Master Company-Wide Messaging Like A Founding PMM

25:32But what I've noticed throughout your story is that if this big workshop that you were doing was kind of like the big game, right? You were preparing for the big game like every moment before then. You know what I mean? You had almost like practice shows where you met with some of those stakeholders ahead of time. So by the time they saw something in the workshop, it wasn't the first time they had seen it. Like you had kind of like been preparing their like readiness to accept what you were going to unveil to them in the workshop. So I just think that was so, I don't know how much that way. I think it was pretty intentional the way that you did that, but I thought that was a really sharp strategy.

26:13Okay. So what I want to do now is take this case study and turn it into a playbook. And you've kind of given us some pieces of that already, but let's say that I'm a product marketer who is kind of going through the same thing, where I work at the super complex organization and I have all these different offerings. I have services, I have products, I have subscription models, et cetera, et cetera. And no one's speaking the same language. And I am coming to you as my coach. Where do I get started in all of this? What's step one? Step one is assessing stakeholder readiness. And I think that was pretty clear up front.

26:55And I think if you're sometimes like itchy on the trigger figure or itchy on the action, like I am sometimes, and you just want to like jump straight into messaging documents, that sometimes can get you in trouble. And so I think what you really need to do is understand how an organization currently thinks of what product marketing can bring to the table and messaging, obviously, sometimes being like a very strong component of that. And so the real blocker with step one, or even before you move beyond step one, is that different teams have different beliefs, right? And so does the company understand truly the difference between positioning versus messaging and messaging versus copy, maybe most importantly, important than other?

27:36And then from there, does sales trust the way that PMM puts together messaging in the first place? Do they understand the process? Do they have that implicit trust or do you need to earn it? And so what steps do you need to take to earn it? I think that a useful question to ask when you're joining an organization for the first time is when you're understanding the baseline of the understanding of product marketing or messaging, like what prevented that last attempt from being successful? So the last attempt of building a personas, that last attempt of writing messaging and having it stick through enablement and through marketing channels, like what was the hindrance and how can you learn from that before you make that same mistake a second time and maybe erode that trust further without knowing it?

28:18And so I know, I think first and foremost, you have to educate the people on why what you're working on matters and how it can help that organization make better decisions downstream of where that work is happening. Yeah. I love step one because it's all about earning trust. And that is going to be the biggest hurdle, especially if you're somewhere where trust has been broken. I worked at an organization that I was like the third PMM leader to come in. And it was just like so hard to get all of the stakeholders to trust product marketing again. It took a long time. It took like almost six months before I finally got everyone.

29:04And I mean, we're talking a massive organization. So I appreciate the like some of the tips that you give on how do you assess that and, you know, maybe how you start to earn trust. So, OK, step one is assessing stakeholder readiness. So what is step two? Step two is that doing the voice of customer work. And so, again, once you understand that organization's readiness, now you need to ground the work in evidence. And so that's where earning your seat, especially as a consultant or a newbie, is this is where that gets done. And so otherwise, you know, whatever you're working on messaging in this example can become a debate about internal opinions as opposed to, you know, here's like, yes, there's an art to writing messaging, but there's also a science to it.

29:53And so here's the science. DOC gives you that shared source of truth. and in him's example, admittedly, the data setup was not perfect compared to, I think, the way we can use AI and a lot of the new ways that we can collect that voice of customer tooling. But back then that wasn't present, but we had something and that was better than nothing to earn that trust. It was enough to identify the patterns and keep going. Yeah. Yes. Okay. I love that you mentioned AI and I want to come back. So we're going to get into a couple other side topics before we move on in the playbook. So earlier on in our conversation, you mentioned that oftentimes stakeholders can confuse messaging with copywriting.

30:32And that is so true. I cannot tell you how many messaging strategy meetings I've been in where like every word was picked apart. And there are times when you should pick apart language that there absolutely are. But sometimes it was just like, no, no, no, this isn't like website copy. Like that's not what this is. So I'm glad that you called that out. And then I'm also glad that you called out AI and I have some questions for you around AI. Now, I remember interviewing somewhere because I had done a lot of, I've always been a very strong believer in voice of customer work and talking to customers and synthesizing CRM data with sales calls transcripts and actually talking to customers.

