Articles, Blogs, Videos, Podcasts, Share projects - Experiences from the field

 

 

Hi there,

 

On November 1st, 2016, I started my ServiceNow journey.

 

I knew almost nothing about ServiceNow other than its name.

 

My first day was at the office. My second day was already at a customer.

 

Ten years later, I'm an 11-time ServiceNow MVP.

 

That sentence makes it sound like there was some brilliant career plan behind all of this.

 

There wasn't.

 

And since ServiceNow University recently started its Learn Out Loud campaign, sharing not just the polished outcome, but also the wins, challenges, wrong turns and everything in between, I thought my ten-year anniversary might be a good moment to do exactly that.

 

Because if you only know me through the ServiceNow ecosystem, you probably know a very different version of my story.

 

You might know me from Virtual Agent.

 

You might know me from Instance Scan.

 

You might know me from articles about the Now Platform, database footprint, upgrades or whatever subject happened to catch my attention.

 

Maybe you know me as that guy who gets a new release as early as possible, goes through the release notes and starts digging for the undocumented, documenting the undocumented.

 

Maybe you've seen me on the (Unofficial) Live Coding Happy Hour, answering Community questions, writing articles or posting something on LinkedIn.

 

Or maybe you simply recognize my name because it has had "MVP" next to it for quite a few years.

 

That's the polished part.

 

What you don't see is the rest.

 

You don't see the kid growing up with very little, in a difficult home situation.

 

You don't see someone who used sport partly as an escape from that home situation.

 

You don't see someone getting laid off from a job he enjoyed.

 

You don't see someone entering a ServiceNow partner on November 1st, 2016 knowing practically nothing about ServiceNow.

 

You don't see the certifications I didn't pass on the first attempt. Or sometimes even on the second attempt.

 

You don't see the countless evenings spent studying, experimenting in a PDI and reading the Community.

 

You don't see me watching basically every Academy, Office Hours, Ask the Expert and Live Coding Happy Hour video I could find, Chuck Tomasi's Community videos, you name it.

 

And not just the new ones.

 

I went backwards and watched what had already been published in the years before I even started with ServiceNow.

 

Literally everything.

 

You also don't see that for years my normal job was combined with professional basketball, studying, certifications and all the hours I voluntarily put into the Community.

 

And you probably don't see that the guy who seemed to smile all the time wasn't always as happy underneath as that smile might have suggested.

 

So perhaps my ten-year ServiceNow story should start quite a bit before ServiceNow.

 

Where I came from

 

I didn't grow up in a wealthy family.

 

Far from it.

 

We lived in one of the poorer parts of Lelystad. Money was always an issue. Holidays basically didn't exist. New clothes and toys weren't something you could simply take for granted.

 

But the financial side wasn't the hardest part.

 

My father was an alcoholic. There was a lot of arguing and shouting at home, and not much interest in how school went, how sports went, what I was doing or how I was feeling.

 

A lot of things other children learn naturally at home - socially, emotionally or simply about growing up - I had to figure out myself.

 

My mother was very different. She cared for the family, worked hard and later went back to school herself. When money was short, she would even spend her summer break working shifts in a factory to help pay overdue bills.

 

I probably learned something from both of them. From my mother, the value of working hard and caring. And from my father, plenty of examples of how I didn't want to live my life.

 

For a very long time, my way of dealing with much of this was simple:

 

Stay busy.

 

Basketball became my escape

 

I started coaching when I was 14. At first it was obviously at the lowest level and completely voluntary.

 

But gradually it became more serious.

 

I joined committees and board activities while still very young. At only 23, in May 2006, I was made an honorary member of my basketball club in Lelystad. In January 2010, I was awarded Sports Volunteer of the Year in Lelystad.

 

The coaching also kept progressing.

 

Local teams became regional selections. I was involved briefly with the Dutch women's national program as an assistant coach. Later I coached the women's team in Zwolle at the second national level.

 

And then came a phone call.

 

The head coach of the men's professional team in Zwolle called me.

 

I joined.

 

I would stay for seven years.

 

Those years gave me experiences I wouldn't trade for anything. We became national champions. We played European basketball. We travelled to places such as Cyprus, Israel, Austria, Latvia, Ukraine, Hungary. I worked with professional players and staff and experienced championships, painful losses, transfers, illness and some very difficult personal situations within a team.

 

It also taught me a mentality that I later took into ServiceNow.

 

Preparation matters.

 

Sharing knowledge matters.

 

And if your competition has three times your budget, doing the same as everyone else probably isn't going to be enough.

 

We proved that by becoming national champions with a fraction of the budget of some competitors.

