From Survival to Success: Matthew Mickler's Journey to Project Management Mastery

In This Episode:

Master the world of project management with our inspiring guest, Matthew Mickler, a Lead Technology Operations Analyst at Wells Fargo. Matthew’s journey from being raised by a single mom in a less-fortunate neighborhood to a successful career in project management is a testament to his resilience and dedication. He dives into the heart of his work, sharing how he turns his knack for problem-solving into successful project management strategies. 

Matthew's experience in balancing work and personal life, especially while parenting six children, provides valuable insights into managing time and resources effectively. If you've ever wondered how to manage cross-functional teams or how to overcome communication hurdles in large enterprise-level organizations, Matthew's experiences and strategies are worth a listen. He shares his favorite tools, including JIRA, and emphasizes the importance of transparency and openness to get everyone on board.

But it's not all work with Matthew – he also emphasizes the power of networking and continuously learning from each other. He shares how being genuine, understanding, and being open to sharing resources can help build valuable relationships. From his own experiences, he knows that networking can open doors you didn't even know existed. So, whether you're a seasoned project manager looking for fresh insights, or you're just starting your journey, tune in for an episode packed with valuable insights and inspiring stories from Matthew Mickler.

Favorite Tool(s):

• Jira - https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
• Monday - https://monday.com/free-project-management-software

Links:

• Connect with Mathew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewmickler/
• For a full podcast episode list, visit here: PM-Mastery Podcast Episodes.
• For a full list of blog posts, go here: PM-Mastery Blog Posts
• PM-Mastery.com 

PMI Talent Triangle: Leadership/Power Skills (Learn More)

Get your free PDU Tracker here: https://pm-mastery.com/resource/

Transcript

Intro/Outro: 0:12

Welcome to the PM Mastery podcast. This podcast is all about helping you master your project management skills by sharing tips, tricks, tools and training to get you to the next level, while sharing the stories of other project managers on their journey in project management. Now here's your host, Walt Sparney.

Walt Sparling: 0:35

All right. Welcome everyone to the current episode of PM Mastery. Today I have Matthew Micler. Did I say that right? Yes, sir, you did. Awesome, matthew, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are as an individual?

Mathew Mickler: 0:50

So I am a father of six. I am a very basic person. I enjoy family and you know the art and things like that. I've been in IT for coming up on 15 years 10 of those in the project management arena, doing a little bit of everything from, you know, software development, healthcare transformation for software to banking and financial institution projects.

Walt Sparling: 1:27

All right, six kids, wow, that's a handful right there.

Mathew Mickler: 1:30

Yeah, it is. I give all thanks to my wife. She's the true MVP on that.

Walt Sparling: 1:35

Good deal. What is it that you actually do? What is your job?

Mathew Mickler: 1:42

Yeah, so my title is Lead Technology Operations Analyst. It is not an official project management role, but when I came on to my current role with Wells Fargo, I was brought onto a team that we evaluate and test cryptographic technologies that are being introduced into the organization. It's a really fancy way of saying testing everything and running through a project of evaluating. If that makes sense, all right.

Walt Sparling: 2:21

So Lead Technologists Wells Fargo. All right, do you want to add any more detail to that?

Mathew Mickler: 2:29

No, I think I'm good on that.

Walt Sparling: 2:31

All right. You've had a lot of years in the technology realm. You've done project management during those realms. Why do you do what you do? What drives you?

Mathew Mickler: 2:43

So what drives me is I love to fix things. I've been doing it since I was a kid. I think when you find a passion and you don't, even as a kid, you might not even realize it. I didn't realize it until I got much older. When I see a problem, my brain works in a very analytical way and I look at things and I find that I enjoy the process of figuring out how best to create a solution for the problem, if that makes sense.

Walt Sparling: 3:13

Absolutely. I think there's a couple I would say skill sets or driving nature of people that lead them to project management and fixing things. Organizing things are probably two of the big things that I hear from a lot of project managers and I can say for myself has definitely been what's driven me. So that's great Projects related in your notes. You like to fix things, you like to see the big picture and you like working and managing every aspect of projects. So even though you're a lead technologist, you don't have that PM title but you're still managing those projects as if you were a project manager.

