In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry sits down with Jennifer Vollbrecht, CEO of J. Volbrecht Consulting and author of My Mom is a Veteran. From her beginnings as a Marine Corps crew chief to becoming a successful entrepreneur, Jennifer shares her story of transformation and leadership.
Jennifer discusses a moment in her career that led her to pursue entrepreneurship, emphasizing the importance of work-life balance. She highlights how military discipline and planning skills translate into effective project management, a crucial element for success in any field. Jennifer also shares her experiences with both exemplary and poor leadership, underscoring the value of mentorship and personal connections.
Balancing her systematic approach to business with creative endeavors, Jennifer demonstrates how storytelling can be a powerful tool in leadership, helping teams understand their mission and context. Her insights offer valuable lessons on leadership and the execution of vision.
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It came to a point in my career, though, where I was at an inflection point, where I was like, this is not living. I was commuting. So I’m working 12, 14 hours a day, door to door, barely seeing my kids, barely seeing my family. And I thought, something has to give, something has to change.
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today’s guest is Jennifer Vollbrecht, CEO of J. Vollbrecht Consulting, author of My Mom Is A Veteran and former Marine Corps crew chief. Welcome to the show, Jennifer.
Thank you so much for having me.
There’s a lot to unpack here. You start off as an enlisted Marine Corps crew chief. You get out, you get into project management, and you start your own company.
Yes.
I know it’s been a long journey, and you have a husband who is also a Marine Corps Veteran. Now, he’s a firefighter. But at what point did you decide that you were going to start your own consulting company?
So entrepreneurship has always been a dream of mine. I’ve always just dreamed of being in charge of my own destiny and the sky’s the limit and just really trying to put myself out there. It came to a point in my career, though, where I was at an inflection point where I was like, this is not living. I was commuting. So I’m working 12, 14 hours a day, door to door, barely seeing my kids, barely seeing my family. And I thought, something has to give, something has to change. And I started to do a lot of self-seeking and thinking, what can I do? What is my idea? It’s now or never, come up with your idea. I came up with that. It basically started as my resume.
Outstanding. For a lot of Veterans, project management should be second nature because we understand a plan is a wish unless you can execute. Project management gets us there. I had a very embarrassing moment where I hired a member of CEOcircle, the group we’re in now, and she was an Air Force Veteran, and this is the year before you were in it. We were talking, I’m like, Wait a minute, I don’t have these things done. We were using a program called EOS, and we have Rocks, the 90-day Rocks. Everybody said, My project’s on track. It’s on track. It’s on track. We get into the 90 days, off track. Well, what happened? Well, what happened was they were not tracking the project. They were not managing the project. They didn’t do their backwards planning like we learned in the military. That’s why I love hiring people from the military and working with consultants from the military because it’s like, Okay, we speak the same language, and you understand how s*** gets done. The way it gets done is you do the planning and you use the most powerful force in the universe, you put it on a calendar, and you put all those tasks and subtasks on the calendar.
When you say I’m on track, that means I got A, B, C, done this week, and I’m going to do D, E, F, and G next week, and the rest of the alphabet the next week. That has been one of the biggest challenges is understanding that just because I talk to somebody and I say, Okay, can you get this done by Friday? I can get done by Friday, but they haven’t done the backwards planning. Then Thursday, they start working on it and they’re like, Uh-oh, I’m not going to get this done. I want to take you into how you learned project management and how you became an expert.
I learned on a flight line, right? I’m a crew chief, and I was comfortable in a flight line environment. I learned about getting everybody together around an idea. We were building aircraft. We had to get them out because these aircraft had to deploy. They had to go to Iraq, and they were coming back and getting upgraded and going to Afghanistan. I felt like I was connected to the mission. We would get together around this idea and what needs to be done. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter which aircraft went out. It just mattered that an aircraft went out. We got comfortable with the idea of putting our plan on paper and allowing that to deviate. Putting the plan down, allowing it to deviate in order to attain the end goal. That’s what project planning is all about is getting the plan all down on paper. A schedule is just something to deviate from, but we all know what the end goal is, and we’re all on track to get there together as a team.