31:14And I remember working, interviewing somewhere once and they were shocked at how much time I spent doing the VOC work. and they thought like, how do you have time for that with all of the like, cause PMMs do everything like we do. So we're responsible for so much. So how do you have time for it? So that's no longer an excuse now with AI, we can, you know, jump through some, jump over some of those hurdles. So like, how do you think about like AI changing, like the VOC collection for like messaging work and especially like how would you compare it to this particular project if you were to like kind of like do it again how does ai play a role in that yeah i think it i think it changes this quite drastically and so when i was at him this was yeah maybe closer to five years ago at this point and so uh none of that at least existed at least to the competency level that it does today um but yeah it can help a lot on the research and especially on the synthesis side when I was working with HIMSS, Viosi collection was much more manual.

32:19And so I'm sure a lot of people can empathize with this, but I was pouring over source CRM notes manually. I was sometimes command-effing to find unified keywords and make sure that I'm drawing down that information correctly or sort of distilling it into different categories. I was meeting with advisory boards for feedback and I didn't even have a call recorder. So I was writing stuff down on a notepad and having internal-to-me conversations and again, kind of doing the same thing. And so the work was valuable. VOC work is super valuable, but it was slow. I think today with AI, it's just so much easier to turn unstructured customer data into structured customer data.

32:55And you can get that from all various facets of your organization. And so call transcripts are one way that you can add that in. Same thing with sales notes that are in your CRM. Customer interviews, support tickets, public reviews from review sites, It's things that are on community forums like Reddit. And with AI today, you can pretty much just take all of that, put it into like a second brain, and then be able to like query that information or prompt it in any which way to make sure that you're slicing and dicing it as many different strains as you need to to be able to get that insight. And so the work just moves faster.

33:31But the one thing that I will say about AI for data research or synthesis is, if anything, it just makes PMM judgment more important than ever. I think I said at the top again that PMMs are not data analysts, nor do I think we should think of ourselves as them. Instead, the data can come from anywhere, right? I think we can work with really great data teams to get information. We can work with our product teams to better understand maybe the user and how they're different than maybe the research we're doing on the buyer. But ultimately, I think it's that PMM sense or gut that you can sort of continue to build upon over time to say, okay, well, it's not just about me being an echo chamber of all the same insights that everybody else knows.

34:12But like, what's the strategic insight that I might have as I'm pulling these all together? That's where that strong sense of, I think, PMM opinionation comes from. When someone's coming to you as a PMM, they don't want your data. They want your opinion. And I think that's really important. I am so glad that you said that because one of the cautions that I have to PMMs who are not skipping the VOC work these days, they're doing it, but they're doing it with AI, which is helpful, so helpful. Like we just talked about how helpful that is. But my caution is for, and particularly for junior PMMs who are just kind of starting their product marketing careers and they didn't have, they didn't, you know, experience product marketing life without AI like you and I did.

35:02So they don't, they don't know what it's like to sit there with a pen and notepad, to take hand notes, you know, or, um, plug in pages of notes into a spreadsheet and to, you know, sift everything together. Like they don't, they didn't have to do all of that. So, but, and it's, there's definitely pros and cons to this, but I think one of the cons, and that's why I call it a caution. And I want to get your perspective on this. I still think product marketers should, if you haven't done it, should put the work in to do it without AI or like with very little AI. Because you mentioned like that PMM gut, right?

35:44That when stakeholders come to you, like they can, if they wanted to, they could just go build an AI model to go do that themselves. They're not asking you to regurgitate the output of Claude. That's not what they're asking you to do. But to get built up that like what I think you said, like that kind of like PMM perspective or, you know, that gut reaction, it's really a confidence. So you have to do the work to get the confidence in yourself and your ability. Is that kind of like what you're saying with some of how you explained like the AI kind of world that we're in right now? Yes, for sure.

36:22And I think that's where, you know, one of the things that I think using, you know, something like Cloud or ChatGP can take away from you is if all you're doing is copy and pasting in a bunch of different transcripts or CRM data or any, you know, mix of data that you can sort of think of, and it's giving you an output and you're taking that output and maybe you're copying and pasting it into something else and then transforming that data set or sort of information into another format. You're not, you yourself are not learning anything through that process. And so just like writing down something by hand helps commit it to memory.

