eso, I guess where I got to where I'm at today really is a series of events. Honestly, because when I had first started college, I was focused on or I was studying aerospace engineering. It was something I really enjoyed and loved. But I had a feeling to switch over to international business, and so I switched over and completed that degree at I guess Utah State University on did an internship abroad. So I was able to do an internship in Paris with an investment bank there. So I was there for six months and got a lot of great experience as part of the marketing team for that bank. And then again once that internship completed, honestly, I mean, I had a job lined up in Africa to do micro finance projects, and I was really excited for that. But again felt like I was supposed to actually go back to the U. S. And and focus on just whatever was there. I had no job, so I came back and was able toe line up a job at Goldman Sachs, for it was like a contract position and work for them for about nine months. It was just here in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a good, good job that I had on Bond. But when it was nearing the nine month contract, I definitely realized I was done with finance. It was not. It was fun, but not my cup of tea. So I just happened to be at a party, talking Thio, like with a friend. And there's another individual there and we got to talking about work, and he had just said, and somehow it came up that I just said, Well, I'm actually looking. I'm at the near my end of my contract. I'm sure Goldman Sachs was going to renew it, but it was still something I wanted to see what else was out there. And so he had said that there was a position open at his company for like a business analyst, and again it was contract work. So I was like, I don't I was looking more for the full time position, but I still decided to interview, and I actually did take the job because I love the company. I loved what they were doing and that it was more around technology and solving problems and Luckily, within a month I was able to be hired on full time, so that's really where I started. And it was more of Although the title is business analyst, it was in product management. And so that's really where I got started being, ah, product manager, if you will, and started in the product management role and that I've been doing that since the past eight years, and I've loved it. So I love the the variety that it gives. I really get to talk with almost anybody within the company and outside of the company and helping drive strategy. And honestly, I think this is where I'm going to stay for the rest of my career. I love every part of it.

Yeah, So I guess in general, of course, pre co vid we would travel probably about once a quarter. And so it Zordon, once or twice, I've got visit either customers or other locations. So Avanti has, um, offices in multiple areas around the world. And so we have some and a couple in Europe. We have a couple here in the US and then actually one in India from, like, a development perspective and then some other offices from sales and marketing. So often times we go through and traveling just to make sure that our co workers there have what they need. And before, I was actually even traveling, maybe once a month. But it's kind of tapered down, and of course, not there at all with with this past year. So yeah, and at least from a general work our I'd put in probably about 50 to 55 hours a week. You can definitely do more than that, Of course, depends on if there's other projects or timelines, and I guess the responsible is in decisions really comes down to in product management. You're either owning an overall product for a company or a part of the product and trying to help. I mean, deliver and see what you can do to improve it overall. And so, for my current situation and current role, I deal with third party integrations for our cloud platform. And so this cloud platform has about 12 different teams all over the world and American all working towards, and we have maybe four different products that are being delivered from this platform. And then we also be integrations with two other products that are also cloud hosted. So I technically support upwards of six or seven different products with the pieces I work on. And that's kind of my responsibility. And I'm trying to make sure that, you know, it's always up and running were continued to add integrations that air needed and so forth. Now, I guess, a typical work week. It's just really dealing with. Of course, there's always meetings. I mean, there always is, and I wish they would be a lot more efficient. And we've done a lot of improvement over times to reduce the the I guess the waste of time in some of those meetings, and so as a group, I work with the development team. Individually, we have five individuals were on that team, and then we have an extension of our team of another three individuals that we call our content team. So we've been able to, through our strategy and what we're doing, enable other people to help us build these integrations. And so I'm gonna have helped lead and guide those. And so we have a weekly meeting just to go through what that looks like, what work needs to be done. And then, of course, everyday meetings, which we call stand up just to see the progress on those items. And if there's any issues that came up so again, I'm just more around. How do I help make sure this team is running as what they need, that decisions are made in a timely manner. I try to enable all of people on my team to make those own decisions because I don't I shouldn't be a bottleneck by any means, so I'm trying to make sure that we all are on the same page, and everybody can do what they need without me. So that way, if anybody's on vacation, things could move forward on then. Generally, it's like training sales, call research, troubleshooting, talking with customers. There's, I mean, you name it. That's definitely varies from week to week and what I do.eso working from home? Yeah, pre covert. We didn't. I mean, we allowed it. We didn't do too much. Obviously, I like working in person just because I deal a lot with working with people. And so I like to talk to them and do it face to face. It's a little bit more, e would say, Effective in my mind, but working from home, it's definitely a lot more teams conversations. And so, like slack resume or whatever you're using to talk to people. We we use teams, and we do that also just through I am or through just face to face conversations. So, like what we're having right now, So it really hasn't changed how we work. It's just definitely a lot more talking. And as I said, I wish it was we were in the office. Still, I I still like that. I get the point of our feels like I separate from home. You have a better work life balance there. But not only that. You get to talk with people they get to see you have a lot more energy throughout the day, whereas conversations just kind of little times throughout the day where you're only talking with people on a as needed basis. It works, but it's just it's just not as efficient in my mind, that's my opinion.

