What we learned from Career Pivots — Consulting, to Product Marketing, to Product Management

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - This episode is brought to you by Smiles Northwest.

00:00:10.000 | When you say hello to someone,

00:00:11.560 | one of the first things they notice is your smile.

00:00:14.120 | That's why having a dentist you can trust

00:00:15.600 | is really important.

00:00:17.180 | At Smiles Northwest, they have you covered,

00:00:19.520 | whether that's cleaning, restorative, cosmetic,

00:00:23.000 | orthodontics, or implants,

00:00:25.140 | they are focused on providing the best comprehensive care

00:00:27.480 | to you and your family.

00:00:29.680 | Smiles Northwest always invests in the latest technology,

00:00:32.800 | has their own in-office dental lab,

00:00:35.000 | and are constantly training their team

00:00:36.480 | in the newest advancements in dentistry.

00:00:38.840 | Visit smilesnw.com and book an appointment today.

00:00:42.000 | Hey guys, today we're talking about making transitions

00:00:46.620 | and pivots in your career.

00:00:48.480 | Joining us is Michael Chen.

00:00:49.560 | Michael, how are you doing?

00:00:50.760 | - Doing well, Tim.

00:00:51.600 | Hey, it's good to see you.

00:00:52.440 | - Good to see you.

00:00:53.280 | So Michael, you and I met when we worked at LinkedIn

00:00:56.280 | in LinkedIn Learning.

00:00:57.360 | It is essentially a startup at the time, right?

00:00:59.200 | It was a new business, they had acquired LinkedIn Learning,

00:01:01.280 | or lynda.com, and now they do this big thing.

00:01:03.760 | And you were a product marketing manager at the time,

00:01:06.800 | but where you started in career

00:01:08.680 | and where you've actually gone from there

00:01:10.280 | are totally different.

00:01:11.640 | So can you tell us a little bit about

00:01:13.320 | maybe what you're doing now,

00:01:14.240 | and then maybe start from the beginning,

00:01:15.480 | like what was your life journey?

00:01:17.120 | - Absolutely.

00:01:17.960 | So today I'm on the product team.

00:01:19.640 | I'm a product manager and I work at Asana.

00:01:22.040 | But my journey starts actually even before LinkedIn, Tim.

00:01:25.060 | When we first met, I had just come out of business school.

00:01:28.680 | And prior to business school,

00:01:30.200 | I was actually a consultant in the brand strategy world.

00:01:32.520 | So a few transitions from brand to product marketing,

00:01:37.360 | stint in head of marketing,

00:01:38.520 | and then now I'm a product manager.

00:01:39.640 | So a lot of different places that have overlapped.

00:01:43.040 | - So can you tell us the very beginning,

00:01:44.840 | 'cause I know that you started in consulting,

00:01:46.560 | and I've always wondered,

00:01:48.360 | is it the right move for early career folks, right?

00:01:51.160 | Is it intense?

00:01:52.280 | And why did you choose to start off with consulting?

00:01:54.960 | - Yeah, consulting, I would absolutely agree with you there.

00:01:58.040 | I think consulting is a really good place to learn.

00:02:00.800 | It's great for early career.

00:02:02.420 | It's great for a lot of people coming out of graduate school

00:02:05.920 | because you get to just learn

00:02:07.400 | and see from so many different industries,

00:02:09.760 | clients, businesses,

00:02:11.000 | and also just work with a lot of different types of people.

00:02:14.200 | So not only do you get to learn the job

00:02:16.720 | and the hard skills and the soft skills

00:02:18.800 | of being a business or strategy expert,

00:02:21.800 | you also learn how to work

00:02:22.960 | with just a lot of different people, personalities,

00:02:25.820 | and learn how to manage upward and downward.

00:02:27.680 | So absolutely, it's a really good place to start.

00:02:31.040 | - Is it considered high stakes?

00:02:33.760 | 'Cause obviously as a consultant, you're working for a firm.

00:02:36.880 | They're entrusting you to go out there

00:02:38.440 | and build these relationships, right?

00:02:39.660 | So if you're describing that as early career,

00:02:42.240 | like you may not have the business savvy

00:02:44.320 | or communication skills to pull it off, right?

00:02:46.360 | And so is it truly a safe place

00:02:48.720 | for the early career people to start,

00:02:50.600 | or what was your experience?

00:02:53.160 | - Yeah, it's a really good point.

00:02:55.400 | I think because you are early career

00:02:58.080 | and coming out of business school,

00:02:59.440 | a ton of consultants as well,

00:03:00.800 | and I wouldn't call them necessarily early career,

00:03:02.880 | but it is a new foray into a space

00:03:06.120 | where you have to be the expert in the industry

00:03:08.960 | or the client that you're working for, right?

00:03:10.640 | High stakes, but I think what you get out of consulting

00:03:13.320 | is you build the ability to learn as fast as possible,

00:03:17.720 | because at some point you do have

00:03:19.480 | to become the expert of that field.

00:03:22.200 | You'll see kind of this theme

00:03:23.640 | as we talk about my different roles and careers,

00:03:26.040 | but consulting is a really good place

00:03:28.480 | where you figure out a learn from your own research,

00:03:31.920 | but also from the people that you are surrounded by.

00:03:34.760 | If you don't know something,

00:03:36.040 | there is probably someone that is around you

00:03:39.000 | who has gone through that industry, that type of project,

00:03:42.880 | whatever it may be for me right now,

00:03:44.840 | the engineers that are around me and the team

00:03:46.680 | to help me with the technical components,

00:03:48.640 | there's someone that you can learn from.

00:03:50.360 | And I think consulting is a place

00:03:52.560 | where you can just really figure out

00:03:54.000 | how to learn as fast as possible

00:03:56.360 | and then become that expert in your space.

00:03:59.600 | - And how long were you a consultant for?

00:04:02.080 | - For about four and a half years.

00:04:03.840 | - Does that feel like the right amount of time

00:04:05.760 | to transition to client side or?

00:04:08.360 | - Yeah, it's a great question.

00:04:10.280 | I have a lot of great friends who are career consultants.

00:04:13.240 | They have gone from the associate

00:04:14.920 | into the partner track, right?

00:04:16.360 | They've spent over a decade, two decades in consulting.

00:04:19.480 | Four years I think is a good amount of time.

00:04:21.640 | It was a good amount of time for me

00:04:23.240 | to have seen a lot of different types

00:04:24.840 | of projects and industries.

00:04:26.600 | And it was the right amount of time for me to say,

00:04:28.960 | I think I know exactly,

00:04:31.040 | I've learned exactly what I've wanted to learn.

00:04:33.200 | And I now wanna go to business school

00:04:34.680 | because I am tired of being the expert in some things

00:04:39.280 | and actually wanna learn and absorb other parts of businesses

00:04:43.040 | that I may not have seen in brand and strategy consulting.

00:04:45.600 | So I would say four years is a good amount of time,

00:04:48.560 | especially if you're coming out of undergrad

00:04:51.000 | for the first time.

00:04:52.600 | And then that number can vary

00:04:54.440 | depending on what your objective is,

00:04:56.600 | what you're trying to get to and learn from it.

00:04:59.600 | - I would totally agree with that.

00:05:00.840 | It kind of mirrors my own experience.

00:05:02.840 | I didn't dive into consulting world,

00:05:04.480 | but I worked at like a digital agency,

00:05:06.280 | which operated very similarly, right?

00:05:08.080 | We're all billable.

00:05:09.240 | And I agree, you're exposed,

00:05:12.040 | in my world, it was like digital marketing.

00:05:13.920 | And so you're exposed to everyone doing the work

00:05:16.120 | from development to design or whatnot.

00:05:18.000 | And to your point, seeing all the different industries,

00:05:20.560 | 'cause they are so different, right?

00:05:22.200 | How you treat a B2B client versus B2C,

00:05:25.800 | the approach is very, very different

00:05:26.960 | 'cause their audience is so varied.

00:05:28.600 | And you're right, it's a perfect ground

00:05:31.400 | for just to learn and expose everything,

00:05:33.360 | whether it's directly or indirectly.

00:05:34.960 | So I agree with you.

00:05:35.800 | For anyone who's starting their career,

00:05:37.760 | I would highly recommend engaging a agency or consulting

00:05:42.280 | to get your feet wet so you can discover what you want.

