Leading Through Risk and Uncertainty with Russell Parker | #LeadWithLegacy | Episode 23

What separates proactive leaders from reactive ones?

In Episode 23 of the Lead with Legacy™ Podcast, Amanda Chambers and Sloane Lott sit down with Russell Parker — known as “The Bearded Risk PM” — to discuss leadership, risk management, military service, resilience, mentorship, and the importance of thinking ahead before problems arise.

Russ shares powerful insights from:
• serving in the United States Marine Corps
• surviving a life-changing brain tumor diagnosis
• transitioning from military service into project leadership
• building 44 Risk PM and The Risk Blog
• teaching risk management and leadership worldwide

This episode explores:
• proactive vs. reactive leadership
• developing a risk mindset
• staying calm under pressure
• mentorship and leadership development
• innovation through learning and failure
• why certifications alone are not enough
• servant leadership and legacy

Russ also shares practical lessons leaders can immediately apply to projects, business, and life.

🔔 Subscribe for leadership insights, honest conversations, and practical wisdom you can apply immediately.

🌐 Learn more about IOL Global:
www.iolglobal.com

Connect with Russ Parker:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/russ-parker

Learn more at:
44riskpm.com
theriskblog.com
44PMTrainingAcademy.com

Support the Lead with Legacy™ Podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2600300/support

Contact our team to book a time to be on the Lead with Legacy™ Podcast:
https://iolglobal.com/podcast

#LeadWithLegacy #IOLGlobal #ServeGod #ServePeople #FaithBasedLeadership #ChristianLeadership #LeadershipDevelopment #LegacyLeadership #KingdomLeadership #ServantLeadership #LeadershipPodcast #AmandaChambers #PublicServiceLeadership #LeadershipWithPurpose

Transcript

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Lead with Legacy, the official podcast of IOL Global. Here we will explore leadership that outlives titles and trends. Through conversations with faith-based and marketplace leaders, we will discuss integrity, conviction, and purpose. To learn more about us, visit us at iOLglobal.com. Hello, welcome to the Lead with Legacy Podcast. I am so honored today to have my Director of Operations, Sloan Lott, and Mr. Russell Parker with us today. Russ, I was looking up to find some information. So we have been connected on LinkedIn since August of 2024. We've done some work together in the past. We did some work on a on a big um on the Pure project, which we've had some other people on here from there. And you you did some courses on there. You did an amazing job. You're like a superstar. Did you do two or three? I did two. Two. Okay, I can remember. I'm sorry. Um you did two courses on there. Um they were really good. We're gonna talk a little bit more of those about those in just a little bit. Um but before we get started, I just wanted to let you introduce yourself, tell us who you are, what you do. And just to thank you for being on here, because I appreciate you saying yes. You say yes a lot, and so I appreciate that. Um to have you on here. So tell us about the beard, tell us about what you do and who you are, and just let us get to know you a little bit. Yeah, so I'm Russ Parker. My nickname, I'm the bearded risk PM, because I love risk management and I teach risk management. So I own 44 Risk PM, which still has a whole mission on you know, teach, coach, and mentor, new and aspiring project managers, risk managers, and project leaders. So what I like to do is I like to talk project management, project risk management, and I like to stroke my beard in the process. So um, you do get a lot of comments about the beard, and it actually since you and I met, it's a lot longer, a lot longer. I know people keep asking me, they're like, how long are you gonna go? And I'm like, I don't know, until I just until I feel like stopping. And right now my wife, my kids love it. It's definitely like up here. Like, I mean, it's it's definitely like it's come a long way. Yeah, absolutely. Well, so we're gonna talk a little bit later about how people can find you. We've got um your website, your LinkedIn. We're gonna put all those links at the bottom too. Um, but before we start, let's for because everybody doesn't know what is risk management. If I did not know what risk management was, how could you explain it to me in like three seconds? In three seconds? Oh man. Okay, not mere. Yeah. Risk management is uncertainty, is what it is. When we work on projects, we don't know how things are gonna go. So risk management is just doing a little bit of math, a little bit of homework in order to figure out where do we think we're gonna actually go? Good, bad, ugly, you know, just taking a good look at it and trying to make sure you keep yourself within the borderlines of what's good and bad. Good job. You see, you did great. That was that was a test. And we will talk a little bit later to you, but let's go ahead and say, so you served in the military, in the Marines. Um thank you for your service. I got to that before Sloan did because the last one she got to it before me. But no, thank you for your service, and we've talked about so much. Thank you, thank you. We appreciate you. And then can we can we talk about the other part that you survived too? Can we talk about that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You always talk about that. I I I'm open door. