in this episode of titans of ServiceNow we interview Mike Lombardo a glide fast and ferret code plenty of links in the description so you'll want to check that out remember the purpose of titans of service now is to get an interview with the man himself mr. Fred ludie I can't do it without your help so if you enjoyed this content please pass it through your network if you want to know what I'm up to lately I want to personally invite you to check out vivid charts and make your reporting and service now vivid links in the description below hey everyone welcome back to another episode of titans of now I'm your host Robert the duke fedora holy cow people have I got a treat for you today a genuine service now celebrity a true Titan a paragon of the community and a guy whose name is absolutely Piqua tiss with success on service now I can't believe I've actually got Mike Lombardo Mike how the hell are you Wow the hype is real you are the to legend you are the to Titan nah man I stand on the shoulders of giants so we always start at the start tell us kind of when you got into the ServiceNow space and and how that happened Wow I've been an IT about 15 years now I actually got my start in IT through a program called ear up definitely check them out it's a great program it's Europe org usually takes young adults and puts them through six months of technical training and then six months of internship at IT organizations it's for young adults 18 to 24 I believe and I was fortunate enough to get an internship at Partners HealthCare which is a large healthcare organization out here in New England I was a helpdesk agent and I learned so much on the job I mean they weren't utilizing idle but I think they were without really noticing it I mean we had kpi's we had metrics we had goals and I really learned a lot of that customer service and customer satisfaction and taking as many calls as possible closing as many calls as possible and I just fell in love with the job I mean answering phones is not the best job in the whole world but I really enjoyed solving IT problems and that's really hot what's not my passion for what would come down the line then I went I made a move I went to another local hospital doing the same thing so I did helpdesk at Boston Medical Center and now Boston the center was a smaller organization that we didn't have a knowledge base so knowledge means at my last or Ganesha was so crucial to all of our day-to-day activities that was like the first thing I had to do I had to build a knowledge base so I had built a custom knowledge base basically on just a website yeah I get it kind of in secret for about six months and after I felt it was good enough to prime time I show it to the whole organization and the whole IT department is actually still using it today they do have seven now as well but and then that really set me up for when the organization decided to purchase service now I was chosen to be the admin pretty much solely on the work I did on the knowledge base and just my my close interaction with what I was doing the help desk and helping other teams and things like that crazy man I didn't want to interrupt you but I'm actually a huge fan of the Europe program oh yeah I've never been through it but back when I was at Hyatt they asked if you know I could be one of the mentors I guess you could say or whatever yeah yeah shout out to Roble his kiss Robel I hope you're doing well man all right yeah Robel was my guy man yeah love that kid yeah such a great program I was I wasn't really an early student of that program that goes class overall and it was actually founded in Boston started in Boston I was in the first sight right when I joined we had one floor then by the time we had all five floors in the building now they're in a whole new building now they're all over the country right Chicago they're New York there you see Florida they're everywhere and the program it's such a positive program Robert and it's self-sustaining like you're saying it's not just a non-profit it's it is a non-profit but it's not one where we have to donate money to keep it alive and it makes money because organizations are paying for these resources because they need these resources we need we need the younger generation we need we need skilled trained workers in the IT space and now they have fine and they have other work exchange as well but IT addresses core offering what a testament to the Europe program to have you as one of their first going through and now look at you and so that meant that maybe that's a great segue to you know what is Michael Lombardo doing now I mean I'm sure everybody knows but this is your chance to make the big pitch the big pitch well after Boston Medical Center I was a customer for about two years so I led that implementation we had a partner so I learned a lot of what I would do and would not do if I got into the consulting world because going from a customer perspective to the consultant world is a big jump right it's scary it seems so scary you know when I'm interviewing people now they're like well I've never consulted before but but really you are if you're already working with different different groups within your organization gathering requirements selling them on the solution delivering the solution fine-tuning that solution that is consulting right we're just doing it I had a different at a bigger scale more aspects of the platform so I learned a lot just from being a customer of a partner and then I was fortunate that during a startup consulting firm that was local in Boston that only did service now is one of the first employees there was a big part of growing that company still maintain a lot of my relationships they're great people I was here for about two years and then I decided to go independent so I went independent first I'm sure as you know the Duke independent life is a tough life it's feast or famine in this space mostly feast so it kind of became too much to handle so I started to partner and hire people I knew through the community and that's really how I was able to grow in my career and every step of the way was through this community I mean I was never a developer before service now I was by no means this was an easy journey for me but having that community out there to lean on there's always somebody there like itching to answer one of your questions we had amazing websites like ServiceNow guru com ServiceNow elite comm all the other ones Jace's website you know JC's YouTube videos energies YouTube videos back in like asking I don't think every other technology spaces like this you know where people are just over the moon willing to help you and so that's where like I feel like I owe pay forward to do everything we can to push the next generation of developers help them you know so wherever we're going it's a good place man you just you just do yourself the question is where does my cat Lombardo now yeah where is my Google bar now so after Oreo after