The Business Checkup is the front door to The Practice: a full-spectrum business development company for owner-run service businesses doing roughly $750K or more.
The owner question
The strategy
Owners do not wake up searching for a full-spectrum business development company. They search the pain: cash flow problems, contractor profit margin, tax strategies, business valuation, owner bottleneck, or how to sell a service business. This site is built around those searches.
Services
Most service businesses do not have one profit problem. They have a few small leaks that add up: underpriced labor, materials getting eaten,...
Most owners treat taxes like an annual surprise. The real issue is that tax decisions are connected to payroll, owner pay, cash reserves, eq...
Clean books are not about neat reports. They are about knowing which work makes money, which customers slow the business down, which costs a...
Owners usually ask what the business is worth after they are tired. Buyers ask a different question: how risky is the cash flow if the owner...
Exit readiness is not only a sale process. It is the work of making the business less dependent on the owner, cleaner to understand, easier ...
Operations are where profit disappears quietly. A job waits on approval, a crew loses hours, parts are missed, invoices go out late, and the...
For owner-run service businesses
HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, construction, landscaping, manufacturing, distribution, and other service businesses where the owner knows the trade but never got a real business operating system.
HVAC owners often lose money in labor recovery, flat-rate pricing drift, callbacks, maintenance-plan execution, inventory, and owner-dependent sa...
Plumbing businesses usually need clean separation between service, install, excavation, warranty, and emergency work so the owner can see what ac...
Electrical contractors can hide margin problems inside labor estimates, change orders, material markup, commercial receivables, and project close...
Roofing companies often need tighter controls around materials, subcontractors, supplement/change orders, job costing, and seasonality....
Project-driven companies need discipline around scope, change orders, job-cost review, draw schedules, and owner bottlenecks....
Landscaping and lawn-care owners need to understand route density, crew productivity, seasonality, recurring revenue, and equipment drag....
Light manufacturing and distribution businesses often hide cash in inventory, purchasing, pricing, freight, receivables, and weak controls....
Owner search hub
A busy business is not automatically a profitable business. The common causes are underpriced work, poor work mix, labor hours that are paid but ...
Profit does not pay bills until it turns into cash. Cash can be trapped in receivables, delayed invoices, inventory, deposits, debt payments, tax...
Contractor profit margin depends on trade, work type, labor model, subcontractor use, material exposure, and overhead. The more useful owner ques...
Owner dependence costs money through delayed decisions, staff waiting, low-value owner work, missed sales time, slow hiring, weak delegation, and...
Material problems usually come from missed billing, weak markup discipline, discounts, warranty parts, waste, purchasing, inventory shrinkage, an...
Labor utilization compares the hours you pay for with the hours that create revenue. The gap often comes from travel, waiting, poor prep, callbac...
Receivables are cash the business has earned but cannot use yet. Contractors often lose control through late invoicing, weak follow-up, missed ch...
Service-business value is driven by cash flow, risk, repeatability, management depth, customer concentration, owner dependence, growth quality, a...
The business is easier to sell when the buyer can see clean earnings, transferable systems, a team that can operate, customers that will stay, an...
Free calculators
Are you keeping what a business like yours should keep?
What is it costing when everything runs through you?
Are you paying for labor you are not selling?
Are materials being marked up, missed, wasted, or eaten?
How much money is sitting in customers' pockets?
How much could your business be worth?
What is your seller's discretionary earnings?
What does your business earn before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization?
How much should you set aside for taxes?
Could an S-Corp structure reduce self-employment tax drag?
How much are you actually keeping as the owner?
How many days of revenue are sitting in receivables?
How ready is your business to sell or hand down?
Where might business risk be reaching your personal life?
Apply for a Checkup
We work with established owner-run businesses and only take one on when we believe the Checkup can create value. The form takes about 30 seconds.