A 90-day business plan is one page that says what the business will change in the next quarter, how you’ll know it worked, who does what by when, and when you’ll check. For a growing contractor, 90 days is the right length: long enough to hand off a responsibility, test a pilot or fix a process, and short enough that the plan is still true when you get to the end of it. A one-year plan written in January is mostly fiction by April.
This lesson shows the parts of the plan, a filled-in example built on the constraint and growth move from the earlier lessons, the weekly and monthly reviews that keep it moving, and how to decide at day 90 what comes next. The template is in the article: copy the tables.
The parts of a 90-day plan
| Part | What it is | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| The constraint | The one thing holding growth back, with its evidence | From lesson 1. One sentence. |
| The objective | What will be different at day 90 | One objective, measurable, tied to the constraint |
| Measures | Two or three numbers that show progress on the objective | Numbers you can pull every month without a project |
| Milestones | What’s true at day 30, 60 and 90 | Each one a result, not an activity |
| Actions | The work that gets you to each milestone | Each with one owner, a date and any dependency |
| Reviews | When you check, and what you do with what you find | Weekly in the team meeting, monthly with the numbers |
One objective is the hard rule. A plan with five objectives is a list of wishes, and in a busy quarter each of them gets a fifth of the attention it needs. If something else matters, it goes in the next plan.
A filled-in example
Made-up company, continuing the example from lesson 1: a remodeler with three crews, where the third crew needs the owner on site about 15 hours a week. The owner wants a fourth crew, and the readiness check said “not yet: no lead for it”.
Constraint: supervision. The third crew can’t run without the owner, so the owner can’t estimate faster or lead a fourth crew.
Objective: by day 90, the third crew runs without the owner on site, and the owner’s freed hours go into estimating.
Measures:
| Measure | Today | Target at day 90 |
|---|---|---|
| Owner hours on site per week | About 15 | 3 or fewer |
| Owner calls from the third crew per day | Several | Escalations only, as defined in the decision limits |
| Days from site visit to proposal | About 6 | 3 |
Milestones and actions:
| Milestone | Action | Owner | Due | Depends on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 30: a lead is chosen and runs the crew with the owner on site | Choose the third crew’s lead from the readiness list | Owner | Week 1 | |
| Write the lead’s responsibilities and decision limits together | Owner and lead | Week 1 | Lead chosen | |
| Lead shadows the owner running the day, with the owner explaining each decision (stage 1) | Lead | Week 2 | Limits written | |
| Lead makes the routine decisions with the owner on site, reviewed each evening (stage 2) | Lead | Weeks 3 to 6 | Stage 1 done | |
| Day 60: the lead runs the crew with the owner on call | Owner leaves the site; reviews decisions in a weekly one-to-one (stage 3) | Owner | Week 7 | A week of stage 2 with no decision the owner would have made differently |
| Daily status and photos from the lead, without reminders | Lead | From week 7 | App set up for the lead | |
| Owner moves two freed mornings a week into site visits and estimates | Owner | From week 7 | ||
| Day 90: the lead owns the crew, and estimating is faster | Pay step and title for the lead, in writing | Owner | Week 10 | Two weeks of clean escalations |
| Run the fourth-crew readiness check again | Owner and office coordinator | Week 12 |
The plan includes something the owner wanted to skip: running the readiness check again before hiring the fourth crew. That’s on purpose. Week 12 is where the owner reviews how the delegation went before authorizing more hiring.
Keep it moving: the weekly and monthly reviews
Weekly, five minutes in the team meeting. Read this week’s actions from the plan: done, or a new date with a reason. Anything blocked becomes an action in the meeting’s log, with an owner. Nothing else from the plan is discussed weekly.
Monthly, 30 minutes. At day 30 and day 60, with the owner and anyone who owns actions:
- Milestone: reached, partly reached, or missed?
- Measures: the numbers against their targets. Pull them the same way every time.
- Constraint: is it still the constraint? If the measures are moving and the symptoms are fading, keep going. If the measures are flat, find out why before adding actions.
- Course correction: for anything off track, decide one of three things, and write it down.
| Decision | When |
|---|---|
| Keep | On track, or behind for a reason that’s already fixed |
| Change | The action isn’t producing the milestone: change the action, the owner or the date, not the objective |
| Stop | The evidence says the constraint was wrong. Go back to lesson 1 with what you learned. |
Changing the objective mid-quarter is the one move to avoid. If the objective was wrong, finish the quarter’s learning and pick a better one at day 90.
Day 90: what comes next
At day 90, hold the monthly review one more time, then answer:
- Did the objective happen? Measures against targets, honestly.
- What’s the constraint now? Fixing one usually reveals the next. In the example, once the owner is off-site, estimating capacity might be the new constraint, or the fourth crew might be ready.
- What goes in the next plan? One objective again, from the new constraint.
That loop is the whole course in one sentence: find the constraint, choose the move, check readiness, test it small, plan the quarter, review, and start again.
The template
Copy these into a document or a spreadsheet.
Header
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Quarter | |
| Constraint (one sentence, with evidence) | |
| Objective at day 90 | |
| Plan owner | |
| Monthly review dates | Day 30: ____ · Day 60: ____ · Day 90: ____ |
Measures
| Measure | Today | Target at day 90 | Day 30 | Day 60 | Day 90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Milestones and actions
| Milestone | Action | Owner | Due | Depends on | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 30: | |||||
| Day 60: | |||||
| Day 90: |
Review log
| Date | Milestone status | Measures | Decision (keep, change, stop) | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Your next action
- Write the constraint and the objective for the next 90 days.
- Choose two or three measures and write today’s value next to each.
- Write the three milestones, then the actions under each, each with one owner and a date.
- Put the day-30, day-60 and day-90 reviews in the calendar, and add the plan to the weekly team meeting.
What to review:
- Each week: this week’s actions, done or re-dated
- Each month: milestones, measures, and whether the constraint is still the right one
- At day 90: the result, the new constraint, and the next plan
This is the last lesson of the growth course. Start again from finding your constraint at the end of each quarter: the constraint changes as the business grows.
The course toolkit
You’ve reached the end of Plan Your Next Stage of Growth. The course toolkit (PDF) has a worksheet for each of its five lessons in one file, in lesson order, ready to print or fill in on your phone. It comes with one spreadsheet: the Expansion Options Matrix.
All six courses are condensed in The Contractor Growth Playbook (PDF): one worksheet per course and a 90-day plan, in one short ebook to keep on hand for the next quarter.
Where MotionOps helps
MotionOps shows the numbers for the monthly review without rebuilding them:
- Advanced Reporting: compare booked vs collected revenue for the timeframe you select.
- Financial Reports: track payouts, invoices, revenue, taxes and lead source performance.
- Billing Metrics: see how many outstanding invoices you have, to reduce your accounts receivable.
- Team Reports: leaderboards for account managers, project managers and technicians.
- Real-time Overview: see jobs progress in real time, with photos, notes, signatures and timesheets.
See plans and pricing, or book a MotionOps demo.
Contractor Scaler Hub: Plan Your Next Stage of Growth, lesson 5 of 5
- Previous lesson: Test Before You Expand: Run a Growth Pilot Without Losing Control
- Course toolkit: Plan Your Next Stage of Growth toolkit (PDF)
- All courses and lessons: Contractor Scaler Hub
