Pump Up The Volume

Suzanne: For the benefit of our listeners, who maybe aren't familiar with the brand, we hope they'll all be familiar with the brand post-conversation, what is Sonos?

Joni: Sonos makes a wireless speaker system for you home. We connect to over 60 music services around the world and it's frankly the best way to fill your home with music. In fact, that's our company mission, to fill every home with music. It's the main reason why I feel like I do have the best job in the world because, everyday I wake up and I get to think about, "How can I help people listen to more music than they listened to yesterday?"

Suzanne: So when you say integrate with over 60 services, are you talking about services like Spotify, and Apple Music?

Joni: Exactly.

Suzanne: Okay.

Joni: Exactly, so we primarily partner with music services, but we also work with internet radio providers. We work with SiriusXM for example. Our goal is to play all the sounds from around the world.

Suzanne: Is the idea that Sonos, the hardware, can interface with these services independent of a device like a laptop, or a mobile device? Is there a direct communication from speaker to service or you have an application in between? That's your own.

Joni: You do need to have an app and we do make an app that's the primary way that people do play music on our speakers, but one of the things that we've done very recently, as of a couple months ago, is to allow, Spotify for example, you can use their app to play directly on Sonos speakers, and we're looking to do that with more partners in the future as well. You do need an app of some sort to actually find the content that you want to listen to, and play it on those speakers.

Suzanne: So the idea is, I've got my home, I've planted a beautiful Sonos speaker behind every book, everywhere I go, and I open Spotify and I say, "I want to listen to this song, send it to this speaker over here," and then boom ...

Joni: Exactly.

Suzanne: Music is alive.

Joni: Exactly.

Suzanne: So I'm pointing it to the specific speaker of my choice.

Joni: Exactly. The beauty of Sonos is that, unlike Bluetooth speakers, you can use Sonos to listen to the same music all over your house, or you can have different music playing in each room of your house. It's a true multi-room system, which is very different than most of the other products that are out there today.

Suzanne: It's perfect for families.

Joni: It's perfect for families. It's perfect for people with roommates. It's perfect for people with kids. It's just, yeah it's great.

Suzanne: I didn't intend to go this far down the rabbit hole, but this is like fascinating ... I love electronics, and we're also in, our listeners don't know that we're in this amazing room right now.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: It's basically been curated to look like the best living room in the world, this is intentional.

Joni: It's very intentional. At Sonos, we pride ourselves on a couple of things. The first is great sound. We have some of the worlds best engineers working on making speakers that produce the best sound possible. Right now we are sitting in one of the listening rooms in our current building. It's been acoustically tuned, to provide the best listening experience possible.

The other thing that we do is pride ourselves on creating these wonderful user experiences, so the room is designed to look like a living room. We're sitting on couches, there's a TV.

Suzanne: It's nicer then my living room.

Joni: It's a very nice living room.

Suzanne: Yeah, I was gonna say ...

Joni: It's a very nice living room but, it helps when we want to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers, we can always come in here, and just literally imagine what it's like for them, to use Sonos at home.

Suzanne: There's that famous anecdote about Amazon and Jeff Bezos kind of wheeling the empty boardroom chair in, so that whenever there was a meeting of the key stakeholders, we could remember the customer.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: You all have taken that to the next level.

Joni: Absolutely.

Suzanne: Like, let's just get in the living room, kick off our boots, watch a little TV, and really feel what our customers are feeling.

Joni: Exactly.

Suzanne: Slash, pass the chips.

Joni: Exactly, and the beer.

We do talk to our customers, we get out, we talk to our customers quite a bit, but this is really meant to be more inspirational for us, this space that we're in today.

Suzanne: Yeah I'm inspired. I'm not sure I'm gonna leave when it's done. Just as a heads up.

Joni: Okay.

Suzanne: Okay, so this is perhaps a really organic segue than because you've been here at Sonos for over a decade.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: You drank the Kool-Aid. Is it like Hotel California? You can't leave once you get here? Or just the best place in the world to work?

Joni: It's funny, I told my former boss who was one of the Sonos co-founders, I made him a promise years ago that if I ever stopped having fun, I would leave. 11 years later and I'm still here and it's because I absolutely love my job.

