Lessons In Product Management

This is a crazy and turbulent time in Tech. Companies are hitting financial hard times or restructuring as the economy is forcing extreme prioritization of resources. If you find yourself on the unfortunate end of these layoffs, I have someone on the show who has been through several and helped several others through this process. Don't miss the great advice on this week's episode of Lessons in Product Management!

Dan Balcauski is a pricing expert and dropped by the pod to share key insights, hot takes, and practical advice for product teams and leaders to help unpack the pricing process, key variables, and mistakes to avoid.

Show notes:

0:00-0:30 - Episode Intro

0:30-1:55 - Dan’s Intro/Background

1:55-4:55 - From Engineer to Pricing Guru

4:55-6:42 - Biggest Pricing Pitfall

6:42-19:00 - Segmentation Myths and Realities

19:00-21:00 - defining value (3 Types)

21:00-26:35 - The Value Cascade

26:35-36:45 - How customers shape pricing

36:45-43:00 - Willingness to pay (WTP) (40:12)

43:00-47:30 - Pricing in B2B

47:30-56:50 -  Freemium Good or Bad?

56:50-57:48 - Contact Dan

57:48-58:02 - Outro

There are great frameworks for prioritizing features, but what if prioritizing features isn't the right approach? We dig into why opportunity costs are the most underrated variables in prioritizing Product decisions.

If you're looking to get into product management, come join us at Path2Product to gain the hands-on PM experience you need to land your first product role. 

0:00-4:20 - Episode Intro

4:20-6:54 Opportunity Cost in Action

6:54-8:50 - Economics in Product Management?

8:50-17:52 - NFL Draft Example

This week's lesson in product management is brought to you by Derek Osgood, Founder and CEO of Ignition. If your product launches are less than ideal, you should listen to what Derek has to say. Even if you're launches go well, there are great tips on how to optimization the success of your launches. 

0:00-0:32 - Podcast intro

0:32-2:30 - Derek’s Intro

2:30-4:15 - Who is Ignition for?

4:15-4:40 - Where to find Ignition

4:40-8:40 - The PM/PMM Disconnect

8:40-10:23 - Aligning PM/PMM Teams

10:23-13:10 - Overlooked aspects of product launches

13:10-18:30 - Why Run Betas in B2B?

18:30-21:20 - How to price your new product?

21:20-24:00 - The future of software for PMs and PMMs

24:00-25:00 - Podcast Outro

If you want to connect with Derek, shoot him a request on LinkedIn 

If you want to check out Ignition, go to their site

If you're looking to get into product management, get your hands dirty and gain real experience on Path2Product

As you wrap up the last 30 days of your 30, 60, 90-day onboarding, it's time to start drafting strategy. In this episode I break down how to do that with a simple framework and how to shrink the timeline if you don't have 90 days to get it done in a new position. 

Here's the episode with Randal Whitmore 

Here's the link to the product strategy development course on YouTube

Join us on Path2Product if you're looking for the Product Management experience you need to land a PM job

Many answers to the question of "why do you want to be a product manager" have some variation of "ideation." While ideation and solutioning are definitely part of product management, it's by far NOT the most important thing to get right.

If you're looking to get into product management, join us at Path2Product to streamline your path to product management

Story time - your competitor launched a feature. They’re making a bunch of noise on all the social channels. An influencers Tie Tok of the new thing went viral. Your execs are screaming that you need to respond.

As the Product Manager, what do you do?

That's exactly the scenario we'll unpack on this week's lesson in product management. 

Andrew and I both had non-traditional paths into product management, and we've both experienced and seen how broken the talent acquisition process is for aspiring PMs. On this episode, you'll hear a passionate discussion of what problems we've noticed and some fun banter on how we'd fix the problem. 

On this episode of Lessons in Product Management, I sat down with Luke and Jakub from GetResponse as they shared their experiences launching products into new markets, what it takes to do it successfully, how to test into it, and how partnerships can be great and complicated at the same time.