The deal that was struck
Jan 2025 → May 2026 · 6 source documents · Click any event to expand
16 months. Four compensation arrangements. This document is a factual record of what was agreed, what changed, and where things currently stand — assembled from Slack, Zoom transcripts, and written agreements, with all parties' words reproduced verbatim.
Here's what I had written down for my comp structure:
Reducing my contribution to this team to just "ad performance" doesn't reflect the reality of my role.
Our core customer journey: Ads · Funnel · Pre-Call Experience · Call Experience · Post-Call Experience · Onboarding/Trial Experience · Ongoing Experience. Plus Ops: HR (Hiring/Training) · Tech (GHL, Kixie, Integrations, Webhooks) · Finance · Data
Outside of Call Experience, Post-Call Experience, and Finance, I currently own or am deeply involved in every other department listed above. Our four core KPIs are CPQBC, SUR, CR, and Churn — and you guys hold me 100% accountable for pretty much all 4 of them.
I don't think it's fair for me to take 100% responsibility for the entire operation all year, but then be reduced to just the "paid ads guy" when it comes to comp.
Yo you only sent $3k. Just double checking I'm supposed to make $6k this month right? Or no?
Based on this, I expected to be at $6K for March ($3k salary plus $3k for 10 clients under management). And then after I get 6 more clients (16 total clients), the base salary goes away right? So basically I won't get both a base salary starting next month, only the $300 per active client. Am I misunderstanding something?
@Akash so this is something we should probably discuss on zoom because we spoke about this on Feb 4. Reference the convo below that we agreed on... (if I'm missing something please let me know)
The discussion was 3k monthly salary which would be paid until there was 10 campaigns or more under your management. Once we got to 5k which is 16 campaigns under your management the salary would fall off. I proposed paying you for any additional campaign beyond 10 in addition to the salary until we reached 5k. So if you were managing 13 campaigns it would be 3k plus $900 (for the additional 3 campaigns). Obviously once the 16 campaign and 5k threshold was met it was only up from there...
[Prior message from Sean, Feb 4]: @Akash hey man. so the plan is to get you to 5k in income which is 16 campaigns that you manage. (this was the number you wanted to be at) - obviously additional campaigns result in additional money. The salary was to hold you over until we got to that number. the question is how do we want to handle the threshold between 3k and 5k. Once you cross the 10 campaign threshold ($300 x 10 campaigns) we can add $300 additional comp to every campaign after 10 until we get to 5k. Then the salary falls off and we pay per campaign managed. (which should be way more than 16 campaigns in the next month or two)
and just for transparency sake. J and I take a 3k per month salary (after taxes) so basically 50k per year. We did take distributions last year but our goal was to keep as much cash in the business as possible for the first year. But now we both agreed we definitely can't do that forever. The goal for you was to get you to 16 campaigns so we could essentially get you to that 5k per month threshold.
if you want we can get you to 5k now until we hit 16+ campaigns. I was just going based on what we talked about on Feb 4... apologies if there was miscommunication here.
Yeah my bad, I thought we were saying the same thing - it's 100% my fault for not reading what you said more carefully. I thought it was base salary AND per client fees, but looks like you were saying it's base salary OR per client fees. Either way it really only affects this month, since either way the base salary goes away within the next few weeks. It's totally my bad for not clarifying last time we talked about this, and yes $5k is more than fair. Sorry about the confusion!
2k additional was sent.
congrats buddy you're the highest paid employee at EyeFly! lol good talent is worth it. Thanks for all you do.
Pleasure's all mine - Looking forward to continuing to crush it with you guys.
Hey gents — I've been wanting to talk about this live, but with us being deep in 2026 planning the past month (and now Sean with the baby), we just haven't had many chances to get on a full team call.
So I figured it'd be better to share where I'm at and give you both time to digest and talk through next steps and what you want to do before we sync.
Quick summary so you know what to expect:
This past year has been the best of my career — I genuinely love working with you guys and I'm fully aligned with the long-term vision - but I'm at a point where I can't afford to keep going on the current comp structure.
I'm probably going to land around $48k for the year (I've linked a table to my YTD monthly income for reference), and that's before taxes, benefits, and my own out-of-pocket costs (about $3k so far on software, creative production, etc.). Realistically, my take-home is closer to ~$38k — which is just not sustainable.
