VP Product Marketing at Kajabi | Building PMM Office Hours

Hi, I’m Tamara 👋🏻

I’ve spent my career building product marketing teams, shaping company strategy, and leading big, high-stakes launches. 

I’ve held five PMM leadership roles — 2× Director, 2× VP, and Chief Strategy Officer — and over time, one truth became impossible to ignore:

Great PMM leadership isn’t a solo sport.
And most PMM leaders are forced to figure it out alone.

That’s why I started PMM Camp — a private community for product marketing leaders who want to grow with intention, be surrounded by peers who push their thinking, and develop the habits that make them truly indispensable.

My work today sits at the intersection of connection and leadership development. I help PMM leaders strengthen the skills that actually move their careers forward — thinking more strategically, driving clearer business impact, communicating with influence, developing their teams, and building professional relationships that open doors.

If that’s the journey you’re on, here’s where to start:

✨ Subscribe to the newsletter
✨ Apply to join the community
✨ Shoot me a DM to say hello

"Be more strategic."

The vaguest feedback in product marketing. And somehow, it's the most common.

You get promoted because you're excellent at execution. You know how to ship, how to bring clarity to messy problems, how to move work forward.

Then the job changes.

Now you're expected to set direction, influence decisions, and operate at a higher level across the business while still doing everything you were doing before.

No one hands you a playbook. You're just supposed to figure it out.

I've lived this. As a 2× Director, 2× VP, and Chief Strategy Officer, I made this transition myself. And over the past few years, I've watched the same pattern repeat across hundreds of PMM leaders inside PMM Camp.

So I spent the last six months building what I wish had existed when I needed it.

Today I'm launching the 5 Modes of PMM Leaders ✨ It's the first leadership framework built specifically for product marketers.

The reality is, leadership isn’t a single shift from execution to strategy. Being strategic matters, but it's only one part of the job. 

Leadership isn't about choosing between execution and strategy. It's about knowing how to show up differently depending on what the moment calls for.

I call this range.

Range is what separates excellent executors from indispensable product marketing leaders.

Sometimes the business needs clear direction. Sometimes it needs strong execution. Sometimes it needs you to step back and design systems that scale beyond you.

That's where ​the five modes​ come in. They represent the different capabilities product marketers need to activate to be successful.

Here's how they break down:

→ Strategist: Shape direction
→ Operator: Create business impact
→ Activator: Unlock team potential
→ Connector: Invest in relationships
→ Architect: Lead with intention

All five modes need to be available to you. But, range isn’t something you unlock all at once — it’s built through specific leadership habits.

Across the five modes, there are ten core habits that strengthen them. Small, repeatable actions that change how you think, operate, and show up as a leader.

This framework gives you the map. The habits are how you build the range.

Over the past six months, this framework has been peer-reviewed, tested, and refined alongside experienced leaders inside the PMM Camp community.

And, today, I'm excited to share it with all of you!

Explore the framework 👉 https://lnkd.in/eYn9gRnY

Tamara Grominsky

Hey there, I'm Tamara 👋🏻

I'm an award-winning product marketing leader with 10+ years of experience building and scaling PMM teams.

As the founder of PMM Camp, I'm on a mission to help you:

🔥 Ignite your spark for product marketing
👯‍♀️ Connect with other PMMs over meaningful, high-quality conversations 
🌱 Expand beyond the basics to deepen your skillset and refine your craft

Ready to build a high impact career? Here's how I can help:

1️⃣ Join the PMM Camp Executive Clubhouse community. Build connection and grow your career alongside other experienced product marketing leaders. Unlock access at www.pmmcamp.com/community

2️⃣ Subscribe to the PMM Camp newsletter. Get actionable product marketing insights in your inbox every week. 

3️⃣ Hire me as your coach. Get the guidance and support you need to navigate your career as a PMM leader.

Learn more at www.pmmcamp.com

✨ Product Marketing Leadership Coach | 2X VP PMM | I help PMMs master the habits that make them indispensable

Every PMM wants to become "more strategic".
Here's the simplest path:

Get better at choosing which problems to solve.

