In 2009, I co-founded a business and immediately hit a problem I'd keep solving for the next 15 years: how do you pay people based on what they actually do?
My first solution was a basic Excel spreadsheet. Days worked, daily rate, percentage of sales. Over the years, it grew - each role got its own formula, each formula was agreed with each employee individually. They always knew what they'd earn and why.
But the real shift happened when I hired an SMM manager.
At first, the job was purely quantitative - post X times a day, prepare content, reply to messages. A flat rate made sense. Until I realized I wasn't paying for what actually mattered: content quality, reach, engagement.
So I built a KPI calculator. 13 metrics, weighted scores, three performance tiers. For the first time, pay wasn't just tied to activity - it was tied to outcomes.
That spreadsheet became the prototype for PayByResult - an AI tool I'm now building that creates KPI-based pay formulas for agencies, studios, and small teams.
15 years of trial and error, compressed into 30 seconds. More soon.