#GirlsWhoProduct: Sabrina Rzepka

Productized
19 min readJul 31, 2020

Meet Sabrina Rzepka, Lead PM In-Car Commerce at BMW and Co-Founder of Product Professionals. In this interview, you’ll be able to understand the difference between project and product management: How do you know which way is right? Where should be your focus? If you want to become a PM and don’t know where to start, listen to this interview. You won’t regret it!

By Teresa Segismundo on July 23rd, 2020

T: Hi Sabrina! Do you want to talk a little bit more about yourself? Where are you from?

S: I’m from Germany, from a city close to Berlin. I moved to Munich after my studies in 2013. Since then I have been living here and found my place in the heart of Munich.

T: Before entering the “adult world” and after finishing your course, you travelled to South-East Asia and Australia for 6 months. Was that a gap year?

S: I’ve always loved travelling. I still do. So I travel whenever I can. I’m always on the road or flying somewhere. I really love exploring new things, especially new countries. So, I decided to take some time off after my master’s studies. Many people do that directly after school, but I missed it unfortunately. Before moving into the ‘serious’ world, I decided to just get some inspiration and get my head free. Then I was ready to move into the ‘adults’ world’, as you called it, with new energy and my head completely free to follow up on what I wanted to do.

T: Knowing new cultures, having contact with different people and knowing how to take advantage of those moments are undoubtedly an added value for the integration of a team too! What do you think? Should young people do gap-years?

S: Yes, absolutely. Whenever you have time and the chances to do it. Unfortunately, so far, I haven’t done it in between jobs, if you change positions or the company. But I would highly recommend doing it, whenever you have the chance and the possibility. Take three months off or even two or something alike to get your head free, get some new impressions and to know new cultures. It’s one of the best schools in life that you can get. There were many things I learned along my travels. For example, not to stress or freak out if something doesn’t work out as expected. Being very adaptable and flexible in all kinds of situations; you will always encounter situations when you’re travelling, that you couldn’t foresee. You meet people, whose language you don’t understand, but you need to communicate with them, you are exploring landscapes and villages in which you have to find your way through, you try fruits and food you haven’t seen before and you need to deal with many cultural differences and behaviors of people and manage to adapt to it. So, all of these things really teach you how to deal with people, how to communicate. They also teach you things about yourself, like I said, not to stress out and to just be a bit more relaxed about uncertain situations.

T: Really nice! Did you feel the need to figure out what you wanted to follow? Or did you always know what you wanted?

S: I didn’t always know what I wanted. I think the more you go along your own way, you figure out what you want and what not. I’m not a huge fan of planning out everything. I used to do that in the past, for example, when I did my first travels. I stopped planning out details, because there are so many factors that come into play, that you cannot foresee and that´ll change your path. This is also how I deal with uncertainty today, including knowing what you want. I rather recommend that you should have a clear goal and you should know where you want to head to. But still, the path to get there can be diverse and different. So, stay flexible along your way, and do what you feel comfortable with and what´s strategically best to reach your goal.

T: During your Master’s studies, you focused on Marketing and Consumer Behavior as majors. Do you think a Product Manager should have some kind of background in marketing or management?

S: I think there are a hundred ways to move into product management and another hundred ways to thrive in it. There’s a sweet spot for everyone. I would say you don’t necessarily have to have knowledge in a very certain field to be successful in a product role. I believe that everyone with their very individual background can add something particular to be successful in the product world — that’s how we create diversity in teams. If you are an engineer by background, then you may have a very good technical understanding which will help you along your way. For me, having a Marketing and Business Administration background, I have a very good sense for customers and empathy, and get a good understanding of how they think and feel. That is one of the main and most important aspects of being a product manager. I think my studies and the focus on consumer behaviour helps a lot to get down to the thinking of what my customers´ needs are, fast and easy. But, at the end of the day, I guess everyone can find their sweet spot in product management, and regardless of their background, they can be really good product managers. Leverage your individual skills and talents to play them out where they’re needed the most in your product role.

T: From an early age, you were interested in the subject of human behaviour analysis… You like to study human behaviour and think of the user first to achieve a successful product. You like Behavioral Economics since an early age, but this course didn’t exist at the time when you started your career. What do you think were the key moments that made you decide you wanted to be a Product Manager?