As I said earlier, I wake up everyday and I get to think about, "How can I help people listen to music?" To me there's no better job in the world.

Even though I think of myself as someone who is most comfortable in startup environments, after being here for so long I don't think I can necessarily say that about myself, but whenever I'm asked, "Why have you stayed here for so long?" I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the job never gets stale. Things are always changing in the space that we're in and I am always being challenged, I'm always growing as an individual. That's one of the things that really keeps me here, in addition to the great products and my own love of music is just the fact that, as a product manager, I'm continually put into new situations where I'm evolving and growing.

Suzanne: You bring up your love of music and I wanted to ask you about this specifically. I was looking at your history, I mean I had to go back because it was like, Sonos, Sonos, Sonos for ...

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: ... all those titles that you kind of leapfrogged around, but music seems to be the theme of almost every professional role that you have had, even in the years before Sonos, so it's music first? Is that your love?

Joni: It is. I was very fortunate to have started working at the very first internet radio service 20 years ago, which I'm totally dating myself, I realize that.

Suzanne: Better you than me.

Joni: I'm okay with that, it's a company that's obviously no longer around, but it was the very first internet radio service.

Suzanne: What was it called?

Joni: It was originally called thedj.com, and it rebranded to Spinner.

Suzanne: Okay.

Joni: That company was eventually bought by America Online. To me, it represented what I loved best. It essentially brought music and technology together in a way the just really satisfied my personal passion.

I also came from a generation of ... I grew up in the 70s, music was such a part of my life, that the moment I had an opportunity to actually work somewhere where I could be paid to listen to music, I don't think I could ever go back. I've been fortunate enough that I've been able to parlay that into other opportunities since then. Here I am at Sonos and it's just the greatest thing ever.

Suzanne: I love that story, we've had a couple guests on this show who have their version of that experience. One of the things I say, to my students in particular a lot, when they're asking for advice on getting a job, and we'll talk more about that later is, don't forget to think about what excites you. It's true that in product you may find yourself working at a company that you love in a role that you love, for a product that you may not be the primary user for and that's okay, and it has its application. All things being equal, to just sit around and say, "Okay well what do I want to do? No idea, but I know I love music so how can I figure out a way to get into that?"

Joni: Exactly. I've recently have been having conversations with college students that have been talking to me about, how do they get their foot in the door as a product manager once they graduate? My advice to them is, "Hey, look for it, if you love music, look for companies that are in the music space, there are a bunch of them, you just have to do a little bit of research. No matter what your passion is, if you really love football for example, I'm sure there are a number of opportunities in sports that tie into technology. You just have to almost be a detective and just really sleuth those out.

Suzanne: Right, so you sleuthed it out, you got in at Spinner.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: It got acquired by AOL, there was another one I thought I saw that was also a big internet ... Musicmatch?

Joni: Musicmatch.

Suzanne: That came later?

Joni: Musicmatch, that came afterwards. Musicmatch was definitely a pretty big player at the time. We made a software program called the Musicmatch Jukebox. That was one of the top software applications at the time for ripping and burning CDs.

Suzanne: Aw, the good ol' days.

Joni: So back when everybody was downloading MP3s, you probably used the Musicmatch Jukebox software to burn your CDs, so you could take em in your little disc player or what have you. Eventually that company was acquired by Yahoo. That was about 12 years ago.

Suzanne: Wow, so you were kind of at the ground zero of technology, cause this is like late 90s we're talking about, mid 90s right?

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: Ground zero of technology, ground zero of sort of internet music technology.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: What was it like, back in the old days, the early days of internet technology as compared to now? Now, starting a startup, as people like to say, "I'm starting a startup." Is the new thing. I think I saw a cover of Forbes, or GQ recent news, like the 25 millennial entrepreneurs under 20 whatever, like this is the new exciting thing is to be in tech, but I don't think it had the same, what's the word, luster back then, or did it?

Joni: I don't think it did, when I think back to when I got started in technology, I was working for a publishing company that wanted to create a website and because I was slightly more technically inclined than most of the people in my department, I was nominated to be on the team. I was super excited because I was able to teach myself HTML. I was able to build these webpages and make something happen. That for me is what really caught my eye, and I said, "Hey, I want to do this full-time." That's when I went and started working for the first startup that I went to.

