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.
Beyond the Challenger Sale Part 1: JOLTING Customers out of ”No Decision” (with Matt Dixon, Author ”The Challenger Sale” & ”The JOLT Effect”)
Survive the Feature Factory by Applying Product Thinking to Product Thinking (with John Cutler, Product Evangelist & Coach @ Amplitude)
Data-Informed Decision Making and the Three Cs of Product Management (with Roger Snyder, VP of Products & Services @ 280 Group)
The Role of Product Management on Truly Agile Development Teams (with Allen Holub, Software Architect, Consultant & Outspoken Twitter Agilist)
Banishing Cynicism and Empowering Yourself as a Product Leader (with Claire Vo, CPO @ Color & Impending TikTok Influencer)
From Product Leadership to CEO and Saving the World from Stupid Smart Stuff (with Yana Welinder, CEO & Co-Founder @ Kraftful)
Closing the Gender Pay Gap and Hiring Diverse Product Teams (with Chris Mason, Co-Founder @ Intelligent People)
Treating Your Career as a Product and Landing that Next Big Job (with Sarah Doody, founder @ Career Strategy Lab)
Measurably Improving Managers to Help People do Great Work... and be Totally Psyched Doing It (with Russ Laraway, author ”When They Win, You Win”)
Getting Customers to LOVE your Product with Great Product Marketing (with Martina Lauchengco, author ”Loved”)
Build Products Businesses Want with the Lean B2B Pyramid (with Étienne Garbugli, Author ”Lean B2B”, ”Find your Market” and ”Solving Product”)
Coming Out as Transgender at Work and How We Can All Be Better Allies (with Saielle DaSilva, Director of User Experience @ Cazoo)
Your Product is a Joke - How to use Improv Comedy Principles in Product Management (with Amogh Sarda, Co-founder @ Eesel)
Diving into the Deep End as a Woman in Product (with Darby Maloney, Product Manager @ Divvy & Occasional Swimming Pool User)
Mapping your Way to B2B Product Success (with Daniel Elizalde, author ”The B2B Innovator’s Map”)
Betting on the Value of Product Design at the Organisational Poker Table (with Andy Budd, Executive & Design Leadership Coach & Founder @ Clearleft)
Solving the Innovator’s Dilemma with Compassion Driven Innovation (with Nicole Reineke, VP Innovation @ Iron Mountain & Co-Author ”Compassion Driven Innovation”)
Moving Beyond Survival and Paying Off Your Vision Debt (with Radhika Dutt, author ”Radical Product Thinking”)
Inside the Mind the Product Acquisition - Why Now & What’s Next? (with James Mayes, Evangelist @ Pendo & Co-Founder @ Mind the Product)
Developer Relations & Product Management - Friends or Foes? (with Tessa Kriesel, Head of Platform DevRel @ Snap & Wesley Faulkner, Head of Community @ SingleStore)
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