Recurring Services Master Playbook
For owners of house cleaning, lawn care, pool service, pest control and snow removal businesses. Find out what an hour on route actually earns once you count the driving, price every stop from your own cost per minute, and grow on the streets you already drive. Every number in it is yours to count.
Route Economics: 7 systems, in order
Every system passes the Trade Spine Test: a unit a route business actually sells or spends, a leak you can pull from the schedule, timesheets or invoices you already have, and a script you can say on the route.
- System 1: Measure the route. Productive ratio, revenue per crew clock hour, drive ratio, stops per crew day and churn per cycle, guessed first, then counted.
- System 2: Density. Every customer on the map as cluster, stray or hole; added drive minutes; the quarterly stop-level scorecard.
- System 3: Price the drive. Crew cost per minute with drive minutes counted as paid time, true cost per stop, a minimum stop charge, a distance premium, frequency options priced from minutes (never "% off"), 4-week billing, commitment structures that do not cut the visit price, and the annual price rise judged on contribution.
- System 4: Keep them. Churn per cycle against the starting count, the cancel log, evidence of the visit, weather notices, a reward placed past your own churn point, the save conversation and the reinstate list.
- System 5: Crews. Crew contribution per week, route knowledge, paying the whole working day, and hiring in a trade nobody applies to.
- System 6: Grow tight. Streets, not markets: door hangers placed legally, a neighbour referral offer priced from contribution, and the referral equation run per route.
- System 7: Owner rhythm. The weekly 30 minutes, the monthly hour, and where lawn, cleaning, pool, pest and snow differ, including a snow expected-value sheet run on your own storm history.
- Plus. The route money model, route-adjusted lifetime gross profit (LTGP), the 30-day cash test, the seasonal cash plan, and a dated legal appendix.
The Problem
You keep adding customers and the business does not make more money. Crews are stretched, overtime creeps up, and a busier week somehow pays less.
It is usually not the price and it is usually not the crew. It is the road. A customer pays for the minutes your crew works on their property. You pay for every minute the crew is on the clock, including every minute of driving between stops, which counts as paid work time under US federal wage rules.
The same $65 stop, with 35 minutes of work, earns $95 an hour when it sits 6 minutes from the last stop and $68 an hour when it sits 22 minutes away. Same customer, same price, same work. The address decided it.
What the book covers, in order
- Part 1. The 20-minute quick win: what an hour on route actually earns
- Part 2. Diagnosis: why adding customers does not add profit, and where your constraint sits
- Part 3. Route Economics, the Trade Spine Test, the route money model, and System 1
- Parts 4 to 8. Density, Price the Drive, Selling a Recurring Service, Keep Them, Crews
- Parts 9 and 10. The day itself, and Grow Tight
- Part 11. What a customer is actually worth: route-adjusted LTGP, the most you will pay to win one, and the 30-day cash test
- Part 12. Routing software as a priced decision, MRR, the seasonal cash plan and the sinking fund
- Part 13. Owner rhythm, and where lawn, cleaning, pool, pest and snow differ
- Parts 14 to 17. The one-page scorecard, 4 labelled composites (one goes wrong), your calibrated baseline, the 5-Day Route Sprint, the 13 weeks, the day-30 and day-90 look-backs, and a dated legal appendix
Sample: Part 1, The 20-Minute Quick Win
Take 1 crew and 1 normal day from last week. Before you count anything, write down 2 guesses: what share of the day you think the crew spent on paid work, and what that day brought in per hour.
Then count, from the timesheet and the schedule:
- Productive ratio = hours doing the work ÷ hours on the clock
- Revenue per clock hour = revenue from the day's stops ÷ hours on the clock
An illustration with round, made-up numbers: a crew on the clock 9 hours works 5.5 of them, which is 61%. The day's stops bill $740, which is $82 an hour. The customers paid $135 for every hour of work, but you paid wages, truck, fuel and insurance for all 9 hours.
Write your counted numbers next to your guesses. The gap between them is the first useful thing the book gives you: the distance between how the business feels and how it is.
Instruments: what you will count, not what we tell you to hit
This book prints no industry drive ratio, no revenue-per-hour band, no churn benchmark and no valuation multiple. A number from another territory cannot know your density, your crews or your market. You get the method to count your own:
- Your crew cost per minute, drive minutes included
- Every stop's contribution and revenue per crew hour, ranked
- Your minimum stop charge and distance premium
- Your churn per cycle and where on the calendar cancels bunch up
- Each customer's route-adjusted LTGP, and the most you will pay to win one
- Your seasonal reserve, and, if you plow, the expected value of a seasonal contract on your own storm history
Guess first, count second, write down the gap. Count again at day 30 and day 90 and compare.
Who This Is For
Owners of route-based recurring service businesses (house cleaning, lawn care, pool service, pest control, snow removal) with 1 to 10 crews, roughly $300K to $3M a year, who keep adding customers without making more money. If your work is one-off jobs such as HVAC or plumbing repairs, the Home Services Master Playbook is the one built for your economics.
Common questions
Does it tell me what to charge?
No. It shows you how to price every stop from your own crew cost per minute, your drive minutes and the margin you choose, and how to judge a price rise on contribution: the share of customers you can lose and still break even.
Does it teach recurring discounts?
No. Each frequency is priced from its own minutes. Commitment comes from billing that matches the visits, prepaid seasons with an included add-on, and a reward placed past the point where your own customers tend to leave.
What is in the spreadsheet?
Inputs, a baseline, a crew-day audit, a stop scorecard for every customer, one-customer LTGP with the 30-day cash test, pricing (minimum stop charge, distance premium, price-change break-even), billing cadence, seasonal cash with a sinking fund, a snow expected-value sheet and the referral equation per route. It opens in Excel, Apple Numbers and Google Sheets.
Is it legal advice?
No. The appendix quotes the federal sources it relies on (drive time, bank debit authorization, background checks, mailboxes), dated October 2026, and gives you the question to take to your attorney, insurer or state agency.
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.
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.
