Thread by @hey_rick__

What do I actually want out of the Product Manager Operating System (PMOS)

Thinking out loud about #prodmgmt, #buildinpublic, solopreneurship, and more. ⬇️

I started the year doing two things:

1. Snowboarding 🏂
2. Exploring what's next professionally 👨🏼‍💻

I did a lot of #1, now I'm refocusing on #2.

While exploring new roles, I've had a growing desire to have a toolkit that I can take with me from job to job.

Every role is unique. There's no copy and paste option.

But that doesn't mean experience and tools can't be transferred.

I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

The Product Twitter community is super engaging and helpful, so I asked about it.

https://twitter.com/hey_rick__/status/1497058538153259010

Then wrote a thread on what my "Product Manager Operating System would include, and it took off.

https://twitter.com/hey_rick__/status/1498365404435075080

That was enough to spin up a gumroad product (a first for me) to see what sort of traction I'd get.

I'm not on the verge of being the next Cagan, and I posted it as free, but it's enough to do something.

heyrickj.gumroad.com/l/productsystem

The question I'm asking myself now - why? Why build this? What do I want to get out of it?

- Help existing and aspiring PMs
- Share and refine my own knowledge
- Better equip myself for my next role - whatever it is

There's a few different approaches I could take from here...

1. Indiehacker
2. Solopreneur
3. Bootstrapper

They're all similar but have differences in my eyes.

The Indiehacker approach

- Build something fast as possible
- See if there's traction with paying customers
- Learn and iterate from there

I like the speed and focus on quick learnings, but this approach can easily lead to a useless product. That's a bad outcome.

The solopreneur approach

- Create landing page with different pricing tiers
- Set up a drip campaign in Convertkit
- Offer discounts and market the hell out of it

This aligns with my growth and email marketing instincts, but focuses on a single sale and lacks longevity.

The bootstrapper approach

- Continue pursuing consulting opportunities
- Build digital products based on what you're doing
- Rinse and repeat

This makes sense if I want this to be the seeds of my full-time work. That's not the plan.

https://twitter.com/nathanbarry/status/1202243039986536454

My fear with all these approaches is that they don't actually provide value to people.

Digital products like a book, PDF, video, course, etc. can be insightful. But it's one and done.

If you don't actually apply what you've learned, and keep doing it, what's the point?

This is where spaced repetition is valuable.

Rather than a huge download of information at once, you get small nuggets of wisdom spread out over time.

In the long run, spaced repetition provides much more value than a short-term, focused sprint.

2-tiered approach

- Continue building PMOS
- Weekly(ish) newsletter on the foundations of product

First, I'll continue building PMOS .

All the templates, frameworks, and tools, plus WHY and WHEN to use.

This will be help you get started, whether you're a first product hire or building a full product org.

I'll release PMOS v1 this month and continue expanding on it over time.

First 50 people get FREE lifetime access to every iteration of PMOS 👇🏼

heyrickj.gumroad.com/l/productsystem

PMOS will come with a newsletter.

The why and when of one #prodmgmt #growth concept per week(ish).

Customer interviews, pre-mortems, metrics,anti-goals, and more 🤗

If you just want the newsletter, sign up here ➡️ rickjarrell.com

Most of all, I want to build something useful.

So if I'm wrong, not being help, or just kinda suck, let me have it.