[Music] and now the host of the phoenix dev show mark scott [Music] uh it's my favorite it's still it gets me every time every time dance a little bit then i go oh yeah the vo works great and then i saw karen grab his pipe and i'm like oh yeah i do have a pipe collection here that i can bring over i can swap oh man welcome everybody to the phoenix dev show i have i'm joined by a litany a panel of of servicenow professionals um i let's go one by one and introduce ourselves so first of all uh i'm mark scott phoenix dev uh and we're gonna add one more person to the stream as if we didn't have enough here's another person to add but we'll go through each person i'll i'll i'll throw to you to uh introduce yourself so um first up candidate are you ready we'll we'll throw it to you first hey yeah hi i'm i am a principal outbound product manager for creator workflows at servicenow and uh i've been in this role for uh about 10 months now and prior to that worked in the consulting space for uh about six and a half so yeah it's been a good it's been a good run so far all right gabby hi my name is maria gabriello perez-wechter and i am on approximately two hours of sleep for the past 34. um i'm having a great time my nails are still kind of okay i just started at servos as a senior technical consultant i'm back in consol consultancy so it's like perfectly topical right um other than that i'm a 2021 2022 developer mvp and you better go to women now.dev and go read some good articles yeah all right wrote to sharon now i am sharon barnes i am a business analyst over at clear sky nowadays prior to that i did work as a consultant with new access innovations and with them i got to go ahead and just uh help a variety of government clients solve some very unusual problems very cool all right mr mayor himself hey everybody mike lombardo ceo of glidefast consulting uh we're a servicenow elite partner um happy to be here it's my first uh my first time on the on the phoenix dev show i'm excited i also think i also think right you hold you hold the bar for the highest eo yet and i don't think we'll get another one i think you're one and you got a mayor yeah you got a mayor right yeah you'll be the mayor but yeah you you're like a unicorn when i pull like the mayor the ceo the you know the arc the ex-architect the consultant like that's why i pulled you on i'm like yeah hey you know what though my team won't let me have the admin role anymore so you guys all have that on me that's true that's true yeah raise your hand if you still got admin um i don't have admin and prod and neither should you no developer should have admin and prod and i cannot stress this enough um let go of your control issues y'all yeah um but also i'll have you know that you are in the presence of sn dev's presidential chief director of marketing and branding okay like i also got a cool title mgopw i loved i loved i've always loved even even when you had mgop i love that i always loved that thank you i love i love being supported for four initials and five i was deport both of them all right so let's get into it let's get into it i want to i want to keep it tight because there's a lot of people on this call and it's a very expensive call um consulting is a skill set right what is it that makes a consultant and i think i think what i'm going to have to do is just kind of throw to people and you know if i really want to kind of define the term before we get into what it takes to be a consultant so what is different about being a consultant from let's say working in an enterprise so um happy you're giggling the most i'll start with you very very actually uh so you just made me realize tell me you're a consultant without telling me you're a consultant and you're uh when you're tallying up people's salary and how many people are on a call going oh my god this is thousands of dollars wasted um that's my favorite thing in the whole wide world yes let's invite 20 people to this eight hour workshop where only three people need to contribute um what was the question again i'm sorry the question is what what is different about being a consultant than being in the enterprise so you know what what would a consultant be different than someone that had you know just a salaried employee every day kind of goes to work in my opinion that one ends up kind of being uh slightly nuanced depending on what kind of customers you end up having because in my opinion even as an internal resource your users are your customers those you're still liable and responsible to them but it ends up being a lot of red tape and a lot more caution that you need to take when you're working with government sows and you have to very strictly adhere to rules and regulations with that type of stuff and compliance it's an entirely different beast accessibility and compliance in actual uh contracting and government work than it is on any non-university type of work in my opinion sure so you said that you said an acronym there i wanted to find you so w right statement of work right i'm glad you didn't ask me to uh say what that meant just making sure just making sure go ahead karen yeah so that right there was a consultative answer right there um because i mean essentially that's that's the one thing consultation is a mindset it is kind of seeing the issues ahead of you kind of in a circumspect manner and kind of with a little bit of a critical distance that you don't necessarily have when you are directly inside of an organization um because a lot of times in organization there's just there's so many uh so much informal politics there's so many um kind of confluent issues uh that you don't have the ability to have a critical distance from and a consultant comes in and they're able to kind of parse the situation um kind of free of that and then be able to kind of provide best practice recommendations on a particular subject and give implementation guidance right um i'm trying to just maintain that uh hey look we are looking to solve xyz um this is particularly what we're focused on and really driving that message so i would say that that to me is the crux of consultancy it doesn't matter what you're consulting in but it is kind of having that mindset of kenny yeah and karen and i i'd agree and mgopw i agree with both you guys um for me you know and i think as the servicenow ecosystem has grown and it customers have adopted a lot more of the platform it definitely has changed a little bit but for me especially like going from the customer world to the consultant world is just it's like it's like going at uh you know 20 miles an hour to 150 miles an hour right it's it's much faster you're getting exposed to more product and more uh applications right and you know for me i went from you know i worked at a hospital so you know our uh main lines of revenue was health care in supporting patients right um which was you know great but you know servicenow is kind of last on the list right you know so but when you go into the consulting world where you are the product essentially you know the company makes money off of my hours my billable work my implementations my services that i provide you know i become you know more important to the to the organization right and because you know especially if you're at a consulting firm that only does servicenow you're getting the opportunity to get your hands into everything right to say hey you know what i want to get into hr and and all right hey let's let's put you on a training let's get you shadowing let's get you down that path if you're at a customer you're kind of stuck to what products they own and and they've purchased um so that's what i loved about going to the consultant world uh from from hell from healthcare is just