From S-control hacks to Forcelandia: my accidental marketing story

The first marketing I ever did for Platy IT... was accidental. I wasn't even thinking about starting my own consultancy yet—I just wanted to show off some cool things I’d built for my then employer, Center for Employment Opportunities, to the NYC nonprofit Salesforce group.

Context: I joined CEO in 2007. Apex wasn’t out yet (I was later chomping at the bit), Visualforce was still years away. My first presentation? A demo of the Adobe Flex UI I’d hacked in via S-control (look it up, kids) to schedule CEO’s participants—formerly incarcerated NYCers—into transitional jobs around the city.

Why a custom UI? Because the process was fast & intense (Eric Montelibano can speak to this). Twice a day (for different shifts), a few days a week, dozens of participants would flood the phone lines. Schedulers—two or three at most—took calls in an intentionally darkened room. “Yo, ID ####. What you got in the Bronx?” In 15-30 seconds, they’d check eligibility, crime restrictions, open slots, haggle, and de-escalate if needed—no one wants a commute from the Bronx to Staten Island. Fifteen minutes later, the calls died down, and when I'd observe, I'd walk out shoulders raised from absorbing the tension.

Standard Salesforce UI isn’t built for that even today. But with S-controls, Javascript DOM tricks, and a Flex component, I made it work in Salesforce (it was replacing a Lotus Notes custom interface. Yeah, that was a thing). That solution and others for CEO nudged me into Salesforce’s “priest class”—pushing boundaries even many corporations weren’t. Showing those off made me notable, side jobs rolled in, and before long those “side” jobs became Platy IT.

Fast forward nearly 20 years. I haven’t been to a Salesforce event in ages—remote work, motherhood, and a darker chapter that spurred me across the country kept me cloistered. But I've been on the upswing and leading a great team at Trajan Wealth has been part of my path out of isolation, and now I’m even starting a company with two of them.

And today, after 8+ years, I stepped into a Salesforce event—this time on the other side of the country at Forcelandia. Introversion aside, it felt good. Great to be back talking with people. Hopefully, it’s the start of a habit, and of some maybe-not-so accidental marketing for my new venture.