Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diana Alt here. And this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. Hello there and welcome to Work Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host, Diana Alt, and today my guest Jeff Makaitis and I are going to talk to you about strong leadership and why it doesn't mean just doing more stuff faster. Jeff is the general manager of Ron USA Corporation, a division of Ron ag, which is a global chemical developer and distributor. He began his career after his getting his chemistry degree from Missouri S&T, which is actually where Jeff and I met. His early career roles focused on doing actual chemistry, and then he later got an MBA and moved into technical sales, sales leadership, and eventually his current role as gm.

Diana Alt [00:01:09]:
Jeff is a hardcore family guy. He loves traveling with and supporting all the various activities of the wife and kids. And he's also a passionate reader of biography, historical fiction, and actual history. He's a proud Sigma PI and has mentored young undergraduate members of his chapter at S T for five years as a member of the Building Association Board of directors. Welcome, Jeff. I'm so. I've been wanting to do this since I invented the podcast.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:01:39]:
Thank you, thank you.

Diana Alt [00:01:41]:
I think I invented the podcast so that I could have a conversation with you on this for the rest of the people. So here's a question since we go back to college days. If college. You heard that you were going to be in the role that you are now, what would that version of Jeff say?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:02:02]:
Probably would laugh. I had no inkling idea that I would go into business. I went to school. I got my degree in chemistry. I got it in chemistry because I knew I wanted to go into math, science, but I didn't know what started in engineering for about two weeks and said, that's not for me. And so I moved into the chemistry program and I just wanted to, you know, work in the lab and got my first job, worked in the lab and enjoyed it, you know. You know, I remember thinking in the first year, I want to do this for the rest of my life. And then I remember thinking in my sixth year, oh my God, I can't do this for the rest of my life.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:02:46]:
And so, but yeah, college me would have laughed at the idea.

Diana Alt [00:02:51]:
Yeah, I love asking people because I've had several clients and other people in my life, a couple. You're the second RA on the show. That I've asked similar questions and they're like, no, like probably thought I was going to be in jail is one of the comments I got. And I'm like, you're probably not going to be on the podcast. But I think it's really funny because I didn't know that what I do existed when I was like no one was a coach in 1994. You know, I did figure out that I didn't want to be in the lab. Real quick. I think that you figured that out.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:03:31]:
Before you even finished the degree, didn't you?

Diana Alt [00:03:33]:
Yeah, I did. It was organic man. Chemistry ruins chemistry for me. I. Because for those that have not figured out, I do have a chemistry degree as well from Rolla. Jeff was the year ahead of me in school and we shared some classes along the way, but I liked everything except organic chemistry. I could not stand organic lab. Like it was the smelliest thing I've ever done in my life.

Diana Alt [00:04:00]:
And I didn't like the like memorization aspect of organic chemistry. Like it never, I mean there's a method to the madness, but I just couldn't ever get it the way that I could get all the other domains of math and chemistry that I worked with. That's why I hated biology too. So. But you say you want to do math and science, but if I go back to when you were in high school, you also seriously considered a history degree.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:04:27]:
I actually didn't think about that until about a year after I graduated with my undergrad.

Diana Alt [00:04:34]:
I had that backwards.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:04:35]:
I thought that, you know, I always liked history, but I, you know, I never thought I had the temperament to be a teacher. My mom, my sister, and so many of my family members are teachers. But after a year in school I started or year at work, I started thinking, well, what else do I want to do? I'm not real happy with my situation. And just so I did some exploration and thought for about an hour or two that I might get a master's in history and become a junior college teacher. I didn't want to get a PhD and become a full on professor. I didn't really want to go into high school because I always felt like that was more discipline and control of the classroom than actual teaching. And yeah, and then I looked at the salaries and I said, well, you know, chemists don't make much and junior college teachers make even less.

Diana Alt [00:05:32]:
Yeah, my parents taught at junior colleges and they did all right. Like we didn't. That's the only thing I knew because that's what they did. My whole childhood. But you don't get rich off that for sure. Definitely don't get rich off that. I thought that you had considered it more seriously though because you talk so much about history and you told me a couple times like since we reconnected almost 10 years ago now at a random conference in Chicago, but you've mentioned considering it multiple times.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:06:06]:
So I, I, I, I liked history when I was a kid. I kind of fell in love with it. You know, that's probably 50% or more of the reading I've done in the last 30 years has been biography or history related. So you know, that's that, you know, it's more than an interest, it's something I'm very passionate about. And I think I've seen a lot of ads recently on LinkedIn that say, or Facebook that say, you know, if you don't know history then you know, or knowing history means you're intelligent. And that's not why but it really, I think I'm going to use a word that you're going to use several times. It gives you context into what may or may not be happening right now, both politically, geopolitically and economically. So I draw on that an awful lot in my decision making.

Diana Alt [00:07:03]:
Obviously better at your job, I think. So how do you feel like your interest in history and the time that you've invested in reading and grokking history makes you better as the GM at.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:07:19]:
RON1, you know, gives me a bit more of a long term perspective on things which is very important in my company. Everything we do is long term focused. We're a Swiss based company, we are 100% owned by the Ron family. That's not true. But we're predominantly owned by the Ron family and, and we don't have any, we don't have any debt. So we, we can be much more strategic in our decision making. And so, you know, everything we do is long term forward. But I've been with the company now for 19 years.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:07:59]:
I'm one of the longest tenured employees certainly in the United States, but even amongst the, the entire team in Switzerland. And so, you know, I know a lot of the history of the Ron company, you know, certainly how it's developed in the last 27 years in the United States. And in that experience, you know, helps guide my decision making because I don't have to make quick irrational decisions. I can think about things a little bit and we can, you know, and so I draw on that experience, that history, that knowledge to try to make the best decisions. I can. Rather than just, well, I don't know, I'll ask a couple people their opinion and then make a decision based on that. I really draw my, my decision making a lot on, you know, what has happened in the past. How is this similar? How is it different? How did that end up and then help that, you know, just guide which direction I want to take myself or the company.

Diana Alt [00:09:05]:
It's that context strength number one, buddy.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:09:08]:
I'm. I'm the oddball out there, I guess.

Diana Alt [00:09:10]:
But yes, I, I tell people about you all the time because like we worked Clifton strengths. We've talked about it different times and the time that we've worked together, if you didn't figure it out, just been my client for a while. And we're going to dig more into. We're going to dig more into like this progression into the GM and all the things. Not just coaching. Of course I'm a, I'm a minority of what you had to do in order to make the transition work. But we worked on cliftonstrengths and giggled because your number one is context, which is my dead last number 34. And when I first saw that, I was like, this is gonna be either amazing or we're going to kill each other.

Diana Alt [00:09:58]:
I think it's been pretty good. So you always are very thoughtful about what you're doing. Do you ever feel like that your desire to kind of process and analyze the past ever becomes a liability for you, either in your personal life or your professional life?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:10:21]:
I, you know, I've read enough and listened to enough about cliftonstrengths and you know, one of the downsides to someone that's heavy into context is that analysis paralysis, you know, where you're just stuck. Do I need more information before I can make a decision? I don't think I fall into that trap very often. Honestly. When I do, it's usually small decisions where I fall into it. Not.