the pace i'm a very you know i like to go fast i always said it was you know it's green filled every six months right like there's a new contract coming in to try it exactly right constantly yeah no but going off of what the mayor said um it shocks me how consultancy is simultaneously the fastest thing i've ever had to do and the slowest to ramp up i can't tell y'all how many months i have spent on the bench waiting for my clearance to go through or something instance access it makes me want to cry yeah and and sharon sharon didn't even realize she was a consultant before coming onto this street that is not that challenging i uh i always thought of consultants as like the independent guys the ones who go out there and do their own things and not like if you're an implementation partner interfacing with customers every day that also counts as consultancy i have the tendency to just do what needs to be done in front of me and worry about the names later right um but to me now that i know that is consultancy consultancy is really about providing the customer the information they need to make the right decision and that is that's so many times as the business analyst or admin on the team what i had to do was get all of this data presented to them in a way that they're going to go in the best practice path and that and you also have to accept when they don't yeah you know yeah really hard part of consultancy you don't get to control the client right like you don't you just don't get to to make those decisions but you know pulling it back to like what you know what is that consultant i always i looked at the difference and it was a huge culture shock when i went from a consultancy to you know enterprise at servicenow um that's that time is money mindset right like every every every hour of my day when i was a consultant was parceled up and i told you know this is what i was working on this is the client i could build to you know when i switched to an enterprise level that kind of concept went away and and almost to the point i was i was almost appalled almost appalled that my team uh estimated their stories in days and not hours right i couldn't believe that i just couldn't believe it i love that fight tell me you're a consultant without telling me you're a consultant what's your opinion on story points um but that's also something really really really important to note is it's a very hard adjustment i've worked as at a consultant partner for most of my career i've never worked at a customer and i only other than that have worked well no i guess i started with a customer but that was very brief um i just came from clear sky which is a product partner and i'm so used to right now just being able to okay i'll put in five hours in the morning and five hours between the hours of like 7 00 pm and midnight and i'll be good but right now this first week at my new job i'm freaking out about how long it's taking me to figure this widget out and it's i'm just sitting here going oh god i'm billable again what am i doing with my life why did i do this to myself that's hey you get a lot of freedom but you you you need to be billable and you that i again it was like i loved being a consultant and and mike you and i were talking about this like that hard work that kind of comes out of it it it it shaped a lot of my career right like there's a lot of hard work that that it takes to be a consultant yeah and gabby to your point right like like that that i have to figure this solution out now like i i i learned a lot of lessons where i like i i'd give myself an hour i only ever give myself an hour to work on something after an hour if i've made no visible progress move on right it's those kinds of lessons that it's hard to learn you can't teach that right and it it takes that mindset to be a consultant i i would think that that that's the one thing too that i would say really defines a consultant to me is that it doesn't matter when you are needed or what is needed of you you're going to provide it um because that's what consultancy is right you're going to be there to actualize the solution if you're working 15 hours for a day um and you know sometimes you wake up at nine o'clock and you're like yeah i don't have anything i don't have any meetings so i'm gonna go do it again but when you are needed you are there and you're gonna deliver it right even if it's outside your wheelhouse you have no experience in that particular module you don't have any resources but um you're going to isolate the client from that particular issue that you're having and you're going to provide them with the consultancy the service that you have the ability to kind of solution for them yeah i agree and i disagree i i agree in that yes you may not have any resources but being part of a consultancy in a partner like glidefast for example your power is in the quantity of people you have in the varying experience so at casca i always felt comfortable being able to reach out to someone like zach fanning and going hey this story is kicking my butt what's going on and that is something you don't get at a customer whatsoever there's a lot of time yep customers community you got youtube you got the community you got google but you know that's it you don't have your slime but there's something else to be said though in that it is a lot easier to talk to your co-workers at a partner because you don't have to worry about disclosing customer information right yeah it is such a pain to censor screenshots and make sure i don't know anything on the community yeah or even on slack yeah yeah yeah so and and and it's i i think let's keep going right like that uh kearney you you touched on like never saying no to a task right never saying no right it doesn't matter like well okay to next time yeah to an extent i think dave had a great session on this with something you can say no to things when it's it's like let's say it's not you know i'm gonna say structurally feasible if it's you know architecturally doesn't make sense things like that but i'm i'm talking about if if i walk in as a consultant and i'm sitting there and i'm supposed to fix service i'm supposed to fix something on your service now instance and your ceo walks over to me and says hey can you help me debug this printer you know what i say yes absolutely 100 i don't know a lot about printers but absolutely let me help you right like it's saying yes to everything i i don't care if that you're gonna pay me to mop the floor as a consultant that's awesome right like it doesn't matter like honestly y'all there's been so many times where i was told to um go update these 200 records manually and there's no way to automate it so i just need to do it manually and it's like you need to learn and let go of things as a consultant but also know when you are responsible when you are the architect you need to know when to push back as well it's a very delicate balance yeah it's an article that's one thing i was going to definitely say is that the big big thing is also being able to delay the turn on the table um because sometimes you need to be the voice to say hey look i understand that you are asking for xyz these are the primary reasons why i would highly suggest not to and you lay out your case but then if they decide i still want you to stack this turd eight feet high okay i'll do that for you but then i'm out the door and document yeah cover your second cydney yeah but it's it's an art form and how you deliver that message right you can't just say hey it's this crappy idea exactly i'm not gonna do it it's it's like hey that's a great idea but you know if we did it this way then you wouldn't have issues upgrading and you know someone's not going to look at my code and