What Comes Next: Your 30-Day Action Plan

You’ve read the playbook. What comes next is what matters.

Knowledge without action is just entertainment. You now understand how PE firms build value, how scalable businesses operate, and what separates stuck contractors from growing ones. But understanding isn’t the same as doing.

This chapter is about turning what you’ve learned into action. Specifically: what to do in the next 30 days, how to evaluate where you are, and how to get help if you need it.

The 30-Day Priority Framework

Don’t try to do everything at once. That’s a recipe for doing nothing. Here’s what to focus on in the first 30 days:

Week 1: Assessment

Goal: Understand where you are before you decide where to go.

Actions:

1. Complete the diagnostic below. Be honest. No one’s grading you.

2. Review your financials. Pull your P&L, AR aging report, and check your current cash position. When did you last look at these?

3. List every role in your business. Include “owner” — what functions are you performing that should be delegated?

4. Identify single points of failure. Who are the people whose departure would cause a crisis?

5. Track your time for one week. Where are you actually spending your hours? Operations? Sales? Firefighting?

Week 2: Quick Wins

Goal: Implement fast improvements that build momentum.

Actions:

1. Same-day invoicing. If you’re not already doing this, start. Today. Every day you delay invoicing is a day added to your cash cycle.

2. AR reminders. Set up automated payment reminders at Day 7 and Day 14. Most accounting software can do this.

3. Phone answering protocol. Write down exactly how calls should be answered. Who answers, what they say, what information they collect.

4. Document one process. Pick your most critical process and write it down step-by-step. Just one.

5. Identify your next hire. Based on where your time goes and what’s falling through cracks, what role should you hire or outsource next?

Week 3: Systems Foundation

Goal: Begin building real infrastructure.

Actions:

1. Start the 13-week cash flow forecast. Use the template from Chapter 8. Update it weekly from now on.

2. Define decision rights for one area. Pick scheduling, pricing, or customer service. Write down who can decide what without asking.

3. Create role documentation. Take the most critical role in your office and document it completely: responsibilities, metrics, authority, escalation.

4. Implement one scheduling improvement. Shorter windows, route optimization, or better confirmation process. Just one.

5. Track a new metric. Pick one thing you’re not currently measuring that matters. Conversion rate, average ticket, call answer rate. Start tracking it.

Week 4: Momentum

Goal: Lock in habits and decide on your path forward.

Actions:

1. Weekly financial review. Establish this as a non-negotiable. Same time every week. Same reports.

2. 90-day plan. Based on what you’ve learned in Weeks 1-3, create a 90-day implementation plan.

3. Make the DIY vs. help decision. Based on your experience these past few weeks, are you going to build this yourself or get outside help?

4. Start conversations. If you’re getting help, start conversations now. Don’t wait until you’re desperate.

5. Finish what you started. Make sure that first process you documented is fully trained and being followed. Complete one thing before starting ten.

The Diagnostic

Answer these questions honestly. Use the scoring to understand your starting point.

Financial Health

Operational Health

Organizational Health

Scoring

• Mostly Green (10+): You have a foundation. Focus on optimization and scaling.
• Mostly Yellow (7-10): The basics exist but need systematization. Good candidate for DIY with the right commitment.
• Mostly Red (<7): Build fundamentals first. Strongly consider outside help — you’re trying to climb a steep hill.

The Sequence That Works

If you’re building this yourself, here’s the order that makes sense:

1. The Office Machine First (Chapter 7)

• Phone answering
• Scheduling and dispatch
• Invoicing and collections
• Customer service

Why first: These create immediate cash flow impact and improve customer experience. Every day you fix these, you make more money and lose fewer customers.

2. Financial Discipline (Chapters 6, 8)

• Margin tracking by service type
• 13-week cash flow forecast
• AR enforcement
• Pricing discipline

Why second: You need cash flow visibility and control to fund everything else. Bad financials kill good companies.

3. Organizational Structure (Chapters 3, 9)

• Role definition
• Decision rights
• Throughput logic
• Replaceability

Why third: This builds the structure that can handle growth. Without it, you’ll keep hitting ceilings.

4. Growth Engine (Chapters 4, 5)

• Customer acquisition
• Revenue per customer
• Service agreements
• Marketing systems

Why fourth: Only pursue growth after your operations can handle it. Growing into chaos is worse than staying small.

5. Value Creation (Chapter 10)

• Owner independence
• Clean financials
• Documented systems

Why last: This is the result of everything else working. It’s not something you build separately — it’s what you become.

When to Get Help

Here are signs that DIY isn’t the right path:

You’ve tried before and failed. Past behavior predicts future behavior. If you’ve attempted to systematize and it didn’t stick, more effort on the same approach probably won’t work.

You’re already maxed out. If you’re working 60+ hours a week and can’t find time for strategic work, you don’t have 15-20 hours to dedicate to building systems.

Revenue is stuck. If you’ve been at the same level for 2+ years, something structural needs to change. More hustle isn’t the answer.

You can’t take a vacation. If leaving for two weeks would cause a crisis, you’re the single point of failure. That needs to change.

Good people keep leaving. High turnover often signals organizational dysfunction. Outside perspective helps.

How to Choose a Partner

If you decide to get outside help, here’s what to look for:

Industry experience. Generic business consulting doesn’t work for trades. Look for people who understand home services specifically.

Operational knowledge. Theory isn’t enough. Your partner should understand the day-to-day realities of running a trade business.

Proven results. Ask for case studies and references. Talk to their clients.

Clear deliverables. Understand exactly what you’re getting, what the timeline is, and what success looks like.

Cultural fit. You’ll be working closely with these people. Make sure you actually like talking to them.

The Invitation

If you’re ready to have a conversation about implementing what you’ve learned, that’s what Office OS does.

We provide the operational infrastructure for trade businesses: phone answering, scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, collections, customer service. We hire the people, build the systems, and manage the operations — so you can focus on running your business.

Our clients get the operational infrastructure of a PE-backed company without the acquisition.

We’re not the right fit for everyone. If you have the time and inclination to build this yourself, the tools are in this book. Do it.

But if you want it installed — if you want to skip the build and go straight to operating with professional infrastructure — we should talk.

Here’s how to start:

• Visit our website
• Schedule a discovery call
• We’ll discuss your situation, see if we’re a fit, and go from there

No pressure. No hard sell. Just an honest conversation about whether we can help.

A Final Word

Every large trade business started small. The difference between the ones that grew and the ones that stayed stuck isn’t luck or market conditions — it’s systems.

The businesses that scale build the infrastructure that enables scale. They invest in operations before they’re ready. They hire before they’re comfortable. They systematize before it feels necessary.

You now have the playbook. You understand what needs to be built and why.

The only question is: will you build it?