45 questions every business owner should be able to answer (but most can't)
This is not a quiz or trick, just a list of questions you should be able to answer as a business owner.
See how many you can answer!
Your business
What does your business do, in one sentence, without using the word "help"?
Who is your ideal client?
Who is your least ideal client?
What do you want more of in your business right now?
What do you want less of?
What problem does your business solve that nobody else in your market solves the same way?
What are your actual services and what does each one include?
What are your prices?
What’s your top method for acquiring clients?
Your boundaries
What are your non-negotiables?
What are your actual working hours? Do you have working hours?
Do your clients/team know those hours?
What is your preferred method of communication? Do your clients/team know this?
What is your response time? Do your clients know this?
What is your average turn around time? Do your clients know this?
Your money
What did you make last month, after expenses?
What is your business's run cost?
What subscriptions do you pay for?
How many outstanding invoices do you have right now?
What is your most profitable service?
Which client/service costs you the most time relative to what they pay?
What does one hour of your time actually cost the business when you factor in non-billable work?
When are you raising your rates next?
Your time
How many hours did you work last week?
How many of those were billable?
What did you spend the most non-billable time on?
What task do you do regularly that someone else could do?
What things can only you do in your business?
What time of day are you most productive?
What time of day are you least productive?
Your systems
Who in your business is the bottleneck?
Is your business set up to run without you for a week?
Where is your website hosted and how do you access it?
Where is your email hosted and how do you access it?
What do each of your apps do in your business?
Where are your passwords stored and who has access?
Where do your SOPS live?
What is your folder system?
What is your client onboarding workflow?
What is your team member onboarding workflow?
Your team
What is your delegating process?
What is your review process?
Does everyone on your team know what "done" looks like for the work they do?
What would happen if your best person took two weeks off tomorrow?
If someone leaves tomorrow, what is your replacement plan?
How many questions can you answer?
You don’t need to know all of these off the top of your head, but you should know where to find the answers.
You don’t need to be the expert in everything your business does, but you do need to understand how it functions.
If you hit a question and drew a blank, that’s a good place to start!
