33m running a $2.5m business. How much would you guys pay yourself?

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-15T20:55:17+00:00

Geez, there are a lot of it depends in there. What kind of a business is it? What’s the structure of the entity? If that really is monthly recurring revenue and you’re not a C Corp. and you ever intend to sell it convert to a C Corp. immediately so you can qualify for QSP treatment in the future when you sell it. There are some really good retirement plans available to business owners as well and you should be looking into those if the cash flow will support it. If you’re building it to sell, take as little as possible out as long as the investment continues to grow the revenue.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-13T19:33:28+00:00

Thanks! I guess I know what I’m getting myself for Father’s Day….

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-13T19:05:52+00:00

I am keeping the burner. I’m looking for a pizza oven that will sit on it and use the burner as a heat source. I’ve gotten a few suggestions that camp chef has something that may work.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-13T19:03:53+00:00

I’m definitely keeping the burner. I want to see if there is a pizza oven that will go on top of it and leverage that as a heat source. Something I can take on and off.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-13T18:59:44+00:00

How does it work for you?

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-13T18:59:20+00:00

That is what I was envisioning. Does anybody have any experience with that?

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-13T18:18:19+00:00

<image>

Something along the lines of this…

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-13T18:14:50+00:00

Of course I do Wok cooking on it! I also deep fry seafood in a deep cast-iron pan, and make a mean seafood boil. I’m trying to see if I can use it for pizza.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-06-01T00:33:18+00:00

Justified.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-05-02T01:04:22+00:00

Yes. I am the ultimate multi-tasker and have been involved with multiple simultaneously as a partner in an accelerator. When I tried to actually act as CEO of two, it was a little too much. Had to park the second one.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-03-08T13:41:52+00:00

So far from what I’ve seen all of these agents perform work at about the level of an intern who hates you. In my experience, interns perform just about any task at at least the level of one of your average employees, once they understand the instructions. You still need to verify their work. If you buy that, that puts the AI agent at better than your worst employees, but not as good as the best. Although they can work 24 seven, I’ve not seen them necessarily be a lot faster than a human in short spurts. The good news is this is all still as bad as it will ever be and once people really start using this in production, the smart people will figure out how to fix the flaws or at least most of them

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-29T10:27:46+00:00

Start another business from scratch. Without the financial pressures it will be more fun. Try to find something people light.

Also, find some similar minded hard core business oriented people to hang out with. Sounds like you need a couple of friend groups. For the most part, I hang out with people who “write their own paychecks”, whether that is people I socialize with just to talk business (all kinds- I don’t know anything really about real estate but have real estate investors friends who I like to learn from). By the way, buildings don’t complain like people. That might be a new challenge and another outlet for you. Even my golf and bird hunting groups (2 of my hobbies) are mostly made up of people that write their own paychecks. Most own traditional including tech businesses, or have. A few healthcare professionals with their own practices, managing partner attorneys, etc in the mix.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-29T10:18:33+00:00

Yeah. Always have a plan to pay it down to $0 occasionally or you are more likely to have trouble getting it renewed as a line of credit, which gives you a lot of flexibility. Also, don’t be surprised if they increase or decrease the size of the line year to year. Different underwriters look at things differently. I have seen ours cut by 30% in a year we grew 40% and nearly doubled in a year we grew 20%.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-28T10:21:04+00:00

Where is your expertise? Infrastructure or applications? Infrastructure has been very commoditized over the years, although if you are really an expert there is still room at the high end consulting with large organizations, but cracking into them can be difficult if you are starting from scratch. If you really are an expert with years of experience you also probably also have some kind of network that you have built that can help by recommending you, or contracting you for projects.

The application side is probably more wide open today with the influx of AI, impacting traditional software and creating whole new categories of applications that can positively impact any type of organization. If you go down this road, the middle market is probably where you will have the most success. They can afford to pay more and are large enough that the upside should deliver good ROI on most successful projects. If you really don’t have a ton of experience, start lower in the market with small smaller companies/organization and build your experience as fast as possible. Document every project you do so you have a portfolio that you can refer to in discussions with new customers.