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so I like to call it my my little unknown, unknown risk uh that happened in my life, which was I've I was in the Marine Corps, things were I was having problems, let's just say, like type deal. And ends up I had a golf ball-sized brain tumor sitting right here behind my eyes. So they took that out. In the process, I lost a pituitary gland, which if you didn't know is nicknamed the master gland for your body. So in turn, the Marine Corps said, we don't want you anymore. And I, you know, at the young age of 40, I get to walk around with a pill case every day because I got to take multiple pills, multiple injections every week. But, you know, I've learned to figure it out uh since then. But yeah, like it was my little unknown, unknown wrist that just diverted my life in a way that I didn't know where it was gonna go. I was in the Marine Corps, I was on a great path, I was doing great things. Then I switched over, had to figure out what what I wanted to do when I grew up. Project management made sense, and I've learned to just really embrace it, uh, have a lot of fun with it. And then as I learned it, that's when I got the risk side because I realized that the way the military does risk management and the way PMI does risk management, somebody copied each other along the way. And therefore, like I know it a lot more than I probably thought I did when I got into it. But absolutely, yeah, yeah. So the brain tumor thing, I like talking about it just because you know, the conditions I have are just so rare that a lot of people don't even realize they exist. Like, you know, I always have water on me because my body cannot retain water. I have to take a pill to retain water, which causes a lot of weird effects on my body when I take the pill and I sweat. Your body wants to sweat, but your pill is telling you to retain water, so therefore I swell. And it's just like you've done a really amazing job at in handling it and navigating, and you've come a long way since I met you. I mean, you're like super famous now. Um, you have massive following on LinkedIn, um, which is where I found you when I was recruiting people um for that project. And so at the time that we met, when you were recording for that, you guys were you and your wife and your kids, you were moving to St. Augustine, which I'm super jealous about. Um, it's one of my favorite places. And so, um, yeah, you guys live in St. Augustine, and you I mean, I don't know what could be bad about that. So beautiful here. Absolutely beautiful. I'm gonna let Sloane take um take over a little bit. She's got some questions to grill you with, and so I'll let you take it away. You said project managers don't fail because of lack of technical skills, but because they haven't been taught how to think ahead. What does it really mean to shift from reactive to proactive leadership? Okay, so yeah, my whole thing is about being proactive over reactive. And that's because as we grow, as we develop, we're you know, we're taught how to work, we're taught how to focus on our job, focus on our mission. And when we study for the PMP and other exams, they really test our ability to do the do that work, right? So when it comes to risk management, the side that I really appreciate, it's all about getting ahead of them, getting ahead of the fight, right? And I learned that when I was a young lieutenant in the Marine Corps, is that you know, I was doing convoy operations over overseas in Afghanistan. I had Marines that did the work. They were able to go do great things. They worked on trucks, they drove the trucks, they loaded the trucks, they made sure the trucks were full of fuel and operated, and they were able to drive in straight lines and do all this stuff. And the straight lines are important. I don't just say that willy-nilly, like that's a long story. Okay. But either way, my job as a lieutenant was to think ahead. I was pulling up Intel reports, I was pulling up different heat maps of what roads looked like based off IED reports for the past 30 days. So my job was to be proactive. I wanted to look at what was going to happen in the future and how that's going to impact how my Marines were doing their job of doing driving the trucks and going where they had to go. So, in turn, I trained them. I put them through scenarios, I made sure that they knew what to do. And then when we're on the road, I told them, hey, between this checkpoint and this checkpoint, you need to be aware of X, Y, or Z because in the past we've seen a 20% spike in this, this area is highly more prone. So, what I like to teach is on the project management side is the same concepts. We have tech individuals who can do really good tech coding. We have different operations people who are really good at that. We have partnership individuals who are really good at working with partners. Us as the PMs, our job is to be proactive, looking forward. You know, don't get sucked into the fun and excitement of what we're building and everything we're doing. You got to keep track of it, but you want to look out. You want to look what could cause us problems. Look at those lessons learned of other projects. Hey, we get to a certain point and people start getting complacent because everything's good. Delivery's two weeks out. So now someone misses testing or they don't take something as serious. So my whole mantra and what I try to teach is stay proactive so that way you're not reacting. Because once you become reactive, now your mind is racing, you're thinking about all these different aspects, and you're not actually addressing the problem. And when you do that, all you're gonna do is delay work, you're gonna cause stress, you're gonna cause individuals to get upset. And it doesn't help anything when you just start getting down that reactive road. Because once you do it once, now you're away from the proactive. Now you become more reactive. It just eventually becomes into everything's reactive, we've all been there. And then obviously, you know, it takes either a whole bolt of lightning to get everyone back up front and being proactive, or things fail. So and you know, we talk about proactive is not easy, but reactive to me is so much harder when I am in a reactionary position. I'm already behind, right? So I haven't thought about it. I I'm behind in my work, I'm behind in the workflow. And so it's this constantly running faster to try to catch up. And so it's one of those pick your hards. And for me, proactive is so much easier, just not only in the workflow and communicating that with your team, but mentally. My headspace, when when we're ahead of the game and I've