Don't forget to join the MentorMesh community for free and if you're looking to get into Product Management, sign up for the MentorMesh PM Career Accelerator ! On today's episode, I sat down with Phyllis Njoroge, Product Manager at Redfin and imposter syndrome connoisseur. Phyllis drops some great wisdom on what imposter syndrome is, where it comes from, the #1 way to combat it and how important it is to create a culture where imposter system can't exist much less thrive. Here's what we discusse...
Mar 01, 2021•25 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast Be sure to join the free community at MentorMesh.io and check out the PM Career Accelerator from MentorMesh. On this episode, I dive into the topic of stakeholder empathy. Assuming stakeholder priorities is the antithesis to empathy. Fortunately, there are some easy ways to start building trust with stakeholders and creating alignment for your organization as a PM. In this conversation I cover: Internal Stakeholders - the Product Team Internal Stakeholders - your Cross-Functional Par...
Feb 25, 2021•16 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast Don't forget to check out mentormesh.io and check out the PM Career Accelerator if you're looking to break into Product! Here's what we discussed: How Jae started in Tech without a degree or connections and transitioned from engineering manager to Sr. PM at Microsoft to launch his PM career Why Jae started the MentorMesh.io platform and the goal of the community What an entrepreneurial mindset is and why it’s so important to PMs The need to start building something now and how impactful that is ...
Feb 22, 2021•22 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast Accelerate your path to product by joining us at Path2Product to get the hands-on experience you need to land your first Product job. On this episode, I break down why you should never assume development effort. Save yourself some headache and heartache. Save your developers some stress. And save your cross-functional partners the disappointment.
Feb 18, 2021•11 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, Zach Daley joins us again to share insights on the opportunities he sees for Product and UX to collaborate more effectively. Here's what we discussed: Zach's role as a design lead and how it's structured like a "player-coach" type of role The overlap and collaborative nature of the UX and PM relationship And the differences between UX and PM and who "owns" which pieces Why UX and PM might share user research but why UX MUST lead it How UX should own and have the biggest...
Feb 15, 2021•29 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast MentorMesh PM Career Accelerator - Join Today! Okay, I know this might sound controversial, but hey... our jobs as PMs are not to be order-takers. Our jobs are to prioritize customer problems that align to driving business outcomes. If our executives press us to prioritize things that would limit our ability to do those two things, then we should push back. Enjoy the episode as I relate this topic to the first three and how to help prevent top-down dictates in your PM role. ...
Feb 11, 2021•9 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast Identifying gaps in the market and building solutions to fill those gaps to solve customer problems is a key part of product management. On today's episode, Heather James, Founder of the Product-Led Alliance, dropped by the pod to share how and why she Founded the Product-Led Alliance, the gap she saw in the market, and how she and the PLA team are filling those gaps. Here's what we discussed: The launch of PLA's new podcast, "For the Love of Product" What you'll get by joining the Product-Led A...
Feb 08, 2021•18 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast On part 1 of "Never Assume Competitors Are Correct", I'll discuss the pitfalls of copying competitors and why it's never a good idea. If you're looking to get into Product Management, be sure to check us out at path2product.io where you'll have the opportunity to gain the hands-on experience you need to break into your first role as a Product Manager
Feb 04, 2021•5 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast Sign up today for the INDUSTRY conference and get 20% off using promo code: path2product20 The Industry Conference - Sign Up Here On today's episode, I got to sit down with Mike Belsito, Co-Founder of Product Collective and Co-Organizer of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, and co-host of the Rocketship.fm podcast! Here's what we discussed: Mike has been involved with early-stage startups since 2005 Right now, Mike is the Co-Founder of Product Collective and the INDUSTRY conference Mike is the co...
Feb 01, 2021•29 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast As we continue the "Never Assume" bonus series, we're going to focus this week's episode on feature requests and why we should never assume the solutions customers propose are the right ones.
Jan 28, 2021•6 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast You've heard it said that Product Managers and Companies as a whole should be data-driven, but did you know that too much data isn't a good thing? It's like a good wine. The right amount leads to a good time, but having too much can leave you drunk and hungover. On today's episode, Emily Reid, Product Manager at AgeRate comes on the pod to share the difference between being data-driven and data-drunk and how the difference will impact your business. Here's what we discussed: Emily's role as a PM...
Jan 25, 2021•28 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast On the first episode of the Never Assume series, I break down why you should never assume you're correct. It's not our job to come up with ideas. It's our job to prioritize what we work on based on how it's going to reach our business objectives, and we'll never know we're on the right track unless we validate our assumptions and hypotheses!
Jan 21, 2021•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast You always hear that Product Management requires leadership through influence, but have you ever considered being asked to influence the processes of other departments or the tools each department might use to get their jobs done? Well, on today's episode we get to hear from Tunde Oke, Product Manager of Developer Enablement & DevOps Experience @ Dell. Before working on Developer Enablement, Tunde was brought into Dell to lead and product manage a company-wide digital transformation And he c...
Jan 18, 2021•31 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast Huge shout out to this episode's sponsor, Jacobs Creative Services. Check them out at: Jacobs Creative Services On today's episode, I sat down with Abby Hehemann, Sr. Product Marketing Manager @ GetResponse where we explored what the ideal partnership looks like between Product Marketing and Product Management. Here's what we discussed: How Abby got into Product Marketing, pivoting from Customer Success within her company The great culture of professional development and growth at GetRespo...
Jan 11, 2021•30 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Here's what we discussed: What Difrent does as an organization Randal's role as Head of Growth Where Randal started his career and how he transitioned into Product Management How Difrent helped to quell the COVID storm in the UK The massive challenge that Randal was given to solve and the 7-day window he had to do it How the team approached the challenge and the massive team it took to tackle this hairy problem The process of developing and validating the MVP Why you'll likely always have to mak...
Jan 04, 2021•36 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast Whether you're thinking about your target market or your target persona and their problem(s), coming to a precise definition of what problem you're trying to solve and who has that problem is absolutely key for developing concrete, valuable solutions. That's what Aazar and I talk about on this episode, but here's some of the other things we discussed: How Aazar got started in his career and how he got started in startups in Germany His current role in UserPilot as Head of Growth The enviro...
Dec 28, 2020•20 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast Here's what we discussed: The big problems in the employee experience that Anthony found first-hand How Anthony validated the scale of the problem across businesses The behavioral driver creating this problem and how that was the key challenge to overcome Why cultural issues are driven by old-school mindsets of HR and how those sands are shifting The data driving the value behind the E1B2 Collective How moving upstream to the root of the problem is how to maximize impact to change And key takeaw...
Dec 21, 2020•28 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast Here's what we discussed: Randy shared what he does as an Agile coach, and how he's different from others The problem with falling in love with solutions rather than the problem Some of the forces that work against organizational agility How to shift from a silo'd organization to a collaborative product-led company Why the whole organization needs to be involved in product development to stay agile How to prioritize feature requests or potential problems to solve Why it's important to anchor wha...
Dec 14, 2020•24 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Kayla Lee. Kayla is currently a Growth PM at IBM working in IBM's Quantum group and we had a great discussion on how IBM approaches go to market with cutting edge technologies like quantum computing and how reducing the barriers to entry is one of the most critical aspects of scaling adoption. Here's what we discussed: Kayla's role with IBM and how she's helping to grow IBM's Quantum business through community building and partner...
Nov 23, 2020•22 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I spoke with Thane Ringler, speaker, author, podcast host, and development coach. Thane is a good friend, but this conversation isn't going to be your typical product management discussion. Thane doesn't have a PM background, but what he's about to share absolutely applies to you as a product manager. If product launches fail, it's on us and we MUST take ownership of the success or failure of our products. And we exist to make the lives of our customers and users better, so w...
Nov 16, 2020•36 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I got to speak with Peter Knudson, Manager of Product Management at Unity. Before Unity, Peter was a PM at both Zynga and Activision, pretty much spending his entire career as a Product Manager. Peter shares his product career journey and some great lessons he's learned along the way. Here's what we discussed: Peter's background and how he pretty much started his career in Product with Zynga Peter describes himself as a Gaming PM How Peter got involved in the Gamining i...
