The number is £10k a month.
Recurring. By the end of 2026. Zero employees. Whatever margin sits after the SaaS, the hosting, the gear, and the tax is mine. At 25% net that funds the life I want, the half marathon habit, the family runway, and the year of pure shipping that comes after.
Today I am at £2.25k. The gap is £7.75k. The clock is seven months.
● current snapshot
- +Digital services · ~£1.25k/mo · one retainer live, one signing
- +1:1 coaching · ~£1k/mo · across active clients
- Total: £2,250/mo · Gap to £10k: £7,750/mo
Aggregates only. Per-client splits stay between me and the client.
The levers I will pull, ranked by what closes the most gap per hour spent:
1. Sign two more digital retainers. The pattern is proven on the case study at Reed Lifts. Two more closes roughly a third of the gap on its own. Outreach is one or two cold conversations a week to specific trades and operators.
2. Ship Overseer in Q3. If the waitlist converts at 20% at the average tier price (~£85 blended), 200 buyers is £17k in launch revenue. Even at 10% conversion that is two months of the £7.75k gap covered.
3. Lock in one or two more coaching clients. Two new in-person London slots inside the published rate card. Inbound from content, not cold outreach. The existing client outcomes do the selling without naming the clients.
4. £250 audits, two per month. Low-friction door opener. Half of audits convert to bigger builds. Adds a small baseline plus pipeline.
5. Time:Stamps growth. Small contributor at £8 to £16 per subscriber. Will not move the needle on its own. Bonus, not the bet.
Add the levers up and the gap closes by October if every one of them lands. They will not all land. That is fine. The point is having the maths sit somewhere I can see it every week.
A public number is harder to bullshit yourself out of than a private one. That is the entire point of writing it down.
Why put it on the internet. Two reasons.
First, a public number is harder to bullshit yourself out of than a private one. I have set this goal to myself in journals four times in two years. Every time it drifted. Writing it on a URL with an actual deadline means past Sam can read present Sam in six months and ask exactly what happened.
Second, this is the deal I am offering anyone who reads the log. You watch me try to hit a specific number, with specific levers, in seven months. You see what worked. You see what failed. You see the maths weekly. If you are trying to reach your own number, that data is more useful than a generic indie hacker case study from someone whose business looks nothing like yours.
If I hit the number, that is a proof point worth a thousand "follow your passion" posts.
If I miss, that is also a proof point. Just a different one. Subscribe to Escape_Velocity if you want the weekly numbers.