Service X-Factor
Service X-Factor is the podcast where service operations stops being a cost center and starts being a competitive advantage. Hosted by Microsoft MVPs Scott LeFante and William McLendon, this show reveals the secret ingredients behind service operations success—transforming chaos into clarity and strategy into profits.
Service X-Factor
Heidi Neuhauser - From CRM 4.0 To WP Portals: Lessons In People-First Dynamics
Ever seen a CRM project teeter on the edge and wondered if the platform is the problem? We invited Microsoft MVP Heidi Neuhauser to unpack why so many implementations stall, why “more fields” won’t fix adoption, and how a single meaningful win for frontline users can flip the narrative. Heidi’s story starts where many ops leaders begin: thrust into a system no one wants to use. From there, she built a people-first playbook anchored in no-code tools, clear feedback loops, and honest conversations without managers in the room.
We dive into the practical levers that matter most: business rules that replace fragile JavaScript, user acceptance testing that reflects real work, and inclusive design workshops with influencers, skeptics, and tech-averse voices at the table. Heidi shares hard-earned lessons on avoiding report-first forms and explains how to measure success with outcomes users feel, like shaving hours off monthly reporting. For leaders navigating career growth and community, she offers candid guidance on presenting confidently, setting boundaries as a woman in tech, and turning community into a multiplier for learning and impact.
You’ll also hear a fresh take on portals strategy. If Power Pages feels heavy for your scenario, Heidi outlines how WP Portals pairs WordPress with Dataverse to deliver data-rich experiences using familiar drag-and-drop tools, cutting cost and complexity for high-volume use. The theme is consistent throughout: choose the simplest tool that solves the real problem, reuse your work to avoid burnout, and keep pace with change through release notes, user groups, and series like Power Tips.
If you care about CRM adoption, Dynamics 365 best practices, Dataverse, Power Platform, and building portals that users actually love, this conversation is a roadmap. Subscribe, share with a teammate who owns adoption, and tell us: what’s the smallest high-impact win you’ll ship this month?
Welcome everyone to the latest episode of the Service X Facts Factor Podcast. I am one of your co-hosts, Scott LaFonte. And of course, I'm joined back from assignment this week, uh Mr. William Quad McClendon. Will, how's it going, man?
SPEAKER_01:What's up, everybody? I am super stoked. Super excited to be back and really excited about our guests this afternoon. Another one of our amazing people in our community. Yay. Don't leave us hanging. Who is it? I was gonna pause. I was waiting for you to like, you know, hey, we want you to do an introduction. I don't have any theme music like that that that work alarm. No. This one, they've been in the community for a long time, and it's quality over quantity with their contributions. Um I just absolutely adore this individual, and she is flat out just one of my favorite people on the planet. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to Heidi Newhouser.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you're making me blush. Thanks, Will.
SPEAKER_02:Look, I see that little stuff on his face, like his nose. You know, here I got a towel.
SPEAKER_01:Heidi's awesome, dude. Like Heidi, you know, I got I got plenty of stories that might just break out and tell them during the middle of this podcast, folks. So definitely stay tuned. I'm gonna show some restraint and just let Heidi get a chance to speak, right? Go ahead, Heidi. Introduce yourself. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Hi everyone, I'm Heidi Newhauser. I'm a Microsoft MVP in customer engagement, mostly on the sales and service and marketing side and power automate. And I've been working in this Microsoft CRM space for a really long time now. I'd have to look at my LinkedIn profile. I think 15 years. I don't really know.
SPEAKER_01:I just know it's been since uh 4.0, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, since 4.0 is it has it like long strain script.
SPEAKER_00:It is. You know what's funny? Uh just got a project where I'm working with somebody who is upgrading to online. Get this from 2011. I was so excited to see it again. It was like seeing an old friend. Wow.
SPEAKER_02:Shout out to them for endurance. An old friend that you haven't seen in a long, long time. I think that's how I think it I can't remember if it was 4.0 or 11. I mean, I started a little after you in the dynamic space. It's only been about I guess 11 years or so. But I I want to say it was probably like 20 ish 11 was the version. So crazy how time flies.
SPEAKER_00:I like forgot what it looked like, and then when I saw it, it's like, how could I forgotten this? These are like my formative serum years.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. So I I guess here's a good question talking about Fort Ford O. I mean, how did you stumble upon this crazy world that we call dynamics?