00:05:45.240 | So, all right, so you got that four and a half years

00:05:47.640 | into consulting, you decided you needed to do

00:05:49.840 | business school.

00:05:52.040 | What were you hoping to get out of that?

00:05:53.480 | And did you walk out with this,

00:05:56.160 | like, did you achieve what you set out to do

00:05:57.600 | or did it kind of evolved as you went through school?

00:06:00.080 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:06:01.120 | A little bit of both, right?

00:06:02.160 | And I think business school is this first pivot point

00:06:05.240 | for a lot of people.

00:06:06.400 | Early career, even mid career,

00:06:08.280 | do I make the investment and spend all of this money

00:06:11.040 | to go to business school?

00:06:12.360 | And for me, that decision was even greater

00:06:14.760 | because I did my undergrad in business.

00:06:16.560 | So the question was,

00:06:18.000 | is this going to be repetitive and duplicative

00:06:20.520 | to what I've already picked up?

00:06:22.080 | Or is it going to be a really great stepping stone

00:06:25.040 | to advance my career?

00:06:25.960 | And the answer has turned out to be the latter.

00:06:27.880 | It's really good.

00:06:29.760 | So I went into business school initially with the thought of,

00:06:32.600 | hey, I want to transition away from being the consultant

00:06:36.080 | where my deliverables were mostly PowerPoints strategy

00:06:39.760 | and being removed from the actual execution

00:06:42.800 | and operation of the work,

00:06:44.200 | to learning how to take those ideas

00:06:45.960 | and bringing it to life, right?

00:06:47.760 | I have always been more of a creative hands-on person

00:06:52.640 | and delivering strategy is fun,

00:06:55.200 | but I wanted to be more involved in how it comes to life.

00:06:59.320 | So I went to business school hoping to make that transition.

00:07:02.600 | I actually wrote my business school essay

00:07:05.000 | around working in ed tech.

00:07:07.240 | So education tech, right?

00:07:09.000 | That was initially what I wanted to go into.

00:07:11.160 | LinkedIn Learning, Tim, as you kind of alluded to,

00:07:13.600 | was the realization of that in a slightly different space,

00:07:16.800 | more of the enterprise benefits space.

00:07:20.360 | But it was really,

00:07:22.000 | I went into business school wanting to learn about

00:07:24.600 | what are the other parts of business

00:07:26.720 | that would be incredibly important

00:07:28.680 | to actually get my hands on those operational pieces.

00:07:32.000 | So I was in marketing and brand.

00:07:33.560 | Can I learn the operations pieces, the finance pieces,

00:07:36.360 | and other areas of business that would make me full

00:07:39.400 | and well-rounded enough?

00:07:41.400 | And then try to see if I can get into the industry.

00:07:44.840 | And tech was, of course, and still is a very hot industry.

00:07:48.560 | LinkedIn, LinkedIn Learning became the culmination of

00:07:52.400 | not only the skill sets, the industry,

00:07:54.920 | but also the subject matter that I wanted to get into.

00:07:57.680 | So I kind of checked all the boxes there.

00:08:00.080 | - Yeah, I'm wondering, you know,

00:08:01.040 | when you're in business school

00:08:02.800 | and you're exploring all these various functions

00:08:05.800 | within an organization and by industry,

00:08:09.040 | for me that usually screams like a executive type aspiration

00:08:13.960 | where like you need to have enough experience

00:08:16.360 | in all these areas to be a C-level executive, right?

00:08:19.160 | 'Cause you need to have experience.

00:08:20.400 | Is that kind of your end goal coming out of that?

00:08:22.560 | Or was it a little more near term where,

00:08:24.800 | you know, it allowed you to kind of distinguish,

00:08:27.320 | you know, marketing out of all these things

00:08:29.360 | is the track you want to start.

00:08:30.360 | Like, how do you make the decision between like

00:08:32.120 | applying what you just said to product side

00:08:34.120 | right out of the gate versus marketing

00:08:36.080 | or even anything else?

00:08:37.640 | - Yeah, the great thing about business school

00:08:40.040 | is that people come from all different walks of life,

00:08:42.880 | all different industries and backgrounds.

00:08:45.320 | The reason why people go to business school

00:08:47.120 | after a few years of working

00:08:48.680 | is because you want to collect that type of actual work,

00:08:52.320 | experience and knowledge,

00:08:53.720 | so that you can feed off of your classmates, teach them.

00:08:57.520 | And the great thing is you can go in with one thing

00:09:00.520 | that you think you're going to come out with.

00:09:02.000 | You can think that you want to be the marketing executive

00:09:04.840 | because that was your former job,

00:09:06.680 | but from the exposure, the classmates, the classes,

00:09:10.640 | the types of projects you do,

00:09:12.320 | that may start shifting and forming your experience

00:09:15.240 | into what you actually want to do.

00:09:16.760 | So to answer your question,

00:09:18.320 | I went in with a little bit more of the near term,

00:09:20.800 | the kind of three to five years.

00:09:22.400 | I want to come out working in this space

00:09:25.280 | a little bit closer to product,

00:09:27.200 | with of course the long-term aspiration

00:09:30.040 | of getting to that executive level,

00:09:32.720 | but leaving the door open

00:09:34.760 | as to exactly what type of role that is and how I get there.

00:09:38.960 | We talked about consulting in a sec, right?

00:09:40.440 | Or a little bit earlier.

00:09:42.320 | A lot of business school MBAs come out as consultants

00:09:45.920 | because we are still exploring

00:09:48.720 | exactly what that shape looks like.

00:09:51.400 | And not only is consulting good for early career,

00:09:54.800 | a lot of people pick it up because we joke,

00:09:56.960 | you probably don't know exactly what you want to do

00:09:58.920 | even after business school.

00:10:00.320 | And it's another way to help understand yourself

00:10:03.000 | and what you're passionate about.

00:10:05.240 | - Is there advice you would give to someone

00:10:07.320 | who's currently going through business school right now?

00:10:09.600 | And there's like one thing they should do or focus on

00:10:12.640 | to make sure they arrive at an end state

00:10:15.120 | where they can actually do something about it?

00:10:16.200 | Like what piece of advice would you give them?

00:10:18.120 | - Yeah, I would say business school

00:10:20.760 | is one of the only times in your life

00:10:23.880 | where you can take protected risks.

00:10:26.240 | So try the thing that you didn't think

00:10:28.880 | you would be interested in,

00:10:29.960 | or that you didn't think would match

00:10:32.200 | whatever it is that you're thinking,

00:10:33.120 | your personality, the thing that you want to do,

00:10:35.320 | because you are in this two year timeframe

00:10:37.840 | where it doesn't actually affect your performance reviews.

00:10:42.840 | The trials and tribulations you go through

00:10:45.920 | with your classmates are relationship building

00:10:49.200 | and bonding events.

00:10:50.480 | I would say take those experiential type classes

00:10:54.040 | where you get to go out into the field, into the industry.

00:10:57.240 | Try something like venture capital.

00:10:59.120 | We had a VC class where I'm a marketer,

00:11:01.840 | taking a VC class.

00:11:02.960 | Didn't know what I was doing,

00:11:03.960 | but because you were in this protected environment

00:11:06.080 | of business school, you were there to learn,

00:11:08.120 | you were there to observe,

00:11:09.560 | and hopefully that can help shape this two year journey

00:11:13.080 | of what you want to exit with.

00:11:14.560 | - All right, so you decide.

00:11:17.560 | Product marketing is for you.

00:11:19.880 | - I'm the marketing. - For you.

00:11:22.080 | Prior to going to LinkedIn,

00:11:23.200 | what was your impression of what that job was about?

00:11:26.400 | - Yeah.

00:11:27.240 | - And then what was it really about

00:11:28.600 | when you started at LinkedIn?

00:11:30.400 | Was it, did it meet all your expectations?

00:11:32.960 | Was it a little different than expected?

00:11:35.160 | Walk us through that a little bit.

00:11:36.360 | - Yeah, so product marketing was not a job

00:11:40.240 | or a term that was on my radar

00:11:42.000 | when I was going to business school.

00:11:44.200 | Actually working in consulting

00:11:46.000 | and specifically brand strategy consulting,

00:11:48.360 | the tech industry, of course I'm a consumer of tech,

00:11:51.640 | but thinking about what it means to work

00:11:53.760 | at one of these companies was also not really on my radar.