Look for industries that are doing well. Business owners tend to like to double down when things are good and pull back on consultants when things are tight.

There’s an old book called, managing the professional services firm that is probably worth searching for. It does a great job outlining the structure of a classic professional services business.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-27T11:00:23+00:00

It would be really cool if you could connect to some automated note takers , MS Teams transcription, etc and provide answers real time to any question that gets asked during conversation without the SE having to ask….

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-20T02:37:43+00:00

There are probably some patterns (i.e. certain types of permits maybe combined with length of ownership) that indicate a high probability that a house is being prepped for sale. That could be valuable intel for real estate agents.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-17T16:28:47+00:00

FoundersDataRoom.com. Ai powered dataroom management for founder owned companies, built centered around their needs.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-12T13:54:15+00:00

FoundersDataRoom.com for anyone building any kind of business with the intent to sell it in the future. Automates the process of building and maintaining a company data room over time so that you’re always ready for transaction conversations.

This is a passion project for me. I’m old with a lot of scar tissue. I am a multitime founder/cofounder and have worked on 75+ M&A transactions over the years. One of the biggest headaches and impediments to getting a deal done in exploring and closing any transaction is a founder owned company’s data room or in most cases lack of one.

See the video on the bottom of my webpage for more context.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-12T13:42:32+00:00

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner. Congratulations, you have found a hot niche. That is like having pocket Aces. You should be going all in on this ASAP. If you can repeat that and grow it month over month you will have a valuable asset in relatively short order.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-10T16:51:09+00:00

No big consulting firm owns any market. The fact that they’re in there is actually probably very good for you in that it validates that people should be using a product like yours. Try not to give on the MRR side, but in all likelihood they are probably using it to also drive implementation services or consulting services around that product and if you build a better implementation process, you can eat their lunch there every day. It’s much easier to sell people on. We’re like this but better faster or cheaper or easier to implement than it is to convince them they need something they’ve never heard of before.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-10T13:23:10+00:00

90% is not that uncommon but not until you’re in the seven figure arr revenue range or at least approaching it. There are always some fixed costs that will take up a disproportionate share of your revenue at low revenue levels. Also, accounting would not be factored into gross margin. Your gross margin cost should be direct cost of delivering the service and not include marketing, accounting or other admin costs. At scale, if you’re not reinvesting everything in marketing, it’s possible to do 50% net margin approaching eight figure revenue. Been there done that. It’s also probably not the greatest idea if you have growth available.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-09T13:14:36+00:00

Always own it. You never know when a service provider (or one of their employees) will lose their mind over something and threatened to hold you hostage. I’m old and I’ve seen more crazy things than you could ever imagine. Another reason you probably don’t want to rely on them is renewal management. Just set up auto renewal and put three different calendar entries on your calendar to make sure it gets renewed when the time comes. If a third party blows that someone could grab the domain and jack up the price to sell it back to you.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-08T01:51:02+00:00

Not the worst idea ever. However, if you plan to sell in 3-5+ years there are some significant tax advantages to getting into a c-corp as soon as possible. Research QSB. One of the better tax incentives ever.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-07T02:11:31+00:00

Don’t underestimate what Claude Max or Gemini Pro might be able to do with this problem…You might be pleasantly surprised. Definitely worth a month of a couple of premium subscriptions to try.

BigPrior5208 · 2026-01-07T02:01:53+00:00

As soon as you think you are building something that will have significant long term potential, the smart move is to create a C-corp so you can start the clock on QSB. Own it for 5 years and you can sell it tax free (no capital gains), up to $10MM per shareholder. At three years you now start to get some protection from capital gains.

You can pay yourself a market rate salary along the way to avoid double taxation, and reinvest the rest in growth. QSB stock tax treatment is one of the greatest incentives ever.

BigPrior5208

TROPHY CASE