SPEAKER_00:Ah, in the same way many of us find ourselves here. I was doing absolutely nothing involved with tech at the time. I was working in marketing, I was working in business-to-business marketing for a propane company. And I happened to work with salespeople well. And they're like, hey, by the way, we have this system that we spend a lot of money on and we can't get our salespeople to do it. Can you figure it out? And and then a baby system admin was born who had no idea what she was doing. And I feel like that is like a very common path for some of us. I just kind of went with it, you know, an opportunity presents itself, and you can either dive in or kind of resist and be like, no, that's not me. I don't do that. I'm in marketing. Uh, but I I embraced it and gosh, has it been a great ride?
SPEAKER_01:You're being way too modest, man. I gotta say, like, because like you're not just like a casual ad man who just picked up a few tips. Like, you have a uh a profound deep knowledge on on the platform and all of its offerings. Like you're you're you didn't just just just casually dip your toes in the water, man. Heidi, you've been an agent for change. Um one of your one of my favorite.
SPEAKER_02:You got thrown right into the fire.
SPEAKER_01:I did. Love it. I did. If you haven't, guys, you gotta attend one of her sessions uh with with good with Kylie, uh 60 tips and 60 seconds. Like you'll learn in sixty minutes on top of 60 tips in 60 minutes. Look, I've got to talk real fast, Heidi. Challenge accepted, right? I like No, I mean it's just it's unreal, man. It's great. So what like what if I asked you, uh what was your favorite feature over the last you know 15 years that you were just like, man, this is just Oh wow, that's a really good question.
SPEAKER_00:Uh the thing that I got the most excited about that I think changed my life as a no-code admin was business rules. I still use them all the time. I think business rules were great because prior to their introduction, you needed JavaScript to do all of those things or whatever language, custom code at the time. And it put a lot more power in your system admin slash early citizen dev hands to be able to get some things done quickly that make your users happy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think it's one of the most undervalued features in the application because everyone seems to forget about it, and everyone, every customer that I deal with, and I come in and they had another partner, everything's JavaScript. And I'm sitting there thinking, why is this all JavaScript? When we could have done this easily in a business role and you could have had to be a lot more flexible.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Very quick. Business rules, man. They don't get enough love, man. I love it. So when you were when you were making this drastic shift from a sysadmin um into the partner channel, you know, what was the biggest mindset that you had to adopt?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, excellent question. So I was on the customer side for seven years. So it was quite a while that I was working directly with my employees, which is very different than coming from a partner perspective, right? So, like the entire mindset and thinking about how problems could be solved at the organization level versus how do I fix Will's problem or how do I make Scott use the system?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know if you depict any of Will's problems.
SPEAKER_01:No. That's a buff conversation, folks.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, like learning a different dialect on the thing about like keeping my time and learning a whole different way of viewing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, absolutely. And and and so one of the things that I've learned, and thank you, Chat GPT, and all the other AI uh functions in uh is that you're known as the rescue project specialist, apparently. And so from that perspective, I mean, what's the what's the moment you usually walk into? Is it like massive chaos? Is it panic? Is it just they don't know what they don't know yet? Or is the house on fire and and you you know you're trying to salvage whatever you can before they you know have to leave?
SPEAKER_00:And it's kind of a little bit of everything. Uh so have you ever seen a CRM project that didn't go well? Uh but sometimes it's really, really off to the point that an organization is willing to throw it away and start up with Salesforce or something totally new and think that that's going to solve all their problems. When usually it's a process and a people problem. I myself am very focused on people first for kind of identifying what the problem is, which I think um a lot of organizations might not be focused on, right? They're looking at management and ROI in the bottom line and green, yellow, red. But uh even if you make the most perfect system in the entire land, if you haven't given your people a reason to want to use it or given them some benefits to themselves, like can you create a report that saves them five hours a month and manually creating something? If you can do that one thing, that could turn the whole project around. So sometimes it's as simple as, oh, you're not listening to your people. Here's what they're saying. Let's do some like sessions and and just see what they think without managers in the room, right? Because they're not going to tell us the same thing if their manager is there. And uh yeah, those are awesome because it's a quick, easy fix and like everybody wins. Sometimes the house is on fire, though.
SPEAKER_02:Those are hard. Yeah, and to your point, I mean, I think I've seen it a lot where you you know it's uh a higher level group that's making the decisions and not involving the the actual users or the subject or even just like the SMEs that are you know in the different groups, and then all of a sudden it gets thrust upon them and they're like what is this? This isn't even what we do.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:And they don't and they don't use it, but then all of a sudden it's like, oh, this system's garbage. So it yeah, seeing it time and time again, just like you have, and and it those are the ones that to your point, I think there's there's some quick wins I think in that in that one before that the house you know becomes completely on fire.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, those are more tough.
