For a lot of founders, starting a company can be a path to new levels of wealth. But in the beginning? Don’t expect a paycheck–at least for a while. A survey of 500 entrepreneurs across various industries revealed that 51 percent of small-business owners did not pay themselves for multiple months to control the cash flow in their company. The survey found that 26 percent of respondents had gone two to six months without paying themselves and another 25 percent went more than six months without a salary.

New data from Kabbage, an Atlanta-based financial services firm that provides loans to small businesses, sheds light on exactly how long most business owners tend to forgo paying themselves. The startup world is filled with now-successful founders who were forced to start very scrappily. For example, Lyft co-founders John Zimmer and Logan Green did not take a salary during the first three years of building the now $15 billion ride-sharing empire. “It was helpful that I saved some money,” Zimmer told Business Insider’s U.S. editor-in-chief, Alyson Shontell, in an episode of the “Success: How I Did It” podcast. “We basically lived in an apartment that was also our office. We called it the ‘apartifice.'”  (The founders did not, however, disclose how much they had in savings.)

That’s something that Zume Pizza co-founder and CEO Julia Collins had to face earlier in her career. In her former role of CFO at the Mexican and barbecue fusion restaurant Mexicue, Collins said she didn’t pay herself for two years, which eventually led to her feeling completely burned out. It was then she learned it’s OK to divert some funding to pay herself a reasonable salary.

Source Credit: Inc.
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