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24 min read

Product Marketing Life [podcast]: Devon O’Rourke

Podcasts | Product Marketing
 


Founder and Managing Partner of Fluvio, a product marketing consultancy, Devon O’Rourke shares the fascinating story of what inspired him to make the leap from PMM at a goliath like Amazon to starting his own consultancy, his top tips for anyone considering making a similar move, plus PMM-specific insights including how he views the role of product marketing varying so much from company to company as a good thing, his views on PMMs sitting in the product or marketing orgs, where his preference lies, and heaps more good stuff.  

Full transcript:

Bryony Pearce - PMA  0:03
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Product Marketing Life podcast, which is brought to you by Product Marketing Alliance. My name’s Bryony Pearce and I’m the Content Manager here at PMA.  This week’s podcast is sponsored by Product Marketing Core...meta, we know. PMMC is our very own product marketing certification program, and it covers the A to Z of product marketing essentials. With 11 modules, 68 chapters, 87 exam questions, 10+ hours’ worth of learning and official PMA certification, it’s a course not to be missed. Head to https://pmmalliance.co/PMMC for more info.  As part of this series, we’re connecting with product marketers all over the world about topics they’re super passionate about, and in this episode, we’ll be speaking to Devon O’Rourke, Founder & Managing Partner of Fluvio, about why he founded his own product marketing consultancy, what it was like working at Amazon and Etsy, and what he’s learned working with startups at different stages.  Devon started his product marketing journey at Tremor Video and from there, he moved on to Etsy as their Global Product Marketing Manager for apps. After that, he spent just over two and a half years at Amazon, and then he founded his own consultancy company, Fluvio, in February 2020. I’ll let Devon talk us through his background more throughout the show, but for now, welcome to the show, Devon.

Devon O'Rourke  0:22
Yeah, thanks so much for having me on, appreciate it.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  0:25
It's great to have you here. So I guess we're going to touch on your time at Amazon, Etsy and Tremor Video shortly, but just to kick off, can you tell us a bit about how you fell into product marketing in the first place? And what attracted you to the industry?

Devon O'Rourke  0:40
Sure. You know, I think like most people, I definitely didn't have my eye on product marketing as I was going through school. So definitely sort of just found myself in this position and really grew to appreciate it. I studied Communications and Media in college, I actually focused on journalism and minored in photography. So I actually thought of myself as someone on the creative side and wanted to be a photojournalist, interned at the New York Times photojournalism Getty Images. And my first job out of school was being a photo editor for ESPN The Magazine so I was very much entrenched in photography. And things sort of started going south with the publishing industry and I got a little bit concerned being the youngest person at ESPN The Magazine. So started looking elsewhere and found myself at a media agency and was not super happy there. Didn't like media agency life but learned a lot and decided to just join a vendor at the time, and that was Tremor Video. And I was put into an entry-level product marketing position just because the customer for Tremor Video is a media agency, planner or buyer. So I was that ideal customer. And it was a great way for me to be transitioned into a product marketing role where obviously we know you have to be an expert on the customer, which was me at the time. So that's how I sort of stumbled upon it.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  2:17
Yeah, it sounds like a very kind of natural path there. But I guess with the kind of comms and media background, there's a lot that can be transferred from there into product marketing?

Devon O'Rourke  2:26
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, learning about CPMs and different forms of media and the advertising industry as a whole, you know, branding, all that sort of stuff definitely helped accelerate, I would say, accelerate my role at Tremor Video.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  2:44
And then in that first role, product marketing role that you had, how did you kind of learn about it? So was it very much training on the job? Did you go to any courses or?

Devon O'Rourke  2:54
Yeah, no, it was very, very much training on the job. I got very lucky in the situation I was in, I had a really great mentor there, my manager at the time, and actually her manager who ended up becoming the COO of the company, which is a publicly-traded company, started out as the Director of Product Marketing. So someone super senior within the organization had product marketing experience. We had a lot of buy-in with product marketing and so I just sort of was able to learn the ropes through them.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  3:29
Yep. Cool. Okay, thanks for that. So next up, we regularly hear kind of within the community, people are really keen to understand what life as a product marketer is like at these kind of big, big organizations. So can you just kind of talk us through your time at Amazon, Etsy and Tremor Video and what kinds of product marketing cultures they had?

