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OhHello - Mary Sheehan
74 Plays2 years ago
Meet Mary Sheehan, the rockstar of product marketing! With an impressive career spanning Adobe, Google, and multiple startups, she knows a thing or two about driving product success. Mary is a co-creator of a cutting-edge course with Reforge and also hosts the fun and informative Women In Product Marketing podcast. On top of all that, she's a bestselling author of The Pocket Guide To Product Launches. And if you think that's all there is to this powerhouse mama, she's also raising two little ones in the Bay Area. Mary is killing the game and showing us how to make strides in career and family life.
https://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Guide-Product-Launches-Confident-ebook/dp/B0BQ59M2Z4 - the book is awesome. Jeremy Bloom read it and loved it.
We're so excited to have Mary be part of the OhHello community!
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Transcript
Sponsorship and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Our sponsor for the Oh Hello Pod is Flash Talking by Media Ocean. Say oh goodbye to the headache of personalizing your ad creative. With Flash Talking, you can easily create, automate, activate, and iterate.
00:00:18
Speaker
That's four eights for those keeping score. And I'd say overall, that's pretty great. Open web, social, mobile, and CTV. Do it all in a flash with flash talking. Visit mediaocean.com slash flash talking to learn more. That's mediaocean.com slash flash talking. Thanks. And now for our pod.
Meet Mary Sheehan
00:01:03
Speaker
Oh, hello, Mary. How are you? Hello there, Jeremy. I'm great. How are you? What do you have there? I am holding this amazing book called The Pocket Guide to Product Launches, Get Confident, Go to Market, and Win by Mary Sheehan. Wow. And look who's on the pod. Look who's on the video. This is amazing.
00:01:29
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy that you bought my book. What a surprise. And I'm just really humbled to be part of this whole Oh, hello world. So thank you so much. Absolutely. Absolutely. So Mary Sheehan, thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of the Oh, hello community. We know each other from working with one another at Adobe for several years.
00:01:55
Speaker
And when I saw that you released your book, again, The Pocket Guide to Product Launches, and this is a pure plug. You're not paying me. This is just the kindness of my heart. I went, I bought the book, I read it over the weekend. It was great. So many snackable insights on
00:02:15
Speaker
how to be confident for a private launch, so many nuggets about what could be helpful to entrepreneurs, mid-market teams, enterprise teams at scale. With that said, I know who you are. I know where you've worked. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Mary's Roles and Podcast
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah. So in addition to writing the book, I am a mom of two. It's a Maddie who just turned one, an indie who's three and a half and full of energy.
00:02:44
Speaker
I'm also the head of product marketing at Lightroom for Adobe right now, which is a really fun photography product, which I love working on. And I've been a product marketer for a long time. I love it. I have a podcast about it too called Women in Product Marketing. And I really think about the podcast as kind of mentorship at scale. I bring on these brilliant women across the globe who work at the fastest growing tech companies to
00:03:14
Speaker
talk about product marketing and how they got to where they are. So love this. I feel like there's a lot of connection into what you're doing with this new pod and what you're doing with Oh Hello. So just really stoked to get to connect. That's amazing. That's amazing. And I've listened to a handful of the pods. They've been great that you've been working on over the past few years.
00:03:36
Speaker
getting guests from some of the top tier tech companies that are all female leaders within product marketing. So shout out to your podcast for sure. How would you characterize your skillset that you're going to be sharing with the Oh, hello community, Mary?
Building Relationships and Career Plans
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I think a lot of it comes down to marketing breaking in the door there, especially with product marketing. I think one of my superpowers is around
00:04:01
Speaker
building relationships with partner teams. So when we were together, I was on the marketing side and the sales side, I think we had a wonderful working relationship. I'm also able to do that with product teams, engineering, and really just creating a plan. So as we were kind of talking about with the book, helping people figure out what their plan is, if it's a product launch or also kind of a career plan as well. So one thing that I always think about with my career is
00:04:30
Speaker
when I became a manager for the very first time, how hard of a transition that really was. I wish I had had mentorship during that time. I wish I'd had a little bit of a game plan or really understood what it is I needed to know and what I didn't know. There's so much out there. So those are some things I think I'll touch on in mentorship at Oh, Hello.
