From Cold Calls To Consultancy with Parmjit Kaur | Ep065

Manuel Martinez: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez, and this is another episode of Career Downloads. Where each episode, I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences. So for today’s episode, I have with me Parmjit Kaur. Her and I connected on LinkedIn, she’s somebody I had followed. I saw a lot of what she’s doing in the community, a lot of the speaking that she’s done, looked at her profile and there was just so much. We connected, I got to learn more about her. So again, I’m excited to learn more along with everybody else. So with that, I’ll go ahead and introduce Parmjit.

Parmjit Kaur: Okay, yeah, Manny, thank you. So firstly, should I call you Manuel or do you prefer Manny?

Manuel Martinez: Either one works for me. So normally I, Manuel’s obviously my legal name, but as I get to know people, I just tell them like, “Hey, you can call me Manny.” So whatever you feel comfortable with.

Parmjit Kaur: Okay, absolutely, yeah. I’m very big on what folks like to be called and how they like their names pronounced, so thank you.

Manuel Martinez: Same, and that’s why I remember asking you, like, how would you pronounce your name? So I really tried to do my best to say, “Okay, how do you like your name being pronounced and help me pronounce it properly?” Yeah, and I really appreciated the question, thank you.

Manuel Martinez: So if you don’t mind, tell me a little bit about what your current role and responsibilities are so that people can get an understanding of who Parmjit is.

Parmjit Kaur: Sure, sure, absolutely. So right now my current role, I have my own business, so I have a project management consultancy, and so I take on different project management contracts. I’m not at liberty necessarily to say who. I’m working with currently who my client is, but currently I’m working on a very big website modernization project. So I’m working with an organization. They have a great website, but that website hasn’t necessarily been maybe revamped in some time, and so we’re looking to modernize that website to ensure not just a great experience for employees that utilize the website, but community members who access that website.

Manuel Martinez: And I know that there’s a lot of skills that kind of go into project management and things of that, so I’m excited to get into that and how you develop those skills over time.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, absolutely, I look forward to talking about it.

Manuel Martinez: So now if you can tell us a little bit about kind of where you grew up and then eventually what kind of got your career started and what you thought you were probably gonna do and then eventually how you started.

Parmjit Kaur: Sure, so this is gonna be a little bit of a long story.

Manuel Martinez: Even better.

Parmjit Kaur: So you might be surprised to know I’m actually born in Scotland, so that is where my life started. I’m born in Scotland, I moved to England. I lived with my grandparents for quite some time. So my father’s side of the family is from the London area of England, and then my mother is, her family’s from the West Midlands. So I lived there for about six, seven years before we migrated to the US. First to Pittsburgh and then we went to New Jersey. So I lived in New Jersey for a majority of my life, but I moved around a lot. I’ve lived in California, I lived in Florida, I lived in Kentucky, I lived in Connecticut. I feel like I’m missing a place in there somewhere, but yeah, that’s for the most part, I grew up in New Jersey. So that is what I claim, I’m a Jersey girl through and through.

Manuel Martinez: That’s gotta be, at the time you may not enjoy kind of moving around, but at the same time, I would think that just in the little bit of experience that I’ve had traveling within the US and to other countries, like it brings you a lot of exposure that probably we don’t realize it at the time, but later influences how we approach people, our careers and things of that nature.

Parmjit Kaur: Oh, sure, absolutely. I talk about that a lot. Being exposed to, well, traveling in general, right? And whether that’s traveling within the United States, right, traveling outside of the country, getting to know how different communities interact, I think it’s helpful in understanding humans, and I think that helps you in business, because right, especially no matter what you do, right, as a project manager, I deal with so many different stakeholders from different, all walks of life, right? I think being that I travel so much, it is that aspect of it has helped me understand people, that people are different, and so I need to sometimes alter my communication style depending on who I’m speaking with. So yeah, no, absolutely, I think that experience has definitely shaped who I am as a person and as a business professional.

Manuel Martinez: It’s fantastic. So then, being as a Jersey girl, even though you kind of moved around in your early kind of years, and I’m gonna say early high school, and I can’t remember if you did or didn’t go to college, but what did you aspire to be? So I know me as a kid, from as early as I can remember, I used to love to draw, so in my mind, I was always gonna be an architect. That was the thing, I’m gonna be an architect. I guess technically at some point I became an IT architect, so there’s that correlation, but what did you think that you were gonna do?

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, I’m so sorry, I realized I overlooked that part of your question.

Manuel Martinez: That’s okay, I kind of broke it up, so it’s all right.

Parmjit Kaur: So that’s actually a great question. So like a lot of us, especially growing up, I think we change a lot about, some of us say we wanna be a doctor when we grow up, some of us say I wanna be a teacher when I grow up. Similarly with me, I initially wanted to be a Bollywood actress. So growing up, I watched a lot of Bollywood movies, and so Bollywood is India’s version of Hollywood. It is a huge industry, huge film industry, and I always wanted to be an actress, or I wanted to at least be a Bollywood dancer. I’ve always loved dancing, and so that was what I thought I was going to be when I was a little kid. As I grew up, that changed, I said I’m gonna be a doctor, and then I pivoted again, and I said I wanna be a teacher. Eventually I said I would love to be on the radio. None of that panned out, and eventually I ended up doing sales, so most of my background is in sales. I did sales for gosh, many years. And then I realized that I am detail-oriented, and I’m a good communicator, and eventually realized that I am fit to be a project manager. And so I felt, like many project managers, I kind of fell into that role.

Manuel Martinez: It’s interesting, kind of like all the different areas that you kind of thought that you were gonna do, right? You jumped around a lot, like I said, most of us do. Very few people, I think, growing up are like, this is what I’m gonna do, and actually end up doing that thing.

Parmjit Kaur: Right, right.

Manuel Martinez: So you got into sales, and was it like sales marketing, because I know I saw a little bit of marketing background, so what was kind of your first career role, and did you have jobs? And I’m gonna say jobs, like in high school, you just like, were you doing any kind of work and studying at the same time? Or was it your career, the first kind of role that you stepped into?

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I actually worked when I was in high school, I did work when I was in high school. Actually, of my entire time in high school, for the most part, I was working. I did sales, I work at Macy’s, actually. And so I did retail sales for a very long time, loved it. Especially loved helping people, and so again, that is where I realized, I’m definitely a people person. I loved the interaction with the customer. Eventually, started doing outside sales, and I was selling fragrances. So, I was selling fragrances, outdoor sales, door to door, business to business. Did that for quite some time, and then I started doing business development for a healthcare IT company selling software. And then I moved on, again, I moved on to an IT company, again, selling software, selling services, and so that was kind of the trajectory of my roles in sales.

Manuel Martinez: I’ve seen, so I only know a couple people, but I’ve seen a lot of videos online of people that talk about doing that type of door to door sales, and they attribute a lot of that to their later successes in building resiliency and being okay with, I don’t like to use the word rejection, because they’re not rejecting you, it’s the offer, it’s the product, whatever that might be, but it is a, I guess, you get comfortable with being told no.

Parmjit Kaur: Yes, yeah, oh my gosh, I’m so glad you asked that, 100%. I absolutely attribute having been in sales to the person I am today. I honestly, I did have a lot of confidence growing up, I just didn’t. I come from a very conservative, submissive Indian household where, as a female, you don’t typically speak unless you’re spoken to. And so that contributed maybe a little bit to having maybe grown up with lower confidence. But getting into sales, just like you said, you do have to get used to people saying no to you, and you are gonna hear no more often than you’re gonna hear yes, right? You have to learn to work your law of averages, that if 300 people say 100, three, you meet 300 people, out of those 300 people, 100 people are shown your product, out of those 100, you will get 10 sales. So you have to, so I learned that. I learned that it is okay to be told no. It is okay that you, not everyone is going to like what you have to sell, not everyone is going to like what you have to say, but you have to move forward. And so absolutely, I think being in sales taught me a lot about being just a business professional and having resiliency and being able to take a no and still be able to push forward, trudge forward anyway.

