 It's interesting a lot of the best practices that are used in product management. Well one, they're not consistently used within companies. So some of the things you're going to learn about product management, you might be going even further than your small startup if you're in one right now. You might be learning things that aren't consistently applied but have been found to be best practices across the organizations overall. And then what's interesting is when we apply a lot of those principles to our overall life, we end up getting better outcomes there as well. And we want to take advantage of that. So for me personally, my mission in life is to help teams and individuals get to their next level. And I do that via corporate training, consulting and coaching. And so again, I think I told you all this stuff. I talked about my, I talk about myself as being a personal accelerator. You too can come up with nifty little words to talk about what you do. So even if you go into product, you can be like, I'm a product genius whatever. But a lot of times when you think about what you do, like product is such a great area because you might have noticed it's very broad. Have you noticed this? Product management, does it mean the same thing everywhere? No. And so that's something to really understand for yourself when you want to go into product management or understand something about it. So it could be any of those things. And, you know, when I mentioned to you, I've done a lot of coaching, I've helped people like you get into six figure incomes, making 60, 50% more than they made before, if not more, and also achieve a work-life balance. I'm curious, how many of you right now feel like you have work-life balance today? It's an astoundingly small number. So something to consider. I know some of you are like, you're like, whatever, I'm committed. I don't need balance. But for others, you might be craving it. But for me personally, I found that to be really essential over the years, which might sound ironic given I worked at Amazon. But, you know, eventually you will be able to get there. And I studied cognitive science and computer science, which is all about people and machines. And I think that's part of what led me to product because I wanted to understand enough technology so that I could use it to live a better life. And that is the approach that I personally take to product is that the whole point of it, especially when we're doing digital product management, is not just to build cool stuff. So that's also awesome. But it's to build something that's useful, that's solving a problem that's meeting a human need. And so that's the approach that I take and that I recommend people take. So by the end of tonight, you will be able to start applying best practices for product management to your career and your overall life. You will have some specific ideas on how to actually become a product manager. And with all of that, you also want to better understand influence, which is one of the key attributes needed of product managers so that you can focus on the areas of highest impact, highest return on investment. So some inspiration from product management. Vision. Having a vision is key to creating a great product, create a great company, creating a great business. I want all of you to take a minute right now. I want you to close your eyes. Go with me here. I can see you. Close your eyes. And I want you to imagine a year from now for your own life for that vision. What is it? What is it that you desire? We talked a bit about some of you want to be product managers. Some of you will just want to know more. What is that perfect life that you have a year from now? What are the attributes of the job that you are in? Do you have an amazing manager? Do you get to go home at 5 p.m.? Maybe you don't care about that. You just want to build the next coolest, biggest thing and you want to be in a company that set up to IPO. Whatever it is that drives you, think about it both from that career perspective, the position you're in, the team that you're on, the role that you are playing within that team, as well as your overall life. Where are you living? Are you traveling? What are you doing overall? So now that you've taken a minute to think a bit about that, I want you to share with a partner some of the main highlights of what you expect your life to look like in a year. So each of you share for about a minute each, what are you aiming to achieve and be in a year from now? It's interesting. I was just talking this morning with one of the folks in my mastermind and she's a high level manager in a company where they're doing an offsite and she was talking about how they met and or exceeded all of their goals from last year. And so now they're in the midst of goal planning for 2018. And one of the things I said to her was, okay, well, I want you to reflect on that and reflect back to the team. One of the reasons why goal-setting and vision-setting is so important is because that's what y'all actually do. If you met or and or exceeded your goals from last year, that's the stuff you committed to. So what that means is what you're committing to now is going to be that year from now, what y'all are talking about as far as like, yeah, that's what we did. If you don't set that, then you end up meandering all around and you might not ever get to the place you truly want to go. So vision is really important and it's both in that corporate context, like I was just talking about as well and like as well as you all were craving in terms of