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. 3d ago

    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

  2. 5d ago

    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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. Aug 20

    The Co-Working Call That Changed Everything: How Founder Isolation Led to Security Besties

    Founders are surrounded by people all day — clients, teams, family — and can still feel completely isolated. Not lonely exactly, but without anyone to be unfiltered with. In this episode, Heather shares the unplanned, honest conversation with her mentor that became the real turning point behind Security Besties. It happened during what was supposed to be a group co-working call. No one else showed up except Heather and her mentor, and one honest question turned into the conversation that unlocked something Heather had been circling for a while: her shift toward becoming the go-to voice on cybersecurity for small business and female founders. Heather talks about what it means to lose the rooms where real honesty can happen once you're the one running things, why that quiet erosion is so easy to miss, and how a single unscripted conversation gave her permission to say what she'd already known under the surface. She also shares the exact moment — a conversation with her husband about what happens if she loses herself in the growth of the business — that became the entry point for everything Security Besties is built on. This episode is the story of why Security Besties exists: not a webinar, not a course, but "me, you, and a cup of coffee" — a place to ask the question you haven't asked yet and get a straight answer. Security Besties Community is $100/month or $1,000/year. 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. Aug 18

    Delegation Isn't Losing Control

    Heather gets honest about the last few weeks of band camp season — and what it actually took to be present for it. Rather than repeating last year's pattern of "present in theory, still doing everything in the background," she delegated research for upcoming blog posts to her kids, Ash and Josh. The work came back great — and that surprised her less than the hesitation she noticed in herself before handing it off. This episode digs into that hesitation: the quiet, common founder belief that control means doing it yourself. Heather unpacks why that's actually exhaustion wearing control's clothing, what real control looks like instead (a good handoff, built on trust and actual capability), and pushes past tasks into the harder version of this conversation — the small decisions that still quietly funnel through you every week because it's faster, not because they need you. 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 6

    You're Not Too Small to Get Hacked — You're the Exact Right Size

    "We're too small to get hacked." Heather hears it almost every week, said a little dismissively, a little tired — like it's obvious, like it's settled. And it might be the most expensive sentence she's ever watched a founder say, because it's usually the last thing they believe before something goes very wrong. In this solo episode, Heather takes that sentence apart: where it comes from, why the logic is backwards, and what it actually costs founders when it turns out to be wrong. Attackers don't care about revenue — they care about access. Most attacks aren't a person deciding your company is worth their time; they're automated scripts scanning thousands of small businesses a day, looking for the door that's unlocked. Small businesses aren't ignored. They're targeted, specifically because they usually have the fewest defenses. Heather walks through a composite story (details changed, shape all too familiar): a five-person marketing shop that brought on a contractor for six months, never turned off their login when the project wrapped, and got quietly breached eight months later through that forgotten credential. The cost wasn't just financial — it was weeks of the founder's time, uncomfortable calls to clients, and trust built over years spent all at once cleaning up a mess one closed-off login could have prevented. This is where Heather's bodyguard-versus-alarm-system framework comes in. An alarm system is reactive — it sits quiet until something's already gone wrong. A bodyguard is proactive — closing the gaps before the bad thing gets the chance to happen. Turning off that contractor's login the day the project ended? That's bodyguard thinking. Heather is clear this episode isn't about scaring anyone into believing they need enterprise-grade security. Small businesses don't need what a bank has — they need what's right-sized for a business their size: a handful of deliberate decisions about who has access to what, what happens the day someone leaves, and where the actual vulnerabilities are in plain language. If you've got that itch — that wait, do I actually know who has access to what in my business feeling — Heather offers a Critical Services Security Assessment built exactly for founders in that position. No jargon, no scare tactics, just a clear, founder-sized look at your actual gaps and what to do about them. 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 4

    From Debate Team to the C-Suite: Saying Yes to AI (Carefully), with Jordan Mazur

    In this episode, Heather sits down with an old friend — she and Jordan Mazur competed together on their high school speech and debate team, and two decades later they're both running fractional practices, just on opposite sides of the product and legal divide. Jordan is the founder of Fourth Rock Counsel PLLC, where after years as in-house counsel for regulated software and fintech-healthcare companies, he now supports emerging companies as fractional general counsel. The conversation kicks off with a LinkedIn post Jordan wrote about AI, and the deeper theme running through it: the difference between lawyers (and leaders) who say no and those who find a path forward. Jordan traces this back to the early GDPR era, when he watched a split emerge between people who took the time to understand both the regulation and the technology — and came up with creative solutions — and people who defaulted to blanket refusal. He and Heather dig into what it actually takes to be a legal or compliance partner rather than a gatekeeper: getting looped in early, before the product doc is finished, so trust gets built before there's a crisis to manage. From there the conversation turns to AI's effect on all of this. Jordan makes the case that AI has "10X'd" the pace at which small and big decisions get made — and made without anyone pausing to ask if they should. Heather and Jordan talk through where AI genuinely helps (drafting, admin, first passes) versus where it can't replace the judgment that comes from years of pattern recognition — whether that's legal risk, regulatory nuance, or knowing which questions a founder didn't think to ask. Heather shares the story of Ash finally giving AI a real shot while debugging PDRM Protect's login page, and the two riff on the now-famous idea that writing code with AI is cheap, but debugging it is where the real cost lives. They also unpack a distinction Heather picked up at Pittsburgh Product Camp: vibe prototyping versus vibe coding — and why mistaking one for the other is how "ready for beta" apps end up very much not ready. The episode closes on where it started: debate. Heather and Jordan talk about what four years of speech and debate actually gave them — not the skill of arguing, but the skill of listening, reading a room, and staying composed when someone disagrees with you in a room full of stakeholders. It's a big part of why, all these years later, a product strategist and a fractional GC can have this conversation at all. Connect with Jordan: Jordan Mazur is the founder of Fourth Rock Counsel PLLC. Find him at fourthrockcounsel.com or on LinkedIn under the vanity URL JD Mazur — and note, he's not the other Jordan Mazur on LinkedIn (spelled with an "e"), who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, or the fuel and recovery nutrition coach for the 49ers. Just this one. 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
    87
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 PDRM Consulting All Rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    Beyond Product Management