Before You Set Another Revenue Target, Answer: What Is Enough?

Eight in 10 U.S. small business owners started their companies seeking the freedom and flexibility of self-employment, according to FreshBooks' 2024 State of U.S. Small Businesses research. Yet the same founders routinely set goals — $1 million in revenue, then $5 million, then $10 million — without defining what any of it is for.

That contradiction sits at the center of a new argument making the rounds in entrepreneurship circles: business owners should stop setting growth targets until they answer one personal question. What is enough?

The case rests on a simple observation. Ask founders why they want their next revenue milestone and the answers are vague. "We should be able to get there." "It's the next level." "That's where a company like ours should be." None of those is a strategy.

The problem is not a lack of ambition. It is that without a defined destination, every milestone creates another. Hit $1 million and you start thinking about $2 million. At $2 million, someone asks about $5 million. Then $10 million sounds like the number that would mean you have made it. The finish line keeps moving because nobody decided where to put it.

The money question, settled

Any argument about defining "enough" has to confront the fashionable claim that money stops mattering past a certain income. Recent research pushes back on that idea. A 2024 analysis by happiness researcher Matthew Killingsworth compared a large U.S. income sample with two groups of high-net-worth individuals. He found happiness continued to rise with money even at very high levels of income and wealth. Wealthier participants were substantially happier than people earning more than $500,000 a year.

So wanting more money is not shallow. Money creates security, choices and opportunities. The distinction that matters, the argument goes, is between wanting more money for a reason and pursuing more because "more" has become the default setting.

The Champagne Moment

The proposed method starts with what one coach calls the Champagne Moment: the point at which a founder can look at something the business enabled and think, "This is what I was building it for."

The answers vary widely. One entrepreneur's moment meant having the money and freedom to attend the Kentucky Derby — not someday, but because they could decide and make it happen. Another wanted to live and work from Europe for the summer. A third aimed to buy a first investment property and start building wealth outside a professional services company. A fourth set a bigger goal: retire from the company with the resources to spend half the year in Europe.

None of those goals appears on a P&L. But each defines what the P&L needs to produce. That is the point. A Champagne Moment turns an abstract ambition like "I want financial freedom" into something a business can be designed around.

FreshBooks' data suggests this personal dimension is not peripheral. The 2024 research found 79% of business owners were driven into business by a desire for independence or fulfillment rather than external necessity. Many never dreamed of managing 100 employees or chasing an eight-figure revenue number. They wanted control, flexibility and the ability to build something on their own terms — ambitions that are easy to replace, somewhere along the way, with conventional metrics. Revenue becomes the goal. Headcount becomes evidence of progress. Being busy becomes evidence of importance.

From moment to number

Defining the personal destination is only the start. The next step is calculating what it actually requires — an exercise that produces what the approach calls the Enough Number. Despite the name, it is not necessarily one figure. It is an economic specification for the life the founder is trying to create, built from five components:

• Owner income: how much the business must provide annually.
• Wealth: the level of investable assets or business equity targeted.
• Outside income: investments, property or other assets generating income independently of the company.
• Time: how many hours a week the founder actually wants to work.
• Freedom: what the founder wants to be able to do without the business getting in the way.

Specifics matter. "I want more freedom" is an aspiration. "I want to spend June through August in Europe while working no more than 20 hours a week" is a business requirement.

Working backwards

Once the outcome is fixed, the planning question changes. Stop asking how big the company can get. Start asking what company is needed to produce the outcome.

The arithmetic can surprise. Suppose the desired lifestyle requires $500,000 in annual owner earnings. Does that require a $20 million company? Maybe. But perhaps a highly profitable $4 million or $5 million business could produce it. Those are radically different companies, with different headcounts, management structures, capital requirements and demands on the founder's time.

A sale changes the calculus again. If the Champagne Moment involves selling the business for $10 million, then recurring revenue, management independence, customer concentration and transferable enterprise value may matter far more than maximizing this year's distributions.

A practical test for the next planning session

The recommendation for founders with existing revenue targets is not to discard them but to place the Enough Number beside them. At the next quarterly or annual planning session, the method calls for writing down five things: the Champagne Moment, required owner income, the wealth target, the time target, and the revenue, margin, team and business model that can realistically deliver the first four.

Comparing those answers with the company currently being built can cut both ways. Some founders will discover they need to grow faster, build a management team, raise margins, create recurring revenue or prepare for a sale. Others will discover something equally powerful: they do not need as much business as they thought. The next office may not be necessary. Doubling headcount may not be progress. The next $3 million of revenue may create complexity without materially improving the founder's life, wealth or enterprise value.

Knowing what enough looks like does not reduce ambition, the argument concludes. It makes ambition more precise. And in a field where there will always be someone with a bigger company or a larger exit, a founder using "more" as the definition of success can never actually win.