When I was still teaching, the three main points of advice I found myself repeating were:

1. Take your time.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

As it turns out, those three statements apply to most things in life – including business. Especially business.

I know. We’ve been in an era of calculated risk, mainlining entrepreneurial spirit, and the pervasive (-ly annoying) go-big-or-go-home philosophy for so long that “going above and beyond” isn’t even status quo; it’s bare minimum requirements.

Hear me out.

No matter what else you’re doing with your company, you have to take care of your customers. You have to understand them: what they want, what they need, and what they will need down the road.

That understanding of your customer and their relationship with your product is a crucial aspect of becoming a successful product-oriented business.

So you’ve read our previous post on product-led growth (PLG) and now know all the nuts and bolts of a PLG go-to-market strategy. It’s a super-exciting concept and exactly the direction you’ve wanted to take your company in.

But. (There’s always a “but.”)

Your business – the entire customer lifecycle every user of your product goes through – revolves around the traditional sales-led approach of painstakingly coaxing every customer through each step of the sales cycle from demo to trial to paying user.

You can’t go in tomorrow morning, clear out all your established processes, and tell your sales team: Right, we’re totally changing everything right this second. Even if your sales team doesn’t laugh you out of the office, it’s not going to work.

So how do you navigate that transition and maintain your success?

I didn’t know the answer to that, so for this Process Street post, I went straight to the horse’s mouth ( ) and asked PLG champ, author, and founder Wes Bush about how to make PLG work and become a successful, product-oriented company.

• Wes Bush, PLG Champion
• Product-led growth: Where it all began
• The end-user era: Software for the people
• PLG: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
• What goes up, must come down
• Essential metrics to measure product-oriented success
• A final word on the product-oriented evolution

Let’s get started!
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It’s 4:55 on a sunny Friday afternoon. You have a whole weekend of relaxing in the backyard planned. Maybe you’ll have friends over for a barbecue, or finally finish that crime thriller you started last year and forgot about. There’s always that super-extended director’s cut of a film from four years ago that just came out.

You’re blissfully contemplating all your stress-free options when your line manager pops their head in and cheerily says, “HR wants to see you first thing Monday morning. Have a great weekend!”

The truth is, the role of HR teams – and even the name – has evolved quite a bit over the years, though its reputation hasn’t been quite so quick to keep up. People Teams, as all the start-ups are calling it these days, still have a vital role to play in the structure and organization of a company, though.

So, when is it time to create a super team-up for your start-up? More importantly, how do you do it?

I sat down with Process Street’s own VP of People, Jay Hanlon, to talk:

• The HR team’s role within an organization
• HR teams: The problem of bad branding
• Key factors in building a healthy HR team
• The final word on HR teams

Come on in and have a seat!
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This is a guest post by Hazel Bennett, a freelance writer and blogger. She has a degree in communications and lives in Northeastern Ohio. Hazel loves writing about numerous topics and showcasing her expertise with words. Follow Hazel on Twitter.

Those with anxiety know what a struggle it can be to get through each workday. Stress, nervousness, and negative thoughts can wear a person down. As the effects of anxiety begin to take over, workers can lose the focus and motivation necessary to get the job done, leading to productivity and morale problems.

The combination of a high-stress work environment and mental health challenges can result in less-than-satisfactory work performances and unhappy employees. If you’re looking for solutions to keep your company working smoothly and your staff healthy and well, this Process Street post has you covered.

Read on for information about anxiety and how to overcome it with the help of productivity-enhancing technology:

• What causes workplace anxiety?
• Coping with chronic anxiety at work
• How to use tech as a de-stress
• Productivity hacks for workplace anxiety
• Mental health matters

Let’s take a look!
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Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea what exactly a full-stack engineer was, let alone what the role entailed. I know, I know – I work for a tech startup, I should know these things.

You’re right; I should.

So, to educate myself, I sat down with one of Process Street’s engineers, Herbie Porter, to discuss what he does, his first year at Process Street, and the art of making pandemic cocktails:

• The very distinguished Mr. Herbie Porter
• One year ago today…
• The makings of a programmer
• Shape Up with Process Street
• Essential tools for the discerning engineer

It is my privilege to introduce you to…
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Jonathan Bond is a Process Street Staff Product Designer, Star Wars fan, and human problem solver. Reach him on Twitter @jrbond.

The path you actually take in life is often wildly different from the one you thought you’d take. I spent years undertaking a fine arts degree. However, after I graduated, I wanted to get my hands metaphorically dirty (and literally cleaner — goodbye, paint!) by going into graphic design.

Initially, I bounced between various agencies doing what you’d expect any freelance graphic designer to do: logos and websites. While it was interesting and paid the bills, there was a new buzzword on the block in 2010 that sounded even more exciting: UX.

“A user interface is like a joke.
If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.”
– Martin LeBlanc, CEO

User experience (UX) design is focused on the individual thoughts about a product or service a person might have. It takes into consideration qualitative data like the user’s emotions and attitudes towards a product, as well as the more practical elements like ease of use, efficiency, and so on.

The more I read about UX design, the more I liked what I read. I felt it fit my own design philosophy; I just connected with it. This was something I wanted to be involved in.

As luck would have it, a company that wanted someone to improve their app’s aesthetic hired me to be involved with that. I still didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I kept reading and studying, and ten years later, I’m still doing that – now at Process Street.

This post will cover:

• Product design at Process Street
• The details make the (UX) design
• You are not your user

Let’s begin!
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The other day, my household experienced one of the great tragedies of the home delivery era: our grocery delivery was canceled.