Manuel Martinez: So you said something that I found quite interesting, and again, it’s kind of a very different. So you mentioned that kind of not having much confidence, but then also earlier on you wanted to be kind of a Bollywood dancer, so sometimes I’ve seen people that that’s what they aspire to, and just because that’s what they watched, or a lot of times they’re comfortable in that aspect, because again, maybe it’s behind a camera, or even on stage, it’s different than one to one. So when you say the confidence, was it confidence in the smaller setting like that, to direct sales, because it sounded like at Macy’s you enjoyed kind of helping people, so that confidence, kind of where would you attribute kind of differences there?

Parmjit Kaur: Sure, I would, yeah, I would say, you know what, actually no, I was gonna say something and I’m like, no, I feel I do better in larger audiences around multiple people, and I don’t know why that is, I mean, usually that makes people nervous. I feel in one-on-one conversations because I’m being zeroed in on, right, and the focus is all on me, I feel, although, then again, another I’m thinking about this, in for a large audience, obviously the focus is still on you, I don’t know why, I’m much more confident in larger groups, I can’t explain it, I don’t know why that is, but in one-on-one conversations, I sometimes, I’m constantly thinking about what it is that I want to say and how is the other person going to perceive what I’m about to say, and I think a lot of it comes from imposter syndrome, which a lot of folks suffer from, and I think it comes from that, so, you know, I actually know, and I said all that, but I don’t know, I don’t know if, I don’t know.

Manuel Martinez: If one attribute, well, and there may or may not be a correlation, just again, everybody’s different, so again, sometimes in the smaller situations, I know what you mean, so I grew up in a large family, so in large groups, I feel very comfortable, but sometimes there is a little bit of an intimidation factor, maybe lack of confidence, whatever it might be in smaller settings, again, because there is that direct, like, oh, there’s only three of us now, I have to be careful, but in a large group, maybe you feel comfortable in a larger group, or, you know, like, oh, well, it can kind of get lost, you know, I don’t know.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, actually, I’m glad you mentioned that, so like you, I also grew up in a very big family, my mom is the oldest of seven, my father’s the oldest of five, I’m the oldest of four, and so, grew up in a very big family, lots of cousins, aunts and uncles, and I definitely think, for that reason, maybe that is why I feel a little bit better in settings where there’s more people, yeah.

Manuel Martinez: So then, you slowly start to kind of develop this confidence, doing the sales, and you just mentioned that you’ve kind of got into the IT, so how did you transition from selling door to door into eventually selling, you know, healthcare IT, like, what was that transition like?

Parmjit Kaur: Sure, so funny enough, I just answered a job posting, I just answered a job posting, they were looking for a sales professional, and so, because I had a sales background, I took that on, oh, actually, let me backtrack, so even before I got into, so after the outside sales, I started doing mortgages, I got into the mortgage industry, I was doing, I was a junior loan officer, and I was also helping with underwriting, and so, again, even with that, you had to, in a way, you were in sales because you’re trying to convince the customer why they should go with your mortgage company versus another mortgage company, and so, again, it was a little bit of sales. After the housing crash in 2008, right, I went from working full-time to suddenly my hours were reduced, to eventually, I was laid off because, right, in 2008, we all know what happened in 2008, right? So, eventually, I was laid off, and I was looking for work, and I answered an ad for a sales professional in, actually, it was in selling IT software and services, so I answered that ad first, and then, eventually, I transitioned to healthcare IT.

Manuel Martinez: And in that kind of industry, right, so there’s differences, right? The door-to-door, that’s a little bit like to a consumer, and kind of in IT sales, like software sales, now you’re having to go through and sell, you’re still selling to an individual, but it’s for their entire business. So, did you get, obviously, they hired you on, you went through the interview, and were able to kind of relate the skills, and say, hey, this is the sales experience I have, this is how I think this will translate into me actually doing the job, but did they provide you training, and there had to be some sort of a transition, and what was that like? Because I can imagine there was some struggle, and you’re just kind of, again, that confidence building, where it’s like, have confidence in doing it in this setting, this is different.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, honestly, there wasn’t much training. There was more like I was given a list of customers, and those are customers that I needed to cold call, and talk to, and I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t think anyone likes cold calling. (both laughing) So, it wasn’t a lot of training, but to be fair, that company that I was doing those sales for, they were a startup, so I think they were just getting into business. I think I might have been their first salesperson actually. So, there wasn’t training, and even thinking about the healthcare IT company that I eventually did sales for, very, very minimal training, yeah, I don’t think there was. It was kind of, I don’t wanna say you were, in a way you were thrown to the sharks, but you kind of thrown to the sharks and you kind of had to figure it out, but I was okay with that as well, because I’m one of those people, maybe if you throw me into a situation, like all of us, right, we’re humans, we figure it out, we adapt, so.

Manuel Martinez: And so then, minimal training, but I mean, they had to explain at least kind of what the product was.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, yeah, and which they explained the product.

Manuel Martinez: And that was my mistake, I wanted to say training as far as what it is that you’re selling, not so much how to sell, because you have that kind of experience, like they already know that you can sell, now it’s how do we train you to understand what you’re selling?

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, absolutely no, absolutely. They did train me a little bit on the software that we’re selling, the benefits of the software, the features of the software, so they did. And then of course, we had folks who had the IT technical expertise, so if I was able to get a prospect to agree to a phone call, for example, or agree to a demo, we had our subject matter experts who would come in and attend that demo to answer any technical questions that maybe I didn’t have the knowledge to be able to effectively answer.

Manuel Martinez: And the reason I bring that up is again, someone who might be looking into this and saying, well, oh my, she had no sales training, well no, again, you kind of get that on the job, right, especially with inside sales or cold calling, you’re figuring it out, you’re working with your peers, in this case, there were no peers, but it’s more just them understanding, you do get at least some basic training around the product and what it is that you’re selling.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I did, but I will also say it was very minimal, very minimal, but even that helped me later on in life because now when I’m working with stakeholders on my project or my project team members, I really do my best to handhold as much as I can. Yeah, and I tell folks all the time, you have to sometimes train people, if you were speaking to a kindergartner, can that kindergartner walk away understanding what you have just explained? It shouldn’t be that simple and it’s not about being condescending or treating people like they’re dumb, it’s about really handholding to make sure folks have truly understood the information that you are sharing and maybe repeating back to them the information that you have shared to ensure that their understanding is the same as your understanding because I might be saying something to you, but what you heard might be different than what I think I said. So even though there was minimal training later on in life, I think that helped me because it showed me what do I really need to implement if I’m training my own teams to make sure that there is not a gap in knowledge.

Manuel Martinez: And I’m glad you brought that up from the communication standpoint, because I’ve run into that a number of times and where I really understood that is when I started teaching part-time is, again, I think I’m explaining it properly. And again, what I’m saying is not what they’re receiving and it’s not always necessarily something that I’m doing wrong. Now, there are times I’ll tell you, most of the time it is, it’s just I need to find a better way to communicate that. But how did you develop that skill? Is it just something that over time, through trial and error, you understand that, okay, well, I said this, maybe the meeting ended or maybe even in that same conversation, they’re like, do they repeat things back to you? And you’re like, wait a minute, that’s not what I said, because that used to happen to me a lot where I’d be like, well, no, no, that’s not what I meant. And a lot of times when I would say that, or I would think that I would kind of pause and say, well, wait a minute, that’s not what I meant, but that’s what they understood. So then instead of going, well, no, that’s not what I meant, I had to stop and say, okay, how do I re-explain this instead of trying to excuse what I said previously? Okay, wait a minute, I have to alter my communication.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah. Manuel Martinez: So how did you develop that skill? So I think a lot of it, trial and error, a lot of it trial and error. A lot of times I put myself in other people’s shoes and think, okay, if somebody was explaining this to me, would I understand it? So that is something I think about often. Again, I go back to the, if I was speaking to a kindergartner explaining this, would they understand it? Is it easy for them to understand? And I wanna say, I am a work in progress, so I’m continuously improving how I communicate with others and I’m not perfect, right? I’ve definitely made my mistakes in how I’ve communicated with others, learned a lot of lessons through those errors in communication. But yeah, a lot of it really has been trial and error. And then I go back to, you probably heard about the two cups on a string,

Manuel Martinez: Yeah, the, what was it, the telephone game?

