How to be the founding PMM your B2B SaaS startup needs (in 30minutes).

[00:00:00] I help foundingproduct marketers, startups who are trying to build the function from scratchor from zero. This week, Jason Oakley, founder of Productive PMM, joined We'reNot Marketers. One of the biggest challenges with being a founding productmarketer is you've gotta do all this internal education. In thirty minutes,professor Oakley gives a master class to all product marketers on how to getthat done for more. I'm not gonna speak for everyone, but It's been mentioned afew time in our WhatsApp that you are the godfather of PMM.

This isn't a podcast on labeling product marketing. This is apodcast for product marketing managers who feel misunderstood internally.Because building slide decks and writing copy is not all that we do. So aretoday's product marketers actually marketers?

Eric: Yo. Jason,thank you for coming here today and joining a couple of misfits on anafternoon, on a "Friday Junior". So we're gonna do our very for firstepisode [00:01:00] of We Are Not MarketersPodcast with, think one of our favorite guests, and I'm not gonna speak foreveryone, but it's been mentioned a few times in our WhatsApp that you are the"godfather of PMM".

Gab: Hundred.

Eric: For those whodon't know Jason, we wanna make it very clear that we all view him very highlyand his focus area right now is really product launches, um, particularlyaround those founding PMM roles. And so really gotta kick it off with a thankyou and I think our first question that we want to know from you, because threeof us here believe we're not marketers right? As a PMM role. When you hear thatquestion. What is your take on it? And obviously we want to hear more aboutwhy.

Jason: Yeah, so I,first off, thanks for having me. Excited to be here, honored to be the firstguest. I Think you guys gave me more credit than I necessarily deserve, but Iappreciate it and it's cool that I've, I've [00:02:00]worked with you all and met you all separately, somehow all three of you foundeach other and you started this so that's pretty cool.

Gab: That's the magicof product marketing.

Are PMMs actually marketers?

Jason: Yeah, exactly.So yeah, so I think like to your

Jason: like, thanksfor your introduction and yeah, like my focus today, like I've always been afounding product marketer, so all my career I've been like the first productmarketer in the role. I've been responsible for building out the team andestablishing that function in a startup. And and so today, yeah, we've got acourse on product launches. I get to do a lot of work specifically on productlaunches, but like my My focus all the time is specifically on founding pmmsand like, how do I help founding product marketers, startups who are trying tobuild the function from scratch or from zero.

Jason: and so, yeah,like I, when I remember you put that thing on LinkedIn and I was like,"Ooh, like that's spicy. 'cause it's, product marketers are strategyonly". It's or like my take on it was, it's all about the strategy. It'sless about the market, like not marketers. And to [00:03:00]me that was not about It was more about strategy and less about execution. I'vealways, as someone who's come into the role as the only person in the seat,it's always been a balance of both strategy and execution. And I think thatwhen you join a startup as a founding product marketer, you could, when Ijoined Chili Piper, I was one of two marketers. Like you are doing a little bitof everything. And that's one of the challenges that comes with being afounding product marketer is like prioritization. 'cause you're expected to doa lot and not everyone. And I think like the one thing that comes with being afounding product marketer is not everyone, it's safe to say most people in thecompany have never seen product marketing before. At least not at that company.And so different people are doing little pieces of it. Different people have adifferent understanding of what product marketing is.

One challenge as a founding PMM at an early-stage startup

Jason: If theyunderstand what it does at all. So when you're stepping in, one of the biggest challenges with being afounding product marketer is you've gotta do all this internal education andyou've gotta change people's perspective on what product marketing actually is.And so a lot of what they assume it might be today is like executional things. [00:04:00] Andso that's why there is some kind of pushback or like fighting you need to do tobe like, no, I'm also about the strategy. Like I've also worked on positioningand messaging segmentation. Competitive intelligence, market research, like allof that stuff. But at the end of the day, especially in a small company, atsome point the rubber needs to meet the road and that stuff needs to get out tothe market. So you could have the best strategy you could have, yourpositioning could be like perfect, and you could have a very focused ICP, but.At the end of the day, you can't turn that into a landing page or you can't getthat out into the different channels that you have.