Diana Alt [00:10:48]:
Not the big happens.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:10:50]:
Yeah, I, you know, it's a small decision. You know, it's 50, 50. It could go either way. It's probably, you know, low to mid importance. It's not high importance. And, and I'll just be like, I don't know, you know, on the big ones. I rarely get stuck like that. But we've talked in the past.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:11:09]:
I, I've stolen my decision making or thought thought process from Don Draper and Mad Men. I think about something deeply. Usually when I'm out walking my dog at nights, I park it in the back of my brain. And maybe tomorrow morning when I wake up or maybe in a couple of days the, the direction or the answer comes to me. But you know, I don't let that hold me up because I know that sitting there not making a decision is, is the wrong decision. You know, whether it's yes or no, you come to that and then, and then you're decisive in it. And of course you correct along the way if need be. But I do find myself, I, I sit on the fence much more on, on low importance items than I do on high importance problems.

Diana Alt [00:11:59]:
I have similar things like I have a stash behind me that says Ms. Overthinker for a reason. And it's because like all of my top Cliftons strengths are like the thinking ones. So input which is like the information hoarding one intellection which means I could stare at the wall and think all day and be perfectly happy and learner which means that I really enjoy the process of learning. So I can get lost in thinking and learning and gathering information and be perfectly happy and never get stuff done. Like I'm a fully functional human being that has a business and everything. So clearly I can get some things done. But one of my favorite things for me I just have to call it most of the time on a decision.

Diana Alt [00:12:50]:
And a friend of mine named Julia McCoy who's like a leading AI voice right now, which is funny because two, three years ago she hated III. I was in a kind of a group of hers a couple of years ago and she talked about a five second rule. She's like, just try to make a decision in five seconds when you're stuck. And the whole theory was number one, speed of decisions is everything when you're a small business owner. And number two, if you make the decision and realize you don't feel good about it, that means you should have made the other decision. It's kind of like the proverbial flip the coin and then call it in the air when you're, you know, flip the coin if you're stuck, call it in the air and you're going to know the right answer no matter what because if the right thing pops up you're going to be like yay, I'm happy. And if it doesn't, then you're like, oh, I'm unhappy and you should have just made the other decision. So talk me a little bit through some of your career moves in a little more detail.

Diana Alt [00:13:51]:
Detail because you went from the lab into not the lab into leadership. What was your progression really quickly of making the decision that you wanted to pivot out of the lab. And then how did you do it?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:14:08]:
So I graduated in December 96, started working in the Chicago area for Sherwin Williams, one of the largest paint companies in the world, making automotive paint. And about three and a half years into that process, the company was going to move to Cleveland. And I wasn't averse to moving to Cleveland, but I also, you know, I didn't have strong ties to Chicago, but I did grow up in Illinois. So I just weighed my options and decided I'd rather stay than go. So I jumped into another job that was not a very good fit for me. I knew that after one week and about eight months into that, an opportunity came up to work with someone I'd worked with at Sherwin Williams. It was a small company instead of working for a couple of large companies. And I made the jump, took a pay cut to follow an opportunity.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:15:05]:
And after a couple years, I, you know, through some corporate changes, and I was just finding myself okay. I'm six, seven years in a career, and I've been doing the same thing for this last six or seven years. And I have learner fairly high as well. One thing I know is I love starting things. I love learning new things. And at this point, I felt like I wasn't learning new things. I. It wasn't that I couldn't.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:15:33]:
I just was, you know, just kind of stuck. And so I had several friends that had gotten MBAs, and they said, well, you should look into it. I'm like, yeah, that's not me. That's not for me at all. But I had two friends in particular that said, you know, organizational behavior was the best class I ever took, you know, in. In my entire life. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm stuck. I want to learn something new, so I'll just.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:15:56]:
I went to Northwestern continuing ed, and I took a class in organizational behavior, and that was in early January of whatever year that was in. And by the end of January, I was like, I need to get the GMAT done as quickly as possible. I want to go get an mba because it's just going to open up opportunities for me.

Diana Alt [00:16:15]:
Can we just talk about how cool it was that you took one class to see what you liked? Because a lot of people don't operate that way. What made you decide you were just going to do the one class? We've watched so many people. I think you and I have watched a ton of people go and invest like $120,000 in an MBA at a top school without really knowing what they were doing. So what made you realize I should try before I buy?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:16:47]:
I think I just wanted to dip my toe into something different because like I said at the beginning of January, NBA was still not on the list. It was, let's just do something new. Let's change the paradigm. And this was the class that had been recommended so much. And I understand why. I, you know, I, I didn't take a lot of psychology in high school or College, psych 101, basically, but it just, it just spoke to me about, you know, a different way to think about work, different way to think about companies and organizations. And I knew, you know, being stuck, you know, at a certain point I kind of felt like I'm not only not getting smarter every day, I feel like I'm slipping. You know, I'm.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:17:39]:
And we'll talk a little bit more later about mental health. But, you know, I knew nothing about mental health at the time. I just knew that I was unhappy. And so it was just try something different to, to make a shift or, you know, jolt the system a little bit. And it really did because I was fairly newly married. My wife was very supportive of me. Go take the class, you know, I know you're not happy and try something new. And so, yeah, within a month I was like, I think I want to do this.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:18:13]:
And she was right behind me the whole way. You know, whatever you need. Let's, let's figure it out. And being in Chicago, you know, there's only a couple of good part time programs. I wasn't gonna stop working, stop making an income and, and pursue the MBA. So I had friends that had gone to both DePaul and Loyola. They were both very good programs, applied to both, somehow got into both and then, and just decided to do the DePaul thing. And at which point I'm like, oh God, student loans.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:18:44]:
And, you know, I was not really in a situation where my organization was going to pay for it and, and I didn't want to be in a situation where I was committed to working or repaying if I were to leave. So took out what ultimately ended up being right at $50,000 in loans to get the degree. I fast tracked it as much as possible. I finished it in almost exactly two years, nights and weekends, which was, you know, which was possible because we didn't have kids at the time. And so, you know, two nights a week in class and then an awful lot of work in between to get the assignments done. But it was the game changer for me.

Diana Alt [00:19:33]:
What do you Remember in your organizational behavior class, that class you took is just to test it out. Do you remember if there was a certain thing that just like a certain topic or lesson or something like that that just captivated you, or was it the whole thing?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:19:53]:
I. I don't. You know, now we're going back to 2003, and no, I don't remember any of this, honestly. You know, this is, you know, the dreamer that's in me. Maybe. I took the class at Northwestern continuing ed up on the Evanston campus. And I lived in the city at the time. And so every week when I drove home, you would drive down Sheridan Avenue to get to Lakeshore Drive.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:20:22]:
If you don't know the area, there are some lovely, lovely houses. Some of them are, you know, 100 years old, some of them are five years old. And I just remember every week when I was driving home, kind of looking at the houses, and it wasn't so much, I want that, but it was like, maybe I could have that or something along those lines. And it was just. That was the thing that kind of opened my mind up to, there are other possibilities out there. You know, my. We didn't talk about chemistry. Why did I get the chemistry degree? One was because I didn't want to do anything else.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:21:01]:
But my dad was a chemist and. And my mom was a teacher. And they. They said, you can do whatever you want. We don't recommend you be a chemist or a teacher. And so me and my sister, being the nerds that we are, she became a teacher and I became a chemist.

