Based in Melbourne, Sharon Young started cross-training with Revolent 18 months ago to become a Salesforce Functional Consultant. Alongside this, she’s been working towards completing another inspiring challenge. In September 2022, Sharon will be swimming the English Channel—a distance of 34km—to raise money for the Australian Lions Hearing Dogs charity.
We caught up with Sharon to find out how the training’s going and how she’s managing to combine these two major challenges: starting a new career in the cloud and training for the swim.
1. What inspired you to take up this challenge to swim the English Channel?
I grew up in a swimming family. Every day, after school we were always doing swimming and I continued swimming into my school years, doing triathlons alongside it. But I was always too scared to go into the open waters by myself. I didn’t know what else could be out there—sharks or jellyfish, or anything like that.
And one day, after I moved to Melbourne and was walking my dog in a park, I met this friend of mine I hadn’t seen for ten years. I was telling her that I wanted to go out into the bay and swim, and she said: “Oh, look, come with me! I swim out there every day.”
So off I shot with her and joined a local open water swimming group called Mentone Pink Caps. Initially, I was only doing one to two kilometers, and I kept thinking, oh god, this is a long way!
While I was doing that, there were people who were coming in, having just returned from the English Channel. I was like—wow! That is such an inspiring thing to do!
I signed up to do my first marathon swim (distance: 20km) in February 2020. After I made it across successfully, I decided I wanted to sign up for the English Channel swim.
2. How long is the distance and how long do you estimate it will take to complete the swim?
It could be anywhere between 34 to 75km—or 21 to 46 miles. It’s different for everyone because it depends on the wind, the currents, and the conditions out there. I’m expecting to complete the swim anywhere between 12 to 16 hours. Although I know of people who swim at the same speed as me, and it took them 18 hours because the conditions were so rough. So, it really all depends on the day.
3. Why did you decide to support the Australian Lions Hearing Dogs charity?
That one’s pretty close to my heart because I come from a family that is deaf. So, it made sense to support the Australian Lions Hearing Dogs when I found them. The charity supports people who are either deaf or hard of hearing to train dogs to be able to help them hear what they’re missing out on. They’re trained to listen to certain sounds, and then they alert their owner to a sound that’s to where the sound is coming from. This resonated with me because we’ve got that hereditary condition within the family.
4. What did you do before joining Revolent? Do you have a background in IT?
My background is actually in Finance and I moved into IT to support Finance with the application they were using. I’ve been a Technical / Functional Consultant before transitioning back into Finance where I operated my own bookkeeping business and then became a Finance Team Leader for a global organization. In this business unit, I was Finance Team Leader for a company that was merging into a much larger organization. As a result of this, I became Project Team Leader to help transition the business unit into the new organization. That’s where Salesforce really came into the picture for me.
5. Did you have any experience with Salesforce prior to joining Revolent?
I had touched on Salesforce back in 2013 when we implemented an application called Zuora. I’d been working with it at that point in time, and then I stopped using it for some time. It wasn’t until about 2016—when we had transitioned over into the new organization—that I got more involved with the user end, rather than the back end, of Salesforce.
6. What inspired you to cross-train in Salesforce?
I really like the flexibility that Salesforce offers. You can do a lot of customizations with it. You can add a range of applications to make it suit the business using it. Salesforce also has extensive potential for growth, and I knew that there were going to be a lot of opportunities for me in the ecosystem. I really like the growth, expansion, adaptability, and scalability that Salesforce offers.
7. You now work as a Salesforce Functional Consultant. What do you do day-to-day in your role?
My day-to-day as a Salesforce Functional Consultant is all about gathering business requirements and existing processes, creating storyboards, hosting workshops with customers, and creating To Be Processes. Once we’ve done the design process, we go into the build phase. Even as a Functional Consultant, I do develop the requirements alongside other developers. I work on the declarative side of development and leave the programmatic side to other developers. I also get involved in the data migration, SIT, UAT, and training with customers to see the finishing touches go into Production go live. This is the fun part—doing all of it, building something that comes to life for the customers!
8. When did you start your training for the English Channel swim?
I started my training back in October 2020—just before I joined Revolent. There’s a 34km swim here in Australia, called the Derwent River Big Swim in Tasmania which takes place in our summer season. I wanted to do that swim to see if I could even do the English Channel, as it has very similar temperature conditions in the water. It’s partly fresh and partly salt water. The swim took me 9h and 53min to complete. I then knew that I could at least attempt the English Channel.
Sharon’s training schedule for the English Channel swim
If Sharon’s story has inspired you to take up the same challenge, here’s what her training schedule looks like.