Jason: You can't execute on a product launch. Likenone of it's gonna matter that as much because you're, it's not getting out tothe market to actually work. So I think that you need both the strategy sideand the execution side. But I also just think again, my perspective isthinking small startups, founding pmms, it's like there's [00:05:00] you. There are gonna be days and there aregonna be times when you're working on strategic things and that's gonna up alot of your focus. But there are also times when you just need to execute andyou do need turn that messaging into a one pager or a deck or a landing page orthe assets for a launch.

Back to Jason's answer on whether PMMs are marketers

Jason: And so I thinkthat a lot of the best founding product marketers are actually people who havebeen marketers, maybe marketing generalists or people who have been digitalmarketers or people who have understand the strategy side, but can execute. Soanyways, I'll stop talking 'cause I,

Jason: I'll leave itat that and I'll see what you guys think.

Eric: I've got afollow up question then, and maybe more some, for some practical advice.

Jason: Yep.

How to prioritize to be a more productive PMM

Eric: just for usthree, for any potential listeners. I really resonate with the idea ofprioritization. So can you help us figure out how do you prioritize thosethings, right? And not only to yourself, but how do you prioritize them witheveryone else around and make sure they know, um, the yes but mentality,right?

Eric: When you takeon this thing, [00:06:00] what are you lettingoff the plate of something else?

Jason: Yeah. Theprioritization thing is one of the hardest, right? I haven't talked to aproduct marketer who hasn't at some point said like, no, there, my plate justkeeps growing. No one's ever

Jason: like,

Jason: oh, I don'thave much to do. Like I have this one product, like one project I'm working on.That's it.

Jason: everyone'sPlate is always full and there's always a new top priority. And so I think thatlike prioritization is everyone something everyone knows they need to do, butsomething that's really hard to do. And so what in companies where I've alwaysfound it's been better has been when. When your leadership gets to a pointwhere either your company, or at least like your leadership within marketing,for example, starts to be very clear about their priorities. So if you'releader and you can like incur, you manage up in a sense to get your marketingdepartment to have clear OKR clear OKRs and clear goals heading into a quarteror heading into a year, and at least [00:07:00]that gives you like a north star that when you are starting to plan out withinthe product marketing team, like your quarter or right your year. You can startto think about, okay, how do we actually ladder up to these objectives? Like Iwas working with a product marketer the other day. She's thinking about herplan for next year, and part of that is like how she build out her team. Who'sshe gonna hire? 'cause she's got some budget to hire another product marketer,for example. And so when she's starting to map out who's going to do what andwho's going to own what. She's starting to think about her like 2024 startingat the company objectives. A lot of people don't have that, like a lot ofpeople, and they struggle a lot because it's just every month it's a newpriority. And so I think that if you can manage up in a sense, or you can encourageyour, even at just your marketing team to think more about what are our OKRs aslike a bigger team than just product marketing. And then I can ladder up tothose, or if you don't know those for. Pro like marketing for example, liketalking to other cross-functional teams to understand like what's sales istop priority heading into the next quarter, right? So things that you can,that will [00:08:00] help then influence howyou plan out your quarter. Because if you just are always reactive to what thenext request is, then it's gonna be really hard for you to feel like you have agood sense of what your priorities are. Something a little bit more tacticalthough, like when you think of like sales for and you're always having salesrequests, I. One thing I would always encourage people to do is just have asystem for how you accept requests and manage those. So again, this is likepretty tactical, but it's, I always, we implemented a system at Clue where it'sif you were a sales rep and you wanted to ask for a one pager, or you neededhelp on a deal, or you needed help with some messaging or anything changes to adeck, all of that, you would at least be asked to submit it. By doing that,you're being asked a couple simple questions around what does, what does whatdoes done look like? You're asking them questions around like, why, what's theurgency of this? Or what the level of importance is and why You're just asking'em a couple questions first, and a lot of times people, [00:09:00] even the effort of doing that is gonna getthem to not even request it one, but but at least you have a good sense ofgetting some understanding and some context around it. and then it goes into asystem where at least they know, and when I say a system, it's just like asimple notion page, but it just goes into a list, for lack of a better word,where at least they know that you've accepted it, like you've seen it. But alsoit gives them introduces this concept of there's a lot of other things on yourplate. There's this whole list of things that sales has requested. I can'trespond to this in a couple of seconds, like I can't do it by tomorrow. And welook at this as we prioritize this list based on working with your manager orthe head of sales, and this is something that we come together with on aquarterly basis, or we come together on every couple of weeks and we readjustthis list so that we know we're always working on the most important thingsbased on what your team and your leadership deems to be the most important. Andwhen within that, there's always gonna be like areas for a bit of give and [00:10:00] take. And if you're trying to buildrelationships with sales, sometimes you wanna respond to certain things,especially if you know it's gonna move the needle, right? But generally, if youcan have some process in place so that how you manage things that are beingasked of by product marketing. Then that'll help you prioritize and manage thattype of work. But then at the second, same time as a product marketing team,knowing what the broader objectives are of the company and goals of the companyor your broader marketing department, you can start to be a bit more strategicabout okay, What projects are we working on this quarter? What launchesshould we really focus on? okay, If a big goal this quarter is to breakinto a new vertical, it's like, okay, how can we bundle these features into alaunch? That is gonna help us like drive revenue in that vertical yeah, that'smy thought there on prioritization.