vision-setting in those companies and as well as in your own life. So do you keep that in mind? Goal-setting overall. Now vision is like that higher level, right? That larger level, what you want to achieve. Maybe you want to move the business in a dramatic way. You want to start a company. You want to get this product manager job. You want to, I don't know, can someone think of an example of a high level vision in a company maybe you want to work at? Go green? Yeah, that's definitely something that's at that level for sure. Anyone else? You're like, I want vision, this is driven companies, but I have no idea what they're driving us toward. So I would say like that's the thing. So vision is generally not going to be the like grow the product to 50 million. That's going to be more the goal-setting. So the vision is going to be like take the world, you know, bring the world's information to everyone and make it organized. And then within that it's going to be like, and I want to grow search by 30% next year. And I want to like grow ads by 50% or a million percent because of Google or whatever. Right? But it's that kind of thing where as you get to those more concrete, like we're climbing up this ladder, we're figuring out, these are basically means goals. And these are end goals. So this is like the overall end, the overall experience we want our clients to be having, want our customers to be having, want to like bring to the problems we want to solve as a group, as a company, as a product. And then here is more like the how, getting into, okay, so I'm going to add these features. I'm going to grow this particular part. And you know, in life, obviously some of those goal-setting things, I want to have a house, I want to have a family, I want to, all of those things are concrete goals that you can set for yourself. And again, you want to, you want to ideally do both of these things because you want to make sure whatever concrete goal you're aiming for adds up to what you want. I was listening to something recently where the, the title on the video is like very provocative, like goal-setting is stupid, right? And it was like, you know, like obviously you have to click and see what's being talked about. And the reality of the video is more like, goal-setting is traditionally done in the Western world is very, you know, it's like, it's sort of like, okay, like very caveated, right? You probably still need to set goals. But one of the examples this guy used, he said, well, look, a lot of people, when they're in high school, they want to get good grades. Why? So that they can go to a good college and then they want to do well there. Why? So they could go to law school and you're like, oh, you were like, I don't know why you'd want to do that. But anyway, for those people who want to go to law school, they're like, okay, why do you want to go to law school? Because I want to be a lawyer. And then he says, oh, NPS 50% of lawyers are super depressed. And so then, you know, so in that case, right, if you're just like, okay, I want to do well, because the next thing, because the next thing, because the next thing, but then you're like, wait, what was I actually aiming for? Oh, did I want like a nice life with a nice home where I actually wasn't depressed? Maybe it's a 5050 shot with law. Maybe I should pick something else. But again, so you want to have both of those things in mind when you're setting your vision, when you're setting your goals. And so thinking about even 2018, when you're planning for that next year, what are the things, what's the way in which you're thinking about it today? Is it, you know, okay, high level, this is what I want. And here's the specific things I'm going to do to get there. You might be on either side of that, you might be more high level, you might be more concrete, make sure that you cover both. And I think that's also true when you're working in a corporation, you want to make sure that we understand the high level goal. How many of you have been on a project where you're like, I'm doing it because my boss told me to do it? Okay. And in those cases, is that rewarding and amazing and fun? Fun? Not usually. So the thing is, in those cases, if you actually knew the purpose, the higher level purpose, have you been on projects where it's more mission driven? How were those? Great. And why do you think it was easier? Yeah. Well, I love it. So he also wants the mission driven company. So he's like, passion, passion, passion. I want the mission. That's what's going to drive him. You all are going to have different things that drive you. But this is true. I mean, this is a huge effect. Just having meaning, mission can be meaning, vision can be meaning. Now that also said, if I have a very concrete task that's super hard, how do I come up with alternatives if I don't know the overall mission? So like if I am, you know, it's like if someone says, oh, I want you to, you know, build a rocket ship to go to the moon or something, you're like, that's really hard. And they're like, actually, I just wanted to, I don't know, I don't know the alternative. I'm like, oh, that didn't go well. But I'm like, you know, but really it's like all we wanted to do was like get a rock sample from there or something. It's like, oh, maybe I don't need to put a man's ship up. Maybe I can just like do something else. I mean, if you know the overall thing you're aiming for, you're setting constraints, you're setting boundaries, and that's where creativity really starts to happen. So I have like a more naughty way of saying