Now, not to be stereotypical, but when I think of Marines, I think of Gunny Highway.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, adapt, improvise, overcome. My experience with Marines is they do not do the in-depth planning that the Army does, but you seem to be very attuned to planning. You’re in the Marine Corps, and obviously, like I said, on the flight line, you learned that the planning has to happen. But is that where the bug bit you that this is it, this is what I love to do?
The planning effort. Let’s talk about being a crew chief. I’m going to show up at probably 4:00 AM for a brief. I’m going to get briefed at 4:00 AM at what my mission is. Then about 5:00 AM, I’m going to go grab all my equipment. I’m going to do an inventory, make sure everything’s okay. I’m going to start inspecting my aircraft in the 5 o’clock hour, still 6:00 AM. I’m tidying up the bird. I’m ready for a 7:00 AM takeoff. It’s like three hours before we’re taking off, I’m in there preparing. I’m getting to know what my mission is, what equipment I need, what do I need to know, making sure that everything’s in working order. I would say that being in the Marines and being specifically a crew chief really taught me that foundation.
Obviously, you carry it forward today. What is your biggest challenge when you’re consulting with companies who have substandard project management, and they want you to fix it?
My favorite is… So our clients and our projects are critical to national defense, right? And they’re critical infrastructure, critical to science. They’re very important. My clients are stereotypically in the engineering field. We’re here, we have really great degrees and really great technical backgrounds, and so then we get assigned to these projects. When clients bring us on, it’s because they’re very smart at engineering things and technical things, and they need somebody with just a little bit of leadership to put it all together and to get us to stop solving problems in a meeting and get the status, get the next actions, make sure that we know what the handouts are, and then get out of there and get back to work. They call us in when you need that leadership finesse.
That’s the tough part. Anybody can have an idea, but it’s in the execution. I think you talk about a vision, anybody can have a vision. But can you execute? Because that is where the rubber meets the road. Is it just in your DNA, in your personality, or how is it that you are so driven to ensure that the people you consult with actually take the steps that they decided to do when they planned?
I guess it has to do with being a good fit, making sure that we work well together. In addition to planning our projects, we spend a lot of time getting to know each other. If they call me, I’m going to answer, and I’m going to hear what’s on their mind and vice versa. Hey, this is what I’m worried about. I think so and so is getting distracted by this technical issue, but they need to put it to bed. Really getting to know each other on a personal level so that we can…
Wait, you get to know engineers on a personal level?
It takes finesse, right? And it takes time. It’s not something that comes automatically. You don’t just get your rapport automatically. But with time and asking questions and learning what makes them laugh and sharing those experiences together then you get to know each other.
Now, what’s interesting to me is you have a very, I guess you would call it left brain. You are very systematic. You want the systems to run and you want people to follow the processes, and yet you’re also an author of My Mom Is A Veteran. Tell us, are you also very strong in the right brain as well?
Yes. I do have a creative outlet, and that’s what I do for fun. I try to have creative projects, writing stories, telling stories, and having experiences. And so that story came from becoming a mom. And I became a mom in… My daughter was born in 2013. I got out of the Marines in 2009. She never knew mom as a Marine. She knew mom as mom. I’m her comforter, I’m her nurture. And then my son came along and I started to share with them about me being in the Marines or, hey, don’t worry, I’m a Marine. I can handle it. And they’re like, what are you talking about, mom? And so I started to tell them. I took them to Camp Pendleton and showed them a CH-46. I took them to the Miramar Air Show and showed them, hey, that’s what I used to do. They started to go, okay, mom is an actual person, an actual human being. I felt like they really took an interest in like they were really able to see me as something outside of just their mom. I guess to answer your question, yes, I love being creative in addition to being very systematic.
I have found that storytelling is extremely effective in leadership because our brain… You dump a bunch of facts on me, the cognitive load is too much. I’m not going to remember most of them. But if you can tell me a story, our brains are wired for stories. The storytelling can actually help the team understand what they need to do or understand the context, the why as to why this mission is important. I absolutely love that. Since we are on the topic of leadership, I want to take you to the after-action review, the three examples of great leadership you have seen in the civilian or military side, and then the three examples of horrible leadership. Let’s start with the three good ones.