Today I think it's a little different, today you go to school and you get your computer science degree and you learn this stuff in school, I think 20 years ago people seemed to be more self-taught than they are today. There also weren't very many startups back then, so to me it's very, very different.

What's very similar though is, back then I was unfortunately one of the only women in the entire company and even 20 years later I find that that is still often the case, which is really frustrating.

Suzanne: One of the things that was always an important part of the show even before we launched was, "We're gonna talk to 100 product managers, and it's not gonna be 99 men." We've had phenomenal men on the show, and there are so many great guys out there doing great work, but we've had so many phenomenal women, and I think in particular, stories like yours where we're talking about 20+ years career in tech, being really at that leading edge and saying, "I'm gonna go out and ... " What did your family think when you got involved in some startup? Did they think-

Joni: My family-

Suzanne: They wanted a refund on the school.

Joni: Still doesn't really quite understand what I do.

Suzanne: Right.

Joni: The only thing that my mom and dad actually understood, was when I worked for America Online, after they acquired the startup I was at, because they knew of the CDs. It was such a mainstream company, they finally understood what I was doing.

Suzanne: That's when they were proud, and they were like, "Well Joni is working at AOL, did you hear?"

Joni: Right, exactly.

Suzanne: That's funny. It's interesting, I wanted to go back to the part about studying, and school, and how that's changed. You bring up the point to say, back when you started people were just, like yourself, learning to code on the job, technology was new. You're right I think to reflect that it is very different, but interestingly about product, it's not.

That's kind of another reason for this show existing is, "Well, what is product management? How do you do it?" A lot of the people that we talk to, myself included, have these sort of what I call accidental paths into product. Where you didn't necessarily seek it out, but then you realize, "Oh, this is what I'm doing."

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: Or some people I've spoken to, they kind of retroactively applied the product manager label to their history, but in reality they didn't know that's what they were doing. They had these other job titles.

Your story is a little different, you knew you wanted to be a product manager.

Joni: Right, right.

Suzanne: You cheated your way in a little bit.

Joni: I did, I did.

Suzanne: Tell us about that.

Joni: Like you were saying, only recently are there classes for people interested in learning how to become a product manager. 5 years ago to 20 years ago when I got started, there weren't classes you could go to to learn to become a product manager. My background was in marketing. I ended up interviewing with the internet radio service startup that I mentioned earlier.

Suzanne: DJ.COM.

Joni: DJ.COM, THEDJ.COM for a marketing position. At that time I was in San Francisco, and I had seen enough of the tech industry to have identified this idea of product management. I really wanted to do that because I liked the idea of building things. That's really what got me really jazzed, was just making something, creating something. When I was interviewing for that job, I asked my hiring manager if I could take the job, but also act as a product manager and essentially wear two hats, and as the company grew, we agreed that I would then take the marketing hat off and then just focus on product management as the company grew. It was a very small company at the time.

Once that happened, I never turned back. I was in love with product management, it's exactly where I wanted to be, and I still love the idea of creating things, and making things.

Suzanne: How did you know about product management as a discipline or a role back then? What got you connected to ... Cause some people still don't really know what it is.

Joni: Right. So I was working in the Washington DC area, and the very first startup I went to work for was called Freeloader, this was such a long time ago, it was the first startup that Mark Pincus started. Who eventually went on to create Zynga which is a really popular gaming company.

Suzanne: Right, yep.

Joni: His co-founder Sunil came from America Online, and he was a product manager. So I think that was where I got my first taste of product management was, they started that company having product managers. Which, looking back on it I think was pretty amazing. That's where I got my first taste. When I left there, and went on to my next opportunity, I knew that that's what I really wanted to do.

Suzanne: So that was you ... Another thing we sometimes talk about is that coveting of the product manager role from sort of a nearby domain.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: So you were in marketing going, "What's up with these product managers anyway?" And then they were having fun, and doing cool things, and creating.

Joni: Exactly, they were creating.

Suzanne: You were like, "I want that!"

Joni: I was in marketing ...

