I've been a PM for 10 years. I just published my first product. Here's what surprised me

I spent a decade telling engineers what to build. Last month, I built something myself for the first time.

Not code — a template pack for PMs. Five systems I've been quietly using and refining across multiple companies: 1-1 frameworks, leadership update formats, AI workflow prompts, stakeholder communication scripts, and interview prep tools.

I've given versions of these to teammates informally for years. Someone would ask "how do you run your 1-1s?" and I'd paste them a doc. It kept happening. So I cleaned them up, wrote proper usage notes, and put them on Gumroad for $29.

A few things surprised me about the process:
The hardest part wasn't the content. I had the content. The hard part was stripping out everything that sounded like a framework and keeping only what I'd actually say to a colleague.

Reddit told me more than any survey would. Before writing a single word, I spent two weeks reading r/ProductManagement. The posts with 900+ upvotes weren't about strategy — they were "steal my 1-1 format" and "here's how I do leadership updates." The demand signal was sitting right there.

Zero sales so far. I'm being upfront. The product is live, the problem is real, but I haven't cracked distribution yet. That's what I'm working on now.

For anyone who's done this before — what actually moved the needle for you in the first 30 days?