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How Cheers Health replaced gut-feel compensation with a verified framework their managers can use
Cheers Health is a fast-growing consumer wellness brand selling across direct-to-consumer and marketplace channels including Shopify, Amazon, TikTok, and major retail. With a lean team and aggressive growth targets, they had reached the point where compensation decisions could no longer be made the way they always had been: by feel, by what the last person asked for, and by hoping the number landed somewhere reasonable.
They needed a real compensation framework. Not a template. Not a spreadsheet someone drops in a folder and forgets about. Something their managers could pick up and use, that would hold up across performance reviews, new hire offers, and the retention conversations nobody wants to have too late.
Here's how we built it.
The Challenge
Compensation decisions made by instinct carry a specific kind of risk that compounds quietly.
The offer that seems fine in isolation turns out to be misaligned to market. The raise that feels generous is below what a competitor is quietly preparing to offer. The person who seemed happy wasn't unhappy, but they couldn't see where they were going, and someone eventually gave them a reason to look.
For Cheers, there was no single crisis point. The problem was the absence of a system. No benchmarks. No career path documentation. No way for a manager to walk into a compensation conversation with data instead of instinct. And no way to see who might be at risk before the conversation was already too late to have.
As the team grew and the business scaled across more geographies and more roles, that absence was going to become more expensive. The goal was to get ahead of it before it did.
The Solution
We built a full compensation and talent strategy for the Cheers team. Every deliverable was designed to be used immediately, without requiring a Head of People or a finance background to operate.
👉 Current State Snapshot — every person on the team benchmarked against real, current market data covering US and global roles. Each person tagged by where their compensation sits relative to market, so leadership could see at a glance who was aligned, who needed attention, and who was above range.
👉 Salary Reference Workbook — a ready-to-use reference built from multiple verified sources so the team never has to visit a salary site and try to figure out which number to trust. Country tabs for every geography the team works in, with current and forward-looking ranges at local, fully remote, and hybrid pay levels. Source verification tabs so any number can be checked against the original data in real time.
👉 Career Progression Maps — year one and year two paths for every person on the team, with real compensation at each level. So when a manager sits down with someone, they're not just looking at where that person is today. They can show them exactly where they could go and what the compensation looks like when they get there.
👉 Compensation Rubric — a step-by-step decision framework any manager can pick up without a finance background. Raises, promotions, new hire offers. Every decision goes through the same consistent process. The subjectivity is removed permanently, and every call is made against the same standard.
👉 Flight Risk Tracker — a seven-factor scoring model that flags who might be at risk of leaving before they say a word. Built to be run quarterly before review cycles. It tells the team who needs a conversation, what kind of conversation, and which lever is most likely to work for that specific person.
👉 Growth Motivation Profiles — a guide for understanding what actually drives each person beyond compensation. Built around five interview questions that surface whether someone is motivated by pay, career path, ownership, recognition, or skill development. Because defaulting to a raise is often the wrong answer, and knowing the difference before the conversation matters.
"The salary reference workbook was used as part of all of our performance and compensation reviews across the global team. The flight risk tracker is genuinely helpful. I could see us using this as we start to professionalize our HR, not over-complicate it, but have a place where we can see where everyone stands in one view."
Brooks Powell – CEO at Cheers
The Results
Cheers moved from making compensation decisions by feel to having a verified, documented framework their managers can use across every performance review, every offer, and every retention conversation.
6 core deliverables, built and live on day one. 100% of comp decisions now anchored to verified market data. 7 flight risk factors tracked per person, per quarter. And zero compensation conversations left to gut feel.
The workbook is live. The flight risk tracker is being run quarterly. The career progression maps give managers something real to point to when someone asks where they are going.
More importantly, the team now has a way to have compensation conversations before they become resignation conversations. The framework surfaces who needs attention and what kind, before someone else makes the first move.
Want to achieve the same results? Get in touch.
Get in touch via our website form and our team will get back to you to get started as soon as possible.
Don’t just take our word for it…
"I think getting that salary reference workbook updated every six months might be something we work with you guys on. Really, really appreciate our partnership."
Brooks Powell – CEO at Cheers
