Sell Your Vision Like a Postman PMM
Picture this for a moment. You're leading a product marketing initiative you genuinely believe in, but every direction you turn, someone else is fighting for the same limited resources, the same stakeholder attention, and the same tiny sliver of executive patience. Your inbox is drowning in meeting invites. Leadership wants numbers like, yesterday. Engineering has their own roadmap to protect, and sales is chasing their own quota. You know that deep down, if you don't sell your vision, your project is going to get cut, folded into something else, or starved of support before it ever has a chance to shine.
That's the reality for PMMs inside big organisations. The work isn't just about go-to-market strategy or launch plans. It's about winning the time and space to actually do it right. That's the secret we're unpacking today.
One of the most powerful ways to earn that buy-in is treating your internal initiative the same way you'd treat an external launch. Give it a brand, give it a story people can latch onto. When you do that, you make it easier for people to say yes, plus you buy yourself the freedom to do the best product marketing work of your life.
John McKiernan joins us as one of those product marketers whose career stories you couldn't make up if you tried. He's been head of product marketing at a startup that was later acquired by Atlassian, the very move that kicked off his Atlassian journey. He's worked 63 different jobs, including gossip writer and even Santa Claus at the mall where he insists he was paid better than the elves! He ran a custom songwriting business for seven years called Romance Outsourced that landed him as a breakfast TV guest. Professionally, he led the marketing launch for Jira Product Discovery, the fastest growing product in Atlassian's history.
Today he's a product marketing leader at Postman, continuing to shape how high-growth products find their audience. John's sharing exactly how he's mastered the art of internal buy-in using frameworks that simplify complexity, narratives that create emotional connection, and experimentation that builds credibility when everyone's fighting for the same limited resources.
Treat Your Internal Project Like a Public Launch
Here's John's first game-changing strategy: treat your internal project exactly like you'd treat a public product launch. Have you ever considered giving your initiatives an actual brand and story? Most PMMs present their projects as line items on spreadsheets or bullet points in decks. John transforms them into something people can emotionally connect with, making it infinitely easier for stakeholders to rally behind you. With a compelling narrative, your project isn't just another task competing for resources, it's a vision worth investing in.
The Race Car Growth Framework That Actually Works
John shared his Race Car Growth Framework, which brought clarity and focus to his initiatives at Atlassian when everything felt chaotic. Imagine your strategy as a race car where every component represents a marketing tactic: growth engines, turbo boosts, fuels, and lubricants. This analogy simplifies complex strategies and aligns tactics with objectives, giving executives a clear, comprehensive view of your vision without drowning them in details they don't have time to process.
It's not just about having the right plan; it's about how you present it. John learned early that diving deep into tactical details leads to blank stares and polite nods that mean absolutely nothing. Simplifying strategies through the race car framework helps stakeholders grasp the bigger picture quickly and effectively. Executives appreciate clarity and a bird's-eye view of how your tactics will achieve goals, not a 47-slide deck explaining every minor decision.
The Experimentation Mindset That Builds Credibility
Central to making the race car strategy work is genuine commitment to experimentation. John emphasized running targeted experiments to refine growth strategies, which ultimately builds trust and credibility with stakeholders who've been burned by overpromised initiatives before. A well-documented set of experiments doesn't just back up your plan; it establishes you as someone who makes informed decisions based on evidence rather than gut feelings and hope.
The Messaging Critique
We also dove into our messaging critique segment, analyzing Lovable, an AI-powered software development platform that builds full-stack applications from natural language prompts. While Lovable successfully shifts from listing features to presenting transformative journeys that resonate with users' deeper needs, John spotted an opportunity to strengthen their narrative by better aligning it with measurable outcomes that speak directly to stakeholders' KPIs. He suggested integrating clear evidence of success through customer testimonials or data-backed results that tie the narrative back to tangible business objectives. It's the difference between compelling storytelling that makes users feel something and strategic messaging that makes leadership open their wallets because they can see exactly how it contributes to the bottom line.
Why This Approach Separates Winners from Wishful Thinkers
Advancing within large organisations demands more than compelling data points. It demands storytelling that creates emotional connection and strategic frameworks that simplify complexity. John's insights prove that success hinges on blending strategic thinking with authentic communication that respects how busy everyone actually is. The PMMs who master this balance get resources, executive attention, and the ability to actually execute their vision instead of watching it die in prioritisation meetings.
The days of assuming a solid strategy document will speak for itself are long gone. Now, it's about crafting narratives that resonate, frameworks that clarify, and experiments that build credibility one win at a time.
LINKS:
Lenny’s Racecar Growth Framework
Lovable (messaging critique): https://lovable.dev/
Connect with John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mckiernan-1a6b2719/
Connect with Elle:
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[00:00:42] Elle: Picture this for a moment. You're leading a product marketing initiative that you really believe in, but every direction you turn, someone else is fighting for the same limited resources, the same stakeholder attention, and the same tiny sliver of executive patients. Your inbox is full of meeting invites.
Leadership wants numbers [00:01:00] like yesterday. Engineering has their own roadmap to protect, and sales is chasing their own quota. And you know that deep down, if you don't sell your vision, your project is going to get cut folded into something else, or starved of support before it ever has a chance to shine.
That's typically the reality for pmms inside big organizations. The work isn't just about go-to-market strategy or launch plans. It's about winning the time and space to actually do it right. And that's the secret we're unpacking today. One of the most powerful ways to earn that buy-in is to treat your internal initiative as the same way you would treat an external launch.
Give it a brand, give it a story people can latch onto. When you do that, you make it easier for people to say yes. Plus, you buy yourself the freedom to do the best product marketing work of your life. With that, it is my absolute pleasure to welcome John [00:02:00] McKiernan to the show. John is one of those product marketers whose career stories you could not make up if you tried.
He's been head of product marketing at a startup that was later required by Atlassian, the very move that kicked off his Atlassian journey. Actually, he's worked 63 different jobs. Including a gossip writer and even Santa Claus at the mall where he insists that he was paid better than the elves.
Wonder about that one? He even ran a custom songwriting business for seven years called Romance Outsourced, and that landed him as a zeal list celebrity on breakfast tv. And if that weren't enough. Uh, professionally, he went on to lead the marketing launch for Jira Product Discovery, the fastest growing product in Atlassian's history.
Today he's a product marketing leader at Postman, continuing to shape how high growth products find their Audience. John, it is amazing to have a [00:03:00] celebrity on the show. Welcome.
[00:03:02] John: thank you. Is that list celebrity, but I'll take it. Thanks for Having me.
[00:03:06] Elle: all right, so let's jump right in. I wanna start with the case study segment. So this is one of my favorite parts of the show because it's where we get to dive really deep into how you, as a product marketer took a super tough situation and turned it around. So today we're gonna share this incredible story about a framework that you've used to sell your vision and ultimately grow product adoption.
