 Hello, welcome to this product school presentation on becoming a product manager. My name is Tori, a little bit about me. I live in San Francisco. I have a baby named Kiki who's 16 months, has been named Kevin and an adorable fellow, Prince Ravioli on the right. All right, so what we're going to talk about today is before we break into the steps about becoming a product manager and the product manager you want to be, we'll talk a little bit about what a product manager is and a little bit about my story and perspective for this presentation. All right, so jumping in, what is a product manager? What is a product manager? So you probably either, maybe some of you are product managers, maybe you have heard about product management, they're the CEO of the product, maybe you've heard that. Maybe you work in a company and product managers seem to be doing a lot of presentations or maybe making decisions, leading meetings, and you're kind of like, I want to do that, I want to lead. Maybe looked up the salary, fair enough. These are all fair enough ways to be interested in like, what the heck is this? But what is a product manager really? Product managers are really just here to build amazing solutions to hard problems or just delighting customers. Product managers are here to solve problems for people. And they're also here to, product managers don't just build solutions, but they have to also define the sort of parameters of where they're going to go after the solution, define what success means, and then achieve it, and then do it in the real world. So product manager ship product, it's not theoretical and just strategy. We get work out into the world and we test it. And that means we have to be practical and work within real world constraints. So it's a really fantastic and interesting role and I'm just going to give you a few examples of some products that I've been sort of thrilled by recently just to cover the gamut of a few things that you could do. So this first one, I use Capital One as my main credit card. These rewards, I never really use them. They kind of like, we're in the background and Amazon, being Amazon, we're like, hey, we could apply these toward your purchase. So I go to buy a stuffed animal for my baby and it's basically free, which is amazing. So that's a very Amazon-y thing to do. So that just made me stoked. This is a sort of silly version. There's this thing called PoolSuite.fm. That's just a website where you can listen to cool tunes and feel like you're in Palm Springs. Super fun and kitschy. This was something that solved a really actually hard and serious problem for me. So we've been struggling with sleep training with the baby. It was really, really hard to get ahold of a sleep trainer. It was expensive and I discovered this app that I actually had their work that would let me just talk to a certified sleep trainer like that day and it blew my mind. Solved a huge problem for us, really helped unlock some solutions. It was really helpful for me. Next one for something completely different. If you have ever done anything with VR with an Oculus or other VR headset, it's super fun and interesting. I don't know if Metaverse is the future or not, but I do know that playing Billie Eilish on Beat Saber is extremely fun. So all of these examples are just examples of different products that product managers are behind and work with teams to create these really great experiences. So how do you become one of these? That's what we're going to talk about today. Okay, so here's a little bit about my story to kind of show you my perspective and sort of where I'm coming from with this presentation. So I graduated in 2007. Yes, I am an elder geriatric millennial with an English major from a college that no one had ever heard of. I really didn't care at the time. I just wanted to be a writer and live on a boat. That was like my main aspiration in life. In 2008, the recession hit. I had luckily gotten a job as an editor. I tried to quit that job. I begged for it the day after because it was the recession that was like, shoot, I should probably have work. So I'm glad I did, but I really didn't like that job and it took me a long time to get out of it and figure out what I wanted to do. I applied to literally hundreds of jobs. It was really hard. By the time 2012 came around, I finally found someone I really connected with named Marnie who helped me get a six-week contract job as a technical writer at a startup that turned into a full-time job thanks to her help for advocating for me. The problem was, once I became a technical writer, I really wasn't satisfied with just writing content about product. I didn't want to write directions for how to make a product make sense when it just didn't make sense in the interface. So I kept hunting the product managers down, being like, can we change this? What's going on here? Why did you make this decision? Can we try this one instead? And it just kind of became clear to some of my colleagues, and I didn't even really know this at the time, that I was thinking like a product manager. Somebody encouraged me to apply for an open entry-level PM role at the company at the time, gave me a copy of Marty Kagan's Inspired. I read the book and almost fell off my chair. I was like, this is what I want to do with my life. I didn't even know this was a job. And I worked really hard to and studied for that interview, barely got it, and then barely hung on for my life. So I really didn't have any experience at the time other than my expertise in this domain at the startup. I really hope that what I've learned over the years while up-leveling myself and gaining the information that I needed to succeed in product can really help you all. I also, you know, in my role as VP of product at a startup called People Grove, as well as a manager at Udacity, I've learned a lot about hiring and interviewing entry-level and intern level of PM. So I have a little bit of perspective on what hiring managers might be looking for. Now I work for Twitter with writers and editors and publishers, and despite all the craziness in the news, I'm still excited to work there. So all right, moving on. Okay, some notes before getting started. The audience for the first few steps are more about breaking in the product, the second and more about up-leveling. So this is kind of about becoming the product manager that you want to be at the end of the day. Grain of salt, of course, these steps are all my opinion, colored by my journey. There's