This is the introduction to a series of valuable and short videos on consulting done as an interview between Rocco Luongo, founder and coach at GoRocco.Pro and Jason Bell, a seasoned leader with a long career. At the time of this interview, Jason was finishing up his Master’s degree in Organizational Development and exploring options for developing consulting as a next-stage career choice.
In this video Jason and I discuss how I got into consulting, from which industry I came to consulting from (engineering) and my definition of a coach vs. a consultant. This longer version of the video also digs deeper into my education, both undergrad in New Hampshire and my master’s work in Germany, along with some additional detail of my start-up experience and development as a leader and manager. Full transcript follows:
Transcript of Video
Jason Bell: Well thank you Rocco I appreciate your
time today.
Rocco Luongo: My pleasure.
JB: Awesome so we’ll pretend we haven’t
known each other for 20 years and like
it’s a more of a brand new interview
okay but very excited to hear your
insights today on the field of
consulting and to get started why don’t
you tell us a little bit about yourself
your background how you got into this.
RL: Okay well my name is Rocco I got into
consulting through an engineering
background. I did my undergraduate in New
Hampshire and sold a table saw to the
right guy. I had to swing a lot of hammers and
build houses to pay for undergraduate
so I sold the table saw to the director
of a subsidiary of a German
manufacturing firm that had just
recently opened in New Hampshire right
next to my apartment and he offered me
an internship. He liked the technical way
that I described a table saw, so at first
I thought yeah sounds cool but
internship sounds like free work and when
he came back in to pick it up he
asked how come I hadn’t sent him my
resume and I said well because it sounds
like free work I’d really like to . . . but. He
says no it’s not free we pay pretty well
and when I talked to him about it, it
actually paid twice what I was making at
the hardware store so I immediately sent
him a resume and was working there in a
couple weeks. It was really fun so
then that took me to Germany. When I
moved to Germany, I hadn’t finished my
degree when the whole rest of the group
went so they put me into a different
program where I was able to do my
masters while I was working in Germany
and I started managing right off the bat.
So, I didn’t really speak the language
and so I had to start managing people
directly. An engineer at a big company in
Germany is a de facto manager I had a
couple of drafts people working under me
and also, because I was in product
development, it was up to me to manage
people from other departments
whether it’s sensors, flow control,
infrared imagery, slow motion camera
whatever it would be,
so there was always a management
component but I didn’t speak the
language and so I
learned early on in my career to manage
by listening.
So I listened really intently and I think that
quality has helped me dramatically throughout
my career and especially being a good coach
and consultant in that because I never
had the language tools early in my
management I never had the compulsion, or
frankly never the ability to just talk
too much to my people. I just let them
talk and tell me what they were going to
do and that may well have been a very
good skill to have learned early.
I also learned German fluently while I
was there, as you know, and from there left
Germany was recruited by a spin-off of
WSU that’s Washington State University a
spin-off of their technology they
brought me in to help commercialize it
because I had a patent in pneumatics and
acoustics and mass production and so
they wanted that kind of help with this
product.
That product was really fun, we
ended up raising 180 million dollars in
that company and commercialized a different
version of the product. From there I spun
off my engineering and management
consultancy and I do sort of mix of
consulting in general for product
development, I also do some technical
engineering work most of that now is
checking high level calculation, product
strategies and how it aligns with
manufacturing, and expert witness work.
I just recently in the last two
two-and-a-half no, no longer now, three
years branded a separate entity out of
my company specifically for business
coaching, allowing me to reach down into
other fields and it’s been really fun.
I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve learned a lot and I
draw the distinction between coaching
and consulting like this: if you hire me
to coach you because you want to become
a great marathon runner – I don’t run laps
for you. I help you accountability, I
help you set up programs, I give you new
perspectives, I work with your motivation.
We deal with the human aspect of maybe
blockers why you’re not getting the
things done that you already know you
should be doing, but I don’t run laps for
you. Consulting is all of that plus I
contribute specific, actionable, tactical
skills as well and so that’s the rough
way I draw a line between those
things and that’s how I work in my
business.
JB: That’s a great distinction.