so in the past year, i have caused a couple of employees to break down and cry because of their job performance. sometimes i feel like shit because i have to play the role of demanding better performance from the people that work for orange. given the uncorporate nature of the orginzation, i think people don’t take directives as seriously if they were in other business originzation. i mean it’s hard to take me seriously when i joke about being their janitor and boss. it’s an intentional loose environment that has been created but in light of the next level and the financial commitments that it entails, we had to reassert the financial reality of a running a business. That expression of reality check manifests different for each of the respective roles that people play but one thing that was make clear, everyone was going to have to share the burden of the beast. i think the three of us have put in a lot of time and sweat in the past three years and since they’re still making a subsistence living, we didn’t feel we were treating ourselves fairly and were bearing too much the burden of the struture. our sales team were projected to make twice what i was making and the reason they were capable of doing that was because of the ground work that we had laid in the past three years. so as brutal as it was to readjust their expectations and revenue potential, we definitely felt justified on too many levels. we keep remainding ourselve that the ‘equity’ we’re building will mean shit if the business fails because we were allowing our own employees to earn more money than us through the sweat that we toil. how ironic it is in light of all the exploited workers out there. but for me, the primary driver is not about money at all so i don’t need that sort of compensation at this conjunture. it’s about the lifestyle and freedom of being in the driver seat and the opporuninity to do something meaningful with a business vehicle. it’s quite the fad these days, social (compassionate( capitalism and although we don’t fall in that category yet, i don’t would also avoid that label as i avoid any other types of labels. one of teachings that i try to live up is to refrain from do gooder horn blowing. it corrupts the core of the movivation.

so, it will be interesting to see how it will pan out after a weekend of soul searching for said employee. if she is movivated by money for herself over the survivial of the company, then the choice is obvious from both sides. earlier in the year, another employee had to go through the same type of process and she came out of it a more firm believer on the value of the orgnaization. scarfices had to be made and she made them, so i am quite glad that she make the smart choice. reducing your lifestyle is hard but i think you can gain more freedom from that sort of exercise. less dependence on the need to make more money to support an already excessive lifestyle compared to 90% of the world. people lost sight of that very easily and if anything i hope we can inject some prespective to the people that we bring on board. as long as i keep my salary low, eveyone will have to be here for the right reason.