Devon O'Rourke  3:48
Yeah, it's a really good question. And as I've started to work with more companies, it's becoming more and more evident that there is no one size fits all for product marketing, it really truly differs everywhere you are. And so I'll start with just saying that and I can go through my experiences. So at Tremor Video, we were very much a part of the product org, focused on inbound, I would say probably more strategic product initiatives than creating marketing collateral or really focusing on outbound activity. So, you know, I definitely worked very, very closely with the sales org, but my job was really to help scope out what the roadmap would look like, where there were revenue opportunities, also forming partnerships with companies that would sort of separate us from the rest of the demand-side platforms, which is the business we were in, so I would say that was definitely a product focussed org, as I mentioned earlier, the COO of the company was a former product marketer, so understood our value and it was sort of smooth sailing. Of course, that was my first experience, I didn't recognize that at the time. And then I went over to Etsy. Etsy also was... their product marketing practice was a part of the product org. And the structure at Etsy, you know, they had different pods for different products. I was on the app, right? So my product was the consumer-facing app. We had a PM, and then myself as the product marketing manager, and then a team of developers, both for iOS and Android. So there, I would say it was understood in terms of what our role was within the org, but it hadn't been fully built out yet. I was a part of that, like incoming not class, but group of product marketers that were what product marketing looks like at the company. A lot of things changed there, there were some leadership shifts, and product marketing was actually cut for a time, I think it's back now. But on the consumer side of that business, product marketing lost headcount, and I was shifted over to the seller side of that business, so focused on Etsy crafters and their experience with Etsy. So I would say that working at Etsy was a little bit more challenging, in that the perception of product marketing was still not quite there. We were building that out. So then I left Etsy to go to Amazon and Amazon is structured a little bit differently, product marketing falls under marketing, and that really does have implications on the role. We had much more of a shift toward messaging, collateral development, focused on the sales team enablement, those sort of product marketing activities became the primary focus. I would say running betas, helping the product team to scope the roadmap was definitely secondary. And so that was definitely a shift. And I think that goes along with just the fact that product marketing is a part of the marketing org and not the product org. So the force and function on like, what matters to us within marketing versus product? And then, working at a big company, I know that was part of the question, Amazon is a very, very large company. I worked in the advertising part of the business so obviously narrowed down the company a bit but still, the advertising business is a behemoth. So it is very large. Everything at Amazon in terms of the culture is built around Amazon's leadership principles. And I can tell you that those things are tangible like everything you do at Amazon has to align to at least one of the principles. And so that was interesting. I think that's what's made Amazon successful and able to build out such a big company, and yet remain really productive. So I think that was fascinating to be a part of.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  8:28
Yeah. And then in terms of your time at those three companies, what did the size of those product marketing teams look like?

Devon O'Rourke  8:36
Yeah, so Tremor Video, a little bit smaller company, I joined right after it went public. So you know, yes, it's a public company, but definitely still felt a little bit more like a startup. There were four of us. I mean, it was always in flux over the course of three years I was there, but generally, it was about four product marketers. And I believe the product team was 10 or fewer. So in terms of the ratio between product marketing and product, it was pretty healthy. And that's the ratio I tend to try to look at is, how many PMs to one PMM, how many PMs to one product marketer. So it was about four of us. Etsy was a little bit larger, but the company in terms of the product org was larger, so it was trying to be building out pods with one product marketer in each pod. I think there were probably about six of us or so on the consumer side of the business, and then another six on the seller side. So about 12 to 15, I think. And there were far more product managers. So, I think at least 30 product managers. And then Amazon, I mean, there's hundreds of product managers at Amazon. It's probably the most popular role. A lot of MBA candidates will come into Amazon as product managers. Product marketing was very much outnumbered. I think the ratio there was more like 10 to one, and that changed the culture of product marketing. I think just due to resourcing challenges, we had to focus on where we could add value within the marketing org. And so our focus started to shift towards solution marketing, really focusing on messaging for each vertical we worked on.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  10:42
And then you mentioned kind of the vast difference between your role when you report into for example, product at Tremor, where you were looking at scoping out the roadmap, revenue opportunities, that kind of thing, versus messaging and sales enablement, collateral marketing for Amazon, would you say you have like a preference between the two?