GTD. So basically it's funny. I know how many of you are familiar with getting things done. So a few of you. So there's like a methodology, it's Covey, right? I think it's Covey. It does GTD. But or David Allen, I'm sorry, David Allen does getting things done. And that methodology is if you have a two minute task, then just do it. Don't put it on the list. But if you've got something longer, put it on list, organize it, and then figure it out a later time and group things in a certain way to make it easier. Now, you know, I just say like just get it done, however it takes, like whatever it takes, right? Figure out like who you can leverage, what you can leverage, what tools, what methods, just, you know, and of course GTD, you can use that as part of your methodology. But you want to make sure that you know what is all the, what are all the tactical things you need to do to get to those goals. A lot of times both for individuals and for companies, you could just get out executed. And if you're, I will say if you're planning, how many of you are in small companies right now? Okay. And do you, do you know, is your company planning to out execute someone? Sort of. I will say it's very dangerous in small companies to plan that to out execute people, right? I mean, if you're trying to out execute a really large behemoth that actually gets things done, it's a dangerous place to be in. You want to have something competitive that's going to say, okay, we've got this new idea, we've got this new market, we've got this new way of approaching things. Out executing you can do, but you've got to, you've got to have like the manpower to really do it. If someone just has more ability to execute, then it's not going to be in a good place. So you want to be organized enough so that you're able to execute on all of these vision, all of these goals that you have. And the other thing, testing and learning. In a sense, I feel like this is the most important part of you managing your businesses, your products and your life. You're all likely familiar with agile, how many of you are familiar with agile as methodology? Okay. So I know some of, most of you are, some of you aren't. So agile is really this methodology that says, I'm going to build the minimal amount of products often referred to as minimum viable products. I'm going to build a minimal product to test out my ideas. So a lot of times this could be just drawing on, you know, these little cards. I'm going to draw an app and I'm going to show it to you and I'm going to get feedback. And I'm going to see when I show you this thing and say, okay, what button would you click? And you're like, I would close the app. And you're like, oh, okay, that's cool. Maybe I shouldn't build it. And like, and you know, then you find out, okay, what did they really want? Kind of dig in, understand the needs better. That's a form of testing. Now, the reason why you see a trailer up here is because one of my good friends was telling me how she had this vision of owning a trailer and like going off grid with a great internet connection because hello, we're in the industry. So she wanted to go, you know, into nature with this trailer and had this vision of like this awesome thing. And I said, okay, awesome. She's like the trailers, like 30 grand, like, uh-huh. And I'm like, have you ever been in one of these trailers? No. Have you ever been camping? Eh, maybe. So I'm like, wait, I think we should test out something before we go trailer shopping. I think we should maybe rent a trailer, go camping once in it. See, you know, maybe you see, oh, the amenities aren't that great in this trailer, this very expensive trailer that's now probably parked outside in a driveway because you don't know what to do with it, but you don't want to camp because that kind of sucks. So this is the kind of thing that we want to avoid. We want to avoid making large investments in things that we don't yet know. We don't know yet does this work. We don't know if that app works yet. So we want to test it out before we spend, you know, thousands or millions in building it. Similar to here, we don't want to just go all in on a 30,000, you know, price tag trailer. We want to maybe like Airbnb that stuff, right? Try it out for a bit, see if we like it, and then move on from there. So I want you to think about with the vision that you shared earlier this evening, what is one way in which you can test something that you're aiming for? What is something that you're like, it's pretty costly to change jobs. How do I test out whether I really want to do the thing I think I want to do? How do I test out, you know, wanting to move somewhere, whatever it is, something that you have as a goal you think is part of your vision that you might not be 100% sure. You're like, I think it's what I want, but I don't know. So I want you to take one minute and share with each other what's the thing you think you need to test or need to experiment, get a little more info on, and come up with some idea on how you would test it or maybe your partner can come up with something. If you're stuck, you're like, I think I need to figure this out a little more. I'm not sure how to do it yet. Work together and come up with one thing that you want to test, one way that you can test it. And one of the things that we were talking about, do you want to share about what you were thinking in terms of the I want to go here and then I want to go there, etc? Sure. So I can share. I've currently always been sales and account management. I'm very interested in