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, the telephone game, yep, exactly the telephone game. And by this, so I share a message with you, you share with the person next to you, they share with the person next to them, so on and so forth. And by the time you get to the last person, the message has completely changed. So the first person might have said, “I saw a big dog on a sunny day.” By the time you get to the end of the message, it might be, “I saw a dog on a gray day.”

Manuel Martinez: Right, or a cat.

Parmjit Kaur: Or a cat, right, exactly, exactly. Sometimes the message has changed completely. I learned that, that sometimes the messaging isn’t always received the way that you intended for it to be delivered. And so again, I think again, a lot of it has been trial and error. And again, just through candid conversations and through trainings and just again, putting myself in other people’s shoes. Because even when I’m in meetings, for example, I don’t always want to ask the question, ask a question. Sometimes it’s because a lot of it, I think a lot of us do that. We don’t want to maybe come across as unintelligent. We aren’t confident for many reasons we don’t ask a question. So folks might walk away from that meeting and you might think, everyone has understood the message, right? Oftentimes if you go back and you have a one-on-one, let’s say you have a one-on-one with somebody and you say, “Can you share with me what you learned in that meeting?” Oftentimes you might realize that they only took away 25% out of that 100% of that message that you were trying to deliver. So again, a lot of that I have learned because of my own experiences, putting myself in people’s shoes, but then also lessons that I’ve learned from miscommunication with other stakeholders.

Manuel Martinez: And I’m glad you mentioned that because a lot of times people might hear you and say, “Oh, wow, she communicates fantastically.” In that moment, you might have been able to communicate that message with them and they are probably also comparing you to themselves. Because I’ve done that all the time. And I was like, “Man, this person speaks really well.” And the thing that I’ve noticed with you, with myself and with those people is you are, we’re never gonna be perfect, but it’s that constant, “I can improve here and I can improve there.” Not that you, and I wanna get your take on it, it’s not that you’re terrible at it, but you’re always constantly trying to improve. So it’s not nitpicking because I seek feedback and I’m like, “Well, tell me where I can improve.” Because you wanna know, not because like, “I wanna be the best, but I wanna be better than I was in the past.” Is that kind of the same for you?

Parmjit Kaur: 100%, 100%. In Project Management, we talk a lot about, and in even software development, we talk a lot about continuous improvement. You’re never going to get a perfect product, right? Think about the iPhone and how many new iPhones have come out. Think about all the new software updates, right? That is continuous improvement. Apple knew that they’re not going to have a perfect iPhone from day one, right? So they continuously develop new iPhones, they continuously introduce new features, and that is continuous improvement. And like Apple, like the example I just used, as humans, we are never going to be perfect. And it is okay, and it’s actually, I suggest that everyone always seek feedback so we can continuously get better and better. And I do the same thing. I’m always asking for feedback from my, not just from my team, but from leadership. I ask all the time, like, “Where can I improve? What am I doing that you think maybe I could change a little bit to better deliver?” I think it’s so important for us to seek that feedback and continuously improve.

Manuel Martinez: With continuous feedback and continuous improvement, so there’s a balance, right? Because a lot of times we want to know what we’re doing well, what we excel at, and that could, I know earlier in my career, like it is helpful to kind of build that confidence, but then at some point I think we transition more to, I don’t care about what I do well, I want to know what I’m not doing well. And is that a similar experience? I mean, it sounds like you’re constantly learning, like I want to get better, I want to get better, but at what point in your career did you kind of start to seek more feedback than praise to kind of develop? And I don’t mean praise in a negative way, but just kind of that positive feedback, and how did you get kind of like that constructive feedback?

Parmjit Kaur: Sure, absolutely. So I’d say that probably started a few years ago, I owe, where I started to seek that feedback. So I’m going to go back to project management. In project management, we typically followed a waterfall framework, and what that means is you have to finish one phase before you start another. So I might be in the planning phase of my project, and if I’m following the waterfall framework, I have to finish my planning phase before I move into monitoring, controlling, or execution, right? I then learned about Agile, and Agile takes a very different approach. Agile talks about continuous improvement, that I don’t have to finish planning before I go into execution. I can still do planning while also doing maybe a little bit of execution, and so my mindset on that changed a little bit. I realized I wanted feedback, so going back to that. So in waterfall, you wait till the very end of your project to document lessons learned. Okay, well what did you learn throughout this project? What did you do well, what did you not do well, what could have been done better, what do you want to do the next time? Whereas in Agile, you are doing what they call sprint retrospectives, at the end of every sprint, you do a sprint retrospective, which is when you’re evaluating, okay, well, what went wrong, what did we do well, what could have been done better, what needs to change? Every two, so let’s say every two weeks, you are doing this evaluation, and I loved that, and I started thinking about that. Why would I, as a business professional, I started asking myself these questions, why am I waiting till a review, let’s say at the end of the year, to speak with my leadership and ask, what can I do better? Let’s say, Manny, you’re my boss, Manny, what can, it’s been six months, what can I improve, what would you like me to change now, but now six months have gone by, right? Six months have gone by, six months where I might have been doing poorly at something, that you wanted me to change, and we’ve waited six months to have this conversation, whereas I prefer to have those conversations at regular intervals, so that I’m constantly seeking your feedback, cause and feedback loop, and looking for opportunities to improve, so that I’m constantly, again, continuous improvement.

Manuel Martinez: It’s amazing, and I think Agile probably did do that for a lot of professionals, and just even articles, because I read something similar, it’s saying, especially as you are in larger organizations, and when I say larger, it doesn’t mean like millions, it could just be larger where your manager has more than, say, four or five people that report to them, because, gosh, I’m trying to remember, I wish I knew exactly who wrote the article, just for this purpose, but they talk about, it’s on us as individuals, as business professionals, to seek that feedback, because we have to also realize that the manager or the leader that we’re reporting to, they have someone that they’re reporting to, they’re having, it’s not just you, if you are not seeking that feedback to understand, one, you’re making the job easier for them, they’re not having to wait until month six or month 12, like you said at the annual review, to say, well, here’s what you could have done better, and you’re like, oh, well, had I known, I would have done that sooner.

Parmjit Kaur: Right, exactly, exactly.

Manuel Martinez: So, I know we kind of got into the project management piece a little bit, so I’m curious, when did you identify the skills that you’re detail-oriented, that you can kind of communicate well, and transitioned from a sales position into, you mentioned it, and I’ve talked to a lot of other project managers, where you kind of fall into project management, like, what is it that, was it somebody that said, you’d be good at this, did you see a posting, did you just kind of lead projects internally, like, I’m just curious, what led to that transition?

Parmjit Kaur: Sure, sure, absolutely. So, I spoke about that startup company, in which I was doing sales, and that startup company was having to do layoffs, and they were needing to eliminate my position. And I had a really, really good relationship with my leadership, with my manager, and so my manager said to me, look, we really like you here, we don’t wanna let you go. So, I have a parent company, that’s run by my, actually it was run by his brother, he said it’s a healthcare IT company. We would love, if you would be willing, to move you over to the healthcare IT company instead. And I said, okay, so, and I did, loved it. I wasn’t doing sales for them though, I was doing, I was the client relations manager. So, they realized I’m a people person, I like communicating with people, and they said you’d be a great client relations manager. So, that’s where I started off. Around that time, my manager had this just brilliant idea to connect software companies with healthcare leaders in a sort of speed dating fashion. Interesting. Yeah, it was so innovative, and we’re talking back in, I wanna say this is probably 2009. Yeah, was it? Yeah, 2009, so it’s so innovative for that time. Because what he realized is a lot of smaller software companies were having trouble getting their foot in the door with IT directors, hospital CIOs, and the reason why is these smaller companies couldn’t compete with maybe the metatechs, the Serger’s, the Siemens of the world, right? So, he had this fabulous idea, he in collaboration with at the time, I think he was our senior marketing manager, had this idea that we are going to start holding these speed dating sessions for these entrepreneurs, these smaller companies, and with healthcare leadership from a lot of the, at the time I was living in New Jersey with these hospital CIOs, and so we did that, and we did that across the country, but he needed someone to manage that, right? So, he needed someone to manage that. And lo and behold, he asked me to become the program manager for that initiative. So, we were going to have this, we’re going to run this speed dating session in Philly, and we were gonna run it in Cali, actually it was hosted at Kaiser Permanente in California, so we did it all from coast to coast, from east coast to west coast, and I managed that entire thing. Through that, I realized, oh my gosh, I’m detail oriented because I had to get contracts signed, right, I had to, so did procurement, had to also navigate, find event spaces for where we were going to hold these events, had to stakeholder coordination, had to have a stakeholder log, in which I’m documenting all the stakeholders. So, we did this for, I wanna say the program might have gone on for a year, and that is when I realized, I’m like, oh my gosh, I love this, but had no idea that this could actually be a career, and then I realized, oh my gosh, project management, program management, that portfolio management, these are careers, there are certifications for this, and that’s kind of when I made the pivot, so.

