“It's not personal, it's just business,” is something we’ve all heard at least once in our lives.
But for entrepreneurs, business is incredibly personal. You are driven by a need to make an impact for your customers and in your life. It’s not an easy path, but you didn’t choose to do this because you thought it’d be a walk in the park.
The reality though is that many small business owners aren’t thriving, they’re simply surviving from one challenge to the next. We’ve heard from thousands of small business owners about the daily hurdles they face, from feeling overworked and on the brink of burnout to being underpaid and one emergency away from their business imploding.
This stress isn’t limited to your small business’s finances. Our business and personal lives are connected, and stress from one side crosses easily over to the other. It’s something Craig Dacy sees every day with his clients at DACY Financial Coaching.
Craig has built his business by helping owners make sense of their finances. As a small business owner himself, he knows that no one quits their 9-5 to work long hours for less money and more stress. The path to more income and less stress starts with building a system to not just manage your cash flow, but to build a foundation for income growth and long-term stability.
This post draws on insights shared by Craig Dacy, owner of DACY Financial Coaching, in a webinar with Relay. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.
Relay is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC. FDIC deposit insurance covers the failure of an insured bank. Certain conditions must be satisfied for pass-through deposit insurance coverage to apply.
1. Organize Your Business Finances
You can’t pay yourself consistently if your cash flow is a mystery. The first step to taking home what you earn is getting organized.
If you’re operating out of one big 'slush fund' account, you don’t have visibility on where your money is actually going.
“We have to be organized on the business side,” Craig said. “That’s why I love seeing a clean spreadsheet and trying to figure out what it's saying about our money and trying to figure out what we can do with it.”
To get your money managed, Craig recommended the Profit First method of using multiple accounts to give every dollar a job.
Think two accounts is enough? Try five (at a minimum):
Income: Use this account for depositing payments.
Owner’s Pay: Transfer a percentage of your income to this account. We’ll have more on that later in the post.
Operating Expenses (OpEx): Set aside cash for rent, services, and other business expenses.
Tax: April 15 isn’t the only tax day for small business owners.
Profit: This is where any excess cash should be transferred.
Once your business cash flow is organized, the next step is understanding what your personal expenses are so you can figure out how much you can pay yourself.
2. Define Your Personal Lifestyle Costs
As we mentioned earlier, small business owners want to make an impact. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have your desired lifestyle. Craig said that if making an impact was his only reason for running a business, he would most likely go work for somebody else who's doing that.
“I started my business because I want to make an impact. But I also want to be able to pick my kids up from school, pay for vacations, and have control over my income.”
Whether it’s running your business or training for a marathon, if you don’t measure it, you can’t fix it. Understanding what personal expenses are is the next step to determining what your business should pay you.
Start by auditing your personal bank and credit card statements to identify your monthly expenses. This will help you identify everything from your mortgage or rent payment to groceries and car insurance. If you have a partner or spouse with an income, include that as it may go toward those expenses that you need to cover.
The goal is to find two numbers: what you need to survive and what you need to thrive.
The Survive Budget: This is your “keep the lights on” budget.
The Thrive Budget: This is how much you need for your ideal lifestyle of vacations, savings, and comfort.
“You'd probably be shocked at how much is slipping through the cracks. Getting clear on this is going to really save you a lot of money on both sides,” Craig said.
Once you have your numbers, Craig recommends setting up a simple three-account system to keep yourself on track similar to how you organize your business:
Bills Account: For fixed costs like your mortgage and utilities. If you can’t impulse buy it, it goes here.
Spending Account: For variable expenses like groceries, dining out, and fun money. This is the account you watch to see if you can afford that extra dinner this week.
Savings Account: For emergency funds and short-term goals (like that vacation you put in your Thrive budget).
3. Reverse-Engineer Your Salary Percentage
Now that you know what you need to cover your personal expenses, it’s time to figure out exactly how much to pay yourself. This is the cash that will go into the Owner’s Pay account you created in Step 1. Craig uses a straightforward formula to find your target percentage:
(Thrive Budget ÷ Total Revenue) x 100 = Owner’s Pay %
Let’s say your Thrive Budget is $100,000 and your total revenue is $300,000. Using the formula, you should be transferring 33% of every deposit into your Owner’s Pay account
You may even be in a spot where you can transfer more.