going independent I started to really have more independent work than I could handle so yeah as an independent contractor as you know it's it's really creature famine and in this space it's really a lot more feast and famine so as as we grew as or as I grew as an independent consultant I really needed help so really just reached out the ServiceNow community one of the best communities out there it really some of the relationships I developed over the years I was really able to bring some of those resources in in some of those experts who were even better than me so and about 2015 we started glad to ask and sell things and it just really grew so fast and that we were hiring a ton on the glass side and then we saw an opportunity in the government space where ServiceNow wasn't really even able to host some of their customers some of the high security level customers started a second company called fire code we're actually doing the hosting of ServiceNow on Microsoft Azure and then doing the the follow up implementation work as well along with a lot of managed services so we really have this one-two punch we're glad pass is dominating the commercial the enterprise private sector space and then you have fire code that's just Clearing House on Department of Defense a million Asian tsunami Navy and anything higher security that's crazy I remember there was a knowledge I was like you and Lloyd and it was just you guys there is no booths or nothing and we went out and partied with like you and like a couple of your clients or a couple of your prospects or something and then the next year it was like look at all those people I know it was like one year I've never there's like the speed of the service now ecosystem but the speed of glide fast with in that ecosystem has just been insane to watch yeah you know I think it's it's a combination of obviously share hard work I would be nothing glad path should be nothing without the team others we have I mean knowing they work out of the me they're smarter than me he yeah they're more passionate than I am I think my biggest thing that I bring to the table identifying that talent those people that do want to work harder do you want to contribute and then also making sure they're compensating and they're happy and they doing the work that they want nobody really wants to go work for someone who haven't done the job you know I think what gives me a little bit of leg up on some of the competition is I've done the job I know what it entails I know what we what we like to do is developers consultants and we don't like to do I know how bad a difficult client can be and I have a lot of empathy around that and I try to I just try to support my team as best I can I mean if you support your team they're gonna support you you know this so that's that's the name of the game for me well I mean you got to be doing something right and I think everybody you know anybody in the ServiceNow ecosystem can see that glide fast grew fast but it takes old-timers like me looking at the kind of people you acquired early and still continue to pick up to realize how stacked your bench is with the apex elite talent I guess there's no secret to it right you just you put in the work you hustle and you've been there in the trenches and so you got that lombardo factor going for you yeah I mean that's the only way to explain it right like I mean even the big four kid even the big four they have plenty talented folks but I don't think anybody's got as stocked a deck as you guys do truly Wow man I've already like one of your guys you get you guys are gonna have two spots on the Titans and now and then a third one coming up as soon as soon as you let him stop doing services for a bit so he can take my invitation yeah no problem pleasures mine everybody knows glide fast and you guys do a lot of stuff like basically everything but just from Mike Lombardo's point of view is there any part of the platform where you have a particular affinity for I mean I fell in love with it so much because you know I was never I was never that guy that would build a website from scratch you know from pure HTML or anything like that but I love to build stuff and create stuff and build things that people would use you know I got my greatest satisfaction like in high school building a little gossip site you know before social networking all that but I never build a subscribe I needed that baseline I needed that platform level give me tools to to you know make maybe it's my ATB right I don't want to sit in it for three months but I want do some in three days you know so yeah I got immediate gratification of building something people could use within days you know so ServiceNow was like the answer and I can do it for my career this is pretty you know because I was doing it for fun before but I love automation I love providing service I love putting smiles on people's faces letting back to my home best days Wow thank you so much and I'm like all I did was tell you to plug in printer that you thought was broken it was unplug you know so I usually love like getting that immediate gratification of helping somebody making people live easy you know so yeah anytime I can be that you know I don't care if it's through ppm I don't care if it's through its advantage that request management portal you know I just I love building something that people are gonna you and I love doing it in in a way that other people may think took me months to do or you know is this big undertaking when it was really very simple and that's really the name of the game with servers now I was gonna you know that would dovetail nicely into like what's one of the most favorite things you've built but I think like from a guy in your position who's basically like from everybody else's perspective top of the world but what was like one of your bleakest moments in the ServiceNow space like a time where you just hanging by a thread just like man am I gonna make it like go live I was the main architect on this project I was on site we had a goal line baking within a couple hours and I had to not we sure exactly which table I had to move over from a developer environment development environment to a production environment but let's just say this table was not backed up so I could not go to deleted items and restore it we only really get this kala Bagh we do do a full restore the environment and base and long story short I deleted the wrong table so as I thought I was grabbing the right table from development and our god I was deleting the right sales and prod and during a nice clean swap and it was one of those things where like we had 20 other pom he knocked out of the park this was like the last little step but this was like a deal breaker this was like the end of the world kind of thing you know i sat there it was by I was by myself i sat there i de rêve this table I know I messed up so bad and I had two choices that I could sit there and try to hide ate or curl up