SPEAKER_02:I see Will shaking his head, he's like, Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01:I I i i it's it's funny, right? Like, you know, we uh we have we love adoption, right? I I know you love the topic of adoption. I you were one of the very first people I ran into and I was like, oh, they get it. Really helped me to see the value of the way I started back in you know uh my day. Um say back in my day. Um we we we talk about adoption um you know amongst ourselves, we preach it. What is the number one killer of adoption you find with uh a lot of our customers? What do you what have you seen that's just absolutely killed it?
SPEAKER_00:Uh uh number one killer of adoption.
SPEAKER_01:That sounds terrible. It sounds like a very bleak question. We'll probably have to edit that out. But what is the number one product all died? No, I'm sorry. Well, folks, it's not Friday yet, so hey, maybe we should take a day early off. What is the one that just like just you you you spend we've been on 12 to 18 months? You know, companies spend hundreds, even millions of dollars implementing these amazing massive applications only to want to throw it away or struggle for the next two or three years with it to leave the platform altogether. Um so really I I just you know, I have my feedback, but you're the special guest. So what do you think would most of the time improve the adoption process? That's a better way of asking that.
SPEAKER_00:I think the biggest miss is not including the end users in the entire process. And if you're not doing that, it's not too late. You can involve them at any point in time. But I don't think it should just be your bringers that you're involving in the process. I think a lot of companies will be like, oh, well, Nick's really good at CRM, so let's talk to him and see what he thinks. Instead of like, oh, Heidi's the influencer and she hates it, and she's telling everyone how bad it is and how so, like you need to find the influencer and you need to find the stick in the mud, and you need to find people that are good at tech and people that are bad at tech, and then you put them all in your group of users together, and then along with with your SMEs, along with the key stakeholders, you're gonna hear what the problems are, and then all of those people in a core group are going to become evangelists of the product eventually because they they're a part of the process, they feel invested in it. So my answer is people, actually, and not having the right people in the room.
SPEAKER_02:That's a great one. I I would I would tend to agree with that, seeing it just like you have so many times, not having those right people and how critical of or in potentially fatal mistake that is from a project success.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and there's like tech things too, right? Like don't put 500 required fields on a form. That's a killing. That was what I walked in on as the first time system admin. There were, I'm not joking, like 25 required fields on the lead entry. Like, why aren't salespeople doing this? Like, would you look at this? Yeah, take 10 minutes to enter a lead.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we just had that similar situation where they were like, we went, oh, this required this requirements like you can't have the entire field, you though it weren't required. It's just not it's not practical. That's not what it's there for. They'll drive you nuts.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and then I like the one where there's required fields on one tab, and then there's required fields on tab two and tab three. Well, yeah, I love that too.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's fun. Yeah, I think those are born when like it's report driven, right? Subs whoever's system architect has gotten all of the managers in the room and they're like, What do you need on your report? And they're like, Oh, this and this and this, and you can't have it without that. Now you have all of these required farewell, but your users don't know absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:That's great. Um, so I want to turn uh our attention a little bit about you know everything that you do within the community. Right? And so, I mean, y you run user groups, you're you're constantly, you know, speaking at different engagements, uh, creating kind of when did you realize you know community leadership wasn't just something you enjoy, but something that you're built for?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think I am a serial volunteer in many ways in my life. And this is no different. Um, and I I actually fell into the user group thing by mistake as well. I I when I became system admin for CRM 4.0, I started researching things that I could learn. I stumbled upon what was once called CRM user group, CRM UG. And I finally had a local chapter. I joined the local chapter, I went to a meeting and found out there's no chapter leader. And they're like, would you like it? I'm like, sure, I can help. Why not? So that was my beginning into user group leadership. I had a couple of years of hiatus, but I always keep finding my way back into it. And I think it's just a passion. I have a passion for this. I enjoy it. Uh, I've been told I'm kind of good at it, so I keep doing it. And uh I I really love sharing what I've learned. I think it's because I had such a hard time finding information as a new system admin. I try to give people all of the stuff I didn't have. That's kind of where it comes from for me.
SPEAKER_02:That's great. Yeah, and I mean, even today, I still think there's so much content out there. I think for someone that's new, especially in the system admin world, it's overwhelming. You know, where do you start? You know, where do you where do you go? I mean, what there it's not like there's a one-stop job, so to speak. And so it it becomes, I think, very it it comes to the point it's like you throw your hands up and you're like, all right, I don't know. I I give up. Like how you just I gotta ask this question.
