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Grody & UnPrOfEsSiOnAL

Grody & UnPrOfEsSiOnAL

By: Justin McMenamy
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Hello and welcome to Grody & UnPrOfEsSiOnAL, my name is Justin McMenamy, and my mission is to share both profitable and painful leadership lessons I have acquired over a twenty-year career as a misfit in corporate America.

Like everyone, I have worked with and for hundreds of leaders across my career. While some leaders are great, and many are good, the vast majority find themselves tossed into leadership and left to figure it out on their own. Grody & Unprofessional seeks to share leadership stories harvested from my own experiences and from the experiences of others through approachable and candid conversations with the aim of educating and shaping your leadership journey.

Grody & Unprofessional episodes will toggle between focused monologue on specific lessons or mindsets I have acquired from my experiences and conversations with other leaders seeking to understand their convictions and strategies for inspiring, motivating, and maybe sometimes cajoling a group into action.

Grody & Unprofessional is not a memoir, it’s not a forum to gripe or complain about the past or present. The rules are simple, I aim to convey leadership lessons through storytelling. If a given story has a hero, we will use proper names, if the story has a villain, a dolt, or if there is the potential for embarrassment, proper names will be removed. While we do NOT aim to embarrass people or organizations, we do intend to embarrass poor leadership behaviors and mindsets common to many leaders and organizations.

My experience has been that demand for talented leaders outstrips supply by at least tenfold, Grody & Unprofessional is my feeble attempt to improve supply.

I hope you will join me as we seek to uncover people, product, and organizational leadership lessons through the musings of a corporate misfit and his friends.Copyright Justin McMenamy Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Sales is Life w. Drew Norton

    Sales is Life w. Drew Norton
    Sep 17 2026
    Host Justin McMenamy welcomes sales leader and coach Drew Norton to discuss sales and leadership. Norton explains that salesmanship often comes with a negative stigma (e.g., “used car salesman,” “sales is a four-letter word”) driven by bad actors and buyer’s remorse; however good salesmanship is rooted in honesty, integrity, and trust, including being willing to recommend against a purchase.

    They discuss why sales skills matter beyond commission roles because “sales is life,” affecting communication, influence, and decision-making in family, social settings and career. Norton contrasts ethical selling with manipulation, referencing the 1961 Milgram experiment, and says leaders have a moral obligation to clearly communicate value.

    He defines strong sales culture as shared vision, language, and demonstrated behaviors, and describes balancing commissions with teamwork through alignment and engagement. They close by outlining traits for future sales leaders beyond performance, including cultural fit, competence, team-first mindset, credibility, and communication.
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    34 mins
  • Blackbelt Math w. Jim Weber

    Blackbelt Math w. Jim Weber
    Sep 3 2026
    Host Justin McMenamy and guest Jim Weber continue discussing how to lead and sustain innovative organizations, including leadership styles, developing people, and rewarding performance.

    Weber describes an over-enthusiastic “Woody Woodpecker” management style that pecks people into working quickly but can ultimately lead to high turnover. They discuss instances where innovation tsunamis ultimately took down tech giants, like Xerox PARC and Kodak, who were unwilling to self-disrupt.

    Justin frames corporate IT, HR, legal, and safety as the “four horsemen of the innovation apocalypse” that often smother innovation. A companies’ otherwise inevitable march toward risk aversion, led by these disciplines, can only be mitigated by placing cultural gatekeepers in these roles.

    People’s development relied on mentorship, flexible one-on-ones, and heavy customer proximity. Reward structures emphasized “win/lose as a team,” minimal titles, profit-based shared bonuses, and a behind-the-scenes “buoyancy model” aligning pay with impact while keeping compensation criteria intentionally vague.
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    52 mins
  • The Dumbest Guy in All the Right Rooms w. Michael Kainatsky

    The Dumbest Guy in All the Right Rooms w. Michael Kainatsky
    Aug 20 2026
    Host Justin McMenamy interviews Michael Kainatsky, a former corporate leader and recruiter, about leadership lessons, the broken hiring ecosystem, and the proper role of LinkedIn within a healthy professional network.

    Kainatsky recounts an accidental, fast-rising career from sales to C-level roles, then into recruiting, arguing the hiring ecosystem is broken and candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, and HR are all complicit. He says mass AI-driven applying and AI resume screening create a feedback loop that rewards bots, while many recruiters overcharge for their low-quality advice and placement techniques; he advises using one specialized recruiter with proven outcomes.

    On LinkedIn, he argues the platform isn’t the problem... people are. He goes on to criticize unverified “experts,” fake content, and engagement obsession, and recommends authenticity, relevancy, and moving conversations off platform. They also discuss quit-vs-grit approaches to difficult decisions, negotiating an honest exit, and concern that AI will displace roles while eroding trust and human connection.
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    56 mins
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