Nov 09, 2020•22 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I sat down with Preethi Sekar, Product Manager at L&T Technology Servies. On this episode Preethi shares the dangers of taking product requirements from internal stakeholders and not including users in the research and feedback to determine what those product requirements should be. Preethi's story highlights how industry experience does not guarantee you understand your customer. Here's what we talked about: Preethi has a diverse 7 years of B2B and B2C product management...
Nov 02, 2020•22 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I sat down with Liyana Sulaiman, serial entrepreneur and Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder at Pollen. Pollen helps amplify brands by helping them convert social followers into a seller community. I love Liyana's story of how micro-failures can lead you through the necessary iterations to validate the market opportunity, your business model, and product market-fit. Liyana is super smart, thoughtful, and intentional in her work, and I'm excited for you to hear what she had to ...
Oct 26, 2020•29 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I sat down with Evan Groom, Product Manager at Audio Technica. Throughout this series on why products fail, we've looked through the lens of startup founders and their experiences. Today, Evan shares lessons he's learned in a global company and industry leader. We talk about what pitfalls you might run into in well-established organizations that could inhibit the success of your product launches or kill them altogether. Excited for you to hear what Evan has to say, so let's g...
Oct 19, 2020•24 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I sat down with Vytenis Pakenas, CEO of Lucid Agreements. His 15-year journey from multi-time startup founder to CEO is pretty amazing. Today, Vytenis stopped by the podcast to share some key learnings from his JobRely startup experience. From business model fit to finding the right value metrics to track, there's so much to take away from this conversation, so let's get started. Here's what we discussed: How Lucid Agreements is helping to arrange meeting notes verbally...
Oct 12, 2020•27 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast Here's what we discussed: How Mads was an entrepreneur since high school. At the young age of 16, Mads started his first business From Denmark and educated in London, Mads always knew he wanted to have his own company Living all over Europe, with a fascination in tech, Mads now lives in Bogota Columbia with his wife and is VP of Product at a FinTech company, OmniBnk After seeing the future in Crypto, Mads had friends who convinced him to jump in early and do something interesting with cryptocurr...
Oct 05, 2020•21 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I had a great conversation with Piyush Madhukar, Senior Product Manager at ServiceNow. Piyush founded a startup back in 2012 called Shopnrelax. Through this failed startup experience, Piyush learned some very valuable lessons that he's carried into his product and senior product management roles. I'm so grateful Piyush came on to share what he learned, so let's get started. Here's what we discussed: The inspiration for Shopnrelax and how his family's professional backgr...
Sep 28, 2020•24 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome back to Prodcast as we continue our "Why Products Fail" series. On today's episode, I spoke with Aditya Kakrania, multi-time startup founder. We talked through Aditya's first startup, Foomore, how it grew through clever growth hacks and community building but how timing and environmental issues brought Foomore to its knees. This is a great lesson in why startups need to consider the fragility of its business, especially when the business is overly reliant on a very specific market. We al...
Sep 21, 2020•41 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast This is episode two of the Why Products Fail series and on this episode, I sat down with Max de Melo and Patrick Niederdrenk, Co-Owners of America One Luxury Real Estate, to talk about how to successfully break into crowded markets and why so many fail trying. Whether you're launching a startup or in a product team trying to introduce a new product into an existing and crowded market, you'll be glad you took the time to listen. Here's what we talked about: Both originally from Germany, Max...
Sep 14, 2020•27 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, I sat down with Kevin Garret, Founder and CEO of Food4All. What started out as volunteer work in urban farming turned into a passion-based business to help lower-income families develop a livelihood around the world. Kevin learned many lessons on his startup journey, and what he learned from key, early failures helped to shape his startup's success today. Here's what we talked about: The origin story of how urban farming in the Bay Area turned into an ag-tech startup fo...
Sep 07, 2020•35 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast 
