Craft the Perfect Reminder Letter for Outstanding Payment for Product Management

Reminder letter for outstanding payment for Product Management

oh I am new to payments I have spent 20 years doing something else and now I move want to move into payments and product management is that possible or how should I go about making my career into payments data and product management what are the first kind of steps that I should be looking at when I want to learn about payments and product management lots of questions and we all struggle to find these answers at times we have been talking a lot about payments core domain topics Data Business analysis and various other things on this channel but this time in this video we are actually going to talk to someone who has embarked on this journey who has been also watching some of the videos on our channel here and somebody who has transitioned himself from being a project manager to a product manager he will also talk to us and explain what's the fundamental difference between the two things the Two Worlds Hands-On in the real world real time make sure you watch this video to the end because this video I'm sure is going to be very helpful for all of you who are looking to practically get that experience of how it is when you are thrown into a world of product management particularly in payments where there is Cutthroat competition all right so without wasting any more time let's get started and get into the conversation hi everyone today we have a different video for all of you today we have got Oscar Fuller with us um I will let Oscar introduce himself and then I will get going into the conversation Oscar about you thanks Rob so um yeah I'm a currently a project manager and working in the insurance space and sort of looking to get involved and really interested in the payments industry currently in his current state and I guess mainly how that that payments industry is changing and how it's evolving with sort of um the influx of fintechs especially in the UK and sort of Paris and Mainland Europe and how that is changing the space and I guess syrup's videos have really helped me recently just understand the basics of payments processing payment gateways and sort of the end-to-end process and all the players involved and I hope this conversation can sort of help other people as well who are looking to get into the payment space and and beginners like myself who come from a background such as project management and not particularly a finance background but want to understand further and a basic level and then maybe more in depth in the future yep yep sure thanks Oscar thanks for the introduction so yeah like uh I am myself a manager I am also a BMP certified project manager but then yeah I think um for for the sake of our viewers um you know we would probably see what would be interesting for them to know so somebody who's new to payments a lot of people who come to my channel are very new to payments uh and one of the things that I always try to focus on my channel is to creep the content very very simple for a Layman somebody who comes to my channel and watches any video should be at least get something out of it even if he spends five minutes on a video so so I think you have been embarking on on your journey on payments and you know you're sort of um new uh relatively new I would say as opposed to somebody who has spent a lot of years in the payment industry what would you recommend as some of the first key things to do if somebody wants to break into payments so I think obviously initially your first step is to have an interest in it wrong and and not only have an interest in in the payments industry but have somewhere a goal where you want to be um and a reason for studying the payments industry right so whether that be you want the career change from say project management into the finance industry and into uh payment specifically or you just want to understand better how money moves around and you're making these transactions every day without even realizing how the money is actually moving um between one account and another or yeah there's an end goal whereby a bit like myself where there's there's a business need and you see a gap in the market whereby payment can be improved in in the UK or wherever you live and you want to understand more about payments to sort of get to a position where you can build your own business um in in some form of entrepreneurial spirit and and I guess the Second Step then would be to just uh actively look for I guess YouTube channels like and others that give you sort of bite size information there's a lot of a lot out there there's a lot of fintech companies like who or stripe who will give you sort of a bite-sized uh introduction in into some form of uh I guess topic if it was payments processing for example stripe or or how to use um Square cards for merchants and which is really interesting uh you could also look into books I've got a book here of me actually which is called this isn't sponsored but it's called the payoff um and it's basically how changing the way we pay changes everything can it and it talks a lot about the current state of uh I guess UK and Europe payments how these differ to America and how I guess China and the Asian market are advancing a lot quicker than we are and never really touched upon sort of the credit card era and sort of jump straight to um that EP sort of um alipay um movement which which is really good I hope that something where from my point of view and my interest that's where I want the UK to be in the future so just sort of sinking your teeth into it in with light material to start with so that that book I just mentioned there isn't anything too academic and it tells the story it starts with the history and then yeah which is really good and so it's quite light and and like I say bite size videos and videos like yours as well so I've been really helpful sure thank you thanks for that Oscar I think this explanation should be helpful to our viewers as well on the channel coming in so it would be fair to say that if you are somebody who is sort of uh experience no other domains maybe somebody who's coming in from sales or maybe somebody's coming from Healthcare and if he wants to move into um this um Dynamic um field of payments it's pretty much possible I mean it's not that somebody who is who's ex who spent 20 years of his career doing something else if he wants to break into payments he definitely can do that um and he doesn't need to go undergo a new degree course or you know some costly certifications I mean there's plethora of knowledge available online on on YouTube on internet on medium I think there are some fantastic articles that people are publishing on medium so there's a lot of information available online and that should help people to to progress here and then make their way into into payments yeah and as well I think as as someone new getting into the industry no matter what sort of age you are I guess just take advantage of the fact that the world is so interconnected now and you can reach people with your fingertips I guess on social media like I did with use right obviously I'm not advocating for everyone to start flooding your inbox and ask for for calls and discussions on anything to do with payments because that's why the videos are there hopefully they answer everyone's questions but just to understand that the the beauty of social media and being interconnected is that you can