Episodes

When execution stops being hard, what becomes visible? For Razy Shah, it was a three-hour meeting with a restaurateur who had no budget. He went in planning to spend an hour. He left energized but uncertain. Years later, that meeting turned into a six-figure contract. This isn't a story about networking strategy or playing the long game. It's about what we choose when nothing is forcing our hand. As AI takes over more execution, the space between what we can do and what we should do gets wider. ...

Have you ever walked out of a meeting convinced everyone was aligned, only to discover weeks later that half the team heard something completely different? Stan Slovin has spent years working with leaders who thought they were listening, until the silence, the turnover, and the failed projects proved otherwise. In this conversation, we dig into the small tells that reveal when someone has stopped hearing you, the moment a CEO's dinner table question changed his relationship with his daughter, an...

Have you ever sat through yet another transformation announcement and quietly thought, "here we go again"? Alex Adamopolous II has lived through enough of those moments to know the truth: organizations don't struggle with new processes. They struggle with the humans trying to figure them out. In this conversation, Alex shares what 45% of workers won't tell you in surveys about burnout, the wardrobe app startup that failed because they asked all the wrong questions, and why AI is creating the ...

What happens when you spend eight months building something impressive, only to discover the people who promised to use it actually don't want it? Richard Abi Chahla knows that moment. The deflation. The walk back to the team. The hard conversation about wasted months and sweat equity. In this conversation, Richard shares what he learned from that 2016 failure and how he now uses AI not to build faster, but to learn faster. We dig into the messy reality of validating your riskiest assumptions fi...

At some point in your career, you have to decide who you’re going to be when things are uncomfortable. In this episode of Productly Speaking, returning guest Reese Gifford joins Karl Abbott to talk about authenticity and humility, not as polished leadership traits, but as choices made under pressure. The kind that cost you something in the moment and only make sense later. Reese reflects on entering tech in the late 90s as a young woman with no roadmap, learning early that preparation wasn...

What if the moment everything tilts sideways at work could actually make you better at your job? In this episode, Rick Lewis sits down to talk about the messy middle of change, the kind that knocks the wind out of a team long before it becomes one of those polished “growth stories.” Rick brings stories from big reorganizations, mergers that paired frenemies into one team, and the kind of customer feedback loops that only surface after months of digging. He talks about the small, painfully hum...

Ever had one of those weeks where the roadmap is bursting at the seams, everyone wants one more thing, and you can practically feel your balance slipping through your fingers? This conversation with Katie Tamblin goes right into that moment. Katie shares the kind of stories product people don’t usually admit out loud. There’s the time she walked into a team with seventy‑two product “priorities” taped around the room like a horror‑movie timeline and had to help the organization face the truth ...

Ever wonder how a punk‑rock kid hauling amps through Midwest basements ends up helping steer one of the world’s most widely used pieces of enterprise software? Yeah… us too. In this episode, Scott McCarty invites us into the winding, deeply human story behind his career — a life that didn’t unfold in straight lines so much as heartfelt pivots. Scott shares what it felt like when the band he’d poured his whole identity into began losing steam and what it meant to walk away from a dream w...

Product management gets talked about like it’s all clarity, confidence, and momentum. But most of the time, it’s not. Season 5 of Productly Speaking explores the human side of product work — authenticity, balance, uncertainty, and values. These are conversations about what product management actually feels like when things are unclear, when the roadmap breaks, or when the rules everyone repeats stop making sense. This season features conversations with Scott McCarty, Katie Tamblin, and Rick Le...

AI is transforming the way we work, but building great AI products takes more than hype. In this episode of Productly Speaking, Karl Abbott talks with Dina Atia, an AI Product Manager at Microsoft, about how to navigate the noise and focus on what really matters: solving real user problems. Dina shares practical insights on managing expectations, balancing bold visions with incremental progress, and the skills PMs need to thrive in this fast-moving space. From rapid prototyping to aligning metri...

What if the thing you are closest to is actually what is blinding you? In this episode, Karl talks with Jake Bowen-Bate about the quiet, human challenges of building products in fast‑moving environments. Jake shares what it really feels like to work in places where you are building the plane, flying it, and still figuring out how the controls work, all while knowing the money might literally run out if you get it wrong. The pressure is real, the workload never quite matches the capacity, and th...

What happens when all the advice you followed turns out to be wrong for the job in front of you? In this episode, Karl talks with Katie Tamblin about the lived reality of building products inside what she calls “chunky corporates” and why so many well‑intentioned product efforts quietly fall apart there. Katie shares hard‑earned stories from decades inside large organizations, including the moment she realized that everything she knew about building new products simply did not apply to replacin...

