Thanks, Matt.  ## Metadata - Author: [[Ben Meredith]] - Full Title: Thanks, Matt. - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [WordPress, Technical Support, Career] author: Ben Meredith source: benandjacq.com reference: [https://benandjacq.com/2025/10/thanks-matt/] date created: 2025-10-30 00:00 --- # 🏷️ Title: Thanks, Matt. ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - Include links cited in or relevant to the article. ## 📝 Summary - What happened. - The author reflects on nine years of growth from joining GiveWP to leading Technical Support across multiple brands at Liquid Web/StellarWP, and shares he was laid off during a restructure. - Why it matters. - Shows the impact of strong leadership, mentorship, and support craft; highlights industry consolidation and career transitions. - Key stakeholders. - The author, Matt Cromwell, teams across Kadence, Iconic, Orderable, SolidWP, GiveWP, WP Business Reviews, StellarPay, StellarSites, and the Cloud One Digital portfolio. - Risks and tradeoffs. - Restructures risk talent loss and continuity; career pivots trade stability for autonomy in new ventures. - Bottom line. - Gratitude-forward exit; the author is seeking full-time roles while going “all in” on buildsustainablesupport.com. ## 📖 Main Content - Core arguments: - Mentorship changes careers: “Your promise ‘you’ll go full-time once I go on paternity leave…’ led to the best 9 years of my working life.” - Support leadership craft: coach individuals to maximize satisfaction by modeling high performance and improving communication, execution, and goal-setting. - Layoff as inflection point: proud of team outcomes; moving to productize a repeatable support system. - Context/definitions: - GiveWP: WordPress donations plugin later acquired by Liquid Web/StellarWP. - Restructure: portfolio-level reorganization under Cloud One Digital. - Uncertainties: - Specifics of Cloud One Digital’s strategy and timelines; details of the new product’s features beyond “ready-made system.” ### 🗒️ Notes - “Most unconventional HR onboarding”: first-day email that a colleague’s spouse went into labor; immediate trust and informality. - Career arc: GiveWP → acquisition by Liquid Web → Head of Support → leadership across 8 brands (Kadence, Iconic, Orderable, SolidWP, GiveWP, WP Business Reviews, StellarPay, StellarSites). - Exit: “Yesterday was my last day… laid off in the midst of a restructure.” - Leadership thesis: - Be the exemplar high-performer. - Improve daily at communication, execution, and aligned goal-setting. - Forward plan: applying for full-time roles; building buildsustainablesupport.com as a plug-in system for support teams. - Central gratitude: “Thank you so much, Matt.” ## 📚 References - GiveWP (donations for WordPress): https://givewp.com/ - Liquid Web: https://www.liquidweb.com/ - StellarWP: https://stellarwp.com/ - Kadence WP: https://www.kadencewp.com/ - Iconic WP: https://iconicwp.com/ - Orderable: https://orderable.com/ - SolidWP (formerly iThemes): https://solidwp.com/ - WP Business Reviews: https://wpbusinessreviews.com/ - Cloud One Digital (portfolio context): https://cloudonedigital.com/ - buildsustainablesupport.com (author’s venture): https://buildsustainablesupport.com/ ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Paragraph A paraphrase. - Over nine years, the author grew from an unconventional onboarding at GiveWP into leading support for multiple brands post-acquisition, culminating in a layoff during a portfolio restructure. - Paragraph B paraphrase. - His leadership centers on modeling high performance and improving core skills daily; he’s seeking full-time work while launching a productized support system, closing with thanks to mentor Matt Cromwell. ## 📰 Newsletter - A heartfelt career note from the WordPress ecosystem: Ben Meredith reflects on nine years from GiveWP through StellarWP/Liquid Web, leading support across marquee brands like Kadence and SolidWP. He’s now exploring new roles and productizing his approach to support with buildsustainablesupport.com. If you care about sustainable support, leadership, and community-led product craft, this is a worthy read. Related resources: GiveWP’s impact on nonprofits, performance-minded theming with Kadence, and mature support ops at StellarWP. ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Build a demo of the support system with sample tickets, KPIs, and coaching loops. - Publish a “support leadership playbook” with templates and quickstarts. - Run an office hours series on communication, execution, and OKR alignment. #### OSPO - Draft contribution guidelines for support tooling and playbooks. - Establish license scanning and training for shared macros/snippets. - Create intake for vulnerability reports in support workflows. #### Community - Maintainers: monthly roadmap clinics focused on support debt. - Contributors: rotate “first issue” support pairings. - Sponsors: publish impact reports tied to ticket deflection and CSAT. - Ecosystem: coordinate incident response drills across plugins. #### WordPress - Core: triage rituals and performance budgets for support-critical issues. - Core Performance: dashboard standard for support-derived perf signals. - Core AI: guardrails for AI-assisted replies; evaluation sets for accuracy. - Core Program Team: cross-team retros; dependency mapping from support data. - Mobile: offline-ready help