Well, definitely. There's a lot of challenges to come into product management, and I would say the biggest is always trying to make sure you say no to certain requests. It's always hard, like I'm always one that likes to please people and always say yes, because that's that's just who I am. But honestly, you can't and I mean, it's not healthy for the company. It's not helping you get where you need to go, especially in terms of a strategy on DSO. You're gonna get requests from all over there. That's from customers, whether that's from sales, whether that's from our support team. And so how do you juggle And prior to that is all of those It really is a different, a definite challenge. And so an example, actually, two examples. One just happened this past week. Actually, it was two days ago. I had a customer demanding that we get all since I deal with integrations, They said, No, you need to get all this data from this party and it needs to go here. It's like we've never promised that we'll get everything. That's just because we also want to make sure that we're doing it just enough because you don't need all the data you just don't. And yet that customer is kind of pushing it through. And I only heard about it as it was already escalated through the chains. So it was a customer, just kind of getting really angry. And it wasn't until just a couple days ago that I heard It's like, Well, this needs to be done now. It's like, Hold on, hold on what's going on And so it's just always having to deal with even, well, you call it a fire drill that just comes up. It's like you guys, what is the really need here? Like what? I mean, what problem are you really trying to solve? Excuse me. Just because there's a huge opportunity cost for only doing what I would consider these ones you Tuesdays, right when we can't support every single customer's request, I have to look at it as a broad hole and does it still fit in our overall strategy? And so if I divert the time from our development teams to do these things, it's taking time away from where we need to go as a company overall. So that's the honestly the huge is the biggest challenge that we always have in product management and similar example was last week. Got a request from ourselves team for another integration. And again, that's like you guys, I haven't heard about this one at all. This is the first time, which is fine, and so I always kind of point them to say, Look, you could definitely request these ideas, but make sure you continue to tie customer names to him or accounts so I can actually see the overall demand because if I can see that there's a whole lot more customers that want this type of integration, it's so much easier to prioritize and say, Yep, that makes sense. Let's go ahead and devote our time on it. Let's get it done. Whereas every time they ask, it's like, Well, they feel like it has to be done right then and there because there's a particular deal that's contingent upon that request for that integration. And so it's hard for me because again, I have to go back to me like you guys. Every time we do these, I can't focus our time on finding ways to open up our platform to crowd source like I know I don't have enough time to do this. I can't. We just again limited resource is right, And so it's like every time I'm having to focus on these, it takes time away from me, creating a platform that allows you to create the connections integrations you need when you need them. I don't want to get to be that bottlenecks. So it's just it's back to that that kind of balancing act, if you will, between those those requests, that's honestly the biggest challenge in product management. Um, on another challenge, I would say sadly, I don't e. I mean, there's always politics wherever you go. I don't like it as much, but I think a lot of that comes from when there's a lack of ah, really defined strategy or vision within a company. And I would say that was something that I was noticing and talking with my manager a couple of years ago and tried to continue to influence and try to say, Hey, how do we change this? How do we start to define where the strategy's going? Sadly, it's taken two years. We're finally got a defined strategy. We finally got a defined vision, and now it's actually getting to the unification that makes conversations a lot easier, especially as requests coming and say, No, guys, this is not part of where we need to go as a company. This is what we've all agreed upon. So it's definitely how do you get so many different different opinions on the same page and all that again? I guess, sadly, it took Our whole executive team is brand new as of the beginning of this year because they continue to try to say, We'll do everything and you just can't You can't do everything. Um, And it was just it really was not a strategy there it was, So I don't have to say it beyond that, Um, E guess the last part of this question is an approach to dealing with challenge. As I said in Prime Management, it's all about creating trust and relationships with everybody that you have. You can't be best pals with everybody, but you have to have those relationships with the different groups. And so it takes making sure that you have the great listening skills and an empathy to actually understand what their needs are and just continue to reach out to him, have that constant communication. And as I said, the people I definitely wanna work with a lot ourselves because they're always on the front lines, asking questions and and hearing what customers you're wanting so we can identify where opportunities are. And then my other approach into dealing with challenges is always looking at. How do we can bring data into proving and showing the impact that either these problems have or the big you know, how the size of the opportunity and how even on my end, I'm now trying to go back to my original challenge of how all these requests come in and especially like, well, this needs to be done. Now I'm wanting. I'm tracking how much time it takes to do these one offs, if you will, and actually have a chart that were being were able to illustrate. Here is the amount of time we're taking to do these. Here's how much man hours this feature cost us. That's how much man hours that took away from doing something else. And so that's That's the easiest way of I found to help kind of deal with those challenges