Most problems fall into four categories:

Delegation Zone
Quick Wins
Shared Wins
Strategic Levers

The average PMM spends too much time in the wrong one. Strategic PMMs are selective.

Answer these questions to see where a problem fits, and how to prioritize it.

DELEGATION ZONE

- Could someone else do this just as well?
- Would skipping this have little to no business impact?
- Does this require little to no PMM judgement?

If yes, delegate or drop.

QUICK WINS

- Am I particularly good at solving this type of problem?
- Can this be completed quickly with minimal effort?
- Will it create a small but noticeable improvement?

If yes, do it quickly and move on.

SHARED WINS

- Would solving this improve key business outcomes?
- Is another team better positioned to lead this work?
- Would PMM's time be better spent partnering vs leading?

If yes, partner, don't own.

STRATEGIC LEVERS

- Will this materially shape direction or priorities?
- Is PMM uniquely qualified to solve this problem?
- Would the outcome be weaker without me involved?

If yes, prioritize aggressively.

The fastest way to become more strategic is not to just work harder. It's to ruthlessly filter what you work on.

The best PMMs spend 80% of their time in Strategic Levers. The rest spend 80% everywhere else.

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👋🏻 I'm Tamara, and I help product marketing leaders master the habits that make them indispensable.

💌 Want my Sunday strategy sessions? Join 9,000+ PMMs who get my newsletter every week. Click “view my newsletter” to subscribe.

Most product marketing team charters are surface-level documents. 

They list who's on the team and what they own.

That's it.

And they leave a lot of value on the table.

Across all of the charters I've reviewed, I usually only see two components:

TEAM ORG CHART

This answers who's on the team and how roles are defined.

SCOPE OF OWNERSHIP

The key areas of responsibility for the team. Often, high level categories like messaging, positioning, compete, launches.

And that's where most charters stop.

But if that's all you're including, you might actually be doing more harm than good. 

Why? Because you're not giving stakeholders enough context to truly understand what you do, why you're doing it, and what value your team brings to the business.

The result?

→ Leadership doesn't buy into your vision
→ You're stuck in reactive mode, responding to requests instead of shaping your own roadmap
→ Other teams feel confused because it's unclear how to work with you

You end up misunderstood instead of valued.

Indispensable PMM leaders go further. They add these extra 4 layers that turn a basic doc into a leadership tool:

PROBLEMS WE SOLVE

Identify the business challenges PMM is uniquely qualified to solve and narrow in on the ones where you can drive the most impact.

This allows you to go beyond a list of tasks and actually connect your work to higher-impact outcomes.

IMO, this is the most important part of every charter. It should be the foundation for everything else.

DECISIONS WE DRIVE

PMMs often feel like we're influencing decisions but never truly owning them. This section makes it explicit: at this company, these are the decisions I am accountable for.

This creates alignment upfront with stakeholders and makes it clear who to go to when a decision in that category needs to be made.

HOW WE WIN

One of the most common criticisms of PMM is that we're bad at choosing metrics. This section solves that. 

It makes clear what company goals you're laddering up to and what metrics you're using to measure success. Your team needs to know this, and so does the rest of the company.

WAYS WE WORK

This makes your charter actionable. Because PMM sits at the intersection of so many teams, it's not always clear when to come to us or how to work with us.

This is the logistical layer: where to find your roadmap, how to submit a request, what rhythms of business you're involved in.

Here's what most people miss:

When you define a clear mandate and deliver on it successfully, you earn the right to solve bigger problems.

You get invited into more strategic conversations. Your scope expands, and the cycle continues.

Your charter isn't a deck you build once and file away. It's the backbone of how you grow your career and your team's influence at the company.
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👋🏻 I'm Tamara, and I help product marketing leaders master the habits that make them indispensable.

💌 Want my Sunday strategy sessions? Join 9,000+ PMMs who get my newsletter every week.

If your research isn't landing, it's probably not about the data.
It's about something much bigger.

PMMs spend hours tracking patterns, pulling sources together, analyzing trends.

We get genuinely excited about our findings.

Then we present to product stakeholders or senior leadership.

And... crickets.

No one else seems remotely as excited as we are.

The problem? You're probably stuck in what I call the "observation zone."

