Better Product Weekly: Series Wrap with Lessons Learned

Episode Transcription

Christian Beck:

Hello. On this week's episode of BP Weekly, it's just myself, Christian Beck. Anna Eaglin is taking this one off because this week's episode is just me presenting the insights that we've gathered from the product leaders over the last two months on our BP Weekly show. So in the show notes for this one, there'll actually be a link for the slides, or for the video of me doing what you're about to hear. But if you prefer to hear it in audio format and want to listen to it at 2x speed, then I encourage you to listen to this week's episode.

Christian Beck:

But for this week, what we wanted to do was look at the professionals we've heard so far and try to gather a lot of the patterns that we're hearing, to gather them for you to help guide some of the work that you're, that you're going through. You know, we're two months in ostensibly into the Coronavirus and its impact on the industry. You know, as people are starting to return to work, I think that there's going to be a lot of shifts happening, but I think a lot of the lessons that we've learned over the last two months will continue to be useful.

Christian Beck:

So, what we wanted to do was gather insights from people like Ryan Chan, Kirsten Moorefield, Amy Brown and Myles Grote, who we had earlier on in the podcast to share a lot of what they've done. And if you haven't listened to their episodes, when this is done you know, we have some audio clips of some of them in here, but you can go listen to their episodes, which you can always find on betterproduct.community/podcast. Or if you're already listening to this podcast, in your favorite player, go to the shows and you can go look at the past episodes.

Christian Beck:

So for this week this is it for our intro, and next you'll hear me presenting the key insights that we've learned over the last two months.

Christian Beck:

So, I'm going to go over what the past two months have taught us about product strategy. Obviously the two months we're talking about is since most of the entire world started working from home and it affected a lot of businesses, particularly on the digital product front. And so since that time, myself, Christian Beck and Anna Eaglin, have switched our Better Product podcast to focus on talking to product leaders that are just trying to figure things out right away. Our previous version of the podcast is really talking about product leaders and about the things that we're doing to be successful and for us to all learn and be inspired by those things. But once all of this started happening, we realized that what people really needed was to learn what people are trying right now, whether it's working or not. But just to just hear from other leaders.

Christian Beck:

So what I wanted to do today is summarize a lot of the key things that we've learned from talking to some of these people. And we'll bring in some of the key quotes that we got from those interviews through the the months of March and April on this podcast.

Christian Beck:

So the four main things that stick with us are the focusing on customers, which some of these ... let me just actually start, a lot of these insights are not going to be earth shattering or new, and they shouldn't be. But I think what they mean at a time like this has changed. But focusing on customers, number two, finding and sticking to your value, three, be careful not to overreact. And then ending with what we're hearing a lot of people is really act in the short term, but think about the longterm ramifications. So let's get into what these insights mean.

Christian Beck:

So starting with focusing on your customers, what does that mean over the last two months, and maybe for the next several months? The best way that I felt that we heard this was holding a mirror to your clients to sort of reflect back to them you know, what's going on. Listening to them is really something that most product leaders do when they're starting you know, new projects or new products from the ground up, you go out, you listen to the market, figuring out what they need. But in these times of uncertainty where we have less confidence in what the market needs, you need to go back to what got you here. And that's really with listening. I think Amy Brown, the CEO and founder of Authenticx put this best.

Amy Brown:

So, when thinking about introducing this feature, how I think about it is that we're tuning the mirror, tuning our ears to the parts of the conversation that are most relevant to the customers right now. I think the whole world is looking for ways where they can help.

Christian Beck:

And Amy Brown also leads to another component of focusing on your customers, which is to be authentic. She's the CEO of Authenticx, but also to be helpful. There's actually this interesting you know, thing that's happened where a lot of us ... I think a lot of people have sort of stepped back not you know, to not really you know, inundate customers that are already busy doing other things. But it's important to understand that if you have something that can help in the moment, help them get their job done, help them with the transition to home, whatever that is, you have a responsibility to offer it. This is even something that we've done in our own agency. We've actually listened to our customers, our existing clients, and found that their needs were starting to change, and they weren't asking us because they didn't think it was something that we did.

Christian Beck:

It's not something we have traditionally done, but there's ways that we help them now that we weren't doing it before. So I think the same thing works with product leaders is as you start to listen and understand what they need, find ways to help them, rather than thinking about, Does this fit in with my roadmap? Is this where I want to be in three years? Throw some of that out of the window and just focus on being authentic and helpful.

Christian Beck:

The last part of focusing on your customers is really all about focusing on their changing needs. This is something we heard really early on. I got this advice in a private conversation I was having with the CEO in the Indy area. And he told me a lot about how he was surprised immediately that a lot of what their value prop was, was changing. So it wasn't that people found his product less valuable today than they did before, it was what they found valuable had changed.