And I know you're currently at Postman and we, I definitely wanna talk about that and dig into that. But, first you applied this framework to Jira. And so that's really where I think this was born. And that's where I wanna start for this case study. Um, and then later I wanna dig into. and compare how you applied that same framework more recently at Postman.
Sound good?
[00:03:53] John: Sounds like a plan.
[00:03:54] Elle: Okay. So set the stage for us. What is Jira for any folks who may not [00:04:00] know and what was happening, uh, with Jira product Discovery when you first stepped in? as lead PMM.
[00:04:06] John: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Jira, I think, I think most people know Jira, but what many, many people don't know is there's. Three different JIRAs, uh, now anyway, so there's one in the ITSM space, then there's big Jira, which is what everybody sort of thinks of, project management tool. That was initially for developers.
And then there was the third one, JIRA product discovery, which didn't exist at the time. That's the product that, uh, I was asked to come in and, and help leads and take it from what was enclosed beta, I think at the time, all the way through to ga. So I'll give you a little bit of context about it. Um, at the time, and I think still Atlassian has like an accelerator where they would launch new products, or try to build new products and launch them.
Uh, not all were successful. In fact, very few as you'd expect from an accelerator. and at the time when I came across, um, the product was still in beta. expectations were pretty high. The product had been really beautifully built. Um, there was a product [00:05:00] team all based in Europe. Across France and Ukraine and, and Holland.
And, uh, it would been really, really beautifully built, but the product vision didn't really have a GTM vision to match it. And that was kind of, the challenge that was, that was facing us. It had eyes on it from everywhere. The, the co-CEOs, the, uh, the CMO, the, the head of the accelerator, everybody was really keen to see what was happening.
But the growth that kind of, kind of stalled, you know, it was still pretty early days. But, uh, it needed, it needed some sort of clear GTM vision as well as, you know, the, the actually growing the products. and if it didn't, the, the truth is, you know, any of these products could get, uh, closed down. They could just get folded completely, or they just become a feature in JRR Atlassian and all of the other products in the accelerator that were there at the same time as that's, that's what happened to them.
So we managed to escape. We got that velocity to actually become a real life product. and I suppose one other little piece of context as well that's important is that you, you know, yourself, Phil, from working in, in big enterprise, you, you [00:06:00] can't really have a moderate success. You know, it has to be on a path to like a, you know, a hundred million dollars of a RR within a few years.
Otherwise, you know, that attention and all of that engineering time is better spent on the main product.
[00:06:11] Elle: Yeah. I've absolutely had that experience where, if you have something that you are committed to working on, but you're not hitting the targets that have been set by leadership for that leadership team, you know, they have their targets that they're trying to commit to. Commit to, to, from their stakeholders.
So all of it kind of ladders up to that. And at the end of the day, it's time and resources spent on something. And when you're a high growth company startup, um, or if you're in any kind of accelerated growth phase, it's ruthless out there. And sometimes if you can't. Make it, then you're cut. So sounds like the pressure was on.
take us back to then, what action did you take and what action did the team take once you figured out that you [00:07:00] needed to make sure that the product didn't get cut? That it got the funding and resources and attention that it needed.
[00:07:06] John: Yeah, so this was a bit of a learning curve prior to Atlassian. I actually got to Atlassian, as you said, via an acquisition of a startup, and my whole life was startups. That was just where I got my energy, where I still got my energy and uh, I always thought that coming into a big enterprise, launching a product would be so much easier.
You know, you have all of these resources and you have all of this budget, but whew, I was naive and I was. Very wrong. You know, the, the truth is that it's something that we don't talk about a lot, but it's kind of obvious when you think about it. If, if it was easy to launch new products from enterprise, there would be no such thing as startups.
There'd be no such thing as m and as because it's hard. We stand on our own toes. There's, you know, Atlassian had 10, 12,000 people. You've got multiple cross-functional teams. There's 10 different products all competing for attention and energy and resources. So it took me a bit, when I went in, it took me a bit to realize that, [00:08:00] ah, okay, this isn't just a clear path where everybody's completely focused on driving this in the same direction.
I kind of have to carve out some space. I kind of have to carve out, like a brand, I suppose to wrap around, uh, the whole launch and sort of give us the protection that we needed to get it done.
[00:08:13] Elle: Yeah, and I guess like once you've realized you needed to build that brand, talk a little bit more about how you actually get buy-in across the business for something like this.
[00:08:26] John: Yeah,
so this, this is, you know, I'll sort of start as, as I often do with my mistakes. You know, the first thing I did when I went in was. Do what sort of any marketer would do. You sort of look at the problems and you talk to the customers. You come up with this pretty comprehensive GTM plan and you're like, okay, boom, I've got it.
I know exactly what we're gonna do. You bring it on tour, you're like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. And I. remember sort of sitting in one of the leadership meetings and, and sort of trying to talk through it. And you sort of have these like blank, you know that zoom screen where everybody just sort of giving you the blank. And you're like, please, please somebody just say something. [00:09:00] And really it, it wasn't that they didn't understand it, it was just that what I was trying to get across was quite a lot. And again, you gotta consider the audience. These are like C-suites are making decisions constantly. And all of these details that I was getting into were a bit too granular for one and two in isolation.
Some of the tactics could seem, could seem a bit strange. So to give you like a tangible example, uh, myself and the head of products were pretty aligned that. As well as sort of launching the product itself. We wanted it to be connected pretty tightly to the craft of product management. So Jira Product Discovery was built specifically for product managers.
Product management is a pretty low maturity craft. There's a lot of project managers who are just told by their companies, Hey, you're a product manager now they do like a YouTube course for for an hour, and then off they go. So we realized if we wanted to sort of grow, not just the product, but also the segment for product managers, we'd have to.
Uplevel the whole craft. And you know, when you're sort of, [00:10:00] you're building something that's in beta and you're talking about craft and community, you know, you kind of get the view from execs going, well, you know, what about top of the funnel? What about signups? What about paid ads? And so forth. And that's kind of what I was faced with.
So I walked away from that Zoom meeting, had a little cry, uh, and went for a walk, came back, sort of took my time. And then one of the newsletters that I.
subscribed to was Lenny's newsletter, which is one of the best, uh, high recommendation for anybody in
[00:10:29] Elle: I follow it and I love it.
[00:10:31] John: yeah. He's honestly, it just feels smart.
Oh, yeah. I could go all day talking about Lenny. And I, I, I read this article that he had posted about a race car growth framework and. At the top of the page, it is just this like pretty picture of a simple car, like an orange race car with like tags to the different parts of the car and different tactics that you could use for marketing.
And it, it just immediately resonated with me. I was like, that is such a simple way to get across what you're trying to say. Like to show your holistic vision [00:11:00] of what you're trying to do. You know, not just fill the top of the funnel, but to fix any issues that are there to sort of build out the crowd.
All of that stuff, to put it into one space. But I didn't actually use it at first because I thought this is, this is too simple. This is almost like something my, my kid would do, you know, like the drawing of a race car. I can put that in front of my CMO
[00:11:17] Elle: it's a little silly, right? Especially at some, at a place like Atlassian or like a big organization where you have these executives that are, it almost seems silly to, to show something like that.
