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CJ & The Duke have fielded a lot of questions about places to acquire ServiceNow work. Here we outline what its like to work at a ServiceNow partner, a customer, or as an independent consultant.
Authentic, Authoritative, Unapologetic ServiceNow commentary by Cory "CJ" Wesley and Robert "The Duke" Fedoruk
[00:00:00] Duke: All right, Corey, what are we talking about today?
[00:00:02] CJ: today, duke, we're gonna talk about the world of work, right? Partners versus customers versus indies. What's the experience that you're gonna have and each one of these separate ecosystems and how does it relate all total, right? Like what's gonna be a similarities and the differences, right? In the ServiceNow ecosystem.
[00:00:19] Duke: All right. Corey and I searched long and hard to find representatives from each of those domains. And we found that we, um,
[00:00:26] CJ: We found two of them. We found two of them right in front of us,
[00:00:32] Duke: Corey and I have been in the game a long time, and both of us have, worked for partners. We have worked for customers, and we have worked for ourselves. So we feel like we've got the chops to give you some good advice on these.
[00:00:45] CJ: Been there, done that.
[00:00:47] Duke: And for those new to service now, like this is a good session to listen to just because it's like, once you learn the skills, where do you go for work and what kind of work can you be expecting when, when you get there?
So, what do you think, Corey? We start off with partners
[00:00:58] CJ: let's start off at customers, cuz I do feel like more people enter the ServiceNow ecosystem through the customer route. Then a partner route, but I might be wrong. Maybe I'm biased because that's how I got here.
[00:01:09] Duke: I have absolutely no numbers to use as evidence, just mostly gut feel. But I've always gut felt that the, the partner side gets the most people. Because part, you see like partners will have like hundreds of people, right? Customers, like the biggest teams are like a dozen, two dozen.
[00:01:23] CJ: That's a good point. Right. That's probably, uh, one of the key differentiators there too, is that when you're on a customer, you might be anything from the long wolf part of a bigger team, but you're not gonna be a part of a massive organization like you would be at a, some of the bigger partners, right.
That are doing like just epic numbers of implementations and services work.
[00:01:41] Duke: since we're here talking about customers, the one thing that struck me as being unique to the customer experience is, while you might not learn as fast as when you're at a partner, Cause like at a partners, like one week you're doing cmdb, one week you're doing incident. One week you're doing, asset or whatever.
But at a customer, you kind of learn what really works.
[00:02:04] CJ: Hmm. Yeah.
[00:02:06] Duke: you know, the partner ecosystem sleeps on this a ton cuz they just like, they're so used to being apex predator. They do the most different jobs and they've seen the most stuff in the trenches, but they also get to go away.
[00:02:18] CJ: Yeah, they get to leave. Right.
[00:02:20] Duke: Like really? When's the last time a partner checked in with you when you were a customer to say, how, how's that thing we built for you? Like last year,
[00:02:27] CJ: Damn, man, that's a big leak, right? I, I didn't even think about that. Like I should probably be checking in with all of my, you know, past customers. Hey. How's it going, , right? That thing I built for you. Still working.
[00:02:39] Duke: so you see what I mean? Like it's, it's the customers that get to figure out what. Survives the crucible of real life use.
[00:02:47] CJ: It's not only that, right? Like the customers also are deeply embedded with the business, right? At least. At least if you're doing it right, you. You know what I mean? You know exactly what that business problem looks like. You know the folks who are experiencing it, and you work with them on a day to day basis for months and years sometimes.
Right? And, and so when you're in the, in the, in the trenches trying to solve that problem with ServiceNow, you know, it looks a lot different than when you call a partner in.
[00:03:16] Duke: And just, you know, that's another thing about the partner gets to leave, right? But if you're at a customer, you can't leave . And so if, if the job is not a good one, like who does that? Who shoulders does it rest on?
[00:03:33] CJ: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, that's, I mean, that's good and bad too, right? Like, I mean, I, I look at that as a good thing. Like, I can't leave, right? This is my instance. I gotta make sure it works and you know, if it, if I, if I screw it up, right? Like here, I, I can go and fix it. Well, and, and it is, and the fixing, right?
That you get the knowledge right. That's where you learn.