Diana Alt [00:21:18]:
Nice.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:21:19]:
But. And so, you know, honestly, for a little while, I felt like, am I betraying this? Am I selling out if I go into business? And then I was like, yeah, I don't care.

Diana Alt [00:21:30]:
It's interesting narrative because my parents both were teachers. My mom was English, all things like composition, grammar, like literature, all the things. And my dad was a STEM guy, so he was at a junior college called East Central College Union, Missouri. Shout out to East Central. They both worked there for a long time. And my dad was basically the department head of everything, pre engineering. The only thing he didn't teach was chemistry, which he taught early in his career, but there was just too much of it for him to do it. So he missed physics, calc, defiq, college, algebra, circuits, like all of it.

Diana Alt [00:22:11]:
And they did not think business was a real degree. I remember when I was in high school and some of my friends were getting ready, like they were getting accepted into Southwest Missouri or Missouri State now for. To study business or Marketing. And my parents were like, those aren't real degrees. And now what do I spend all my time learning about? Business marketing. So. Which is pretty fun. I want to turn to a little bit too.

Diana Alt [00:22:37]:
So you're at. You're at Ron for a long time. You do the mba, you go into sales, you end up, you know, managing one or two sales reps. And then at some point, you start getting groomed into a higher level of leadership, which ultimately is where you stood today. How did that play out? When did that process start where you feel like you began to be mentored into this role? And what was that progression like?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:23:09]:
When I maybe first noticed it was I started Iran in 2006. So maybe, you know, I came straight out of working in a technical service role into, you know, I had the mba and I went into a sales job. And so was learning, you know, how to be a good sales rep. And let me tell you, for the first year and a half, I would go on a sales trip, and at the end of it, I'd be sitting in my car kind of shaking my head, thinking, my God, I gotta get better at this or I gotta leave, because this is not working. You know, I'm not working well in it. And so I just really committed myself to it. I had a couple of sales mentors from previous companies. One was a sales trainer that I worked with on a couple of workshops and developed a personal friendship with.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:24:02]:
And I just committed myself to that for a while. How do I get good at that? And then once I got better at it, I really looked at it as, I'm the CEO of my territory, my company is my supplier, I've got my customers, and it's my job to grow my territory as quickly and as well and sustainably as possible. And so it really wasn't until about 2010, 11 that, you know, they started giving me a little bit more responsibility. You know, I had a person reporting into me. We. We added a new. A new territory, which basically cut my. My territory in half.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:24:40]:
And so, you know, training. Training him and bringing him on board. But I was starting to get, you know, the curtain lifted a little bit between, behind whatever. What happens behind, let's say, the. The supply chain part of things that I needed to know as the sales salesman. And I had a great role model in Steve Lundstrom, the. The former general manager, who he probably saw in me well before I did the possibility here. He's about 15 years older than me.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:25:12]:
So, you know, he knew that at some point he had started the company in the United States. He knew at some point he wanted to retire, and so he just started challenging me more. You know, he would come to me every once in a while. Hey, I've got a decision to make. Here are the things I'm considering. What do you think? And. And then, you know, I don't remember the exact year. I remember the exact day, but I don't remember the year.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:25:40]:
I was getting very frustrated because I felt like, okay, I'm not. I'm not going anywhere. I'm, you know, I'm going to be a salesman for a long, long time. Is that okay with me or not? Well, you know, I like what I'm doing. I love my company. But I was starting to feel that dissatisfaction. And I was actually going to a friend's funeral and had a conversation with Steve on that drive, and I said, I want and I need more. And that began a longer conversation that ultimately ended up with me sitting in the CEO's office during a trip to Switzerland and really talking about, you know, where my head was at, what I was thinking about, talking about where his head was at with it with regards to the development of the company, but also knowing that, you know, my predecessor was not going to retire until sometime in the 2000s.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:26:33]:
Didn't really know what date ended up being October of last year. But at that point, they said, well, we think you're a good candidate. We would rather hire from within, but we're not gonna make decision right now. There's way too much time on hand. And it just kind of, you know, over time, I just, you know, reinforced, hey, I'm still interested in this. I still, you know, would very much like this. You know, if. If it's not gonna happen, that's fine.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:27:01]:
Just let me know because I'll probably want to move on. But, yeah, you know, it was. It was relationship building. You know, it really was. At this point, I knew I had a great relationship with. With Steve Lunchtime, the former general manager. I knew I had his support, but even he said, it's not my decision. I retire.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:27:20]:
It's. It's somebody else's decision. So I didn't rely on him to make my case for me. I was. I made sure I was building relationship.

Diana Alt [00:27:31]:
That. That's really smart. I want to interject there because there's a lot of people that form a good relationship with a boss or grand. You had a national sales manager in between, but the company up. You had a line under Steve. Right? So they get so reliant on one person. Being their advocate, that they forget that they're going to have to develop other advocates. Who are some of the other advocates you focused on building relationships with?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:27:59]:
So the CEO at the time, Marcel, you know, every time, you know, he would come to the United States once a year, I was going to Switzerland maybe every other year. And you know, we always just try to make some time to, to sit down, you know, go for walks, you know, if we're at a trade show, just go grab a cup of coffee, spend a half an hour at time. Similarly, as the, the gentleman that's the CEO now, when he was placed as the vice president of the division, started developing that relationship also to just let him know that there was. That he was or to let him know that I was interested in that and that, you know, just, I'm a salesman, you know, relationship is everything to me. Not my phrase, I don't know whose it is, but relationship. You develop relationships now for when you need them later, you know, when you're in trouble, you know, when you've got a problem, it's too late. So I, and you know, exactly what you said. I, I knew I had an advocate in Steve, but I also knew people leave all the time or the unexpected happens.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:29:06]:
And so I didn't want to put my eggs in one basket. So those were, you know, those were the, the main ones. But along the way, just developing relationships with the European sales team as well and just talking to them and getting as much information, you know, United States is kind of a satellite and if you're not involved in the, the day to day, week to week stuff that's happening in our Swiss parent company, you, you know, you're a little bit separated. And so I wanted to build those relationships and kind of keep my finger on the pulse of what was happening on the bigger scale within the company.

