Kevin Tawil

Another interesting aspect of our compensation, Will, was this idea of full potential.

So consistent with divine discontent, like reaching for those goals, we have a bonus plan that was a fair bonus plan that people would strive for, obviously.

But we'd always have this souped up or supercharged bonus plan for hitting full potential.

Because we didn't want to be that company that put out low targets and beat it.

By the way, in any organization, that's sort of the natural state or people will tend toward that as you get more and more people because it's easier.

Everybody wants to hit their goal, so you set a lower one, and if you beat it, nobody asks questions.

And that's the road to mediocrity, honestly.

Then you're just maintaining.

You're not really pushing yourself.

So we'd always have this full potential bonus that was something that was stretch and orientation.

We would never really hit it all, but...

I can tell you it helped get us well beyond the reasonable plan we put in place and well toward the full potential of what we could be.

You saw it in the results.

I mean, the growth in the 2001 to 2007 timeframe was incredible.

And super roughly, where did that kick in?

If budget was $100, then the full potential, it was really unbounded, but think about $150.

The bonus would accelerate after the $100.

And as a rule of thumb, for every dollar above hitting that plan, management will get a third of all the dollars that was made in that year.

So an outsized portion of that pool over budget came to the management team.

So it was an incredible motivator to really achieve full potential.