Most PMMs present low-quality insights without even knowing it. They describe what happened, but they don't help people understand why it matters or what to do next.

There are three levels of insight quality:

LEVEL 1: OBSERVING

You're describing what happened. Sharing data, maybe a few trends.

"Our competitor updated their homepage."
"We have 10 customer support tickets on this feature."

These are just data points. The business doesn't know why they should care, so they divert their attention somewhere else.

This is where most PMMs get stuck.

LEVEL 2: INTERPRETING

Now you're connecting meaning to the data.

"Our competitor updated their homepage to emphasize AI. This, combined with other changes to their marketing and the launch of their new feature last week, signals a positioning shift we need to respond to."

"Those 10 support tickets all come from our priority customer segment and mention the same point of friction. We need to pay attention before it starts costing us renewals with our best customers."

When you apply meaning, you spark conversation. You give people something to react to.

But interpretation alone isn't enough to drive action.

Because now everyone will ask: "Okay, so what do we do about it?"

LEVEL 3: DIRECTING

This is where you propose a path forward.

"Based on the competitor shift, I recommend we update our homepage messaging by end of month. Here are three positioning angles we could test."

"I've mapped out two options to address the friction point: one quick fix, one longer-term solution. I recommend we start with the quick fix and revisit in Q2."

Three components make this work:

→ Shape options: Determine the potential paths forward.

→ Add a strong point of view: Present the path you recommend (and why).

→ Bring an activation plan: Show how to bring that path to life.

When you move out of observing, through interpreting, and all the way to directing...

That's when you present insights that get buy-in.

And that's the real difference between insights that get filed away and insights that drive decisions.

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👋🏻 I'm Tamara, and I help product marketing leaders master the habits that make them indispensable.

💌 Want my Sunday strategy sessions? Join 9,000+ PMMs who get my newsletter every week. Click "view my newsletter" to subscribe.

I'm cooking up something new 👀

It's the best talk I've ever developed (6 months in the works), and I'm debuting it in NYC. 

Early bird pricing ends tonight at midnight.

We just launched our newest round of Cabins inside PMM Camp.

→ 91 product marketing leaders
→ 15 small core groups

Topics spanning AI, B2C PMM, people management, go-to-market strategy, founding PMM, B2B SaaS, and more.

You are the sum of the 5 people you surround yourself with. That idea is the foundation of everything we do with Cabins.

If you're not familiar with Cabins, they're the heart of PMM Camp.

Small groups of 5-8 PMM leaders who meet regularly to tackle real challenges together.

The small group structure is intentional.

When you're surrounded by the right people, solving real problems together, you don't just learn faster. You become better at your craft.

Each Cabin has its own focus, but they all share one thing: real PMM leaders solving real problems together.

The people in your Cabin become your inner circle. A group of smart and kind people who help shape how you think and work.

None of this happens without our Cabin Leaders.

These are PMM Camp members who volunteer their time to facilitate, guide discussions, and create space for others to grow. They're the reason Cabins work.

Shoutout to our 15 Cabin Leaders this round: Talya Heller G. 💡, Camila Morrison, Ana Conde, Shannon Kearns, Abigail Egle Zilinskaite, Kate Orchard, Paul Ngan, Steffi Li, Martina Havrlent, Amit Alagh, Denny Hollick, Conrad Walsh, Kristin Howland, Sheryl Floyd, Kim Toffan

If you're in one of these Cabin groups, you're in for something special.

You're about to spend the next few months surrounded by people who will make you better.

If you're not, the next round opens in a few months.

Your habits are your future, one day at a time.

I used to set career goals:

"Get promoted to Director."
"Manage a team of 5."
"Become a Chief Strategy Officer."

Then I'd stress about things I couldn't control.

Would my boss leave?
Would the company create that role?
Would there be budget cuts or layoffs?

It was exhausting.

But, at the recommendation of my executive coach, I shifted focus. Instead of chasing titles, I started building leadership habits.

And that's when things changed.

I couldn't control when I'd get promoted to Director. But I could control showing up to every strategy meeting with a clear point of view.

