Starting Again and Taking That Next Step

For those who aren't following me, I was recently informed that my current position is being eliminated. While unfortunate and frustrating, I'm optimistically looking at the situation as an opportunity to move forward into a role that will be an even better fit.

There are two main challenges I've been facing at this stage in my career:

1) Highlighting what I have and can do in a digestible format. I've done a lot in my career so far, including:

• Relaunching products and reinvigorating multi-million dollar businesses, including creating the playbook for moving a 9-figure business to being cloud-native.
• Repeatedly creating and executing business plans to grow products both organically and into new markets through customer and market research.
• Launched multiple AI features and products.
• Establishing the Product Management team and processes in two different organizations.
• Building multiple high-performing Product teams.
• Coordinated both small and extremely large projects that impacted hundreds of users and hundreds of thousands of customers.
• Streamlined numerous processes and technologies to reduce costs.
• Leading success wherever I've been, with the KPIs and metrics to back it up.

Though it's normally hard for me to brag, I've already accomplished a lot and am looking to tackle my next challenge. There's an incalculable number of companies that could use my background, skills and experience.

Yet, how to most effectively get that across? And how to get the first few sets of eyes at an organization to get excited about it? It seems everyone's focused on certain different aspects, which kind of leads into my next point...

2) Finding the right jobs and fits for me. You'd think this would be easier, but the titles and pay ranges for many Product roles are all over the place depending on the organization. For example, each of the following could have almost identical job descriptions:

• Head of Product
• Director of Product Management
• Senior Product Manager
• Product Manager

And there's probably another dozen variations I've left out of there.

Even my last two positions, both with "Manager, Product Management" titles, were wildly different. For one, it was a "first time people manager" role, but I was overseeing that team across three different products. For the other, I was closer to the "Head of Product", coming in to establish the Product team, processes, and transform the organization from a sales-led to a product-led organization.

It's certainly a challenge in a messy marketplace, but I'm determined to find my spot to thrive. And who knows...maybe the next step isn't any of that.

What I do know is that I'm the guy you go and get when you need your product or organization get to the next level of growth and maturity.

And if that's what you need, feel free to connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregnilsen/