Beyond Product Management

Heather Miller (PDRM Consulting)
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Beyond Product Management is a podcast that explores the unexpected intersections of product management with other disciplines, industries, and ideas. We go beyond the usual frameworks to uncover fresh perspectives, unconventional insights, and the skills that truly set great PMs apart.

  1. 1d ago

    Building a Portfolio Career: Leaving 20 Years at MetLife to Design a Life You Love

    Guest: Jennifer Doty — CPA by background, nearly 20-year veteran of MetLife (product, marketing, M&A, and ultimately running U.S. Group Benefits operations), now building a portfolio career that includes customer operations leadership in insurtech, a nutrition and wellness business, speaking and workshop facilitation, and author of two books drawn from her LinkedIn writing. Episode Summary: In this episode, Heather sits down with Jennifer Doty to talk about what happens after the corporate identity falls away. Jennifer shares the story of being notified her MetLife role was being eliminated after 19 years — and how that forced pause became the catalyst for building a portfolio career instead of chasing a single next title. The conversation covers the mental work of separating who you are from what you do, tools for interrupting spiraling or self-doubting thoughts, how to evaluate whether you need a mindset shift versus a real career change, and why "10x thinking" opens up possibilities that incremental improvement never will. Topics Discussed: Jennifer's path from 19 years at MetLife to building a multi-stream portfolio careerSeparating your identity from your job title after a layoff or major transitionA practical thought-reframing exercise for imposter syndrome (write the negative thought, test if it's true, list contrary evidence, rewrite it)The "cancel, clear" technique for interrupting late-night thought spiralsKeeping a running "evidence folder" of compliments and wins to revisit on hard daysHow to tell whether you need to adjust your mindset or actually change direction — matching your current day-to-day against your dream-job visionThe 10x vs. 2x mindset and "kindergarten brainstorming" (no constraints allowed) as tools for bigger thinkingWhat surprised Jennifer most about running multiple income streams at onceHow her LinkedIn posts became the foundation for two booksWhy the fear of being visible online fades once you stop worrying what people thinkConnect with Jennifer Doty: Website LinkedIn PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management. Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations. You can follow us for more daily content: Instagram: @pdrmconsulting LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

  2. 3d ago

    How PDRM Consulting Really Started (And Why It Took Me Three Years to Grow Into It)

    In this solo episode, Heather steps away from guest interviews to share the real story behind PDRM Consulting — not the polished version, but the messy, honest one. She talks about: Nearly 20 years building other people's products at NetHealth and Philips, and why leaving wasn't about escaping a bad jobThe unplugged 10-day trip to the southern Caribbean with her husband John where the idea for PDRM actually startedWhy the company's name — Product Development Risk Management — was chosen with more foresight than they realized at the timeLiving in two worlds for months: showing up fully at her corporate role while quietly founding PDRM on the sideThe corporate burnout and internalized perfectionism she didn't recognize until she was finally out of the environment that caused itHow PDRM evolved from a product-focused idea into a company that also serves underserved female entrepreneurs through security — starting with PDRM Protect and growing into their security assessment workJohn's role throughout — quieter at times, more vocal at others, but always thereMentioned in this episode: Security Besties Community — hands-on cybersecurity support for female entrepreneursPDRM's fractional product and strategy work PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management. Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations. You can follow us for more daily content: Instagram: @pdrmconsulting LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

  3. Sep 10

    My Pricing Philosophy: The Good, the Sore Spots, and What It Cost Me to Learn

    In this solo episode, Heather shares her real, unfiltered pricing philosophy — from a timid first offer with hidden pricing, to an honest in-house debate over whether PDRM's $1,500 security assessment is priced right, to the free webinar she wishes she'd charged for. She breaks down value-based vs. time-based pricing, how she handles "too high" objections, why Security Besties exists to meet real client budgets, the math trick she uses to fight imposter syndrome, and why underpricing costs more than money — it costs capacity. What you'll hear: The myth of pricing by time instead of outcomeValue-based vs. time-based pricing — Heather's rule for choosingThe real tension behind the $1,500 Critical Services Security AssessmentWhy "if you have to ask" pricing works for enterprise but not small businessHow to respond when someone says your price is "too high"Discounting with intention (speaking events, holidays, beta pricing, Cybersecurity Awareness Month)"Starting at" pricing for fractional/custom workThe pricing lesson Heather wishes she'd learned sooner PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management. Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations. You can follow us for more daily content: Instagram: @pdrmconsulting LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

  4. Sep 8

    The Story I Never Told: What 17 Years of Parenting Josh Taught Me About Building a Business

    Today my youngest, Joshua, turns 17 — and it's his senior year, so this one's a little bittersweet. Everyone who knows Josh knows he's one of the kindest people you'll ever meet. But that's his story. In this episode, I'm telling mine: the two months of early contractions, the NICU, finding out Josh is Deaf, and the years without a plan that I, a deeply stubborn, deeply type-A person, could not control. I also get into where the actual founder lessons showed up — because this is still a business podcast: Why I took a different volunteer role for Josh's marching band than I did for Ash's, and what that taught me about matching your involvement to what your business actually needs right nowWhy we launched PDRM at the end of Josh's freshman year — during one of my busiest weeks, not my calmest one — and why waiting for the "right time" is usually just fear with a calendar excuseHow watching my kids navigate hard things gave me the courage to bet on myself as a founderIn this episode: The story behind Josh's early arrival and NICU stayFinding out Josh is Deaf, and parenting without a planLesson 1: Match your role to what the mission needs, not what worked beforeLesson 2: There's no perfect time to launch — timing your calendar isn't the same as timing your courageLesson 3: Where founder courage actually comes from PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management. Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations. You can follow us for more daily content: Instagram: @pdrmconsulting LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

  5. Sep 3

    Build Your Personal Board of Directors (Before You Need It)

    When you're a solo founder, every decision — pricing, hiring, whether to take the client, whether to pivot — lands on you alone, usually at 11pm with nobody to talk it through with. There's no VP down the hall to sanity-check you. In this episode, Heather breaks down why that gap is one of the most dangerous (and least talked about) parts of building a business solo, and why it hits even harder for women founders specifically. Heather walks through the concept of a personal board of directors: not a metaphor, but an actual, intentional group of people you go to on purpose for different kinds of guidance. She breaks it into three categories every founder needs — the been-there-done-that people, the people you vent to, and the peers in the trenches with you right now — and shares how to audit who's already in your orbit, where the gaps usually are, and how to go find the people you're missing. In this episode: Why solo founders inherit no built-in structure — and why that's the single biggest structural disadvantage of going out on your ownWhat the research says about women founders, capital, and access to rooms that matterThe three categories of a personal board: been-there-done-that, the venters, and the in-the-trenches peersWhy venting is legitimate but dangerous as your only categoryHow to audit your existing network and find your gapsWhy the been-there-done-that seat is usually the one you have to go actively find (masterminds, industry groups, paid communities)Why a personal board is reciprocal — you're someone else's been-there-done-that person tooWhy this isn't a one-time project — your board changes as you changeA line worth sitting with: A personal board of directors isn't a luxury for founders who've already made it — it might be the single highest-leverage thing you build this year that has nothing to do with your product at all. If this episode landed for you, send Heather a message on LinkedIn or Instagram and tell her who's already sitting on your personal board. Thanks for listening to Beyond Product Management. I'm Heather Miller — see you in the next episode. PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management. Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations. You can follow us for more daily content: Instagram: @pdrmconsulting LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