S: Actually, when I started my first job, at AutoScout24, I joined as a Marketing Trainee. I joined the CRM team in a Relationship- and Brand Marketing role. My responsibility there was to basically communicate and marketeer the ‘ready product’. That is a product that was already made, and you mainly communicate its benefits to the customer. But I found out very quickly, through the very close cooperation and collaboration with our Product Department back then, I was actually interested in the steps before that. So, ‘How did it come that this product was developed in the first place?’, ‘What are the needs of our customers?’, ‘Why are we, as a company, building such a product in the first place?’. This is how I got more and more into product thinking and also into closer collaboration with the product department. Then I finally joined the product management team. Since then, this is what I love doing. To really be involved from the very first moment — finding the problem, a solution and then providing something valuable to the customer.

T: During your journey, you also left Munich to work at Daimler Mobility AG. What was the biggest change for you and what did you learn differently?

S: Actually, that was a very big change because I was coming from a company that was purely digital, like an online marketplace platform. I moved into a huge corporate group with more than 200,000 employees in total, that was global, that had a product that was not only digital anymore but also had a hardware component which is the vehicle. Plus, a lot of things I learned before just didn’t work anymore. For example, the approach of “fail fast, succeed faster”, you can’t just apply on MVPs in a vehicle. Imagine there’s a product manager who has this “fail fast” mentality building products within a vehicle. You wouldn’t want to drive such a car. You have to be very sure that what you’re building is the right thing, and sometimes you need to find other ways to test your ideas. It’s not an online platform anymore, where we can push the reset button and roll things back easily. First of all, when something goes wrong, you’re bringing your customer into real danger, because he’s driving a vehicle. It’s not that easy to roll something back if something fails. These were learnings that I took from all the things I learned throughout these years. Regarding agility, it probably doesn’t work the same way as you´re used to anymore. Another thing I learned is that networks are super important. In a smaller company, you naturally are involved and collaborate with a lot of people: sales, marketing, analytics and so on. At some point in time, you know the whole company. But it’s not the case in such a corporate group world. You really have to actively extend your network, leverage it and take shortcuts. If I was the one to learn and understand everything in this whole company from scratch and without help, it wouldn’t have worked. The solution I found is to take someone who went down the road before me, like a copilot, someone who can show me the shortcuts, who can tell me why things are as they are. I saved a lot of time and energy to figure it out all by myself. This is something I really value. I recommend everyone, who is mutual to a project, a team, a company, a new culture…not to hesitate to ask for help and approach someone who is very experienced in the company. Someone who knows the right people, that they can introduce you to and who can explain to you how this whole world works.

T: Since we are talking about digital products, how to become a Digital Product Manager? (Joana Moura)

S: In general, I think there’s a way into product management for everyone, even if you are in another position. Like, you’re an UX person, an engineer or whatever, and you feel ‘okay, this part of business of understanding customers is more alike to what I’m looking for, to what is fun for me or to what I would love to work on’. Then, don’t hesitate and shy away from going into that. I guess with digital products it’s just the same as with every other job. You can look out for companies or products that you love to use yourself or that you have an affinity for. Then, go, activate your network, don’t shy away from approaching people and let them know about your endeavours, and most importantly, don’t underestimate yourself.

T: Do you think car German manufacturers are afraid of Tesla? How do you see this catchup game?

S: Tesla is a very special car maker, I would say. A lot of people compare German car manufacturers to Tesla. I guess one of the biggest differences is that Tesla doesn’t have a lot of legacy. They are very new in the market — they do not exist for 100 years. Also, they don’t have 300,000 employees, globally. They also focus on a very specific product niche, which is only electric cars, whereas BMW has a very huge range of vehicles in various sectors for many different customer segments. You really have to take this into account when comparing Tesla to German car manufacturers. This justifies their success factor and the reasons why they are so fast and aggressive in terms of having the newest technology, electric cars and customers. On the other hand, Tesla customers are a bit different. They are first movers, people who want to belong to a certain kind of crowd — the Tesla crowd. They are mainly first movers and forgive mistakes faster made by Tesla. They don’t mind if something is not 100% fine. For BMW or Mercedes, that’s totally different. Imagine a 60-year-old man who has driven a BMW his whole life, he has a certain, very high standard and quality expectation. So, I think you need to match those kinds of situations and consider what those car manufacturers are in. Nevertheless, Tesla is very successful and German car manufacturers have to take that into account and be very cautious about it. At that, they should watch out and be careful.

T: Talking a little bit more about you and projects that you’ve been developing and are part of your personality… You have a Product Management blog called “Product Stories”. Do you want to tell us a little bit about this project? Why did you start it?

