The Business Owner's Textbook
Score the ten holes in your business, price your weakest three in dollars a month from your own numbers, test the top one for 2 weeks, and spend the quarter on the hole that costs the most. With a spreadsheet that does the math.
Ten holes. A dollar figure on the weak ones. One hole a quarter, tested before you commit to it.
What’s Inside
Every part of it is in your library with The Standard.
The Problem
Everybody tells you what to fix. More leads. A new website. Better follow-up. Software. Each one sounds right, and you can only do one well at a time.
So most owners fix the hole they can see, or the one they enjoy. The hole that costs the most is usually quiet. This book puts a dollar figure on each hole, from your own numbers, so the choice stops being a feeling.
Rank the holes by what they cost, not by how bad they feel. Then prove the top one with a 2-week test before you give it a quarter.
The 10 Holes
- Get found: do the right people find you without paying every time?
- Capture: when someone shows interest, can you always reach them?
- Respond: do you reply before they book somebody else?
- Convert: do real conversations end in a decision?
- Deliver: is the work the same standard whoever does it?
- Delight: does anything happen the customer did not expect?
- Retain and refer: do they come back, and do they send people?
- Money: do you know the gross profit on your main jobs?
- People: could you be unreachable for 2 weeks without decay?
- Owner: do you spend protected time on the business?
Took the free Bucket Audit? Its ten holes are named for tools (offers, websites, tracking, ads, local search, content, follow-up, reviews, systems, money). The book opens with a one-line map from each audit hole to the hole it lives in here.
What's in the Book
- Part 1, The 20-Minute Quick Win: write your guess, score the ten holes, and price one of them in dollars a month.
- Part 2, Full or Empty: idle capacity value, the most that more demand can add. If you are full, more leads make it worse.
- Part 3, Why Owners Fix the Wrong Hole: the visible one, the fun one, the upstream one, the advised one.
- Part 4, The Order Rule and the Constraint Test: why a hole below eats every fix above it, relative lift, advertising or sales, likely suspects by stage, and the 2-week test read against your own normal swing.
- Part 5, The Ten Holes: for each, how to count it from the source, a formula that turns it into dollars a month, the first fix, a 2-week test and the library guide that goes deeper.
- Part 6, Trust the Number: three checks before you act: source or report, outcome or activity, label or definition.
- Part 7, The Scorecard and the 90-Day Plan: one hole, one change, one expected number written first, and the 30-day sprint.
- Then: 4 worked composites (1 that goes wrong), metrics, 13 common mistakes, the 30 and 90 day look-back, and a headcount map in the appendix.
A Sample: What Are More Leads Worth?
A hypothetical mobile detailer has 18 empty job slots a month and $200 gross profit per job. Counting from her phone log, she loses 24 enquiries a month to slow replies and books 50% of the ones she answers in time: 24 x 50% x $200 = $2,400 a month. Add the people she cannot reach and the conversations that end without a decision, and the holes below "get found" already lose about 25 jobs. She only has room for 18. So more enquiries are worth $0 to her this month. Every number is a round hypothetical. The book shows you how to run it on yours.
Questions
Does it tell me what a good number is? No. There are no industry rates, response-time targets or margin bands in it. Every comparison is against your own count: your own best quarter, your own normal swing, your own last 90 days.
Do I need to read all ten holes? No. Score all ten, then read the three your score flags. Each hole names the one library guide that goes deeper.
Do I need Excel? No. The spreadsheet opens in Excel and Apple Numbers and imports into Google Sheets. Every formula is also on paper in the worksheets.
Is it for my trade? It is written for small local service businesses: detailers, plumbers, cleaners, florists, salons and the like. The examples are a detailer, a florist, an upholstery shop and a window tinting shop, all hypothetical.
Who This Is For
The owner of a small local service business who is working hard, growing slowly, and cannot tell which of the ten things everyone says to fix is the one that costs the most this quarter.
Read it in your library.
This is included with The Standard, along with every other guide in the library. Your monthly re-audit tells you which one to open next. $497 to start, $297/mo to keep it running. Cancel any month and keep everything.
See The Standard →Not sure yet? Take the free Bucket Audit or tell us what's broken.
