authentic voice through you is definitely a smart play long term. And I think it's interesting too, your prediction about the partner ecosystem. I think we've all heard different statistics about a company acquires Salesforce and they pay their licensing fees for, and they spend X dollars on that. And there's,

anywhere from two to five X spent then on consulting and implementation costs. And all that value is going to the partners. ⁓ And from Salesforce's perspective, that's value capture that they're not ⁓ recognizing themselves. And it's interesting your prediction that they came out with some sort of agent force implement. They could start capturing a little bit more of that internally. And that would...

But that would eat into the partner ecosystem a little bit, but ⁓ it could still be a tailwind for the Salesforce company at large. So think that's an interesting prediction to make.

They're gonna

do it, man. Why wouldn't they? You know they will. You know they will. Because they tried with the professional services. They acquired ⁓ multiple firms that were mid-size firms, but what that came with was complexity of additional people.

Whereas using Agent Force to implement, even if it's simple quickstarts and you know, it's going to ask you 50 questions and when you answer them, it's going to configure and it's going to be ready to go. you're, instead of paying $10,000 to implement, it's only going to cost you $2,000. Whereas for them, it's going to cost 30 cents in, in server.

sort costs and they're going to get 2k out of it. the, and instead of the client not buying Salesforce because the implementation was 10k, now they're buying Salesforce and only spending 2k for an implementation bot that Salesforce will say something to the effect of, well, you know, they quoted you 10k for a three week project, but for 2k, can have agent force implement for three months and talk to it as much as you want. And it'll build as much as you like. That's going to be an easy story to sell. And realistically speaking, it's going to be a high margin, ⁓

ticket item for Salesforce that naturally extends this product that they're building. And as you and I've seen invested almost what 10 billion, if not more dollars in acquiring eight, nine different companies already. And I trust if that's what they've acquired to date, I trust that they're in boardroom discussions with other AI tools to strengthen their position. And there's no part of me that believes that ⁓ they won't do this. And I'm sorry if it hurts a lot of people's feelings. It's not, it's, know, I wish it wasn't the case.

But I had many aspirations of building a large consulting firm or a medium sized consulting firm. And I no longer have those aspirations because of the things that I'm seeing in the SQL system. I think the, the more value that

I think we'll be able to extract a lot more value ⁓ as solopreneurs using these technologies, building small, powerful teams, working with companies that want to work with somebody that cares about them and building a high margin business through leveraging these technologies is going to be a lot more feasible for a lot of us than building the next large 100, 150 summit partner. And I don't think Salesforce is looking for more summit partners because they see a large, as you said, if it's three, four, five X, the

one year license costs to implement the solution. Well, Salesforce is losing that business. Salesforce is losing those deals, right? And they don't want to lose those deals. Trust me, they don't want to lose those deals and they're not investing billions of dollars into this technology to not come up with a solution that addresses that core issue for them. And it would.

deeply surprised me if they're not already, if there's not already a team dedicated to this project that I just described that I'm confident is coming. If they're not doing it, they should, if they want to be a smart company, I'm not happy that they, that they will, but I don't know how else to say it other than I can't imagine a different way. What do you think? Am I crazy?

Yeah, no, I think

it's a very smart prediction and Vuk I'm looking forward to having you back on sometime when ⁓ we can discuss when it's released and we can talk about ⁓ how you had called it early on and I also look forward to one day maybe interviewing ⁓ some members of your cohort from the Blueprint program as they go on their solopreneur journey. But in the meantime, ⁓ we should probably wrap up so.

Yeah, when it comes on, when it happens. The fallout.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For anyone listening, where can they find out more information? How can they reach out to you, MVRK, or learn more about FLS or perhaps the Solopreneur Salesforce Blueprint Program?

I think it all starts with finding me on LinkedIn. I don't know if there's a way we could put a little QR code here. It's just like linkedin.com slash VUKS, V-U-K-S is how to find me, connect with me. If you want to email me, do it at VUK at M-V-R-K dot C-A. If you want to learn more about the Salesforce solopreneur blueprint, especially if you want to ⁓ see if you're fit for it, I have a free nine question self assessment on SSB dot M-V-R-K dot C-A. That's a great place to start understanding, you know, if you're an independent,

Okay.

person that thinks that, sorry, if you're a talented person that thinks working independently is in your future in our Salesforce ecosystem, that's a great place for you to start and ⁓ see if you've got what it takes to consider this. And more importantly, to see where you're strong now and to see where you're lacking in terms of some of the skills and some of the tangential things that are necessary to succeed as an entrepreneur, at least according to my beliefs and according to the martial art that is ⁓ running a solo Salesforce business as I've defined it. ⁓

Other than that, you see me on the street, if you see me at an event, if you ⁓ find me on Reddit, anywhere you want to reach out to me, the one thing you will never hear from me is I don't have time. The most you will hear from me is I don't have time right now, let's chat soon. I'm always happy to connect and give back and collaborate and you know.

build up this ecosystem that is the reason why I've got a wonderful life and I'm grateful for and I want to keep building it. I don't want to see it destroyed no matter what my predictions say. I want to see it be something that grows and gets better for all of us, buddy. That's the last thought I've got, man, is let's keep working as humans, right, to make this great for humans, not just something that's great for the big corporations.

That's

I love it. love it. We will definitely link those up in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time today, Vuk, and we'll talk soon. Cheers.

Thanks man. Thank you. Awesome. Bye everybody.

Woo.