Zach Lawrence

Retention Group PM @Kayak | Founder of Iterate Studio Product Management Coaching

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

👋 everyone!

I just launched Iterate Studio, a small coaching and advisory practice for early career PMs and early teams.

If you are trying to break into product or bring an idea to life, this is for you.

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

@maorshlomo Building In public is sometimes hard for folks at current jobs. Any advice?

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

Link with details is in my profile
Open to questions or DMs anytime

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

👋 everyone!

I just launched Iterate Studio, a small coaching and advisory practice for early career PMs and early teams.

If you are trying to break into product or bring an idea to life, this is for you.

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

If you are early in your product career, what is one thing you wish someone had told you sooner?

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

Very similar to a quote I heard today on @lennysan podcast while talking to @zoink about shifting your thinking towards “time to value”

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

A major cheat code in life: Treat your time like it's more valuable than money. Money you can make back. Time is gone forever. Stop spending hours to save dollars. Stop saying yes to things that don't move you forward. Time is the only currency that matters.

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

@BenjaminPutano I love that you can tell AI art from a mile away. This is actually a really good picture, but it just looks like every photo generated from ChatGPT.

I do like the billboard analogy though 😉

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

@aakashgupta Hundred percent and I really love the article. I just think trust might’ve been the wrong word. 🫣

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

@lennysan Does it count if you buy it to your for yourself?

[George from 🕹prodmgmt.world @nurijanian]

I just read a PM's post about automating their workflows with AI, so let me share some takes:

1. You can automate documentation all you want. You'll still spend 3 hours a week explaining it to people who won't read it anyway.

2. The biggest time sink in product management isn't creating artifacts. It's convincing others your idea was actually their idea all along.

3. I've seen PMs automate their entire PRD process. They still spend 80% of their time in meetings where nobody references the PRD.

4. AI can write your user stories in seconds. Getting alignment on those stories will still take 4 meetings, 12 Slack threads, and one awkward hallway conversation.

5. Most PMs spend more time writing angry Slack messages and then deleting them than they spend on actual product strategy. This is the emotional labor nobody talks about.

6. Every PM job description mentions "data-driven decision making." In reality, you spend most of your time cleaning up decisions your predecessor made based on vibes and executive opinions.

7. The irony of AI automation tools for PMs: They optimize the 20% of your job that's already efficient. The other 80% - managing up, sideways, and down - remains stubbornly human.

8. You know what takes the most time? Re-explaining the same strategy to different stakeholders who all think they're hearing it for the first time.

9. I automated my entire data analysis workflow last year. Now I spend that saved time defending the data to people who don't like what it says.

10. The best PMs I know aren't great at creating artifacts. They're great at navigating organizational dysfunction without losing their minds.

11. Here's the pattern I see: Junior PMs obsess over perfecting their templates. Senior PMs obsess over reducing the number of meetings where those templates get ignored.

12. You want to know where PMs really spend time? Writing diplomatic versions of "this is a terrible idea" in 15 different ways until one lands.

13. AI can generate a roadmap in minutes. Getting everyone to stop trying to add their pet feature to it is a quarterly battle.

14. The cruel joke: By the time you've automated your PM workflows, you'll probably be promoted to a role where none of those automations matter anymore.

15. If AI could automate stakeholder alignment, that would be the real revolution. Instead, we're automating the creation of documents that prove alignment never existed.

Product management is 20% building products and 80% managing the humans who make building products complicated.

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

Strong opinions, Loosely held.

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

Do you ever start reading a post on LinkedIn, just to get half way through and realize it is just someone stating the obvious, and you just wasted 90 sec….

But then continue to read until the end, and get mad that you wasted 5 minutes of your life!!!

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

Hey Product x/twitter world are we still here?

I took a >12 month break and just logged in again. Who all is still here I would love to reconnect?!

Say hi 👋!

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

@ProductFont

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

Hey PM Community, Its been a while since I’ve been back here, but wanted to share some news. I’m Hiring!!!

Looking for a Senior PM Level, in the Boston Area.

DM me if you know anyone or are interested!
https://t.co/hH7hLm6n35

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

@davidhoang @lennysan 👋

[Zach Lawrence @ProductByZach]

I didn’t get a copy of @lennysan Vol 1, anybody looking to part waves with theirs or maybe there’s another run coming?