299: Product Management - Building the Right Things for the Right People with Ben Holland

Ladies and jelly beans excited. First time I've ever done that. By the way, that intro. That's not. Ben, I know that you are maybe not a food blogger, pro podcast listener. It's the first time I've ever done the ladies and jelly beans intro. So congratulations. We'll maybe like cut that and do a little nft, see if we can get millions of dollars from the latest in jelly beans intro. We're starting to do these intros in the beginning leading into it, so we don't segment it out. But I want to talk a little bit about product management, about how we've worked with you, Ben, and then what we're going to be talking about on the podcast. Excited to be chatting with you because I think it's an area that's really important and it's crafting the roadmap, the vision of the thing that we're building based on feedback from the people that we are building it for. And Ben is going to be talking about that as it relates to product management. So building a product. But for us, a lot of the podcast listeners, for Pinch of Yum, the product that we have is content. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be talking to your customers and developing ideas and gathering feedback around how you can be successful with that content based on what the customers need and want. So we are excited to talk about product management. Excited to talk about how to do that. Well, customer development, all of those things. But before we do, I want to say, officially, Ben, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. It's great to be here. Excited to be a part of this.

Yeah. Excited to chat a little bit with you. We've worked for a while together, but I've never had like a talk to Ben about his story conversation with you. So. So let's do that. I'm interested to hear how you got into product management. My connection to you is through Raquel, who helped us build and launch WP Tasty. In the early days, she got super excited about product management. She was like, hey, I'm a part of this group where this guy's kind of leading this group of other product managers. When I was in the early stages of working on Clarity, I was like, we need somebody to do product management and lead this project. And she's like, Ben. He's like. He's like, he's pretty good and he's senior. I don't know, he might be too qualified for you. I was like, I want the best person possible. Introduce me to Ben. So that's how the connection happened. But rewind the tape a little bit. How did you get into this, Ben?

Yeah, so I actually. My first job out of college, my first real job. Right. I did like pizza delivery and all of that.

Totally.

I worked, worked for my dad. My dad owned a little game shop here in Southern California and they were, it was kind of right before the tablet movement, so mobile games was becoming a thing. And they hired me as a college student to test games for them. And it was like the perfect.

That's like, that's like the dream job of every middle school kid, especially a middle school kid who loves games. It's like literally video game tester.

Exactly. And they had like a little lounge area, just sit on a couch with a brand new tablet and testing games and trying things out like that. I also have a lot of like sound engineering background and so I did a lot of the game music and game sound effects and things like that, which was really fun.

So this was like mobile, iOS, iPad, Android games.

Right when that was becoming a thing. Yeah, before that they were web based games. Yeah.

And they're casual games.

Yeah, Flash games, casual hidden object games, you know, adventure games.

Yeah.

Even like Angry Birds type games. Pretty, pretty fun stuff.

And so were they developing them as an in house kind of startup to then publish on their own or were people coming to them and they're like, hey, we have this, you know, everybody has an idea for an app. And then everybody was like, oh my gosh, I have this idea for a game. Who do I have build it? Is that what it was? Or were they developing like in house games that then they on their own would sell?

So they had mostly in house games. About the time throughout my tenure there, they had some bigger game companies come their way and say, hey, we want you to be the indie publisher for this, this game. And, and I mean big, big game names like Activision and things like that.

Would there be any games that people be like, oh my gosh, I play that game or know of that.

So they've shifted quite a bit over the years. If you were big into hidden object games, you may know their name. Back in the day, like early 2000s, they've shifted quite a bit. Now they run a company called like they. Their flagship product is a game called Munzee, which is like a geocaching type of game. But instead of geocaches, there are QR codes all over the, all over the country, actually all over the world.

Oh, interesting. People put the QR codes there or do, do does the. Does the, like the company?

Yeah, you buy, you buy a QR code pack from the company and then the people go place them all over. So I mean, if you download the Munzee app, I guarantee this isn't a plug for Munzee by any means. But yeah, if you, if you download the app Munzee and sign up, I bet you'll see there's some all around your house. We go look for them all.

How do you spell it?

M U, N, Z E E. Munzee.

Because I've done, I know geocaching and have done geocaching where like for those who aren't familiar, you have the coordinates and you try and find where this geocache is. We did it at the nonprofit is like a group like team building thing and people were like wading into water like this pond, trying to find a geocache that was like underneath. And so I know some people are really into it. So anyways, they have this, your dad has this company, which sounds awesome, sounds like a dream job for you to come out and do like testing of these. But you're getting into it and doing essentially like QA quality assurance on these games before they publish the next update of them.

Yeah. And as I was doing qa, I mean, it's pretty natural as you're testing things to make suggestions like, hey, I think this could have been thought through this way because you're kind of the first user using it right at that point.

Yeah. When you're building it, you have an idea of, hey, somebody's going to use it, here's how they're going to use it. And then somebody else picks it up and it's like, oh my gosh, this is not how I intended you to use this.

Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, they were really great about doing customer research and things like that. And so eventually I had these suggestions and as my dad and we had some really amazing portfolio products, he said, hey, why don't you take lead on a couple of these? And we didn't have the term product manager in the gaming world. It's usually called producer or things like that. But I was called a game designer. So I led kind of the design of a handful of games and started to think, wow, I really like this. But I wasn't sure if I liked the development part of it or if I like the product part of it. So I started. That's when I switched my major in college and started learning how to code and things like that because I thought that was the avenue I wanted to Go in.

And it wasn't. It turns out it wasn't.

No, I'm not.

At what point did you realize that?

Well, they actually, they actually kicked me out of the major. They. I got, I got too many B pluses.

You realized when they kicked you out?

Yeah, I realized, oh, maybe I'm not cut for this.

Totally.

So I switched to. I actually switched to a writing major. Finished my undergraduate in writing, realized I really like writing. I just wanted to get the degree behind me and wanted to move forward with more product stuff. And that's when I worked for a small startup in Salt Lake, was a financial startup. We built kind of analytics tools and I was actually the full stack developer and the product guy talking to all of our customers. And I stretched too thin.

Yeah.

And then kind of worked my way into some pretty cool nonprofit product roles where we were helping people with finances around the world and student lending and things like that.

But yeah. And so over time you've kind of filtered down to land, it seems like at a place where you're working on in kind of your zone of genius, your area of expertise. How would you describe, for those who aren't familiar, the role of a product manager? And the reason, the reason that we're having this interview is because, you know, especially in the early stages, I think any business builder, creator, they're having to wear multiple hats. Right. We did a book nook episode on the E Myth. I think you and I have maybe talked about the E Myth as well.

Yep.

But in that he talks about in the early stages, you're kind of having to do everything. And one of those things that you're having to do for us as brand builders, business builders, blog builders, publishers, whatever it is, is to get really good at understanding the best thing that to create in the world and to put out there. And we're going to be talking about product management as, as, you know, really specific things around that. But it's one of the hats that you have to wear as a publisher and a creator. And for us to kind of borrow best practices from the product world and apply it to content, which for us is, is the product. And for other people, they actually are going to be having products that they're creating. So context for podcast listeners, as we get into this, kind of the reason for the, for the conversation. But what does that, what does, what does a product manager do? Like what is, what is the day to day and what, what do you consider to be the most important deliverables out of that, that position or that role yeah.

So I think the role of product is really nuanced and extremely broad. People can use the term product manager to meet a lot of different things. The true purpose of a product manager is to make sure that you're building the right things and that you're also doing them right. Building them right. And that's the way I kind of summarize it. I think that most people and product kind of get mis misunderstood as project managers, as the building it right. You know, let's just make sure we're doing things and doing them in a certain order and having a plan, this.

Step at this point and it needs to be done here. And have you completed it? Yep.

Yeah. And are we communicating properly and all that? And that's all that's really important, of course. But I think the most valuable kind of sweet spot for a product person is really building what people want. I wish there was a better term other than product manager. I've tried to invent one, but there isn't because product manager just doesn't construe that value. Right.

Yeah. It's almost like this is putting the pressure on me to manifest, maybe I'll use that word, value manifestor. But this idea that there's nothing and you're wanting to create something, but it's not like just creating the thing accomplishes it. You need to be creating the thing that people actually want. It's kind of like, I feel like it parallels that idea of, you know, the idea of you can climb the ladder, but if it's up the wrong wall, it's not going to. I think they use that for like career stuff. But like this idea of project management could maybe be like, how do you, how are you properly climbing the ladder? Whereas product management would be about, hey, make sure that before you start climbing the ladder, you've really analyzed and you want to make sure that this is the wall that you should be climbing up so you can change your LinkedIn to value manifester.

I love that I'm going to steal that one. And I think you nailed it. I think we, I mean, we see it so often. I mean, so here's a recent example and maybe we've all forgotten, but Quibi, right, The.

Can you explain that for people who aren't familiar with what that was?

Yeah, so Quibi was a very well backed kind of streaming giant that was coming into the marketplace, but they were all focusing on short form content that you could be viewed vertically or horizontally on your phone. And lots of big tech players in that space, tons of big actors, Hollywood producers putting content on there.

1.8 billion in funding.

Yeah, I think Meg Whitman was the CEO. I could be quoting that wrong. I can't remember.

Yeah, Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg were Katzenberg.

Huge tech entrepreneurs, huge tech names. Well, and maybe Covid can be blamed for this, but I think that it would have happened either way. People weren't watching media on their phone anymore. They were watching them at home in their living room on the tv. But the big question I think most of us in the product world had was do people actually want this? Do people want this new form of streaming? There have been a lot of people that have tried this short form content play in the past and haven't succeeded. Verizon, go. There's a couple other short form content things that tried their hand at this. So in the product world, I guess the way I put it is, are you hacking through a jungle knowing where you're going, or are you just hacking as fast as you can?

Yeah, right.

Kind of like, are you climbing up the wrong. The wrong wall?

