Who Gets Paid First

Keep Your Marines Informed

There is an old rule in the Marine Corps: keep your Marines informed. When Marines are not kept informed, the problems are predictable. Junior Marines do the wrong thing because nobody told them the right thing. Senior Marines make mistakes because they are working off rumor. Morale goes in the dirt, not because the news is bad, but because there is no news at all. The rule is not complicated, and it does not expire when you take the uniform off. It applies to employees, contractors, volunteers, and anybody else who shows up for you. Money is the right place to start, because money is the thing people wonder about the most and talk about the least. So this morning, after another night of working until I was half passed out on my desk, I wrote my team an email about money. Nobody asked me to, and I wrote it because I have watched what happens to a unit when nobody knows what is going on. I would rather my people know exactly how the bills get paid than guess, and it is the email I wish more leaders would write. They already see the invoices and most of what comes in and goes out. What they did not have was the order of operations, and the order is the part that explains every decision I make.

The Order

Sgt. Wesley Hillis, a section leader with 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, briefs his Marines before a machine gun range at Marine Corps Base Twentynine Palms, California, May 23, 2011. Photo: U.S. Marine Corps. Public domain. The appearance of U.S. Department of War (DoW) visual information does not imply or constitute DoW endorsement.

The first things that get paid every month are the things that keep the company running: email, the phone system, the servers behind the EPS Portal and the website, the office, phones, internet, and a pile of smaller things nobody thinks about until they stop working. None of it is glamorous, and all of it is the difference between a company and a hobby. No phone, I cannot talk to a client. No internet, I cannot build or teach a course. No Portal, I cannot certify anybody. No email, I cannot send a quote. No phone system, I cannot make or take a call. Operating costs come first because without them there is nothing to pay anyone for. After operating costs come the people, salaries and contractors. After the people comes everything else, including what we are still climbing out from under after last November, which I wrote about two weeks ago. That issue is still being addressed, and we are hopefully almost out of it.

The Rent

Here is what that order looks like in a normal week. The office rent is due, there is a late fee waiting on the other side of the due date, and my people need to get paid so they can pay their own bills. So the decision goes like this: pay the team first, then either make the rent on time or eat the late fee. Then I look at the calendar and run the math. How much can I realistically bring in over the next three days? Who am I talking to right now? Which clients need a follow-up? Which levers do I actually have? A late fee is a cost. A person who cannot pay their rent because I protected mine is a different kind of cost, and I am not willing to pay that one. That decision is maybe three percent of my day, and it is the three percent nobody on the team ever sees, which is exactly why I wrote it down for them.

The other ninety-seven percent is making mission: building courses, finding and editing video, teaching, helping students, verifying every employer that registers on our platform, chasing payments, writing quotes, keeping the website and the Portal running, licensing paperwork with the state, shutting down the scammers who try to use our platform, writing these articles, and then some. That is before the volunteer shifts at the firehouse and with the Red Cross, the free training we run to build the company's name, and the calls to companies to get their recruiters onto our platform. The IT work I am doing for a new client right now is paying the people and the bills. It is not paying me. I could not tell you the last time I took a paycheck. Probably October of last year. I am not saying that for sympathy. I am saying it because my team now knows it, and a team that knows where the money goes can carry a lot.

The Other Kind of Leader

Capt. Michael Gagnon briefs his Marines at Patrol Base Alcatraz, Afghanistan, October 20, 2011, the day before a mission in the Helmand River valley. Photo by Cpl. Brian Adam Jones, U.S. Marine Corps. Public domain. The appearance of U.S. Department of War (DoW) visual information does not imply or constitute DoW endorsement.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the leaders who answer a staffing plan with their résumé, and I said what I still believe: titles and margins are temporary, they are going to die like the rest of us, and hopefully their bad ideas die with them. This email is one of the many ways I make sure I am nothing like them. I keep my Marines informed. I keep my contractors informed. I keep my employees informed, and I am an open book about what is going on, the decisions being made, and how I am making them. Not the line items, nobody is walking the whole company through every bill, but the reasoning, every time. And I am always open to somebody improving the system. My web developer just moved one of our servers to a cheaper host and saved us somewhere around fifty dollars a month in fees. Some people throw fifty dollars in the trash without noticing. If you have ever had to make payroll, you know that fifty dollars a month is real money, and you thank the man who found it.

That executive with the red line got a free plan from me that stayed under his own number, and he answered it with his résumé, for no reason I have ever figured out except that he could. Humans have a reflex I call self-preservation, and self-preservation is beautiful because it shows you somebody's true character faster than anything else. Anybody I have mentored has heard me talk about it, my students have probably heard it too, and so have a few casual friends who never asked. It is the reflex that says I did not do it, he did it, the second something goes wrong. It is ugly, and I make it a point not to do it. I did not do it when I worked for somebody else, and I do not do it now that I work for myself. If the only move you have is to point at somebody else so you can keep the job, keep the job. You will lose it eventually anyway, and I do not have the energy for it. If somebody who worked for me did that, I would fire them.

Moral of the story: there are plenty of people out there who would rather do the wrong thing. I am not one of them, and I am still learning every single time. The Marine Corps has eleven leadership principles. Keep your Marines informed is number four. Know yourself and seek self-improvement is number one. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions is number eleven. I did not invent any of it, I just still live by it. Memento mori.

Mahalo for reading. This piece first ran on the EPS Dispatch on Substack: Who Gets Paid First. Subscribe there to get the next one by email.

About the Author

Kawika Rogers is Managing Partner at Eight Point Solutions LLC, a veteran-led defense consulting and training firm based in Maryland. He served as an Infantry Team Leader in the United States Marine Corps, then directed the Field Training Officer program and served as an Armorer for Triple Canopy at Camp Arifjan and Camp Buehring in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. He has also served in an advisory and operational capacity in Eastern Europe. Rogers holds over 15 instructor certifications in firearms, defensive tactics, and emergency medicine, and studied International Relations and Global Security at American Military University.

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This assessment is based on publicly available, open-source intelligence. It does not contain classified information. Distribution is authorized for public release.