🧰 The Scrappy PM Toolkit

When I was still in Customer Success, I used to dream about becoming a PM.

I thought I knew what it would take:

• Master roadmaps

• Learn prioritization frameworks

• Talk like a product leader

So I signed up for all the things:
📚 Online courses
🧠 Notion templates
📊 Lenny’s newsletter (yes, I read it like a novel, still do)

But none of that helped when my manager asked me to take on my first product project.

I froze.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just “close to the customer.”
I was the one deciding what to build. And I didn’t feel ready.

So I did what I thought a real PM would do:

• Gathered feedback

• Ranked it like a scoreboard

• Wrote a full spec and prioritized by “impact vs effort”

And when we shipped it?
Silence.

No one used the feature.
Customers were confused.
And the team was frustrated.

That was the moment I stopped trying to sound like a PM.
And started learning what actually matters.

💡 The Scrappy PM Toolkit

These are the 5 skills that helped me go from customer-facing to product and stick the landing when it counted.

🎧 Listen Between the Lines

Early Stef: “Ten customers asked for this! Must be important.”
Now Stef: “What are they trying to do?”

Some of the best insights come from single moments:

📌 Try this today:
Next time you hear feedback, don’t ask “What’s the request?”
Ask: “What’s the tension behind this?”

🧱 Ship Something Ugly

There’s a special kind of dread that comes from shipping something half-baked.

I once launched a reporting feature without all the edge cases handled.
We knew it would trigger tickets.
But we also knew: we couldn’t improve it without seeing how people actually used it.

The feedback was rough but also gold.

📌 Test this:
What’s something sitting in your backlog that you could ship in a scrappy form—just to learn?
Send a Loom. Build a mock. Ship a filter with limits.

The real product starts at v1. Everything else is theory.

And the good news?
You don’t need a full sprint to make progress anymore.

🛠️ Tools that make early testing faster than ever:

• ChatPRD to auto-draft your first spec

• V0.dev for generating design prototypes with real UI

• Loom for async walkthroughs

• Notion for mapping flows and gathering async feedback

You don’t need polish. You need proof.
And these tools can help you ship just enough to learn fast.

✏️ Turn Fuzz Into Focus

Customers don’t speak in JIRA tickets.
They speak in feelings, frictions, and workarounds.

Your job? Turn that into something shippable.

I still remember a user saying:

📌 Steal this formula:

“The dashboard feels confusing” → They’re not seeing relevant data fast → They need personalized recommendations → Show top 3 relevant reports on open

🧪 Validate Without a Sprint

Old me thought testing = a full sprint, full team, full launch.
Now? I run experiments with:

• Google Docs

• AI mock-ups

• Calls with 3 users and a rough idea (even with just internal teammembers)

📌 Run this play:
Before building something big, test one version with zero engineering.
Ask: “Would this solve the problem?”
If they say no, you just saved a sprint.
If they say yes, you earned the green light.

Here’s a LinkedIn post where I shared 3 low-lift tests I run all the time → link

🔑 Treat Context Like a Superpower

When I made the jump from customer success to PM, I was insecure about not being technical.

But what I had no one else did:

• Firsthand knowledge of churn reasons

• Real language from real users

• Context on what features actually did in the wild

That made me dangerous (in the best way).

📌 Reminder for you:
If you’re in Support, CS, onboarding, or implementation
You are closer to the customer than most PMs ever get.

That’s not a gap.
It’s a head start.

🚀 Final Thought

No one told me that the most important PM skills weren’t on any job description.

But if you want to grow faster, ship smarter, and build things that actually matter:

• Spot the tension behind the ticket

• Ship before you’re 100% sure

• Write the real problem, not just the request

• Learn out loud

• Stay close to the customer

Everything else?
You can Google it.

—

Share this with someone trying to break into product. Or someone who needs the reminder that you don’t need a framework to make an impact, just a little courage and a lot of curiosity.

See you next week!

Stef
—

You’ve officially reached the “user feedback” section of this newsletter.
Congrats, you’re now the customer.

Can we retro this?

• What worked?

• What made you skim?

• Should I cut scope or ship more story next time?

Reply with your hot takes.
No need for a full PRD, bullet points welcome.
I read every response (and yes, I’m even tracking sentiment).