The Underrated Book That Improved My Career

It’s that time of the year again where everyone posts a list of the highly-rated books they read over the past 12 months. I live for these lists not only because I love to read, but I love to further my career and professional success. However, I have noticed that every article I came across containing book suggestions for business and tech are home to around the same 10 titles over and over again. While I am sure this is a testament to the quality of those books, I always notice that my favorite title is missing: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick.

The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

My mentor gifted me this book when I was starting my career in Product Management and it became one of the most valuable pieces of literature I consumed over the past few years. Regardless of your job title, if you are speaking to customers, you should read this book — period.

It helps you talk to customers.

Yeah, yeah, you may think this is a no-brainer because you don’t have a hard time carrying on a conversation or building trust but I am here to tell you that it’s not enough. Interpersonal communication is complicated. The way you ask for and receive information today is likely misleading and is therefore poorly affecting your product. Fitzpatrick explains how common questions and phrasing lead customers to the same affirming answer, regardless of their true feelings. This book really helped me phrase my questions in a different way to help me get to the customer’s true thoughts and opinions.

After reading this book, I took the time to rewrite my test scripts and customer interview questions. After putting this into practice and building a habit around it, it has become second nature to ask non-leading questions on the fly and spot leading questions a mile away. This book greatly improved my ability to obtain quality feedback and then directly translate that into building more valuable products for our userbase.

Whether you an an entrepreneur who is trying to validate a product idea, a UX engineer getting feedback on designs, a Product Manager who is trying to define pain points, or any person who is customer-facing, this book will change how you talk to your customers so you can gain far more genuine feedback and build higher quality products.