[00:11:28] John: It does. Yeah. The first time I put it into a Loom video and shared it for like an async project update. I remember just like, it was a Friday afternoon and I just like poured a glass of wine and I was like, well, that might be my last day. So, uh, I'll just. I'll enjoy this glass of wine, but it really works.
I, I started to, uh, like take, take apart this race car and use it for my, for my marketing launch, and it helped me tell a story in a way that I just couldn't have done in any other way.
[00:11:57] Elle: I love that. Okay. And I can, I like that [00:12:00] you, walked us through that first attempt of building out that go-to-market strategy and the blank stares that you got on the Zoom call. I think many product marketers out there have been there. I have certainly been there. And recognizing the audience of executives.
And you are one of probably 15 to 20. Where they're seeing and hearing very similar presentations, pitches, what have you, and talk about putting yourself in their shoes and thinking about how they might interpret this and being too granular. So love the new approach and, um, shout out to, to Lenny and that framework.
but I have to ask what happened in the end. Sounds like you, yeah. Oh, you had the, okay, this might be my last day, but it took on.
[00:12:49] John: Yeah, well let, I'll take a step backwards first and sort of walk through what the actual race car growth framework is. It'll, it'll sort of help explain why it works. I'd recommend going to check [00:13:00] out the article for anybody who has the time. There's
[00:13:01] Elle: We will definitely link it in the show notes. Yeah.
[00:13:04] John: Dude, dude, there's like a simplified version, and then there's a com, like more comprehensive version.
And really it has like every single marketing tactic under the sun that you can use, which in itself is quite useful, but you can pick and choose what you need. So for me, what I was using was four different aspects of this. Framework, metaphor, brand, whatever you want to call it. First one was growth engine.
All right? And the growth engine is how do you get reliable, consistent, renewable source of signups. Something that you don't have to recreate the wheel every time. Something that you know, that you'll always have this steady flow of signups can be different in every company, different in every project.
And we'll sort of talk about it in a moment. Uh, what that was for me. Uh, the second thing was turbo boosts. and this, this is kind of a lot of the time, people who don't really understand marketing or maybe have worked with lesser marketers, this is what they think marketing do. It's like, okay, we've shipped a feature, go and write a blog or do some paid ads, and that's what marketing [00:14:00] does.
Or send a blast email. especially product marketing like it's, we do a bit more, we do a bit more than
[00:14:05] Elle: Oh my gosh. And then you have these mar leaders from other other partner segments and they're like, we need marketing. We need where the, where's the marketing? And they're, that's exactly what they're expecting. Blogs and ads.
[00:14:17] John: that's it. And again, but this is a really useful way. It's like, Yeah, they are valid tactics. You know, things like paid ads or events or whatever it might be. But they belong in a category, you know, if, if you're a good product manager, you're sort of looking at the holistic customer journey and turbo boost.
Are just one off things. They're just things that will work, but they take a lot of energy and it's not always gonna be the best path for you. The third part of the race car was the fuel. And this is whatever keeps the growth running long term. And for us, that was actually the craft and the practice of product management.
And then the last one was lubricants, which is a gross word, but really useful in this, uh, in this context. It's basically whatever friction is stopping the growth. And this is probably the most common mistake that we make, uh, as, as [00:15:00] marketers as businesses, is that we fill leaky bucket. You know, we're so obsessed with the top of the funnel.
We just keep getting people in there and then they churn out and putting all of these things into the growth. Uh, the race car growth framework allowed me to sort of put it in front of this audience of C-Suites and show them what we are trying to do and what we are trying to achieve, uh, with a longer term vision.
[00:15:21] Elle: Yeah, I love that. Um, and I wanna dig more into the race car framework itself, so I, and I think we'll do that once we get into the playbook part of this conversation. so here you've got the playbook, uh, or the race car framework that you've broken out and aligned to your vision. You've put it together in these loom videos.
You've got the buy-in, you go through execution. What happened in the end?
[00:15:45] John: So in the end, success you'll be, you'll be glad to know, uh, I, we, we survived. and like I, I, I put all the tactics into the race car growth framework. I updated every week. We used a tool, um, which is kinda like Twitter for work. You'd embed a Loom [00:16:00] video and it'd be like a four or five minute video every week.
Where you go through, you talk through how things are going, you would, show the different tactics that you have within each segment. And eventually you start to show the outcomes from each one, which is the most important thing. So it doesn't just come across as like a fluff, you know, you're actually doing things and you're achieving things.
And in the end?
we launched your product discovery. It became the fastest growing, product in Atlassian history, I think. And, yeah, it was, it was a great success.
[00:16:26] Elle: I love it. Yeah. So you didn't end up losing your job afterwards, wasn't your last day? Okay, so now let's say that I'm a PMM who needs to take a product that's stagnant, not growing, um, or I, I am, have a new product that's coming out. let's outline the steps that I would need to take that's mirroring everything that you did following that, uh, race car framework from start to finish.
What would step one be? How would I get started?
[00:16:58] John: Yeah. for sure. So [00:17:00] look, it's, we're talking about. Had a product launch here, but it works just as well for a feature launch, even for picking up stagnant growth, whatever it might be. Step one is simple and you know, there's, there may be listeners out there that going, this is a picture of a race car. This is very simple stuff.
That's the point. This is first principle stuff because it's a noisy world being a product marketer. It's a very, very noisy world and there's a lot of shiny things. There's a lot of expectations and just making sure that you've set your goal. And have that really clear, whatever tactic it is that you're working on, ladder it up to that goal.
I have a habit of just whatever page I'm working on. If it's like a, a strategy page or a scrap, whatever it is, like just the top of the page, I have a thing. What is the goal that I'm laddering up to? And if it doesn't serve that goal, gone kill it. So that's
[00:17:46] Elle: Okay.
What a good habit and obviously natural step. First step is to identify the goal or set the goal, and then what comes after that.
[00:17:55] John: Know thy audience. Um, I was just listening to your Nova, podcast [00:18:00] actually in the car this morning. And this is, I know this is a big topic of the conversation, but obsess over your audience. I mean, I was really lucky with Jira product discovery. It had a really clean ICP really clean, um, customer profile of product managers.
And I just read everything that. they read. I talked to three or four, uh, product managers a week, whether they were using the product or not. I.
deeply understood their problems and that raid the rest of my life so much easier.
[00:18:25] Elle: Yeah, so we talk a lot about as product marketers wearing the customer's shoes, and really empathizing with them. And I think it can be really easy for product marketers especially. Product marketers who've been in an industry for a long time to kind of rely on their gut instead of doing the homework, doing the effort, putting in the effort to talk to customers, interview customers.
okay, so once you align on customers, what's the next step? How do you, you know, kind of go into the next phase?