Manuel Martinez: And did you discover that just kind of looking around at roles, talking to people, because, or just in interactions with others, because it’s interesting, like you mentioned, at some point you discovered this, well wait a minute, not only is there a career, but there’s certifications, there’s all these things that you can do, so I guess the two part question is, how did you discover this, and then two, what did you do to kind of start pursuing that? Did you go after certification first, or try to get into a role first?

Parmjit Kaur: I started searching roles first, so I started seeking different project management roles, because at this point I was like, okay, well I now have experienced being a project manager, right? I ran this huge program, nationwide program. I started searching roles first, and when I was looking for jobs, I saw, oh my gosh, there are tons of them, indeed, and on LinkedIn, so many project manager jobs. So I started applying, but I would often run into an issue where I would always be asked for a PMP, and I remember, I will always remember this, I had gone to a job fair, again, this was in New Jersey, I had gone to a job fair, and I spoke with an individual who worked at a hospital, and she, I mean, she was such a fan of me, and I was such a fan of her, we just had such a great rapport, just in that brief conversation that we had at the job fair, and she said, you know what, you seem like you’d be such a great fit for our organization, would love to interview you, but I just have one quick question first, she said, do you have your PMP? And I said, PMP, and I had no, honestly, I had no idea what a PMP was, and PMP for folks who don’t know what that is, that’s a certification, and that acronym stands for Project Management Professional. And so I said, well, no, and she said, oh, this role, you have to have a PMP, it’s a requirement, and that’s when I realized, okay, that, so I started looking into the PMP, I was like, oh gosh, this is a certification, and that is when I realized I needed that certification, so while it wasn’t impossible for me to get project management jobs, because I was able to get roles in project management without my PMP, I realized for me, at that point in my career, having that certification was going to be, it is not only incredibly important, but I feel like it was going to be a game changer for me, and it has proven to be a game changer for me.

Manuel Martinez: And with that certification, again, there’s a number of different certifications for different industries. For that one in particular, while you said, again, it’s not a, you could probably work your way around it, like even if they said, hey, it’s required, I’m sure maybe you could have tried to find a way to kind of, hey, how can I circumvent this, or hey, I will get it as part of this, but that process of learning and studying, because I’ve seen you write posts about how you had to kind of go through that process, but in that specific instance with the PMP, is it really something that’s that beneficial, or is it kind of more of a, I guess what’s the word, like a filter?

Parmjit Kaur: I think it’s really important, yeah. I think it’s incredibly important. So even though I’d been doing project management for quite some time, and I was getting roles before I got my PMP, my experience wasn’t formalized, so I didn’t know about it. So yes, I was documenting stakeholders. I didn’t have a stakeholder log. I didn’t have, I never had a raid log to log my risks, my assumptions, right, my issues, my decisions. I didn’t have any of that, right? The PMP taught me all that. I would have not, I would not have known about it, I feel, had it not been for the PMP. I think it’s incredibly important, but at the same time, there is, and there are many project managers who don’t have their PMP, who are incredible, incredible project managers. I feel for where I was in my career, I didn’t have enough project management experience where I could get by without having the PMP, and without having the formal training.

Manuel Martinez: Oh, and that’s good to know, and again, there’s going to be, it’s always gonna be based on your experience.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, yeah.

Manuel Martinez: Because I’ve talked to people, like you said, oh no, I don’t have that, it’s not necessary, but again, they have maybe not that formal training, but maybe they had, sorry, maybe not the formal certification, but they’ve had some sort of formal training that addresses all that, and they have that experience to where maybe they don’t need it because they look at it, well, this person’s been doing it for 15 years in large things, where somebody else it might be, well, I need this like yourself to kind of formalize why you could do the role, it helped you formalize, built a, not a structure, but maybe a different structure that’s more widely accepted. So again, that’s why I bring it up, because even within IT, I mean, there’s a lot of people like, well, I’m against certifications, it’s just a gatekeeping thing. Well, it can be, but for some people, for me specifically, I enjoyed certifications because one, it forced me to have a structure to my learning.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah.

Manuel Martinez: I wouldn’t say like when I did this Microsoft cert, everybody’s like, oh, well, those aren’t worth much. Maybe the certification itself isn’t, but it helped me go through and say, oh, I didn’t study or I didn’t have exposure experience with this type of software, the way that you do this. Oh, but now I do, I might never use it. But again, similar to you, it gave me that formal education around it. Now it’s on me and it’s on you to kind of take what you’ve learned and apply it.

Parmjit Kaur: Exactly, exactly, yeah. I mean, I think about, right, there are project managers who have been doing project management for 15 years. They’ve run huge, huge, multimillion dollar projects, right? They don’t have their PMP, but they have the experience, right, they’ve proven themselves in the field. Whereas there was somebody like me who had done this one, yes, coast to coast program, right? And I’d had project management jobs in between, but again, I didn’t have the formal education to feel confident enough to say, yeah, I can confidently say I’m a good project manager. The PMP is what helped me get to that next level.

Manuel Martinez: So in that process, at some point, and I’m gonna kind of start blending things together.

Parmjit Kaur: Sure.

Manuel Martinez: Is I know that you are also, I don’t know if you’re still currently, or at some point you were involved in Toastmasters. Is that because you, again, that constant improvement to kind of want to get better communication? Is it when you started doing more of the project management? So I kind of want to understand where in that process Toastmasters came in and why?

Parmjit Kaur: Sure, so I wasn’t involved with Toastmasters, so a little bit of history. I got involved with NSA, which is here in Las Vegas. They have chapters all around the US, and NSA stands for National Speaker Association. So it is, you have Toastmasters, and then after Toastmasters, you would join something like NSA. So it is like the next level. Now that you know how to speak on a stage, thanks to Toastmasters, now NSA will help you get business. It’ll help you kind of formalize your speaking a little bit more, and how to make money off of it, how to really build a business from your speaking.

Manuel Martinez: And I don’t mean to interrupt, so that’s more on the not so much how to, like I said, Toastmasters is more how to speak, how to build confidence in delivering speeches, and NSA is more of the, getting the business around the speaking engagement, and then also how to deliver speaking engagements, or is that separate?

