Why Anaita pays herself less than her staff at Hero Packaging
Anaita shares Hero Packaging's revenue growth from $100k in year one to $3-4 million after two and a half years, and explains that she pays herself a low salary while staff earn more. Her reasoning is that reinvesting in the business builds long-term value over short-term personal cash flow.
The lessons
Prioritize reinvesting profit into stock, marketing and staff over maximizing your own salary early on.
Pay your team well even if it means taking home less yourself, business value compounds over time.
Normalize talking openly about revenue and salary so founders can actually learn from each other.
Questions people ask
Why does Anaita pay herself less than her employees?
She believes building the long-term value of Hero Packaging matters more than her personal daily cash flow. Instead of taking a high salary, she reinvests profit into staff pay, stock, and marketing to grow the business faster.
Transcript
We're going to talk about money. People hate talking about money, but I'm going to tell you how much revenue I make and why my staff earn more than me. So I own Hero Packaging. We're now at about the three to four million mark.
It's been running for two and a half years. In the first year, we made about a hundred thousand. It's growing pretty fast. That does not mean I pocket three to four million dollars a year.
I give myself an extremely low salary. The rest of the profit goes to staff, it goes to stock, and it goes to marketing. My staff salaries are all more than mine. The point of that is because the business value is more important to me than my daily cash flow.
My new business is Sell Anything Online, which is this. I'm making about $500 a day through business mentorships and books. All my profit gets reinvested. Why is this important?
Because I want to normalize talking about money. It shouldn't be a secret. We need to learn from each other.
