The Owner's Paycheck: What You Make, What the Job Pays, and the Gap

Add the distributions, the truck, the health plan, the retirement match: $90,000 of true comp. Divide by the honest 2,750 hours: $32.73 an hour, for the person carrying all the risk. Now price what replacing you costs — a general manager plus the fifteen tech-hours you still work: $113,500. The difference is free labor your business eats every year, and it's hiding in your prices.

How it works

• The Real Paycheck — everything you took, every hour you worked, your true hourly rate, and the replacement cost of you
• The Right Paycheck — the honest profit ($41,000 reported is $17,500 real — a 2.1% return), the boring salary paid monthly like any employee, and the punchline: the whole gap closes with a 2.8% price increase — $23.50 on an $850 job
• The Rules — two hats, two payments (salary for the work, quarterly distributions for the ownership — after the cash buffer holds); what it means when the business can't afford you; and why every buyer and banker will compute this number in an afternoon — better you find it first

Built for

Every owner who pays themselves "whatever's left": trades · salons · restaurants · agencies · shops. Not tax advice — how you take the money is your CPA's department; how MUCH is this file's.

What you get

One .xlsx file, four tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no subscription.