179: Making Radical Career Changes with Dr. Allan Mink

Pete Mockaitis
Al, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Allan Mink
Thanks, Pete. I’m really excited to be on this podcast. Thanks for inviting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too. Me, too. Now, I first want to kick it off by hearing a little bit about your story of biking over 2400 miles in under three months to raise money and awareness for the Children Science Center. How did you decide that this is something that you ought to do and sustain yourself for a period that long?

Allan Mink
That’s a good question. Probably the last question is, “If you knew what you know now would you have started it?” Well, Pete, I really am a passionate supporter of science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM for short. I think it’s important for our national information and security, our economy and for our youth and professionals. So I looked for an opportunity to contribute to the cause and still do something was another passion of mine – bicycling.

So I recruited three of us cyclists, and my wife in a support vehicle, and we rode across the country. It’s established for the Bicentennial of our country in 1976. The big part of that is that it brings together a lot of history on the route. The bad part of that is it follows a route that has a lot of history so it’s not the most direct route across the United States, by any means. But I learned a lot, the inflections of what it’s like for this in part or looking at the Oregon Trail and the early American frontier, going across the Northern Trail, when we think about the challenges today and when you think about the challenges that these folks went through to get across.

And then my biggest takeaway from this is the enjoyment of getting to know our country particularly the middle part of the country, the part West travel. Because we’re on a bicycling route with history, we’re going through small towns and we get to meet the folks and they really like to talk because it was in the fall leading to the elections, everybody had an opinion.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I imagine.

Allan Mink
I’d say the most challenging part was connectivity when I had to run my businesses, my consulting, my real estate and I was teaching along the way. You can’t take for granted connectivity with cellphone and computers when you’re on the road. That was a big challenge, to find some places when you’re going in the country. So, yeah, tremendously rewarding for all four of us going across the country raising money for STEM.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is fun. Thank you for sharing. And so, now, we’re talking about radical job changes here on this episode, and so that was pretty radical move right there, bicycling that whole pathway. And so could you maybe give us the one or two-minute outline of your own career just so we can get kind of oriented how, well, you’re really walking the talk when it comes to radical job changes?

Allan Mink
First, I’m probably not the only one that’s had radical job changes. In fact, I did a little research on others and there’s a lot of leaders across America that’s been successful and done radical job changes. And I also got to say upfront there’s a lot of luck involved, being in the right place at the right time. So there’s always some caveat.

For me, the first one was going from college. I was an engineer in MIT in Computer Science to go fly jets in the Air Force. There wasn’t a whole lot transferable and it’s probably not what you would pick but that’s how I was able to get through college was on ROTC scholarship. And it turned out, this was my first experience with pivot, is that a lot of the engineering that I picked up in college is applicable for aircraft and weapon systems, computations, pneumatics, electrical systems, that’s a big part of flying a jet.

The other one was an internship at our headquarters, from the flight line to the Pentagon. Internships are pretty safe but for this one I was very fortunate but an operational background, with computer background, my MBA fit with headquarters so I ended up working there, $500 billion five-year budget in bringing computers online for it.

The third one was, very wise, a transport pilot, that’s like an airline pilot for the Air Force moving troops and cargo. You get to see the whole world on my first tour when I started the Air Force but I was -advised, I learned the power of mentors, “Get closer to the mission of the Air Force.” Like any company, and our mission was war fighting. So they suggested I move into bombers and they allowed a couple, actually two transport college years to go into bombers.

And so I did turned out to be really lucky. I ended up following a colleague up to a remote place in northern Maine. It was the first B-53 unit to pick up non-nuclear tactics, they were nuclear bombers at the time. And one thing led to another and the short story is I was the first armored pilot to deploy for the Gulf War in the middle of the Indian Ocean and led the largest bomber or tanker to strike at the war… Didn’t actually fly the first one, the later ones but I’ve directed from the command ship.

So it’s kind of a third pivot. The first one is into the Air Force, the next one is an internship, and the third one I can’t overstate how radical it is. It’s like going from being in charge or working and developing minivans for an auto company then moving over to tractors and it’s just a whole different business transport to bombers.

Another big shift was to leave government and move to industry. That was family as a fact of life, life-work balance and a lot of these I had to do that, I did that shift that I prepared for it. I became Chief of IT, Tech Initiatives for the Air Force and the talking head for IT transformation for the Air Force Ministry conferences. And then 9/11 happened and defense contracting exploded.

