Building products users love through empathy, rigor, and deep customer insight

Main Takeaways

• Great product experiences start from genuinely understanding user problems, not competitor checklists.
• Maintain simplicity while evolving sophisticated features through rigorous design iteration.
• Deep, consistent customer listening uncovers high-impact opportunities others might miss.
• Balance quantitative metrics with the irreplaceable value of customer sentiment.
• Cultivate alignment and buy-in through clear communication and structured processes.

Who are you in a nutshell? What do you do, and why do you do it?

I’m a mom, wife, sister, aunt, daughter, manager, peer, and friend. Personally, I do my best to live intentionally and adventurously alongside my husband to give our daughter the best life we possibly can. Professionally, I’m a product leader at Flodesk who’s deeply invested in helping small business owners understand and utilize the power of email marketing.

What’s your setup? What tools, frameworks, products do you use? Where do you work, how is your work schedule?

It wasn’t always this way, but my husband and I both work from home and have spent nearly every day together since March 2020. After my home office turned into a nursery in 2023, my workstation moved to our den. My desk is a DropTop (super sweet UK-based company) which can be folded up when I’m done for the day. On it, you’ll find AirPods for meetings, Bose headphones or Loop earplugs for focus time, coffee, ergo mouse and keyboard, and my Ugmonk Analog to-do list cards. That last item is my favorite. I love writing things down and having a consistent reason to look away from my screens.

Flodesk is a truly global team, and because of that, my schedule is pretty flexible, with a lot of work happening asynchronously. I usually start my day coordinating with my design partner (shoutout to David!) in Spain, have flexibility throughout the afternoon, and check back in with our engineers in Vietnam in the evening. This schedule probably isn’t for everyone, but I love being able to easily take the time I need for personal care and appointments during the day.

What’s the biggest challenge for you at the moment, and how do you plan to overcome it?

Two of the most important tenets of Flodesk are great design and ease of use. One of our biggest challenges is maintaining the ease and simplicity that has made Flodesk so loved and successful while continuously iterating and releasing the more sophisticated features our members crave.

We attempt to overcome this in two ways. First, we make sure we have a deep understanding of the problems our members are trying to solve. We don’t build features just because our competitors have them, but because we truly believe our members would benefit from them. We conduct regular interviews and user testing to ensure the features we release are intuitive and aligned with their needs.

Second, we’re absolutely rigorous in our product design process. We take our time mulling over potential solutions to ensure we land on the right one. Explore. Iterate. Explore. Repeat. We don’t release features that we’re not extremely proud of. While I believe there is power in aligning on a direction and sticking to it, I also believe there is courage in admitting when something still isn’t quite right and spending the extra time to get it there. You only have one chance to make that first impression.

In your opinion, what defines a top 1% product management professional?

Top product leaders recognize that the customers they’re serving aren’t just numbers or conversion metrics, but complex, nuanced people. They recognize their cross-functional partners aren’t there simply to do their bidding but are partners in collaboration who carry valid and unique perspectives that should be respected. The power is in people, both internally and externally.

I really believe that a product manager who has an incredible sense for their customer, but isn’t a shining star in their technical or analytical skills, can build a great product. I wouldn’t say the reverse is true.

How do you consistently identify high-impact opportunities that others might overlook?

You’ll start to see a common thread throughout most of my responses. But my answer here, and in most cases, is listening to the customer wherever they are and learning to read between the lines. I keep a pulse on what our members are saying on socials, in community forums and support groups, on our public feature request board, across user research interviews and surveys, or on blogs that compare us to competitors. The list goes on and on. If you spend time every single week reading or listening to how customers (or potential customers) talk, you become intimately familiar with the challenges they encounter day to day, and you can identify solutions to build a product that will be invaluable for them.

What systems or habits do you use to ensure that product discovery remains continuous?

I love to keep a pulse on the landscape by signing up for the email lists of best-in-class companies and our competitors. I regularly speak with customers, through interviews, user testing, community forums, or surveys. We also created a venue where our customers can share their product feature requests. It is chock-full of creative ideas and allows for upvoting so we can get a sense of what our customers care about most. I also love reading through the comments to hear how the feature would benefit others in the community. Paying close attention to the other tools our members are using and the integrations they’re requesting provides a great window into the current gaps of the product and potential to create more value.

How do you go beyond surface-level feedback to dig deeper into user needs?

I spend time actually talking with our members (surprise, surprise!) regularly. I ask them to walk me through their workflows, what they’re hoping to achieve, and what they’re currently struggling with. We have a really active Facebook group where I regularly browse posts and conversations, and speak directly with members about issues they’re encountering. Between the Facebook group, a large group of partners and members who’ve opted in to give early feedback on product ideas, and a great program to incentivize members to complete our surveys, we’ve established processes to get quick feedback across different channels. Putting in the time and resources to create those channels and processes will benefit you so much down the line.