“If you go through this and find you could put more in, say 40%, well, that’s awesome. There’s nothing wrong with making more than your thrive budget,” Craig said
But what if your business can't afford that percentage yet?
Don't panic. Start by running the formula using your Survive Budget number to set a temporary baseline. Then, make a plan to scale up. You can bridge the gap by auditing your OpEx to find what to keep, what to trim, and what to cut
Keep: These are the non-negotiable expenses that are essential for your business to exist, like professional licenses or permits.
Trim: This category is for expenses you need but can reduce the cost of. Look for better alternatives or “hidden” lower-tier plans that offer the same features for less money, or switch to a competitor with a better rate.
Cut: These are expenses you can eliminate entirely, even if it is just temporarily. Aim to find three to five items to remove, such as pausing a software subscription that you won’t be using for the next few months.
Remember: Every percentage point you save in OpEx is a percentage point you can move directly to your Owner’s Pay account. You aren't just saving pennies. You're funding your life.
4. Stop Dipping and Start a Consistent Pay Schedule
When it comes to paying yourself, you need to treat yourself with the same respect you would demand from an employer.
Imagine you’re interviewing to be the CEO of a major company. You ask about the salary, and they tell you: "There’s not really a salary. Anytime you need to pay the rent or the mortgage, just let us know and we'll transfer some cash."
You wouldn’t accept that job. So why do you accept that arrangement from your own business?
As Craig put it: “If a potential hire said, ‘Hey, don't worry about paying me. I'm just gonna dip my hand into the business account every time I need to cover a bill'... There's no way we would do that. So why do we do it to ourselves?”
Stop "dipping" randomly. Pick a frequency—weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly—and set up a recurring, automated transfer from your Owner's Pay account to your personal checking account.
If the money isn't there on payday? That’s a signal to fix the business operations, not a signal to raid the operating account.
Make Your Salary Automatic with Relay
The strategy Craig outlined becomes far easier when you don’t have to do it manually every week. That’s where Relay fits in.
Relay provides the platform to turn Craig’s advice into a set-it-and-forget-it system:
Implement the 5-Account System: Relay lets you open up to 20 individual checking accounts, making it easy to create dedicated buckets for Income, Owner’s Pay, Profit, Tax, and OpEx without hidden fees eating into your margins.
Automate Your Paycheck: You can set up percentage-based auto-transfer rules to move money from Income to Owner’s Pay, and then schedule recurring transfers to your personal bank to get paid on time, every time.
Gain Total Visibility: Stop wondering if you can afford to pay yourself. With clear account separation, you can instantly see exactly how much cash is available for your salary versus how much is locked away for taxes or bills.
With that structure in place, the "dipping" habit disappears. You stop treating your business bank account like an ATM and start treating it like a sustainable operation.
Relay is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC. FDIC deposit insurance covers the failure of an insured bank. Certain conditions must be satisfied for pass-through deposit insurance coverage to apply
Quick Answers
Q: Does “Owner’s Pay” include the money I need for income taxes?
A: No, Owner’s Pay is intended to be your net take-home pay. You should create a separate Tax account and allocate roughly 15% of your revenue there to cover your tax liabilities.
Q: My business is seasonal. How do I pay myself consistently when revenue drops?
A: Create a "drip account" to hold cash earned during high-revenue months. You then transfer a fixed, consistent salary out of that holding account throughout the year to smooth out the peaks and valleys.
Q: Do I need a professional to help me set this up?
A: While you can implement the method yourself using the Profit First book, a certified Profit First Professional can help you customize the percentages and navigate specific friction points for your industry.
Q: How can Relay help? A: Relay’s multiple accounts, automation, and real-time visibility make it easy to implement systems like Craig’s—so financial discipline feels less like effort and more like design.
Relay is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC. FDIC deposit insurance covers the failure of an insured bank. Certain conditions must be satisfied for pass-through deposit insurance coverage to apply.\