00:04:53
Speaker
I love that you just brought that up just when you go from being an individual contributor to a manager, when you don't necessarily have the proper tools or the proper mentorship, wherever you may have been, or maybe you did, but you just didn't have the proper guidance or it's, it's,
00:05:14
Speaker
trepidatious. It's intimidating. And to be able to now look back at your career and the experiences that you've had and the businesses that you've helped build, the product launches that you've helped build, being able to give back and provide those insights, they're absolutely invaluable.
Career Advice from Mary
00:05:30
Speaker
What would you tell your younger self? So probably tell myself to take a deep breath
00:05:42
Speaker
I think, you know, one thing that's been interesting, especially in the career both of us have had around advertising tech is that there are jobs that are going to be created that we don't even know about that are probably three or five years out. So for example, when I started in 2007 in my working career, mobile advertising wasn't even a thing, you know, display advertising was brand new. So all of these new markets just came to be. And so,
00:06:11
Speaker
what my job is, you know, now I couldn't have even really imagined it at the time. So what I tell myself is take that deep breath, but build up the skill sets that can get you through innovation, you know, keep on par with what's coming out there. Try new technology, keep curious. So you can really be on the up and coming trends and be able to tap into that when needed, but you will not be able to predict what your career is going to look like.
00:06:37
Speaker
So you might as well just get on board for the ride and learn some skills along the way. So deep breaths, being curious, embracing innovation, and essentially understanding that you don't necessarily know what's going to be in store for your future. So just enjoy the ride. Well said, well said.
Influential Mentors
00:07:01
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Who are some mentors that have had a profound impact on your career?
00:07:06
Speaker
And on you as a person, as a mom, as a wife. Yeah, definitely. So first of all, I have to say my grandmother. So she became an author for the first time at age 85, which I just think amazing. I know. So she once she wrote her book, I was like, I got to get my book out. Like it has to happen so she can see it. So
00:07:24
Speaker
Um, that was really amazing. Um, she's also a painter, a singer, you know, guitar player. So she just had a many, you know, many pronged career and a mentor. Um, as far as sort of tech goes and some of the specifics, shout out to guy or Renwick. So he was my very first manager at Google and he, he really taught me how to be a professional. I look back and kind of laugh and think about how young all of us were that he managed, you know, a bunch of 22 year olds, fresh out of college, but he taught us how to, you know,
00:07:54
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work with clients, how to be organized, how to show up, how to show impact in the work that we're doing. And I'll always remember that and just how to be an empathetic leader. I think, you know, you and I both really are drawn to people like that and try to be empathetic leaders. And he was really my first example of that. And then my manager for product marketing, my first manager for product marketing ever was Desiree Modemetti, who's now a VP of product marketing at Shopify.
00:08:20
Speaker
And she took me through product marketing bootcamp. So I think without her, I wouldn't have been here today. I wouldn't know how to do product marketing. It would have been able to orient or codify what's in the book. But I really, you know, I really appreciate her feedback. She was also from Adobe. Then we met at Google, but just a really wonderful way to get the ins and outs of product marketing from a great leader.
00:08:43
Speaker
And then my now friend, but also mentor, Alison Murdoch. She is the founder of the trusted CMO and she has been the CMO at a couple of companies I've worked at under her. And she's just amazing showing how she can, you know, really orient a marketing team around sales goals, drive revenue.
00:09:03
Speaker
and kind of play in a man's world and go toe to toe with all of the executives. So I've learned a lot from her. We have shared many a piece goes sour together about life. So I mean, just fun when you can cross that bridge to, you know, mentor friendships and, you know,
00:09:20
Speaker
Um, just really appreciate that. That's awesome. Well, thanks for giving them a shout outs. I believe you're not this morning. Listen to Desiree's, uh, podcast with you back from September, October. And as a, it seemed like she was a mother hen. I love mother hen to her, her, to her team. Something that I took away from it was that is resonated so much with, uh, with myself and different people in, in our.