Episode Summary: In this episode of Productly Speaking, host Karl Abbott sits down with Lee Fischman—seasoned developer, product manager, executive, and author of How to Excel at Digital Product Management. Lee shares decades of experience across industries from fintech to healthcare, and dives deep into what makes a great product manager beyond the usual playbook. We explore the mindset that drives success, why humility and empathy are non-negotiable, and how overlooked skills like communicat...

Welcome to Season 4 of Productly Speaking! In this short kickoff episode, host Karl Abbott introduces the theme for the season: Why do products fail and what can we learn from those failures? We’ll explore the hidden risks, organizational dynamics, and human factors that shape product success or lead to disaster. If you’re a product manager, founder, or anyone building products, this season will challenge your assumptions and help you think differently about success and failure! Subscribe so ...

Have you ever put something on a roadmap knowing, deep down, it probably was not going to happen on that date? In this episode, Karl talks with Janna Bastow about the uncomfortable truth behind most roadmaps and the moment she realized they were quietly training teams to overpromise. Janna shares the story of building her first roadmap tool and the surprising pattern that emerged when almost every product manager came back asking to “just move everything over by a month.” It was not a tooling p...

What happens when the people building your product do not work for your company, and still feel deep ownership over every decision? In this episode, Karl talks with Reese Gifford about the lived reality of building products in open source, where community passion can be both your greatest strength and your hardest constraint. Reese shares what it was like stepping into Mozilla, falling in love with the mission, and then navigating the very human tension between keeping Firefox open and free whi...

What if being a great product manager had less to do with sounding smart and more to do with getting your hands dirty? In this episode, Karl talks with Ali Rakhimov about a product career that started far away from tech titles, roadmaps, or polished decks. Ali shares how he quite literally tripped into product work while trying to solve real problems in K–12 schools, like watching student cash disappear at the front office and deciding someone had to fix it. No role, no playbook, just curiosity...

What if your path into product management started behind a coffee counter, in the middle of a global pandemic? In this episode, Karl talks with Flora Taagen about a journey into product management that looks nothing like a straight line. Flora shares how she went from studying computer science to serving coffee during COVID, where suddenly “making coffee” also meant rethinking safety, budgets, and how a small business survives when the rules change every week. That experience, it turns out, tra...

What if you were already doing product work years before you ever heard the job title? In this episode, Karl talks with Adil Hussain about a path into product management that started with a teenage side project and quietly grew into a career. Adil shares how, at just 14, he and a co‑founder were building websites, talking to users, and figuring out what people actually needed, without realizing they were doing product work at all. It wasn’t until much later, sitting in a tiny meeting room with ...

What happens when the thing you worked so hard to build starts quietly working against you? In this episode, Karl talks with Kevin Bailey about the hidden cost of high‑growth success and what burnout really looks like when it sneaks up on you. Kevin shares the story of building a bootstrapped startup with two friends in his twenties, watching it explode from a team of three to over a hundred people, and suddenly feeling the shift from excitement to fear. What once felt creative and energizing t...

What really happens when sales and product have to sit in the same room and agree on what matters? In this episode, Karl talks with Richard Cawkill about the lived reality of working at the messy, often misunderstood intersection of sales and product. Richard shares what it feels like to carry a number, build long‑term relationships with customers, and still genuinely care about protecting the integrity of the product. From two‑year sales cycles to last‑minute deal pressure, he walks through th...

What if the biggest risk to your product isn’t what you build, but how you talk about it? In this episode, Karl sits down with Austin Fuller to unpack the very human tension between product and product marketing, and why getting that relationship wrong often shows up much later, in churn, confusion, or missed expectations. Austin shares what he’s learned from years of listening closely to customers and prospects, including why the most honest feedback often comes from people who haven’t bought ...

Have you ever ended a workday exhausted, knowing you were busy all day, but unsure what actually moved forward? In this episode, Karl sits down with Keith Allen Johns to talk about the invisible weight product managers carry and why the stress of the role so often shows up at work and at home. Keith shares his own journey from climbing to the C‑suite to realizing that something still felt off, and how that search for “what’s missing” led him to work closely with product managers who feel respon...

What happens when two product people stop chasing perfection and start talking honestly about the job? In this episode, Karl is joined by Evie Brockwell and Michael Palmer for a wide-ranging, refreshingly human conversation about what product work really feels like day to day. Michael shares the excitement and pressure of stepping into BBC iPlayer, including the surreal experience of watching real people sit on a couch in a mock living room while testing new ideas for one of the UK’s most iconi...