thought of the what-ifs, it's easier to go about everything. Yeah. And also the I think the and the dangerous part is we make our money in the reactive space. So why do you, you know, who who's the individual who like gets exalted? Is it the one who did a very great project for six months and had no problems? Or is it the one who they had this huge hiccup, but they were able to be reactive and they're able to take care of the problem and put everything back into place. You know, so a lot of times people forget about the proactive because they want to show that they can respond in the the dangerous areas. So it's it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I like to say sometimes. Yeah, I agree. And and when I first saw your your tagline on this, I loved it because I love to plan. I love to, you know, lay things out ahead of time so we can try to mitigate that risk and and not have it have it doesn't work all the time, but um to be prepared, right? Um, because you know, you're gonna need tires and the, you know, like the other week, like my radiator blew up and we weren't, you know, like Son and I are through the drive-thru somewhere just and so it happens, um, but we can be proactive about planning ahead as best we can. You often talk about developing a risk mindset. So, how is a risk mindset different from a traditional risk management? I think so. But it really comes down to people have risk registers. We know risk management's important, but the problem is we do this nonverbal, what I like to call nonverbal acceptance of risks because we're more comfortable not looking at what could go bad. And it goes back to that, you know, we're we get praised when we solve problems via taking a good look at what could actually go wrong and how do we solve it before it ever happens. So, what it really comes to is like risk management is not hard, it just takes some time and effort. So the whole risk mindset is taking that time and effort up front, which you know, there's a great book, it's called Risk Up Front, where they really preach this is doing that work up front in the project to save yourself all that hassle, all that time in the back end. And that really is what the risk mindset comes about is again proactive over reactive, just taking the time to do the work before it actually gets bad. And it's also applicable to every facet of your life, not just project management. You can take this through every single part of your life. Um, we're gonna plug um the podcast. So if you are interested in what we're talking about and the people that we're interviewing, please go to we we're on all the platforms now. Um iHeartRadio, Spotify, YouTube, the whole nine yards. Splun's gotten us everywhere. Which is a little scary. But you can go, you can check us out, subscribe, whatever that particular network has going on. So please do that and support us in that way and listen to the conversations that we're having, because we have some really great people like Russ on here. I want to talk about um the the blog that you do because it's really interesting and it's a little bit different than just your average blog. And so I want you to kind of go into some depth on that. What is it? What what's the premise behind it? What is it, what it is that you're writing about? So the wrist blog is how this all started with me. I didn't know I didn't know what I wanted to do. I know I wanted to kind of start something, and I always liked writing, so I just started writing about my experiences from the military, you know, some of my PMP RMP prep, called it the wrist blog, which eventually became 44 RISPM. And my focus is really uh well, recently it's become, you know, I do a YouTube video, I take the YouTube and I turn it into a blog, and I kind of just go into a little more details, but my whole focus is really shifting into giving people some just tips and tricks to get through the days with this whole proactive over reactive and just making sure that they have the resources they need to succeed. You know, having risk registers, checklists, and just little things like that that just makes someone's life a little easier. And it's amazing. You you create some really, really amazing stuff, you put a lot of free information out for everybody. So, so we want to be clear that you you do sell courses as well, and we we want to encourage everybody to go and do that. You teach the uh PMP and the RMP. So tell us a little because we're talking risk today, let's talk a little bit about the RMP. What is it? Why would somebody get it? Why would they want it? And why would we want you to teach us how to do it? Yeah, I mean, the RMP is it's a you know more specific certification than the PMP. The PMP is 180 questions, covers everything on project management. Out of those 180 questions, you're probably gonna get, well, according to the old exam, you're gonna get about five risk questions. The new exam, it's gonna probably go, I'd say you're probably gonna get more like 10, somewhere between 10 and 15 uh risk management focused questions because risk management is now its own domain. It's it's got a little more weight in the PMP. But the risk management is 115 questions dedicated to risk management. And if you talk to anyone who's taken the exam, they're gonna tell you it's a lot harder. And that's because the this exam is really honing into you are the risk subject matter expert on project management. But that's not just project managers, I mean, you're also program management, portfolio level management. And I think that's the key item when it comes to risk management, is that it is across the board. You know, whether you're a business analyst or portfolio manager, you do risk management at that level, and it's all really done the same way. You still have to initiate, you have to find them, you have to analyze them, you have to go through and assign them owners, and then you have to manage them overall, keep monitoring, keeping them going, and then closing them out the right way. But you know, so the RMP is a very specific certification that really makes