Full transcript:

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 0:01

Hi everyone and welcome to the Product Marketing Insider podcast. I'm Lawrence Chapman and I'm a copywriter here at PMA. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Mary Sheehan, Head of Product Marketing at Adobe Advertising Cloud.

Mary's an experienced product marketer with experience in launching new products, positioning for growth, creating go-to-market strategies, and much more. Mary is also a fellow podcaster and has recently wrapped up the first season of her show Women in Product Marketing. Welcome to the show, Mary.

Mary Sheehan 0:28

Thanks, Lawrence. Glad to be here.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 0:30

Glad to have you on the show, thanks so much. Just to start off, congratulations on the first series of Women in Product Marketing. If you could just let us know, first of all, what prompted you to begin the show in the first place? If you could also tell the listeners a little bit more about it that'd be great.

Mary Sheehan 0:46

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, we just wrapped season one, it was really an amazing experience. It all came about kind of as an intersection of two things I've been really passionate about over the last, let's say, five or 10 years, which is mentorship, especially for women, and also product marketing. So I teamed up with the folks over at Sharebird who have launched a number of great podcasts as well for product marketers and pitched them this idea on women in product marketing, and here we are.

But it's been a wonderful experience, especially with the times we're in right now virtually to be able to network to be able to scale these conversations and really kind of like what you're doing - give back to product marketers that are newer in their careers, or people that are thinking about getting started, give them a little bit of a sneak peek into what types of work product marketers do, and some of the unique challenges that we as women face, in business, especially in leadership positions.

It's just been a really wonderful experience and I've had a blast doing it and we've had some amazing guests from Uber, Shopify, Figma, New Relic, and we've gone all the way up to CMO.

It's been really great to show not only product marketing women in leadership but also how this has become a foundational role now for the CMO level as well. All great things and season two is going to kick off again in just a few weeks. I'm really looking forward to that.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 2:21

Oh, congratulations, where can the listeners find the podcast and check it out?

Mary Sheehan 2:27

Yeah, so it's anywhere podcasts are available. Just search for Women in Product Marketing on Google, Apple podcasts, you can also go to sharebird.com another product marketing peer networking site, and search for the show there if you'd rather listen online.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 2:43

Okay, fantastic. Moving on to your personal career in product marketing, what is it that made you want to become a product marketer in the first place?

Mary Sheehan 2:53

I think it was really about assessing the role I was in at the time, which was an account executive on the sales side working out at a really large company - working at Google at the time. And understanding that I only really liked about 25% of my job and that was creating these stories and presentations that other people would end up using for their client presentations and coming to me for advice for things like objection handling and how to actually convey these complicated topics.

Little did I know it but I was really doing the sales enablement part of product marketing. And so when I took a good look at what I liked about what I was doing at that time and what I wished I was doing more of it was really this aspect of product marketing.

I started to talk internally, it was great to be at a big company and be able to make the jump because they had the infrastructure to be able to try that and take a chance on me. But that was what really got me hooked in the beginning was understanding a little bit more about what product marketing is, and that that was the part of the job I liked the most. So why don't I just take a chance to do it full time?

Then, of course, I realized moving over that that was just one part of the toolkit, the sales enablement piece of it, there are many more aspects of product marketing. But it was a great intro and a great opportunity to be able to move internally at a company like that. That was a long time ago, I want to say about ten years ago at this point.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 4:26

Okay, awesome. So from your first exposure to product marketing, can you talk us through your career path from then to now?

Mary Sheehan 4:36

Yeah, absolutely. I did the product marketing individual contributor role for I want to say about three and a half, four years and really, I got thrown into the deep end. So now, in hindsight, I always thought it was normal to have five product managers that you're working with, be managing global launches at all times, be working with executives on speech writing, content development, running case studies. But now when I am looking at what I was actually running back in my very first job, it was a lot, it was actually probably a little overloaded for my very first product marketing job.

But the good thing about that is being thrown into the deep end, I really did get to build out the toolkit of product marketing, and really understand all the different facets of it. Once I left Google, I was there a total of about seven years, I got that seven-year itch, I went over to a smaller company called Adroll, which was about 500 people, a global ad tech company, and I joined as a senior product marketer, but I kind of got a lucky shot in that my boss at the time ended up moving on just a few months after I had joined the company.