Track 1: Jason, onechallenge that our fellow product marketers who are going into a founding roleis how do you establish that internal authority before joining a [00:11:00] organization as a founding marketer? Let'simagine this product marketer has to pick to choose a few options in theirinterview process, and they want to evaluate what is the best organization.

Track 1: That willhelp them set, that will set them up for success

Jason: Right.

Zach: in achievingwhat you outlined, such as having that strategic plan, having the ability tobuild those systems, what are the questions that a product marketing candidateshould be asking on an interview panel such as the CEO, the sales leader tovalidate and see whether this is the appropriate organization that will set 'emup for success when, if they were to join.

How to decide the right startup to work at, as a founding PMM

Jason: Yeah, that's a great question and I wasactually having a conversation with someone about this the other day. And Ithink one of the big questions that if I was going into a startup right nowthat I would ask is, and being able to ask [00:12:00]some of these questions comesdown and like how you ask it and how upfront or how blunt you are, obviouslydepends on the level of role you're coming in at, right?

Jason: How much you feel like you were, you'rereally fighting for that role versus, they really want you, like that sort ofthing. But. I would want to talk to the sales leadership and I would reallywant to know how they see product marketing, the importance that they see ofproduct marketing and how they anti, like, how they see working with productmarketing.

Jason: So I'll expand I'll explain it a little bit.Like I, I was working with someone the other day and this person is trying tothey're trying to roll out content with the sales team. Like they're inparticular with them, they're trying to roll out a new pitch deck, but the bigchallenge is that they just can't get the sales team to adopt it. And so muchof this comes down to when you create new messaging, new content, you wantsales to get involved in helping you promote a launch. Like you want to get salesto do anything. That is a [00:13:00] case where you're trying to influence in alot of cases without authority. And there are certain people that sales listensto, they listen to top performers, like they listen to the reps that have beenthere and done it before and have credibility within the teams. They listen totheir boss and they listen to their boss's boss, like they listen to the headof sales. lot of times they won't do. They really won't change the way they dothings unless the leadership in sales is bought in and encourages them to doit. And a lot of cases, if you get someone in sales who comes into a meetingand you as a product marketer, like pitching a new deck, for example, if thatsa, if that sales leader is not fully bought into it and backs you up and isexcited about it, encourages his team guys, this is, I'm not encouraging youto do it.

Jason: This is the new deck. Everyone needs to getcertified on this. This is it. I'm on board with this. I've worked with theproduct marketer on this. This isit, you all need to do it. If you are not pitching this deck and you're numberand like you are not hitting numbers, like there's a problem, right? So ifyou don't have that support you are not going to [00:14:00] be able tomake things like that happen. And so I think if I, today was going to a newproduct marketing gig and I was talking, I was in the interview process. Iwould want to talk to some of those people within those key teams. And I wouldwant to, without asking exactly that, I'd want to get to the point of are yougonna back me up? Are we gonna be a team here? Or do you not feel, are you notgonna listen or believe in anything that I, I have to say, or I'm trying tomake happen. And so I would really want to get there. And knowing that when youland in the role, there is still some credibility, like trust you have tobuild. But I would want to definitely have a good sense of are the other headsof these departments, the people who influence their department, are they gonnahave my back?

Eric: That's gold.

Jason: there,

Eric: Gold.

Gab: I'm curious,Jason, you started ProductivePMM to really help product marketers in foundingPMM role, and I'm just curious to hearing like what happened that [00:15:00] kind of brought you ultimately to startthat.