Christian Beck:

So you might see that even in your daily life you know, some of the things like we really liked puzzles, but what value that provides us when we're stuck at home has changed immensely. So you think about like, well at least my family itself has gone through probably you know, 30 plus puzzles over the last two months. So I think about you know, whereas one ... this is just a way to sort of like engage with people and do something challenging, now it becomes your sort of you know, home away from home. So the value prop of what your product provides, at least in this time might change. You know, maybe before you had a value prop of say, this helps your team scale, you know something that's more forward looking. Today it might be, We help you stay above water. You know, whatever that is.

Christian Beck:

So focusing on your changing customer needs has proven to be extremely important and something that I think will be true for a while. There's a really good quote from Myles Grote, the Chief Product Officer at Upper Hand on this subject too:

Myles Grote:

Most of our customers have been forced to shut their doors, so we've had to find new ways to really help them via our software. So this change in needs has really altered some of our team's day-to-day focus, but the overall mission hasn't changed. So it's more like positioning of the different products that we offer.

Christian Beck:

And so with Myles, this has been really challenging because you know, some of his customers you know, are gyms and are places that are just legally not allowed to be open. So, their overall mission at Upper Hand hadn't changed, but they've had to really find you know, new ways that they can be useful during that time.

Christian Beck:

I may have already said there was one last point, but that was a lie. There's actually one last point on the inside of focusing on your customers and that is existing customers, our top priority. I can also say that from us, we're a services agency. Immediately when this happened, we made sure that all of our client teams that focus on clients were focusing on them exclusively. You know, a lot of that is to help them, you know a lot of it is for our own business to make sure that we're serving them well.

Christian Beck:

And I think that we're seeing this a lot in the product realm. You know really the reality is, let's just be honest. There's not a lot of new business coming in for a lot of companies around the world right now. You know you may you're signing five new customers a month, that might be one every six weeks at this point. So when you're finding that challenging, you can think about spending a bunch of effort, trying to find more, or really doubling down on the ones that you have.

Christian Beck:

And you may be surprised to find that there's hidden opportunities there that you may not have seen, but at the very least, you make sure that as you come out of this recession that we're in with a stronger customer base than you had going into it.

Christian Beck:

Okay. Insight number two of four is finding and sticking to your value. So I hinted at this before about the value prop. And I want to dive into it a little bit here because I think it was relevant before, but really what I want to talk about here is, is breaking it down to think about what is valuable about what you do? I would say on a weekly basis, I'm hearing product leaders actually look at what it is that they do, and re-examine it. And if you're talking to your customers a lot, that's the outside perspective that you can take. And y'all will even say from personal experience, if you just sit in the room with your own team members thinking, What else can we be? You're missing out on how the rest of the world sees you.

Christian Beck:

So it's important to actually go out to customers. You might even go out to colleagues and sort of show them, tell them what you do and have their outside opinion on what you do, because you may find that you are still valuable, but it's very different. You know I mentioned before how in a growth mindset where the economy is growing and we're all fat and happy and everything's great, we have value props of optimizing and scaling and growing very aspirational.

Christian Beck:

Today we're talking about feeling inundated, like saving time, like those sorts of things. So a lot of the things that you may provide in a product might still be useful today, but you actually need to figure out from your market, from talking to peers, what about that might change.

Christian Beck:

The second part of finding and sticking to your value is really just staying above the noise and focusing your message. So as we're two months into this, this has died down a little bit, but for a lot of last two months on LinkedIn and social, is just inundated with messages around Coronavirus and COVID-19. And that seemed to be the go thing. And truthfully, most companies didn't really need to even speak about this. We were as consumers or customers in the broader world or citizens getting inundated with messages, but only a small percentage of products really need to talk about what's going on and how it relates to what they provide you.

Christian Beck:

So it can be tempting to also add another voice to something like this, but be aware that there's something that really does matter to your users. And that's what you provided them before. Now, the context of what's going on might have changed a little bit, but what you're provided riding, shouldn't just latch onto that, you know. So, this one is about rising above what the noise is and figuring out what your message needs to be. And you may find that it is relevant to talk about what's going on, or you might find that look, you know maybe it's not the Coronavirus specifically, but the urgency that it's created for some of you in digital transformation spaces, so we're going to refocus our message on that.

Christian Beck:

So, anyway, whatever that looks like as you've talked to your customers looking for you got your market, you need to pay attention to how your value may have changed, and then really focus on that and not get caught up in what everybody else is saying. Here's Kirsten Moorefield, the Chief Product Officer at Cloverleaf with more on that.

