Focused engagement · Compensation stage
You haven't paid yourself. Or you haven't paid yourself sustainably. The firm is generating revenue, and somehow you're still last in line. This is the engagement that fixes that.
The pattern I see most often: the partner does not take a regular salary. They take money out when it's needed for personal expenses. Revenue might be strong, the work might be good, the firm might even be profitable on paper, and the owner is still working without a structured paycheck and without a tax-aware draw schedule.
That's the Compensation stage of the method. The job here is to fix the structure, not to give a pep talk about self-worth. Owner compensation is an operational decision and a financial-architecture decision. It deserves to be designed, not improvised.
This engagement designs it.
A structural pass at how the firm pays its owner, what it pays, when, and out of what, coordinated with your CPA at the implementation step.
A pass over the financials to see what the firm is actually earning after the real cost of delivery, not the surface P&L.
What the firm is spending on staff versus what it's producing, and where the ratio is out of band relative to a healthy small-firm benchmark.
Base salary versus draw versus distribution. What the right structure is for your entity type, your firm stage, and your personal financial reality.
For multi-partner firms, the architecture of how profit gets split, on what cadence, against what definition of profit. The conversation that almost never happens cleanly without an outside operator in the room.
A draw schedule designed in coordination with your CPA, quarterly estimates, retained earnings posture, and an owner-comp cadence that doesn't blow up in April.
A written protocol your bookkeeper and CPA can run. Cadence, triggers, and accountability so the new structure doesn't depend on you remembering to enforce it on yourself.
Owner compensation lives at the intersection of operations, finance, and tax. Some of that work belongs to other professionals, I coordinate with them.
Profitability & Owner Compensation runs roughly four to six weeks. Week one is scoping and information request, trailing twelve months of financials, payroll detail, draw history, current entity structure, your CPA's contact information.
Weeks two through four are analysis and design. Working sessions with the owner, and the other partners if applicable, to walk through what the financials actually say, what a healthy structure would look like, and what the trade-offs are. I bring the CPA into the conversation at the right point; we coordinate, we don't compete.
The final weeks are documentation and implementation. You leave with a written compensation structure, a draw schedule, and a protocol your bookkeeper can run. The engagement closes when the new draw actually hits your account, not when the plan is delivered as a PDF.
A real, anonymized firm Liz worked with. (Per Liz's primary-source case study record, 2026.)
A partner who had been pulling money out of the operating account as personal expenses came due. The rebuild included a structured compensation design that placed the partner on a regular salary for the first time, and the firm's profitability supported it.
Read the full case →You don't have a self-worth problem. You have a structure problem. Owners who don't pay themselves are almost never lazy or undeserving, they're operating a firm whose architecture never made room for them.
No. I coordinate with them. Owner compensation design has tax consequences, and I want your CPA at the table for the implementation conversation. I bring the operational and structural design; they sign off on the tax treatment.
Sometimes. If the firm is not yet generating enough margin to compensate the owner sustainably, the issue is usually upstream, cash flow, billing leakage, intake conversion. We talk about that on the scoping call and route you to the right starting place.
Yes, partner compensation design is one of the most common reasons firms reach out for this engagement. The structural conversation gets clearer, not harder, with more partners at the table.
That's the engagement's job. A structure that exists only on paper is a failed engagement. We design the schedule, set the cadence, and put the protocol in place so the owner draws aren't dependent on the owner remembering to pay themselves.
Schedule a thirty-minute call. We'll talk about how the firm is actually compensating you, and whether this engagement is the right fit.
Need broader financial leadership beyond owner comp?
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