Coffee with Product

Michael Fountain

Coffee with Product is an interview/conversation podcast where a community of Product Leaders shares their best product wisdom & career tips for new and aspiring product managers. Tune in weekly to gain an advantage in your product career.

  1. Don't Wait for Perfect with Lauren Lee

    13/09/2021

    Don't Wait for Perfect with Lauren Lee

    Tune in to listen to Lauren Lee, Founder & CEO ProductLivity, share the stories behind some of her best product wisdom & career tips for new and aspiring product managers. Lauren's product wisdom & career tips discussed in this episode Set aside 10 minutes a week to journal what are the top three things that I really did that added value, or what did I learnBe mindful of your comms strategy when you change something in your product, your end users are people too and if they are on the losing end of a change, you may need to help them through itProduct decagon framework to help you grow your product careerProduct discovery and execution - insights, roadmap, to executionPeople management - beyond IC, peoples, managersLeadership - any PM should be displaying some amount ofCommunication - tons of meetings, devs, designers, stockholders, customers - articulate what you are trying to doStrategic thinking - more important as you get more senior in your product career, what is the right set of things to put on the roadmap in the next 12 monthsUser empathy - understanding users, how to best solve problems, uniquely do that that the alternatives are notAnalysis - understand the data, quant / qual - why success criteriaTechnical fundamentals - speak enough engineering to have trade off conversationsDesign fundamentals - good conversations with your designersNew technologies - always changing Don't wait for perfect, share it, workshop it along the way, get feedbackDone listening? Great, do this next... Tell me how you heard about the podcast with a short 2-minute surveyThen, GO TO https://coffeewithproduct.com AND SUBSCRIBE for complete transcripts of every episode as well as even more curated product content that will help you get started and get ahead in your product career

    44 min
  2. Have an Opinion, Have a Hypothesis with Patrick McNulty

    07/09/2021

    Have an Opinion, Have a Hypothesis with Patrick McNulty

    Tune in to listen to Patrick McNulty, Regional Director at Twilio.com, share the stories behind some of his best GO TO MARKET product wisdom & career tips for new and aspiring/pivoting product managers. Patrick's product wisdom & career tips discussed in this episode Inputs, Outputs, ConstraintsAutonomy, Mastery, Purpose - Find your purpose, something you believe in, and then go put yourself in uncomfortable positions Don't just go looking for something that exists, try to create something, have a hypothesis, have a point of view and go convince somebody that you're the right person to help them solve that.PM's first and foremost in my belief are salespeople, hands-down because a PM at its core is a consensus builderConvey thoughts in writingHave an opinion, have a hypothesis, but you have to be able to take the facts and pivot if something is not working, and quickly do itYour communication style has to adapt to what people are attuned to listening to.When you become a manager one day, you are a career ambassador to your direct reports, give the feedback them the feedback they need to growDon't overlook the power of a compliment, don't overlook the power of an expressionAsking for feedback, what are the things that are going well and what are the things that can be improvedif you're not where you want to be today, set a goal and don't have to talk about five, 10 years, just set three months, a few months into the future, write down what some of those actions are.Done listening? Great, do this next... Tell me how you heard about the podcast with a short 2-minute surveyThen, GO TO https://coffeewithproduct.com AND SUBSCRIBE for complete transcripts of every episode as well as even more curated product content that will help you get started and get ahead in your product career

    51 min
  3. Trust but Verify with Tony Tao

    24/08/2021

    Trust but Verify with Tony Tao

    Tune in to listen to Tony Tao, Product Manager at Zulily share the stories behind some of his best product wisdom & career tips for new and aspiring/pivoting product managers. Tony's product wisdom & career tips discussed in this episode It's possible to become a PM out of college through an APM program (associate product manager)You don't have to be a software engineer coming out\ of college, you can become a product managerThings will not always go according to plan and your career, and that there are going to be a lot of setbacks along the way, so that doesn't mean you should give up on your goals, but it means that you have to be adaptable and how you accomplish your goalsWhen joining a startup, what is your value-prop, what are you bringing to the table Pivot in the same company, find a mentor if you can who has a similar storyThere's a lot of preparation that goes into a good career pivot outcomeTrust, but verify - you are always one quest away from a different outcomeUse a fake door test or proxy metric to test the outcome before building the solutionAsk the question, what can I do that my immediate team can't doYour career is going to be very long, they're going to be opportunities you want to run after and they're going to be opportunities you want to steer clear of, but in the end, you are judged by the effort you have applied along the wayDone listening? Great, do this next... Tell me how you heard about the podcast with a short 2-minute surveyThen, GO TO https://coffeewithproduct.com AND SUBSCRIBE for complete transcripts of every episode as well as even more curated product content that will help you get started and get ahead in your product career

    46 min

About

Coffee with Product is an interview/conversation podcast where a community of Product Leaders shares their best product wisdom & career tips for new and aspiring product managers. Tune in weekly to gain an advantage in your product career.