The Three Things That Are Actually Broken

I've spent the last six years diagnosing business problems. Before that, I spent eight years diagnosing animal problems. The throughline is the same: most of the time, the patient is telling you what hurts, not what's wrong.

A founder says "we need more leads." A mortgage broker says "our conversion rate is too low." A VC says "LP fundraising takes too long." They're all describing symptoms. The actual problem is almost always one of three things.

1. Your story is broken

This is the most common one, and the hardest to accept. Your product works. Your metrics are solid. But nobody cares — because you can't explain why it matters.

I rebuilt a SaaS founder's pitch deck. Same product, same metrics. Killed 30 slides, rebuilt around one question: why does this market need to change right now? He went from six months of "let's stay in touch" to closing the round in 60 days.

The tell: you're getting meetings but no commitments. People say "interesting" a lot. Your pitch changes depending on who you're talking to because you haven't found the one story that works for everyone.

2. Your funnel has holes

You're generating interest, but people disappear between first touch and closed deal. The pipe was never plumbed.

A mortgage broker had great lead volume — hundreds of enquiries a month. But only 12% were converting. The brokers were good. They just couldn't get to people fast enough. 70% of drop-off was happening between day 3 and day 14, when the prospect was still warm but nobody was talking to them.

Built a 90-day automated nurture. Conversion jumped to 34%. $3M extra revenue. The fix wasn't more leads — it was not losing the ones they already had.

The tell: you're spending money on acquisition but your close rate is flat. Leads go cold. You know you should follow up but there's no system for it.

3. You are the bottleneck

Everything runs through you. You manually follow up with every lead. You copy-paste proposals at midnight. You're the CEO, the sales ops, and the intern — all in one.

You don't need more hours. You need systems that run without you. The 20% of tasks eating 80% of your time can almost always be automated, delegated, or eliminated.

The tell: things break when you take a week off. You're working 60-hour weeks on things that don't require your brain. Your team asks you before doing anything.

The diagnostic question

Here's how I figure out which one is broken: I ask what happens when someone shows interest in your business. Walk me through it. Not the ideal version — what actually happens.

Within five minutes, the bottleneck is usually obvious. The founder who can't explain their own business simply. The broker whose leads go into a spreadsheet and die. The operator who personally touches every deal.

One problem. Fix that, and the rest tends to sort itself out.

Related

Case study: SaaS founder pitch rebuild | Case study: Mortgage broker automation | Why your pitch deck doesn't work