Thread by @onejasonknight

It's my podcast's birthday! 1 year ago I pressed Publish on @podbeancom for the first time. 77 episodes and 20K downloads later, phew! I've met so many great people, had so many great conversations. Thanks to all who have listened or taken part!

A few reflections 🧵

Starting a podcast was not a natural thing for me to do. I hate how I sound, and I don't think I ever fully recovered from a bout of Bell's Palsy. But I wanted to accomplish a few things and it seemed like, in true #prodmgmt fashion, I should test & learn

1. I wanted to learn from other product managers. Product management can be a lonely profession and you can get stuck in your own head sometimes. My job wasn't going wonderfully at the time (have since switched) and I wanted to connect with other product managers & leaders

2. I wanted to help people share their stories. After all, if I'm feeling like this, other people are feeling like this. I wanted to give your everyday practitioner a voice & a platform to share their experiences, and refine their own messaging in a low-stakes way

3. I wanted to help the product management community. There's no one way into product management, everyone's experience is different. As a profession we're riddled with imposter syndrome. I wanted to inspire other product managers & leaders and let them know they're not alone

Of course, saying all that, it's probably pretty odd that my 1st episode was about Bitcoin, and I'll confess I took advantage of my long-standing friendship with author @davidgerard. We tackled Bitcoin from a product perspective, kind of 😊

After that I interviewed a variety of people in a variety of different types of companies and started to build credibility. These early conversations helped me find my own voice & build a house style for the podcast. And I met some really great people!

As for that house style, I didn't want to be another @productschool or @mastersofscale - I wanted to be cheeky, irreverent, and if I may be so bold, a bit more British about it (the cheeky British, not the racist British that we've become)

I was actually originally inspired by @guardianaudio's Football Weekly - people chatting about serious issues in a relaxed, conversational setting, poking fun at each other but still informative. I don't think my style is actually anything like theirs, but it's where I started

Over the first few months download figures rose slowly but it was difficult to get mega traction (& I'd argue I still haven't). I'm not @MindtheProduct or @productschool after all. But tehre was a definite change after I got the confidence to start asking big names onto the show

Starting with people like @MAA1 and @simplybastow I started to realise that people of any standing in the community are more than prepared to share an hour of their time to chat about things they're passionate about, especially if they've just released a book 🤣

There was kind of a double tipping point, after which everything got more popular. That was when a friend introduced me to @jackiebo, and another guest forgot @cagan's name when they were talking about his book which led me to cheekily ask him for an interview. He accepted!

Both of these inspirational product leaders had recently released books and were glad to spend some time talking about them. This is despite Marty not getting the calendar invite, being unaware that we had an interview scheduled, and then just doing it anyway

Both of their episodes are amongst the top downloads for the podcast. And after interviewing them I lost all fear of asking anyone for an interview again 😎 Average numbers went up after that, and that's continued to this day as more people find me.

In a way I feel a little bad for some of my earlier guests, who were with me at the start, had some fantastic experiences to share but not everyone goes back to check them out and their numbers remain lower than they should. Maybe I'll get them back for round 2!

I've spoken to too many great people over the last year to call them all out, but I have to give a special mention to @aprildunford who was insightful, great fun and someone I had heard on other podcasts and couldn't believe was getting to ask her questions myself

To all of the people who have been interviewed, THANK YOU for spending your time and I hope you got something out of it. For those of you who have listened, well, THANK YOU too! I hope you learned something from at least one of my fantastic guests.

What's next? More interviews! I've got some great guests lined up and if you're releasing a product-related book I'll doubtless be appearing in your mentions soon.

In the meantime, why not check out some episodes, or get a product-aligned friend to check out the podcast! I know I'm biased, but I actually believe the podcast is as good as any other product podcast out there (& that's a really high bar!).

oneknightinproduct.com

#prodmgmt