SPEAKER_01:I know I'm gonna get in trouble because I'm going completely off um off topic here. Um so so there are and I probably will you could probably you will punch me in the face when I see you in a spring. Um so first of all, we're gonna get on this list. Um there are tons of women in our industry. Um and I'm not gonna name them all, but on on to with like, you know, the Juliax, you know, um uh in this bucket of of MVPs, uh there was some momentum in hey, we needed to have more representation with women in this space. Um that was recent. You were here for that. Would you like uh I know I didn't ask you this ahead of time, so again, if you punch me, I if I wrap a black eye in my face, that's because I get it. Um what how how did you navigate that? And what uh I would say uh quality you see that it added if it did, if you kind of if it kind of sharpened anything, if it made you better, or maybe something that others would like to show or see to make it make them improve? Like what would you say about that?
SPEAKER_00:In like the lens of like women in tech kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I agree there is a lack of female representation in this space. It is challenging, it is difficult to kind of feel like we get an equal playing field sometimes. That's fair. Um, I am often I have a wonderful husband who I work with. So he often, yeah, right, he often gets credit for my accomplishments, and the reverse is not true. People assume he's an MVP. He's not, he's never been, he never wants to be. But I find it very interesting that as a woman in tech, my accomplishments get shared by my husband in tech, which isn't quite what you asked. But I am just saying there is a problem, isn't it yet? Will it be? I sure hope so. So I am involved and I try to help other women find their voice. I have found some people that I'm kind of trying to take under my wing who are tech fluent graduates or other different programs that I've met through, and I am trying to just show them that what they have to say is important and people care about and people listen. And I will 100% continue to do so. And I thank you, Will, for bringing this up. I think it's a good topic that probably should be talked about a bit more.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's it's gotta be tough. Like I I I was actually when I was talking with Julie a couple weeks back, like I one of my fondest memories is her like just essentially punting somebody who's a big dog in the room right in the mouth. Um, and you know, I'm looking at her, I'm like, damn. Like, you know, she's holding her own. Um, but yeah, she did it, you know. I've seen her, I've seen you, I've seen her, and so if she sees me, I don't want her to hit me. But um I've seen it. I've seen yeah, she will. Um but I've seen you also be, you know, strong and yeah, with finesse, with tactful and yet firm. Um that's hard to navigate in today's society because there's so many people on different sides of the argument. Um but yet you've always maintained this positive uh very factual attitude. That's been positive, right? Um, so is is there is there a particular soft skill set that folks can use to kind of like navigate this? I would say sensitive and very um, I hate the word triggering, but it gets me geeked up sometimes, right? Because learn some more fuck it. But is there some soft skill they can use to kind of navigate that?
SPEAKER_00:Oh man, another good question. I don't know the right answer to that. I can just say I try to approach it again. I'm glad you're saying this with a positive outlook, but to also be I'm stealing on your words, be firm with drawing your boundaries, right? If you think something or you're uncomfortable with something or you want to advocate for yourself, no apologies needed, right? Just say it, own it, but be kind to all the people around you too.
SPEAKER_01:Facts, facts.
SPEAKER_00:Julie probably has a better answer.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, the reason why we haven't done it yet. We're gonna get in trouble with Julie. Like, I'm gonna have to like, you know, have the thank God we're not on camera because like the facial expressions. I think I think you and Julie get me in the most trouble. I have to kind of walk away and turn ahead and smile when I come in.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:I've seen you, Heidi, yeah, I've seen you give it to people before. I'm like, ugh, damn, they didn't know they were walking into that, did they? Um I try to stay on everyone's side. That's why I try to stay on everyone's good way's side. Yeah, it's all love in the good way.
SPEAKER_02:But um I I want to go back to real quick, you know, going back to your your speaking days, if you can go back to your uh conference and your first your first presentation around I mean, were you already you know Heidi the Rockstar then, or were you like I was like anybody who speaks for the first time, right?
SPEAKER_00:Nervous, doubting if my voice matters, like why am I talking? What gives me the right? At the time I wasn't an MVP and all these MVPs are speaking. I'm like, what right do I have to stand up and talk about this? But I did anyway and kind of led me down that path.
SPEAKER_02:That's great. That's great. And so you know, kind of segueing off of that too. I mean, for someone who wants to start and you know, present and maybe has a little bit of fear, right? To your point, they're not an MVP that you know, you know, oh my god, they see all these MVPs and all these folks that are always talking or or posting on LinkedIn or uh have their own blog um sites. I mean, what would be some of the advice that you would give them?
SPEAKER_00:I think uh partnering up with a seasoned presenter is always a wonderful idea. You don't have to co-present, but what I did recently with somebody was I stood up next to her for questions, or I will be there to help if you have tech problems. I will literally do a song and dance to distract from everybody. I did this at Summit as you are getting everything figured out, right? Like all the scary things.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, yes, you did.
