Last year, I took one of our own products from $11,500 in spend to $180,000 in revenue. The system behind that result is the same one I’m about to walk you through, and this audit was a big part of how I got there.
What Matters This Week
Most founders I talk to don't have a growth problem. They have a system problem.
The demand is there. The product is good. But revenue keeps resetting every month instead of building on itself and nobody can tell you exactly why.
I've run this audit across 30+ technology companies. The same gaps show up almost every time. So this week I'm giving it to you.
12 questions. Be honest with yourself.
The Growth Audit
ATTRACT - Are you pulling the right people in?
- Q1. Can you describe your best customer in one sentence? Not a job title, but a specific person with a specific problem.
Not "B2B founders aged 30-45." That's a filter, not a person.
A real answer sounds like: "A SaaS founder doing $500k ARR who's running paid ads but can't tell if they're actually working." If your answer is vague, your messaging is vague. Vague messaging doesn't convert.
Healthy: One sentence. Specific person. Specific pain.
Gap: You're talking to everyone so you're landing with no one.
- Q2. Do you know which channel brings your best customers? Not most customers, best customers!
Volume isn't the goal. Quality is.
I've seen companies with 10,000 leads a month and a pipeline that barely moves. And companies with 200 leads closing 30% of them.
The difference almost every time: the second group knows exactly which source produces customers who stay, pay more, and refer others.
Healthy: You can name the channel and back it with data. Retention rate, LTV, or conversion rate by source.
Gap: You're optimising for leads and wondering why revenue isn't following.
- Q3. How tested is your offer?
This one trips up almost every company I audit.
Most businesses explain their product through features. What it does, how it works, what's included. But features don't sell. Outcomes do.
If you haven't tested different ways of framing what you do, different outcomes, different angles, and different promises, you're leaving conversion on the table every single day.
Healthy: You've run tests on your offer framing. You know which outcome resonates most with your best customers. Your messaging leads with that.
Gap: Your offer says what the product is, not what it does for the person buying it.
CONVERT - Is your funnel built to actually close?
- Q4. What happens to someone who clicks your ad but doesn't buy on the first visit?
If the answer is "nothing" or "they get retargeted eventually", you're leaving serious money on the table.
Most buyers don't convert first time. The follow-up, the re-engagement email, the retargeting flow, that's where a lot of the revenue actually lives.
Healthy: You have an automated sequence. It runs without you. It brings people back.
Gap: Traffic that doesn't convert on the first visit just disappears.
- Q5. Do you know your conversion rate at every step of your funnel?
Ad to landing page. Landing page to lead. Lead to call. Call to close.
If you can only tell me the final number, you can't tell me where you're bleeding. You're flying blind.
Healthy: You have a live view of every step. You know where people drop off. You have something running right now to fix it.
Gap: You check revenue at the end of the month and hope the number went up.
ACTIVATE - Are new users actually getting value?
- Q6. How long does it take a new user to get their first real win inside your product?
This is time-to-value. One of the most important numbers in your business.
Every day a user waits to feel the product working is a day they're closer to leaving and never telling anyone about you.
Healthy: You know the number. You've mapped every step to get there. You've removed the friction.
Gap: Onboarding ends when someone signs up, not when they actually succeed.
- Q7. What brings a new user back on day 2, day 7, and day 30?
Not a notification. Not a broadcast email. A reason built into the product itself.
The best products create loops. Using the product creates the reason to use it again. That's by design, not by accident.
Healthy: You can name the specific moment that pulls users back. It's tracked. It ties to retention.
Gap: Retention is something you think about when churn spikes.
MONETISE - Is your business model built to scale?
- Q8. When did you last look at your pricing and what data did you use to set it?
Most companies set pricing once. Early. Based on gut feel or what a competitor was charging.
That number controls whether your acquisition is profitable, whether your team has room to grow, and whether the whole thing actually scales.
Healthy: You've tested pricing. You have tiers. You know which tier your best customers sit on and why.
Gap: Pricing is a number you're nervous to touch.
- Q9. Do your customers have a clear path to spending more over time?
Upsells, higher tiers, add-ons. The architecture that takes someone from their first purchase to their fifth.
Companies that only sell one thing once are working twice as hard for flat revenue.
Healthy: You have at least one upsell path that's live and tested. You know your expansion revenue number.
Gap: Revenue per customer is flat because there's nowhere for them to go next.
- Q10. What is your ad spend liquidation and do you actually know it?
Quick explanation if this is new to you: ad spend liquidation is how fast you recover what you spent on acquiring a customer through the revenue they generate over time. How quickly does a new customer's LTV pay back your acquisition cost, so you can take that money and put it straight back into growth?
Most companies don't know this number. Which means they have no idea whether scaling their ad spend will make them money or drain them.
If your LTV is high enough and fast enough to cover your CAC, you can keep putting money into acquisition and the system funds itself. If it's not, you're running a leaky bucket and spending more just makes it worse.
Healthy: You know your LTV, your CAC, and roughly how long it takes to break even on a new customer. You're actively working to close that gap.
Gap: You're spending on ads and hoping the lifetime value works out somewhere down the line.
AMPLIFY - Are your customers doing any of the work?
- Q11. Do your customers refer other customers and is that by design or by accident?
Referrals by accident are a nice bonus. Referrals by design are a growth channel.
There's a big difference between "people sometimes tell their friends" and "I have a referral system with tracked incentives and a number I optimise every quarter."
Healthy: You have a referral or advocacy system. It brings in a measurable percentage of new customers.
Gap: Word of mouth happens sometimes but you have no idea how much or why.
- Q12. Does your social proof feed back into your acquisition?
Every customer win, every result, every testimonial is acquisition fuel.
The best growth systems take proof from the back end and pipe it straight into the front. Ads built from real customer language. Landing pages built around real outcomes. Outreach that leads with proof instead of product.
Healthy: You have a process for capturing wins and turning them into creative and copy.
Gap: Testimonials live on a page nobody reads.
Your Score
Count your healthy answers.
10 to 12 - You have a system. Focus on compounding what's working.
6 to 9 - You have parts of a system. The gaps between stages are where growth is leaking.
0 to 5 - You have tactics. Probably good ones. But they're not connected and that's why growth keeps resetting every month.
What I See Every Time
Almost every company I audit puts most of their energy into Stages 1 and 2. Attract and convert. Getting people in and getting them to buy.
But even there, most aren't testing enough. They're not iterating on their offer, not building out enough of the components, not covering the parts of the system that actually make performance build over time. They set something up, it kind of works, and they leave it.
And Stages 3, 4, and 5 get almost nothing. Activation, monetisation, amplification. The parts that make growth build on itself instead of reset.
Fix all five stages, test inside each one, and connect them properly and the same budget starts producing results that build on themselves instead of disappearing every month.
That's the difference between a growth system and a stack of tactics.
Right now I've opened a few free Growth Audits for this week. My team will dig into your actual system, find the gaps costing you conversions, and tell you the one fix that'll move revenue most. These usually run $250 - this week they're free.
Spots are limited, so grab one while they're open!