 Let's define courageous in your job hunting process. My student Jackie quit her full-time job to focus on product management career because she knew that's her dream destination. Guess what she was able to lend her associate product manager job in American Express with no traditional product management experience. Let's learn from her today. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, director product from drncd.com. I help people transition from worker B to product manager and business leader. Lots of you guys must ask this question. How can I successfully transition into product management with zero product management experience? Today, I had the pleasure to invite Jackie to join us to share with her experience transitioning into an APM role at American Express. So it's my pleasure to have Jackie to join us who is an American Express APM and Jackie welcome. All right, so lots of you guys have heard of your story transitioning into an APM in the early stage of your career. Would you like to introduce yourself Jackie? Yeah, sure. Hi everyone. So I'm a little bit about my background from co-founding an educational investment app to college to helping build a banking platform at Fensifee. I've taken a product from concept to launch. Specifically, I've collected and analyzed user feedback, crafted product requirements, optimized features funnels, and built out operational processes. But until this current role, I wouldn't say I've really done like formal or official traditional product management work. Prior to MX, I worked with Axiom Space and Ambassador Relations raising $53 million after conducting in-depth six product market research analysis. And yeah, two months ago, I joined a team that's launching American Express business checking account. And as a junior PM, it's been very fulfilling. Awesome. Great. I think Jackie, you're very humble. Lots of people want to hear exactly how did you make it happen? Can you tell us how did you become part of manager? What's your journey to product management? And especially you mentioned you were working on some startup ideas and especially out of college. And I also know that you were focused on startup for a little while and then you transitioned into this new industry and also the dream city locations you want to join. So tell us more, your journey into product management. Yeah. It started a long time ago in college. I studied biology economics, had no prior knowledge of PM at all. Actually, I learned about startups and fintech while I was clubbing in Miami. I would be the person that ends up talking to these investors and trying to figure out what I want to do. And I was told that, oh, like my worth ethic means that I should join a startup. So when my high school best friend had this idea to basically help other college students or other teenagers who are going to college to save up earlier based on a tax-free plan, I jumped on it. I first started off by liaisoning with investors and then I used the feedback to help refine our revenue model, our deck. And eventually we got to a click-a-pull prototype. But then, you know, we're both amateurs. We weren't technical at all, so that didn't exactly work. I also learned the barrier to entry was too high because the cost to launch that product was 500k per state. So, you know, after that I joined another startup. And this time it was this retail banking platform that's bringing values alignment to the average user who uses any bank product. Backtrack a little bit. In high school I wrote a 12-page paper on corporate welfare and understood that a lot of companies like Monsanto, Abbott Labs, survive off of syndicated bank loans. And so for me, the ability to allow like an individual bank user to earmark their deposits towards a banking platform was very innovative in a way it felt like they are essentially voting with their deposits, right? So, long story short, it was also very early stage. To say I was an idealist was an understatement. We ultimately, you know, launched with a beta product with two community banks and captured more than 90% of the lot of transfer the banks. But, and then the founder decided to pivot. We didn't raise enough money. We felt that the banks were too predatory. So I left and this was around the time when COVID was hitting. So I also didn't really have a lot of help. I didn't have a lot of direction in interviewing for PM roles. So when COVID hit, like all of my interviews got suspended and I was sort of at a crossroads. So, you know, I decided to take a chance and, you know, find something that was both analytical, but sort of forced me to build my network as I was still early on in my career and did investor relations for 10 months, learned that it's really not for me and quit to focus on getting back into product management. Yeah, that's actually, that's a lot of determination. You actually quit your job to focus on product management career and job hunting. And especially lots of us actually faced similar challenges and during COVID, especially at the beginning of COVID and the job opportunities and also interviewing were just withdrawn from the interview process, right? It's crazy. I can't believe how stressful that is. Yeah, yeah, it was a disappointment for sure. Yeah, keep going. So you decide to quit your job and focus on product management career. So what happened next? Yeah, so, you know, while this was going on, the job market slowly started getting better, right? And you know, once I quit, when you're in a comfortable job, you have a little bit less incentive to put in as much effort, you know? But I was at a point where I just couldn't do it anymore. It wasn't making me happy and to the point where when I wasn't working and getting this sort of cushiony salary or whatever, I was much happier not having a salary than when I was in this job. And so I, you know, started researching online. I started off with like a few Facebook groups. And then I, you know, I found your program and just by doing all of the work, putting in the work and, you know, really learning both how to really interview like an expert without coming off as too much of an expert for sure and actually getting all of the product management knowledge down, the ones that matter in the interviews and then also being a part of the community that ultimately worked out. But it was still a long process. I still went through a ton of interviews, a ton of disappointment and yeah, at one point, I was also, by the way, I was also very set on staying in New York City. And at one point I almost gave up. It was around I think May. I was almost like, let me just go back to the best relations. I remember it was in May, it was so funny. You're like, I think you were about like one month or so into programs, something like that. You're like, oh, Nancy, if I cannot get a job by July, I'm going to go back to do whatever I'm doing. I may go back to grad school. It's MBA or something, right? Grad school was like $200,000. So we're about to save you some money. I'm glad we didn't go to grad school but still become a program manager and actually before July, I'm very happy to see that. Thank you, yeah. