Pistachio

Founder

Brand Chemistry

A weekly newsletter exploring how brands build trust and connect with their audience.

The Daily Aus

As the first growth, marketing or brand hire, and as part of the senior leadership team, I established foundational structures and strategies to ensure the business achieves sustainable long-term success.

Multi-channel Audience Growth
→ Grew newsletter audience by 5x.
→ Gained 140k Instagram followers.
→ Doubled TikTok audience to over 100k.
→ Podcast moved up 43 spots in the charts.

Special Projects
→ Managed the first brand refresh in TDA’s history from conceptualisation to rollout across all products.
→ Ran TDA's first ever OOH campaign for the 2023 Voice referendum.

Brand Development
→ Grew audience preference by 16% to become the most preferred news brand for young Australians.
→ 81% conversion from consideration to preference among the 18-24 year old target audience.
→ Awareness, consideration, investigation and usage all grew 8%.

Head of Growth

Mamamia

Brand Positioning
→ My team re-positioned and integrated the “MPlus” subscription offering into the master brand as the “Mamamia Subscription”.

Growth Hacking
→ Iterative testing of day-to-day subscription growth initiatives.
→ Held business units across both editorial and consumer revenue accountable to subscription targets.

Data & Analytics
→ Implemented reporting dashboards to surface insights at all levels of the business.
→ Restructured data warehouse to increase available data points and surface new insights.

Team Management
→ Managed a team of product managers and customer support agents, including recruitment, onboarding and career development.

Product Innovation
→ Ran ideation sessions and undertook user research to explore product opportunities that add value to the subscription offering.
→ Led research, design and development of the ‘Move by Mamamia’ app.

Innovation & Product Manager

Inastra

I co-founded Inastra to empower businesses to discover their own creativity. This included guiding the InterContinental Hotel Group through a reimagination of their operational structures to adapt and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Co-Founder

batyr

I led the innovation function including the design and implementation of strategy, ideation and execution of collaborative initiatives, and development of strategic partnerships. This included launching projects such as OurHerd and the Young Innovators Award, managing a pipeline of concepts, and fostering an internal culture of innovation, while also serving as Secretary of the ‘Growth’ Board sub-committee.

Innovation Lead

Clipboard

After joining as the first employee, we achieved 8x customer growth in as many months through:
→ Sales pipeline management
→ Targeted case study campaigns
→ Guerilla marketing activations (which were incredibly fun!)

I also looked after product management, bridging the customer support and engineering teams to deliver better user experiences and introduce network effect features for product-led growth.

KPMG Australia

Over the course of my internship at KPMG I worked directly with the Design Thinking Partner to understand design thinking practices on a large scale, and then deliver a design thinking workshop to almost 300 participants.

Design Thinking Intern

Concio Group

I co-founded Concio Group to help teams in large organisations challenge their assumptions and draw upon interdisciplinary insights to overcome problems. This was a fantastic opportunity to utilise my understanding of innovation frameworks to deliver real-world value to a variety of organisations.

Hey 👋 I'm Isaac!

I’m a growth strategist and the founder of Pistachio, a GTM and brand-led growth partner for startups and scaleups. We help teams launch, scale and stand out by turning positioning into pipeline.

Most companies have strong products but fractured go-to-market efforts: sales, marketing and product aren’t aligned. The story isn’t clear. Growth depends too much on short-term tactics. That’s where we step in.

At Pistachio, we combine:
Brand strategy → defining your positioning, narrative, and messaging so you win trust and convert more buyers.
GTM blueprints → ICP definition, value prop, channels, packaging, sequencing.
Content systems → newsletters, CRM, LinkedIn and amplification to operationalise GTM and compound growth.
Growth ops → automation and reporting systems to scale without chaos.

Before founding Pistachio, I led growth at The Daily Aus (scaled to 180,000 subs in 10 months) and Mamamia (grew subscriptions to 30,000+ members and $170k+ MRR). Since then, I’ve worked with teams at BuzzFeed, Clay and many more to build GTM systems that turn brand trust into business results.

I also write Brand Chemistry, a newsletter about building trust and driving compounding growth.

🚀 Ready to align your story, GTM and growth engine? Let’s chat! check out my Featured section to get started.

Isaac Peiris

People always ask "How did you decide to start your own business?"
The truth is… I didn't.

I left my last job on a Friday.
Moved in with my partner on Saturday.
Then Monday morning, she left for work.

