Leaders and Their Stories

Richard Lowe (00:01.368)
Hello, I'm Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghostwriting guru. And this is the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. And I'm here with Gary Mecca. We've known each other for quite a long time and he's got some very interesting stories to tell that apply to leadership and how to get ahead in the world. So, Jerry, take it away.

Gerry Mecca (00:20.186)
So it's so funny, you briefly called me Gary and I always think to myself, the G followed by the E is a softer G generally like George Washington or Gerry Mander, but it's very common. Thanks for the intro. Man, I'm happy to be here, Richard. I think this is an interesting forum to talk about leadership and we're not all doing it the same way. So I hope whatever I share today is meaningful for your listeners or your viewers, I guess.

It's no longer a podcast. It's now a video podcast. Is there a video podcast? Well, I'm ready to go. What's on your mind?

Richard Lowe (00:53.974)
It's a video podcast,

Richard Lowe (01:00.13)
Well, why don't you spin, just tell a couple of paragraphs about your, your, how you got started in wrestling and what it meant to you and how that, how that helped you as a leader.

Gerry Mecca (01:06.042)
Sure. Sure.

Sure. you know, I'm from a family of wrestlers. And so almost without much, well, when you have five boys in the house at the same time, and at one point we're all in the same bedroom in Camden, New Jersey, wrestling is like a byproduct. The leadership part came from the great coaches and my dad, maybe my dad more.

you know, there was shame in quitting and, and maybe that's not super motivational to call it shame and quitting, but man, I'll tell you at the end of the day, anything I want to do, I will wrestle it to the ground to the point where I will be successful at it or I'll die trying. And so that, yeah, that's kind of like a,

Richard Lowe (02:00.974)
That makes sense.

Gerry Mecca (02:04.748)
And you know, I know we're going to talk about my book, but throughout the book writing, it's been a theme that, you know, quitters are like the worst form of anything. And I still carry that through to anybody who just mails it in. Even with my kids, if they start something, they're allowed to stop it, but not in the middle of it. You follow me?

Richard Lowe (02:28.652)
I do follow you and I remember that. That's a very important lesson.

Gerry Mecca (02:30.51)
Yes, for sure. mean, it's horrible to be on a soccer team and, and, you know, your daughter loves the game, but the kids are, are mean. And I mean, some, you know, some kids are cut out for athletics where, where it's push and shove and summer cut are not, and she was not so, but she stuck it out, got a couple of trophies, remembers it fondly, but won't ever do it again. And

needs to recognize when she has kids that if she has a personality that fits, it fits. Otherwise, you know, it's a lesson worth learning. Nothing, what's the old state? that's worth doing is worth doing badly or something of that nature.

Richard Lowe (03:13.762)
Right. I think it's anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Gerry Mecca (03:18.16)
Okay, you know, sorry, I do have a tendency to lean to the negative side. So that's right. Well, you're the writer. You'll remember the right way to say it. yeah, but even after maybe junior high school, immediately I'm a Mecca. I'm coming into the high school for the high school wrestling team. There's sort of like this assumption that I'm going to be really good and that I'm going to be a great leader. And man, I was reluctant.

Richard Lowe (03:20.078)
It's totally fine.

Gerry Mecca (03:48.663)
leader. I, I was wanting to have fun and, and, you know, I, I think I even told you, I got into trouble. I didn't even do what I got in trouble for, but I got kicked off the wrestling team. And if it hadn't been for the captains of the wrestling team, telling the coach, Hey, you know, Jerry's got some spicy rough edges, but, he's a good wrestler. And you know, the kids look up to them and I'll think I, and I, I owe a lot to them.

recognizing that I had a value that, and the part about being on the dugout or being in the locker room wasn't something I really was tuned into yet. And then I later learned it was a responsibility that I needed to show them how to work and to demonstrate that in everything I did.

Richard Lowe (04:37.006)
Would you say that the coaches who rescued you, so to speak, were leaders, acting like leaders at that point?

