Sheryl Netley on The MVP Show

[mark]: 1:29
today's guest is from ross on why in england she works for cloud thing as a senior functional consultant she received her first n v p award in twenty twenty one she is a lake a switch er her own words i've picked up microsofpower platform in the last few years as an enthusiastic fifty something i'm in that club as well a very active she's very active in the power platform don three six five community and regularly participates in events as a speaker volunteer and attend you can check out the show notes in this episode for her twitter linked in and blog various resources he has welcome with the show sere yeah it's great to be here

[sheryl]: 2:13
thank you very much for having me mark it's lovely to be here yeah

[mark]: 2:14
i've known you for some time now and i'm so pleased to see you in the m v p program

[sheryl]: 2:19
thank you it was you know i've sort of made no secret of the fact it was a real shock when i got the m v p i mean i knew that i'd been nominated obviously but to be honest there are so many amazing people in the m v p community i didn't think that you know i get to be one and when the email came in that it was yeah i was absolutely blew away blown away yeah

[mark]: 2:46
that is awesome epic epic epic tell us a bit about family food and fun for you and the part of the world you live in

[sheryl]: 2:54
okay so i'm a single man of four kids and they're actually all grown up now my my youngest baby was eighteen on monday so yeah i know and i have no idea where all of those years went to be honest but yeah we do a lot as a family still i still have a couple of the kids living at home with me allegedly saving for mortgage right so yeah we do a lot as a family we go to festivals together we spend a lot of time together so i'm very you know very much still on active mom even though my kids aren't really dependents anymore you know yeah i think that's never probably going to stop right

[mark]: 3:36
ah m makes sense yeah exactly exactly so you know in the intro there i talked about you moving later in your career to the power platform tell us about how you first got exposed to either dynamics or the power platform what was that very if you can cast back your mind what was that very first inflection point that it came on to your raider and then tell us about the journey you went from there to where you are today

[sheryl]: 4:08
okay yea so i for a long time i've worked in it or sort of in the tech industry for probably almost thirty years now for the longest time i worked in it service management so i'd sort of gone through the it discipline you know typically from service desk right through tex support and worked my way back to b an it manager service des manager and then i became an it service management consultant and i unfortunately it was a redundant twice in very quick succession had one of my children was at un so i had a lot of financial obligations you know and i needed to find job quite quickly and i went to work for a microsoft partner as as an its m consultant because they were doing quite a bit of work on service management themselves they also did they did dynamics implementations so i was exposed to a dynamic project where i was an its process advisor so to see the platform right and i thought well you know i really like this dynamic thing it's it's got so much potential right especially the power platform is sure was sort of becoming quite big at that point i'm m and then i got moved into being the enterprise services manager for that partner which essentially meant that i managed to support team who supported the dynamic customers the clients of this partner although i didn't you know i didn't know dynamics myself i just managed that team but over time i just i just got to see how this platform was being used and understand the potential of it on when i was then subsequently made redundant again i thought you know what i think i might like to try maybe to see if i can pick this thing up right because i knew it had legs i knew it was going to go you know really gone to go places and so that's what i did i had some redundancy payment and i knew that i could survive for a few months so first thing i took a month i spent some time with the family because it had been a really hectic few years right and then i thought right i'm going to learn i'm going to spend a month just learning and so what i did was i looked on linked in i looked at all the jobs that were going in dynamics par platform i looked at what employers were asking for and i set about to learn all of those things right i did a great big spreads it's a really long spread with like a massive table in it all the things that people were looking for i researched on sort of what was the dynamic learning portal since become my oflearnright i researched all of those certificates and yeah i spent actually i spent probably about six weeks in the end just learning all of those things then i thought right i need to try and get a job now so i did two things i thought right well my experts my you know what sort of known for is its m so i'm going to apply for some its m but i'm also going to apply for some power platform jobs um and at the same time this was such a stroke of luck for me i had seen on linked in that there were these study groups being run by an m v whose name is julian sharp right and i thought i would join one of these study groups so i did that and a guy on the study group i was on which was but i think the nine hundred i our fundamentals there was a guy on the study group called larry mercelis and he knew of some opportunities going in the company that he worked for and he he knew of some opportunities going in the company that he worked for and he suggested that i contacted them and i did and got my first job dynamics and power platform right and from then i mean that study group for me was actually it was the catalyst for all of my community activity ever since then because i also met on that same study group and connelly who you all know who organizes also met on that same study group and connelly who you all know who organizes the scottish summit and i went to that first one in glasgow and i remember