be like what the hell is this let's talk about that because i've brought that up a few times on this stream right speaking client it's a different language it's a completely different language and i'm not saying it's it's not a it's not misleading and it's not you you like if someone's like turn it to your point right stack this turret eight feet high it's like and mike to your point right like okay that's probably not best practice right well we still want it done it's like okay right you you have to learn how to speak that and they're gonna ask you for your opinion right there's times where you're gonna get that money ball right like what are you what are you gonna you know what what's your answer to this and you've got to be able to just come out with a litany of technical stuff then there's sometimes like sometimes you're sitting in a meeting where you can't speak technically you're at an upper level you're you're talking to upper management you have to read the room there's so many skills like there's so much that goes into it that it's so hard to learn honestly it's like the most terrifying thing because often you're on these high stress high pressure situations where let's just say hypothetically a local admin who should not have been improv reading a script and now 3 000 records are broken um and this is pre roll back of the fixed scripts um you end up in these high stress situations with very stressed out very up high people who are demanding answers from you immediately and one of the biggest things that i've had to learn is how to intelligently say that i don't know because that gets you a lot more respect and it gets you trusted a lot easier than just bullshitting your way through an answer how do you say that yeah oh yes please speak to sharon barnes uh she's got this that's how i say it sharon definitely you have a background in hr right and that's one of the things that i've noticed um in my dealing with folks that speak hr they are not i.t people so you have to change the way that you address the way you talk about technical issues um so i mean i i don't i don't want to put you on the spot sharon but i know that you have kind of expensive background have you kind of noticed having to change cadence when you're oh that's that is something i have done for years because in many of my roles i don't know if i'm going to be talking to the ceo or whether i'm going to be talking to joe schmo client on the side of the street like figuring out what that matters to them is the most important thing because if you know what matters to them you can help them get to that goal in the fastest way i also really like to present them with two options and tell them the costs and one of my options the one i want them to take is going to sound great and the one that does not is gonna sound like let me show you how this is going to be tragic for you in a nice and pleasant and positive way to where hopefully they don't notice i've given them to very very different options but it's all about this is what it costs you if we go that way that brings up my favorite point don't believe what they say they are telling you what the what they think the solution to their problem is they are not telling you what their problem is so always ask why and always dig deeper yeah it's not it's not don't believe what they say as much as it is um you know sometimes what they're saying is not what they want right it's it's hey i'd like a nice way of saying it this is why i let sharon talk for me right this i be this is again that's that client speak right it's like i can say something negative without it sounding super negative right that's that's you got to put those liens and slants on things but you know it's kind of loud i mean i think that that that really speaks to the same thing we were talking about earlier is when you're in house there's often myopia right you only see the thing that's in front of you and often when somebody comes to a consultancy they say hey this is the problem that we're having it's massive and as a consultant you can kind of sit back and you look at it you say well the problem that you're trying to solution for is predicated on this this this and this downstream like uh or upstream from that particular process and so you can kind of sit back take a look at it uh at the holistic process of the whole life cycle and say all right well if we address this one thing that's upstream uh we don't have to solution for what you're asking for right and like that's the big thing once once you realize that you know you start to be able to really critically um come into an instance and start asking questions because that's the big thing is asking questions first off hey can you walk me through what you're trying to accomplish and in that process you end up unlocking kind of really what needs to be done yeah and a lot of times they don't realize because like like it's been said earlier they are so entrenched in the weeds and their day-to-day processes that they don't realize that no you don't have to print out a pdf to scan it in the next day because servicenow's not going to drop your tables every night that doesn't have to be a part of your process we can move past it wow was that really a process that you came into gaby no comment oh wow okay all right mike what do you like what do you what what is the advice that you give people at glidefest right when they're coming in for like you know interacting with clients how do you how do you prep them for that um you know well i guess i'll take a little bit of the approach of you know if somebody's coming to me from uh that's never consulted before right that's that's coming from a customer you know i think we touched on it a little bit you know you've been doing it already you've just been doing it kind of at a smaller scale when you work with other departments and you gather requirements and then you trans translate that into stories and and get that built and solution and guide them down best practice you know um so that that's really all it is you know we have glide fast consulting university which we're taking you know kids uh younger younger adults out of college and that maybe never consulted sometimes first job first professional job you know so i always um i always say be on you know be on your a game you know be on your a-game every single day you know make you know and it i don't mean it like make no mistakes like it's okay to make mistakes try not to make them twice but um you know be bulletproof you know if you're you know when i'm sharing my screen i'm making sure i'm sharing one thing right there's not going to be a message that's going to pop up i'm very aware of sharing one you know i'm only sharing that window that i'm sharing you know yeah i'm you know so be bulletproof you know don't let don't make silly mistakes because that could crush you just by sharing your screen right especially in the remote world we're in right right you know um you know be professional don't you know you never have a second chance at making a first impression so you know all that and and just you know for anything is work hard you know i message you mark like yeah some some of your last things i feel like we're missing out on the key thing here is like it takes a lot to get to be an expert in the space or even intermediate right so it's it takes a lot of effort i mean i i carried my laptop a laptop around for for two i still do but you know it took me it took me a good two years at least a year to get you know semi comfortable and that was like working all day in servicenow going home at night trying to figure it out and luckily i had a little group of us trying to figure it out together and we had a great community and used all of