Field notes

Field notes from the P&L.

Short, practical pieces on the things that actually move a service business: sales teams that hunt, indirect costs that get billed, leaders who read their numbers. Written by an operator, for operators.

Four notes so far; one new note a month, each under five minutes. Follow by RSS Steve on LinkedIn (opens in new tab)

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Three leather-bound ledgers stacked beside a gold fountain pen on a walnut desk in a wood-panelled office

Operations4 min read

Made money on every job, still missed EBITDA

The trades’ most common P&L mystery: healthy job margins, a branch that still loses money. The five indirect-cost leaks behind it, and how to find them.

Project margin and branch EBITDA are different numbers — a branch can hit one and miss the other.

More field notes

A sales manager with a coffee looks out of a high-rise window beside a whiteboard covered in sticky notes and process sketches

Sales3 min read

The 90-Day Sales Sprint

A week-by-week structure for turning a comfortable sales team into a hunting one — and the three mistakes that stall most sales turnarounds.

Four different chairs in a row against a cream wall — a navy armchair, a walnut moulded chair, a leather sling chair and a brass-frame chair

Sales3 min read

Selling to a High‑D

Four buyer types, four conversations — most teams only know one. A practical DISC guide for field and B2B sellers: read a D, I, S or C fast and adjust.

A leather folio and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses on a boardroom table, city skyline through the windows at golden hour

Private equity3 min read

The first 90 days of a PE turnaround

What an operating partner should expect — and demand — from an interim leader in the first 90 days of a trades turnaround: stabilize, find leaks, fix EBITDA.

Job costing that survives the close-out

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