[00:03:53] Duke: it's, I, I felt like it gave me a greater sense of responsibility and accountability too. Like
[00:03:59] CJ: Yeah.
[00:04:00] Duke: it mattered to me that this worked when they left. And it frustrated me when it didn't work when they left. And I was like, you roll up my sleeves and I'll fix it my damn self. Right? And you know, that instills pride and then all of a sudden it's just like, okay, listen.
Like I will be the one who ensures that this thing is completed the way we need.
[00:04:28] CJ: You know, what else Duke? I think it starts to form that architect mindset, right? Of, um, God, where was I going with this?
[00:04:39] Duke: I totally get you like right away. I get you
[00:04:42] CJ: right? Like, you, you, you get where I'm coming from on this, right? Like, so when you own that instance, right? And you, and you're okay, so. I, I own the Service Now instance I'm on. And, and I'll just jump right into my persona here as a, you know, as a customer, um, as a, person who started off on the customer side, right?
Like, this is where I started off my ServiceNow venture. And as I started to learn the platform, of course with ServiceNow is you start to learn the platform. You start to realize just how powerful it is and just how much it can do. One of the key things that I think allows you to transition from.
A customer to a, a pretty kick ass architect, Is that Internal evangelism of the product. There are problems all over your enterprise to solve, you know, the people who are having them. You're hearing, you're hearing them complain about them all the time, and you know that you now own the key, right, to fixing those problems for.
that is the gateway to, uh, solutions architecture, Like, let's go in here and let's get in, let's get in the conference room. Let's, let's draw out the process of what you're doing now, and let's talk about how that we can insert ServiceNow into this process to make your life better. You do that 3, 4, 5 times, you're right, there, right on your way to being a, a world class a.
[00:05:57] Duke: Yeah, shoot. I wasn't expecting you to take that path. Um, but I definitely. I was getting it, being at a customer, being the one admin or on the team of admins, I think definitively pushes you towards an architect mentality. Again, just because you're accountable for it, not the partner. and so you start forming like we, I half our listeners are probably like, what even is architecture when you're talking about software, right?
It's, it's an abstract concept, but. You, you start forming the pathways that say, listen, if we build it this way, it will have less impact on my performance. It'll have less impact on my other apps. It will allow me to capitalize on data that I already have. It will allow me to support this with a lower experience level. It will allow me to hand this off to somebody else. It will allow me to have less administrative tasks and put the data maintenance in the hands of the stakeholders. You see what I mean? Like partners don't have they They do. They do. Like there's, I don't wanna drag on partners all day long because Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of exquisite ones that will think about this stuff, but they don't have to , you know? And I think the person that has to more often than not is the person that's most, accountable. And the person who's most accountable is the person whose job it is at the company to make ServiceNow go. You see what I.
[00:07:21] CJ: I do. Absolutely. I look at those as two different, um, sides to the same coin, on the one end you've got the internal, identification of the, of the problem, right? And then the, the, the solutions architecture portion of it's like, how do we even understand the process and how do we even.
Service now into it so that we solve that problem. Right. And then you have on the other side, okay, now that we know how to solve that problem using the platform, how do we build it in all the ways that you just outlined, right? So that, you know, from the perspective of owning this, this, um, platform long term, then it's gonna be the least amount of headache for me, I look at that as like, yeah, two, two sides to the same, to the same coin, but both, just dragging you towards that architect mental.
[00:08:00] Duke: And no matter what you're doing in ServiceNow, I think it's good to ingest as much of that mentality as you can.
[00:08:05] CJ: Yeah, no doubt.
[00:08:06] Duke: it affects your work and your design. But maybe, so we got a minute left on this topic. Maybe we talk about if you're new to ServiceNow and you're the new admin at a customer that already has a team, how do you propel yourself ahead?
[00:08:19] CJ: If you're new the Service now and you're the new admin on
[00:08:22] Duke: Yeah. Like, let's say I'm, let's say I just passed my csa. I've been in the e ecosystem six months, and somebody hired me to be the new person on. And they have senior people, they have mid-tier, and they have an architect like, what would I do to climb up, earn my bones, get my respect?