our resources you know chuck jace all the blogs the guru right and uh but man it's not the reason why you know i think we're we were paid very well and this is a great career for us is because not everybody can do it you know and um it takes a lot of dedication and you know look it's friday night guys where are we we're not out partying about service now you know what i mean like so that's what it is and i feel like it's there's like you know the only reason we're not partying is because it's not knowledge week yeah next week i know i'm tired oh my god let's be real oh god next week soon crazy we you know we we we play hard but we work hard too right oh yeah mike i this is this is why i love bringing as many people as i possibly can to these streams because i had messaged you and said hey and you you gave me some perspective into this and i'm like you're right like i'm it looks so easy when you look at me or you or someone you know social media instagram it looks so easy like what you're missing is you know 3 a.m phone calls what you're missing is you know having your point right like you said this on break point with chuck like having your laptop with you at a house party like i for 10 years i didn't like i slept with like a laptop at my side because i was on call like there's all sorts of things that happen like that you you you've taken this responsibility you you know you own it and and i want everyone to understand that you know consulting first of all is not for everyone it isn't like there's a lot of people that want to go in and put their nine to five and then they're out that's perfectly fine that's okay that's not what this is it's it's much more dedication than that you're going to become an expert you're going to you know in sme you're going to a subject matter expert you're going to rise to the right the top of the ranks there and that's really what's going to start kind of showing off right is hey you you're doing really well in in like let's just say you're in a customer and you've got that itch like you've got that itch of like there's got to be more to this like there's something that i'm missing i'm like that's consultant all day long baby like that's that's who that's who i try to you know send send towards the consultancy route yeah and i see people you know and i've tried to especially early on my career i've tried to like do you got to get into the service now thing it's great you know like here's here's a dev instance let's go you know and like here's some stuff it's not for everybody and like people's like it you know people especially when they're motivated by just by money like all right when am i going to make 100k you said i can make 100k doing this like when is it i you know like it's it's not like just because you're you know this and you got to be careful with entitlement it's probably everywhere right it's like man just you know this is not an easy thing and even if you do consulting or you are in the servicenow world doesn't mean you're automatically going to make that six figures like you know if you're lucky enough to get an opportunity to get brought into the service now space and you know just because you're on a project and just cause maybe you're billing but there's a lot that goes into that to make sure you're protected shielded you have architects watching out for you you know if you have enough if you're if you if there's like three junior devs and an architect on a project that architect has to work harder to make sure you're not you know messing things up and you know teaching you and guiding you and mentoring you right so you know there's a lot that goes into that and i think sometimes i see it in the space where people are just like well i'm a servicenow developer i should be making what everyone else makes and it's not that easy it's not the same yeah i mean seriously oh yeah it's it's got to be overheard and i've i've known you for when you're at maine up in maine yeah yeah seven seven years probably yeah something important too though is that in my opinion salary is largely based off of your negotiating power and how you can sell yourself to the person that you're discussing things with because there are people who get criminally underpaid and there's people who get criminally overpaid and they have very varying experience levels now um guillermo um in our opinion how much experience does someone need to have with servicenow before they start at a servicenow consultant in my opinion you don't need any special amount of any special amount of um of service in our experience the important thing and the thing that differentiates it a lot is that in consultancy you're going to be more exposed to customers more likely so you need a lot more soft skills in my opinion and you can pick up the service now along the way but there are different expectations as part of being a partner and or being a uh customer is that partners expect you to get a lot of search because certs help them and that is a large monetary investment that they're putting into you which you should also account as part of your compensation so when you're in interviews you should always ask what the training budget is if you're in a consultancy how does certs help the partner um doesn't it literally isn't that literally how you get the elite status the quantity of certs the elite status is so watered down anybody everybody's elite give me a non-elite partner everybody's elite we're glidefast actually is the most certified elite partner in the world i think certifications help the individual more than anything because 100 explain to me why you're marquis you're going crazy uh you have to ex if i'm interviewing you right and i've interviewed probably hundreds of people if i'm interviewing you and i'm like hey and you and i get on the phone you say hey i'm certified in hr itsm uh csm right it just brings a level of comfort right like okay and and people will fight me on this all the time they'll say search don't mean anything and i'm like it's not that it doesn't it doesn't mean everything it doesn't mean just because you have those certs you know hey experience absolutely 100 but if you don't have those certs you have to explain it right you have to i say hey do you have any starts no i let them expire and that's and didn't pay for it right if you have them you don't have to explain it so so that's the thing though certs are i agree certs are very very important for the individuals but what search show is a commitment to the platform and to yourself professionally to develop further bingo bingo dedication it shows you here yeah it shows that you didn't let them lapse i still have my search active i i don't have i don't have csm i failed the hr i'm never going to take that again but i still have i know yes itsm and i'm never letting that expire because if i do i probably can't pass it again i haven't had vrmi twice yeah 80. by the way by the way by the way delta season delta c alpha season right don't do what i do and wait until the last day y'all um be smart i i build the now learning platform i stopped to take my delta so you go take your deltas everybody yeah continue so i i like to get um i'm so used to calling you lombardo i'm so sorry you can call me i'll change my name for you um i'd like to get your opinion on karthik's question okay why are consulting so after sow then customer satisfaction why are why are basically why do you chase an sow to completion much more than they perceive partners chase customer satisfaction i i i think that's a big differentiator from glidefast and all the other partners i don't care about the srw i care about the long-term partnership i care about you know it long-term success right because that phase one this is this