SPEAKER_00:Things go wrong, things go wrong for the best of us, the best situation. And when we've done this enough times, we know how to roll with it, how to distract, how to talk and not be afraid to bowl, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I did it when I was presenting awards at this last summit, and I said the same line twice, and I said, give me a break, everyone. It's early in the morning and I haven't had my second cup of coffee. Right? And then you just roll with it. We've presented to your point, I think into the world. Or you may have a a a technical issue, and that's where all right to your point, maybe pairing up with someone seasoned was give you like, hey, hey, you're gonna do a live demo. Okay, maybe you want to do also do some videos as a backup.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And then the other things you can do is, I mean, when we attend sessions, you're gonna enjoy it more when the speaker is enjoying what they're doing. So have enthusiasm when you're speaking. Show that you like this, and just have confidence in what you're saying, even if you have to fake it till you make it.
SPEAKER_01:Great advice. We never have anything bad happen during our demos, right?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Never the demo demons always come out. Always come out. I was doing a demo the other day and I swear the system was freezing up on me, and I go Alright, well, I know it's not my Wi-Fi. You know, uh, so you just gotta pass the time and figure it out and say, okay, you know what? Chalk it up to the demo demons again.
SPEAKER_01:You gotta give it you gotta give it the shot at the key low uh ahead of time. Um so uh something I I never asked you, I said I have to know, right? So um I walked into the community, I met some pretty big, big names, big time folks, and we just I just I didn't know people were who they were. They were always welcoming and kind. And then I had some not so pleasant experiences. Um which I've had the pleasure of um getting my little uh petty petty moments in as well. Um but uh um uh to my point, my question is is you have people that were always extremely kind. Um you never looked at uh even you know looked at me when you're on stage, who is this dork? Um, and uh you've always been very welcoming. Um one of the I'm not saying I probably hate, I'm not an NDP anymore, who cares? I've seen people who talk about it, but very uh I there was a part part-time of folks who were actually taking this hands-on approach. Um what made you so you know where I mean, why was it almost like it was personal to be so open and kind to people and invite them to do a bit more community? What was that for you?
SPEAKER_00:Oh well, thank you for saying that. That was so nice. Um, there was very much looked up to as an MVP before I was an MVP, met this person at a conference and was partially rejected. That is why I am very welcoming because I didn't like how that felt, and I will never respond that way to somebody.
SPEAKER_01:Scott, I never knew that about that. I didn't know that happened to you. Uh, didn't know that happened.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's just the kind of person that I am, right? Like, I don't just volunteer in community on in my personal world. I have a running group, Monco Runners shout out, where we have 1,400 runners in our local area, and I coordinate all that. I do all the running meetups, I I spend a lot of time volunteering that I foster animals. I have two foster kittens right next to me right now. Like I spend a lot of time volunteering, and I think in general, it's just kind of like my personality to be welcoming, warm, and encouraging other people to get involved.
SPEAKER_02:I I have a dog here that you can foster if you want.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Now, here's an interesting fact. What I understand is that you know, you you were training for a marathon, I think, when you were awarded the MVP, uh if I'm not mistaken. And and so how are you training for uh I mean uh you're all over the place, I mean, because you're a rock star, but I mean you're training for this massive marathon and then obviously doing content for you know MVP submission. I mean how do you how do you how do you do it? How do you manage your time like that? Or are you getting like one hour of sleep a day?
SPEAKER_00:And this is insane. So I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02:I was saying holy crap, that's not that that's not a marathon, that's a holy cow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's like two marathons. I only did it once. I only did it once. I just wanted to see if I could go that far.
SPEAKER_02:I can do a 50-foot marathon.
SPEAKER_00:There you go. So I was actually this I know this is insane. But the day that I found out I was awarded MVP, I was out doing my longest training run. It was a 50k, which is 31 months. I know it's nuts. I'm perfectly aware how this happens. But it was quite fun. So it was a 10-mile loop, and then after 10 miles, I stopped back at the park, get some food, refuel, all that good stuff. Check my phone because it's the first of the month. I know that's when the MVP stuff goes out. So on my second loop, I check my phone, and that's when I found it out. That was really fun. That's not what you're saying, it was just a fun story. The last 10 miles was awesome.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, you know what? Um, I can't even imagine. I just thinking of running 30 miles training, I I'm exhausted just from just from thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it is ridiculous, right?
SPEAKER_01:That's not the that's not I'm gonna break character here for five. Well, I'm always breaking character, but I'm gonna break break real quick. Dumb question. Did you ever were you awarded on the first time?
