This chapter is short, because I've watched too many business books spend their last forty pages selling me a seminar, and I promised you in the Author's Note that this wasn't that book. Everything you need is already in your hands. This chapter is just about what happens next, and there are only two honest versions of it.
Version one: you run it yourself
You can. That's not sales-page humility — it's the truth, and it's why I put the whole exam in the book instead of teasing it. The forty-eight questions are in Part II. The posture is in Chapter 6: save your feelings for your wife, answer what you can prove, write "I don't know" like a man. The scoring math is in Chapter 14 — gross profit per crew-day, the three bands, no exceptions and no anecdotes. The gap report is one page and a sort. A disciplined owner with a free Saturday, an honest bookkeeper, and the guts to write down what he actually believes before opening QuickBooks can take the back off his own watch with nothing but this book and a legal pad.
If that's you, go. You have my blessing and my phone number's not required. Just hold yourself to the two rules that everything else hangs on. Beliefs first, books second — the minute you peek at the numbers before writing the belief column, you'll unconsciously grade your own exam, and the gap disappears exactly where it matters most. And no feelings in the room — the first time you explain away a LOSES band because that crew leader's been with you nine years, you've stopped diagnosing and started decorating.
I'll be straight with you about the failure mode, though, because you already know it from your own bookshelf. The owners who buy this kind of book are the same owners who bought the other kinds, and the exam has the same enemy every framework has: it competes with Tuesday. The phones ring, a crew doesn't show, a customer's upset, and the legal pad goes in the drawer next to the binder from the last conference. Not because you're weak. Because you're the bus driver, and I've been saying this line for years now for a reason: you can't drive the bus and watch the kids. Self-administered surgery is legal. It's just rarely finished.
Version two: you give me one meeting
The other version is the one I do for a living now, and here's the whole thing, no mystery.
You fill out a survey — about twenty minutes, honest ranges, nobody's in trouble. Then we sit for one meeting: you, your key people, and me or one of mine, and I run the exam on you exactly the way Part II runs it on paper — the lay of the land, what you believe, the lead engine, the build reality, the sales and the money, the lane. Then you hand over the books — read access, nothing exotic — and we score your year the Chapter 14 way. What comes back is a written readout a few pages long: your gap report, sorted by delta, the one number you can't currently see, and the three fixes in priority order. It's yours to keep whether you ever talk to me again or not.
That's the whole product. One meeting and your books. I charge fifteen hundred dollars for it — by the time you read this the number may have drifted, but the shape won't have — and I'll tell you exactly why it costs money when the book already told you how: because a diagnosis you paid for is a diagnosis you read, and because the fee is the first honest question of the exam. An owner who won't spend one bad lead's worth of money to find out where his margin is going has already answered Block Two, question one.
Some owners stop there, fix their three things, and I never hear from them again except a Christmas card. Perfect outcome — genuinely. The watch got opened, the truth got read, the owner went back to running a business he could finally see.
And some owners look up from the readout and ask the question that built my second act: who's going to make sure this actually happens? You already know the answer, because it was Chapter 17 — and you watched Walt ask it word for word. That's the ongoing seat — the weekly numbers on the board before the meeting so nobody argues about what happened, the follow-up that runs without a hero, the enforcer with nothing to lose, in your voice. It's consulting without the ridiculous consultant fees, and unlike every consultant either of us has ever hired, it doesn't leave a binder and an invoice — it stays and does the work, around the clock, every day of the year. But notice where it sits in this book: at the very end, after the diagnosis, exactly where a prescription belongs. If anybody — me included — ever tries to sell you the enforcement before running the exam, keep your hand on your wallet. You know the rule by now. A doctor who prescribes before he diagnoses is a salesman in a lab coat.
The back off the watch
Here's how I want to leave you, and it's back where we started.
Remember the jeweler. The back comes off, and the works are just there — every gear, every worn spring, no opinions, no feelings, no market conditions. The watch was never hiding anything. It was just closed, and everybody who owned it assumed they knew what was inside.
