The Intentional Product Manager Podcast

Become So Good They Can't Ignore You: Building Compelling Narratives and Storytelling

• Shobhit Chugh • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Join Shobhit Chugh and special guest Will Lowrey as they reveal powerful strategies to stand out in your product management career by mastering your narrative and cultivating a positive team culture. Together, they unpack essential skills to set yourself apart, including:

  • The Power of Storytelling: Learn how to communicate so that people listen and remember.
  • Overcoming Self-Doubt in Job Searches: Discover how projecting confidence can increase your chances of landing the role you want.
  • Navigating Job Searches in Startups vs. Big Companies: Get tailored strategies for building relevant experience and standing out in today's competitive tech landscape.
  • Building Team Culture: Understand how to foster an environment that brings out the best in everyone.
  • Focusing on Business Outcomes: Acquire techniques for creating connections that drive impactful, revenue-generating results.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast
00:17 Meet Will Lowrey: Career Journey
01:03 Path to Product Management
02:19 Pre-Product Management Background
06:00 Significant Career Moments
08:54 Early Lessons in Product Management
12:37 Mid-Career Insights: Storytelling
16:04 Building Teams and Culture
19:56 Becoming a Coach: Motivation and Inspiration
23:03 Discovering the Path to Teaching and Coaching
23:53 Focusing on Intentional Job Search
24:49 Crafting a Compelling Narrative for Interviews
26:51 Overcoming Self-Doubt in Job Search
29:13 Differences in Job Search: Startups vs. Big Companies
32:44 Importance of Business Outcomes in Product Management
35:52 The Joy of Coaching Product Managers
41:16 Tips for Product Managers in the Job Market
44:31 Final Thoughts and How to Connect

This conversation will equip you with the tools to become a confident communicator, inspiring leader, and strategic thinker—helping you carve a career path that maximizes both income and impact.


Connect with Shobhit at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shobhitchugh/
Connect with Will Lowrey at https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamlowrey/


www.intentionalproductmanager.com

 Ready to move to the next level in your product career. I'm Shobit from Intentional Product Manager. Join me as we discuss ways to help you stand out in your job search and your career, so you can have more impact and make more money. 

Hey, welcome to the Intentional Product Manager podcast. With me is our guest, Will Lowry. Will, great to have you here in the podcast. Thanks Shobit, it's great to be here. Amazing. So, well, why don't we begin? Why don't you tell us just, you know, a little bit about yourself, your high level career journey, and then we'll dig in.

For sure. Yeah. I've been in product for a little over 20 years now, uh, but I definitely went through it. Like everyone else kind of came into it sort of backwards, but I've, I've done lots of different things. I've been a software engineer. I've been in startups with venture backed startups where we were every hat to larger companies working at a company like Bazaarvoice and Indeed.

And so kind of been around the block a few times with, uh, different types of companies. So yeah, that's me. That's awesome. You know, I'm always curious with people who've had a long product career on how they began, like, how did they get into product? Cause one of the things I often hear from product managers I talk to is show it, my path is not typical.

And so I want to know what's your path into product management. For sure. Yeah. I honestly got a role with a title of product management at a startup. And honestly, I had never heard the title product management before, uh, I, I was leading the engineering and marketing of the company. I was employee number four at this startup.

And when we were starting to put together the investor decks and the board and that kind of thing, I saw in there that I was the lead product manager was the title that I was given. That's how I first got introduced to the idea. And so then I started understanding like, what does that actually mean? And it looked a lot like what I was doing.

I was talking to customers. I was deciding priorities. I was working with engineering to figure out ways that we could solve problems. So I had been doing it without knowing I was doing it. And then finally, somebody who knew more than me at the time gave me the title. So that's kind of my journey into it. 

That's amazing. Given the title.  That's right. Okay. So, uh, tell me like, uh, what was life prior to product management? What, what's your background before you got the title? For sure. Yeah. So I joke with people that I. Had five different careers before I was 30 and it's a joke not because it's not true It's just more than nobody really believes it.

So I was a software engineer. I have a degree in computer science I did that for a number of years and then I got a bit of the entrepreneurial bug. So I made a pretty big shift from writing code to selling money. I worked in mortgage and finance. Um, I got to leverage a bunch of my software engineering, uh, building out websites and funnels and all those type of conversion things that I could do that people couldn't do back then.

Uh, they weren't, it wasn't easy for them. They needed more engineering capabilities. Um, but that wasn't enough. So I did that for a few years. I sold that to a football player, which was kind of neat. And then I went and  You sold that to a football player? Yeah, so I had, I had re I had gotten a mortgage and finance company.

