6 years ago today I raised my company's min wage to $70k. Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines.
Since then our revenue tripled, we're a Harvard Business School case study & our employees had a 10x boom in homes bought.
Always invest in people.
Since our $70k min wage was announced 6 years ago today:
*Our revenue tripled
*Head count grew 70%
*Customer base doubled
*Babies had by staff grew 10x
*70% of employees paid down debt
*Homes bought by employees grew 10x
*401(k) contributions grew 155%
*Turnover dropped in half
After our $70k min wage:
*76% of employees are engaged at work, 2x the national average
*Customer attrition fell to 25% below nat'l average
*We expanded to a new Boise office & enacted $70k min wage there
*Our highest-paid employee makes 4x our lowest-paid employee, down from 33x
We started our $70k min wage with about 130 employees in Seattle.
It worked so well we expanded it to a new Boise office, where the cost of living is lower but people deserve good pay all the same.
We now have about 200 employees
idahostatesman.com/news/business/…
At the start of the pandemic, we lost 55% of our revenue overnight. Our employees were so invested they volunteered to take temporary pay cuts to prevent any layoffs.
We weathered the storm, paid everyone back and are now giving out raises
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/0…
What helped inspire our $70k min wage?
An employee was secretly working a 2nd job at McDonald's. It was clear I was an awful CEO who was failing his employees. I gave her a raise to quit that job. No one should have to work two jobs to make ends meet.
When I've been on Fox News, the production assistants who led me through backstage confided they were making min wage and struggling to get by in NYC. I asked the hosts (who make seven figures and laughed at me on air) to talk about their workers' pay on air. They always said no.
Our success with a $70k min wage isn't some fluke.
A Massachusetts biotech recruiting firm raised its min wage and saw revenue and headcount grow 50%, while retention rates doubled. Profit held steady despite the $500,000 cost of raises
bostonglobe.com/business/2017/…
To help finance our $70k min wage, I cut my CEO pay from $1.1M to $70k
I don't miss anything about the millionaire lifestyle. Money buys happiness when you climb out of poverty. But going from well-off to very well-off won't make you happier. Doing what you believe is right will
People focus on the cost of paying employees well but not on its benefits.
For us: Our happy employees drove record sales and we now have 20,000 small business clients.
Our turnover is low and we spend $0 advertising openings since we get thousands of applicants.
We're doubling down on our mission to invest in employees. Our revenue (which comes from small busienss credit card processing) is still down slightly from pre-pandemic. But we're handing out raises of 5-6% and hiring to grow headcount by 10% to make workloads easier.
Does this way of doing business actually work? I broke it all down the other day with one of the best @mehdirhasan on the @MehdiHasanShow:
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