Every buyer has a 100-day plan. Most are lists of improvements, and they die in Week 2, because they were written for the business the buyer imagined. The plan that survives has a different premise: learn and stabilize first, build later. Here it is, block by block, with the scripts.
Days 0 to 30: stabilize. The goal is that nothing breaks and everyone stays. Your Day 1 all-hands script has exactly three beats: I bought this business because it is good and you made it good; I am not here to change what works; my job for the next month is to learn from you. Then stop talking and start listening. Also in this block: personal contact with the top ten customers (seller-introduced where possible), the 13-week cash flow started in week one and updated every Monday, the shadow schedule (sit in every seat), and a notebook for every change you want to make later. Writing the change down is what gives you permission not to make it yet.
Days 31 to 60: assess. The goal is separating what you assumed from what is true. Close your first full month of financials and put them next to the diligence model line by line; the gaps are your education. Map customer concentration with real numbers. Inventory which processes are documented and which live in someone’s head. Assess people against the org chart, because the org chart is always partly fiction. Then rewrite the back half of your plan, because reality just gave you better information than diligence did.
Days 61 to 100: build. Pick two improvements, not ten, chosen for being visible and low-risk: a pricing correction the review supports, a documented process for the most person-dependent function, a fix employees have wanted for years. Shipping two small wins teaches the team that change under you is competent. Then install the operating rhythm that outlives the plan: weekly numbers, monthly review, quarterly priorities.
The weekly review, verbatim, 30 minutes: One, cash: what does the 13-week view say, and what changed? Two, people: is anyone wobbling? Three, customers: is any account colder than last week? Four, the plan: one thing to stop, one to start, one to continue. The plan is not the document. The plan is the habit of looking.
The 100-day plan template is free in the Five Experts resource library, and full members review theirs with an operator who has run one. Join Five Experts free.
