How to Pay Yourself as a Business Owner, with Andrea Liebross

July 7

1h 5m

Episode Description

Andrea Liebross was the least-paid person in her own business for years. Then she got deliberate about changing that.

In this conversation with host Syama Bunten, Andrea gets into how to pay yourself as a business owner and why so many women wait too long to start. She grew up watching her father run his own CPA firm, where money was a subject reserved for adults. He talked business with clients one way and money with his own kids another, and that gap taught her early that finances could stay private inside a family that talked about everything else.

Andrea didn't launch her coaching business until her forties. She left a 1099 role bound by rules she didn't like and bet on herself, funding the leap with a zero-interest credit card and a self-imposed deadline for her first client. That story of starting a business in your 40s runs alongside her belief that identity precedes strategy. Clarity comes from deciding who you are first, not from gathering more information.

It took Andrea three years to get deliberate about paying herself a real salary instead of whatever was left over. She walks through how to pay yourself as a business owner in practical terms, why betting on yourself in business rarely feels secure, the Colin Powell 40/70 decision rule, and what she has learned about family owned business finances getting tangled with feelings.

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Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Andrea Liebross Joins Getting Rich Together

02:53 A Childhood CPA Household and Quarter Collectors

11:37 Dartmouth, Career Purpose, and Money Silence

19:24 Trauma and Grit in New York Advertising

24:20 Tutoring the Bass Family and Marriage Finances

35:28 Moving to Indiana and Asking for Benefits

40:59 Quitting the 1099 Role to Bet on Herself

46:57 Funding a Business Launch on a Credit Card

51:15 How to Pay Yourself as a Business Owner

55:05 Family-Owned Business Finances and Identity Precedes Strategy

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