I had a good team of people and there was a football player. He had worked, he had played in the NFL for about 20 years and he, he had a, a number of companies. One of them was a title company and he was launching, um, a mortgage and finance company and a friend of a friend. introduced us and I said, Hey, I would love to kind of hand off some of this business.

So he brought me in and I built up his business and handed over my staff and did a six months transfer and then said, great, thanks. This was awesome. And then, uh, went on and then I started teaching middle school. Cause you know, why not do something different? Yeah, of course, it's a logical next step. Yeah, for sure. 

Um, so I did that for a while. Uh, I was a stay at home dad for a bit. And then I launched a couple of lifestyle businesses while I was raising three children under the age of three. Um, so web design, web hosting, marketing, lead generation, kind of doing all of those as just a service type business. Yeah, obviously all the prerequisites to product management, right?

So, um, and then of course I took a bit of a stint into seminary and I was a youth pastor and a interim pastor at a church. So I was preaching every Sunday for 30 minutes as everyone does.  It's the normal path into product, right? Perfect. Yeah. So that was sort of my journey. And then I got back into venture backed startups.

Sure. Um,  and I thought I was coming in having no intention to do anything with engineering. I was coming in to do their marketing, their SEO, their, their lead gen. And then of course they had, they had no version control software. They had. Uh, no processes for ensuring that any of the code that their teams were writing would actually not get lost.

And it was a multimillion dollar investment. So that just made my skin crawl. So I jumped into that worked again, even though that's not been my intention, um, until they ran out of money.  As many startups do. Um, but that's what I think ended up in a startup where I ended up doing product management. 

That's amazing. Amazing.  And just like shattered that myth of, Oh, my path is not typical. You know, everybody does undergrad engineering and MBA, and then they become a product manager.  I just have hardly ever seen that for sure. Absolutely. Awesome. Yep. Uh, just one sec. Google decided that this is a perfect time to sign me out of the account.

So I can, uh, view our questions. Okay. Awesome. So tell me, were there any significant moments along the journey that really influenced your career path in your journey? Sure. It's, it's one of those things where at the moment, I don't know that I would have realized how much it has influenced my path, but now that I get to look back, uh, there was, I was, I was working at a company called bizarre voice.

Uh, it's a company that almost everyone's used, but nobody knows about if you've read. Rating a review, uh, at Walmart or target that's been collected and then syndicated by bizarre voice across an entire network of retailers and brands. So a really cool company, no one really knew about it, but I was working there and there was a product leader.

His name was Lucas.  Lucas was.  Controversial at times he would say things just to get people to think differently and I appreciated that because I think sometimes we get stuck in patterns and Lucas and I were meeting about some of the candidates that we were interviewing for the product team,  and he got really, uh.

Animated and energized about the difference between, uh, an average or a mediocre hire versus a great hire and how big of an influence it has on a company. And so we just, we dug into that a lot and to the point of  the, the culture that was being created for our product team was that hiring was our number one priority.

So we needed to adjust our thinking, our products being delivered were not as important. As product leaders as the time and effort we put into getting to know the possible talent, bringing this talent in, evaluating it well, and creating the most amazing team we could.  And Lucas is the one who was championing that.

And that really opened my eyes to the impact that we could have on an organization by the people that we bring in. And that led me down into a whole world of loving  the, the hiring process, the value of that process. Um, it ended up, I ended up at Indeed, uh, which of course is all about helping people get jobs.

So I got to explore that even further. Um, but yeah, I think it really started there. And, and now here with what we're doing with Intentional Product Manager, it's, uh, just an extension of that for me.  I mean, that's, that's amazing. I'm so consistently surprised as how much.  If I look at other people in my own career, how much managers, both good ones and the not so great ones have influenced.

Yeah, absolutely.  And, uh, like some of those things live on, like some of the things my previous manager at Google just like lives on.  So that's  okay. Um, now, now let's go back and let's make you,  um, like sort of seem less wise than you, than you were, you know, less wiser. I don't know what the term is. So  let's say. 

You will now go back to like when you're starting product management and you have the lessons  That you've collected so far. What would you like try to teach this? Early product management career will version of you. Yeah, I think at the time I didn't See and know how powerful it was to just talk to your users, just talk to your customers.

And I think there's so much red tape that companies create or people, or the, or the hindrance we create on ourselves to make it complicated.  This does not have to be,  uh, it doesn't have to be incredibly research based all the time. Sometimes you just need to get on the phone or just get into a Zoom or just go and meet them and say, tell me what you're trying to accomplish.

Tell me, talk to me about your day.  And the things that happen after that. Are always so interesting to me for a team, particularly, but for an individual, it creates a new level of motivation because you're now have listened to them. And you've seen the pain and the joy of what they're trying to accomplish.