getting into product management. And right now, I'm looking for opportunities in project management, because I thought that would be a good transition. And now I'm learning that that might just create extra steps in the process. And if I can take these small steps to go towards product management, that would make more sense instead of kind of going the roundabout way. And it could. I mean, and again, there's no one like obviously as talking for like two minutes is not quite sufficient information to say, yes, this is definitely the plan. Update it now. Right. Like there might be a little more to figure out, but be careful because and thank you so much for sharing because the thing is what she just described, you all have done at some point, like everybody has done it at least once in their lives where they're like, well, I just need to take this class in order to do that one in order to get this thing in order to do that. And then five years later, maybe I'll have a life that I like. So I mean, this is extremely common. And it's kind of like that law school example that we talked about, right? I'm going to get the good grades to go to a good college that I'm going to get good grades in college to go to the good law school, then I'm going to do that. Now the thing is, and I do want to highlight this for all of you in law, despite the show, for those of you who have watched it, despite that you actually do need to go and get a degree in law. And then you need to pass the bar and it is like a very specific process in order to be a proper lawyer. And that's just how that industry works. Now for product management, that is not the case. It is not a clear shot is not one pass in order to get into product management. To use myself as an example, I was initially an engineer at Amazon. I switched into product management while there. And then fast forward, you know, however many years later, I now train Fortune 500 companies in how to be better product managers. I have, I have taught programs where people get certified in product management based on the things I'm teaching them. And yet irony, I was never certified. I just learned it, did it, did it well, and then that translated into all of this. So this is something to understand this industry works very differently. And you can take advantage of that. Now I'm not saying therefore, you know, you're like, I'm 16 want to be a product manager sounds like a plan, right? There there will be steps to this process. But be careful about whether or not you yourself are adding more hurdles as opposed to just straight going for the goal. Anyone else have something they want to share in terms of your chat or any questions on what you might want to experiment or how? Yeah, it's not a step away, but it may just be an additional step. So I mean, it is definitely the case that a lot of people in product management came out of project management that they do a lot of project management, that is for sure the case. So I understand the logic. What I'm saying is it may not be necessary, or you might be able to find a role that's like project slash product manager, like where it's already kind of both, depending on the company, where it's instead of saying, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight to get in here in a new position that I haven't done before. And then when I'm there, I'm gonna fight to get in another position that I haven't done before. It's just more steps. And so again, it could be the path, could be even how it works out. But I will say, if she doesn't aim directly for product management now, no one's gonna say, I know you keep saying project management, but I heard that you really want product. So here's all the product jobs. You know, that's the thing. Yeah. Now I just wait, I just want to pause a second. You're like, I'm just an engineer. Do you want to CIA that or you want to share what company it is? Anyway, okay. All right. And got it. Sure. Product. Got it. Okay. All right. Got it. Okay. So I'm gonna address a few things. And if you want to talk after, that's fine too. Be careful about limiting beliefs, because whatever limiting beliefs you have, they come out in your language. You're like, I am just an engineer. And then you're like, all right, just listen more, listen more. Now the thing is coming out of engineering, especially if you're going into a technical product management position. I would never say just an engineer. I would say, I'm an amazing engineer and I know all about technology and that's going to make me a better product person and here's the ways in which I contribute to products during my engineering experiences because we don't have product managers because apparently we suck at that or whatever the case is. Okay. Don't say that last part. But anyway, the other thing to understand, like to give you all some context. So obviously, you know, I did product at Google. I did like the engineering and then product at Amazon. And then we will question later what set of thinking led me to this conclusion. But when I went to Google, I was like, I wanted you engineering at Google. I was like, they only value engineers. I'm going to be an engineer again. And I was like, study, study, study, try to be able to pass the engineering interviews, like after like a year or two of doing products. So I did that I did engineering at Google. And then I was like, oh, right, but I still love products. So then switch back again. Now, in the product org at Google, they are more stringent about your computer science backgrounds than the engineering