The Reason Why I Started Selling Merchandise: I Love to Double Dip
I don’t mean double dipping in shared food (ie. chips in communal guac 🥑)! I’m not a monster! What I mean by double dipping is utilizing something in multiple ways. Read on to see what I mean by ‘doubling dipping’ and how I approached this with product management principles.
DOUBLE DIPPING IN INTERVIEWS
One my most common pieces of advice when prepping for an interview is to get really familiar with your work experience and anecdotes. Turn them into story beats that can be remixed and applied to more than one typical interview question. In other words, don’t be afraid to double dip a response that demonstrates how you’ve “gone above and beyond” to also answer another question about your “proudest professional achievement.” These examples can be one and the same, but you dress them up to fit the question.
👉 More advice on Expertly Prepping For Your Next Interview !⚡️
DOUBLE DIPPING DESIGNS
When I first started Two-Dots Co., I wanted fun characters to represent myself and my clients, job seekers. They would assist in telling a story of a job seeker presenting to a hiring manager, a recruiter, or a prospective peer. Thus, Motivational Green Bean and Yellow Job Hunting Potato were born. 🫛🥔
👉 There’s even a Weird Purple Job Hunting Potato because they represent The Weirdest Interview I’ve Ever Experienced. 🍳
In the spirit of double dipping, I looked at the delightful characters that the wonderful Erin Hiromoto of HoneyStarHawaii created for me, and wanted to do more with them beyond brightening up my website and blog posts.
Every design, inspired by job hunt advice or a work life moment, has a story.
DOUBLE DIPPING MY SKILLS
Helping job seekers by moonlight. Prioritizing features by daylight. Never running from a presentation, I am a Product Manager. 🌙 ✌️ I’ve pivoted twice since my first career as a recruiter. Nowadays, I’m a full-time Product Manager.
👉 You can read about my Career Change Journey to UX Designer and then PM 🦋
In a nutshell, my purpose and goal as a Product Manager is to maximize the value of a [digital] product. In the case of Two-Dots Co., it’s the brand. By putting on my PM hat, I realized I have an opportunity to leverage existing assets to create additional revenue streams and reach new audiences, which will reinforce my brand. This powers a flywheel from tangible good (Merch) to blog post (Guides) to coaching service (Services) or digital download (Templates).
I looked at qualitative data and specifically homed in on the illustrations that people have commented on or resonated with most from my blog posts. I also added a few new designs to reflect work life moments with my dorky sense of dark humor like Per my last email (read my last f*cking email) 💌 as I wanted to create physical goods that people would enjoy even without the Two-Dots Co. context.
Additionally, creating merch means that I’m extending the reach of my brand and bringing it to tangible, physical life. This makes it a passive form of promotion, a time-old strategy employed by many companies.
So the move to add goods, apparel, and stickers was not random. It was a strategic one—and one that I’ve had a done of fun working on! I hope you’ll take a moment to consider my offerings and support my small business if you see something you like. 🫶
ALSO, BECAUSE IT’S FUN!
My last reason for creating merchandise is purely a selfish one. It’s a fun and creative project. This has provided me an outlet to dream up new ideas that I normally wouldn’t with my day job. As someone who used to paint and draw and loved creative projects, designing merchandise has afforded me an opportunity to explore and express my creativity.