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Riding the Waves of Transformation: Sky's Inspirational Journey into Project Management

• Walt Sparling • Season 1 • Episode 44

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Riding the Waves of Transformation: Sky's Inspirational Journey into Project Management

 Are you ready to ride the waves of transformation with Skye, a dynamic Senior Project Specialist at a leading edtech company? This episode gives you an exclusive window into Sky's inspiring journey, from the world of social work to the fast-paced realm of project management. Sky's unique approach to navigating change, assessing business needs, and fostering growth will leave you with an invigorating perspective. Settle in as we deeply dive into Skye's commitment to lifelong learning, her tactics for mastering technical skills, and the exciting road to their PMP certification.


As we peel back the layers, Skye reveals the nitty-gritty of studying for the PMP exam, the reality of dealing with imposter syndrome, and the thrill of spearheading an innovative financing initiative aimed at amplifying access to resources for lower-income students. But that's not all! We’ll also explore Skye's top-notch PM tools and uncover the secret sauce behind her company's exceptional marketing strategy. This episode is a treasure trove of insights and inspiration for those seeking to elevate their project management career. So, plug in, tune out the noise and immerse yourself in this enlightening conversation.

 UPDATE: Since the interview a couple of weeks ago, Skye has accepted a new role as a Web Project Manager with CloudMellow and will be relocating from Florida to Atlanta, Georgia!

 Let's wish Skye the best on this new adventure!

 Favorite Tool(s):

ClickUp - https://clickup.com/

 Links:

 PMI Talent Triangle: Technical /Ways of Working - Leadership/Power Skills - Strategy/Business Acumen (Learn More)

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

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


Intro/Outro:

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 Sparling.

Walt Sparling:

All right, welcome everybody to the current edition of PM Mastery. Today we have with us SkyDod. Welcome Sky.

Skye Dodd:

Hey, thanks for having me.

Walt Sparling:

Glad to have you. We're going to start out and we're going to have you tell us a little bit about who you are personally.

Skye Dodd:

Oh, personally, oh my goodness. Yeah, so my name is Sky. I live in Florida. I've been in the Orlando area for about 10 years, moved down here from New York and, yeah, just live in the Florida Dream Town here, the Sunshine State.

Walt Sparling:

Good deal and you're near the east coast, so you're near the good beaches with the waves.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, and all the sharks.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, those two. So what do you currently do for a living?

Skye Dodd:

So I am working at a company called General Assembly. It is a tech education boot camp and my role right now is senior project specialist. So it kind of consists of a little bit of sales and additionally I pick up projects probably about 50-50. So you know half sales and half projects, project management.

Walt Sparling:

Okay, you indicated in your notes you're constantly assessing business needs and you had you're going to talk about this a little bit, I think, but you had done something with one of their training boot camps.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, yeah. So a lot of what I've done just before this role is implemented projects that when I start at a company they don't even necessarily realize that they need. So I'm always I'm like very process driven, so always just kind of looking at what we're doing and how we can make it better. Right, how do we do what we do more efficiently? How do we drive business revenue? So just constantly evaluating business needs and really suggesting to management projects where we can fill in any gaps and just become more successful as a company and as individuals.

Walt Sparling:

So why do you do what you do now?

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, that's a good question. So I love projects Transparently. I'm not really a salesperson, but I was a social worker for seven years and really wanted to be in an environment where I was able to drive change. I found an opportunity for that at this ed tech company. The primary goal of the company, or the mission, is really to help people who don't think that they can pivot into the tech industry. We train them and we help them land jobs and really completely change their lives. So my whole motive in life is my whole brand is really to inspire and motivate people. I also really love helping emergent leaders evolve. So in social work you really don't have a huge work-life balance You've probably heard this, but the salary is not really that great, and so I was really hoping to take my skill set that I really fostered in that atmosphere and bring it over to ed tech to change people's lives in a different way.

Walt Sparling:

Good deal. It's interesting how our past jobs or roles can help us create our future. Sometimes we don't even know where we end up, where we're going to end up, but our past experiences kind of take us down a path.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah.

Walt Sparling:

In this. You came from social working. You're now into this. You sound like you've got some pretty interesting roles that you do as far as assisting people and helping them grow and helping the company. How do you keep up? How do you continue to learn in the various areas that you're dealing with?

