The Product Pivot: Real conversations with product people.

TheProductPivot
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The Product Pivot is a podcast by Prodfolio that goes beyond the surface of product management.Through candid conversations with PMs, leaders, and hiring managers, we explore what it actually takes to grow, lead, and navigate the product world — from breaking in to shaping what comes next.Each episode brings honest stories, practical insights, and perspectives you won't find in a textbook. Whether you're early in your PM journey or deep in the craft, there's something here for you.Follow for new episodes, guest announcements, and insights to support your growth in product.https://prodfolio.io/podcast

  1. How Product Managers Actually Get Hired with Andres Tenias, Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist at Lantern

    Jun 23

    How Product Managers Actually Get Hired with Andres Tenias, Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist at Lantern

    Everyone has advice about getting hired in product. Andres Tenias has insights from a technical recruiter perspective.  As a recruiter for close to a decade and now Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist at Lantern, Andres got tired of nodding along to engineers and went and earned a software engineering diploma, so when he screens product and technical candidates, he can tell who actually did the work. He joins us to walk through how PM hiring really works, and where the standard playbook quietly fails people. Some of it stings a little. Andres makes the case that the most beautiful portfolio in the stack is often the weakest, because the candidate can no longer talk through their own decisions. He explains how he tries to surface candidates on LinkedIn, and the one habit that makes you invisible. And he shares a move for the job you didn't get that he describes, as "a little bit stalky." What does a recruiter actually look for in the first ten seconds of your profile? And why does so much of the job hunt start to feel like a personal attack, when almost none of it is? Plus: carrying product skills into healthcare and the public sector, the rise of fractional product work, and the interview cues most candidates miss entirely. Support the show Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

    1h 5m
  2. The PM Skill AI Can't Replace, with Steve Johnson, CEO of Product Growth Leaders

    Jun 9

    The PM Skill AI Can't Replace, with Steve Johnson, CEO of Product Growth Leaders

    ⁠Steve Johnson⁠ asked a training room full of product managers how many had spoken to a customer in the past year. Most hands stayed down. One person admitted they'd been at the company three years without ever meeting one. Steve is CEO and co-founder of Product Growth Leaders, a former VP at Pragmatic Marketing, and one of the original architects of the ⁠QUARTZ Open Framework⁠. He's written books on customer conversations and on turning ideas into products, and he came back to make an uncomfortable case: most people with "product manager" in their title aren't doing product management at all. They're writing tickets, polishing prototypes, and dabbling in code, while the actual job goes undone. So what happens to that job when AI can write the tickets and vibe-code the prototype faster than you can? Steve's answer points at the one thing he says AI cannot replace, and it's the thing most PMs are too busy to do. He also explains why he tells product managers to get to know their customers "even if it requires civil disobedience," when he thinks the AI cost bubble finally bursts, and why private equity firms have quietly flipped to saying "hire a product manager first." What does product management actually mean in 2026, once the busywork belongs to the machines? Check out the ⁠QUARTZ framework⁠ Read ⁠Customer Conversations⁠ Support the show Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

    1h 12m
  3. From IC to Executive: What Actually Changes with Aaron Kesler, VP of Product at RozieAI

    May 26

    From IC to Executive: What Actually Changes with Aaron Kesler, VP of Product at RozieAI

    What if AI could handle the hard part of being a boss for you like telling someone they're not getting the promotion, weighing empathy against the P&L, or being the bad guy? ⁠Aaron Kesler⁠, VP of Product at RozieAI and author of an upcoming book on breaking into product management, has been sitting in that exact seat for a year. He's also sitting on a $4.5M AI story that nobody knew was due to AI at all. There's a moment where he names what nobody told him about going from IC to executive - it's lonely at the top. It's something most new leaders learn the hard way. Support the show Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

    49 min
  4. Product Marketing Is a Partnership, Not a Takeover - with Zach O'Neal