Gerry Mecca (04:43.202)
You know, I would, I would, but I think they may have been a little on the selfish side. And I say that because as an example, as a senior, I led our wrestling team in points scored. Now that means that for the most part, I probably wrestled in every dual meet and every tournament and scored highly. Usually by fall, I was a pin expert.

I could usually win a match in the first period by fall, by pin for those who don't know what that means. And, I'd stick guys. And so my point totals went way up. And so by the time we got to the end of the season, but I also think they knew that because we wanted to be the dual champs. We wanted to be the state champs and we achieved both of those things. I think they thought we wouldn't without me.

But I didn't think of myself like that. In fact, I was as shocked as anybody else when they gave me that award. I didn't even realize I had done it. Heck, I took second in state. I thought I was a loser. You know, it's funny. But yeah, the wrestling coaches and the captains were very important. But my dad really was the person who said, Jerry, I don't know what it is, but

they're paying attention to you and you need to recognize that for whatever it's worth and channel that somehow, because you'll get more out of everybody else. And so I was great with the underclassmen. And I started, you know, I played baseball and I played soccer and I never played anything that you had to really jump for, forget basketball or gymnastics. but yeah, I really felt and I had one coach, particularly a guy by the name of Paul Aubrey.

Richard Lowe (06:30.519)
Right.

Gerry Mecca (06:39.396)
who was the, he was a national champion from OU in the late fifties. He was a pilot and he was not needing to work. So he volunteered as a volunteer coach. And, and, that also has a, a little bit in my, in my psyche. I still coach, I get paid by the Texas Rangers to do youth academy.

It's a nominal amount of money, so don't make it sound all that exciting. But I've been coaching youth baseball for free for so long that I think a lot of that came from knowing that you have an impact on kids at a certain age and if you put the time in, they just might be great.

Richard Lowe (07:25.558)
And I think that that's a part of leadership is to understand that some you have things to teach.

Gerry Mecca (07:30.555)
For sure, the right things to teach. I get often asked about my leadership style when I go into a project, know, the bid I'm doing and the leadership wants to know, you know, what kind of style. I said, well, I'm a classic coach. You know, I'm gonna give the kids enough rope, but I'm not gonna let them hang themselves. And I'm not a yeller. I'm going to...

Richard Lowe (07:32.364)
Yeah, of course.

Richard Lowe (07:50.936)
All

Gerry Mecca (07:58.097)
pat them on the butt and whack them on the back of the head if they do something wrong, and I mean that metaphorically. Well, no, I actually would pat them on the butt. I wouldn't whack them on the back of the head, but they'll get a wake-up call if they're missing on their, expectations and their skill do not align.

Richard Lowe (08:03.128)
course.

Richard Lowe (08:17.166)
So you've had all this experience as a coach, not as a coach, as a wrestler. How did that apply as you started to go into the business world?

Gerry Mecca (08:20.068)
Yeah.

Gerry Mecca (08:26.17)
Well, similarly, all of those coaches taught me how to set goals, how to, you know, I mentioned not give up on them, how to go the extra mile, how to work out more than your competition. I joked about it with employees. Everything's a baseball metaphor for me as a general. I don't do a lot of wrestling metaphors because people just don't know the vernacular, but

but to talk about their experiences as sports, I go, look, you guys are professional IT people, professional, not part-time, not winging it, not valiant. I'm giving you a sizable salary to do something very needed. You are my shortstop, my second baseman, my center fielder, my starting pitcher, my catchers. You have to fill your role at an expert level.

And that's way I've motivated people to recognize that there's a workout regimen, even in the professional world. You can't leave with the fire burning in the back room. I don't care, frankly, if it's five o'clock, if the network is down and you're responsible for network. We'll make it up on, you know, PT, but don't leave now just because you have to and you want to punch out. That's just not my style.

Richard Lowe (09:54.626)
Yeah, they're not hourly employees. they're, they're.

Gerry Mecca (09:56.239)
No, Particularly if you get into IT, your life is over. No, that sounds negative. And you know all about this. Yeah, yeah. If you're in technology, I used to call myself the most available person on the planet. I had a pager, a cell phone. My phone at my house pinged my pager to tell me I had a message left, you know, because my bosses, you know, when I started supporting C-level,

Richard Lowe (10:00.792)
Hahaha.

