Why You Should Pay Yourself First in Your Business?

Hi, welcome to the Pelby Biz Podcast. Are you a pelvic health PT or ot struggling to start your own practice? This podcast helps pelvic health PTs and OTs get out of debt, gain the income they desire, be able to treat patients without insurance restraints, and learn how to create time freedom for yourself and your family. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Alhui, founder of Ortho, Pelvic Physical Therapy, Pelvic Health Business Grower and Pelvi Biz. Over the last two years I went from a solo entrepreneur to a seven person team in counting. I'm here to help provide a clear path to grow your pelvic health business as fast as possible so that you can gain the time freedom, decrease debt, increase income and live the life that you desire. Before we get started today, make sure you click the link in our bio to grab your ticket for Pelvi Biz. Now let's get into today's episode.

Welcome guys at Pelli Biz Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Alhuey. Today I'm going to ask you one question, one very important question. Are you paying yourself? So many people that I talk to are not paying themselves and I just don't know why you have to pay yourself. If you are in business, whether or not you're just starting out or whether or not you are years out into your practice, you have to be paying yourself. And here's the reason why people get the standards that they create for themselves. So I have an example. I was talking to a practice owner this weekend and she has a PT that she is paying and she is a PT herself and she was saying I have not paid myself yet, but I am paying full time for this other PT that I have on staff. And I'm like well what the heck, why are you not paying yourself? And she was like, well I only have the income for the this other PT and to pay my rent and you know, whatever the other expenses are. So that's, you know, it goes to them and then it's okay, I don't need the money. And in reality she is setting herself up for failure in the fact that she is just setting a standard that she only needs. Let's just say I'm pulling numbers, but let's just say she only needs 10k to pay for her PT to pay for rent and then to pay for any other little things that come up. So if that is her standard, that's exactly what she's going to get. She hasn't said okay, I'm Going to pay myself 10k myself. I'm going to pay my PT 10k or, you know, maybe 8k, something like that. And then just 2k for rent left over. Okay? That's my standard. Now I need 20k to actually make this worth it for me. So the question here is, what is your standard? Are you paying yourself? And, you know, what are you willing to dream big enough for that the job that you actually have created doesn't become a job, and that it actually starts working for you, and that you feel that you have not created this other position just for yourself. You're not in business to create another job. You can go out and get a job for free, by the way. You don't have to struggle to get a job. And if you're not paying yourself, you definitely have this job that you're going to start resenting because you're not even getting paid for it. You're paying someone else and you're just trying to, you know, keep your head above water without going under. And what's in it. Like, why are you doing that to me? This person needs to be dreaming bigger and needs to be holding themselves accountable for what they actually need and setting higher standards. Like, that's just it. So my point of this is basically, you don't get to your goal. You get your standards in life. That's it. Whatever you set for yourself is what you get. That's like, that's it. So if you're someone that has not been paying themselves, okay, I want you to think about what you can do today to start paying yourself. Number one, you have to put yourself on payroll, which means you gotta contact ADP or Gusto or whatever platform you want to use, but you've got to contact them because you've got to start paying yourself. That's key. And number two, I need you to start looking at this. So there'll be two categories. Number one, what is your fixed expenses? What is that? So what I mean by that is typically salary is a fixed expense. Because we know we're going to always pay this pt, this amount. If they're on salary, we know rent's not going to change. So that's a fixed number. We know pretty much typically payroll is around the same. Unless you were to, like, add someone. Right. These are things that really aren't going to change. Then there's a variable that's. Number two, what expenses go up and down every month. So let's just say one month. I paid to have someone edit a podcast. Okay? That is a Veritable expense because maybe I'm not doing that every single month. So that would go under veritable and that could be, you know, could sweep either way. So maybe technology, maybe you invested in a new app that maybe is not subscription. You just used it for one month and then you were done with it. Maybe you had a renovation at your clinic and it was like a one and done thing. That's veritable. Maybe there was some marketing thing that just that month you had to spend extra money on getting a table or marketing materials like flyers and stuff like that. And that was a little added expense. So you need to know the difference between fixed and variable. And what do you have to have? That's a must. In your fixed income, you need to include yourself. Let me say that again. Your fixed income, you need to include yourself so that you always are getting paid and then you have to then set your standards based on what you need. So you actually need to pay yourself more to raise your standards. That's true. The more you pay yourself and harder that you're going to be like, you know what, this is my why I'm actually paying myself. And I'm not letting it go and just saying, okay, it's okay, I don't need to get paid this, I don't need to get paid this month. That's fine, I'll just keep giving. You're not going to be in business. You're in business to stay in business. You're not in business to create another job for yourself. That now you're stressing about money because you can't even pay your bills. That's not why you're in business. So if who's ever out there listening to this and you haven't paid yourself today, I need you to start paying yourself to be able to progress your business forward. On top of that, guys, you also want to look at what is your profit. Profit is the only way that you are going to stay in business. So when it comes to the fixed and variable income, you're going to add those two up. Like what is that? What is that? Fixed and variable? What does that give you? What total number does that give you? Then what is left over? Whatever is left over. When you pay for the fixed and variable, what is left over that equals your profit. That profit can be used for many different things. You can save it, you can use it to invest in other systems that may overall help progress you like in the long run, you may use that profit to help, like I said, like an office renovation or or you may be like hey someone needs a raise so use that profit and or you take it as a distribution and give it to yourself to be able to do whatever you want in it. Maybe like real estate investment, maybe crypto, maybe you know, NFTs, whatever it may be, that's what you're going to use the profit for. So hopefully you guys, you know are getting this that you have to pay yourself otherwise your standards are poop and you literally are just going to not be in business at all. You will not survive. And know what your expenses are, know what your fixed cost is and know what your variable cost is and know what profit that you actually have at the end of each month. So start with that and again, value yourself, set your standards high, dream big and whatever you want to get paid you can get whatever standards you set for yourself. Let's go.

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