- Swim – 6 days a week – up to 35km per week, with a mix of pool and open water training
- Strength conditioning – twice a week
“As the water temperature is dropping in the bay—around 10°C, at the moment (and it will keep dropping to 7°C during winter)—I need to keep going into the open water, so I can stay acclimatized and it won’t feel so cold when I do the Channel swim. The Channel will be around +17-18°C. That will feel like I’m having a spa bath.”
9. How do you find managing your time between your training and your work?
With the project that I was doing for my first placement, I had to give up a lot of my swim training time. I just couldn’t get into the training that I needed to do. The placement I’m in now is a 16-week project, so it’s nice and short! At the moment, we’re in the business design phase, so it’s fairly relaxed. When we get into the build stage, there will be more hours that are going to be eating into my swimming time. I’ll just have to do a bit of juggling and play that one by ear. I’m not going to stress about it though. You’ve just got to give and take on these things.
It also helps that my career coach at Revolent, Kyle O’Brien has been very understanding of what I’m doing and offered lots of help and support. And Damien Battista always hits me up to say—hey, how you going? If you need anything, just let me know.
Sharon’s top tips for staying motivated
Like all of us, Sharon has her good days and bad days. We asked Sharon to share her three top tips on how she stays motivated, for anyone in need of a little inspiration.
- Break your goal down into smaller steps
If you’re going to embark on a challenge, you’ve got the end goal as your big end goal—but you need to be able to break that down. And then you need to be able to break those smaller goals down into even smaller ones so that you can get to that end goal without feeling too overwhelmed. So, set yourself some of those milestones and set yourself some of those goals in smaller pieces, so you can get to the end.
- Surround yourself with like-minded people
Make sure you’re surrounded by people you can fall back on, if needed! You might be having a bad day. Go back and talk to those people.
- Don’t beat yourself up if you do have a bad day
Things are going to happen. Things are going to get in the way. It is what it is. Move on, accept it and just try and readjust. If it means that you have to extend your goal, that’s okay. But don’t be too hard on yourself about it. That’s life!
10. What do you think will be the most challenging aspect of the swim on the day?
Mentally, I’m ready for the swim. But on the day, a big challenge will be not getting sea-sick and hitting the ‘graveyard shift’. This is the last part of the swim, where you can see France but you are not getting any closer and you’ve got the changing of the tide against you wanting to push you back to England. I’ve been told not to look for the land. I will have my support boat, skipper, and my Australian support crew which I’m very excited about!
11. What are you most looking forward to about completing this challenge?
Once you sign up, it consumes you for two years. So, just saying that it’s been done and ticked off the bucket list! I actually can’t wait to get in the water in Dover. I’m excited and scared at the same time. The Channel will decide if I make it or not. Fingers crossed.
12. What other challenges are on your ‘bucket list’?
I’m looking forward to completing the Australian Triple Crown. It’s made up of three swims, which are the Derwent Big River Swim (Tasmania, 35km); Palm Beach to Shelley Beach (New South Wales, 24km), and Port to Pub, (Perth, 25km). I’ve done two of the three, as they were part of my training for the English Channel. Next year, March 2023, I’ve got to re-attempt Port to Pub so I can complete the Australian Triple Crown.
13. What date is the English Channel swim?
It’s actually a window between the 16th and 23rd of September. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll get to go on those dates though, because it all depends on the weather. We have up to five swimmers within the window, and I’m ‘swimmer number one’, so I’ll get to go first within that window. And if the weather isn’t great—say, for five of those six days—then I’ll get to go on the sixth day. Swimmers number four and five may not even be able to go in that window. They have to jump on the back of the next window, which is once a week, on the 16th, 24th, and 30th of September.
14. Finally, beyond raising money for a good cause, where would you like this challenge (and your cloud career) to take you?
Once I’ve completed my placement with Revolent, I’m keen to get out into contract work. Even though I may start off in the space as a Salesforce Functional Consultant, I’d like to think that I could progress further. To what? At this point in time, I don’t know. But I’m excited to see what’s going to be out there waiting for me!
And in terms of the challenge—who knows? I’d like to keep on going and raising money for ALHD as I do so, but these challenges are pretty expensive. I will have my sights on the World Triple Crown as the English Channel is one of them. The other two swims are Manhatten Island (a 28.5-mile circumnavigation of Manhattan Island, New York City) and Catalina Channel (20 miles between Santa Catalina Island and the California mainland).
In between these swims, I’ll put back into the open water swimming community what others have done for me because there’s been a lot of people asking what sort of challenges they could do next and I’ll help them along their journey.
Want to support Sharon?
It costs around $37,500 to raise a hearing assistance dog and to train them to provide life-changing support for their deaf recipients. Australian Lions Hearing Dogs (ALHD) places hearing dogs with recipients free of charge. To support Sharon and this fantastic cause, follow the link below to donate to the fundraiser. All proceeds will help ALHD continue their important work.