S: I always love to try out new things, new methodologies and to exchange with others to get more input and ideas of what you can try out. At some point in time, I felt that I needed to structure all that information and organize it in a way so that I can look it up, like in a little library for myself, whenever I need it or want to take it out as some advice. That’s how I came up with the blog “Product Stories” — not only to just write down my own experiences and methodologies that worked well for myself, but also sharing trends in digitization and whatever is out there regarding product management. I’m a person who likes to browse on other blogs, attends conferences and reads a lot. So, I started thinking, ‘if I can share my experiences with others that might help them, I don’t need this library just for my own. I can share it in a blog, and everyone benefits from it’.

“Tobias Beau is my ‘partner in crime’ so to say. Together with him, I founded Product Professionals and we are both dedicated to the project.”

T: Was it from the blog that you started your 2nd “Product Professionals” project? How did it come about? What does it consist of? Who can take this course?

S: I started it out together with my partner, Tobias Beau, who’s also the co-founder of Product Professionals. We felt there were some parts missing whenever we visited product trainings, conferences or something alike. Lots of conferences or trainings provide mainly theoretical knowledge. But then, when you go back to your company and want to apply that knowledge to your team or just for yourself, you often get stuck. It seems that what you´ve learned in those seminars is not the same as the real world. Every team and organization is different. So, we decided to improve this training experience and came up with Product Professionals — the academy to train and certify product professionals. It is directed to everyone who’s got a role related to product management, not only product managers. That is, engineers, designers, UX researchers, among others. Product Professionals is based on three pillars. If you want to move into product management or want to thrive in it, there is a theoretical base, our Product Professional Certification, in which you learn all methodologies and get theoretical knowledge. It also provides hands-on experiences and exercises how to apply those methodologies in your product work. The second pillar of our course is coaching. We don’t want the graduates to be left alone with what they learned. If they go back into their companies, they should have time to apply what they learned and try it out. If they get stuck or want to have feedback, we are there. We have a great team of coaches who have ‘superpowers’, for example, insure-tech, mobility, AI, UX or design. Whenever someone needs guidance at what they’ve learned or want to implement it, we offer coaching sessions to teach individually and work closely together with the participant, so they can move along and apply what they’ve learned in their particular environment. The third pillar is career development. This is also something we personally missed every time whenever we did those kinds of courses, certification or training. If you participate in a training, you actually do it for a reason: either you want to develop yourself, make the next move or thrive for a change in your current position. Again, after those training there is no one who’s really supporting or working together with you on your personal development, no one who shows you how to make real use of what you’ve just learned so you can go further in your career and development. So, in career development, we support everyone who graduated to thrive and maybe make the next move.

T: This year you will be one of Productized Online conference speakers talking about “Do an internship as your customer! — Why listening to customers isn´t enough”. Who is this talk for? Why should people sign up?

S: I experienced for myself that whenever we, as product managers, talk about customer experience for example, we actually only consider a little part of our product. When we do user interviews, we only talk about a very small part of the whole customer journey. We only consider a slice of that. I figured out that is not enough because we do not eat our own dog food often enough. We just test little bits and pieces of our product but not the whole journey. This is what this talk is about — to figure out what is actually missing if you are only listening to customers. For example, what you miss out is the context, situation and feeling that people have when they are using your product. If you are a travel booking platform and you’re responsible for the booking page, then, what happens very often is that those product managers just test their booking website where customers click on the ‘OK’ button to buy or book a flight or a hotel. But the whole journey is much longer. People are researching where they want to go, the hotels, compare flights and all of that. After they booked, they’ll maybe have troubles and contact customer service. These are parts of the customer journey we do not always consider and neglect. This is why listening is not enough and why we should use our own products more often. In this talk, I provide some solutions on how to do that by taking an internship as your customer and how to use the results you get out of it, to create a better customer experience at the end.

T: Because you’re always putting the “why” before everything you do, do you feel that this also implies your daily routine? Do you think too much about the actions you take or are you more relaxed about it?

S: I’d say I do not think about everything I’m doing every day. For example, as I mentioned in the beginning, travelling taught me not to plan too much and to stay very flexible and adaptable with whatever you encounter. That’s why I think the key is not to plan, but have a clear objective or an idea of where you want to go instead. How you get there, your way or path needs to stay flexible, otherwise you get stuck on an idea or you might miss out on opportunities. This is also why I do not plan everything. However, I like to think about my next step strategically: will this move bring me closer to my objective?

T: Other than books and podcasts, where do you get inspiration for your work?

S: By now, I use my LinkedIn feed very much. I really like it because of all the connections I have with all those people who share articles and interesting thoughts and ideas. Also, the companies that I follow are a source of great inspiration for me because most of them are not always related to product management. It is very important to me to get sources and inspiration from topics that are not 100% related to product management. I guess it’s crucial to look beyond your own horizon and not to always fish in your own sea. This gives me a lot of inspiration — what other people think, how they approach things, even though they might not be product managers.