Suzanne: But I want that plus music.

Joni: ... talking about all their cool stuff. I wanted to make the cool stuff.

Suzanne: Amazing, amazing. Since we're kind of digging around in your past, if it's not too uncomfortable I want to stay there for just a moment 'cause something else caught my eye, which was that you studied in school, Germanic studies.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: Which doesn't sound like music, and technology, and product, and marketing.

Joni: Not at all.

Suzanne: So is there a story there?

Joni: There is, I double majored in Germanic studies and political science because my dream, honestly as a child, was to become a diplomat. I had this dream of traveling the world, speaking all these different languages and kind of representing our government. Now this is a long time ago, this was like cold war era, so it was a very different time than, well maybe not that different than what we have today.

Suzanne: She's really not as old, listeners, as we're making it out to seem, at this point.

Joni: I'm really not that old, I know, I'm an old soul.

Suzanne: You started young.

Joni: I started very, very young.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Joni: I did have this dream of becoming a diplomat. What took me to Washington DC in fact was my dream of joining the foreign service. I went there, I enrolled in graduate school, I took the foreign service test, but at some point in time I decided that that actually wasn't the career path for me. I switched gears and eventually got into technology.

Suzanne: Right cause I don't think, if you had become a diplomat, you would be allowed to be rock'n Bob Seger in the halls, the same way you can do that here.

Joni: Probably not, exactly, probably not. Although I do think it's interesting that there are parallels between diplomacy and being a product manager.

Suzanne: What do you mean?

Joni: Well, I think what's really interesting is, as a product manager you absolutely have to be diplomatic. You need to be able to engage with your stakeholders, you need to be able to work with a wide variety of people and bring them to the table. Oftentimes, as a product manager, you need to be the one that is getting alignment across these different stakeholders. To me, that's what diplomacy is all about.

Suzanne: Right, so you had the true official training for diplomacy, for product management.

Joni: Yes, exactly.

Suzanne: Everyone else listening is going, "I'm never gonna be able to be that diplomatic, I got to take Germanic studies, go to Washington." You're absolutely right, I think for sure the challenge is, it's a strategic role. In your case you're in a very senior position. How many product managers are working on your team with you?

Joni: I have two product managers in my group.

Suzanne: Two.

Joni: The other groups also have two to three product managers. Overall we have around 15 product managers in total.

Suzanne: Right. Then there's the other departments that you actually have to align- sales, marketing, the executive team whenever they're kind of coming in and coming out of the equation, the developers.

Joni: Right, external partners as well.

Suzanne: Yeah, external partners. A lot of the times, you don't really actually ... I mean maybe you have some power. Sometimes people don't actually have the power as the product manager, they just have the obligation to make it happen, and so you have to kind of really rely on your charms, really rely on your diplomacy in order to get everybody bought in.

Joni: Exactly, and even if you do have the power, 'cause I think at some companies, product managers are empowered to call shots, even here at Sonos, one of the things that product managers have been setup to do is provide direction, and really show that leadership so that everybody knows the direction we're going in, but when the tough shots have to be made, everybody looks to the product manager to make those decisions. We try to do it in a way that involves all of our stakeholders. At least I think good product managers do that. We certainly try to do that here at Sonos.

Suzanne: Do you have any diplomacy hacks that you can share with us from learning. Something you won't read about.

Joni: I don't know if you won't read about it, or if it's a hack or not, but to me I think one of the reasons why I have been successful in my role is that I have been able to create bridges with a number of different functions within the company, and I've worked really hard, not just to establish relationships with those people, but to work with them very early on in helping them understand, "What is our strategy?" "What are our goals?" And help get them aligned early. So that as we're working on things and when things tend to get in the heat of the moment, it's not as much of a fire drill to then help everybody understand, "Okay, this is really why we're here, this is why we're having this conversation, or this is why these tough decisions have to be made."

It's much easier to establish those relationships earlier, rather then later. When the heat gets turned on it's very difficult I think to bring people to the table, but if you do that earlier in the process, I think the experience as a product manager will be much less rocky.

Suzanne: My impression of you, is that you don't ever get mad at anybody. Is that an accurate impression? Or people from Sonos are listening going, "Yeah, you should just have a meeting with her."