I was an IT, I understand.

Gerry Mecca (10:22.862)
You know, that was, there was no option to not be available. Yeah. And, and that also was an example. So in the second part of being a coach and giving them the, the, the proper accountability is the mere fact that you have to show that you're also willing to do the job and that lead by example, do the job. Don't, don't, no, I don't want to be known as the guy that's going to fix the CEO's iPhone, but, but,

Richard Lowe (10:26.85)
Right, of course.

Gerry Mecca (10:52.492)
It was never below me if he was sitting, I'm sitting in a meeting and he's freaking out, you know, for me to grab hold of it and give him a hand. But, but as a general rule, that's, that's something that you do want to, you know, sort of have a good group that can take care of them. Even if I have to say, text somebody say, Hey, re re send that app to, to Roger. needs his, his app, you know, refreshed on his device and it would just happen. And he would like, what, what happened? How'd you do that? I was like, well,

Richard Lowe (10:59.758)
Of course. course.

Richard Lowe (11:20.014)
Magic!

Gerry Mecca (11:21.572)
We have a console where you can upload your stuff.

Richard Lowe (11:25.496)
Yes, indeed. I remember those days from my career as well.

Gerry Mecca (11:28.79)
I want to forget them. You know, the other thing about about leadership, particularly, you know, is finding the thing, whatever it is that motivates each individual versus thinking that there's one thing that could motivate them all. And so I there are a lot of leaders who only know how to yell.

Richard Lowe (11:31.394)
Yeah.

Richard Lowe (11:49.432)
Right.

Gerry Mecca (11:56.753)
There's a coach down at UT. He's revered. I think is, I want to say Augie Gurrito is his name, but don't hold me to that. But he is, if you get a chance, Google him and watch a couple of his locker room videos. I refuse to believe that 18 year olds need that much screaming at him. Much less 19, 20 and 21 year olds. And, but.

Richard Lowe (11:56.792)
Right.

Gerry Mecca (12:24.686)
You know, it does work in the short term.

Richard Lowe (12:27.758)
Yeah, but it's not a good long-term motivator.

Gerry Mecca (12:29.132)
and I'll

So when I say I'm a coach leader, I don't want people to think, I often will say I'm not a screamer. I'm a nickname giver. I'm a attaboy giver. I'm a, you're the captain today, you're the captain tomorrow. I'm a, know, a doler out of significant responsibility to show that I care and I believe and not later yell at them for not achieving it or as well as somebody else.

giving great, know, giving, cause everybody improves at a different rate.

Richard Lowe (13:07.758)
But I'd be willing to bet that if somebody's not up to snuff, you're going to be fairly ruthless after a while.

Gerry Mecca (13:12.848)
Well, sure. I'll go ahead and say that you're allowed to make one big mistake. I used to have this thing I'd say to the guys, look, if you're an analyst, you get to make 10 or 12 mistakes. If you're a senior analyst, you get to make five. If you're a manager, you get to make three. If you're a director, you get to make one per year. And I'm really kidding. I'm not keeping a scorecard, but that's kind of, you never make the same mistake twice.

Richard Lowe (13:41.07)
Agreed.

Gerry Mecca (13:41.955)
And so that is the, and I, I put that out there. I'm not shy. Yeah. I also have a, a little, these are all mechanisms. That's what my team called them, but like I would, I would say somebody would be whining about somebody in another department and I would let them whine. And then I go, okay, well, I'm to go ahead and say this the only way I know I ha I can, I like to play golf. You just brought me a gigantic ball.

Richard Lowe (13:47.874)
Yeah, I know that.

Gerry Mecca (14:11.96)
and a great big Bertha, and I'm about to hit this thing down, and this person in this other area is gonna be feeling the pain. Or were you just blowing off steam, trying to let me listen, to tell me that you're about to go to this person you're pissed off at for some, and try to bury the hatchet? Because if you're not gonna do that, this will be the last conversation we have, you know. And just to try and give them feeling that, look, I'm here to support you, but I'm not here to.

win and fight your battles for you. And so what would, you know, of course I can't think of a time where someone said, yeah, you're right, I should probably talk to them. And then I'd say, hey look, if you go over there and you're still button heads, both of you come back, we're getting all the liars together in the room and we'll knock this thing out. But it's not gonna be because you're gonna come whine about your employee or your peer or some department head without you doing that job I assigned for you to manage that department head.

