Cloud on Purpose Celebrates 1 Year in Business!
It's been a whole year since stepping out on my own and starting my own Salesforce consulting firm, Cloud on Purpose, here in Los Angeles, California. So far, so good!
It felt like a natural next step on my Salesforce journey that first began as a Salesforce Administrator in 2012 and then as a Senior Consultant for a number of boutique firms in Chicago in 2016. Since then, I progressively worked on bigger projects for larger firms across the U.S. with a vast array of clients–everything from a speakers bureau in Washington, D.C. to a leading fashion company in New Jersey.
During that time, I had the chance to learn a ton, meet some amazing folks, and deliver some awesome projects. To every person who took a chance on me during this journey, I want to extend a big THANK YOU! And to the people who I’ve kept in touch with over the years and have had the opportunity to build deeper friendships with: You make life awesome and have made me a better person and professional. THANK YOU!
Ultimately, I've used all of these experiences to inform how I want Cloud on Purpose to operate. One of the most important things for me to regain was a better quality of life and work-life balance. It’s no secret that 2023 and beyond have been tough years with mass layoffs, and the Salesforce consulting sector has been no exception. And even those who are still employed face an increasing workload and burnout.
Motivated to make a change and find a more sustainable paradigm, I started Cloud on Purpose. The great news is that I've been able to serve clients while also fitting it around the other important things in life, whether that be a morning spin class, a walk around Huntington Gardens, a hike in Topanga Canyon, or even working on the go while abroad. These things weren’t possible in the old paradigm, and when I tried to make them happen by either drawing a boundary or expressing a conflict, I was told I had to prioritize work over everything else. Of course, I’ve had to wake up an early morning or three to meet with clients in the United Kingdom, but thankfully I’ve been able to manage it and partner with clients directly to find working terms that are a win-win.
I call this new paradigm “Living on Purpose,” and I’m starting a new blog capturing all the little things, people, and places that make life happy. A gratitude live journal if you will. You’re invited to follow along on the Live on Purpose blog.
The name “Cloud on Purpose” means what you'd expect. We aim to build trusted, easy, and adaptable Salesforce solutions that are informed by intentional and sustainable design decisions and patterns. In past projects, I witnessed many reactive solutions built to make a client happy or as a bandage to keep past poorly designed solutions afloat. These projects had very little time for design, instead prioritizing an image to the client that “we are developing.” We flip this paradigm on its head and proactively prioritize the business outcome we're aiming to solve (“the what") and the design (“the how"). Funny enough, when we do that, the amount of time it takes to build a solution is much quicker.
In addition, we launched our solution library composed of Well-Architected Salesforce Solutions, including solutions for Chargent, DocuSign, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (f.k.a. Pardot), and Financial Services Cloud. We’ve started to get traction on this subscription offering, and we’ll continue to add more solutions in the year ahead.
Finally, our consulting services have fared well, including delivering 4 projects this year. One of them was a Process Builder to Flow Migration that involved the consolidation of logic into more composable, reusable microservices. We leveraged the Salesforce Well-Architected Record Triggered Automation Guide heavily throughout the course of the project to deliver the best solutions. Our other projects included a Chargent, Marketing Cloud, and Financial Service Cloud implementations. Some of the completed projects have now shifted to our managed services offering where we continue to work together on an iterative basis to enhance and extend the Salesforce platform.
A huge THANK YOU to our clients and partners for a successful first year. I don’t have any plans or expectations on what growth looks like, but hope that delivering Well-Architected Solutions that clients are ecstatic about will make our second year even more successful!
With positivity and purpose,
Paul