[00:18:57] John: Yeah, so this is maybe the most [00:19:00] important phase?
experiments is step three. so, you can put what you want into your marketing tactics and then you put it into your race car growth framework. You tell the story, that's awesome. But to actually make it scientific, to make it actually work, you gotta get into your sort of scientist mode.
let me give you sort of a, a pragmatic example from to your product discovery. When we were looking for our growth engine, so what would be our renewable source of signups? Um, I started doing a bunch of tests and I was like, okay, could it be SEO? I was like, it's a, I don't think we have the patience. No, there's not many startups that can sort of win in the SEO game.
Could it be sales? No. It's too cheap. What we realized was we knew that there was product managers already within Jira. They're working in there. We knew that they had issues in there and that they were trying to do a lot of their product, product management work in a tool that wasn't built for it or in spreadsheets.
And we knew that we could cross sell them from big Jira as it was called, into this new product that was specially built for them. But the early tests hadn't [00:20:00] really worked. You know, like email blasts were okay, you know, if the messaging resonated, they would sort of sign up. But not in huge droves in product nudges.
Kind of worked because, you know, it's, it's a fairly simple problem. Here's a, here's a tool. At the time it was free. Give it a try. But again, it wasn't something that was gonna work when it became a paid tool. So we had to really experiment around different surfaces in Jira, and we took like small percentages of the customer user base, and we would introduce nudges to the right person at the right time with the right messaging.
And what we wanted to get back from that was just a renewable source. And that's exactly what happened. So we, we started to figure this out. We had like a big, uh, confluence page or Google Docs where on the left hand side you had all of these different experiments that we would run on the right hand side.
It was the results. And this is the kind of thing that really does two things. One, it helps you build your personal brand because all marketers should be sort of deep business people and deeply within the product as well. But two, it gives you, um. I suppose the [00:21:00] air cover that you need, leadership can see that you're not just making these, you're not just throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks.
You're being really, really careful and picking and choosing what you're gonna do. So experiments probably the most important step in all this.
[00:21:12] Elle: Yeah. So on the experiments, how did you know which ones to run? And I'm sure all of that experimental phase probably took quite some time It's funny because it's like a race, race car analogy, but I'm picturing like, a real blueprint of a race car and you kind of standing there and pointing it at different parts of which, which areas are leaking and which ones are need repair.
Right. How did you go into diagnosing that? You needed to run an experiment on SEO, for example, like what were some triggers that you identified to do that?
[00:21:47] John: lots of different things. I'll give you two examples. So one is. Signing up to the product. Right. That's, I know it sounds simple and stupid again, but I sign up to my product in Postman. I do it once a week. Every Monday [00:22:00] I sign up and I go through the flow in geo product discovery. I signed up, as different personas and, you know, yeah.
So
[00:22:07] Elle: truly wearing the customer's shoes.
[00:22:09] John: Yeah, I was wearing, I was wearing their sneakers and their, their high heels and, and various different kinds, various different kinds of food. And what I realized was that if you're not an admin in Jira, you couldn't get access to the product easily. You had to request access. And then it was this really convoluted loop and we, when I sort of kept diving deeper and deeper and deeper into it, I realized that we were losing like a massive percentage of people who were putting their hands up and saying, let me in, let me in.
But we couldn't hear anybody knocking on the door. So that was one of the ways that we just experimented. We're like, okay, well what if we just made this easier? And that just opened the flood gates. the second is talking to the customer. So they would, uh, I, I would just talk to them like, tell me how, how do you do, like, you know, your product discovery at the moment, how do you choose which features to build?
And they show me these like Jira backlogs with 723 items on it. and I was like, wow, [00:23:00] okay. That's, that's painful. And. So it's like, okay, this is, this is the right time, this is the right person, this is the right time. When they're going through their backlog, if they have more than X amount of items and they're trying to go through, and it was usually at the end of a sprint as well when you dig into the data.
So I was like, okay, that's the best part first, the best time for us to reach them. So it's, yeah, it's just digging in. It is just understanding their problems.
[00:23:21] Elle: And you are really able to pinpoint to you as exactly you said the right message at the right time, you know, on the right channel, et cetera. You know what it sounds like, as you were explaining this investigation work that you did, you literally followed the customer journey. Everything from, you know, you mentioned SEO earlier in the conversation, right?
Like how they're discovering the product all the way through conversion. And through to adoption. That's such a healthy exercise and I think not a lot of pmms that I've. Meant anyway, if, if they know to do it, they don't know how to do it, they don't have the resources [00:24:00] to do it. which is why they should be doing the race car framework to get buy-in, to get the resources to do it.
but uh, my question for you is, was that intentional? Like did you actually map out that customer journey as part of preparation for the experiment or, or is that kind of just happy accident?
[00:24:20] John: No, it was, it was definitely intentional. Um, and I was quite lucky the, the head of products and myself, he was in as much into the. The marketing side of things as I was into the product side of things, and honestly, I think that's when the best partnerships happen with PM and PMM. Like when you just blur the lines, you know
like you have a shared brain, but each of you then focuses on your craft. It's like, okay, now I get it. I'm gonna go off and come up with creative ad ideas and he's gonna go off and actually implement some growth ideas. But you both need to be sort of looking at the same thing because like a customer can tell, you can tell when you use a consumer product or whatever it is, when a product is being built and then thrown over to marketing and [00:25:00] it's just inconsistent, it's painful.
[00:25:02] Elle: Yeah, completely agree. So, um, once you have all this great data from these experiments and this analysis and the customer conversations, what do you do with all of that information? What's the next step in the process?
[00:25:14] John: Yeah, so that's the race car. That's when you get to get your pretty pictures out. and you know, my, my recommendation when you go through is to have no more than say two or three tactics within each bucket. So one or two in the growth engine. Maybe two or three in the Turbo Boost and so forth, because it keeps it, again, it does two things.
It makes it easily digestible for that sort of C-suite audience and, and the rest of the people around the business. But two, it keeps you focused as well. Like how often have you, you know, been working l as well and you're sort of, I dunno, two a few days passed and you're like, hang on a minute. Why, why am I working on the landing
page for something else?
[00:25:49] Elle: the time.
[00:25:50] John: Oh, too often. So it really just keeps you focused. The goal at the top, you've got your race, car, everything ladders up, everything serves that.
[00:25:58] Elle: I love the healthy goal of the goal [00:26:00] at the top. I'm gonna steal that one. That's a good one. okay, so once you've built the race car framework, how do you make sure that the rest of the company actually gets behind it and then not just like, you know, kind of just nodding along 'cause they don't know what else to say.
[00:26:14] John: Yeah. well I was lucky in some ways. So Atlassian is an a distributed company. I think first, um, I'm in Australia despite the weird Irish accent. the team that I was managing And leadership were all in the states in various different places, and the product team were in Europe, so it was actually quite nicely set up.
We have, as I said earlier on, we have this, uh, had this product called Atlas, which you can do your updates every week and then out in bed and Loom video. And everybody would watch it. Um, it became a bit of a, a story, you know It was, it was became fun for me. I was like, okay, this week we focus completely on the growth engine and we ran these two experiments.