Richard Lowe (14:43.403)
Indeed, indeed.

Richard Lowe (15:10.318)
Right, right. So I understand that you're working on a book. So why don't you talk, if you can, why don't you talk a little bit about that.

Gerry Mecca (15:16.088)
Yep. No, I can. I can. Well, coach, you might say it's about a third of the way done, maybe 100 % in my head. It really sort of goes into the why am I the way I am. You know, it goes through the trials and tribulations of my parents who

decided for whatever reason they were going to deliver at least, they tried to have more, but at least eight kids onto the planet, five of them being boys. And mom was a waitress, dad fixed TVs, you know, and it wasn't like they were in great financial shape. Now, both of them emerged. My dad,

significantly advanced his career and mom didn't always have to go wait tables, but there were some tough times and I sort of, you know, kick off the story of the first real downtime that I could recall as a child because until you're three or four, you really don't notice. And so my opening chapter is on how we

Richard Lowe (16:33.294)
course.

Gerry Mecca (16:41.632)
made it through that. How did we end up in a row house in Camden, New Jersey with five boys having to sleep in the same room? But how did we make the best of it? And it's a fun story to tell. It's not going to be autobiographical. It's sort of, you know what? I'm still debating that, Richard. I may end up this being as true to life a story, at least as far as I can remember.

but now I got seven other stakeholders who want to make sure I'm not lying about them. you know, there's a part of it. And we all remember things differently. I don't remember if I'm writing into the story or not about the injury where my brother trips me and I smash my head on the windowsill. And it was the first time that I had ever

Richard Lowe (17:13.592)
Hahaha.

Richard Lowe (17:18.232)
Of course, of course.

Gerry Mecca (17:38.511)
had a room by myself. Because if I didn't, know, with my head cracked open and a bunch of rambasting little boys, you know, and a chief instigator, my oldest brother Len, who was 10 years older than me, but six years older than my older brother between us. And we were a force to be reckoned with. There weren't a whole lot of people who wanted to fight with the Mecha Boys.

Richard Lowe (18:07.924)
How bad, I'll bet. So you're now a fractional seed level person?

Gerry Mecca (18:16.304)
Yeah. So look, I've always been entrepreneurial. And so I have the general skills to be CEO and COO and CMO, but my career has been in technology. So I've been a career technologist, CIO, CTO, EIEIO. I often say, I don't care what you call me. The guy in charge of all the technology, regardless of what department

Richard Lowe (18:39.938)
you

Gerry Mecca (18:45.008)
And, uh, and, uh, you know, when I left corporate world, which I w which was somewhat, I don't need to get into that story, but let's just say I, I really wasn't ready to leave, but it was, it was necessary. And, uh, so I hung my shingle and, uh, began to get fractional work, which is often 10, maybe 20 hours a week.

at a reasonable hourly rate and usually reporting directly to the CEO or the strategy leadership to assess what's going on. The company doesn't think they need a full-time CIO or they're just in a sort of interim state, but they do need the comprehensive leadership skills that a CIO of a corporation does.

Yes, he better understand infra. Yes, he better understand apps. Yes, he better understand cyber. Yes, he better understand data. Yes, he better understand incident management and operations and support. Yes, he better understand the business's applications for technology. He better understand contracts, licensing, outsourcing. I'm not sure what I'm leaving out. IT finance, how to, you know.

how to argue positively in a boardroom for a particular ROI for an IT project. I just rattled off 12, in fact, I'd love to see those bullet ties, because I may reuse them, but those 12 sort of aspects of a CIO, and I haven't even mentioned leadership, talent management, recruitment, the HR aspects. So now there's 15, but most the guys I meet,

Richard Lowe (20:20.878)
Yeah.