One of the benefits, as you probably talked about in your show from being at a smaller company is often those opportunities afford themselves really quickly. So all of a sudden, I found myself the head of the product marketing team, so a lot of different challenges there, figuring out how to structure the team, make sure that they weren't as overloaded as I was in my early career. I really got to grow as a manager and leader there and still keep in contact with almost everyone from that original team. It was just a really great experience.

From there, after I ran the team for about two, two and a half years, I actually became a consultant for product marketing. I started a consulting firm and really specialized in things like messaging workshops, launches, I also did a lot of competitive intelligence work for companies and built a business that I was able to run and pay the bills for about a year.

And then after doing that I got hired by one of the companies that I was working in-house with and then did this startup thing for a couple more years. I joined a company called SocialChorus, which was a 100 person workforce communications company as their senior director and they are awesome. Check them out if you don't know about them, they actually have a conference coming up, a free conference with Malcolm Gladwell, I had a tonne of fun working with them, because it was a little bit more in the experience set of B2B and B2C.

We were working on not only selling in at the enterprise SaaS level but also really thinking about how to make sure that employees at these mega-companies were actually using our products. It was really this sort of marketplace type of approach and for me, as a product marketer, I'm always interested in growing my skill set. So that was really an amazing experience.

From there, I joined Adobe. I have had a wonderful experience here so far, it's great to be back in a big organization. I think I'm looking at my career right now as a bit of a pendulum swing, where it's been bookended so far by these really big companies with some smaller stops along the way. But I think you learn a lot from joining companies at different sizes that are in different stages, you learn tonnes of different leadership capabilities from the people that you're working really closely with at the smaller companies.

Then at the bigger companies, you just have so many resources, you are able to work cross-functionally with so many different teams. I think it's really been a fun experience for me to see both sides of the coin, and then to be able to actually be a manager and a leader in that capacity too in product marketing has been a really fun journey for me, and I'm excited for whatever the next step holds.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 9:00

Sounds exciting, and I'm glad that you actually kind of delved into the difference between working at a larger organization as opposed to a smaller company, because I was actually gonna ask that next.

Just looking at the consultancy side of things, if you don't mind, obviously, with what's been going on in the last year or so with the pandemic that we've been stuck in with quite a few product marketers almost veering into the consultancy side of things or being forced into the consultancy side of things, what would be almost like your piece of advice for anybody who may be considering beginning to start their own venture in that particular area? What did you find worked for you when you were doing your consulting as a product marketer?

Mary Sheehan 9:53

I think that's such a great question and I don't have a silver bullet answer but let me share a couple of things that I think might be helpful. I think first of all starting off, you want to test out a lot of things just like you would marketing a product, you kind of are now marketing yourself. So I spent a lot of time thinking about brand building, how I would reach customers, how I would engage with them, but really, you're going to have to try to test out a few things, or many things and see what works for you. For me, what ended up being the most successful was a couple of things.

One was really networking, I got the most of my clients from warm leads. So telling people on LinkedIn, telling kind of weaker connections, as they say, that I was in the market, and then a couple of people, in particular, introduced me to those that eventually ended up being my clients. So make sure you're networking. I spent a lot of time on a website and a blog, but really, I don't think I got any clients organically, it was all based on relationships. Don't be afraid to tap into those networks that you know, and tell people what you're offering and what you're doing.

I would also say, there's still a lack of understanding of what product marketing does for many people, especially at the CEO and founder level. So when I was starting off my sweet spot ended up being with Series A and Series B companies, and a lot of the CEOs and founders that I got introduced to, because that's who you'll be working with usually at that size of company as a product marketer, they didn't know what to do with me. They were sort of trying to understand how I would fit in. For them, they were trying to maybe hire me part time, which I didn't really want to do at that moment.

So trying to find a way to communicate your value and what you can offer in a bite-size way I think would be really helpful to you. Whether it's a package of hours that you're selling, or you're selling a product launch in a box, or a toolkit to help them get started with their competitive intelligence, whatever it is, think about it like a product marketer would and actually package your offerings and make it easy for them to buy.

One really, really tactical thing too, if I can, is that a lot of these companies have a set budget so if you're able to give them the upfront cost of what something will be, or even a monthly cost, they'll be a lot more comfortable with that than something like, 'yeah, just hire me on retainer forevermore'. They're really thinking about what they're going to put into an investment and what they're going to get out of it so just being really, really clear about that and hopefully, that can help you get it started.