And I sat on the floor, surrounded by moving boxes thinking “well… now what the hell do I do?”

So I did what everyone does. Updated my CV, applied to job ads, reached out to people.

A few people started messaged me asking for help with projects, mostly with setting up and growing their newsletters.

I said yes for some income while looking for “a real job”

But two things hit me fast:

1. None of the jobs I was applying for excited me as much as the freelance projects I was doing.
2. I felt like I could do good work, but every job application felt like asking someone else for permission to do it.

Eventually, I figured what if I just gave myself permission?

I stopped the job hunt and started telling people I was available for freelance work.

The requests kept coming in. So I kept going.

Fast-forward to today…

Pistachio is a small but mighty team of 3.
Turns over more than double my previous salary.
We work with amazing clients from all over the world.

So to answer the question, I didn’t really decide to start my own business.

I never had any grand ambition to “be a founder”, I just followed what felt exciting and what people needed.

Now I’m scaling from there.

And I think that’s part of the reason it works.

P.S. yes I did a very very limited edition run of merch because I saw it on Etsy and got excited…

Founder of Pistachio | Build trust. Drive growth.

“Which newsletter platform should we use?”

It’s a question I get asked a LOT

10 times out of 10 my answer is beehiiv

We migrated to them while I was at The Daily Aus and hit 180k subs in 10 months.

Now I’m running Brand Chemistry on there and just passed 60k subs.

We’ve managed a bunch of client newsletters on the platform like BuzzFeed and The Imperfects.

We’re even migrating another client over at the moment.

I got early access to see what's coming next Thursday as part of beehiiv's winter release event and let me tell you, this thing somehow gets even better…

Now it’s a fully fledged, one-stop-shop platform for running a media business.

Huge props to Tyler Denk 🐝 and the team

Can’t wait for these updates to launch next week 🙌

Brand teams deserve better data, especially when the brand is the product.

That’s how Tony Clement described their approach to brand measurement at Movember and it stuck with me.

Most brand tracking is still stuck in “iceberg mode”.

You wait six months, get a deck that says “awareness shifted two percentage points” and the conversation ends there. You can't optimise with that. You can't make real decisions.

Tony's approach is to break it down by feature and attribute. Get granular. Get resolution.

Instead of just "awareness went up," you want to know:
→ Which brand attributes shifted?
→ Amongst which audience?
→ In which market?
→ What was in-market when that shift happened?

This is what changes the internal conversation.

Because now you're not arguing about whether brand "works", you're discussing which specific aspects are resonating with which audiences and why.

You'll probably never get to e-comm levels of attribution but you can get a lot closer than waiting a year and a half for two percentage points.

The goal is having better quality conversations internally about what's actually working.

And honestly, the hard part isn’t the tech. It’s getting leadership to apply the same measurement rigour to brand that they do to everything else.

Because if your brand is your product, vague metrics aren't just unhelpful, they're expensive guesswork.

How are you currently tracking brand impact beyond the surface-level stuff?

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I share brand strategy insights daily, follow for more.

Coca-Cola's Christmas ad is trending again.
And once more, AI is part of the story.

But the more interesting part is what hasn't changed at all.

Second year in a row they've used AI to remake their iconic red truck campaign.

Some people are calling for boycotts.
Others are defending it as innovation.

But here's what caught my attention in all this noise:

System1 tested the ad and gave it a 5.9 star spike rating.
(The maximum possible score for that metric)
It also hit 97% brand distinctiveness.

Meaning almost everyone instantly recognised it was Coca-Cola.

So there's this gap between online reactions and how the ad actually performs.

Which made me think about consistency and brand building.

Coca-Cola has been building the same festive world since 1930.

→ The red truck
→ Santa in that specific suit
→ The "Holidays Are Coming" music
→ That nostalgic feeling they've owned every December

95 years of showing up exactly the same way.

Because of that consistency the ad still works at a recognition level

(even when people debate how it was made)

That's the power of 95 years of consistency.

The emotion is already there. The associations are already built.

So Coca-Cola can experiment with production and the ad still does its job.

What people recognise isn't the method of production.
It's the feeling.

Makes you wonder if the debate is less about the technology and more about whether decades of consistency create enough brand equity to enable experimenting with execution.

Based on the data, seems like it does.

It's a reminder that marketing isn't just about execution.
It's about how people feel when they see it.

🎅🏼 What do you think of Coke's AI Christmas ad this year?