Comp History
The first comp structure we agreed to in January was never followed:
The first month the second comp structure ($250/client + $100/qualified booked call) was supposed to kick in, we (in)conveniently changed the definition of qualified booked call to factor in show up rates — which cut what I should've made that month by about $3k. And since we stopped running ads by October, that structure never really took effect anyway.
Financial Gap
Position
All prior comp structures paid me as a vendor, not a partner. I'm handling partner-level responsibility and strategy, building enterprise value — not vendor-scoped work.
Ask
Full partner in everything except equity. Proposed structure: % revenue share across the entire business (including campaigns Country manages).
@Jason Katz Just read the comp agreement you sent over, everything looks good except for one adjustment — I think the current definition of what qualifies is too restricting.
My takeaway from our comp call earlier in the week is that you guys keep 100% equity, but moving forward we're full partners in profit from ALL growth that happens from this point forward — except for any growth that explicitly comes as a result of your legacy relationships with the Basement Systems Network.
My Proposed Section 3 Revision: "All active clients are considered Qualifying System Campaigns EXCEPT for: Legacy Clients (Active prior to Jan 1, 2025). Basement Systems Network Clients (regardless of start date). Direct Referrals from the above two categories. All other clients (whether sourced via Paid Ads, Organic Content, Inbound, or new Outreach) constitute the Growth pool and are subject to the 33% profit share."
I think this does a better job of capturing the partnership dynamic we discussed while still fully protecting the relationships that preceded me.
My only concern is, how should we handle scenarios where growth comes primarily from channels you're not directly driving (like outbound or cold email), especially if the ad funnel starts to underperform? 33% profit share feels misaligned in those scenarios.
I think the main point here is we have no problem splitting the way you suggested. It's just important we make sure the bulk of the business is coming through the channel we are investing in the heaviest. Maybe it's just an agreed upon percent of revenue has to come from the ads channel? Or an agreed upon new client sign ups (example X% of new clients comes from funnel). Open to hearing your perspective on this AK.
My thoughts below:
1st of all, reducing my contribution to this team to just "ad performance" doesn't reflect the reality of my role.
Our four core KPIs are CPQBC, SUR, CR, and Churn — and you guys hold me 100% accountable for pretty much all 4 of them. I don't think it's fair for me to take 100% responsibility for the entire operation all year, but then be reduced to just the "paid ads guy" when it comes to comp.
2nd, in the scenario where you're building outbound systems and I'm building inbound systems, it doesn't make sense for me to give up 66% of profits from channels I'm driving, and get 0% of profits from channels you're driving.
That's why I think 33% profits of all growth that happens from this point forward is the only fair way to split it that won't breed resentment later. Us fighting about attribution is a precedent I don't want to get into.
Lastly, I really think you guys are overthinking your potential downside. If it ever gets to the point where I'm not worth the 33%, you can just fire me. You still have 100% control over that outcome. Unlike you guys, if I underperform, I probably also get fired. And when I get fired, you keep everything I've created up to that point (systems, trained staff, ad funnels, offers, and content assets) and I get nothing.
Your safeguard IS that you can terminate the contract whenever it no longer makes sense for you.
Totally hear you. Sorry if anything we said came across like we were reducing your contribution to just ad performance. That's not our view at all — you're deeply involved in building and running the operating system across multiple departments. I'm good with your proposal and I like the simplicity of flipping the definition. I just want to be crystal clear that scaling the inbound engine is the #1 outcome we're optimizing for this year.
More on an emotional note, just to be candid — 15 months, 18 months, whatever it is, no bonus is a tough pill to swallow. We've kind of been — I've been waiting on this for like over a year now. We kind of buried it — "oh, we forgot we were doing that last year." And then like to not get it this first one too is like — I've asked for it multiple times at this point. I'm not saying you guys are purposely not giving it, but I would like line of sight into all business financials. Just the P&Ls.