[00:08:38] CJ: This one's easy for me, it's two things that I do. The first thing is I ask a whole lot of questions, And everybody who's willing to listen to me, and I ask them a ton of questions. And I do that for two reasons, right? One is that I wanna learn all I can, right? And, the best places to learn that outta people who know it.
two, this is a little per a little. personality hack or interpersonal hack or, or something like that. Like when, when people do you a favor, they feel closer to you, not the other way around. When you do them a favor, they don't feel closer to you, but when you ask a favor and they actually provide it, they feel
[00:09:10] Duke: Oh, that's a good, I never thought about it that.
[00:09:13] CJ: Yeah,
[00:09:14] Duke: if I do you a favor, I know that there's something about like, you know what I mean? Like I don't do just anybody a favor
[00:09:19] CJ: Exactly, exactly right. you that sums it up right there. You don't do just anybody a favor, right? And so now while I'm asking these questions, right, and you do me a favor, by teaching me these things now, you're gonna go closer to me. That's gonna get me a bit more, um, immersed in the culture of the team.
And get folks to start thinking about me as one of them, as a part of the team. And then they're going to be, they're gonna trust me more, and as they trust me more, they're gonna give me more things to do. And then it's gonna be my responsibility to take those things that they've given me and go and excel at 'em, right?
But it starts off by asking them a lot of questions, hoping that they'll do me those favors, so then they'll trust me to give me responsibility that I can excel at and and improve myself.
[00:10:02] Duke: That's awesome. I'll tell you what I do. I do two things. Number one, I learned how to code um, Oh my God. We, we must promise ourselves that we will do a whole episode on that.
[00:10:14] CJ: Yes, we We must,
[00:10:16] Duke: the reason I would, cause again, it's just like, technically you don't have to have to have to learn to code to be a ServiceNow admin, but it helps, it opens doors, And so, if I started my ServiceNow career with zero JavaScript knowledge and I was on a team of, of ServiceNow people, which is exactly how I did start
[00:10:34] CJ: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:35] Duke: I would start learning JavaScript as fast as I can because that allows me to step into those real life gaps that happen. oh, somebody just told us we had to switch our priorities and work on this new dev thing.
Well, what about the old dev things that they were building? That's still, I. And I got a couple hours and that looks easy enough for me. Why don't I step in and do that? Okay. Sure. Rob, there you go. Just finish it off for us. Great. Or I know enough now that I can read code and shoot. We got this weird problem and now my level one support of the product can go a lot farther.
I'm a bigger shield for the dev team so they can keep on doing their dev things. While I'm handling bigger and tougher and more nuanced and harder to find problems that might be code based, I would learn how to code just so I can step into more wild card opportunities.
[00:11:27] CJ: Okay.
[00:11:28] Duke: the second thing I would do, This is like a life hack level right here.
I would say, Hey, where's our documentation And when they inevitably 90 plus ti, uh, percentage of the time, say, uh, I don't really have any. I would say, may I start izing our solution and start documenting everything that they've got? And it could be as simple, like simple abstract statements at the start. We use sp. But we only use demand and, and project.
We don't use program portfolio resource yet. And then you start filling in the stuff as you see it. Oh, we have a custom form on the project form. Does anybody know what that does? And when they explain it to you, go back to the documentation and write it down. This will give you skills that nobody else exercises in the industry, practically speaking.
And it provides a huge value to the.
[00:12:17] CJ: you're, you're absolutely right, and we talk on this show a lot about documentation and the fact that not enough of us are doing it in the field. Right. And the fact that. enables the rapid accumulation of technical data, on your platform, as you, as you speed into the future, right?
Especially with the flexibility and power of service now and the, uh, and the keenness to continue to build on the platform, right? going through the platform and documenting everything, and this kind of dovetails back what, what I was saying as well, right? as you do that documentation, you're gonna have to ask somebody to look at this thing and say, is this correct?
And they're gonna, you know, they're gonna look at that and, oh, this is awesome. And then they might start adding stuff to the, documentation. And next thing you know, this is a team effort. And you started it
[00:13:02] Duke: Yep. And you could, you could be the one, the straw that breaks the camel's back and convinces the entire industry that, okay, we're gonna do this from now on
[00:13:10] CJ: Yeah. Yeah. Or, or at least whatever corner that you end up.