Mathew Mickler: 4:02

Yeah, and I think that is something I will say. I've heard a lot from project managers. Right, it's not always the title project manager and even though I find that there's a huge value that comes with that title, what a lot of people especially people first getting into the industry don't understand or first getting into project management, a lot of the times, the roles that you've already been doing. If you look at it in an analytical way, you are doing project management tasks. Now, not in every situation is that the case, but, for example, with mine, I've been a titled project manager many times but I have taken this role, which offers project management duties, without the title.

Walt Sparling: 4:57

Gotcha and I think it's a big topic now, especially in the circles that we hang out in on LinkedIn, about transitioning from other careers into project management and I've heard you know anyone can do it. I don't agree with anyone can do it, but I think anyone with the proper skills or experience can do it and you don't have to be a project manager to move into it. But there are certain skill sets that are definitely very favorable to that and if you're, if you've, if you take a course like the Google certificate or the CAPM I kind of lean towards the CAPM it starts to teach you more of the formal process of project management and you can relate what you've done in the past to that which helps you transition.

Walt Sparling: 5:51

Melissa Chapman just recently interviewed and she's actually got an ebook coming out. It'll probably out by the time this podcast drops, but she talks about her journey in how she went from a teacher to project management and she could relate the things she did. But I think it took her kind of understanding the project management life cycle to then say, well, you know what I've done, all that stuff. This is how I can relate to it. So I definitely think there is the possibility for a lot of people coming from other industries to go into project management, because you've done similar roles. I don't say it's in anyone, but there's a huge, huge sector of people out there that can definitely make that transition.

Mathew Mickler: 6:39

Yeah, no, I would agree too, and I think it also is defined by your industry right? I talked to project managers that are in construction and they're their tasks, even though that the projects that they are working on have a structured just like in any project, it will have a structure that you follow the type of skillset that they bring. I talked to one project manager. He literally was a construction worker and he worked his way up and he worked with a general contractor and realized that by doing that, he was learning that process without even recognizing it, until he started looking into the industry more and then he realized wait, I've been doing that already.

Walt Sparling: 7:27

Yeah, so I'm from a design background but I now manage. I don't manage construction projects as a construction project manager, I work as an owner's rep, but I understand the building construction method. I've worked with a lot of contractors over the years and I've learned a lot of those people like yourself. They come up from the labor pool, they move up into like a project engineer role and then into an assistant project manager role and then eventually into a project manager role. So you can come from an educated, you can get a degree in project management and then join a firm or you can work your way up. I think the people that have worked their way up have a little more insight. I mean, anyone can be successful, but they've seen it, they've done it. They kind of get the subtleties of it. So I agree with you that is a great avenue to do. So. You're in IT. You've done IT for a while. You've done project management in the past. You work for a large organization. What do you do or how do you keep up with what's going on?

Mathew Mickler: 8:40

I personally am a very busy person with six kids, with work that at times can it's more than the 40. I think a lot of us can understand that I find that just by doing projects I tend to be able. When I face an issue, I always go back to my days as an entry-level IT tech at 18 years old, first getting into IT. If I don't know something, I'm going to go learn it During my projects. If I run into something that I don't know, I either will touch on resources that I've made connections with, either in my network or somebody I co-worker or whatever the case may be, or I go do the research and figure it out. I think anyone who works in any field will find that they will do that a lot. It goes back to that old adage but Google is your best friend Anyone who says I'm an expert in this and I have nothing more to learn I think that's when their career starts to fizzle out, because anytime you've said I know it all about this specific thing, it's continuously changing. By working in project management, I think you're able to keep up with it. I've also started the process of PMP several times.

Mathew Mickler: 10:12

Somebody like me, where I dropped out of high school, got a GED, started working at 18. I never got certified. I've just got a lot of years in the industry. I've looked at certifications and I've wanted to do it, and then I always find myself so busy with life work, kids, family. But I think, depending on your industry, there's a lot of solid information out there. I am signed up to so many different cybersecurity threat analysis and newsletters and things like that that you can keep up with that. In the morning I open up and I get an email every morning from a newsletter for cybersecurity threats that are on the rise. That's something that's an automated thing. It takes me two, three minutes to read through before my morning coffee. I think keeping up to date with what's going on specifically to your industry is key. As far as your project management knowledge goes, I think the best thing to do is just be in the trenches working on projects. Don't be shy to admit when you don't know something and go learn it.