Devon O'Rourke  11:03
I would say I have a preference to be a little bit more aligned with product. So I think the sales enablement is certainly important. I think that product marketing needs to have a very large role in enablement, and be closely aligned with sales and that we as product marketers get a lot of value out of those relationships and helping the product team because we are on the front line. So I think that's extremely important. But, you know, I do have a preference for product marketing to be more closely aligned with product and that's what I work with a lot of companies on doing, is structuring product marketing so that it is embedded into the product org.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  11:44
And then what are your thoughts kind of in general, because I know it's obviously quite an industry-wide thing that the role of product marketing can just vary so much from company to company. Do you think that's... like do you see that as a pro or a con or is that a problem or?

Devon O'Rourke  12:00
Yeah. It's a really good question because I actually think that that is a pro. Like, I'm very excited when I see opportunity. And I think product marketers have so many opportunities, you know, the purview is super wide. So I think anyone who's able to adapt, recognize where they can add value can take advantage of how wide that purview is. And I actually think it's a really good thing. We're not pigeon-holed into a very specific role. We're able to sort of stretch where we need to.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  12:43
Yep, that makes sense. And then kind of looking at your LinkedIn bio it looks like you kind of started big in your product marketing career in that I know Tremor Video wasn't quite the scale of Etsy and Amazon, but it was quite an established company already. So how did you find starting at those big established organizations and then transitioning now to going in house, to helping smaller startups and like the resource and budget changes and that kind of thing?

Devon O'Rourke  13:10
Yeah. Well, it definitely has required me to do a lot of educating. Which, you know, I think I'm in a good place to do that, because I have seen what product marketing can look like within big orgs, how it can scale, where it's best positioned within a company to succeed. And so, you know, I actually get a lot of satisfaction of working with these smaller companies, and giving them my perspective on how they can first start it, you know, who's someone within their organization that might have the skill set to become a product marketer? Help them do that, and then help them figure out how it can scale, how they partner with different teams, etc. So I think it's educational for me to obviously experience these smaller companies, styles, and the different teams that have built out, and then a lot of my job is educating them on the value of product marketing and where it can fit within the company.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  14:13
And then I guess kind of going back one step, what was it that made you want to go and set up your own consultancy in the first place?

Devon O'Rourke  14:21
Yeah, good question. So, you know, I think when I joined Amazon, my thinking at the time was, this is probably the last really big company I'm going to work for. I always had a desire to go somewhere small, and to have a little bit more freedom and ownership, I'd say, not that I didn't have that at these other companies. But, you know, I just wanted to go small. So,  I knew from the onset that that was my goal at Amazon is to use that as a stepping stone to taking on a leadership position in a smaller company. But while I was at Amazon, we were trying to expand our product marketing team pretty aggressively. And I was a part of the working group that was trying to hire so I was interviewing a bunch of product marketing candidates, the interview process at Amazon can be quite lengthy. And it was taking us anywhere from six months to a year to hire a Senior Product Marketing Manager.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  15:25
Oh, wow.

Devon O'Rourke  15:27
Yeah. So, you know, I think being a part of that process was pretty eye-opening. There weren't as many senior, experienced product marketers out in the marketplace and I just was surprised by that and I thought that you know, if Amazon with their brand recognition was struggling to... I'm not saying that we were struggling to find talent, we found talent, but it took a lot of time. And if Amazon was taking time to do that, I was pretty sure that there were other companies struggling with building out product marketing and finding and retaining talent. So I started to think about that and recognize that there's probably an opportunity to work with other companies that are struggling, and really become an on-demand sort of remote product marketer, and either help them hire and build teams and help them figure out what product marketing looks like, which is, you know, what the smaller companies need or just be a true consultant where I embed myself and am almost treated like an employee at a company and execute the product marketing myself.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  16:44
Okay, cool. So I'll kind of touch on that a bit more shortly in terms of what kind of work you do for your clients. But first off, what would you say the sort of typical profile of your clients are? Are they generally quite product marketing savvy, is the concept quite new to them? At what stage do they reach out to you?