[00:13:14] Duke: alright. Wow. We're like 15 minutes in on the one
[00:13:17] CJ: I know, man, you're like, yeah, we got another minute on this one. Like, yeah man, what does he tell you? Okay,
[00:13:23] Duke: what can you do? We're 70 some episodes. There's no fighting it. Why fight it? Why fight it? Okay. Um, you know what
[00:13:31] CJ: what's the evolution?
[00:13:32] Duke: right. We edit it down. It's like under 30 anyway, so
[00:13:35] CJ: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We, we threw out a lot of this stuff that you guys don't hear with some of the fun stuff. We should do an outtakes episode one day. That'd be pretty fun.
[00:13:44] Duke: Just consult my, what would Chuck Tomasi do? Bracelet
[00:13:47] CJ: Yeah.
[00:13:47] Duke: He does that for all his stuff.
[00:13:48] CJ: Yeah,
[00:13:49] Duke: What's up with working for partners?
[00:13:51] CJ: so I, I've worked for a partner for quite a while. for me, it's interesting, I didn't feel comfortable working for a partner until I had felt I'd learned. Almost everything I needed to know working for a customer and doesn't mean I learned everything about ServiceNow, right?
There was still a lot that I needed to learn, um, and that I have learned, um, ever since I left, the customer side. But I felt like I needed to have a certain level of skill in my own eyes before I felt comfortable working for a partner. And then, Portraying me as an expert to a great many of folks over a longer timeframe.
You know what I mean? Over a
[00:14:29] Duke: oh, I know exactly what you mean.
[00:14:30] CJ: Yeah.
[00:14:31] Duke: I think partners are a great place to start.
[00:14:34] CJ: Huh? Okay.
[00:14:35] Duke: , and I say that not just from my ServiceNow experience, right? we go all the way back to Magic Total Service desk, right?
[00:14:41] CJ: Yeah, no doubt.
[00:14:42] Duke: while you inherited Magic Total Service desk from your, day job, right?
You were a customer. Like I came outta college and my employer was just looking for people with university degrees. That would be easy to get work visas to go to the states. For certain types of work. And so they were just like, don't care what you went to school for. Come here, we're gonna teach you magic tool, service desk,
And so I learned it. And this company did it right. They sent me on like four or five implementations, just shadowing people, you know. And the first one is just like sit, just like sit in a room and say nothing. Just like . Just be quiet and watch. And then, you know, every job in you get a little bit more and a little bit more, and a little bit more.
And then the last one, you lead, but your senior is like right there with you. and so you got into it gradually. And then when you were at home, it was just like bootcamp, bootcamp, bootcamp, bootcamp. learn, learn, learn, learn, learn.
[00:15:31] CJ: Right.
[00:15:32] Duke: And it didn't take long for me to like literally know more than the customers. so I think it's a great place to, get your skill quickly. But what I would add to that is just remember what we said about being a customer, is the customers that figure out which things last the longest. no matter how much you think the differential is between your skill and the customer skill, who's hiring you to do stuff keep your ears open, for insight.
[00:15:56] CJ: that's a good point, I've seen some things, working for a partner, right? Like, so you, you end up in, in a situation where there are multiple, where you see multiple clients, right? And you jump in somewhere and you think, wow. Who did this? Or, why'd you do it this way?
Or, I never thought to do it that way. and I think, we jump into a situation like this when you're seeing multiple clients, and you come in, you obviously wanna think of yourself as the expert because that's what they're paying you for, and that's what you need to portray to them.
But you can't think of yourself as the unqualified expert with nothing to learn. Because there is always something to learn from pretty much anyone that you can imagine, right? So I love that, like keeping your ears open, like whenever you, um, whenever you start a gig or whenever you're working on a gig because you never know like what they're doing.
That might be something that's useful for your toolbox that you've never heard of.
[00:16:42] Duke: Yeah. Yeah. Well, like one of my older mentors at that job this way before ServiceNow, but it's still, I, TSM tools is basically, like he said, the, the reason we're able to be, get. Expertise is because each of these customers is gonna teach us something that we didn't see before, whether they know it or not, And so it was kind of like, that served me really well. I mean, remember the Deb Quentin episode?