sure that you are the subject matter expert. And like I said, the PMP general. ACP honed into Agile, but there's Agile again is so big. And that's and that's what I see is like students, they take the PMP, they take the ACP, they walk into the RMP, like, okay, it's just another general risk management. And then you start diving deep into it, and they're like, okay, there's a lot more to this than I thought there was. You know? We were talking before, there's a lot of people contacting you now to train for the RMP who have taken other courses and didn't get the information that they needed to go and take that exam. So I want to back up just a little bit because this is it, it's funny, not funny. We have so many people from project management on this podcast. I guess just because of all my connections, but this isn't really a project management podcast. It's a leadership. However, it's fine. I just want to back up a little bit and I want to talk about okay, so the PMP is the project management professional certification through PMI, which is the project management institute. Um so just, you know, I I joke. I was talking to somebody else about this the other day. I joke about it because project managers love to use acronyms and everything's an acronym and it drives me insane because I'm like, not everybody knows what you're talking about. I was in a meeting the other day and I I swear to you, there must have been 20 different ones, and I was like, I have I was lost on the third one. I have no idea what you guys are talking about. So just want to be clear for what the PMP is. And so the RMP is also through PMI, the project management institute. Right. But just at a very, very high level, um, what happens is is you have to take a course, you have to be trained, and then you go um to an examination facility or you can do it online and you can take the exam. I don't know what your feelings on the online is. Mine has generally been don't do it because it's pretty terrible. But you take the exam and then you get certified, and then you take um, you know, continuing education um kind of things, credits, probably people would understand that more to continue to keep your certification. Um, and I I'm gonna let you explain it because you know better what are the requirements of the RMP versus the PMP. Yeah, so the PMP, you know, you have to have so many years of project management experience based off your educational level. Same thing for the RMP, um, but they're just looking for focus risk management experience. And for the and like again, going back to like the questions and stuff like that, the PMP is a 35-hour training requirement for that 180 questions. The RMP is a 30 or 40 hour training requirement based off your educational level for that 115 questions, which goes to show you how much information is actually in there. So it really does, and I'll be honest, um, I've been kind of like a little distant from that side of things for a little while just because of some other you know, the other things we're working on at IOL. So people can train from you directly, which is really cool, and then you teach some P and P stuff through Project Success Academy, but primarily um you're teaching risk through um your own networks and and and sites and all of that. I'll let Sloan take it a little bit um for a few more of these questions, and then we want to be respectful of your time too, and then I have a fun thing to share with everybody. So every leader has moments where things don't go according to plan, right? That's the whole risk mindset. In your opinion, what separates those leaders who stay steady in those moments from the ones that absolutely flip out, freak out, everything's terrible, everything's on fire. What what's the difference? How do we be not the second? Yeah, so I always thought this this is a fun one for me. Uh, because I like to always say when it comes to leadership wise, I've had a lot of people ask always ask me, it's like, well, how do you stay so calm? When things go bad, how are you just calm? And I like to tell 'em, I've already had the most stressful days of my life. I already know those are the most stressful days of my life. But how I, you know, like when I got new lieutenants though, how did I teach them to be how did I teach them to stay calm? And what it really comes down to is you wanna keep that mindset. You want to keep your mind focused. Right. And so what you so what I always tell people is when things go sideways, you know, people are gonna start freaking out, starting thinking. Take a breath. I always say count back from five. Just be like five, four, three. Take a breath, relax, keep your mind focused on the fact that you have to solve this problem. And get the, you know, get your team, start assigning roles. Um, I think that's the number one thing is like, okay, we this is bad, we're in a bad situation, okay. You know, Sloan, I need you to go talk to this individual, look into this information, and figure this out. We don't know what this is, go go find that out. So now you have a mission. You have a singular job that you have to get done. And then I can look at Amanda and be like, Amanda, I need you to start drafting up some paperwork on X, Y, or Z that's gonna help us present this up to leadership, start developing an outline of what we know that they generally want to see. So that way when you know Sloan gets back, she can provide us the information, we can throw it in there, and we can start developing a a way forward. So when things go sideways, it's all about breaking things down, giving people singular jobs, singular roles, something, something they can actually figure out that solves the goes towards the problem. And if you don't know what that is, that's when you just do some brainstorming. All right, throw the problem up on the board. You know, you know, is it um man? We had a situation pop up, and we just went up to a whiteboard and wrote, we need to do this in six months. Oh, that's it. We uh I was planning an exercise and ended up commanding general said, I don't want to do that. That's