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[Music] stephen thank you so much for for doing this chat with me yeah shabbat i'm happy to join in and chat a bit about my experience with uh product manager blueprint love it so uh steven uh could you i mean to begin with you know people who are watching this could you tell them a bit about yourself sure my name is steven soroush i'm a lead product manager for torquada data and analytics which is an atd intelligence company atd is american tire distributor so we are the data arm of the largest tire distributor in the u.s actually in north america and so we have a lot of data coming in and we are building uh we have freemium and premium different you know products that serve different channels within the replacement tire industry and uh so that's uh that's the business we're in and um i'm over a couple of uh i've got three different product teams that report to me as a as a lead pm love it and and you know steve stevens the automotive guy he knows everything about automotive everything there is to know i know that after after talking with you working with you so you know i want to rewind the clock so before you join product leader blueprint like what was going on in your career that led you to seek out something you know something you were frustrated with something you were looking to improve just eager to hear about that yeah um so when i joined product leader blueprint it was uh it was fall of 2021. um i had joined torquada about a year previous to that really it was a spring of 2020. and when i came in um you know it was we were very much in kind of scrappy startup mode uh atd had spun us off and i was you know working on rationalizing you know 20 different analytics products and i was really doing you know what i do best i was um you know collaborating with atd stakeholders and with our internal team and we were you know working on a whole bunch of different products and but as we got into 2021 actually it was it was late 2020 we brought in a new head of product and we really completely changed our whole product management organization and we got into something that was much more formal we had you know scrum teams that were formalized and we had you know we started to do pi planning which is something i'd never done before and you know suddenly we were using jira in these new ways that were a lot you had a lot more kind of discipline and around them to kind of help drive agile maturity and i found myself really feeling um you know lacking confidence um i kind of i came into a pm role sort of not necessarily in a traditional way i'm a mechanical engineer i don't have software development you know education and background but i founded a tech startup and i spent six years um you know we raised raised money and i built a team and sort of through that process i was of course the head of product for that company and i kind of learned product management sort of the hard way by um you know failing and failing and iterating and and then uh you know eventually when i ended up with torquada um it was very it was very similar very scrappy but once we got to a more formalized kind of product organization i was just not very confident in my in my ability as a as a product manager and so part of what drew me to the course was um i don't know i i was seeking someone to kind of help coach and mentor me to sort of help me understand what tools do i already have in my tool belt that maybe i don't even know about yeah what tools do i need to you know get better at how can i do a better job of sort of influencing kind of driving decisions and how can i build confidence in my ability to actually make a career um out of being a product manager love it love it and and i mean you know i one of the things you mentioned i love people's journey you know you had been you started your own company to raise money and and all that and and uh then moved into product so and then you were like sort of looking for i mean you know as much as uh learning new stuff you like also want to make sure you're doing things right in some sense right yeah yeah i wanted some confirmation that you know i'm not crazy and thinking about things correctly you know and you know and as we were as i was kind of getting to know you know my new boss who had come from a very big organization and he was the head of product there and they had you know thousands of engineers and probably hundreds of pms and now we have this really small team you know it's like well am i am i you know i think i know what a road map is um but you know i'd like to get some confirmation that i'm doing things right as well that was definitely definitely part of it awesome yeah so uh so tell me uh stephen what convinced you to to enroll and and be part of productivity blueprint yeah um well you know i i came across the product multiple times um i think at that time i was actually researching um campers uh we were buying a camper and so i was watching a lot of youtube videos and i kept seeing your face and um i just uh i had started looking at other product management courses kind of around the same time and um you know it was all very formal oh you know you can go to whatever kellogg university or cornell or stanford and you can get a product manager you know certificate or something totally um but i just wanted something that was more personalized than that i really wanted something where there was going to be a strong coaching element involved i wanted something that might be a little bit more personalized rather than just kind of running through a curriculum and so um i i came across product leader blueprint a few times and i kind of started to look into it and my company does have a very generous education um program and so i was able to apply you know those those dollars towards product leader blueprint and so of course that that certainly helped but um i feel like whether they had provided that money or not the investment was worthwhile but i just recognized