00:11:56.520 | A lot of these come through explorations,

00:11:59.360 | case studies, competitions we do in business school.

00:12:01.800 | So your question of what is product marketing,

00:12:05.120 | was it exactly what I was thinking?

00:12:06.560 | I think the answer is actually,

00:12:07.880 | yes, it is much closer to what I had been doing

00:12:12.120 | than what peers or the industry

00:12:15.000 | or even people interviewing me would have suggested, right?

00:12:18.760 | I think the thing you'll see

00:12:20.800 | by transitioning different career role themes

00:12:23.360 | is that there is a lot more overlap.

00:12:26.400 | So product marketing as how I think about it,

00:12:30.280 | especially in enterprise B2B as LinkedIn is,

00:12:33.680 | is this intersection between the sales

00:12:36.880 | and the go-to-market side

00:12:38.360 | and then the R&D and the product side.

00:12:40.520 | The product marketer sits in between that Venn diagram

00:12:44.200 | and tries to take the information, the needs,

00:12:47.080 | the pain points from our actual customers, our sales team,

00:12:51.400 | feeds it into product,

00:12:53.480 | what we call inbound product marketing.

00:12:55.840 | How can we give them the right information

00:12:57.440 | to help sequence and stack the roadmap correctly

00:13:00.360 | so that the products that come out

00:13:02.640 | are actually meeting those customer needs

00:13:04.600 | and that folks actually wanna buy it.

00:13:06.560 | So that's the outbound side,

00:13:07.840 | doing the messaging, positioning,

00:13:09.560 | go-to-market for those products.

00:13:11.600 | You asked about LinkedIn and LinkedIn, absolutely.

00:13:15.560 | It was a great place to see that come to life, right?

00:13:20.480 | LinkedIn has a very, very strong sales side,

00:13:23.400 | has a very strong R&D side.

00:13:25.560 | And to be able to sit in the middle

00:13:27.640 | was a really good opportunity

00:13:28.960 | to not only learn from both of those sides,

00:13:31.720 | but to figure out what's the best way

00:13:33.280 | to put those two together.

00:13:35.520 | Traditionally, product or R&D and sales

00:13:38.040 | don't talk with each other as much.

00:13:40.640 | And at LinkedIn, what we try to do

00:13:42.680 | and what we try to carve out in this,

00:13:44.200 | you mentioned we were kind of

00:13:45.040 | a startup environment in LinkedIn.

00:13:46.520 | How can we make product marketing,

00:13:48.200 | how can we be marketing that center

00:13:50.720 | that can bridge the information

00:13:53.120 | that flows between development and go-to-market?

00:13:55.640 | - What would you say is your high point

00:14:01.720 | at an experience like LinkedIn

00:14:03.480 | versus a low point, right?

00:14:05.600 | Or was it pretty, relatively steady

00:14:07.720 | for you in that experience?

00:14:09.320 | - Yeah, Tim, you must remember

00:14:11.480 | when we were at LinkedIn,

00:14:12.520 | we were, as you mentioned actually in the beginning,

00:14:14.760 | trying to transition the acquired company, Linda,

00:14:18.080 | into the brand new LinkedIn Learning.

00:14:21.480 | That came with a lot of excitement,

00:14:23.400 | which was how can we take all of the good

00:14:26.320 | that was Linda and make it even better

00:14:28.600 | with a new platform?

00:14:30.400 | But at the same time,

00:14:31.920 | how do we make sure that customers

00:14:33.360 | who are so used to and loved linda.com

00:14:36.280 | don't hate the new thing

00:14:38.960 | because no one likes change?

00:14:41.280 | So in answering your question,

00:14:42.920 | I think the most challenging part,

00:14:45.560 | let me start with that,

00:14:46.400 | is maintaining that customer love

00:14:49.520 | from one thing to the next.

00:14:50.960 | Change is always hard.

00:14:52.440 | And if there are any LinkedIn folks

00:14:53.800 | watching this recording,

00:14:54.800 | we did that migration project.

00:14:56.720 | And that migration project was incredibly difficult

00:14:59.200 | because it is more about risk reduction

00:15:02.120 | at first before you can go make people

00:15:05.360 | love this brand new thing.

00:15:07.040 | Change is hard.

00:15:08.000 | Whenever someone changes anything

00:15:09.720 | in your favorite product,

00:15:10.840 | whether it's the color of a button

00:15:12.720 | to how the entire thing runs,

00:15:14.680 | I'm sure most people have this visceral,

00:15:16.600 | like, "I hate this.

00:15:17.840 | "Why did you change the thing I love?"

00:15:19.720 | Feeling first.

00:15:21.040 | And then as you start using it,

00:15:23.080 | you start seeing why the people

00:15:25.160 | who made those decisions love it.

00:15:27.160 | So making sure the customers actually

00:15:29.880 | would continue to be customers

00:15:32.160 | was probably one of the most challenging things.

00:15:34.560 | And then the parts that I love the most

00:15:36.040 | was perhaps interacting

00:15:37.640 | with all the different types of people

00:15:39.600 | with the sales team and seeing

00:15:42.760 | what they're talking about

00:15:43.600 | and forming relationships with them

00:15:45.600 | to make the product better

00:15:46.640 | and forming a relationship with the product team.

00:15:48.360 | And then, of course, getting to talk

00:15:50.080 | to customers ourselves directly

00:15:52.000 | and getting their opinions and inputs.

00:15:53.640 | I think that aggregation

00:15:56.720 | is what makes you feel a lot closer

00:15:59.600 | to the work you're doing.

00:16:01.120 | And honestly, the thing I was looking for

00:16:02.760 | coming out of consulting.

00:16:04.040 | - Yeah, you know, I remember that migration project.

00:16:07.640 | That was tough, man.

00:16:09.120 | (laughing)

00:16:09.960 | - Two plus years.

00:16:11.680 | - Yeah, that was rough.

00:16:13.160 | And I've always appreciated your approach specifically

00:16:17.400 | 'cause I know how stressful it is.

00:16:20.600 | And you managed to still put on

00:16:22.480 | a really friendly demeanor.

00:16:23.840 | Like, you really powered through it.

00:16:25.280 | And I think the team benefited from that.

00:16:27.840 | And naturally, when I discovered

00:16:31.200 | that you were thinking about leaving,

00:16:32.400 | like, it hit me hard, man.

00:16:35.480 | But I'm more interested.

00:16:37.360 | It's like, as you're going through that,

00:16:39.240 | what were you learning about yourself?

00:16:42.040 | Whether it's about your own capability

00:16:44.600 | or desired rooms to grow

00:16:46.480 | that made you even think about

00:16:48.720 | exploring something else?

00:16:49.880 | 'Cause LinkedIn as a company

00:16:51.520 | is known for having great culture, right?

00:16:55.080 | And if you have the desire to grow,

00:16:57.480 | like, you can make a lot of it.

00:16:59.120 | And so I would have thought that you'd be

00:17:00.480 | the typical person who would go up

00:17:01.880 | really high within LinkedIn.

00:17:03.520 | So all that came as a shock to me.

00:17:04.960 | So like, what did you learn about yourself

00:17:06.840 | and what kind of led you to start thinking about

00:17:09.120 | maybe pursuing a different option?

00:17:10.840 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:17:11.840 | LinkedIn is fantastic.

00:17:13.600 | It's a fantastic company.

00:17:14.560 | The people are great.

00:17:15.760 | I remember one of our values is relationships matter, right?

00:17:18.640 | And the fact that we are talking here seven years later

00:17:22.120 | means that relationships really do matter.

00:17:24.720 | We built them and we've kept them.

00:17:26.760 | Some of my closest friends are from LinkedIn

00:17:29.160 | and we still keep in touch today.

00:17:32.080 | So the thinking that I had was,

00:17:34.960 | what did I learn at LinkedIn?

00:17:37.680 | What was I good at and wanted to double down on?

00:17:41.360 | And what did I not see in my role

00:17:44.760 | that I wanted to explore elsewhere?

00:17:47.120 | I think the thing that I've started seeing

00:17:50.440 | and observing about product marketing as a function

00:17:52.400 | is that each company defines product marketing,

00:17:55.560 | the role, the responsibility,

00:17:57.480 | and how you're measured for success very differently.