Diana Alt [00:29:41]:
Cool. At some point you decided I need outside help.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:29:46]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:29:47]:
So when, when did that happen? And kind of what led you to that realization that you wanted to get some outside help towards the.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:29:57]:
I'm going to take even a half step back behind that and kind of where you and I reconnected you. Yeah, we knew each other, but I Left school in 96 and we met at a pragmatic marketing seminar in Chicago. And the reason I was there was decision had been made to kind of expand my role. I was going to be. Ours is not a company that does traditional product management. It was something that I was talking to some people about, seeing that I didn't know much about it, but I knew we needed to do more. And so I got the approval to take the six course Pragmatic Marketing seminar. And lo and behold, I walk in and I see a face.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:30:43]:
I'm like, I know you. And so came up and we started talking and you know, I'm here to basically build a job description for what product management might look like with my company. And we went down that path within the company for a while. But then 2018, 2017, some things happened with the economy. The business turned south and plans that had been made were scrapped because of necessity, which was fine. But at that point, I won't say the die was cast, but certainly I had some buy in from everybody that I was going to be the future of the company as it went forward. And so, as you know, interestingly what happened is I had Marcel basically sign off on it says going back two or three years ago and wake up one December morning to we're having an all hands meeting at 8 o'. Clock.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:31:51]:
Don't miss it. Well, we don't get those. So it's like, oh. And it was in that meeting that he announced that he was going to be stepping down as CEO within the next six, six months, that the vice president was going to be elevated to the CEO and a transition was going to be made there. And within an hour I was on the phone with Marcel, the outgoing CEO, and he said, just so you know, it doesn't change my position, it doesn't change Xavier, the new CEO's position. This is the direction we want to go and you'll have a meeting with him in a couple weeks. And at that point the ball was really moving forward.

Diana Alt [00:32:32]:
And.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:32:34]:
I said, well, you know, I've been selling for 16 years at this point. And you know, I approached it from, you know, I need help. I have an MBA that's, you know, that's getting dusty and 17 years old, I have, you know, I felt like I need to learn more about finance, small business finance. I need to learn more about legal and hr. And I have all these subjects that I need to learn and I need help. And so I worked with the HR team. I just negotiated that I would get a budget to do some training and development work. And it was even before then that I reached out to you and I said, hey, no promises here.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:33:17]:
I don't know what's going to happen, but the seed in my head was planted even before you had left your last software position. Because in that meeting that we had.

Diana Alt [00:33:31]:
Yeah.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:33:31]:
Last night and you told me that you were going to be Transitioning to more of a. A pure career coach. And I think it was within a year that you had quit and. And put up your shingle and started your business. So I was like, you know, I. I didn't want to just develop a new relationship with someone. I knew you. I trusted you.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:33:51]:
And, you know, you. You had kind of just in. In those three days of seeing you at the Pragmatic marketing and having conversations during the coffee breaks and whatnot, I was like, you know, you come from the same background, that technical background. You know, you directed your own career, and you're helping people to direct their own careers. And so I was, you know, I. I don't know if you're an executive manager or executive coach, but that's what I'm looking for. And if you were interested, maybe I can swing something. And so, sure enough, it was about a year and a half before the position was actually going to be mine.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:34:27]:
We started working together.

Diana Alt [00:34:31]:
I think it was February of 21.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:34:36]:
Was it that long ago? I want to say maybe I. Whatever it was, but, you know, at.

Diana Alt [00:34:41]:
That point, 22, because.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:34:43]:
Yeah, 22. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:34:45]:
Yeah. But we talked about it for a year before that. Because you returned throughout what made sense.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:34:51]:
Yep. But, yeah, I came into it with, I need you to help direct me and all the things I need to learn. And you basically said within the first session, okay, but I don't think that's what you really need, Jeff.

Diana Alt [00:35:05]:
Yeah, it was an interesting adventure because. And I think this is really important because a lot of people, when they go and try to get a leadership or executive coach, whatever you want to call it, there's all kinds of names for it. They think the whole goal is to become more efficient, and the whole goal is to learn subjects. And that's where you and I started. And full disclosure, y'. All, Jeff was my first paid executive coaching client. I had someone that we kind of mentored each other. I had high impact, and I wasn't even acknowledging the skill set in myself, but I was like, I knew in my gut that I could help Jeff move towards this, even if it was, let's work together for a short time and then find you, like, the right education, or if you need a different coach, I'd help you find one.

Diana Alt [00:35:58]:
That kind of thing. So when we first got together, what did we do? We cataloged, like, all these areas that you thought you didn't know anything about, and we developed this coaching roadmap. How long did it take us to abandon that coaching roadmap?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:36:13]:
Well, three Months, maybe. But even in probably month one or month two, after that first session, you're starting to lay the seeds of bigger picture. What I might need to be looking at in terms of leadership, management, people skills. I was a generalist. As a salesperson, I was a generalist, but. But I was a salesperson, so I was role. And so, you know, it's one of those things. You think you know what a job is, but you really don't know what that job is until you're in the job.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:36:56]:
But you started planting the seeds very early on that. Nope. We need to be looking more at, you know, my mindset and, you know, my beliefs, my behaviors and. And then taking that into, you know, how does that translate into leading an organization and working with people?

Diana Alt [00:37:17]:
Yeah. The thing that I remember figuring out within that first. Well, when I. When we first started, I knew you needed all of that stuff. I didn't know what you needed in terms of the other things and where you needed to get it from. But what I remember is this is the things that Jeff needs, but he doesn't know he needs it yet, so we'll just put that in the back pocket. And then when we were going through kind of those domain areas like operations and legal and compliance and all that stuff, what we ended up figuring out is that you had access to expertise inside the company for all of it. And one of your top tasks was actually figuring out how to get mentoring at an appropriate level for each of those things.

Diana Alt [00:38:06]:
So from there, what I remember is that you started with Steve. It was like a big ask to Steve of like, I want to learn from you more formally. What did that kind of look like? And what were some of the first things you asked Steve to help you with?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:38:23]:
You know, Steve was very much, I don't want to say resistant, but he said, let's not put the cart before the horse. You know, you'll have plenty of time with me when the transition comes.

Diana Alt [00:38:34]:
Which turned out why?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:38:41]:
Part of that was because the work that was done ahead of time anyway, you know, because really, you know, the transition was much more task related. Here's how I do this part of supply chain. This is how I do, you know, inventory management. This is how I do, you know, tasks working with SAP and with the vendors and things like that. But. But in the lead up to it, I think shortly into it, because one of the things just small business finance, of course I've taken classes in this. I've read P and L statements and balance sheets and all of this. But what's really important and relevant to Ron USA is around 20 employees.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:39:24]:
Ron Group is about 150 at this point. But what did I need to know that was relevant to profit and loss for Ron usa? Because that's ultimately what I'm responsible for. So I kind of pressed him on, hey, can we just spend. I think we spent a half a day, it was a team session, but just walking through a lot of our systems and just, you know, this is how I approve invoices. This is what I consider or think about when I'm approving invoices or what I'm checking. This is, you know, walking me through in great detail, you know, the profit and loss, you know, and, you know, it was very much technical, but along the way it was. And here's what I'm, you know, querying, or here's what I'm asking myself, or do I need more information around this or that? And so it kind of started there. And at that point, he was coming to me much more often with, here's my problem.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:40:21]:
What do you need to know to answer that problem? So, you know, I'd ask him, you know, I'd say I need. I'd want to know this information from the sales and this information from the supplier or the laboratory. And, you know, and I'd want to gain those inputs so I could put together my decision and he might say he might give me those inputs and then, you know, just write me an email in a day or two and tell me what your thought process is and what you think.