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, that's a really good one. So, as a social worker, let me just clarify so I predominantly worked in the child welfare industry and so essentially, you have your kids taken away and I kind of come in as your social worker to help mitigate the risk and really reunify you with your kiddos or help your child achieve permanency in whatever way is safest for them, and so, that being said, I have a really great people-centric focus, really good at risk assessment. But I really wanted to upscale in more of those technical areas. A lot of the medical and mental health industry is pretty far behind technologically. So I was able to come over to this ed tech company and I can actually take all of our classes for free.

Skye Dodd:

So it's helped me grow in all of my technical skills right. So using actual analytical software to provide metrics that are going to really drive that business change that I love to assess. I was able to take a UX design bootcamp and really enhance my skills with regard to creating beautiful digital product With my experience. I already was really great at that research piece, but now kind of merging that into more of a technical sort of skill set, so kind of a cool combination of all of my skills really kind of multifaceted but yeah, just continuing to learn and grow in my technical skills and really utilize all of the programs that we teach at General Assembly.

Walt Sparling:

Do you use some of the other platforms like LinkedIn, learning or Udemy or any of those other ones out there as well?

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, I do, yeah. So someone that you that I've connected with that you actually had on a previous podcast sent me this free trial for LinkedIn Learning, so I've actually been utilizing that. It's a two month trial, so, gosh, I've this weekend alone, I took a SAS training. I took another one that was technical product management, avoiding scope creep, so really just continuing to enhance my project management skills, utilizing that. That's a stellar platform. Udemy is really great as well. I've done several on there, but I'm actually really vibing with LinkedIn Learning right now.

Walt Sparling:

Cool, yeah, I love both of them. But LinkedIn Learning our company actually has. As part of your employment, you get the free subscription to the LinkedIn Learning. So it's very, very helpful.

Skye Dodd:

Mm, hmm.

Walt Sparling:

All right. Now you indicated in here also that you were on the hunt for a PM role and you took your PMP and tell us a little bit about that.

Skye Dodd:

Oh, you want to hear all about the study process. Yeah, I studied for about two months Getting my PMP. I actually just got it a couple of weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago, so that's new, and I just came up with the idea. Maybe two or three, probably three months ago I studied rigorously, legitimately, 200 hours of study in two months and I actually was going to take the test remotely so in the virtual setting, and I got about 40 questions in and I was actually kicked out of the setting for holding a pen.

Skye Dodd:

So completely my fault for not reading all of the requirements and then I had to reschedule it and all of that. So that was quite a learning process, adding all of that to the lessons learned, and I had to retake it and I took it in an in-person session the second time and was able to pass. But yeah, it was definitely intense. Going through the studying. You think you know everything and then you start taking these mock exams and that messes with the. You start to really be dealt with or faced with imposter syndrome and all sorts of emotions, exhaustion from all the studying, overstudying yeah, it's a crazy process.

Walt Sparling:

Yes, of all the people, myself included, that I know that have gone through it and I went through it twice was I wouldn't want to do it again. So, I focus on keeping my PDUs up.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, yeah, that's what I've been using all the LinkedIn learning for and, like I said, I just took it a few weeks ago, but I'm like let me get all these PDUs out of the body right now.

Walt Sparling:

Well, you'll get at least a half a PDU for this one, and then, if you listen to it, you'll get another half.

Skye Dodd:

Holy cow, what a deal.

Walt Sparling:

All right, and then you are looking for a PM role.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, yeah.

Walt Sparling:

Let's see what else we got here. Challenges Now you've transitioned from various positions. You've done your PMP. What is maybe current challenge you deal with, or one recently that you've had?

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, so my current role again is part sales and part project management, and the company just released a new marketing strategy. That is really amazing, very mission-driven, centered towards helping people transition careers who are perhaps lower income. However, that kind of poses a challenge for people in the admissions process. Our boot camps are pretty pricey. They're market value for sure, but it's hard when you have a demographic that makes perhaps 30k and under for them to get approved for loans for 16,000.

