Gravity Payments employees: Taking care of the company and small business clients

BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) - Along 27th Street in Boise, it's all quiet at Gravity Payments.

During the coronavirus pandemic, all 50 employees are working from home.

"Basically, almost every single role of our company, there's at least one employee in Boise," explained Dan Price, CEO and founder of Gravity Payments.

Price said more than 200 employees company-wide... from Boise to Seattle and beyond... have volunteered to take temporary pay cuts as the pandemic takes hold.

His credit card processing company has lost about half its revenues as transactions drop from stay at home orders.

"We were losing upwards of a million dollars a month - even 1.5 million - but we figured out how to get it down to a million and so that meant 5-6 months maximum to turn things around," he explained.

Price never wanted to do layoffs.

But even before the pandemic hit, 98 percent of the company's workers had decided how much they'd cut from their own paychecks - with Price and another executive team member taking 100 percent pay cuts.

"If we are able to maintain the expense savings that our employees have sacrificed for, that takes our runway more to 10-12 months - so it doubles our time to recover," he said.

You may recall, Price made headlines in 2015, raising all employees' minimum pay to $70,000 a year.

You may think that is a driving factor in the employees' decision to give back.

But Price believes his workers are ultimately trying to put their 20,000 small business clients first.

"With small businesses up against a rope so bad - and it's so heartbreaking, and so terrifying - we feel like we have more of a difference to make and more good for small businesses in the next 16 months than we have in the last 16 years combined," he said.

In fact, the company most recently created "Small Business Champion."

It's a business referral, where folks can join as a contractor, helping Gravity Payments recruit and keep small businesses afloat during these tough times.

"We hope that some of those people will join the company full time once we recover and can start hiring again," Price said.

Price doesn't know exactly what the future holds - other than what most Americans are probably feeling.

... We'll figure it out as we go.

But at Gravity Payments, there's one thing you can't put a dollar amount on.

"I've spent my entire life building this, and now it's in jeopardy," Price said. "But I would rather lose my company than have anybody lose their health or their well being. And that's really, really important for us to put our health first in this circumstance. Because if our health goes away, the economic fall will still happen anyway, so we have to put our health first."

Price was named Entrepreneur Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 and won the 2010 National Young Entrepreneur of the Year award presented by President Obama.

He credits his mentor, Heather Hempel, of Moxie Java in Boise... for inspiration and guidance.

If you'd like to learn more, he's just published a new book... "Worth It" ... and it's found on major bookseller lists and local bookstores.

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