Your company has been closed a long time. Not because the truth is expensive — you now know the whole procedure costs a Saturday or a modest check. It's been closed because of the oldest entry in your belief ledger, the one this entire book was written against: I already know what's inside. Forty years of kitchen tables, a $6.98 million year, two trips onto the Inc. 500, one heart attack, and one hundred unbuildable swimming pools taught me what that entry costs, and I wrote it all down so it would cost you less.
You'll be right about most of what's in there. I've told you that three times now because it's true and because it's the reason not to be afraid of the exam. But nobody's right about all of it, and the handful of entries where you're wrong have been quietly billing you every week for years — in leads sent to the wrong closer, crews sent to the wrong lane, Friday nights you sold your way out of instead of seeing your way past.
So that's my standing offer, to every operator who's read this far, and it fits in one sentence:
Give me one meeting. I'll show you the watch with the back off.
What you do with the time is up to you. It always was.
Volume for vanity. Profit for sanity.
Appendix A — The 30-Day Self-Run
Chapter 19 gave you two honest versions of what happens next, and version one was: you run it yourself. I meant that, so here's the schedule — the whole exam, spread across thirty days, sized for an owner who still has a company to run while he does it. Nothing in here is new; every step points back to the chapter that taught it. This is just the order of operations, with the stall points marked, because I know exactly where self-runners quit and I'd rather tell you in advance.
One rule governs all thirty days, and it's the one from Chapter 6 that everything else hangs on: beliefs first, books second. The whole schedule is built so you physically cannot peek at the answer key before you state your beliefs. Break that sequence and you're not running the exam. You're grading your own homework with the textbook open.
Week one: the room and the beliefs
Day 1 — Book the room. Pick a Saturday morning two weeks out (that's Day 13, and the two-week runway is on purpose — you'll need it for the data pull). Invite the bench: you, your GM, whoever runs marketing, whoever runs production, and your bookkeeper. Not optional attendees — the exam needs the people whose hands are on the parts of the watch you never see. Say the second promise when you invite them: numbers already happened, nobody is in trouble. You'll say it again in the room, but saying it at the invitation is what gets you honest RSVPs instead of defensive ones.
Days 2–3 — Print the packet. Every worksheet from the block chapters, full-size, from myeasysystem.com/worksheets — or photocopy Appendix B. One packet per person in the room. Pens, not keyboards. There's something about handwriting a belief that makes a man own it; I don't fully understand the mechanism and I don't need to.
Days 4–5 — Write YOUR belief column alone, first. Before the room ever meets: sit down by yourself with Block Two and Block Six and answer every belief question in your own hand, dated, sealed in an envelope if you're the theatrical type. Here's why this step exists: in the room, you're the owner, and the room will drift toward your answers the way iron filings drift toward a magnet. Capturing your beliefs before you've heard anyone else's keeps your column clean — and it sets up the most useful comparison the exam produces that no chapter has mentioned yet: where the owner's beliefs and the bench's beliefs disagree with each other before the books have said a word. That gap is free and it's often the loudest one on the page.
Stall point #1 lives right here, and it's the sneakiest one: the urge to go look something up. You'll be writing "our window margin is 42 percent" and your hand will itch for QuickBooks, just to be sure. Don't. The itch is the exam working. Write the belief, flag it stated, to verify like Chapter 6 taught you, and let the itch wait two weeks. A verified belief isn't a belief. It's a peek.
Week two: the data pull
This is the week your bookkeeper earns a nice dinner. The exam scores the trailing twelve months, and everything the scoring needs comes out of systems you already have. The pull list, in full — nothing exotic, per Chapter 19, read access to what already exists:
- Every job, trailing 12 months: contract price, direct costs (materials + labor + subs), product line, completion date. Your job-costing reports if you have them; invoices and POs reconstructed if you don't.
