A one-page worksheet from the book Booked Out
Find the money your full calendar hides
Right now, money leaves your company through four places that look like a normal week. This Saturday, the free Leak Ledger puts a dollar figure on each leak and names the biggest one.
Ben DesjardinsStarted, grew and sold three companies. Host of the Booked Out podcast.
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Booked solid and still leaking
What a normal week costs
- One call in four rings outAlmost nobody leaves a voicemail, so the caller hangs up and books whoever answers next.
- One estimate caller in four hangs upWhen the first opening on your calendar is more than four weeks out, they call a company that can come sooner.
- Past customers search for a company againThe homeowner you served a few years ago looks again the next time she needs the work, because nothing reminded her she already has one.
He ran four crews and wanted a bigger Google Ads budget, because the phone did not feel busy enough. His Ledger showed 58 of 200 April calls missed or after hours, about $63,200 a month in revenue. He fixed the phones first.
58reached nobody in April
15a month by month three
Phones covered, ad budget unchanged. Nine roofs, $108,000 in month three. Chapter 1.
Every call gets answered or a text back within a minute. The calendar is full of the right jobs instead of any jobs, and past customers call you before they search. On Monday you read the week in twenty minutes and see which number moved.
The four leaks
Where the money leaks out
The Ledger gives each leak its own line and prices it from your own numbers. Under each one, a client from the book, before and after the fix.
- Demand missedA homeowner searches your service and your city, and Google shows her four lists on one screen. If your name is missing from the one she picks, you never hear about her.How the Ledger prices itIt counts how many of 20 spots you hold, your five best searches times those four lists, and prices the calls going to the other names.
60profile calls a month
93a month by month six
Garage doors, Round Rock: listings cleaned up, reviews asked for, a page for each town. Chapter 6.
The four lists on one screen, from chapter 2. - Calls missedCalls ring out at lunch, after five and on Saturday, when the office is busy or closed. Your ads and your listing already paid for every one of them.How the Ledger prices itIt takes last month's missed and after-hours calls, prices the ones that would have booked at your average job, and keeps half, the share a fix wins back.
52night calls missed last July
7this July
Plumbing, Denver: an AI front desk answering after 6pm. Chapter 11.
Missed calls by hour, Columbus, from chapter 10. - Capacity missingYour crews can finish only so many jobs a month. Past that ceiling, more demand only stretches the wait on your calendar, and the callers who will not wait go to someone else.How the Ledger prices itIt counts only when your wait is over two weeks for project work or two days for service work, then prices the callers who hung up over it.
27roofs a month, ten-week wait
35a month by month ten
Roofing, Nashville: a fourth crew hired, ads left where they were. Chapter 13.
The backlog in weeks, Nashville, from chapter 13. - Customers not retainedMost plans sit on the price sheet and get offered when a tech remembers. The customers who could fill your slow weeks are already in your field software.How the Ledger prices itIt takes last month's finished jobs where nobody offered a maintenance plan and prices the plans one customer in ten would have bought.
1 in 5jobs got a plan offer
90%of jobs, from April on
HVAC, Kansas City: one plan owner, offer rates read out every Monday, 191 signups in a year. Chapter 16.
The slow months filled, Kansas City, from chapter 16.
Every figure is revenue a month, before costs. The four lines overlap, so you rank them and never add them up.
Free, with the Ledger
What you get, and what it does for you
- The Leak Ledger calculatorType in last month's numbers and it ranks the four leaks in dollars and names the biggest, so you know which one to fix first instead of guessing.
- The Introduction and chapters 1 and 240 pages with the method behind the Ledger and the Surface Audit, a one-hour count of where your name shows on Google, so you can check every number yourself.
- The Method on One PageThe whole book on one sheet: the four leaks, the order to fix them and the twenty-minute Monday check, to pin on the office wall.
The book
Find your biggest leak, then fix it
- 21 chapters on the four leaksEach leak gets its fix, one fix a month, from an owner who started, grew and sold three companies.
- The Ledger is its backboneIt is chapter 1, every chapter after it fixes one of its lines, and every sprint in chapter 21 is picked from it.
- For one truck to a dozenHVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, painting, garage doors, septic: any trade that sends people to a homeowner's door.
- The free part is what it runs onYou get the Ledger, the Introduction and the first two chapters, and the method on one page, with nothing to buy to use them.
I give this part away for a reason. You run the Ledger for free, and if you want help later, you already know which leak is yours, so the first conversation starts in the right place.
About two hours
How your Saturday goes
Most of the time goes into pulling the numbers. Rough numbers will do. When one leak is $60,000 and another is $20,000, a small error leaves the order the same.
- Pull last month's numbersOpen your phone system's call log, your calendar and your invoices. Write down the missed calls, the calls from search, the first open slot and the jobs that got no plan offer.
- Type them inThe calculator does the math with the rates from the book and shows the four leaks in dollars, biggest first.
- Start with the biggestRead which leak tops the list and start there. The Ledger tells you which chapter fixes it.
By lunchtime you have one number to act on: your biggest leak in dollars, and the chapter that fixes it.
The leaks a normal week hides
1 in 4calls to a home service company rings out with nobody picking up.
1 in 4estimate callers hang up when the first opening is four weeks out.
0of it shows on any report.
From the client accounts and published sources in the book.
Who wrote it
Ben Desjardins, owner first
I started, grew and sold three companies before I sold anyone marketing. Every one of them had the same four leaks under different names, and I found each one the hard way, from a full calendar that did not add up at the bank.
I wrote Booked Out for the owners I work with now, who are too busy in the business all week to work on it. The book is that part, written so you can do it in the hours you already have.
I also sell fixes for all four leaks, which is why the Ledger tells you which leak is yours before I mention anything of mine.
- Three companies started, grown and sold.
- Twenty years running local businesses.
- Host of the Booked Out podcast, where owners from the book tell what the number did.
Run it this Saturday morning
By lunchtime you know which leak costs you the most each month and where to start fixing it.
Get the Ledger
No spam. One email with the files, then one a day for a week on how to run them. Unsubscribe with one tap.