2020 Blog and Podcast Wrap-up with Amanda Sherman

In This Episode:

In this episode, I had Amanda Sherman back to do a wrap-up, where we talked about the blog posts and podcast episodes for 2020. 

 Books: 

• Positive Personality Profiles - DISC

 Links: 

• This Episode Page w/Transcript
• For a full list of podcast episodes visit go here: PM-Mastery Podcast Episodes
• For a full list of blog posts go here: PM-Mastery Blog Posts
• pm-mastery.com 

 Episode Sponsor: 

• Freshly

PM-Mastery Links:

• 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
• Become a PURE PM: https://pm-mastery.com/pure
• Check out Instructing.com for all your PM course needs: https://www.instructing.com/?ref=bd5e5c
• Get your free PDU Tracker here: https://pm-mastery.com/resource_links/

Transcript

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

project manager, pm, podcast, PMI, project management, interview, Amanda Sherman, Freshly, PMI, resources, David Alvarez, goal, struggles

SPEAKERS

Walt Sparling, Amanda Sherman

Intro  00:12

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. And now here's your host Walt Sparling. 

Sponsor  00:36

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Walt Sparling  01:39

This podcast is the final episode of 2020. So today I have Amanda Sherman back with us. How are you doing there, Amanda? 

Amanda Sherman  01:49

Hey, Walt, I'm doing great. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me. 

Walt Sparling  01:53

How was your Christmas?

Amanda Sherman  01:55

Christmas was great - had all the local family got together? No timeframe just visited and hung out and ate great food had a really nice time. 

Walt Sparling  02:08

Did you save me some pumpkin pie? 

Amanda Sherman  02:10

Well, you know it's your favorite.

Walt Sparling  02:12

Okay, deal. actually surprised I got a small one. And it was pretty yummy. And I think there's some left. So we'll see. But I'm looking forward to yours. 

 Amanda Sherman  02:22

Yeah, how was your holiday? 

 Walt Sparling  02:24

It was pretty quiet, we stayed at home. My son in law and wife and grandchild. Were here and have been here. You may notice in my voice I don't sound so good. The whole house is sick.

 Walt Sparling  02:42

Started with a little one. And made its way through. So now everybody is sick. We had Christmas with the grandparents while they set in their vehicle in the driveway and watched Kai open up all his presence. So because so they didn't want to get near them or near us for that matter. And everybody's still had their masks on. But it was weird. Ya know, Christmas 2020. Yeah, so hoping next year is a little bit different. 

 Amanda Sherman  03:10

Looking forward to next year.

 Walt Sparling  03:12

What about New Year's you got any big plans? 

 Amanda Sherman  03:14

Not really just kind of, you know, saving the big plans probably for next year. kind of thing, hanging locally.

 Walt Sparling  03:25

I think there'll be a lot of parties, but they'll probably be small. And everybody's just gonna be like, let's get this year over always. 

 Amanda Sherman  03:30

Mm-hmm. I think so.

 Walt Sparling  03:34

So, I know we're only eight episodes into the podcast. It's new just started in October. But the goal is to do a weekly podcast and bi-weekly blog posts. And at the end of the year, I want to kind of do a wrap-up each year of what the year was like and who we talked to interviewed, etc. So it's fitting that Amanda came back because Amanda was actually interviewed me on the very first pod podcast back at the end of October.

 Walt Sparling  04:10

So I just want to kind of go down through and talk a little bit about where we're at. We, so we kick the blog and podcast off in October; the blog was early October and teh podcast was late. The first episode was our introduction, which Amanda helped interview me on. We've had a total of eight, including today's, so let's see most of them have been interviews with project managers or project related folks. And then we've had a couple topical so the first one was with Clinton Brooks Herman he is a construction pm in the educational space. The Second one was Sean Kelly, also a construction pm in the educational space. And I actually met Clint virtually when I was doing my PMP, he and I were in the same class, we took a boot camp, I had to do a refresher from version five, we've been kind of communicating back and forth. So when I kicked this off, I asked him if he would be willing to be involved. And he said, Yes, he's been a big supporter. And he is working on trying to get us more folks to be interviewed, and Shawn was one of them.

 Walt Sparling  05:25

So then we went to see our third interview was with Travis chess, a construction PM, he works for a large national general contractor that we actually work with it work. And then on the fourth one, mixed it up a little bit. I had David Alvarez on, he is actually a commercial banker. And he came on to talk about ADD, which is action Deficit Disorder was a really good one. And I would recommend that you listen to that one. I'll put a link to all of the podcasts in the show notes for this one, but you can just go to the pm-mastery.com and on the main page, there'll be a list of all the podcasts. So, our fifth interview was with Chris Chavez, he is a land development PM, and actually a former teammate of ours. He was still there when you joined? What wasn't he? 