Gerry Mecca (20:37.452)
and gals that want to be CIOs for lack of a better, okay, up and coming technology leaders, they have about 40 to 60 % of that, but they don't have it all. But they are already called CIO because by default or maybe by DEI or whatever this person got promoted and they're going to give them a shot because they have high potential and they'll probably be successful.

Richard Lowe (20:50.062)
Mm-hmm.

Gerry Mecca (21:06.522)
but it's an expensive, very expensive experiment. And I've found that if you have some really good up and comers you're trying to mold and you're a CEO of a corporation and you want to bring in a guy like me who's been there, done that and find the talent, figure out where the diamonds in the rough are, build a strategy. Hell, I left that out. Strategy, IT strategy planner, you know, all of the things that map to the business's strategy. These are all

And this is sort of my question. How many people have you hired? They'll tell you. How many have you fired? If somebody doesn't have double digits in both of those categories, they're not a C-level person. They're just a person who's by default the person who's been in the IT department the longest. I haven't even mentioned innovation. We're up to 20 things now that a CIO does. So all right, enough said, but that's kind of what's going on.

Richard Lowe (21:56.216)
Right, right.

Richard Lowe (22:02.07)
Okay.

Gerry Mecca (22:05.744)
I get hired to do that. They're often, you know, four months, six month gigs. Sometimes they're a retainer where they just bring you in and they pay you whether they bring you in or not, not to be, you know, always try to do a checkpoint with the CEO, even if it's five hours a month, you know, but I don't like those five hour ones. I want it to be a 10 hour a week.

Maybe I do two of those with two different companies. So that's the other good part about it for me. I don't have to be stuck with one company. Usually a quarter or even maybe a third of the cost of a CIO full time. So it's better priced. And in the end, I think everybody's happy with what they get.

Richard Lowe (22:50.016)
Awesome, awesome. How can people reach you?

Gerry Mecca (22:53.358)
Well, so I have a website, ekggroupllc.com. The EKG Group is my company name, my brand. EKG stands for Everybody Knows Jerry. Just something that stuck. My email address is gerry.mecca at ekggroupllc.com. I'm on LinkedIn. Maybe you can.

post some of that stuff after you produce this thing and I am happy to talk to anybody. I got into the placing of CIOs for Fractional Work totally by accident. I don't know if we talked about this, but I started coaching last fall. I started having coffee with guys and gals that were wanting to make the, I want to say, know what it is, but north of 50, maybe early 60s,

Richard Lowe (23:24.056)
I

Gerry Mecca (23:50.575)
been the corporate world, want to do their own thing, need a little sort of structure, and I've got the structure. And then I place them through a placement firm. The firm pays me. The customer pays the firm. Everybody's happy. And sometimes, two times I've done fractional work and I've become the CIO of the company. That's not what I want. I want to stay

Richard Lowe (24:17.059)
Interesting.

Gerry Mecca (24:20.706)
Now I want to stay independent. say that, what is it? Famous last word, somebody's going to twist my arm. But I think most of the people I'm talking to have finally said, you know what? I've done the corporate thing. I don't want to go to work for PwC or Bain or McKinsey or, you know, be inside some private equity firm. You know, I want to, I want to do my own thing. I want to, you know, make a couple hundred dollars an hour for what I do. And,

Richard Lowe (24:23.459)
course.

Gerry Mecca (24:50.296)
and run my own business.

Richard Lowe (24:52.43)
Well, very good. And thank you for appearing on the podcast. Appreciate it.

Gerry Mecca (24:55.14)
No, my pleasure. I hope it was, or it will be valuable to whoever watches it.

Richard Lowe (25:00.408)
So you've been listening to leaders and their stories and I am the writing king and the ghost writing guru. And I produce books for leaders, for coaches and for seniors looking for a legacy. You can find me at the writing king.com that's the writing king.com or ghost writing.guru. And appreciate your time, Jerry. And you're going to have a great time. Thank you. Bye bye.

Gerry Mecca (25:20.122)
No problem, enjoyed it. Thanks for all the help on my book.

Gerry Mecca (25:27.057)
I'll talk to you later.