Peloton Leaders: Meet Jae Taylor

Whenever a Member enjoys a live or on-demand class without interruption, they can give their thanks to Jae Taylor and his team. Jae is Peloton’s Senior Director of Product Management, where he leads the product team that makes sure our platform is in top performance and no one experiences any performance issues when streaming our content. Jae and his team are charged with scaling our systems and processes to accommodate for our growing community - all 6.2 million Members (and growing!).

Jae came to the tech industry with a non-traditional background. When he began his career, he was a young dad with two daughters, with no college degree, no industry connections, trying to start a career in tech. But Jae got creative and when no one would hire him, he hired himself and started his own successful startup! Fast forward to today: he’s a proud father of four daughters, founded MentorMesh.io where he brings together mentors and mentees and shares his strategies for creating a successful tech career, and has had leadership roles at Expedia, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Twitter before he decided to join the Peloton team.

With such a busy schedule, here’s how Jae keeps his day on track.

Ruthless prioritization: Ideally, I start my day earlier with cardio on my Peloton Tread around 6am Pacific Time. Doesn’t always happen, but that’s the goal! What I love about Peloton is that many folks share an interest in fitness and understand its importance for energy and overall health and happiness. Make time for it. This is especially important if you have a “desk job” and work from home.

I’m based in the Seattle area, and with Peloton being a primarily east coast company, my meetings start pretty early around 7am PT. So after my morning cardio routine, I’m usually headed into my first meeting. So much of being a product leader is about collaborating across my team, my organization, and especially with my customers. So lots of conversations around projects, needs, and goals. I schedule regular 1:1 sessions with a lot of people, to make sure I’m in tune with what they need.

It is a lot to fit into just a morning. I think you have to really understand what’s most important in your life and make sure you prioritize the most important things first. Sometimes when the priority list gets long, things drop. Don’t let the most important things drop by doing them first.

My family is most important to me. I have a tendency to get carried away with work, because I really enjoy it, so I have to make sure I timebox the time I spend there, so my family gets my attention. A lot easier said than done of course. So I set a schedule for my fitness, Peloton work time, mentoring time, and family time. I have four daughters of all ages, so I need to make sure my evenings and weekends are clear for them and my amazingly patient and supportive wife.

Building trust, one conversation at a time: As I’m in these meetings, I take a lot of notes. You especially want to keep track of any action items or follow ups. Making sure you do what you say you’re going to do is a key way to build trust in an organization. Trust and support are huge for me and meetings are typically the most frequent way we engage with our colleagues - so it’s important to stay present.

I also remind myself to always keep the conversation positive. Back in my younger Expedia days, I was going through a difficult transition and one of my leaders said this to me. I took it to heart. I’m naturally a very passionate person, so I try to keep balance by always keeping my message positive and assuming people have good intentions. In high growth companies, which I always strive to work for, it can get a little hectic and emotional. Lots of changes happen all the time. So it's important to keep positive, assuming people are doing their best.

If you want people to support you, you need to support them first. If you want people to be interested in you, be interested in them first. Whenever I join a company, I make it a priority to talk to everyone, understand their challenges, and find ways I can help. If you do this first, people enjoy working with you. And when the time comes that you need help, people are more willing to lend a hand. So much of leadership and product management is about “influencing without authority”, so get good at it.

Making time to think: The afternoon is where I usually try to find some time to log off of meetings and start more focused work. The day probably resulted in a few actions for me, so now it's time to follow up and prepare for the rest of the week.

I make it a good practice to take breaks when I can, go walk around, say hi to the family, whenever I squeeze it in throughout the day. Sometimes I’ll go on a short walk.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of work. So I try to spend time thinking about the bigger purpose of my team and my role. And I make sure I execute on the most important things that will fulfill that purpose. I want to always focus on doing impactful, thoughtful work, making sure I’m driving my vision and purpose forward. Being busy is not the same as getting results.

Winding down by planning ahead: When I’m ready to end my day, I’ll start to review my notes, take special notice of any actions needed from me. I’ll look at the day tomorrow and see if there’s anything I need to do to prepare for then or the rest of the week.

This is also the time of day when I make time to mentor folks in their career journey at Mentor Mesh. I’ll do 1:1s, group sessions, and livestreams to help people conquer imposter syndrome and level up their careers. This really is my passion. I love seeing people achieve things they never thought possible.

Whether I’m speaking to folks at Mentor Mesh or my own team, I love trusting people and enabling them. I don’t want to tell you what to do. I want you to bring your creativity and passion and you tell me where you’d like to make an impact. The goal is not to complete this one project. The goal is to create a sustainable culture where people love to be here. That ultimately also results in high quality work and committed teammates.

I’ll provide high level guidelines on our mission and the results I’d like to see. But I make sure the team is very involved in defining and pushing these forward. When you bring people along, they feel a stronger sense of ownership, and you ultimately get better results that way.

Another reason the Peloton mission resonates with me, #togetherwegofar.

After that I try to hit the weights and do some strength training.