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it encompasses all of that. Yeah, it encompasses all of that. NSA will help you and say, now that you are a speaker, it might give you tips and tricks for, okay, you are already a speaker, here are other ways you can improve your speaking. This is different things you can try. They have classes, I think they, not classes, they have meetings once a month, and in these meetings they typically invite world-class speakers who are certified speaking professionals, and so we get to learn from these individuals. But I’ll kind of backtrack, that is not how I started in speaking, I started in speaking so that Healthcare IT Company I was working for at the time, so HIMSS, I don’t know if you’ve heard of HIMSS, HIMSS stands for Healthcare Informatics Management Systems Society, it is a huge organization. HIMSS has different chapters within the US as well, so you have global HIMSS, I think it’s national HIMSS, and then you have your local chapters. New Jersey HIMSS at the time was having a meeting, and this is when we were transitioning from in the healthcare field, from paper medical records to electronic medical records. And I was asked at the time by one of our clients who also worked very closely with NJ HIMSS, if I would be willing to give patient testimony on stage. So we were having a meeting, and we had invited over 200 physicians to this meeting, and we wanted to speak about why it is so important to adopt EMR, electronic medical record technology. He asked me to speak, and when I say he asked me to share my patient story, I’m a patient, and I’ll kind of get into that a little bit, but I was diagnosed with something in 2008, and soon after diagnosis, my family’s house caught on fire. And because my family’s house caught on fire, I had a lot of paper medical records that I had. They weren’t on a CD, they weren’t digitized, right? And so that is the first time I got on stage, and so I spoke to this room of 200 plus physicians talking about the importance of having an EMR, and why having your patients use a personal health record to again digitize all of their records, why all that is so important. So I got on stage, and I’m talking about it, and I spoke about the house fire. And as I’m talking about the house fire, I said, “Yeah, I said everything, “I said we lost everything, and I said, “but the insurance company gave us some money, “I said because we still had insurance.” And I said, “Thank God for insurance, “and everyone, it wasn’t to me, it wasn’t funny, “but everyone started laughing.” Everyone started laughing. And the second I heard the audience laughing, something in me said, “Oh my God, this feels amazing.” I love being on stage, I love delivering presentations, and that was in 2010, and that is when I realized this is what I want to do. I love being a speaker, I love being on stage, and then I started thinking about, right, the little girl, me, who wanted to be an actress, who wanted to be on stage, and I thought, while I don’t know if I want to get into acting at this stage in my life, this is a perfect way for me to still be on stage, but just in a different capacity.

Manuel Martinez: Right. Yeah. And that’s amazing, I was making that same correlation right now as you were saying, it is just, again, you didn’t know it at the time, right, that speaking is a thing, but apparently that, dancing and being there, you’re like, you felt like this is something you wanted to do, and then when that happened, that feeling of like, oh, I enjoy this, and not because, oh, I enjoy people, any number of things, right, it could be for any number of things, but just kind of that correlation as you’re talking, I was like, wow, I could see that.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah. Manuel Martinez: And just you going through and saying, wow, I enjoy this, and at the same time, the other correlation I saw, you wanting to help people is you’re able to deliver information that is valuable and helpful to others in a way that, again, you weren’t trying to be funny, but they found it funny and all these other things, so you’re like, oh my gosh, it’s that connection with people that probably brought out that desire to, I want to do more of this.

Parmjit Kaur: Absolutely, it really is. And then the way I got started then with NSA, so, and no, you’re absolutely right, I think that being able to help people, I’ve always, since from the time I was little, I’ve always had this servant leadership aspect to me. I feel like it’s just who I am. It’s who I was raised to be. It’s my family, not to get into religion or anything like that, but my family is sikh, come from the sikh faith, and in the sikh faith, we are taught from a very young age that we are to serve others, and that is our purpose in life, to serve others and stand up for the oppressed and all that. And so I grew up going to our temple, had a huge kitchen, and that kitchen served food for free of anybody who was attending temple that day, and anyone could attend no matter your religion. And so as a child, we were to go and pass around napkins to folks who were eating and serve folks water and help serve the meal and go into the kitchen and help cook the food, and so that servant leadership aspect, I grew up with that, and so seeing being on stage and seeing that I made people smile, I mean, I can’t tell you how good that felt, how good that felt, and then I got into NSA, and the way I got into NSA is I am a past president of a PMI chapter here in Nevada, and I would, as the president, I would introduce our speakers and I would make announcements in front of the meeting room before the speaker would go on to present. One of our speakers was the member of another NSA chapter, and after he spoke, his name is actually Sabi, so Sabi, after he spoke, he said to me, and I went to thank him for speaking, he said to me, “Parmjit, you’re really good on stage.” He said, “Have you ever considered being a speaker?” And I said, “Well, actually, I’ve spoken before.” I said, “But I spoke a long time ago.” I said, “2010 is the last time I spoke on stage.” And he said, “You should really look into…” He’s like, “Do you know about NSA?” And I said, “I’d never heard of NSA.” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, I’m part of an NSA chapter.” And he said, “I’m sure there’s an NSA chapter here in Las Vegas.” He said, “I think you should look into it because you are real, again, you’re good on stage.” And I was so humbled, and that evening, I looked up NSA Las Vegas. The very next day, I went to my very first NSA meeting, turns out the very next day they were having a meeting, and signed up right there, and I was hooked, I was hooked. And I said, “This is absolutely what I want to do. I want to be a speaker.” That is what I’m passionate about.

Manuel Martinez: That’s awesome. And I’m gonna go back here a little bit before we kinda continue the NSA thing. How did you get involved in the local PMI chapter? And what made you get involved? I’m glad, you know, I have all these notes, all these questions, but as the conversation goes, I’m like, “Oh, I forgot about that that I wanted to ask.” How you got involved with that organization, and you were there for quite a while, like a number of years, and actually ran as president. And I’m assuming that a lot of that, the president type of role, again, a lot of the project management skills come into play, but some of that servant leadership as well, is you are having to, and this is something that I’ve talked about on a couple episodes, is being involved with these organizations, again, they’re not paid. You’re doing this, it’s volunteers, but you learn an aspect of leadership, and it’s not management. You’re leadership because the other people on the board, the other member roles, they’re also volunteers. Now, yes, there might be people that pay dues, but again, you are having to, from a president standpoint, go through and get people to, you’re leading them to, “This is where I want the chapter to go,” or, “Here’s what I think we’re doing,” and not convince, but influence people that at least at this point in time, this is the way to go, or maybe it’s not, and seek feedback from the other people and say, “Okay, from a consensus, this is what we’re gonna do.” So what was that experience doing that?

Parmjit Kaur: Sure. So first I’ll answer the first part of the question, how I got involved. So I got my PMP during COVID, right? Everything was shut, so I moved from Connecticut to, at the time I was living in Connecticut, I’d moved from Connecticut to Las Vegas, and I’d sold my car in Connecticut before I moved, thinking, “I’ll just buy a car when I get to Las Vegas.” Little did I know, right? (both laughing) We were going to be hit with COVID. So I moved here and it was COVID, everything was shut down, everything was shut down. And I should have known because in Connecticut, I was working on a different project. And I remember one of the risks that came up was COVID. And at the time we didn’t know enough, right? I think this 2019, we didn’t know enough. And I just thought it was the common cold, right? Because we didn’t know as much as we know now. I got to the airport and everyone was wearing masks. That should have been my first. And the airport was almost empty as I was leaving to come here to Vegas. And I get to Vegas and again, everything is shut down. So I couldn’t buy a car. And so now I’m stuck at home. I can’t go anywhere, I don’t have a car. I was relying on my former partner to drive me everywhere. And at the time I was like, “You know what? This would be a great opportunity to study for my PMP.” Now it wasn’t my first time going for my PMP. My first time studying for my PMP was back in 2018. But I made a mistake and you really have to be heads down studying for the PMP. I mean, it’s a lot of material to study, to understand. But at the time in 2018, I didn’t have enough time to study or I couldn’t make enough time to study because I was working full time. And then I was also training for my very first bodybuilding competition. So I was doing all that in parallel. So I was doing working full time, training for this bodybuilding competition. And I was trying to study for the PMP. Needless to say, I didn’t study nearly enough and I failed in 2018. And so when COVID hit, I was like, “You know what? “It’s going to be a great opportunity “to study for the test again.” And so that’s exactly what I did. I was heads down. I linked with several other folks who were also studying for their PMP from all around the world, actually. One of the individuals that was in our group was from Canada. Another one was from Boston. Another individual, she was from Kenya, if I’m not mistaken. But folks from all over the world. And we studied every single day for about a month, every single day. So we would finish work from about 6 p.m. to about, I want to say probably did two hours a day, 6 p.m. to about 9 p.m. or to 8 p.m. We were heads down studying. And again, we did this for a month, including weekends. And then I did two practice tests and then I eventually took PMP. As soon as I took the PMP, I thought, I wonder what organizations I can join. Because I knew about PMI. And so I looked for my local chapter, saw that there was a Southern Nevada chapter and immediately reached out to the board members and the president invited me to apply to be a board member. And I did. And I was almost immediately, I joined as, I think I was the vice president of public relations at the time. That was my first position. So immediately, no time passed. I got my PMP, probably less than a week later I joined the board of our local organization. And then I moved, and so I was with the board for five years. I went from VP of public relations to VP of programs, which I loved that because as the VP of programs, I got to put on events. I got to procure speakers. And given my experience with that speed dating thing that I’d done, I thought, oh my gosh, I loved it. I loved the interaction with people. I loved procuring speakers. And then I was the executive vice president, which is at the time that was the role you were in before you moved into the role of president. And then eventually our president had to step down. And so I moved into the role of president. It taught me a lot about leadership because yes, I had to, with my board members and with our membership, I had to really understand what it was that our membership needed and how I could best serve our membership. And I really did want to pass it forward. I had just gotten my PMP. I now wanted to help other individuals understand how they can obtain their PMP, what skills they needed. So I did a lot of that. I also recognize that there were, so because of COVID, we lost some membership and our chapter wasn’t as active again because everything was shut down, right? And so some of the things that we used to do, like we used to do things for the military, that kind of went away during COVID or wasn’t as, that part of our chapter wasn’t as active. There were a lot of things that we weren’t doing anymore. So there’s things that I introduced. I got our volunteer program started up again. So because to me, something that was always important to me was I don’t just want us to help other projects managers. I want us to also help the community, right? Like how, and that came from a lot of people I would speak with had no idea what PMI was, had no idea that there was a project management chapter. So it was two-fold. One, I wanted through these programs, I wanted to reach out to our community to let them know, hey, we’re here. Project management, Southern Nevada chapter, we are here. We want to help you. We want to provide you with the resources that you need to be an even more effective project manager. We want to help you study for your PMP. We wanted, so wanted to do that, but outside of that, I also wanted the broader community to know that, hey, we are here and we want to help you. And that program since I left has just really taken off. And I was so proud to have been able to really get those programs active and going again.