that i'm probably not going to get what i want out of a course at a university or even a course on one of these learning platforms what i need is i need to talk to someone who's been a product leader for years who's built their career i need kind of that individual sort of personalized element which is what i got with you and what i felt i would get if i joined the program and of course right away i think we had sort of an introductory call yeah um you know prior to signing up and i just felt like yeah this is this is what i want this is what i need to sort of help um identify my weaknesses help identify my strengths and how do i leverage those but you know also how do i um you know maybe do some things to improve or shore up kind of my weaknesses and also how do i improve just as a person and honestly that was a lot of what i got out of product leader blueprint was really some foundational just kind of good practices to do as a human i love it you know um maybe we'll talk about that stuff as we go but no no that that that's perfect i mean you know just just when as people are watching i actually did like two separate uh conversations just one more like this somebody else has gone to plp and that's the other thing they said which is hey just like i'm a better person okay cool there i just love to hear that because you can't fix careers in isolation of the person overall you can't like just focus on one thing and say i'm going to ignore everything else and and this will be be perfect there's so much interrelation between these things yeah yeah so uh so so tell us okay so you were in the program like what were some of the initial either victories you got or things that surprised you like talk to us about the first few weeks yeah um well so the first few weeks really really big for me because we were like i said we were kind of getting into some like human things right it's like okay what are you doing every morning right are you um are you journaling you know are you writing down your goals are you being positive are you you know focusing time on positive thinking are you establishing like personal habits that are helping you to become just a disciplined person and i've had those habits in the past but you know the previous three years or so my family went through a lot of a lot of shifts we had a child who had a heart defect and he ended up passing away and there was a huge we kind of pulled our family up and kind of moved closer to a major hospital to kind of care for him and a lot of different things happen this just really sort of broke me down as a person and i felt myself feeling like i need to kind of get back to baseline i need to reestablish my journaling and my spiritual journey um you know i need to pick up my bible and and those kinds of things are important for everybody um you've got to have some sort of faith element or i would encourage that you should really have some sort of personal element you should be focusing on self-care and those were all things that just due to my situation had been completely um just they were absent due to the you know our circumstances and what i really needed was help kind of picking those things back up and sort of rebuilding and sort of reestablishing my foundation and i really felt like i got that with you guys um i love it you know just beginning to be more intentional about my everyday and getting up and reestablishing you know those positive habits that was a victory for me and i immediately began to feel better about myself i began to have more confidence i began to feel more prepared to lead my family my two young children my wife and so i think that was a very important early victory for me just beginning to personally re-establish those kind of key stone habits that i've had in the past but they've been lost but you guys really helped me to re-establish those and i've got a lot of work to do still right i'm not there yet but but that was a big victory and then um you know there's lots of other things but i think one of the biggest kind of victories as i reflect back was i had been really kind of working for a long time to try to get leadership to recognize the need to formulate a team specifically focused on data cleaning and data management and it was kind of happening across different teams and we were doing okay but i in my previous startup i had experience with automotive data and i knew how difficult it can be and so i was working on trying to sort of get buy-in and beginning to get some practices like you know communicating like a marketer um and i really began to like pick up a couple of key things and i began to just emphasize those again and again and again actually one of the senior leaders uh repeated a phrase that i used which is you know the status quo is our biggest competitor in this industry and i knew when that happened i was i was gonna get there right because my they just said that but they said it like it was their own uh their own idea right and i knew that okay my ideas have now made the transfer over and other people are thinking of them as their own and so that was like that was really cool for me and then i really began to try to use shuttle diplomacy and i began to sort of go to different stakeholders and just talk about what it would mean to have a data team and what what could we do and how would that affect them if we had this capability and how would it improve sort of their team dynamics and before you know it i had a lot of people who were kind of telling me in my one-on-ones with them yes we need to do this and then you know we had an opportunity to come together as a leadership team to kind of talk about making some changes and i was able to present um you know the need to have this team but because i had already gotten buy-in from all of those different other stakeholders it was a non-event everyone was like well yeah of course we need to do this like steve go hire a pm and let's build a team and let's get it going and like i mean that was