[00:17:05] CJ: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:06] Duke: there's so much to learn if you sit and listen to them for half a second about what's really, you know, we told the story of this ServiceNow customer who did a ServiceNow implementation. the deployment team was all about like best practices and da, da, da, da.
But they didn't listen for a second about why healthcare was different. They just assumed this was just another customer where we deploy the same, same stuff at. and they missed a huge opportunity to learn some really crazy, nuanced stuff. Sorry, I totally went on a rant.
[00:17:35] CJ: No, you're absolutely right though. domain expertise, right? you don't have it in all cases. so we all. Not all of us do, cuz as you just said, you jumped straight into this, uh, two feet first. but a lot of us, right, like have worked in various verticals became who we are in the ServiceNow ecosystem.
And so we, some of us do have like some various domain related expertise, right? Like I'm pretty good around the consulting space, right? Um, did a lot, a lot there and, and also in finance. it's important that when you find yourself doing something that's outside of your typical experience or, or skills on that you.
that you are willing to learn, That you are willing to understand like the use cases that that customer is utilizing the product with. Because you just never know, Some stuff is gonna translate, some of it isn't. I worked with an msp, um, and did some stuff with them in timecards, one of my first projects.
. But I learned so much from that client and the way that they were using ServiceNow from an MSP perspective. You know, it was just stuff that I carried with me going forward and.
being able to look at, other folks in that ecosystem in the future, like future Me, felt a whole lot better about those situations, was able to, um, contextualize the platform in, in terms of that domain experience as well.
[00:18:43] Duke: this is the dichotomy, right? So if you come on as a customer, you tend to figure out the stuff that lasts. That's, and the stuff that scales the best. but if you come on as a partner, you get to learn those neat little nuances that you get to take with you other places, right?
This place had that problem. We can maybe try that again here. and you think about if you do, oh man, it's been so long since I worked for a partner. Let's say you do like five to 10 big jobs, a. That's 10 things that you've learned that like the average person doesn't get to
[00:19:13] CJ: so that's a good point, right? Like, it really compresses the learning curve, because when you're at a customer, you got the instance, you typically have much longer timeframes, right? Your time horizon on getting changes, um, baked in or typically a little bit longer. You, you've got a lot more, um, kind of autonomy on.
On set in the beginning and the ending of, yeah, this looks like about three months worth of work. This looks like about six months worth of work. Right, and, and they're paying you regardless, so they're not being too pushy when you are on a partner. Like that contract is signed, that is definitively three months of work.
[00:19:45] Duke: Yeah. That's tough. Yeah, that, that is tough. I mean, everybody's got expectations that they wrestle with, but I think partners have it worse.
[00:19:53] CJ: Yeah.
[00:19:54] Duke: basically they've settled on an amount of money and that amount of money is. fixed, right? It's kind of like, we're gonna pay you $50,000 in return. You're gonna give us, my math brain isn't working right now, but like, x number of hours.
But if it ends up going over the hours, you're, eating into some, like your, your boss's, boss's boss's revenue , you know? And, uh, it, it doesn't look good. And it's hard. So, you know, on the cons on the working for a partner side, I find that you can get stuck between a rock and a hard place more often and more intensely.
[00:20:26] CJ: But what it also does is it allows you to experience more, projects over the course of a year than anyone else will. And if you're trying to skill up quickly, if you're trying to really learn ServiceNow and learn how to solve problems for, for folks, live in the field, right in Technica , this is how you do it.
[00:20:44] Duke: I gotta say too, the another thing I love about, like, I wish I'd had done when I worked at Partners is paid a lot, more attention to, the artifacts that they prepare, right? Cause professional services is all about like maximizing those billable hours, And so they'll often have artifacts that are ready to get the, the, the grunt work outta the way faster so they can get to the good stuff.
And so it's like, you know what I mean? Or train, train the most junior people to do the most senior stuff as fast as possible. So it's like, oh, hey, you're gonna do, a performance analytics workshop, You got the basics down, but run the workshop with this. You don't, you don't even have to think about, well how do I run a performance analytics workshop?
They'll show you once. Then you have this piece of paper that shows you how to do it. They have just like stacks and stacks of assets that helps them scale their resources faster. And if I could go back, I would pay a lot more attention to those docs cuz they help everybody. Like I bring those kind of docs to my new customers in terms of like coding standards and that kind of, it's like they've never s even conceived that this could be done
and so that's a great thing about partners and if you go the partner route, pay close attention to the artifacts that they give you.