Joni: I'm sure they are going to be laughing after this.

Suzanne: Do you get mad at people?

Joni: Oh yeah.

Suzanne: You just seem like, "Let's talk about it."

Joni: I think I'm pretty even-keeled, and I am definitely very, very relaxed, but I also get worked up and passionate.

I was reading something the other day it was talking about, your product managers need to really be ... There's three personas that makeup a really good product manager. One is, it was actually funny 'cause they talked about the diplomat.

Suzanne: Okay.

Joni: You need to be diplomatic. You need to be a bit of a detective, you need to be willing to dig in and figure out, "Why aren't things working?" Or, "How can I make things better?" The third one is, you need to be a bit of a warrior. You need to be willing to take a stand when you need to. That's something that I'm not afraid to do. I don't have to do it all the time, but when I need to do it, I definitely can ...

Suzanne: You can get scary.

Joni: ... put on the warrior persona. Yeah, I get scary.

Suzanne: You even reluctantly say yes you're like "Yeah, okay fine." All right. Have you ever had any interest in going out on your own and doing the 'founder route'? Or, do you prefer kind of the steering within a collaborative setting? Not that being a founder isn't collaborative, but it's a different mindset.

Joni: I think of myself as very entrepreneurial, and I sometimes think, if I got the right idea I would definitely be willing to go out there and do something on my own. But at the same time, I've been fortunate to be with a company where I am so happy, I haven't necessarily felt that pull. The other thing is, my husband started his own business years ago and so I got to see, pretty close, I got to see what that was like, as the spouse of a founder. It takes a lot of work, I would think really hard before I did something like that.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Joni: I definitely wouldn't say never, I think it's more a question of, "If the right idea came up, would I do it?" But as long as I'm happy where I am right now, honestly I'm not really thinking too much about that.

Suzanne: Yeah, and you seem happy.

Joni: Very.

Suzanne: I mean, and you've been here. Did you ever think about going out and becoming a musician? Somewhere between dreams of diplomacy and-

Joni: No, although I have this tremendous love for music, I've never played an instrument in my life, until six months ago.

Suzanne: Really? What was the instrument?

Joni: A guitar. For my birthday last year, I got guitar lessons. I went out and I bought myself a guitar, and I absolutely love it. I'm horrible, but I'm learning, and it's great. Not only am I finally learning to play an instrument, I've been one of those people who said, for years now I've said, "Gosh I wish I would have learned how to play an instrument." And then finally I just realized, what am I waiting for? There's nothing to say that I can't do it now, so I am learning and I really love it. What I really like is it's exercising this part of my brain that I've never used before, so it's thrilling.

Suzanne: Is it changing the way that you think about music in the context of your job at all? Or it's just really separate from that?

Joni: No, it's pretty separate from it, for me it's a very personal thing. I do it because I just have fun with it. If anything it's given me an appreciation for how hard it is to be a musician. I had no idea how hard it is to play the guitar. I have calluses on my fingers now. I had no idea, I just have such an appreciation for musicians now, that I probably didn't have before.

Suzanne: Have you learned Night Moves yet?

Joni: I have not learned Night Moves yet.

Suzanne: I think you might enjoy ... Go home, pull out the chords, it's just C and G back and forth. I think there might be a D in there. You're gonna be fine, you're gonna go home, you're gonna be happy that you learned it.

Joni: I have to pull it out. I'm basically just playing a bunch of Beatles songs, which are very simple and basic. They're good, and I know the words to most of them, so it's all good. I have a list of songs that I want to get to, over time as I get better.

Suzanne: Okay, love it.

Joni: I'll have to add the Bob Seger songs there too.

Suzanne: So building on the diplomacy piece, and you talking about diplomacy as being an integral part of succeeding as a product manager. We do a segment here on the show called, Get the job, Learn the job, Love the job. Since you're on the show, I got to put you through it. Let's start with, maybe some additional advice for up and comers. You mentioned you've been talking to some folks just out of college, looking to get in the door, what is it that you tell them? Or what can you tell our listeners who want to be the next product manager at a Sonos, or somewhere else?

