Build the Operational Foundation Your Trades Business Needs to Grow Without You
This Is the Right Path If...
- Your business is growing and the cracks are starting to show
- You have hired consultants before and ended up with a plan your team had no bandwidth to implement
- Your team runs on memory, habit, and verbal handoffs rather than documented processes
- You are ready to build toward a business that can run without you at the centre of every decision
- You are thinking about your long-term exit and want to start building the operational value that makes your business transferable
The Operations Foundation Build is designed for trades and home services owner-operators with 1 to 15 employees and $750K to $5M or more in revenue across Canada and the United States. This includes HVAC, plumbing, electrical, painting, landscaping, roofing, and residential renovation contractors.
This is not the right path for general contractors managing multi-trade construction projects, heavy commercial or industrial operations, or product-based suppliers.
Not sure where you fit? The Growth Ops Diagnostic is the right starting point.
What the Foundation Build Includes
The Operations Foundation Build ranges from $31,500 to $60,500 CAD | $23,500 to $45,000 USD depending on the scope and complexity of your business.
Uncover What's Holding Your Business Back
Before you can fix what is broken, you need to know exactly where it is broken and why.
In Discovery, Funnel Forward interviews your team across sales, production, and office to understand how work actually moves through your business today. We assess your operations through The Forward Operating System to uncover where process gaps, missed follow-ups, and outgrown systems are costing you time and capacity.
What you get:
▫️A full operational assessment across your sales, production, and office functions▫️A gap analysis identifying where processes break down and where team capacity is being lost
▫️Prioritized recommendations so the highest-impact problems get addressed first
▫️A clear implementation roadmap built for your business, not a generic template
Discovery is the foundation of the full build. You cannot design what you have not diagnosed.
Clarity Before Construction. A Blueprint Before You Build.
Discovery tells you what is broken. Design shows you exactly how to fix it.
In Design, Funnel Forward turns your Discovery findings into a complete operational blueprint for your business: your team structure, process flows, systems architecture, technology plan, performance framework, and documentation roadmap. By the end of Design, every decision about what to build in Deploy has already been made deliberately, not reactively.
What you get:
▫️A visual operational framework showing how your team, processes, and tools work together
▫️A clear accountability structure showing who owns what and where handoffs happen
▫️A technology blueprint showing which tools you need, how they connect, and where gaps exist
▫️A performance framework defining what to track and measure across your key operational areas
▫️A documentation roadmap identifying the SOPs and process guides your team needs to execute consistently
Design transforms diagnostic findings into a buildable plan. Implementation runs smoothly because the thinking has already been done.
Plans Do Not Move the Needle. Implementation Does.
Your blueprint is ready. In Deploy, Funnel Forward builds it.
We configure your CRM, build your automations and workflows, and set up the integrations your business runs on, alongside your team. Systems are built with your people involved so adoption is in place from day one, not bolted on after the fact.
What you get:
▫️CRM configured to match your sales process and capture every lead and job consistently▫️Automations that eliminate manual follow-up, reduce errors, and keep jobs moving without constant owner oversight
▫️Dashboards and reporting so you and your team can see pipeline, job status, and team performance at a glance
▫️Systems your team can actually use, built alongside them so they are ready before go-live
Deploy is where the blueprint becomes a working operational system.
Train Your Team and Launch With Confidence
A system no one uses is just documentation collecting dust.
In Drive, Funnel Forward documents your processes, builds the training materials your team needs, and supports your launch so adoption actually sticks. This is how systems become habits and habits become a business that runs without the owner in the middle of everything.
What you get:
▫️SOPs and process documentation your team can reference anytime▫️Training materials tailored to how your team actually works
▫️Playbooks that create consistency across jobs, crews, and customer interactions
▫️Launch support to ensure smooth adoption and sustained performance after go-live
Drive is what turns a built system into a running business.
This Is Not a Consulting Report. This Is Not a Coaching Program.
Most trades owners who have worked with a consultant before know how it usually goes. Someone comes in, asks questions, produces a document or a deck, and leaves. The implementation falls to the owner and the team to figure out, on top of everything else already in motion.
That is not how Funnel Forward works.
We build it alongside you. Every phase of the Foundation Build is hands-on implementation, with Funnel Forward working alongside your team until the systems are built, the processes are documented, and the tools are in use. We add operational capacity so you are not carrying the implementation weight alone.
When the engagement is done, your business runs on documented systems your team understands and uses, because they were part of building them.
Co-Owner
Jeff B., , Aloft Group | Residential & Commercial Painting
"She got into the details of our customer journey and built that logic directly into our tools. Beyond the systems work, she helped us get clear on where our time genuinely creates value and handed us a real plan to automate the rest."
Co-Owner
Joel D., Aloft Group | Residential & Commercial Painting
"For the first time, we have a real playbook. The SOPs Brandi built make it easier to bring people up to speed and stay consistent from one project to the next."
Not Sure If This Is the Right Starting Point?
Start with the Growth Ops Diagnostic
If you are not sure whether you are ready for a Foundation Build, the Diagnostic is the right first step. A 60 or 90-minute session plus a written findings report gives you a clear picture of where your operations stand and what to address first. The full investment is 100% creditable toward any future Funnel Forward engagement.
Already past the foundation stage?
If your operational foundation is in place and you need an embedded partner for ongoing execution and refinement, the Fractional COO Partnership may be the right next step. Funnel Forward works inside your business as an operational partner on a minimum three-month engagement.
Ready to Build Your Foundation?
If your business is growing and the operations have not kept up, this is where that changes. Discovery is the starting point. Every phase builds on the one before it.
