It’s a strange topic, really: entrepreneurs struggling to take profit for themselves. Yet I meet them all the time.
They’ve built a business. They’ve made it a success, which very few people do. They’ve generated revenue. They’ve made profit. And it’s there for the taking.
Something still feels wrong.
Underpaying Yourself Is a Symptom, Not the Problem
It means taking a low salary from the business. You live in a flat below your means. You pay your team at or above the market rate, sometimes with profit share or performance incentives. You feel a certain pride in restricting what you take while looking after everyone else.
But the low salary is not the root of the problem. It’s how the problem manifests. The real issue is a dissonance between the old reality you came from and the new reality you’re now living in.
Profit is founder’s privilege. You generated it. It is yours. You have earned it.
My intention here is to give you permission to feel okay about taking it.
The Guilt Comes From an Old Broke Reality, Not From This Business
Most entrepreneurs, even very successful ones, remember what it was like to be broke. I didn’t grow up broke, but I spent my twenties broke: a jazz musician in a shared house in North London with six people, driving across the country for forty-quid cash gigs and paying for the petrol myself. That feeling doesn’t leave because the business works. The way you relate to money is one of the most hardwired things about you.
And it produces three familiar worries.
First, I don’t deserve it. Who am I to earn this when the people I grew up with have much less?
Second, what will the team think? They work for me. Is it right that I keep the profits?
Third, the business needs the money. If I take it out, I’ll starve the business, and then I’ll go down with the Titanic clutching the coins in my pocket.
Some cash concerns are real. But having a successful business doesn’t mean you can just cast off the old money mindset.
You Already Did the Thing That Earns the Profit
So what did you actually do? You started something that didn’t have to exist. Before you founded the business, it wasn’t there. It had no reason or purpose to exist in the world.
If you run a modern online content-based business, the start may not have felt like risk: one day you wrote a blog post, or you recorded a YouTube video in your bedroom. But most people never start a business. Of the people who do, very few succeed.
I prefer the word initiative to risk. You took the initiative that no one around you did. No one on your team took it. You chose to go without the security of a regular career, which is what most people go for. You could’ve kept the job, or worked for another founder. Instead, you started and stayed, even when it was difficult. If the YouTube algorithm shifted and revenue dried up, you’d still be the one who had to find a way to pay the team.
People see the business you have now. They don’t see the choices you gave up to build it. That’s why profit is your privilege as a founder. You’ve earned it.
Not Taking Profit Stops You Evolving Into a Steward
If you don’t learn to accept profit, there’s a price. You can’t evolve as a business owner.
Growing a business involves learning to manage money. It goes from money you make for yourself so you can eat to money you manage as the steward of capital. Once your basic needs are covered, you move to allocating capital. You start moving large amounts of money to get results in the business, with zero impact on your standard of living or well-being. But you can only reach that if you work on your own money mindset.
If the old guilt is still running, you can’t step into that role.
Give Yourself Permission to Take the Profit
Underpaying yourself is a leftover from an old reality. The pride in it is just more of the same.
So take the profit the business can genuinely spare.
You’ve earned it by doing the thing most people won’t do.
It’s yours. Take it and enjoy it.