Joni: First of all I would say, look for a variety of ways to get your foot in the door. There's not one straight path there. There's so many different paths and you just have to be creative. I also think it's important to think about the traits that make a good product manager and really try to look for opportunities where you can showcase those skills in yourself.

For example, when I took that job, and I was in marketing, I really worked hard to exhibit the traits that I knew would go into a good product manager. Things like that. Working well with others, and identifying problems and really looking to solve those problems creatively. Showing that you can work well with engineers for example. One of the things that's really important, every company is different, but at least here at Sonos, being able to work closely with marketing, as well as engineering. We tend to be a pretty engineering-focused company, but yet, our marketing team is world-class, so trying to create the bridges between the two, so they have better insight into what we're doing and vice-a-versa has been super important.

For a new product manager I would say, "Really work hard at trying to build those bridges, and focus on that idea of alignment. Getting alignment early is super important I think to establishing your credibility, and being someone that people want to work with.

Suzanne: When you were talking I just had what I thought was a funny vision of somebody showing up for a job interview and bringing their friend who was a developer just to really prove to their hiring manager, "Look, I get along well with developers, we're getting along right now."

Joni: It's true. You need to be able to speak engineering speak, and be able to speak marketing speak. In fact even I today, here I am, I've been in this role for 11 years, I've been in product management for 20 years, I was in a meeting today where I was having a conversation with a bunch of people, and one of the engineers and I, we were saying the same things, but we were not hearing each other. I found myself kind of laughing 'cause I was like, "Classic product manager, engineering kind of ... " We eventually got to the point where we knew what the other one was trying to say, but it took us awhile to get there.

Suzanne: Right. Interestingly, I don't think engineers ever have to demonstrate to their hiring managers that they know how to get along nicely with product managers.

Joni: Never.

Suzanne: It's always the product manager.

Joni: It's always the product manager.

Suzanne: Same with marketing. It's not a requirement, "How well do you think you can get along with product people?" It's the product manager who has to kind of bend to the personalities, the languages.

Joni: Exactly, diplomacy.

Suzanne: See, there's that good thing you had that Germanic studies.

Joni: Exactly.

Suzanne: You know how to think in different languages. What about hard lessons learned on the job? Product management can be very conceptual as you know. Lots of frameworks, lots of ideas for how to think about things. In practice, where have you seen perhaps some of your junior product managers, or even yourself in your own career kind of fall down, because it's harder than it looks.

Joni: Right. I think one of the things that comes to mind is, as product managers we're often asked to do so much that I've seen a number of product managers, including myself feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders.

Suzanne: Right.

Joni: You need to be willing to ask for help, or go to your manager and say, "Hey, I've got 10 different plates that are spinning in the air, somethings got to give." I think part of it is just, really learning how to prioritize. That's something that a good product manager does, but that takes a little time to really build that muscle up I think. Don't be afraid to ask for input, to make sure that you've got your priorities right. I think that's an important lesson to learn.

Suzanne: Right.

Joni: Another thing is, I feel like I keep coming back to this idea of alignment but, making sure you've got executive alignment, is super key. In fact when I think back to one of my earlier challenges, I was working on, it's funny, I've worked on a streaming music subscription service, before there was one. This was when I was at America Online. It was an idea before it's time. We went through the mechanics of spending months and months and months and actually ended up being almost two years of resources to build something that ultimately didn't quite meet expectations of the executives, and it never saw the light of day.

When I think back on that experience now, I think, "You know, we probably could have helped them understand, we could have helped manage their expectations better." So that we didn't sink 18 months of a team’s time into this project. We probably could have done that maybe six months in or eight months in.

Suzanne: It sounds a little bit like sort of the perils of waterfall methodology.

Joni: It probably was.

Suzanne: Versus agile. Just not integrating stakeholder feedback.

Joni: Exactly.

Suzanne: That is such a core part of the role as well, is saying, maybe before we've build the entire thing, we can get someone in the room and show them some mock-ups and just say-

Joni: We're selling you this idea.

Suzanne: "Hey we're working on this, what do you think?"

Joni: Right, would you be willing to pay for music?

