The Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) is a privately held sports league started by Paul Rabil (former player) and his Brother, Mike Rabil. It’s a fascinating story about Paul’s rise through the sport to league founder/owner. Mike is featured in this interview and provided an interesting answer to a question about recruitment. You can play the clip below, but it got me thinking about the simplicity of the answer and why more business owners don’t come up with competitive and creative ways of compensating their best people. They’re a growing league looking to increase viewership & revenue, so recruitment & retention are everything.
To summarize, Michael describes a situation where any additional revenue that is pumped into the league by way of sponsors would be then allocated to the players (who by the way also have equity in the league), thereby increasing their annual salaries across the league.
As a business leader, having a strong brand in your market adds credibility to your pitch, but it doesn’t stop there. You’re competing for talent in your market, yet there’s a significant wage gap across the board, and I learned quickly that people change careers for 2 reasons: meaningful work and compensation (sometimes there’s a trade off, but in a perfect world, there shouldn’t be).
I like to take a compassionate approach to compensation, and I think we should reframe how we tackle the “money conversation”. It’s transactional at best and entirely skewed towards the employer with interests in keeping salaries offered as low as possible. Asking a prospect ‘what they need to earn’ conveys a degree of empathy that will change the dynamic of these discussions.
Again, the more money flowing into the league, the more available capital to pay their players. Not the board or the stakeholders, the players. Paul & Mike don’t have a league without players, and they have figured out what seasoned executives have failed to accept.
If you’re a company that has just secured a new project that is approved to add $350 million to your bottom-line once completed, then compassion dictates that there is additional cashflow that can be distributed to those within the company who helped to win and execute the project. Why aren’t salaries increased at that point? Profit sharing is one way of sharing the wealth, but that is only a fraction of earnings that the average employee sees. The majority stays at the top of the funnel. New projects drive market awareness. Market awareness drives new business opportunities. New business opportunities drive earning potential. Additional earnings should drive up employee wealth, ownership, and intellectual property.
Kudos to the Rabil brother’s and the PLL for redefining the employee (athlete) / employer (owner) relationship.
View the clip here – https://lnkd.in/gcSNS2C6
