September 7

New month, who dis?

Is it me, or did summer just whip right by?

As I write this on September 2nd, I realize that summer isn’t officially over – but now that my kids are back in school… and especially after this upcoming long weekend, we are definitely in post-summer mode in our family. Now, it’s onto soccer games, hearing the high school band from my front porch on Friday nights, and (dare I say it?) making homemade pumpkin spice lattes.

But as we start September, I want to remind you that every beginning of the month gives us a new opportunity. It doesn’t matter what went wrong this past month… or which projects you wanted to work on but never got to. Every new month is an opportunity to:

  • Calibrate your product team so that everybody is on the same page.
  • Plan those customer visits you may have been putting off.
  • Revisit your roadmap once more to make sure that everything is still relevant.
  • Commit to saying “no” when you need to.
  • Finding a way to make “yes” possible when it’s the right thing to do.

It’s easy to get caught in the everyday rut of just… doing our job. But every so often, we need to give ourselves a kick in the pants. I think the beginning of every month can be that built-in kick in the pants that we need.

So, enjoy your Labor Day weekend – you do deserve that. But come Tuesday, let’s let the calendar motivate us to be even better product people.

What do you say?

Mike Belsito

About the author

Mike Belsito is a startup product and business developer who loves creating something from nothing. Mike is the Co-Founder of Product Collective which organizes INDUSTRY, one of the largest product management summits anywhere in the world. For his leadership at Product Collective, Mike was named one of the Top 40 influencers in the field of Product Management. Mike also serves as a Faculty member of Case Western Reserve University in the department of Design and Innovation, and is Co-Host of one of the top startup podcasts online, Rocketship.FM. Prior to Product Collective, Mike spent the past 12 years in startup companies as an early employee, Co-Founder, and Executive. Mike's businesses and products have been featured in national media outlets such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, NPR, and elsewhere. Mike is also the Author of Startup Seed Funding for the Rest of us, one of the top startup books on Amazon.


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