Suzanne: Exactly, exactly but also those are the lessons that help us understand how to do it differently.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: Right? Everybody has to have the really wasteful experience to get connected with the pain of waste. Now I'm at the point where I'm like, "What's the least possible thing I can do to learn?" "Can I do it without even moving from this seat?" "How can we distill it down?" But that only comes from so many times making the same mistake over and over which is, what I call, going too far too fast.

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: Right?

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: So ...All right, what is your favorite thing about being a product manager?

Joni: My favorite thing about being a product manager is making cool stuff, I love it. We at Sonos have quarterly Hack Weeks. Unfortunately I haven't been able to participate in the last couple of Hack Weeks but when I am able to get in there, we basically spend five days coming up with an idea and building it. We don't necessarily have to think about, "Oh, is this gonna meet with the market needs?"

Suzanne: Right.

Joni: It's just, we're gonna make something for fun. It's awesome. As a product manager I get such satisfaction out of coming up with an idea and working with a team to create something. Even if I doesn't see the light of day, there's just something about that creation process that I absolutely love.

But the Hack Week projects, we draw from every location, and we draw from every department, so it's not just people in software getting together and cobbling together some hacks. Marketing does it, the HR team has done Hack Week projects. Everybody comes together and they have an idea, it's been awesome. Quite a few of the ideas have shown up in our product. Some of the ideas are also just internal tools. HR will have an idea for how they can make their portal easier for people to use, and they'll pull in a couple of web developers from another team, and they'll hack something together. It's like magic, it's a lot of fun.

Suzanne: Who gets to pick the music that's playing?

Joni: That's always one of my favorite things, in fact if you follow me on Twitter I'll sometimes say, "Now playing, during our Hack Week demos." There's a lot of Rush for some reason, I don't know why, I don't really quite get it. Rush for some reason is very popular.

Suzanne: Right.

Joni: It's really fun, that's one of the best parts of the Hack Week demo, is just to see what people will actually play.

Suzanne: That's amazing. What's your Twitter name so that everyone can ...

Joni: Joni Hoadley.

Suzanne: Joni Hoadley, Joni Hoadley on Twitter, awesome. Any resources Joni that you think, whether product manager resources, business product design whatever, or music even, that you think are worth throwing onto our ever- growing resource list?

Joni: Sure, from a music perspective I follow Bob Lefsetz, who is this guy who publishes this email on an almost daily basis and just has tremendous insights into what's going on in the music business.

Suzanne: Okay.

Joni: I love reading him. I also enjoy reading Tim Ferriss, he's got a great podcast, and he's written a number of books that I think are really awesome. I love how he's always kind of looking for life hacks. I always try to incorporate that into my own life, so I like to read him.

When I think about product management, Mind the Product is a group I think that has great resources.

Suzanne: Yeah, great organization.

Joni: Great organization. I love the stuff that they're doing and so I often find myself reading articles that they've been publishing, and watching videos from their conferences and that type of thing.

Suzanne: Okay, awesome. Normally I ask our guests about personal mantras, professional mantras, side of the month quotes, but you actually have one front and center on your LinkedIn. You wrote, "I'm happiest when I'm working at warp speed."

Joni: Right.

Suzanne: So what is that about?

Joni: Well, I wrote that because I find that I thrive in situations where things are pretty chaotic and happening really fast. That's probably one of the reasons why I like Hack Week for example. The idea of coming up with an idea and building it in five days, like go! I love that, I think I do my best work in that situation. When I do my best is when there are so many things going on I'm in my sweet spot.

Suzanne: Although it is interesting, I will reflect, that you chose to setup in Santa Barbara, which doesn't ... As a place, as a geographic location ...

Joni: It's really laid-back.

Suzanne: Right.

Joni: It's really laid-back, and I think people tend to think I'm pretty laid-back too, but I definitely thrive in high- energy situations.

Suzanne: Right. Do not misread her, she will yell at you and she is way more wound up then she purports to be.

Joni: Just give me a little coffee and watch what happens.

Suzanne: That's amazing.

Joni: Yeah.

Suzanne: Joni Hoadley thank you so much for joining us, we're richer for your insights here and really appreciate it.

Joni: Thanks for having me, it was great.

Suzanne: Thank you.