CEO Stuns Employees with Gigantic Raise

Dan Price started up a credit card processing business called Gravity Payments about ten years ago when he was 19 and it's grown very well over the last few years. The firm is now expected to turn a profit this year of a little over two million dollars, so he's got to be pretty proud of himself, his business and his employees.

Dan started Gravity in his dormitory room at Seattle Pacific University using money borrowed from his older brother. The idea struck him a couple of years earlier when he was playing in a rock band at a local coffee shop. The shop's owner was having trouble paying the exorbitant fees charged by the company that processed their credit card payments. He looked into the matter and realized he could form a company that did the process cheaper, more efficiently and even provide better customer service at the same time.

Now that the company's become so successful, Dan's proud of his employees and he decided to do something special for the 120 people working under him. He's giving everybody a really big raise. And not just a few bucks here and there. He's decided to set a minimum salary for his workers of $70,000 a year, regardless of how much they're making now.

Dan says he came up with the idea when he read an article on employees and how happy they actually were. The article said that people who earn less than $70,000 a year always seem to need a little extra money to be truly happy. 

So he decided that his employees deserved to be happy and so, over the next three years, he's raising the salaries of everybody, even the lowest paid clerk, salesman and customer service rep to a minimum of $70,000. The raises will affect about 70 employees with 30 of them doubling their pay since the average salary at Gravity right now is $48,000 a year.

He made the announcement at an employee meeting the other day and just about everybody "freaked out," according to one. After the clapping and whooping died out, there were a few moments of what he said were "stunned silence."

Dan says he'll pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from about $1 million to $70,000 and then taking a big chunk out of the company's anticipated $2.2 million profit this year. There's no question everybody at Gravity is happy with the idea. Wait a go, Dan. Wait a go!