Diana Alt [00:40:48]:
You were basically being. You had training in decision making sprinkled in across the thing. So, like, absolutely. Sitting down and looking at all those financial reports that you hadn't really had any need to spend time with was important. And then from there, just having little drops of like, here's like a case study or here's a decision I'm actively working on, you know, how would you think about it? Was your next level of mentoring, Right? Yeah.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:41:18]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:41:19]:
So there came a point when they said, you're actually really, truly the guy. We have a date, we have a plan. From there, what happened? Like, how did that. How when was that and when did you know that? And then what was the process from there to when you actually started sitting in the chair, which was last October.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:41:47]:
October 1st was. That was. Was the first day in the new. With the new title. It was about a year and a half, maybe a little bit more before that, you know, because the decision went first the executive management team, then to the board of directors of which I only knew one member of the board of directors. You know, part of the deal with Marcel stepping down as CEO was that at the next shareholder meeting that he was going to be installed as a board member. And so I, you know, he and I knew each other and, and I certainly had his support, but nobody else on the board knew who I was. So the decision had been made.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:42:22]:
But there, you know, there were still some relationships that needed to be built. So I got to know the majority shareholder on a Patricia Ron. And you know, it wasn't that I was selling myself to her, but, you know, as, as the proxy for the board of directors. I did have to make sure that she was satisfied that, you know, I was going to be taking over, you know, this arm of the company. So we had a dinner together, you know, wide ranging conversation. It was, it was much more how do you think about things? It certainly wasn't how do you do things. You know, we talked about, you know, talked a little bit through some of the things I had done. One of the requests along the way was put together executive summary and update a resume for them, something I had not done in earnest in at least 10 years.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:43:18]:
So you and I worked on that and you helped me to prepare for that. What do I need to be thinking about? What do I need to be asking her? And I had a similar conversation with Marcel about a month before, said, hey, you know her better than anybody else. You know, can you give me any advice? And so, you know, I did the preparation there, but at that point the decision was made and I had started developing a relationship with, with the guy who was going to ultimately be my direct manager once the transition was over. And there, you know, it just started off with once monthly meetings, you know, get to know each other, how do we work together? You know, you would ask me questions, how do you know, what do you think about this? Or how do you consider, you know, for this situation or that situation? And from there it just kind of grew and got more specific. But we wanted to have that relationship established well in advance. The announcement was made about a year ahead of time. It was in October of, or maybe, yeah, it was October of 2023. Because then the decision had to be made.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:44:28]:
You know, I'm the territory rep and you know, we need to start working on hiring my replacement and getting that person trained, which is a minimum of six or seven month process. Really ended up being more like a nine month process because we want to, whenever possible, give a very long Runway to a new salesperson so that they're set up for success. So you know, it took a couple months to recruit, interview, you know, we, we hired my replacement and then, and you know, my job was to first train her with the support of the national sales manager and, and then to do physical handover meetings, introducing her to the clients. You know, all the key relationships, the projects that were going on with that company, the sales, the history, things like that. And you know that that takes a long time. The territory has about 50 or 60 buying clients and probably twice as many potential prospects. So you know, want to make sure that everything, you know, was as smooth a transition as possible. And that went through pretty much August of 2024.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:45:39]:
But also along the way during that summer I was getting much. Steve Lundstrom left for a month of vacation in June of 23 and he's like, well, you're going to be approving invoices and doing some of these other things, which was eye opening. Once you actually start approving invoices instead of selling product, you go from I'm trying to make this money company as much money as possible to oh my God, it seems like all we do is spend money. How do we actually make money in this company? In fact, that was my first comment to him when I called him when he returned, I was like, how does this company actually make money? Because it just seems like all we do is spend it.

Diana Alt [00:46:20]:
Oh my God.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:46:21]:
So, you know, it was a lengthy transition, but I, you know, I think it was very, you know, it was a new experience, I think for the company. We'd never done anything like this before. And so, and I knew, you know, you and I talked at length about this, but I knew from a long time ago I work for a great company, I work with great people. Do we have challenges and problems? Of course we do. But having been a sales rep, I, I've called on probably 400 companies in the last 18 years. I know that the grass is not greener on, on any side of the fence. And so, and I will tell you that working for a Swiss family owned company, being based in the United States, it's, it's unique and it's just, it's kind of special. I would talk to my friends working for publicly traded companies or American companies and it is so different.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:47:19]:
You know, a lot of companies say employees are our greatest assets. Our company doesn't by the way. But, but they, they believe it. You know, they act as if that's true.

Diana Alt [00:47:29]:
Like to me it's kind of like if someone has to tell you they're funny, especially more than once, like, they're not funny.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:47:36]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:47:37]:
Has to say that they're classy. They're definitely not classy. Definitely not. So despite all this. So you have been, you have exhibited, like, loads of patience at this point.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:47:48]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:47:49]:
Did you ever, especially in that year between when the announcement was made and you actually took over, did you ever get, like, really antsy and what was that like? How'd you get through that?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:48:04]:
I don't think so, because I was so encompassed with making sure that my replacement in the territory was well trained. And it was throwing a bit of a curveball because the national sales manager, who was my direct manager for the last 15 years, he announced about February of 2024, when I'm taking the position in October 2024, he said, I'm going to retire at the end of this year. And what. Yeah. I'll never forget the call I made to him when I, when I was informed, because I started with gratitude. I said, I, I'm really happy for you. I think this is. This is good for you.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:48:51]:
And, and I wish you nothing but the best. And then I believe the next phrase, I, I won't say it so that we can keep the PG rating here, but I told him how directly he was impacting me, let's say. But. And so that changed things as well because now we're hiring and training his replacement as well. And worked out kind of well because now we're training two new people at the same time, and, you know, we're able to be a little bit more efficient in terms of that. And along the way, I learned a lot of things from you in terms of training, you know, working with, how to do. How do people learn? How do they. How do they listen? And, you know, the best piece of advice you ever gave me, and I think my company gets a little tired of hearing me say it, is, hey, let's record this call or, and let's file it so that.

Diana Alt [00:49:42]:
I didn't know that was annoying your people.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:49:45]:
Well, it's still difficult because you've got to manage filing those and making them accessible. But we spent a lot of time recording team sessions so that the next person and the next person has that experience. Because, you know, you never tell the same story twice. But if you've got it in there recorded and you've got a searchable transcript, you know, God bless technology. These days, you're looking for a specific thing, you search the transition transcript, click the button, and it takes you right to that Point in the video. That's fantastic. So, you know, you don't have to watch an hour long video to get the two minutes that you really needed.

