MARK KOHLERMain Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, LLC · Owner at Main Street Professionals, LLC

The Payroll Secret That Separates Profitable Companies #businesstips #money

19 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:43

Mark Kocher breaks down payroll math for service businesses: producers should generate roughly three times their salary, total payroll should be about one-third of revenue, and every admin hire needs to prove how much producer capacity it frees up. Put numbers on every expense.

Chapters

I think once you're looking at that position that you're gonna hire for, you have to say, are they helping make more money directly or are they supporting the people that are making the money? Like a producer should be making 3 times what you're paying 'em. So if you're paying 'em 50 grand a year, are they generating 150 grand in product or service? The general rule being a business payroll is a third of the business. Overhead's a third, your profit's a third in a service-based business, if you can do that. But then if you're hiring administrative people, are they freeing up the capacity of you or your producers? Put numbers to it. Like, what, what are they doing for the bottom line when I figure out how much I'm paying them?