36:56If you're not, if you yourself are not wading through that data, you are not committing anything to memory. And then that's going to just hurt you as a PMM leader when you're in a room and you need to have an opinion on something. And yeah, you don't have that, you know, quick ability to, you know, prompt that answer. Then they are looking for you to have an opinion. And if you don't have that opinion, then maybe worst of all is, are you going to continue to earn that seat at the table that, you know, I think we're all trying to earn? Yes. the trust that we need to build, that was step one of this playbook.

37:25So I'm so glad you mentioned all of that. I think I agree with that thinking. Okay. So step one was assessing the readiness to kind of learn and basically hear you out. Step two, I think was to do the voice of customer work. What is step three? Yeah. So step three is bringing stakeholders along for the ride. So throughout that entire process. There were times where I was maybe having a conversation with a stakeholder, bringing them up to speed. I think no surprises when you're trying to work on something as important as a positioning or messaging strategy. And so, again, PMMs can often feel like, hey, I can do all this myself.

38:06I know how to do the research. I can build the framework. I can polish the doc and I can show everybody what it looks like at the end. And maybe hopefully rub my hands off of it and walk off into the sunset, right? That doesn't really work in actuality. And so stakeholders, if they don't understand how you got there, they're more likely to debate the individual words, maybe dismiss the initial strategy that you're even putting in front of them to begin with. And I knew that at HEMS, the messaging would only stick if people trusted the process. And so we needed to make sure that we brought them along for the ride, not just at the beginning, but throughout.

38:40And so the leadership workshop was really about understanding how the leaders saw the business. Following up from that, we did similar smaller sessions with different subject matter experts in the healthcare space that were employed by HIMSS and made sure that the language would hold up with those expert buyers in which they more often engaged with at the very peer-to-peer level that they operated in. And so at the end of the day, it wasn't sort of me coming in and saying, I like this messaging and so you should like it too. It was more like, hey, as an organization, let's look at the evidence together.

39:11Let's build that trust, not just in PMM, but with each other that we all trust the expertise that we're all bringing jointly to the table. And especially when you have, again, executives, both technical and non-technical SMEs, sales and marketing, we all bring different perspectives that are really important to make sure that we all agree on before we move forward. Yeah. And something that I want to call out that I think kind of connects step two with step three is, and all the more reason why like sitting with the data is important, it's helpful for your stakeholders to actually see how you got to the conclusion that you came to, because that's what earns trust.

39:54And having, like just going into a Google Doc and like suddenly seeing it filled out, like isn't something that's necessarily going to build that trust. It actually just reinforces you as an order taker of like, you asked for the messaging, here it is. Not that collaborative, let me bring you along for how I got to this conclusion so that moving forward, we all agree that this process is something that we all want to follow. So I really appreciate that note. Okay, now what's next? What's step four? Yeah, I think step four is really, about, okay, now we've, you know, again, taken people along for that ride.

40:36And so now we're hopefully, you know, at this point starting to get further, we're starting to draft the messaging itself. And so let's be intentional with that word choice that we ultimately end up choosing for the messaging strategy. And this is where I think, you know, if anyone's ever worked on a messaging project before, it can be highly subjective. And suddenly before you know it, we're wordsmithing by committee. And so it's like, you know, what about this word instead of this word? or someone's going to go on Webster's and look up a synonym for a different word or something like that. And the way out of that is you need to ground the word choice in the VOC and in the alignment that you're putting together.

41:14Not every word needs to come directly from a customer quote, but important language should be explained through customer evidence. I think that at HIMSS, this mattered a lot because again, we were dealing with a very complex healthcare environment. And so we want to make sure that we can speak really truly speak the language of our buyers. And so we had to be very deliberate about word choices, what words to also avoid, and what terms specifically meant. And so as part of the messaging framework that we ended up putting together, we actually had very clear excerpts where if we were being very particular about a word choice, we would call out why we need to be particular about that.

41:49And if you were to swap maybe these three words, that might be okay, but this fourth word, don't swap it. Here's why, here's a specific reason. And so that's where we need to be clear where we're getting that from. Is that VOC? Is that other stakeholders? And at the end of the day, as much as I always preach alignment, sometimes there's also something that I like to call, which is like disagree and commit. And I think that's where as PMMs, we should be able to say, hey, here's the objective facts on the table. I know that you as a product person or you as a salesperson said we should use this word instead.

