Podcast

Episode 561: How I Started Paying Myself A Consistent Salary From My Business

I used to treat paying myself like a nice-to-have. In this episode I share the behind-the-scenes of how that thinking kept my business feeling like a hobby even when I was working so hard on it. 

You’ll hear the messy middle too – why I changed jobs so I could have more time for my business without more financial pressure, the vague “replace my income” goal that didn’t help me make more money and the moment I created some positive pressure that quietly changed everything. 

If you’ve been waiting for a big cash month to finally be able to start paying yourself consistently, this will offer a different way forward.

Resources to help you get out of your own way in your business:

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.

Sam Laura Brown (Custom introduction)
Today’s episode is a chatty one that I recorded when I was just feeling inspired to talk about how I started paying myself a consistent salary from my business. This this is something that I work on with almost all of my one on one clients, if not all of them, because you don’t just want to have with your business consistent revenue, consistent sales, that is important, for sure. But what you want is consistent personal income and to not have to feel like it’s a hobby. Because when it’s a hobby that is when you paying yourself is negotiable, and you pay yourself with what’s left over on top, if there happens to be anything left after you’ve paid your expenses, or you’re just not paying yourself at all. There’s so many ways that it can show up the negotiable salary, and we want to have you having a non negotiable salary that you are actually able to pay yourself consistently from your business, that is one of the most tangible ways to go from feeling like your business is a hobby to feeling like it is a real business.

So in this episode, I’m just sharing with you the story of how I started paying myself a consistent salary, some of the mistakes that I was making when it came to this, and then what I did to actually be able to pay myself a consistent salary, which I have been paying myself ever since, no matter what’s been going on in the business, we’ve been incredibly profitable when we’ve had years that weren’t profitable, and everything in between that I have paid myself consistently, and this episode, what I share in this episode was really the start of it and having those shifts. So I hope you find this episode helpful.

Sam Laura Brown
I want to share a story about paying yourself that I think it’s really important to share. If you feel like you have a hobby business. Part of that like, I’ve really been studying this, because so many perfectionists that I work with, when they come to me, they feel like their business is a hobby, even though they’re working so hard at it, it’s the main thing they think about. It feels like a hobby. And so I’ve really been dissecting why is that like, Why does it feel like a hobby? And I think there’s a few things that go into that, and one of them is when it comes to paying yourself, if you are literally not paying yourself or and I see typically two ways with my one on one clients, they’re not paying themselves at all because they need to make more money first to be able to pay themselves, and they want to be able to pay themselves consistently, so they need to wait to be able to start paying themselves.

And there’s that, or there’s they see what’s in the business bank account at the end of the month or the week, or however, often they pay themselves, and then they transfer that across to their personal account. And it’s very much like, Well, if there’s excess money, then I’ll pay myself. And I really think that approach to business is what makes it feel like a hobby, because that’s literally how you would approach an actual hobby business. Like, if we think about how we approach a hobby versus a business or a job, a hobby is kind of like, I’ll do what I feel like. When I feel like it’s this, kind of like, I’m doing it purely for the enjoyment of it. And everything is really negotiable and can change, and that’s not a bad thing. Some of that mindset around hobbies can be really helpful to have in business. But, but, but, but, we want to keep the curiosity, we want to keep the experimentation.

We want to keep it feeling light and fun and enjoyable. That’s great. But when it comes to business, if you feel like you have a hobby business, a big part of that is because you’re paying yourself like there’s a hobby business. So you’re either doing what I said before, you’re either paying yourself not at all just waiting to have this like big windfall, and then you will start paying yourself, or you are paying yourself with what’s left over. And this is why, one of the key things that we do in my one on one coaching at some point during the coaching container, when it makes sense for the client, is we will look at the financial side when it comes to paying themselves, and how like the specific steps for them to based on their situation, to be able to pay themselves consistently, in a way that doesn’t freak them out, in a way that doesn’t put this unnecessary pressure on them.

But it is a really important shift to make, to be able to go from not paying yourself or paying yourself sporadically to paying yourself consistently, because when you are paying yourself consistently, you will feel so much more like a real business owner because you’re not making payment to yourself. Being negotiable, that’s a hobby thing to do. And if you think about as well in a job, you aren’t they’re not. Like, okay, well, we’re paid this month. If there’s money, you know, if there’s profit left over in the business or whatever, then we’ll pay you. Otherwise, you know, I hope you enjoyed it and had a good time, but we’re not going to pay you or, like, we’re just not making enough money yet to pay you. Hopefully, one day we will be, you kind of be like, well, that’s not going to work for me.

