A Deep Dive on Compensation

In The Trenches

This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Oberle Risk Strategies⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, the leading insurance brokerage and insurance diligence provider for the search fund community. The company is led by ⁠⁠⁠⁠August Felker⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (himself a 2-time successful searcher), and has been trusted by search investors, lenders, searchers and CEOs for over a decade now. Their due diligence offering (which is 100% free of charge) will assess the pros and cons of your target company’s insurance program, including any potential coverage gaps, the pro-forma insurance pricing, and the program structure changes needed for closing. At or shortly after closing, they then execute on all of those findings on your behalf. Oberle has serviced over 900 customers across a decade of operation, including countless searchers and CEOs within the ETA community.

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This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Symphony⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Symphony not only performs technical due diligence engagements for search funds, Private Equity firms, and strategic acquirers, but they also partner with those buyers on an ongoing basis on all things product (outsourced development, team augmentation, new product prototyping, UI refreshes, QA professionalization, and so on). Symphony is offering a full 15% off of any of their services for listeners of In the Trenches. ⁠⁠Just go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Contact form on their website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and tell them that you’re a listener of the podcast to receive this discount!

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I have spent the past several weeks going through almost 3 years of In The Trenches archives to tease out all of the best insights that we’ve been able to collect from each of our guests specific to Compensation. I won’t need to convince any CEO of how important compensation is, and how fraught with peril it can be when it isn’t done right. Below is a list of our guests and topics, which include timestamps, so you can skip between the segments that are most interesting to you:

• (3:06) Verne Harnish: Crafting Company-Wide Compensation Plans
• (20:55) Dave Prusinski: Sales Compensation
• (37:48) Rich Manders & Brent Beshore: Equity or Options as a Form of Compensation
• (51:00) Jim Sharpe: Managing Wage Inflation & Salary Expectations
• (55:05) Randy Street: Surprising Lessons Specific to Compensation
• (1:03:05) Bob Pritchett: Compensation Mistakes