Thursday, September 17, 2026
If your best salesperson or only bookkeeper vanished tomorrow, would the business survive? Here's the audit that finds your hidden risk points.
Last updated 13 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: United States.
The business paid everyone this month — the team, the suppliers, the landlord. You paid yourself what was left over, which this month was less than last month, and you've stopped mentioning it out loud. You want growth that actually shows up in your own account, not just the business's. What you've actually built is a company that's getting bigger while quietly training you to expect less for yourself, one skipped pay run at a time.
62% of US small business owners have reduced or skipped their own pay at least once in the past year, and 21% have done it four times or more, according to Bluevine's 2026 research (Bluevine, 2026). "Things settling down" isn't a milestone that arrives on its own — it's a decision, and most businesses are structured so there's always a plausible reason to put it off one more month. Growing revenue without growing what lands in your own account isn't really growth. It's a bigger version of the same squeeze.
Mike Michalowicz's Profit First approach flips the usual order of operations. Instead of Sales minus Expenses equals Profit — where owner pay and profit are whatever's left after everything else — it forces Sales minus Profit (and owner pay) equals Expenses, by physically moving set percentages into separate accounts the moment money comes in.
Kevin didn't learn this lesson purely from the outside looking in. Even as a coach, he hired an Icehouse coach of his own to accelerate his growth — a reminder that this isn't about willpower or sacrifice; it's about having someone outside the business enforce a structure you won't reliably enforce on yourself, under pressure, every single month. He's also open with clients that his own run of nine companies founded or co-founded includes genuine failures as well as wins, and that the discipline of paying yourself properly is one of the lessons that cost him real money to learn the hard way, so his clients don't have to.
"Kevin's knowledge and intellect on all things business — no matter what industry it is — he just seems to find gems that you can focus on. I catch up with Kevin once a week and it is definitely the highlight of my week. He just sees different opportunities so clearly."
John Roberts
Co-owner & COO, Oragene
Paying yourself properly feels like it should wait until the business can "afford" it — but the business will always find something else to spend on if the money's sitting there to be found. This isn't for you if you've genuinely decided to reinvest everything deliberately for a defined period with a clear end date — that's a real strategy, not avoidance. It's for owners where "once things settle down" has quietly become the plan itself, with no date attached.
A cash management approach from Mike Michalowicz that allocates profit and owner pay first, as a fixed percentage of revenue, then runs expenses on what remains, rather than paying the owner last from whatever's left over.
The money isn't removed from the business — it moves to a separate account and stays there as profit and reserved owner pay, which forces more deliberate decisions about the remaining expenses.
Start with a modest, sustainable percentage you can actually hold to every month rather than an ambitious one you'll abandon after one tight month.
If you've paid everyone else properly this month except yourself, that's the number we fix first.