Project pipeline management for product management

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hey there this is Rich one the co-founders of product gym in today's video I'm going to be walking you through some of the best AIS side projects that you can take on as a product manager specifically if you want to go ahead and leverage these skills to navigate up the product management ladder at your current company whether you want to go ahead and leverage these skills to move over to your next higher paying product manager job for those of you who are actively on the job hunt or if you want to go ahead and put together a portfolio so you can start freelancing for a secondary income stream these are the best AI side projects for you to take on right now as a product manager keep [Music] watching welcome back everybody my name is Rich I'm one of the co-founders here at product G you're number one online resource for everything related to product management job hunting and product management interviewing if you have not clicked on the Subscribe button pretty pleased with sugar on top hit that subscribe button and definitely don't forget to tap that notification Bell so you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest in product management hiring also helps us out with the YouTube algorithm so we can keep on producing these videos for you all right folks so before we go ahead and talk about some of the best AI side projects that you can go ahead and take on as a product manager right now let's even talk about why getting a side project why even having a portfolio of side projects is so important for you right now the only reason why well the only two reasons why you would be even learning AI in the first place is I would go ahead and wager that some of you are extremely fascinated with this concept of artificial intelligence AI automation and you know because you're very smart you know that this is not a fat this is here to stay it's only going to get better it's only going to get faster and if you don't keep up with it you're going to get left behind so you want to go ahead and take on these skills because you want to be a rockstar product manager right you want to be legitimately good at what it is that you do the second batch of you and you know it's not mutually exclusive the second group of people that are watching this video right now you probably want to go ahead and make more money you want to leverage these skills to go ahead and either move up the ladder move up over to a higher paying position or you want to go ahead and leverage these skills on the freelance Market which taking on these skills that we are promoting today is not only going to help you make more money on the freelance Market it's also going to give you so much more time and bandwidth back on your full-time day job so that you actually can free up some spots on your calendar to be able to do so having side projects accomplishes a few objectives so how does a side project help you get better skills and how does a side project actually help you make more money well let's talk about about the first problem in order for you to master these skills you really need to be able to show that there was an outcome the problem with most certification programs right now is they give you a piece of paper and there's no outcome there was actually nothing to show other than the fact that the company that you paid gave you a piece of paper or a graphic that you can upload on your LinkedIn profile that you actually mastered something at some point you're going to have to show your employer or future employers or a possible freelance client that you have something more than just a piece of paper because people are very visual if you're saying that hey I have a certificate that shows that I know how to build chat Bots okay is there a chat bot that you can show me yeah no but I could theoretically put one together right now yeah that's bad that doesn't make for a very impactful conversation right the other reason why you want to have a side project is so much of what you're doing at your job right now is proprietary information even if you can deploy the skills that you've learned at product gym or wherever at your current day job you can't really show it outside of the walls or the confines of your companies it's proprietary data it's actually in many instances illegal for you to show that information on a possible interview yeah like I did it I worked on all this different stuff but it sounds to me as an employer myself it sounds to me like you're selling me oxygen the other thing here is if you want to go ahead and leverage skills to make more money or freelance clients you just have to understand right now more than ever you have a lot of small business owners that are hiring for these types of services that are provided by product managers but more than ever right now it's crazy you have like dry cleaners you have chiropractors that want chat Bots you have influencers that want to go ahead and actually have people put together their social media metrics dashboards they want to know more about their current users which is a fact or they want to see how it is that you can help them automate their manual workflows so many small businesses right now they're just learning about zapier and they're just learning about this thing called apis and they want people with product management skills that has training in these different vertical to be able to make a very strong and positive impact into their business but you have to understand something these people don't work in tech people that work in Tech have really good visualization skills because as a product manager every single day you're taking an idea that doesn't exist from a whiteboard somewhere and you're bringing it to life so so when you're explaining all these different concepts to let's just say a small business owner that has four chiropractor practices across town like okay okay okay like can I just see it like is there anything you can show me if you don't have that side project mix aesome for a very difficult conversation you want to have those side projects ready to go so now it just comes down to so what side projects should you have well let's talk about what's in demand right now currently what's in demand right now is trap Lots is very much in demand because so much of our time is being lost every single week due to manual communication so chatbots whether you're utilizing something that's very hot like lead generation chat bots so you can go out there and plug on websites appointment setting chat Bots you can go ahead and leverage chat Bots to go ahead and manage customer onboarding customer success internal knowledge chat Bots there's all different types of chat Bots but at the end of the day you only really need something that you can show right even if it's a chat bot that you build for yourself where you say some sometimes I forget what is it that I'm working on or sometimes I forget my monthly goals and I actually ask the chat about what are the monthly goals I'm working on this project right now where I have so many documents that I have to deal with some I can go out there and ask my chap bot that I plugged into slack hey uh can you send me the marketing presentation the go-to market strategy that we're having for 2024 and then the chat bot's actually responding naturally back to me even that that you can go out there and show is something that's very tangible something that's very much into man every business owner right now every company small medium and large wants a chatbot but it's something that you can show makes for a very intuitive conversation whether you're on a job interview whether you are talking to a freelance client something else data visualization you want to have right now some kind of CRM dashboard and you want to have like some form of social media metrics dashboard either or would do it would be better if you have both right now every company is looking at how volatile this Market is and they're thinking to themselves acquiring new customers is so difficult is there anything we can do with our existing customer base ad spend has reduced as a result of like companies are spending more money on ads but they're not really seeing that much more of a return so they're looking at like how do we go ahead and provide value to our existing customers because they already know us like us and trust us they purchased from us at least once before what else can we go ahead and do to get them to purchase again that's also something so having like some kind of CRM dashboard is great social media metrics dashboard what types of users do you have what are the trends what are the shares being able to pull that data from any external source and we show people how to do it with an application called retool which is kind of like notion and air table on steroids that's also going to make for a very high impact lastly showing companies that you can actually automate manual workflows every business right now wants to automate and streamline manual workflows and they want to be less and less reliant on human beings because it's just faster anything that that you can do that's consumer facing or that you can go out there and put into part of your portfolio where you can prove that you can actually do this type of work is going to make you stand out so much more than just any normal candidate either on the job or on the freelance side now it's important for me to note this cuz I already know some of you guys are going to let me know in the comments none of these skills are new but what is new is with the help of AI assistance you can go ahead and execute these objectives in a much shorter amount of time chap bot's not new taking sequel queries putting it on some forign data visualization is nothing new apis and zappier that's nothing new mapping out like system design workflows on the back end that's nothing new either technical product requirements document that's nothing new none of this is new the only thing that is new is this stuff used to take so much more time and with the assistance of AI it's dramatically reduced if you're interested in learning these skills and the first thing that you need to do to be able to master these skills is actually take a course I want you to schedule a consultation with us and you're going to find the schedule call Link in the description but at the first layer is you need to go ahead and get a baseline understanding of these Concepts and these fundamentals but once you have that to build something with it put it together in your portfolio and then go ahead and leverage it to either move up the ladder move over to a better paying job or start freelancing for a secondary income stream which every product manager not only should be doing needs to be doing but is going to be doing for the upcoming 18 months as we continue to navigate a very volatile Market you found any value in the video at all please like comment subscribe and follow my name is Rich I'm on the co-founders here at product gy until next time I look forward to speaking with you very very [Music] soon