My Salesforce story began on April 18, 2013, when I attended my first Salesforce event: the Salesforce Customer Company Tour in Chicago, Illinois.At the time, I was the manager of a mixed martial arts gym in the Chicago suburbs and discovered Salesforce while researching ways to generate more leads and grow gym membership. I learned a lotThrough a series of happy accidents, I landed a job as a Sales Operations Coordinator at a software company headquartered in the Chicago suburbs. After making several acquisitions, the company decided to implement Salesforce across the business to consolidate CRM tools. Seeing the opportunity in front of me, I volunteered to be the Salesforce Administrator for the company when the implementation project was complete and dove head-first into the Salesforce rabbit hole.About a year later, I started a new role as a Senior Salesforce Administrator at a software company headquartered in Chicago. In that role, I participated in another Salesforce implementation project and got my first exposure to a product for which I would become “a legend” in the Salesforce ecosystem: Salesforce CPQ.I joined the dark side a year later; I became a Salesforce consultant.Simplus, a Salesforce consulting partner specializing in Salesforce CPQ, hired me as a Senior Consultant. In the time I worked for Simplus, I worked on dozens of Salesforce CPQ projects, taught Salesforce CPQ to hundreds of Trailblazers in the Salesforce ecosystem, and advised some of the company’s biggest clients on CRM strategy.Later, I left Simplus to join another Salesforce consulting partner in a leadership role. The role was not a good fit for me, and I resigned in less than a year to join Salesforce as an Implementation Architect specializing in Salesforce CPQ. Six months later, I received a promotion to Solution Architect, still focusing on Salesforce CPQ.After only 18 months, I resigned from my role at Salesforce to join a third Salesforce consulting partner, from which I resigned in less than a year.My Salesforce career includes over 100 clients, 450 students, and 10,000 hours of accumulated experience and expertise related to Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce Revenue Cloud. I have worked with and for Salesforce, its customers, and its partners. I have advised Salesforce customers of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 500s.In addition to my work at Garvens Consulting, I volunteer as a Salesforce career coach through Salesforce Military and Veterati, helping military veterans and spouses start and grow their careers in the Salesforce ecosystem.