42:22but this word was chosen intentionally, grounded in A, B, C, D, and E. We heard your suggestion. Here's why we chose a different direction. And I think that's a very healthy kind of disagreeing commit where, you know, if you're showing, if you have the data, that's where, again, like your data and your opinionation on those two being the right things can really matter in how you work with stakeholders. Because at the end of the day, not everything's going to be this like really clean commit and high five and walk away kind of movement. Yeah, I appreciate you kind of highlighting some of the like, you know, sometimes you don't agree and it's an uncomfortable situation to be in, but just kind of relying on the data and the evidence is really helpful way to move forward.

43:02Something else that you said that I want to come back to is we talked a lot about earlier on in the conversation that like, don't confuse copywriting with messaging, but here your step four is about be intentional with word choice, right? So I don't want to confuse listeners. Something else that you said earlier on too, which is related is that when you were doing these workshops with your stakeholders, executives often had different probably word choice because they were having more peer to peer conversations, not like, I don't know, maybe practitioner level conversations. And I think that's so important.

43:35That's something that happened a lot at some of the larger, more complex organizations that I've worked at where we had to be, we had to recognize which persona are we talking about here? Because the worst case scenario is when you build messaging that was intended for a peer-to-peer audience of executives. And somehow that's the narrative and that's the messaging that gets used for practitioners. It was a bad outcome, let me tell you. Yeah. So I guess what I'm coming back to is earlier when we said like, don't confuse copywriting with messaging is still true. But I think what, and I'm trying to like get clear on your step four here.

44:15It's just being clear with word choice of messaging and making sure that it's like the same language that you're speaking to the customer. Is that accurate to kind of say that? Yeah, that's correct. And I think where to me, like messaging sort of sits compared to copy is, you know, messaging is your strategic truth, right? It's the truth that you want to be able to tell to the market. And I think obviously like with copy, that's really like where you want to may be able to make it a bit more channel specific, right? And that's where, you know, there's people that are much better experts than I at copywriting.

44:48But I think messaging is like, again, where you need to seek that type of alignment that you mentioned, you know, is it practitioner to practitioner? Is it executive to executive? Yeah, totally. Okay, so bring us home, like, I'm guessing there's a step five, but and then is there anything else to the story after that? Yeah. So step five is leaving room for iteration and feedback. And so my engagement with HEMS was actually less than a year. And so just going through this messaging component took a good component of my time there. And so at the end of the day, when you're departing, you want to make sure that you're leaving room for iteration and feedback.

45:25And so I was able to help guide or facilitate this through the remainder of the time in which I was there. But ultimately, this is another place where PMMs can suddenly stop too early. And so, you know, you launch the new website or copy, you know, you write that new sales deck based on the messaging structure that you've created. And then you kind of move on to the next project. We didn't want to do that at him, I certainly didn't. And so messaging is only proven once it gets used. And we need to make sure that when it was used, like, is it being effective? And so at HIMSS, this was really important because we were introducing messaging again for the first time in an organization, maybe not to the stakeholders, but certainly to the organization.

46:06And so we did not want to build a culture that if messaging was to be done in the future, it's a one and done initiative. And so you need to teach them how to detect signals from places where messaging is supposed to create the type of impact we expect messaging to create. And so is it landing in the sales calls as we're sort of converting that into the page deck, right? Are we, you know, is a senior leader maybe when they're giving a keynote at like a healthcare convention or presentation, is that landing in the right way, you know, out in the audience? And so how can we pick up on some of those maybe like harder to pick up, like less tangible cues?

46:41And then obviously, when it comes to more quantitative signals, there's things like, are they spending more time on page? Are they reading the copy actually? If we're building white papers and the white papers are leveraging more of that messaging structure, are we actually maybe getting better download rates because we're hitting on pinpoints that are true to the folks that are encountering that content moving forward? And so really making sure that we're building a culture in which PMMs won't be able to see all the signals as they're coming in live. We rely on so many different stakeholders to feed that feedback back to us.