reach out to these people and ask questions and more often than not these people will respond to you because if they're putting out content into the world it's because they're interested in the industry and they're interested in teaching people no one's asked for them to actively go out and do this no one's paid them a large sum of money um so yeah that'll be one of my biggest recommendations is to just don't be afraid to contact people you say contact 100 people you might get 95 reject you but then there's still five people there for a lot of information and a lot of uh a wealth of knowledge I guess that they can share with you um so don't be afraid to use these forums and even places like Reddit and that a really good there's a payments process in the subreddit actually that's really good and there's a lot of people in there with a lot of information to share yeah yeah absolutely I think well said I think there's definitely a lot of information available online and uh you know no idea is stupid you know as they say it's all about just making that start and approaching people I think a lot of people are hesitant to approach people on LinkedIn or or or Facebook or Twitter but I think I think that's the whole point right how how well do we leverage these platforms uh and and I think not you know not maybe not everybody will say a yes to you but there are people who are willing to help you out with your idea and and you know everybody's here to sort of improve um so I think it's all it's all you know Fair um to utilize these Services uh to the best possible ways so yeah absolutely agree with you one of the things that I also wanted to touch upon briefly is um you know I know that you have been doing um a lot of sort of work on project management as you said about yourself in the introduction product management as well um how how difficult or easy it is for someone and first of all let's maybe start with the fundamental difference that you think is between project management and product management you know how are these two things different from each other so I think project management mainly is sort of you're you're developing something from the very very beginning something didn't exist and that was a business case put out there and and a sponsor who said this is what we need implementing into the business or we need this to happen right so whether that's the integration of one business into another or that's data migration from one platform to another or it's just developing a whole new um say for example in the insurance industry it's developing a whole new broken platform from scratch with with a third-party vendor so there's the use case there at the beginning and you you work on that project up until the point where you've developed delivered the sort of the end goal of the project goal and then you sort of let go of it and you give it to BAU team who will support it throughout its BAU life as well I feel like product management is you get to stay with the product for a longer period of time and you get to see it evolve so it's not just from a or zero to one say for example which is project management so it's getting from nothing to the product it will be from one through 100 if there's that many institutions of the project the love story and I'm looking I guess the use case and user feedback and how we can develop that product to sort of grow with the user and and sort of benefits realization as well I guess is is the way I've seen it changed yeah yeah and and do you also think that when um we talk about product management what we do as product managers or product owners um in a tech company versus say what we do when we try to work on our own products these are two different games all together I mean much of it of what we do you know we talk about when for instance when we work in a tech company we look at um things like agile scale agile um some of the some of the you know the the best things that industry is doing uh today when it comes to uh moving to a highly agile product management path right so we try to do those things but yet we sort of falter at times yet we find it difficult to achieve our Milestones or complete our features uh Etc you know we see that more often than not across a variety of tech companies across a variety of um projects that I've been a part of as well but when it comes to say being a product manager for your own self you know when you were working uh for something that's very close to your heart your own idea your own baby so how is that different from the product management that you do as an employee of a company I think the main difference now is that there's some sort of issues on its sort of uh to personify sort of like your own baby and and there's that emotional attachment there so one of the main things you have to do when you're product managing your own product I guess is you need to be a willing to absorb and take on criticism and have people poke holes in your product idea but then the challenge with your own product is that that emotional attachment is there and you need to understand that someone criticizing your product isn't completely unraveling it and and they're not they're not doing it in a malicious way at all you need to sort of take away the emotion from blind of almost to say right that's a great bit of feedback to be honest for me and and that's something that I can work on to then help develop the tool and I think a lot of people may sometimes see it as that open-ended criticism is something that that has an emotional attachment or this person doesn't believe in my product at all and my might put you down and it might stop you from actually delivering that as where what you need to see is that you've gone to that person for some form of criticism on your tool because you feel as if their input would be beneficial and if it is critical I'm sure it's not coming from a malicious place and it's there to actually be constructive and it's sort of taking that on board to develop your tool and go back to that person and say however long it takes you say A month's time with another iteration and say look I've done this now does this give give the tool more more benefit and and more likely than not it will do so it's yeah it's sort of taking away that emotional aspect as much as you possibly can because it is your baby and and you wanted to succeed and most likely it won't at the MVP stage um and it will take iterations right you look at these massive unicorn fintech companies most of them have been around for 10 years before you've ever heard of them right so I know we were discussing that it's rather about Revolution as well have been around for ages and it's people are only just starting to hear about them now but for the owners of those companies like Tom Bloomfield at monzo I'm sure he's had that on his brain for the past 10 years and and we're only just hearing about it now and I'm sure there was a lot of pushback when when they first came about because a lot of the time of new products as well is it's new right it's it's sort of disrupting history and the payments industry itself in age old industry um and it may be certain ways there's a lot of Regulation around it and for these thin lips to grow and new products in the market to grow there needs to be a culture shift and and you need to remove that emotional aspect to help push that culture yeah no and it actually reminds me of of this series that I saw in Netflix I don't know if you have seen this but