It was six years ago when the CEO and founder of Gravity Payments, Dan Price, decided to increase the minimum annual salary of his 120 employees. He raised it to $70,000.

Naturally, his decision was met with a lot of criticism and skepticism.

A lot of people thought they would fail. Some of them even rooted for the company to go bankrupt because of his decision.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

Dan was able to prove everyone wrong. In fact, in the years that have passed, the results his company experienced were more than fantastic.

He shared:

“We’ve had a 10 times increase in the number of first-time homeowners every year and 70% of our employees were able to pay down debt.”

Apart from improvement in his employees’ financial status, there was an increase in the number of babies they were having, too.

He said:

“We went from having between 0-2 babies born per year among the entire team, to over 65 born or announced over the last six years.”

Surprisingly, his company has even tripled its number of employees.

When asked how much he’s making, Dan said that he makes $70,000 a year. And in order for him to pay his bills and buy everything he needs to live a good life, he sold his second home. He downsized and even tapped into some of his savings.

Even though it’s such a huge risk and sacrifice, it was worth it.

His employees don’t take his actions for granted. In fact, they are super thankful for what the CEO has done that they decided to buy him a Tesla. Everyone chipped in to buy him a car.

Dan shared:

“My employees have done way more for me than I could ever do for them. So the fact that they wanted to get me such an unreal, amazing gift, it’s pretty special. I don’t know if I can put it into words.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic happened, their company took a hit.

They lost 55% of their business. They even reached the point where Dan thought they were only a couple of months from failing.

To help with the situation, his employees volunteered to take a temporary pay cut.

Some of them asked to have their salary reduced to $40,000. Others took about $60,000. About 10 of his employees chose to not receive any salary at all. And to mirror his employees’ decision, Dan also decided to get zero salary during the challenging time.

With their collective effort, they were able to save their company.

They were even able to secure more clients despite the pandemic. All of his employees who chose to have their salaries reduced received their money back too.

Dan plans on raising their minimum salary again in the future.

He knows that the cost of living these days isn’t cheap. And as years go by, it’ll keep on increasing. For his employees to live safe and comfortable lives, their salary needs to increase too.

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Source: CBS News, Facebook-Gravity Payments, CBS Mornings