About Me

• I grew up in a small town (Manorville) on the east end of Long Island. I was raised to value hard work, to be kind, to be loyal, and to help others
• I have been married for close to 10 years and have two children (currently 7 (girl) and 4 (boy)). Family has always been extremely important to me and I try hard to be the best husband, and father I can be
• I enjoy any and all activities with my family, puzzles, running/working out (Strava), grilling, coffee and doing yard work (I grew up taking care of a bed and breakfast and loved the first impression that guests got when they pulled up to the B&B)
• I attended Stonehill College (30 minutes south of Boston) where I played soccer for 3 years and football my Senior year for the first time in my life. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science of Business Administration (majoring in Finance and a minoring in Computer Information Systems)
• After college, I jumped right into working at a FinTech start-up and have since worked at both public and privately owned and VC backed companies that spans unified communication and collaboration (UCC), B2B Martech, and ecommerce SaaS as a Product Manager and as a Product Leader. For a full background, check out my LinkedIn
• When I’m not working my normal ‘9 to 5’ day job, I love advising start-ups, mentoring Product Managers, and helping small businesses grow in the Shopify ecosystem
• My CliftonStrengths top 5 strengths are:
  • Relator (Enjoys close relationships with others finding deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal)
  • Achiever (Works hard and posses a great deal of stamina taking immense satisfaction in being busy and productive)
  • Strategic (Creates alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, I can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues)
  • Restorative (Adept at dealing with problems and good at figuring out what is wrong and resolving it)
  • Includer (Accepts others and showing awareness of those who feel left out and make an effort to include them)

My role as a Product Leader

As a Product Leader, it’s my responsibility to build and lead high functionality Product Managers and Product Designers while creating the path for where we want to take our product.

As a Product Leader, I get really excited about a few things:

• Building and coaching awesome Product Management and Product Design teams
• Building products that solve real customer problems

Building and coaching teams:

• Sourcing, recruiting, and hiring the best possible talent we can find for open roles
• Ensuring new team members have a great onboarding experience so they can contribute to our team and company as quickly as possible (generally through 30, 60, 90 day milestones)
• Meeting with direct reports weekly to build relationships, get to know team members a bit deeper, and unblock them whenever they face road blocks
• Helping each individual team member achieve their career goals
• Empowering team members to be autonomous and make the best decisions possible for their product by providing them with business and market context
• Being a servant leader and helping team members work through hard issues

Building product:

• Talking directly to customers to understand their current pain points and what we can build to solve those problems
• Analyzing data to help make informed decisions but I do not solely rely on data. I like to factor in my own product sense and usage of other products as inputs into decision making
• Building, iterating, and shipping product quickly so we can get early feedback/learnings and make improvements before releasing to general availability
  • If it’s a big change, I like to roll out new changes to a subset of early access participates to gather feedback and make sure that everything is working as expected
  • If it’s a smaller change, I rather get enhancements into customer’s hands sooner rather than later because that enhancement could be the thing that is preventing them from being successful with the product which could result in churn
• Releasing product initiatives when they solve the customer problem and not waiting until things are ‘pixel perfect’ –> things will always come up and teams will always find a reason to hold off on a release which doesn’t help us learn or help our customers be successful
• Creating and building a product strategy and effectively communicate our strategy both internally and externally
• Collaborating with Engineering to deliver high impact initiatives
• Collaborating with cross functional teams (Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Customer Support) to successfully bring products and features to market

My role as a Product Manager

As a Product Manager, it’s my responsibility to build and deliver product initiatives that solve customer problems in a timely and efficient manner.

As a Product Manager, I get really excited about a few things:

• Talking to customers about their pain points, product problems or feature requests and building relationships
• Executing and getting results
• Analyzing data (usage/activation, churn notes, support interactions, and financials) to generate insights
• Working collaboratively with Designers and Engineers to build best in class products and experiences

Talking to customers:

• Meeting with customers on a weekly basis to present and solicit feedback on new ideas, to gather feedback on recently released product features, and to discuss feature requests
• Onboarding new customers onto the platform to ensure that they have a great first impression and see value as quickly as possible
• Everyone sells –> I love partnering with Sales to help ‘close’ deals

Executing and getting results:

• Getting (important) shit done has always been a personal motto –> I don’t let friction or hurdles prevent me and the team from finding the most viable and valuable option and moving forward as quickly as possible
• Shipping product to customers is the best validation we will get on our assumptions or hypotheses
• Working on product initiatives that matter and move the needle
• Measuring success metrics to ensure what was released is driving the right customer behaviors and results (and if it’s not, figuring out next steps)
• At the end of the day, it doesn’t always matter what I think or want. It’s not about me; it’s about the customers and what they think or want because they vote with their dollars. They’ll either keep paying because they are getting value from our product or they will churn because they aren’t

Analyzing data:

• Watching customer sessions via tools like Fullstory to see how customers are interacting with our product which will help inform product improvements
• Creating dashboards with core key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure that we are on the right path to hit business goals
• Reviewing usage/activation data to ensure that customers are adopting the core features that we offer (and if they aren’t, putting a plan together with Marketing to educate customers and drive adoption)
• Keeping a pulse on company financials to ensure that what we are prioritizing and releasing will help us move the needle against business goals
• Reviewing churn notes to understand why customers are leaving and figure out if it’s something Product can prioritize to reduce churn

Working collaboratively:

• Building great products and experience is a team sport
• Talking through multiple ways to solve customer problems to understand potential technical and usability constraints
• Pulling Designers and Engineers into the discovery process early so they can help shape the potential solution
• Sharing customer pain points and feedback to stay aligned and set proper context as to why things I’m prioritizing matter

Communicating and working with me

• I write everything down and constantly share work in progress (wet paint) early and often (usually through Google Docs, Google Slides with video voiceovers). This leads to soliciting early feedback which makes my initial thoughts even better and clearer to create alignment and set context
• After talking with customers and reviewing data, I share learnings and insights with the rest of the organization so everyone can learn alongside with me
• I generally prefer asynchronous communication (Slack, videos, collaborating through Google Docs/Slides) to quickly riff through ideas. During my career, I’ve found this type of communication less disruptive (respond on your own time) and gives team members more time to think and gather their thoughts instead of jumping directly into a meeting and talking things through without gathering their thoughts to provide their point of view. I’ve also learned that juggling multiple team members calendars is hard and usually pushes important meetings off for multiple business days/weeks
  • If critical decisions need to be made, I prefer to jump on a meeting to discuss my thoughts and rationale to keep us moving forward
• I love jamming with team members on new ideas and problems. I like to provide space for team members to just talk out loud even if they haven’t identified a proposed solution yet
• I’m pretty reserved during group meetings because I like to give team members space to talk while I gather my thoughts before I share my own point of view. But when things go off topic or we aren’t making progress to making decisions/discussing next steps, I won’t be shy to call this out
• There are times where I don’t have as much context as my team members and I trust that they’ve done their ‘homework’ and are proposing solutions that will solve the customer’s problem. I believe strongly in giving team members the autonomy to make decisions and move quickly without being a roadblock to progress. After all, Product Managers are responsible for decision making and prioritization
• I do not enjoy conflicts or ‘office politics’ but whenever something comes up, I address things head on in an attempt to clear the air and move on as quickly as possible which will drive a better outcome for everyone involved
• I will make mistakes and I’ll always own up to them. I look for direct feedback on my mistakes and immediately think through what I could have done differently/better to not make the same mistake again
• As a former Product Manager, I like rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty. I really enjoy working closely with Engineering during the discovery and build phases

How you can help me

• Try your best and always bring your whole self to work each and every day
• Raise the bar for your role, peers and company
• Keep things simple
  • Turn complex problems into simplified solutions since these solutions will often times delight customers and get more adoption/usage
  • Be specific with your thoughts
  • Don’t use overly complicated words in written and in verbal communication
• Be open and honest as much as you feel comfortable with so I can find ways to help out when it’s needed and I’m not blindsided
• Always assume positive intent with coworkers and aim to work openly and collaboratively with them
• Prioritize business outcomes over outputs
• Extreme bias for action
  • If a coworker has a question, answer them as quickly as you see it (even if you don’t have an answer) because you can help unblock them to keep things moving forward
  • If you don’t know something, go learn about it and come back with a point of view
  • Make decisions that will help your team and company take steps forward and not backwards –> there aren’t a lot of ‘one way door decisions’ that we can’t learn and make adjustments from
• Provide continuous feedback to help me level up and learn both personally and professionally