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The Owner's Payroll Problem: Structure Compensation, Benefits & Incentives for Businesses Under $10M - Without Bleeding Cash or Losing Your Best Peopl
Paperback
Series: The Small Business Owner's Framework
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: May 30 2026
Pages: 214
Weight: 0.58
Height: 0.54 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
For most small business owners, payroll is a black box. You set salaries based on what the last person made, you give raises because someone asked (or threatened to leave), and you add benefits reactively to keep up with the competition.
You've hit the Owner's Trap: You've built a $1M to $10M business, but you haven't built a system to run it. You are the highest-paid employee in your company, yet you're stuck doing $20-an-hour tasks because your team isn't structured to scale.
The Owner's Payroll Problem is not an HR manual. It is an operator's playbook designed to move you from managing by feel to managing by framework.
Author Scott Gillespie, founder of The Gillespie Group, delivers a pragmatic, data-backed operating system-The Gillespie Method (Analyze, Frame, Decide, Execute)-to help you reclaim your margin and your time.
Inside this book, you will learn how to:Calculate Your North Star Metric: Use the Payroll-to-Revenue Ratio to determine if your business is healthy (25-35%), in the Caution Zone, or at Critical Risk.
Plug the Retention Leak Identify the subtle signals that your best people are shopping for other offers months before they hand in their notice.
Eliminate the Growth Tax Understand why your profit stays flat even as your revenue climbs, and how to fix the structural drift.
Design Incentives That Actually Work: Build commission and bonus structures that drive the outcomes the business needs, rather than just rewarding activity.
Master the S-Corp Salary: Navigate the Reasonable Compensation minefield to satisfy the IRS and see your true profit margin.
Execute the 90-Day Onboarding Window: Use a structured system to turn new hires into independent contributors in half the usual time.
Stop managing the most consequential line item in your business by gut feel.
Whether you run a crew of five or a team of fifty, this book provides the Main Street MBA frameworks you need to build a professionalized, debt-free, and exit-ready asset.
What's In It For You?A business that runs on a system, not on your adrenaline. A team that knows exactly how to earn their next raise. And a P&L that finally tells you the truth.
Scroll up and grab your copy of Book 01 of The Small Business Owner's Framework series today.
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