But in business, we just say, Okay, well, that’ll work for me if I just treat this like a negotiable thing instead of, okay, this is what I can start paying myself now. This is what I want to build it up to, and this is my specific plan to get there, which is typically consistent sales, and that’s one of the key results that we work on together in the one on one coaching. And here’s exactly what that’s going to look like. And here’s some obstacles that might come up. Here’s my plan for overcoming them. We do that work together so that you literally stop treating your business like a hobby, because if you are paying yourself sporadically or not at all, that’s a key reason it feels like a hobby. You are literally treating it like a hobby.

So here’s what happened for me when it came to figuring out, like paying myself and all of that. So initially, when I first started my business, I didn’t pay myself anything. It felt like a hobby. I didn’t pay myself anything, and I didn’t have anything for sale. I didn’t have a product. I didn’t have anything for sale. I wasn’t like, there was no way for me to actually make revenue. I was not selling anything. I had nothing to deliver. I was just creating content. I was just, like, trying to get to a point of consistent marketing for my business. And I figured that out, and I teach that now in PGSD, how to go from like the inconsistent marketing and showing up that happens when our perfectionism handbrake is on to actually being able to market consistently. So then I started making sales, and it was sporadic at first. So with my one on one clients, we I we work on consistent sales. That’s the result you get. But it always starts with sporadic sales. So that’s where I started too.

So sporadic sales, I was just in this mentality. So my goal had always been, I want to be able to have, like, be full time in my business. I want to be able to have that. When I say that, I don’t mean like, I have to work full time, nine to five hours. What I meant was, I want a full time income. So now what I have, I have a full time income, or more than that, a full time income on part time hours, and that’s what I wanted. So when it came to figuring that out, my plan for that, by the time that came around, my plan for that was, I’m going to do a big launch, and I’m going to make, I think my goal was maybe like I wanted to make, I have $100,000 a year, for sure. That was a massive goal for me, but I’m going to do a launch. I’ll make $50,000 in that launch, which I’ve never done anything like that before. Gonna make $50,000 in this launch, and then I’m going to be able to start paying myself and be able to replace my income, and be able to go full time in my business.

And what happened was that made paying myself so far away and put so much pressure on, like I have to do this big, crazy thing that I’ve never done before, and I have to pull that off perfectly before I can even start paying myself. So that’s that perfectionist or nothing mindset. Such a good example of it comes up a lot. So I was in that mentality of, like, I need to do something big. I need to do something I’ve never done before, which, of course, had me go into procrasti-learning, which, of course, had me feeling overwhelmed as well. So I carried on like that for a while, and I didn’t even know specifically I like, had this vague goal, as we often do, of like, I want to replace my income from my job. So I didn’t have a specific figure in mind and a date or anything like that. It was just like, I want to replace my income, and I know roughly what that is.

So if my business can just make what my income is, then I will be able to leave. Was my thinking. But what actually needed to happen, and this is how I was actually able to pay myself, is there’s a few things that happen. One is that I realized at a certain point I needed some positive pressure. So when I left my full time job as an accountant and went to a part time job, I was at a place where I didn’t want any financial pressure on the business. It felt too fragile, like my my identity and what I was doing like it felt like such a big league to even leave the job that then having to have the business make enough money to pay myself of like a full time income just felt like way. Too big a leap, like way too much pressure on myself, that I felt like I would crack under the pressure. So I didn’t do that. I went to a part time job that I could work in the afternoons. It paid a better hourly rate than my accounting job, even though it was a reception job, it paid a better hourly rate so that I could work all day until 3pm in my business, and then I could go work for a few hours in the evening at this reception job.

So I was just in a place then, like, I didn’t want any pressure on the business to make money. Then fast forward about a year, and I was like, me not having to make any money from my business at this point now, and this is where a lot of my one on one clients will be with things. Not having to make money in my business is actually kind of like, I’m using that as an excuse to not have to show up and sell and put myself out there and like, it’s kind of like this security blanket because I don’t have to make money, because I’m getting my full time income, if you will, from the job that I’m working, the reception job. It’s paying the mortgage, it’s paying the groceries. Like I don’t actually need any of the money from my business, and I could see like that was actually making me, like, giving me an excuse, or I was using it as an excuse not to show up when I did want to show up. But it felt scary. So I’d be like, well, you know, it’s okay if I make if I don’t make any money this month, or I make less than I plan, because I’m not actually relying on that income at all.