is the misconception that every i think a lot of my competitors have is they're just chasing numbers i'm not chasing numbers i'm chasing world domination i'd like to argue that it is your role as the ceo yeah to chase world documentation and that you hire project managers to deal with the sows for you yes but it's it's the mentality right it's like again like what are you going for we're going for a growth we're growing we're going for you know success with our customers and with servicenow and you know it the the the numbers are important you know so the company is profitable i can make payroll and you know we're a healthy business and we can pay people yes absolutely that's important you need in obviously shut out all the engagement managers out there we need them right you can't just run around giving away free work but it's you know for me i'm not chasing dollars dollars like i'm chasing dominance i'm chasing and like like you know if you if you think you know talk about michael jordan i got michael jordan i don't know if you can see him right here right michael jordan he you know what when you what do you know how many wins he had do you know how many like how many points he had no but you know he's the best basketball player of all time arguably you know so like that's what i'm going for i'm going for the michael jordan story not for the you know uh you know bill gates has 110 million or something you know so i think that's you know that's something that i wanted to talk about too yeah something i wanted to talk about too because you know we were talking about the whole concept of salary hitting 100k or whatever it is and like that's one of the things i think anybody that's been in the consulting space in the partner space you realize like hey we can pay our bills right um if you're working it long enough you can pay your bills it's it's cool but i mean how many of us have turned down jobs that are 15 20 more than you're making because it's not money you realize it's not about money it's about the fact that do i have an ecosystem um do i have people that are gonna invest in me uh are going to really care about the success of a project and to your point mike you know there's a ton of people out there who are going to you know nail somebody doing so w um things get messed up all the time um everybody's an apartment engagement that goes belly up and everything's on fire um but if you have people there working with you if you have the resources other people are online at midnight two o'clock i'm trying to make sure that that goal live goes correctly that is worth you know x amount of money whatever it is because you know that like i'm not by myself right yep and sometimes that's the big thing yep culture something about being in a team is that i think karthik's question is very we have to understand the perspective that it comes from because from a partner builds a team in order to have different people care about different aspects of it so you have the engagement managers caring about csa and you have other people caring about meeting the check lines uh what i wanted to say is that the perspective of the question almost makes it biased towards why are consultants so bad chasing sow instead of customer satisfaction and i'd like to argue that they chase both because technically you do not get paid if the sow is not met like facts that's contractually literally why they're important facts thank you eww let's go csa is important so they bring you more business mine too she's got a business mind too love it well i like the sows because they tell you what your goal is unless you're in the government look like unless you're in the government space then they just implement drivers now um sows have been a double-edged sword for me at some times they have been very useful in helping the customer adhere to the requirements and making sure that we are able to implement what they have purchased and that they get a successful go live instead of getting distracted and wasting all our hours on the way there but additionally it's been very tricky because sometimes delivering upon what has been contractually agreed upon by non-technical people is very very difficult um so mike which is better certs or great examples of work completed um well it's kind of hard to communicate the the the great work completed right sometimes i think it's a combination you know i i honestly i take the experience all any day i take the experience every day but i think the answer is we really kind of need both you know and i don't think you need 20 certs and the master you know architect is is a whole nother thing you know but you know just to show hey yeah i have my admin i have my app dev i have my c i have my cis itsm like and i have five years experience you know and um so i i think i think the answer is different for every every person right because everyone has their own journey it's being able to tell your story and i think you said it earlier kind of sell yourself a little bit of hey here's the value that i can provide and i was on a podcast with chuck tomasi and he said you know even even just you know somebody who creates a little blog and shows like hey i built this cool game on service now it shows creativity it shows again passion like somebody that shows passion to me and that they care and that they want to be here they want to work i'll take that any day of the week you know what what i what turns me off is when you know egos like and like someone that's like i don't need to be on a team or like anti anti-kind of team player like i i'd i'd rather take somebody that's less experienced less knowledgeable that's more hungry and it's not going to give excuses things like that you know and that's going to work hard so that brings up something for me that that's really interesting because i think all of us have been in the infrastructure for a while you realize there's a lot of old time like there are some old-timers in the system who have been you know since aspen and you know just busted ass in the infrastructure a lot of the time um previously you have people that have solutions something uh that worked once right and and they they keep implementing it that same way over and over again as a consultant i think one of the big skills that you realize is a solution that works once may not work in the exact same scenario at a different company right it's like you're talking a specific one that i worked and got your help with a couple a couple of them maybe half a dozen but i mean really and truly that's that's one of the things is that uh in consultancy you always have to be open to the fact that like the platform changes it matures and evolves it's currently in the middle of an evolution right and um even if you do have an implementation for a partner that is very very similar to what you've done before you have to be open and available to like not just rest on your laurels and and be willing to adapt and change so really great willing to learn yeah yeah yeah cause you're never gonna be you're gonna get humbled every day i mean the platform changes every day i mean it's you know it's scary it's scary but a customer is very easy to let egos flow because you're the owner you're the platform owner you run service now and you say how the show goes as a consultant you're going to get schooled by your customers you're going to get schooled by your co-workers and you have to stay humble and ready to learn and willing to to stay open and learning new things like andrew said um in in really quick take in my opinion everything you need to get into the industry is to show you are committed to the industry get your csa beyond that whether you get cert or not is up to whether you're at a partnership