Yep, yep. Yeah. And it seems like the combination to use that going through the jungle analogy, the analogy with. Or to draw that out further, Product and project. It's like, hack, hack, hack, pause, climb up a tree, look where you're going, go back down. Hack, hack, hack, climb up a tree. So analogies aside, what does that actually practically look like? Because I think that, you know, as content creators, we probably have ideas or product creators. There's people who both have products and produce content. Most of the people listening to the podcast are going to be, you know, their product is their content. And I think that the. Generally what happens is like, maybe you do some keyword research, so you're kind of thinking about it from like an SEO perspective and how do you rank for something? But there's also a piece that's about building a brand and figuring out a niche and figuring out if people actually need and want that thing that you are creating. So we can use clarity as an example. That's the product that you're focused on and that we're working on building. And we can draw analogies to that from the content world. But, like, how do you go about knowing what people want? How do you ask those questions and how do you even get people to follow up? Like, what do they care? Like, it's your thing, not theirs.

Yeah. So I think there's a lot. My roadmap for this is Steve Blank's Four Steps to the Epiphany. I live by that I think it's a very important model. And he has these four circles. Right.

First one is customer real quick. So Steve Blank, who that is. And then real quick, shout out. I don't know if Dom listens to the podcast, but Dom lives in Scotland and I was just having a conversation with him on the Food Blogger Pro forums and he mentioned Steve Blank. So funny connection there. And props to Dom on Food Blogger Pro member on doing some Steve Blank reading. But can you talk about just kind of a quick background on who Steve Blank is and then dive into the. That framework that you use?

Yeah. So Steve Blank's one of those kind of godfathers of the, of Silicon Valley kind of tech startup worlds. And he's largely responsible for the lean Startup method and some of those things. So he's written several books. Four Steps to the Epiphany is one that I found especially meaningful to me over the. Over my career as a product manager, even though it's not necessarily a product book, but it's about kind of customer development, customer discovery, understanding your customers and things like that. So what he talks about is oftentimes people will jump straight to like, okay, I'm creating my customers. I know who they are. I'm building stuff, I'm hacking through the jungle. Right. Not to bring up analogy again, but what we should do when you're starting from zero is figure out what people want, figure out what problems they're facing, kind of go through a discovery process and what that's meant for us. And clarity is talking to people, talking to bloggers, talking to people who own sites, who write posts and understand what their pains are. That first step is really just analyzing problems, understanding what problems, and seeing patterns throughout people's content creation journey and content optimization journey.

Yep, it's interesting. One of the things that we do with Pincher VM is we have a survey that goes out anytime that somebody signs up. I think this is still running anything. Anytime that somebody signs up for the email list, they'll get a survey where they can fill out, like who they are, like where they shop. So we often talk a lot about, like Pinch of Yum. We're making recipes for people who shop at Target, right? Like they need to be able to get everything they need to get at Target. But that feels like a great opportunity for us to then and I don't know all the questions within that to ask a question around, like, what is your biggest problem when it comes to making meals? Might be time. It might be like education. I don't know how to do it. And that can inform some of the decisions that we make around the content that we produce. So you can start to see how, how some of this stuff comes together. But you know what, in your best case scenario, what does it look like to have conversations with people? Are they literally like a zoom call conversation or can that be a varying degree of, you know, asynchronous conversation, email, you know, zoom, what, what does that look like and how do you struck structure those conversations?

I found, you know, the later you get into your product development or content creation, you, you can use a lot of other mediums. I think when you're very early on, the best thing to do is just get out there and talk. And I mean if, if, if you are building something that should go to the every everyday person sit in a coffee shop, say, hey, can I buy you, you know, your $3 coffee and, and talk to you for a second about something I'm working on. I think they're very informal. One thing that I usually do is I plan like a 3 by 5 card of questions and just guiding questions. Kind of think of it as like a really informal 60 Minutes interview where you can ask these kind of open ended questions, learn from them, but also if they stumble upon something that you hadn't heard before, double click on that and continue to ask questions about that. One of the important things to kind of remember through this is you're looking for patterns. And you can't find patterns if you're not talking to more than one person. Right. One data point doesn't give you enough feedback to make decisions or understand the problem. Or you got to find patterns amongst groups of people and asking questions in ways that help people feel comfortable expressing how they really feel. So an example of that is, you know, if you could wave a magic wand to make any problem go away, what would you wave it at? Right. Instead of, you know, what bothers you the most, you know they're going to be, if you ask that way they're going to sit there and think, well, what do they want me to say? How can I answer this? Right. So finding ways to disarm the conversation so it's not, you know, between two of you, but you're looking at the problem together and kind of learning more about it. Very investigatory.

