Mastering product strategy and growing as a PM | Maggie Crowley (Toast, Drift, Tripadvisor)

**Maggie Crowley** (0:00)
If you ever find yourself saying something like, that's not my job, that's probably a thing you should do. And you know what, it probably isn't your job, and it probably is someone else's job, and you can spend your life getting frustrated at that, or you can just get over and get the work done. And people who are willing to just get the work done will move faster, their products will be more successful, and they probably aren't carrying around all that anger and crappy emotion, because as a PM, for better or for worse, and maybe this is not how we all want it to be, but you're oftentimes the emotional center of the team. And it's your job to keep people motivated, keep people excited, keep them bought into the project. And you just have to keep that optimism going. And it's hard work.
And part of it can be just like, you know what, let me take that on, I'll do this thing, I'll hop on this sales call, I'll implement this with the customer, you just have to do whatever it takes.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:57)
Today, my guest is Maggie Crowley. Maggie is currently Vice President of Product at Toast. Prior to this, she was VP and Head of Product at Charlie Health, Senior Director of Product at Drift, Director of Product at Bevspot, Product Manager at TripAdvisor. She's also got an MBA from Harvard Business School. She was also an Olympic speed skater, which is insane and incredibly cool. And in our conversation, we discuss the three most common threads across the best product managers that she's worked with, hired and managed. How to very tactically write out a product strategy to share with your team and manager. Why being data driven is a red flag for product thinking. Why product content you find online can be dangerous. Her best advice for how to break in product management. Also the impact writing online has had on her career and so much more. Maggie is amazing. I'm excited for you to learn from her like I did. With that, I bring you Maggie Crowley after a short word from our sponsors.
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Maggie, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Maggie Crowley** (4:10)
Thanks for having me. I'm super excited.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:12)
You put out so much content across podcasts, blogs, tweets. I'm sure there's other things I haven't even seen. And so what I've done is I've scoured all of your content as much as I could to find topics that we could dig into in our conversation today. And I thought it'd be fun to start with how to become a successful product manager and what it takes to be a successful product manager, especially long-term in your career.