Skye Dodd:

So one thing I have been working on in the last few months is a financing initiative. I call it Operation Financing, so I'm managing a project all around getting more resources to really support the students that this marketing campaign is drawing in. Overall, I think it's been really successful. We have a spoiler we have a new financing option coming out in the next couple of weeks, so definitely connect with General Assembly or myself on LinkedIn to hear about that. But yeah, I'm really excited about the opportunity. It's going to increase revenue, obviously, increase conversion rates, but ultimately the mission is to really help these folks get new jobs and I'm just really excited to see the opportunities that are going to be available to the diverse population that we serve once we launch this new option.

Walt Sparling:

Oh, that's exciting. I'm sure some people that were thinking about it now might think a little bit more because they have additional options to be able to do the financing.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, definitely Give me a call. Let me know I'll connect with you and kind of see what we can work out for sure.

Walt Sparling:

So what are some of your favorite tools? Previous now.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, that's a good question. So when I started my BMP training, I picked up a project to do alongside the training the project I was just mentioning. That way I could really apply those skills in a practical way as I was learning them. You know, really best practices I hadn't come from prior to General Assembly. I hadn't come from a company that had a PMO or really understood the importance of project management, and so it was always me that was really researching what tools were in the market the most popular tools in the market at the time. So recently, I guess in the last year, I've been utilizing ClickUp for all of my projects that I've been managing. It's pretty user friendly. It's got a lot of different features. I'm also doing some trainings meet LinkedIn learning, trainings on Asuna, lucid and Visio. So, yeah, my favorite though that I've gabbled in so far is ClickUp.

Walt Sparling:

I've heard of all of those, except you, mentioned what was it Lucid and what is Lucid?

Skye Dodd:

Similar to Visio, so like a flow chart. Are there specific softwares that you would recommend?

Walt Sparling:

Well, I can tell you well from my own experience and then from what's very popular with the different interviewees is OneNote. So now you mentioned that in your notes that you were a macro.

Skye Dodd:

I am. I love myself a MacBook.

Walt Sparling:

So they do have Office for Mac. Do you use the Apple Office software? I don't even. I can't even think what that's called right now Word processing and.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, not really for my current roles. I have in the past. But yeah, I'm just using Google Sheets and Google Docs right now. That's all I really need for my current role, other than the projects that I'm managing which are on a smaller scale. So, you know, click up is kind of sufficient for those, Okay.

Walt Sparling:

So I can see why OneNote may not be something out there. Onenote is a Microsoft product. It's available within Windows for free, there's a version in there, and then it's also part of their Office 365 suite. They do have a little bit of subtle differences, but if you don't have either Office or Windows, yeah, I'm not sure you, there is a web version so you could actually sign up for the web version of OneNote. But it's a very common tool.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, that's great. I prefer to upscale the software agnostic, as you mentioned. I'm looking for work, so really anything I can kind of dabble in in the meantime I think is going to be beneficial for myself and whatever company I end up in.

Walt Sparling:

And most corporations I found use Microsoft Office. I did run into one recently. I mean there are firms that use the Google suite. Typically they've tended to be smaller, but I ran into one recently that a very large firm at multiple offices and they use the Google suite. So a lot of options out there. Asana is a common one. Quite a few people use that. Clickup I have heard of before. I don't believe I've dabbled with it, but I'll definitely make sure that gets in the show notes.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, it's pretty good it's. If you've ever used Smart Sheets, it's similar with extra features.

Walt Sparling:

Oh, so you would say, a little better than Smart Sheets.

Skye Dodd:

I think so. Yeah, now I will say it depends on who is on your team, because it's not as user friendly. I think Smart Sheets is a little more intuitive.

Walt Sparling:

Okay, where are you starting to use a lot of Smart Sheets at work for intake and because of the automations, and I'm thinking about starting to use that at home and for my side projects well, side projects being the podcast and stuff just to kind of track, and I love anything that can be automated.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, ClickUp's got a lot of automation features, so there's a free trial. If you wanted to give that a whirl, I'm an advocate, okay.

Walt Sparling:

Good deal, I'll take a look at it. All right, so let's see if there's anything else we missed. Now you're very active on LinkedIn.

Intro/Outro:

Yeah.

Walt Sparling:

And, from what I can tell, you're very generous with trying to help folks out and you're a go. What did you call it earlier? You're supportive. I'm trying to think of the term. Well, now I feel silly.