 

But there was another side.

 

Professional basketball wasn't my full-time job.

 

I already had one of those.

 

The road to ServiceNow

 

After almost a year backpacking through Australia, I came back to the Netherlands and eventually found my way into ITSM at a consultancy company, 2e2 Consulting.

 

I started working with HP software: HP Service Center, Service Manager, Asset Center, Asset Manager, Change Control Manager, Release Control, Connect-IT.

 

Eventually I moved on and joined the largest bank in The Netherlands, Rabobank.

 

I enjoyed the work, especially switching to Operations Orchestration, and Rabobank gave me enough flexibility to combine work with basketball.

 

Then came a massive reorganization.

 

Out of 59,500 employees, 20,500 jobs were cut.

 

Mine was one of them.

 

Getting laid off hurt more than I initially admitted to myself. I became negative about it, including toward some of the people who were able to stay. 

 

But while all of that was happening, something else had already started.

 

The CEO of Paphos, a ServiceNow boutique consultancy and partner, had contacted me.

 

People from Paphos working elsewhere at Rabobank had apparently mentioned my name to him.

 

At first I had to hold him off. I didn't yet officially know whether I would lose my job, and I wasn't going to resign voluntarily while a redundancy process and financial compensation was underway.

 

Then the letter was handed over to me.

 

The same day, I sent him a LinkedIn message.

 

Two weeks later, we were signing a two-page employment contract.

 

And on November 1st, 2016, my ServiceNow journey started.

 

From zero to senior in six months

 

I started at Paphos knowing basically nothing about ServiceNow.

 

Day one: office.

 

Day two: customer.

 

By April 2017, about six months later, I was already working as a senior.

 

That didn't happen because I was some ServiceNow genius.

 

I simply went all in.

 

Part of the reason was insecurity, not emotionally, but practically. I had left a permanent situation after being made redundant and now had a one-year contract. I wanted security. I wanted a permanent contract. I wanted to grow. I wanted to become senior. And yes, I wanted to earn more.

 

So I studied.

 

A lot.

 

During the day I worked with ServiceNow. Outside work I read the Community platform, experimented in my PDI, watched videos and tried things.

 

At the same time, basketball continued.

 

Looking back, my basketball mentality transferred almost one-to-one into ServiceNow.

 

I gave 120%.

 

Today I actually think differently about that.

 

You cannot expect somebody to operate at 120% for a 40- or 50-year career. That's not sustainable. Perhaps 80% most of the time is actually much healthier.

 

I certainly wouldn't recommend that everybody spend their evenings consuming virtually every piece of ServiceNow content ever created.

 

I don't do that anymore either.

 

But at that particular point in my life, it accelerated my learning enormously.

 

Certifications, including the ones I failed

 

Initially, apart from my Certified System Administrator training and certification, I wasn't allowed to pursue additional training and certifications.

 

One particular person within the company kept blocking that.

 

When he left, I saw my opportunity.

 

I went for it.

 

Eventually I reached 15 ServiceNow mainline certifications within four years.

 

And because this is Learn Out Loud, here's another part that doesn't usually appear next to someone's certification count:

 

I didn't pass all of them on my first attempt.

 

Some not even on my second.

 

That's learning too.

 

Today I keep those certifications alive through the deltas, but my view of certifications has changed considerably. There are certifications for areas I don't work with anymore. If I were starting again today, I wouldn't necessarily pursue all of them.

 

Training can be valuable.

 

Certification isn't the same thing as experience.

 

And failing one certainly doesn't mean you're bad at ServiceNow.

 

From learning to sharing

 

My Community platform involvement started by answering questions.

 

Partly because I wanted to help, but also because it was a challenge to myself:

 

Can I answer this?

 

And then somebody marks your answer as correct.

 

That's quite a nice feeling.

 

My first Community platform article followed on March 18th, 2019. It was about Virtual Agent: Rate their Experience.

 

Virtual Agent became one of my first big content waves.

 

Later came Instance Scan, Now Platform, database footprint, new releases, documenting the undocumented. Whatever happened to interest me.

 

For a while I was known as the guy that published most Community platform content of anyone worldwide.

 

I don't think you need to decide that you're going to become the expert on one subject and then talk about that subject for the rest of your career.

 

Find something interesting.

 

Learn it.

 

Share it.

 

Then perhaps something else catches your attention.

 

An email I didn't expect

 

On December 17th, 2019, an email arrived from Andrew Barnes.

 

The subject was about the new ServiceNow Developer All-Star Program.

 

I had been selected for what was described as ServiceNow's most exclusive group.