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I share brand strategy insights daily, follow for more.

What’s new in growth and marketing this week?

Here’s your quick Friday catch-up so you’ve got something smart to drop in Monday’s meeting.

🤖 Agentic browsers are here and they’ll change everything about digital marketing.
👀 AI search is reshaping how brands get seen (and not everyone’s ready).
📣 Publishers are suddenly advertising… themselves.
👢 Ugg keeps turning comfort into culture.
🧱 LEGO showed us how community can be a billion-dollar moat.

👉 Swipe to catch up in under a minute.

This week in Growth & Marketing #2

Here’s what happened in growth and marketing this week.
A simple rundown of the main updates you should know.

📉 Many B2B leaders still see marketing as a contact-collecting function.
🔗 ChatGPT links get visibility, but very few clicks.
🤖 Reddit’s audience continues to grow across age groups.
📱 New social predictions outline specific changes coming in 2026.
🛍 Depop shows how status influences buying behaviour.

👉 Swipe to read the full breakdown.

Want the source links? Comment or DM and I’ll send them.

This week in growth & marketing #4

I get asked a lot about founder-led marketing.

Is it really effective?
Who’s doing it really well?
What kind of content actually works?

One of the best examples I’ve seen is Tyler Denk 🐝, CEO and co-founder at beehiiv.

I was going to write a whole deep dive on how his content, especially his newsletter Big Desk Energy, drives epic results for the business.

But I figured it’d be way better to hand over to Tyler himself to take you behind the scenes…

Article link in comments 👇

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I share brand strategy insights daily, follow for more.

Most brands rebrand when they're in trouble. When the numbers are sliding and they need to "do something"

Domino's did it during record growth.

Their CMO said it pretty clearly:
👉 "There's risk in doing anything. But there's a lot more risk in doing nothing"

They didn’t throw away what already worked. The logo stayed. The colours stayed. The whole pizza promise stayed. They just made everything bolder.

And the packaging?

They didn’t design it for shelves or delivery trucks. They designed it for social feeds. For that Friday night pizza shot everyone posts without being asked.

Because Domino’s understands something most brands still ignore: your customers are already making content with your product. The question is whether you’re designing with that in mind, or pretending it’s not happening.

The new packaging stops the scroll. And don’t even get me started on the jingle... Try saying “Domino’s” without doing the little “mmm” in the middle 👀 you literally can’t.

While other brands chase every new trend and end up losing what made them stand out, Domino's just made the most of what was already working.

Most of us wait until things start going wrong to refresh our brand or strategy. When growth slows down. When engagement drops.

But the best time to evolve is when you've still got momentum. When you can build from strength instead of scrambling from weakness.

So the question is what's one thing you could refresh right now, before you actually need to?

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I share brand strategy insights daily, follow for more.

What happened in growth and marketing this week?

Here's your weekly breakdown so you've got something interesting to talk about.

🎥 Spotify is coming for YouTube’s video crown.
🤖 Grammarly rebrands to Superhuman and goes full agentic.
🎅 Coca-Cola’s AI holiday ad is… a choice.
👴 How brands can be old and new at the same time.
🐝 And beehiiv shows why building in public works.

👉 Swipe to catch up in under a minute.

Want links to the full articles?
Comment or DM and I’ll send them through.

This week in Growth & Marketing #3

Most people quit right before a breakthrough.

They’re zoomed so far into the data that they can’t see the bigger picture.

We obsess over every dip.
→ Zoom in on the graph and it looks like chaos.
→ Zoom out and it’s all just progression.

We treat short-term outcomes like they’re the whole story. We forget that noise isn’t the same as a real trend, and then we make big decisions based on what happened this week or this month.

I’ve seen teams throw out solid strategies because of one rough month.

I’ve also seen founders ignore real problems because the annual chart still goes up.

It’s always the same pattern.

Your worst stretch might actually teach you the most, but only if you step back far enough to see what’s really going on.

Before you change direction, give up, or double down, ask yourself:

Am I reacting to right now, or am I looking at the actual trend?
Is this real failure, or am I just in the messy middle?
Are we too zoomed out to see the small cracks?

The timeframe you pick changes how everything feels.

Don’t let a bad day or week convince you the growth isn’t coming. But don’t ignore the signs when something genuinely needs to change.

How do you decide when it’s time to persist vs. pivot?

