From Marine Corps to Project Management with Russ Parker

Episode Transcript
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Intro/Outro (00:12):
Welcome to the PM Mastery Podcast.
This podcast is all abouthelping you master your project
management skills by sharingtips, tricks, tools and training
to get you to the next level,while sharing the stories of
other project managers on theirjourney in project management.
And now here's your host, waltSparling.

Walt Sparling (00:36):
Welcome everybody to the current edition of PM
Mastery.
And today I have with me Russ,and today I have with me Russ
Parker or Russell, which do youprefer?
Yeah, russ, all right, russParker.
So, russ, we're going to kindof go through our normal layout
here.

Russ Parker (00:58):
Tell us, a little bit about you as an individual.
I live in St Augustine Florida,just a little farther north
than you.
I am a retired Marine Corpsofficer and I now am a project
manager and teaching projectmanagement.
I have a wife and two kids thatI love, and I just got a new

(01:18):
dog, an English Bulldog, and wedecided to call him Major oh,
sweet, good name.
He's 12 weeks and he isstubborn for training right now.

Oh, bulldog mentality.
Yeah, so you do projectmanagement during the day, and
what sector are you in?

Financials, so working financial on the
technology side.

Gotcha All right.
So you are retired from theMarine Corps and you're doing
project management.
What got you into thattransition like going from very
into project management yeah.

So whenever I met my wife, she was actually going
through the pmp program.
This was 2016 and, you know,while she was doing it I just
noticed I was like hey, there'sa lot of similarities.
I'm giving her these quizzes,these flashcards and I'm like I
know this, this is something wedo in the military.

(02:29):
And fast forward.
A couple years later I was onmy way out the door and I was
trying to figure out what am Igonna do and I ended up taking a
couple personality quizzes andI was talking to the assessor
and he's like have you everthought about project management
?
Like now, my wife does that.
So I looked a little more intoit.

(02:50):
I actually took a scrum mastercourse and I think it just it
just hooked me on from therejumped into the PMP program
through a military programonward to opportunity and from
there just kind of drove meforward and I fell in love with
the risk side of the house.
The risk side really matcheswhat the Marine Corps does for

(03:12):
risk in a lot of different waysand eventually I was like
started the company 44 risk pmand decided to just see where it
took me and started bloggingwith the risk blog.
And now I'm here.

Good deal.
So you went from helping yourwife study for the PMP.
You got your PMP.
Do you have any othercertifications?

I have the risk management professional and the
agile one.
Okay cool.

All right, so we know how you made the transition
.
Now you have a blog where youwrite about risk, you do project
management, you teach projectmanagement.
Now, what specifically, whatkind of items do you teach for
project management?

Yeah, so I have PMP courses that I run Right now.
They're not very standardrotation, it's more whenever I
have the time to teach.
But yeah, I teach PMP coursesand I'm putting together a RMP
course, right now, okay, so arisk management course, correct,

(04:21):
correct, awesome.

Now you're busy, obviously.
How do you keep up with thevarious things with, you know,
full-time job side, blogging,consulting or training?

How do you keep up with the technology and what's
going on in the industry?
Reading, you know, whenever Ican I try to read.
A part of my blog is I do amonthly book review, so I'm
constantly doing that, and I tryto do this in the podcast,
while I'm working out and whenI'm going for walks or whatnot.
Really, it's just, I have tosay, through research, whenever
I'm trying to write my blogs,it's definitely something that

(05:03):
keeps me up to speed and theintegration of, you know, trying
to use a lot of AI.
That's kind of been a goodfocus.
Especially working within thetech side of the house, I've
been introduced to a bunch ofnew areas that I didn't really
get to work with in the military, which has caused me to start
studying a little bit more inthose areas as well.
So whenever I have the time, Ireally try to just kick back and

(05:27):
read and I learn a lot fromthat.

So, with all that being said, uh challenges, what
kind?

of the challenge is just, yeah, the time I mean I
got a.
You know I got a three and afive year old, now my five.
You just turned five last week.
So you know it's just reallybalancing my time.
That's why you see my littleKanban board behind me.
I definitely manage what youknow kind of limit what I'm
working on at a time and, youknow, do a lot of stuff after

(05:57):
hours, put the kids to bed andwork for a couple hours and work
for a couple hours after I getoff during the day.
I'm an early riser so I usuallyget up around 4 or 3 am so I
get a lot done before my workdaystarts Way to do it.

So in the various I don't know if it's maybe in
your workday or in yourconsulting or training do you
have any specific favorites whenit comes to tools?

Ooh, favorites for tools.
Right now, I love ClickUp.
Oh, favorites for tools uh,right now I'm I love click up.
I wish my you know more peoplein my organization use it it.
Just, it works well for me.
I think the way it's just, theway it's structured and the way
you can put everything in thereworks great, I like now is there
.

I know you said you have an rmp course coming
out, but do you have any otheritems that you want to share?
Other stuff that's on theagenda yeah, definitely.

I think working with the PRPs kind of opened me
up and rewired.
Getting into this.
I didn't know what I was doing.
I'm a Marine by trade, sowhenever I was like, okay, I'm
going to start this company, andyou know, people are like what
are you going to do?
I'm like I'm going to startblogging, like blogging, and
that's like, well, I like towrite, so I'm just going to

(07:16):
write, I'm going to readresearch, write and I'll see
where it goes.
And then I developed a websiteand then, and then from there I
started posting on social mediaand then people started calling
me, and then someone to contactme about teaching PMP, and then
I got a call about the peer andthroughout this time it's just
been learning.