 

Only 16 people had been invited. 14 accepted.

 

I genuinely hadn't expected it.

 

And I was incredibly proud.

 

There were people in that group, big shots, the elite of the elite. People like Nathan Firth, Robert Fedoruk and Jace Benson to name a few.

 

And suddenly I was there too.

 

Developer All-Star was renamed to Developer MVP before it launched, bringing it closer to the Community MVP program. For four years I was both a Developer MVP and Community MVP. Eventually the programs became one.

 

Today I have been recognized as a ServiceNow MVP 11 times, tied with four others for the most MVP titles worldwide.

 

And yes, I'm proud of that.

 

But I also want to put that title into perspective.

 

Almost anyone can become an MVP

 

I sometimes see people treating MVP as if it's some unreachable status reserved for the absolute elite of the ServiceNow world.

 

I don't see it that way.

 

And the program itself has also changed over the years. Today there are many ways to contribute: writing, speaking, answering questions, organizing meetups, creating content, helping others and much more.

 

You don't have to know everything.

 

I certainly don't.

 

You don't have to be the best developer in the world.

 

You don't need 15 mainline certifications.

 

And you definitely don't need to wait until you consider yourself an expert.

 

You need something useful to share.

 

That's it.

 

Someone somewhere knows less about that particular thing than you do.

 

Write an article.

 

Answer a question.

 

Show something you discovered.

 

Explain the mistake you made so somebody else doesn't have to make it.

 

Organize something.

 

Help someone.

 

The title shouldn't be the reason to do it.

 

I've seen people who seem to want to become an MVP primarily because they want MVP next to their name.

 

That's backwards to me.

 

Share because you want to share.

 

Connect because you want to connect.

 

Help because somebody once helped you.

 

If an MVP title eventually comes from that, enjoy it. There are certainly some nice benefits attached to it.

 

But those benefits shouldn't be the reason you started.

 

ServiceNow has given me something I didn't experience in my previous technology world: an enormous ecosystem of people freely sharing their knowledge.

 

When I worked with HP software, such an ecosystem didn't exist.

 

With ServiceNow, suddenly there were people everywhere sharing what they knew.

 

That helped me grow.

 

So why wouldn't I give some of that back?

 

Sharing gave me something I didn't expect

 

The Community in the ecosystem isn't only about technology.

 

Some of the people I consider friends today came into my life through ServiceNow.

 

They're spread around the world.

 

There are people thousands of kilometres away whom I could message today, tell them I'm coming over, and know I'd be welcome.

 

For somebody who doesn't have a family anymore and historically hasn't had a huge social circle, that means something.

 

A lot, actually.

 

And perhaps my coaching background has something to do with why the Community in the ecosystem fitted me so naturally.

 

I'd already spent decades helping people improve at something.

 

The subject simply changed from basketball to ServiceNow.

 

Going independent

 

Paphos eventually became Quint Technology, and later Quint became Eraneos.

 

Over time, it simply wasn't the company I'd originally joined anymore. Different company. Different management. Different feeling.

 

It was time for me to leave.

 

After a very short period at another consultancy company, I realized that environment wasn't for me either.

 

So within one month of employment, I handed in my contract.

 

I had no new job waiting.

 

No assignment.

 

I simply went to the Chamber of Commerce, registered myself as an independent consultant and sent out a message.

 

I got an assignment almost immediately.

 

That was July 2022.

 

I don't use recruiters. Recruiters approaching me on LinkedIn instantly get declined. Companies tend to find me directly, often because they already know me or my work.

 

Being an MVP and sharing all those years undoubtedly helped enormously with that.

 

About four years later, my business has now invoiced a seven-figure amount.

 

I'm mentioning that figure for one reason.

 

Not because turnover is the same as profit. It isn't.

 

Not because money makes somebody successful. It doesn't.

 

And certainly not because everybody should become an independent consultant.

 

I'm mentioning it because sometimes I stop and compare that figure with where I came from.

 

The kid growing up in a household where money was constantly a problem eventually built this.

 

That's still difficult for me to comprehend sometimes.

 

There was a price to always going all in

 

For years, my calendar basically consisted of two things:

 

Work and basketball.

 

Imagine a European competition week.

 

Monday: normal job.

 

Tuesday morning: bus to the airport, fly somewhere, evening practice.

 

Wednesday morning: practice. Wednesday evening: European game.

 

Thursday: fly home.

 

Friday: normal job.

 

Saturday: another competition game.

 

Repeat.

 

Or later, playing in the combined Dutch-Belgian competition: travelling to Oostende on a Wednesday morning, playing in the evening, arriving home at perhaps four in the morning and being back in the car around seven to go to work.

