In this practical episode episode, Jody K. Thelander, CEO of J. Thelander Consulting and Morgan Thelander, COO of J. Thelander Consulting, shares how how to fix messy compensation structures using market data. If you struggle with inconsistent pay and retention risks, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- How to use surveys for free, tailored market comp insights

- Why balancing cash and equity prevents talent flight

- What data-driven plans avoid emotional comp pitfalls


This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 4 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz


Jody and Morgan Thelander are a powerful mother/daughter duo. The team behind J. Thelander Consulting (recently featured in Forbes) brings unmatched expertise in executive compensation, founder strategy, and leadership alignment at growth-stage companies. They’ve built a reputation for translating complex compensation data into actionable strategies that help founders attract and retain top talent while navigating the scaling journey. Their perspective is especially valuable for your listeners because it bridges the human and financial sides of growth: how leaders get compensated, how to shape culture, and how alignment at the top sets the tone for long-term success.

Want to learn more about Jody K. Thelander and Morgan Thelander's work at J. Thelander Consulting? Check out his website at https://jthelander.com/

Check out this survey at https://survey.jthelander.com/

Connect with Jody K. Thelander at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jody-thelander/

Connect with Morgan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgan-thelander/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the Start scale and succeed podcast. It's the only podcast

that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as

a founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and today I want to

talk to founders who've built their team one handshake deal at

a time. You know exactly who you are, and now you find yourself

staring at a spreadsheet that makes no sense. There's dollars

everywhere, there's metrics everywhere, and it's just all

nonsense. You've got someone that you've hired in year one

who's making more than someone else who's been doing that job

better. In year three, you've got people being paid for all

kinds of things. You have people with titles that we've used to

compensate for a lack of compensation, and it's all just

a big mess. You know, it can't keep up, but you don't know how

to move forward. And here's what makes it even heavier, is all

the complexity of it. It's not just numbers, it's the emotions

and the relationships and the fear of what could go wrong if

you get it wrong. And so how do we do it? How do we tackle this

compensation challenge? How do we build a streamlined

compensation strategy? Well, today's guests are uniquely

qualified to help us navigate these waters. Today, we have a

duo with us, both Jody and Morgan Thelander, who are a

powerful mother daughter duo, the team behind J. Thelander

Consulting recently featured in Forbes, brings unmatched

expertise in executive compensation, founder strategy

and leadership alignment at growth stage. Companies, they've

built a reputation for translating complex compensation

data into actionable strategies that help founders attract and

retain top talent while navigating the scaling journey.

Their perspective is especially valuable because it bridges the

human and financial sides of growth, how leaders get

compensated, how to shape culture and how alignment at the

top sets the tone for long term success. Well. Jody, Morgan,

welcome it's a rare day that we get to have two guests on at

once. I'm excited to jump in here. My first question for the

two of you out of the gate is, you've been doing this together

for a really long time. You've worked with 1000s of private

companies. What would you say is the most common mistake that you

see founders make when they start building out that like

real executive team?

Well, I'll jump in because I'm the OG of the

house. So I started the company 30 years ago, and Morgan's been

with the firm for almost 10 which is great. And yes, she is

my daughter. I mean, I would say the number one mistake, and I

love the way you said it, that it's a combination of looking at

maybe a cap table and terms, and then the emotional side behind

it, and then hiring somebody and putting them in a more senior

role, because it seems great at the time, but then you end up

hiring someone else who is actually more senior, and you're

a little bit in a log jam. So I think the number one thing that

would that you've got to do is to really plan it is never too

early to make sure that you look back. I mean, they're people

like us right there. There is no excuse not to get it right, and

it's got to be a priority.

Yeah. So there's this transition that

happens, and it's not all at once, but it builds and builds

and builds. And we move from this kind of one off employment

deal, right, like over a handshake, whatever it takes to

get them in the door, to an actual compensation strategy.

Tell us, what does that shift look like, and why do you find

that so many founders resist making that until they're

already in trouble?

I don't know if it's so much that they resist

it, that they just don't know, or it's their first company, and

they're a first time founder, CEO, and they don't have the

resources, or they don't know what resources exist. But I

think the biggest thing, kind of jumping on what Jody said, is

that taking the time to put the formality in place, and having a

compensation structure and having a compensation philosophy

that starts at the top, and it trickles down from there, and

especially from the founder perspective, you only get

founder equity one time. So making sure that you get that

mix of cash and equity correct from the beginning is really

you'll never regret that ever.

And also, to bring you back on what Morgan's

saying is, you have a lot of founders make the mistake that

it will work itself out, or that their board or investors will

take care of it. And I would say that's the the worst thing to

do, because if you really want to be a baller CEO, and you're

innovative and you're entrepreneurial, but you also

want to be successful, you've got to cover both sides of the

innovation as well as the real business side of it, and take

the bull by the horns. It is not you can't catch and receive the

ball like you've got to be able to have a plan and execute.

No joke. This actually just happened last

week. I was sitting down with a client, and he had been working

on a compensation strategy, and he was like, just the most

disappointed I'd ever seen him. And they're having this great

year. It's literally record setting year he's gonna make the

most profit he's ever made before. Sure, and the defining

emotion he's feeling is like this, like I'm doing this. And

it's interesting how it seems that there are a lot of things

that are getting more complicated. There are a lot of

things that require them to think differently as founders,

to become CEOs. But for some reason, compensation hits a

nerve. It starts to hit some of those imposter syndrome

impulses. It starts to feel like handcuffs for folks. Why is it

that there's so much emotion in this topic?