Work-Life Balance and Goal Setting
00:09:50
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Ecosystems in our spheres just the work-life balance and from the pandemic to being really present with your family and making sure that taking the time to just Have that balance because especially for women before the pandemic I saw it firsthand with with many friends I was incredibly fortunate
00:10:12
Speaker
where I had worked, where many female colleagues did not go through this, where I had worked, but many friends working at other companies did go through that, where they weren't able to go to parent-teacher conferences or pick up their kids from activities. I encourage everyone to listen to that podcast. Before I ask you,
00:10:34
Speaker
what charities are near and dear to your heart within the Oh Hello platform. I wanna just call out two things that I picked up from your book when I read it this past weekend.
00:10:43
Speaker
On page 12 for developing a launch strategy, what is a launch strategy? It's a plan of action for your product launch, which includes the who, what, where, when, and why of the launch. A great strategy also considers what you are not focusing on. I just wanted to highlight that to everybody, how important it is
00:11:04
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As I'm building this and I'm sharing building a company with and I'm being vulnerable showcasing this with so many different people. I thought it was so relevant how you explained the great strategy also considers what you are not focusing on and being
00:11:21
Speaker
showcasing the unaware, the knots. So I wanted to touch on that. And then also the other takeaway that I got from your book was on page 133, if you didn't measure it, it might as well not have happened. So before we talk about the charitable components,
00:11:40
Speaker
If you can just mention any feedback on either of those to our audience, because those two points resonated with me where I highlighted it in the book. Yeah. Yes, I love that. And that was so cool to see you actually pull out the book with the paid kind of surreal I launched it less than a month ago. So it's still kind of surreal to see in Chicago to San Francisco. It's there. Um,
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, but I think the point about strategy is really salient for a new business owner like yourself. But in my line of work in product marketing, we have so many stakeholders that I actually advise newer product marketers to say no before they say yes. Develop your plan and make sure that anything that's coming your way fits into that strategic plan because otherwise you'll just have a bunch of things that you've checked off a list but don't really make any impact. So
00:12:33
Speaker
It's really looking at what you can accomplish and being honest about yourself and your commitments and what is really going to drive the business and throwing out the fluff. And often that means focusing on one customer segment and not all of them. And there's so many ways to apply it, but those are a couple that come to mind as well. Amazing. The other thing about measurement too is, yeah, if you don't measure something and you don't have goals for yourself,
00:13:00
Speaker
or for your team or for, you know, anything you're trying to accomplish. It's hard to say if you hit that goal and it's hard to say that it mattered in general. So I feel like we live in this, you know, uh, you know, if it didn't Strava, it didn't happen kind of culture where we need to measure everything. But more than that, it's about setting a goal for yourself and working towards that goal, whether it's, you know, a project at work or something you're trying to achieve for the year. I'm really a big fan of it because otherwise how can you say you succeeded or not?
00:13:31
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Words of Wisdom from Mary Sheehan.
Supporting Black Girls Code
00:13:34
Speaker
With that said, to conclude this, as you know, there are 40-plus charities that are integrated within the Oh Hello Platform. What is one that is one or two that are near and dear to your heart, Mary? Well, it's an amazing list, so it's hard to choose, but I would say Black Girls Code. I really believe in their mission.
00:13:52
Speaker
Learning to code is really challenging and it seems to be a white man's world in a lot of ways. So I think what Black Girls Code is doing with going early, you know, having a really broad way of teaching young Black girls to code in terms of
00:14:12
Speaker
learning this skill that can be really lucrative and kind of opening up possibilities for an underserved group of people that's not usually exposed to this is just so amazing. I'm happy that you're doing that and that we both are trying to make this ecosystem of tech just more democratic for everybody.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:14:32
Speaker
So thank you for mentioning that.
00:14:33
Speaker
All right, with that said, we are at time. So much appreciate you jumping in and being part of this community, Mary. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you for watching. Bye, Mary. Thank you.