Why Your Financial Goals Should Start With You
By Sarah Petty, Founder Olive Business Partners
Most business owners set financial goals the same way. They look at last year's revenue, pick a number that feels a bit more ambitious, and work forward from there. The goal becomes the top line, and everything else follows, including costs, profit, and what the owner actually takes home.
It is a logical starting point. It is also the wrong one.
When revenue leads the goal-setting process, the owner's pay becomes what is left over after everything else has been covered. In practice, that often means it becomes the first thing that gets reduced when cash is tight, and the last thing that gets addressed when the business is under pressure. The result is a business that may be growing on paper but is not actually working for the person running it.
There is a different way to approach it.
Start with what the business needs to pay you
The Owner-First approach inverts the usual order. Instead of starting with revenue and hoping profit and pay follow, it starts with the owner's salary and works outward from there.
This is not a small distinction. It reframes the owner's pay as a cost of running the business, the same way any other critical role would be treated, rather than a reward that is paid only when conditions allow.
The first question is straightforward: what does the business need to pay you consistently each month as the CEO? Not the amount you have been taking. Not the amount you feel comfortable asking for. The amount that properly reflects the role you are performing and the value you bring to the business.
Then set a profit target
Once owner's salary is established, the next step is profit as a deliberate goal.
Profit represents the business generating returns beyond the cost of running it. It funds reinvestment, creates a buffer, and provides the foundation for distributions or bonuses. A business that covers its costs and pays its owner but generates no profit is fragile. One bad month, one lost client, one unexpected expense, and the owner's pay is under pressure again.
Setting a profit target before reviewing costs and revenue forces an honest question: is the current business model capable of delivering this, or does something need to change?
Review the cost required to run the business
With salary and profit defined, operating costs are the next layer. The discipline here is to start with last year's cost base and question whether there is a deliberate reason to change it.
This is not about cutting costs for the sake of it. It is about being intentional. Every increase in the cost base should be a conscious decision, a planned investment, a known increase, a capability that the business genuinely needs. Costs that accumulate by default, through renewal, habit, or assumption, are worth examining before they are carried forward into a new year.
For product businesses, cost of goods sits in this layer too. Margin at the gross level needs to be sufficient to support everything above it.
Revenue becomes the output, not the starting point
Once owner’s pay, profit, and costs are set, the revenue target becomes simple arithmetic. It must cover all three. Owner pay plus profit plus operating costs equals the revenue the business needs to generate.
This is where the approach becomes most useful and sometimes most confronting. When revenue is derived from what the business actually needs to deliver, rather than estimated from what feels achievable, the gap between the current position and the goal becomes visible and specific.
If the required revenue is significantly higher than last year, that is meaningful information. It means the business model needs to grow, pricing needs to change, or the cost structure needs to be reconsidered. It surfaces the real work to be done, rather than allowing a revenue target to sit as an aspiration that is never properly interrogated.
The question the process is really asking
Underneath the numbers, the Owner-First approach is asking one central question: does your current business model actually support your goals?
This considers the level you are planning to operate, with the costs you are carrying and the clients you are serving.
For many business owners, the honest answer is that the model has not been designed to support them, it has evolved to sustain itself while the owner absorbs the shortfall. The goal-setting process exposes that. And once it is visible, it can be addressed.
Where to start
The process does not require complex financial modelling. It requires four honest numbers: what you want to be paid monthly, what profit the business should generate, what it costs to operate, and the revenue required to cover all three.
Pull last year's actuals as a reference point. Use rounded numbers, this is about direction, not precision. Then work through the four steps in order, and resist the temptation to jump to revenue first.
The result is a set of financial goals you can genuinely stand behind because they reflect what the business actually needs to deliver for it to be worth building.
Sarah Petty is the Founder of Olive Business Partners and has worked with businesses at every stage of growth, from early-stage startups to multi-billion-dollar global organisations. She brings CFO-level thinking to small business owners who want clarity, control and a business that actually makes money. Sarah is known for making finance practical, commercial and also human.