No big deal this blog post title you’d think. A CEO, rich fellow, can easily afford one. Okay now forget and move on.
But wait, this Tesla was not bought by the CEO, but gifted to him. And not just by anyone, but by his own employees. Wow, your own employees coming together and gifting a car worth USD 70,000! No mean feat.
How did this come about?
The CEO is Dan Price, the founder of Gravity Payments, a payments processing company. In 2016, he was drawing a million dollar salary, while some of his employees were struggling to make ends meet, getting paid only USD 35,000 a year.
What did Mr. Price do? Something unheard of. He cut his own salary by a ridiculous 94%, and distributed the cut across all the other employees, such that the minimum wage at his company rose to USD 70,000!
By keeping his employees happy, the revenues of the company grew sharply. Isn’t this a great lesson in empathy?