your personal motivation etc sharon in your experience i know you have not had this experience but what do you think what benefits come from uh what benefits does coming from a customer background help with transitioning to consulting i know that you have a lot of outside of servicenow experience um years of selling and you have amazing interpersonal skills and amazing soft skills um i want to be you when i grow up so what do you think about that question um of having those sort of industry specific skill sets to where you're speaking it's natural for you to speak the the same language as the the company you're going into is that the question i think it's more if i worked at a customer that was my first experience actually i worked at percent and i implemented something with a partner i was the admin and then i am now a consultant wow i didn't realize i had literally relevant experience to this um sorry sharon i'll throw you the next one um but the um honestly i have learned a lot ever since that first implementation and if i ever see the um the the solution consultants that i worked with i will apologize to them for giving them a four out of five because i let my bitterness with our internal politics reflect upon the work that the consultancy did because of my perceived because i perceived that they lacked action when in reality it was my organization so having that perspective as a customer moving forward into consultancy really helped me realize the the that i did not want to hear as a customer and the that i should not say as a consultant like there are some really easy ways to demean people without realizing it if you start talking trash about how the current system is you're out quite literally do not ever talk down on anybody else's work find respectful ways to comment on roadblocks and obstacles sharon what are some good strategies on how to say negative things positively because you're really good at this so find find something valuable that they've contributed even with the most raw or inappropriate solution that you can come in and replace um and a former boss actually said this perfectly don't tell them their baby is ugly you can't do it it's not allowed you cannot tell them their baby is ugly it's their baby they think it's gorgeous so find something about it that has value because there's something that you've learned from what they've built there is some feature that they did succeed in creating even if even if it actually takes five clicks to enter data into one field in the legacy application that you're going for and they've got like 80 fields on this form that they have to fill out i yeah i would have to have quit working with that system if i came into their organization and they told me that that was what i was going to use luckily i came in we were already at the point where we want something better we don't know what it is and that's something that i see people step in all the time they put their foot in their mouths by talking bigger than they should so they come in they see something and they start on it because they think they're the big bad consultant and that they're here to fix everything but then that's what causes the customer to not feel heard because if you come in with blinders and you just start insulting everything you see and not understand the context of why it exists the way it does and why it has been the process they've used for the past 20 years no matter if they're printing pdfs and then rescanning them the next day um there's a reason why that's going on and whether it is someone's ego trip or it is this is what made sense if you go in and immediately just trash talk their process and they're they're gonna get defensive and that's gonna be the worst way to start your engagement so we had this discussion earlier about talking about the skills of the dev versus the skills of a consultant and and that's one of the big things is like i i know people that come out of code school like tomorrow that are a thousand times better developers than i am but the one thing that i have been able to do in my career is i try to kind of understand when to dial back the technical and when to dial up the the cheat kissing and and ask having um to make people feel good and and that is the big thing about consultancy is being able to come in and say it's gonna be okay yeah we're all set and then deals kind of go to the other technical stakeholders and be like hey look this is what's occurring in their minds this is how they're seeing the situation um i get that technically it's not feasible the way they're proposing but it's really surfing those lines it's really it's kind of living in this that liminal space between like being a hardcore developer and and being somebody who is completely non-technical and like and some things are important yeah those are super important something i do every time i start a new project is i write down the customers names and their position and their interactions with each other because there has been there was a really bad time where one time i said something to someone in front of somebody else where the target audience now felt um attacked because of the context that i said the thing i said and even though it was correct and on a one-on-one basis they would have agreed with me and understood the fact that i said this in front of their peer and or boss now caused a very very tense situation where they had to defend and they couldn't there's he's there's he's there's politics everywhere you got to be very careful as a consultant not to step on toes i think i think the the lesson to take away from that right is it every every consultant is in sales every single one right it doesn't matter who you are if you're an admin you're a developer it doesn't matter who you are you're in sales you need to be selling the the the company you need to be selling yourself selling your skills it's it's a sales pitch right you've got to keep up that sales pitch and and and maintain that you know the the the professionalism the the the integrity of your work right because that's what it is it's it's it boils down to you know your professionalism your your your ability to make your company look good reflects on your work there's a reason those contracts pay out in installments so that way you're basically held accountable for the rest of your contract your behavior your skills i mean your behavior and your work are going to continually affect whether the customer chooses it's like being in a relationship you choose to be in a relationship with people every day it's not just a one-time thing your customer chooses to stay with you and not send that contract over to glidefast and get them to finish it up which customer we talk about [Laughter] oh man i think hey guys i uh i i lost power at home and uh somehow um gabby thank you for for keeping everybody entertained i think that's how it sounded like you took charge there for a second i wasn't quite sure because my headphones cut out i'm so sorry no it's okay you know we're all natural born leaders and someone uh took took took charge so i wouldn't be so embarrassed which is great um unfortunately i think what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna i'm gonna cut us off a little early about 10 minutes early but what i'd like to do unfortunately i don't know i don't think i could put you in solo layouts man we're just getting yeah we're just gonna cut us off we got a crew here right there dude we got a crew we've got we've got tons of engagement chats lighting up like crazy and i want to go out on a high instead of like maybe you know what we'll do four a.m with drinks until four a.m better than everybody oh man yeah and then for you mark hey you know what i tell you