1 Staff X $125/Hour

Is it a goal in our lives to make it big or make it better?

This is a tough question for many including myself. I always want to be bigger, better and stronger. I have reasoned with myself on many occasions that because I accomplish this through a career that aims to make other people’s lives better and more livable, I am walking correctly.

But that’s not the whole story. Because if someone was to offer me….1 million dollars and fame today, I would accept and ask most questions later. Where do I sign? You might find this shallow. What it is, is honest and it’s also a symptom of living a life that’s been too small for me for 39 years…And this thought leads me back to the original question.

Is it a goal in our lives to make it big or make it better? Imagine if life had just one purpose. What do you think it would be if these were your only options?

I want both. Is that selfish? I think so, yes. Through my choices I have created a life that mostly leverages the second facet (ie Make it better). But at the end of the day, I toss and turn at night because although I help elevate the daily conditions and well-being for many, I am not satisfied with what I have been paid. Because is this really it? My pay check is not my dream and it affords me less and less. My accomplishments are too small. Do you ever feel like this?

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If the majority of us walked around with a central goal in our minds to make it better rather than big, we would build things effective and scaleable more often and reduce the mindset I shared above. People must feel valued to keep striving, building, and living an enjoyable life.

I meet with a lot of business leaders who get years into their design, often decades, and then get stuck because they are running a team of 40 under-paid employees. They become frustrated because they aren’t meeting their business goals and their teams are running out of steam before the agencies visions even leave the gate. Then, that same business leader says a thing like this: (Real Quote)

“I don’t understand, we pay great wages. My goal is that in 5 years, we can pay our team in the 65th percentile in the area”.

To which I think, Really?! This CEO is going to give himself a whole 5 years to ‘sort of’ increase wages? This is how certain people think. I’m not one of them. If I was going to give myself a whole 1,825 days (i.e., 5 years) to do a thing it’s going to be done to an exceptional standard. The 65th percentile? In what percentile is he paying his team now? Where did this CEO stray in his ability to leverage people’s full potential or even just the basics of drafting goals? The 65th percentile is the milestone? Could you imagine being married to that guy? No. Pay people their worth. It’s important. Like really, really important.

I firmly believe that AI is the United States of Corporate America’s manufactured solution to address the real consequence of an underpaid and therefore underperforming work force. Corporations believe their staff are the problem, detached from the reality that the conditions their staff are living under are their own fault and changeable. I’m not a fan of AI. Instead, we should be addressing why humans are exhibiting behaviors that look a lot like depleted soil that has stopped being able to grow things and sustain life. From there, we can take the next step and begin all future projects, build outs, ramp ups, start ups, whatever word the internet is now using to describe “doing something”, and START with this formula:

1 Staff X 125/hour

If you build something, anything that involves staffing I urge all Directors to begin with this question: ‘How much does this cost us in staff?’ Too many people leave this question until the end, mimic inadequate pay standards that currently exist in their salary schemas, and then race through the answer to arrive at the wrong figure.

Which method will get you to meet your business goals? 5 staff who are excellent and are experiencing reciprocal investment from their place of employment or 40 staff who can’t afford their rent, mortgage or bacon and eggs? What we create does not need a blueprint that includes scarcity if we start with what we actually need. Fame? Fortune? Or to make each others lives better through intentional design that leverages humanity?

Wayne Dyer is quoted as proclaiming:

“The future is promised to no one”.

I believe him. Maybe we’ll reach the end of our lives and no one will ever call us to offer us fame and a million dollars. Then what? Is that even the point?

Why are we giving the future anonymous caller that may or may not exist more power than we ourselves have to create a meaningful impact across the span of our lives and within the payroll spreadsheet?

I do not begin or end projects or business mockups with a formula that includes 1 staff X $11.75/hour. That’s the formula I earned directly out of college with a caseload of 30 adolescents, not enough time in the day to get everything accomplished, and mounting student debt.

I ask you this final question for today:

1. Would you rather pay people well and reverse the conditions of poverty which are artificially imposed or,

2. Would you rather pay awful wages and not invest in the well being of your employees?

Only one of the answers will help you accomplish your business goals in 2026. And of course this leads us back to the original question again, but I will stop there because I have asked enough questions in this one post.

Thank you for reading!