Gab: Like,

Gab: I,

Gab: We know aboutUber Flip, we know about Klue, we know about Chili Piper. , like what was yourexperience like and what have you identify as The biggest challenges andultimately strategies that those founding PMM can do. Um, and we already talkedabout priorities, prioritization, and everything, but I'm just curious tohearing of your own journey, like what, what brought you up to understandingthose big challenges and ultimately strategies to solve those problems?

How ProductivePMM came to be

Jason: yeah, It's agood question. Like I I think I, I guess to answer your first question, Iunderstood it like for me to what made me want to go out and do productive PMMif I'm right? Yeah.

Jason: Um,

Jason: I've alwayshad an entrepreneurial, I. Kind of itch. I've always, you know, throughout mycareer I've taken steps into pro, into entrepreneurship and then back into likein-House [00:16:00] work and in and out.

Gab: Back in sorry tocut you a bit back with recess weekly 12 years ago, right?

Jason: you've doneyour research. Yeah. No,

Jason: I did

Jason: I

Jason: did,

Zach: like.

Jason: I did, yeah,that's right. I, yeah. When I was in university, I had a publication. I'vesomehow always found my way back into some type of content publishing or,Content creation, but I did, yeah. I had a, like a publication at universityand then I went out, like after I graduated, tried to turn that into somethinga bit bigger, um, that ultimately didn't work out. Went back in started workingat software companies and then eventually wrote like a children's book. I triedto start a small SaaS product that was actually focused on building wait listsfor product launches. So I've did a little bit, done a little bit ofeverything, but I ultimately, for me, like I do think the end goal for me isto, one to is to be an entrepreneur.

Jason: And so I thinkwhen I got into product marketing, I was like, really? [00:17:00]I think this is the field for me, because it's the, it's

Jason: kind of

Jason: where all,because I think like a lot of my skills come together. and it is that actualbit of like entrepreneurship. It's a little bit of strategy, but it's also alittle bit of just like tactical marketing that's also involved in there,especially in the area where I did product marketing as like early stagestartups.

Jason: And so I,that's why I really liked it succeeding as a founding PMM, I think that Iquickly I think like some of the areas where I've excelled is, yeah I've, I'mpretty scrappy. Like I, that entrepreneurial nature I think makes someone is ina founding PMM position makes you successful. 'cause you are going to have tobe able to do a lot on your own. You're gonna have to be able to createcontents on your own. You're gonna have to be able to wear a lot of differenthats and to be able to do good enough in a number of different areas where youcan make things happen. Like Eric I know I've worked with you, I see you dothat in a number of different ways too. Right. So, uh, [00:18:00]there's that whole jack of all trades been a master of none. I definitely feellike that's me in many ways has proven to help me in those roles. I also think,like I'm pretty good at making. Like building relationships and rapport andlike credibility within teams. Just because one, yeah. Hard worker. I like Tothink I produce pretty good work and I like to think I'm pretty personable withpeople and I can build those relationships and I think as product marketer,it's an important thing for you to be able to do so that you can work good withcross-functional teams. You are able to build rapport and have the credibilitywith those teams. Um, not just sit in away and you're Your, your ivory tower orlike your little back office and just plug away at at yeah, more like just workthat no one ever gets to see. So yeah, I think I also just think like a bigskill for product marketers, communication, internal, external, justcommunication in general.

What's one big skill for PMMs to know

Jason: How well areyou communicating an idea? How well are you at [00:19:00]kinda motivating people? How well are you at messaging written video? Like Ijust think communication. With something that, it's a skill that I've builtthroughout my career and it's something that continues to pay dividends where Ican walk into a company and I feel confident speaking on a Zoom call.

Jason: I feelconfident writing an internal message, feel confident writing an emailmessaging, firing up a loom video, like I feel confident doing all thosethings. And those are all things that are important when you're doing that,like founding PMM role.

How should a non-traditional candidate consider a move into PMM, if theyhave no marketing experience

Zach: Jason, a followup question.

Zach: Gab saidearlier, like many product markers, they know how to do the research andassuming the listeners on their call are gonna look at your profile as they'relistening to this conversation, one thing they may notice is that they may seethat one of your first few roles in your career was customer success manager.