One was a disaster, one was a victory. We're gonna implement that one. Here's the outcome. And you just sort of bring people along. And then you say, next week what we're gonna do is focus on the turbo boost. We're gonna send an email [00:27:00] blast to certain segment. We'll let you know how it goes, and people would follow it.
Like some sort of a, uh, I don't know, a corporate
[00:27:06] Elle: Yeah.
[00:27:07] John: Yeah.
[00:27:08] Elle: Yeah. And you know what I've learned in my career, anytime I would, um, I didn't do it, obviously, I, because I had never come across the race car framework until I met you. Um, and I'm so glad that that happened. But, what I would do though is share. I, I've definitely run experiments and I would. Share that with my stakeholders.
Hey, I'm gonna run this experiment and then follow up, you know, sometime later to say, Hey, remember when I said we are gonna run this experiment? Here's what we learned and here's what we're gonna do with the information. I've found that when my stakeholders get excited about the experiment, sometimes before I'm ready to share the results, they proactively come and ask.
Hey, how did that thing go? Hey, what was the performance on that? and then the second thing that I was gonna mention to that, and I'm curious if this happened to you, when you do that follow up, when you do well, both, both steps. First [00:28:00] tell them, Hey, here's the experiment I'm gonna run and then do the follow up and say.
Here were the results. It builds a lot of trust with those stakeholders. So now in the future, you've earned credibility that you know what you're doing, you're strategic, you've got the goal at the top of the page, so they can count on you to do the best work needed. Um, but curious, you know, if you've had seen similar things with that earning trust and credibility with your internal stakeholders.
[00:28:29] John: Yeah.
YI think you hit the, the, the nail on the head there and, uh, you know, again, listening to your episode with, with Hattie, the PMM and sort of selling yourself internally, that's, that's kind of what happened. You know, I became known as the race car guy, uh, which is. Better than sort of big bushy eyebrow guy or whatever.
Um, and it, it did buy me a lot of freedom. It sort of, it bought me the freedom with this product and once I'd sort of finished the project and was looking for my next challenge, it made it much easier. I was like, okay, I have kind of the freedom to, to go around and pick and choose this. [00:29:00] So you know, for the product itself, I think we got a lot more patience than maybe the other products in the accelerator did.
Obviously you need to have a beautiful product, something that people love, but there's a lot more to it. I've seen great products fold that I knew could have a future if they'd just given a bit more time and if they had a bit more vision.
[00:29:15] Elle: Yeah. Got it. Okay. So once you have all that buy-in from leadership and stakeholders, what comes next? If you mentioned, you know, you had these frequent, um, you know, updates that you would send out, is there more to the story here?
[00:29:32] John: No, that was pretty much it. I mean, the rice car, it serves you as long as you need it. And for me it was probably about three or four months, because I think it took maybe about a year from start to end to sort of say, okay, we have successfully launched the product. The growth is fantastic. Uh, the churn is low, the CS SAT's really high, so we used it as a, as a vehicle, pun intended.
Um, oh God. You can delete that one. [00:30:00] Um.
[00:30:00] Elle: I'm not keeping it.
[00:30:02] John: My kids will kill me. and you know, we, we served it for as long as it needed to do, but once it was done, that was it. There wasn't much more needed. Leadership, just, they trust you. They, they, they trusted where we were going. They knew that we had a great product. They knew that we had great distribution.
They knew that we had an aligned vision and they left us alone. They left us to execute on it. And anytime that we needed help, whether it was sort of budget or people and resources, we were much more likely to get it.
We grew the team pretty quickly.
[00:30:27] Elle: That's great. And I have a question about the videos that you would send out though. Uh, weekly videos, I think you said they were weekly anyway, um, however often you would send them out. and this may be unique to the situation that you were in, but how did you structure those updates? And did you have any call to action for the stakeholders who received the updates?
And I'm asking because. I have been in situations where I'm updating stakeholders. I'm sure lots of pmms have felt this in various organizations. I send an [00:31:00] email or an update. I have never sent a video, so maybe that's something I could try, but I've sent a written update and usually I'll get a response.
Sometimes I get crickets. Like no response. Leaders will usually respond senior leaders, but if I'm trying to speak to maybe like a mid middle manager, you know, director level person, sometimes they don't respond. So what would you do if they didn't respond? Sorry, that was a lot of questions, but let let me know what you think and what your thoughts are.
[00:31:28] John: no to be, to be honest. In some ways no response was a good thing. You know, you'd get in, in the Loom videos, you'd get like a thumbs up or like a quick comment from. Yeah. like I, that's, you know, smiley face. I was pretty informal. with all my videos, I would crack the same terrible jokes that I'm doing now.
I rarely had a CTA if we needed something we would just directly ask. But what I would do, you know, like, like any brand, it's a bit of repetition involved. So, for example, I might say, Hey, this week we're working on. Uh, we're working on this, this part of the, the Turbo Boost or [00:32:00] whatever. we can't work on this one because we only have a team.
It was just me and one other guy on the team at the, at that time. So it was like, you know, if we had more people, uh, then we could do more. And it was a nice way to just sort of keep on showing that momentum, the product is growing, but hey, we need some more people to support us as well. So I kind of use it as a, as a way to sort of build, um, I don't know, a bit of noise around how we needed more support, more budget, and um,
[00:32:23] Elle: Yeah.
[00:32:23] John: we ever had an ask, we would just ask directly.
[00:32:25] Elle: Yeah. Okay. And one more super tactical follow up question. When you were doing like the, maybe like the beginning of the video, this is what I'm imagining you're saying, okay, today we're working on, you know, gonna tell you about the turbo boost, da da da dah. Do you have to reeducate on what that means, or were they was everyone, you know, so plugged in that they know exactly what it means when you say Turbo boost because they've been following along for, you know, however many weeks.
[00:32:51] John: a great question. Yeah,
so I I would, I did it so long in Atlassian after a while and it was, you know, the same sort of audience of, of 40 leaders mostly, [00:33:00] or, or peers, um, that I didn't need to, but generally it is a good tip to do. But what I, you know, after the first few times of sharing it, I remember the CMO sort of re like.
Commenting on it to the head of accelerators saying, I think we should codify this. This is something that we should do for all product
launches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was nice. It's always, it's always, uh, reassuring on, on those Friday afternoons when you get the comments. Um, and that, that's, that's quite, you know, it's quite nice they're saying like, this is, you can never predict what the growth of a product is gonna be, but you could certainly put tactics into your growth engine and then have a, a good, um, knowledge like this base of all of these experiments that we've run and the growth and it's just a really nice way to sort of build something that. can be done.
again.
[00:33:43] Elle: Yeah. Right. Okay. So once you get the race car in motion, just to go with that, I'm just piling on the punts. When are you considered done? You know, at what point do you look back and say, all right, our work here is [00:34:00] finished.
