Leader Spotlight: How to evaluate product career opportunities, with Isabel Petty

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Isabel Petty is Head of Digital Product at TUSHY, a modern and sustainable bidet company. She received her BA in music studies and a Masters of Technology Management degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. After graduating, Isabel became a category manager at Walmart and then joined Gritwell, a virtual health clinic, in growth and product development. Before her current role at TUSHY, she served as a senior product manager at Pattern Brands.

In our conversation, Isabel talks about her somewhat unconventional career path within product management and offers advice on how to evaluate if a role in product is right for you. She provides suggestions for understanding a company’s culture and strategic direction during the interview process, such as asking questions about KPIs, recent product launches, and goals. Isabel also talks about her role at TUSHY, working to transform people’s gut health and, as a result, their quality of life, in a fun, delightful way.

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Taking inspiration from technology management

You had a somewhat non-traditional path to arrive in product management with a background in music studies and a master’s in technology management. Could you talk about that?

I went to UC Santa Barbara. They did not have a business school, so I chose to study a personal passion of mine. As a result, I got my undergraduate degree in music studies with a focus on opera and jazz voice. I always thought I would go on to get my MBA because I never wanted to become a professional performer, and UCSB had this new program for technology management that offered a master’s program. Specifically, it’s a business master’s degree that focuses on technology innovation and entrepreneurship.

About 25 percent of students who do the program go on to become product managers. The exposure to working with engineers and translating business requirements into technical requirements opened my eyes to the world of product management. That’s how I knew I wanted to pursue it professionally.

Your first role after the program was with Walmart. What was that experience like and how did your career evolve from there?

I worked in Walmart ecommerce as a category manager running a business unit on their .com channel. That was a great experience. It was a cohort training program, so there was a clear growth pathway and I learned a ton. I had a great manager who knew I wanted to be in product management long-term, so she gave me a lot of opportunities to train with the product management team at Walmart.

After about two years there, I wanted to officially get product management on my resume and try my hand at a startup — especially after working at such a large corporation. It took a lot of cold emails, but eventually one bit. I joined a startup called Gritwell as the fourth employee. I spent a year helping the founder build the business, prove the model to potential investors, acquire our first few customers, and constantly iterate with the engineering and creative team.

I then joined Pattern Brands, a D2C aggregator, as a senior product manager. We grew from three to eight brands in the portfolio during my time there, and that was definitely a traditional product role in the sense that we had a senior engineering team. I was running all the sprints, kickoff feature requirement launches, measuring success, and I reported to the VP of technology.

After a couple of years there, I joined TUSHY as the head of digital product. I oversee all technical resources, website development, and UX/UI testing, and we also are exploring building an app to enter more of the data analytics space.

A mission to transform gut health

You’re currently working on developing a wellness app for TUSHY. What unique challenges or considerations have you encountered that might impact the approach that you take?

We are exploring building a poop-tracking app at TUSHY. This makes a lot of sense given that we are a bidet company and already have been experts in this space for a while. The long-term goal is that this is the go-to app for gut health, digestive system, microbiome insights, and recommendations. We’ll be partnering with medical professionals to serve these insights, but we’re really excited about the opportunity here.

A unique challenge is marketing and positioning a product that’s uncomfortable to talk about. This isn’t new or unique to us at TUSHY, but gut health is poop health. We all do it, and you can learn a lot about underlying conditions or opportunities to improve your digestive health from your stool. 15 percent of Americans have IBS, 32 percent have toilet anxiety, and one in 10 adults do not meet their daily fiber intake.

I was also shocked to discover that colon cancer rates in patients under the age of 55 have doubled since 1995. We will be partnering with medical professionals to serve insights, and so a future iteration that I’m excited about is the potential to identify early symptoms of colon cancer and get people to see their doctor sooner rather than later.

We’ve been the leader in this space for years because we actually improve quality of life in a fun and delightful way. My hope for the app is to remove anxiety around something that should be normalized, while also providing real insights and recommendations to improve the user’s health.

Do you feel that most customers for your bidet product are attracted to the environmental angle or the hygiene aspect?

We hear customers mention sustainability a lot, but a lot of people cite our brand’s humor as a reason to try it. The cleanliness, of course, doesn’t come until after you’ve tried the product, and we always hear people say, “I can’t believe how long I lived without this. I’m telling everyone about this. I’m buying this for my friends and family.” Another big reason that people became interested in our product was the issues with the toilet paper supply chain during COVID. Bidets cut your toilet paper usage significantly.

Many of our customers have experienced bidets while traveling abroad. In pretty much every other country throughout the world, bidets are the standard. Why is that not the case in the US? Our mission is to change that.

The skills it takes to be a PM

For people who may be interested in getting into product management, do you have any advice on how to figure out if it’s the right path for them?

Product managers have to be that perfect mix of entrepreneurial but also very organized. One strong indicator of success is being a people person. You are going to work with so many different teams. You’re going to be the connector between them, so you have to be able to communicate well and work closely with everyone at the company — from the most technical people to the most senior leaders. Also, you’ll be given a lot of responsibility. There are few entry-level product roles, and you’re usually expected to make an impact right away.

If you like fast-paced, high-visibility opportunities, product management is definitely for you. You are the owner of the product, so you are responsible for its successes as well as its failures. The same thing goes for handling pressure. It’s not a matter of if, but when something will break. Eventually, you’ll come across a problem that you can’t fix yourself and you’ll need to keep your head above the water, remedy the problem, and then also remedy any customers that were potentially affected when that feature broke.