Interesting. But I'm curious to know at what point when you are having interviews with people you're early on. So in the, in the content world, as an example, you say, hey, great, like I want to be able to write about, let's say a specific diet. I want to, I want to talk about what it's like for me to do grain free recipes. That's really important and I want to, I want to share that with the world. So instead of just like, hey, now I'm gonna spin up a blog and it's gonna be about grain free, you know, recipes or gluten free would maybe be like a broader, more applicable, you know, kind of category for that. At what point do you, do, you know, when you have like a takeaway, a nugget, something that you can move forward with and, and, and apply versus just random feedback from random people? I think that's one of the hard things is distinguishing truly helpful things from somebody's opinion and thoughts. Do you have to have a hundred conversations to suddenly know what those takeaways are? How do you get through that and how do you do that?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I think that's probably more art than science to find those nuggets. But I will say that as you start to hear patterns, you can start to find the common denominators among people. And you can certainly take the kind of one off problems and say, well, that was a really interesting one. I'm going to ask about it in these following conversations with people. But I think really it's about kind of seeing the patterns amongst these conversations and trying to find the common denominators. And mind you, this is kind of problem focused. Understand what their problems are, what their, what they're yearning for, what their hunger is, what they care about. Don't jump right to solutions. Right. I mean, Henry Ford's famous quote, which I don't think he actually said, right. If people were to ask me what they, if I were to ask customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse. Right?

Sure, yeah.

Oftentimes your audience doesn't know what they want, but they can talk about their problems all day long or they can talk about their, you know, lack of something all day long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the interesting thing for me is the point with that, I think some people are, will say like, and so then therefore customers don't know what they want. You just shouldn't ask them. Just create the thing. You know, Steve Jobs, you know, talked about how they don't do customer interviews for Apple because, you know, people don't know what they want. But it's like, I think people do know what they want. Maybe they just can't describe it in a way where not like they would say a Car to your point, they're saying we want something that's faster and then it's your job to interpret what that actually looks like in the world. So still super helpful and interesting to do those conversations, have those conversations, but then to interpret those into what that might actually look like in the world. So that's the interesting thing to what you were saying before is like there's not a rule. You know, there's not A. After 10 people say it, then you say this is something we actually need to move forward on and it's actionable. It's kind of the art of those conversations to say like, hey, I see some consistency here. Do you have an example for clarity? So for those who aren't familiar, clarity two eyes. So clar I t-I.com is the tool that we are working on to help people organize, optimize and improve their content. It kind of came out of us having this pinch of yum, spreadsheet, massive spreadsheet. And we're like, anytime we have a massive spreadsheet is probably an opportunity to not have a spreadsheet and instead have software. And so we're like, there's gotta be something there. But that was just for us. And what I didn't do, that you are doing now is starting to have a lot of conversations. So can you talk about what that actually looks like with clarity and some of the things that have come out of those conversations?

Yeah, so we have pretty regular conversations. And I will say this, while that customer discovery can be problem focused, it's also really important. Like the goal of all this is to kind of calibrate your customer intuition, understanding what they really want. And I think that you want to make sure that that's hyper calibrated throughout. There are two examples throughout all of our conversations that I can think of that came up time and time again from our audience, from our bloggers who are early adopters of clarity. One, they have created their own manual way of tracking all of the content because WordPress doesn't do it and they're tired of, well, there really wasn't a tool to do it. They would put it in spreadsheets or Airtable or Asana. They have these big elaborate projects that would track every single post, all of the metadata about it and things like that. That was one pattern we found amongst one customer segment. The other pattern we found was Google Analytics is pretty intimidating and it's hard to glean decision making insights from Google Analytics. You can't just sit there and say, oh I see this today, therefore I'm going to do this or I'm going to start writing this type of content. It's hard to do that. You have to be kind of a wizard to be able to get those types of actionable insights from Google Analytics. So those two things have really spawned kind of our early roadmap for clarity to get these tools into the hands of bloggers without all of the manual labor of putting it into a spreadsheet or an airtable and kind of keeping that up to date regularly.

Yeah, and this is a quick little, we've talked about clarity here and there. Quick little shout out for clarity. For anybody who's interested in being early stage, clarity will probably be a tool. I don't know, there's all different classifications of like, where tools are like consumer prosumer, enterprise. It'll probably be as far as a tool that we've created on the higher end in terms of product pricing. Like we're looking to connect with people who are strategically building a content site and are either really hustling to make it income producing or already at the point where it's income producing and then kind of allowing them to double down on that. Really a lot of it focusing on this idea of content optimization, not just creating new content and that being an important shift that's happening too. But we're doing a, we're calling it Forever Plan for the first 500, which it might take us 10 years to get there, or it might take us 10 months. We don't know yet. But we're going to cap that at 500. And that for us is like that makes Clarity a sustainable product. And so we're just in the early stages of starting that in April. So if you're interested, there's a waiting list, you can sign up for that. And we're slowly bringing people on and getting their sites set up and doing a lot of hand holding along the way. But the idea with that Forever Plan is like, hey, that makes it sustainable for us. It's probably below the price point. It is below the price point that will eventually launch at. But acknowledging for people who are early beta users, like, hey, there's going to be a little bit of risk in getting in early stage and that we're a beginning product kind of just starting out. But long term, you know, if the tool is still one that you're going to be using three, four years from now, which we're excited about the potential for that and think that there's high probability that that will happen, that you'll be at a price point where it's like, hey, great. It's like you just have this recurring discount as a thank you from us for signing up early and being a part of that. So if you want to check it out, clarity.com and if nothing else, you can just sign up on the waiting list and you can kind of see what we're up to. We'll be sending out updates as the product evolves and you can learn a little bit more about it there. But talk about the framework like that you talked about Steve Blank and this kind of framework that he has for doing product development. We could apply that to the content world as well. But what does that look like to walk through that and how do you use that as a tool to not only have conversations with customers, but then also turn that into like actionable insights that you can use?