- Crew-days per job — and here's where I stop you, because this is stall point #2, the big one, the week-three killer. You almost certainly don't have this number, and the temptation is to halt the whole exam until you can build it. Don't halt. Chapter 14's rule: estimate from trade norms per line (your production manager can get within a day on most jobs from memory and the schedule board), flag every estimate, and keep moving. A flagged estimate that produces a verdict this month beats a perfect number that produces one never. And start writing real crew-days on every job record *this week* — the one-field habit that makes next year's exam run on granite.
- The nut: every dollar of monthly overhead — rent, office payroll, insurance, trucks, software, the quiet subscriptions. Have the bookkeeper build it while you're not in the room, to the dollar, Reenie-style. Round numbers are where the fog hides.
- Marketing spend by source, trailing 12 months, and lead counts by source from wherever leads live — CRM, spiral notebook, the receptionist's memory. Imperfect is fine. Flagged is fine.
- The sales grid: per salesperson — leads issued, appointments run, sales written, net after discounts and cancellations. Issued is the denominator; Chapter 11 already had this fight for you.
- The money's plumbing: deposit terms as actually collected (not as printed on the contract), and days from job-complete to money-cleared, job by job.
- The service log: callbacks and warranty visits by job, if any record exists. If none exists, that's a finding, not a failure — write it down.
Days 12–13 prep: bookkeeper hands you nothing. Seriously — you don't look at any of it yet. The pull sits in a folder, closed, until the beliefs are on the record. Books second.
Week two, Saturday: exam day
Day 13 — Run the six blocks. Morning, conference room, phones in a basket, sandwiches ordered in advance so nobody leaves. You open with both promises out loud — save your feelings for your wife and nobody is in trouble — and then you run the blocks in order, exactly as Chapters 7 through 12 laid them: the lay of the land, what you believe, the lead engine, the build reality, the sales and the money, the lane. One question at a time. Every number stated, to verify. Every belief written down with a court reporter's face — Chapter 6's rule, you do not argue with a single belief, and as the owner you have one extra job: when the first ugly number hits the table, the room is watching your face, not your words. Flinch once and the afternoon is fiction.
Three to four hours. Sign and date every sheet. Then everybody goes home, and you resist the urge to open the folder that night. You've been fogged in for years; the truth can keep until Monday.
Weeks three and four: the scoring and the report
Days 15–19 — Score the year. Chapter 14's math, job by job, no exceptions, no anecdotes: gross profit per crew-day on every job, rolled up by line. Compute your floor (the nut ÷ crew-days fielded per month) and your target. Band everything — PRINTS, THIN, LOSES — remembering the precision that chapter drilled: THIN is not a loss; THIN is a job clearing the floor but missing the target. Run the NSLI grid per salesperson. Run honest CPL and CPA by lead source. A spreadsheet and a stubborn evening or two is genuinely all this takes — or, yes, this is the part my software does in about a minute, and either way the math is identical, which is the point.
Stall point #3 lives here: the first sacred cow scores badly, and you'll discover an urge to re-check the math — but only for that line. Notice the asymmetry. Nobody ever re-audits the numbers that confirm their beliefs. If you're going to double-check the deck line, fine — but then you double-check the window line with the same energy, or you admit the re-check was a feeling in a math costume.
Days 20–22 — Build the gap report. One page, Chapter 15's format: belief column word for word off the signed sheets, reality column from the scoring, sorted by delta, biggest on top. Circle the matches — that's the business you now provably know cold. Then take the top three gaps only, and for each one answer Dale's question: what does this actually make us, and what would have to change for the truth to beat the belief?
Day 27 — Reconvene the room. Same people, one hour. Read the report out loud — matches first, because Chapter 15 told you the truth about this and it bears repeating on a schedule: they will be right about most of it, and hearing that first is what keeps the room honest for the gaps. Then the three fixes, each with a name, a deadline, and a number that will prove it happened. Signed at the bottom, like the worksheet says.