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't spend that money. Awesome. And I know now you're already an associate program manager in American Express. Can you tell us what it looks like to be an APM at American Express? Yeah, yeah. So I will say American Express is a company of 160 years. So I would say it's a huge company. Obviously the experience is going to be dependent on the team but overall I really love how supportive MX culture has been actually much more than I expected. In fact, our CEO just announced a company-wide pay raise and bonus raise, no exceptions. Internal mobility is very, very high and people tend to just be very helpful. And then so another thing is that even though we're not Goldman Sachs in the financial industry or a thing company, MX is surprisingly known for its machine learning. So if that's an area that you want to learn more about, I really recommend MX. Actually met a Columbia machine learning professor who was raving to me about MX ML strategy. So that's another thing. But I will say the harder part of it, aside from the fact that I literally joined at the time of the Friends and Family launch and then we also just launched the public yesterday, aside from all that craziness, it is still a very large company. So you'll likely be working with like, I would say 10 different teams. It's not an exaggeration and specific to building a product. You will be interfacing with a lot of complex internal systems. So it's a steep, steep learning curve in that sense. Yeah. Actually, I can imagine it is a learning curve for everybody who got started, but I'm very impressed by how fast you guys launch a product. When you joined about two months ago and you have almost like Friends and Family, I call the beta version of product and now two months later, you just launched a product. That's very fast, very impressive. And that's the also one highlight, which I didn't know. American Express is known for like ML. That's impressive because it's very obvious that ML and AI is just a trend in the industry. Now, not only you want to become product manager, you want to become the product manager of the hottest technology. I'm glad you're hitting on AI and ML. That's very good. Maybe you can come back to teach us AI and ML product management to our alumni panel sometime. Awesome. Okay, great. Jackie, now we know how you ended here. Can you give us specific strategies? What kind of preparation strategy led you where you are given at the beginning you did a product management experience on the startup experience? Yeah, so you're right. A lot of the work I did before was, you know, as a co-founder, it was a lot of business development work, some financial analysis work. And then when I joined the banking startup, it was also early stage. So it was also a lot of product operations, a little bit of product management and a lot of marketing. So in order to really prepare to land a good PM or APM role, I think there are two major areas or three that I would consider. So first is really, you know, bolster the material that you have and be a part of a big community. And then second, to really just document and improve price. So on the first, in terms of material, I think you really need to have a great set of interview material to talk about. So for example, you should have like 20 to 30 different stories and be able to map them to like four or five different questions each. So you never run out of material. That's one thing. And then on the more PM knowledge material, it's very important for you to take to not only just read random Google articles, but to take good courses on product management and specifically the ones that are going to tell you how to, where to focus on, right, in terms of the technical and the soft skills of PM knowledge. And then the second, well, sort of to my first part, the second part of my first part that's important is be a part of a community. So whatever online community or in person community you choose to be a part of will really, really get you there. For example, I think with Nancy's program, with your program, I got both of that, right? Like I got the interview strategies, the technical PM knowledge that's not overly detailed so that I'm focusing on the right parts. And then also the community has been great. Like the alumni in your community has been very helpful. And then, you know, there's also one other thing relating to community is, like if you feel whatever area you feel like you are short on. For me, I feel like I'm, I always feel like I'm not technical enough. A lot of PMs came from an engineer background. I always hunt down those who are transitioning from an engineering perspective. We can trade off, right? Like maybe I know a little bit more about business development or monetization. They know a lot more about, you know, engineering. So from that community, you can learn so much. And the second part is just document and improve. Practice a lot and document. Ask for feedback after every mock interview and real interview. Like no matter how much, how, how you don't want, how much you don't want to come off as annoying to an interviewer. Like hunt them down and make them give you feedback in a nice way. Yeah. So I do remember actually, you're a very active learner and especially asked multiple times I came from a marketing background then you ping. I remember in the alumni swag channel basically ping everybody. It's like, hey, anybody who is an engineer, a