hey everyone thank you for joining us on another episode of glide chat my name is michael lombardo and joining us today we have a service delivery director at glidefast josh brostoff how you doing josh hey mike thanks for having me on i'm doing well so really happy to have you here today uh i think let's jump in and maybe tell us a little bit how how you got into the service now space yeah absolutely so about seven years ago um you know i was working at a electronic health medical record company outside boston um and i was doing mainly production support for various different applications you know really started off around pink veteran which is a single sign-on platform and also started doing production support for servicenow at the time so i was actually working on the fuji release so it was way back when if if you guys all remember that and fuji you know was really starting to you know help with basic things right you know people needed to be added to groups people needed roles other stuff like that so you know it was really just helping do production support and and i got presented with the opportunity to actually start and you know enjoying the servicenow team they were looking for developers and was presented with the opportunity and and really didn't know much about servicenow at that point but decided you know hey why not so kind of just you know started uh started doing development on it took several classes the servicenow administration course and and really started you know taking the classes and teaching it to myself a little bit and from that point on i really just dove head first into it you know was learning how to script was learning more about workflows and itsm and took the itil course and really got deeper into it into that from that point you know i really started to learn about various different pieces right and and really went on to another customer in the boston area also in the healthcare space and you know really helped with their implementation as well they were a new customer to service now we're rolling out new products started to learn about asset management and procurement and the cmdb and discovery and really started to expand my skill set in servicenow you know after about a year there i really kind of felt like i had done the implementation i kind of you know hit the amount that i knew and that's when i finally moved over to gladfest about four years ago i and you know what's funny is i remember that day um i remember we just like moved into this office i think we were like sitting on boxes yeah and you came in and and i remember talking to you and i'm like man this guy is kind of he's cocky i like it and uh and i remember just sitting in and like and i actually remember you telling the story more as like you know we were just like we're gonna we're you know we're gonna be the number one partner in the space and you're like man this guy's crazy but i think i like it yeah i mean it was definitely an interesting experience joining because i mean i think at that point you know the company was was established you know they have been known you guys were a partner at that point um at the same time you know i was coming from a place where i you know really really stable job very established company um you know i came to the office like you were saying there are a couple boxes i think it was it was you and uh lloyd and he's now the ceo but but really didn't know anything about it and you know i i kind of looked around like what's going on here is this you know is this real and i remember you talking about it though because you were so passionate about it i was like you know kind of left that day i was like you know what i don't think i'm interested and i went back i kind of started thinking i was like i think these guys like might be on to something so you know i remember i kind of went back and i was like you know what let's do it let's do i just had a feeling i was like there was i got a feeling when i left that day i was like this something's gonna come with this so you you absolutely gotta go with your gut you know yeah but you and i kind of hit it off right away i mean i just i just like i sensed that hunger that you had it was you know it reminded me a lot of the hunger i have and and the belief you had in service now you know what i mean yeah and uh we both started in the healthcare space you know and that that's the other thing i was like man we both came from the healthcare world we both kind of just fell into service now we both believed in it so much and i think that's why we like kind of just hit it off right 100 and i think the biggest thing too i remember talking to you you know this was around 2017 and kind of you know we were talking and a lot of people were saying oh you know we think service now is kind of you know it's like it's critical mass at this point it's going to just kind of you know it's over yeah we're saying i was like this is the these are the early days of this you know the new company we are in you know the early stages of this thing blowing up from massive transformation everywhere and i think a lot of people frankly didn't know or didn't believe it and i think you and i have both already known at that point this is this is the beginning so i i still think it's early you know yes and you know what's funny i used to think that too when i first got into service now this is like the aspen berlin release this was like ipo days yeah and i was like man am i too late you know and just because it was so hard to learn in the beginning like you know you mentioned going to the classes and everything like ever you know i had it for me it took to learn the technical aspects of this platform it's so deep and wide just to learn even the 10 or 20 of the platform that i did end up learning it took my full-time job it took you know all night you know getting home eating going right back on the computer and you know working with what you know my co-workers trying to learn i had you know i had uh somebody i worked with that we were both just heads down trying to learn this thing all the resources on the community and everything and and i and i got this sense from you too is like once you did kind of become that expert you really wanted to like give back to the community you know you started your blog on github you know you were doing some videos you were uh right yeah i loved seeing you perform at knowledge uh on stage that that was exciting what were the two you did two presentations of knowledge right yep i did one on uh integrating change management with slack yeah the following year i did one on building store applications yeah so both of those and you know just just going back too i think you know people still ask me when we talk about are these like kind of the early days of servicenow is it too late to get in i still say this is this is really the best possible time this is the best industry the hottest industry within it to get into i think so if