organization. So I had already been an engineer at Google getting positive reviews for a year and a half. And I was asked to provide my transcript from Dartmouth, showing all of my grades in the classes that I took to showcase how much like engineering and computer science background I had. So with that in mind, partly why I share that with you is because your engineering experience is an asset, not a liability in this case, especially, I mean, I'm assuming you're looking at product management jobs in the digital space. Yeah. Okay. And now the other thing is as far as what you have done and how you showcase it, there's going to be there's going to be a question of, you know, how do you talk about what you've done? If you have done something that can be construed as product management work, how do you talk about that? Because most of you, for those of you who are like, I want to go into product management, most of you do not technically have that title right now. But generally people come to this conclusion based on a set of experiences. Product management is a very broad field. So, you know, if you're doing project management, like we were talking about up here, project management is part of the product world. Say, you know, well, this is what I've done. It wasn't technically with that title, but here are the things that I've done within the product org and within the product realm. So I know you're going to just think on that, empathy and connection. Again, think about this as we're talking about the stuff. All right. So empathy and connection is really at the heart of product. Understanding people is so critical because you're building products for people. So you need to understand what they want. And I will tell you, have any of you gone to a user and asked them like, okay, what do you want? Have you done this? Yeah, like, don't be afraid. I told, I did it on purpose. I was like, I don't think it's going to go well, but I'm going to try it anyway, just to see. And I know a handful of you have. I was sitting down with the admin, I was working on DoubleClick at the time, Google's ad serving system for all like the picture ads on the web. DoubleClick basically served most of them up. And so YouTube uses DoubleClick to serve their ad. And I was talking to the guy who administered the YouTube interface at the time. And he was onboarding all the new users. Now, the new user flow at that point, you would like make a new user. And there were 500 checkboxes that you had to either check or uncheck in order to configure a new user on the system. You might think I'm joking. No, I counted 500 plus checkboxes for new users. And they were really great. They had interdependencies that you couldn't tell what they were. They had text that would say in parentheses, do not uncheck. They would say things like, here's the AOL hack. It was great. So it's an awesome, awesome system. And I'm looking at this. I'm like, oh my God, I have to redo all of this. Cool. Got it. So then I asked the guy who's the admin, I say, okay, you've been doing this awhile. And what would you like to see? And he sits there, stares at it. He says, you see this line? Yeah. He says, I think it should say X-Wavy. I'm like, so you would copy edit 500 checkboxes. You would copy edit each line describing the 500 checkboxes so that they were a little more clear when you had to decide which ones to check. Like obviously, that is not what this guy wanted. He wanted to go in. He wanted to see if a salesperson said I needed to see this report. He wanted to be able to go in, say, check a box. Now you see it. Great. Goodbye. I'm out of the system. But he is not a product person. He is not a designer. He doesn't do that. So I need to be able to connect with him. I need to be able to understand what does he actually need? What does he actually want? What are the frustrations when he's going into that product? The frustration, yes, in parts. The copy editing of do not uncheck. Great. Pull the box out of here. Why is it here? But he is not going to make that product awesome. He needs to achieve certain goals. And I'm only going to get to understand those if I can truly empathize with where he's coming from. I'll just say Pia, since you're coming out of sales, you're like, hello, empathy connection. That's what I did all day. So again, think about those things because that's the kind of stuff when you're looking to transition, those are the things you're going to talk about. Understanding people. Yes, that was my job for X number of years. And this is how I do it. And this is how I become close with them. And this is how I get them to tell me the real deal of what they want. And then that's going to lead us to build better products together. All right. So some of the tactics of product management. Product is this trio of business design and technology. Again, assuming not the serial box version, but the more technical version that I think most of you are after. And product is at the heart of this. Now part of the thing that's really interesting about that is to be more rooted in any of these places. You might be coming from more of that technical background, more of the business, more of the design, maybe a little bit of each. But regardless of whichever one has been initially your home, you can use it to route a path into the center where you say, because I have this deep expertise in this one area, I'm bringing a better base there that I can utilize in the overall picture of product. Now at large, if we look in the sort of back out to understand that a little better, in