These three guides let you run a growth diagnostic on your own business, for free, in about an afternoon. Read them in order: learn the levers, score yourself, then rank what to fix. Each one is written for an owner with real work to do, so the examples use plain numbers and the advice fits around a working week. When you are done, you will have a ranked list of two levers, and a much clearer idea of whether you need outside help.
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The printable growth self-assessment
Fifty statements, five per lever. Tick only what is true today, give yourself one point per tick, and total each lever out of five. Nothing to type in and nothing to send.
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Reading your score and choosing what to fix first
Low scores tell you where the business is weak. Impact tells you which weakness is worth fixing first. Put the two together and you get a short list of two levers.
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The ten growth levers, explained for owners
A business grows when more of the right people find it, choose it, come back and send friends, and when it can deliver that work at a profit. The ten levers break that down into parts you can score.
Guide 1: The ten growth levers, explained
This is the map. The ten growth levers breaks a business into offer, customer focus, findability, first impression, response, closing, reputation, repeat and referral, capacity and numbers.
For each lever you get a short definition, the warning signs that it is weak, and a ten-minute test you can run this week with nothing more than a phone and your own records. You will learn, for example, how to check your own response time by sending an inquiry to your own business, and how to find the real customer pattern hidden in your last 20 sales.
Read this first if you have never thought about your business as a set of separate parts. It also explains why the levers multiply rather than add, which is the single idea that makes the rest of the diagnostic work.
Guide 2: The printable self-assessment
This is the scorecard. The printable growth self-assessment has 50 plain statements, five for each lever, each with a ☐ box to tick on paper.
You tick only what is true today, give yourself one point per tick, and total each lever out of five. There is nothing to type in and nothing to send anywhere. The guide includes three rules for honest scoring, a totalling table, and rough bands that describe what a total of 15, 30 or 40 usually means.
What it teaches is discipline: separating what you plan to do from what actually happens most weeks. Owners are often surprised which levers come out weakest. Response and numbers are common surprises.
Guide 3: Reading your score and choosing what to fix first
This is the plan. Reading your score shows how to turn ten numbers into two priorities.
It walks through an impact grid that weighs how weak a lever is against how much fixing it would change revenue, and a worked example where a quote follow-up routine beats a bigger ad budget by thousands of dollars a month. It also gives a sensible default order for fixing levers, a one-page 30-day template, and the five mistakes that most often stall an owner's plan.
Read this last. It is where the self-assessment stops being an interesting exercise and becomes something you can act on.
How these guides fit with our paid work
The guides are the do-it-yourself version of what Ali does in a paid engagement. The difference is evidence and a second opinion.
When you score yourself, you rely on memory and judgement. In a full ten-lever diagnostic, Ali scores each lever against your actual call records, analytics, quotes and financial summaries, which usually moves two or three scores by a point or more. A review session sits in between: you do the scoring, and Ali checks it with you.
Plenty of owners never need either. If the guides give you a clear plan and you have the time to carry it out, that is a good result. If you want help, every option and its price are on the services and pricing pages.
A note on sources
Where a guide mentions a Canadian law or rule, it links to the official source and does not give legal advice. For example, the repeat and referral lever links to the federal government's explanation of consent under Canada's anti-spam law, because building a customer list without consent creates risk. For legal, tax or accounting questions specific to your business, talk to a lawyer or a CPA.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to read the guides in order?
It helps. The first explains the levers, the second is the scorecard, and the third shows how to turn scores into a plan. If you are short on time, go straight to the scorecard and come back to the others.
Are the guides specific to one industry?
No. They are written for any owner-run business in Canada, from a clinic or a studio to a shop or a trades company. Examples use small, ordinary businesses with numbers you can swap for your own.
Can I share the self-assessment with my team?
Yes. Print as many copies as you like. Having two or three people score the same business separately is one of the fastest ways to surface disagreements worth discussing.