You often get both of those  on a team. You didn't get to come back and you get to be this passionate advocate for the problems that you uncovered. And that, that is contagious. Your, your, your fellow coworkers want to have that same energy. They want to go talk with customers because they want that energy that you just brought back into the office or into that meeting.

Uh, and, and then when you get to turn around and solve a problem quickly and notify the person you just interviewed with. Hey, I really appreciate the feedback. Here's how we thought about solving it. Does this seem like this would be better for you? And they turn from someone who might be disgruntled to incredibly powerfully advocating for the fact that you've listened and it's making progress. 

I mean, it's just so incredibly rewarding. And it's not measured in dollars and cents all the time so eventually it gets there, but it is incredibly rewarding. And I wish I had known that earlier so I could have done that more. And I would encourage, I encourage all my teams now, like if you're not on the phone or meeting or interviewing some customer almost every week. 

Uh, you need to, it will absolutely change what you're doing in product.  So that would be in the early days. Yeah, you know, it's, uh, it's interesting you say that. And,  um, I remember this conversation I had with somebody at Google and it was this UX researcher. This person's like, Oh, I don't know if you're allowed to talk to product managers.

I mean, sorry. I don't know if you're allowed to talk to users. Right. And I was like,  I'm sorry,  why am I not a human? What's wrong with me? It's like, I don't know if you're qualified. You have the UX research training and everything. I'm like, I don't care what the red tape is. I'll figure my way around it.

It's a non negotiable for me to work here as a product manager, not be able to talk to you.  That's just not going to happen. And that is what I think a lot of people need to  do is like, that's just a non negotiable.  Not talking to customers. Absolutely. I, I, I use it during my interviewing questions of feedback of how, how do I and my team go and get to talk to customers at this company?

And if they don't have a good, clear answer, that's a yellow flag. And if the answer is you can't, then it's a red flag for me. Total red flag. Yep. For sure. So that's amazing. Tell us more. So like, as you went on in your career, what are the kinds of lessons that you started to learn? Yeah. Yeah. When I think about the. 

My mid career. That's when I knew more than just how to launch a feature function. That kind of thing. I think now that storytelling was so important and to learn how to do that. Um, it's it's internal, but it's all it's internal and external. It's an element of marketing to your audience, but you have lots of different audiences, whether it's your team, whether it's your cross functional teams, it's your leadership or it's external.

And I think being able to understand your audience allows for you to build better products. Because you craft an under a narrative with their language in your head. That's to me, what great storytelling is. It's how do you enter the conversation in your target persona's head? That's already taking place and then just augment and expand on that.

And so learning that skill and practicing that often, whether that's in marketing materials or attending some of the biz dev calls and seeing how your product is talked about and how your, your potential buyers are. Discussing it and coming up with objections. You need to understand their language. Uh, I think that's really powerful in product.

And, um, so yeah, that's, I think middle, mid career, that's what I would really expand on.  And I mean, could you give us an example, like  some places where you leverage the skill of storytelling? For sure. So I was, um, I was launching a product for small and medium businesses and they were brands. And so they are brand business trying to sell their product out of, say, a Walmart or Target. 

And they don't have any access to the in buyer because the in buyer relationship is owned by the retail store.  And. The work that I needed to do was to understand what were all of their pain points. And by going in and then listening to their language, when they talk about things like sell through, which I had no idea what it meant because I've never been a brand. 

Uh, and what it means is when you put ten items on the shelf, Do you sell through all 10 of those fast enough for the retailer to want to buy more of those? Great. Makes sense. The term now makes sense to me, but knowing those terms and then being able to talk to them about how part of what our product was meant to do for them was to help their sell through velocity go to be greater so that they would sell through more of their product faster and be able to earn more shelf space. 

And I had no concept of that until I started listening to them and then entering that story and understanding their concern of how do you move enough inventory? How do you get rebuys from your big retailers so that your small brand can actually grow and that we would overcome some of their challenges of reaching directly to the customers on their behalf.

And once I told that story, they were like, that's, I have no way to solve this. You solve it, you make it affordable, and you understand my problems? Excellent. I will buy your product, and I will keep paying over and over and over again for it, because I make more money because I work with you. Um, so that was an example of where understanding the story and the language of them was really important to be able to get our message across. 

Love it.  Okay. Um, storytelling, um, obviously very well talked about topic. Very popular. Now, as you went on later in your career, and especially as you're now starting to build teams, manage teams of product managers,  what were the core lessons in this phase? Yeah. So this is where I find that.  Culture happens whether we want it to or not.

