Saagar Bains is a fractional product leader and product advisor who started out digitally transforming his family's wholesale business and launching its e-commerce site before moving into consulting and into startups. One of those startups was The Body Coach, started by celebrity fitness guru Joe Wicks, where Saagar had the job of translating their vision into scalable reality. For this episode, we travelled to Saagar's hometown of Birmingham for a LIVE interview and Q&A about the pros and cons of building for celebrity creators.
Episode highlights:1. Being an early entrepreneur can really help your product management game
Product managers often get tied up in the craft of product management and the latest frameworks, but Saagar started out working for his family business and had to work out everything as he went. This gave him an incredible bias for action, to do things that don't scale and to get scrappy where needed. These are traits that many PMs should develop rather than getting precious about process.
2. Product Management is all about the "Why"Saagar spent some time working for Deloitte Digital and, in many cases, building stuff without being told why it was being built. This left him feeling unsatisfied, and like he wasn't doing "Proper Product". Luckily, even though The Body Coach started building with an external agency, the "why" was so strong from the founders that Saagar could take over something that made sense.
3. Creator-led businesses have a built-in audience, which means that "move fast and break things" doesn't workIf you have millions of users with a direct relationship with the brand upfront, you can't just throw anything out the door. There's an incredible amount of brand equity and trust that needs to be satisfied, and there is a higher quality bar. That said, you still have to pick your battles, and there's still good product prioritisation work to be done.
4. All founders are going to come with feature requests, and smart PMs are going to do some of themWhen you have an incredibly well-respected founder who lives and breathes the product, you're going to get requests. Some of them will even make sense. But, product people who don't have evidence against the requests, or a better plan in general, are going to get overridden and they only have themselves to blame. That said, it's important not to rail against feature requests just because they're from a founder.
5. Building proper, trusting relationships with the founders is incredibly importantWhen working with creators with a massive following, who have invested so much of themselves into a company, the worst thing you can do is just walk in expecting them to bend to the awesome power of product management. Saagar spent several hours walking and talking with the founders before even getting the job, to understand their motivations and forge a bond. This ultimately helped him be more successful.
Contact SaagarYou can connect with Saagar on LinkedIn.
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Practice Makes Perfect: Embracing the Messy Reality of Product Management (with Matt LeMay, Product Management Consultant & Author ”Product Management in Practice”)
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The Five Dysfunctions of Product Management Teams (with Saeed Khan, Founder @ Transformation Labs)
OKIP LIVE! Is Product/Market Fit Really Dead, or Just Resting? (with Andrea Saez & Dave Martin, Right To Left)
Learning the Bedrock Skills of Innovators & Entrepreneurs (with Bob Moesta, Co-creator of the Jobs to be Done Framework & Author ”Learning to Build”)
Using The Power of Community to Help you Thrive in a Generalist World (with Milly Tamati, Founder @ Generalist World)
Making Sure you REALLY Know your Customers and Pulling out of Growth Stalls (with Adrienne Barnes, Founder @ Best Buyer Persona)
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Using Tech to Change Culture and Un-f**king the Design Industry (with Mackenzie Daisley, CEO & Founder at Brieft)
Getting the Narrative Right and Taking Web3 Products Mainstream (with Rachael Sacks, Crypto Storyteller & Founder @ Narrativ3)
The Importance of Messaging & ROARing Your Way to Product/Message Fit (with Diane Wiredu, Founder & Messaging Strategist @ Lion Words)
Supporting Mental Health & Wellbeing for Product Managers (with Jacquelyn Guderley, Product Manager @ OVO & Co-Founder @ Product Mind)
Taking Recruitment into the Future with AI and Embracing the Metaverse (with Shaun Smith-Taylor, Co-Founder @ MyProductPath)
Beyond the Challenger Sale Part 2: Focus on Value & Make your Product Easy to Buy (with Brent Adamson, Author ”The Challenger Sale” & ”The Challenger Customer”)
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