SPEAKER_03:No, second time.
SPEAKER_01:So uh I gotta ask a question because that people oftentimes they uh gotta ask another question. True. Uh so are you uh like You see, I see posts and my heart breaks for them uh because uh you know, i i it it it's a tough pill to swallow. Uh you're again, you're the special guest. What caused you not to give up on that? Like what what was it that just said, you know what, screw this award, I don't care. It you start hearing people say, it's not that important anymore. And I know we don't, you know, oftentimes we don't say we're coming in there to be an MVP. What was it that made you say, you know what, forget it, I'm still gonna be freaking awesome in the community.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I mean the MVP I used to be recognized for something that was like cool benefit, cool bonus. Uh and yeah, that was never getting an order or not getting a word was never gonna change how I live my life in dignity. Awesome. That's a great way to do that.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's a great way to look at it.
SPEAKER_02:It really is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, it's cool, like I mean, because it it's it's there if I know for me it was I didn't I would say the first the f so uh my journey was funny. It was actually Trish and P and Dion that yelled at me and made me do my first session, and then it was um Mark Christie who gave me uh my first real uh you know uh demo or uh or session at a at a big platform with the Scottish Summit. I had no idea it was that large. Uh so Mark's gonna kick my ass when he hears that. Um but it was it was I'm gonna let him know too. It was uh uh you know, there were some folks who were really good about it, and I thought that I was gonna get because I did a couple of sessions or talked and helped out with some few things, and um and then when you realize you're not really being acknowledged or even in the community, you know, it just moment where you're like, Man, this sucks. But then, you know, I had a good friend. Um A good friend, a couple good friends remind me you're not doing it for accolades, you're doing it because somebody opened the door for you. Um and you're impacting people with or without the award uh award. Uh um and then lo and behold, it popped up as soon as I started changing it up. Um I think folks can kind of take a time and remember it. Like even without the award, uh Heidi is still gonna be Heidi. Um Nick is still gonna be Nick and you're still gonna be freaking awesome. Um I think this community is so uh intimate. We uh uh we value those connections and those relationships. So I think you just keep showing impact in the community, it would just keep uh Yogi Rand and who you are will just keep rolling. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I know the cool thing about it too.
SPEAKER_01:It's like you're seeing a karaoke at you know some of these sessions or anything like that, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, God, that's great. But I I love it. I mean to your I think both your points, right? I mean I I want a posting, like I get up early in the morning and like, okay, you know, because the dogs wake me up at like 4 30 in the morning. So then I write, you know, some sort of LinkedIn article, I find the topic, I kind of do some research and and put it out there. And it's not I'm not doing it because I'm an MVP, it's I'm doing it to your point because I want to share my knowledge and my opinions and expertise. You may disagree with me, and that's okay. All right, um, but at the end of the day, it's sharing I think our passion for what we do and what we know. And I'm trying to I'm trying to branch out so I'm not known just as the field service guy.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome. I get it from the things I'm actually doing. So if it's a refresher, like I had to work on reporting for SLAs, and like I couldn't remember off the top of my mind which SLA table I need to report on. So I made blog posts just in case I ever need to refer to it again and in case it helped anybody else. So if you're wondering why my content is all over the place, it's supposed that's what I'm specifically working on in my real life in that moment.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. No, that's fantastic. And I think that's the important thing too, is right. I mean, you're kind of looking at it. I mean, I've seen a lot of your posts, and some of them will get you feel free. All different I do. I I read stuff, I read. Um but you know, you you get it to the point where it's like, hey, this is for you know, no one, but then you go up and and you can elevate to those that are are more experienced as well. So it's kind of runs the gamut, uh, which is which is what I love about you know the content that you put out there.
SPEAKER_03:I see Will thinking. He's thinking really hard. He's gonna question.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I think he's frozen.
SPEAKER_02:That's okay.
SPEAKER_00:But he is looking really intent.
SPEAKER_02:He he is looking intent. He's looking like, oh boy. So here's a here's a great question for you. I mean, uh you know right, your your business re enhanced is is a family business. Can you hear see me? No, we can't we can see you now. You're good. It's all good. You know, your your business is a family business, right? I mean, what's the secret to to running this business at home with your husband and everything without losing your sanity?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, we work in separate spaces. We don't lunch time. That's it, he's right behind your dust to be funny, but we do finish we do very different things, right? I'm on the business side, the people side, he does chat, he writes code, he does custom integration, he writes power automate connectors. So we have a very complimentary skill set, which is why we work together, it goes along really well. Uh our clients are able to get the best of both worlds, and uh we work well together, which is good.