3,000 people lined up for a Happy Meal.
Not for a discount or a celebrity appearance.
For collectible toys tied to a K-pop group.

McDonald's launched a TinyTAN Happy Meal ahead of BTS's 2026 return and hosted a three-day "Magic Meet-Up" in LA.

Here's what made it work:

𝟭) 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗿𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗺

BTS is coming back after military service. Fans were already buzzing. McDonald's didn't manufacture the moment. They just showed up when it mattered.

𝟮) 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀

The food didn't matter. What mattered was giving fans a space to connect, take photos, create content, and feel part of something again. The real product was community.

𝟯) 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲

The agency team included real BTS fans who'd worked on the 2021 BTS meal. That insider perspective changes everything. You can tell when people actually get it.

𝟰) 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰

McDonald's measured this like any other campaign: attendance, engagement, earned media, sentiment, post-event behavior. They're tracking KPIs tied to culture rather than keeping it as a “fun stunt”.

K-pop used to be a subculture. Now it's mainstream enough that Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters became a global hit. The people who showed up weren't all the same demographic. Fan communities don't look like they used to.

When brands join cultural moments authentically, those moments expand without losing what made them matter.

What other fandoms could brands tap into without forcing it?

FNDN

FNDN exists to empower startup success through strategic pay practices that drive growth and create clarity for your people.

We transform compensation into a clear, strategic advantage by ensuring fair, budget-aligned pay practices that drive your business's growth.

Director

Kindred Minds Advisory Board

An advisory group of HR/People leaders who are helping build the future of People tech. Learn more: kindredminds.com/

Advisor

Oyster®

Senior Director of People Experience

An expanded remit taking on responsibility for both people operations and employee experience of the end-of-end journey that all each professional undertakes in their employment with Oyster.

Director of People Experience

Leading the People Operations function for Oyster:
• Enabled Oysters scale from 200 to 700+ (across 70 countries) within 12 months
• Led establishment and roll-out of compensation philosophy through detailed communication campaign. 
• Led team in the construction of a global pay calculator - delivering an ability to benchmark any Oyster role across 140+ countries within minutes.
• Led pay transparency efforts in support of values. This included building our own compensation tool and launch to internal employees. Comprehensive reporting and enablement efforts on understanding philosophy and basis for mechanics of comp benchmarks.
• Development and rollout of Oysters job levelling framework to provide career paths to all and standardise roles and salaries internally and for candidates coming in to the business.
• Delivered implementation and rollout of a performance enablement platform based on a continuous feedback framework, providing an objective capability for progression and internal mobility.
• Led the growth and development of a globally distributed team of People Ops professionals, delivering an Operating Model to dedicate our team specifically towards service and project delivery.

Director of People Operations

Rheinmetall

• Responsibility for; Talent Acquisition, HR Business Partnership and Workforce Planning.
• Led national workforce planning, reporting and analysis in line with national capital projects and secondary defence contracts.
• Established and led the annual performance and compensation merit cycle. 
• Led team accreditation and adoption of Korn Ferry job evaluation methodology.
• Implemented market dataset in TA benchmarking and merit cycle process. Training talent acquisition, hiring managers and leaders broadly in compensation methodology and uptake.
• Led talent acquisition team in hiring ~250 people over 10 months, as well as key initiatives including the launch of RDA’s referral program.

SilverRail

Procured and implemented a global HR system (HiBob), replacing myriad expensive and non-integrative systems. This provided a single system for employee data, leave management, onboarding, performance, analytics and surveys across our global workforce.

Led development and implementation of a global job levelling framework across four global sites.

Procured and leveraged market benchmarking data for to enable offer benchmarking. Further utilised this dataset to establish market relativity and in developing and leading SilverRail's first global compensation cycle efforts.

Senior Director, People Operations (Boston, London, Brisbane)

Delivering a people agenda focused on creating a workforce of unrivalled growth in capability across initiatives such as; global job levelling, benefits and remuneration; talent identification and selection; organisational value and behaviours; leadership development; and, day-to-day stakeholder engagement across business and corporate executives.

People Operations Manager

Various Companies

Mid-Senior People Operations roles across tech, FMCG, legal and professional services industries.

Mid-Senior career roles

People | Tech | Community

I help startups know what to pay their people.

If you’re leading a People function, I’ve been where you’ve been.

I know you have a thousand things to do, and working out how to do compensation is just one of them.

I know this because my experience isn’t just compensation. I am a career People Operations expert — I just really like nailing comp strategy. 

