One Knight in Product

Debbie Levitt, UX and CX consultant, discusses the importance of putting users at the center of the conversation. She highlights the value of quality user research and challenges the prioritization of speed over quality. The podcast also explores the differences between user experience and customer experience, the insights from Debbie's book 'Customers Know You Suck,' and the polarization between product managers and other roles in product development.

Lloyed Lobo, author of "From Grassroots to Greatness" and co-founder of Boast, shares his insights on community-driven growth. He emphasizes that community should be ingrained in a company’s DNA, not just a marketing tactic. With personal anecdotes from his childhood in Mumbai, Lloyed explores how showing up for your community fosters loyalty. He discusses the delicate balance of providing value without immediate expectations while also encouraging necessary sales conversations. His ideas challenge traditional business strategies with powerful, innovative approaches to growth.

Shyvee Shi, LinkedIn Product Lead, discusses the importance of generative AI for product managers, the fear of AI obsolescence, and the responsibility to focus on real user problems. The podcast also explores the role of a product leader at LinkedIn and provides information about Shi's book.

Becky Flint, CEO of Dragonboat and former Paypal employee, discusses the importance of product portfolio management and product operations. Topics include: the need for portfolio management even in one-product companies, the importance of explaining strategic decisions to stakeholders, the role of product operations in ensuring product teams deliver, and the importance of portfolio management for product operations professionals.

Orly Zeewy is an experienced marketer who "makes the fuzzy clear". She's passionate about helping startup founders get their branding right, and enabling them to identify their own "zones of genius" where they win. She does this through her consultancy, Zeewy Brands, as well as her book, "Ready, Launch, Brand". We spoke all about the ins and outs of branding, and why startup founders need to rethink marketing. A message from this episode's sponsor This episode is sponsored by Succeeding in B2B Product Management, a cohort-based, live course that Saeed Khan and I are launching on Maven in January. If you're a B2B product manager struggling to make an impact, a B2B product leader looking to promote healthy product practices, or a B2B founder looking to get your teams to be true business partners, check the course out here. You can use discount code OKIP to get $100 off the price of admission. Episode highlights:   1. Branding is not just a fancy logo and a cool company name The true definition of a brand is that it is the sum of all experiences that customers have with an organisation over time. Brands don't live in the minds of the company, or its founders. They live in the minds of their customers. 2. Marketing is not just a widget, it's a fundamental cost of running your business, and results take time Some startup founders either don't bother with marketing at all, or they give up as soon as the first thing they try doesn't work. But, you need to start early and invest for the long term. There are so many brands competing for mindshare and you need to make sure that you remain part of that in an attention-poor market. 3. Your company website is your front door, and you need to explain clearly why people should care about you It can be pretty common for companies to either ignore their website entirely or try to cram as much information as possible on there and overwhelm potential customers. Your website is likely to be the first touchpoint that a potential customer has with your brand, and you need to clearly and concisely explain why they should care about you. 4. Not everyone has done this work upfront, but it's important to meet people where they are Yes, it's easier to intercept avoidable problems before they occur, but there are plenty of good conversations you can have whatever the situation within the company. It's never too late to try to make a difference, and you can find that the entire company will get energised and rally to the cause once you've put the work in to define what the cause really is. 5. People, and organisations, have Zones of Genius and they should focus and stay in their lane It can be really common for founders and solopreneurs to try to solve every problem for everyone because they're interested in everything and they think that it will increase their chances of success. But, if you can find the thing you're uniquely good at and focus your efforts there then you have a much higher chance of sticking in someone's mind and being their go-to solution for that specific problem. Buy "Ready, Launch, Brand" "You may be familiar with the Silicon Valley expression about the iterative approach to software development, "We’re learning to fly the plane while we’re building it." If so, think of a startup―with all its moving parts, phases, and personalities―as flying a plane, while you’re building it, booking passengers, marketing the airline, interviewing co-pilots, and serving coffee. In this book, Orly Zeewy navigates the turbulence and provides a flight plan so you know when you’ve landed in the right airport." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Orly You can catch up with Orly on LinkedIn or visit Zeewy Brands.

Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher and author of two books, "Interviewing Users" and "Doorbells Danger, and Dead Batteries". Steve is a passionate advocate for the value of user research, and ensuring that people can find out compelling insights from their users. He's recently re-released a 10th-anniversary edition of "Interviewing Users", and we spoke about some themes from the book and how to make an impact with user research. Episode highlights:   1. Some people are still wary of user research, or think they don't need it, but it remains as important as ever It can be tempting for founders to think they know exactly what they need, rely on feedback from customer-facing teams, or not speak to anyone until they've already built the thing they want to build. Feedback from sales teams and founders is an incredibly important vector, but should only be the start of the discussion never the end. 2. Continuous discovery and point-in-time research both have a place in a researcher's armoury There are methodological constraints to continuous research, alongside the difficulty of finding the time and buy-in to do it but, on the other hand, it can be incredibly impactful to have rapid research tightly coupled to the product team. On the other hand, well-planned up-front research can still help you to find truly disruptive insights for your company. Do both! 3. We all have cognitive biases - we should accept that and be honest with ourselves about their effects People look at the word "bias" and worry about the negative connotations, but "bias" just represents how our brains are wired. Cognitive biases will affect how we interview people, and we should do our best to counteract their effect and improve on getting better (even if we're not perfect). 4. The best research has a tangible impact rather than being research for research's sake It can be a heavy burden to bear if all of your well-planned and well-executed research ends up having no effect on decision-making at all. It's important not to get downhearted, and work out ways to build actionable, accessible repositories to enable your stakeholders to make the best decisions possible. 5. There are a lot of similarities between good user research and improv We don't need to be able to create 45-minute plays off the cuff, and knowing when to stick to our interview plans and when to deviate from the script, enables us to get to the real generative insights that we need from our users and find out what we don't know we don't know. Buy "Interviewing Users (2nd edition)" "Interviewing people is a skill that most professionals who do research assume they already possess. But not everyone knows how to ask questions well. Expert researcher Steve Portigal updates his classic Interviewing Users to provide fresh guidance on interviewing techniques, as well as new content. This edition includes a new foreword by Jamika D. Burge and features two new chapters: one about analysis and synthesis and sharing research results, and another about ensuring that your user research efforts will have an impact on your organization. There are seven new short essays (we call them sidebars) from guest contributors. Plus, you’ll find updated examples, stories, and tips for leading interviews, and new sections about bias, remote research, ResearchOps, planning research, and research logistics. You’ll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people." My listeners can get 20% off with promo code KNIGHT on the Rosenfeld Media website. This code is valid until 21st December, 2023. Alternatively, check it out on Amazon. Contact Steve You can catch up with Steve on LinkedIn or visit Portigal.com.

Richard Blundell is a serial entrepreneur and startup advisor who helps B2B startups win by getting them uncomfortably narrow and solving critical problems. He also believes that startup founders are heroes, and recently published a book trying to help them avoid common mistakes and have the best chance of putting a dent in the universe. We discussed his approach, and what on Earth he's got against product managers. A message from this episode's sponsor - SuperProduct This episode is sponsored by SuperProduct. Have you ever wished you could simplify competitive research, and reduce time commitment and effort but still get extraordinary insights? Well, have I got news for you! You can try SuperProduct's new course which teaches you how to unlock the potential of AI-powered insights about your competitors and about your market. This course demystifies AI and teaches you how to be the mega prompt maestro that will transform ChatGPT into your personal research assistant. Check the course out here, and make sure to use code KNIGHT to support this podcast. Episode highlights:   1. Your best chance to win in B2B is to get "uncomfortably narrow" and solve a visceral problem Startup founders often start off spraying and praying, hoping to get any traction at all and start to build their revenue. This is understandable, but generally a mistake. It's important to start off way more narrow than feels comfortable and have a really solid plan to get your next 25 customers. Everything else can follow. 2. It's easy to get misaligned and lose sight of your core value proposition Even when organisations start off with a solid value proposition, this can change over time. But, in any case, one of the main problems with startups slowing down (or failing to scale up) is often not a lack of sales ability, but a lack of fundamental GTM narrative. You need to fix it upstream. 3. Startup founders are heroes... Startup founders put everything on the line to bring a sometimes impossible-seeming vision to fruition. It's easy to criticise them when things are going wrong, but no one has invested more time and effort into their startup than them. 4. ... but even heroes have weaknesses It's important for founders to be self-reflective and understand their own weak spots. In some cases, this is the first leadership position they've ever held. In other cases, they'll have glaring gaps based on their own past experience. It's OK to have gaps! But, it's important to be honest about the gaps and get the right people to help you. 5. Your first hire at a B2B startup shouldn't be a Head of Sales (or a Product Manager!) It's tempting to get a seasoned seller into the business to get the numbers in but, actually, there's an even more crucial role that you need to hire first. Listen to the episode to find out who, but it's not a product manager - this can come later after you've got a foothold in the market and the founder can no longer scale. Buy "The Go To Market Handbook for B2B SaaS Leaders" "There are few people we admire more than the Founders and Leaders of software companies who have the courage, determination and, some might say, sheer madness to put their livelihoods and reputation on the line, to leave their own ‘dent in the universe’. It's a day to day, up at dawn, pride swallowing siege to lead such a business. And we know this for a fact because we’ve walked in your shoes many times. Over the last 25 years, we’ve been involved in the start-up, scale up and exit of several successful technology businesses, that between them have realized close to billion dollars of shareholder value. But along the way we've also had more than our fair share of disappointments and have the mental scars and bruising to prove it. We’ve made mistakes and fallen in what felt like bottomless pits. But fascinatingly enough, we learned as much from the ones that didn’t work, as we did from the successes. It’s these lessons which we thought we'd share in this book." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Richard You can catch up with Richard on LinkedIn or visit Vencha.

Petra Wille, author of 'Strong Product People' and 'Strong Product Communities', discusses the benefits of forming communities of practice for product managers. These communities lead to better teamwork, knowledge sharing, and breaking down of silos. Each community is unique and valuable in its own way. Petra also highlights the challenges of establishing and maintaining these communities.

April Dunford, world-renowned expert in product positioning, shares insights on creating a winning sales pitch. Topics include the lack of a standard sales pitch approach, the importance of grounding the pitch in positioning, and organizing product demos around differentiated value.

Maja Voje, growth strategy expert, shares insights on achieving product/market fit. Collaboration is crucial for success. Product/market fit involves building a sustainable business, not just delivering value. Startups should pick a niche, define ideal customers, and stick to the plan.