Devon O'Rourke  17:01
Yeah, it's a good question. I am going to be consistently rethinking that. I don't know what the ideal customer profile looks like, I can tell you I've learned a lot from where I started. You know, I started thinking I was going to be working with small startups who've raised capital, who certainly have, you know, developers and engineers, they probably have a product manager or two, and now they're either being told by their investors or they're recognizing that companies are beginning to hire product marketing. I always think of product marketing as the role that's hired just after you have solidified product management. So my initial approach to the business was looking at, you know, series A - Series B companies who were in that sort of ballpark. I think that's still a core set of my clients, but what I've found is the product-market fit for my business might be better for companies that actually are larger and have established product marketing, but maybe struggled to get it into a place where it's successful. So those companies have an understanding of product marketing already, obviously, they recognize that it has value, and so they don't need to be educated, they recognize the challenges like there's just a lot of things there that... there's a lot of barriers that are broken down with those customers. So yeah, you know, I think I'm always going to be trying to reevaluate my company's product-market fit, but I think that was an interesting learning for me is that perhaps my clients aren't going to be that small startup segment.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  18:57
And then how do you actually... do you work remotely or do you go to companies in-house or?

Devon O'Rourke  19:03
Yeah, so a big part of my pitch is that I'm flexible and not just in terms of the projects I work on, the scope of those projects, but also how I work with these companies. I have done remote work. I've done work where I go in on like a bi-weekly basis and perform different sort of trainings. And then I'll have like one, you know, the primary client I work with right now, I went into their offices, obviously, before this whole COVID-19 started happening, but I would go into their offices three days a week and really embed myself in their team meetings.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  19:47
And then out of curiosity, is there any kind of consistency in terms of who within the organization kind of reaches out to you or is your main point of reference?

Devon O'Rourke  19:59
Yeah. So I think depends, it depends on a lot of factors. If a company has product marketing built out, then it's obviously the leader of that practice. So it could be the Chief Product Officer if product marketing roles into product. And it could be the SVP of marketing, if it's a larger company, where product marketing fits into marketing, or it could be the CEO. So for the smaller startups, I generally try to go right to the CEO who's the decision-maker across the board, and likely doesn't have these folks that have ownership on signing consultants themselves. It'll all go to the CEO. So I'll hear directly from the CEO. I'll put a proposal together and address it to the CEO. For the bigger companies I'm working generally with, you know, the SVPs and the Chief Product Officer.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  21:00
Yeah, that makes sense. And then when you're actually picking up new clients, what does that process look like for you in terms of sort of establishing where their problems lie and how you can deliver value and whether or not they're actually a good fit for you?

Devon O'Rourke  21:15
Yeah, it's a good question. And not everyone is a good fit. And so I definitely don't expect when I'm speaking to someone, that my services will automatically be applicable. So I think that's an important thing that I try to establish with my prospects in setting that expectation and being transparent around that. So what I try to do is I try to look for companies, if I'm the one prospecting and no one has reached out to me, I'm looking at companies that fit my profile, whether they're, you know, a Series B startup, or a large, private equity funded company that is looking to hire product marketing, for example, and I'll try to find a decision-maker within that organization, I'll reach out to them. Or if they'll reach out to me, I set up a call. And that initial call is, you know, 30 minutes to an hour where I ask them a lot of just organizational questions if they understand product marketing, where it fits within their organization, what their primary goal is within the company, what success looks like for that role, and how well it's performing today. And then I ask a lot of questions around their customers. So I want to understand who their audience is, really intricately. And that generally gives me a pretty good idea of whether or not product marketing is something that they need to adjust or they need to establish. And then I will put a custom proposal together that gives them my thoughts on how that can be successful. And then, you know, if they like the way that proposal looks, then we start to work together.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  23:06
Okay, cool. That makes sense. And then for you as a product marketer, how, if at all, would you say the role kind of varies from doing it from an in house perspective now to doing it on a consultancy basis?

Devon O'Rourke  23:22
So, I think it depends on the relationship of the client. I would say that, if done right, it doesn't change. What I tell clients is that I want to be treated like an employee, I don't want to be this sort of consultant that's hard to reach, that's not a part of the team, and that doesn't have the same ownership of certain things like I want to be very much treated like an in house product marketing expert. So if that is done successfully, and our relationship is set up that way, then there really is no difference right? I'm part of the team meetings, I'm a part of the company-wide meetings, I'm a part of happy hours, I'm a part of all the things that help build morale within teams. Now, that's not always the case, like some clients don't embed me in that way. And that's, I think, a mistake. So I'm always trying to be incorporated much like, you know, an in house team is.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  24:25
And then that kind of leads me on to the next question in terms of like, what would you say is most challenging about consultancy life?