When I establish and implement practices, I do so with the experience not just of a comp specialist, but someone who's been responsible for the manager conversations, the employee experience and the commercial wellbeing of my company — like you are for yours.

My experience spans small and large tech-scale ups. From seed startups in a small office, to multi-country, to hundreds of people fully remote and globally distributed across 70+ countries. I’ve supported companies that grew to acquisition and that achieved unicorn valuation.

I like to help scaling technology businesses get comp right and get it out of the way — so that you can be the commercial leader your company needs you to be.

My most recent experience was scaling the unicorn and hyper-growth company, Oyster.

Results:
• Oyster scaled from 200 people to 650+ across 70 countries, enabled by the precision and agility of our compensation strategies and operations.
• Underpinned by our compensation strategies Oyster ramped hiring to capture market share that achieved a 390% growth in revenue.
• Our global compensation strategy enabled us to scale and expand the company while achieving an average salary cost reduction of 23%, and maintaining a candidate closure rate of >80%.
• Established Oyster's inaugural pay equity review, closing identified gaps through role-based benchmarking and a newly implemented job level framework.
• Won an employer of choice award from the prestigious HR Transform awards.

Today I help Heads of People and Chief People Officers of scaling technology companies build and grow their company through their compensation strategy.

To work with me, reach out via my website www.fndn.com.au or send me an email at matt@fndn.com.au 

I have deep experience within the tech domain:
→ Global compensation strategies
→ Pay transparency strategy and rollout
→ Career frameworks and job levelling
→ Executive compensation
→ Pay reviews and pay equity audits
→ Salary benchmarking and market pricing
→ Sales compensation & incentive plans
→ Pay for performance

Matt McFarlane

I don't care who you are.

You're never important enough that people need an email to send you a connection request.

If I have to be spammed as soon as I accept a connection request from a random, so do you. 

It's called shared trauma. 

We're all in this together.

Building startup compensation practices 👉 Compensation Philosophy + Job levels + Salary bands.

The role of the People professional has never been more important, or more uncertain. 

Here to help make every people pro successful, is In Good Company. 

A community for People people that want insights into the conversations about culture, AI, leadership and the future of work — without the spin.

I'm stoked to be an ambassador of IGC, joining incredible leaders such as: Adam Weber, Jessica Z., Hebba Youssef, Angela R. Howard,Christine Song, Johannes Sundlo and many more.

I'd love to see you in there: https://lnkd.in/gbUWzCZu

Everyone says they want to be rich, but they're using outdated goals like 'I want to earn six figures'.

Not me.

I want to be the kind of rich where I can buy a *new* Aesop hand soap, instead of refilling that one I bought 12 months ago with cheap stuff.

That's true wealth.

I just got off a call with a Head of People, and they're dealing with something we've all faced, repeatedly. but often don't know how to solve.

The moment when a manager storms in, desperate to save their top performer, and the data shows they’re already sitting at the top of their salary band.
 
No room to move. No obvious lever to pull.
 
They've got a high-impact employee at risk...
... and you've got a framework you spent months building, which suddenly feels like the thing holding you back.
 
This is where People teams can often collapse into reactive decision-making:
– stretching bands to “just make it work",
– throwing cash at the problem without a strategy,
– or holding the line so tightly that you lose the very people your system was meant to retain.
 
But a top performer at band maximum isn’t the real problem.
 
It could be symptomatic:
– Of outdated bands,
– Of unclear levelling,
– Of weak promotion pathways,
– Or of a business case you haven’t articulated strongly enough.
 
And while managers will always push hard (“we can’t lose them”), you’re the one who has to defend fairness, avoid precedent, and keep your comp philosophy from crumbling under pressure.
 
It usually feels like a no-win scenario. Unless you reframe the problem.

Fortunately, there's a straightforward playbook for tackling everyone's most common problem, and there are ways to recognise and retain your best people without blowing up your structure or creating inequity.

And the timing couldn't be more perfect, because it just got published.
 
In this piece with comp platform Ravio, myself and Ekaterina Potter share a few of the ways to handle this challenge.
 
We give step-by-step guides, with practical examples and decision paths you can actually use.
 
And it's one worth saving, because if you've ever faced the “top performer at band maximum” dilemma, you know it's never a once off.
 
Grab the article here: https://lnkd.in/gtH-84md

And let me know below — how many times have *you* dealt with a high performer at the top of their band?