I couldn't control managing a team that didn't exist yet. But I could mentor junior marketers, even when it wasn't officially my job.

I couldn't control the timing of the VP opening. But I could write strategy memos that the CEO actually wanted to read.

The promotion to Director came (early!). The team followed. The VP role was created just for me.

Not because I set those as goals.
Because I built the habits that made me ready when the opportunity arrived.

What if, in 2026, instead of obsessing over outcomes you can't control, you started focusing on the behaviors you can.

Your habits are your future, one day at a time.

What future do you want to build for yourself this year?

I've been lucky to work at companies where community was the heartbeat of the business.

At Unbounce, our community was full of superusers who knew the product inside and out. They figured out workarounds before we did. 

They answered each other's questions and gave us a constant stream of feedback that shaped what we built and how we prioritized.

At Kajabi, the product was the center of our customers' businesses. I'd never seen customers so emotionally invested and eager for every new feature, ready to adopt the moment something launched.

But when I talk to marketers and community builders now, that's not what I usually hear.

Most communities are treated like a one-way street. The company has a message, and the community becomes just another channel to push it out.

That's not a community. That's a marketing list.

Real communities are two-way. They're products, not channels.

→ They have clear positioning (for members AND the business)
→ They create feedback loops that shape what you build next
→ They drive retention and expansion, not just engagement metrics

This is how I think about PMM Camp. 

Every decision — from what to offer to where to double down — follows the same product thinking I used as a PMM leader.

I'm breaking down these key product principles at Circle's Reimagining Community Strategy for 2026 event.

It's virtual, and free!

I'll be bringing a product leader's mindset to community building.

We'll cover how to clarify your community's positioning, build real feedback loops, and make smarter investment decisions about what to build next.

Whether you're running a customer community, partner community, or a learning community, these principles apply.

Register for free 👉 https://bit.ly/4sXnd7O

If your work has ever felt invisible despite being excellent, this might be why.

I used to watch teams present their work at all-hands and feel genuinely impressed.

They had super creative campaigns. 
Interesting new product features. 
And work that clearly took effort.

But then... nothing happened.

The work didn't get championed or build momentum. It just kind of faded into the background.

And I couldn't figure out why. Until I noticed the pattern.

The teams whose work got recognized, resourced, and remembered were doing one thing differently 👇🏻

They connected everything back to a company goal.

This was the foundation of how they presented AND positioned their work.

That's it.

It sounds simple, but most PMMs skip this step because it feels like a big leap to go from "company goal" to "PMM metric."

So I built a process to make that leap easier. Here's the flow:

→ Start with company goals and leadership priorities (they're not always the same)

→ Filter those goals through your PMM focus areas to identify the goals your team can best support

→ Define PMM objectives that ladder up to the filtered goals

→ Break objectives into initiatives with clear ownership

→ Measure progress with metrics that show PMM's contribution

When you anchor your work in what the business is trying to achieve, two things happen:

1️⃣ You focus on the right things (because you're solving real business problems)

2️⃣ Your work becomes impossible to sideline (because it's tied to what leadership already cares about)

This isn't just the right thing to do (after all, we were hired to support company goals). It's also the fastest way to get your work seen, supported, and resourced.

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👋🏻 I'm Tamara, and I help product marketing leaders master the habits that make them indispensable.

💌 Want my Sunday strategy sessions? Join 9,000+ PMMs who get my newsletter every week.

I asked 134 PMMs how they'll know they've made it as a leader.

Only 7% said "a bigger title."

52% said something very different: being trusted to set vision and strategy for the business.

What stood out immediately in the survey results is that very few people anchored their answers to titles or team size. Being a leader wasn't about finally becoming a Director or managing a team.

Across both aspiring and current leaders, success was defined by impact.

They described success as having a seat at the table early. Shaping direction rather than reacting to it. Influencing decisions that extend beyond product launches.

If PMM leadership were simply a promotion, you'd expect people to define success in much more traditional ways: a bigger team with a bigger job title.

But that's not what showed up in the results.

What PMMs are actually aspiring to is strategic authority.

They want to move from being excellent contributors to being trusted partners in how the business thinks, plans, and prioritizes.