SPEAKER_01:So I have to ask a question, Tidi. Out of all the things that you've written about and have been involved with, you know, I know you said you love business rules. But in recent years, which is a topic that you think more people would pay attention to that would just if they did it tomorrow, see an instant improvement in there, you know, whether app building or you know, applications in general. Like what do you think that would be?
SPEAKER_00:I my answer to that is training and user adoption, right? That does get cut out of budgets all the time in implementations. And when you're when your hours are creeping up or scopes getting expanded, that's the first thing that gets cut down on. So again, I'm the people you have good user acceptance testing too. That's another thing that Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Nope. I I totally agree. It you know, and and it kind of brings me to this next question, right? Because you're the people person and you're probably on a lot of calls with with your customers. Uh, and I know you have told you. I mean, have you ever had any sort of or have any fun stories where hey, you're in the middle of a call and all of a sudden, you know, one of your kids comes in the room and is asking you questions and is on the camera. I mean, have you ever experienced any of those? And you know, and if you have, I mean, how I mean what you know 100%. Is everyone laughing or is every you know customers like, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, everyone's understanding, right? We live in this world where many people are remote or working from home. More often than the kids, it's the animals. We have a lot of animals. And my cats will walk across the keyboard, or these foster kittens. Yesterday, I was doing a call, like walk jumped onto my keyboard and smacked off my camera. So, like, it all just disappeared, and then I don't know why this little like webcam just cascaded into this crazy set of like things falling in noise. It was horrifically embarrassing, but they just laughed. We just laughed together.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I've had it where because I have French bulldogs, and you know, the microphone on Teams is supposed to noise cancellation, right? Well, apparently, this one particular time it did not. And the two dogs were snoring tremendously, and they're like, Scott, are you are you having a hard time breathing? I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, I hear like I said, oh no, that's Darth Vader over here. He's you know, he sounds like Darth Vader, so I call him his name's Yoda, but he sounds like Darth Vader. I said, No, that's just my dog snoring. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:My dog, we have a sensor on the driveway, and it's hooked up to our like Google Echo type device. So every time it trips, it says a visitor has a rack, and then the dog parks like crazy. So usually the noise canceling works, but I'm never sure. I'm like, I'm so sorry about the dog.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah. Someone comes to the door, drops off a package, there's a dog. Interrupt. I'm really sorry. Uh Will are still with us?
SPEAKER_01:They're animals.
SPEAKER_02:Oh no, awfully quiet. I've seen Will I've experienced Will at all. Are you guys able to hear me at all? Yeah, we hear you.
SPEAKER_01:You just quiet. I'm shocked. I've been trying to talk. Sorry, I'm having internet issues here at uh at wonderful Orlando. So anywho, um, no, the dogs are phenomenal. I love animals. Um, so yeah, dogs are great, and we all know how large how long or how loud my my puppy was or can be so or could have been, but anyway. Long story, not gonna dead in the mood. So I have one question for you guys, because like you and Nick have an awesome, phenomenal business with re-enhanced technologies that uh you guys have that are coming out.
SPEAKER_00:Ooh, so our specialty area on the power is that are using both WordPress and data. There's WordPress things from WooCommerce or Gravity Forms and some other form submission apps that you can add on on the WordPress side. But the really exciting one that we just rolled out is called WP Portals. So I don't know if your listeners are PowerPages fans, but we're not, because they're overly complicated and required liquid code, and they're fine if you want to play in the framework of Power Pages, but once you stray from that, or once you want to do something a little bit different, it gets really complex. And we've had really poor results with clients that we've implemented those for. Nick has been architecting this WordPress alternative for a long time. He's had this vision for more than a year and it it worked, guess. We have a Microsoft Gold partner who is currently using WP portals. So their entire portal instance is being hosted at WordPress. That means a WordPress admin can manage it, not a skill, not that you're not skilled in WordPress, but you don't need special skills and special coding language capabilities. You can just drag and drop and do things in WordPress world and use Dataverse data. It's been super exciting. I think they do um, what do they do, 10,000 cases a week in there? Like it's a high volume thing for a fraction of the cost of power pages. So very, very excited about this.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, we need to pick your brain, uh, Heidi. We're gonna have to we're gonna have to chat uh sometime after the holiday because I I have a a use case where I don't think power pages is necessarily going to be applicable to a a customer. So yeah, we definitely need to chat. That sounds awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, anyone is welcome to chat with us about this. We're very excited. We're ready for customer two to onboard. Customer one got everything working splendidly, so hopefully we can have more people getting on this. It's pretty exciting.