Ok LinkedIn friends, I have a relatively vain ask of each of you. 


I’m 100 people away from 20,000 followers, and I wanna see if I can hit it before I get back to Australia (on Saturday). 

But I’m not just going to ask for you to follow me (I'm not *that* vain).

Instead, I want to use this as an exercise for uncovering some of the best people to learn from on this platform.

The people you might miss because sometimes this platform isn't as great at uncovering them.

So, who are the 100 people you think I should connect with?

Let’s see if we can’t fill these comments with the best people, posting the best content on being a startup People professional.

I'm sure collectively we can unearth some amazing professionals and give them the recognition they deserve.

I’ll even kick things off with a few legends I adore following:
- Jessie Schofer - doing the lords work finding and sharing the best in the world of HR tech
- Luke O'Mahoney - leading the charge on people as a product with amazing content and events
- Melissa Theiss - some of the most pragmatic and commercial People content you can find
- Matt Bradburn - for everything at the intersection of people and AI
- Vanessa Monsequeira - चित्रलेखा - incredible leadership and org design and amazing build in public.

Now, just reply back with the 1 (or more) people you thoroughly enjoy (and why) and I’ll connect with them. 

Then by Saturday, if I’m at 20,000 people, I’ll be able to enjoy my jet lag just that little bit more easily. 

Thank you for your service.

LinkedIn is making it harder to find the best voices in HR. So I curated the most important list of people to follow if you're a HR professional.

I'm sure you're feeling it, too.

Every week I see only a limited, narrow segment of my full network.

And I feel like I'm losing the chance to learn from fresh names and faces, who are doing important work.

So I did something about it.

Last week I asked my network for help identifying the top 100 people I should connect with.

What happened next created a chain reaction of hundreds of the most important people to follow in the people profession.

My amazing network recommended the best people to learn from.

Then those same people recommended who they learn from.

It was a who's who of the best
- Thinkers
- Leaders, and
- Doers

All helping to lift the profile of our profession with their thought leadership.

They say you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

I believe the same can be said of the network you build around yourself.

Level ourself up and check out the full list here:
https://lnkd.in/gjwCCehP

Who's the most important person *you* learn from on LinkedIn?

2025 might be winding down, but on the FNDN Series, things are only heating up ﻿🔥
﻿
And we're closing out the year with powerhouse guest, Sarika Lamont. Chief People Officer at Vidyard.
 
We've got three incredible episodes, tackling three incredible topics.
 
This coming Sunday we'll be dropping episode 1, on everything to do with leading AI adoption from the People team.
 
(Fun fact, that's what Sarika is doing at Vidyard)
 
She shares a thing or two on the challenges facing people teams and how she's overcoming it.
 
For the final two episodes, we focus on my favourite theme: comp
 
In episode 2, we're covering how to personalise comp during a downturn. 

And how you can continue to make it meaningful and impactful despite a difficult business environment.
 
(Which might be particularly relevant given the bubble everyone thinks we're in...)
 
Then we hit a fun one in episode 3, with 'How to have the tough pay conversations'.

All three of them are bangers (promise).
 
First one is coming Sunday, and you can read, watch or listen (link below).

We’re in the most challenging era of salary progression of the last decade. And there's two compounding factors I see that are reducing how to grow your pay.

Pave has just published their 2026 Compensation Budgets & Trends Report, and it's a detailed snapshot of the market.

(grab the report here btw, well worth a read: https://lnkd.in/gnErrHN9)

But here's the two things that stood out to me:
 
1. Salary growth has stalled, with companies budgeting a pitiful 3.5% merit increase for 2026
 
2. Job hugging is growing, with turnover plummeting (especially in public companies) and people staying put for longer.
 
So why does this matter?
 
For those playing at home, a 3.5% increase on a $100k salary is $3,500...
... or $67 a week. 

*Before tax*
 
Not great for anyone who’s already absorbed record-high inflation. 

Prices may not be rising as fast, but they’re still elevated.
 
But sure, salary increases have sucked for a little while now, who cares?
 
Well I can tell you both from first-hand experience, and report data, the biggest pay increases you will get in your career will likely come from switching employers.
 
– The data shows an average 15% pay increase from switching companies,
– I've personally experienced closer to 30%.
 
That's anywhere from $11,500 to $26,500 you're leaving on the table by accepting your companies 3.5% pay increase.
 
