Which of the five is holding you back?

Your answers point to the foundation.

Three things have to be clear before anything else works. What you sell. Who it's for. And why somebody picks you instead of the cheaper option.

Your answers say at least one of those isn't settled yet. That matters, because everything else sits on top of it. Marketing gets people to notice what's already there. If what's underneath isn't clear, marketing just makes that cost more.

Three things to look at

• Ring your last three customers and ask what made them pick you. Not whether they were happy — what made them pick you. The answers are rarely what you expect
• Write down what you sell in one sentence. Say it out loud to somebody outside your trade and watch their face
• Next time somebody asks for a discount, write down what you said back. If it was mostly about price, that's the thing to work on

What to do next

Don't spend money on being found until this is clear. More people finding you and not understanding you is the most expensive mistake on this list.

Your answers point to being found.

What you sell seems clear enough. The problem is that not enough people are running into it.

Being found gives you a chance. Nothing more than that. But without the chance, nothing else gets a turn. Your answers say people who would happily buy from you are going somewhere else, because they never came across you.

Three things to look at

• Search for your kind of work the way a stranger would, without your business name. Write down where you actually show up. Most people are surprised
• Look yourself up on your phone, as if you'd just heard your own name. Whatever comes up first is what a customer judges you on
• Write down how your last five customers found you. If you can't, start writing it down from today. It costs nothing

What to do next

Start with the cheap things. Showing up when somebody searches your kind of work, and looking solid when they check you out. Paid ads are worth thinking about after that, not before.

Your answers point to what happens after somebody finds you.

People are finding you. Fewer of them are getting in touch than should be.

This one costs the most and gets noticed the least. From the inside it looks like you need more visitors. Usually you don't. A thousand visitors and three enquiries isn't a traffic problem.

Three things to look at

• Open your own website on your phone and try to contact yourself. Count the taps. More than two is costing you
• Read your homepage as if you'd never seen it. In five seconds, is it clear what you do and what to do next?
• Find the last message you got and check what time you replied. Not what you think you usually do. That one

What to do next

Fix the replying first. It's free, you can start today, and it's where most businesses lose people. Then look at what your website says.

Your answers point to what happens when the work arrives.

Your answers say the business is already running close to what it can hold.

That's an odd thing to hear when you're trying to grow, and it's the most useful thing on this list. If a business only works because somebody is holding it together by hand, more customers just means more strain. Things get dropped at exactly the moment you can least afford it.

Three things to look at

• Write down what happens to a new message, from arriving to being answered. If it lives in your head and not on paper, start there
• List the jobs you did more than twice last week. Those are the ones that should be running on their own
• Ask what would break first if next month were twice as busy. Whatever comes to mind first is usually right

What to do next

Sort this before spending money to bring in more work. Growth arriving faster than you can handle does real damage — to your name, and to the customers already paying you.

Your answers point to how the business learns.

The first four look to be in reasonable shape. What's missing is the part that keeps them that way.

Things get tried, but nobody finds out afterwards whether they worked. So the same money gets spent twice on the same idea. And something that is working can get dropped, because nobody noticed it was.

Three things to look at

• Pick three numbers and check the same three every month. How many people asked, how many bought, how much money came in
• Work out roughly how much of your work comes from old customers, or from people they sent
• Before the next thing you pay for, write down in one sentence what would make it worth the money. Before you start, not after

What to do next

This is the cheapest thing on the list to fix and the easiest to keep putting off. An hour a month is usually enough.

Everything here is early days.

Your answers came out low across all five.

That usually means one of two things. Either the business is young, or it has been running on instinct and nothing has been set up properly yet. Neither is unusual, and neither is something you can't fix.

When all five need work there's only one sensible place to start, and it's the first one: what you sell, who it's for, and why somebody picks you instead of the cheaper option. Everything else sits on top of that. Fixing something further down first is money spent on the upstairs of a house with no foundation.

Three things to look at

• Ring your last three customers and ask what made them pick you. Not whether they were happy — what made them pick you. The answers are rarely what you expect
• Write down what you sell in one sentence. Say it out loud to somebody outside your trade and watch their face
• Next time somebody asks for a discount, write down what you said back. If it was mostly about price, that's the thing to work on

What to do next

Do that first one properly, then come back and answer these fifteen again. You should see the difference.

Nothing stands out clearly.

Your answers came out fairly even across all five.

That means one of two things. Either the business is in decent shape everywhere, and the next move is a judgement call rather than a repair. Or fifteen questions didn't go deep enough, which happens.

Either way, the lowest bar above is still where I'd start looking. Just hold it more loosely than if it had stood out on its own.