a lot of ways to do this. This is just sort of my perspective. And then, you know, behind the bubble, I can't move it or it'll stop my slides. These are all free. They're meant to be scrappy and kind of a lot of work, but they're also steps that anyone can do without having to pay a bunch of money to get an MBA or expensive coaching. Okay, getting started. Break into product. Steps one and two. Get started somewhere. As my writing coach used to say, if you had writer's block, just get started somewhere. Just start something. And that's what I would say to folks who are struggling to figure out how to break into product. Just be a product manager. Just do it. There are a million different ways to start a website, a product, physical product, maybe you have some data that you found, you know, there's literally publicly available data about like weather and about humans that you could put a front end in front of with air table. I mean, the literally endless possibilities. A lot of times, you know, when I've interviewed folks for internships or PM roles and they tell me they started their own thing, they kind of apologize for it. Well, only five people use it and I'm always thrilled. I'm always like, oh, thank God, this is amazing. This is somebody who's, you know, really wants to be a PM. You can see it through their actions and it's inspiring. So just do it. Start your own thing. Similarly, create something from scratch. So the product management is a very creative discipline and it's a craft. So if you are, have an idea for a screenplay, you want to organize a community volunteering effort, you want to start a meetup, all of those things will contribute to your ability to think creatively and to build something from scratch. So ship it, get something done and that will also give you some ammunition in the interview to stand out from the crowd and also just give you a little bit of confidence so that you can start kind of figuring out what it means to be a product manager. All right, next steps. So these are kind of similar to the first ones, but they're more about forming your perspective, where you want to go with it. So many different avenues and sometimes it's hard to pick which one you want to go into. So this can help you hopefully in your search. So the first one, find a problem that you really have to solve, something you're really interested in. Here are some examples. Maybe you created a hack. Could be physical, you taped something up because you didn't like the way your room was configured. Could be digital, could be emotional. Maybe you solved some really hard problem. And you could create training around that. What did you hack? What's problem did you solve? Number two, what annoyed you? What could you fix? It could be a little thing. It could be a big thing. How would you solve that problem? Number three, why do you see injustice in the world? The world is very unjust. There are so many ways to lift others up. How can you work to fix that problem in the world? Number four, maybe this isn't something that you would necessarily think of, but a friend of mine actually created a product out of something fun that we all came up with as a group, a couple hours into hanging out. Share your fun idea with the world. I think that's one thing that really surprised me about product management is if you find something amazing, others probably will too. So what problem do you have to solve? This can give you a perspective into what companies you wanna interview for. When you are interviewing for them, you probably will have done some more thinking around this problem, which will really help you stand out. Next, product managers take a lot of information and synthesize it. It's very important to read a lot, think a lot, discuss with others so that you can push back and have a perspective. You're gonna spar with engineers. It's important to be able to take a lot of information in, have a perspective about it and be able to stand up for it. So have fun with it. Build a list of books, podcasts, articles. I'm gonna share a bunch of stuff, but I'm happy to share my own favorites. You can also Google it. Read the news. Product managers work within, like I said earlier, work within a context, a real world context. It's really helpful to know what's going on in the world. Even 10 minutes, read the news every day. Watch TV, have some fun with content, consume stories, talk about what they mean with people, have fun. Reading and consuming content is actually more important than it seems. Okay, become an expert. So I've already sort of covered this, but becoming an expert, I mean, back to, when I applied for my PM role at the beginning, at the start of I was at, I was an expert in the company. In email technology, because I was writing about it, as part of my technical writing, that's one example. You know, especially when you're applying to an entry-level role, say it's a gaming company. Are you a gamer? Are you an expert in that? Because you play it all the time? That's an example too. Just become an expert in something. Find something that you're passionate about. And that will lead you to more success and also more satisfaction in your life, in my opinion. All right, steps six and seven. This is a little bit of a funny transition because it's like, I wanna be a PM. How do I get the job? And I'm like, get the job. So this is kind of a crossing the chasm moment. In my experience, there are four general paths that people tend to take when becoming a product manager. They do what I did. Get a job at a startup, become a trusted expert, and then apply for an open PM job in their company. A lot of people I know have done that. They've joined in account management. They've joined in support, technical writing, engineering, there's so many different ways, web development, marketing. I've known a lot of PMs who've come from other roles in their startup. A lot of startup founders end up as PMs. So they are entrepreneurial. They started their own product. And then they either got acquired or just kind of became PMs. Realize that that's the role that they want. Engineers end up often becoming PMs because maybe they get specs that they want to improve. They start improving them. And then they realize, actually I'm enjoying this role more and they become a PM from there. The fourth one is one that I feel like people often wanna do, which is getting an associate or an entry level PM job straight out of an MBA or college, like getting sort of placed in a role. That one