And then the last pivot, after going through several jobs, three jobs over a decade in the industry, was to move from corporate to consulting. I was going to start my own business, a startup in defense industry, instead moved to consulting to help other businesses large and small. And I started that three years ago and that’s going really well also.

So each of those I was able to take higher skillsets and apply them, but each of them also required new skillsets and had some gaps in my background I had to mitigate. But I tell you, across all of them, I loved them, the differences in the jobs, it made it really interesting throughout my career and I wouldn’t trade it in for anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, thank you for that outline there. And so I also wanted to dig into one of your particular accomplishments. You were promoted to colonel about three years ahead of standard or your peers, putting you kind of in the top 1% of, I guess, speed of promotion in Air Force officers. Is that correct there?

Allan Mink
Yup, those are the right facts.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So just orienting it right. So, first, I’d like to know, how did you pull that off and to what extent are you thinking that these job changes of a radical nature, or your mindset associated with that was key in making that happen?

Allan Mink
I put it to several factors. First, again, being very, very fortunate. Fortunate in terms of luck and timing, a little bit like Forrest Gump in that movie awhile back. Different investments and being out on the only boat during a hurricane so they can bring me back in. Also, I owe it to some colleagues, both peers and bosses. They supported me and acted as mentors and that was invaluable.

And the third is some of the standard block and tackle like somebody in a podcast, Pete, on just how to perform well on their job. So if I put all those in the mix, today we’re talking about radical job shifts and things where you move, instead of going up the career ladder like one rung at a time, you kind of fling yourself from your current ladder onto an adjacent ladder and work on that one for a while before you move to yet another ladder. So that’s a little bit of the difference with radical job changes.

So some luck there but at the same time, and you look ahead where the skillsets might apply and what you’ll need in the future, if you want to be a general in the Air Force, a CEO of a corporation, maybe your career goals are kind of look towards the skillsets by reading biographies, talking to those leaders, and then noting where you feel you might have a gap and potentially trying to orient yourself towards where there’s radical job shifts, or pivots as you might say.

And I’d say from Air Force to industry there’s an example. Sure, I was very fortunate. It’s a bad word perhaps but on the timing that I was in place to help industry, help America right after 9/11 so that helped too. At the same time, having a background in technology and in the customer space, national security, helped. And I had to learn some of the nuances of the business side and threw myself into that.

So I would say, as I look at senior leaders over time, you’ll find that these radical job shifts aren’t uncommon. In fact, they’re very common. You know, you could pick Martha Stewart. She was a model, and as a 25-year-old mother was finding fewer modeling jobs so she pivoted and went into Wall Street as a stockbroker. It seems like a huge jump but a lot of it was attracting clients and she was very good at that coming out of her previous career.

Then when she understood finance investment she’s able to get equity to start her own business in gourmet cooking, and we know what happened. Now she’s valued over $400 million. There’s lots of examples of folks who have done something it seems extreme but if you decompose it you’ll see that they smartly leveraged the skills they had to pick up new skills and be successful at them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That is a nice kind of key theme that runs throughout there, is zeroing in on one’s skill that’s applicable and then seeing how that changes over. Can you share some additional perspectives on how one can make the shift and adjustment successfully?

Allan Mink
Let’s talk, first of all, reinforce the between a radical job change and just a promotion. It’s different in the nature of a job. It might be one from technical to ops, or into the sales, or finance, so it’s way outside would be considered your profession, right? And it could be into a different industry, right? It could be going from a product to a service firm. Those are significantly different.

Or it could be the nature of the firm could be different. You could be in a for-profit and then going into a non-profit, or in entertainment then going to government. So those they operate differently, they have different values, different business models. So that’s what it is.

So with that, some tips on it, I would break it into two parts, Pete. Let me know if you want me to cover both. One is kind of like how to plan and prepare for a radical job shift, and the other is maybe some lessons learned, scars on my part, and tips that I could pass on. What do you think would be best?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, please. Both.

Allan Mink
So let’s say that you’re 28 to 32, or any range, but we’ll just pick that, early to mid-career, you’re a professional, probably college educated, you want to be a successful leader in your business, however you define your business or your organization. And you’re thinking about this pivot, this radical job change.

