5 Practical Tips for Content Creation & Community Building

Welcome to the latest issue of the Product Management Learning Series - a series of live streaming events and newsletter articles to help you level up your product career! ??

In our 17th installment, our speaker was Felix Watson Jr. , a product manager at Google with over 10 years of tech industry experience at companies ranging from startups to large enterprises. After 5 years as a software engineer and achieving an MBA from UCLA Anderson, Felix launched his product management career at Microsoft. Felix is the founder of the PM Mastermind, a community for product managers to get advice, share advice, and build relationships. Felix is a steering committee member in the Inclusive Product Management Accelerator Program at the University of Washington.?

If you missed the event, you can watch the full event recording here.?

Below are the main takeaways from the conversation I had with Felix:??

Spending more time clarifying the problem vs. solving the problem to succeed in product management.?

?Prior to becoming a PM, Felix previously worked as an engineer taking on projects such as helping with the streaming needs of the 2014 World Cup. As an engineer, he was very solution-minded: whenever he faced a problem, the first thing that came to mind was to come up with a solution. When he first transitioned from being an engineer to a PM, he realized he needed to shift his approach from being a solution manager to a problem manager. He needed to work on finding and defining the problem clearly rather than jumping into the solution.?

For instance, the first problem he had to solve as a product manager was to build an analytical platform for his company’s recruiting software. The product not having an analytical platform was not a clear description of the problem. At the time he jumped right in and started working on what a dashboard could look like, what other dashboards were out there, and how they could build it. In retrospect, as a product manager, Felix realized he should have spent more time clarifying the problem and understanding the user need they were satisfying by building the analytical platform. This was the most challenging and important part of his transition from engineering to product management.

Connect with peer PMs to learn from each other, and listen to their needs and show up consistently to build an engaged community.

When Felix first started as a PM, he struggled to gain traction. It wasn’t until he started connecting with other PMs, that things started to click. He learned a lot of the PM fundamentals through connecting with other PMs. Thus, his motivation for starting the Product Management Mastermind was to connect with other PMs on a small scale. He realized that many of the challenges he was facing, such as clarifying problems and gaining stakeholder alignment, were similar challenges faced by other PMs. As they worked through their problems, they began to unblock each other, and Felix learned the richest discussions and tactical pieces of advice he got were from other peer PMs.

Felix started sharing content on LinkedIn, connecting with people one on one, and after 100+ one on one chats he realized it wasn’t scalable. He was really motivated to create a community where he could facilitate his own connections with PMs as well as between each other. His community has now grown to 9,000 members on LinkedIn, composed of aspiring and current product managers and leaders. Felix offered two tips for building an engagement community: listening to the needs of the community (often via surveys to find the tailored and focused topics for meaningful discussion) and to show up consistently. His community does about two live events per month. Check out more here.

Telling a compelling story with a personal touch is the key to successful content creation.?

When Felix started creating content on LinkedIn, he would experiment with different content. Initially, he created long-form content and while it resonated well, he realized it wasn’t the best at facilitating PM connections, so he made the switch to short-form content. Now the majority of his content is in the form of audio or video. He landed his current way of working from continuous iteration. Next, he focused on the story. Felix mentioned “It is hard to keep people's attention and be engaging. So, you must really think upfront about the story and make sure you distill it down to the most critical pieces: what is the intro? What is the meat (main body)? What is the close? Really focus the attention on the right things at each point of the journey.”

Another tip Felix shared is to always think about how to bring in personal stories and anecdotes to bring the examples to life. A lot of times, you are not going to be able to differentiate from other content because a lot has been said, but it is the personal story that makes it uniquely yours. Felix’s previous example of building a recruiting analytics platform was not the first example where a PM made the mindset switch of going from a solution manager to a problem manager. But by recounting his own experience, the story is his to tell.

Start small, reach out thoughtfully, follow up with people, and give as much as you can to build long-lasting relationships.?

Felix shared that to network effectively, especially for introverts, you should start small. Felix started to have 1-1 conversations with product managers at his company (Microsoft). During those conversations, he would share pieces of advice or tips or insights that he learned with multiple people over and over. He soon noticed that certain advice and tips consistently would get people nodding and agreeing, and as consensus built up, he gained more confidence to start sharing externally and connecting with PMs online.?

This was how Felix started building relationships. Over time, he stayed in touch with like-minded PMs by learning about the projects they were working on, sharing the projects he was working on, and sharing relevant resources whenever possible. The formula to create longer-lasting relationships is initially connecting, finding out what people are interested in, and giving as much as you can to help, as well as following up with advice they have given to you to motivate people to come back to you.?

Managing competing priorities efficiently comes down to knowing your why and being intentional with time.

When Felix initially started out writing on LinkedIn, he wrote down his goal: hitting 10,000 followers in three years. Through his consistent content creation and determination, he was able to meet that goal in a year. As part of defining his “why”, Felix focused on two key dimensions: helping existing PMs to level up and PM diversity. So as opportunities came his way, he was able to evaluate them on those two dimensions and figure out if it made sense for him to pursue the opportunity. Secondly, be intentional with how you spend your time. Felix first took inventory of how he was spending his time and he found ways to minimize idle aspects of his life such as cutting out some TV watching or going to bed earlier and waking up early. Making these small yet crucial changes, helped him structure his life in the way that was aligned with all the things that he cared about.

Additional gems from Felix:

?? Tonal, a smart gym product that offers challenging workouts in the comfort of your home, is Felix’s favorite product.??

?? Felix shared that his product role model is Rohan Rajiv , Director of Product Management at Linkedin, who’s Notes on Product Management newsletter is his favorite to read and follow.??

??? Felix mentioned two final pieces of advice: the first is to follow Diego Granados for great tips on breaking into product management (check out Diego’s latest PM interview course here). For his second piece of advice, Felix mentioned following Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast to stay abreast on ways of excelling and leveling up as a PM and beyond.?

?? Kudos to Anusha Kovi and Soumya C. for writing this article.

Next up,

• November 4: Building Products across Different Startup Stages with Andre Albuquerque
• November 9: Cracking the PM Interview & Career with Jackie Bavaro
• November 18: Never Search Alone and Find the Job You Love
• December 2: Thriving as a Woman and Mom in Tech with Vidya Srinivasan
• December 9: Defining A Compelling Product Strategy with LinkedIn Co-founder Allen Blue
• December 16: Take Back Your Power & Special Afterparty with Ancestry CEO Deb Liu

More sessions to be added soon… subscribe to stay tuned!

Learn more about the Product Management Learning Series and view past recordings here.