[mark]: 8:58
that's right that's right yes

[sheryl]: 9:00
i met you there and you brought me a drink even though you didn't know who i was right and yeah that was it really and from then yeah i mean as i said the potential of the platform blew me away the commune it just sort of dragged me in and hugged me you know even though i was new and even though i was you know not typical sort of new starter of anything like i said i was like one fifty two you know but there's just no judgment you know everyone's everyone's welcome as chris hunt sort of as always said to me we all started somewhere right so that's yeah that's how it

[mark]: 9:43
yeah yeah it's such a good story yeah it's such a good story and i just think there's a lot of people out there you know that that c it is something that they can't get into and yet you've shown by going you know doing that six weeks really learning what was out there and of course microsoph learns provided an bona resource now you know when when i started eighteen years ago in the space you know getting training was instructor led only and it was expensive right and i think that's massively but the other thing that i really liked i want a highlight here is the community right how you have found a place at home and this community transcends the world because you know my time in london i was very involved in the community that was happening in the u k and then you know when i was in australia i was very involved in the community there it's kind of like now it's the pandemic you know driven at global and i just think there's so many opportunities for people to get involved and do the career switch and you're a great testimony to it

[sheryl]: 10:52
thank you and you know you are so you're so right about the community and it is global right i mean you know i am literally next week i'm going to be speaking at the bristol group and i saw you speak at the bristol

[mark]: 11:06
yeah exactly exactly oh

[sheryl]: 11:10
user group right or remember you did an awesome session on the difference between c d s data versus no back then and c commendatea model right on and that was that was great also then in a couple of weeks time i'm going to be going to scotch summit again right on the time speaking on zarlybsal i have been chatting i chat to a guy who's in australia nil benson right who runs the customer academy and he sent me over a load of lego figure to go

[mark]: 11:43
ah nice nice it's so good

[sheryl]: 11:47
and give out the scottish summit for him so i mean is you make friends right from from all over the world on the ninety m c now obviously so many friends that i made as a as a consequence of doing the mending challenge right

[mark]: 12:00
yeah so it's so good so good and of course yeah that's where i spent a lot of time with you on that mentaring challenge tell me about becoming an m v p for you you know you talked about you know your shock et cetera now that you you are an m v p what surprised you out you know after you got over the shock what was the kind of and what may be continues to surprise you now that you're in m v p

[sheryl]: 12:34
yeah i mean i back in the ninety m c days we talked a lot about m v p and o know how people might become an m v p if that was what they wanted in their career hadn't particularly being on my horizon but the thing that really i really appreciate about being an m v p is actually the fact that it does give me a platform to reach people and actually you know helped to further some of the areas in which i you know i particularly like to be involved along you know the sort of women in text lines really i do a lot of work also with the stem number it is part of a group which is called text styles and you know i also support other women in text through through various avenues such as like and in circles so actually this the m v p award in itself actually does it sort of catapult you out to a much much wider audience of people who who actually you know will listen when you when you put forward these ideas which you know these ideas which i believe important to myself and hopefully you know to many other people so that has been a fantastic opportunity actually to get to get these messages out there the other thing the other thing that surprised me is actually how much goes on behind the scenes in that v p community right the the sheer volume of effort people put in it just absolutely stuns me and i have new found and massive respect for anyone who who takes that on and who actually you know it's all very fair and well becoming an m v p to stain that over time right with all of the effort that goes into it i just take my hat off to people who i see people who've been an m v p for years and i think why you know that is that's an awful lot of giving value to other people right giving your time your energy and yeah i mean hopefully hopefully i'll be able to sustain be able to sustain beyond you know one or two years and yeah and carry on to to pay it forward right is another thing that we've talked about before

[mark]: 15:17
sheryl it's been an absolute pleasure hearing your story i think you're doing amazing thanks for coming on the show

[sheryl]: 15:25
oh it's been lovely really lovely to speak to you really lovely thank you