 Amanda Sherman  06:20

Oh, yeah, he was. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I did some training with him while he was there. 

 Walt Sparling  06:26

And then our sixth episode was actually had David Alvarez back again. And that was just recently, and we talked about goal planning, which was probably one of my favorite episodes. A - I love the topic. And B - I think I sounded better on that one than most of them. So I'm starting to get kind of get the handle of this, this thing. So that was definitely one of my favorites. What about shooting? Do you have any favorites? 

 Amanda Sherman  06:53

Well, I think they each have great insight on project management outside or, you know, silo industries if you will. It was interesting to hear everyone's experiences in addition to their history behind what brought them to their current profession, and how that has played a role in their development of their career. So I guess in a nutshell, I kind of like the mall. And I liked what each person brought to the table was interesting. 

Walt Sparling  07:29

And that is a good point. Because I mean, the hope or the point of the podcast is to help project managers grow, and if or help project manager wannabes, so someone who's thinking about becoming a project manager, manager, what are the options out there? What are the industries, what are the jobs, I belong to a couple of project management, Facebook groups and PMI. And it's interesting, the groups are all different in their focus, some are totally focused on just testing and getting your PMP. And then some are just general knowledge. And for me, learning about the different tools that everybody uses, the struggles that they have, I think that's a good way to relate to the audience of, hey, if you have these struggles, or you like these tools, you know, there is an area we can focus on; like OneNote is popular among everyone. So if there are tips and tricks that we can add resources out there for that I definitely that is one of my target areas for the beginning of the year is to go in and do some really good resources for OneNote, since so many people do it.

 Amanda Sherman  08:40

And you're a great teacher, Walt. So I expect this will be great, great stuff. 

 Walt Sparling  08:46

I certainly hope so. And I certainly hope I have this cold gone by then.

 Walt Sparling  08:50

So that is what we've done so far this year, or for the year 2020. And I'm always looking for new folks to interview if you're a PM, project coordinator or project executive, head of a PMO, or pm trainer. Any of those categories would be great resources for the interviews.

 Walt Sparling  09:15

I do have so far already planned for 2021. I've got one more construction PM, that he and I are going to talk a little bit about being a good boy or girl scout and being prepared for different things like site visits and meetings. Little tricks you can do to kind of keep yourself ahead of the game. I have one construction project executive, which is kind of a more of a he's the client interface when issues arise or any complications come up. Then we have a project coordinator, which the one that I'm interviewing is a OneNote queen. So looking forward to that.

Walt Sparling  09:57

Have a healthcare pm and a software developer. The software developer's title is not PM, but he is basically the head of a software development group within a large international structural firm. And much of what he does is project management. So, he deals with the whole agile stuff, which we don't typically deal with on our end. So that'll be interesting. And then Amanda, I am certainly hoping that soon we're going to interview you and hear a little bit about your history and what you do. So maybe we can get you on the schedule for next month. 

 Amanda Sherman  10:36

Fair Enough.

 Walt Sparling  10:36

And then we'll periodically throw in some discussions like we did with the ADD and the goals. Amanda, you and I were talking earlier, you mentioned something about a book you really liked, it talked about personalities. Run that by me again. 

 Amanda Sherman  10:55

Yeah, I'd love to see us get into this a little bit. So the book is positive personality profiles, and there's different takes on it and versions that are out there, but this one in particular, it has like the DISC. Which is you know, it talks about you know, D is outgoing task-oriented I outgoing and people-oriented, S is reserved people, and C is reserved and task-oriented. So it just kind of, you know.

 Walt Sparling  11:26

So I'm a C - maybe.

 Amanda Sherman  11:29

So basically, it's kind of like the four temperament models, if you will, of human behavior. And we all deal with people being project managers, and how you approach things kind of might weigh in on how they make decisions, and how they, and then how they react. So it was interesting. 

 Amanda Sherman  11:51

Yeah, I think that would be great. Communication is huge for what we do, and leadership too, because you're, you're kind of running the team, even if it's not, they don't work for you. But if they're on the team, you're managing them in some fashion. And you're gonna have a ton of different personality types as we know, so I think that would be good. I've also got some good communication books that I've read, I want to have you email me your, your book title in, I will get a link to it in the show notes, like with a couple of these other books, I think that would be useful. 

 Walt Sparling  12:26

That's been the podcast part. And then on the blog, we have four posts, actually, five, we have the intro, which talks about the purpose behind and the goal of the podcast and the blog, and then an article on "Are you a project manager?" So whether you have the title or not, are you doing these kinds of steps, and it kind of walks through different things and skillsets, and you go, Well, you know what, maybe I am a project manager, or maybe I'm suited for it. If you were wondering, career planning, there was one about kind of planning out your year tracking, getting things organized on your calendar ahead of time as a project manager, who shouldn't be waiting last minute to do things. There's one about PDU tracking. So if you have a PMP, or sort of a CAPM or a couple of the others that you need to track PDs for, I talked a little bit about that, as well as included a tool that I put together on how to track in all the different areas, how to put all your PDFs in one spot, and then in links to where you need to go to verify them and where you need to go to input them on the PMI site. This is all for PMI certifications. 