Zach: And earlier Isay I see EI see Eric doing that Little fist

Eric: Yeah. [00:20:00]

Zach: Going back toyour earlier response of saying that product marketers are like, need to havethe marketing fundamentals to be effective at what they do, what would you sayto the fellow product marketers who jumped in to the field with non-marketingexperience and for the, and the follow up, and maybe a follow up to that is forthose who are going in to product marketing or considering it.

Zach: How should theyapproach marketing as a discipline to compliment their skillset as anon-traditional candidate?

Jason: Yeah. Yeah.Great question. So yeah, my first role was sales. I always thought I was gonnabe sales, the account exec. When I joined Verafin, which is like the first Evenwhen I did my own, product when I was in school, first ever sales gig I had wasworking for my uncle and I did di direct sales trying to sell, um, in store, [00:21:00] like on hold music and messaging, when youcall him, puts on hold.

Jason: Like he had acompany that did that. Uh, and so I did that. I even recorded some of thethings like for a while if you called Uh, business in St. John's, Newfoundland.You might actually have heard me speaking, doing the on hold messaging, likethe ads and stuff. But anyways, like that's where I cut my teeth on like sales.And then when I got into Verafin, like I somehow managed to weasel my way intobeing like an account executive and my first sales role. But I learned a lotdoing that. Eventually I worked my way. Yeah. Like I found myself in a CS rolewhen I went to UberFlip. And. I would say that like coming from those two, Ialmost think like it set me up for success even more so than if I'd come fromtraditional marketing going into product marketing.

Jason: So that's why like I think that productmarketing is pretty diverse and you work with so many different teams, so yousee people from product going to product marketing, people from CS, people fromsales. It's everyone brings like a strength in the product marketing. And Ithink that even for anyone who's trying to get a [00:22:00] job today,it's all about how do you position yourself. So if you come from sales, it's Iunderstand how people buy. I've sold before. I know I have empathy forsalespeople I know what they need to sell. So from like an enablement, a dealsupport and like competitive enablement, all that stuff. Perspective, likeyou're way better off than someone who is working in marketing. Whereas,when you're thinking about like more growth type initiatives or when you'rethinking about things that are copywriting or like messaging, things like that,that are more of a marketing skill than, oh, like you're probably a lot better,um, suited for that. And I would position myself more around that if I wascoming for marketing. But if you're in css, like you understand the customer,like you understand customer interviews, like you might have, understand likeonboarding and training and like all of that. So I think that there's a way toposition yourself depending on whatever Of these teams you come from so thatwhen you step, when you're fighting for a role at a company for productmarketing, you look for the ones that maybe over index on certain things thatjob is gonna be [00:23:00] responsible for. Andyou'd be like, I'm your natural fit there. 'cause I come from sales and this isI know all this enablement stuff. Like I'm your person for this. And so thatwould be, , like my advice to people who are coming into the, into this now, ifyou're trying to break into product marketing for the first time, for example.Is look for the roles where you feel you actually would be based on your pastexperience, where you feel like you could position yourself in a way thatyou're better than, you're better off than a lot of the other candidates theymight actually look at. Yeah.

Eric: I don't know ifyou guys heard what I heard, but I think Jason said that it's. Better to not bea marketer if you're a product marketer. I don't know,

Jason: Not

Jason: not true..

Gab: Doomed. I.

Four fundamentals of product marketing. What are they? Here's how they backup strategy and execution.

Jason: no. It's agood But it's a fair point. But I think that the yeah, when I think about themarketer versus not marketer as a product marketer, I think of it as a lot oftimes when people think marketer or like digital marketer [00:24:00] or marketing practitioner, whatever, theythink more of the tactical nature of You're building out programs or campaignsor you're creating content, like those sorts of things. And I think a big part of that, like that's still abig part of product marketing, I think from the world I come from. , butthere's a lot of, there's I like the definition of product marketing as likethe four kind of key pillars. Right, which is intelligence or research thing,how you look at it. So it's like research positioning, and then you have launchand enablement. I think that research positioning is the strategy. Once youhave that all figured out, it's like launch and enablement is like where therubber meets the road.

Jason: That's more the execution. And so I thinkthat like you need all those, like that's all product marketing.