Yep. And if we're not intentional, we just get stuck with what organically happens. Yeah. And I think as a product leader and the leader does not necessarily mean a title, right? You can be a leader without being the boss. Uh, they're wonderful leaders at every level in a company. And that's where I think the word leader is important here is you can lead.

Your team culture. And that's what I think as both a manager and a leader, I have even more opportunity to do that. How do I create a culture of  being able to be wrong and not being ashamed of learning and experimenting? How do I create an environment where we. Assume positive intent in each person where we can get into a room.

We can one of my favorite phrases. My teams have heard in the past is let's cuss and discuss and then we'll go have lunch afterwards. And so as long as the nature of the conflict is always about trying to find the best answer for forward to move us forward and never about it. The quality of the individual bringing up the suggestions.

Then we have a good, healthy space for critical thinking, uh, conflict resolution, and ultimately really valuing each other. Like that's, that's what I've learned. I really need to create as an environment where.  Your ideas are valued. Your voice has a space. Uh, everyone at the table has an opportunity to speak up and to share their thinking. 

And they also have a sense of ownership.  I think, um, I think it's Patrick Lencioni in his book of Three Signs of a Miserable Job, which he might have renamed, but that was the original version. Um, he talks about the need for people to feel a sense of autonomy  and a sense of knowing how that they progress.

How do they put points on the board? Or how do they know if they're winning? So if we can create a community in the team that they know what they're expected to do, and they feel a sense of,  I know the big decisions and I can make a lot of the thousand other micro decisions that need to be made without having to get approval or check in.

Uh, I think creating a culture like that allows for people to love what they're doing.  Even if we don't always agree, that's okay. We don't all have to agree. We're just trying to get to the right outcome. And so I think creating that intentionally is what's really important. And it's what I really believe is.

One of the  best uncovered or unused levers right now in businesses to help them perform better. Um, just to create that culture. I love the, I was writing down the phrase, cuss and discuss.  That's awesome. That just looks like, Hey, we're going to be.  Completely honest with each other. That's right. We'll talk about the hard things.

Yeah. And then we'll cool. We'll grab lunch. That's right. Still friends. Yeah. And if you don't agree, we had that wonderful experience at, uh, when I was at Indeed. Um, I, my boss was fantastic. Um, he was very energetic and sometimes very vocal, uh, never at any of us just with the concepts. Um, I mean, I remember one time he was very upset because we had turned a test off.

And he was just yelling. Turn the machines back on, which of course is a clip from a movie. But, um, and, uh, and of course, we went and turned the machines back on. Uh, we discussed it all. And then we're, you know, it's like, Hey, all right, everybody, that meeting's done. You've got your we know what we're doing.

Let's go grab lunch. And we all sat down and we had a great lunch. And, um, it was just great. It was, it's just a wonderful example of living that out. So, yeah. Yeah.  Okay. That's awesome. Um, so I'm gonna, you know, like continuing this career journey, I'm going to bring you now to your awesome role as coach at intentional product manager.

Um, I'm, I'm just, you know, before we talk about like the things that you do, I'm just curious about what interested you, like why be a coach? What was your motivation behind? Yeah, so I think I mean, except except for working with awesome people. I feel like that could be a real motivation No, that's great So there's two things two people that have really kind of spoken some truth into my life about this So one of them is the one who actually sent me the job posting that sam had posted for this role And I met him his name is natan and I met him during covid because I I felt a need to connect with people and give in a moment in the world with Things were so chaotic and hard.

So I had just posted up a Calendly link and offered to help anyone in product who wanted to talk and just. What do they want to talk about? It was half an hour blocks. I had like 11 of them on my calendar. They filled up in 24 hours. People needed to connect.  One of them was Natan.  And it's now been three, four years maybe.

And he and I still meet almost every two weeks.  We've continued to become, to be great friends. I'm excited for him. He's getting married here very soon. Um, and so like, but he's the one who saw this job post and he said, Will, This is what you've been doing for me, uh, not just in the job search, but just in my career.

You've been coaching and mentoring me for the last four years. You should go do this.  And so that was awesome. And then there's another person and you know, this person as well, because he's he's working with us here, Michael, um, Michael and I work together at Indeed. And I was talking with him about what do I want next?

Uh, and he and I have continued to stay friends even after working together. We still keep in touch every two weeks as well. Um,  but he said, Will, I, I don't know that, um, because I was talking to him about, I don't know if I want to keep building products per se. It's like I'm trying to explore what that is.

He said, Will, I believe That you're going to build people, and you're going to build teams. And so that whole conversation that we had earlier about building culture is what I'm really passionate about. And, uh, Michael kind of inspired me when he said, Will, as soon as I'm a leader at a company, and I can bring in someone to help me do that, I'm hiring you to come help me do exactly that for my teams.