Diana Alt [00:50:27]:
Yeah.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:50:28]:
And so, you know, I don't know that I had time to get antsy really. I was overwhelmed. You know, that last summer between the training and the travel, that was where, you know, I've been traveling as a salesperson for nearly 20 years. But last year was one of the most difficult simply because now I've got teenagers at home and I'm preparing for the new thing while closing up everything on the old thing. And, and last summer's travel schedule was, was an awful lot for everybody in the family. It caused a lot of stress.

Diana Alt [00:51:05]:
So I, I'm. This is a great point to kind of turn to the family because way back early on when we were working together, one of the things that we talked about was even though, even though there was still kind of that perspective of, well, you just need to look, you mostly need to learn the things. One of the things I said is like, we might as well not make your, you and your family miserable while you're making this transition. Like if we can figure out how to not do that, that would be really good. So one of the things I'm really curious about is what are, were there any lines in the sand or boundaries or non negotiables, whatever you want to call it, that you and the family set while you were going through this so that you could maintain the home life that you wanted as well as possible?

Jeff Mockaitis [00:52:01]:
I don't think it was anything quite that rigid. You know, there were a couple of times, you know, last summer was, was one of the more stressful three month periods of my life because, you know, it was the first time ever where I sat down in the beginning of May and put together a spreadsheet of four people's calendars for every week of the next 12 weeks. Because when are we going to go on? Yeah, kids, because my wife travels some for work as well. And so, and, and you know, I had kids in camps. My, my son was working. And so, you know, all of a sudden there's only two or three weeks that we could even go on vacation. And, and there were three weeks in a row where I was traveling nonstop. And so it was just.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:52:56]:
There was a lot of frustration. But you know, it's, I understand what's happening, I understand why it's happening, I support you, but that doesn't make it any easier what I have to do while you, Jeff, are traveling and that really, you know, that's where the frustration was because it's, I get it, I understand it. We've talked about this for years. Now that it's here, it's much more, you know, it's much more real. It's much more complex than, than it is as a, as a theoretical exercise. And so, you know, it was, it was just very stressful. And then, you know, accompany that with, I live about one hour away from my office and I need to be in the office several days a week. You know, we, we run a hybrid schedule, so try to, Everybody tries to be in the office three days a week.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:53:43]:
You know, we're flexible on that a little bit, but, you know, we want it to be. Half the company's there Monday through Wednesday, the other half is there Wednesday through Friday, so that everybody's around on one day a week. And that, that, that became difficult because Now I'm adding 6 plus hours of driving every week and getting home at 6:30 or 7 instead of being home at 5 if I needed to run a kid somewhere. And last summer also happened to be the last summer I didn't have, you know, my son wasn't driving. So, you know, there were various points where, can you pick someone up? I'm like, no, I'm, I'm an hour away or I need to, you know, so we had to be much more regimented and scheduled from that standpoint. But, but we got there.

Diana Alt [00:54:30]:
Don't realize, you know, sometimes people look at, they look at folks in executive roles and think, oh, they think they know what the pay is, and whether they do or not is a whole different story, but they just see someone sitting in a corner office making what they perceive to be too much money. And they don't realize that that person in many ways has less freedom because they might have financial freedom, but they have less time freedom and their energy is used in a different way. So I think figuring out how to work through managing those things is a very big deal. Another thing though, like in the way back that you discovered along the way is that this whole transition was more than just what's the family calendar? And it was more than just learning things. To become the manager or the gm, you had to also look at some other personal things related to your health. So can you talk about kind of how you figured that out, how it unfolded, and what some of the benefit of digging into that is? So I'm being vague because it's your story to tell and I want you to figure out, you know, how much of that you want to tell, but it was a major part of the last few years.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:55:58]:
It was August of 2022. You and I had a session, and I started off the session with, hey, how you doing, Diana? My God, I'm really tired right now and just not very motivated. And then we dug into the session, and then I spent the next month being tired and unmotivated. And then in September, we had our next meeting. Hey, Diana, how you doing? My God, I'm still tired. I'm still unmotivated. And you could have heard the record needle go across the record because you said, I don't care what we were about to do. We're going to do this instead.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:56:35]:
And you and I started having a long conversation about, why are you tired? What's going on? Are you sleeping? How are you eating? Just general. But it was at that time you said, I have a guy I think you need to talk to, because there's something else going on here. I don't know what it is that. You know, I have had depression probably my whole life, but certainly my entire adult life. You know, that's certainly what I was going through in that. In that year, building up to when I took the organizational behavior class. We had some personal things along the way. So, you know, I had.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:57:14]:
I had started to see someone a couple of times because of some family things. You know, we had some miscarriages when we were trying to have kids, and. But I. But I hadn't seen anybody or done therapy for quite some time, and that's not really what you were proposing. Although the gentleman you reached, you put me in contact with was a therapist as well. But really, it was much more what's going on with you medically, because there. There are things going on here that you were noticing in me that I just. I was just kind of blind to.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:57:51]:
And so I started working with this gentleman, and he's like, I want you to. I want you to go to the doctor and get these blood tests done. And I want you to tell me what these blood tests were. And, you know, some of them were related to thyroid and hormone levels and blood sugar and. And all of these other things. And so it was at that point we realized very quickly, jeff, I think you have a low thyroid hypothyroidism or something. You need to see an endocrinologist. I started going on synthetic hormone.

Jeff Mockaitis [00:58:25]:
Shortly thereafter was maybe October, November. And I won't say that I instantly felt better, but it was pretty fast. You might also want to get tested for allergies because, you know, what you're telling me sounds like there's some allergic response or some sensitivity there as well. So went to an allergist, and, you know, let me tell you, I recommend anybody go to an allergist, but be prepared that you might not like what you find out. 48 years old, and all of a sudden I have seasonal allergies, which I've probably had for years, but now they're unbearable. And, you know, the thing that I found out along the way is between the thyroid and the allergies, you know, those were inflaming my body and basically pushing me over the edge seasonally to depression. You know, the. The leaf.

Diana Alt [00:59:21]:
Full disclosure, everybody. Like, the person that I sent Jeff to is my therapist, too, and his name is Hal Dibner. And he has, like, his counseling psychology background, but also highly educated in what did he call psycho physiological endocrine disorders or some kind of mouthful. That basically means the interplay between your body, your brain, and your mental health and your endocrine system. It's a lot. So people are gonna. People are gonna message me and ask about this. So I figured we'd throw it out there.

Diana Alt [01:00:00]:
You won't mind.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:00:02]:
And, you know, I'm still seeing how I met. I met with him yesterday, and I. I cannot thank him enough for helping me to identify what these things were, because where I was In October of 2022, I was very concerned about my ability to think strategically, which is probably the thing I identify myself most with. So, you know, through this, through balance, you know, taking immunotherapy shots for the allergies, taking the. The hormones and adjusting those levels along the way. And. And then just in talking with him, you know, I'd like to say, you know, I've been depression free since, let's say, November of 2022. That's actually not the case.