SPEAKER_02:That's great. So I guess uh you know, I know we're we're coming close to the end here, um, but you know, definitely have a a question again, you know, because you're you know, you and Nick, and I mean, you're balancing all this stuff, you're working, you know, behind you know walls together and um you know trying to you know juggle all the different com you know constraints and and demands on you, right? You're uh a parent, your partner, an MVP, you speak, you do stuff at at uh UG groups. I mean, how how do you balance that or what would be your recommendation even to others to say, hey, you can do this without burning out? I mean, what's your what's your secret to all that?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, it's you know, diversifying your content so you can use it many different places, right? Like you're not having to do 500 things. I can take a presentation that I did at Summit, and then I can chunk it up into lots of different ways. So it's not it's not super overwhelming. Um, and the user group stuff, that's just like fun bonus time, right? We meet in our user group quarterly, so that's just four meetings a year. We meet for two hours. So you do have to take that time aside, but I don't think it's an overwhelming amount. And the information that I got from the different speakers is well worth the time commitment to attending those and putting it all together. Um, and if anyone wants to speak, we do 45-minute sessions online teams. I would love to have you at the Philadelphia User Group, and you should attend too, because it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You know, I I was I lived in in the Philly area in person, right? For quite a while.
SPEAKER_00:You so we to be totally honest and candid, we have had a really hard time coming back to in-person after the COVID effects. We typically will host them in person, but we'll also have them online. So what I try to do is have one presenter in person and then one presenter on Teams, which has some benefits to it, but we still aren't getting that many people showing up in person. It's usually me and maybe a small handful of other people. So hybrid.
SPEAKER_02:Excellent. No, I'd love I'd love to attend one of those uh sessions. So you have to you know send it my way. I'd love to listen in or or present or talk. Perfect. Send it my way.
SPEAKER_00:December twelfth.
SPEAKER_02:I'll be there. Well, not physically, but I'll be there. Awesome. So Will, any any parting questions for Heidi? I know you're chomping at the bit, but you're usually good at the last question or two.
SPEAKER_01:Heidi is phenomenal. So um Heidi, what are some, you know, to any of the new aspiring individuals in this industry, what what what's like if you had to sum it up in a paragraph, what is some, or what is something you'd probably tell your past self that you wish you knew that would help make this journey a bit better?
SPEAKER_00:This community is extremely welcoming and willing to help, afraid to reach out to the people that you've met at conferences, that you have seen on YouTube channels, that you follow on LinkedIn. Like I will answer your questions. I will help you if I can. So I would say don't be afraid to reach out and ask for help or ask for different resources, right? So depending on if you're a new CRM system admin, I create paid resources. And like if you need field service help, you can reach out to Scott and Will, and they can point you to the right people. So don't be scared to reach out to all of us. Maybe we'll be future friends and we'll swap Christmas cards.
SPEAKER_02:There we go. Perfect. All right. Um, so I I mean, I guess uh in general, Heidi, any any parting comments for our listeners, uh, you know, any wisdom, any additional wisdom goes upon them.
SPEAKER_00:Oh become familiar with your CRM out-of-the-box tools toolkit and know the right time to implement those out-of-the-box tools over all of the fancy customizations and code that you could do. And uh never stop learning because this product never stops changing. So follow the release guides or follow this great series on YouTube called Power Tips that I do with MVPs Malcolm McCullough and Kylie Kaiser, where we go through all that stuff because this will continue to change, and you better be willing to change with the product, or you are going to be left behind.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome. That's great. Thank you so much, Heidi. We appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for having me. All right, Heidi, you and Nick are phenomenal, and you guys are great, and we just love having you guys. So this has been great. Appreciate it. Sorry for the drops in and out, Scott, and Heidi. Uh my internet's been dead, so I had to switch devices.
SPEAKER_02:So maybe next time we need to have Heidi and Nick on and do Battle of the Newhousers.
SPEAKER_00:Ooh, he's a hands. He's not a new houser, but you should call Nick a Newhouser. That's the point.
SPEAKER_02:It would be fun to watch just because of that.
SPEAKER_01:You know what we need to do? We need to have Malcolm and Heidi on. Malcolm, Heidi, and Kylie on next time, too as well. Malcolm is hilarious. Um by the way. I hope you listen, bud.
SPEAKER_02:All right. So awesome. Well, thank you, Heidi, for uh joining us today. We greatly appreciate it. Love your wisdom, love the content you put out there and and all of your contributions to the community. Uh thank you to our listeners, as always. And until the next time, this is Scott and Will for Service X Factor, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