” Some of the essential things for me to get inspired which are headphones to listen to podcasts, my journal to write down whatever idea is in my head right now, a good cup of coffee and my notebook of course.”

T: What do you consider to be the greatest passion in your work?

S: What I really love about being a product manager is to see how customers evolve together with your product. For example, let’s take the iPhone: It is a product that solved a problem that customers didn’t even know they were having. But it is also a product that changed their lives completely. Maybe the products we’re working on are not that life changing right now. The point is really to see how you can create value for customers and remove a problem they weren’t aware of. This is something I really love about the job, to create something valuable for someone who didn’t even know that they had an issue with, to see one grow into it and go along or grow together with your product.

T: You mentioned that a career is not planned. What advice do you have for anyone starting a career in this area or that want to start from the beginning? Btw, is BMW hiring for product roles?

S: They’re always hiring, I guess you can always check out for some interesting open positions. As I mentioned, I’d say ‘don’t have a plan, but have a goal’. I’m always saying you should know where you want to go and create your own personal career North Star. That should consist of your purpose, meaning, what is your passion, where is your heart? What are you thriving for from an inner point of view? What is your desired state of awesomeness? Where do you see yourself in terms of a particular position? For example, you might see yourself as a product or UX research expert? Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years? Then, you combine those things together with your values and what is important to yourself. Things that are related to the work and the job you’re doing — work-life balance, salary, job level, aspirations and whatever comes in that is important to you. If you take those things together, you will find your way. If you will always move forward and adapt the next move accordingly, you will come closer to your personal career North Star. That’s my advice — to be clear on where you want to go and to stay flexible on how to get there.

T: Thank you, Sabrina!

S: Thank you!

Listen to the interview with the Q&A at the end:

T: How is being a product manager in Automotive industry different from other industries? (Estella Li)

S: One of the biggest differences, I’d say, is that our product is not a solely digital product. I think this is common to most corporate traditional companies, which have more offline work. A car is not only software, but a hardware product consisting of hundred components. Eventually, all of these components have to work well together. None of them can be just half ready or are allowed to fail. All the software and hardware need to be 100% fine. I guess this quality assurance and dealing with this sheer complex system on a global scale is one of the biggest challenges.

T: What would you recommend to someone making a shift from Project to Product Management? (Rita Bandeira)

S: I think the biggest change you’ll have to make is the shift of your mindset. If the organization you’re working in is very familiar with product managers, it shouldn’t be a big problem. However, if you’re working in an environment where product management is quite young, maybe you’ll have to do some educational work with your team and colleagues first. For yourself, I’d say you have to focus much more on your customers, rather than being the one who’s planning out the project, has road maps and is critical. You really need to think about what your customers need and want. It is much more about understanding and having empathy with them, instead of just pushing a project forward for the sake of having it done. That’s both the biggest difference and challenge — to be responsible for your customer and product, not only for the road map and timeline.

T: Could you share an example on how having a data analysis/science background can help in the Product Management career? (Renato Munhoz Neto)

S: If you have a data analysis background, that’ll definitely help you not only to analyze the customer data, but also to extract and interpret results to turn them into valuable insights. This is one of the most important parts. You have to measure data, interpret it and communicate it in an easy digestible way within your organization. If you have a data analysis background, are really good with numbers and know how to crunch the data to provide insights, that’s a very huge benefit. I think a lot of product managers need to not only process data, but communicate in a way that other people understand it. If you manage to use that ability within your product role, you´ll definitely benefit from your data science background.

Get connected with Sabrina and drop her a message on LinkedIn.

Sabrina recommends must 📚 on product and leadership:

📗Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World — David Eppstein

📗Unlearn — Barry O´Reilly

📗Unleashed the unapologetic leader’s guide to empowering everyone around you — Frances Frei & Anne Morris

📗Atomic Habits — James Clear

📗Cracking the PM Interview

Podcast Channels 🎧:

🎧 This is Product Management

🎧 Getting Things Done

🎧 ProdMgmtTalk

This project was made possible thanks to our partnership with Zalando Tech. #GirlsWhoProduct is a series of interviews with women that have been able to beat the ‘product’ ceiling and get into the profession. Our mission is to inspire, connect and empower more women to get into product roles and help them consider ‘product’ as a venue of personal and professional growth.

About Productized

Productized organizes different activities with the intention to boost the product community around the world. It was created by professionals from the engineering and design space, with a history of co-founding several pioneering projects in Portugal such as TEDx, Beta-i, Startup Weekend and Silicon Valley comes to Lisbon.

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