not the way to do things. So we went to the board, we wiped it off and said, you know, we have two weeks to do what we had in we've done six months. And we just started breaking it down. We need this, we need this, we need this, signed it to individuals, and we took care of it. Were we all freaking out? Yeah, there was a lot of panic in the room until we just okay, everyone calm down. So, really, when it comes to when things go sideways, it's all about take a breath, break it down. What do you actually need to get done? Assign it to people, and just work forward. Keep yourselves focused on where you need to go. Don't worry about where you were. He makes it sound so easy. Like I just have to breathe and come back from five and start telling people what to do. Well, actually, for me it is pretty easy because I do go slow and so I mean I very was that way, so actually it does it and it works great. So I I can attest to that. I think she's got another question for you too, but you did great on that one, very good. You're I always learned so much from you. It is really good, yeah. So you built a lot of your work around the idea that so certifications alone are not enough. So where do you see professionals leaning too heavily on those certifications? Yeah, so if you go on LinkedIn and you see anyone has like 50 certifications under behind their name, uh that's where they're leaning too much into it. Uh I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that. There's not. We love that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just more the fact that, you know, and this coming from the guy who teaches certification prep, so it's probably unpopular opinion against mine, but like the certification doesn't make you who you are, is what it really, you know, something I like, I want to make sure people know that. The certification shows that you have the expertise in that area. Do you need the certification to show that? No. If you have a really good resume, people know who you are. Yeah, you can show that you you can do the work. But if you don't know these individuals, they're just looking at a piece of paper and we know how it works. They look at the top, it says P and P. They're like, okay, they understand that you understand the basics around project risk management. Is I know I'll probably take some hate from saying the basics around the PMP, but in reality, that's what you showed. You showed that you are a basically certified project manager at the lowest level. Not the lowest level, but like mid-level, right? There's the capum underneath that that shows that you have a basic under now knowledge, really. And this is also why in the project management space, I do a certif, I do support PMI's initiative to develop above of the PMP certification. With 1.3 million PMPs, they probably need to start developing a way to differentiate those individuals because not all of them are going to be program and portfolio level managers. But when it comes to certifications, at the end of the day, they all they do is give you the credibility. I like again relate back to the Marine Corps. This is what I did. 20 years in the Marine Corps, I have to relate back to that a lot. I was prior enlisted before I became an officer. And a lot of people are like, oh, prior enlisted officer, that's that means you're a better officer. And I'm like, no. What it does mean is when I get in front of the junior enlisted individuals, I automatically have some street credit with them, but give it 15 minutes, they're gonna know if I'm a worthwhile officer to actually follow, right? To be their leader. Same thing with certifications. You know, you can study to pass the certification and not know anything associated to it. And that's any certification that sits out there. I've known a lot of those, of those project managers, yeah. And I I can attest to that too. So I'm like, I'm a baby project manager as far as certifications because I was really blessed that um when I was working for Joe, he he pushed me to get my I call it CAPM, some people call it cap em, I don't know. But so he pushed me to do that. I have terrible test anxiety though, and I mean in a terrible, bad way, always had, and I told him I was like, I I am not, you know, I can't do it, and that's the only reason. Well, I did get it. Um but I would say, and I'm not tooting my own horn or anything, but I would say that's not what gives me the credibility. I'm glad I did it though. Um it was an experience. I learned from it, I learned a lot from it. Um, I've gone on to take a lot of other courses. I don't have my PMP. I don't people ask me sometimes like, are you gonna get a vlog? Probably not. But I respect the fact that you guys have worked so hard to get it. Um, and I'm definitely in network with so many of you. I understand the value in it, but like you said, um, does it does it make somebody who has a PMP better than me that doesn't have a pet a PMP? Not necessarily. It's really about how we execute the work, how we do the work, and the same I think would g apply for the RMP as well. I think the RMP is really cool. I think um PMI has some really nice well-rounded additional certifications like the the RMP. I was also like actually I really wanted to get my ATP. That's the one that I really, really would like to have above all, but then they just changed everything so much and everything was just like Agile's not that, you know. But Scrum and Agile's really more up my alley, and that's a whole nother discussion for another day. But I appreciate what what they're doing and what they've continued to do and that they give that credibility. Um, I do think it's a large pool of fish at this point. Um but I and I also appreciate instructors like you who are willing to go the extra mile because what you're doing is not only just selling courses, you give this information on YouTube, you have the wrist blog. And so we're gonna we're gonna touch really quick. You have another thing that you do. You read books. Tell us about that. Yeah, so my book reading can slow down a little bit. Probably