But yeah, network, think about what your value is and what you bring to the table, package it well and then make it easy for people to buy your services. Hopefully, that helps. I'm happy to chat about that more with anybody that's interested.

It's kind of a work in progress and I'm actually still at it, I do have one client, I don't have a tonne of time for it right now obviously with the full-time gig, but it's something I think that for me helps to keep me fresh and helps to make sure that I'm understanding and knowing the nitty-gritty of product marketing and making sure that my skill set is keeping up to date too. So I enjoy it. I think I'll come back to it and back and forth throughout my career forevermore. Looking forward to keeping that part of the business going.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 13:40

Looking at the role that you've got at the minute Adobe, if there is such a thing, what does a standard day in your role look like? And I know that this question, I've asked it so many times, and people are like there's no such thing as a standard day but I always ask anyway, so I'm going to fire that one your way as well, Mary.

Mary Sheehan 14:00

Yeah, definitely. No, I actually laughed when I saw this question too, because there is no typical day and that's what I love about product marketing, actually, is that there is no typical day. So one day, my day might look like I'm meeting with the leadership team with the Adobe Advertising Cloud, I'm having some sync-up meetings on some big projects. For example, right now, we are in the midst of launching something called task forces to help our internal folks focus on specific areas within the business, which I think is going to be really exciting.

Then I'll pop into a sales meeting to understand how our pipeline is doing, where we can impact that. Then I might head over to a creative review for some new demand Gen assets that we are launching, and then maybe I'll have a bit of a break to work on an upcoming presentation that I have. Then I'll hit the phones with a client or two to actually talk to them about an upcoming customer advisory board.

That's just a kind of a hodgepodge of some of the things. I think that was an actual day that I had last Monday. But there's a lot of different things that we're working on. I think for me, too now, in the management position, one thing that I really like doing is, first of all, blocking off time so I can actually have some heads-down work.

My perfect day would actually be I have an hour and a half or two-hour chunk in the morning to work on messaging, to work on any kind of white paper content, to review things that my team... to just really have that heads downtime. And then I've also found, especially in the virtual world, I love having unstructured time at least three times a week where people can pop in and we can talk about whatever.

On my team twice a week we have something called product marketing power time, which is basically anyone can bring a topic to review or brainstorm, and we all just get to weigh in on it. And then I've also just recently started office hours for myself, just one hour a week, no structure, come in, we can hang out, last time some of the team members came in and we actually were talking about the Product Marketing Alliance and my presentation from a year ago, and how I kind of got hooked up with that, and how to move forward with that.

The structure can be free-flowing and I think it's really important right now to have some time and space for that, especially with your team, because you don't get to see anyone in the office, you don't have those serendipitous coffee talks anymore. I'm really enjoying the days where we have that unstructured conversation and then also when I have work time, in addition to the meetings and projects and things that I'm working on.

Anyways, very long-winded but there's never a day in the life, you're always working with many different stakeholders. But I think it's really important right now to make the time for yourself to accomplish those goals that you've set out to do.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 17:09

Yeah, I love that almost like an open-door policy that's in place there. It's, as you say, so important, particularly in the current circumstances, just to put that in place for yourself, your team, just everyone and to make sure that everyone's got that support because it is to coin a little bit of a cliche, an unprecedented time that we're going through at the moment, nobody knows how to deal with it.

And so to have that opportunity to speak with people, just to get a little bit of face time, I think that's really important and it's refreshing to see that it's being valued at Adobe. So I think that's great.

So in terms of your actual team that you have in place, can you just give us a little bit of an indication of what that looks like in terms of both numbers and roles please Mary?

Mary Sheehan 18:10

Yeah, definitely so I'll share that our team is a medium-size product marketing team, I would say medium to large. We're actually organized functionally. So by functionally, I mean we're not organized by products on the advertising cloud side, we actually took to heart the pragmatic marketing framework. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that but it's basically a set of tools from build to post-launch that helps product managers and product marketers really align on their objectives and how they're working together.

So on the product marketing side, we're really organized functionally from that product strategy to launch, sales enablement, and even training. And each person has a lane that contains a few different functions. So if you were to look at the map of it from end to end, it tells this story of the birth of a product to post-launch and enablement and training.