[00:21:54] CJ: fair enough. I, I totally agree with you on that. , those artifacts really do serve as a, a good way to boost you into the ecosystem and get you started on things that probably are typically above your head, but now you got training wells to help you through it. So the last thing about partners too, and, and this kind of is a segue into the independent consulting world, is that working for a partner teaches you how to be a consultant in a lot of cases, not all the cases, because not everyone working for a partner will be client facing, but most people.
In the ServiceNow ecosystem, working for a partner tend to be client facing at some point in time, right? And learning how to do that well really, allows you to build a skillset that enables you to go out on your own as an independent consultant in the future, if that's what you decide to do.
[00:22:40] Duke: can't agree more and can't add anything to that. That's . That's definitely true. Well, I mean, I think there's something to be said about having both To have been a customer and a partner.
Cause the customer again, has the Yep. I know what it was like to be left with an app that barely worked. I know what it was like to go back and try and support this thing when the partner's long gone and there's no documentation. and so there's an appreciation there for having been a customer, what your customers will experience.
[00:23:07] CJ: Agreed. from my perspective, the one thing, that separates an independent consultant from working for a partner and working for a customer is accountability. I'm now accountable to this solution. My name, my reputation, my company, my everything right is accountable to delivering a good solution for this customer, and.
Creating that brand for myself, So that I can continue to be fruitful in this space. as a partner, you, have some of that, , but you're working for somebody else, there is somebody else's larger. Brand on the hook, and you could end up screwing it up, but they'll just find one of their rock stars and insert them on that client who'll clean up the mess behind you and, you know, maybe credit some hours or something like that.
They'll take a little bit of egg on the face, but they'll fix it, right? especially for the bigger partner, they'll fix it. They've done this before. you know, you want to be good because like everyone does, but you don't necessarily have to, it's not exist. In most cases, but when you're an independent consultant, it can be existential, right?
A lack of accountability can be existential. So it's one of the first things that you want to think about and yet you wanna, um, internalize, is that anytime you step foot in an instance, not like that step foot in an instance, anytime you
[00:24:23] Duke: Does it make a squishy sound?
[00:24:25] CJ: Yes, unless it's well documented, But anytime you step foot, in instance, right? Like your, your name's on the line for this thing, you're on the hook and. If that whatever contract you sign with your client and that time is up and they walk away with an app that's barely functioning, it's not, big four consultant that's on the hook for this.
they're not about to call in, like, that rockstar to bail you out. Like, this is you, man. You gotta fix this.
[00:24:54] Duke: nobody's coming to save you.
[00:24:56] CJ: Yeah, nobody's coming to save you. That's a great way to say it, dude. Nobody's coming to save you. So that, to me, is a, probably the number one thing I think about I think about my transition from customer to partner to independent consultant, right?
Is, that accountability and, you know, I, I, I honestly feel it more keenly when through other folks than I do when I'm working on my own, but, I, I mean, yeah, that accountability. You just can't, you can't miss it. At least I can't.
[00:25:19] Duke: Yeah. , isn't it odd? Like it's scary at first, right? ?
[00:25:23] CJ: Yeah.
[00:25:23] Duke: scary. and what I said earlier about if you're working for a partner, you can get stuck between a rock and a hard place really intensely, but not nearly as intensely. If you're on your own, like,
[00:25:34] CJ: yeah. You're working with without a net.
[00:25:35] Duke: yeah, you can, you can eat a gigantic crap sandwich sometimes , like if you, if you mess it, but I guess it prompts you to be more careful.
It prompts you to be more, what do you call it? when you're just emphatically rule following, no, we will not take that risk. Or you get somebody else to take that risk for you.
[00:25:51] CJ: Yeah, and you get sign off, you get, you know, you get, you make sure you got, you, you, you cya on everything, right? Like you explained.
[00:25:59] Duke: yeah. You know what I mean? Like you have a customer that says, I want you to build this, and if you're employed by them, Emery, you're working for a partner, it's you. Done deal. You have to.
you can put up a good fight and try and convince them, but, when you're an independent consultant, there's always the option to politely decline and walk away.