Skye Dodd:

No, I just don't remember.

Walt Sparling:

All right. So you spend a decent amount of time on LinkedIn and now you're doing some LinkedIn learning, so that is good, that is cool.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I'm really just trying to utilize LinkedIn to help people. Ultimately, you know, branding, content creation that's all great, but I think my biggest driving factor is really making meaningful connections so that we can all help one another. I'm not necessarily someone that wants 15,000 followers, right. I just want people that we're going to be able to really trust each other and bring each other meaningful, useful content consistently. So, yeah, I think just supporting each other, I think, is what I'm trying to really, how I'm trying to really brand myself on LinkedIn nowadays.

Walt Sparling:

Okay, yeah, and we met in a common group, which I think was the project management group. You've been chatting with a few of the people that I'm connected with. That's how I got your name and started following you.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, you know, I think we were talking about people transitioning careers. I remember having the conversation about just people just really using the word transitioning so loosely that it kind of undermines their skill sets. Right, I didn't have a project manager role for a while the title wasn't there but I've been managing projects for a decade and so transitioning teachers really just trying to maybe go for the CAPM instead of the PMP and that sort of thing. So yeah, I've just been trying to comment and really make sure that people are assessing their skills and know how much they actually can do and really selling themselves in the best way possible to position themselves for that change.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, I think Melissa Chapman, who I'd interviewed a couple episodes back. She just came out with her e-book and she did a great job of helping with how you can approach it, the struggles that you might encounter trying to register for the exam and then the studying. Of course. That's as you said, that there's a lot to that and you really got to be dedicated to it and the test has changed. I think I took it the first time with five. I ended up. I didn't pass that one. I missed it by a little bit, so I had to. It was towards the tail end of five, so I had to take it on six. I've seen some of the material for the newer test and it's evolving. It's not the same.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, and I'll say some of the questions. I submitted it with about 20 seconds left in the whole, so I used nearly every second and I thought to myself probably five or six times throughout the duration I'm not going to pass this thing, because some of the questions are a full paragraph, so it takes you quite a while to read it and then you have four answers. Two of them are very clearly the wrong answer and the other two the verbiage is very similar, so it really trips you up. It's an emotional roller coaster, for sure, but I think that's why you really have to choose a strategy that works for you and choose resources that really simplify the material, and then I think it'll all come together. So, yeah, happy to help. Anyone that wants to DM me on LinkedIn and we can talk about a strategy. You know, coming up with strategy and resources that are going to be beneficial, but Melissa's book is great, to your point.

Walt Sparling:

Awesome. I'm sure that'll be much appreciated. So what do you have for us for a? Did you know?

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, this is a good one. So again, I'm from New York. Snapple Facts are a really big thing up there. Well, snapple's a big thing and you just you know look under the cap for that fact. So in my recent Snapple Facts exploration, the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds plus 37 will give you the current air temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Walt Sparling:

So very interesting, very unique. Now I just got to get around a cricket.

Skye Dodd:

I know, yeah, do we? Do we have crickets down here because we're in Florida too, do we?

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, there are, but you've got to be away from the city. You know, go camping, you might find some.

Skye Dodd:

Maybe that'll have to be an adventure in a couple of weeks. We'll figure that out.

Walt Sparling:

Are you going to go camping for your vacation?

Skye Dodd:

My upcoming vacation. No, we are going on a cruise. I am so excited. Yeah, we're flying up to New York and then my friends are meeting us in the city my husband and I and we're taking a cruise to the Turbermuda because two of them are getting married.

Walt Sparling:

So no, good deal.

Skye Dodd:

Yeah, exciting.

Walt Sparling:

Well, enjoy that trip and thank you so much for coming on. Do you have any other things you want to add or ask?

Skye Dodd:

Well, I appreciate your time so so much, definitely going to go ahead and share this. I've watched some of your other or listened to your some of your other episodes and they're great. So definitely want to advocate for people to listen in to other, to other episodes that that you host as well. But yeah, just I really appreciate your time.

Walt Sparling:

All right, well, I appreciate it. I will get this out and get some show notes in there with a link to your profile so people can connect with you if they haven't haven't already, and we'll see the rest of you on the next episode of PM Mastery.

Intro/Outro:

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