in my experience seems a lot more rare and a lot harder to do. You can do it, but if you aren't in an MBA or honestly in some ways a top college, there's a lot of other ways to get yourself into the role. But that is one valid way, of course, as well. So my suggestion, this is maybe a little controversial, but this is the way that I do it. I think the easiest way to become a PM is not actually necessarily applying directly to be a PM. It's actually kind of going in from the side. So joining a tech company or a startup in a role that suits your passions. So I joined as a technical writer. Again, I didn't mean to do this going in, but you could join in marketing, you could join in doing a lot of things that you're interested in. To be clear, do a good job. Make sure that you're a good colleague. Like do your role. Maybe you'll fall in love with that role too. That's also great, but if you still wanna become a PM, become a trusted expert in the company, show creativity, passion, leadership, expertise, and then a role opens, just go for it and just keep trying. After you've been at a startup for a while, even if you can't necessarily get that role in your company, I have seen people, once they've built expertise and say education or whatever it is that they're working in, pivot into an entry level PM role at another company with that same expertise. So it's still valuable to be at a startup even if you can't necessarily move into a PM role at that startup. Okay, this is pivoting a little bit into more of the how do you grow in your role? But once you have started as a PM, I would suggest that you try out a few different roles. So I have a few here, but there's so many different types of product manager. So I have a growth PM, you can't really see that there, but that's kind of about, maybe you have an e-commerce funnel and you're trying to get people to purchase. So how can you take a metric and make it go up and to the right? What sort of changes can you do to the website? A, B testing, et cetera. It's pretty fun and analytical. Platform PMs, this is more technical. So how do you build the platform that others build off of? So this could be a content management system that engineers use. It could be a product like Shopify that shoppers, I'm sorry, merchants use to sell their products. Zero to one PM, this is about growing a startup. So either start your own startup or you could join a startup within a startup and start something from scratch. There's a lot of ways to do it and I do think that because it's kind of easy to switch into different roles, trying out these different roles can be really good for your career and for understanding what you actually like out of the product management role. Okay, next step, up level. So these next steps are kind of about, maybe you've started into product management and you're trying to figure out how to be the product manager that you want to be. So it's hard enough just to get your foot in the door. So get your foot in the door by any means necessary. I mean, obviously legal and please be a nice human, but get yourself into the door and do a good job. Even if it's not exactly your ideal job, you will learn an immense amount and you will meet customers and colleagues that you love no matter what company it is and no matter if you're doing it like the right way, having a good attitude and putting your best foot forward is always good in my opinion, to build experience and to learn. And then from there, you can start to figure out how to up level. So finding communities really important. I joined all three of these communities. I ended up being an organizer at Mind the Product San Francisco. It was a really great experience. I was just at the Women in Product Conference last week. Products that count is another meetup that I went to relatively often. These are great communities. They might seem kind of like, I don't want to network, I don't want to. But honestly, it's really helpful. You'll meet people you can collaborate with who can open up doors for you. You also meet friends who will geek out about product management or even can visorate about different things that you might be struggling with. Another thing that a community can help you with is finding a mentor. So mentorship has been shown through data to be one of the most helpful things that you can ever get in terms of career progression. So, or even college graduation. So if you could get a mentor as early as possible to help you, you know, who's been there, who's been in your shoes and who really sees you and sees what's valuable about you and can help you navigate, that is super important. Mentors are very hard to come by because they're busy people. They have lives, they have jobs, but most people's is also shown through survey data, want to be mentors, like 90% of people want to be mentors. So just keep trying until you find somebody who works for you. It's very important as part of your career. So you can do that through, you know, honestly emailing people on LinkedIn, cold emailing people, you can go to communities. People grow of the company that I used to work for was actually a college career center basically where you could log in and find folks who'd already signed up to mentor you. A lot of colleges have that platform or similar ones. So you can find mentors, lots of different ways, Google it, try to figure it out, go get yourself a mentor. All right, next steps, steps 10 and 11. So know the score. I guess what this means is, you know, once you're into into your product management role, you're starting to kind of feel yourself a little bit. You're starting to be like, all right, this is hard. I get this, like you're learning, which is great. The problem is there's a bunch of other talented people out there who are also very good and who are also learning and growing as well. So you're gonna need to keep yourself sharp, especially if you're interviewing at some of these more kind of like coveted roles and jobs. All product manager jobs are amazing. There are just some that tend to be a little bit more desired. So you're gonna have to up level yourself. So that's true if you wanna be a startup founder as well, PM jobs, entrepreneur jobs, especially in the tech world, require a lot of skills, primarily technical design and business. No matter where you come from, if you're an engineer, if you're an MBA, if you're a designer, you're gonna have probably one of these three where you're gonna be weaker in. And I do encourage folks to try to shore those up. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna hurt, but it's good. You don't have to, you know, necessarily go back and get a CS degree, but it's really helpful to shore up some of your weak spots and just get some improvement because it'll help you day to day and it'll make you feel more confident. I have a few resources on the right that I've used. I use Udacity before I worked there. It was fantastic. I really, it really helped me learn technical skills. You can also go to Coursera, linda.com. Code Academy is really great if you're starting out learning technical skills, especially programming, go to Khan Academy. So many different ways to do it. On the left here is more about business strategy. So, Sir Techery is one of my favorite blogs. It's all about market conditions and all about, you know, what's happening that matters in the world of tech and why. And India does great analysis on it. This one on the bottom is a former associate of mine who worked at the first startup called Tristan Kroemer who does these really great and really practical pieces on experimentation. So, whether that is if you're starting from completely from scratch or AB testing, when to do which experiment in which context really helpful and very practical. So, highly recommend that. But the takeaway from this is whatever year we can, you should probably try to up level yourself and there's a million resources out there. So, organize yourself and get it done. Practice interviewing. So, this one is not very fun. Nobody really likes doing this, but it's really important because other PMs out there are doing this. And if you don't practice, it actually is kind of obvious. So, I've done a lot of interviews, especially at Twitter. And it's very noticeable if people are just kind of winging it when other people have practiced. So, you know, read, cracking the PM interview, read, decode and conquer. I'm a big fan of Lewis Lynn. You can go to his Slack community and get interview partners, which is really helpful. Exponent is another one that I've used. That's like a interview practice site. There's other great ones. Candor is another one. There's a lot of these out there. This one is free. These are relatively cheap. If you're interviewing for some of these more coveted jobs, you're going to need to practice. So, I know that sucks, but it's true. And while you do this, it'll make you a way better product manager. Like you'll bring back some really great new ideas, new strategies to your current job. So, definitely do this. All right, last step. So, this one is honestly about kind of bringing it all together. So, you've upskilled yourself. You've practiced, you know, you've been at the PM role for a while. You've tried out different things. You have a perspective of what's interesting to you. You know how to synthesize information. You know how to lead. You've got all of it. If you don't know how to bring it together with a story, it's still not really going to go anywhere. So, learning how to tell your story about where you've come from, what's interesting about your perspective. You are unique, you are amazing, and you can do it, but you also have to figure out how to really bring yourself to light. So, it's not, you know, it might sound kind of annoying that, you know, I don't want to have to sell myself, but it's not really selling yourself. It's really just understanding what is amazing about you and allowing that to shine. So, you can, you know, how do you learn how to story tell? You practice. You practice over and over again. So, how do you do that? Maybe you go through multiple interviews. Maybe you practice out loud with your partner. There's a lot of ways to do it. You could do things like what I'm doing right now, get on some webinars, start, you know, leading, start mentoring yourself, like mentoring other people. There's a lot of ways to learn to story tell, but it is important once you've, especially, when you're trying to up-level, learning how to tell your story in a way that is compelling to other people, that shows your perspective, shows your passions and your expertise, is extremely important. All right, so that is the presentation. So, just in summary, the first steps are about starting your own thing, creating something from scratch, get something off the ground. After that, or even during that, finding your perspective, find a problem that really matters to you and start researching it. Start understanding what makes the customers and users tick in that world. What solutions are out there? What could you do? Read, think, discuss, read the news, watch content, discuss what matters about what it is that you're consuming with other people or write about it. Become an expert. Just have fun with things. Fall in love with them. Be passionate. Just get involved and become an expert. It really helps you stand out in the crowd to have something that you're independently passionate about. When you're trying to up-level, definitely, oh, I'm sorry, when you're trying to break in, my advice is to find a startup and if you can't break in directly as a PM, join a startup in any role that is relevant to your passions and then do a good job. I think definitely make sure that you are in it for the job that you get, but then after a while, you can probably move into a product manager role as long as one's open and you are showing expertise in the domain. From there, get a mentor, try out different PM roles, join a community, start to kind of get a feel for by working with other folks in the community with a mentor or trying out different roles, like what paths do you really want and how can you get there? And then when you're really trying to up-level, teach yourself those skills that you're lacking. It is important to compete with your peers who are very smart people that you have at least short up your weak spots. And that also goes for practicing interviewing. Do it, it's not fun, but it's really helpful, so do it. And then, Storytel, bring it all together. What are all the things that you've done and all of the things that you've learned who's made you into the amazing PM and person that you are today? And help your interviewers see that, help them understand what's amazing about you and why they absolutely have to have you on their team to build the amazing product that will thrill and excite and solve problems for the users in the real world. So that is it. Thank you so much for attending this webinar and best of luck in your PM career.