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Veterans know how to lead. The lessons we learned in the military form the foundation for bigger successes in business, entrepreneurship and community.
Host John S Berry, CEO of Berry Law, served as an active-duty Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army, finishing his military career with two deployments and retiring as a Battalion Commander in the National Guard. Today, his veteran led team at Berry Law, helps their clients fight some of the most important battles of their lives. Leading successful teams in the courtroom, the boardroom, and beyond, veteran leadership drives the firm’s rapid growth and business excellence.
Whether building teams, synchronizing operations, or refining tactics, we share our experiences, good and bad, to help you survive, thrive and dominate.
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[00:00:00.08] - Matt Quick
PMP is a really in demand field. I think we need about three million a year over the next 10 years. There is a shortage of project professionals worldwide. That's why I advocate for a military transition. 200,000 Veterans transition every year. That can fill a lot of project professional gaps.
[00:00:20.22] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today's guest is Matt Quick, the head of military affairs at the Project Management Institute. Welcome to Veteran Led, Matt Quick.
[00:00:29.07] - Matt Quick
Thanks, John.
[00:00:30.00] - John S. Berry
Now, I've seen your stuff on LinkedIn for a while, and I know that you are a serious advocate of Veterans getting out of the military and finding their purpose immediately, but you are also a project management expert, and you love to get Veterans in the project management space.
[00:00:45.12] - Matt Quick
Love it.
[00:00:46.02] - John S. Berry
How is it that you do both?
[00:00:47.18] - Matt Quick
I've been on social media now for about 20 years when it first started, so I know I go where people are. If you can build a brand or if you can build an audience or platform somewhere, it's on social media. So, when I got out of the military, I realized I need to help others because I got out real quick. If we help others get out of the military, get jobs, get upskilled, really the economy will boom because military employment is a really national security issue. What I do is I used to want to be everything to everybody, but I realized I can't do that. I can learn healthcare, I can learn this and that, transportation, logistics. But if I learn project management, one really sector, which is industry agnostic, I can actually scale what I do at a higher rate, faster. And by doing that, I post on LinkedIn almost every day. I'm consistent, not constant. So that's what I like to think of myself right there.
[00:01:43.21] - John S. Berry
So you're even using project management for your LinkedIn?
[00:01:46.12] - Matt Quick
I do, yes. I have a framework I use. Normally, it's Motivation Monday, Transition Tuesday. So I use a framework, but everything is a project in life. I tell my wife, I said, I'm a terrible project manager at the house because really, Really, projects are time, scope, and budget. A vacation time, where are we going? Scope, where are we going? Budget. I'm always over budget, so I am not a good project manager.
[00:02:11.18] - John S. Berry
Well, let's talk about this. What I like is the way you've embraced I think, helping Veterans transition, but you've done it in a way where you wouldn't know the way your persona is on social media, that you are a crusty old 25-year Sergeant Major who spent four of those years in the Marine Corps before transitioning to the Army.
[00:02:29.15] - Matt Quick
That's right. I wasn't the best kid, and my dad was a Marine, my brother was a Marine. So, I said, You know what? I'll be a Marine. Only because the uniforms were so awesome. So, I got in the Marine Corps, did my thing, realized I wanted to ease your life. So, I joined the Army, naturally, right? So, 25 years total, but I try to stay young by drinking a lot of water and still running. And my wife is still doing the same thing, and she won't let me get fat and old yet. I don't smoke, so I can't get all crusty.
[00:03:00.03] - John S. Berry
Fair enough. But you didn't bring that negative attitude. I wouldn't say negative, but maybe I think a lot of times people reach the pinnacle of their career and they think that they know it all. You certainly have not taken that approach. In fact, you're learning more now than you ever did.
[00:03:14.07] - Matt Quick
I've never needed my rank in the military. I love my rank. I respected it, but I never needed it. If you connect with people, it's not about rank. When people think about a sergeant major, they think about we were soldiers, that sergeant major. You can walk on my grass any day. I'm not going to kill puppies. So please ask the question. But really, I embrace learning all the time. The more I learn, the more I can share. And that shared experiences, it's relatable to folks on the Internet. They want to be relatable to somebody. That's what I do.
[00:03:48.09] - John S. Berry
And it comes across as very authentic. And I think one of the ways that you do it is that you're really genuine in there, not to get likes, not to impress people, but to actually help people. The content is actually there to help veterans. So how long did it take you to get to the point where you were comfortable and you thought you were good at it?
[00:04:06.13] - Matt Quick
So like I said, on social media for like 20 years. So LinkedIn was easy. Learning the algorithm, how to do that, it wasn't so easy, but I learned it. But when I share a thing, I share my experiences. For instance, I work at PMI. I'm a head of military affairs. So I took our certified social project management course. I took the exam. I failed the first time. I shared that on social media, and people are like, Why would you share you failed? I want people to know that you have three attempts of these tests. They're not easy, but they're worthwhile. If I can share my experiences, go through the journey that others go through, I can feel what they feel, I can better explain things and be a better advocate.
