The Business of People
Scaling a startup isn’t just about product and funding—it’s about people. The Business of People is a biweekly newsletter that helps people leaders learn to think like business leaders. You'll get tips, tricks, tactics, and templates to build high-performing teams, scale operations, and drive commercial success.
🚀 Two weeks of a VP of People's Claude use cases
Two weeks of a VP of People's Claude use cases March 31, 2026 | Edition #21 The Business of People is brought to you by: Personal AI Build Partner for Startup HR The Workspace Pass is the go-to subscription for smart startup people teams. It brings together 25+ years of real-world experience and insights from 1,000+ startups and scale-ups from people who've actually done your job into highly practical, ready-to-execute playbooks, and a personal AI Build partner designed specifically for...
🚀 The 4 questions that make you a better meeting facilitator
You need to work on your executive presence March 17, 2026 | Edition 20 The Business of People is brought to you by: Startup HR Operating System Nahed Khairallah and I teamed up to put together the Startup HR Operating System. It has everything you need to launch or accelerate your HR career with 20 hours of content and 50+ templates and tools. Before the course goes live, we're giving early access to a limited number of people in our network. If you provide feedback and a short testimonial,...
🚀 The playbooks for internal AI adoption (because there isn't one tried and true standard yet)
Leading AI adoption when you feel behind the curve February 10, 2026 | Edition 19 The Business of People is brought to you by: Top CPO AI Playbooks Real AI use cases, adoption strategies, and experiments shared by 10+ CPOs on The Modern People Leader podcast — what’s working, what’s not, and what they’ve learned along the way. Download the toolkit Maura, the VP People Operations at a Series C SaaS company, is getting worried. She's reading and hearing more and more about the impending...
🚀 How to avoid overpaying for the wrong executive experience
Don't hire a triathlete as your next CMO January 6, 2026 | Edition 18 The Business of People is brought to you by: Step Up MBA: Master Business Acumen Make 2026 the year you go from HR leader to business leader. JooBee Yeow's Step Up MBA course and community are a great first step. You'll learn about various business models, how products get built and brought to market, what the three financial statements are, and what investors look for before deciding to back a startup. Use the discount...
🚀 You're stuck at Senior Manager. Commercial literacy might be the culprit
You're stuck at Senior Manager. Commercial literacy might be the culprit December 16, 2025 | Edition 17 The Business of People is brought to you by: Step Up MBA: Master Business Acumen Use the code BUSINESSOFPEOPLE for an exclusive discount of 50% off the Step Up MBA course. Offer valid December 15th through January 16th. Learn more about Step Up MBA Cora had spent eight years building her HR career. For the last three, she had been a Senior HR Manager at a Series B SaaS company. She'd earned...
🚀 The career multiplier that nobody talks about
The career multiplier that nobody talks about November 17, 2025 | Edition 16 Picture two Senior People Ops Managers. Same credentials. Wildly different careers. We'll call them Jordan and Alex. Both came from top-tier companies. Both can design a performance management system in their sleep and speak fluently about employee engagement drivers, comp philosophy, and org design. Jordan is brilliant—genuinely, one of the sharpest strategic thinkers out there. But working with Jordan means:...
🚀 Dial equity up to 11
Dial Equity Up to 11 November 11, 2025 | Guest Post FNDN Series, Matt McFarlane Join me for the webinar: November 18th at 1 PM ET Equity is table stakes in the startup reward stack. So, when everyone offers the same ‘thing’, how do you differentiate? The simple answer: You bridge the gap between equity and incentive. Despite being one of the best long-term incentives, most companies neglect their equity program. Early in my career, I saw three companies invest heavily in an equity program...
The art of getting to "Yes" as an HR Business Partner
The art of getting to "Yes" as an HR Business Partner November 4, 2025 | Edition #15 Join me on November 18, 2025 at 1 PM ET for a webinar, hosted by Lattice For many HR and Finance leaders, connecting performance and pay is still one of the hardest parts of the job. That's why I'll be diving into it with 2 other People leaders on a upcoming free webinar. If you can't attend live, you'll still get a link to the recording if you register below. Register for the free webinar Here's a tale that...
🚀 How to build a headcount plan that actually works
How to build a headcount plan that actually works October 21, 2025 | Edition #14 The Business of People is brought to you by: A better 360 Incompass Labs is the first AI-native platform built to automate performance management’s key pain points: complexity, accuracy, and usefulness. Sign up for a demo today Picture this: It's mid-December, and Sarah, the newly hired Head of People at a Series B SaaS startup, walks into her first annual planning meeting. The CFO opens his laptop and projects a...
🚀 Why shutting down employee surveys is like unplugging the smoke detector
How to save your feedback culture after brutal survey results September 30, 2025 | Edition 13 The Business of People is brought to you by: Build and deliver custom training in minutes, not months UJJI AI builds your knowledge transfer agent so training is effortless. Just plug in all of your internal knowledge and create bespoke learning experiences with a single prompt. For new hire onboarding, sales enablement, or any business critical knowledge transfer, UJJI AI has got you covered with...
Scaling a startup isn’t just about product and funding—it’s about people. The Business of People is a biweekly newsletter that helps people leaders learn to think like business leaders. You'll get tips, tricks, tactics, and templates to build high-performing teams, scale operations, and drive commercial success.