Devon O'Rourke  24:33
Well, you know, I would say it's challenging that you don't have a team around you every day, at least at this point. It's really just me. So if you're someone who needs to be you know, in close contact with people, talking and feeling like you know, you can have a conversation with somebody, that can be a little bit challenging. And then just starting a business, there's so many things that you learn along the way. And I would say those are challenges, but I enjoy them. So it's not, those aren't negative things. There's just a lot of different, you know, insurance for example like I didn't have to think about that before, I have to do that now. Finding new business, you know, that takes time. And that's not product marketing work. So I have to allocate my time differently. I have to understand where to invest my time on a daily basis. So managing that is challenging. There's a lot of things that I'm just picking up along the way.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  25:46
Yeah, I guess stuff like that you can't really plan for, sometimes you don't think of it then all of a sudden it's a case of "Oh wow, I need to do this now". And sometimes it makes you realize because I was freelance before I joined PMA, and there's so much more that goes on behind the scenes that you don't necessarily realize until you work like purely for yourself. It can be a shock to the system sometimes. But like you say it's a great learning curve and you learn lots along the way, which is great.

Devon O'Rourke  26:10
Yeah. And those are important things to learn if you want to be, you know, an entrepreneur, which is something that I wanted to do. So, for me, it's exciting to learn those things. It's not daunting, but I think there's gonna be a lot of folks that probably wouldn't want to do that. So it's not for everyone.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  26:28
Yeah, that makes sense. Um, and next up, so kind of looking at OKRs I find that they're sometimes... I'm not sure if contentious is the right word, but it's a tricky topic within product marketing in that some people don't have OKRs, some people do, some people are not sure how to kind of measure and improve the success of product marketing. So do you have any examples at all of how your clients measure the success of what you do for them?

Devon O'Rourke  26:55
Yeah, I think I'm really early in that process. You know, I don't have any KPIs that I'm providing clients at this point, I think part of the challenge is distancing myself from very near term tangible metrics that someone like, you know, a demand generation or growth marketer will look at, right? Like, I'm not coming in and telling these companies, I'm going to get them a thousand new customers in a week. So, that's the first thing is educating them on what product marketing is able to do. And that's helping them build a sustainable business where, yes, we're driving adoption of their products, we're getting new customers, but it's not a one month, three-month thing. It's months down the line. And then it's helping them understand the partner team so you know if done well working with the marketing org who's going to increase all of their metrics, right? We're going to have better-qualified leads that go to the sales team, we're going to have higher sell-through rates if we have the right things in place in terms of sales enablement, we're going to have higher NPS scores from existing customers because we're building better products. So it's looking at the metrics that other teams are taking on and trying to track against those as well.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  28:28
Yep, that makes total sense. And then I guess you've been working with lots of different types of businesses, products and growth stages since you started this consultancy company. If we were just to focus on the startup element. What have you learned since working with companies at different stages and how do their needs subsequently change your input?

Devon O'Rourke  28:54
That's a hard question. I would say what I've learned is that all of these small companies are moving very fast, and they're just trying to figure things out. And there is not always a place where product marketing is easily plugged in. And a lot of them what I'm finding is not necessarily, they're not necessarily a good fit for product marketing at this point. For example, you know, I spoke to a CEO of a fast-growing SaaS startup about two months ago, and we had a very frank conversation around where his business was at, he has a sales team, he has obviously engineers and he has I think one product manager, and where we netted out was that demand generation was what he needed at the time. So, we basically said let's reconnect months down the line, I helped recommend the type of role he should hire, given his situation and that was grow fast and learn a little bit later. And so, yeah, I think it really just it depends on the company.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  30:08
That makes sense. And then out of curiosity, when you transitioned kind of from Amazon into your consultancy, were you kind of consulting on the side before you took the plunge to take it full time? Am I going to get you into trouble for asking that?

Devon O'Rourke  30:23
That might get me into trouble, I would say... No, I'll be transparent, I was very much planning this for about six months prior to leaving. So yeah, it takes time. I wasn't, I would say I was working as an advisor.  So I wasn't making a huge amount of income that would allow me to think about that as a standalone business. I was using six months as an advisor as an opportunity to learn whether or not there was a market for the services, and what that might look like and then understanding the processes that I would have to go through in order to acquire clients.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  31:09
Yeah, sure. And then we've touched on a few throughout the pod already I think, but since setting up your consultancy, what would you say your biggest personal learnings have been to date?

