Is Your Business Actually Supporting Your Life? (Or Just Running It?)
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I try not to give away all my trade secrets… but this one’s too good to keep to myself.
If your business looks great on paper but your personal finances feel like a shrug emoji, this is the shift you’ve been missing.
Keep reading—I’m giving you the same behind-the-scenes playbook I use with my clients to make sure their business is building the life they actually want.
Step 1: Where You Are vs. Where You Want to Go
Whether you’re a business owner or not, financial planning always starts with clarity on two things:
Where are you right now?
Where do you want to go?
Getting clear on where you are is mostly logistical: gathering numbers, organizing accounts, reviewing cash flow. But getting clear on where you want to go? That’s where it gets powerful.
This is the part I love most: values-based life planning. The deep, human work. We ask:
What actually matters most to you? What are your core values?
What brings meaning, fulfillment, joy to your life?
What do you want life to look and feel like?
This is your North Star. And even though your goals will evolve, your core values tend to stay more stable over time. Maybe your value is freedom or creativity or health—the way you live that out will change, but the foundation holds strong.
Without this clarity, any financial plan is just guesswork. But once we name your destination, we can reverse-engineer the most efficient path to get there.
Step 2: Connect the Dots Between Your Life and Your Business
Here’s where most business owners get stuck:
They think about personal goals (like saving for retirement, buying a house, or taking more time off), separately from their business goals (like hitting revenue targets or hiring a new team member).
But your business is one of your most powerful financial tools. So we need to connect it to your personal goals in a real and actionable way.
This is where my clients start to experience breakthroughs.
Together, we walk through:
How much do you need to save/invest each year to reach your goals?
How much income do you need to bring home to support that savings target and your lifestyle?
Does your current salary + distributions support that?
→ If yes, great—we lock it in with a plan.
→ If not, we figure out the gap and work backwards.
This is where the real alignment–and progress–happens. Because now, we’re asking:
Can your business support that extra take-home pay?
If yes, how do we structure salary + distributions in a way that’s tax-efficient and stable?
If not, what needs to shift inside the business—profit margins, expenses, debt, pricing, operations?
Suddenly, your personal financial goals aren’t just vague hopes—they become concrete drivers of business strategy.
Step 3: Reverse-Engineer Business Decisions with Your Personal Goals in Mind
Here’s an example I see all the time:
Let’s say your financial plan says you need to be saving an extra $25K/year for the next 10 years to hit your freedom goals.
But your current salary doesn’t support that. So we ask:
Can the business afford to pay you an extra $25K/year?
If yes: great. Let’s structure it (salary or distributions) and build a rhythm.
If not: we dive into your P&L, profit margin, balance sheet, and debt structure to find that money inside the business.
Sometimes it’s a matter of tightening up inefficiencies. Sometimes it's increasing pricing. Sometimes it’s refining your delivery model or improving collections.
If your business can't currently support the income you need, it’s time to focus growth plans in a very specific direction—toward your life goals, not just growth for growth’s sake.
This is also how we approach planning for a business exit. We look at:
What do you need to net from a sale to fund your next chapter?
What would make the exit feel fulfilling—financially and emotionally?
With those numbers in hand, your business strategy becomes crystal clear. You’re not just scaling. You’re aiming.
💡 Why This Approach Works
So yeah—you may have heard some of this before.
But what makes it powerful is the alignment:
You’re not just optimizing your business.
You’re not just setting personal financial goals.
You’re integrating both to work toward the same place.
That’s the real magic. When your business strategy is informed by your personal financial goals—and vice versa—you create traction. Intention. Clarity.
🎯 Try This Today
Want to get started right now? Here are 3 things you can do this week to get the wheels turning:
Clarify your next personal milestone.
How much would you like to save this year toward long-term goals? Even a ballpark is helpful.Check your current income flow.
Look at what you're actually taking home—salary + distributions. Are you on track to support your savings and lifestyle needs?Assess the gap.
If there’s a shortfall:
→ Can your business support a higher income for you?
→ If not, what needs to shift to make that possible?
This is the same foundational process I guide my clients through. You don’t have to have it all figured out right away—but even asking these questions can create a ripple of clarity that changes how you run your business.
The Bottom Line
I get it—I’m a business owner too. It’s so easy to let your business take over your entire life. But most of us didn’t go out on our own to feel boxed in.
We did it for freedom. For flexibility. For fulfillment.
So don’t forget: your business should be supporting your life—not running it.
And you have more control and choice than you think.
Let’s make sure the business you’re building is creating the life you actually want to live.