Manuel Martinez: You mentioned something there is kind of wanting to kind of not just help the PMI group, but also kind of community. And this is one of the things that attracted me to your profile in a lot of the posts that you’re doing is I see that you are very community oriented.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah.

Manuel Martinez: I hadn’t seen so much, and again, I’m not saying that you weren’t doing it, but not local, but I see a lot of when you would go to these other events and other people that I had connected through LinkedIn. So like Tanya Boyd, I believe, she’s out of Arizona?

Parmjit Kaur: She lives in Louisiana.

Manuel Martinez: Louisiana, that’s what it is. So again, just other people that you connect to, and I would see how you guys were connecting at different events, just the different people in a lot of your posts are very community driven. It’s like, yes, I’m at this event, but I’m at this event with these people. And here’s what we’re talking about. So I can see that community aspect of it. And now, again, through this conversation, I’m seeing, again, that servant leadership, a lot of that tied in. That community that you’ve built, now understanding, it’s not just PMI, like you are a big community person. Is that, again, kind of going back to you moving around, understanding, communicating, would you say that all of that together has kind of influenced you to doing that? And what are the benefits that you see as part of, and I’m gonna say, I kind of like the word of building community instead of building a network, because I feel that, yes, they are a network of people, but you’re building a community. I see the people that interact with you, the people that you’re meeting, and just the way that they kind of talk about you and interact with you. It is a community that you’ve built. So what are some of the ways that you go about doing that and kind of your recommendations for people and say, “Hey, don’t focus so much on building a network,” but like a community of people that you can, I don’t know what you’re, again, I’m not in those conversations. Are you balancing ideas off? I know a lot of it’s just catching up with people, but kind of what does that mean to you?

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, absolutely. And firstly, thank you so much for saying that. That is a huge compliment. So thank you. I think it really comes down to authenticity. Authenticity. Whether you’re in sales or whether you’re in project management or whether you’re not in doing business at all, right? It’s about being authentic and being human. And just being human, I think a lot of times when people are speaking, they’re looking to see, okay, well, when does this person, let me wait till this person finishes speaking. So they’re already thinking about what they’re gonna say next. So they’re not present in the conversation, right? They’re not truly hearing what the other person is saying, right? And so there’s that lack of authenticity, in my opinion, right? One thing that I feel really has helped me build community is authenticity. I genuinely love people. I genuinely, and hopefully that shows, yeah, in a lot of–

Manuel Martinez: It does, it shows in a lot of the posts, a lot of the interactions, just even in the short time that we talked prior to this and kind of, our syncs about kind of getting this going, and even just this, I was just like, I can see it, right? Like you can just, you feel it. And it’s weird to say, people might think it’s, ooh, ooh-hoo-doo-doo, whatever they say, but I genuinely believe, similar to you, you can feel that authenticity. As you’re speaking, I don’t feel that it’s forced, that you’re thinking of what to say, but how to communicate it properly, not like, how do I come across as this type of person, if that makes sense.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, yeah, no, it does. And then again, thank you for saying that. Authenticity, it’s so important. And like you just said, right, people can feel that. People can tell when you’re being authentic and when you’re not, and when you’re kind of faking it, or putting on a facade. I think when people see that you’re genuinely interested in speaking with them, you’re genuinely interested in them. I think people wanna be around you. I think that’s how I’ve kind of built my community. It’s so funny, you talked about, right, that you see our friends with Tanya, and I have this little community on LinkedIn. I think a lot of that has come from, we all share a lot of the same values, but I think we all genuinely care about each other. I’ll use Tanya as a perfect example. She is one of my closest friends. Tanya is one of my closest friends. We both connected after we had both gone through layoffs. And I remember Tanya had posted something about her layoff, and I had just gotten laid off myself, and I reached out to her. And I said, “Hey, Tanya, I saw your post.” I sent a message, I said, “I saw your post.” I said, “I didn’t know her yet. I just said, we were just connecting on LinkedIn.” And I said, “I saw your post. I saw you got laid off. I’m really, really sorry. I also got laid off.” And I said, “Let’s have a conversation. It would be great just to connect.” Since that conversation, Tanya and I are like, “We are so close.” And because we genuinely care about each other’s success. And so Tanya has helped me inter…get, well, not, well, she helped me twice. She helped me get a job. So my last position, I got through Tanya. And even before that, she helped me by sharing a position that she knew about that wasn’t the right fit for her, but she felt, you know, this might be the right fit for you, Parmjit. So I think genuinely caring about one another and helping each other when and where you can, I think helped build that community. And I think it really is, it’s about that servant leadership and it’s about the human element of it. I think a lot of times we, especially with all the tech, we forget to check in with each other. I genuinely just pick up a phone and say, “Hey, just wanted to see how you’re doing.” And I think, especially now more than ever, we need that. We need that human connection. And so I think, yeah, I think that is what has helped me in building community.

Manuel Martinez: And I love that because again, you reached out to her just to connect and to talk. And I think that might be the word I’m gonna start using for now on is, and I’m not gonna tell people build a network, I’m gonna say build a community. Because that’s really what it is. And it’s a community because a lot of times I say, “Hey, build your network, but build your network to just to meet people.” It shouldn’t be, “Hey, I’m gonna connect with Parmjit because I could probably, I’m looking at project management, maybe I want a job.” Again, that will come across. It’s weird, there’s a bunch of science around it. We see physical cues, tone of voice, whatever it might be. But building a community and just saying, “Well, hey, I wanna reach out to Parmjit like I do with you and say, I like a lot of what you’re posting.” And I think the first, the way I became aware of you is through a mutual contact was Alan Tyson. He was on your podcast. I listened to it and I was like, “Wow, this is really cool.” And I think maybe shortly after that, again, the algorithm kind of starts going through. So I saw that post, followed a couple of other ones. It starts to pop up. So you start to read and you’re like, “Oh, I like this, this is interesting.” At some point we connected and I connect just to kind of, again, I do it to kind of curate my feed a little bit and say, “Okay, there’s something about this person. Let me connect. Let me see what’s going on.” You start to see more and more. I’m like, “Wow, I like a lot of what she’s doing.” Like you start to kind of align. So I think that’s kind of a takeaways moving forward from this standpoint is when I ask people about building network, I’m going to say, “How are you building your community of people?” Because I’ve done that through different organizations, different guests here. And that’s something that in, again, in trying to serve others and sharing your information, your knowledge, your experience for the benefit of others. I don’t want to say selfishly, but I feel bad sometimes because I feel like I got more out of it because now I’ve made a connection. I have somebody that, again, I can just, now I can call you up and say, “Hey, how’s it going? It’s been a while. Maybe I saw a job or maybe I just want to see how you’re doing.” Just any number of things. It doesn’t just have to be in a professional realm.