For every team I go to, I want you there to help me craft that. So that just, like, When I think about the next 20 years, what do I do? Well, how do I build people? And so this was an opportunity to meaningfully invest and take my years of experience in it to build people So that's what i'm here for. That's amazing.

I mean, um  It's really awesome when other people look out for you and They send you job postings, which sometimes it takes some object, some like objectivity to recognize the right path for you.  I mean, just,  um, just an example here. Um, I, when I was, you know, hadn't even thought of intentional product manager, that wasn't a thing.

And I, um, started this free class. Where Sam, Sam Feldman, who's my co founder on one of the programs. He, um, he was one of the students in that. So I, I told my wife that, Hey, you know, I'm, uh, just, you know, testing this class out just, just for something fun. And she was like, Oh, I knew you were going to go into teaching some point in your life as a career teaching and coaching.

I'm like, I don't know that. She's like, I know that.  So she was able to like, you know, give me a pretty good sense. Yeah, I know you, this is where you're headed. It's just happening. And I was like, okay, now I'm, now I have a lot more conviction behind it. That's right. It's amazing when you have people who can speak that truth into you and say, this is part of what you're meant to do.

This is part of your purpose. Uh, it's really powerful. It's really powerful. Awesome. So, so let's talk about  what are you focused on these days, other than responding to my crazy requests?  No, I, I think, uh, what I spend most of my time on, particularly at the, at, uh, in the intentional job search side is working with a student on how to bring out all of the great work they've done in a way that the interviewers and the people who are trying to fill roles can have an idea.

Of if I hire this person, if I hire Joe, this is what we're going to get. And this is how Joe's going to solve our problems. And that's not the same thing as a journey of what all you used to do. It's about crafting that narrative that clarifies how Joe will solve future problems and use examples in the past.

To prove that it's not just lip service, that they've actually done it.  But  let me, let me play devil's advocate. Sure. Why do that? Like, you know, just, why don't I just tell them, Hey, here's all the awesome stuff I've done and let the hiring manager  connect the dots.  One of the things that I, I share with students often is that I've, I've been an interviewer a lot of times.

And I've also had the luxury of working with a lot of companies who were hiring in various roles. And a lot of interviewers are not amazing at interviewing. And that's no,  nothing negative about them. Maybe their kid was sick in the morning. Maybe their boss was upset about them with something. Maybe a project is late and this shows up on their calendar and now they're there.

And so our job as, uh, as coaches, and then as the interviewee, is to make that interviewer as incredibly good as possible. And we do that, and the way that I tell the students to do that is be prepared, have a well organized story,  use frameworks to help them explain what you did, and a great interview is not one that you land or that you get through, but where the interviewer has a great set of notes to be your internal champion when you're not there.

So that's what I tell the students, that this is what we're doing. Is we're trying to help you give an answer that allows for that interviewer to be awesome at being your champion when you're not there, and all of a sudden they're like, okay, I get why I need to do this. Okay, that is so insightful. Let me repeat that.

Your, your goal is to  after the interviewer is over, the interviewer should leave with an awesome set of notes, motivation to be your champion,  and like remembers you in some way and thinks you're just awesome. Thanks. The bee's knees. Awesome fit for that. That's exactly it. That is so insightful. And it's so different.

I mean, it's so different than how most people approach their, uh, narrative or their set of stories right now. Right? Right. Right. Exactly. And so that's what, that's why we work with them to help that come through, to give them the structure, um, to do that. I think the other thing show, but, and I know that you are very.

Involved in and have practiced a great deal of the mindset side of things. I think that one of the elements of mindset that  is hinders people to be as successful when they talk about themselves is they have an internal voice. That is constantly berating elements of themselves or downplaying their value.

And that's just the reality of being human. We have elements where we second guess or we devalue the things that are easy for us. And so, part of being this, uh, this outside voice for them is to help pull out this great work that they did. And help them realize that just because it was easy for them doesn't mean it's easy for everyone and it has value and companies need that value.

And so let's present that so that they can say, yes, this is worth X. That's why I'm giving you this offer because I need you to do it for my business. And just help them realize that there's more value than in themselves and in their skills than they likely see in themselves.  That's, um, I mean, I, I would add one more thing to this because that's really amazing when you say that,  uh, people don't bring out their best  elements.

It's like almost paraphrasing what you said. They are blind  to what made them so awesome.  You're absolutely right. I, it's amazing to me and I shouldn't be amazed. It's more, it's more that it's, it's recurring and yet, um, it breaks my heart really when I see someone who downplays. Oh, yeah. We just launched this thing.