because of all the other stuff I'm doing right now. But yeah, I love to read books and then write about them on the blog. Uh-huh. I'm a huge book reading person, which is funny because, you know, Marines are not known for being the smartest. Granted, I can debate that any day, but you know, the Marine Corps did teach me how to read books. Um, and I've always been someone that reads a personal professional, personal professional. So I continue that now with the project management space. I love just picking up a new book. Uh I have one that I've been trying to focus on, but I just haven't had, like I said, it's a it's a monster of a book. And I just haven't been able to really get into it yet because I want to be able to take my time with it. But I still like to just even on Amazon, I like to pick out those random, you know, was it self-published type books? I love though. I love picking up some of those because I think you can really, I think you really get some good information out of those, not the the bigger, you know, the bigger published ones sometimes. You get some personable information from individuals. Yes, I think Splan could weigh in on that a little bit. She can tell you a little bit about where she came from, because you guys have a lot of common. Yes, I came from library land. I am a librarian, and so I, yes, I love books, all kinds of books, all genres, fiction, nonfiction. I've I've downsized my books I don't know how many times now, and I still don't have enough shelves. It's a problem. I still don't have enough shelves. But yes, I'm a huge reader and I I love to hear other people love to read too. It's so good. It's really it makes me happy. Even yeah, I'll I'll admit though too, like Marines made so much fun of me because, you know, wasn't it was a 2012 Afghanistan because I just didn't want to read I didn't want to read any military stuff because we were doing it every day. So I read the Hunger Game series, like all of them. So then now, like I, you know, was it the Sunrise and the Reaping one came out a couple years ago? And my wife's like, Are you serious? Did you seriously buy that? How old are you? And I'm like, Well, it's it's a part of the books that I read. I don't know what happened. Yeah. Let me tell you, that series stressed me out. I did not finish that series because I was like, Whew, I can't do this. It was a lot of adrenaline for me. Now, I will I'll probably take a lot of hate from this. Until I met my wife, I never touched a Harry Potter book because she's a big Harry Potter fan, so she made me watch all the movies. And but I still have not watched a movie or read a book. And at this point, I'm just taking a stance against it, and that's the Lord of the Rings. So I'm I'm gonna stand with you. I have not done either either, however. We have a lot of Harry Potter books and movies in our household, and we have fans in our household, and so I'm the one that gets the plaque for it. And then my son's my son has this little friend that they they go to the like day school with. And the other day I was there and I was talking to her, and she said, It's my birthday tomorrow. And I said, Oh my gosh, I didn't know. And I said, Well, why didn't you tell me I would have got you something? And I said, Well, what's your favorite thing? thinking that she was gonna say Hello Kitty, and she said, Harry Potter. I was like, I didn't expect that. So we moved from Hello Kitty to Harry Harry Potter with her. And so now we have to get Harry Potter stuff, but yeah, I have um uh fans in in my household as well. So I have never seen a bit of it or read a bit of it, so I'll probably take flack for that as well. And you know, it was part of it was actually like in the marriage agreement that I had to watch all the movies with her. So I understand that. Smart woman. Yeah. She wrote it, she wrote it in the fine crap. So in just a minute, we're gonna we so on this podcast for everybody who's been watching before um or listening before, we ask every guest the same two questions. So we're about to ask you those two questions. I'll ask one and Solomon will ask the other. But before we do that, I'm just gonna talk about and again say thank you. Um I'm gonna talk about I still have this. I have a little cabinet in my office that I keep like all my keepsakes in and stuff. So when we were working together before, Russ sent me the very, very nicest um little card with his 44 wrist PM on it and all of his amazing certifications that he has. And he also sent what's called a challenge coin, and I'm gonna let him talk a little bit about that. It was funny, not funny. I mean, it was funny because we had already, for the project we were working on, ordered these for everybody that was in the program or something similar to it. And he sent these and we got them first, and we were like, Dan, he made us do it. But there's actually, we did not know the history behind these, we didn't know um the whole story. And so you have a link that takes individuals that you give these to um to that link and it tells all about it, and it's just really fascinating and incredible. So I'm gonna I'm gonna let you tell a little bit about it, and I just wanted to say thank you again. This is one of my treasured keepsakes that I keep in here. No, I'm I'm glad. Yeah, someone an old boss of mine taught me that, you know, in the day of digital and all that stuff, a handwritten note goes a lot a lot further. And uh, but the challenge coins, yeah, they so there's there's you know, was it the uh you know, the myth of it goes back, you know, they can say years and years, like you know, Alexander the Great probably had a coin that he gave out to people. But for like the US military, where it really started was, and I can't remember if it's rule one or two, blanking on that one, but a unit they made, these little coins, and they all kept them on themselves, and it was mostly the aviation units, so pilots. And the pilot got shot down uh behind enemy lines, worked his way back, and he got linked back up with some US for or not with uh partner forces, I think it was