Parmjit Kaur: Absolutely. And I’m so, so glad you said that, Manny, because a lot of times, right? And I’m sure you’ve experienced this too. You accept a connection request on LinkedIn, right? Not even five-ten minutes later, you get a message. They’re trying to sell you something, right? And it always, it irks me out. It irks me because I think you haven’t even gotten to know me. So there was, your intention behind it was to get business, but there was a motive there. And now I feel you aren’t, you’re not being authentic. You only wanted something from me. And I hate that. I think people can feel that. And I think a lot of, right? Especially in a world where there’s so many different tools that are through which people get access to us, right? Our emails, all these different technology. It’s overwhelming. Sometimes it’s nice to feel like, I’m a visual person. The way I always visualize it is I always see myself standing and I always see all these hands coming for me. Coming for me. That’s how it feels. It feels like everyone’s always trying to, everyone wants something from me. That’s how it always feels. In a world where it feels like everyone wants something from you, right? It’s nice to get a phone call or have a conversation where you’re not expected to give something. It’s just a connection. It is just an authentic conversation.

Manuel Martinez: It has. It’s happened a number of times. And I think I posted about it one time is you get those connection requests and instantly it’s, here’s, hey, I’m here to sell you my IT services. And I get it, you’re trying to run a business, but then the other thing, it irks me as well as one, that’s all you wanted. And two, you didn’t do any kind of research. This must’ve been a tool or something like that because I go, if you look at, if you had genuinely looked at me and said, maybe I am the perfect fit for what you’re offering, then I might’ve been like, okay, I kind of can see it and maybe this is a benefit for me. But when you’re trying to sell me MSP for my business and I’m like, what business? I run a podcast or I work for my employer that doesn’t fit. So again, that’s the other thing that really bothers me is okay, not only do you want something, but you just want anything because there’s no alignment, there’s no nothing.

Parmjit Kaur: 100%, yeah. I’ve gotten messages from folks asking me if I’d be interested in getting my PMP. And I’m like, did you not look at my profile? You just conveniently just glossed over the fact that I’m already a PMP, so.

Manuel Martinez: Yeah, no, it is. And it is, it’s genuine. I’m hoping that, and I’m assuming, well, actually I don’t want to assume I’m gonna ask, is part of the reason that you eventually agreed to kind of come on and share your story is I wanted to, again, I was doing a little bit of my research, like one, even if you don’t come on, this is a good person that, hey, I like interacting with your posts. I like some of it’s funny, some of it’s just all these different things. And when I interact, again, it’s hard when you start to grow a bigger community to go, I can’t do every single post, every single thing that comes out, but when it does, like I do, I take the time to read, and there was one where you had shared with the dancing, with the Bollywood dancing, I was like, oh man, that looks like so much fun. Like I’ve been to those types of events, and again, it’s refreshing to see that. And then eventually when I did ask, and I was like, you know what, this is somebody that I think, based on your career, based on from the outside looking in, things that I think that you’ve done that would be beneficial, eventually I was like, hey, here’s what I’m doing, I would like to bring you on. And I would like to think that you said yes, because you felt, one, you have good information to share, but two, you’re like, hey, this is somebody that I trust, is not just trying to get something from you. I am, but it should be mutually beneficial for both of us.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It’s so funny, you say, I do my best not to be standoffish when people send me messages, because I’m always now, it’s subconsciously, I’m like, this person is probably, what does this person want from me now? I have to make sure I don’t do that, because it’s easy to do that. But no, I really appreciated you reaching out, you were very authentic, and I think you and I aligned during our first conversation when we talked about why you started your podcast, which was really to give back and to highlight all these incredible professionals that you know of and give them a spotlight to share knowledge and share their journey. And I loved that, because that’s exactly why I started my podcast, right? I said, I know so many incredible people, and I want to be able to spotlight them and give them a platform to share their incredible knowledge with the world. So I definitely did not feel that way with you, you definitely came across as, because I also was looking at your posts, and I saw the things that you were posting, and you were and are, which is very humble and kind, and that resonated with me. So I definitely felt, did not feel standoffish when you reached out to me, if anything, I think it was welcomed, that was a very welcomed interaction.

Manuel Martinez: And the reason I kind of highlight this, and again, it wasn’t to kind of like, hey, I’m this kind of person, but it’s again, this is what building a community looks like. And I think this might be one of the few platforms where people can see that, this isn’t rehearsed and it’s an open format to where people can kind of see like, oh, oh, I see what Parmjit’s talking about, I see what Manny’s talking about, oh, they do align because here’s their experiences, and here’s where they align, sure, are there gonna be differences? Of course, we’re all human, we’re all different, but again, this is what building a community should look like. So again, just trying to show a small piece, and I was like, well, this is the perfect time to kind of highlight that.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, absolutely, no, thank you for that.

Manuel Martinez: And you’ve shared a lot of great information, you’ve answered a lot of my questions, I think there’s a lot of value that people should, would be able to get out of this conversation. I wanna give you the opportunity, is there anything that we talked about that we kind of maybe glossed over, that you wanna highlight, or just something differently that we haven’t covered yet, I wanna give you the opportunity to kind of talk about anything you want.

Parmjit Kaur: Sure, absolutely, well, so I have something called, there’s a framework that I talk about often, my framework is called CPR, and CPR not, I know what CPR typically stands for, right? But CPR in my world stands for communication, project management, and resiliency. I use that framework because I say those, that is all you really need to revive a project, or to revive a project, or to revive a business, right? Communication, I think it’s so understated how informed communication is, right? So whether you’re a business professional, whether even in our personal relationships, right? If we don’t communicate and communicate effectively, that business or that project is bound to fail, you have to be an effective communicator. When I talk about project management, I talk about the basics of project management, right? Project management isn’t that complex, right? And I think if you want to run a project effectively, just go back to the basics of project management, right? You have to initiate, you have to plan, you have to monitor, control, execute, right? I think going back to the basics of project management, you can apply project management to everything, right? So my podcast is called Your Life Projectized, and the reason why is because I believe and I think you’d agree that you can apply project management to anything that you do, right? Think about you need to retile your bathroom, right? That’s a project, your initiation phase that you’ve discovered that there’s a need for a project. Now you know you’re going to initiate, you have to plan it, you have to think about your stakeholders, you have to think about your risks, you have to think about vendor management, right? You have to do all the same things you would do in a project, and then I talk about resiliency, because again, in business and in life, we have to be resilient, right? Each one of us, whether in business, whether it’s our project is going off the rails, right? You have to be resilient and be able to get that project back on track, but even in life, we have to, we go through so many different things in life that you have to be resilient. And the reason I developed this framework is, I shared with you, I made a shared with you earlier, I’d gotten laid off from a very, a Fortune 500, a very well-known Fortune 500. I was one of many people that was laid off. I was laid off while at the Project Management Global Summit in Atlanta, Georgia. It was the second, no, actually, so when I got there, we had our volunteer appreciation day for all different PMI chapter members. If you were a volunteer with a PMI chapter, PMI typically does a volunteer appreciation day. We had just had our volunteer appreciation day, so it was the first day. The conference hadn’t officially ramped up just yet, and I get a call from a senior leadership member, and I’m thinking they’re calling me to tell me maybe something happened with my project, because they knew I was going to be at this conference, but instead, he was calling me to tell me that my position had been eliminated. I was being laid off, and mind you, here I am at the PMI Global Conference, and I was stunned, I was stunned, but then I thought to myself, this is bad, of course, this is bad, and I was about to move, I was about to change homes, so that was in progress, and I’m thinking, oh my gosh, I need to move, I just got laid off, what am I gonna do? So I took a second to grieve just a little bit, and then I got right back on track, and I thought, you know what? I got laid off at the best place I could have been laid off. I’m at the PMI Global Summit. There’s a wealth of opportunity here, there’s a wealth of connections here that I can tap into, and that’s exactly what I did. I started having conversations. When I went back home, I decided, I don’t wanna work for someone else anymore. I was tired, like this wasn’t my first layoff, and I said, I’m tired of working for someone else and being laid off, and so I started my own company, and so I started my own project management consultancy, and so the business is a combination of the project management consultancy side and the public speaking side, so that is what my business is, and it’s been now three years since then, so that is why I have that framework, to revive any business or to revive any project, or just to revive anything in life. You only need, and there’s, of course, nuances to that, but for the most part, you need to just be able to effectively communicate. You need to go back to the basics of project management, and you just need to be resilient, so.