47:14And so what does that look like? And how do we let people know that this is just the first step we're going to continue to iterate? And here's how the iteration process ultimately works. Yeah, I've always heard and even said myself, messaging is a living document. It's always changing and growing. So I want to fast forward now in your career. You're at Fleetio now. How does this playbook show up in Fleetio? And I know you have a ton of, we've already talked a ton about AI as well. So help contextualize some of this for us. What does it look like in practice now in a totally different setting? No longer this complex healthcare organization.

47:54Yeah. So I think at Fleetio, when it comes to, well, certainly the VOC collection days, you know, manually pouring over CRM fields is, you know, for the most part, it's over. I think that's, again, where like AI does a really great job at turning unstructured data into structured insights that you could use in a variety of formats. And where, you know, like tools like Gong and their AI studio and other conversational intelligence tools can just dramatically accelerate the sort of analysis that, to your point, like could take you months back before AI existed. Back in my day. Yeah, maybe we're dating ourselves a little bit here, but I was trying not to go in that direction.

48:36And I would also even say that where we used to previously be wholly reliant on very perfect CRM hygiene in terms of like, hey, when we need to understand that the product won for this reason and lost for this reason, here's all of our pick lists and the pick list needs to be granular enough. now you can you know pull that same information from a gong transcript with some good detection you can you know be able to do the same thing by even taking the unstructured data that is a seller's like one or lost notes or activity notes throughout an opportunity in their crm and be able to like tell better understand that story without you know someone spending 15 minutes polishing that type of data and so that's the one piece that i think has changed the most in that playbook.

49:18But then not only how do you take that VOC, but then when you're writing the messaging in step five, when I was talking about that iterative feedback loop, that's also where I think the times are changing. And so AI has been able to really step in and add, I think, a bit more directionality or at least maybe not causation, but strong correlative ties between, I think, what a PMM does and the sort of impact that it might have out there in the field. And so So at Fleavia, one thing that we are looking at right now is, again, if you have that sort of like foundational messaging and again, like enforced by that more scaled sort of way of gathering VOC.

49:57In your messaging, you can also be a lot more specific because you spend less time in the CRM data. You can spend more time in the different slices of what that messaging can ultimately look like. And so for us, when we're dealing with a technical buyer, there's obviously a lot of different sales plays in terms of like, if they're wanting to use our API, or they're wanting to use an integration with us, or they're, you know, looking at using any of the sort of data interoperability features that are available, not just in Slavio, but across the board. and let's say your seller is not super technical and they shouldn't actually need to know the five foot view, it's okay for them to primarily just understand maybe the 20 foot view.

50:38There is more we can do now with AI around like coaching a proactive, like the type of proactive behaviors that we ultimately want to see. And so I think that's where for us, I mentioned when it came to HIMSS, one of the signals that we would look at qualitatively was, you know, like if a rep is using the messaging, how is the buyer reacting to that messaging? And you might be able to like, you know, pull up a gone transcript to see that. Going one that will further now, what you can do is not only how are they reacting to that, but if they maybe had a negative reaction to that, is that because there was something wrong with what the seller had said?

51:13And how can you coach that immediately? And so that's where I think AI through being able to quickly crawl a transcript, understand where that objection was maybe handled incorrectly and then servicing the right coaching moment based on here's actually like in the messaging, the type of direction we should have pointed that to them to one layer deeper. You can actually have that rep go out, go back out and say, Hey, realized last, last week or yesterday, I didn't answer that question you had as, as, you know, as well as I should have. And so here's the way, here's some information that I do want to leave you with.

51:45And, and, and you can feel free to ask me any more questions, you know, that you might have. And so it allows for that sort of really great proactivity where you don't need to let that opportunity go all the way to a close before you realize, oh, shoot, I messed up that, you know, my talk track there. There's a bit more of that proactivity of like, well, maybe that wasn't so great. Here's how I can fix it. And not only does that help that opportunity, but it also helps the seller in that moment, you know, be coached that a little bit better as well. Yeah. So these messaging systems that you're building are so much, they can now go way beyond just building and establishing the messaging or iterating on the messaging, but also going into like the enablement of the messaging.

52:25So I love that. Okay. This is my last question for you on this topic. What's one piece of advice you have for a PMM who's in the thick of it? They're trying to create, you know, establish that foundational messaging. What's, if you had to pick one thing for them to walk away with what, what should it be? Yeah. I think the first, um, the hardest thing for me that I always try to remember anytime I'm getting into any sort of exercise similar to what we covered today is that, um, messaging is hard because it's both in art and in science and, and that, and because people, you know, words matter a lot to people, right?

