This last decade has been a tough one and I find myself with a deep sense of stuck-ness and hopelessness.
A little background: Due to familial/personal circumstances, I studied a non-tech discipline through grad school with the goal of eventually getting into tech. After finishing, I eventually found my way to joining the founding team of an early stage startup where for the next 6 years I ran around like a headless chicken. Whether due to lack of education, experience, mentorship, or volition, I learned very little about how to systematically build a product and business. The whole experience was taxing.
I left the company to spend the next couple years working on my mental health. It became clear that much of my ineffectiveness was due to deeply-rooted fears, self-hatred, and maladaptive behaviors from severe childhood trauma.
Now at 36, I do find myself in a much better place. I've arrived at more of an understanding of who I am, my values, the kind of life I want to live. But I do feel as if I've squandered almost a decade of professional potential. I have good intuitive product and design sense, but have very very little in the way of effective skills, such as understanding and facilitating a product development process. Additionally, I have a very small network, if one at all.
Where do I go from here? Do I seek a mentor / life coach to help me build a practical path forward? Back to school? And where do I begin building a professional network? Will a company even look in my direction at this point?
Thanks.
The difference with Product Manager vs. Project Manager I think is really a Product Manager will have to acquire or start with in-depth knowledge about the market a product operates in. In some ways a product manager might be a superset of skills including project management. There could be organizations big enough where these are different roles though. If you have knowledge/experience and interest in some domain, start there since that is helpful.
There are project mgmt classes and certifications like PMP or Scum Master. I don't think highly of orgs that require certifications on things like this, they tend to focus a little too much on strictly following a certain framework's guidelines as rules. They could be a way to get a job and some experience under your belt. I think the PMP cert is shorter if you have a college degree and it does require doing PM work as part of the cert, has different levels, etc.