PM-Mastery

From Marine Corps to Project Management with Russ Parker

• Walt Sparling • Season 1 • Episode 65

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In this episode: 

Could transitioning from a military career to project management be your next strategic move? Join me as I chat with Russ Parker, a retired Marine Corps officer turned project manager and PM trainer. From assisting his wife with PMP certification study sessions to obtaining his own PMP and Risk Management Professional certifications, 

Russ's journey is both inspiring and informative. With a keen focus on risk management, Russ draws intriguing parallels between his Marine Corps experience and the intricacies of project management. Discover how he skillfully navigates his various roles in the financial technology sector, balancing a full-time job with blogging, consulting, and teaching. 

As Russ shares his insights, you'll learn about the importance of continuous learning and staying ahead of industry trends. With a penchant for integrating AI into his skill set, Russ opens up about how technology has enhanced his expertise beyond his military background. 

Russ also shares information on the two courses that he taught for PURE Management Alliance. Check out his courses through the link below. 

Whether you're contemplating a career shift or eager to deepen your understanding of risk management, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways. Tune in to explore Russ's multifaceted career path and gain actionable insights that could shape your own project management journey. 

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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. And now here's your host, walt Sparling.

Walt Sparling:

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 you prefer? Yeah, russ, all right, russ Parker. So, russ, we're going to kind of go through our normal layout here.

Russ Parker:

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 Corps officer and I now am a project manager and teaching project management. I have a wife and two kids that I love, and I just got a new dog, an English Bulldog, and we decided to call him Major oh, sweet, good name. He's 12 weeks and he is stubborn for training right now.

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

Financials, so working financial on the technology side.

Walt Sparling:

Gotcha All right. So you are retired from the Marine Corps and you're doing project management. What got you into that transition like going from very into project management yeah.

Russ Parker:

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's a lot of similarities. I'm giving her these quizzes, these flashcards and I'm like I know this, this is something we do in the military. And fast forward. A couple years later I was on my way out the door and I was trying to figure out what am I gonna do and I ended up taking a couple personality quizzes and I was talking to the assessor and he's like have you ever thought about project management? Like now, my wife does that.

Russ Parker:

So I looked a little more into it. I actually took a scrum master course and I think it just it just hooked me on from there jumped into the PMP program through a military program onward to opportunity and from there just kind of drove me forward and I fell in love with the risk side of the house. The risk side really matches what the Marine Corps does for risk in a lot of different ways and eventually I was like started the company 44 risk pm and decided to just see where it took me and started blogging with the risk blog. And now I'm here.

Walt Sparling:

Good deal. So you went from helping your wife study for the PMP. You got your PMP. Do you have any other certifications?

Russ Parker:

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

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

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

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

How do you keep up with the technology and what's going on in the industry? Reading, you know, whenever I can I try to read. A part of my blog is I do a monthly book review, so I'm constantly doing that, and I try to do this in the podcast, while I'm working out and when I'm going for walks or whatnot. Really, it's just, I have to say, through research, whenever I'm trying to write my blogs, it's definitely something that keeps me up to speed and the integration of, you know, trying to use a lot of AI. That's kind of been a good focus. Especially working within the tech side of the house, I've been introduced to a bunch of new areas that I didn't really get to work with in the military, which has caused me to start studying a little bit more in those areas as well. So whenever I have the time, I really try to just kick back and read and I learn a lot from that.

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

of the challenge is just, yeah, the time I mean I got a. You know I got a three and a five year old, now my five. You just turned five last week. So you know it's just really balancing my time. That's why you see my little Kanban board behind me. I definitely manage what you know kind of limit what I'm working on at a time and, you know, do a lot of stuff after hours, put the kids to bed and work for a couple hours and work for a couple hours after I get off during the day. I'm an early riser so I usually get up around 4 or 3 am so I get a lot done before my workday starts Way to do it.

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

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 people in my organization use it it. Just, it works well for me. I think the way it's just, the way it's structured and the way you can put everything in there works great, I like now is there.

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

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, so whenever I was like, okay, I'm going to start this company, and you know, people are like what are you going to do? I'm like I'm going to start blogging, like blogging, and that's like, well, I like to write, so I'm just going to write, I'm going to read research, write and I'll see where it goes.

Russ Parker:

And then I developed a website and then, and then from there I started posting on social media and then people started calling me, and then someone to contact me about teaching PMP, and then I got a call about the peer and throughout this time it's just been learning. I think 2024 for me is just a year of learning, because everyone I talked to I was just learning something new, learning how to do stuff, and with peer I kind of learned how to put the courses together. I think and you know I learned through observation a lot. And this year yep got the RMP course that I'm putting together. I'm putting together some leadership training and some just small, micro, mini courses that I'll hopefully have posted in the next couple months.

Walt Sparling:

Okay. So the peer program and this is something that listeners are going to hear a lot about over the next month or two where there is a new industry cert coming out and it's actually taught by project management professionals that do this every day and what is kind of their specialty or their superpower. And you all listened to the interview with myself and Joseph Phillips recently where he explained the program and what it's going to be all about and how it's set up. So this month and maybe next month, I'll be interviewing some of the instructors and talking about what they do or what their courses were in the program, and I believe, russell, you have two courses that are going to be in the program.

Russ Parker:

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

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

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

Walt Sparling:

And it's going to be an intense program. I've tried to break it down in my 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 think most of it was just in studying and researching than it was in just going through material. Where this one, you actually have 60 hours of lesson work to go through videos and then take a quiz and then your final. So it's people are going to have to really allocate their time in order to get through this, yeah, but they're going to learn.

Russ Parker:

You know, I think the thing I like about it is it just it's like a mob squad of instructors 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 not 60 hours of just one person up there, just you know, yeah, all these was a 25 of us all together teaching from our vantage points, which is just the ultimate way, I think, to learn.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, it's real experience, not theory. I mean, theory is good, I mean it's just like going to college, but when you have people that do this stuff every day, sharing their knowledge and experience, that's a plus for sure. Well, I'm excited about the peer program and I'm definitely going to keep my eyes open on your risk program, because that's one of the areas that I was thinking about trying to get more involved in. We had talked earlier before the call, and risk is handled so differently depending on where you're at and what the company is and how they structure things. So now, did you have a? Did you know?

Russ Parker:

yeah. So one of the things I talked about is that you know, as soon as I get into the the course and pure is the marine corps, we have our own planning process. It it's called the Marine Corps planning process and it matches up to the actual PMI planning process and same within RISC. We have the same kind of set of standards that PMI has. So something I think a lot of people just don't realize about the military is that we do everything that PMI and project managers do. We just call it different names.

Russ Parker:

So, like when I was studying for the PMP, half my battle was just getting the terminology in my head switched around. Even when I was sitting for the exam. Part of it was like okay, they're talking about this, that's this. I almost had to translate it in my head back to the military planning process because you know, marine Corps has the Marine Corps planning process, the Army has their planning, the Navy has theirs and then we have the joint and if you really look at that joint manual, that one really matches really well to the PMI as well. So it all kind of works together.

Russ Parker:

And the big thing I want people to take away, especially when they take the course, is that veterans in the military have done it. They probably don't understand that they've done it just because of the terminology, and when they get someone in there is a good chance of that whole imposter syndrome. So keep an eye out for that With veterans. They're highly skilled, highly capable. You just have to coach them slightly upfront. If you you put up that up front work, you're going to get a huge turn on your investment.

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

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

Walt Sparling:

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

Russ Parker:

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

Intro/Outro:

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