Part 2: Review- Auditing and Diagnosing Your Leaks

In Part 1 of this series, we explored The Plateau Problem — why online businesses flatline. We broke down the psychology, math, and mechanics of the “founder bottleneck,” revealing how most businesses hit a revenue ceiling not because the founder isn’t good enough—but because their systems are outdated, over-reliant on founder effort, and fundamentally unscalable.

🔁 Quick Recap of Part 1: Why Businesses Plateau

• It’s not a mindset or work input problem — it’s a broken engine problem

• Founders are often still on sales calls, micromanaging reps, trying to hustle their way to growth — the Hustle problem

• The solution isn’t more inputs — it’s to rebuild the pipeline, nurture flows, and positioning

• Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is the key to identifying what’s actually broken

• Most common culprits: no pre-call nurture, vague offers, messy CRM, no analytics, over-dependence on the founder

• Founders need to stop guessing and start diagnosing

We introduced the core idea: if your business is still running on hustle and intuition instead of systems and data, you’re already on borrowed time.

Today, we go a layer deeper.

Because before you fix a system, you have to find the leaks.

A root cause analysis is great, but if you don't have any metrics to start the line of reasoning, you're lost.

This is where we truly begin the RAPID framework — R for Review.

Here’s exactly how I run a high-clarity Revenue Audit in under 45 minutes to pinpoint what’s broken (and what’s not).

Step 1: The Diagnostician

Can you run an effective analysis without data? Not to mention the right data. The answer is no.

If you went to a doctor for abdominal pain, and they started gathering data around your mental health, that wouldn't make sense.

It's important for us to gather crucial data points of your business so we can conduct a comprehensive examination of the right points.

Some examples of important metrics:

• CPC: How's your ad copy performing?

• CPL: How’s your funnel converting?

• CPD: Insight on your float post-lead grab

• Show Rate: How effective is your warm-up sequence?

• Utilization Rate: Are you maximizing your calendar capacity?

• Close Rate: A multifaceted metric — training, offer, fit

• AOV: Feedback on both the market and the closer

• Revenue per Call: How much cash are we collecting per opportunity?

• Sales Cycle Length: Are we prioritizing urgent sales cycles?

Each one serves as a signal. A single data point rarely tells the full story—but in context, patterns emerge. It’s not about finding a number, it’s about triangulating root causes through multiple indicators.

Once this information is gathered, we can move on to the second step:

Step 2: Performance Pulse Check

We now have the necessary information. Now what?

Now it's a comparison game.

Data itself is one-dimensional and stationary. A percentage means nothing without context.

One way we can conduct this "pulse check" is through comparing to industry standards:

• Close rate: Under 25%? Time to re-align your sales function

• Show-up rate: Sub-60%? You’re not warming leads properly

• AOV and Revenue per Call: Under market average? You’re leaving money on the table

The second way we add dimensionality is through trends over time. Are metrics improving? Declining? Stagnant?

Pro tip: Compare against both industry benchmarks and your last 90 days. That dual lens reveals growth patterns, stagnation, or decay — and gives you leverage.

Step 3: Root Cause Mapping

Once you've identified what’s underperforming — CPD too high, show-up rate too low, close rate dropping — the next step is identifying why.

That’s where Root Cause Analysis shines.

Start with a single metric and ask “why” until you uncover the source of the issue.

For example:Why is our CPD so high? Our opt-in to call-booked ratio is dropping. Why is that happening?Our landing page conversions are tanking. Why? The headline and offer structure isn’t resonating with this new traffic segment.

Most founders stop at the first or second layer — if they dig at all. But the magic happens in the third, fourth, and fifth layer, where the diagnosis becomes obvious — and the solution strategic.

Want to go deeper? Run multiple branches of RCA.

Business isn’t always linear. More often than not, multiple elements contribute to a single breakdown. Don’t stop at the first explanation. Explore multiple contributing factors and design a multi-lever fix.

Bonus Tool: STEEP

Extreme ownership is powerful — but ignoring the external environment is dangerous.

That’s why I use STEEP — a framework to evaluate macroeconomic pressure points that could be skewing your performance.

• Sociocultural: What shifts in beliefs, values, or norms might impact buyer behavior?

• Technological: Are new tools, platforms, or automations changing how your audience buys?

• Economic: Inflation, spending habits, market volatility—are they helping or hurting intent?

• Ecological: Sustainability trends or climate policy affecting your niche?

• Political/Legal: Are upcoming elections or regulations creating buyer hesitancy or urgency?

No single factor is king — but when viewed together, STEEP can explain why systems that used to work… suddenly don’t.

Use this as a sanity check before making dramatic changes. You might not need a rebuild — just a recalibration.

Real-World Snapshot: Misdiagnosed Offer

A client once came to me frustrated: "We're getting shopped around and everyone says it's too expensive."

Initial guess? Bad closer.

Reality? After a comprehensive audit, we found:

• Positioning lacked a sharp outcome

• No pre-call warm-up sequence

• The pitch was too feature-heavy

We reframed the offer to emphasize the transformation, not the features — making it outcome-driven and urgency-loaded. Once we cleaned up the upline messaging, close rate rose 21% in 3 weeks.

Want to Run Your Own Audit?

This is just a taste of the process I walk founders through inside my Revenue Audit.

Gain a clear lay of the land — and the path will present itself.

We covered the internal quantitative environment and the macro-environment, but there are many layers that we can push deeper into. Be it quantitive measures, cross referencing to competitors, if you get a clearer scope of the land, the easier planning becomes.

From here, the question is begged: I have all this data - what now?

Next up in the series: Offer, Team, Tech: What I Fix First When Sales Stalls.