How to talk the PM talk, how Trunk Club grew conversions by 130%, 9 practical career growth tips, and lessons from 1 year of publishing
PM, product building, and career 💎's - 10/28/22
Today, I’m celebrating 1 YEAR of publishing the Build Your Own Product Newsletter 🎉 I’ve got 3 things for you:
THANK YOU for subscribing, learning, and interacting with me. I’ve learned a ton from this community
NEWSLETTERING IS HARD. But it’s also fun and can be a great catalyst for growth. I’ve shared a few lessons in the “thought to ponder” section below
SPOTLIGHT: If you get value from this newsletter, you’d get “100x more value” from my upcoming live group coaching cohort. (that was a real quote from someone in the 1st cohort)
Early bird pricing (20% off) ends today for everyone else. But I’m extending it to next week for subscribers of my newsletter.
One person pivoted careers to a PM role just 3 weeks after the cohort
One person spent 10X the money on another course but said mine had a 10X better ROI
Another person successfully submitted their first Value Qualifier (progressed in an interview) with feedback from me and the community Slack channel.
If you’re new here…on Friday’s I drop free, curated resources to help 1200+ people:
👉 build products
👉 pivot into product
👉 level up in product
𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭
Part of breaking into PM is “talking the talk”. Here’s all the terms you need to know. Find connection points between these terms and your existing experience. Great post by Lisa Zane
𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐬
Loved this chat on Lenny’s Podcast with Kristen Berman. I got so many useful nuggets about driving a desired user behavior. My favorite example was about actually adding friction during an onboarding process to improve conversion rates. She shared the example of Trunk Club adding a questionnaire which subtly communicated the “benefits” a user would soon receive.
𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡
Usually, I don’t love these kinds of “soft skills” posts. But this one by Ben Meer is super practical. Some of these things have done wonders for me (and I never knew how to talk about them) and Ben has done a great job communicating them impactfully yet succinctly. #6 has been huge.
𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫
Picture yourself 12 months from now. What would you hate yourself for not starting today? Put another way, what’s something you could start today that you could do 1x/week for a year? What could it become?
Not saying this newsletter is some smashing success. But here’s a few things I would have missed out on if I never did it:
meeting new people (and getting lots of opportunities)
a $100 ad placement
building a “consistency muscle”
what messaging works, vs. what doesn’t
immediate feedback from testing new ideas
learning about the business of newslettering
starting the process of “deplatforming” as a creator
a giant list of curated resources for product-curious people
So now, the $1M question… Was it worth it?
Some would say this was wayyy too much work for 1200+ subscribers and $100. That’s ok. Most people are comparing these numbers with the badass newsletter creators of the world like Akaash Gupta (Product Growth) or Linda Zhang (Product Lessons). I’m not. I’m only competing with myself. I saw a gap in myself 12 months ago… That I was scared not to try something new. And that I pivoted (or gave up) on things when it got tough. So, the fact that I stuck with something for 12 months, tried to deliver value to my readers, and learned a thing or two is a success for me.
Now the $2M question… what comes next? We shall see. I’m contemplating a complete overhaul. Stay tuned.
—
#ABowkTime #ProductManagement #NoCode #BuildYourOwnProduct #CareerTips
I can help you become a PM in 4 ways:
👆Free, ungated guide to the IBM APM program
✌️$20 guide to skipping other PM interview candidates
🤟 a live, hands-on workshop (starts Nov 12)