And the gap compounds in years 2+
 
Which is why the rise in job hugging matters.

It represents the biggest impact to salary growth we’ve seen in years.
 
Now I'm not advocating for everyone to up and quit their job every 12 months.
 
But I am advocating for being clear-eyed about what’s driving this, and it's impact on you.
 
Job hugging is being driven by fear.

Months (years?) of high-profile layoffs and hiring freezes, have lead the majority of employees (55%) to state they're now prioritising job security over ambition.
 
And that creates a perfect storm:
 
We’re in a market where the two biggest levers for salary progression (annual increases and job mobility) are collapsing at the same time.
 
The result?
 
Professionals are experiencing the weakest real earnings progression in a decade, largely because fear is keeping them in roles where pay growth has flat-lined.
 
People aren’t earning more because the mechanisms that normally drive meaningful pay growth simply aren’t functioning.
 
Low salary budgets + risk-averse “job hugging” = stalled earnings.
 
So I'm not telling people to job hop.
 
But I am telling you the current environment is structurally stacked against your salary growth.

And you need to understand the forces at play so you can act deliberately, not passively.
 
Because staying put and hoping for a better pay increase isn’t a great strategy.

Not in this market. And probably not for a long while.

One of the biggest unlocks of my entire career has been the mantra 'ask and you shall receive'. Here's what I mean and how it worked for me just last week.

There's a famous quote I love, that is a little cliched, but perfectly sums up my approach to life.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" 

So many people let the fear of rejection prevent them from ever asking someone for something.

And they reject themselves from the opportunity before anyone else is given the chance.

But asking for something has been the biggest unlock for my entire career:

- Can you help me with this
- Can I get involved in this
- Can I do this piece of work

Whatever it was, 'simply asking' can be the biggest hurdle between yourself and opportunity.

Here's an example that worked for me even just last week.

I was at 19,900 followers on LinkedIn. I wanted to be at 20,000.

I asked my network for help recommending 100 people I should connect with that would help me get there.

A few hours and 100+ comments later, a post curated with some of the most amazing people that I and others could follow was generated.

So ask the question.

Don't let the fear of rejection reject you before someone else can.

Because even if they do, you're no worse off after the ask than you were before it.

What's one thing you've been wanting to ask for that you've been putting off?

I get it, you're tired. But if there is one thing that is the most tiring part of being a Head of People, it's headcount planning.

Luckily for you - this weeks guest author on the FNDN Series is Melissa Theiss. 

A 4x Head of People that drops some of the most sage wisdom on being a commercial people leader getting around.

And this week's article (you guessed it): 'How to Build a Headcount Plan That Actually Works.'

Melissa shares a straight-forward 3-step process for taking the most stressful part of the year, and turning it into a process that works for you (and the business).

So hop on over to the FNDN Series newsletter and subscribe to get this article and many more nuggets of wisdom, straight to your inbox 📫

Despite the feeling, AI isn’t a threat to HR. It’s an opportunity to grow your responsibility (and yourself).
 
Most Heads of People are scared to say it out loud, but when I speak to them, their fear is real.
 
- Fear of being replaced.
- Fear of stuffing it up.
- Fear of one more responsibility dumped on an already overloaded team.
- Fear of not being “technical enough”.
 
But AI is already reshaping the People function. And it will do it whether we lead that charge or ignore it.
 
The fastest-moving leaders I’m speaking with aren’t waiting for permission.
Instead, they're claiming AI as a lever for culture, productivity and influence.
 
Not a risk to be managed, but a mandate to lead.
 
And the shift is simple: Instead of seeing AI as a tech project, view it as a people project (because it is).
 
It's a shift in mindset, a focus on adoption, and a need for behaviour change.
 
This and more came out clearly from my recent interview with Sarika.
 
In the latest FNDN Series interview, Sarika Lamont (CPO at Vidyard) shares how she not only placed AI squarely within the People remit, but why it worked.
 
And the outcome every HR leader (and Founder/CEO) wants?
 
She was able to avoid an entire People Ops Coordinator hire because automation reduced a full workload of admin.
 
These outcomes weren't just theoretical, and not just "future state". This was a present day impact.
 
That’s what leaning in (not stepping back) can look like.
 
In the latest episode, Sarika even goes into detail on how the hurdle to getting started isn't as high as everyone worries.
 
Don't be intimidated by starting with “transformation”.
 