there's this series on uh on the founder of Spotify Daniel Lake um yes I haven't actually watched it now yeah I think it's it's brilliant and I think they have they have actually showed in that series you know the kind of the pain the pressure the vulnerabilities that you have to go through uh when you are sort of conceiving an idea uh where you know the the challenges when you see around you when the world writes you off so I think I think what we are trying to say here is don't give up yeah I mean your MVP may not work uh initially uh and it take it takes time for an idea to be accepted um uh as in general use by everybody so it takes time it's it's like wine you know it takes time to uh get it yeah so and I think if your MVP does work straight away maybe you're doing something wrong because if your MVP does work straight away that means that the industry is already set up for it and it's already easily doable so therefore someone else is probably doing it so there's some big bang put more resources more money is doing it if it works straight away if you're disrupting an industry and you're trying to develop something that one there will be a unicorn like like Spotify became with Daniel Eck in the music industry um it won't work straight away and there will be opposition to and there will be pushed back because the the sort of the Native players in the game won't want that disruption to their industry and A disruption to their market share of things but you've identified something where there is a gap in the industry and it will work and maybe that is 10 years down the line because a lot of these things need a cultural shift a lot like we've Spotify for example there were there was Napster before Spotify and that didn't really work out but Daniel Weck still progressed with it and and still sort of delivered this new streaming service um and and which has now commonplace right a lot of us have spots to find our phones and we wouldn't think anything of it but there was probably a painstaking few couple of years for for the guys who developed the app to actually break down the regulations in the industry and and sort of adopt change yeah yeah no absolutely and and despite the fact that there's so many other players in the market Spotify still rules um you know we have we have apple music we have so many other players but I don't know um but as far as I know I think you know Spotify is still the number one um music service today that's available so yeah I completely agree with you one of the things that I really wanted to uh ask you was that uh you know a lot of people um they they have an idea in their mind um they have identified a problem statement but they still aren't you know sure about taking that first step um you know so so the when you talk to them maybe on a on a coffee um they would you know share their ideas with you and they say you know what I've got this fantastic idea I think there's a real life problem uh that needs to be resolved here and I think we can just uh you know pitch this idea to solve this problem but they're not sure where to go how to do things about it you know how to take the first step do you do you reckon that um that that you know meeting people is is the first thing that you should be doing or reading more about how they can you know take their idea forward what should be the first things first few things that you think um as a product manager or as somebody who's conceiving a new idea should a person do so I think the first step is to you you need a business plan right and I'm not talking about a 10 page business plan you need a very high level one-page view of what what is your current issue what is the current issue today in today's world um that you see right and what is the current solution for that issue if there is any and what are the issues with that and where does your product or your business idea make that solution a lot more seamless or or the solution is easier for that issue then you sort of you've articulated your idea right and then I guess you can do some light reading but what I've found out is that you can read and read and read as much as you want and gain and before of information from following different things on Twitter or actually reading the hard books but nothing will progress your idea further than speaking into existence almost and speaking to people in the industry um industry players big or small and working on the idea because you will learn a lot quicker you you might fall but you're actually learning at the time and you're actually doing something as opposed to just learning because you could sit down and read a book and read books for a year but then that's a year wasted of your time and a year that maybe someone else has come up with your idea and has started to develop it as when if you're actually getting out there in the world and speaking to people who are in the industry and may have more knowledge than you then then you're definitely helping I guess iron out any kinks that you've had in your system hasn't done but I'd say definitely have a business plan first and foremost you don't ever want to go and speak to anyone um without knowing what exactly it is you want to deliver and you can have an idea here but you need to articulate that idea to someone and explain what is the issue today and how will you solve it sure sure yeah no absolutely I think it's very critical um to to talk to people to real people uh who have been there done that or maybe you know at least give you the right direction and like we discussed initially right maybe not everybody is ready maybe people are busy so you know we're not judging anyone here but then there might be some people who might just say Yes um and you you just need to just wait for that one yes and you know you one conversation then leads to the other and then I think that's what you should be looking for so yeah I think I completely agree with you I mean this is fantastic uh Oscar I think this is a really valuable information for all of our viewers here who come to our channel uh to learn payments and product management uh any last things any parting thoughts that you would want to share with our audiences here I guess I'd say don't be afraid to stop but there's no age cap on on starting a business and there's many people that started very young as we know some of some of the most famous people people in the tech industry have started very young and sort of have come from good stock in terms of like welcome to Stanford or Harvard or somewhere but if you're late 20s like I am or early 30s you can still start and and get your idea out into the world and you will never know that your idea will work until you at least try to deliver it and and your little ridiculous enough in 10 years time if you see your idea come to life through someone else's hands so I'd say yeah if you've got an idea if you're interested in the payments industry um if you're worried about regulations or how it will work the best thing to do is get out there get speaking to people and and sort of try and come up with those Solutions because no one will hand them to you need to go out there and find them yourselves sure sure yep thanks a lot Oscar uh thanks a lot for your time this morning I really appreciate you taking out time over the weekend and uh you know talking to us and I hope we have many more fruitful conversations down the line as well the benefit of our viewers thank you very much Rob thank you thank you Oscar take care bye by