I'm like, wait, wait, wait, you launched this thing to half a million people generating X millions of dollars using five other people and some interviews, right? That's how you did this. Let's not pretend like this is easy.  Right. Do you realize that like 90 percent of companies that are founded never make it to a million dollars in revenue, let alone into tens or more millions of dollars?

So like, these are not small things. These are big deals. Um, and so just helping people realize that their, their day to day norm, uh, is quite exceptional in a lot of cases. Love it. So, so let, let's talk a bit more about both like the job search and go further into this, this coaching that you provide. So,  you know, in the past you worked at both startups, you worked at larger companies like Indeed.

Um, how do you see the job search deferring based on. You know, maybe size of company or type or whatnot. For sure. So I've thought about that a lot because we do have people who come in who are looking for various things, uh, startups or, or bigger companies. What does that look like? And I find that  In a startup world, there's often, um, a mixed bag of how the journey will go, the job search will go.

Um, there's some really awesome things that can happen. One, they can be very motivated. You can get an interview and go through two or three interviews on a Monday, and you can have a job offer by Wednesday. Like that. Doesn't happen all the time, but it's possible because they have no red tape. They're a group of three or four people.

If they want to hire someone, they just hire someone.  The other side of that, though, is they also don't necessarily have a ton of process. So you might have a company of 30, maybe they're in a series B or series C funding round. They could have gotten a bit bigger. Um, but they're still figuring it out, which means you might have to stay on their email a little bit more, remind them that you're still involved because they had to put out other fires, like making sure payroll got in on time or the investor's check cleared or whatever it might be, right?

Like all these other things that they have to worry about. Um, so that, that can be really interesting. It can also mean that you're going to have a lot of behavioral interviews, which is what we prep people for. And you're going to get a couple of like product design or metrics type questions because somebody somewhere read an article, saw a video or wanted to be like some of the big players like, Oh, we should do this.

So, but they won't necessarily know what's great about it. They're just going to go a little bit more on gut feeling than they will on training data,  you know, that type of thing. So that's what I find in startups and bigger companies. I find that they have more. Um, process, more ritual behind it. Um, I, and in some of the really big companies, they have a ton of effort into the qualification process, but in those mid level, those sort of medium to large that aren't necessarily your largest tech,  I think that, um,  they go through this process because that's what somebody created at some point, but they don't necessarily know how to evaluate all of the results.

To determine things. So it still has a lot to do with, uh, opinion and interpretation of what you received, which is why having a great interview and making sure they have great notes can help you win a ton. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have the best skills to do the job and from a hard skills perspective, but clearly you had a great way of communicating.

So your soft skills are going to help you win over there. So I think that's an interesting part of it. Yeah.  And, uh, it's good to recognize like, uh, one of the things I really caught on with it's like extreme empathy for the company and the hiring manager and other people because hiring you is not their core job, right?

Okay, and um,  they're under other pressures and you want to help them succeed In their hiring and hopefully we're including hiring you. Yep And that also means not treating.  Oh, they haven't responded for two days. It's like I must suck. I must be awesome That's right. It's not about you Life gets busy.

That's right. They're just busy so so  um You know, as  you see all these people, um,  look at all these different companies, uh, What are like some common things that you think product managers should demonstrate more in terms of their skills or qualities to really succeed in the job search in today's market?

Yeah, and I think my answer would have been different if you'd asked me a year and a half or two years ago. And so the answer I give now and what I work with our students on understanding is  business outcomes have become so much more important.  And that's true, not just in the startup world. And it's very, very true in the startup world.

Investors are not investing for growth at all costs. They're looking for profitability and a path to that. Um, money is more expensive now, so they're wanting to, uh, distribute in a ways where it's going to come back. Um, but I think in even in bigger companies where they're realizing that. The efficiency of their teams and their ability to deliver value, business value, not just, um,  not just I, I showed up and took action, uh, as opposed to I got results. 

And I think it's more than time for this. I think this is a great way to think about products, is products do need to deliver real value. Uh, and in a, in a for profit business, that's often measured in some form of revenue or retention or, um, or upgrades or cross sales or whatever it might be. Uh, but you can also be in a nonprofit where it's around mission or a mission that you're fulfilling more.

Those are great. Like you can exchange the word value for lots of things. It's not just. Dollars and cents. I just wanted to make sure people are clear on that, but talk about what you're doing from a business outcome.  And if you're not sure with what you did and why it mattered to the business, go figure that out.

Because somebody decided that this was worth doing and to drive your business forward, you need to know how this attaches to it. And you need to talk about your work from that business value, because I think that's what people are looking for right now.  One more point to add kids because what you just said was very insightful and, uh, maybe just reinterpreting this is  some of the best product managers.