what let's do this again i'll i'll ping everybody we'll get it all scheduled we'll do you know we'll come up with another another topic that everybody's very passionate about because it sounds like we need to have consulting as a skill set part two i don't know like um it doesn't seem like we even scratched the surface to all of this there's a lot to go but yeah i have a question what is this panel like what do you guys want for like the next topic because i want a lot of i want a lot out of the show i want a lot out of the show i want a really nice glide fast hoodie oh i got you i got i got the perfect one i have the perfect swag either personally all right look can i show you can you give me two seconds and i'll go grab it yeah let me see if i can make you like oh yeah i can't make you so locations i have stated the fact that the fact is i will happily help you on slack for swag i will happily help you i know but that's did you ask oh yeah hey kiernan accepted a job and then never came here oh so one of our developers rachel designed this and made this sipping on winning juice [Music] wait a minute i'll get everybody on the call one the phoenix dev slacking or the the swag exchange what come on this is the where it's it's it's fun we're having fun and we're getting some branded swag that just happened to be given to us but it just happened to be donated right to your door in a cardboard box that's it um but but along with his question though um i feel like this is a topic that i had no idea i had this much to talk about and i write a little bit about it on women now. you should go check it out i have a lot of great uh blog posts for people getting started in the industry um i have a fantastic one about working at a partner versus a customer it's fantastic but i actually [Laughter] socials um but legit i didn't know i had these many things to say about this and i had a whole bunch of fun here today i feel like consulting as a skill set is a great topic to get people to rant it is yeah and yes there's a lot of appetite in me uh for people to really understand how to break into it and um i i think if you're not in it it's super intimidating but um there's a lot of us particularly the women now that you guys are putting out a ton of content about being able to um really lay out the path it is not that difficult as you said it requires dedication and a desire to do it um there's a blind fast academy i mean you guys are offering uh paths for a lot of people to come up there's other ones for veterans there's a ton of stuff out there um but i think yeah there's a huge appetite and all of us want other people to join right yeah i have never met anybody in the service infrastructure that says get out of here kool-aid we're all looking to have people jumping yeah but here's the thing though all that means nothing if the person's not working their butt off exactly honestly nothing the the the veteran program skill bridge um you know we were a big part of getting that going with service now um and you know glide fast university whatever whatever it is if you're not working your butt off 24 hours a day you know and maybe not 24 but you know 12. no 24. you know you're not gonna get there you're not gonna get this is something we have jeff lemonis real quick you go sorry one last thing we have to recognize that like we have to we have to tell people that hey guys just cause you're whatever doesn't mean you're entitled to this like this is something you gotta work for you know i'm like yeah a little bit of tough love i guess old school but no i love it has never been a moment i i used to do this a lot when i was younger i used to put so much of myself into people and i would spend so much of my time trying to motivate them yeah and give them external motivation go take the csa i'll get you all these resources i'll help you out i'm here and i would spend so much of my energy trying to live people's lives for them now i have a very very here is my google drive of resources you can use it it is up to you now and once you show that you want to do this and you prove it to me by getting your csa that's when we can talk and i mean if it's the money thing i'll help you find the 450 dollars to get the take the class and take the cert but you have to show that you want to do this uh my mentor the guy who got me into service now literally the guy who took a chance on me to get into i.t when i told him that i fixed my car by youtubing a fix and going to a dumpster and pulling the part out of another car and saving 350 dollars um he has always told me his name is jeff lemonis he gets super mad at me when i reference him and i don't like give his full profile like jeff lemon is that citrus flows um just go do it he always he always told me you build your career outside of work like you can't expect a partner or a customer or anybody to chase after you to take certifications to pay for everything that you're going to need to do it's great to get these as perks but it's not owed to you whatsoever you have to demonstrate you know who had the best early on who told who who kind of taught me that was travis tolson he he he uh he brought like some new people into gladfest and he said because we were talking i think we were talking about that of like hey dude like i would invest in people and then it'd just be a big zero and it's a whole waste of my time he's like i'll i'll send somebody these just like you said i'll send somebody these 10 things like do that call me when you've done that and then i'll talk to you you know and like lauren toomey's a perfect example he that was one of like his uh mentees kind of and she's a rock star i mean honestly in my opinion no development experience you know and she did it on her own you know and she's she's a she's a badass now you know travis is amazing travis and sarah have taught me so much and they teach me things every day um but something that i have noticed and i think it's the next evolution of our community and where i'm really pushing our community to go to next and jace is doing a great job of this literally the content is out there now sure it might be two or three versions old by the time you get to it yeah yes when you get started it's hard to discern things like this but the content is out there it is literally now the problem of reaching it and this is something that servicenow has done to themselves by lacking the internal centralized documentation but in in which has caused the community to make up for it and provide all these resources which is great but now it's everywhere it's disjointed there is no one path of doing it except the servicenow developer developer.servicenow.com website they have amazing learning paths and they have gotten to be way better the website is improving every day and that is a very centralized free resource to access to get started and have a linear path now learning has risen up in the most recent months and year the most the most steady so far has been it the problem isn't the content existing the problem is giving people access to it without overwhelming them yeah yeah exactly why i'm here same here yeah yeah sundowns.com is why i'm here yeah all right i gave every sharon anything you want to pitch any any final any final thoughts i want to summarize what all of y'all said as what you look for as people coming into this and and what they need to have as one acronym ace attitude cultural effort if you have those three qualities you can learn to do this you gotta have the attitude to want to do it and the excitement and the energy and you got to put in the effort nobody's going to carry you over the finish line yeah and as long as you're coachable and keep learning because the industry evolves so quickly