You know what that means. I had to go to the grocery store. Like, physically, in person, go inside the grocery store.

I survived, but phew. Let’s just say there were a few close calls.

All in all, though, it was a successful trip. I picked up a couple of prescriptions, had an eye exam, switched the pet insurance, got some advice about first-time homeownership, and even remembered to get dinner fixins. I would’ve gotten my oil changed and tires rotated, too, but I don’t have a car so… Yeah. I didn’t do that.

This is what economies of scope look like. Economies of scope are when it’s more cost-effective to produce related items together than it is to produce them individually. In the 21st century economy, it’s also an increasingly familiar model as brands continue to expand their offerings to consumers.

As a consumer, this model is great. We don’t have to run around all over the place to take care of all our responsibilities. For companies, it’s not a bad model, either.

Economies of scope – offering all of these services under one roof – companies are actually spending less by offering more.

But wait – how does that work?

Well, I’ll tell you:

• What do we mean by economies of scope?
• Economies of scope: Pros and cons
• Economies of scope vs economies of scale
• Economies of scope in action
• If all your friends jumped off a bridge…

Welcome to Process Street! Right this way, please.
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Who resolved to read more this year? ✋

Who actually has?

Let’s be honest: you’re never actually going to make it through that folder of bookmarked articles you’ve been collecting since last year. Hey – not judging. I’ve been cultivating my own To Be Read monolith for months.

So what’s the deal? How do you catch up with all those industry insights, actionable advice articles, and entrepreneurial retrospectives when there never seems to be any time to, y’know, read?

Simple: let us read them for you.

Introducing Tech Out Loud – the coolest podcast around bringing those must-read articles directly into your waiting ears.
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There are plenty of great quotes from inspirational leaders that perfectly sum up the importance of workforce planning, but in my mind, none of them quite capture it like this one:

“Making a plan without the right tools is like making spaghetti without a pot.” – Kris Hughes, Content Strategy Consultant

You are absolutely not going to be making any spaghetti without a pot, or at least a pot-like vessel that will hold boiling water in a way so as not to burn the crap out of your hands in the process. When it comes to workforce planning, the spaghetti is your business and the pot…

Okay. I took the simile too far. You get the picture: if your business doesn’t have the right people in the right place, you got nothing.

Think beyond that: if the right people don’t stay or aren’t being utilized properly, you still don’t have a pot to… make spaghetti in.

There is a lot out there about workforce planning, and by a lot I mean, a frickin lot. It’s my job to do research and even I got a little dizzy trying to sort through all the different takes on what is or isn’t or could be/might be the best way to manage your workforce.

This post aims to simplify all that. I’ll cover the foundations of workforce planning, specific considerations for remote work, and examine some common methods for finding the right approach for your organization.

This Process Street post is designed so you can jump straight to the info you need to know, so feel free to skip ahead.

• Workforce planning foundations
• Challenges for remote workforce planning
• Future-back planning process
• Recruit, retain, reinforce
• Workforce management tools

Let’s get planning!
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This is a guest post by Brian Skewes, a technologist into deconstruction. Over two decades of self-employment, he has accumulated a wealth of inadvertent real-world lessons related to building, running, and preserving a small company.

There’s a phrase that’s become popular in web analytics, digital marketing, and business consultancy in the last few years: data is everything.

There’s a lot to recommend it. It’s short, snappy, and captures the importance of data to the way in which we do business today. Whether you are building organic links or in the process of drafting an employee development plan, the path to success runs right through a big ‘ol pile of numbers.

Unfortunately, there’s more to numbers than just numbers.

This is due to the nature of data itself. The problem with relying on numbers and nothing else is that no matter how impressive it is, it also remains inscrutable, incomprehensible, or simply boring for the majority of people. Unless your audience is composed entirely of the type of person who can instantly visualize columns of figures, you are going to need to provide some context for the ever-so-impressive stats.

This is where the concept of storytelling comes in.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at how you can go beyond data acquisition, compilation, and presentation. We’ll show you how to make your data come alive through the magic of storytelling.

• Purposeful data, the Enlightenment, and Single Source of Truth
• Building the framework for your data story
• What’s the story behind your data?
• The happily ever after

Once upon a time…
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This is a guest post by Brayn Wills, the current Knowledge Management Specialist at ProProfs knowledge base. He is responsible for creating unique and relevant content on the knowledge base and keeping track of the latest developments in the realm of knowledge management. In his free time, he is either reading a new book or exploring offbeat destinations.

When a crisis strikes, it brings along daunting challenges that require businesses to reevaluate their strategies. One such significant challenge is customer churn. It can impact a business drastically if left unchecked.

Statistics show that, on average, most companies experience a monthly churn rate of 7.5%. If left unchecked, this can be catastrophic for a company’s bottom line.

A rapidly shrinking customer base means reduced profits that can have a severe impact on an organization, especially during a crisis. What’s more, crisis situations tend to exacerbate the root causes of churn, meaning businesses need to be extra responsive and attentive to their customers during these times.

While you cannot prevent all customers from leaving your company, you certainly can take concrete steps to keep customer churn in control.

In this post for Process Street, I will cover:

• What is customer attrition?
• Customer expectations and mindset during a crisis
• 6 Effective ways to reduce customer attrition
• How to provide extra value to customers during a crisis
• Move beyond promotion to meet customer expectations
• Customer retention solutions with Process Street

Read on to uncover the pragmatic ways to reduce customer churn during a crisis by understanding and providing value to your customers.
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