    May 19

    Product Marketing Is a Partnership, Not a Takeover - with Zach O'Neal

    Zach O'Neal spent five years running the subscriber experience as a Product Marketing Manager across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. He now leads the same function at a B2B SaaS startup, at a fraction of the headcount. Most PMs have never worked with a product marketer who sees the role through his lens. Zach gets specific about why, including the four years it took him at Disney to find a real stride with the product team, the hiring filter he uses that has nothing to do with copywriting, and the question he asks instead of running a blame-game post-mortem. Plus why he describes himself as "the voice of the product to the consumer, and the voice of the consumer to the product," and what breaks when no one fills that role. Support the show Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

    56 min
  5. The Dark Side of Product Management Nobody Posts About - with Alyx Priestley

    May 12

    The Dark Side of Product Management Nobody Posts About - with Alyx Priestley

    Most PM content is the highlight reel. This episode is what gets said after the camera turns off. Alyx Priestley is a Product Director who came up running her own creative agency before someone called her "the product person" and she had to go figure out what that meant. She now writes some of the sharper PM essays on Medium and is rebuilding her consultancy alongside an in-stealth sports brand in the golf space. This is the conversation PMs have on their own, not on LinkedIn.  A few things this episode gets into: what Alyx actually says to PMs drowning in imposter syndrome, what to do when leadership doesn't respect the function they hired you to lead, and the bluntest one - what not doing the thing is costing you right now. Support the show Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

    1h 3m
  6. Breaking Into Product Without The Title with Kartikeya Shah, Project Manager II at RozieAI

    May 5

    Breaking Into Product Without The Title with Kartikeya Shah, Project Manager II at RozieAI

    He has a spreadsheet. 350+ contacts and still emails 30–40 of them every couple months. It didn't land him a PM job. What it did was keep him in motion long enough to take the advice that actually worked: stop waiting for the title. Kartikeya Shah is now Project Manager II at RozieAI, where he's been handed a product to manage about a year into a job he took instead of holding out for a full PM role. We get into the two questions he asked at the end of every networking call, why he stopped only reaching out to PMs, and what to do when the books and frameworks don't fit your actual reality. If you're trying to pivot into product right now, don't skip this one.  Support the show Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

    46 min
  7. From Publisher to Product Manager: An Accidental PM's Take on AI

    Apr 28

    From Publisher to Product Manager: An Accidental PM's Take on AI

    She'd been doing the job for nine years before she found out it had a name. ⁠Riëtte Verster ⁠spent the first chapter of her career as a "publisher" at Pearson in South Africa, running Scrum, leading a national reading program in 5 languages, doing all the work of product management without ever calling it that. Then she moved to Canada and discovered her job had a title. Now she's a Senior PM at Liferaft, building AI into a threat-intelligence platform for analysts and investigators, a customer base that is, by training, deeply suspicious of black boxes. Riëtte and Santi (her current Liferaft colleague) get into what actually changes when AI lands on your roadmap, why "shower ideas" are killing your simplification work, and the kind of customer who needs AI to not feel like AI. Plus: the red flag every PM should watch for in themselves. Support the show Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

    39 min
  8. Product Manager or Problem Manager? - Steve Johnson, Product Growth Leaders

    Apr 21

    Product Manager or Problem Manager? - Steve Johnson, Product Growth Leaders

    A company fired its entire product team because nobody could explain what they did. Three months later, they called every one of them back. Steve Johnson has been coaching product teams for 30 years, started as a programmer, stumbled into sales, got pulled into product management by a VP who watched him train salespeople and said "that's not your job." And is the founder of Product Growth Leaders. A few things he gets into: Why "product engineer" might be the wrong answer to the AI question. What he thinks product management is actually about, and why he'd rename the role entirely. The specific bad habit that sinks more PMs than any skill gap. Support the show Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

    50 min
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The Product Pivot is a podcast by Prodfolio that goes beyond the surface of product management.Through candid conversations with PMs, leaders, and hiring managers, we explore what it actually takes to grow, lead, and navigate the product world — from breaking in to shaping what comes next.Each episode brings honest stories, practical insights, and perspectives you won't find in a textbook. Whether you're early in your PM journey or deep in the craft, there's something here for you.Follow for new episodes, guest announcements, and insights to support your growth in product.https://prodfolio.io/podcast

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