A podcast for small-business owners with employees
The Bonus Podcast
Creating Employees Who Think, Act, and Care Like Owners
You care about your business.
But sometimes it feels like your employees just… don’t.
The Bonus Podcast explores how small-business owners can use bonuses, incentives, expectations and performance systems to create employees who make smarter decisions, take greater ownership and care about the success of the business.
Because paying employees more shouldn’t automatically mean making less. The right incentive system can help your employees earn more because they’re helping the business perform better.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Why give your employees a bonus in the first place?
Too many small-business owners give bonuses because they feel like they’re supposed to.
A good year ends. There’s some extra cash in the bank. Everyone worked hard. So the owner hands out some money and hopes it creates motivation, loyalty or better performance.
But if you don’t know what your bonus is supposed to accomplish, how can you know whether it worked?
A bonus is a tool. Every tool needs a job.
The Bonus Podcast helps owners think more intentionally about what they measure, what they reward and what behaviors their compensation systems are actually creating.
The big idea
If the business wins, employees should have an opportunity to win too.
Andrew believes a well-designed incentive plan should create upside for employees without requiring the owner to sacrifice the health or profitability of the business.
Employees should understand what success looks like, know how they can influence it and see how better results can create greater rewards.
The goal isn’t simply to pay people more. The goal is to build a business where employees have a reason to think, act and care more like owners.
One question. About ten minutes. No HR jargon.
Most episodes tackle one real question a small-business owner might ask Andrew during a coaching call. Episodes generally run about 7–13 minutes.
Bonus Plans
How much to pay, who should participate and how bonuses should work.
Profit & Performance
Connecting employee rewards to business results without sacrificing profitability.
Metrics & KPIs
Figuring out what employees can actually influence and what should be measured.
Motivation
What money can change—and what it can’t.
Fairness & Trust
Building incentive plans employees understand and believe in.
Employee Ownership
Creating people who make better decisions, take initiative and care about results.
Profit Sharing
When it works, when it doesn’t and how it differs from other incentives.
Culture & Behavior
Making sure your rewards reinforce the company you actually want to build.
Start With the Trailer
Listen to the trailer
You care about your business. But do your employees?
Read the trailer transcript
You care about your business. A lot.
But sometimes, it feels like your employees just… don’t.
They’re not taking ownership. They’re not making the decisions you would make. Maybe they’re doing the bare minimum, or you’re constantly worried your best people are going to leave.
And it’s easy to blame the culture, a new generation of workers, or assume that people just don’t care about work like they used to.
But what if the problem isn’t your people?
What if it’s how you’re incentivizing them?
I’m Andrew Lamppa, founder of Built to Benefit, and this is The Bonus Podcast: Creating Employees Who Think, Act, and Care Like Owners.
On this show, we’re going to rethink the way small business owners pay, reward, and incentivize their employees—because handing out a random bonus at the end of a good quarter isn’t a strategy.
We’ll talk about bonuses, profit sharing, incentive plans, employee retention, accountability, performance, and how to reward the people helping you grow your company without giving away the company.
Because I believe your employees can make more money while your business becomes more profitable. And with the right structure in place, they can become just as invested in the success of the business as you are.
If you want employees who think, act, and care like owners, you’re in the right place.
Welcome to The Bonus Podcast.
The first full episode is on its way. Follow on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to get it the day it’s out.
Episodes
Full episodes are on their way. Here’s what’s coming.
Coming soon · topics in the works
- Why Are You Giving Your Employees a Bonus?
- The Problem With Surprise Bonuses
- How to Make an Employee Bonus Plan Pay for Itself
- Why Most Bonus Plans Don’t Actually Change Behavior
- What Are You Accidentally Rewarding Right Now?
- Should You Bonus Someone for Doing Their Job?
- Never Bonus a Metric Employees Can’t Control
- The Employee Hit Every Goal—but the Company Lost Money. Now What?
- How Big Does a Bonus Need to Be to Actually Matter?
- How to Build an Incentive Plan Employees Actually Trust
Meet Andrew Lamppa
Andrew Lamppa is a business coach, former 25-employee business owner and founder of Built to Benefit.
Before coaching business owners, Andrew spent 14 years building and operating his own company, which was running at 4x his industry’s profitability and 8x his industry’s growth at the time it was acquired in 2018. Along the way, he became fascinated with a question many small-business owners struggle with:
How do you get employees to care about the success of the business without expecting them to act like owners while giving them none of the upside?
Today, Andrew works with small-business owners to improve employee ownership, performance, profitability and leadership systems.
The Bonus Podcast is where he explores one of his favorite pieces of that puzzle: how businesses pay, measure, reward and incentivize the people helping build them.
What Andrew Believes About Bonuses
01
Bonuses should have a purpose.
If you can’t explain what you’re trying to accomplish, you can’t know whether the bonus worked.
02
Employees should be able to influence the outcome.
Never build an incentive around something employees have no meaningful ability to affect.
03
Employees should be able to see the score.
People should understand what success looks like and how they’re performing.
04
Rewards should be predictable.
An employee shouldn’t need to guess what performance will produce what reward.
05
Bonus plans should protect profitability.
A good incentive plan should help create the additional performance that funds the reward.
06
Better results should create shared upside.
If employees help make the pie bigger, they should have an opportunity to participate in some of the upside.
Take The Bonus Podcast With You
One problem. One practical idea. Roughly ten minutes.
Listen on your drive to work, over lunch or whenever you have a few minutes to think about how to build a better business.
Follow The Bonus Podcast
Your employees can make more money while your business becomes more profitable.
The two don’t have to compete.
When employees understand what matters, can influence the result and share in the upside they help create, incentives can become much more than an extra check.
They can become part of how you build employees who think, act and care like owners.