You can start with something as simple as a low-stakes workflow:
Employment letters,
Policy retrieval,
Pre-boarding.
 
You just need one experiment that proves the point.
 
If you want the playbook for leading this shift, this episode is it.
 
The latest episode of the FNDN Series is live now, and Sarika dives deep into how she's taking AI by the reins and seeing real benefits at Vidyard.
 
Jump into it in the comments.

“Employer of choice” awards can unfortunately have a bit of a credibility problem.
 
Too many rely on opaque scoring or pay-to-play models.

The result is predictable: companies buy an accolade instead of building a workplace worth celebrating.
 
What cut through for me with Inspiring Workplaces was the opposite dynamic.
 
The process is transparent.
The bar is clear.
 
And my favourite part 👉 the award recognises progress over perfection. 

Organisations doing the work to build better workplaces, not just the ones polishing a submission.
 
It’s also why I agreed to join the judging panel for the 2026 awards.
 
And not just me. My co-judges are even more incredible. People like Nicole Karagiannis GAICD, Melanie Cole, Charlotte Anderson and Alex Pusenjak (and many more)
 
A who's who of those who have been in the trenches, pushing for the same people-first outcomes.
 
So if you’re a Head of People, ask yourself: what's that one thing you've delivered this year that deserves recognition? The thing that others could benefit from, even if it's not perfect.
 
PS: Early-bird pricing runs until 5 December. So jump online and get involved.

A guilty pleasure of mine when travelling is checking the internet speed wherever I go. Here’s the speed everywhere I went in Europe over 5 weeks. 

- Madrid Airbnb: 92 down, 50 up (bad start)
- Malaga Airbnb: 487 down, 450 up (😍)
- Malaga airport: 25 down. 17 up (tragic)
- València Airbnb: 287 down. 184 up. 
- Lisbon Airbnb: 519 down. 372 up (hello)
- Lisbon to Porto train: 9 down. 4 up (🤮)
- Porto Airbnb: 38 down. 8 up. 🙈
- Porto Airbnb 2.0 (didn’t like the other one): 737 down. 371 up (🔥🔥🔥)
- Turin Airbnb: 327 down. 155 up. 
- Lucca Airbnb: 67 down. 55 up (😞)
- Cagliari Airbnb: 83 down. 20 up. 
- Rome hotel: 368 down. 129 up (acceptable)

What’s the weird thing you do when you’re in the vacuum of holiday travel?

I know a lot of Australian People teams are grappling with how to improve the way they do work. If you're looking to implement Product-led thinking into your people practices, I can't think of anyone better to help you than Megan.

🐝 | UXer turned PXer | Speaker, Coach & Facilitator | Empowering leaders to unlock team performance through HCD

Years ago, when I was still in UX, I kept talking about wanting to work in teams that felt like intellectual beehives. 

🐝 I come alive when I’m working with collaborative, innovative and adaptive teams who are working towards something bigger than themselves.

If you've followed my journey as a UXer turned PXer, you know I've spent years advocating for people functions to adopt product-led, human-centred approaches. 

Before moving back to Australia, I told a friend about my dream of setting up a business to help founders and people leaders design organisations where people could do the best work of their lives.

 ➡️ 💬 He replied “Sounds like you’re a pollinator of design thinking”...

In the last two months I've been running my own discovery & design phases to get PollinateXD off the ground.

Now, what I'm working on is:
 • Sharing insights and ideas on how to design impactful & human-centred people experiences
 • Partnering with founders and leadership teams to build high-performing organisations
 • Coaching people leaders to build their confidence in moving beyond traditional approaches

I've got capacity for a few projects and coaching clients in the new year, so for those who have asked how you can help, I'd say:

♻️ Engage with posts that resonate. 
Likes, comments, shares - they help build community

📬 Subscribe to the collaborative newsletter I'm writing with Mark Lewis from Crewmojo. 
Every other Sunday, you'll get practical insights on how to adopt a truly people-centred approach to performance. (Link in comments)

☎️ Get in touch if you or someone you know is wrestling with adopting a truly PX approach to building organisational performance. 

and a MASSIVE thank you to my wonderful community across the globe for all your support so far!

Moving home, getting married and starting a business all in one year has been no small feat. But it's been nourishing for the soul and I'm excited for what's to come.

#PeopleExperience #OrganisationalDevelopment #CultureDesign #HumanCentredDesign #Leadership

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Isaac Peiris's LinkedIn Performance

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