And what I've liked about this structure, which is different from how I've organized teams in the past, is that usually I've done it by either vertical or business like SMB versus enterprise, or even products - if you have multiple products in your portfolio. But what I like about this functional approach is that it lets all the team members work together so they are able to have this handoff process that we've really fine-tuned.

And they all understand that they're all invested in the success of every product and project that we work on. It's not just one person who is 'I am this product owner and this is my show' they're all part of this higher level team and we're all working towards those same goals. So I really like it from that aspect.

As the years have progressed with this, or as the quarters have progressed rather, people's roles have begun to evolve too. So as they've gotten more comfortable in this functional setting, they've been able to expand their opportunities and take on more within that functional setting, too. So it's been a really cool setup and I'm really happy with it and I think that's something that I would do in the future as well.

But I do have to say shout out to my team, they're amazing, I feel really lucky, I don't know how I landed such an awesome team at Adobe, but everyone is so curious, and motivated, and brilliant, and it's just been a pleasure working with them. They are just crushing it. So it's been great, I got really lucky and so they're game for all my wild ideas and we've been able to make it work I think pretty well with this structure.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 21:02

Again, going past the past 12 months, how have you adapted your previous way of working internally to the shift towards more remote working? How have you changed or adapted your practices to sustain what was in place beforehand? To make sure that that level of cohesion remains intact.

I imagine it can be quite easy for some teams within some companies to really feel the effect of what's going on at the moment. As you say, you've got this great relationship, in some companies, it will be a case of these relationships might break down because they're not seeing everybody every day, they're not in the office, what have you done or what's been the secret at Adobe that's helped you sustain those relationships and sustain that performance?

Mary Sheehan 22:05

Yeah, definitely. So I would go back to a few of the things I mentioned with the unstructured meetings during the day. But I also think our team has done a great job of having some virtual social events. So at least once a month, we'll get together and have a fun, happy hour. And sometimes we play a game - Scribbles, a game, it's one of my favorites, it's like a Pictionary and everyone is terrible at it so it just cracks us up.

So we spend the time to actually get together and socialize. We're all going, go go and it's hard to make the time for that, honestly, and I'm a mom, I have a 20-month-old son, it's hard to find the time with childcare and all of that. But I think it's such a worthwhile thing to just make sure you're connecting with people as human beings, and that you are able to make sure that you have those relationships.

I also got this great idea from Sima Kumar, who is on my show, she's the CMO of New Relic and it's to start off your team meetings with some good news. So for the first 10 minutes of every team meeting that we have once a week, I have everyone go around and do some good news. So either in their personal or professional life. And I think at first everyone hated it, and it can be awkward and sometimes people say, 'I didn't have anything good happen this week but I have a really hilariously disastrous story. Can I tell that?'

Anyways, it's kind of given us all a little bit of an insight into each other's lives in a way that I don't think you would get necessarily otherwise in a virtual environment. Another channel, if I'm sure most teams and most people listening to this have something like this at least but we use Slack and I would say about 90% of our PMM team Slack conversations are more fun and conversational.

Definitely, there are things on there that are more tactical, 'Hey, can you review this?' Or ' I have this headline' or 'can you come to support me at this meeting or stakeholder review' or something like that. A lot of it's sharing articles and having conversations about PMM topics or industry topics and then a lot of it is gifs about funny things that we're doing or baby pictures from those on the team that have kids.

I think some leaders may look at some of those things as frivolous or things that aren't meeting the bottom line. But frankly, this is a marathon, not a sprint, and I really enjoy it. I love coming to my virtual office and meeting with these people that I work with. I think having some time with them in a social way that you can really make sure you're connecting and seeing each other as human beings is really, really important to maintain this because we're all missing out on those serendipitous coffee chats, as I was talking about, and the fun work happy hours, and all of that stuff. We've had to make some changes to be able to have those moments still.

Those are a few from my grab bag that have worked well and I've enjoyed and I think have kept the team together and motivated and excited to be part of the team and connect with each other.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 25:32

Yeah, sounds great. I'll be stealing Scribble, I'm gonna suggest that to the PMA team, we can use that on our next social. So in terms of teams outside of marketing such as sales, product, operations, etc, which departments would you say that you interact with most at Adobe? And what's your relationship with them like?