[00:04:49.12] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I think winners share their failures. Losers share their wins. They tell you how great they are. You can usually tell after a while, and all they do is tell you how great they are. You've never failed. You've never made a mistake. I don't believe you. But I think winners share their failures. As we delve into this, project management, I mean, the PMI, the Project Management Institute, it's a certification. You got to take the test, and the test is a four-hour test. Walk us through. If a Veteran says, hey, you know what? I remember the horse blankets. I remember the sink matrix. I remember how we put all that stuff together in the military. I was one of the weirdos that liked that stuff. I'm interested. What would you tell them about the Project Management Institute and what you actually have to do to get certified?
[00:05:32.17] - Matt Quick
That's a great question. It really comes down to how do you learn best. Are you an online self-paced learner or you are an instructor-led? That's how I know who to bring you to. PMI is a credentialing body. We have authorized training partners that we work with that train folks and can jump them through. So it comes how do you learn best. But when it comes to PMI, our superpower is our community. We have 150 chapters in the US or in North America that will support a journey through with a project management certification. So we have the training. We have a study hall, which is get you to and through exams because that exam is four hours long. That is mentally challenging. But you get breaks, though. It's funny because if you go and take a PMP exam, you get breaks, you can walk out and just go to the bathroom, get a drink. I was taking my exam one day, and I was so frustrated with how I thought I was doing. I said, I'm not coming back. But I came back and I passed it. It's really mentally challenging, but it's worthwhile because it's globally gold standard, recognized certification that really every industry can use.
[00:06:42.06] - Matt Quick
I spent 25 years in military HR, program, project management in HR. If I was told, if I learned how to do project management, my job would have been better. I wouldn't just figured it out. It's already figured out for us.
[00:06:57.13] - John S. Berry
I like that. It's already figured out for you. Now, and you also, you don't want to let that certification last. How long is the certification good for? What do you need to do to keep it? You have to take that four-hour test again.
[00:07:06.16] - Matt Quick
I had a conversation with a colonel today, a retired colonel, has his PhD. He said, Matt, I lost my PMP. I'm a smart ass, so I said, Where'd you lose your PMP? Just being funny, he goes, No, I let my PDUs lapse. They're professional development units. A certification is like a license. You got to maintain that. So 20 PDUs per year or 60 over three years, you maintain your PMP. He didn't maintain his. What are the consequences? He has to retake his PMP exam again. He's dreading it, but he knows he needs it, though.
[00:07:44.23] - John S. Berry
For a Veteran thinking about getting the PMP credential, what job opportunities are available right now that you're aware of?
[00:07:56.05] - Matt Quick
PMP is a really in-demand field. I think we need about three million a year over the next 10 years. There is a shortage of project professionals worldwide because people are just aging out and not enough new or younger folks know about the project profession. That's why I advocate for a military transition. 200,000 Veterans transition every year. That can fill a lot of project professional gaps. So, I said, get trained early, get certified early, use that framework as experience. That experience is what employers want. Get trained, get certified, gain the experience, get hired. It's that simple.
[00:08:35.21] - John S. Berry
And what's the salary range, generally?
[00:08:37.21] - Matt Quick
There's project professionals that can be a business analyst, a project coordinator. It can be 75,000 to 200,000 a year. Depending on your level of project or directors, it's a very meaningful lucrative career.
[00:08:52.13] - John S. Berry
I shared this with you. I didn't even understand this until a couple of years ago. I'm part of a group, 12 law firm mastermind. It's invite-only. Everybody has to unanimously let you in. You have to meet all these requirements to get in. Then once you get in, you got to share everything. You got to share your revenue, your profits, who your marketing vendors are, who you're using for your case management. Now, we don't share client information. That is attorney-client privilege. But we're sharing our strategy and a lot of information about how we're running. One of the questions I got to the end of it, the application was, what project management software are you using? I thought, Oh, wow, we're not using any. I might not get in. Now, luckily, they let me in. But then I got to hear about the different software and that most of these major law firms had project management planners. I was like, Oh, man, we are so... I thought we were cutting edge. We got a great technology, but we weren't doing it. We were not managing our projects. Look, we were. You try a case, military case, guess what?
[00:09:53.20] - John S. Berry
It's a project. There are timeline, suspenses, deadlines, and all these tasks that got to get done. We were doing it, but we didn't to have a formal process that gave the entire team visibility.
[00:10:03.10] - Matt Quick
That's key. Communication. That's the biggest part of project management is how can you communicate to your stakeholders, to your end users, to your team? Communication is key. But software, PMI gives you the framework. They give you whether it's agile or predictive. There's so many different variables in project management, and there's so many software platforms. You pick the one that works best for you and adapt to that. You'll be successful.
[00:10:27.12] - John S. Berry
Yeah, and that sounds easy, but it It was tough because when I started research, I'm like, oh, great, here's Monday, which is good for a certain size of company. Then there were some that were great for marketing, but not necessarily legal operations. It's really finding the one that I think the entire team can use because you don't want a bunch of different project management software because then nobody's going to look at it.