Diana Alt [01:00:49]:
No.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:00:49]:
And in April of last year, I was talking to him, and he says, jeff, are you depressed? I said, no, I'm fine. And about 12 hours later, I was sitting on a couch. I said, damn it, I think you might be right. And so we ran back to the doctor to get more blood tests done, and I just expected that my thyroid numbers would be low and I needed to increase my dose. But that's when I found out that I had something else going on. It was minor, but my PSA was elevated. Back in January of this year, I had a prostatectomy to remove my prostates. And cancer free, you know, no radiation, no spread, no nothing.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:01:33]:
Thank God. But. And I Am. You know, I feel exactly as I did beforehand, but I never would have had any real symptoms that I could say there was a problem there. I had no pain. I had no. I won't get into the details. I didn't know urinary issues or anything like that.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:01:52]:
So I wouldn't have known anything about this. This maybe for 5 or 10 years if it weren't for this, you know, this battery of tests. And so, you know, it's gotten me. The whole thing has just gotten me to pay a lot more attention to how am I feeling right now, you know, and some of that extends to, you know, am I exercising enough, am I eating properly, am I sleeping enough? And I can tell you all of those, no, I'm not. But I'm much more cognizant of it. And I certainly am trying to do a better job on all of those things because they all into energy. And, you know, I can't do this job if I don't have the energy to. To do that, you know, and to think and make those decisions.

Diana Alt [01:02:36]:
Energy isn't just staying upright. It's that mental sharpness. So, I mean, I'm. We're recording this in early June of 2025, and I'm 29 days away from having a pituitary tumor removed that I figured out for similar reasons because basically Hal said, I need you to go get a whole bunch of medical tests. And here we are a few years later, having managed a condition until I couldn't manage it anymore. So it's critical that whole mental health, physical health, family and work all have to go together, especially when you're trying to perform at a high level. Something I want to turn to before I go to a quick lightning round is we had an interesting conversation along the way. I don't remember exactly when it was, but I asked you a question about what do you think your job is as the gm? And I think it kind of shook some stuff loose for you.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:03:43]:
Yeah, I answered what? My job. My. My thought process on the job was I, I need to basically, you know, set Ron up to, you know, make the most money we can, you know, to be profitable and, And. And to, you know, to guide that. And you said, what if?

Diana Alt [01:04:06]:
I said, what if that's not your job? What if that's not your job?

Jeff Mockaitis [01:04:12]:
Yeah. And I. I looked at you.

Diana Alt [01:04:15]:
You looked at me like you had two heads.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:04:18]:
I did the same thing my pug does. When I talked to him, I tilted my head, said, are you crazy? And we move. Said it again. A couple more times. And we talked more and more about it over time. And you know, again, not, not always the fastest on the uptake on, on some of these, probably three months really, before I started to really understand more fully what what you meant or what your intention behind that that statement was. But it was, it was the game changer for me because then it was, you know, it's, how do you treat people? How do you, how do you empower people, how do you work with them, delegate to them, you know, and, and develop this environment that everybody contributes. Not that I'm the superman and I.

Diana Alt [01:05:13]:
Do it like, it's funny because you and I had that conversation and then like 10 minutes later, Seth Godin released a book where he stole basically my quote, which made me mad. But then I realized I may be onto something if Seth Godin is writing a whole damn book about it. But, you know, the whole notion of the job is to create the conditions for meaningful work. In your case, the meaningful work is, does involve ensuring Ron makes a profit. It does involve making sure that your relationship between the US and Europe offices is good and that the customers are satisfied. So that was your meaningful work. But most, a lot there are people that would have fired me for asking that question or for proposing that the job was something different. And I would have been probably happy to get fired.

Diana Alt [01:06:06]:
Because if you don't understand, like, if it's one thing to understand it, if you are unwilling to consider that that might be the case, like, I'm probably not the right coach for someone that is unwilling to consider it. If somebody is like, I don't know that I get it, but I'm willing to learn more. Like, that's completely workable. So what kind of impact have you, Are there moments already? You've, you've been in the role for seven, eight months now. Can you recall any moments that you've had since we sort of shifted your thinking on that, where that new perspective has made a big difference?

Jeff Mockaitis [01:06:48]:
I, I, there, there have been some very specific things where I, I've, yeah, being a small company, you know, sometimes everybody does a little bit of everything. But, you know, in a big company, you have a box, and if you step a toe outside of that box, you can get slapped for. You know, that's not your job. That doesn't happen in small companies as much, but there is a sense of, well, that's not my responsibility or that's, I don't want to step on somebody else's toes. And I'm like, by all means you know, I, I'm overwhelmed with all of the things I need to do. So if you can do that, do that. And one other thing that I remember very specifically was having a conversation with one of our new sales reps. And he'd been on the job for about nine months.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:07:42]:
Jeff, I've got this problem with the client. I need to explain xyz and I wrote him back. And so I'll call you in about 20 minutes. But before I tell you what my advice or my thoughts are on it, I want to hear your advice on it. Or, you know, what do you, what do you think before I tell you what I think? Because it's really easy. Well, the boss thinks this, I'll do that. That's, that's the way to do it. I'm like, no, I want everybody critically thinking for themselves, you know, and I get it.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:08:10]:
I mean, especially, you know, we tend to hire more sales reps that are direct out of the lab. That's, that's where I was. That's where some of my predecessors were. Both of the new hires are straight out of the lab. You know, they had customer facing roles, but, you know, was predominantly technical, not sales. And so there's, there's a lot of training. You know, there are a lot of bad answers to sales questions that will just create more problems. And so I learned a lot by asking those questions, taking notes, and then developing it in my own language or vocabulary.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:08:44]:
But, you know, it really becomes much more, well, how do you think we should do it? Because I know what I would do. But I didn't hire you to be me. I hired you to be you. And so I want you to be motivated and interested and challenging yourself critically to answer those questions. Here's my feedback.

Diana Alt [01:09:07]:
I very rarely see someone that moves into a role like you because you had one. Was it one or two? Did you ever have two sales reps?

Jeff Mockaitis [01:09:16]:
Just one.

Diana Alt [01:09:18]:
You had one guy that reported to you guys were doing the same thing. Like you kind of knew it. You became good friends. That's a whole different animal. A lot of people that are moved into a position managing multiple people feel they would never ask that question. They would have this. They would spend five years with the superhuman perspective until they burned out or they got a bad performance review that says you need to do this differently. So I commend you for stepping into that early because I, you know, Steve at least did it with you like your prior gm, at least did it with you, whether he was doing it with everyone else or not.

Diana Alt [01:09:59]:
So I want to shift into a couple of. I call it Lightning is Round. And then we will go ahead and close because we're well over an hour. But I kind of knew we would be. I like to talk, you like to talk. It's all good. The first question I have is, what is the worst piece of career advice you've ever received?

Jeff Mockaitis [01:10:25]:
When I was leaving to take the sales job, I was a tech service rep at my previous company. And so I was dealing every day with sales reps, and I. I told them I was taking. Taking this job in sales, and most of them were like, that's great. I'm really happy for you. I'm really proud of you. What's up?