53:04We're a very communicative society and that, you know, that really matters at the end of the day. And so just to be able to maybe calm yourself down and in the middle of a heated moment, when someone's debating messaging with you, they're probably just not, they may not be reacting to your messaging specifically or to your phrasing or word choice specifically. What they can sometimes be reacting to is the strategy behind it. And I think that like we as PMMs, we're very prideful people, right? We wanna be involved in the strategy. We wanna earn our seat at the table. But a strategy is something that's ultimately defined by a number of stakeholders.

53:36And hopefully, you know, we and any listener here is part of that group, but it is a group activity to create a strategy that as an organization you can commit to. And so a lot of the times when a mess, when what is messaging, if not strategy on a page. And so if there's a disagreement around messaging, sometimes it's good to just take a step back and take a breath and go, okay, is this a messaging problem? Or is it a strategy problem? If I can divorce those two in my mind, I can understand what it is that I need to do next. Whether that is like, hey, do we actually need to get, take a step back and do more strategic alignment or is it actually a messaging problem?

54:09In which case, if it is a messaging problem, I do know how to solve it by, you know, again, digging back into that VOC, having more conversations and, you know, having a grounded data back kind of opinionation again as a product marketer. I love that. And it's funny that it feels like the one piece of advice is really anchored in a relationship driven, you know, the stakeholder with the stakeholders. So and it's so true, right? So I really appreciate that note. This was such a powerful case study. I'm so glad that, you know, you were so generous to walk through it with us. All right. So now it's time for the next segment of our show.

54:47This is the messaging critique. So Kevin, this is where you and I as marketing experts get to analyze real world messaging. And the fun part is you get to pick the company that we analyze. So let me throw out some quick ground rules. First, you're going to tell me something after you reveal the company, of course, you're going to say something that you're loving about the messaging, something that stood out to you in a positive way. Then you're going to talk through something you wish the PMM would have done differently. And then lastly, we'll just do a quick brainstorm iterating on how that PMM can take you to the next level.

55:16So without further ado, please reveal the company that we'll be looking at today. Yeah. So I'm going to, I think, take this a different direction than some of your other guests in the past. So I'll pick a physical device. And so for those of you who are familiar with Brick, it's a physical sort of square device. And it essentially helps you lock your phone down so you stay more present in the moment, you know, which I need to sometimes when I'm... I was going to say, this should be a required product for like every American household. Okay. So it's getbrick.com is the website for anyone who wants to kind of follow along.

55:51So, okay. Walk us through it. Like, tell us about the messaging and like what stood out to you. Yeah. So I think what really stuck out to me was that, so first of all, I think they lead a lot with, yes, like a very generic statement at times. And that maybe is part of my critique if we're going to get there later on, but really take your time back. But in terms of like how they message around maybe that key position is not through actually using your phone more. And so right away, they sort of call out the competitors in the space, which are like these other apps that sort of will help you limit your screen time by downloading yet another app in which you can set that time restriction.

56:30With Brick, they make that action more physical. So the value isn't just in blocking apps. It's actually from removing that moment of negotiation with yourself where you're like, oh, I'm going to extend my limit 15 more minutes. You're actually locking down that entire phone. And it makes it easier, at least maybe now I'm speaking purely anecdotally about myself. It makes it easier for you to go, okay, well, my phone's locked down. I'm just going to put it in that drawer and I'm going to come back to it like after my kids are asleep or, you know, like after I'm spending, you know, more time doing maybe what I should be doing at the end of the day.

57:05All right. So let's get a little bit into the critique now. You gave us kind of like a tease of it with a generic piece. Go a little deeper. Tell us more. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, like I said, the whole adage of helping keep time is still a little bit of a generic keyword. I think what really helps Brick differentiate themselves and why I ended up purchasing a couple for us was they're not really just solving, I think, like a screen time problem. They're ultimately solving like a willpower problem. And so maybe, again, speaking for myself as I guess now calling myself someone with weak willpower, once you sort of log down that phone and it's truly been, I guess, bricked as a way that they might want to want to call it, you know, I think that it reestablishes the willpower that you may not have had previously.