Kirsten Moorefield:

We've been really intentional to just say maybe a half a sentence to one full maximum [inaudible 00:12:08] sentence about, Hey, we understand this is happening at this time. Whether it's you know, Hey, maybe you're feeling isolated or, Maybe your team's working remote for the first time ever. That type of stuff, and then we just move on to, you. To talk about you, what do you need, what's happening in your life?

Christian Beck:

Side note, irrelevant you know, to any of this. I love how you can hear you know, Kirsten's child in the background. I think on Myles too, you can hear it too. Which by the way it's ... doing this podcast and talking to people it's been really interesting that you know, we've just sort of just like said, Hey, look, we're not trying to go for polished perfection on all of this. And it's been kind of funny to just hear the new sounds of the office with a lot of these interviews.

Christian Beck:

But Kirsten's very specific in what she's talking about here is, is the virus and talking about that and what they're allowing themselves to do. And you know, I've connected with her on LinkedIn. I see a lot of the content that comes from her and Cloverleaf. And I can attest that you know, during this time they were talking about their value prop and you could notice subtle tweaks in it, but it wasn't referencing Coronavirus specifically.

Christian Beck:

So you know, what she's really talking about here kind of goes back too, to being authentic and looking for personal connection. So keeping that message you know, close to what you do is really important.

Christian Beck:

Okay. Insight number three, don't overreact. Okay. This is like telling somebody not to panic when they're panicking. But, don't overreact. It's tempting again, when you're looking at the way the market's shifting, when you're just watching lines of a stock market you know, go down and down and down, to think that everything is changing permanently. If you've ever talked to me privately, you may have heard my rant about how it can be tempting to project out longterm trends when you're in the middle of something so volatile. But that's what's happening now, is there are a lot of people, a lot of thought leaders, a lot of people that are claiming to know you know, what the new world is going to look like.

Christian Beck:

I mean, there's no doubt that there're fundamental changes that are happening. Obviously remote and virtual will continue to be more important, but the world doesn't shift that monumentally to say that everything is going to be completely upended. It really still moves in sort of incremental changes.

Christian Beck:

So with all this said of paying attention to your market, it's important to understand that ... we hear this from the leaders that we've talked to ... that just because a world is changing, doesn't mean that everything you're building necessarily needs to change. It can be tempting to think, Well, I need to build this new feature to handle this sort of thing, but that can be very expensive. And given that we don't know how long this will last, and we also don't know what's permanently changing about this, it's advisable to not go starting to build something new that you think is going to be the new normal, because if you're wrong on that at a time like this, it can be even more expensive and take you further away from what it is that you truly provide. So keep that in mind as you hear this clip from Myles Grote, the CPO of Upper Hand again.

Myles Grote:

Drawing a clear line, there's product marketing strategy and there's product development strategy. And so I think it's really important to really point out the difference between the two, because our product development strategy hasn't changed whatsoever. We're still focused on the same stuff that we were focused on before. However, our product marketing strategy has definitely changed.

Christian Beck:

So again, if you remember you know, serving gyms and fitness centers like Upper Hand does, you could see how it'd be very tempting to just start you know, creating a bunch of new stuff. But a lot of the stuff that they were doing for these places was digital to begin with. So some of these changes actually might help in that regard. Some of the landscape things that need to change to open the businesses are sort of out of their control. So this is a great example of what we're talking about.

Christian Beck:

And I want to end it with, again, something I touched on a little bit earlier when it comes to not overreacting before was talking about from a messaging standpoint, but it's really important when you think about this to avoid copying what other companies are doing.

Christian Beck:

I'm guilty of looking sideways, you know being a part owner of an agency myself. I know a lot of product leaders are looking to other product leaders to learn from them. But what's important to understand and why I wanted to give this summary of what we've heard, is not to copy what everybody else does. You know, this is a fundamental business lesson that you don't just copy the business model. You don't just copy the product moves of someone else without understanding the context within which they operate. Even as you heard Myles Grote, is something there to take from that, but it doesn't mean that it may necessarily work for you. You know, Kirsten Moorefield with Cloverleaf is working on software for Teams that work remotely or in person. So a lot of the surrounding context doesn't really change that.

Christian Beck:

And so some of the advice you may get from her may not affect an industry that you're in. Whereas when you think of Amy Brown and Authenticx you know, serving the Healthcare system, there's a lot of things there that she may be doing that may not be relevant to you. So it's ultimately about understanding what your users' needs are, and your business impact is, and less about just saying, Oh, that looks cool, let's go ahead and copy that. Again, advice for any product leader, but bares reiterating at a time like this.

Christian Beck:

The last insight is acting short term and thinking longterm. I wonder if I would consider this to be different today than I would have said you know, three months ago, because I think a lot of product leaders do a lot of things that act on the longterm and they also think longer term. But some of this is a little bit of a shift for people because they actually have to change what that looks like.