00:18:00.160 | I mentioned a little bit outbound product marketing.

00:18:04.080 | So the more go-to-market side

00:18:06.080 | where you're doing the messaging, the positioning,

00:18:08.920 | and then the inbound product marketing,

00:18:10.960 | which is more about feature development,

00:18:12.760 | working with the R&D side.

00:18:14.320 | I have always gravitated a little bit more

00:18:18.000 | to the inbound side.

00:18:19.560 | Now, I picked product marketing as a career

00:18:21.040 | because I was very good at the outbound side.

00:18:23.680 | It was a lot of what I did in my brand consulting role,

00:18:26.640 | figuring out how to take something,

00:18:29.200 | put the right narrative and story around it,

00:18:31.120 | and take it to market for customers

00:18:32.600 | that resonate with them, right?

00:18:34.200 | And I really wanted to learn more about the inbound side,

00:18:36.400 | which is creating, building, ideating

00:18:38.760 | about what the different ways of product

00:18:41.480 | in the future can come to life.

00:18:43.320 | And at LinkedIn, I got to see both sides of it,

00:18:46.600 | but I think the thing that I was missing

00:18:48.640 | was working a little bit more closely

00:18:50.920 | with the product management side.

00:18:53.400 | I wanted to work with them to figure out

00:18:55.320 | what features should be coming out,

00:18:57.120 | working with design to figure out

00:18:59.680 | how the thing should look like.

00:19:01.760 | And that was part of my desire to look elsewhere

00:19:05.800 | is because I had this vision

00:19:07.960 | of what product marketing could be,

00:19:10.320 | how to become a successful product marketer.

00:19:12.840 | And when I made the transition out,

00:19:14.280 | it's because I got a call to say,

00:19:15.960 | "Hey, can you come to this company

00:19:18.240 | "to help us define what product marketing could be

00:19:21.400 | "and could look like?"

00:19:22.640 | And I saw that as an opportunity not to go,

00:19:25.240 | not only to go to a new company,

00:19:28.200 | work on something very, very exciting.

00:19:29.880 | The company was Slack.

00:19:31.200 | But also be able to help define at an earlier stage

00:19:35.640 | what product marketing as a function could be.

00:19:39.280 | - Yeah, you're calling out something

00:19:41.280 | which is really important,

00:19:42.360 | which I'm really glad you went through that thought process

00:19:44.720 | 'cause a lot of times when you hear people making pivots,

00:19:48.680 | they're disgruntled or something.

00:19:51.680 | And so when the opportunity comes to them,

00:19:54.360 | they'll grab the opportunity

00:19:55.840 | 'cause it's opportunity to parachute out

00:19:57.400 | and land somewhere else.

00:19:58.360 | And oftentimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.

00:20:01.120 | I can definitely tell you the grass is never greener.

00:20:03.160 | It's always gonna be shades of brown,

00:20:05.160 | but the patches of green are just in different places.

00:20:08.320 | And for me, I don't know actually

00:20:10.040 | if I've ever told you this, Michael,

00:20:11.120 | like LinkedIn for me, my role was also really healthy.

00:20:15.200 | It was really good.

00:20:16.360 | And when I was thinking about where I wanna advance

00:20:20.560 | in my career,

00:20:21.800 | I wanted to be very intentional about my decisions

00:20:24.400 | because leaving a safe space like LinkedIn,

00:20:27.880 | it's a tough decision, right?

00:20:28.960 | 'Cause there's a lot of stability there at the time.

00:20:31.920 | Today, the job market is different.

00:20:33.200 | That statement is totally quickly outdated.

00:20:35.480 | Like what is stability anymore?

00:20:38.160 | But like you, I kind of went through my checklist

00:20:40.960 | of what I wanted to do in my career.

00:20:43.120 | And while you were,

00:20:43.960 | your equivalent is like kind of getting closer to product

00:20:45.920 | and kind of getting and influencing that, the roadmap.

00:20:50.360 | For me, my version was, you know,

00:20:52.520 | 'cause I'm older than you,

00:20:54.440 | although maybe, hopefully I look young.

00:20:55.920 | - Can't see, can't see.

00:20:56.760 | - Can't see.

00:20:57.580 | - I just can't do any of this.

00:20:58.920 | - This beard added like five years to my age.

00:21:01.560 | I think at that point, for me, I was like, you know what?

00:21:06.560 | I want to not only get back to leading teams,

00:21:09.960 | but LinkedIn is known for having such a great culture.

00:21:14.720 | And I felt like I was a culture contributor,

00:21:18.340 | but I wasn't a culture driver.

00:21:19.920 | And so for me, when I was looking at opportunities to leave,

00:21:23.160 | that was my very specific lens.

00:21:25.200 | Like I only would wanna go somewhere

00:21:26.880 | where I believe that the culture wasn't a place

00:21:29.560 | that was open to change, but maybe needed the right catalyst.

00:21:33.920 | And so for me, that was how I kind of looked

00:21:36.640 | at the next opportunity.

00:21:37.680 | And then that became my first director role.

00:21:39.720 | But I think I quickly learned

00:21:41.680 | that your position in the company doesn't necessarily imply

00:21:46.080 | how much influence you have over it with things like culture.

00:21:48.720 | And so that was its whole interesting journey.

00:21:51.360 | And I can get to that another time,

00:21:53.440 | but again, it was a very intentional decision.

00:21:56.340 | I think the takeaway for people here is that, you know,

00:21:59.100 | as you're looking at making pivots,

00:22:01.680 | have a true, honest conversation with yourself

00:22:04.280 | about what you're really looking for.

00:22:06.840 | That allows you to go to interviews

00:22:08.560 | with a very specific set of questions

00:22:10.760 | that might be eye-opening conversations

00:22:13.000 | that the interviewer is not expecting.

00:22:14.880 | And that in itself can make you stand out.

00:22:17.840 | Cool, so you teased us with Slack.

00:22:20.400 | And you kind of talked about the opportunities

00:22:23.080 | of presenting yourself there.

00:22:24.240 | Can you tell us a little bit about like, again,

00:22:26.200 | expectations meeting reality?

00:22:27.680 | Is that what you thought it was?

00:22:30.120 | Grass is greener, grass is the same.

00:22:32.760 | - Well, so actually, right before I talk about Slack,

00:22:34.640 | you said something that really clicked with me,

00:22:37.120 | which was going toward an opportunity

00:22:39.600 | instead of running away from something that you don't like.

00:22:43.120 | Let's talk about that for a second.

00:22:44.600 | And I'll tap into the risk tolerance part

00:22:47.320 | because that is a very big barrier

00:22:49.680 | even before I decided to go interview somewhere else, right?

00:22:52.840 | - Yeah, okay, yeah.

00:22:53.680 | - Let's talk about a few things

00:22:54.500 | and then let's talk about Slack after.

00:22:56.920 | The first one, and I actually would be very curious

00:22:59.160 | to how you thought about this as well

00:23:00.760 | in your own transitions.

00:23:02.960 | The running toward an opportunity piece

00:23:05.520 | is something that I've heard a lot.

00:23:08.120 | Don't leave your job because you are fed up with it.

00:23:11.280 | You're frustrated because then you've limited

00:23:14.200 | your scope and visibility into what the next thing is.

00:23:18.120 | You will probably reduce the number of opportunities

00:23:22.320 | because you're just trying to get away from something

00:23:25.400 | if you're able to, right?

00:23:26.760 | And I say this because not everyone has the ability

00:23:30.200 | to not exit or hold on.

00:23:32.600 | But if you're able to not run away

00:23:34.620 | and see those opportunities that excite you,

00:23:37.480 | I think one, it helps you stay longer at the next job.

00:23:40.680 | Two, it helps you enjoy it more.

00:23:42.960 | But it also helps you succeed in the interview

00:23:46.040 | and the actual job more because something drew you in

00:23:49.380 | that you want to build more on.

00:23:51.280 | And building something, not just features and products,

00:23:55.160 | but building your own skillset, personality,

00:23:59.600 | your own journey, and that is just done that much better

00:24:03.920 | if you're going toward instead of away.

00:24:05.880 | But Tim, how did you think about it

00:24:09.040 | and how did you also approach the risk equation?

00:24:11.440 | Because LinkedIn is a fantastic company, still is,

00:24:14.280 | and it's hard to leave a known for an unknown.