Eric: Yeah. I justwanna say I'm glad to know that more about you because I actually also startedin sales like. Like standing in Best Buys and BJs and Costcos slinging [00:25:00] DirecTV, and then moved into customersuccess role. Slid my way that way. And I, I would just, one comment before,Gab takes my head off, is, uh, I agree with you strongly that when I made thatfirst initial move into product marketing as a junior pm I felt the enablementpiece was super, super easy because. I had that empathy built up for the salesside. I had that empathy built up on the customer, success side.

Eric: And

Eric: I felt likethat was a lot easier of a transition than, jumping in as a marketer, forexample,

Jason: Yeah. I agree. It's like you can, that's whyI think a lot of people I've hired, multiple product marketers who aresalespeople, it's

Jason: a great internal hire that you can make.'cause they already understand your product. They understand how to sell it.They understand a lot of, like the messaging.

Jason: They understand your competitive landscape.Like they've sold it, they know the sales team. Like it's a great, in myopinion, it's a, [00:26:00] it's been a, for me, it's always been areally good hire as a product marketer.

Zach: Hey.

Eric: Nice.

Eric: Nice.

Gab: That's greatbecause maybe at the end of season two we'll get our answer if product marketare actually marketers. But I love the text of what I think we're really makingprogress. Just want to go with another topic based on, you talked about thefoundational pillar of product marketing one of them is launches. And I thinkthis is, and again, go-to-market is a whole another mix match a little bit, butcan you tell us, based on your experience, what do you think are the most, um,common pitfalls in launches and what, where does it usually go wrong?

Most common pitfall for product launches

Jason: Yeah, I thinkso I think one thing, I was actually writing about this today, but the I Ithink one thing with product launches a lot of times is it's maybe it's justseems so much common sense, but like product launches. [00:27:00]The initial strategy side of knowing who you're targeting, like who is yourtarget audience for the launch, right? And figuring out your positioningfor a launch is really important. And I think a lot of times people canforget that. Because they, I don't for, they might think that this is somethingthat's done at more of a company and like a product level, not necessarily fora product launch.

Jason: That might befor a new feature within an existing product, or not necessarily always a netnew product, but I think the audience segmentation like. Like with anything,you have this pressure or this feeling like you wanna go broad and you don'twanna, be specific about who you're targeting with this new product feature,with this launch. But being specific about what audience are we talking to? Andthat's gonna then influence like what channels are we focusing on for thislaunch and what are we saying? So this is actually resonating and like drivingpeople to take action when we are sending out our launch email or when we'retalking about this on LinkedIn. Like I've worked at companies that have. Theproduct is for marketers and salespeople, right? Like it's both. [00:28:00] The company targets both of them in someway. But when you launch a product, like you're not specific about which oneyou're talking to. Um, and say for example if you have a free product, thatit's the sales rep who could sign up for the free product, but maybe you have abroader product that you sell more directly to pro to marketing teams or if youare working on larger deals that are maybe when you land, say if it was PLG andthen once you land a certain number of sales users, you're gonna sell moredirectly into sales leadership or the marketing team or something like that.Um, not being clear on the audience when you actually do that launch is like abig one.

Jason: Big mistake Ithink. Um, 'cause then the messaging is just more vague. And I think another one is just a lot ofproduct marketers don't work closely enough with product management. I thinkthat it's a challenging team, a lot of it can be a challenging team to workwith. I think that sometimes when I see dysfunction between two teams, a lot oftimes it can be product and product marketing. And I think that it's especiallyif you're coming into a company [00:29:00]that's never had productmarketing before, a lot of product managers do very like light productmarketing. They'll be the ones who manage launches. And so a lot of times I seethat there are like two separate worlds associated with product launches andit's more of a baton pass. Versus a working together on the launch. And so Ithink like one of the biggest things that I think product marketing andmanagement can do together is like align on the product launch process, workearlier in the process together so that as a product manager, if you'restarting to work on, I guess in an ideal world, you both would be involved inlike gathering voice of the customer and feedback to figure out what to put onthe roadmap. But even after you, you have a, like an idea for a new product orfeature is brought to the table when a product manager is starting to dodiscovery on that or scope out what it might look like. Looping the productmarketer in then so that you can work early on things like positioning andthings like doing competitive research and trying to figure out what's themessaging for this?