awesome because when you have kind of a big a big thing that you've sort of been fighting for you know and and it can come down to we'll make a presentation and we're going to decide you know based on your presentation um i mean that's like a high pressure moment and with the shuttle diplomacy i didn't have any of that i did all the the groundwork sort of beforehand to where when we were in our leadership meeting and i was presenting what i felt we needed to do you know the decision had already been made right each individual had already decided that we needed to do it and it was just a matter of everybody saying yes uh so powerful i mean just so powerful and you had such a such a key point there because this is a very common myth and a lot of pms come to me and say sure but i want to improve my presentation skills the outcome what they want is sim is basically what you did was get something major approved and the way the way is like oh i'm going to go into a presentation i'm going to wow everyone and everything will be cool and you hit the nail on the handle like rethinking what you actually need to do to to make that happen yeah love it so yeah yet uh stephen tell us about like what were like some of the victories that you got from the program just boost and uh what you took away from it yeah um well you know big victory is i got promoted from a senior pm to a lead pm during the course of the program and that was huge you know obviously more responsibility better compensation i mean that was a big deal and i don't know that i would have gotten that promotion had i not been going through plb because i was beginning to like lean in more to my 10x tasks and you know you know finding out what are your 10x tasks is part of it was one of the weeks that we really focused on and as i began to sort of reflect and understand what am i the best at really what it was is is helping um to let you know to help helping others to be more effective and so with my new team i was able to kind of bring on a pm and get that team going and i was able to demonstrate to management that i can do this i can actually get a team going i can make them effective and i was still running my other team and so it became pretty apparent to them that i was ready to be a lead pm and have multiple teams underneath me and so huge victory i mean that alone you know more than um you know was more than worth the investment i made in plb um just just to be able to actually see like a tangible change in my career path um going from a senior pm to a to a lead pm so so that was huge um i think other other victories of course i'm i have a lot more confidence in who i am as a pm and that even you know i still don't know how to code i'm still a mechanical engineer i've realized you know being a product manager you don't have to be a software engineer you need to be creative and you need to be a problem solver and you need to be able to orchestrate and collaborate and lead and those are all things that i can do and and that through the course of the through the course of uh the class i've recognized my strengths there and i've been able to start leveraging them more i mean one of the things i mentioned was you know 10x tasks and actually i had sort of discussed this a little bit with my with my boss and part of putting me in the lead pm role was um to enable me to focus more on the 10x tasks so rather than spending so much time in scrum teams and writing user stories and doing all of that sort of stuff now i'm i'm like flying up you know at 20 000 feet and i'm able to really think about the future and become a lot more strategic and understand what what are the market dynamics and be able to kind of bring those ideas down to the teams to develop and i mean that that's huge for me um because that's really where i thrive is is in doing that work so that's been you know a huge a huge impact that will be ongoing for me you know from the course yeah and kudos to you for you just taking the ideas learning and just applying them you were so consistent and so awesome at not just like you know what i've seen sometimes just like theoretically oh this sounds great but okay what do i do now how do i apply it how do i see the impact right away so you know it's been a pleasure working with you stephen and one last question from my side which is you know as other people you know people watch this video they're on my email list or they're going to be like considering plb what message would you give to them yeah i'd say you know a lot of pms are just kind of like a frog in a pond and if you're just a frog in a pond happy to kind of sit on a lily pad and coast around then you know that's fine but if you want to accelerate your career if you want to you know discover your your greatest strengths and and also your weaknesses but but with discovering those ways to um you know ways to ways to address them and ways to improve them you know if you want to become a better influencer if you want to really be i'd say be in charge of your career then this is something you should absolutely be doing um because it will give you the right mindset to take control of your career and also very very practical tools from you know nuts and bolts on communication styles and you know um tactics on influencing and communicating you know all the way to you know self-discovery things from you know journaling and that kind of stuff so i would just say what are you waiting for um you know are you willing to bet on yourself if you're willing to bet on yourself and put your money on yourself and join the class i think that you'll find like i did it's worth it stephen thank you so much for doing this and you know your experience would be super helpful for for everybody who's watching it and of course you're doing this means the world to me so thank you sure i'm happy to connect uh if anyone um has questions hit me up on linkedin uh happy to to chat and uh sherbet i wish you the best of luck thank you steven thank you thanks bye