00:24:18.920 | And I'm curious how you decided then,

00:24:20.400 | and then let's talk about Slack afterwards.

00:24:21.800 | - Yeah, definitely.

00:24:23.280 | And actually, there's another experience

00:24:24.360 | from earlier in my career where I absolutely ran away

00:24:26.960 | from something like you described,

00:24:28.320 | and it totally, I flamed out from that decision.

00:24:31.380 | For LinkedIn, because I wanted to see

00:24:36.520 | if I could shape culture, I had to spend some time

00:24:40.600 | thinking about what culture meant to me, right?

00:24:43.520 | 'Cause again, when you talk about culture,

00:24:45.320 | it seems like a very soft thing.

00:24:47.760 | LinkedIn was actually the only place I've ever seen

00:24:49.600 | where they operationalized it by metric

00:24:51.400 | and measured it by success,

00:24:52.440 | and it held people accountable

00:24:53.880 | at all levels of organization.

00:24:55.920 | So for me, I wanted to see if I could replicate that.

00:24:58.640 | And so when I'm looking at other companies

00:25:00.660 | that have a certain executive structure,

00:25:04.520 | a lot of it was understanding

00:25:05.760 | what's my future VP's point of view on culture

00:25:08.220 | and what their tolerance was.

00:25:09.680 | I also had an aspect where I wanna learn

00:25:12.200 | how to grow my abilities to lead larger teams.

00:25:16.720 | And so I had a little checklist.

00:25:19.120 | It went really granular from my abilities to mentor,

00:25:24.120 | my good as I thought it was.

00:25:26.120 | So there was a hypothesis that I had about myself.

00:25:28.800 | My ability to take culture, influence my team

00:25:32.360 | and develop people was always a passion of mine.

00:25:34.880 | Learning how I can shape the future of technology investment

00:25:41.140 | was another kind of interest area of mine.

00:25:44.520 | And so when I was interviewing there,

00:25:46.000 | I found out that they're still on WordPress.

00:25:47.640 | Oh, there's an opportunity to maybe re-platform.

00:25:50.520 | So there's a potential there

00:25:52.440 | to do something really, really big.

00:25:55.000 | I think a lot of it is just other areas to cut my teeth.

00:25:57.900 | At LinkedIn, I had budgets, but I never influenced budget,

00:26:04.320 | nor was I held accountable to pipeline.

00:26:08.160 | And that's an area that always kind of freaked me out.

00:26:10.600 | And so I wanted, without the safety of business school,

00:26:15.400 | I wanted to take the risk and expose myself

00:26:17.400 | and see if I can do that.

00:26:18.240 | And hopefully it would have worked out better than worse.

00:26:20.800 | Thankfully, I wasn't exposed for being a fraud.

00:26:22.640 | Thankfully, I did a good job.

00:26:24.480 | I mean, those are the kinds of things where like,

00:26:25.920 | those are responsibilities that I never had before

00:26:29.600 | that enticed me that would have projected myself.

00:26:31.520 | How about for you?

00:26:32.440 | - Yeah, it's real, right?

00:26:33.600 | I mean, you mentioned being a fraud.

00:26:35.560 | Imposter syndrome is a very real thing.

00:26:37.280 | - Absolutely.

00:26:38.640 | - The fear of not knowing what that next job may look like,

00:26:42.000 | whether it's just a new company

00:26:43.360 | or taking a completely different role,

00:26:45.360 | that risk is probably the biggest barrier for myself.

00:26:49.800 | And I'm sure for a lot of folks that we know

00:26:52.040 | to even consider making a change.

00:26:54.440 | There was one,

00:26:57.480 | learned a lot of great things in business school.

00:27:00.080 | There's one professor that said,

00:27:01.960 | if you're going into your next job

00:27:03.520 | and you feel like you already know how to do 80% of the job,

00:27:06.400 | then it's too junior of a role for you.

00:27:08.840 | He said something in the percentage,

00:27:12.200 | it can of course vary by person,

00:27:13.520 | but he's like, you should only know maybe 40%

00:27:17.240 | of how to do the job,

00:27:19.360 | because you also want to continue growing

00:27:21.240 | and learning from that job.

00:27:23.040 | - Wow, that's deep.

00:27:24.520 | - Yeah, and again, one of the,

00:27:27.080 | it's easier to say than it is to actually do,

00:27:30.400 | but imposter syndrome is real for everyone, for all of us,

00:27:34.480 | but the spirit of learning and observing

00:27:37.880 | how other people around you do it,

00:27:39.360 | you will always be surrounded

00:27:40.800 | by people who can teach you something.

00:27:43.680 | And to your point about culture,

00:27:44.840 | if you're in a company that has that mentality,

00:27:47.560 | then you can become the person that you know you can be,

00:27:51.920 | that you wanted to be in joining that company

00:27:54.480 | and grow your way into it.

00:27:56.320 | So taking a risk is obviously hard, that's why it's a risk.

00:28:00.160 | But if you can imagine and foresee yourself in that role,

00:28:04.800 | I think that's what can help generate the confidence

00:28:07.400 | for you to even consider taking that leap

00:28:09.600 | and then actually getting there.

00:28:11.040 | - Yeah, that's, oh man, that statement about

00:28:13.240 | if you already know 80% of the job is too junior for you,

00:28:15.920 | that is fascinating, 'cause talking about risk,

00:28:19.960 | there's a piece of it which is like going,

00:28:21.760 | staying within a realm of your comfort zone, right,

00:28:23.960 | and still advancing your career.

00:28:25.880 | Now, if you're, let's say you do the 40% role

00:28:28.760 | where like you're only 40% knowledgeable,

00:28:30.960 | but you know enough to be dangerous to cover the other 60,

00:28:34.960 | the challenge there is,

00:28:36.680 | as you're moving into a senior leadership team,

00:28:38.840 | your dependency on your team is then more important.

00:28:41.920 | So is the incumbent team positioned in a way

00:28:45.440 | to allow you to succeed?

00:28:47.280 | And in today's economy market,

00:28:49.680 | it's hard to find the headcount

00:28:51.480 | if there's no budget either, right?

00:28:52.880 | So like there's so many things you need to take

00:28:54.440 | into consideration, like can I get the most out of my team?

00:28:57.160 | Are they high-performing?

00:28:58.040 | Are there opportunities for improvement or managing out?

00:29:02.040 | But if I were to manage out,

00:29:03.680 | would I even get the backfill?

00:29:05.120 | If the answer is no,

00:29:06.880 | then you need to rethink the whole strategy, right?

00:29:08.320 | It's about development or shifting,

00:29:10.360 | helping people shift careers.

00:29:11.800 | But yeah, that risk piece there is really high for,

00:29:15.080 | you know, as you get up the chain for, you know,

00:29:17.040 | responsibility.

00:29:18.160 | - Yeah, and I'm gonna go on one more tangent,

00:29:19.800 | but I think it's relevant.

00:29:21.000 | So this is from a me looking for a job standpoint, right?

00:29:25.000 | I've also built teams and hired them.

00:29:27.080 | And I think it's a similar type of philosophy

00:29:29.280 | and mentality in hiring teams.

00:29:32.440 | Of course, it's easier to hire someone

00:29:34.840 | who has the title on their resume,

00:29:36.840 | because you know that they've done something similar

00:29:39.080 | for that job, right?

00:29:40.160 | Less they have to learn,

00:29:41.160 | they're probably at that 80% mark threshold,

00:29:44.320 | so they can come into the company,

00:29:45.920 | figure it out and just start running in the first few weeks.

00:29:49.880 | But what I've actually learned

00:29:51.560 | and where I've found some of my most successful hires

00:29:54.400 | were people who did not have that same job title,

00:29:57.920 | but you recognize transferable skills and talent.

00:30:02.040 | If you see someone who has potential and has built a story,

00:30:06.240 | and you see that they are capable and eager to learn,

00:30:11.520 | that person can grow into something

00:30:13.840 | that could be much greater and do make more impact

00:30:17.760 | than that person who's been doing it for a little bit,

00:30:19.920 | for their past job already, right?

00:30:22.760 | - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:30:25.160 | It's like, do they have that proverbial growth mindset,

00:30:28.120 | right?

00:30:29.240 | Do they have the curiosity to learn?