 

Add ServiceNow studying to that.

 

Add certifications.

 

Add Community platform.

 

I could easily spend 30 to 35 hours per week on basketball next to a 32- to 40-hour job. Apart from the extra ServiceNow activities.

 

There wasn't much left.

 

At the time, I didn't really see what I was missing. I was on a high-speed train.

 

A birthday?

 

Can't.

 

Party?

 

Can't.

 

Holiday?

 

Basketball goes first.

 

During COVID, basketball kept going for much of the period in adjusted form. In some ways, it got me through COVID because I still had somewhere to go and people around me.

 

But eventually I stopped basketball.

 

And suddenly there was something I hadn't had for years.

 

Time.

 

Maybe this is the biggest change

 

I started going to the gym four or five times a week.

 

I became fitter.

 

I started doing more socially.

 

I started travelling more.

 

I got my private pilot licence and now fly an aircraft simply because I can and because I love doing it.

 

A couple of months ago, on a random weekday, I drove to Belgium, paid an irresponsible amount of money and drove a Formula 4 car.

 

Why?

 

Because it sounded fun.

 

Five, ten or twenty years ago, that way of thinking would have been foreign to me.

 

Even something as simple as holidays has changed. My first holiday (apart from Australia) was when I was 30 years old.

 

Today I take several holidays a year.

 

I can go to a ServiceNow event in another country and add a few days simply to enjoy the city.

 

And something much more important has changed too.

 

I have more room for people.

 

For friendships.

 

For a relationship.

 

For years, people in the ServiceNow ecosystem have probably seen me smiling.

 

Quite often, underneath that smile, I was hurting.

 

Today I still smile a lot.

 

The difference is that now, much more often, I genuinely feel like smiling.

 

(Almost) Ten years later

 

So here we are.

 

October 1st, 2026.

 

Ten years of ServiceNow.

 

I started knowing little more than its name.

 

Since then came 15 mainline certifications, Developer MVP, Community MVP and eventually 11 MVP recognitions.

 

Hundreds of blogs, articles, videos, podcasts and thousands of answers.

 

Virtual Agent, Instance Scan, Now Platform, database footprint, new releases, documenting the undocumented, (Unofficial) Live Coding Happy Hour.

 

And thousands upon thousands of hours of learning.

 

I'm proud of those things.

 

But perhaps the most important things I've learned after ten years aren't things you can put on a résumé or add to a LinkedIn profile.

 

I've learned that I don't always need to run at 120%.

 

I've learned that being busy and being happy aren't the same thing.

 

I've learned that you can come from a difficult place without having to repeat everything you grew up with.

 

And I've learned that sharing what you know can give you much more back than a title.

 

Ten years ago, on day two, I walked into a customer's office knowing almost nothing about ServiceNow.

 

I had no idea where any of this would lead.

 

Ten years later, a lot has changed.

 

But perhaps most importantly, I'm happier. I have more time for people. More time to enjoy life. And that smile you might see at a ServiceNow event is much more often a genuine one.

 

So here's to the next ten years.

 

Hopefully at 80% 😄.

 

Which brings me back to Learn Out Loud.

 

If you're at the beginning of your ServiceNow journey and you see somebody with 11 MVP titles, don't compare your chapter one with their chapter ten.

 

I had a chapter one too.

 

I knew nothing.

 

I failed exams.

 

I searched the Community platform because I didn't know the answer.

 

I watched other people because they knew more than me.

 

Then eventually I knew an answer somebody else didn't.

 

So I shared it.

 

And then I shared another.

 

And another.

 

That's really all it was.

 

Your background doesn't decide whether you belong here.

 

You might come from a wealthy family or grow up with almost nothing. You might live in the Netherlands or on the other side of the world. You might have several degrees or be trying to find your first opportunity in tech. You might have an amazing support system around you, or you might largely be figuring things out yourself.

 

Your starting point is your starting point.

 

It doesn't have to be your destination.

 

So learn.

 

Try things.

 

Fail occasionally.

 

Ask questions.

 

Help somebody.

 

And when you discover something useful:

 

#LearnOutLoud

---

 

| C |

If this content helped you, I would appreciate it if you hit bookmark  or mark it as helpful.

 

Interested in more Articles, Blogs, Videos, Podcasts, Share projects I shared/participated in?

- Articles, Blogs, Videos, Podcasts, Share projects - Experiences from the field

|

 

Kind regards,

Mark Roethof

Independent ServiceNow Consultant

11x ServiceNow MVP

---

LinkedIn