We founded Fairness & Friends rewards company a year ago. Maybe it was a midlife crisis or something else, but we wanted to do our “own thing” and develop the field of compensation consulting in a slightly new way. We have great competitors in the market, and we understood from the start that if we wanted to join the ranks of trusted consultants, in addition to a solid set of basic services, we’d need to offer something new. So, a year ago, we began thinking about what had always bothered us about compensation—problems that seemed half-finished or unresolved—and whether we could solve them.
And that’s where it all started! By Christmas time 2024, our idea had come so far that we wrapped up contract negotiations with Reaktor and joined the wonderful group of companies at Fusion Ecosystem. This was a huge milestone for our entrepreneurial journey; people believe in our vision.
We are now working with Reaktor on a proof of concept of our tool and have reached a point where we can say that the idea we began exploring a year ago is technically feasible.
As I write this blog, we’re urgently searching for a pilot organization from which we could get anonymized job descriptions and job evaluation methodology-related materials to test.
Me? CEO?
The reason I became CEO is, I believe, a fairly typical story for friends going into business together: “How about you take the CEO role and I’ll be the chair of the board?” That pragmatic approach to dividing roles captures the early stages of entrepreneurship well—suddenly a subject-matter expert like me is also expected to handle a wide variety of other tasks. One hat truly isn’t enough. The only role I’ve managed to sidestep is buying coffee and toilet paper, mainly because we’ve been living as “office nomads.”
I expect this office homelessness to end this coming autumn, but honestly, we haven’t felt that being “officeless” equals being rootless. Becoming part of the Fusion Ecosystem through Reaktor’s ownersip has been incredibly important from this perspective, too. It was wonderful, in early January, to realize we have a large community of inspiring experts around us who help out in countless practical ways—and with whom we can collaborate, for example, on joint customer proposals. That community has also supported us at home, where we often work at the kitchen table.
“Lowest low and highest high”
When I look back on the past year, the toughest tasks have probably been those administrative ones I never encountered in my previous roles as an expert or researcher. I’ve occasionally felt lonely while wading through various websites for information. I’ve come to realize that this kind of sense of loneliness isn’t unusual, and that the fear of doing something wrong—especially when dealing with authorities—can be very real and even paralyzing.
My advice to fellow new entrepreneurs is to be honest about the limits of your expertise. If you don’t know, you don’t know—and there’s no shame in telling others that. The beauty of entrepreneurship is that you can shine in your own area of expertise, and there’s an endless supply of interesting problems to tackle. So go ahead and ask for help with tasks outside your core specialty; it doesn’t lessen your credibility—if anything, it enhances it.
What’s most wonderful about entrepreneurship is the contagious enthusiasm: when an idea you mulled over at the kitchen table with just a few people starts to attract other folks and experts who chime in with their own “what if…?” questions, transforming that cautious spark into a real product.
“The simplicity of the genre is attractive,” as the ironic Finnish saying goes
As for the compensation tool we’re building with Reaktor, our just-begun second year is still very much about creating and refining. In terms of compensation consulting, we already have effective processes to offer our clients. Yes, we face plenty of work and challenges, but we do it out of a deep love for what we do—because let’s be honest: who would dive into entrepreneurship if they didn’t feel that passion?
Published 070425 at Fusion Ecosystem website
