Coin Operated: The 80/20 Way to Build and Pay a Team That Grows EBITDA

The pay plan always tells the truth.

Most middle-market companies run pay plans nobody can fully explain. The salespeople are paid on revenue, the leaders on a scorecard of ten measures, and side letters pile up under both, while the owner values the company on EBITDA. People do what the plan pays for, so whatever the strategy says, the pay plan is the strategy they run.

Coin Operated applies 80/20 thinking to the team and its pay. Read every plan as it actually pays. Put the owner’s number at the top of every leader’s plan and give each lever of the bridge to EBITDA one owner. Build the sales team against the customers worth keeping and pay it on the gross margin it controls. Pay the few seats that move the number at the top of the market, lock the leaders to the number with a cash gate, and give real equity to the people who will deliver the gain.

The book follows Halvorsen Caster & Wheel, an invented company of 540 people, for a thousand days: from seven plans and 61 exceptions to eight one-page plans, and from $18.5 million of EBITDA to the Board’s $28 million. Your team does the work in Coin Operated · The Field Guide.

Audiobook by Bill Canady, narrated using a digital replica of his voice. The 31 figures and the reference material described in the narration are in a separate 46-page visual companion PDF.