One of the things that you can do, and there is an approach to it, is to work on relations. I’ll just go down kind of a list. Start establishing relations and connections. There’s a guy named Thomas Corley, he spent five years researching the daily habits of 177 self-made millionaires, and he said, “Cultivate relationships. Wealthy people do six things on relationships. They wish Happy Birthday, that’s pretty straightforward. They call to say hello. They keep in touch. They network. They volunteer.” And here’s what I would like to hammer in, they participate in formal or informal mastermind groups or business groups or people with the same interests that include professional associations.

Now, I will tell you that every one of my pivots, my radical job change was enabled by a personal relationship without exception. One time it was the four-star general of the Air Force I worked with back when he was a one-star at the Pentagon during my internship. So everyone. Why these relationships are important? It’s because if you just apply to this radical job change on paper, and you let Human Resources look at you, they would say your resume doesn’t fit, it’s got gaps and they’d throw you out.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Allan Mink
So you really need to be selected by someone who’s willing to bet on you and your success and your capabilities and know that you can overcome the gaps. So I’d say build those relationships. I’d join professional associations. In fact, there’s no excuse for not belonging to several. And advancing the leadership positions, run committees. If those future bosses seeing you in a leadership, in an expert role, sometimes you might be chairing a committee and they might be on the committee and you’re in a senior position in a volunteer organization compared to them.

And also since you work in a non-profit for almost 10 years you know that if you can motivate a recruit talent that are not getting paid, imagine how effective you can be in an organization where you actually control their salary. So I didn’t do that intentionally, it was only after about a decade that people commented on that leadership skill and I realized it was working at non-profit professional associations. So join professional associations.

There’s a series of other general tips but if you want to get tactical, here’s something you can do immediately when you finish this podcast. You can assess your skillset, identify gaps where you want to fill the next five to ten years. And then use this gap analysis to suggest where you should pivot to with a radical job change. If you do it smart, you can do it in a way that not only fills the gaps, allowing you to be ready for the senior leadership position, but do it in a way that maximizes your probability of success along the way.

So here’s what you do. Assess your skillset and expertise, be deliberate. Now I mentioned both skills and expertise because they’re not the same. Expertise could be like knowledge of a marketplace or customer set, and skills are more about job tasks and activities. Both are important, just slightly different. So visualize a matrix. Every row is one of those skills or expertise. They’re the ones you have or ones you’re going to need. And then your left-most column, look at your inventory of skillset before you current job. Then the next column.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about the skillset, I guess we got rows and we got columns, so you got me engaged. I’m visualizing this matrix and I’m all in. So where do I go about populating the skills? I guess my first instinct is why the book For Your Improvement, of course, or off the top of your head based on what you know yourself to be good at and wish you were good at. But is there kind of a checklist or a compendium or a resource that you’d recommend folks use to augment this process?

Allan Mink
That’s a good question. I’d love to actually see something we could put online that had that list. For a very senior position like a CEO for a large company those skillsets tend to converge, but lower in the pyramid of smaller businesses they could be diverse.

My one tip for this, particularly when you’re young and maybe you’re going through an MBA program, or you had some other reason, just find a way to buy breakfast or lunch for someone very senior, or by being in a professional association you happen to sit next to someone very senior, and you just ask them what they think the important skillsets are for their job, assuming that’s the job that you aspire to or that general type of job and may not be the exact company, and ask them. Be it automotive, finance, I think the skillsets, the hard skillsets will differ the soft skillsets like leadership and communication. Some of the ones that you even list on your website there, Pete, would be the same.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, please continue with the matrix. I just wanted to make sure we cover that there.

Allan Mink
Yeah. Communications and relationships, I’m looking over your list, will definitely be two of them. Okay, but you raised a good point. This is like a gap analysis. Now the reason you kind of look at your last job and your current job is you’re going to learn something there. If your skillset didn’t really grow then you’ve got to sit back and wonder why you moved to the current, the next job that may enable you for future advancement. Or maybe that just got you a better paycheck. Those are really valid reasons.

But if you want to succeed and reach senior levels you got to do more than that. You’ve got to see you’re having growth as you move forward. So you get your current job and you go to the far right and do exactly what you’re talking about, Pete. Create a list of what it takes, the skillset, for the job you’re aspiring to, and research and interview to start filling out those rows. What I did is I broke the soft skills and the hard skills and become separate bands.