and escalation UX. - Playground: reproducible bug labs from support cases. - Community: speaker mentorship on support excellence. - Training: lesson plans on communication and execution. - Marketing: campaigns around sustainable support stories. - Support: SLAs, knowledge base gap hunts, escalation maps. - Design: UX audits targeting support pain points. - Documentation: examples-first patterns and style guides. - Photos/TV: submission/caption standards for tutorials. - Polyglots: glossary alignment to reduce translation friction in support. - Accessibility: audit cadence tied to support reports. - Meta/CLI/Hosting/Tide/Openverse/Themes/Plugins: reliability telemetry, provenance checks, review throughput improvements. #### The WPCC - Programs: fellowships for support maintainers; microgrants for docs. - Projects: governance clinics; release support teams. - Funding experiments: matched grants for CSAT and time-to-resolution. ### FAIR - Technical independence: signed artifacts, provenance, local metadata. - Policies: funding transparency and anti-capture covenants. - Governance artifacts: reusable charters and operator agreements. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Coaching on communication/execution measurably increases CSAT and agent retention. - Modeling high performance by leaders reduces escalations per agent. - A productized support system decreases time-to-first-response and increases resolution rates across WordPress plugin teams. - Portfolio restructures correlate with short-term support backlog growth. ### 📊 Methodology - A/B teams on coaching cadence; measure CSAT, CES, retention. - Pre/post intervention analysis on escalation rates and TTR/TTV. - Multi-team rollout of the support system with stepped-wedge design. - Incident trend analysis before/after restructure announcements. ### ❓ Questions - Which support metrics best predict meaningful customer outcomes? - How to scale coaching without diluting quality? - What organizational signals precede healthy vs. harmful restructures? ### 🔮 Future Research - Longitudinal study linking support leadership practices to ARR/NRR. - Taxonomy for WordPress plugin support severity and routing. - Standardized evaluation sets for AI in support contexts. ### 💡 Implications - Practice: inve - Summary: Nine years, five months, and 9ish days ago, I got an email well before I woke up, that Melanie Cromwell (who I had never met) went into labor with her 4th child. She and baby were doing fine. This was the most unconventional HR onboarding process I’d ever been a part of. The years that … Continue reading "Thanks, Matt." - URL: https://benandjacq.com/2025/10/thanks-matt/?fbclid=IwRlRTSANwplRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHj2FYERD30Tk9rY8fMOKxsuegYDspjcDidpPwROAZrmJ9BpEac3hH5d20FWv_aem_MpdjQX1VAtBmIogwmubr4A Nine years, five months, and 9ish days ago, I got an email well before I woke up, that Melanie Cromwell (who I had never met) went into labor with her 4th child. She and baby were doing fine. This was the most unconventional HR onboarding process I’d ever been a part of. The years that followed have been by far the most transformational of my vocational life, and I’ve got the branded merch to prove it. As friends in the industry know, I started at GiveWP, then after the acquisition by Liquid Web (I had already been promoted to “Head of Support” in an only-slightly-more-formal HR process) my role expanded to eventually leading teams of Technical Support agents over 8 different brands: Kadence, Iconic, Orderable, SolidWP (formerly iThemes), GiveWP, WP Business Reviews, StellarPay, and StellarSites. Yesterday was my last day at Liquid Web/StellarWP. I was laid off in the midst of a restructure of the companies that make up the Cloud One Digital portfolio of brands. I’m so proud of what we accomplished, but I’m more proud of what working around so many amazing people did *to me.* I am a different person thanks to the incredible environment where I incubated, grew, was challenged, and made to *think deeply* about the art of Technical Support. As I’ve grown as a leader during my time at Liquid Web, I’ve found that my sweet spot is *coaching* individual agents and supervisors to get the most amount of job satisfaction out of their day, by doing two things: 1. Be the best example of a high-performer at your role in the organization. 2. Get better every day at communication, execution, and setting and reaching personal goals that align with business objectives. I’m open to (and applying for) full-time work, and simultaneously going “all in” on buildsustainablesupport.com in the meantime. A decade ago, I used [a product](https://benlikes.us/bctt) to get the job I just left. Today, I’ve got [a product](https://benlikes.us/crrtool-demo) that I feel extremely confident will get me my next job. I’ve got a ready-made system to plug into the next support team I get the privilege of leading. Want to know what I’ll implement? How about instead I just show you? I couldn’t possibly list all of the amazing team members I’ve worked with, but one stands head-and-shoulders above the rest: [Matt Cromwell](https://www.mattcromwell.com/). Thank you so much, Matt. Your promise “you’ll go full-time once I go on paternity leave, I’ll send you an email when it happens” led to the best 9 years of my working life., Thanks, Matt., Ben Meredith, 01k8vc3ce3j2q0vag1farr2y80.