It’s an age-old conundrum that faces every entrepreneur planning their business: What do I pay myself? There are a lot of different theories firsf it comes to this issue, but the two most common for startups are:. Pay yourself enough to get by. At least during startup until you are business in the black. The argument here is to minimize your overhead in order to decrease the amount of capital required to make your business a success. Also, by reducing your overhead, your net loss will decrease or your net profit will increase, providing the business with lean operating requirements until it is well established.