For owner-run businesses · Grand Rapids, Michigan
The day is free. Then I build the fix: the follow-up messages, the website, the FAQ page. I show you how to run it, and I leave. No retainer.
The problem
Almost every owner I talk to carries the same list: evenings lost to invoices and scheduling, customers who came once and never heard from you again, a website you apologize for, and the same five questions answered by phone forty times a week.
Nobody on your payroll has the job of noticing that. You’re busy running the place. So I come in for a day and notice it for you, then put a monthly number on each one.
What you get
Everything I found, what each problem is costing you right now, and which fix closes it, ranked by what pays back first. The numbers in the report are what’s leaking, not what I charge. Here’s the format, filled in for a gym that doesn’t exist so you can see how it reads.
Download the sample report PDF · 2 pagesMembers who quietly stopped coming
31 members haven’t checked in for a month and nobody has messaged them.
Leaking about $2,100 a month in lapsed memberships
Fix Follow-up
The same five questions
Pricing, hours, first visit, parking, cancelling. Roughly 40 calls and messages a week, answered by the owner between sessions.
Leaking about 6 hours of the owner’s week
Fix FAQ
Evenings on admin
Three evenings a week on invoices, the class schedule and a spreadsheet only the owner can read.
Leaking about 9 hours a week, all of them after close
Fix Admin
Web presence
A website last updated in 2021 with the wrong hours and no way to sign up.
Leaking unknown; every sign-up that gave up is invisible
Fix Website
How a leak gets traced
Member follow-up lived in the owner’s head. When the week got busy, it didn’t happen.
31 lapsed members at the monthly rate: about $2,100 a month. That number is the leak, not the price of fixing it.
A follow-up set in the gym’s own voice: the day-after text, the two-week check-in, the we-miss-you note. Sent from the tool the gym already uses.
The owner runs it without me.
This is the method, shown on a sample. The first real one goes here.
The fixes
Each one closes a leak the day usually finds. Priced on its own, built in a few weeks, yours when it’s done.
A customer comes once and never hears from you again. I write the messages in your voice, the thank-you, the review request, the come-back note, and set them up in whatever you already use.
Firms that answered a web enquiry within an hour were about seven times as likely to get a real conversation as firms that waited even one more hour. Harvard Business Review, 2011
Wrong hours, no way to book, last updated years ago. I build a small, fast site that answers the three questions people call about, matched to your Google listing, with your name on the domain.
People settle on whether a web page looks trustworthy in about a twentieth of a second, before they’ve read a word. Lindgaard et al., 2006
Pricing, hours, parking, do you do this. I write the FAQ page in your own words, and a form that collects what you need before the first call.
Eighty-one percent of customers try to find the answer themselves before they contact anyone. If it isn’t on your site, they call, or they leave. Harvard Business Review, 2017
There’s a fourth, admin: the spreadsheet, the booking, the form that feeds them. It’s shaped by what you already use, so it’s scoped case by case. All four, with prices →
How it works
A day on site, free, watching how work actually moves: where the hours go, where money leaks between the job and the deposit, what you handle by hand because no system exists. You get the findings report at the end of it: every problem, what it’s costing you, and the fix, ranked. The report is yours whether or not we build anything.
You pick which fixes to build from the report. Each has a price. I build them in the tools you already use, written to sound like you, not like software.
I show you how to run everything without me. Then I leave. No retainer, no monthly fee. The systems belong to you.
One thing I won’t do: build something that replaces a person. The point is to take work off you and whoever works with you.
You tell me what eats your week. I tell you whether a day on site would find anything worth fixing. If it would, we pick a day. The day costs nothing; you pay only for the fixes you choose to have built.
Book a CallFifteen minutes · the day is free · on site across West Michigan