foreign [Music] to be speaking with you right now I'm honored to be here this is wild and let me tell you why okay you your voice is in my head it speaks to me and it urges me it's sort of like you are sort of like one of my my servicenow angels so let me start off this interview properly I am here with Corey CJ Wesley what can I say there's so much tell us a little bit about yourself Corey oh wow uh so where do you want me to start uh first of all hopefully I'm the bad angel in your voice not the good one we can leave that for the Duke um but yeah I mean so I've been in the service now ecosystem for 11 years been doing a CJ and the Duke podcast for the last three uh co-hosting it with my buddy uh Robert to do for Doric um I'm in the dev MVP program right and so um that allowed me to participate in some of the rise up um marketing campaigns so you might see my picture on the wall here in uh at knowledge so in the keynote didn't know that was going to happen that was awesome uh yeah I've been having a great knowledge so yeah that's me right now right like I'm just you know I've been doing the service now forever I'm an independent consultant I've loved giving back to the folks who gave back to Gabe to me to get me here right and so that's why I do a lot of what I do right it's all about just giving back to the community that was existing when I got into it to make sure that it still exists for the folks who come after me I think you're being a little bit modest your picture's everywhere I think that you have officially maybe unofficially been anointed the king of servicenow your pitcher is in lights you are everywhere and for good reason I know of your work because of CJ and the Duke right when I came to service now less than a year ago I just put in service now into the googler and CJ and the Duke podcast popped up no way that's how I found out and I am true to the gospel of CJ and the Duke and let me tell you why okay those podcast episodes are like many master classes and when I was coming into service now I mean obviously there's now learning which is phenomenal and you go through there for you know paths and learning paths all of that but what you and Duke and the Duke were doing we're talking about servicenow in a very practical way and you were talking a language that I understood I want to know a little bit about how and why you started that podcast and what are the goals so um I started it because so when I was going to interview yesterday before the keynote one of the things that I said was was just to say yes to everything right so um Robert came to me it's like hey let's do a podcast I was like no I don't have anything to say he came back like a day later it's like yeah man let's do this podcast I was like all right let's do it then so I was like yeah let's do it let's see what happens right started the podcast boom here I am right Dev MVP program same thing right like it was there he was like hey man why don't you why aren't you a Dev MVP it's like man I don't know just I just do it but he's like no man you do a lot he's like I'm going to nominate you right and boom here I am right and so I said yes right so it's all about saying yes for me and just make putting myself in positions where I can where opportunities flow and then saying yes to them to get to the next stage it's interesting that you said that you made a commitment to say yes because throughout the event floor no your power work yes is like bold throughout the event for yes yes yes so I'm gonna tell you so what's so funny about this this is completely not coordinated with servicenow at all like you would think because I'm all over a place that we coordinated at this market and kind of messaged to say yes no it's just how I live right like you get opportunity and you say yes to it and you know if you do that enough you might fail sometimes but you're going to succeed more than you fail and the more that you succeed the better the better off you are right in terms of position and inspiring and moving forward right so everything to me is about when opportunities present themselves to say yes to them and see what happens right you can always say no later right after you try it right and in terms of you asked me about like being practical in terms of how we get do guidance on on the podcast for me is all about connecting with the folks who are actually doing the work right and we don't need to be like high-minded or highbrow entertainment for that let's talk about what we're actually doing day by day and and give like you know a blueprint for folks to kind of get to where we are right because some of this stuff was like trial and error like about it being an independent consultant it was kind of hard to kind of figure out like how that was going to work so I love giving giving that kind of advice back for folks so they can catch up you talked about giving back and I feel that your podcast is tremendously does that I'm curious about what your early days were like did you wake up like this so like in a servicenow world uh no actually so the funny thing is I would have considered myself an introvert until maybe 2018 slash 2019 and some unrelated servicenows some stuff unrelated to service now happened I got into local politics and you can't be like into local politics without talking to people right and without being in front of people and talking so that kind of prepared me a little bit I think for the um for the podcast right was just basically getting down in front of people and getting uncomfortable getting comfortable with being uncomfortable right and so when we started doing the podcast it was sort of the same thing it's like I'm talking to a bunch of people they're not in the room but like your mind is thinking like how many people are listening to this what are they thinking about your every word but the more you