Mary Sheehan 25:59

Within our organization, I work most closely with the product team, of course, and then probably close second is the sales and go-to-market side. Then the strategy and operations team, which also includes BD. All of these folks I'm working with on many projects, and probably on a daily basis, I'm getting to connect the dots with it. And actually, that's one of the things I love about product marketing is that you get to talk to so many people and you're working on so many different problems, I find it really fun to never have that same day in life as we were talking about.

And then at a bigger company, we're also lucky to have the resources of a broader demand Gen team, a broader product marketing team that meets regularly to discuss topics, I work with many counterparts for industry-level information and competitive Intel and different presentation and event-related topics. So I do need to think about things in the context of my stakeholders within my business unit, and then the broader Adobe as well.

So the list would be quite long and at the big company, especially working virtually, I haven't quite figured out everyone and who is who in the organization, but working through it. I think that it's been really fun to get to meet different people in different functions in that capacity, and then also get to share notes and connect with other product marketers in other business units and get to understand how they're doing things.

That's been something that's really been a delight for me at this company versus a smaller company, where you're often the only product marketer or you are a leader of a product marketer, and you're rolling up with other managers. So, I do like that aspect of it and just getting to build all those stakeholder relationships is always really fun for me.

One small story, I have a product marketing counterpoint in another closely related product, and I told him one of my OKRs this quarter, or this year rather, is to become his best friend. So building the stakeholder relationship. I set the bar really high and now we are working through how to do that and it's been a wonderful partnership so far.

Maybe you could use that too, OKRs becoming best friends and people on your stakeholder list. Everyone has their own style, but I'm trying to have fun at work and enjoy the relationships that I'm making, as you can tell from some of the things.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 29:38

I like that because ultimately you are working every single day for hours at a time. So if you can't have fun work, you're on a bit of hiding to nothing, so I think it's really important to set up those good relationships and it's so nice to see what is looking like a really good culture that you guys have. I like it, it's something that I wish everybody would do.

We've got a great culture here at PMA and that's something that I think transmits itself really well to the work that we do and I can see that that's something that you guys take seriously as well. That's always nice.

Mary Sheehan 30:22

Definitely yeah.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 30:23

So was there any point in your career when relationships with people in other departments have literally been perfect? And why would that be the case?

Mary Sheehan 30:38

Yeah, so I think that there have been various points in my career where I felt like the stakeholder relationships are perfect, at least with one division. I think that is when there is a give and take of the resources that you're sharing, the ideas that you have, and just really, especially thinking about it on the product management side, I think we're in a really good spot at Adobe and elsewhere in my career, I think that relationship has worked really well when you're very open and transparent with each other.

I think that product marketers suffer when the product management side says, "Hey, we have something here you go, go launch it go put some pretty slides together", it has to be a partnership from the beginning of the product birth, so to speak, when you're doing that research, doing that market validation. I think we have a great partnership with our product folks at Adobe and that's really great, it makes your job easier, and makes your job more fulfilling. I think that it's really just about having open communication and letting the teams in earlier.

For any product leaders out there or even product marketers to ask for this, get invited to the product management weekly meetings, see for specific product launches if your teams can go to their daily or thrice weekly stand-ups, their scrum planning. In the before times, as I'm calling it, I often encouraged my team members to go sit with the product team half of the time, go in the mornings, every morning, because you hear that office communication about features and the discussions that you might not otherwise hear in structured meetings.

So of course, that's hard now, so the equivalent of that today would be getting into the Slack groups that you're working on. I think it really comes down to being invited to the party, having a seat at the table early, and then making sure that you are having your eye open and great communication.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 32:57

Yeah, and I suppose a lot of it as well is just being proactive as opposed to reactive. Invest effort and invest time, as you say, get your hands dirty, really, it's like when you start a new job isn't it and the old adage of the easiest way to learn is just doing things, rather than waiting for things. So I totally see where you're coming from...

Mary Sheehan 33:32

Yeah and just to add on that many times in my career at the beginning, I have faced resistance from the product team, the sales team about letting product marketing in. And it's almost like I've done many case studies or shown how we could add value for one project or for one team. Then it's like the floodgates open and they're like, "Oh, you guys should be on every project and every product".

So sometimes, yes, getting your hands dirty but picking a strategic project or launch or something where you can really show them what PMM can do if you're not getting that invitation to be part of the process. Showing them what a true partnership can look like and how that value and ROI really outweighs the other way, I think can be a way to get in the door yourself if you're having problems with it.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 34:24

Yeah, sure. You've obviously worked with some great companies and you're at an internationally recognized company now. What would you say the top three skills are that have helped you get to where you are today?

