“WHAT MAKES A PRODUCT SUCCESSFUL” is an abstract from Riseyear’s Podcast.

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WHO ARE YOU, WHAT’S YOUR BACKGROUND AND TELL US ABOUT WHAT MAKES A PRODUCT SUCCESSFUL?

I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, where I went to Cass Technical High School. It was an honor high school that was built by the auto industry to have some of the best schooling possible. When I was twelve years old my mom asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up and I had no idea. My first response was to be an electrical engineer. I never became an electrical engineer, but went into aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan. I then got involved in public policy, dealing with the space program, the space shuttle, energy independence, and that kind of stuff. Ended up spending about a month of every year in Washington, DC, lobbying Congress and working with the White House and the executive agencies. Politics is who gets what in society and those that don’t participate in politics usually ended up with nothing.

The good thing is that I picked that sort of North star to go after that at least gave me a direction rather than wandering around in the woods, not knowing, what’s going to happen. That’s what I encourage all young people to do. It doesn’t really matter what it is. You can always change your mind later, but at least pick a direction and pursue it. If you don’t like it, pick another one.

HOW DID YOU GO FROM AEROSPACE ENGINEERING AND LOBBYING TO PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AND CONSULTING?

I graduated from the University of Michigan and I couldn’t find a job.

During my freshman year, I started a flying club at Michigan that has now trained over 5,000 pilots, who fly for all of the major airlines, including the head of the Blue Angels. My aerospace engineering professor who wrote the book on propellers in 1946 noticed how I liked to organize things. At the time he was on Lyndon Johnson’s, Supersonic Transport Advisory Committee and had asked if I’d like to form a nationwide student organization in favor of supersonic transport.

The project ended up getting shot down in Congress due to environmental concerns, but by that time I had 45 student organizations on 45 campuses, with 15,000 members. So I took the organization to Washington D.C. to continue lobbying for energy independence for a space shuttle to get built.

It got funding from about a hundred companies throughout the country as a nonprofit and I organized the first national energy youth conference with the first, Soviet American youth exchange.

After I could no longer pretend I was a student anymore, I was hired by a Federation of Labor, Business, and Farmers in Minnesota. They brought me out there as the Executive Director of the Environmental Balance Association. I was supposed to figure out how to balance economic, environmental, and energy needs and help pioneer in the field of environmental mediation. I ended up becoming one of the nations of the world’s first environmental mediators. During the position, I resolved several major disputes within the state and was placed on an advisory committee for a guy running for governor. Three weeks before the election, he fired his campaign manager and asked me to take over. I got him a 30% swing in the polls. We were losing by 20% when I took over, and we won by 10%.

After doing that a little while I left and came to California and got a job in corporate PR at Hewlett Packard, responsible for siting facilities. While there, I also helped roll out word processing for the PR Department, because that was the only group in the company that knew how to type. This is where I got into product management and was able to move laterally through the industry at HP.

Later, Apple hired me and gave me the responsibility to break through the market with the first hard disk drive on a personal computer. It was enormous! Five megabytes in size and it cost $3,500. From there, they saw that I could manage, so they asked me to take over the Apple three product line, which is one of the two most profitable product lines for the company. I took the line and then they proceed to shut it down. John Scully called me into his office one day and proceeded to tell me they shut down the line, but needed to figure out what to do with the $20 million in product parts scattered about. I created a business plan and was promoted to the same management level as Steve Jobs. While at Apple, I generated enough profits to keep 1,500 people employed, out of the total 4-5,000. During my tenure, I also provided the funding to help Jobs finish developing the Macintosh.

The main reason I was hired at Apple was that I was a trained product manager for Hewlett Packard, where product management started. In 1932, Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett adopted the idea of having a mini CEO of the product and called them a product manager. Ever since the idea has taken off. I prefer to use the term, “product success manager” as I feel like it’s more applicable to what PM’s are responsible for. It’s a good starting point of your career that would allow you to then launch your own company or rise up to the senior management of a large company.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD PRODUCT MANAGER?

Someone that understands all of the aspects of the product market strategy.

Topics can range from understanding what the product is to what is it that the customer wants to do? How do they want to do it? Why do they want to do it? Where do they want to do it?

Then, they will identify at least 15 unmet needs in the marketplace. If you’ve got 15 unmet needs, chances are you’re going to have a successful product.

HOW DID YOU FIND THE PROCESS OF WRITING YOUR BOOK?

Getting started was hard. However, once I got it going, the whole thing flowed and I was able to take content from my training courses and organize it in a similar manner. I used that information as an outline for which I could expand upon for sections.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD PRODUCT?

A good product that satisfies 15 unmet needs.

Those unmet needs are things that people want to do that are really important and current products do not satisfy those needs.

CAN YOU TELL BY LOOKING AT A PRODUCT WHETHER OR NOT IT WILL BE SUCCESSFUL OR NOT (THINK NIKE BIG)?

For some, yes. The best way to truly know is through experience and comparing it to other products. It’s also a result of making mistakes yourself to know what works and what doesn’t.