Walt Sparling: 11:32

So many things you said trigger history and experience with me. I used to be big in AutoCAD. I used to have a blog and I was part of a user group. I was president of the group for a while. We educated people young folks on AutoCAD. The people that are in the group were very experienced. I remember going to a college. We started going to this. It was a tech school.

Walt Sparling: 11:59

I remember hearing one day a couple of the guys talk in and one of them said hey, you're going to hang out for the meeting. He's like no, I know everything I need to know about AutoCAD. I don't need to listen to any of this. I'm like oh, he's just short circuiting his future. He's not listening to people that have been doing this far more than he's been in school that could teach him some tricks and tips on how to do things. The mantra of always be learning, I think, in any industry is good. Tech industry, like in your case, is hard. I lived in that world for a while and I got out of it because keeping up with it was very hard. There's things changing all the time. You said cybersecurity. I don't even want to touch cybersecurity. That's a beast in itself.

Mathew Mickler: 12:51

Here's the thing I always tell everyone I'm not the expert Project managers we should always understand what our organization is doing, what the projects we're working on are accomplishing, what the use case is, what is the problem that we are trying to fix. We should always understand the bigger picture of it. I am not the expert. I always tell my team I have a team of architects and engineers. I'm not the engineer, I'm not the architect. I understand enough of what they're saying when they're talking about different coding languages. I understand enough of it because I've done a little bit of it here and a little bit of it there.

Mathew Mickler: 13:41

But when it sit there and say I'm an engineer, I can go do the exact same thing. I'm understanding not just the jargon but really the intricacies of what they're working on. If they're working on PHP or Java, or if they're working on a algorithm that Google just pushed out or some other organization just pushed out and they're digging into that algorithm, you have to be able to understand what they're saying, to be able to convert that to the business case. Most of the time, your stakeholders, the business side of stakeholders, the executives, whoever it may be they don't have the time to go learn the intricacies of a specific algorithm. That's what the architects are for. That's what the engineers are for. Our job is project managers to understand that their needs, but also understand what our architects and our engineers are explaining to us. So I always tell them I'm not the expert you are, but explain to me what's going on so I can then go resolve that for you, whatever issue it may be.

Walt Sparling: 14:53

And that's why we have SMEs on projects, because you need those subject matter experts to guide you in the right direction. The other thing you had talked about is learning what is required for your job. So that does not limit you from learning other things. If you want to grow and you have a bigger picture mindset of where you want to end up, maybe this job isn't going to get you there and you have to focus on what that client wants. It doesn't mean you can't continue to learn other things, because you never know when that will pay off for you with another opportunity or even growth within the company when they change focus and you're like, hey, that guy actually understands this stuff. He didn't just do his job, he continued to learn and learned other things that now are important to us. So there's great growth potential with that.

Mathew Mickler: 15:46

Exactly, and for me, that's exactly how my career progress has happened. You have to be willing to learn enough to do your work, but also take full advantage of what you're learning. Dig into it a little bit more while you have the opportunity. I've worked in multiple industries, all technically IT industry, right, but I've worked in healthcare, point of sale, finance, banking, all of these different industries. But what has been the catalyst for me has been when I work on a project, I absorb as much as I possibly can and I do the research on either my own time or during the time that I'm working on the project, and I take full advantage of the people that I've built relationships with right. Relationship building is a huge part of what we do and I think when you foster that relationship and you can provide value to your team, they tend to provide value to you with teaching you new things that maybe you didn't know right.

Walt Sparling: 16:52

Yeah, there's a lot of opportunities, like with large corporations. You work for a large corporation and I work for a large corporation. They have training material available to you and a lot of that is not what you do every day but it's available, like LinkedIn Learning. Linkedin Learning you pay a hefty price every month to take that, to subscribe to it, but in some corporations that is provided as part of your job. It's just they do pick and choose certain courses and then they want you to follow, but because of their size and license agreements, you have access to so much.

Walt Sparling: 17:27

Take advantage of that. If there's something you're interested in, learn it and, like you said, invest in your own time. Your job is not just where you do your 40 or 50 hours a week. Your career is bigger than your job, so you need to continue to learn. Constant learners do way better than those that just do their job. So take advantage of the resources and the network, like you said. I know you're big. You do a lot of networking on LinkedIn, which is fantastic, and I encourage other people to do the same. So, challenges I'm going to address the whole six kids thing. That in itself is a challenge, but what kind of challenges do you face on a regular basis, either career or personal?

Mathew Mickler: 18:20

Yeah, absolutely. I guess I'll touch on it in two different ways. For me, I've been a parent since I was 18 years old and we have. I've been very blessed to find my wife in high school. We met in high school and we got married. But having so many kids back to back kind of like that the one challenge personally has been making myself realize that I'm more than just a paycheck to my family. I'm their father, I'm their, the leader of the home I provide for my family and I have to be there more than just financially. I need to be there as a whole, right.

Mathew Mickler: 19:04

So for me, early on, especially in my early 20s, when I first really started getting into project management, I was I'm going to go full steam ahead and go into this and there's nothing that's going to stop me and I would spend 60, 70 hours a week working. The problem with that was I never had time, because when I was working I was exhausted and I never had time to spend with the family, right, as I have now in my 30s and I'm looking back and I'm like you know what? What's more important? I don't work, I don't live to work, I work to live. Right. That that adage, and so I've. It's a mindset flip that I've had to do, where, even though I want to continue to grow in my career, even though I have multiple opportunities that I've been looking at, I also put a limit on what I'm willing to do and I don't I won't bend over backwards to make sure that this is done. I will in the certain timeframe of of work week Right, but I won't, I won't give up time with my kids or my wife to be able to do that. So I think those are one of the challenges that I have as a parent and as a as a husband that I face in my, you know, personal life In career.

Mathew Mickler: 20:24

I think the biggest challenge and maybe you can speak on this as well when you get into big enterprise level organizations, you deal with a lot of the old school silo mindset Everything is a different silo, different line of business means there's no communication with each other, and we've got to start breaking that down. In my opinion, I feel like when there's a big initiative for the entire organization, that's when the best opportunity arises to have cross functional teams where you can talk to each other and work, you know, across the board, not still in those silos and, I think, those. That's one thing that I think stems from the old waterfall mindset. You know, we, we plan it all out step by step and then we start executing and there's no real changes to anything because we already made all the decisions six months ago. It doesn't matter what's happened If something's changed. We got to wait until the end of this to go back and then fix it all later, right? There's no real communication and silos can be detrimental when you're trying to push a big initiative.

Mathew Mickler: 21:33

So, career wise, that's something I struggle with. Yeah, that's, that's a mouthful of stuff there.

Walt Sparling: 21:40

Yeah, Silo's definitely an issue. Communication that's one of my favorite topics and hot buttons. When I was hired at my current role, I was hired as a senior PM, but I just thought I was going to be managing projects. But I was not. I was not, I was not. I just thought I was going to be managing projects. But when they came in, they said you're not a senior PM, you're the senior PM. So you are basically the kind of the. You don't have HR responsibilities, but you're the one that's supposed to kind of corral and and and mentor and coach this team and right now we have everyone is doing their own thing, so your job is to figure out how to get these people out of their silos, get them all communicating and working together.

Mathew Mickler: 22:30

So that was a challenge and Into like a program manager type role, without giving you the title, almost almost like um, here's all these people working on their own individual projects. Nobody's working with each other. Come in and fix it. Create new processes, open up lines of communication.

Walt Sparling: 22:48

Yeah, Share lessons learned. Um, that's a big one, and I think that was probably the biggest because people were doing things and then, a year later, so someone's doing it and they're going through the same struggles. It's like, well, Bob did that last year. Why do you not know what Bob learned? So there, there's that aspect of it.