Yeah. So I think, you know, we talked about early on when you're kind of going from zero to one, right? When you've already got something out in the marketplace, you're producing content regularly, you've got an audience, or maybe it's not as big of an audience as you want. You want to grow that audience. Kind of the next whole half of the model is like the customer creation, company building side of things. And I think what we do at Pinch of Yum with our regular survey and constantly kind of reaching out to customers here and there and applying feedback, the world is your oyster as far as data goes. Find different ways to capture information from your, from your customers. Find ways to capture information from Google Search Console, Google Analytics to optimize what you're doing, you know, in the product where we have other tools like Mixpanel or segment or other full story customer support, all of those other angles that we can kind of take into account to help build this customer segment group, you know, target these customer segment groups and, and really build to what they're looking for and build things that will delight them and grow them. And one of the, one of the things that I would say that I found is really, really important here is focus. And I think in the product world, focus is under undervalued. So many product teams take like a shotgun approach and they'll just kind of throw anything out there that they can. But, but focusing on very key things that will bring value to your customers and then also being willing to change and pivot based on feedback, not on every whim, but being sitting there say, hey, we're kind of going up towards a dead end here. Let's Pivot and see where this path continues.

Yeah. A company I've seen do that really well that we've had on the podcast a couple times is Slickstream. And I've been lucky enough to advise from a publisher perspective on some things for them. But I've also learned a lot as somebody who's interested in startups and building different startups. But Kingston, the founder of Slickstream and his team is really willing to let go of an idea, and a lot of times it's stuff that's really cool and it works really well, and they think, we're going to put this out there and we're going to see if it gets traction in the world, and if it doesn't, they're not beholden to the idea because it was their idea, they're willing to let it go. And I think that can and probably should apply to the content world as well. Like, if you are working on something and it's just not resonating with people, maybe shift and pivot, think about another area of focus, and maybe it's a niche that you could look at that will really get traction and that will be helpful for people. So. But I'm looking at it now. Let me know if this is right. Customer discovery is the first part. And that's kind of what you talked about, where you kind of have this vague idea of the problem that you're trying to solve, but it's almost like at that point you're just trying to figure out what is the problem. Like, it's having conversations to hear. This is kind of what we're focusing on. What are your problems with this? And then is what you're talking about right now kind of customer validation? So in customer validation, you're saying, we heard what the problem was. We created what we think is kind of a solution to it. Is it a solution like, does this help you? Is that what customer validation is?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So taking, you know, you take the problems that you've heard, you create some. You innovate some solutions. Right. In Henry Ford's case, you throw out a Model T, Right?

Yeah, yeah.

And say, hey, would you use this?

Yeah, yeah.

And if the answer is, what the heck is that? Or I don't know, that doesn't have anything to do with the problem. I just, you know, we talked about, you know, that that's. Yeah. That. That kind of cycle there where you can kind of pivot and say, okay, well, this isn't. This isn't the right solution.

Yeah. And for some People, you might stay in that stage for a while until you get something where people are like, oh, this is awesome. This is really helpful for the problem that I have. And you've validated. Okay, we. We talked to people, we heard that they had this problem. We've created something that we think is solving this problem. They've said it does solve the problem. And then it's the next stage that customer creation is. Am I looking at the right. The right chart here?

Yeah, that's right. So the customer creation kind of the line that divides the two boxes is really when you start to get market traction, market fit, you can start to say, okay, not only do we have the right solutions, but they're working for people. They want more. And then this customer creation phase gets more into the, you know, how can we kind of further dig deeper into this customer segment or further, you know, market to this audience and things like that? How do we do more product marketing? And that is about growing the business to where you get to the fourth stage, which is company building, turning this into a true bonafide company that generates revenue and has customers that are happy with the solutions that you provide.