So what I did because I wanted to start paying myself, but it felt so scary. What I did was I started just paying myself. I think it was maybe like, $400 a week, and it wasn’t even going to like, it wasn’t proper pay, like on a payroll or anything. I just started having that money go out of my business account and into a different savings account within my business. But I wanted to create the experience of like, needing money in my business, and even if I didn’t need it for my personal expenses, that my business needed the money. And so that was such an important step in me being able to go full time just creating some positive pressure. At first, I didn’t want any pressure. I just needed to have the freedom to, like, be able to try anything and think long term. And then at some point, I was like, I need to actually put myself on the hook a little bit here.

So I did that, and I was having that money come out. And then what I noticed was a couple things. One is my goal around when I would go full time was such a vague thing. It was just, like, always, you know, hopefully soon, like, basically, I want to do it yesterday. So I can’t even set a goal for the future, because I’m already behind. So if I set a goal, that makes me feel even more behind, because I’m not going to get it today. And so what I did was I noticed that, and I noticed that I hadn’t done the math. And so I do this with a lot of my one on one clients. We’re like, we go into the specifics of the math to do, but I hadn’t done the math on what I actually needed to make to be able to replace my income. Because, sure, there’s my personal income, but the business, if literally, the business just makes exactly what I make personally. It doesn’t have money to pay its expenses, like the business has expenses that are different to my personal expenses I want to be able to invest. There’s taxes, so the business actually needs to be able to make more than I personally want to make.

And I hadn’t done the math of that, so I did the math, and I figured out exactly what that would look like. It was a bigger number than I wanted. Than I wanted it to be. Part of the reason why I had avoided it initially, but I had clarity on that. And then also what happened to support me going full time was I set a time frame for when I would actually be making a full time income. And I also do this with my one on one clients. We go through exactly what that looks like, because you don’t because you don’t want it to be like too there’s a few really important considerations to make, but you don’t want it to be too soon. You don’t need to be too far away. So there’s a few other things as well. So I set a timeframe, and then what I did was, instead of focusing on I need to have this, like big launch where I make a big amount of money and can just pay myself and then leave.

What I did instead was I focus on consistent sales. Is what we do in the one on one coaching consistent sales instead of, can I just have this, like, big event happen? Can I have consistent sales? And I wanted to have, I had a target in mind, and to do that three months in a row, to be able to leave. And that was all based on the math that I did and that I helped my one on one clients with that we go through together. So when I had those parameters set up, I had the clarity in a really self supportive way. It wasn’t freaking me out, but it was putting me on the hook once I had that, then the ideas that were right under my noise that I had I hadn’t even seen before, so many ideas came up for things that I could do to actually have that happen. And then and with sub. Support as well for my coach at the time. Then as those ideas came up, I was able to follow them and execute on them and go full time and be able to make that full time income, to be able to meet, okay, I want to make this amount every month for three months, and to know, not just like that was a good month, but, like, that’s, that’s the new standard, and once I did that, which didn’t take that long.

So I’m just thinking of timeframes. I think it was August. Let me think August 2018 where I was like, Okay, I need some positive pressure. Like, I’m needing to invest in myself. I need to put myself on the hook. I was also resenting my part time job as well, and so I had to flip that mindset as well, because that was draining my energy to resent that job, and that was giving me less energy for my personal life and less energy for my business. Just all the resentment was so draining, and being like I could be working right now on things like that just drained me so much. So there was that work. And really it was over a series of, when did I launch PGSD? That was May or April or May 2019 so within a year, I was full time, and I made $150,000 in my business. I think I’d tripled on the revenue from the year before. I hadn’t worked more out, like I wasn’t working harder, I was just in alignment with what I wanted to do, and willing to navigate the ups and downs of that, and supporting myself and receiving support, such an important one, receiving support. I was getting coaching.

I had a community like I was, had business friends that I was meeting up with and talking to and things like that. That all meant that I could go from having started my business in 2013 to then in 2016 I made my first dollar three years later. And then in 2019 I had made over 100k and I left my part time job because I could now make a full time salary from my business. And then, since then, so it’s now 2025 I’m a twin mum of four, so four little ones, 422, and a half year olds and a four month old. And then I had Lydia in 2021 so then the last few years have really all been focused on building our family, having kids, and being able to keep having that, that income and the sales, and not just that, but like having the freedom I want in the business, which is being able to be self expressed, being able to have the freedom to grow and to evolve, and having the freedom to do what I’m interested in doing, all of that, figuring out how to do that with one baby, and then how to do that with three three babies, which was such a wild ride.

