Only one thing is stopping you. Find out which.
Between one million and five, a business has exactly one bottleneck at a time — the offer, demand, conversion, delivery, or the founder. Fix the wrong one and nothing moves.
Find yoursSix questions. The verdict comes first.
Where is revenue, and what did it do last year?
Five links. Revenue moves at the speed of the weakest one.
- 01Offer
Who it's for, what it does, what it costs — and whether that holds under a discount request.
- 02Demand
Enough of the right people hearing it, from somewhere other than the founder's phone.
- 03Conversion
A process between interest and yes that runs without you in the middle of it.
- 04Delivery
Capacity and quality that survive twice the volume, and clients who stay.
- 05The founder
A calendar that isn't the ceiling on revenue.
Most founders fix the one they can see — usually demand — and find the real one waiting behind it. The diagnostic weighs all five at once, so the first thing you fix is the thing that's actually binding.
Every answer adds weight to one or two links. The heaviest is your bottleneck.
An offer problem masquerades as a demand problem far more often than the reverse, so a tie goes to the earlier link.
Because it's the one you'll meet next. Fixing a bottleneck moves it; it never removes it.
Offer, delivery and founder constraints route to Tangram, where the work is thinking and structure. Demand and conversion route to Fracs, where the work is hands. The verdict says which, and why.
- AI Success For Small Businesses Depends On Better Decision-MakingForbes · 3d ago
- LARRY HODES | Your business isn’t ready to scale until your thinking isBusiness Day · 29d ago
- ‘CEO bottleneck’ forces Irish SMEs to face the hidden challenge to growthIrish Independent · a month ago
- How Strategic Business Planning Helps UAE SMEs Scale Without Losing Controlnerdbot · a month ago
- Brale bets new protocol can solve stablecoin liquidity bottleneckCoinDesk · a month ago