Christian Beck:

Your three year window might become one year and then your roadmap you know, for the quarter is just like, Let's just figure out what we're doing in the next month. So the best advice that we're hearing from people, is to stay opportunistic. Be open. Don't stick so rigidly to what you're doing. And just maybe even throw some of your roadmap out the window.

Christian Beck:

If you've been looking at the market and you've been talking to your customers, you will be open and see new opportunities. This is all about staying opportunistic there, even if you hear about businesses that have pivoted. You know, Instagram pivoting from Burbn, if you don't know that, go look it up. That's B-U-R-B-N.

Christian Beck:

Or if you don't know how some of these past Goliaths that we see today pivoted from something small, that's what's happening right now. And you may find that it's a temporary pivot of value need to provide, or it could be something more permanent with more opportunity. But the whole point is to stay opportunistic about what you're seeing there and don't say, Oh, that'd be really cool, but it doesn't fit with what we're trying to do. Again, think longterm, but act in the short term. So you may visit your longterm roadmap later, but in the short term, you need to act now.

Christian Beck:

This was a really great interview with Ryan Chan, the founder and CEO at UpKeep. And this is a great quote from him on this subject.

Ryan Chan:

How we've stayed nimble during these changing, changing times is that we've said collectively as a company, that we're going to stay opportunistic, we're going to stay open to new ideas to how we can better support our customers in this post COVID world.

Christian Beck:

Yeah. That's great advice from Ryan and one of the most optimistic and positive product leaders that we've spoken to so far.

Christian Beck:

I also think, and we'll hear from him again in a second, what he's done well with, with UpKeep, which helps people that work in facilities and maintenance on large buildings, is to really focused on what you can control. I mentioned this a second ago with Myles Grote and Upper Hand and supporting the gyms, but there's a lot of things that can overwhelm you, myself included.

Christian Beck:

I will avoid recording all of my anxieties here, but there's a lot of things that you hear about, that you think about, and it can start to affect your mindset. So it's important that when you start planning from a product perspective, you have to shut out some of these things, especially if you're projecting out a future that you don't have certainty on, but also understanding what things you can and can't control. You can't control the impact that this is going to have on your customers and how they have to operate. So maybe there're opportunities in that, or maybe there's just some aspects you just have to sort of let go and get back in focusing on what you do best.

Christian Beck:

Here's Ryan Chan again, speaking on that.

Ryan Chan:

We know that at some point there's going to be a turn towards normalcy. And for us you know, we want to focus on the things that we can control. There's so much doom and gloom when you read the news. And for us, we basically said, we're going to focus on three things. We're going to focus on our mindset. So every day when we come to work, what is our mindset? And do we have an optimistic [inaudible 00:20:38], are we positive?

Ryan Chan:

The second thing that we're going to focus on is our effort. How much effort do we put in every single day? And the third piece is, continue to stay to our customers in the longterm.

Christian Beck:

I think Ryan kind of summarizes a lot of what we've talked about so far, and I think it's sort of fitting with his optimistic and positive attitude to end on something positive. And this is something that we've asked everybody we've talked to so far on the weekly podcast, which is that, What are you hopeful for? And so what we are seeing is that there is hope in the chaos.

Christian Beck:

I think if you're listening to this, you're probably in tech and while the short term landscape is murky at best, the future is undoubtedly tech oriented. If there's one positive in a lot of what's going on, it's really cemented techs, you know, ability to help augment or help society on all levels to handle something like this.

Christian Beck:

So the path forward is unclear right now, but your digital strategy is going to provide clarity down the road. So it's important to know that if we are in the privilege, lucky group, industries, where we all exist to serve you know, companies, businesses and people from a digital perspective, and so that's not going to change. If anything, that gets even clear going forward. So it's just a good way to end this that a lot of our product leaders while they are not without their struggles and challenges day to day, they are all very hopeful for what they're doing for the future.

Christian Beck:

So I hope this summary was useful for you. And so if you want to stay up to date with more insights from the product community, I want to encourage you to continue to listen to the podcast. We've been doing a weekly format, which I think we're going to keep going forward in some fashion or another, but we do want to start to get back to some of our other types of podcasts where we're talking to leaders and about the successes and longer term growth that they've seen with their products.

Christian Beck:

But for the time being, we are going to continue you know, releasing you know, some sort of weekly podcasts. So if you haven't listened to that already, you can go to betterproduct.community/podcasts and related, if you haven't already, we encourage you to join the Better Product community, which we are still growing, the community, we're growing even faster than we were three months ago. I think a lot of people in the product community are wanting more resources and more connection more than ever. And it is still our hope that we can start doing events again, where we've done a few virtual events like panels and talks, and we'll continue to do that. But in the meantime, I encourage you to join@betterproduct.community to stay update.