Also, it’s vital to be data-centric. The tech will continue to progress with or without you, so you have to be really proactive here. Lastly, you have to be obsessed with your customers. There are many different ways to learn about the customer, whether it’s session recordings, feedback forms, speaking directly with your customer support team, etc., but you need to truly understand all the customer’s wins and pain points.

Do you think that most of these skills can be learned or do you think some are innate to the person?

I think it’s a little bit of both. Having that natural interest in the things I’ve mentioned is going to give you a leg up, but of course, most of these skills can be learned and refined over time with experience. If you don’t have the experience or certain skills, then having the drive to learn them and to tackle problems from day one goes a long way.

Working in product at a large company vs. a startup

There’s a bit of a debate about whether it’s better to start a PM career at a larger well-established company, like Walmart, or a scrappy environment like a startup. What is your stance on that?

You definitely cannot go wrong, but getting both at some point is key to seeing both sides of the spectrum. The benefit of starting at a larger organization is that you’re going to see right away how a well-oiled machine is run. When you are first out of school or early in your career, you don’t know what you don’t know. Finding a role that’s going to expose you to a new industry, new ways of working, and new coworkers is really beneficial. And if you’re lucky enough to find a training program, those are great because they’re made for people early in their career, so there’s a clear roadmap.

At a large corporation, there’s less risk because there are more resources. They generally pay a little bit more as well. You have a bigger pool of senior leaders to learn from and network with, just purely because of size. At a startup, you hit the ground running early on. You have a lot of responsibilities and work more hours, but that’s the priority at this point in your career. You can work with senior leadership early on and get experience in a fast-paced environment.

Large corporations can have a lot of red tape, whereas at a startup, there’s a bias to action. At a startup, it’s very visible whether or not you’re making an impact.

When considering a career move, what are some important questions you recommend asking to help understand a company’s culture, strategic direction, and operational health?

Before even asking questions, note how the interview process is being handled. Are emails being responded to in a timely manner? Is the process clear and concise, or are they a little disrespectful of your time? Is it a good culture fit for you? For me, a good manager can dictate 50 percent of my fulfillment in a role. Make sure that even in those early-stage conversations, it is a good fit between you and the hiring manager.

In terms of specific questions, I like to ask, “What does career growth here look like? How do you see this role evolving in three years? What are both the company and the role’s short and long-term goals?” Answers to those questions should give you an idea of what you’ll be working on initially and how success will be measured.

Further, I like to ask the interviewer which KPIs are important to them and how they determine whether a launch was successful or not. Sometimes, I ask for an example of a feature they recently launched. This gives me an idea of what the company’s view of a strong standard feature is for this role and how expectations are set. Further, I like to ask about annual planning. How do they handle this process? How do they determine what the next year is going to look like and how those high-level company goals trickle down to each department?

Prioritization and keeping team members motivated

You describe yourself as someone who thrives in ambiguous environments. What strategies do you employ to define clear goals and keep your teams focused and motivated?

It is an art and a science. The art is being a people person, knowing your peers and stakeholders, and adapting to who they are. I had a manager tell me that your first meeting with a new coworker should always be a personal meeting, not a professional one. Take that person out for coffee (or virtual coffee) and get to know who they are outside of work. Because when you inevitably face a problem together, knowing them on a personal level is going to help you get to a solution faster.

In terms of stakeholder management techniques, I like to identify the goal as soon as possible. People forget how quickly the goal in the bottom line can get lost. In a startup, problems will stack on top of each other. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, but it’s your job as the PM to keep your head above water and keep everyone else focused.

Then, I gather context and reiterate the community goal. If you have the opportunity to send a pre-read before a meeting with all of this info and agenda, it can save a lot of time and get everyone focused. At the end of the meeting, I always like to announce what the next steps are and then follow up with an email.

The science part of this is having strong processes that you can lean on, but knowing when to bend them if necessary. I like to roadmap my team’s goals on a yearly, quarterly, and biweekly basis. When a new initiative or priority comes onto your plate, you need to be able to quickly estimate how long it will take and if you have room on the roadmap. And if you don’t have room, is the new initiative more important than something else currently on deck?

When you’re prioritizing initiatives or potential initiatives, do you have to rely heavily on estimates?

At TUSHY, my North Star for the website is conversion rate. How can we convert a higher percentage of customers who visit the site? I don’t have complete control over how many people get to the site, but I can control how many people convert once they arrive. Part of it is just having worked in ecommerce for a while — I have an idea of the impact that features can make, but it did take a couple of months of learning how the TUSHY customer responds to certain features on our site.

It’s helpful to use historical data. For example, we know that a CVR increase on different areas of the site translates to X revenue lift. We can also use historical data for estimation from a development perspective. When you first join a company, you can lean on your engineers and bring them feature scopes to ask for estimates on how long something will take. But, once you just get to know your team better, you’ll be able to make those estimates yourself.

Of course, things will sometimes go wrong. It’s impossible to anticipate everything. You can say something’s going to take a day and a half, but by the time you’ve invested a day and then you discover an issue, it might take three more days. Do you just throw out that work or do you continue chugging along? That’s a call that you, as a PM, have to make.