practice that the more you kind of get get Beyond it and then it's just like I want to share right like I just want to help and so you start you get out of your own mind and you think about the value that you're creating for others and that's what keeps you going speaking of local politics one of my favorite episodes of CJ and the Duke is one of the more recent episodes okay and it's the requirement Gathering episode you did you did about creating an app for your run in local politics yeah love that episode because it's so practical share with me some of your favorite episodes of the podcast yeah so that one was one of them too right because I was literally knee-deep in a campaign right then and the um the requirements Gathering session that we did really helped me out in terms of like organizing my thoughts and thinking through some of the things that I needed to do right um so that one I really love the ones that we do about like what is it to be an architect or what is it to be a business analyst or what is it to be an implementer right I really do love those two because I think we started like a very kind of practical zero step and then walk folks through to what the end game looks like and then you know a few points along the way right so you can judge your progress you know and I think a lot of folks are looking for that step-by-step guy I know in a lot of places not just in service now but in the world like the step-by-step guide doesn't always exist and folks a lot of folks like really need that kind of blueprint and so I think by creating that it helps a lot more people kind of get on board into service now and remove some of that intimidation factor and it also allows them to know that success is possible because they can see it in the people who are talking about it yeah and congratulations by the way I understand that you won that campaign bid so congratulations to you thank you yesterday during Bill McDermott's keynote address yes he spent a good deal of the first part of that address talking about rise up with which you are the king of the face of and to get folks who don't know it is his ambitious plan to skill up one million people in the servicenow ecosystem by the end of 2024. yes can you share some advice for people who are just now breaking to the ecosystem whether they are right out of college perhaps out of the military or perhaps a midlife career pivoter such as myself what are some of the things that you might say to kind of move them along their Journey oh that's awesome uh first I want to give a shout out to everybody else who's in the rise up campaign with me um it's too many to name but we were all awesome and we had such a good time doing that photo shoot and those videos and some of the stuff you didn't see was just so wild right like it was awesome but um but the things that I would say to folks who um and yeah and service down like this whole rise up campaign is a huge priority for them as you can see like Bill spent a good portion of the keynote on it um but the thing for me in terms of like connecting with folks and saying okay so how do you get at the beginning how do you take that beginning part and like go through the process for me it's about removing those barriers right removing those hurdles and making things easier to digest like you don't know what you don't know and so trying to give folks like some information so they can start to know the unknowns actually is what I think actually helps folks out a lot right because once you look at servicenow and you look at say like you go to now learning or whatever it's really technical it's really good technical information though but it's really Technical and if you have no idea what service that was about you kind of get blown away a little bit but if you come listen to the podcast and we start talking about running an ice cream shop with servicenow and how things are like a task and a form and a requirement and an approval right all of a sudden this is putting in Practical terms that you've probably dealt with your entire life right and so that just really kind of reoriented reorientates how you think about the platform right and so that's what that's what what I really think is um probably the key to any success that we're having is just by removing like a lot of that a lot of those hurdles that um that you get by looking at purely technical information and digest it into a point where it's just kind of life experience you saying that it also reminds me that if I understand correctly CJ and the Duke podcast has now become integrated into part of the learning path through now learning tell me a little bit more about that do I have that correct God this has been such a great knowledge right so yes so I looked up last week to find that our our episode on um on how to be an implementer is one of the preferred listening uh tools now for now learning and like just completely blown away like again I can't express like how awesome it is to look at official circus servicenow curriculum and see my podcast there right like to hear my voice and to see that I'm like ordained so to speak right like it's one of the voices that folks should listen to in order to get onto the service down track it's just truly amazing and I'm truly honored all right Corey CJ Wesley final question sure what is your superpower ooh superpower um yeah so on my badge my um title says Chief Problem Solver that's my superpower right solving problems I can see kind of any kind of problem I can distill it I can create a solution then I can communicate that out in a way that everyone understands it so solving problems is my superpower and you heard it right here I'm Kylie Alexander we're at knowledge 2023 and as Bill McDermott says what happens in Vegas must leave Vegas and I am here with Corey CJ Chief Problem Solver Wesley let's go foreign