Day 30 — The enforcement decision. And here's where I level with you one last time, because Day 30 is where the whole self-run either compounds or joins the binder on the shelf. You are now standing exactly where Walt stood at the end of Chapter 16, holding the same piece of paper, and the question is the one his room went silent over: who's going to make sure this actually happens? Chapter 4 taught you what it costs every human candidate. Chapter 17 showed you the seat that pays no tax. Whichever way you go — a weekly numbers meeting you swear you'll hold, a Sandy if you're lucky enough to have one, or the machine — decide it on Day 30, out loud, in writing. An enforcement plan chosen consciously can work. An enforcement plan defaulted to — which is always, always "I'll stay on top of it myself" — has a track record, and you own a shelf full of it.
The schedule on one page
| Days | The work | Chapter | |---|---|---| | 1 | Book the Saturday, invite the bench, make the two promises | 6 | | 2–3 | Print the worksheet packet | Appendix B | | 4–5 | Owner writes his own belief column, alone, sealed | 6, 8 | | 6–12 | Bookkeeper pulls the data (nobody looks) | 14, 19 | | 13 | Exam day — six blocks, signed and dated | 7–12 | | 15–19 | Score the year: GPPCD, bands, NSLI, CPL/CPA | 14 | | 20–22 | Gap report: two columns, sorted, top three fixes | 15 | | 27 | Reconvene: matches first, then the three fixes | 15 | | 30 | Enforcement decision, in writing | 4, 17 |
Thirty days, one Saturday, one stubborn spreadsheet week. Cheaper than any consultant who ever handed you a binder — and if you hit a wall anywhere in the middle, you know where I am. That was Chapter 19, and the offer stands.
Appendix B — The Worksheets, All in One Place
Everything you need to run the exam yourself lives in this appendix — the same sheets that appeared at the end of each block chapter, gathered here for the owner who wants to photocopy the whole packet and run it in one sitting. Full-size printable versions of every sheet, plus the blank gap-report template, are free at myeasysystem.com/worksheets. No gate you can't climb; I'd rather you run the exam than admire it.
Two rules before you print anything, and they're the only two that matter:
1. Beliefs first, books second. The Block Two sheet gets filled out — in ink, dated, signed — before anyone opens QuickBooks. Peek first and you'll grade your own exam. 2. Save your feelings for your wife. Numbers or "I don't know." Nothing else is an answer.
The posture (read out loud before you start — even alone)
"Before we start — three things. One: save your feelings for your wife. I need your numbers. Two: these numbers are the past. There's safety in them. They already happened, nobody's in trouble for them, and we can't fix a single one unless you put it on the table. Three: a doctor doesn't write a prescription before he diagnoses — so no advice today. Today is just discovery. You don't know what you don't know. Let's go find out."
BLOCK ONE — The Lay of the Land *(Owner + GM)*
1. Product lines you run: ______________________________________________ 2. Typical ticket, per line: ______________________________________________ 3. Gross margin by line, best you know it (mark "verified" or "gut"): ______________________________________________ 4. Monthly fixed nut: $ ______________ 5. Crews and how they split (A-team, B-team, specialty): ______________________________________________
BLOCK TWO — What You Believe *(Owner only — in ink, before the books. Date: ____________)*
6. Which line do you think is your most profitable? ______________________________________________ 7. Which line is your worst? ______________________________________________ 8. Who's your best salesperson? ______________________________________________ 9. A job you'd never take again: ______________________________________________ 10. A boring little job that quietly made you money: ______________________________________________ 11. Your best lead source: ______________________________________________
Signed: ______________________________________________
BLOCK THREE — The Lead Engine *(Marketing Manager — or whoever the marketing actually is)*
12. Lead sources, ranked by volume: ______________________________________________ 13. Cost per lead, by source: ______________________________________________ 14. Cost per acquisition, by source: ______________________________________________ 15. [BELIEF] The channel you swear by: ______________________________________________ 16. [BELIEF] The one you keep funding but aren't sure about: ______________________________________________
BLOCK FOUR — The Build Reality *(Production Manager)*
17. Days-to-build by product, in crew-days: ______________________________________________
The GPPCD table — by product line, trailing 12 months. GPPCD = gross profit ÷ crew-days.