Manuel Martinez: And that framework, based on this conversation, I’m assuming a lot of that you kind of put together, just looking at your personal life, your professional life combined, because you mentioned you can do this from a business standpoint, but even from an individual standpoint, and again, we don’t, not to get into details, but you mentioned kind of the house fire, you mentioned being laid off. That’s where the resiliency comes in, communication through being the president of the chapter, to speaking to other people, to even your LinkedIn posts, right? That’s a form of communication. It could be emails, again, I’m just going based on this conversation and the interactions, and then the last part around, I talked about resiliency, I talked about communication, and with project management, is understanding how project management is in both facets. All of this, did you, is that where it kind of came from? It’s just, I need to put something together for how to develop your own kind of, was this framework originally just for you, for decisions, or did you apply this like, no, this is when I’m gonna apply within my business. The reason I ask is it seems like once we’ve gone through a number of things, you start to develop those frameworks. Like, I, based on the time of this recording, by the time this comes out, I will have known whether it’s gotten accepted or not, but I am applying for a TEDx speaking engagement. And it’s around a framework that I’ve developed, and it’s around the three S’s, sacrifice, success, and significance. And I look at it from both a professional and a personal standpoint, is sacrifice, like there’s always some sort of sacrifice that either we have to make, our family makes, in all aspects. With that, for that decision, for that project, whatever it might be, there’s also success. I sacrifice time with my family to build this podcast. It’s bringing success within my professional career, within my community, but the part that I feel is the most important is the last one, it’s just significance. ParmjitL Yeah.

Manuel Martinez: If the sacrifice or the success are bigger than my sacrifice, or sorry, bigger than my significance, it’s not worth it to me.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah.

Manuel Martinez: I wanna know that that significance, meaning the impact, what I’m doing this for, what others are getting, not what I’m getting, sacrifice and success, it’s about me. But the significance is what is that doing for other people? So that’s how I came about it, is I just look at my professional career. When I achieved success, or when I did sacrifice for studying for certifications, it led to a significance. Now that could be monetary, I got another role, I made more money, that’s significant because now that impacts my family life.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah.

Manuel Martinez: If I’m doing something like a lot of volunteer work, that significance is for the bigger community of whatever that might be. So that’s kind of how I developed mine, my framework that I am now starting to kind of put together and formalize based on professional and personal experiences. Is that kind of how you came about?

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, I will obviously, firstly, I wish you so much success, and please let me know if you are selected and, gosh, sending you nothing but good vibes. Yeah, that is kind of how I put that together. So it was funny, I was, I mentioned NSA, and I was part of a sort of bootcamp at NSA. And at NSA, it’s a more intimate group of individuals, and we get access to, again, these certified speaking professionals who have built their speaking businesses and are so successful. And in that, we were recording 30-minute reels in which we were talking about what it is that we speak about, right? Because that’s part of our speaking business. I struggled with that, I struggled with that a lot because I speak about communication, I speak about project management, I speak about my different stories about things that have happened with my health, about the different things I’ve gone through. So, right, they’re coming in the resiliency. I didn’t know how to package all of that up. And so, the gentleman’s name is Dr. McGee. He was one of the individuals who was running this, actually, it was called the Speaker Academy. So he was running the Speaker, helping run the Speaker Academy, and he said to me, “Well, you talk about,” he said, “Well, you said you talk about communication, “you said you talk about this, “you said you talk about that,” and he said, “You talk about CPR.” I was like, “Huh?” He said, “Yeah, think about an acronym.” And he said, “Form an acronym “that encompasses all of those things.” And I think he’s the one who said CPR. I was like, “Huh?” I was like, “You’re right. “I do talk about CPR, “Communication, Project Management, and Resiliency.” So I had to know that 30-second pitch, right? When someone asks me, “What do you speak about?” I speak about CPR. And then, but yes, it was a combination of all of my experiences. So yes, I’d gone through the stuff with my health. I went through a misdiagnosis of a brain tumor. I went through two different misdiagnoses. I went through that. I went through the house fire. After my house caught on fire, the very next day, and I’m gonna get to a point here, but the very next day, my car was hit. So imagine my house just caught on fire. The very next day, somebody hits my car. And it was, and I let the woman go because the woman was crying and she had a child in the car and she said, “I don’t have insurance.” And she said, “I promise I will pay you.” And me being me, I felt bad. And so I let her go. She didn’t end up paying me. That’s a whole other story. Two days after that, so house catches on fire. The very next day, somebody hits my car. Two days after that, my partner at the time was coming to pick me up to take me out. And I was staying at the time with my best friend. And he’s come and picked me up. And I had told him about the woman who had hit my car. And he comes and he says, “Your car’s a lot worse than you said.” He said, “I thought she only hit you on the side.” Because the woman, when she’d hit me, she’d hit me on the side of the car. He said, “I thought she only hit you on the side, but your back is annihilated.” And I said, “Wait, what are you talking about? Go outside and look, somebody did a hit and run and smashed the entire back left side of my car.”

Manuel Martinez: After that. Parmjit Kaur: After that. So now, car’s been, so house catches on fire. Very next day, car gets hit. Two days later, someone smashes the back of my car. And now at this point, I just start crying, right? I just start crying. I’m overwhelmed. I said, “This can’t be happening.” I drop my car for the body shop to get fixed. And then this is all within that same week. The body shop calls me. I think they’re calling me to tell me that my car is fixed. Although I’m thinking that’s pretty quick, but I was like, “Okay.” So I pick up the phone. They called me to tell me that they slipped on ice and smashed the front of my car. Yes. All of this in seven days. So in seven days, my house catches on fire, my car gets hit three separate times. None of which were my fault, by the way. And the third time after I was told about that, I started laughing. I started laughing and I said, “If I can get through this,” because at this point now, I think it’s hilarious. At this point, I said, “If I could get through this, I can get through anything.” And so that is where the resilience, so yes, the resilience aspect of CPR, it came in from that, and it came in from seeing areas on my projects where I had to be resilient. So yeah, that is how that framework was developed.

Manuel Martinez: That’s awesome. And I mean, it’s interesting always to kind of understand, like you see these frameworks, but a lot of times we might get bits and pieces of how it came together, but now understanding that, and I can understand the laughing at some point. Like you break down because you’re getting to this, and then it takes a little bit to build that resiliency. So I hope that people get, you know, while it’s easy to see everything. And I don’t think a lot of times we don’t share the failures because, at least me personally, I try to share some of that information to say, “Hey, like it’s not just all sunshines and rainbows, but it’s hard for me.” And this is where I’m still trying to improve that communication to, I wanna share that, but not in a manner that makes, like I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I want to share this so that you can learn and understand and get a better picture of what it takes to get to, where you’re at, the career that you’ve built, the life that you’ve built. There’s a lot of things in between, and it’s not always that you don’t wanna share because you’re embarrassed, but I don’t want, and I don’t need your sympathies I’m sharing to help you or to help somebody, but that’s it. So again, thanks for sharing that. And again, even just at that high level, I hope that this is beneficial to people.

Parmjit Kaur: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I hope as well. (laughs)

Manuel Martinez: So thank you again so much for taking the time out of your day to kind of share your experiences and build another person within your community. So I really appreciate it.

Parmjit Kaur: No, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me on. Honestly, it’s been an honor, and I’m very humbled by you asking. So thank you again for the opportunity.

Manuel Martinez: And for everyone that continues to watch, listen and support, thank you for continuing to plug in and download the knowledge, and until next time, thank you. (upbeat music)