Issue 177, Part Time CEO Newsletter

Hey, it's Dhiren 👋,

A founder I work with cut her own salary last month. For all the right reasons,I thought she'd take it in stride. Then her voice changed, and she said this, almost embarrassed:

"Am I going backwards? I was already paying myself under market. Now it's even less. Am I actually shrinking here?"

Salary is a fair thing to watch. It's clean, it's monthly, you can see it. But she was using it as the only proof she was getting anywhere. By that one measure, a month she'd taken less out felt like falling behind.

Most founders feel some version of that.

One benchmark, not the only one

There's nothing wrong with watching the salary. It's a real benchmark, and it's the first one every founder reaches for, because it's the one we learned in our careers. Do the work, the number goes up, you're winning. A clean signal, every month.

The trap is making it the only benchmark. Because most of what you build as an owner gives you no monthly signal at all. The team getting stronger. The systems that hold. The day the business runs without you. None of it pings. None of it shows up in what you pay yourself. So the one number that does ping starts speaking for all of them, and on a lean month it says you're shrinking.

The messy middle

Building a business is like a painting that takes years. Halfway through, up close, it looks like a mess. Corners painted over three times, nothing like the picture in your head. Judge it stroke by stroke and you'd swear you were ruining it.

The painter who makes it through keeps laying strokes without seeing the finished thing. The one who loses himself stops believing it's going anywhere, because in the middle it never looks like it is.

I've been that second painter more than once. That's where she is now. The team, the systems, the freedom, strokes that won't resolve into a picture for years.

Salary is the one stroke dry enough to see, so the eye fixes there and calls the whole canvas a failure. When I made her list her year, the strokes were everywhere. A team that runs without her. Her whole business run from another country, kid in tow, when her city stopped being safe, without dropping a client. She couldn't see it, standing two centimetres from one stroke.

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Your Turn

Once this quarter, step back from the canvas. Name one stroke you've laid that the salary can't show. A system that holds without you. A call the team makes without ringing you. A week you were gone and nothing broke. Write it down. Not because it paid you this month. Because it's proof the painting is moving, even when it doesn't look like it.

Don't lose yourself in the messy middle. The painting is coming together. You can't see it yet, because you're the one holding the brush.

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📢 Dhiren’s Updates

On July 10 I'm running a live, in-person session here in Dubai called the Offer Engine.

You know the proposal that goes silent, the one you're sure you lost on price? Usually the price was fine. The offer wasn't. We'll spend the session fixing that, so you stop dropping your price to win work that was already yours.

If that sounds familiar, this is the session for you. I'm keeping it to a small group of founders, so reply to this and I'll send you the details.

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ps: did someone forward this to you?​
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Cheers