Yeah. And at that point, you know, the thing that you've created is working well for people. It's a good fit. And so then the questions become around, how do we make this as available to people as possible? Like, how do we scale this up? I'm trying to think of examples in the food world, but the easiest ones are around almost like I think of our friends at Simple Green Smoothies. Right. So they created this really niche thing. And I don't know if they went through the process of doing, like, you know, customer discovery and customer validation, but at some point, you've kind of validated, hey, people are interested in having, like, simple, healthy smoothies. We have this niche and this focus around it. And then the question becomes, how do we scale this up to reach as many people as possible? Or another example would be, you have a really specific niche, and maybe there's a trend around it. Instant pots. So that being a really important device that a lot of people are using. And my mom, like, every night I'll FaceTime or not almost every night, but I'll go down with our daughter Solvi and play with her, and then I'll FaceTime my parents. And the other night, my dad answered, and I was like, hey. And we talked to him for a little bit, and he's like, yeah, your mom's actually doing a, like a community class on instant pot recipes. Like, okay, like, that's validation that there's people who have this, they want to learn how to use them. And so, you know, in this case, it's like a community ed class, but still it's a problem. And that is a product that is helping people solve it. And so it's a real world example of creating something where there's a need, there's a problem, spinning up a solution. In this case, like a zoom class, and then presenting that to people if they wanted to, they could then think about, how do I spin that up? Create an Instagram account, right? You publish recipes around it. You start to do like corporate classes on this specific thing. We're having a conversation with our team right now. We're trying to do lunch and learns. And we're having a conversation with somebody who does pasta making, like simple pasta making classes for remote teams as a way to connect. And she's building a business around it. And that comes from probably not formally, maybe, but probably not formally going through this process of saying, like, hey, there's, I see there's a need here. What's the best way to solve that need? Iterating on that and then creating a product around it, which, you know, there's a good chance that tinybit as a team will buy that. And she then has a business around it. So you can start to see real world examples of how this is existing within the world and how people are moving forward and executing on it and using it to, you know, build businesses. So if somebody wants to dive deeper on this, how do they go about doing that? Is there a Steve Blank book on Four Steps to the Epiphany? It sounds like a spiritual self help book, but it's actually a product book. Is that a book that he's actually published on it or are there other ways that people can learn about it?

Yeah. So the book is called the Four Steps to the Epiphany. And I agree that when my friend gave it to me, I had no idea. I didn't read it for a year because I thought this is kind of a strange concept. But as you start to dig in lots of valuable tidbits here, and I will mention, I think most extroverted people will probably naturally go through this process because they're interested in kind of getting feedback, talking to people. If you're more introverted like I am, you have to kind of formalize it for yourself and say, okay, I'm going to be strict about this. But the cool thing about his book is this is a pattern that many tried and true products, companies, content creators have gone through is this kind of understanding what people want, seeing how the market or the audience reacts and then kind of adjusting and pivoting to that. So there's a lot of principles here that apply in so many areas of our life that I've really appreciated. About the book, well, it kind of comes from a Silicon Valley background, startup background. It is a very life applicable book.

You mentioned Lean Startup. One of the interesting things, Eric Rees, I think that's how you pronounce his last name, wrote the book that I feel like really caught fire in the startup tech world. All about building a product and not wasting a bunch of time and energy on it because you're doing these important things first, which a lot of people don't do. But it's like Steve Blank really being the person who kind of did the initial work with that. And it seems like I'm not super familiar with it, but in the Lean Startup, a lot of those philosophies are inspired by kind of some of the original work that Steve Blank did, which is kind of cool to see that through line through there. Can you talk about some of the tools that you use to do this? Even if it's something as simple as, you know, zoom. We all know zoom. We use zoom and, but, but what are the, what are the, what are the tools that you use to document, to save notes? What does that look like? So if somebody does want to go through this process, they can maybe get a jump start on, on, on some of those tools.

Yeah. So I mean, you can be really scrappy. I think you can do it with pen and paper half the time. And a coffee shop. Right. Your local coffee shop. Pre Covid probably would have been easier.

Yeah.

Although it seems like that may be getting easier here soon. Zoom. Getting a zoom and 30 minutes recording it, going back and kind of listening to it a couple more times to make sure you're really familiar with what, what happened there. I mean, if you want to get scrappy, we use Google Forms, which are free. You can use Qualtrics free Qualtrics account to create some kind of more articulate surveys.

Can you talk about what Qualtrics is?

Yeah, Qualtrics is. They call themselves the experience management. So it's really kind of understanding customer experience, understanding the customer sentiments, things like that. So they've got a whole suite of products as Q U A R L T R I C S and it's really like SurveyMonkey on steroids with a lot of other tools. But they've got free tiers to most of their tools. That's a tool I rely on heavily. And then when you get into product analytics, we use things like segment to track customer events and behaviors and things like that. Full stories are really good one too. You can actually replay a customer session on a web app or something like that. Just really cool.

And can you give examples of the questions that you're asking? I think some people, to your point, extroverts like, awesome chance to talk to people about anything for somebody who's like, ah, I know that this is important, but I wouldn't necessarily be super excited to just spin up a conversation and talk to somebody off the cuff. What are some reusable questions that could kind of exist regardless of the product or the thing that you're trying to learn more about, or is it really specific to the niche and the product?

There are some broad questions and I actually recently wrote a blog post about this, so I'll read a few of them because these are ones that I've kind of been tried and true that I've used a lot, especially in that discovery phase. I think it's most important to start out by establishing context. Right? Like, hey, this is the space we're in. You know, I don't want to hear about this. Not, you know, not that I don't want to talk about it, but like, this is where we're focusing, right?

Yeah.

