Your company's investment level in a product fundamentally changes what your job looks like as a PM or PMM. John and Nate break down how your priorities shift across the spectrum: high-growth products chasing new customer acquisition, retention-focused products where stability is king, and that tricky middle ground where the product has value but go-to-market isn't working yet.

Plus, where should you put your most experienced people? On retention products or growth products? What skills do you actually build in low-growth roles?

Side topic: the reality of VP-level context switching—bouncing between three-year vision and this week's execution, across products with completely different business models, while staying sharp for C-suite conversations.

New episodes every Tuesday. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, or visit productischange.com for all episodes and YouTube shorts.

New Episodes every Tuesday

Videos and clips available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GettintoMarketPod

Nobody likes having hard conversations at work. Whether it's telling customers the feature they requested isn't going to make it into the product, pushing back on scope creep from other teams, or explaining why you can't take on that "quick favor" that definitely isn't in your goals—these moments are rough. But they're also unavoidable.

This week, John and Nate talk through the two categories of tough conversations that come up in PM and PMM roles: external conversations with customers (outages, delays, bad news) and internal cross-functional battles. We also explore why being honest is almost always the right move, even when it's uncomfortable, and how to navigate the "it's not in my goals" problem without burning bridges.

Also covered: power tool battery platform lock-in, New Year's resolutions, and the fact that John Lennon was an objectively terrible person.

Your job is real, but your role is negotiable.

For video, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXSGm0RUDxo

New Episodes every Tuesday

Videos and clips available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GettintoMarketPod

We're ending the year with an extra-long bonus episode - 71 minutes of pure Disney chaos with zero product management frameworks. Nate and Kyrie just survived separate Disney trips with their kids, and John shares his deeply weird childhood Disney experience courtesy of his parents' Amway business.

We talk about Disney's Lightning Lane system (a UX disaster), whether Disney adults are okay (jury's out), Expedition Everest making an 8-year-old pass out, the worst custom t-shirts we saw at Magic Kingdom, and why Epcot doesn't count as international travel.

This is not a normal episode. There's minimal talk about PM/PMM work. It's just three friends processing expensive vacations and questionable life choices. Think of it as our holiday gift to you - or punishment, depending on how you feel about Disney people.

Normal professional discourse resumes in January. Happy holidays from Gettin' to Market!

The Audio the Imagineers: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/twenty-thousand-hertz/id1171270672?i=1000732003957

New Episodes every Tuesday

Videos and clips available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GettintoMarketPod