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How much should you pay yourself?

For many small-business owners, the answer is probably more.

As raises go, this was a doozy. Andy Meadows, founder and CEO of custom software company Live Oak 360 in Austin, Texas, decided to increase his salary in the summer of 2010. He didn’t bump it up by 5 percent, or 10 percent, or even 25 percent. Instead, he doubled it — to what he calculated an outsider would charge to do his job. It was a stretch for his then eight-year-old company, but Meadows is now convinced it was the right thing to do.

“Raising my salary to a market level forced me to look at my company from an investor’s perspective,” Meadows says. “It helped me better understand the value of my own time.”

As he began looking at the hours he was devoting to different tasks, he explains, he began asking if they were really tasks he should be doing, based on what the company was paying him, or if they were better suited to one of his employees. Often, the latter was the case, and he learned to cede those tasks to others. “It allowed me to turn myself loose from a lot of digging and hunting for information, and spend more time finding new and better business,” he says now.

…to read this article in full, visit leading US entrepreneurial resource, Entrepreneur.com

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Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur Magazine has been inspiring, informing and celebrating entrepreneurs since 1973. Entrepreneur.com offers real solutions to the challenges faced by entrepreneurs, including tips, tools and insider news to help build – and grow – businesses.

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