Because I think people are they feel like

talking about money is a problem. That's what I think. I

don't know. Morgan Do you have a different opinion?

I think it depends on the generation,

right? I The younger generation. They are much more comfortable

talking about what they're getting paid and what their

salaries look like. And I think older people, for lack of a

better word, maybe more seasoned executives,

Morgan, I'll take it as the OG right people

my age

wouldn't do it. It just that pay

transparency hasn't been there, and the need for it has not

existed in the past. And part of it is really, I mean, we work

with a lot of recruiters, and the compensation is really

personal to everybody, and everybody has different

realities and different situations, and we've

historically have seen more of a trade off between the cash or

the equity piece, and that's really evolved with how the

markets have too, especially for private companies, with

financing taking longer, runways taking longer. You can't

necessarily make that trade off for cash or equity, and you

really what we are data shows, too, is that you need both.

I'm glad you brought us back there, because

that was actually my next question, because it gets real

complicated. I love the way that you put it. You get your founder

equity once, and I think that while most of us couldn't

articulate it that clearly, we feel it that clearly, and

there's a sense of how does equity fit in this with a first

time founder, right? Who's in this stage of building an

executive team for the first time, they've had some success.

Maybe some of those people have been a big part of that success.

It feels to me like oftentimes the equity conversation is just

kind of like, forgive the French, but like a wild ass

guess it's like, oh, this is a number that makes sense. How can

a founder think about it more rationally? Sounds bad, but

like, in a more strategic way,

they got to use the data. I mean, we just got

off a call with a top tier VC firm and the guy who had

compensation for all the portfolio companies, and we were

just having this conversation, and we looked at multiple cuts

of data by different financing, by different industries, like a

job title, a CEO. And it is almost uncanny how stable the

data is. Looking at the averages and the medians were worth like,

within certain point, 00, you know, one three of each other,

like, really close. So the market is very stable. What you

decide to do with this is up to you. Like, but there's really no

reason if you make a mistake in either direction as a founder

giving equity, either you give somebody too much, and then

there are problems even if you give yourself too much, because,

you know, we spent a lot of time talking to founders, and it

comes up that the board asks them to give back equity when

they do their next round because they still have too much. So

they asked them to sort of reset the vesting and give some equity

back, which is really not anybody's favorite thing to do.

And also, if you give somebody too little than the playing the

catch up. If that snowball starts, you know, rolling down

the hill, it's really hard to stop that and fix it, because

there becomes too big of a divide between where someone is

and where somebody should be. So it's equally bad on both sides.

Yeah, yeah, too.

Is that really we look at to get the mix of

cash and equity correct, especially on the equity side,

is how much capital A company has raised. You can look at it

also by revenue, if they have revenue, but the total amount of

financing is the most reliable way to customize the

compensation data.

The simplest, because everyone starts to make

it crazy. How about this location? How about that

location? How about, you know, all these other factors in your

head count. You know, valuation, so not necessary. It really is

not a complicated algorithm.

Yeah, that's so good. So I have, I have this

question that I like to ask all my guests. I'm interested to see

what the two of you have to say, especially in the context of

compensation. But the question is this, and Morgan, we'll start

with you. What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish

wasn't a secret at all? What's that one thing you wish

everybody watching or listening today knew?

I get asked a lot of what the difference with

our data is to. To other resources, and why somebody like

why even a compensation survey matters? And the part that I

would say back to it, that I wish wasn't a secret, is it's

really so easy and simple to get it right, and if you take the

time to invest early on, you'll it'll pay off tenfold down the

road, and what seems like you have no time for is worth

putting 30 minutes aside on your calendar to make sure you get it

right. Because exactly even what Jody was saying a moment ago,

everything is predicated on how right you get it in the

beginning, especially those equity percentages. And if you

have somebody who's really valuable to the company, and you

want them to have skin in the game and be aligned with the

performance of the company. That is the secret sauce and the

special sauce of a private company, which is the equity

component.

It's so good, so good. Jodi, same question for

you, what's the biggest secret you wish wasn't a secret at all?

What's that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening

today knew?

it will not work out on its own. The UK, you

know, you there is no way to pretend it's like the dog who's

under the bed who can't see you but their tail is sticking out.

You know, you're like, that is not going to help you. This

needs to be addressed. It's so important because we know

entrepreneurs are really passionate. They start these

companies because they can't help themselves, and they're,

you know, patient care or boiling the oceans, whatever

they're going to do, and the worst thing is for someone to

find out the hard way that they didn't plan for this. There was

a liquidity event. Now they're having conflict with the board

because they're not going to have wealth creation or it

didn't work out in their favor, and we hate to see that. So for

you entrepreneurs or founders out there, you got to make sure

you take care of your got to put your house in order.

So true. So on that note, what is the next

step? So if someone's there, a lot of folks are thinking about

this this time of year, and they've just never taken a

formal approach to it. What's the next step that they can

take, starting today?

Well, I mean, you can't hate us for this,

since we run a compensation data and consulting firm participate

in a Thelander survey, because it's free. It whatever job

information you fill in, let's say you fill in the cash and

equity for five roles. You get that those five roles back for

no charge. So I'd love for you to do it with us, but if not us,

I don't even really know who else, but at least don't use,

you know, don't just google this or put it in on an AI tool that

you really got to make sure that you have the right resource.

Yeah, so good, so good. Well. Jody Morgan,

thank you so much for being on really was a privilege and

honor. Having you here today, and for those of you watching

and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the

world to us, I hope you got as much out of this conversation as

I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.