software engineer, any kind of engineer, I'd like to talk to you. I see that lots of the talk to you and also believe that later on, you also join our alumni channel share any aspect you have, especially the ones you mentioned. Hey, hunting people down in a nice way to get feedback through the alumni panel. I bet lots of people just really appreciate your perspective because your personality really comes through because we're from like a business background and lots of people with engineering background have no clue how to do it. So it's like trade. I do love what you said about the community aspect. It's like blooming right now in terms of learning from each other. Yeah. Yeah. It's really important, especially when you had a bad day or when you finally think, oh my God, I had a last round. It's really important to have that community, especially if you don't have personal friends or family that are in the field. Yeah. Especially for part of management space, we said this space maybe is only about three years or up to five years. It wasn't really a thing until recently. So that's why there are not that many people who already had experience. That's why the community is very critical. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. Yeah, yeah, of course. So Jackie, let me ask you this question. What do you wish to know before you become a part of manager? Anything surprise you? Yeah. So, you know, you always hear that APMs are in a lot of meetings, have to balance stakeholders and all of that. And it's really true. Even for me at the APM level, I am in back-to-back meetings a lot. And it can be a lot, especially when you actually also have work to do. So I think one of the most important things is really prioritize and time manage well or you're going to like really burn out. And I think it could be especially hard if you're starting in a big company and it's important for you to have that face time and important for you to have intros. So don't ever sacrifice on any intros. Because for me, our team was so busy that no one really had like a real onboarding thing with me. It was all almost mostly Q&A. So for me, I set up like 30-minute intros with almost every major team member, cross-testing, compliance, everyone. And that helped a lot. But, you know, that cut down my time even more. So I would say time management prioritization is really important. A second thing is I do wish I, you know, had read more sort of case studies into specifically like the effort level of certain different requirements. And then just like understanding the different types of backend systems better. Because for MX specifically, it's such a huge company. Some systems are new, some systems are legacy. It can be a steeper learning curve. But in general, once you're in it, like there's no better experience than to be in it and really learn. Yeah, I can imagine especially you said American Express actually big on AIML. And this is also very, very new field for lots of people who doesn't have engineering background like you. I made a YouTube video talking about how would you deal with for 30, 60 days, 90 days in your new job and everybody can check out this video right on top. Jackie, I can imagine. Yes, it is true. We are a continuous learning group. And that's why we always welcome alumni coming to share their knowledge. Now, I really want to ask you this question on behalf of lots of APM, Associate Product Manager. So what exactly does APM do compared with normal PM? Do you still write requirements into the customer? So what does it look like? Yeah, okay. So also this I think is a very company dependent question. For my role, I will say some of the responsibilities I've taken on that are more APM specific would be building decks for compliance or compliance approval prior to launch, facilitating some of the launch related activities and then setting up meetings for things that I may be not in charge of. But again, this is another reason why I really like my team. I really like MX so far because specifically for me, I've gone a lot of ownership. So I've already written requirements for simpler features. I've already launched. It's been two months and I've already launched my first feature. Yeah, I think it really depends on the company. So I don't know how much that helps, but yeah. No, it helps. It helps significantly. Especially you already start writing a new feature. My personal experience helping people become a PM and also APM is that so basically APM is still product manager but managing a smaller part of the entire product portfolio. Probably your manager, someone else, managed every aspect. But you manage certain features. So you're responsible for launching that specific feature and that's also the reason you need to work with such a big team because the features sitting on top of a product portfolio or the suite of different features relate to each other. Awesome. I'm so glad to see that you're very active and already launched your first product. How exciting. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's basically how I would describe it. That's a good way to describe it. Awesome. Okay, great. For everybody who is interested in learning about the product manager accelerator, you can check out the description and in this video and join the webinar where you can learn more about how to become a product manager as soon as possible as well. Thank you so much for joining us today and let me ask you this final question. How can people get in touch with you if there are any questions, learn about how to become a PM or APM? Yeah, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and if I can help, I would love to help. I totally understand the trials and tribulations to get to my role, so I would love to help if you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, feel free to. Awesome. Thank you. I'm going to link the description of Jackie's LinkedIn and the description of this email as well. And thank you so much for joining us, Jackie. And for everybody who is aspiring product manager, and please continue to watch this channel and hit the like button so that more people will discover this organic content. Thank you very much for joining us, Jackie, and looking forward to seeing you and more aspiring product managers next time. See you. Bye. Bye.