[00:34:00] John: Yeah, look, technically the launch, you know, we got to ga uh, the growth even before then, before we had even put pricing and packaging in was, was fantastic. It got better again. Um, but it reminds me that this is something I learned years ago. It's that like a Napoleon quote of all people where it says, um, I.
can't remember what it is, but, uh, something like the most dangerous, the most dangerous moment comes at victory.
And it's so true. Like we had launched it and in some ways we were kind of victims of our own success. It had grown so dramatically and so quickly, and it had gotten traction from enterprises and really what we had done was built this really. Streamlined PLG motion and the minute that launch came was like, okay, we really need to catch up now and build a sales motion around this and sort of start appealing to, to enterprises as well.
So that's kind of when the race car growth framework had served its purpose and it was time to move into a the next phase.
[00:34:57] Elle: I love that. Okay, well, real quick [00:35:00] follow up question to that. You mentioned that you had to build a sales motion to handle the enormous, tremendous amount of interest you had. Could you not apply the race car framework also to like, like create a new one or a new story or whatever it new strategy? Using the race car framework, could, would it, could it still apply or is the race car framework really only for like product related goals, product launches, et cetera?
[00:35:32] John: Yeah.
that's a good question. I never, I never really tried. That's the truth of it when it came to the sales side. I, I'll, you know, to be, to be blunt, I'm a, I'm a PLG guy through and through the sales side is, is less interesting to me. I, I always try to delegate it. But, uh, I think it could probably work, but I feel like it works better for PLG because it's just a bit more complex.
There's a lot of sort of nuances when it comes to it, and I think it's a good way to wrap it all up.
[00:35:57] Elle: Got it. Helpful. Well, either way, [00:36:00] I am genuinely excited to try this out for myself, so I might hit you up for some tips as I'm deploying it. Um, okay. So I wanna fast forward now in your career. So you're at Postman now. Really quickly, um, tell us what is Postman for anyone who doesn't know, and hopefully I'm saying it right.
Um, and then more importantly, how did you apply that same framework in your current role?
[00:36:24] John: Yeah, for sure Postman. Awesome company. Uh, a quick pitch as well. We're hiring, including product marketing, so if anybody's interested in hearing these jokes daily, come on, come on board.
Um. Uh, it's Postman's an API collaboration platform. So basically everything across the entire API lifecycle design, documentation, testing, and so on.
Uh, I've been over here at Postman for just about a year now, which is, which is unbelievable. and one of the first projects that I had going in there, which was kind of a nice way to dip my toes in the water was Postman templates. and to give a little bit of context here as well, [00:37:00] uh. You know, there's a, a sort of misperception with Postman that it's just a basic testing tool when it actually takes care of the whole life cycle.
And part of the fun of the job is changing minds about that bit by bit templates, really effective way to do that, um, to sort of say, Hey, backend devs, you can use the following 10 templates to do your design or your mocks, whatever it might be. And it was a similar situation, okay? It wasn't as high stakes and it wasn't CEOs.
It wasn't like a hundred million dollar a RR sort of thing. But it was still something that I wanted to do in the right way. And, um, I could have just, you know, done the usual, done an email blast or, put paid ads and be super targeted towards all these personas. But again, we wanted to build a long-term vision.
We wanted to find a growth engine so that once, you know, attention moved on to another project, we had this reliable source of traffic, reliable source of signups going to templates. So really it used it in the exact same way. Um, I made a few changes to it because. Um, there was parts that were more relevant, but again, we identified the [00:38:00] growth engine, which in our case was closer to SEO because we had so many, sort of, so much share of voice in the market.
Uh, we identified the turbo boosts. We identified pretty similar friction in the, in the signup flow where people weren't getting in as quickly as we could have had. So very, very similar. the only difference really was that it was a shorter, shorter time need and maybe did about, uh, three weeks of race car growth framework, just helping to build that vision and give that patience.
[00:38:24] Elle: Oh wow. Okay. So you mentioned a couple of, um, differences already, but is there anything maybe more specific, um, or not more specific, but anything that you might call out as you were building or applying that race car framework between Postman and Jira, um, and just anything you'd call out that pmms should look out for if they're trying to apply this framework in their roles that, you know, maybe surprised you as you were going about it the second time in a totally new environment.
[00:38:53] John: no, I mean, I think the best advice I can give is to treat it like a, a pick and mix, uh, shop. I don't know [00:39:00] if you have that in America. It's like where you go and you pick your own sweetss, put them into a bag and then
[00:39:04] Elle: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[00:39:05] John: I thought we were the only ones. Um, it's not like there's a lot to it, so you don't need it.
There's all of these different tactics and depending on the company you're in, the project, the product, the feature, it's gonna be different things that you choose. So the first thing is just make sure you sort of. You know, don't do everything. Keep it small. And the second thing is, um, have a bit of fun with it.
You know, it's like for, for whatever reason, when we get into the B2B world in particular things, you know, you start getting very, like sitting upright and getting very formal and you get a bit afraid to use things like metaphors and frameworks and storytelling. But honestly, in the era that we're entering, uh, the, the great AI era, these soft skills are more important than ever.
Um, and that ability to bring people along for the ride, that's something that's only gonna need to be improved over the years.
[00:39:51] Elle: Yeah, I completely agree. And while we're on the subject of ai, question around how you applied the framework [00:40:00] with AI tools. I guess like if you, did you do that at Postman? Did you do it at Jira? Or if you didn't, why?
[00:40:08] John: First of all, I can't believe we got 40 minutes into A-A-P-M-M conversation with that ai.
[00:40:13] Elle: Proof that it's not the focus of every single conversation.
[00:40:19] John: Um, yeah, to be honest, I'm, I'm gonna be a bit contrarian with this one. Um, because if I could go back in time and AI wasn't really, in fact, I don't think chat PT had even been launched at that point. I wouldn't have used anything. and it's for two reasons. I, I think. One, and I've, I've caught myself doing this recently, being a bit too dependent and not doing enough thinking, and I'm, see, I've seen some stats recently that's proven this out.
People have stopped thinking, they're just leaning way too heavily on ai. And it's, it's, it'd be, it's like the equivalent of going to the gym and watching people work out while you just drink. Uh,
[00:40:55] Elle: Ew.
[00:40:56] John: yeah.
[00:40:56] Elle: Oh my. I love that analogy, but also [00:41:00] so hate it.
[00:41:01] John: It's creepy. Yeah, that's, that's my.
[00:41:04] Elle: Which is ai. AI is creepy.
[00:41:07] John: AI is creepy. It is, and you need to do the reps. You know, you just, you need to go in and I needed to just use those, you know, those few brain calories that I.
have to really think through the problem and work through the problem. AI can't talk to customers. For you, it can take notes for you, but it misses the nuances.
It misses the look in their eyes. It can't go through and sign up for the product for you and do all of this stuff for you. It can't tell a story. It can't make jokes. It can't connect you to the other humans around the business. So I think AI, for me, comes in a little later in the game. It can augment what you've built.