00:30:31.440 | And then for you, it's up to the manager

00:30:34.400 | to kind of uncork that a little bit and let it all out,

00:30:37.720 | 'cause they may not have had the opportunity

00:30:39.600 | to really fully explore.

00:30:41.040 | I actually really enjoy that part of management.

00:30:44.000 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:30:45.800 | - Yeah, it's much easier to teach a hard skill.

00:30:49.320 | Actually, you tell me about your roles as well.

00:30:52.800 | I feel like it's easier to teach someone

00:30:55.440 | how to create a great slide deck or some technical skill

00:30:59.720 | than it is to teach someone how to be curious

00:31:03.080 | or how to develop good relationships

00:31:05.240 | with your sales partner or your design partner.

00:31:08.720 | If you see someone with the soft skill ability

00:31:11.840 | who has the potential to learn and build,

00:31:14.200 | I think as a manager, as a leader,

00:31:16.400 | you can mold and shape that person or that team

00:31:20.160 | into a direction that helps them

00:31:22.960 | and also helps the company.

00:31:24.400 | - Yeah, no, in every individual that I've ever mentored,

00:31:29.600 | there is a process that I go through,

00:31:32.280 | and it's the first one.

00:31:35.080 | If you're watching this, you've been through this with me,

00:31:36.880 | you're probably chuckling right now,

00:31:37.720 | 'cause I don't even know what to call this thing.

00:31:40.160 | I need to brand it.

00:31:41.920 | Basically, it's like understanding what, as a human,

00:31:45.560 | what gives you joy,

00:31:47.360 | understanding what are your values

00:31:49.840 | that you can't negotiate on,

00:31:52.120 | and then what the next two to three years looks like.

00:31:54.760 | And the reason why that applies to your conversation

00:31:57.040 | and uncovering growth mindset or potential to learn

00:32:00.440 | is every individual is different.

00:32:02.440 | So as a manager, you need to understand

00:32:04.000 | exactly how your team is wired and what makes them happy.

00:32:08.040 | 'Cause some people, just getting acknowledgment is joy.

00:32:11.480 | Some people don't want an acknowledgment.

00:32:14.320 | And for them, it's something else.

00:32:15.760 | And some people, it's more around being around people,

00:32:18.600 | whereas other people are around joy

00:32:20.240 | from getting a task completed.

00:32:21.840 | So understanding how they're wired,

00:32:23.720 | then tying into what their core values are.

00:32:27.440 | So for me, I'm a very people-oriented,

00:32:30.400 | so respect and accountability is really important for me.

00:32:35.400 | When you tie respect and accountability

00:32:38.560 | with things that give me joy,

00:32:40.400 | and you package into what I wanna do

00:32:41.680 | in three to five years,

00:32:42.600 | there's a very specific track there I can go on

00:32:45.240 | that's tied into hard skills and soft skills.

00:32:47.320 | So I typically do that.

00:32:48.440 | I think once you start assuming everyone's kinda like you

00:32:52.240 | and you get stuck in mentoring

00:32:54.040 | as if you're mentoring yourself,

00:32:55.080 | then you kind of limit the capability

00:32:57.400 | to help people grow at all.

00:32:59.720 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:01.720 | And these folks bring in so much,

00:33:04.240 | not so much, but like really good ideas

00:33:06.160 | that you may have not even thought about.

00:33:08.600 | If you as a manager can be learning,

00:33:11.040 | I think that's one of the best things

00:33:13.320 | because you're expanding your knowledge base.

00:33:16.280 | You're expanding your own potential

00:33:18.480 | if you have people that you've hired for your team.

00:33:22.200 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:23.160 | I am constantly reminding my team to challenge me.

00:33:26.760 | And sometimes I'll throw something out there

00:33:29.440 | that I'm hoping someone challenges

00:33:30.880 | and no one challenges me,

00:33:32.000 | I'll call everyone out on it.

00:33:33.520 | I'm like, what I just said made no sense.

00:33:36.440 | Like, why is everyone nodding their head?

00:33:37.680 | - You're playing games in your head.

00:33:39.080 | - I know, it's like four teachers, yeah.

00:33:41.600 | But I think that goes to the culture, right?

00:33:43.520 | A culture where it's a safe space

00:33:45.720 | for people to truly be themselves,

00:33:47.560 | to feel empowered, to challenge the status quo.

00:33:50.040 | Like, that's what my management style is all about, right?

00:33:52.840 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:54.680 | - Cool, so you're at Slack.

00:33:56.760 | And so, what did you discover about yourself there?

00:34:00.160 | And 'cause I'm assuming from there,

00:34:02.120 | was it from there where you eventually went to product side?

00:34:05.960 | - No, so I was still in product marketing at Slack.

00:34:08.280 | - Okay.

00:34:09.120 | - Different level and also just a different scope, right?

00:34:12.280 | So a lot more on the, well, I'll talk about it.

00:34:14.320 | I ended up a lot more on the inbound side,

00:34:16.680 | but it wasn't an easy journey to get there.

00:34:18.960 | - Okay.

00:34:19.800 | - So going to Slack, well, the first thing you notice

00:34:22.280 | is LinkedIn is what, it was a 15,000 person company or so,

00:34:25.840 | even though we were a small group,

00:34:27.080 | it's still a massive company.

00:34:28.840 | Slack was about 800 or so people when I joined.

00:34:31.960 | And you can feel the energy, momentum, velocity,

00:34:34.960 | everything being a little different there.

00:34:37.400 | People are a lot scrappier, as we like to say,

00:34:40.720 | in the tech world, right?

00:34:42.000 | You have to figure out what, how to do the next thing,

00:34:45.000 | because that path has not yet been set for you.

00:34:48.680 | I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons

00:34:50.520 | I was brought into Slack is to help define

00:34:53.440 | what product marketing as a function

00:34:55.600 | could be for the company.

00:34:57.400 | And I would say it wasn't easy to do that.

00:35:01.160 | The team at Slack, so I would say product marketing,

00:35:05.760 | the core responsibility is to take a product to market.

00:35:09.960 | You have to market that product.

00:35:11.960 | And the inbound side, and this is through

00:35:14.840 | a lot of reflection and just talking through

00:35:16.760 | and working through a lot of different places,

00:35:18.920 | the inbound side is a nice to have.

00:35:20.600 | And I believe it's really important

00:35:21.800 | because it makes me better at the outbound side.

00:35:23.920 | If I know why we chose to build a product

00:35:27.080 | in the way that we did so,

00:35:28.360 | the trade-offs that we considered,

00:35:30.040 | then I can actually craft the narrative for the market

00:35:34.360 | that talks about why the value of the final product

00:35:38.280 | is what it is and how it comes together.

00:35:41.000 | But that said, when push comes to shove,

00:35:44.160 | you have to be a good outbound go-to-market product marketer

00:35:48.560 | to succeed in that job.

00:35:50.080 | Side of that is, well, if you're a PM watching this,

00:35:54.280 | you're saying, hey, the inbound side is actually my job.

00:35:57.640 | I'm the one who should really be deciding

00:36:00.560 | how the roadmap is built and sequenced

00:36:02.760 | because, well, at the end of the day,

00:36:04.640 | it is the product manager's core responsibility

00:36:07.640 | to set the product strategy, the roadmap,

00:36:10.080 | and figure out how a product comes to life.

00:36:13.520 | And the reason I give that context is as a PMM at Slack,

00:36:17.080 | trying to say, hey, every PMM should have that inbound role

00:36:21.160 | was first met with a lot of resistance.

00:36:23.160 | It felt like stepping on toes, right?

00:36:25.440 | Why are you taking this part of my job

00:36:27.840 | as opposed to you can help me do my job better

00:36:31.240 | and add different perspectives

00:36:33.080 | that I may not have considered yet?

00:36:34.840 | Very fair perspective to hold, right?

00:36:38.720 | If you are used to doing it one way

00:36:40.120 | and someone comes in and says,

00:36:41.200 | no, you got to do your job differently,

00:36:43.080 | your first reaction is going to be, no, I don't.

00:36:45.560 | I already know what I'm doing.

00:36:47.160 | And what value are you going to add?