So, you know, asking questions like, what problems do you face when it comes to, you know, writing a blog or optimizing your content? You know, and that's where, you know, kind of plug and play whatever you are working on at that time. What problems do you face when cooking a meal at home? Or problems do you face when using an instant pot? You know, things like that. What are you doing today to resolve that problem? Are you watching a YouTube video? Are you, you know, have you had to, you know, rely on somebody else to help you through that? Did you build your own tool? What did you do? You know, how do those problems affect your goals in that area? What are your goals in that area? What are you trying to accomplish when this becomes an issue? What's the thing you're trying to, you know, I'm making dinner for my family and I'm, you know, I'm trying to do it between baseball practice and basketball practice. And I'm trying to make sure that my kids have something healthy that's quick and easy. You know, I don't have a whole lot of time. Right. Something like that. What are you trying to accomplish? And then the classic kind of, if you could wave a magic wand or if this problem were just to disappear, what would be the one problem you would choose?

Things like that to disappear? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, I think, of one of the other valuable things that comes from that is being able to then take some of that language that people are using to then format some of the copy that you have to mirror back to the customers that you eventually talk to. So if everybody who has an Instant Pot is always saying, like, I don't have that many, let's say, like, I don't know how half of these button, what half of these buttons do, right?

Yeah.

If everybody says that, then the copy that you can be creating is something like, understand every button on your Instant Pot, our 30 minute guide to instant pot mastery. Or like, something like that. Like, not only are you learning about what the thing that you should create should be, but you're also able to learn about how you should talk to people when you do eventually create that thing, that product or that content. So there's multiple levels of value that you can get from those conversations. And whether that be product development or kind of copy and marketing, which are both super helpful and valuable areas. So if somebody wanted to get started, if they wanted to kind of like dip their toe into this, what would be the best, what would be the best way to start? Would it be like, hey, kind of experiment with sending out a survey, getting responses? Or would you say, hey, if you have people on Instagram who follow you, if you have an email list, send them a message and just say, would love to do a half an hour call with you so I can start to learn a little bit better about what would be most helpful. What, what does that look like? And how do you do that? And at some point do you stop doing it? Or is this something you should always be doing?

I think that it can kind of come and go in waves where, you know, if it's. It's about that customer intuition, right, that core, making sure that that's calibrated like, that you understand. And if, if you feel like you're kind of off center, then it's time to talk to a handful of customers and kind of get that calibrated and then do it fairly regularly. It doesn't need to be this big burst all the time. I would say then the best place to start, if you. It's been a while since you've had a conversation with someone in your audience, one of your Followers or one of your customers, get on a quick call with them, get on a quick zoom with them. Compensate them in some way. You know, give them free access to something, or early access to an ebook or early access to a product or something like that. If you have the budget, give them a gift card. Jump on a zoom. Jump on something. Just talk to them about their experience with what you have and learn about it. And be willing to take feedback and say, you know what? I don't really like this part, or these things aren't really interesting to me, or they're applicable to me and kind of take note of those things and be open to that and then pivot along the way. But I think the best place to start is just start talking to people. Find a way to talk to five people in the next month.

There's a time specifically that I think on Food Blogger Pro where this isn't a great example of it, but it is an example of how valuable it was with the conversations that I was having where we use Intercom as our chat support tool for clarity. Food Blogger Pro, like all the different brands that we have. And I would go into Intercom and I would see somebody who'd be logged in and I would just, like, send him a message and be like, hey, what's up? This is Bjork. Like, just wanted to check in quick. How's it going? And then we would start up this. This interaction and one of the questions I would ask is like, hey, any feedback on. On how stuff is going here? Or, you know, what. What are the. What are you trying to solve? The problems that you're trying to use Food Blogger Pro to solve? And inevitably, people have feedback that I didn't think about or have insight that I wasn't aware of and that informed some of the decisions that we made along the way. Like, hey, this was a super helpful course, but on this step, you know, this screen was outdated. I didn't know what to do at this point. Oh, great. Like, let's make note of that and update it. It's not necessarily product development, but it is customers giving you guidance on what it is that they want and what would be most helpful for them. So I know that you've been doing a lot of this, but two questions for you, Ben, as we come to the end here. Number one, do we still need people to do some of this? Like, if people want to learn by being on the other side for clarity, are we still doing that? Do we need people who would give insight and feedback on Clarity as A tool. And if so, if people are interested in being a part of that, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Yeah, I mean, if you are interested, please sign up for the waiting list. We. If you want to send us an email through support or anything like that, please, please go ahead. Yeah, we're always looking for people to talk to. I think if you are. The people we're looking to talk to are people who are have a lot of content, over 500 posts at least, and who are interested in kind of optimizing that content to perform better. Whether that's, you know. Yeah, there's lots of different ways to optimize and that's what we're looking to get feedback on.

Yeah, that was the other thing that was interesting as we were in working with you to kind of formalize what clarity will be really saying, here's who our customers are and that always will shift and change. But it was a helpful thing. Kind of like the target example for pinch of Yum. If we have a really unique weird ingredient, that framework of saying like, can somebody buy this at Super Target is helpful in informing where we go with it. Similarly for Clarity saying like, hey, this isn't necessarily for somebody who has five blog posts. This is for somebody who has been publishing for a while and has some decent traction or wants to increase the traction that they have by doubling down on the success of certain posts. And that being another important piece of the kind of the customer development process is formalizing who that is, which I think is really valuable. So obviously people can sign up and follow along with what we're up to there. Even if it's not a tool that you're interested in using. We'll kind of send you updates of how we're evolving the tool. Just if you want to follow along and see what that's like. Number two, you talked about a couple of blog posts. You have your site Cree product management kind of agency that you're doing there. If people want to learn more about, you know, read some of the blog posts that you're publishing and the content that you have, we can link to that in the show notes. But, um, can you just share what. Where people would find that?