Walt Sparling: 23:08

And then when you move up into the corporate structure like you said large corporations they have business units and each business unit is is a potential silo, and I work within a real estate organization but the client that I have has multiple business units and our group will communicate changes out, project changes, uh, renovations, new builds, whatever. And they deal with certain individuals and then they say it's up to them to communicate that down the chain. Yeah, and we assume that's happening, or we did used to assume that was happening. And then we would show up to do the work and they're like who are you? Why are you here? What are you doing?

Walt Sparling: 23:50

It's like we're doing that project that your management has known about for three months and they're like we haven't heard anything and you, you can't start cause we don't know what's going on. And we learned like, wow, the communication chain is what they felt was important to share was not being shared and we'd end up being the bad guys, cause we were disrupting people's lives when, in our mind, that had already been communicated. So that's that. You know that corporate mentality is the corporate mentality of they tell the people they think, but those people aren't necessarily good communicators. That may not be their specialty. Their specialty is in finance or in whatever tasks they do within their, their business unit.

Mathew Mickler: 24:38

So that has been a huge thing and the bigger the company, the more opportunity there is for that to happen.

Walt Sparling: 24:45

Yeah, and each one of those has their own priorities.

Mathew Mickler: 24:50

Yeah, and I actually did project management for two companies that are are the, I think, the large one of the top. They're two of the top three largest point of sale self checkout companies in the the U S U at our NCR Toshiba GCS and Fujitsu America. And that would happen regularly stores, stores that have been scheduled for months to have new self-checkouts, you know, installed. You know install teams will get there and then managers are like what's going on?

Intro/Outro: 25:30

What are you?

Mathew Mickler: 25:31

guys doing here. When you have big, big, you know organizations, that that is something that is a major problem and I personally feel I push communication, you know, very hard because I want my team to know that I'm going to be open and transparent with them and I want them to be open and transparent with me. Same thing with my stakeholders. I focus on transparency and communication, you know, because at the end of the day, if everyone knows what's going on, it's going to be a lot smoother process than working in those silos.

Walt Sparling: 26:12

Yeah, that's key. I've. I don't know how many times I've been in situations where we are chastised about our communication, when that's a huge, that's a huge thing for me Communication over communication. Yet it wasn't on our side, it was on the client side and it's like, okay, well, how do we work together to get your side better so that we're all on the same page? Yeah, communication is so good, okay, tools, favorite tools. What are some of your favorite tools?

Mathew Mickler: 26:50

So I think I actually really liked JIRA. I'd used it in the past in other project management roles, but when I joined Wells Fargo on my team we'd run everything off of it and I have found it is way more versatile than I ever thought it could be, because I've actually spent more and more time working within it. I can create custom dashboards and I can do a lot of the things I really like of like, like a CRM system, like Salesforce, for example. A lot of the things I can do in there I can do in JIRA, but I can run all my projects as well through JIRA, and so I really like that. And then, on a personal note, I actually use a program called Monday. I use that for personal projects I have or that I'm working on as well outside of work. You know I've been looking at doing consulting and that's one thing I've been utilizing to help me keep in touch with potential clients and things like that as well. So that software is very useful.

Walt Sparling: 28:03

Yeah, jira has come up multiple times, especially on the technical side of project management, and then Monday has come up a few times. It's one of those ones that's out there that's commonly used. So there's a couple more things, but I want to dive in a little bit into my experience with you in LinkedIn. So one of the things that you had mentioned in your notes was wanting to discuss a little more about personal branding and networking. You touched a little bit on networking, so talk to me a little bit about what your goals are there.

Mathew Mickler: 28:42

Yeah, so I've had LinkedIn for God 10 years. I think I started LinkedIn when I first got into IT, so almost 15 years ago. I think I almost very rarely used it, other than when I was laid off or looking for new work or something like that. I would add people here and there. I give a couple of recommendations, I receive recommendations and things like that, but I never really looked at it any other way. It wasn't until recently I started sharing just some articles. They were too big to be post, so I threw them into an article and I'm like, because I started seeing a lot of the people I enjoy reading their content. You, jeremiah, what is it? Kelly McGuire, I think it is A more recent one. Jean Kang Logan.