They don't have to be the ones who decide that context in which that feature exists,  but they need to know it and they need to be able to communicate it. That's right.  It may not be your choice, but you still have to do it well. And if you don't know why. Like if you don't understand the overall, why you need to figure it out, because otherwise you're going to have a hard time really delivering on that.

Why? And I mean, I know we're talking about job search, but that is just also so important to communicate, to get your team motivated and  really excited that, Hey, this, this big company golden, we are gonna. Contribute to it by doing X in this way,  that rationale is magic and your engineers care about it. No matter what people say that, Oh, engineers don't care about that.

They just want to build features. Just not true. No, just not true. Agreed.  Amazing. So, so let's talk a bit more about coaching. Um,  um, tell me what do you enjoy most about coaching product managers?  Uh, I think, um, I can't remember that I should have looked up the author's name, but there's, um, Uh, a book titled So Good They Can't Ignore You, um, and one of the concepts in there is the bad advice or the quote unquote bad advice that Steve Jobs gave of do what you love. 

And I love, and it's not that that's a bad statement, it's that it's an incomplete statement. And it's that we, we need to like something enough to get great at it, and then we will love it because we love being great.  And so I, I love the, the craft of product management. I love the storytelling. I love the understanding people's problems, and I love trying to problem solve, which is to me what we get to do in product management.

Um, and now I see this very similarly. So coaching people is.  The, they are now part of that product that needs to be, um, understood and encouraged and crafted so that they can go and succeed the way that they want.  And so I still approach it from a very product management lens. What's working, what's not, what are we trying to accomplish?

How do we measure success? But I think now it's just a different medium that I'm working in. It's not as many zeros and ones and it's more. Relationships, conversations, um, the emotional journey, the mindset, the tough love, the encouragement. Those are all wonderful things that I enjoy exercising. And so that's what got me here.

Love it. Love it.  Uh, and,  uh, you know, people love your coaching. They often, they often  tell, I get to know that. So tell me more, like, how would you describe your style of coaching? Yeah. So I, I was a teacher. I taught middle school for a while. So there's a little bit of an element of that where I, I approach things.

With  an educator mindset of how do I provide scaffolding approaches to learning something new? So there's that element. There's that teacher element. I'm also a parent, um, and I've spent a lot of time trying to create independence and capabilities in my kids. So there's pieces of that as well.  Trying to give people enough room to scrape their knees and learn from the process while giving them the encouragement that they're not alone and that they're making that progress that they need.

Um, there's also an element of, uh, so my mom was a word of affirmations person. So growing up, I never left the house without being told that I was loved, that I was beautiful, that I just cared about, that I looked great today, whatever it might be. But strong words of affirmation. And I think, uh,  in this tough journey of the job search, people need to be encouraged.

So there's an element of me that's the encourager.  And, and then, I, it's, this is all this blend, and then there's the final piece, which my father's work was primarily conflict resolution. Like, he, his job was like world peace. That's what he did. Wow. Um, which is really cool. Except when that family where you sometimes just want to be angry and like, let's talk about that.

I'm like, dang it, dad. I just want to yell at you.  So, but I think a part of that is also that there is some tough love that goes involved in conflict resolution. And I think I try to blend those things. So I try to encourage, I also try and push. Uh, in a way that will help them be their best selves and understand that that's the intention.

Um, and I have a lot of frameworks on how I try to help support people. Uh, and sometimes it means that I model. So, just last week, I had some people that I was working with, they were really struggling to get the feedback in their narrative. And I had worked on their story for a couple of times, and I said, We got on the call and I said, can I just tell your story to you? 

And you tell me, am I missing pieces? How does this go?  And they're like, sure, let's do it. And I rerecord it. And then I tell their story. I tell the story they wrote with energy and inflection in various points. And they're like, that's, that's fantastic. That's my story. Now I get where you're saying, and I get why what I wrote is not what you said.

And now I can work on that. And sometimes that just shortcuts us there. Yeah. Um, and, but I also don't want to do that for everyone. Cause some of them need to, um, they need some iterations on their story to really work through the details and figure out what's important. Cause I don't know. I didn't do the work.

So, I mean, this is one of the things people love about intentional job searches, like  personalized, even the style of coaching needs to be adapted  to, to different people. Like I remember.  I've done similar things in war. In one case, there's this person who went to Amazon working with us and  you know, he was struggling with this.

Tell me about yourself. And finally, in a mock interview, I was like, okay, let me try. So I tried. And then he was like, okay, is that regarded? Cause I'm going to just say that. And that's exactly what I needed. Like after some point, the iterations had stopped and he needed just like somebody else to do it.