Yeah. So it's go cre.com cree.com zoned by some Interior design company in Germany. So could get that it's G, o, C level 4.

Four letter domains are just impossible.

They're snatched up. They're all snatched up.

Pronounceable. Four level. Yeah. Four letter.

I've. I've only recently started the actual blog posts. It's one of those procrastination things. I've been trying to do it. I've had, I've got hundreds of drafts. Just started deciding to just publish them in the form that I could finish them. Yep. And I don't preach in the choir here, so. So yeah, there are some blog posts. In fact, the last few blog posts have been specifically about customer research. We have a four part series on customer research there that we're publishing. So any feedback on that too? Ways we can make it better, ways we can make it more informative. I would say that's there's a lot of links in there of things you can look at that apply to all areas of thing, all areas of just creation.

In general, whatever you're creating, your goal can be to get your site to the point where you can be a customer. You can fit the customer, the segment, for clarity, as somebody who could use the tool. So that's where you can. That'll be what you can shoot for 500 blog posts.

I aspire for that. Yep, I aspire for that. One thing I'll like one note about that that I think is really important is I talk to a lot of people who say, well, my customer segment is millennials or my customer segment is anyone who likes healthy stuff or whatever, privacy aware. The way you know that your customer segment, and this is in one of my blog posts, the way that you know you've got your customer segment outlined is if you can write a paragraph about them. If you can write a paragraph about your customer segment, you've got it. If you can't, you don't understand your customers yet.

Meaning you need to know enough about them to do the equivalent of like long Twitter bio. Like, here's who this person is. Yep. Yeah.

And if you can, you know, write three to four sentences about them, they, you know, this is it. The, you know, it doesn't even have to be like age and gender or anything like that. But this is the type of behaviors they are. This is the type of tools they use. This is whatever. So like for clarity, for example, we're targeting people who have over 500 posts, people who have, you know, a certain income level from that they're generating from their posts and so on. And we have a whole framework around that, and that's really important for anything you're developing is if you can write a paragraph about your customer segment, then you've got it. You know who they are.

That's awesome. And probably a Good takeaway. Like as we wrap up the podcast, a little action item for people to be able to do is to say, hey, if you're doing this, if you're taking the time to write blog posts and publish pages and work on your content, probably worth it to take an hour or two to instead of write a blog post, write down that paragraph. Who is it that I'm creating this content for and what are their needs and wants? And to use some of those conversations to then craft and to develop that over time doesn't have to stay like that forever. It can evolve and change. But to take a stab at it would be a great thing. Ben, really fun for me to have a conversation with you to learn a little bit more. And I know that it's going to be valuable for our audience as well and excited to be working on Clarity together. Maybe in a few months, whatever the time period would be, we can have you back and learn about what the update is and where things are at. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast, Ben.

Yep, thanks for having me. It's been great.

That's a wrap for the interview with Ben Holland and really appreciate Ben coming on sharing all things product management. The takeaway for me is the more that we can think about the content that we're creating as product, product for a certain group of people, the better it's going to be. Because really that's what it is. We are creating something, put it, putting it out into the world. And people might not be buying that with their money necessarily. For some people, that's true, but some people probably aren't buying it with, with money, but they are buying it with their attention. And the better that we can get at creating product or content that people actually want to consume, the more likely they are to give it their attention. And in a lot of ways, that's the business that we are in as publishers, as content creators is the attention business. We are trading free content, not always, but most of the time, free content for attention and monetizing that either via sponsorships, advertisements, maybe affiliate or sometimes with our own product. So some of those frameworks that Ben talks about I think are really, really helpful. And especially the idea of just having those conversations, I think it's validation for the time spent in comments or interacting with people or following up on emails or like we talked about, maybe doing a survey and proactively hearing from people and getting more information. So a big thank you to Ben for coming on and also a thank you from me to Ben for his leadership as he's moved the Clarity product along again. If you're interested in that, it is C L A R I T I dot com. You can check that out. There's a. You can join the waiting list there and you'll get a confirmation. And even if you don't want to sign up and start paying for it, it you can just follow along with the product updates that Ben will be sending out so you can get a feel for what it is that we're doing and why we're doing it. We're using it for a pinch of yam and we have some early beta users who are using it as well and excited to welcome people on soon here as we start to ramp up Clarity as its own business. So excited to be working on that with Ben. Thanks so much for tuning in. Our hope is that this podcast can help you get attention tiny bit better every day forever. I know that that was true for me as I listened to this interview with Ben and my hope is that it's the same for you as well. All right, we will be back here next week, same time, same place. Thanks, Sam.