uh maybe the French or something like that. And they didn't know who he was, they didn't know if he was German or anything like that, but it came from his coin. So he was able to show them that, and they were able to recognize who he was with and what he did. So over time it became a tradition that you held the coin for your unit because it showed, you know, you're with that unit. And then over time it just became bigger and bigger. I have behind me, you can't see it in the image right now, but I have like 150 coins from my career. And that's not even a big collection. Like my brother-in-law has like 300 coins, right? The Navy's really big with them for some reason. And um, but yeah, so but we've turned it into our own tradition now where if I go out, it's a bunch of my friends who were with this specific unit where I am. Like in a couple weeks, I'm going to my friends, she uh she's picking up command, so she's taking 05 command in the Marine Corps. So I'm gonna fly out to San Diego for that. While we're there, I'm gonna bring a coin. And what we do is when we go out, I can put the coin down, and anyone who also doesn't have that coin, they have to buy me a drink. But if they do have the coin, I have to buy them a drink. Okay. So it's a way you can challenge each other, but then we also have a hierarchy command in there. So I have a couple, I have a sec def coin, so I have a coin from the Secretary of Defense. Um, so like I carry that one with me, so in case someone tries to trump me with a you know a specific level of coin. So yeah, like we have our own little games you could play with them now. But the tradition really goes back to that individual with who is able to show them. But then also in the Marine Corps and amongst all the services now, they're a level of an award. So commanding generals, secretary of defenses, they'll have a coin and they give it to you for doing something good or you know, areas like that. Yeah, it's really cool. It's really fascinating. I had I had no idea. Um, I actually like have a lot of family in the military. Nobody's ever told me, so maybe it's like secret. I don't know. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, it's I think it's it's one of those things that if you know, you know. Yeah, yeah. Well, I feel very honored to know now that I now we now we've told other people too. So it's it's really cool. And so you are um speaking of traveling, you travel a lot now. Um you weren't before, but you're speaking at a lot of events now. I'm trying to, yeah. So people can follow you on LinkedIn, see where you're gonna be, what you're gonna do. Um they can come hear you speak. Um, they can get PDU. So PDU is a professional development unit through P PMI. All right, Sloan, last two questions. You asked the first one. All right. Who has influenced your leadership the most? Who? I mean, I've had a lot of great individuals in my past. I've had a lot of bad ones. I like to say that I've learned just as much from the bad leaders if I had good leaders. I think for where I am today, I have this, if I had to think, I don't know why I'm thinking about this one individual, maybe because he reached out recently. Uh, he just got his PMP. But uh when I was a lieutenant, I remember I walked into his office and I'm like, sir, I have a problem. This, this, this. He's like, okay, just do this. Just do it like that. I'm like, oh yeah, that makes sense. That that that completely makes sense. Okay. I'm like, I also I've been trying to figure this one thing out, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, figure it out, Lieutenant. And I'm like, but you just helped me with the other. He's like, I did. Now go figure the other piece out. And that really helped me as a leader, actually, which sounds weird. Like, it sounds like he was being a jerk, but he wasn't. But he was trying to show me that, you know, sometimes there's problems that you need some experience, you need some advice. Sometimes you just need to figure it out because you have a week. Come talk to me in five days if you can't figure it out. And I've used that throughout my career as like, you know, a way to just, you know, yeah, you gotta throw some people a bone, you gotta help them out at certain times. But sometimes you just, hey, go figure it out. I have the answer. Yeah, I can I can do this for you, but how are you going to improve? And I think that's that goes into the leadership aspect of mentorship. Mentorship goes a long way. And a lot of times mentorship is not giving people the answers, but giving them the flexibility to learn. Ooh, that's good. That's a whole sermon right there. That's good. That's good. Yeah. Well, and I'll I'll I'll back that up too, is that we're I was talking to somebody about this the other day. Mm, the majority of the things that I have learned in my career, not all, right? Um, but the majority I have learned because I've just done them. Um, I've always kind of been that way. It's like, you know, even when I was first like figuring out like how to type or how to, you know, use Microsoft programs where I just figured it out because that's what I had to do. Um and at the time, like, you know, a hundred years ago when I was starting all that, like there wasn't I couldn't go on, you know, I couldn't call Russ and be like, Hey, can you teach me how to do this? It just didn't work like that back then. And so I think a lot of times that's that's one of the best ways to work. And then when we're leading a team it's so important that we let them do the thing and it's okay if we fail at it sometimes. It's okay if it's you know, we don't do it well at the first time or even the second time because we need to learn how to do it. So if you if like I don't know this is old, right? But I don't know how many people have lost a document before, but you lose one or two and then you don't lose anymore after that. Um, so you figure it out, right? You go, I don't want to make that mistake again. Um, which is so easy now because we have, you know, fail safes in place now where you know it's autosaves, you're not