What were the best career decisions that you made that helped position you for a Head of Product Marketing role at a great company?

The decisions you make are a combination of your circumstances and the options available to you. I think luck and timing is always an overlooked factor. I recently read Einstein's biography, and it struck me how fortutious it was that he failed to get a job as an academic after graduating from college and had to settle for a patent clerk job at the Swiss patent office. If it weren't for this turn of events, he might not ever have come up with the theory of general relativity, because the key insight in that theory is that time itself is relative, and this insight was no doubt derived from his time working for days, months and years on patent applications dealing with clocks and watches.

So my advice to anyone aspiring to a leadership position in product marketing (or any field for that matter), is to first know what you want, then put the time and effort to learn the skills, gain the experience and build the relationships that will get you one step closer to achieving your goal. You will face obstacles and failures and rejections, at times you will feel like giving up, but if it's something you really want, you have to stick with it, because nothing in life worth having is easy. 

• Building a strong foundation of product marketing skills to become a "full stack" product marketer has been key for me. Understand how to manage product positioning, messaging, how to launch a product, and all the different aspects that go into building a successful product offering.

• Raising my hand for projects where I felt uncomfortable and needed experience - like pricing , researching competitive offerings, and creating customer journey maps - has been an invaluable experience.

• Learning how to work cross-functionally with product managers, UX designers, and developers / engineers to deliver a successful product launch was also important for me to grow.

• Regularly attending webinars, seminars or conferences related to the field of product marketing kept me up-to-date on the industry.

• Taking risks - sometimes that means going to a growth area of your business or jumping to a smaller company. When I moved from Google to AdRoll (then a 500 person company) - that's when I got my first management opportunity and managed an entire product marketing team.

• Making sure to set realistic expectations - both for yourself and your teammates, has also been important. You can't build a product overnight yet as a Head of Product Marketing you want to be able to push and inspire the team while being realistic about what resources are available.

• Finally, it's really important to build relationships with people both inside and outside of the company is important in order to be able to share

1) Get experience managing up and across. Take opportunities that allow you to influence leadership and drive change across teams. For example: 

- Leading cross-functional product launches

- Suggesting and creating processes or tools to drive organizational efficiency for your teams

- Volunteer to support your boss or leadership on strategic initiatives

- Manage events, sales kickoffs

2) Don't wait for permission. Start driving change and solving pain points for your team, and your company. Can releases be done better? Are we regionalizing our strategies? Is there a better way to keep the right people informed? A good head of PMM will need to be scanning for org improvements and finding ways to prioritize and deliver results efficiently which takes practice! 

3) Train and practice management. Take courses on managing people. Find ways to mentor, support and coach junior employees across the team, and practice peer-to-peer management. How can you practice eliciting the best work out of your teammates? What questions can you ask? 

4) Nail the basics in everything you do.