[00:26:14] CJ: a good part of my job, I think is telling people no, , just doing it in a way where they like me for it. and that's because not every, Change is a good change. And not every functionality, not every piece of functionality you want to implement is good functionality and, and especially not the way that you want to do it.
Right? Like sometimes you get, you really do need to take a step back and say, you know, what's the problem we're trying to solve? Like, you came to me with a solution you wanted me to build, but you didn't tell me what the, what the problem was that, that we're trying to solve here and, and, and, you know, and give me a chance to participate in that solution making process with.
Because I can, I've got expertise I can bring to this, you've got a problem, but I've built solutions, , you know, and if you exclude me from that process, then I don't think you're, utilizing your money in the best way possible, right? Like, there's a lot of value you're leaving on the table by, by not getting my input earlier in that process.
[00:27:07] Duke: I find, I'm always involved in at least one project at any given time where what I'm doing is so far away from the original ask,
[00:27:16] CJ: Yeah. Yeah. They all seen a drift.
[00:27:18] Duke: Yeah, like I've, I had one customer that came that said, said, we need your help on this, ITBM thing. And what it ended up was that they, they were trying to put something in ITBM that was fundamentally not made for, and no matter how many different ways you put these inputs in, it's not gonna output what you want.
[00:27:35] CJ: Right,
[00:27:36] Duke: let's build you something custom where you take these inputs and it develops these outputs.
[00:27:41] CJ: right.
[00:27:42] Duke: And that's what they did. And we're going off topic again there, but, , I guess what else, like what, what, what is a new person to service now need or want to know about the indie?
[00:27:51] CJ: I would say that you should not tackle it until you've had experience working for a partner or working for a customer.
[00:27:59] Duke: Unless you've cried yourself to sleep one night like I think that's the minimum threshold for even considering it.
[00:28:08] CJ: Yeah, seriously, right? Like, I mean, this is it's hard. It's hard, right? If you knew, especially if you knew. it's hard. If you've got anything, I say less than three years of experience, um, you just haven't seen enough. And there's no way I think that you have, I shouldn't say no way. Most folks don't have enough, real world experience.
Uh, they don't have enough consultative approach. Um, they don't have enough. vocabulary to speak to the business and in the terms that they care about versus the technical terms that you've typically internalized, on your ServiceNow journey, Like you don't have enough of that foundation.
to sit across the boardroom from, you know, someone who's got a VP title and tell them, pick me.
[00:28:50] Duke: Or even let's say I came to the ServiceNow ecosystem when I'm 50, right? I've been doing IT consultant consulting for 20 years already, I could say I've got all the chops to meet people in the boardroom, but it's just like, what are you gonna do from a ServiceNow perspective?
Like you might have brilliant interpersonal, consulting soft skills.
[00:29:08] CJ: Yeah.
[00:29:09] Duke: you might have all the process knowledge in the world, but if you actually want to advise on ServiceNow, with only a couple months in, you're merely adequate. Maybe. So I, I agree. It's, it's not a starting point, but it's not a starting point if you're like new to the technology world.
But it's also not a starting point if you're old to the technology, technology world. But in experience with service now, like you have to have the tool experience.
[00:29:34] CJ: Yeah, absolutely. Because like we just said, right, there's nobody coming to save you. You're out there working without a net and if you get into a situation where you've sold something that you can't fulfill, now you're really, your back is against the wall. And look, no better way to learn it.
[00:29:49] Duke: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:50] CJ: No, there's gonna be no more, uh, no better way to learn than being under duress in pressure, right? Like, oh my God, I've just told these people that I can build this thing. They told me, you know, they sent me a check for half of it up front and I've got nowhere to start. Right? Like, I mean, at that point you better crack open, uh, community and docs and LinkedIn and, and then Tomasi
[00:30:11] Duke: like, how would you even get the, how would you even get the work? how would you convince somebody enough to like get you on as a ServiceNow consultant when you literally, like you don't have the skills to,
[00:30:21] CJ: Well, because, yeah, because in most cases though, the customer knows less than you do. Right? And just because the customer knows less than you do doesn't mean you know enough.