gonna lose your stuff. But there was a time when that didn't happen and we would lose things, and then we'd have to recreate the whole thing, and there was no AI, so it wouldn't do it for you. That was back in the dark ages. But yeah, I mean, and having people who will give you the space, right? And and honor you enough to say, hey, you can have the opportunity to mess it up and figure it out, you know. So that's a great one. I also I think sometimes you'd be surprised. Um I remember I was a captain, I had some lieutenants, and you know, sometimes they come to me and be like, I want to do something like this. And I'm like, I don't know if that's gonna work, but go for it. And, you know, I have to watch, make sure they didn't fall on their face fail. But if they failed, hey, you tried something new, it didn't work. Now let's do it the way I wanted to do it, you know. You know, let's do it the way I want to do it now. Um, but you know, sometimes that's where you're gonna find innovation, you know, is in a lot of times the younger individuals are gonna come up with new ideas to do old solve old problems. So, you know, so I think that's a that's goes into the whole mix as well. Yeah, I agree. Not being funny, but Sloan's quite a bit younger than me, like a decade. And there's things that honestly, like she's like boom, boom, boom. And I'm like, like I'm getting, you know what I mean? Like, and I appreciate it though. And I'm grateful. And I'm like, okay, you know. And so I think as leaders, like too, especially like as we're getting further, further in the process, sometimes we need to turn around and go, okay, what can my people teach me? Um, it's not all about what I'm delegating or I'm teaching them. What can they teach me to do? Or what can we just give them because they're better at it? That's fine too, you know. But yeah, I think I think learning by doing is so important. And having I think there's a lot of leaders, probably more so in like the high-up corporate, that it's like, oh, well, we gotta look at the line, you know, we can't, we can't go in the red for this and we don't want you to make a mistake because you know it might cost us. Well, it might cost you, but it might cost you if your people never make mistakes and never learn from it. Um so sometimes we have to take that into risk into account and and kind of account for it that way. So all right, we want to be respectful of your time. So last question when you think about your legacy, what do you hope that you leave behind? So yeah, actually, my wife and I I made this joke the other day. My wife's like, I don't know if you should use that or not. Uh so I'm gonna say it now and just see how it works. Is that one, two things actually come to my mind. One for like general leadership, just who I am. Uh, I want people to remember I'm a good dude. Uh, I'm stealing that from a friend of mine. Is, you know, I've had a lot of people go, You're a Marine. Like you're so nice and joyful and all that stuff. I'm like, trust me, if you need me to turn it on, I will turn it on and I will not make you a happy individual. But for the most part, this is who I am. I'm a you know, who I was in the Marine Corps, a lot of times was like me being a Marine to show, like, you know, it's ideal, but I'm actually a joyful person. That's who I am. So I want to be known as a good dude, someone who just who's really happy and help people out. But on the other side of it for what I want to do professionally with 44 risk PM is I want to make risk management great again. I want people to think through risk management. You know, uh I want to see if it works. We'll put it out there and see if it works. Yeah. So I just want I want people to look at risk and not be afraid and not backdooring it for some reason and actually just realizing that it takes a little time, but it's worth it on the back end. Good. Very good, Russ. Well, I want to thank you again so much for being on here, for agreeing to to have the good conversations with us. And it was really important to me to have you on on the show and just kind of plug what you do. I was always very impressed from you with you from the very beginning when we met. And you're just you are, you're just a very joyful, kind person. And so it was it was important that that I have you on here. So I thank you for saying yes. Thank you for having me. And having the conversations. And um, there's a lot that people can learn from you. So I hope that we'll put all the links. There's a lot of links, so we'll put them in the bottom. Um, we post everything. But please reach out to Russ and and see what he has to offer, even if you're just watching his YouTube channel or um checking out his blog. If you don't want to, if you don't want to get certifications, that's fine. We're not judging you. Um so but you can you can learn a lot from him in other avenues too. So I appreciate all you're doing. Um, I appreciate that you live in St. Augustine. So one day, one day when I, you know, make it big and we can take a trip out there, we'll say hi. But it's it's good. We'll go out and see all you're doing. Um I'm proud of you and and you've come a long way. I'm learning a lot. It's it's definitely learning every day right now. It is. It is. But we're we're gonna be praying for you guys that you continue to prosper and and do great things, and and I hope that people will reach out to you and and learn and grow from you because you got you have a lot of good stuff to say, so I appreciate you very much. Thank you. It's been great, thank you, sir. This has been uh this has been fun. Miss Manda knows all the coolest people on LinkedIn, and so I I feel like I know some some of you guys, and then you know, I'm kind of like today's the day. Russ Parker is gonna be on the on the podcast. So I'm I'm excited. Thank you. It's been it's been great, and I've taken away some really cool things from here. Take a breath, count to five. Start assigning people jobs. I'm ready for it. Yeah. Thank you so much. We appreciate you and and all that you're doing. Thank you very much for having me.