There may not fully be a glass ceiling anymore, but there are sure remnants of it and the men how made it.
My wife is in charge of a lot of the ordering for our Greenhouse and there is a yearly convention where there are 1,500+ booth and all the big companies on show and you put in your orders for next year, find new products or services, etc. Anyway it has happened more than a handful of times where she has gone to order at a booth and they will say well where is the boss at we wouldn't want to put this order in unless HE approves it. This one specific order was for 5 semi loads of potting soil maybe like 80 grand and my wife, with a maybe 5 month old in a sling on her hip says Bitch I am the boss and took the papers back from him and went and ordered from a different supplier. That was 10+ years ago and every year they call to try to get our business back and I say to the guys calling, well you'll have to talk to my wife, and apparently its is a known thing at the company from the past and they just hang up rather than suck it up and apologize or whatever.
There are countless stories like that and to be honest it makes me really sad as I have surrounded my self with some of the smartest and best people and they all are women and I think I have 3 daughters who still have to grow up knowing they won't be respected by so many. And it really surprises you when a guy you think is pretty good salesman will talk to you, thinking he's talking manly man to manly man, will say something you swear is out of the "1950s my wife is at home barefoot and pregnant making a coffee cake for when I come home from work" type of thing.
All I can say is we aren't all bad which is kinda a sad thing to have to say.
We pay ourselves fairly for our regular paychecks. It isn't right to try and make the business look better by trying to only keep the profits. I'm not talking shady tax avoidance type stuff either, just people I know have fooled themselves into thinking their business is thriving, but in reality it isn't. because they worked all year for $0 to take a pass thru of less than they would pay someone to do their job.
I look at it like what would we pay someone to do our position. so we each make roughly 75 for payroll and then also take the lot more profit share too. But say in a bad year it is good to know that we aren't going to have 0 income.
I know there are ways to play games with paying yourself far less and talking more as pass thru income, but I feel it just can give you a poor vision of your companies health.
Just like @TheRealChipA I use the profit first method. I actually emailed the author when I first read the book, and he had one of his team members to talk with me about my business and helped me come up with my percentages. Because I was a new business with no debt and no employees I started at 5% for profits, 15% for taxes, 50% for owner's comp and 30% for operations. I still follow this system but will make adjustments because adding an inventory account and an employee account (for my future employees).