Walt Sparling: 29:44

Langen.

Mathew Mickler: 29:47

A lot of these individuals that I've been following their content and I've really enjoyed it. I've personally gotten a lot of value from it. So I was like I've got a lot of experience in project management with a lot of stuff. Let me just throw out some of my knowledge base. So I started throwing it out there, the first article I really put out there. I actually tagged a bunch of them in there thanking them for the inspiration to go out and do it. In the last three weeks or so it has exploded. I never would have expected it, but apparently there is a lot of people that are very interested in this industry and enjoy learning it.

Mathew Mickler: 30:41

I've had a lot of people reach out to me. I think the insights on LinkedIn said it went up 30,000% at one point and I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. I've had people ask about am I going to do a book? Am I going to do a newsletter? And I'm like that would be great. My goal with this? To be completely honest, I like to be transparent, like I've said a few times, now that I've realized that there is a want for it, I'm going to do a newsletter. I've already started working on it. On the background. It's going to be called the power of knowledge, because I don't want to just focus on project management, program management, things like that. I'm going to work towards expanding people's knowledge. I want to utilize that to tell my background and my story from where I came from, because it's a unique story. A lot of people have said, hey, this is something I think will bring a lot of inspiration to people. So my story is a little strange. So I want to utilize that newsletter to do that.

Mathew Mickler: 31:55

I have talked to a couple of people who've released books and I think a book would be a lot better to dive into the details of what we do. A newsletter it's kind of hard. You're only going to have them for a couple of minutes while they read over the newsletter. It's hard to dive into the details. But a book or something like that, or even a podcast like what you do which I don't know if I would do a podcast just because it's very time consuming and everything but a book would give me the opportunity to dive into the details of project management, leadership.

Mathew Mickler: 32:38

Inspirational bits of my history.

Mathew Mickler: 32:45

I was a kid who was raised by a single mom with four kids and lived in a very bad neighborhood, very, very poor situation.

Mathew Mickler: 32:56

I was not a very mixed background, so I ended up doing some things where I spent some time in juvenile hall and then I turned 18 and I realized, hey, you need to get yourself together and I fell into IT work and I found out I was actually enjoyed it and it was something I was pretty good at and in never in a million years where I have thought that where my life was leading at that time as a teenager to now, where I would own my own home, have a beautiful wife and six beautiful children, a great job that I enjoy doing and I have a passion for project management and leadership and things like that, it's unique, right. I don't think as a kid I would have ever seen this as my future. I think there's a lot of dark in my past that I've been able to pull out of and I thank my wife and my family for that, primarily because it's the biggest help I've ever had.

Walt Sparling: 34:04

Well, you brought us some good names. Yeah, and I'm with you on, I've had a LinkedIn profile. I'm a little bit older than you. I've had a LinkedIn profile for almost when I started and it was like it was always putting my resume, putting my new job positions, connecting with people I worked with. And it wasn't until I started the podcast and the website that I started being more interactive and started searching people and, to be honest, I started searching people out for interviews. I wanted to find PM to interview and the more people I interviewed, the more people I talked to they would share with me other people that they thought would be a good resource.

Walt Sparling: 34:47

And now I've made some phenomenal connections. You know, jeremiah, like you said, logan Lange and John Connelly, kaylin McGuire, and it goes on. I mean some of the ones that you don't think. You think they're going to be like a little maybe an interview. That'd be great, but they broaden your horizons into other things that you didn't think of. So I'm working on a newsletter too. I can't wait to see what you've got. I'm still trying to formalize mine. I'm also looking for other opportunities to. You know, share the PM mastery story out there with other people and the good thing about it is, the more you promote what you believe in and what your passions are, the more you get connected to other people that are either in the same feeling, have the same feelings you are, or you find an audience that really wants to learn what you have to share. So I look forward to seeing your newsletter and hopefully we can do maybe some projects together you know, coordinate some stuff together. I've seen some of your recent content and I think you've got some great things going.

