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Not so clear on what you should pay yourself as the business owner?
What you pay yourself isn’t 100% of everything you make, but it isn’t 0% either. You would never expect someone to work for you for free, so you should not be working for free either!
While reinvesting 100% of all your profits to fuel your growth sounds great, this will only work for a short while. Now, I’m a proponent of this, but you need to give yourself a deadline for a paycheck.
Don’t wait until this indefinite time in the future to pay yourself. Make paying yourself a priority. Be organized enough in your finances to set aside enough to pay yourself and reinvest. Paying yourself needs to be a part of your larger financial plan. No matter how much money the business is making, the amount you’re making as a business owner will not change until you get organized with your finances and get a plan.
But you may be saying “but Marguerite, I make enough to pay myself and reinvest”. If you’re feeling like you can’t take money out because you aren’t making enough, you have to find a middle ground. You do not want to drain your account, but having money to invest in yourself and your business is key to building a sustainable business that’s positioned to flourish.
Now I understand maybe you don’t have enough for a full-time income. But you HAVE to pay yourself something.
Let’s say you worked at a corporation, your manager isn’t going to say hey we had a good month in sales, let’s give you a bonus. No, that’s not how it works. If you have a good month, slow months happen too, so you’d wait to see how things pan out over time. Instead, you’d say “hey we had a good year, let’s get you a year-end bonus”. You get a steady paycheck throughout the year, but that “bonus” you’d get would be based on your yearly performance.
Listen to the full episode to learn how to “double-dip” in paying yourself…
