So you’ve read or maybe listened to Profit First, by Mike Michalowicz. Or you’ve heard about it, but you aren’t much of a reader and you’re looking for the cliff notes version.

The premise

The main idea is to take your profit first, instead of waiting until year end when you file taxes and your accountant tells you what your profit was. You basically budget your profit into your business and work backwards from there. Profit First is essentially the envelope method of budgeting, but for business, and using bank accounts instead of envelopes—because you can’t run a business with cash this day in age.

The 5 envelopes (bank accounts)

You will start by opening 5 bank accounts for your business:

1. Profit - this is where you will transfer and keep your profit

2. Owner’s Pay - this is where you will transfer the money you pay yourself

3. Taxes - you guessed it, this is where you’ll transfer the money for the tax man.

4. Operating Expenses (Opex) - this is your main bank account,

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