00:36:49.640 | And I think it's that last question,

00:36:52.320 | what value are you going to add

00:36:54.200 | that really helped me break through

00:36:55.720 | and form that partnership with the product team,

00:36:59.240 | just as we did at LinkedIn Form8 with the sales team

00:37:01.720 | that helped me shape this kind of,

00:37:04.840 | we'll call it a full stack

00:37:06.120 | or both inbound and outbound product marketer.

00:37:08.680 | - Can you give me an example

00:37:09.520 | of how you kind of broke through that wall

00:37:11.560 | and came to that ultimate realization

00:37:14.040 | and alignment with your teams?

00:37:15.640 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:37:16.560 | It took some time.

00:37:18.800 | And I think it took relationship building.

00:37:21.440 | It took bringing the right pieces of information

00:37:24.800 | such as data that you were able to collect,

00:37:27.360 | research that we as marketers tend to do,

00:37:30.200 | user experience research or some quantitative research.

00:37:33.320 | And it also took a success story

00:37:35.680 | to actually make it come to life.

00:37:37.640 | It's hard, it's hard to do.

00:37:39.720 | So a few of those things,

00:37:41.280 | I think getting to know some of those product managers

00:37:44.640 | or the R&D side, what they're looking for,

00:37:47.440 | where their gaps, not in terms of what they can do,

00:37:50.040 | but in terms of what time they have,

00:37:52.800 | how can you help add some value,

00:37:55.360 | filling in more sales stories or VOCs,

00:37:58.320 | voice of customers, for example, is one.

00:38:00.320 | Building those relationships, giving them that data,

00:38:04.600 | how many customers of what size of what revenue

00:38:08.880 | are saying they need X versus Y

00:38:11.760 | and helping them think through that trade-off decision

00:38:15.320 | was really helpful and important.

00:38:17.280 | And lastly, not just talking,

00:38:20.000 | showing how that partnership

00:38:22.880 | can actually make a product better

00:38:25.880 | and how the design as well as the go-to-market is better

00:38:29.720 | with that kind of embedded PMM

00:38:32.080 | was what helped me create that kind of relationship

00:38:36.200 | within Slack.

00:38:37.720 | - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:38:38.640 | I mean, you're talking about

00:38:39.720 | the art of building credibility, right?

00:38:43.240 | And I think you're totally right.

00:38:46.080 | If you don't spend time in their shoe

00:38:48.560 | understanding what they're responsible for

00:38:51.320 | and what they're going to be measured by,

00:38:53.560 | then naturally they're gonna take a defensive stance, right?

00:38:56.680 | 'Cause you're gonna make a decision

00:38:58.760 | that could impact their livelihood,

00:39:00.400 | their responsibility or scope.

00:39:02.080 | But like, yeah, I like how you're data-driven,

00:39:05.480 | results-driven approach to kind of help them understand,

00:39:07.840 | first of all, that you understand

00:39:09.000 | what they're trying to solve for

00:39:10.520 | and how you actually add value to that is important.

00:39:13.720 | And I think the better storyteller you are

00:39:17.360 | in helping them understand the ultimate vision

00:39:19.640 | and how this thing works together

00:39:21.160 | is really, really important.

00:39:22.960 | More often than not, people are not good storytellers

00:39:25.040 | and they come in with a very focused lens

00:39:28.360 | and it's not clear why it matters or why you should care,

00:39:32.000 | then becomes very confrontational.

00:39:33.800 | And those are the mistakes I made very early on in my career

00:39:37.440 | coming in with a lot of passion and a lot of fire

00:39:39.000 | and ambition and just bull in a China shop.

00:39:42.680 | - Yeah.

00:39:43.520 | - You don't want to be that guy.

00:39:44.840 | - It's, you said it perfectly, it's the empathy.

00:39:48.760 | It's being in their shoes.

00:39:50.640 | I mean, hey, we're talking about

00:39:52.440 | what it looks like to transition careers.

00:39:53.920 | It's a very similar mentality

00:39:56.640 | as building a product for the market, right?

00:39:59.000 | You have to know the customer,

00:40:00.520 | you have to know what their pains are

00:40:02.800 | and you have to know how to make it better

00:40:05.360 | and be able to craft that story, that narrative

00:40:08.920 | and help them see why your vision, idea, product,

00:40:13.360 | anything can make their lives better.

00:40:16.520 | You can't assume that a customer

00:40:18.080 | is going to buy your feature of your product.

00:40:19.960 | You can't assume that a partner at work

00:40:22.640 | will want to work with you.

00:40:24.720 | But if you know what it is that they're trying to get to,

00:40:27.440 | then I think at the very least carves the path

00:40:31.320 | that you can take to get to that destination.

00:40:34.400 | - So with this journey,

00:40:35.840 | starting from where we started this conversation,

00:40:38.080 | you're moving closer and closer and closer to the customer.

00:40:41.040 | You're moving closer and closer and closer

00:40:42.960 | to product and roadmap.

00:40:44.000 | So was this the juncture where you're like,

00:40:46.720 | hey, marketing versus product,

00:40:51.240 | was that the decision point or did it happen after Slack?

00:40:56.240 | - Yeah, so that question started

00:41:00.240 | maybe even when I applied to business school

00:41:03.160 | and went through it.

00:41:04.600 | And LinkedIn and Slack were both experiences

00:41:08.920 | in building up the marketing background that I had

00:41:13.280 | because I was interested in it

00:41:14.840 | and because I wasn't yet ready

00:41:16.720 | or it felt like too big of a risk

00:41:19.040 | to jump from what I've known

00:41:21.480 | and have been very good at for the past 10 or so years

00:41:24.520 | at this point into what I thought was a completely new field.

00:41:28.840 | To answer your question,

00:41:30.080 | I took one more detour

00:41:31.400 | before I went into product management.

00:41:33.440 | And it was another one of those go-toward experiences

00:41:37.040 | where now that I have done product marketing,

00:41:40.320 | now that I had done brand and consulting,

00:41:43.000 | what could it look like to actually run marketing

00:41:45.720 | for a whole company?

00:41:47.400 | And I decided to take that leap,

00:41:49.320 | a very, very scary leap,

00:41:51.560 | because marketing, as you know, Tim,

00:41:53.400 | you do a part of marketing

00:41:55.960 | that I would never be able to do, right?

00:41:58.520 | And as we know, marketing is so broad

00:42:01.320 | from demand generation to web strategy

00:42:03.600 | to product marketing, brand strategy,

00:42:06.120 | content generation, social,

00:42:07.960 | so much happens in marketing.

00:42:10.800 | And to lead a marketing team was super exciting,

00:42:15.560 | to be able to build out what you think

00:42:17.760 | all of those functions should be able to do

00:42:20.120 | and then create the holistic impact

00:42:22.840 | of how that story gets told to market.

00:42:25.440 | So I took a little detour there

00:42:27.080 | trying to learn about everything marketing

00:42:30.440 | before I then committed to,

00:42:32.320 | I actually am interested in the product

00:42:34.880 | and the development side,

00:42:36.320 | and made a switch, actually,

00:42:38.240 | from being pretty high up in marketing

00:42:40.400 | to learning how to become a product manager.

00:42:43.680 | - So that's interesting.

00:42:45.400 | So you're kind of starting at the high

00:42:47.160 | where you've hit that final, that pinnacle point.

00:42:50.400 | How long into that experience

00:42:53.080 | did you have the realization?

00:42:54.080 | It's like, you know what?

00:42:55.080 | This isn't for me.

00:42:55.920 | 'Cause it's a very big decision

00:42:58.040 | and impacts a lot of people.

00:43:00.200 | So what did that look like for you?

00:43:02.040 | - Yeah, it's wild emotions fluctuating up and down, right?

00:43:07.040 | So it wasn't easy to come to that realization

00:43:11.600 | because of, well, a few things, right?

00:43:13.720 | Risk, not only what does it look like to switch jobs,

00:43:15.760 | but when you're at a certain point in your career,

00:43:18.720 | the opportunity cost of switching is much higher.

00:43:21.480 | And I think that just becomes another dimension

00:43:24.200 | in transitioning.

00:43:26.160 | I think, so a few things, right?

00:43:28.920 | One is the passion.

00:43:30.440 | What gives me, what gives you energy

00:43:33.120 | to want to do that next thing?

00:43:35.160 | What makes you wanna leave something on one day

00:43:37.400 | and then pick it right back up the next day?