Mary Sheehan 34:46

Wow, that's a great question. I would say that one is always being open to learning, staying really curious. I think that especially with product marketing, there's not a college course on this that I know of, you don't come out of university knowing all the skill sets so you have to kind of absorb on the job and then also through great resources that folks like PMA have put forward. So definitely staying open and curious. I would also say being more of a generalist has really helped me.

There's this great book called Range that talks about the difference between Tiger Woods and Roger Federer as one example. So Tiger Woods kind of grew up as a specialist, being drilled into the golf world since the age of 10 months, whereas Roger Federer was sort of this all-around athlete until he decided on tennis as a profession, I think, in his late teens, early 20s.

So I think being a generalist and not going super deep into one of the product marketing toolkit specialties has actually been really helpful in my career, because product marketing is a bit amorphous, and at different companies, it looks a little bit different, sometimes they can be a little bit more specialized, sometimes they can be a bit broader. So you need to be really adaptable. I think having that generalist outlook and being able to combine that with the learning aspect has been really great as well.

I think, also, not being afraid to try new things has been really helpful in my career. For those of you that have dabbled in growth marketing, and tried out different AB testing elements, and have really thought about new ways to approach your customers with messaging, I mean, all of those are really great, there's not a single formula that is going to work. Being really open to trying new ideas, whether it's new channels, new approaches, I think that has really helped me in my career too.

Really kind of adding to that toolkit all the time but those are three areas I think that have really helped me in my career overall and helped me keep going and be excited about this as a career path.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 37:15

Okay, awesome. We'll finish on two more questions. First of all, I was just wondering if you could outline what the process of introducing new products and features looks like at Adobe, and how that compares to previous places where you've worked?

Mary Sheehan 37:36

There's a lot of structure involved, which I think is really great. I think that that team has spent a lot of time thinking about how that structured product launch process works from A to Z, from the introduction of the idea, market validation, alpha, beta, rollout, post-launch, making sure that it's successful, tracking adoption, retention, and engagement, all of that.

There are teams for everything that can help you along the way and that's been really amazing. I think that the process is really, really well done and I think that we use a tiering process, as I have at many companies that help identify, 'this is the biggest launch we're gonna have at summit this year', our digital event that we have every year, this year in virtual, of course, we're going to go all out with that, have all the different resources. Or this is a tier-three launch which is very important to a certain customer segment, but the whole world won't hear about it.

So I think the structure has been really great to lean into here and something that I personally love. Whereas at sometimes smaller companies, you are creating the structure so you are creating that go-to-market plan, that checklist, how the process and timing works. So it has been nice to go somewhere where it's very dialed and there's support throughout the way. It's nice to have a bit of a machine behind you with a global company.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 39:12

To finish, it's been an awesome conversation, I've had such a nice time talking and seeing how your journey has unfolded. If there were any new or aspiring product marketers listening, what would be your advice for them?

Mary Sheehan 39:28

That's such a great question. I would say, first of all, take advantage of all the resources. I can't tell you enough how lucky you are to be a new product marketer right now versus when I was starting off and there was not product marketing and alliance, there was not Sharebird, there weren't all these wonderful podcasts. So take advantage of this. You're already doing the right thing listening to podcasts like this.

Talk to people. I think that Lawrence, you and I were talking about this before we hopped on the recording, but we have both learned so much just talking to other people through the podcast and through casual conversations that we're having with other product marketers. So making sure that you're connecting the dots, sharing ideas, networking with your fellow product marketers, people love that. Find your crew that you want to connect with.

Finally, build your toolkit, you might start off in one area of specialization of product marketing. That's awesome, that's a great way to get started. Competitive intelligence or launches or messaging, but make sure that you're always building and adding to that toolkit so you can eventually become that generalist product marketer or that full-stack product marketer, which is another term we can use for it.

But I would say just have fun along the way too this is a journey. I think it's all supposed to be something that you are having a great time doing and hopefully, this career brings you a lot of joy. So if it's not for you, it's not doing that, maybe try something else. Life is short.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 40:58

On that note, Mary, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, and all the very best with your respective podcast for series two.

Mary Sheehan 41:06

Thanks, Lawrence, it's been such a pleasure.

Lawrence Chapman - PMA 41:08

Thank you.