Yeah. Yeah, look, I hear the emotional thing. You know, trust me, Sean and I aren't making a bunch of money either. As far as the comp plan agreement goes, we went back and forth. So we originally had the costs, operating costs — all costs — to be on a percent basis if you were just getting profit share on the clients that came through basically the ad funnel, which you were managing. And then you came back and said, well, no, I think I should get a profit share basically on every client outside of the network, including ones that come in through cold email, through my cold calls, etc. And so we said, okay, we can do that, but then we're going to calculate against all operating costs. And that's what we agreed on. And you can see it in the comp change agreements. It was all documented. You can see the changes because we had a V1 and then a V2.
I mean, yeah, that's definitely not what we agreed on. But regardless of what we agreed on, just common sense-wise — do you think it makes sense to deduct the entire ops cost?
Like, what do you want me to say? Bro, like, I didn't write this contract. You wrote this contract. So like, what am I supposed to say? That I didn't have my lawyers look over it?
We have a Fathom recording. We have a Fathom call where it was like — all we like actually in the call recording, we discussed. So like everything, what you're saying is true up to the part where you said, hey, man, well, then I said, if you want the revenue from cold email also, we're going to subtract it from all ops costs. That part didn't happen. The last thing that happened was I said, in terms of profit share, it makes no sense for me to be giving 66% of profits from a channel that I'm driving to get zero from another channel. And then you were like, cool, yeah, I agree with that. And then you sent V2 of the agreement.
And the new structure that was discussed the day before was — instead of only ads from funnels, we're defining it as all non-BSN clients. That's what was discussed. There was no part of us discussing, "hey, let's also remove all ops costs from the distribution."
I think, you know, like, just on the pages, like, since we're talking about this, bro, like, it's not, like — I don't know if feel like you understand the full picture. I've been waiting on this for like five quarters. You know what I mean? So it's like, I've been — every single quarter — I'm telling my wife, like, hey, there's probably a bonus coming any second now. You know what I mean? Five quarters. And it's like, I get — I guess, I get the math of, like, okay, this quarter, like, I didn't qualify for it. I think it would have been useful for me to know ahead of time, like, hey, man, we're not in profit. I do feel like I've asked for P&Ls and stuff, but I know it's not a priority, whatever — but yes, I would definitely like to have financials from Jan 2025 going forward. And even like Christmas bonuses — oh, we gave out Christmas bonuses to everyone on the team. I didn't get a Christmas bonus. And like, last month, I asked for $1,000 for a laptop that I'm using for work. And, no, we can't reimburse that. It's like all the little stuff, bro. It's like, I'm not — I didn't buy the top of the line $3,000 MacBook. I bought a refurbished Mac desktop and a refurbished screen. And it's literally to work so that I can do this. Those are 100% should be company expenses.
Can I be completely candid with you, bro? I'm pretty — I don't know that, like, a path moving forward — obviously a path moving forward is a good objective. But I'm pretty jaded by any path moving forward. Like, let's make sure that we're — anything moving backwards, like, anything that we've kind of talked about in the past — we do that. There's been multiple things that — we've just been committing, committing, committing, and it's like, the time comes, and there's one reason or another, whatever comp plan doesn't come into fruition. So yeah — I would love for us to kind of reflect on every promise, or whatever we've said we were going to do, over the last year and a half, and talking through why that didn't come into fruition before we start making promises about going forward. It doesn't make sense for me to hear more paths going forward.
Do you feel, personally, like, there's a world in which it's possible that I get back pay for the 10% of profit distributions on all clients that I touched last year that we originally talked about? Or do you think that's gone off the table?
Akash, last year, your marketing budget you ran for us last year was a loss. We lost money on the dollars you spent from our business on the marketing campaigns. We did the math. All of the revenue and profitability from our business truly has come from our Basement Systems Network clients, which spend a lot, are reliable, and all come through the work we built before we brought you on and referrals within the network. That's the bulk of where our business's profit has come from.
Dude, I run those campaigns.
Well, we slowly transition them. Yeah, but Akash — we can hire a media buyer for that. That's not where we saw your value, Akash. We see your value and ability to generate revenue, which is like the ad funnel was the core thing to generate business.
What do you think my job is? Like, what metrics — my job is MRR and profit, is it not? Like, how the am I — I don't have line of sight into MRR and profit. And that doesn't make sense.