Mathew Mickler: 35:57

Thank you, I appreciate it. I would love that very much. I would like to throw out one more name. His content's been really good too, and I'm not sure if you know him yet Ethan Schwabber.

Walt Sparling: 36:12

Yes, very much Okay.

Mathew Mickler: 36:15

His content's very, very good as well, and I've actually had a couple of discussions with him.

Walt Sparling: 36:20

He's on my target list. In fact, it was interesting he threw my name out in something recently and I appreciate the fact that he did that. But yeah, another good resource. One of the things that I want to do is to in the newsletter and on the website is to share these resources, because there is no one single all-knowing. There are so many resources and some people fit better with certain resources, so my goal is to share them, their link, a little bit about them and then what their focus is. So as people come on, they go. Well, that's my focus too. Let me follow them.

Mathew Mickler: 36:59

Yep.

Mathew Mickler: 37:00

So, and with mine, I actually did an article about what is your niche right and mine being technology, but even more into the niche which is cybersecurity, cryptography specific. That's a very small niche, right, and there was quite a few people that I would have never thought would be interested in that, but I think that there is, especially in cybersecurity, because it's such a growing field, there's a lot of people who want to understand it. So I think touching on your niche or your experiences in specific niches helps a lot of people because it gives more information for people who are trying to get into that niche.

Walt Sparling: 37:51

Absolutely I have. My son-in-law is interested in getting into cyber and a friend of mine I'm in a mastermind group. He has a cyber background and he's hooked them up to talk so he can kind of plan what his next steps are. And without that connection, he was like I think I want to do it, but I don't really know a lot about it. I'm like, well, let me introduce you to this guy and they talk for hours and they were like, oh, okay, now I have an idea of what I want to do. So connecting people, networking is huge and you never know the kind of connections that you are going to have blossom from that.

Mathew Mickler: 38:28

Friendships that'll come from it. It's just like when you are managing the relationship with a stakeholder, you're not trying to get some well with a stakeholder. You sometimes are trying to get something out of it, but with networking, the thing is it shouldn't be always take, take, take, right. I think with networking, it comes down to being genuine. I think people react If you're a genuine person and you're just like. This is who I am, this is my background, this is what I provide. But also it's not just that People I find in networks. You'd be surprised how many times somebody has gone through a tough time.

Mathew Mickler: 39:15

I was laid off during the 2019, 2020 situation. That happened and you'd be amazed, just because of connections I made on LinkedIn. I'd never even in person spoken with them. I posted that information and they went out of their way of jumping on a phone call with me and helping me rewrite resume. Or hey, I've got this other opportunity that might work for you. And they were sending out that information because it wasn't a. The networking isn't always just take, take, take. Those types of connections were the people that I had genuinely built a connection with and a relationship with that we had spoken throughout months and years. That this is what's going on. This is what's going on. I'm dealing with this. Have you ever seen this kind of thing? Oh, there's back and forth, right, and it's just like any other type of networking.

Walt Sparling: 40:16

Yeah, so in your situation, I've seen that multiple times and where people have created new connections because of their and the thing is they were vulnerable enough to put it out there and explain and people like jumped in, said how can I help share their post or reach out? I actually had someone who did that and someone it was in my network. I did not know that person, but when I shared their post in my network, they actually called them and said, hey, can we set up a call let's talk about if there's an opportunity for us, you know, within our company, so that that happens. The other thing is, like you said, with a stakeholder. So all of this to me is like there's an empathy aspect to this. So they understand you as an individual.

Walt Sparling: 40:59

You don't always have to be this, this cold. Hey, this is what I know, this is what I'm here for and you, what I have found in in relationships is, if you understand their situation and you can relate that to the project at hand or the situation, you have a much better part, much better possibility of it being successful, because you're on the same page. Yep, so that is huge. So the big question, or the my favorite, I should say, is the did you know? So what kind of did you know Do you have?

Mathew Mickler: 41:36

So did you know? 58% of the United States population lives on the eastern portion of the United States? I did not know that.

Walt Sparling: 41:49

And most of them probably live in New York.