the team perspective, you end up as a product person working with everybody. And everybody comes with their own things, their own interests, their own values, their own goals. So you've got kind of your deciders. You've got your C level folks. You've got your investors. You've got your customers. You've got your partners. These are all folks that can kind of decide things. A lot of them can decide you don't get any money. We're not buying your product. We're not funding your thing. Or of course the converse, or we want to super invest in you. We want to make this grow even more. You've got the builders. That's going to be the folks in product as well, but also designers, engineering, copywriting, social management, all of that, maybe fabricating even depending on the kinds of products you're working on. You've got the sellers, biz dev, marketing, sales, copywriting is really in between. Like all of this stuff kind of touches each other. And then your support steps. You've got admin, recruiting, shipping, HR, legal, all of these different folks who you're working with. And I will say someone from legal is going to look at your product very differently from your customer. So this is the thing that you really need to understand. What is everybody thinking? Where are they coming from? As another example, I always use this example of when I talk to someone who's doing QA versus product versus engineering, the way I'm going to talk about what matters on the project we're working on is very different. With a QA person, I'm going to talk about needs to be best in class, highest quality, needs to be whatever, have very few bugs. I'd be like, right. Of course, we always want zero. There's always more anyway. But that's the kind of stuff we're going to talk about versus for product. I'm like, we're going to make so much money. It's going to be great. We're going to grow this market and we're going to solve these problems. And it's going to really impact the world in all these ways. And with engineers, I need to often talk with them about how complex it is. And no one's ever done it before. And we need to uproot the database and put it on end and make it feelable in these ways that no one's even thought about in the history. I want to hear from one of you. When I say story, what does that bring to mind? Yeah, that's definitely part of it. For sure. Who are you? What do you want? Why do you want it? Do you think that you get very far in life without? Oh, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So we've got why, what, who. So, and this is part of, this goes back to really empathy. When a client just says, I need X, Y, Z. I need a button that's pink and it does this and it's a checkbox and it's this and it's that. And then you just say, oh, okay. I don't know why, but I'll just do it. And you deliver it. Turns out you spend a lot of time working on something nobody cares about. So if you don't understand the why, the what, the how, the who, if you don't understand these things, you're going to go down a very bad path. It's going to be very long. It's going to be kind of depressing when you're like, I did a lot of work and they're like, well, nobody cares. So this is what product is all about. Product is really about making sure that the thing that you're working on is something that matters at the end of the day. Okay. So with all that coming back to story, the who, the what, the why, the how, you know, you think you're kind of clueing into like it's all the question words and you need to be able to answer them, but you've all talked a lot about it in the context of a company, understanding the mission of the company, understanding maybe where a product is going to go, what's the target market, etc. All of that is true. But I want to also ask you what does this mean? And this is partly what you were starting to say for each of you individually. Because I will say with a company, you don't as an individual have as much control over the story, right? You don't necessarily determine what the mission is and then how it connects. So ideally, you can tell a story that does connect them. And if you can't, something needs to shift. If you have a mission at the company and you have the product you're working on and you're like, these two bear no relationship to each other, then you're going to want to investigate what's going on there. But I will say for each of you individually, you have complete control over your story. And so one of the things that's especially critical when you're thinking about transitioning into product management, the question that came up with you, right? You've got interviewers asking you, so what have you done in product management? What have you done in program management? And this is where your story is critical. You need to be able to tell the story that is both true. Okay. So I do want to emphasize this is not like story fiction. I don't know. I'm going to say whatever I want. And I like all of a sudden Tesla's in my backyard. You know, you need to tell a true story, but the framing really matters. The context that you use really matters. And it could be the thing that makes or breaks, whether or not you end up getting that position. I will tell you also the stories that you tell yourself are the stories you tell others. Talking to a client today, but I've had this conversation like a bajillion times and that's totally a number. So I've had it so many times where someone says to me on the phone, they're like, Oh, well, you know, I don't know that I can really do it or everybody's stupid