Balancing the Grind with Caitlin Wynn, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Weel

Caitlin Wynn is the Senior Product Marketing Manager at Weel, an all-in-one virtual business card and expense management platform.

1) To kick things off, could you tell us a little about your career background and current role?

After starting out working agency-side in PR, I made the move in-house to a tech start-up (Deputy) in 2016, into a general marketing role.

Because we were growing really quickly, I had the opportunity to move through a number of roles and naturally gravitated towards the role of Product Marketing (before I knew exactly what that was). I found I really enjoyed being able to work cross-functionally, while also being customer facing. 

I’m now the Senior Product Marketing Manager at Weel, a fintech business that helps businesses of all shapes and sizes to streamline their spend management processes. 

2) What does a day in your life look like for you? Can you take us through a recent workday?

On any given day, there’s usually a lot of meetings. This was the case even prior to hybrid working, as there’s a lot of information gathering that needs to happen (both internal and external) to be able to do my job well. 

Outside of that, a typical day would also include refining messaging and positioning across our website and enablement materials, putting together competitor battlecards, a bit of copywriting and customer interviews. 

3) Does your current role allow for flexible or remote working? If so, how does that fit into your life and routine?

Yes, Weel is big on flexibility. We are a distributed workforce, with team members all around Australia. I’m pretty lucky that most of the people I collaborate with on a day to day are also in Sydney, and we coordinate our days to be in the office together.

I get into the office around 3 days a week, and work from home the other two. This has been really important for me in building relationships as this is a relatively new role. It’s also a massive plus that I can bring my dog into the office!

Working in a hybrid model, I’ve found it pretty easy to strike a balanced integration between work and life.

4) What does work-life balance mean to you and how do you work to achieve that goal?

While I know this is a privilege, for me having a good work-life balance starts with enjoying my work, and working within a culture and team whose values align to my own. If the large part of your life (work) is something you don’t enjoy, I find weekends and hours outside of work are never going to be enough.

When it comes to balancing work and life, I’ve found that ruthless prioritisation is the key to preventing work from constantly bleeding into life time. The Product Marketing remit can be an endless void, so I try and make sure that I am strategically weighing up priorities, to make sure I’m only picking up projects that will have the highest impact. 

I know it’s easier said than done, but I think I’m also getting better at knowing (and communicating) what is achievable and realistic, to avoid overcommitting and cutting into personal time to deliver. 

5) In the past 12 months, have you started or stopped any routines or habits to change your life?

Whether this sticks or not, I’ve cut back on drinking alcohol. I wouldn’t say I’ve stopped or wouldn’t drink again, but I haven’t had a drink in about a month. 

I’ve also started to make sure I’m hitting my 10k steps every day. I find this a lot easier the days that I’m in the office as it happens incidentally, but I’ve started making sure on my WFH days I walk before or after work, and have added a 30 min power walk in my lunch break to make sure I get those steps in.

6) Do you have any favourite books, podcasts or newsletters that you’d like to recommend?

I really enjoy the newsletter content from Punchy with Emma Stratten. She is a product marketer turned business owner, who always shares really helpful tips and insights on writing compelling messaging.

Other than that, I often have the Strategyzer book Value Proposition Design handy to thumb through, and dip in and out of the Product Marketing Podcast by the Product Marketing Alliance.

Outside of business content, my favourite podcast is ‘Just the Gist’ with Rosie Waterland and Jacob Stanley. The premise of the show is that they share just enough of a wild true story that you could ‘repeat it at a dinner party’. 

7) Are there any products, gadgets or apps that you can’t live without?

As a Product Marketer, I love a presentation deck so I live in Google Slides. I find using a slide deck the easiest way to make sure that I’m communicating the right level of information, and in the right way.

8) If you could read an interview about work-life balance by anyone, who would that be? 

I love hearing from top-dog, c-level executives that have nailed the work life balance. Leading by example from the top down is the best way to instil a healthy culture of work-life balance. I’m way more impressed by an executive that has a surf and does school drop off before work than an executive ‘hustler’ who is online and sending emails at 4am.

9) Do you have any last thoughts on work, life or balance that you’d like to share with our readers?

There was recently a TikTok trend going viral to the sound “It’s not a fire drill, we work in marketing” or something like that. And I think that is true of every role that isn’t literally saving lives in the ER. 

That’s not to say your job doesn’t matter or you shouldn’t have a sense of urgency, but it’s about recognising the difference between what is an exceptional ‘emergency’, and when it becomes BAU that work projects are consistently taking priority over your personal time. 

The working life is long so it’s important to enjoy what you do. Having balance is the key if you want to keep loving what you do without burnout. 

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