Mathew Mickler: 41:51

Yeah, yeah, Well, it's crazy because I, you know, living, being from Arizona but living in other states, I never understood that really, because in Phoenix I mean, we're huge, Huge city, Phoenix is is exploded in the last decade and a half or whatever it may be, and when I looked that up I was like that is, I've been to New York and I'm like I don't know how people raise kids here. My mom is from New York, I have family in New York and I was just unfounded with how many when I went there and I was like how do people live here?

Walt Sparling: 42:32

Yeah, I live in what's considered a decent sized city in Florida. It's a major, it's one of the probably the top four. But I, when I was younger, in college, I went to New York to visit family and I had. I grew up there. When I grew up, I was there when I was young, came to Florida, spent most of my life here, went back up and I took a wrong turn and ended up in New York City and where I was going was upstate New York.

Walt Sparling: 42:58

So I had to get back on the interstate and I spent a couple hours in New York City trying to find my way back to the interstate. I don't know how many people I stopped and talked to and no one could give me direction. I parked in an illegal parking spot because I saw a cop across the street and I'm like I don't care if I get a ticket, I just got to figure out how to get out and he turned his head and looked the other way and drove off. It's like he didn't want to deal with it. I finally found a what was it? A valet parker at a club, and I said I just trying to get to the end and he showed me how to get out. And after I left there I was on my way and I came back home to Florida and I was like I know now why there are so many people in New York. They do not know how to get out. Yeah.

Mathew Mickler: 43:47

Yeah, funny story kind of goes along with this, with what you just said about parking and the cop just kind of going the other way not wanting to deal with it. I took the subway. It was like almost one o'clock in the morning when I first landed in New York, at JFK, and I took the subway. I was trying to make sure I could get off at my in the Bronx or Brooklyn or something like that. I think it was the Bronx, no Brooklyn, I'm sorry near Crown Heights. So I take the train and I'm like how do I get out of this subway station? It's an underground subway station. I've got my bags with me.

Mathew Mickler: 44:27

My mom was panicked. She was like don't take the subway. I'm like I'm a big guy, nobody's going to mess with me. Nobody did I mean. I'm a decent sized individual, you know.

Mathew Mickler: 44:35

And I was like OK, so I went but there's a cop right there and I saw it was an emergency exit. I'm like I can't use the emergency exit, I don't know where else to go. And he's like, hey, are you traveling? And I'm like yeah, I was like I'm trying to figure out how to get up to the street level. He's like, oh, just come this way. He takes my bags, put them over the exit little turnstile thing and just opens up the emergency exit, screaming and loud and everything like that, and he's like, all right, just let's go up this way, takes me up, exit out and he's like why aren't you crossing? Because I had to cross the street. And he's like, because you're a cop and it's a green light. He's like, yeah, just keep going. He's like, but don't, don't stop, because they will hit you and they will not. They'll keep going. And I'm like OK, so yeah, there is a different mindset there.

Walt Sparling: 45:29

Yeah, there's a lifestyle that you get used to in that, yeah, that is. That is bizarre. Actually, to add to that story, when I was, when I was stuck there, I was in a kind of a bad area and there was a bridge that had a like a decline and someone had a flat tire and I thought, well, he's, he's local, he's changing his tire. So I went over a park, went over to help, you know, to ask him a question, and his car started to fall off the jack and he was on a slope. So I grabbed the car and I'm trying to hold it steady so he could get the wheel on there, and got the wheel on and then I'm like, oh, ok, I said so, listen, you know, I helped him and I can you tell me how to get out of New York City? He just, he just put his stuff in his car and I said, you know, good luck, god in his car drove off. What You're you're so welcome.

Mathew Mickler: 46:21

Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.

Walt Sparling: 46:25

Well, I greatly appreciate your time, matthew, and I do look forward to more interaction and senior newsletter when it comes out and whatever other ideas you have coming down the pipe. And for everyone else, thank you and we'll see you on the next episode of PM Mastery.

Mathew Mickler: 46:46

Thank you so much. Have a good one.

Intro/Outro: 46:48

Thanks for listening to the PM Mastery podcast at wwwpm-masterycom. Be sure to subscribe in your podcast. Until next time, keep working on your project.