[00:30:29] Duke: if I was gonna add anything else to the, independent consulting discussion, and we actually did a whole episode on life as an independent. you can check that out. We'll have a link in the description below. is that it's harder to arrange work. when you work for somebody, it's just, you're there for X amount of hours in a day, and whether there's work enough for you or not, kind of doesn't matter. You're getting paid for, that amount of access. if you work for a ServiceNow partner, it's completely somebody else's problem.
What you. on what job you're on next, what's coming next that is somebody else's job to worry about, not yours. If you're an indie consultant, it's just, if I'm lucky enough to get one customer that wants 40 hours per. I still have to look for work during that time, and rare is the case where it's like on a Friday my one gig ends, and on a Monday my other gig starts
[00:31:20] CJ: Ooh. Yeah. Cause you're talking about running a business,
[00:31:24] Duke: Yeah, that's right. And, and it's just kind of like, okay, well, it's like, do I wanna work 80 hour weeks for a couple weeks? And then the other customer's like, oh, we need, we're gonna delay some stuff, some of work to backfill you with. And now all of a sudden it's like you either have way too much or way too little.
and it's never, it's rarely even. And I think so many people have this idea, I'm gonna get into big consult and I'm gonna get, oh, I'm gonna get two, two customers at 20 hours each. And that's gonna make it so easy. No, it's not.
[00:31:51] CJ: yeah, yeah. Right.
[00:31:53] Duke: it's gonna take, oh man. The last customer I took at 20 hours per week, they literally only had five hours of stuff for me to do when I started.
It took me like eight weeks to ramp up to 20.
[00:32:03] CJ: Right.
[00:32:03] Duke: Anyways, that whole scheduling thing is a real It's a real thing. It's a real problem. It keeps me up at night. if you're even thinking at all, at all, at all about going indie at some point in your life, you have to realize that it does not fit together nicely. it's like playing Tetris, but there's no similar shapes. there's no repeating shapes whatsoever. yeah.
[00:32:29] CJ: Yeah, I, I would agree with you on that, duke. I mean, it's, you know, it is, it is very, it is chaos. It's the definition of living in chaos. Like I'm, I'm sure some people do it better than I do. Right. I, I kinda like the chaos to be quite honest with. Kind of keeps, it, keeps me engaged. but you are absolutely right.
Like you're never going to have a clean cutoff, right? At least I haven't, Where the one customer stopped on like March 30th, and the other customer picked up on April 3rd, that's never happened for me. there's always some overlap or there's always a project that you start. You assume they're going to be ready for you.
So you're budgeting 40 hours a week, and then it turns out they're not ready. Right? And you've got like 10 hours a week, or God forbid it's a discovery project and security didn't know you were coming, right? And so now they got a debate within themselves for two weeks, whether or not they should turn over credentials, right?
To actually start scanning the. the infrastructure and things like that, right? So now you're semi on the bench. And I say semi because you're still gotta be available cuz security's gonna want to meet with you, they're gonna wanna send you emails, you gotta turn that crap around, but it's not enough to pay the bills.
Right? So how do you. Manage all of this. And I think this is like consulting 2 0 1 episode that we really kind of need to do Duke, um, because there's some advanced concepts here. I know you and I have both been flirting with, I don't know if we've really put them into our practice yet, but, you know, some things that I feel like we could do to, to make this a easier, , transition for us.
But I think it's. Going to be. I also think you need a certain level of brand and reputation and skillset to do some of the things that we've been talking about that we wanna do as evidence by the fact that we haven't done them yet.
[00:34:09] Duke: slap my hand,
[00:34:13] CJ: just to kinda round it off, I would not suggest jumping straight in as an indie, unless you've picked up some, some skill working for a partner, working for a customer.
[00:34:21] Duke: Yeah. I don't even think you could if you wanted to, it is just kinda like, put that in your, you know, forward looking prospectus. What, what might independent consulting look like years from now, but for now use. Starting two points of our show to figure out like, do you want to go customer or partner?
or at least know where you're gonna maximize your skills, , when you take whatever opportunity comes to you. And we are at 42 minutes of, we should probably think about
[00:34:45] CJ: All right, . So we're gonna wrap this one up. thanks everyone for coming out. Bless. Goodbye
[00:34:51] Duke: See you on the next one.