there's anything you can do right now it's start taking the courses you know get involved go online start doing research you know this is in my opinion still the best possible place to be in you know depend no matter where you are in your career and i think it's going to continue to be for the years to come for sure for sure and i think that there's like so many people that are willing to help yeah other people learn it's if and for me it's always been i mean it's a little different now but for me like over the years all i wanted out of somebody was like listen if you just dedicate yourself i'll give you everything i have to help you learn you just you gotta really like not just nine to five not just you know six to ten it's it's like a hundred percent of your effort like your whole life has to get consumed i know it's a little dramatic but it's like it's the low code no code right but there's just so it's so powerful the platform is so powerful you can do so much automation you can build and i remember you wrote a blog about this right how you and your brother were going uh head to head and he wanted to build an app in php what was it yeah i think it was php i'm like on the aws server yeah yeah and you were like i'm gonna build in service now and like what were the results of that you built it in like yeah i assume we built it in like a tenth of the time yeah the example that we were talking about that day was like a guest book right so you let's say you have a basic web page someone comes to your web page and say hey you know i visited your webpage they write it and inserts it into a database and it displays it on the page right so a very very simple application yeah you know something that you know someone junior could do right but the fact is if you actually start going through the steps from scratch of writing that code you get your own server you get your own database right you have to write all the code to do all that you have to make sure it's secure so people aren't going to try and hack it all these different things right in making sure that everything is going to stay up and that the performance is good when you go through all those steps you're talking you know someone who's maybe a mid-level let's say eight to ten hours right from from start to finish of going through that entire exercise you know when you look at doing something like that in servicenow you create a table you don't do any code um you have a page right that gets displayed you're literally talking under an hour to do this stuff it's crazy you know but at the same time with great power comes great responsibility right you have to follow best practices you know you have to avoid the bad ones right you have a lot of different options but there's one best way i always you know when i'm talking to customers i'm like listen there's five different ways probably more to do every at least five right to do everything you want to do in servicenow but there's one best way right there's always just one best possible way to do it and unless you're very experienced the uh people who are not as experienced they may know one way to do it they may know a way to do it but it may not be the best way it probably isn't right so that's what really expertise is i think it's like knowing all of the options in the platform and then knowing which route to take for scalability you know ease of modification upgrades you know defect avoidance you know things like that yeah i think that that's also like a good segue too and it kind of what we were talking about the other day with just our culture right so i think one of the biggest things that i think sets us apart is 50 of our folks came from people who worked at customers who have been through this enough have seen over customization i've seen you know platforms that need to be re-implemented because something wasn't done necessarily the best way that you talked about and i think that's what's just so valuable with with the folks that we have here they just have that really seasoned experience and i think the other thing too about our culture is you know even myself i've been doing this for seven years there's still times where i don't know the best way to do things i mean and i think that goes that's the same for everyone right there's always times it's too big for anyone to understand this stuff yeah the ability to be able to reach out to other people to 200 people and and within seconds have someone give you an answer and be willing to jump on a call with you i mean you just don't really find that that same type of culture other places where people are willing to jump in and help now we've we've had you know i've talked to some people that that have come from other partners and other organizations where yeah you just don't have that level of support and to your point anyone who's claiming to be an expert in every aspect of the platform it's just not possible it's it's i haven't seen it yet and i believe you i've met you know we've met some amazing amazingly talented people but you have to stay humble and say listen i'm always learning you know that goes for i think i think it's really everybody in every role right i'm sure even you know luddy himself mcdermott himself you know they they uh they seem like pretty humble guys where they're you know always always trying to learn learn something new and um i think that's everywhere right i think that's everywhere you're never going to be an expert in everything possible but i think um wrapping this up what would be some advice maybe since we're on the topic what would be some advice that you'd give to somebody maybe trying to learn servicenow become that expert level like you are what would be some advice that you'd maybe want to give to them yeah so i think there's definitely several different ways to get involved i think a really good way to start out is to to one get a developer instance start playing around right i mean i'm one of those people where i like to go in i like to try things out you know click around start taking some of the free trainings on now learning i think there's tons of good resources out there around you know these self uh self free courses that you can take to go through some of that content the other thing is well you know if you start going through it if you're interested i think glidefast also offers an associate program for folks who are new to servicenow and looking to get involved which i think has been really successful and i definitely think there's a lot of opportunity to to dive headfirst into the servicenow space and get some training that way so um definitely i would say you know leverage the the free resources that are out there there's tons of them there's great content and i think you can learn a lot awesome all right i think that's a wrap thank you everybody for joining us for another episode of glide chat remember to follow us on apple spotify and youtube thank you thanks everyone thanks josh [Music] you