  6. Sep 1

    Why Saying No Is a Growth Strategy

    Early on at PDRM, Heather took on a client she knew wasn't right — vague scope, no decision-maker on the call, every red flag waving. She said yes anyway, out of fear. Four months later, she understood exactly what that "yes" had actually cost her. In this episode, Heather breaks down why saying no to the wrong-fit client is one of the most important skills a founder can build — and why it's so much harder than it sounds, especially for women running their own businesses. In this episode: Why a wrong-fit client costs you more than the hours you bill forThe three fears that keep founders saying yes when they should say no (revenue fear, identity, sunk cost)Heather's five warning signs of a wrong-fit client before the contract is signedHow to say no without burning a bridge — and why "no for now" isn't "no forever"Why building your non-negotiables before you need them protects you from talking yourself out of your own standardsSend Heather a message on LinkedIn or Instagram — what's the "no" you've been putting off? PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management. Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations. You can follow us for more daily content: Instagram: @pdrmconsulting LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

  7. Aug 27

    Who Actually Needs Access? A Security + Product Take

    Least privilege isn't just a security rule — it's a product decision. In this solo episode, Heather breaks down access control through two lenses that don't usually talk to each other: security (reduce risk by limiting who can touch what) and product (give people the access their role actually requires, no more and no less). She walks through why "just in case" access requests are tempting — and wrong — from both sides, how access creep quietly builds up over years, and closes with a practical six-point checklist you can run on your own team's access setup. What We CoverThe security lens on least privilege — why every account and integration is a "door," and why access should default to no until proven otherwiseThe product lens on least privilege — access as enablement, not just risk, and why it should map to the job, not the org chartWhy over-provisioning is a product problem, not just a security oneThe "just in case" trap — a real-world-style scenario of how access creeps in through defaults, copied permission sets, and no one wanting to be the bottleneckAccess creep over time — how promotions, team moves, and project rotations leave behind permissions nobody ever cleans upA 6-point access-review checklist you can use with your own team or IT/ops partnerThe Access-Review ChecklistHeather closes the episode with a 6-point checklist you can run on your own team's access setup — tune in for the full list. Mentioned in This EpisodePDRM Consulting's Mini Security Audit — a focused deep dive into your biggest security issue. PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management. Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations. You can follow us for more daily content: Instagram: @pdrmconsulting LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

  8. Aug 25

    What Two Master's Degrees Taught Me About Building a Business

    Heather just finished her second master's degree — and she'll be the first to tell you it wasn't about the letters after her name. In this solo episode, she traces her path from bioengineering undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh, through nearly two decades in corporate health tech at companies like Philips and NetHealth, to an MBA, and finally to a master's in IT project management she started without fully knowing why. The real lesson, she explains, wasn't project management frameworks or business theory. It was proof — collected twice now — that she can walk into something hard and unfamiliar and come out the other side having actually learned something real. That's the same skill required to run a business without a syllabus: sustained, unglamorous discipline toward something you can't fully see the shape of yet. Heather gets candid about the chaos that slowed her down near the finish line — two classes and a 70-plus page final paper that ballooned during editing — and the system that finally got her through it: small pockets of focused time instead of marathon work sessions. She connects that discipline directly to how she built her business, front-loading content before she had any guarantee it would pay off, and trusting the process the same way she trusted going back to school. If you're a founder sitting on the fence about something hard and outside your comfort zone, this episode is your nudge. You don't have to know exactly why yet. Sometimes it only makes sense in hindsight. If you're wrestling with a decision you can't quite see the other side of yet, that's exactly the kind of work Heather does with founders as a fractional CPO. Find her on LinkedIn or Instagram to connect. PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management. Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations. You can follow us for more daily content: Instagram: @pdrmconsulting LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

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About

Beyond Product Management is a podcast that explores the unexpected intersections of product management with other disciplines, industries, and ideas. We go beyond the usual frameworks to uncover fresh perspectives, unconventional insights, and the skills that truly set great PMs apart.

Information

  • Creator
    Heather Miller (PDRM Consulting)
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    91
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 PDRM Consulting All Rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    Beyond Product Management