And now in other cases. You know, you just got to help them work through it. Yeah, so for sure. I love that aspect, Will. Yeah. Um, so, okay. So you're bringing all these elements.  Last thing as we wrap up, um, your thoughts and your tips for people who are currently in the market for a new role, uh, within product management.

Yeah, I think that's one of the things that I don't know that I realized until I came to, uh, IPM, uh, not in the sense of I couldn't have articulated it, but I felt it. So real is the importance of a couple of elements. I think mindset is a huge part. And the fact that you have mindset coaches on staff is amazing to me.

Uh, and then I think the community element, Is really, really important. Um, and then it's stealing from, as you can tell, I like to quote from other people have thought about these things. James clears atomic habits. He talks about that. We don't rise to the level of our goals, but we fall to the level of the systems. 

And I think that's one of the things that is really important is to have a system. Your job search is not something that we tend to practice often, uh, and we don't necessarily define what are our systems to make sure that we're delivering good interviews, good applications, good outreaches, good networking, and all of these things.

And I think IPM does a great job of providing a structure for that, uh, and I think that's one of the advantages of joining a program like that. But I think no matter what it is, you have to do that. I think that if otherwise you're putting too much up to luck. And I, and I don't, I don't love luck as a strategy.

It's like using hope. It's not a strategy, right? Like hope is not a strategy here. So  having this systems of, of mind mindset to work of consistent delivery of building systems to improve, I think are really important. Um, for anybody who's in the market right now,  I love it. Um, it's a.  It is one of the mantras I generally follow outside, uh, IPM as well.

It's like, Hey, if I'm looking to do something new,  you know, like two things. One is who, uh, there's a book who not how, I believe that's the title. Although I might be mistaken. I have it right over there. Oh yeah. Okay. That's awesome. Great book. Yeah. Which is okay. Is there somebody who's world class who can just do it for me? 

Your job search, nobody can do it for you. So then it's about, is there someone and some system that can help me do it so much more efficiently and how do I learn from others, other people's mistakes? 'cause look, I, I like to be perfect. Yeah. I, I'm never perfect, but I would rather learn from other people's mistakes than my own for sure.

And that's, um.  One of my favorite podcasters.  Wow. I always forget his name. Um, Alex Hermosi. Oh yes. I like Alex. He does podcasting mostly on, uh, business, but like sometimes he says it's like, Hey, when you buy knowledge, that's. The best thing you can buy because now you have these skill sets that nobody can take away from you.

That's right. They can steal your cryptocurrency.  Your stock portfolio can go down. This will not go down. Yep.  Um,  awesome. So any one last question, like any general. Advice about product management careers, any suggestions for them? 

I think  the advice for people in their career is that no one's going to care about your career as much as you.  And so  take time to figure out what it is that you want. So for me, for example, uh, I've decided that there's a level at which I don't necessarily want to pursue further, uh, from, uh, climbing the corporate ladder.

There are other things in my life that I want to achieve.  That, that was not the easiest decision to come to, uh, because I'm so used to pursuing the next thing. But being honest about what it is that you really want and value, and I, and I think, uh, we talk about this show internally about sort of what is their strategy and how do they get clarity on what matters.

I, I think spending time doing that.  Is it sharpening your tools? It's sharpening your axe, right? What is it? If you're going to cut down a tree, I'd spend five hours to do it. It's been four hours sharpening my axe and an hour chopping it down. Well, I think knowing what it is that you really want out of your career and particularly out of your next step. 

mapping that out. What skills do you want to gain? What exposure do you want to have to certain capabilities or, or teams? Do you want to be in B2B or do you want to do SAS, or do you want to work more with engineering or, or do you want to do more with customers? Like, what does that look like? And then pursue that, uh, with.

Um, once again, I'm stealing from so many people, uh, with like gazelle intensity, right? So Dave Ramsey talks about that in his financial pieces, do this for, uh, with a great deal of passion as if a lion is chasing you and you're the gazelle run like crazy towards that thing. And I think there's a lot of, uh, value in, in knowing what you want to pursue and then going all out for that thing. 

I love it.  There is no rat race. It's all in your brain. Just choose your own path. Yep. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing all these thoughts about, you know, lessons from your own career, about coaching and your advice for product managers. I know this will be well received. I know people will be very thankful.

How did they connect with you? Um, well, I mean, you can always hit me up at the, uh, at intentional product manager. So we'll add intentional product manager. com. Welcome to hit me up there. Of course you should join the program and then we can work together. That'd be great. Um, and, uh, but yeah, those are a couple of great places to find me and you can reach me on LinkedIn as well.

Awesome. Thank you. Well, I'll appreciate it. Thank you.  Hey, be sure to check out our website at intentional product manager. com to see how you can level up in your career.