mabinda.com Business, Education, Technology Commentary.

Too often, an entrepreneur often forgets about themselves and dedicates themselves wholly to their business. They give up their entire lives to see the business flourish. The business is like their baby literally, and so they want to see it grow to meaningful success before it can stand on its own two feet. But how then is an entrepreneur supposed to pay themselves from the business? Number one, an entrepreneur is supposed to know even if they are running the business, they are also an employee of the business, so just like they pay employees at the end of the month, they need to pay themselves a salary. If you can’t afford a salary from your own business, then you must be running at a loss, and it’s something that you should consider whether you really want to be a slave employee of your business. Calculate your salary as a cost just as you factor the cost of employees to the business. Which is to say not many business owners do a good job of paying themselves.

Next, have some activities outside of the business to rejuvenate yourself. In the early days, you will basically be raising a new born child as the business will demand your constant attention. But as it begins to grow, then delegate some tasks and basically free some time for yourself to freshen up. It has long been shown that creativity best blossoms when someone has some free time and then they take a walk down the forest or river to spur on their mental acuity. If you are spending all the time at your business and if you get out of it for just a few hours and you find things are not ok on coming back, then question your delegation strategy and whether you are micro managing it. This should indicate to you that you need to begin assigning non core tasks to other people so that you are now able to have some time off from the business and just concentrate on agenda setting and vision bearing of the business.

The next way to pay yourself is through a dividend. If the business is making a profit, then have some dividends which is a portion of the profits transferred to you. This should be a buffer between you are your business to separate the business and yourself. As a safety precaution, don’t pay yourself more than 50 percent of the profits so you can reinvest the rest of the money in expansion. Profits are how businesses measure their value and if you are able to generate profits, then it shows that you do deserve a dividend. Even for mature companies, they pay out dividends after a certain amount of time unless they are offshoring capital in order to avoid a capital gains tax, but that’s playing around with governments because that money is needed for social services such as health, education, roads, civil service salaries and what have you. But really, the point is that don’t be a slave to your business. A great business should engross you, not enslave you.