All right, so three good ones. I have a lot of mentors in my life. I couldn’t be where I am today without my mentors. Some great examples of leadership, is I had hired a consultant when I worked at the lab, and they completed the job, and they did a great job. Six months later and 12 months later, I’m still getting phone calls from this consultant, not doing sales calls. They’re like, Hey, Jen, how are you? How’s the family? What’s going on? How’s everything going? How’s everything going at work? And so this person, I felt like they made a connection with me and wanted to keep in touch and foster that relationship. And that was the first person I called when I said, I’m going to start a business. I’m going to call Dave because he cares about me and he’s looking out for me. And so that was one example of good leadership was just getting to know me as a person. Another one was I had a mentor at work and I had a bad boss. I had a boss… This is my example. Write this down. My example of bad leadership. Because I was trying to go for a promotion, and he said, and I was already working in the role, and he said, I’m not considering you for that role because you have young kids at home and you’re not going to be able to commit to the job.
And so I went to his boss and handed him my resignation. I said, I’m done. This is how my boss is looking at me. He says, I’m not going to be prepared. Well, this person who ended up becoming a mentor to me said, Hold on, hold on with that resignation. Are you telling me or is this an offer to negotiate? Not three weeks later, that person was let go. I was moved into a different role and was able to foster and continue my career. Having somebody…
I have nightmares about that. My top performers, my mid-level managers, they don’t see it. Because they are insecure, they’re C-level players, they don’t want anybody better than them, they prevent them from moving. Oh, my God. You’ve just described my nightmare. Sorry.
That toxicity of when nothing happens, that’s when it really breaks down. But when you see some change happen, when you speak up and you see change, that’s when you’re really like, Okay, this person is in my court, and this person is looking out for me. I really appreciated that level of leadership. Then my final example is I had a supervisor, and every morning, this is so cool. Every morning, she would walk by and say hi. It was just the little things. Just walk by and say, Hello, good morning. How are you today? I felt like on a personal level, she knew if I was showing up to work every day, if I had a different look on my face like, Hey, what’s going on? Because she cared about me as a person. I guess all of mine string together in that same thread of relationships and really caring and really seeing each other as part of our story and part of our network.
That’s so great. Now, the bad.
The toxic. Well, of course, we have my supervisor who was fired. I already gave that example. I have some really great examples from the military, and I won’t get into too many of those. But I did have one who… I just don’t know why this person hated me. He would put me on the night crew. He would put me on all the bad duties and all this stuff. At the end of the day, this person had a toxic lifestyle, and he would take it out on multiple of us. And I just took so many notes of what not to do. When I’m in that position, I’m going to do things so differently because this person got it so wrong. And then bad leadership, I’ll just straight up look at the mirror. And I know that I’ve made some poor decisions in my leadership style, and it’s all part of my learning journey, where if I look back when I’m growing my company or some decisions that I made that really kept me up at night and I’m like, oh, gosh, I could have done better or I really failed today. I really try every day to get better, to learn from my mistakes.
Wow. Great lessons. Yes, look in the mirror for the bad leader because sometimes it’s you. I always say, you remember the term Blue Falcon? Is that an army term? Eventually, you’re the Blue Falcon. From time to time. Jennifer, how can Veterans learn more about J. Vollbrecht Consulting, and where can they find your book, My Mom Is A Veteran?
Yeah. My Mom Is A Veteran, is available on Amazon. It’s also available on my website mommymarine.com, where mommymarine.com has a couple of other resources, a little video explaining about why I made the book and some more details about the book. Then my company, J. Vollbrecht Consulting, jvc-inc.com, or we’re on LinkedIn, and we have a very active LinkedIn page where we talk about everything that we’re doing, all the community events, all the conferences that we attend, and then some of the projects that we’re going after. LinkedIn is probably the best place to find us.
Finally, who is your ideal client?
Who is my ideal client? It’s somebody who wants to come to me and be a human and want to get something done. They want to build something, and they want to have fun while they’re doing it. These engineering types or these scientists who have really big goals or they have a really big capability gap and it’s really hard in their organization to get the ball rolling, then we should work together and figure it out.
Outstanding. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing your insights and wisdom on Veteran Led.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting Veteran leadership in business, strengthening the Veteran community, and getting Veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching at Veteran Led on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.
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