For example, in 2003, RCN magazine gave me credit for having shipped the first advertisement on a cell phone. I tried to raise some venture capital to fund the company and couldn’t raise a penny. At the time, no one could understand media advertising on cell phones and cell phone games–today it’s over a $15 billion dollar industry.

The two mistakes he made were:

The unmet need of delivering ads to a cell phone did not exist until 2007 with the release of the first iPhone.

Most of the distribution was in Europe, but my advertising agency was in the United States and this caused some disconnect between the sales and placement of the ads. The US advertisers have little interest in advertising in Europe.

Had I known about this disconnect ahead of time, I would’ve done it differently and the company would probably still be in business today.

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Like to learn Product Management from David Fradin? Click here

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SO HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHEN IT’S THE RIGHT TIME TO GO ON TO THE NEXT VENTURE OR TO GO OUT ON YOUR OWN TO TRY SOMETHING ELSE?

It all revolves around values. The most important thing is, does a company have a set of values? Do they follow those values?

I’ve been affiliated with 25 organizations over the years, so I sat down and made a list of all of them. I had three columns. First: Does the organization have values? Second: Do they follow their values? Third: Did they match my values?

Only five of the 25 checked all three boxes–those were the places in which I thrived. At organizations such as Hewlett Packard, Apple, and a few others, their values met mine. The others were places where I quit or I was fired because our values did not align.

WHAT IS THE LIFECYCLE OF CREATING A PRODUCT?

Write a product market strategy

Understand what your customers want to do

Product positioning, value proposition, target audience

Send the market strategy over to the development team

Monitor its development

Help with testing

Make sure the product does what it’s supposed to

Take the product to the market

Continue marketing (an ongoing process)

WHAT MAKES YOU GOOD AT MANAGERIAL AND INSTRUCTOR TYPE ROLES?

I think Warren Buffet talked about it a couple of days ago, “What makes a good leader?” The answer is someone that has empathy. I tell everyone that works for me, “do the best job you can. It’s okay to make mistakes because that’s how we learn. Tell me where you want to go when you grow up and I’ll help you get there.”

If our paths line up and you want to continue working for me, then great. If not, I’ll help you get where you need to be because you’ll be a lot happier working for me in the meantime if I do.

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Recommended Audiobook: Building Insanely Great Products

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WHAT ARE TWO PROS AND TWO CONS TO WHAT YOU DO?

The pros are that I can do whatever I want when I wake up in the morning. That’s been a goal of mine for a long time. The con is that I work from home and with COVID, I can’t even have lunch with people. I learn a lot from being able to just go walk around and explore.

For example, I started the flying club at Michigan because I was wandering around campus bored after the first three weeks. I came across a poster with others expressing an interest in starting one and I decided to check it out.

WHAT MADE YOU GET YOUR PILOT’S LICENSE BEFORE COLLEGE?

I joined the Civil Air Patrol as a cadet when I was like 13 or 14 and they had an aeronautics trading curriculum. I went through it and won a scholarship for 15 hours of flying out at an Air Force base north of Reno, Nevada.

Once I got back, I wanted to keep flying so I’d work at minimum wage ($1.25/hr) to pay the $8/hr fee to rent an airplane. Over the next few years, I was able to get in 40 to 50 hours of flight time for my license. By my sophomore year of college, I had an instructor’s rating and began teaching others how to fly.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT FLYING?

You look down and you don’t see any problems.

Everything is really small, like little toys. It’s beautiful. You’re operating at three dimensions. It also requires hand-eye coordination to maneuver the aircraft and get it down on the ground so nobody gets hurt.

IF YOU HAD A BOOK WRITTEN ABOUT YOU, WHAT WOULD THE TITLE OF THE BOOK BE?

That’s the last book I’ll be writing and it’s called, T R I P P I N: Life’s Little Laughs.

IF YOU HAD 30 TO 60 SECONDS TO DESCRIBE TO A COMPLETE STRANGER THAT CAME UP TO YOU ON THE SIDE OF THE STREET WHAT YOU DID, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?

I am responsible for product success.

IF YOU HAD 24 HOURS TO LIVE UNLIMITED MONEY AND COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE AT THE SNAP OF YOUR FINGERS, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

I probably get in an airplane and start flying. Yeah, just fly around for all 24 hours, with unlimited guests visit theoretically, unlimited guests and eat at the top hundred restaurants in the world all at once.

WOULD DAVID AT 8, 10, 12, BE HAPPY WITH WHERE YOU ARE NOW AND WHAT YOU’RE DOING?

Yes, I think so. I should have stayed at Apple longer because I had options on 10,000 shares of stock and I checked it out before it would’ve been worth about $240 million. But overall, I’m pretty happy where I’m at.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH EITHER PERSONALLY, PROFESSIONALLY, OR BOTH IN THE NEXT 6-12 MONTHS?

Firstly, I like to get these two books that I’m working on out there. I’ve trained two people through Cisco, who are entering the workforce now, so I hopefully can just sit back and collect on the good work they do. I also hope to buy a house in Maui to retire to.

This is a transcript of a podcast episode from Riseyear.