there. It's really annoying. And then I say, well, you know, if that's coming off of you, like if you're saying, I really think you're dumb. Like if that was coming off, that's not going to, that's not going to go well in those meetings. And they're like, no, they don't know it. I don't tell them that. Of course, I just great. We're all professional. The things you believe, the things that you repetitively tell yourself, whatever they are, they are coming out of you. They are leaking out. The secret is out. The more secret you want it to be, the more obvious that shit is. Like everything that you're like, nobody knows. Everybody knows. They might not be telling you, but they all know it. So this is really where story becomes critical. You need to watch first the story you tell yourself, because it's a story you're going to tell everybody else. And then that is the thing that's going to get you or not get you to your next phase and next step. I can relate to that story. I think when you've been in a role for so long, you think that's all that I know. That's all I know. And you can kind of be a little bit too. Oh, I just did sales. No, this was really valuable. Yeah. So there are many ways to deal with this. And I'm going to tell you, I cannot go over all of them right here today. But one thing that you can do is one of many methods. It's a little bit cliched, but it's a cliche that you probably haven't actually done. You just hear it and you're like, oh, it sounds annoying. If you think about what you've done is like your best friend. Like you're talking to your best friend, you're describing what they do. And if you kind of make yourself the third party and you're like, this is a friend that I super care about and they want to like get into product management and they did sales, like how would I describe what they did? And even like write down or like record what you're saying, right? I just did blah, blah, blah, right? And then you're like, if your best friend was saying that, you'd be like, what do you mean just did? You worked your butt off for five years for 10 years, like learning all the technology, learning all the sales structures, learning how to pitch people, learning how to emphasize with them, you know, getting into all of that. You're an expert in this thing. You sold me this crap. I don't even want, right? I mean, it's like, that's the kind of thing that you start to realize and you're like, wait, I'm really good at this. Now it's funny because the stuff that is so second nature to us, a lot of times we do have almost more difficulty talking about it because you're like, you're like, I don't talk to people about the fact that I breathe every day. Like that's just, it just happened. So that's the kind of thing that again, you could do that. The other thing that is also really good that I recommend, ask some of the people who are big in your life, like your friends, your family, but the ones you like, ask them and colleagues who know you really well and ask them for three words to describe you. So what are the three main words that come to mind and say you could say anything? Now again, the nice people, that's what we're only talking to them, right? So like, so the nice people, they're only going to tell you good things. So this isn't going to be the like discovery of, oh crap, I have that problem. But it's going to help you see what are the themes that are coming across. And it's always fascinating to see the things that are always repeated. There are themes to you. There are things that are still ingrained in you that you might not see them, but the folks who you're closest with, they're going to come up with words that are very similar, not the same. And so you can use that as a barometer as well. Alright, specialists versus generalists. So this keeps coming up with people that I'm talking to. So I want to highlight it here. A lot of folks I'm talking to, especially in the product phase, they talk a lot about being generalists. They're like, I don't know, I do a lot of things, like I'm good at a lot of stuff, but I don't know. Some people feel like they're more specialized and they're trying to get more general. So of late, I've heard it more the other way around. I'm curious, how many of you feel like you're specialists right now? Okay, and how many of you feel like you're generalist? Okay, so that is basically the conversations I have. You just did like the 80-20 on that, and that's basically the case. 80% or around there is basically I'm a generalist. I don't know. And then some are feeling like they're more specialist. I will tell you that the key, and the thing that I always, always, always recommend when I'm working with folks who want to get in a product is having goals. But that doesn't mean like let's go to law school forever and be depressed at the end. Like that is not what I'm saying. What I'm talking about is, is what is that thing that if the group is working on something, if you're working on a product, it's the area that you could jump in and participate in. That you are like, this is the thing that I know. Something likely that you already did. So here up here, you're like, I could sell things, whatever. We need that. Great. I can jump on in. What is that core that you're coming from? I've done a lot of engineering. I've done a lot of things in personalization and search. So if I'm working on a personalization and search product, I'm like, put me in coach. We got this. So that's the kind of stuff that you want to have a bit of specialization and then also have that rounded filter that you can work with all of those different individuals. Yeah. So I would say specialist is like some amount of niche, but not too much. Like so, you know, copywriting, marketing, sales, like engineering, something that, and it might even be more specific, but something that if, if like we had a need there, you could just jump on in. You don't need to like learn a lot about it. You could just do it. And then generalist is really that ability to work with all those folks that builders, the, you know, the deciders, all of those folks. That's where your generalist skills come in. Yeah. All right. I'm just going to keep going right now. I know, like, because I know I'm like, oh, yeah, I know. I know. I see you. I see you. All right. If you want to switch, like into product, I will say try to go internally first if you can. Otherwise, go outside. It's always a little easier to switch of roles that you're playing in a context where you've already built up a lot of street cred. So ideally, I would recommend starting there. Facional programs, going to smaller companies, like associate product manager programs, these are all ways to kind of infiltrate the field in a way that's built for it, as opposed to go to bigger, but again, any of them can work. And the rich, facial programs like the associate product manager programs tend to be at those bigger companies like Google. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, especially, I mean, any of these, you can intern at any of these places, you can, you know, volunteer, you know, even places like Baruch, like they're always looking for mentors and things like I'm doing a lot of mentoring at Cornell Tech. That could be, you know, again, depending on your background and what you do, like any of these things can be a foray into the field. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to say, like some of the things when you're getting really specific for you, like we should probably take offline, but I will say in general, as you're navigating like this unknown path, networking is one of the most critical ways of connecting with people and finding opportunities. And the more your path is not traditional, the more talking to people is going to get you there. So like an associate product manager program, when you're like two years out of school, and you went to like the feeder schools into Google and things like that. And you're like, all right, great. Like I want to do this thing that's designed for new grads who've gone to these kinds of schools, et cetera. Great. That's like a path that's already defined. And if you kind of fit it, then you can go those normal routes. But the more it's like diverging from the, we have a whole structure to put you in there, then you're going to need to do more networking and more sort of creative approaches to getting a position. All right. I'm going to just keep going. You guys, if you have other questions, like I will be around after, but I'm going to quickly go through art of influence. So control. We all want it. Some of us think we have it. Others of us are older and have been through some things and seen some things. But at the end of the day, we often think we have a lot more control than we actually have. And so we want to understand where do we have no minimal some and, you know, more zero, the weather, like we can barely even tell what's happening, let alone control what's happening. So that's where we have no influence over that minimal. So like recycling, you know, you can recycle one thing here that's not necessarily going to save the whole planet and like change everything, but it's a contribution to a cause. Some control for your health, right? You can eat well, you can exercise. Still things can happen, but your control over that is much larger. So if you're eating really poorly, the correlation is that you do worse in health. And if you're not exercising at all, again, you tend to do worse versus if you're eating well and doing better. That said, sometimes you get hit by a truck like, I don't know. So you don't have total control over this, but you can take steps to make the probability higher that you will do well in your health. And then as far as the most control, it's really over yourself internally. So again, that some of the things that we started talking about some of the limiting beliefs, the things that we repeat to ourselves, we can control what are we saying? I mean, we might need some guidance on how to do that. What are the things we should be saying? But those are the kinds of things we can control. Even with our emotions, we can't control that we're having an emotion right now, like just have it, don't fight it. The more you fight it, the more it'll persist. But you can over time, as you kind of think about and feel and explore, like why are you feeling that way exploring your language, you can influence that as well. So this is where we have the most control today. I told you that we were going to use product management practices to improve your career and your life overall, that we would understand how to navigate the realm of product management at a high level. And we would understand where to focus to be able to proceed so that we can get beyond fear that we might have, right? Maybe we're afraid, like what do we do next? But it's like, wait, we have control over ourselves. We can control our story. We can control what we say both to ourselves and each other. And so that's where we can take that control as we navigate to these next steps of the past and really influence the outcome.