[00:10:49.05] - Matt Quick
Some people still use Excel, but unless you share that Excel on a cloud somewhere, you can't keep it by yourself. It's got to be a shared communication site like Trello or Monday. There's so many out there. Final report. Don't use pencil and paper. Don't use Excel. Use the best works for you, though.
[00:11:07.00] - John S. Berry
What I found is the people that are opposed to project management are generally those that want to hoard the information. They like the silos. They want to keep Those are people that are very toxic to your organization. If you're going to grow, you need to have trust, but you also need to have that clarity, that communication, and that visibility of where projects are. I found that when people don't want that visibility, it's usually for a good reason.
[00:11:29.13] - Matt Quick
They're called micromanagers, and typically, they're trying to hide something because they have faults on their own. When you have open communication, when you have transparency, that builds trust. When you train a team, you build trust and you empower them, your life becomes easier because you trust your team. You've trained them, you empowered them. Now you got to manage them. How easy is that?
[00:11:52.05] - John S. Berry
I think transparency and visibility make leadership a little bit easier.
[00:11:56.05] - Matt Quick
Yes.
[00:11:56.19] - John S. Berry
Major General Dusty Schultz was on here. She said, Results happen at the speed of trust.
[00:12:02.09] - Matt Quick
That's not wrong.
[00:12:03.05] - John S. Berry
Yeah, that's not wrong. That takes us to the after-action review. Matt, I'd love to hear your examples of great leadership and poor leadership. It could be the military or civilian sectors. Let's start with the great.
[00:12:13.23] - Matt Quick
There's great leadership. I had a mentor; someone I work with. She was a start major in retention for Forces Command. I came and worked with her, and she was so great at building us as a team. When I took her position seven years as I advanced my career, I created an award for senior leaders and named it after her before she died. She can see the end result. She was so great to me and us that I gave her that really award and recognition later on. One time, she was a fitness nut. She is a fitness nut. Marty Boyd, that's her name. I was in Forest Comm headquarters doing my work. I was eating maybe candy. I don't know what it was. She's fitness nut. She goes, hey, Matt, what are you eating? It wasn't raisins, and it wasn't this right here. She snatched that food out of my mouth. Wow. I was surprised, but I think it was Twizzlers, out of my mouth. She goes, we don't do that here. So that's good leadership. Bad leadership, I can't think of one-off the top of my head, but there's a few examples of when you first meet your new boss, for instance, and their first perception or first question to you or comment is, you've got work to do.
[00:13:32.08] - Matt Quick
That right there stings because I'm like, what happened in your past that made you say it to me right now? Turns out, I work for retention. He had his last two retention NCOs were terrible. One went to prison. So, he had a bad taste from my peers, but I corrected that for him. So, he then became a good mentor to me, but we had that really bad first step. We got through it, though, and that's really powerful.
[00:14:01.09] - John S. Berry
Yeah, nobody wants to come into a job the first day and say, you got work to do, because my responsibility is, no, s***. That's why I'm here, is to do the work.
[00:14:07.00] - Matt Quick
I wasn't hired in this position to be questioned on that right there.
[00:14:10.05] - John S. Berry
Right. That's the thing. You hired me, and you're questioning my ability to do the work because that's what it feels like. That's what it was, yeah. That's probably not how he intended it. As leaders, I think sometimes we come off differently than we think we do. He's probably saying, hey, I just wanted to motivate you and let you know that there's a lot of opportunities here. You're like, that's not how I heard it.
[00:14:28.04] - Matt Quick
That's how it took initially, we have thick skin, so I didn't take it like that. I earned his trust. It was broken for years, so I earned it back from our field, and now he's a big advocate of retention, so it worked out well.
[00:14:42.00] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. Now, Matt Quick, where can Veterans, learn more about you and learn more about the Project Management Institute and all the opportunities it has to offer?
[00:14:50.11] - Matt Quick
You can find me on LinkedIn, Matt Quick. I post every day, sometimes twice a day, and really actionable tips for our community. But really, Basically, check out pmi.Org/military. There's so many free and no-cost resources there. You'll spend time there, but you'll get actionable steps as well.
[00:15:10.20] - John S. Berry
For all the Veterans that don't know if you have what it takes to be a project manager, you probably do. You know what it means to look at the big horse blanket, to look at all the plans that are going on, the sync matrix, all the things that you had to do to make operations happen. You've seen it happen. But now, and I wish they taught us this in the military. I really wish it. But now you're going to see you've learned it the hard way. Now you can learn it in the way that makes a little bit more sense.
[00:15:36.06] - Matt Quick
I can teach it now, too, which is good.
[00:15:38.17] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. Matt, I want to leave this on one note for the Veterans looking to transition, and they're getting out, and they want that bigger, better future, what's the best thing they can do as they plan for that bigger, better future after military service?
[00:15:51.18] - Matt Quick
My thing is, get on LinkedIn or wherever your social media, network early. Talk with people in the jobs you want. They're the only ones who know how to get there.
[00:16:05.23] - John S. Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we seek to help Veterans build an even bigger, better future after military service. Unfortunately for some of our Veterans, the roadblock to a better future is that they are not receiving all of the benefits that they earned. If you need help appealing a VA disability decision, contact Berry Law.