Then you’ve got this whitee space in between, you know, the radical job change, the pivot. And your goal is to get the skills that are missing. Like a board game, but get them. At the same time, mitigate your risks by thinking how you can pivot on the skills that you do have that they can work.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, you can’t help but think of Liam Neeson in Taken as we discuss this particular set of skills. And so I’m curious then, when it comes to acquiring them, there’s probably many ways to slice or skin that cat with regard to taking on new roles in your current job or committees or volunteer extra kind of pieces there as well as kind of volunteering outside there, courses Lynda.com, this podcast. So what would be something like your favorite means of going forth and acquiring those skills?

Allan Mink
Some you can do on the side. Reading fits, key books particularly biographies, ones on self-improvement, your other podcasts, certainly education. I’m not a big fan of certificate education where the paper is more important than the content in some cases, not all but some. But if you have a strong technical background, picking up and MBA or something that teaches you the business, the management side, because those are the sets of gaps and weaknesses.

When it comes to real life, sometimes the only way to get those skills and expertise firsthand is to move into a position where they’re necessary for success and you have to learn and practice them in the job after you land in a job.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I got a kick out of that. It reminds me of learning a language by just showing up in that country. You got to know it or you’re going to be in trouble, so it’s just sort of that forcing mechanism is present there.

Allan Mink
Let’s take that for a second, Pete. Let’s say you do have to go in a foreign country. You’re right, the language you’re going to have to learn in it if you don’t know it the day you land. So what skills do you have where you can mitigate? Maybe you know another language that’s similar. Maybe you’ll learn to use Google Translate or maybe use relationships and you have a good friend who is bilingual who’ll come with you for some key meetings and help, right?

Or maybe you’re smart online, you know how to outsource translators for written documents. So that’s what I mean by pivoting on your existing skillsets to kind of mitigate until you can fill out that missing skill. Otherwise, you could suffer a greater risk of failure so you really want to pivot on your strengths.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. So now, what would you say once you go forward and you’ve got the job? I imagine there’s often, especially in the first weeks and months, that maybe it’s impostor syndrome, “I don’t belong here. This is so hard. It seems to be going easier for everybody else.” Like there’s that confidence gap. You talk about skills gap, I think sometimes there’s still an internal feeling gap present even if you’ve got the skills proper. So what are your pro tips on navigating that?

Allan Mink
I would say, you’re right, be upfront that a radical job change, a big pivot, is risky. You’ve got to come up the learning curve, you’ve got to face culture change because you are an outsider, and others are going to wonder why you were selected for that job instead of them, what you bring to it because you’re an outsider. It was like being a transport pilot and going into bombers, right? There’s different tribes, you’re going to have blind spots, just things you don’t know what you don’t know. So those are some risks.

Not knowing what you don’t know and not having a plan to work it is the most frequent, in my experience, cause of failure. A good example, and just applying a prior successful paradigm and then not testing it, not using an internal network, was JC Penny’s. In 1902, James Cash rode through Kemmerer, Wyoming, so I got up on JC Penny.

But fast-forward to 2011, during the Great Recession, they’re suffering. They hired Ron Johnson, a great Apple executive. He’s the guy who built and ran the Apple Stores, we all know them, little tables with special devices, no discounting in Apple. And he applied that to JC Penny without testing it, without checking with the current culture, and it failed two years later. He was fired and they brought someone, an old-timer with the firm to start running.

So those risks are real and there are certain things that you want to do for a radical job change that are either magnified or more important than a regular job change. I can talk about some of those if you like.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, if you got a quick tip or two, I’d love to hear it.

Allan Mink
Okay. Sure. Pivoting on existing skills, it’s a little bit like asymmetric warfare, using your strengths related to it. Example for me when I was running defense and intel at Unisys, the CEO stood up initiative to stand up a healthcare practice, infomatics at Unisys so I did for the defense. I was picked through one of the defense.

I went over to sales, they had a separate sales organization. I knew I didn’t know anything about healthcare IT. A lot about national security but not about healthcare IT for DoD. And so I went to sales and said, “I need a business developer that really knows this.” And Barbara was the one they hired, they picked. She was a prior nurse, she was an advocate. She looked at me and she went back to her boss, said, “I can’t work with Allan Mink. He doesn’t know anything about this. He’ll embarrass me.”