Jason: Like what is the overall what's the valueprop versus getting like a requirements doc [00:30:00]when it's all almost built oralmost launched and being like, yeah, now go launch this. So there's so manythings that product marketers struggle with there when that happens. 'cause youjust are fully reactive. You just feel like you're executing on the marketingside of a launch versus being involved in the whole picture. So I think those Ithink that if any, if a product marketer is watching this today and like wetalk about a lot of this in our course is if you were involved in productlaunches, working with your product management team to figure out a process forhow you prioritize launches, how you plan them more strategically, how you worktogether on, on executing them, like making product launches a much morestrategic go-to-market effort versus honestly, most of it's just like releasemarketing.

Jason: It's just likenew feature, let's get it out there. And I think that like work with your PM,map out a process. Be more about how you launch products.

Gab: If you're stillstruggling there. Is [00:31:00] always readyto, they're Ready to Launch cohort in March, right?

Eric: Ready forlaunch.

Gab: Ready forLaunch

Zach: the.

Eric: We're gonnashameless plug,

Gab: God damn I'm notgood at promotional stuff. see it.

Eric: we're gonnashameless plug, we're gonna do it right on this podcast. All right, gab. Andyes, I know you both. I've talked to you about it, but wonderful. Four weeks,six hours, basically over a four weeks span, and I feel like I've gained about60 years of knowledge, so thank you.

Jason: You

Jason: don't.

Zach: years. That's alot.

Zach: So Jason,there's a lot that we've heard from you today, and I'm curious for individualswho want to stay connected with you, like what are ways that they get, they canconnect, work with you, give us the 9 0 2 1 oh.

Jason: Yeah, Iappreciate it. yeah, So I would say if anyone is finds what I say somewhat atall. Interesting. I would say sign up for my newsletter. It's called PMM [00:32:00] Files. I'd say when do you pub, when doyou think is publishing this episode?

Eric: That is to bedetermined, but

Gab: Great question.

Eric: might thatwe've done it.

Jason: Okay. Sodepending on when you do it, it'll be at pmmfiles.com. So I'm actuallygonna launch a site for that. So I do, I just love, every week I break downlike real product marketing examples out in the wild and I ta try to. Basicallygive my take on them and hopefully the idea is that you get practical examplesthat hopefully inspire you, but, help teach you a bit about some other productmarketing concepts every week.

Jason: So subscribeto PMM files, but it's also gonna have its own site with examples on there youcan look at. Um, so pmmfiles.com. I started teaching a course, cohort course onMaven all about product launches called Ready for Launch. Eric was partof our first cohort. Uh, we're launching another one at the end of March yeah,it's on Maven. If you're interested at all, just ping me on LinkedIn. I'm happyto share the link and maybe we can share it in the show notes. And then I also workwith founding product marketers. So if [00:33:00]you are a founding product marketer I know it can be a lonely role. I know itcan be a challenging one for all the reasons that we talked about. And so I, Icoach founding product marketers we can work one-on-one together. You can havea a thought partner, someone to hold you accountable, someone to kinda helpyou, guide you through that process. Um, and check out my coaching program andjust, yeah, hit me up if you're interested in chatting about it.

Zach: Disclaimer, Igot my first call set up with Jason for next week, so

Jason: Yeah. Yeah.

Eric: Oh, Jason, Ishould do the, I should do the soundbite so we can add it. Gab, this is for hisready for launch cohort. It was freaking sweet.

Jason: that. That'shis calling Sign The end of every class.

Eric: Yeah. And everyclass.

squadcaster-1ia0_1_11-30-2023_150721:Eric's the kind of guy you want in a class like that. He like brings theenergy.

Zach: Oh,

Zach: I can imagine.can imagine.

Gab: Yeah, we'repretty much aware at that point,

Jason: He's acheerleader. Yeah, it's great.

Gab: Exactly. It was [00:34:00] pleasure chatting with you, Jason. Thanksso much for being here and we're really excited of of getting your feedbackall, all about the podcast and potentially having you again on the podcast aswell.

Jason: Yeah. Love tocome back.

Eric: For all of our

Eric: out there,you're very welcome. For all the free knowledge we just gave you from Mr. JasonOakley, just hit subscribe. Hit subscribe for more.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah.I'm excited to see who you have on next. But I think you guys got a good thing.

Thank you for listening to We're Not Marketers. If you likewhat you heard, please subscribe, review our podcast, and share this episodewith other PMMs. Thanks again and see you soon.

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