It can augment the foundational stuff, but get the first principles right first. Then bring ai and don't let it do too much for you too early.
[00:41:45] Elle: Yeah, another helpful reminder that it's okay. To not use AI when everyone else is telling you to use ai.
[00:41:54] John: Yeah.
[00:41:55] Elle: Um, okay. So last question for you, and you kind of addressed [00:42:00] a little bit of this already when I asked you the question about like applying the framework in a new, in a new environment, but if you had one piece of advice to give a product marketer who is, you know, trying to uplevel their product growth, what would it be?
[00:42:17] John: Stop sprinting for a minute. And really take the time to know the product better than anybody else in the business. Learn it. Do the courses, talk to solution engineers. Talk to anybody. You can know it so, so, so deeply, um, that you're just unstoppable. Couple that with knowing your customer and talking to them on a regular basis.
And the rest is just fun. The rest is just like, it's incredible. It's like a silver bullet. The customers tell you. Exactly what to say. Their messaging is almost what exactly what you can put on landing pages in webinars and everything else. Um, so that's probably what I say. Know the product and know the customer better than anybody.
You'll be unstoppable.
[00:42:56] Elle: Isn't our job as product marketers. So fun. We get to [00:43:00] just talk to people and then basically tell their stories
as part of our job. It's amazing.
[00:43:06] John: yeah. I love it.
[00:43:07] Elle: Alright, well thank you so much for, um, sharing that deep case study with us and the race car framework. So excited to try it out myself. I wanna switch gears a little bit and jump into the second segment of our show.
This is the messaging critique, and this is where we as product marketing experts get to analyze real world messaging. And the fun part is, John is my guest. You get to pick the company that we critique. before we get started, just some quick ground rules for you and anyone who's new to this segment of the show.
So you're gonna reveal the company we're gonna critique, and then we're gonna talk about three things. First, what you're loving about the product or the messaging itself and you know what's working really well. And then second, something you wish the PMM would've done differently or considered differently in creating the messaging.
And then lastly, we will iterate on what's there and do a quick, fun brainstorm. for the, those pmms out [00:44:00] there, uh, for that company and of how they can take it to the next level. Ready to jump in. Okay. Okay. So what is the company that we are analyzing today?
[00:44:10] John: I'm gonna sound like a hypocrite here after my AI speech, but I'm going with.
[00:44:15] Elle: I, I love it. Um, okay, so lovable. I am pulling up the website. There's multiple lovable websites out there, so I think most people know what lovable is. But if you guys wanna follow along, make sure you're doing the right one. It's L-O-V-A-B-L-E de V. Is that the right one, John?
[00:44:36] John: That's the one.
[00:44:38] Elle: Okay. So give us a quick summary for anyone who maybe knew what is lovable who is it for?
[00:44:45] John: So, um, I am actually a hardcore AI user just at the right time and. Lovable is the fastest growing software startup ever, which is quite incredible.
I think it's made a hundred million a RR within its first year, which is [00:45:00] mind blowing. It's a AI based website creator, so you can build basically anything, websites, landing pages, apps, and so on from scratch.
You just need to use prompts. You don't need to know how to code. it's kind of, I suppose, one of the main tools that have birthed this phrase of, uh, vibe coding. Um, so you don't need to know how to code, but it's certainly helpful if you can.
[00:45:19] Elle: Right. Okay. And as you, started to analyze lovable messaging, what really stood out for you?
[00:45:28] John: so I, I was, yeah. I love this segment in your podcast, and I remember I was listening to a few of your early episodes and I, and going through this. Yeah, it's, it's super fun. I.
love to do it. I just hope nobody ever does my page is the only thing. Uh, like what, what, what's great is lovable audience that they're going after is the 99% of the world that can't code or don't code everybody. Right. Uh, that, yeah, that, That's me.
for sure. And can, I can imagine sort of sitting down, you're like, okay, so [00:46:00] we can do anything for everyone. And you can imagine what a bad team could do to a landing page with that. You know, just like a very vanilla B2B busy page with just stuff
[00:46:13] Elle: Because we don't, I don't know best practices on any every single little thing that I wanna build. So if I were gonna go build a website, I'm not an expert on building websites. I have an opinion, but I'm probably gonna miss some best practices 'cause that's not my core competency.
[00:46:29] John: Yes. Yes, exactly right. And I,
I think despite the, the fact that they could do anything, it's such a simple landing page. It, it's like, it's like when Google came in and replaced Yahoo, well, not replaced, sorry, Yahoo. No offense. And they, you know, Yahoo had these crazy busy page, and then Google was just like, ask.
So simple and lovable have done the same here. And that, that's one of the things I love. Just so simple. They have like the suggested prompts scrolling across the screen and the [00:47:00] H two in particular is really specific. You can tell that it probably wasn't written by a marketer 'cause it just says what it does.
It says create apps and websites by chatting with ai. I just love the simplicity and the specificity. and then I think what makes lovable and why I chose this one in particular. Is I I. But we're moving from a world where B2B in particular, it's like, okay, what can I do with your product? And we're moving to a world where it's, what can this product do for me?
You know, we have agents that go in and they can actually do things for you. Same and postman, things that you used to have to do manually. Now the agent can just go in, do your tests, do your documentation, and I think lovable are the ones sort of leading that. And the messaging all leans quite heavily into that.
It's like, you know, ask not what we can do for you, but what we can do together. I love that.
[00:47:48] Elle: I completely agree. And what a good observation. I never thought about it like that, but I think you're spot on with that, um, with that observation. So something else that I just really [00:48:00] resonates with me, clearly I'm part of the target audience 'cause I'm loving what I'm seeing. I like that they are leaning into the human nature of wanting to create, I mean all, whether you say you're creative or not, like.
We all love creating things. We create spreadsheets, we create stories, we create dinners, meals like we love creating. So, I like that they're like leaning into that part of human nature. It makes something so technical, like an AI tool that can literally build a website. It makes it feel a little bit more, approachable, if that makes sense.
So, yeah, it really resonates with me. Uh, okay. So what's something that you think the pmms should have considered differently?
[00:48:47] John: I think so the one thing that you can suffer from looking at this is that blank canvas problem. and I think they've answered that to a degree with the sort of scrolling prompts saying, you know, ask me to build a landing page aspect. [00:49:00] Beneath that, they have the community, um, which is great. You could sort of take other people's projects and remix them yourself, which is.
Something we've seen in, uh, in other products like notion, it works really well. I think maybe what's missing for me, uh, two things is, you know, they aren't the only horse in this race. There's other products that are pretty close, like Bolt, and I'd kind of wanna see a little bit of fomo, like, this is the fastest growing software over, why should I choose this one over another?
Um, I think that's, that's one thing that would really help. I think that, and I believe that this website itself was built with lovable just by prompts. I feel like that would be just like a fun little thing to have in a corner built with lovable. So you're like, oh, Jesus, it's actually like a, you know, a proper enterprise tool.