But over time, we worked together, and I think the breaking point is when I became what they called at the time a blues person, blue sky, blue spade, and went in there and took off my suit, put on my jeans, stood up to the booth at the conference, and then manned it so she could go out and network. It kind of broke the ice. So pivot and be really cautious about your weaknesses.

Leverage is a good idea for a tip. Leverage is a good ideas from private prior jobs but avoid attributing that idea to your former organization. You always hear about the person who says, “Back when I was at company A we did it this way.” Even if it’s a great idea they’re going to be resistant to pick it up. So I can give you some examples but a better approach is to ask questions, make some suggestions, have part of your team research or develop some alternatives and evaluate them, and coach them to come to the conclusion.

Maybe you’re not being the most direct in that case but you’re using leadership and communication to guide an organization through change and culture. And culture is so important. So those would be a couple tips. Got plenty more but those are a couple I’d highlight.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s handy. Thank you. Well, so tell me, Al, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Allan Mink
Yeah, I would stress that although it’s not covered widely, the idea of taking risks, such as a radical job change, is something that should be embraced. It’s uncomfortable but should be embraced. Corley, as I mentioned earlier, reviewing the millionaires, said, “Failure to separate yourself from the herd is why most people never achieve success.” By the way, he was a CPA and not a social worker, not an author. He did some pivots himself.

Zuckerberg, to tie this to entrepreneurs but he said, “The world is changing really quickly. The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail not taking risks.” So separate yourself from the herd. Another tip, last tip, develop your own herd and some of your prior assignments, this is something that I watched others but I didn’t pick it up myself.

Bring others with you, they’re former peers or subordinates, that you know could take on greater responsibility and bring them to your new job. That lowers your risks tremendously. You know you’ve got a faithful team behind you that’s loyal to you, you should know are performers who could form a core to help you succeed in your job. So I thought we could’ve done that better because I realized it late in life.

Pete Mockaitis
This is such good stuff. Thank you, Al. So, now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Allan Mink
I’ll tell you the leader that really struck me in life is Lincoln. He did some huge pivots in his career, he had tremendous challenges nationally, he had family challenges. In the end he had a huge impact. Let me pull a couple from Lincoln. He talked about, “If you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that always makes me feel better about cleaning my desk before I start working.

Allan Mink
There you go. Yeah, and one of the traits of being successful is getting up early in the morning, a couple of hours either to work out or get your thoughts for the day, and have private time while other people are sleeping, to get ahead. But Lincoln had a second quote that’s like the left hand/right hand to it, and that’s, “Things may come to those who wait but only things left by those who hustle.”

[00:30:21]

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. Lincoln was hustling.

Allan Mink
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s kind of like Lincoln.

Allan Mink
Yeah, plan a radical job shift not to kind of deliberately apply this but spend time thinking through it. There are tips and doing the gap analysis, interviewing and pick up mentors, professional associations. But then there’s time to act, okay, be decisive and follow through with the execution. It’s now known in academics. So those would be a couple of my favorite quotes.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Allan Mink
Okay, let’s pick one that’s fun. And there’s only something recently I came across but strange how I accidentally came across it and resonated. Tom Corley in his 15 habits of millionaires. I never met him, it’s just I looked over and it resonated and made explicit some of the things I had seen in life for good leadership and good success in business, not just becoming rich. So Thomas Corley, and just Google him, 15 habits.

Another study, the Program Manage Institute has a program body of knowledge. Even if you’re not running a program, even if you’re just – you’re not even a manager but maybe you get put on a committee or a team, or you get promoted, it’s a good manual, a good how-to, “How do I form a team? How do I do a charter? How -do I tackle a project? How do I do like Lincoln said? Now, what should I be doing for those first four hours out of the six to prepare?”

And they do, by the way, have a program management certificate but the big thing is the knowledge that comes through their body of knowledge. It’s like distilled lessons learned and techniques for program and project management. So Corely is fun on a high level. The program management body of knowledge is pretty dry but a good reference.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Allan Mink
I got two. I couldn’t just do one. One, really fun, Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October. It’s a great mixture of adventure and facts. This is not how to get ahead in your career but it really does, you can learn a lot. I like some of the first books written that had a lot of facts behind it to tell stories so you’ll learn as you’re reading it.

[00:33:00]

And if you think about Clancy, he was an author that was in the insurance industry, and no one would publish his book. And a friend of mine, Tom… mentioned to me he was working with the Naval Institute, and Clancy, they finally crossed paths, and it was actually a non-profit supporting the Navy that published his first book, Clancy’s first book there. That shows you networking and relationships can do.