Devon O'Rourke  31:24
Biggest personal learnings? I would say personal, I don't know, I think I'll stick to maybe the things I've learned about the business side. Personally, I like flexibility and I'm happy. I think giving myself a sense of ownership and pride in doing all the things for a company myself and seeing something grow is satisfying. So, you know, at this point, that's personally what I'm feeling, I think from a business standpoint, and, you know, I read about this before I started it, but everyone thinks that if they have a good idea for a business, and there is product-market fit, which I proved before I left Amazon, I tested it, that when you launch the business, you would get clients. They'd come quickly, right? I'd have customers. And I do have clients, but there is a lot of work that goes into pitching, building proposals, understanding businesses intricately and acquiring and signing clients and going through legal. Like, it's not a month-long process for each client. It's months long. And for some clients, it's going to be a year. And so, yeah, I think just the amount of time and effort required to business development work is extensive and that's something that I didn't fully anticipate or appreciate until I was in the midst of it.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  33:07
Okay, cool. And that kind of lends itself to my next and final question, which is that for anyone who's listening and perhaps thinking about starting their own consultancy, maybe in the near or distant future, but they haven't yet taken the plunge, what would your advice to them be?

Devon O'Rourke  33:25
My advice would be first, double-check that it is actually what you want to do. There's a lot of good things about having a very established role. And if you see that there's a pathway for you to be promoted into a leadership position at a company and you're happy at that company, then don't rock the boat because I think that still is probably the best route to being happy and successful. But if you are and you have been thinking about doing your own thing, going off and starting your own consulting business, then do the research. You know, I mentioned, I did about six months of testing. There was another six months before that, where I was, you know, reading about the history of consulting, reading about the founders of the big three consulting firms, you know, researching other companies that were doing similar things, studying their clients, reading about entrepreneurs who started their own business that are, you know, not necessarily consultants, but something similar. So like, do a lot of upfront research and feel comfortable with the history of it and learning from that was important for me, and then start testing it with clients, have conversations, cold call people, cold email, go to networking events, start to listen to potential clients and prospects. And just make sure that you feel super comfortable because it is a big leap. There's a lot of things that you have to go through and there are expenses that you probably didn't think of. So, you know, plan it. The other thing I would say is, you don't need a business plan. I drafted up a go-to-market plan of sorts, and maybe a little bit of a business plan just to get a sense for what revenue I would have to be bringing in in order for it to be a sustainable business and you know, what would I charge for example, but I have not referenced any of those plans since I started my business. I have branched off and done my own thing in a lot of ways, you know, go to market fit is forever changing. So don't feel like you have to have a business plan locked up before you make the move because you're gonna be tearing that up anyway.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  36:02
And then I did say last question, but I have one more and I'm going to put you on the spot. You mentioned that you kind of did a lot of reading for six months prior to taking the plunge. Like, what kind of books were you reading? Can you remember what they're called? Or would you recommend them to people?

Devon O'Rourke  36:18
Yeah. So right now, I'm reading Ray Dalio's Principles, which is a really interesting book. So I'd recommend that it gives you principles for life, and then also principles for a business. He's built a super successful hedge fund, you know, it's a professional services firm. So it's not a consulting firm, but there are some similarities. So that's been helpful. And then I read sort of, I think it's The Lords of Strategy, which is the history of consulting firms. So very specifically, if you're going into starting your own consultancy, I think that's valuable. It's important to know the history of the business that you're going into and learning from that. And then I read various founder books on founders. Okay, I read Elon Musk's book, Steve Jobs, all of those things. I think those are just, I think those give you some inspiration. But yeah, so Ray Dalio's book right now I think is definitely something I'd recommend.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  37:28
Okay, awesome. Well, that's all my questions for today, Devon, thank you so much for taking some time out to speak to us, I really appreciate it and it's been great speaking to you.

Devon O'Rourke  37:37
Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate everything you guys are doing.

Bryony Pearce - PMA  37:40
It's our pleasure.



Written by:

Bryony Pearce

Bryony Pearce

Bryony's the Head of Content here at Product Marketing Alliance and you'll find her behind most things written!

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Product Marketing Life [podcast]: Devon O’Rourke