Find your exit number

Your exit number is the amount of money your business needs to make each month in order for you to be able to leave your day gig without putting your financial future at risk.

So it's one monthly number. It's the income your business has to bring in, month after month, before handing in your notice is a decision and not a gamble.

There's a common belief that you have to quit your 9-to-5 to build a business. For some people, that's true. Their cushion is deep enough to absorb a year of nothing coming in. For a lot of Builders, the math is different, and the reason is the wealth gap. Kathryn cites the numbers in Build the Damn Thing: the average family wealth of the "Entitleds" is $171,000, while Black families average $17,150 and Latino families average $20,600.

Average family wealth, cited in Build the Damn Thing.

When that's the ground you're standing on, walking away from a paycheck without any sign that your idea can carry you is, in Kathryn's words, financial suicide. The exit number turns that around. It gives you a clear line, so you leave when the business has shown it can hold you up, not on the morning you finally lose your patience.

You don't have to leave the day you start. A 9-to-5, yours or one belonging to someone close to you, can hand you real things to build with. Kathryn's own example is in the book: while she was building The Budget Fashionista, she uploaded photos fast using the T1 lines at Tobias's office, much quicker than the dial-up she had at home. Later, the relationships she built at TBF helped her launch digitalundivided, with things like free event space and sponsorships.

Read the job as fuel for a while. It buys you the runway to get your number met before you go.

This is about what you truly need to be the best version of yourself, not what it would take to live like Oprah. It's the amount you require each month to cover your basic necessities plus a few extras. And it's not a number you hit once. In the book, Kathryn is specific: your business needs to support you at this level for at least a year, without dipping into your savings or your 401k.

The tool above doesn't hand you a target, on purpose. Kathryn puts it plainly in the book:

I can't give you an exact number or formula here because what you need to get you through the day, week, or month is deeply personal.

Some people need only a futon and cheese sandwiches. Others need a plush mattress and green juice. Private school for your kids might be a luxury for one family and a necessity for another. Going to the gym every day might be what keeps you focused, while singing in your community choir might be the creative outlet that keeps you whole. Your number is built from your real life, so it has to come from you.

Kathryn's method is to go through your spending the way you'd go through a closet. Take it line by line and ask, "Does this item spark joy?" If it doesn't, let it go.

One caution she makes in the book, because most budgeting advice gets it wrong: don't blanket-cut the small things. Every budgeting book tells you to drop the latte without asking what the latte is doing for you. If that latte is the one treat you give yourself, the thing that helps you meet the day a little more optimistically, keep it. If the coffee shop is where you connect with your community, that's not waste, that's part of what keeps you building.