in a ball and cry but I decided to you okay what am i off so I called 7:l support we got all our option the table we were able to get a restore scheduled for one hour through a sandbox environment where I could grab the data it would be from a day before so I don't think we lost much data I went to the you know so I got the plan in place first I didn't go raise my you know raise a flag and say the world's ending what do we do you know I didn't go with the prom I didn't go with a problem for the manager right at the stakeholder I got the solution ready right so then I had a solution I had the pros the cons everything ready I went right to the stakeholder talked to her straight up and I said here's what I did I messed up this was on nobody else it's not the end of the world I have a solution this may delay our goal I've you know one hour and that response that I got from that stakeholder I never forget first of all the company with 250,000 employees this is a huge huge huge company this is a lot of stake her job was at stake you know this is a big dip she goes I cannot believe how professionally you handle this you you took full responsibility and from then on I there's a semi earlier much my consulting clear I will never try to cover anything up you know do you need any snake owned up to it come with the solution now you know don't just say hey I screwed cuz when you magic if I brought back that issue to the stakeholder who having no idea you know what I mean like how do we fix it I'm supposed to be the one bringing a solution yeah so I think it's really important to own up to what you do if you make mistakes but also have the solution or the best possible solution that you can think of or if you need to reach out to other people that you know first to get that solution do it you know so that was a that was definitely a bleak mo in my crib but it was there's so much silver lining there because I learned so much you know from that experience yeah so if you don't know Mike Lombardo this is classic Michael Lombardo is take a situation like that and you know get right down to the silver lining as soon as you can but if you don't mind me saying Mike the other thing that's just a hundred percent Mike Lombardo is the fact that he had the choice of saying oh one time I deleted a production table and that screwed me up or I've got cancer and the guy chooses the time that he messed up a table yeah well I mean hey listen like it's it all comes together right like your profession affects your family your family affects your profession and we were all heartbroken when we heard the news of what you were struggling with and can I ask are you doing with that I'm doing actually finale so for those who don't know 2019 Thanksgiving Day as diagnosed at that non-hodgkins lymphoma actually we're forming it called NTP so and others are the most difficult thing in my family and I have ever gone to puts the whole professional and all the other stuff aside and nothing else matters but you know family and in my house but but we just received some great news I the only think I put this out publicly at all but we just had a what's called a PET scan which checks in and on on how the cancer is doing and it's I'm pretty much in full remission right now I've had two rounds of chemo actually on my right now I still have a few more months of treatment as I said it's January now we're hoping I'll be fully recovered for knowledge 20 which I'm really excited to come you know seventh knowledge six or seven knowledge and I've never missed one I don't plan on missing this one so no everything's great I mean the ServiceNow community in particular has really come at me with open arms and emails from executives at ServiceNow from competitors you know owners of competitor companies obviously all the developers consultants engagement managers across the whole industry as you know vivid shots you guys started a GoFundMe for me which is unbelievable which we will be donating to another foundation I'll get you the info on that just so you can post in the video I don't haven't got my head here but yeah I couldn't possibly accept this money from come you guys because being in here and seeing some of the other patients in putting myself and some of these other people shoes that you know I'm fortunate enough that a team of 200 people that have stepped up shut up the glass logic faculty everybody stepped up they're working harder than ever before and make my life easier and my family so I'm fortunate enough not even a guy right sorry I may want it I gonna start a foundation that would really help people you know with some girls and commuting cost and we're fortunate to find a foundation at Ari yes that does that so we're gonna donate all of that money to that foundation so I promise it's gonna go to better use thing then I'll make use of it so I really want to show to get that information out to everybody and and I can't thank everybody enough who donated it was way over the top great news is it looks like I'm gonna beat this thing a hundred percent and and I can't I can't wait to get back to work on a presented law man so there you have it folks Mike Lombardo like I said true Titan in the industry Mensch cancer survivor now the accolades just keep on coming so we're at time if there's anything else you want to let the anything else you want to let the community know now is your time one last thing I'll say you know what I really look forward to seeing ServiceNow get to the next level and I really think it's on us as consultants and as admin to really take ServiceNow for the next level of generating revenue for organizations so right now we're you want a lot of cost savings we're doing a lot of the intangibles we're making employees experience better but I really want to see ServiceNow being used for helping organizations in their their true business process how they make money and it's really on us to come up with some of those solutions so I really put that challenge out there it's been a glass eyes goal since we started as you can tell it's not not as simple as that I just clicking a switch and we're gonna really can get these organizations and higher-up that this is the platform for the future but I just really want us to keep that in our minds it's not gonna happen overnight but it's more than just we've been screaming it and you know five years oh there's more than just ideas more and as I think now it's more than just in need to say it's more than just internal business drops yep this is a platform we can put in front of external customers that can help these organizations make money and and really facilitate that in that customer experience that true customer experience not just employees I hear that well you know I'm happy to fight in those trenches with you and thanks for carrying that flag in the community such a pleasure to talk with you today thanks for making the time you as well appreciate the invite thanks Rob I will see you around