The other one I’d give to you is the one that I use in my class that I teach for America University on that tech strategy, that passion I told you about that I did on that bicycle trip as well, that’s The Adventures of an IT Leader. This is a fictional book that is put out by Harvard Business Review. Robert Austin and some others are the authors, and it’s based on real experience of the authors and their research, of putting a fun-to-read book. And the reason at this podcast I’d recommend it is because it tells a story of Barton, the guy who was chief of phone operations, the financial firm.

And the company is having problems, the CEO got fired, another CEO was put in place, and this CEO moved Barton from being Chief of Ops, he was doing well and thought he’d be a CEO someday, to being the Chief Information Officer of the firm. A radical job change, right? The guy was not a tech guy. And how he pivoted, and used some of the tips that I mentioned to be successful. So a fun read but it brings out a lot of the points that we’re talking about today – The Adventures of an IT Leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something you use often to be more effective?

Allan Mink
I still come at things from an engineer’s approach, a systems engineer approach, like Lincoln’s quote about getting things right. Okay, so that’s more of a thought framework, and know what you’re going to do, know your purpose and audience upfront, and more likely to get your conclusions faster.

As far as a tool, I use a communications knowledge-base, for me, it’s this old or it’s current, it’s Microsoft Outlook. I keep contacts, email, calendar in a disciplined approach and allows me to go through it. Sure I use mind map and some other tools too but if you look at . . . sense, first, and 80% of my time it’s in communications, so Skype and some others but being able to go back and know what a friend said, or colleague five years past, and know when to send them a note, be thoughtful and send them a note, and I don’t have that good a memory. I re-align that boring tool with Outlook, Google Mail and Google Apps provide something similar.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Thank you. And do you have a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that’s helpful?

Allan Mink
When I was an aide to a general, he was a great leader, Bob Springer, and I go around and we would talk about the three Fs for success – fitness, family and flying. Fitness is physical as well as spiritual. And he said, “If you don’t have that you can’t take your family and other relations. And if you don’t do that you’re not going to be good at flying.” And, of course, flying was a metaphor for the mission of our organization. You’re not going to succeed at your job.

So personal habit is get up early. Exercise, you guess, if I ride a bicycle across the United States that I try to stay in shape. And maintaining a healthy diet is a lifestyle, a modest weight loss. So, again, pretty pedestrian but being up in the morning for a couple of hours to plan the day, do my daily reading, plan of attack, marching fitness and watching what I eat, keeps a very strong relationship, been married 37 years, and that’s really contributed over time, mental disciple and preparation for success in business.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Excellent. Thank you. And is there a particular nugget, something that you share that seems to really connect and resonate with folks that gets them nodding their heads in agreement?

Allan Mink
Well, I’m not a published author or a speaker on improvement or career growth. I do it. I have a passion so not like a real quick quote but the tip is the tip I’ve had in general life is about STEM. And if you’re not working on time to see how technology can help you, help your firm and help your family, then I think you’re losing out on a good part about what life is today, and more importantly life would be like in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Thank you. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Allan Mink
I’ll just point them to my LinkedIn. Have them search for Al Mink or Allan Mink, A-L-A-N Mink.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Very good. And do you have a final parting challenge or call to action that you’d issue for folks seeking to be awesome at their job?

Allan Mink
Well, I’d put a plugin for you, Pete, and say listen to your podcast, and I’ve listened several myself. So that’s a real endorsement. But I would say, a last parting thought is take the risk. There’s greater downside in not taking risks than taking risks on. I’m talking about the risks in radical job change. It could be about investments or anything else in life. And with the right preparation you’ll find the downside can be handled and the upside is tremendous.

A radical job shift is not just the clear stuff that we talked about but it’s being happy in life. I would think that purgatory would be being stuck in a clear path that you didn’t really enjoy, getting bored with your current job and having it show in your performance and missing the goals and things you want to achieve in life. So take risks, be smart about it, but take risks when others won’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, Al, thank you so much. This has been tons of fun and I wish you lots of luck in your upcoming trip to Europe and all the adventures you have in store.

Allan Mink
Well, thanks, Pete. And again, thanks for inviting me into this podcast. I enjoyed it tremendously.