This tracks with what I see in my coaching conversations too. The PMM leaders who feel most fulfilled aren't chasing titles. They're chasing influence.

They want to be in the room when decisions get made. Not just executing what others decided.

If you're working toward PMM leadership, ask yourself: Are you optimizing for title or for trust?

Because the data says the latter is what actually matters.

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👋🏻 I'm Tamara, and I help product marketing leaders master the habits that make them indispensable.

💌 Want my Sunday strategy sessions? Join 9,000+ PMMs who get my newsletter every week.

A lot of PMMs (even leaders) wait for company goals to be handed to them.

That's a mistake.

The first step of strategic alignment isn't passive. It's active 👇🏻

"Gather company goals and leadership priorities."

But here's where things get interesting.

Good leaders can connect their product marketing work to company goals once they're clear.

Indispensable leaders help shape clarity and direction even when company goals aren't.

Most companies don't start the year with perfectly articulated priorities. More often than not, goals are vague and priorities may even conflict. Leadership is still figuring it out.

If you wait for perfect clarity, you'll be waiting a long time. So what do indispensable PMM leaders do instead?

They go hunting for context.

→ They ask leadership directly: "What are your top 3 priorities this quarter?"
→ They read between the lines of company-wide communications
→ They connect dots across functions that others miss
→ They surface gaps and inconsistencies to help leadership sharpen their thinking

This is what it means to be a strategic partner.

When you actively gather goals and priorities — even imperfect ones — you can start shaping how PMM contributes to them.

And when you help the business get clearer on what matters most, you become indispensable to the planning process itself.

Don't wait for the perfect goals to be hand delivered to you. Go find them! And if they doesn't exist yet, help create them.

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👋🏻 I'm Tamara, and I help product marketing leaders master the habits that make them indispensable.

💌 Want my Sunday strategy sessions? Join 9,000+ PMMs who get my newsletter every week.

There are 5 modes every PMM leader needs to master.

Most default to one (maybe two). That's why leadership feels so hard.

Yesterday I launched the 5 Modes of PMM Leaders, the first leadership framework built specifically for product marketers.

Today, I'm breaking down each mode and the habits that'll help you master them👇🏻


STRATEGIST → Shape direction

Strategists make sense of the bigger picture, spot patterns others miss, and steer PMM toward the problems that matter most.

Key habits:

Position PMM's value
Turn insights into action


OPERATOR → Create business impact

Operators turn strategy into action by grounding PMM's work in business goals and making success easy for others to see.

Key habits:

Anchor to company goals
Share your results


ACTIVATOR → Unlock team potential

Activators create the clarity, rhythm, and environment that help their team focus on what matters and consistently do their best work.

Key habits:

Create clarity and focus
Organize for impact


CONNECTOR → Invest in relationships

Connectors make people a priority and consistently nurture the relationships that multiply what's possible.

Key habits:

Strengthen internal trust
Cultivate connections


ARCHITECT → Lead with intention

Architects design their career with care and position their strengths deliberately as they shape the leader they're becoming.

Key habits:

Write your own story
Invest in your growth


Most PMM leaders over-index on one or two modes, usually the ones that made them successful earlier in their career.

But leadership demands range. The ability to shift between modes depending on what the moment calls for.

Developing this range is what separates excellent executors from indispensable leaders.

Swipe through the carousel for a deeper look at each mode.

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👋🏻 I'm Tamara, and I help product marketing leaders master the habits that make them indispensable.

Want to see how you currently lead across all 5 modes? Take the free PMM Leadership Assessment on the PMM Camp website.

The 5 Modes of PMM Leaders

I used to think being busy meant being productive.

Turns out, I was just exhausted.

The shift happened when I stopped glorifying hustle culture and started protecting what actually mattered to me.

I've learned the habits that feel hardest to prioritize are usually the ones we need most. For me, that's prioritizing time to take real breaks throughout the day.

What are you prioritizing this year? Vote in the poll below.

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💌 This week's newsletter digs into intention setting and getting clear about the habits you actually want to build for 2026. Subscribe to get the edition in your inbox: www.pmmcamp.com/subscribe

Which habit are you most intentionally prioritizing this year?

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