It was the first winter I had a team.
We'd just lost a retainer client. One of our main ones. It was the kind of loss that stung, but on paper it didn't seem like a big deal at first. I’d still be able to make payroll, all subscriptions were covered, and the business would survive.
But for the next two months, I could only pay myself about $1,000. Per month. And this was November and December — the stretch of the year when most people are spending for the holidays, not cutting.
Before that point, as long as I knew I could pay my contractors in full and on time, I was at ease. If I never had to use the phrase “we can’t make payroll” that meant I was successful. The rest of the numbers always took care of themselves. Yes, when revenue dipped or a client didn’t pay on time, the cut came from my pay… but wasn’t that normal?
Except my pay had never been THIS low before. It felt like I was taking hit after hit and I started to regret having “help” at all.
The part that made it surreal? There was a team member making SIX times what I was every month. I justified it. I was delegating most of the client work, so of course they'd earn more.
But I didn’t expect there to be so little left for myself.
I remember sitting with my finances around mid-December trying to figure out how I'd gotten here. After an obsessive review, it became clear. Long story short, I'd designed my packages and the whole flow of the business in a hybrid of the freelance way and an agency model. So the structure I'd built was working as designed but it inherently put me last and wasn’t anywhere near sustainable.
That winter changed how I structured my business and how I thought about money. It also changed what self-care meant to me. So I redesigned our systems, consolidated subscriptions purchased for “team productivity”, and made my pay a non-negotiable line item.
It took me a long time to rebuild and set a number that was sustainable for the business AND for me.
I think about that winter every time I talk to a founder who tells me their "owner’s pay" is whatever they pull from the business when they feel like there’s enough. Been there. Don’t recommend it.
Your first hire should be the moment you begin the transition from a freelance model to an agency one. And you have to be intentional about the structure and always, always keep an eye on the numbers.
What's a piece of your freelance brain still running, even though the business has outgrown it?
- Valentina, Mynt Collective Founder
📚 The Learning Lounge
A cozy corner where we share our latest insights from books, podcasts, videos, and articles.
Freelancer to Agency Transition: What Changes and What Breaks. A $500K agency can leave the founder with less take-home than a fully-booked freelancer, because your cut is a smaller slice of a bigger number once team costs come out. Read if your owner pay still feels like whatever's left over instead of a planned line item.
Profit First for Service-Based Businesses (Money First, CEO podcast, Ep. 18). Most Profit First advice breaks for agencies because it treats all your revenue as yours to spend. This episode adds the twist that fixes it for service businesses. You pull contractor and associate costs out first, then build your owner pay off what's left. If your books look healthy but your pay keeps coming up thin, this is the reason.
What's the Right Way to Pay Yourself from Your Business? This one's about treating owner pay as a deliberate decision instead of a draw you grab whenever the account looks healthy. It covers the formula flip (decide your pay first, run the business on what's left), draws vs. a real salary, and how to take money out without the guilt or the year-end tax surprise. Good companion read if "I'll pay myself properly once things settle down" has been the plan for a while.
📊 Bookkeeping is now part of how we work.
Bookkeeping is now a role option inside our Ops Retainer. You get clean books, but more importantly, every bookkeeping client also gets me as their Operations Strategist. So the books aren't just getting done in the background somewhere. We're sitting down together and tying what's in them back to the decisions you're making in your business.
Numbers are a language that most creative founders never got taught. We treat it that way, with a visual-first approach that's built for how creative brains take in information.
If you want a rough sense of what it'd run for your business, the estimate tool will get you a range: Ops Retainer Estimate Tool
🎥 The Ops Studio Glow Up: Launching End of May
We’re giving The Ops Studio a major Glow Up and relaunching our YouTube channel at the end of May! We’re transforming the podcast into a full video series built for the creative agency founder who is done being the Chief Everything Officer.
We’re sharing actionable guidance on the structural problems holding you back—from figuring out if your next hire is the right one, to designing a team that lets you finally buy back your energy.
We believe operational stability creates creative freedom. This channel will help you build the infrastructure that makes that possible.
➡️ Subscribe to the Mynt Collective YouTube channel so you don't miss it.
💌 Prefer your feed over your inbox?
Mynt Musings is also published to LinkedIn. If that’s your preferred platform, feel free to subscribe there instead!
🗺️ Ways To Work With Us
A snapshot of ways we support small businesses. Know someone we could help? Share any of the links below.
Ops Audits: An Operational Audit that identifies bottlenecks and delivers a prioritized 90‑day plan with owners, dates, and quick wins.
Ops Retainers: Day-to-day support with the right roles on deck (Bookkeeping, Ops Manager, Executive Assistant, and more). We run the business, manage change, and unblock the team—roles can expand or shift as needs evolve.
Ops Builds: Design and implement right‑sized tools and workflows, document SOPs, train the team, and drive adoption so the system gets used.
💚 Full service ops for creative agencies.
Focus on big ideas, not busywork.