Busy is not the same as profitable. Work out exactly how many jobs a month you need just to cover your overheads, and how many to hit the profit you actually want.
Break-even is the number of jobs a month where your profit covers your overheads and you are left with nothing extra. Add your monthly overheads to any profit target, divide by your profit on an average job, and that is how many jobs you need to land. Fall short of it and you are working for free.
Everything that goes out whether you work or not.
So we can turn the target into a number of jobs.
A guide, not financial advice. Figures are estimates and ignore tax and seasonal swings. Use your own overheads and average job figures for the most accurate picture.
Plenty of trades can tell you their day rate. Far fewer can tell you the number that actually matters: how many jobs a month it takes before the business stops losing money. Without that number, a full diary feels like success even when it is barely covering the bills, and a quiet week feels like disaster even when the month is still on track.
Rent, insurance, the van payment, your phone, your own wage or drawings, they all go out the same whether you did five jobs this month or fifteen. That is exactly why break-even is worked out against overheads, not against how busy you feel. The busier-feels-safer trap is one of the most common ways trades end up working hard for very little.
Break-even tells you the floor. A target profit on top of it tells you what you are actually working for, whether that is savings, a buffer for quiet months, or just a wage that reflects the risk of running the business. Add it in and the number of jobs you need becomes a real goal, not just a survival line.