 Walt Sparling  13:52

And then of course, the last one I did was on goal planning, which originally was supposed to be in alignment with the goal podcast that David and I did. But to be honest, if you did listen to the first one, and I say the first one, the first version, which would have been a couple of weeks ago when it came out.  It was me talking and it sounded very scripted. I wasn't happy with it. So I actually got David to come on in. We just redid the whole thing, same topic, same things, but we re-recorded it in a conversation and it sounds so much better. And so if you did listen to the scripted version, I highly recommend you go back and listen to the new one with David and I and it was posted this weekend. Okay, I'll go back and check it out. I know you said you had listened to the other one and you liked it, but I'm guaranteeing you listen to this one. You'll like it way better. Okay, that's it for the blog. I've got some more articles on meetings, communication.

 Walt Sparling  14:59

Probably some time Tips and Tricks, I've got a ton of content that I've been saving up to get out there. And I'll be working on that definitely in 2021. And I'm always open to ideas. If, there's anyone out there that wants to know more about something, send me an email, I get a couple of inquiries about something, I'll definitely work on putting something together. The resource page is not up. yet. It's a link that says under construction, so I'm working on putting together some of the resources that have already included in the blog and podcast, I now want to get them on the resource page. So that'll be coming in. They'll also be in their recommendations for books, which we talked a little bit about, in the video links, like I watched YouTube videos and Udemy stuff all the time and LinkedIn. So if you have a LinkedIn, I think it's the premium level or professional, one of the two. I'll include it when I get into the LinkedIn stuff, but you can go in and take these courses as part of your membership, we have one through work that we automatically get. So it's handy. There's a ton of stuff out there, some of its old, you got to kind of take a look at it, because it might be a little outdated. But some of it is really good for growth and topic learning. So that's kind of the stuff that I want to get out there on the resource page. 

 Walt Sparling  16:25

And then the biggest thing that came up, we talked about it, or David and I talked about it a little bit on the goal podcast, which was I belong to a mastermind I've brought this up so many times now. And one of the things that I decided, while I was at the retreat this year was, you know, I've gained a lot of knowledge. And I don't know, I've been successful more successful, I think since I've been in the mastermind. So I thought well, why not start a project management-focused mastermind? Probably keep it around five to six people meet every two weeks, it'll be a virtual one, do a Zoom call, I've started to outline an agenda. And we'll do a roundtable and we'll talk about the struggles that people are having. And hopefully, we'll have the group, if it works, the same way my mastermind has worked is that we'll be able to help each other grow and get past these struggles. So I'll probably do a post on it after the new year with more details of the number of people like I said, I want to keep it to like six people Max, there'll be a minimal cost for it. And it'll be a bi-weekly setup. So I'll do all the details in there. And we'll see if that drives any interest. 

 Amanda Sherman  17:47

Yeah, sounds good. 

 Walt Sparling  17:49

So what do you think and anything else you'd like to see Amanda either on the podcast or the blog, or maybe some resources?

 Amanda Sherman  17:58

Well, I think the resources that you're gonna post are going to be super helpful, the ones that you've developed, you know, internally with our group have been super helpful. And I'm pretty sure a lot of those he could probably share out on your site as well. But I'd like to see those get out there. And then just the other one that we touched on a little bit earlier than just identifying with people and mastering communications, you know, is understanding people could be my two. 

 Walt Sparling  18:28

Okay, well I will take those into consideration and we'll see how we can get those worked in and for anyone that has a topic that you would like to hear more about or you want to just touch base or you're interested in the mastermind if you go to pm-mastery.com, go to the contact page. There will be a form in there you can pick what it is you want or are you're interested in, and especially if you're interested in maybe being interviewed and want to talk a little bit about what you do as a pm that, you can do that same thing there pm-mastery.com, go to the contact page and send me an email. I would love to hear from you. And other than that, I want to wish everybody a super successful Happy New Year and hope everyone had a good Christmas holiday.

 Amanda Sherman  19:19

Amanda, I hope to see you very soon so I can get my pumpkin pie. I do have a present for you too. So if I'm not feeling well, this week, I probably won't make our team lunch. But I'll figure out a way to get with everybody. After that.

 Walt Sparling  19:41

We just wish you well. I appreciate that. Thank you, everyone. And we'll see you on the next episode of PM-mastery!

 Amanda Sherman  19:49

 Happy Holidays.