The Doer pack.

This pack does one thing. It gets a single job out of your head and into somebody else’s hands, for good.

Do not try to write down your whole business. People who try end up with a folder nobody opens, and decide the idea does not work. Pick one job. Finish it. Then pick the next one.

You do not have to. Paste this into any AI and answer its questions out loud. It interviews you and writes the note. Talking is the thing you are already good at.

It asks nine questions before it writes anything. Most of them are about the choices you made, not the steps you took. Steps are easy to copy. Choices are the part that is stuck in your head.

You are helping me write a handover note. I have just finished a job in my business. I want somebody else to be able to do that job next time without asking me anything.  Interview me ONE question at a time. Wait for my answer before the next one. Do not write the note until you have asked all nine and I have said I am done.  Ask me, in this order:
1. What is the job, in one sentence? And what makes it start: a date, an
email, a phone call, something else?
2. Walk me through what you actually did, in order. Do not tidy it up.
3. Go back over those steps. At which ones did you make a CHOICE rather
than follow a rule?
4. For each choice: what were the options, which did you pick, and what made
you pick it? The reason matters more than the choice.
5. What does "done properly" look like? How would somebody know they had
finished it without asking me?
6. What usually goes wrong with this job, and what do you do when it does?
7. What must never be decided without me? Give me the line.
8. Is there wording or tone that matters? Give me the words you actually
use, not a description of them.
9. What would annoy me if they got it wrong, but I would never think to
mention?  Then write the note, addressed to the person who will do the job, in this shape: THE JOB             one sentence IT STARTS WHEN      the trigger YOU WILL NEED       access, logins, files, information DO THIS             numbered steps DECIDE LIKE THIS    every choice, written as "if X, do Y, because Z" DONE MEANS          the finish test WHEN IT GOES WRONG  the usual failures and the fix ASK ME FIRST ABOUT  the line USE THESE WORDS     exact phrasing where it matters  Rules for you:
- Write what I said, not what you think best practice is. If I do something
unusual, keep it. The unusual part is usually the valuable part.
- Every choice must carry its reason.
- If an answer is vague, ask again before writing. Do not fill gaps yourself.
- Plain English. Short sentences. No preamble, no summary.
- If anything I said contradicts something else I said, show me both and ask.

When it hands you the note, read it once and change anything that is not how you would say it. Then hand it over without explaining it. If they can do the job from the note alone, the note is finished. If they cannot, the note is the thing you fix.

This one. It is for chasing an unpaid invoice, because almost every business has that job and almost nobody enjoys it. Copy the shape, not the content.

The job

Getting paid for work we have already done and invoiced.

It starts when

An invoice passes 7 days overdue. Check every Monday morning.

You will need

Access to the accounts system, the shared inbox, and the job notes for that client.

Do this

1. Pull the list of everything overdue, oldest first.
2. For each one, open the job notes before you write anything. Look for a complaint, a dispute, or work we delivered late.
3. If the job was clean, send the chase email below.
4. Log the date you chased it against the invoice.
5. Chase again after 7 days, then after another 7. Three chases, then it comes to me.

Decide like this

• If there is an open complaint on the job, do not chase. Bring it to me. Chasing money while somebody is unhappy costs us the client, and usually the money too.
• If we delivered late, chase, but drop the late-payment line. We do not have the standing to use it.
• If they always pay late but always pay, chase on the normal schedule and do not escalate. That is how they run their accounts, and they are worth keeping.
• If they ask for more time, yes to a date, no to “soon”. Get a specific day and log it. A date we can chase. Soon we cannot.

Done means

Every overdue invoice has been chased this week, or has a note saying why not, or has come to me. Nothing is sitting untouched.

When it goes wrong

They say they never got the invoice. Do not argue. Resend it, say “no problem, sending it again now”, and restart the clock from today. Being right about this has never got anyone paid faster.

Ask me first about

Anything over the limit I have set for you. Anything past three chases. Anything where they dispute the amount rather than the timing. Never mention a solicitor, a debt collector, or stopping work. Those are mine.

Use these words

Friendly, short, no apology, no “just checking in”. It reads as weak and it invites a delay.

Hi [name], invoice [number] for [job] was due on [date] and is still showing as unpaid. Could you let me know when it is going out? Happy to resend it if it has gone astray. Thanks, [you]

In this order. They are sorted by how little of your taste they need and how clear a trail they leave, not by how much time they take. Start at the top, even if it is not the job annoying you most.

1. Chasing an unpaid invoice. Nobody enjoys it, it needs no taste, and there is a written record of every step. The perfect first one.
2. Sending the invoice in the first place. Usually late because it waits for you.
3. The first reply to a new enquiry. Speed beats polish here, and yours is slow because it waits for you.
4. Collecting what you need before work starts. The same things every time. Every one you chase later costs a day.
5. Booking and confirming appointments. Pure logistics, little judgement, and it eats more of the week than you think.
6. Chasing the client for sign-off or missing information. The job that quietly stalls everything else.
7. Ordering and re-ordering supplies. Only visible when it goes wrong, which is why it should not live in your head.
8. Filing receipts and expenses. Nothing weekly, and a whole weekend once a year.
9. Scheduling the week’s work. Harder to hand over. Do it once the first few have stuck, and expect the note to need a few rounds.
10. The follow-up after the job is finished. The one everybody skips, and the one that brings work back.

If none of these are your job, the test is the same. Does it need your taste, and does it leave a trail? Jobs that leave a trail and need no taste are easy to hand over. Start there.

They did it the way the note said. Fix the note, not the job. This sheet is how, and it is the difference between handing something over once and having the same conversation every month.

Two rules for using it

1. Never correct the same thing twice without changing the note. If you are saying it again, the note did not say it.
2. If the same job comes back wrong three times, stop. The job needs your taste, so it was the wrong one to hand over first. Put it back, take the next one on the list, and come back to it later.

The log is the asset, not the note. A note tells one person how to do one job. A log of corrections shows you which parts of your judgement were never written down anywhere, and that is what every stage after this one is about.

The move is not doing all of them at once. It is never stopping after the first. One note a fortnight is 26 in a year, which is every job on the list twice over. Nobody notices you doing it, and at the end of it you have a different business.

And the part almost everybody skips

Alongside the notes, get your business leaving a trace. Money: what you charged, and when you got paid. Work: what you took on, and what happened. Words: what was agreed, in writing.

It does not have to be tidy and it does not have to be software. It has to be consistent. A messy record kept the same way every week is worth more than a beautiful one kept for a month.

You have moved on from this stage when one whole job happens every week that you did not do and did not check. Not handed over and watched. Gone. Then do it again with the next job on the list. The second one is quicker, because you already know what a good note looks like.

When two or three jobs are off your desk for good, take the diagnostic again. Six questions, about 90 seconds, no email needed to see your result. The next stage is where we can help, and its pack is different from this one.

Take the diagnostic again