I have learned so many lessons, particularly from like the year after having the twins, and my gosh, so that, and then now having a fourth, and now I feel like I’m coming into the next wave of things, like I’m I don’t know it’s exciting, but all of that to say, and going off an intangent, all of that to say, we pay myself, the reality I’m in now where I can pay myself and do that very consistently, it’s just a non negotiable. Even when I’m having babies and having lots of time with them, and not wanting to work as much as before, and wanting to have time with my kids, and then time by myself and things like that that it all started with having that clarity in a really self supportive way, having the support as well from others, because it kind of sounds crazy, and as much as other people love us in our lives, but if we’re doing something we have no evidence that we can do, and they haven’t seen others doing it like it’s not a typical thing, then as much as they believe in us and in what’s what we’re capable of, it’s not really the kind of support, like the that doesn’t meet all our support needs, is what I’m trying to say.

So having that support from a coach, having community and friends that I talk to on the business journey, is what our pgsc is have in the community as well, and in the one on one coaching, you have WhatsApp access to me and can just message me at any time. So just having that and having that clarity and the focus on consistent sales, instead of like, I’m gonna have a big, big launch event, and then I’m gonna make a lot of money all at once, and then I can leave that all or nothing. Thinking actually kept me apart from the solution. But when I really started focusing on, okay, how can I make consistent sales in a really aligned way that feels like me, then my brain was able, like I had, to make those mindset and energetic shifts. And once I did that, then my brain was able to find the answer to that, and to execute on that and to do it.

And it was just, like, such a fun, such a fun thing to do, and like, just where you blow your own mind. Like, I, I always wanted to have a full time income for my business, and I, like, at first, that felt like a crazy, crazy dream to have, and now I’m doing it, and not even that, like now I’ve been making a full time income from my business for more than five years. 2019, six years. Actually, it will have been six years last month, the month before. So being in a place now where I’ve been able to do that while having four kids, including twins. It just all started with those first, first things that I set in motion. And when I raise the standard from it’s negotiable to pay myself to its non negotiable. So I really love supporting my one on one clients with that. It makes such a difference, particularly if they’re feeling like they have a hobby business and maybe they’re getting supported from a job.

Typically, a lot of my clients as well, their spouse is providing all of the income that pays their mortgage and childcare or different things like that, or they have savings that they’re relying on. So they’re kind of in this state of like it’s negotiable to make money from the business, and we don’t want to put a heap of pressure on you that is unnecessary, but sometimes a bit of positive pressure and supportive clarity, plus getting support and having that available on demand, it just is what is able to turn like, that full time income from this kind of like far out one day, someday, maybe dream to like actually, that is my reality. So if you want to do that work with me, I do have spots open at the moment for one on one coaching, and that is one of the things that we will do to have you making consistent sales in an aligned, self-trusting way that you love that is really doubling down on your hidden sales strengths. I’ll identify them for you, because they’re sometimes, oftentimes, almost all the time, very hard to spot for yourself, just because of the way our perfectionist brain works, and we only see the insufficiencies and the imperfections and and what needs to be fixed and then how we’re doing it wrong, but I do have spots open for one on one coaching at the moment.

So if you’re interested, just DM me and say I’m interested in one on one coaching, or I’m interested in working with you privately, and I will send you some more details. And if you’re interested as well, we can have a call and talk about it some more. Yeah, so let me know if you want to do that, but I just hope it’s helpful as well to hear about the important shift that needs to happen in paying yourself to have it go from being this negotiable thing to being a non negotiable so that you can go from hobby business to real business.

Outro
I currently have a few spots open to work with me privately to create consistent sales in your business. This really is a matter of learning how to work with your perfectionist mindset instead of against it, so you can show up in a way that not only creates connection, but actually creates sales, even if you’re not working every day, even if you are shy, even if you are scared of feeling salesy, what I do with my one on one clients is we create together a strategy that works for you specifically. It’s very personalized and tailored exactly to you and your business no matter what kind of business you have, that has you making sales. So if you feel like you have a hobby business at the moment, and you want to have a real business, then learning how to make consistent sales in your business so you can pay yourself consistently as well. That is the shift, and that’s the exact work that I do with my one on one client. So to find out more and apply today, go to samlaurabrown.com/coaching.

Author: Sam Brown