Working Out Your "Enough" Number: The Revenue Your Business Actually Needs

Why your business needs an "enough" number

Your enough number is the annual revenue your business has to produce to fund the life you actually want. Not the life a growth chart says you should want. Not a round figure that sounds impressive on a panel. The specific amount that covers your household, your business costs, your tax, your super and the things you're saving toward — and then stops.

Most purpose-led consultants have never worked theirs out. They price by feel, take what comes in, and find out in June whether the year worked. That's not a strategy. It's a hope with an ABN attached.

The consultants we see building something durable have done the opposite. They know the number. They know what it means in client terms. And because they know, they can say no to work that doesn't fit without spiralling about it. The number is what makes the boundary affordable.

What the number is not

It is not a ceiling. Earning more than your enough number is fine — good, even. Surplus buys you options: sabbaticals, pro bono work, hiring, a longer runway to be picky about clients.

It is not a target you set once and defend forever. It moves when your life moves.

And it is not a statement about ambition. This is where a lot of purpose-led operators get tangled. There's a story going around that wanting to earn well and wanting to do good are somehow in tension — that a specific, unapologetic revenue number is a bit grubby for someone doing values-driven work. It isn't. Vagueness about money is what forces people into work they don't believe in. The number is what protects the mission.

Step one: the life number

Start with your life, not your business. You're calculating how much money needs to land in your personal account each year for your household to function.

Open twelve months of bank and credit card statements. Don't estimate. Estimating is how people end up 20% short.

Add up:

• Housing — rent or mortgage, rates, strata, insurance, maintenance
• Utilities, phone, internet, subscriptions
• Food, household, transport, fuel, car costs
• Health — insurance, gap payments, allied health, medications
• Kids — childcare, school, activities
• Debt repayments outside the mortgage
• The stuff you'd resent losing: travel, gym, eating out, gifts, the dog

That last category matters. If you build the number on an austerity version of your life, you will blow it in month three and conclude the whole exercise was pointless.

Call the total your life number. Annual, after tax.

Step two: gross it up

Your life number is what you need in your hand. Your business has to produce considerably more than that, because a chunk of it never reaches you.

What sits between revenue and your bank account:

1. Income tax, at whatever rate applies to your structure and situation
2. Superannuation — nobody is paying it for you now, so it's a cost of the business, not an optional extra
3. Business operating costs — software, insurance, accounting, subscriptions, contractors, professional development, coworking, phone, travel to client sites
4. GST, if you're registered, which is collected, not earned — don't count it as revenue

On tax and structure: this is exactly the point where you talk to an accountant rather than a blog. Sole trader, company, trust — the difference between them changes this calculation materially, and it's their job, not ours. What you need from them is one thing: what does my business need to invoice for me to take home X?

On super, be honest with yourself. If you'd have received an employer contribution in a salaried role, and you're not contributing anything now, you haven't reduced your costs. You've deferred them onto a version of yourself who can't argue back.

Step three: add the buffer and the goals

Two more layers, and this is where most calculations fall over.

The buffer. Consulting revenue is lumpy. Clients delay, projects pause, invoices sit at 60 days, and you get sick. Add 10–20% on top of your costs to absorb that. If you have no cash reserve at all, use the higher end.

The goals. These are the things you're actively saving toward, expressed as annual amounts:

• Emergency fund — three to six months of the life number
• Extra super contributions
• A deposit, a renovation, a big trip
• Business investment — a website rebuild, a certification, a first contractor
• Time off — six unpaid weeks a year is a real cost and should be funded, not endured

Add them up. This layer is optional in the sense that you can survive without it. It's not optional if you want the business to be something other than a treadmill.

Step four: reverse-engineer the client load

Now the number becomes useful. Turn it into work.

Start with capacity. Take your working weeks — say 46 after leave and public holidays — and multiply by the days a week you want to work. Then cut it. In a solo practice, roughly 30–40% of your time goes to sales, admin, finance, marketing and thinking. That time is real and it is not billable.

What's left is your delivery capacity in days. Divide your enough number by that figure and you have the revenue each delivery day must produce.

Then translate it into the shape of work you actually sell:

• Retainers: enough number ÷ monthly retainer value ÷ 12 = concurrent clients required
• Projects: enough number ÷ average project value = projects per year
• Day rate: the figure you just calculated, plus a margin

A worked example

Say you run a two-day-a-week advisory practice and you want to keep it that way.

• Life number: $88,000 after tax
• Grossed up for tax and super (your accountant's figure, not ours): call it $134,000
• Business operating costs: $24,000
• Subtotal: $158,000
• Buffer at 15%: $182,000
• Goals — emergency fund top-up, extra super, a certification: $18,000
• Enough number: $200,000

Capacity: 46 weeks × 3 days = 138 days. Take 40% off the top for non-delivery work and you have roughly 83 delivery days a year.

$200,000 ÷ 83 = $2,400 per delivery day.

Or, in retainer terms: four concurrent clients at $4,200 a month. Or eight projects a year at $25,000 each.

That's the whole point of the exercise. "I need to earn more" is a feeling. "I need four retainers at $4,200 or my price is wrong" is a decision you can act on this week.

The number doesn't tell you what to charge. It tells you whether what you're charging can possibly work.

When the number looks impossible

Sometimes you run the maths and the answer is that your current model cannot get there. Good. That's information, and it's cheaper to learn it now than in year three.

You have four levers, and only four:

1. Price. Raise it. Most purpose-led consultants are under-priced, usually because they've confused affordability for the client with modesty about their own work.
2. Packaging. Move from hours to outcomes. A $2,400 day is a hard sell. A $30,000 engagement that solves a $300,000 problem is not.
3. Capacity. Work more days — but be clear this is a trade, not a solution, and it has a hard ceiling.
4. Costs. Cut what isn't earning. This lever is smaller than people think and never fixes a pricing problem.

If the gap is large, don't try to close it in one move. Pick the lever with the least resistance and re-run the numbers next quarter.

Revisit it twice a year

Set a calendar reminder for the start of the financial year and again in January. Rates move, kids start school, someone's parents need help. A number built on last year's life will quietly mislead you.

This is Product Design work — the first pillar of the Impact Architect Framework™, and the one everything else rests on. Visibility without a viable price just fills your calendar faster. Every member runs the five-pillar diagnostic at onboarding, rating themselves 1–10 across Product Design, Visibility, Impact, Systems and Wellbeing, and Product Design is where the low scores cluster most often. It's also where the fastest change happens.

The enough number is not the summit. It's the base camp — the thing that has to be solid before you attempt anything harder, like a three-day week, a genuine impact practice, or turning down work that pays well and costs you something you can't get back.

Do the maths, then bring it to people who've done theirs

Block ninety minutes this week. Statements open, spreadsheet blank, phone in another room. You will not enjoy the first thirty minutes. You will be glad of the number for the next decade.

Then test it against people running businesses like yours. Pricing conversations are almost impossible to have honestly in public and almost easy to have in a room of forty people who've all run the same calculation.

That's the room we're building — capped at 150 members, purpose-led consultants and fractional leaders who've decided earning well and doing good belong in the same business plan. Join the Community Waitlist and we'll be in touch when the next intake opens.