00:43:39.440 | And for me, so much of my impetus

00:43:41.680 | for going to business school,

00:43:42.800 | for going into product marketing and tech

00:43:44.960 | was to be close to the product.

00:43:47.160 | I love designing, working with the R&D side

00:43:51.000 | to see and figure out how should your product roadmap

00:43:54.880 | and strategy feel.

00:43:56.880 | And when you're taking on everything in marketing,

00:44:00.160 | well, the product marketing side is such a small sliver.

00:44:03.160 | And depending on the stage of company you're at,

00:44:05.080 | your attention may have to be completely,

00:44:07.160 | somewhere completely different.

00:44:08.480 | Brand building was one of them.

00:44:10.640 | Loved it, different than product.

00:44:12.640 | And I also needed to generate pipeline,

00:44:15.040 | which was quite frankly a skillset

00:44:17.120 | that I hadn't built in to product marketing.

00:44:19.880 | And it was that frantic learning and trying to figure out

00:44:22.600 | how do you build demand generation program

00:44:26.480 | with the marketing ops and systems and technology

00:44:29.000 | to feed into it.

00:44:30.080 | It was a very exciting

00:44:34.640 | and also a very humbling experience for me

00:44:37.480 | to know what I could do and was good at,

00:44:40.320 | to learn what I didn't know how to do

00:44:42.760 | and figure out how to plug those gaps,

00:44:44.200 | either through hiring or learning it myself.

00:44:46.960 | And then ultimately that realization of,

00:44:49.280 | hey, maybe product was the direction I wanted to go in

00:44:53.680 | versus higher up in marketing.

00:44:55.880 | - So when you made the leap to product,

00:45:00.000 | my fear is always like, okay,

00:45:01.880 | getting close to the product

00:45:03.760 | means your technical competency has to,

00:45:07.160 | the bar just got raised, right?

00:45:09.480 | And so how much would that,

00:45:12.000 | coming into, I'm assuming Asana's the next one,

00:45:15.120 | how much of that was on-the-job learning

00:45:18.040 | versus education or preparedness prior to Asana

00:45:22.160 | that from a technology point of view,

00:45:24.720 | like how'd you make that leap?

00:45:26.240 | Was it a painful transition?

00:45:28.560 | What did that look like for you?

00:45:29.960 | - Yeah.

00:45:30.800 | So lots of learning, absolutely.

00:45:33.640 | By no means that I come in

00:45:34.840 | and was able to become a fantastic product manager,

00:45:39.080 | but I was able to come in hitting the ground running

00:45:41.760 | for a few different reasons.

00:45:43.880 | One of which was I know the subject matter very well.

00:45:48.200 | Having spent time building our learning platform at LinkedIn,

00:45:51.840 | having worked on Slack as a collaboration software,

00:45:55.320 | Asana and the workflow space that I work in

00:45:58.120 | is very familiar with me.

00:45:59.800 | One of the biggest things that carry in,

00:46:03.600 | and we kind of touched upon this theme

00:46:05.000 | is knowing your customer.

00:46:07.000 | And I had carried in a lot of research and knowledge

00:46:10.120 | about what this customer profile looks like,

00:46:12.440 | what the market of buying profile looks like

00:46:15.280 | that I can bring in actually as a different

00:46:18.320 | and new perspective as a PM, as a product manager

00:46:21.840 | and carve out a different shape of what it looks like.

00:46:25.960 | That's one part of it.

00:46:27.680 | The second, as you mentioned that the technical chops of it,

00:46:30.960 | I would say you probably know more

00:46:32.720 | than you think you know, right?

00:46:34.760 | If you are working at that company,

00:46:36.480 | if you are a consumer of technology,

00:46:39.200 | you generally know how things may interact with each other

00:46:42.320 | and the technical pieces of being a PM is just,

00:46:45.400 | well, it's several layers deeper,

00:46:46.920 | but knowing how various aspects of the product relate,

00:46:51.440 | depend, work with each other,

00:46:53.560 | and then figuring out, hey, technically, is this feasible?

00:46:57.800 | Does it cost more to do X versus Y?

00:47:00.040 | And just really understanding

00:47:02.760 | how the puzzle as a whole fits together

00:47:05.960 | is my kind of translation of the technical components,

00:47:10.040 | but having good tech partners.

00:47:12.040 | So I have a fantastic tech lead on the team

00:47:15.560 | and we are always bouncing ideas

00:47:17.560 | off of each other and learning from each other.

00:47:19.840 | I always run an idea.

00:47:21.320 | Hey, if I have this brand new idea for a feature,

00:47:24.760 | let's talk about what it might cost us

00:47:27.320 | because we have either never built this thing in the past

00:47:29.520 | or we can leverage some existing frameworks

00:47:31.880 | and foundations that we can tap into.

00:47:34.160 | So I am always learning from my peers

00:47:37.800 | to give me enough of that technical knowledge,

00:47:41.360 | making me, as we like to say, dangerous enough

00:47:43.880 | in these tech conversations to be good at my job.

00:47:48.880 | - So now that you're in seat doing PM,

00:47:53.400 | what's maybe the top two things that are always on your mind

00:47:56.800 | as a practicing product manager?

00:48:00.360 | - Oh yeah, two things on my mind.

00:48:02.040 | So I think the first thing is the customer.

00:48:06.320 | It's absolutely the customer, but when you say customer,

00:48:10.160 | we know that not every customer looks the same.

00:48:13.480 | And actually, quite frankly, the segmentations

00:48:15.400 | and the different profiles and the different usage profiles,

00:48:17.560 | the buying profiles for enterprise tech are all so different.

00:48:21.440 | How do you figure out how to sequence

00:48:24.560 | and see and prioritize what is the most important thing

00:48:27.160 | to do?

00:48:28.000 | One example is voice of customer, right?

00:48:30.240 | These are current customers who have used your product

00:48:32.440 | and said, these are the great parts of it.

00:48:35.040 | And then these are the pieces that I need you to fix.

00:48:37.520 | And that ladder is probably a lot much larger list

00:48:40.280 | than the floor.

00:48:41.440 | So you got to figure out, okay,

00:48:42.400 | when do I build the incremental product improvements

00:48:45.840 | versus taking a whole net new idea

00:48:49.280 | that you think may help differentiate your product

00:48:51.400 | or your company and try to take that kind of a bet

00:48:54.320 | and build something big.

00:48:56.240 | So the first thing on my mind is always

00:48:58.240 | what does the market, what's the market telling me?

00:49:01.200 | What are my customers telling me

00:49:03.040 | about what they want next?

00:49:05.080 | And then the second part is making decisions

00:49:09.000 | at both the micro level of not just,

00:49:12.480 | here's the holistic product you're building,

00:49:13.960 | but how does every single user story feature stack up

00:49:17.760 | and in what order you want to build it in

00:49:19.200 | to continuously add value

00:49:21.640 | and making sure that the rest of your company,

00:49:24.120 | be it the product leadership level or the sales side,

00:49:28.560 | get on board and understand,

00:49:31.040 | and actually lastly, be able to recite that back

00:49:34.000 | to the market.

00:49:34.840 | You need that kind of consistency

00:49:36.800 | and support throughout your organization

00:49:39.480 | for your holistic product strategy to actually take flight.

00:49:42.840 | - Well, I mean, none of that surprises me

00:49:46.000 | in terms of like your thoroughness

00:49:47.360 | 'cause I've been a long time Asana user.

00:49:49.440 | And so knowing like there's someone like you at the helm,

00:49:52.200 | you know, like in your respective area leading it,

00:49:54.120 | like it all makes sense to me

00:49:55.960 | 'cause I know you and I had such a great product experience.

00:49:58.160 | Michael, I just want to thank you for your time here.

00:50:00.720 | I would love to have you come back sometime

00:50:02.200 | if you want to talk about something else,

00:50:03.480 | but this was really enjoyable.

00:50:04.960 | - Absolutely, so good to see you, Tim.

00:50:06.680 | Great to hear that you're an Asana user

00:50:08.320 | and it was really good to connect again in this.

00:50:10.680 | - Cool, thanks, Michael.

00:50:11.960 | - Yeah, thanks, Tim.

00:50:13.120 | (upbeat music)

00:50:15.720 | you

What we learned from Career Pivots — Consulting, to Product Marketing, to Product Management

Chapters