| Product line | Avg ticket | Avg gross profit | Avg crew-days | GPPCD | Verdict | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | ____________ | $ ________ | $ ________ | ______ | $ ________ | PRINTS / THIN / LOSES | | ____________ | $ ________ | $ ________ | ______ | $ ________ | PRINTS / THIN / LOSES | | ____________ | $ ________ | $ ________ | ______ | $ ________ | PRINTS / THIN / LOSES | | ____________ | $ ________ | $ ________ | ______ | $ ________ | PRINTS / THIN / LOSES |
Break-even floor (monthly nut ÷ crew-days fielded/month): $ ________ /crew-day Profit target (~$3,500): $ ________ /crew-day
18. Jobs that require the A-team vs. run fine on a B-crew: ______________________________________________ 19. Callback rate by line — the honest number: ______________________________________________ 20. What goes wrong most on site — top three: ______________________________________________ 21. [BELIEF] Jobs that feel like they tie up the company even when the paper looks fine: ______________________________________________
BLOCK FIVE — Sales & The Money *(GM + Sales. The denominator is ISSUED LEADS — not sits, not confirms, not demos.)*
22. The NSLI grid — trailing 12 months, every salesperson. NSLI = net sales $ ÷ leads issued.
| Salesperson | Leads issued | Appointments run | Sales closed | Net sales $ | Close rate (to issued) | NSLI | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | ____________ | ______ | ______ | ______ | $ ________ | ______ % | $ ________ | | ____________ | ______ | ______ | ______ | $ ________ | ______ % | $ ________ | | ____________ | ______ | ______ | ______ | $ ________ | ______ % | $ ________ | | ____________ | ______ | ______ | ______ | $ ________ | ______ % | $ ________ |
Your over-the-line number (roughly $3,500–$4,000/lead in most lines): $ ________ Reps above the line: ____________ Reps below: ____________
23. Time to close: ______ days 24. Financing — how often, which products: ______________________________________________ 25. Deposit up front + payment terms: ______________________________________________ 26. How fast you actually collect: ______ days 27. [BELIEF] The deeper the discount, the bigger the pain — true in your gut? ______________________________________________
BLOCK SIX — The Lane *(Owner + GM)*
28. Your core lane: ______________________________________________ 29. [BELIEF] The out-of-lane jobs you take, and why: ______________________________________________ 30. [BELIEF] Where you're leaving money on the table: ______________________________________________ 31. [BELIEF] What you're doing that's vanity: ______________________________________________
THE GAP REPORT — the one-page verdict
| # | What I believed (dated, my words) | What the books said | Gap | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | | | | | 2 | | | | | 3 | | | | | 4 | | | | | 5 | | | | | 6 | | | | | 7 | | | | | 8 | | | |
Circle the matches — defend them. Then the top three gaps, one committed fix each:
Fix #1: ______________________________________________ Fix #2: ______________________________________________ Fix #3: ______________________________________________
Owner's signature: ______________________________________________ Date: ____________
A note on the other seventeen
The 31 questions above are the operating exam — the two columns and the gap. The other seventeen questions from Chapter 13, the voice-capture interview, aren't on a worksheet, and that's deliberate: they don't work as a form. They work as a conversation — mirrors, silences, follow-ups a sheet of paper can't do. If you want your voice captured the way Chapter 13 describes, that interview runs live at myeasysystem.com — or you'll do it in the first week if we ever work together, because nobody skips it. Every client, every industry, no exceptions.
Sources
The AMRE account in Chapter 3 is drawn from the public record — SEC enforcement filings and contemporaneous business-press coverage of the company's 1992 accounting-fraud settlement and subsequent bankruptcy. The Coastal Empire figures ($6.98 million peak year, 561 installed jobs, two Inc. 500 appearances, a five-year run on the Qualified Remodeler Top 500) are from the author's own documented record, including the September 2003 Replacement Contractor cover story. Where a number in this book is memory rather than record — the hundred pools — the text says so.
From The 48 Questions No Marketer Ever Had the Guts to Ask You. Read Chapter One free →