On this past Wednesday, I finished my last video for my Udemy course teaching Salesforce Administration. Before starting this project I had no knowledge or experience with Salesforce, so I needed to spend some time learning it so that I could teach it to others. I chose to do this project because I am interested in learning CRM software, and Salesforce seemed like the most functional option. Also, this project aligned with my personal goals, which were: to learn a new skill, showcase my capability for quick learning, and demonstrate my commitment to see things through to their end. Overall, I think that I accomplished these goals, with a few bumps along the way allowing me to learn a few other highly valuable lessons.

Part 1: Learning Salesforce on Trailhead (August 1 – 12)

I started out the month with the goal to learn the full breadth of Salesforce Administration skills and plan out the curriculum for my course before the 12th so that I could spend the rest of my time on recording the videos. When I looked for viable methods for learning Salesforce, I came across a platform called Trailhead. Trailhead is a learning platform created by Salesforce that employs a series of lessons called units organized into larger collections. There are modules, which are collections of units, trails which are collections of modules, and trailmixes which are self-explanatory. I committed to going through three trails on trailhead: Administration for beginners, Intermediate Administration, and Advanced Administration. Collectively, they made up 30+ hours of content that I could use to learn Salesforce Administration at a high level of detail. I thought this would be enough learning to be able to make videos on each topic.

While going through the content, I took detailed notes on every section and project that I completed, so that I could have a reference for when I started to write out scripts for each video. The material was easy enough to understand, but there were a few places that I felt were more challenging than others. For example, I found the advance formulas section the most challenging out of all the material. This section taught how to create logical formulas that make data more accessible to the user, taking in data from other places and running calculations on that data behind the scenes to produce surface level metrics on business records. I found this section particularly challenging because of the nature of coding. Often when you are using any logical language to produce a specific result, it takes a few tries to make something that works correctly.

Once finished, I had learned a ton about Salesforce administration. However, I had not only learned about Salesforce, but also about CRM, web authentication and security, the sales process, clean data, and many other things that are important to running a business or software efficiently.

Hindsight being 20/20, I think I should have learned each topic and then made a video for it. This way I could have immediately applied the learning that I gathered from trailhead and other sources to each video, and I would have had to spend less time going back to notes and doing further research for each video.

Part 2: Record Videos for the Course (August 12 – Sept 12)

My initial plans for the course were to create at least 5 hours of content across 30 videos. In order to give my course more authority, I decided that at the end of the month I would take the Salesforce Administration exam. To further ensure that I was covering all of the topics needed for students to pass the exam, I based my curriculum on the study guide that salesforce provides for the exam. I decided that I would make a screen shared video for each bullet point on the study guide. I planned out a schedule for the remaining days in August and decided to create two to three videos every day. This way, I would be able to finish all of the videos before the end of August.

I used the ScreenFlow screen share recorder and a Snowball recording mic to record and edit each video. To make sure that I made a high-quality video, I would script out on paper what I was going to say about each skill or feature beforehand. I would also make a plan on the side of each script of what I would be doing on the screen while I was speaking. For my first few videos, I made the mistake of recording the 8-10 min of needed content in one take, often leading to 30-35 mins of footage with tons of errors to edit out. Eventually, I learned that doing takes would definitely be worth the cost of having small cuts in the videos. This lesson helped improve my efficiency by combining record and edit times, instead of recording and then editing.

I faced a few challenges throughout the process of making the videos. While I did make detailed plans about when I would make each video, I didn’t take into account how long each video was going to take to script, record, and edit. I had never produced videos before, but I had a background in tutoring, computer science, and other means of content creation, so I vastly underestimated the amount of time each video would take me to produce. Also, while some topics required me just to go back and look at my notes, others needed a significant amount more learning and research than I had previously done on Trailhead. These two factors brought my video production speed from my hopeful two to three a day down to around 1 and a half a day at best. This is the reason that I finished my last video on September twelfth instead of before August 31st.

At first, I tried to work through these challenges the way I always had, by just focusing and working harder than I had been before. In the past, I could hurdle any obstacle by just working harder. This time, brute force only produced diminishing returns on the effort put in. I didn’t understand, because this tactic had never failed me before. However, then I realized that it was because this was a marathon, not a sprint. Pushing myself harder and harder was not going to increase my speed of production, it was only going to slow me down. I needed to work smarter, not harder.

I learned many things from planning out and making this course over the past 30 days or so. Firstly, I learned that having detailed plans means nothing if you don’t construct them from trusted metrics on how much time and resources are needed to complete each task. I should have recorded a test video, learned how much time it took, and based my projections off of that, instead of what I thought I could do by just working harder. Secondly, I learned a massive amount about producing video content, Salesforce administration, and how much more effective a company can be when they properly implement an efficient CRM software. Lastly, I have learned that when you are working on a long-term project that requires a considerable input of effort every day, smartly planned consistent work is much better than pushing yourself to extremes daily.

Looking forward about 90 days, I want to have promoted my course using Fiverr, posted it on all forms of social media, and at least have a couple thousand students. I hope to recieve reviews and feedback from anyone who views the course so I can continue to improve it.

Here’s the Promo video for the finalized course, and a link to free access for anyone that has taken the time to read this article.

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Free Access Link:  https://www.udemy.com/the-complete-salesforce-administrator-certification-guide/?couponCode=JULYTRIBE