Diana Alt [01:10:46]:
The sales reps were saying that, or.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:10:48]:
Like, sales reps were saying this to me about leaving to go into sales.

Diana Alt [01:10:52]:
Okay.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:10:53]:
And there was one guy that just looked at me and said, you are making a huge mistake. You need to stay here. And at the time, I'm thinking to myself, now you want me to stay here? And I get that because I'm trying to deliver for you, but this is not a mistake for me. And along the same lines, you know, as I was preparing to interview for sales roles, I met with the people that were calling on me as sales people. And most of them were very supportive. But similarly, there was one person who said, you can't do it. What do you mean I can't do it? Nobody's going to hire someone out of the lab to. To sell for them.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:11:30]:
It's just not going to happen. And I just remember sitting in the. Sitting in the car, and for about two or three minutes, I was really, you know, shoulders down, head down. And then I was like, well, screw this person. I'll show them. And so, you know, maybe it was great advice because I'm like, it motivated me. But, you know, anybody that says, no, you should stay where you stay where you're at, maybe that's the right thing. But.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:11:55]:
But, you know, to. To discount any change, you know, that. That really upsets me, stuff like that.

Diana Alt [01:12:01]:
Or tell you what you should do, it's almost always a reflection of them, not you. So I remember I left a job, I quit a job with no job, which is, to me, one of the biggest power moves you can make. To be fair, it was 24, 2014, and the economy was pretty good, especially in tech, so it was less risky than it would sound right now. But I had the manager that I work for told me it was going to be the biggest mistake and I would regret It. And the whole reason I quit is because this is a person that did not support me when I was being actively bullied by an executive in my local office. My boss was in Houston, but I sat in a Kansas City office. And so that local office leader was a known bully, and she decided to target me, and he did not support me. So I was like, I'm out.

Diana Alt [01:12:53]:
See you later. Yeah, he told me it was going to be the worst mistake of my career. And the next role. The next role I had was actually a contact role at a contract role as a project manager at AMC Theaters, which was arguably one of the most fun jobs I've ever had. And it didn't have anything to do with software, so. And then I went back into software and had several good years before I decided, I'm gonna go do my own thing. The second question I have is, what is a personal habit that's helped you be successful?

Jeff Mockaitis [01:13:26]:
I go through periods of time where I set goals, and. And then I. And then I, you know, sometimes I achieve them, sometimes I don't. And, you know, I've gone through programs, you know, write it down, look at it every day, repeat it, you know, take small steps every day, all of these things. I don't do that that well. I do it for a period of time, and then I don't. But, you know, I. I think what.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:13:51]:
What does happen from that is if. If I write down the. The overarching, the. The big things, and I just think, you know, again, think about it deeply and then just, you know, plant it in your brain. You know, I started thinking about becoming general manager probably in around 2010, when, you know, there was at least 14 or 15 years before the current GM was going to retire. And he was great, so he wasn't going to get fired. But I just, you know, I remember at that time just kind of planting those seeds in my head and thinking about them and then forgetting about them, and then they'd come back and I'd think about them for a while. But so for me, I think that's part of it is just kind of, you know, for me personally, I can plant those ideas in my head and plant those seeds and kind of just let them slowly develop and grow into something.

Diana Alt [01:14:49]:
Said for paying attention to the bhag, the big hairy, audacious goal. So whether it's like a true goal, like, damn it, for sure I want this, or whether it's just something to focus on for a while because you want to walk in that direction and see if you like it. There's something really good to that and I know plenty. This is also I know a lot of people that have adhd, which I.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:15:17]:
Know.

Diana Alt [01:15:19]:
Like there's so many people our age running around that we can look at them and go, you have adhd even if they are not getting assessed. But I know a lot of people that have ADHD or similar ways that their brain operates. They can't handle the little broken down goals. The only thing that works for them is to be allowed to creatively, in whatever way works for them, go after the big thing. So thank you for validating that because I have just as many people that would come on here and say I set the goals at the beginning of the year and I break them into pieces and on and on and on. Those people have execution theme as their top on CliftonStrengths what is something you've changed your mind about recently? Recently being could be the last, even couple of years.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:16:07]:
Well, my mind keeps coming back to, you know, the conversation we just talked about with what if your job is to set the table for, for the team.

Diana Alt [01:16:17]:
I.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:16:19]:
I used to think and before I started this job, the previous general manager looked like he did everything and I know he didn't, but it looked like it. You would send in the request, you would get the response and an overwhelming amount of work and two or three months into the job I'm like, oh my God, I can't do this. So very recently it's, it's kind of going back to basics of who does do this, who does need to do this or what do I need to learn or do. But a lot of it has to comes down to who do I delegate this to or who do I ask for the feedback on so that I'm not the one that is in the middle of everything. I'm either farming it out or more importantly, you should reach out to this person and you should talk to them about it. You can have me informed, but I don't need to be involved. And that's a decision I try to make with the team. Try to keep me, you know, if I need to be informed, please inform me.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:17:24]:
If I need to be involved, I'll be involved. But I'd like to be involved less, not more.

Diana Alt [01:17:31]:
It's interesting that you talk about that. I have a client that I'm working with on a short engagement. They're being promoted to their first manager job after a lot of years working at their company and we've been talking a lot about that delegation thing. So hopefully she'll be able to listen to this whenever it comes out. Then the last thing is, what's a common. You may have already talked about this last one. What's a common misconception you think people.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:17:57]:
Have about your job challenging me here?

Diana Alt [01:18:02]:
You're welcome.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:18:05]:
I think some of it is that you know, that I'm the one that needs to coordinate or answer everything. And honestly, some of that misconception is starting to be overcome. Who's the backup for some of the tasks or roles that are being done in the job and maybe even eventually expanding the team to have someone that can do those kinds of things. But again, it's to empower other people instead of making me the one that has to have everything. I'm not the conduit for everything. I'm. I'm the one who, you know, I can be that conduit. But I'd much rather empower the other people to just go directly to.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:18:53]:
You want me on copy? I'll be on copy.

Diana Alt [01:18:55]:
Architect or kind of like an architect or an orchestrator. Not the bottleneck for everything. I appreciate you doing this today. A lot of important lessons for people, especially people that work for a company that they love and they want to progress in. And so that patience is required. Thank you so much for coming. And maybe, maybe like when you're another year or two in the job, we'll have to do this again and see what you've learned.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:19:27]:
That sounds great.

Diana Alt [01:19:28]:
All right, have a great day, everyone.

Jeff Mockaitis [01:19:31]:
Thanks.

Diana Alt [01:19:32]:
Want some more career goodness? Between episodes, head on over to DianaAlt.com and smash the big green let's Connect button to sign up for my newsletter. Let's make work feel good together. And that's it for this episode of Work should feel Good. If something made you laugh, think, cry, or just want to yell yes at your phone, send it to a friend, hit the follow hit, subscribe, do all the things. And even better, leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it five stars. You get to decide if I earned them. Work should feel good.

Diana Alt [01:20:08]:
Let's make that your reality.