(07:36):
I think 2024 for me is just ayear of learning, because
everyone I talked to I was justlearning something new, learning
how to do stuff, and with peerI kind of learned how to put the
courses together.
I think and you know I learnedthrough observation a lot.
And this year yep got the RMPcourse that I'm putting together
.
I'm putting together someleadership training and some

(07:59):
just small, micro, mini coursesthat I'll hopefully have posted
in the next couple months.

Okay.
So the peer program and this issomething that listeners are
going to hear a lot about overthe next month or two where
there is a new industry certcoming out and it's actually
taught by project managementprofessionals that do this every
day and what is kind of theirspecialty or their superpower.

(08:27):
And you all listened to theinterview with myself and Joseph
Phillips recently where heexplained the program and what
it's going to be all about andhow it's set up.
So this month and maybe nextmonth, I'll be interviewing some
of the instructors and talkingabout what they do or what their

(08:49):
courses were in the program,and I believe, russell, you have
two courses that are going tobe in the program.

That is correct.
I have one that's talking aboutthe similarities kind of you
know, how the military doesproject management and how it
relates to civilian projectmanagement, and then another one
on just prioritization, of howto prioritize your tasks and go
through that process.

Yeah, I think there's going to be some really
interesting courses that aretied up in that program and I'm
excited to get into it myselfand go through all the various
courses.

No, it's definitely going to be a great program,
because just meeting everyoneand just seeing what they have
to teach is just.
I'm excited about it just asmuch as I was excited about
teaching for it.

And it's going to be an intense program.
I've tried to break it down inmy head and 60 hours of
coursework and then the exam,and I don't know how many hours
I put into the PMP.
It was a long time, but I thinkmost of it was just in studying
and researching than it was injust going through material.

(10:02):
Where this one, you actuallyhave 60 hours of lesson work to
go through videos and then takea quiz and then your final.
So it's people are going tohave to really allocate their
time in order to get throughthis, yeah, but they're going to
learn.

You know, I think the thing I like about it is it
just it's like a mob squad ofinstructors putting a bunch of
people on there and you know,we're teaching from our point of
view as practitioners.
It's not a bunch of, it's not60 hours of just one person up
there, just you know, yeah, allthese was a 25 of us all

(10:44):
together teaching from ourvantage points, which is just
the ultimate way, I think, tolearn.

Yeah, it's real experience, not theory.
I mean, theory is good, I meanit's just like going to college,
but when you have people thatdo this stuff every day, sharing
their knowledge and experience,that's a plus for sure.
Well, I'm excited about thepeer program and I'm definitely
going to keep my eyes open onyour risk program, because

(11:11):
that's one of the areas that Iwas thinking about trying to get
more involved in.
We had talked earlier beforethe call, and risk is handled so
differently depending on whereyou're at and what the company
is and how they structure things.
So now, did you have a?
Did you know?

yeah.
So one of the things I talkedabout is that you know, as soon
as I get into the the course andpure is the marine corps, we
have our own planning process.
It it's called the Marine Corpsplanning process and it matches
up to the actual PMI planningprocess and same within RISC.
We have the same kind of set ofstandards that PMI has.

(11:52):
So something I think a lot ofpeople just don't realize about
the military is that we doeverything that PMI and project
managers do.
We just call it different names.
So, like when I was studying forthe PMP, half my battle was

(12:13):
just getting the terminology inmy head switched around.
Even when I was sitting for theexam.
Part of it was like okay,they're talking about this,
that's this.
I almost had to translate it inmy head back to the military
planning process because youknow, marine Corps has the
Marine Corps planning process,the Army has their planning, the

(12:36):
Navy has theirs and then wehave the joint and if you really
look at that joint manual, thatone really matches really well
to the PMI as well.
So it all kind of workstogether.
And the big thing I want peopleto take away, especially when
they take the course, is thatveterans in the military have

(12:57):
done it.
They probably don't understandthat they've done it just
because of the terminology, andwhen they get someone in there
is a good chance of that wholeimposter syndrome.
So keep an eye out for thatWith veterans.
They're highly skilled, highlycapable.
You just have to coach themslightly upfront.

(13:19):
If you you put up that up frontwork, you're going to get a
huge turn on your investment.

Well, that's good advice.
Well, Russell, I appreciate youcoming on and I'm looking
forward to going through yourcourses and the Pure program and
checking out your riskmanagement course that's coming
up as well.

It's all exciting 2025 is going to be a really fun
year.
And checking out your riskmanagement course that's coming
up as well.
Yeah, it's all exciting.
2025 is going to be a reallyfun year.

Oh, it is Absolutely Well.
Thank you for coming on andwe'll talk again soon.

No, yeah, I was going to say I turned 40 this
year too, so a whole otherreason for 2025 to be an awesome
year.

Intro/Outro (13:58):
Thanks for listening to the PM Mastery
podcast at wwwpm-masterycom.
Be sure to subscribe in yourpodcast player.
Until next time, keep workingon your craft.

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