NurjOpen Nurj

Exit 9–5 stage · 12 min read

The salary replacement model

Work backwards from take-home pay into clients, pricing and retention.

Work backwards from what you need, not forwards from what you hope. The arithmetic is unglamorous and it is the whole plan.

Working backwards

  1. Start with your current take-home pay, not your gross. That is the number your life is built on.
  2. Add what your employer covers that you will now cover yourself — pension, health, transport, any allowances.
  3. Add tax on your business income. Do not skip this step; it is where most projections quietly break.
  4. Divide by your average monthly value per client. That is how many clients you need.
  5. Divide by your close rate to get conversations required per month. That is your actual weekly target.

Then apply the retention check: what percentage of clients stay past three months? Replacement is not real until the base is stable, because churn means you are running to stand still.

Turn this into your next move.

Answer five questions and Nurj writes the exact AI prompt for your business and stage. Free to start.

Run my free signal scan