Five Questions Over Coffee with Cydney Mar (ep. 155)

Who is Cydney?

Cydney Mar is a renowned product development specialist with a rich background in the fashion industry. She has developed products and strategies for numerous brands and holds extensive experience designing for prestigious names like Cirque du Soleil and QVC Worldwide. In her early career, she competed as a national-level figure skater before transitioning into fashion design, where her expertise in creating and executing merchandise lines emerged. At the age of 68, she continues to influence and support product-driven founders with her mentorship and strategic planning skills, encouraging innovation and organized execution for successful product launches.

Episode Summary:

In this engaging episode of “Five Questions Over Coffee,” host Stuart Webb sits down with Cydney Mar, a seasoned product development expert renowned for steering product-driven organizations to success. With a background that includes competitive figure skating and an influential career in fashion design, Cydney shares her vast insights into how founders can transform their ideas into reality. She emphasizes the necessity of organizing and planning as fundamental steps in product development and discusses the dynamic nature of markets that constantly demand vigilance and adaptation.

Cydney Mar provides practical advice for product founders, focusing on the importance of strategy, mentorship, and adaptability. She elaborates on the role of reflection and structured planning in navigating the challenging terrain of product development. Cydney’s experiences in overcoming personal and professional hurdles bring a fresh perspective to the conversation, encouraging founders to maintain resilience and perseverance. This episode is a must-listen for budding entrepreneurs looking to merge creativity with strategic planning to excel in competitive markets.

Key Takeaways:

* Organizational Skills Are Crucial: The core of successful product development is organizing ideas and executing a clear, sequential plan.

* Adaptability Is Key: Being prepared to adjust strategies in response to market changes and unexpected challenges is vital for product success.

* Importance of Mentorship: Having a mentor or a trusted sounding board can provide valuable guidance and insights for founders.

* Resilience Through Challenges: Personal adversities can lead to new opportunities and should be seen as part of the growth journey.

* Strategic Planning As a Guide: While a plan shouldn’t be followed slavishly, it offers direction and helps identify when to pivot or stay the course.

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Transcript

Note, this was transcribed using transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast.

SPEAKERS

Cydney Mar, Stuart Webb

0:00:00 - (Stuart Webb): Sam. Hi, and welcome back to five Questions over coffee. I’m here today with Sydney Marr. Sydney is a product development specialist. She helps founders of product driven organizations really go to develop the products that they’re developing. She’s a real expert in this. She’s been developing products and developing strategies for people with products for, for more years than I’m going to say, because she, she is, she doesn’t, she doesn’t look as if she’s got that much experience.

0:01:09 - (Stuart Webb): But I will say that when you read about Sydney, you’ll realize just what an expert we have in the studios with us today. So, Sydney, thank you for spending a few minutes with us, taking a few minutes to do this, this discussion, and I’m really looking forward to hearing your pearls of wisdom for people who want to develop their products and want take advantage of somebody with the knowledge and the, the expertise you’ve got. So thank you for spending a few minutes with us.

0:01:38 - (Cydney Mar): Thank you so much for inviting me, Stuart. I’m really excited because there are so many people that you and I, if we were going to a coffee shop or we would probably hear the conversation at the next table saying, oh, I have an idea for either a new apparel line or I have, you know, this pen is driving me crazy or this buckle. And I’m here to help. And that is really what I’m doing in what I call my legacy years. It’s so much fun because I get to hear about everybody’s ideas and then really helping them bring them to life.

0:02:12 - (Stuart Webb): Brilliant. I love it. Listen, Sydney, tell us a little bit about the sort of things that the founders you’re helping at the moment. You know, what is the problem they’ve got that, you know, we’ve just talked about the fact that they have ideas. But it’s having an idea, even a good idea, is not enough, is it? It’s great, but it’s not going to get you from sitting in the coffee shop to sitting in the boardroom.

0:02:36 - (Cydney Mar): Exactly. And what I find mostly, and when I start with clients and, you know, they hop on a call, just exploratory, to find out what their idea is, is getting it out of their head. They say, I think about this and I think, so you can see all of the ideas floating around above their head. And I really want them to get a notebook, write everything down, and just sort of brain dump. And then once we have all of the pieces, we can start putting it in order because I find that there are so many, you know, founders who love to create products tend to be very creative. So they’re always getting another idea and another idea, and we kind of just have to ground them.

0:03:20 - (Cydney Mar): And once we can table them all, I find it so much easier to prioritize. Let’s start here. Let’s put these ones. You know, maybe this is going to be number two, number three. But until you’ve got the pieces to work with, it’s hard to organize them. And I believe that in terms of producing, getting an idea developed, producing it and figuring it out, it has a lot to do with organizational skills, which most people find super boring.

0:03:50 - (Cydney Mar): But the truth of the matter is, that is what’s going to get you from A to Z.

0:03:57 - (Stuart Webb): I love the simplicity that you’ve put there, Sydney, because you’re right. The first step is to just organize all these disparate ideas into something which somebody can actually sort of say, this is the starting point, and everything else branches out from that. And that’s what a lot of founders, a lot of entrepreneurs struggle to do. And I suppose I’m interested in …