there's always so fast which is great i love learning that's one of my favorite things but you gotta stay coachable 100 100 absolutely that's an awesome acronym right there that's great yeah i love that i don't like fake it to make it i don't like that honestly though that was really yeah it feels really appropriate for the that i've done these past five years like let's be real um the amount of times i sent like giffies to my friends going help sos like not like real quick yeah the reality of it all is that like i i get what you're talking about we're all faking it all the time we're all figuring it out but the thing is is that we're doing it towards um the goal of trying to provide service so we're going to give our best faith effort go ahead pound our ass into the ground until we find a solution or a fix and if we can't find a solution or a fix we're going to come back as a team and say hey look this is a situation that's not going to happen but yeah i mean we're all figuring it out as we go along in everything so faking i want to mention yeah faking until you're making it is valid i agree with karen and sorry mayor it's okay that's all right we can disagree yeah can we point out the fact real quick that not once in this call did we mention javascript or like developer or coding or anything like that that's the most important takeaway it's your soft skills y'all get get out of the development dungeon like i like to call it and go talk to people it sucks and i hate it i'm i'm looking on your profile right now on linkedin right and i see your resume up there and it's a servicenow service portal with it's badass i mean like that's what we're talking about it's like yeah making yourself different and like you know i i kind of you know i always see um what's his name always posting about resumes and i'm like what is a resume like i don't care about your resume like i don't care tell me what your experience is and what you know tell me something something exciting like i don't want to yeah i'm going to read your resume i'm not going to read i'm sorry i'm not going to actually read about an application you built i want you to tell me about it you know sell it to me you know yeah those soft skills give me the story like because if you can if you can tell me the story of how you how you built this for yourself you can tell me why you built it for a client right it's going to translate we're going to ask you the technical questions we're going yeah exactly that that's gonna be a definite you know can you put a can you put a glide record should you put a glide record query in a in a client script you know like we're gonna go through that and we're gonna you know so don't do that other yeah i know you got four egomaniacs in here i'm sorry i did this to you i'm sorry um but like i was so he let's go oh yeah sarah said it's really important recruiters care about resumes that is literally it i can't tell y'all how many times recruiters not having a degree and not having like all the keywords on my resume hasn't helped me because once i'm able to talk to people and tell them like i love this line because it's like feels like the one thing you shouldn't say but i always say that i'm not going to be the developer who's going to sit here coding for you for 12 hours straight i'm going to be the developer who throws her face at this problem for three days straight until i figure it out and i make sure to get it done and delivered like i'll work a 60 hour three day week and um to get this portal ready for you before monday um and that's what that's what matters is what about you what you bring your personality what you bring to the table okay i'll let go mark i think that's a great segue gabby i think that's a great segue because next week i'm going to talk about burnout and how you cannot do can i come back 60 like no nice to you're too nice of these people you're getting you're you're creating a generation of of like you know i don't need to work you know you gotta no come some of the highest paid industries in the world it's true i mean it's true it's true i would just like to add the caveat that i am in no way able to comment on the mayor's leadership nor glide fast as a company but that general sentiment it is very i agree tough love is important egos are bad yeah but corporate abuse and corporate yeah no one's getting corporate abuse but i'm saying culture there's people that are are in this ecosystem that i think are not full full experience that are like you know that just just just because they're in the servicenow space you know are like hey i'm i'm entitled to a certain amount of money or you know 100 hey i don't you know why do i have to work 40 hours a week like i mean man when i was at a choreo i was billing 60 hours a week yeah the problem and i was doing recruiting and that was not good you know but that was my choice and right you know and i'm not his choice in the the beautiful thing about this space when you're that good in this and this goes back to the resumes thing is we can go work wherever we want so if i were to say to somebody hey you have to work 60 hours this week they're going to be like screw you i'm going to go i'm going to go to a show like you know i'm not going to say it yes but you know like another partner you know like they people can go we can go wherever we want go ahead karen so i i gotta i gotta head out here in a sec um but i will say the one my last thing i have to say about consultancy when i started none of this was white i had hair on here so like it i i swear to god all this is gone i have gained about 30 pounds and my hair is gone yeah um so let's see but you're not one of the people i'm talking about you're not one of the people on top you're one of the people that everyone else is talking about burning out right and right right you're a rare breed you're not you know like not everybody people i think we need to preach okay let's let's meet halfway let's create a heart a strong work ethic but not an abusive burnout work ethic all right how about difference yeah that's different i leave a job when i was possible because i believe in this yes and i want to make it happen your choice that's the difference people weren't possible but not expected yeah don't expect this yeah go sharon you're too nice for this that's better sometimes the leadership will make or break and the culture will make or break 100 i i can say from personal experience i can do 80 hours a week for about eight years and then i'm toast also say the thing around that is the first 40 maybe 50 hours can be really good work eventually you get to diminishing returns of effectiveness and i think that is what we should explore the next time we get together let's do it burn out and and how to make sure you're still productive when the crunch needs to happen yeah i love sharon that was such a great segue to end the show mark take it away thank you yeah yeah no that's great um thank you so much sharon everybody thank you and chat for for for being with us thank you so much to my panelists like this has been so much fun obviously we're over i have no power in my house except for my lights are working in here because i've got them on a ups like thank you so much everybody like this has been so much fun this has probably been the best like live stream we've done so far but it's been the worst technically so um same same time next week 5 30 uh uh pst 8 30 est if you're on that side of the the coast um otherwise do the conversion yourself uh but thank you so much again for everybody uh i'll put links in the chat for everything and um yeah peace out thank you bye thanks everybody sondubs.com yes developer.service.com yeah thank you thanks everybody thanks for being on thanks sharon