Home Services Master Playbook

Seven systems. Built in order. Every number counted from your own field software.

THE CONTENTSWhat the book covers, in order

• Part 1. The 20-minute quick win: what your most common job actually makes
• Part 2. Diagnosis: why busy shops stay broke
• Part 3. The Growth Engine, the trade money model and the Trade Spine Test
• Systems 1 to 4. The Price Book, Quote Speed and Follow-Up, The Unsold Pile, The In-Home Decision
• The Promise. A workmanship guarantee and the math that sizes it
• Systems 5 to 7. The Membership, Dispatch and Capacity, Owner Rhythm
• Supporting parts. Techs, financing as the downsell, where the leads come from, roofing and other project work
• The instruments. The 13-week scorecard, the decision log, your baseline, 3 labelled composites (one goes wrong), the 90-day install and the 30 and 90 day look-backs

SAMPLE · PART 1The 20-Minute Quick Win

Pick the job you do most. Before you add anything up, write down what you think that job makes. That guess is the first number in the book.

Now take what you charged on the last one and subtract, one line at a time:

• Materials. What the supplier charged you.
• Labor, fully loaded. Wage plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits and every paid hour that never reached a job, divided by the hours you actually billed.
• Overhead. A normal month's costs to keep the doors open, divided by that month's billable hours, times this job's hours.
• Your pay, counted once. If you run the office, a market salary for that job goes in overhead. If you are on the tools, your hours count as labor. Never both.

Whatever is left is the job's real profit. Compare it to your guess. The gap between the two tells you how far your sense of the business sits from the business itself.

SAMPLE · SYSTEM 1Margin, not markup: one install, priced 3 ways

An illustration with round, made-up numbers. A company carries $33,000 of monthly overhead across 600 billable hours: $55 an hour. Its techs cost $60 for every hour they bill. So 1 sold hour costs $115 before a single part.

Multiplying when you meant to divide costs $320 on this one job. Matching the competitor leaves $600 of profit on a job that tied up two techs for a day. The book then turns this into a price book: every task you sell, priced once from its book hours, with a review date.

INSTRUMENTSWhat you will count, not what we tell you to hit

This book prints no industry close rates, no billable-rate targets and no average ticket. A number from another company cannot know your trade, your drive times or your market. Instead you get the method to count your own:

• Your cost of 1 sold hour, and the price of every task in your book
• Your unsold-quote pile, in dollars, by month
• Your own close rate by how fast the quote went out
• Your membership count, renewals and churn, and member lifetime gross profit
• Your billable rate and callback rate, against your own day one

Guess first, count second, write down the gap. Then count again at 30 and 90 days and compare.

Common questions

Which trades is it for?

HVAC, plumbing and electrical service-and-replacement companies, with a part for roofing and other project work. If you run a route business such as cleaning or lawn care, the Recurring Services Master Playbook is the one built for your economics.

Does it tell me what to charge?

No. It shows you how to price every task from your own loaded labor, overhead and the margin you choose, and how to test a price change on at least 20 quotes before you judge it.

What is in the spreadsheet?

Inputs, a price book, a job profit check, repair-or-replace, a membership pricer with churn, unsold-pile cohorts, guarantee math, a financing check, an allowable cost per customer ladder, a 13-week scorecard and a decision log. It opens in Excel, Apple Numbers and Google Sheets.

Are the examples real companies?

No. Every example is a labelled composite with round, made-up numbers. They show the decision, never a result, and one of them goes wrong on purpose. We do not publish client results.

Do this today