57:54Right. So, you know, I know I can't access this. And so and there's going to be not just one step of extending screen time, but a physical step of repairing it with the brick. Another physical step of then going into my phone and hitting. Yeah, I do want to get unlocked. It's that multi-step process that I think is such a strong factor. And also, like maybe strategically where you have that brick in your house. And so if you have your brick, like right when you walk through the front door, are you really going to want to shame yourself by walking back to the front doors, you know, to unbrick it again when you when you have the urge to.

58:26Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what I'm hearing is kind of like a behavior change and it feels like they're kind of like anchoring around time-saving, which is, I feel like a lot of PMMs fall back on that. I'm not going to lie. I have in my career. But they have so much more opportunity here that they could lean into. So help us iterate a little bit. How would you take this to the next level? Yeah, I think I'd maybe like build off those moments that I just spoke about. So like you're walking through the door, you know, I mean, I'm not walking through many front doors these days because I work from home, but you're walking through, you know, you're walking through the front door, you're maybe you're off work.

59:06And so I think that there's a lot more that they can do to take it to the next level to really like ground it in the daily actions in which you want to unplug and you want to leave that device behind. And so like when you get home, like brick, brick, when you get home, you know, maybe you want a brick before dinner before, you know, when you want the fullest attention of when your kids want the fullest attention of you, which, you know, like again, speaking from experience, that's why we're doing that. And so I think it makes it feel less like a productivity hack or, you know, something that's like something you feel like you are gilting yourself into doing and like a bit more of a smaller ritual for protecting that family time.

59:45So, you know, I'm walking through the front door and, you know, you break when you get home and that's just what you do as a family. So, yeah, I love that. Like and again, like it's coming back to like establishing like positive behaviors. So really interesting. So all right. Shout out to any brick PMMs out there. you've got some fans and we have some ideas for you to try out. Check it out. All right. So Kevin, one thing that I always like to make space for on this podcast is a moment of gratitude because as product marketers, we never get to the next step in our career without learning from others.

1:00:17So this is just a genuine thank you for taking the time to prepare for this episode. And then of course, come on and have the generosity to go deep into your case study and share your expertise. Thank you so much. And then also I'd like to turn it around and give you the chance to give some shout outs to some PMMs who have brought you to this moment. Yeah, I guess in a full circle moment, I will give a shout out to my friend, Jonathan Pithik from Blue Manta. I know he gave me a shout out when he joined your pod. And so I'll return the favor. Jonathan is just like one of the most genuine PMMs that I've ever met.

1:00:52I think that - He's so kind. So powerhouse PMM and just so generous. at this time and he's someone that you can just talk shop with all day and i think that like he was maybe like the first pmm that i feel like became a true friend that i've never actually worked with before and i think that's like a good testament to the type of connections that he's i think built with the community so definitely jonathan you know best ones for you shout out jonathan i think uh the other two that maybe i'll just shout out really quickly are studi and soreb these are two pmms that i worked with back when i was at hootsuite i think we were all you know, I think that you often think back fondly to like the earliest PMM days that you have.

1:01:29And for me, like it was getting in the, you know, being in the weeds with them and getting some stuff done. And so, yeah, shout out to them in terms of like, just how we've, I think, continued to grow and push each other and stay close, I think, through the careers that we all, you know, have on this winding road that's product marketing. I love that. I love that. Shout out to PMM peers. Thank you, friends. All right. Well, thank you so much, Kevin. I really appreciate that. I swear this is my last question for you. Where else can we access your expertise? Is it best to find you on LinkedIn? Yeah, LinkedIn is the best.

1:02:01I am also a mentor for both the Product Marketing Alliance as well as ADP list. And so I love giving back to the community. I think that actually sometimes I learn more about when I'm in the heat of a conversation with somebody else that also loves product marketing and love the way that I've been able to meet other PMMs through that mentorship program on both sides. And so you can find me, yeah, again, LinkedIn, ADP list or the PMA mentorship group as well. Oh, that's so kind. I love the mentorship. Thank you. Thank you. Again, Kevin, thanks so much. This has been awesome. And hey, PMM listeners, if you like this episode, please share with a PMM friend.

1:02:39And I'd be so grateful if you would leave us a review. It helps tremendously with our reach. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take in the next step of your own journey. Thank you.