Something I can use for work. and maybe. it's hard. I, I think, I think the third thing is just how does it work? You know, you can go in and you can do it yourself, but I think just a quick video or like a, a product walkthrough or even just a watch demo or something like that would really benefit because [00:50:00] even though this is a no code thing, I still reckon from talking to a few friends, they're like, Yeah, seen it, but I haven't really made the jump yet.
And I reckon a little nudge just to show how it works. How you just prompt and then just prompt again and prompt again and improve. Um, that will, that's magic. Because when I first did it and I got my eureka moment when I built like a, I built like a netball landing page for my daughter to show her all the fixtures from her.
It's, and when we did it together, it took 12 minutes. so I, I become an evangelist. I go around telling everybody, and the more people do that, the faster growth will be.
[00:50:31] Elle: Yeah, so you, you hit on something that I don't see in, at least in their homepage. And listen, I'm not like, I, as I already said, I'm not like a web designer, web builder, and we're not here to critique, you know, the website on its own. But I think you hit on something that would speak to the persona and that that's like the time that you can do as to your point.
What can you do for me and in what timeframe can you do it? [00:51:00] It's one thing to be able to completely outsource, you know, building a website that I obviously cannot do. But it's another thing if you can also do that in like 15 minutes. I have no idea how long it actually takes. Maybe it takes an hour, maybe it takes two.
I've no idea. But, 'cause I've never done that with lovable. But to give an idea of how long. Some of these things or actions might take, um, to solve some of that, you know, time to market, you know, issue or, you know, I, that I can imagine be part of it for some of this. And I think that might help with some of the fomo that, you know, the fastest growing, right?
Like first to do X, um.
[00:51:36] John: Yeah.
[00:51:36] Elle: Yeah, I really like that part. Okay. So you mentioned a couple of ideas. How would you take it to the next level or what, you know, what are some creative ideas that you have for the lovable marketing team?
[00:51:49] John: So well this, this is, uh, yeah. The funny thing is they don't have a marketing team?
I know that as well. I, I follow, I follow 'em pretty closely. They
[00:51:56] Elle: Wow. I'm pretty impressed. I'm pretty impressed. [00:52:00] This is pretty, this is pretty good for not having a marketing team. Well
[00:52:03] John: Yeah,
[00:52:04] Elle: I like it.
[00:52:05] John: I think, I think they just hired their, at their first, their first marketing as, as far as I know. But, um, there there's not that much.
It's, you know, a lot of the time the magic comes from subtraction, not addition. And there, there are certainly things that would change, but they're relatively minor. Rather, I, I would get outside into the real world and, um. I think they have an opportunity to do things very differently. So let's say for example, every other product in the world has a, a conference where folks go and they listen to keynotes and whatever.
I feel like they have an opportunity to do something different. Um, like let's say instead of a conference, they have a world cup of builders. Um, people fly in. There's two days where everybody can team up and they can build things together. And they can put them into the real world. You can sort of go through having a voting thing.
It can become like a worldwide fun, uh, event. You can get to see which one of these products, like maybe the next year you have the [00:53:00] conference, you see which, which of those ideas that were built actually made money and which one made the most. It could become like this super fun moment, kinda like a Spotify rap vibe where you, uh, really get to see really cool things being built by the likes of you and me who've always needed technical co-founders to do so.
So I think there's a real for them just to have a marketing moment every year.
[00:53:19] Elle: Yeah. Leaning into the community that they're starting to build.
[00:53:23] John: Yeah. Big time.
[00:53:24] Elle: I totally agree with that. And while I do really appreciate the community and them showcasing the community on the homepage, I almost feel like it, it kind of, it, it makes it more confusing 'cause I'm like, wait a minute, what are these things?
so it maybe just reorienting some things to make that, uh, you know, storytelling a little bit easier. And I love that idea of trying something different and going bold. And that really aligns to the moment that we're in. Um, in this, in, in this AI world that we're living in. Um, so fun. Well, well [00:54:00] done, lovable, considering you, at least to our knowledge.
Don't have a marketing team yet, or you're building one. So it's pretty good stuff. I'm, I'm pretty impressed so far and we've got some ideas for you. So check it out. Let us know what you think. Okay. So John, one thing that I always like to make space for on the podcast is a moment of gratitude, because of course, in product marketing, none of us get here alone.
We're always copying each other and building on each other and iterating along the way. Um, so before we wrap up, I just wanna say a heartfelt. Thank you so much. I know there's so much time that goes into preparing these episodes and, um, you have a, you know, busy life and I really appreciate you taking the time to do that.
And the product marketing community is very grateful. So thank you. I appreciate all of that. Um, and now I wanna turn it over to you would love to hear some shout outs for some pmms who have helped shape you and, um, you know, the role that you've had and been able to be in today.
[00:54:59] John: [00:55:00] Yeah.
the, the ones you can blame for shaping me. Um, well, well first of all, I'll spin it back to you. I wanna say thank you to you for having me on. This has been fun, but you're also doing a great service. I feel like we don't have enough, sort of, a good, good podcast, good newsletters and product marketing we do for almost every other craft, and I feel like we could do with a lot more of it.
So. Thank you. and there's three other people that'd love to, uh, think we'll have the chance. One is my old boss in Atlassian, Claire Drummond. She's, I remember sort of starting and I was, you know, scrappy startup guy. And I remember just the first meeting just shouting ideas at her. I was like, why do we do this?
Why do we do this? And instead of her just freaking out and, you know, saying, okay, chill out, dude. She sort of managed to professionalize me and make me work in an enterprise place. And I, I sort of have a lot to thank for her. Um, second is my, my current boss, Justine, um, who's the head of marketing and postman.
Um, she's, I think, former CMO, uh, used to refer to her as someone who leads with a, an iron fist and a velvet glove. And I feel like that's a perfect description of [00:56:00] her. Um, so if you are thinking about applying for a Postman role, you'd be working under her. She's fantastic. Uh, and the third, um, is actually one of my, uh, colleagues at the moment.
Uh, Eliza, she runs a company called Launch Apac over here. So, uh, American companies that want to launch in APAC without actually building out a team, she takes care of. Everything from events and so on. And she's kind of like my work buddy here and she keeps me sane, she keeps me smiling, um, and I just wanna give a big thanks to her as well.
[00:56:27] Elle: I love that, you know, there's really nothing, not nothing, but there's not much to co to that compares to having really amazing partners and mentors and leaders that you get to work with. It really does make all the difference in terms of the quality and motivation. So,
[00:56:47] John: It does.
[00:56:47] Elle: so glad that you have that.
[00:56:48] John: Happy pm m is a good pm m
[00:56:50] Elle: That's right.
And my last question for you, I promise. Um, where is it best for our audience to get access to your, uh, expertise? Is it best for [00:57:00] everyone to find you on LinkedIn?
[00:57:01] John: yes, LinkedIn is probably the best place to go, so have a look for me there.
[00:57:05] Elle: Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, John. This was really fun. And thank you PMM listeners for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take on the next step in your own journey.
