Free Founder Scorecard
Agency Red Flag Checklist
Fifteen honest questions across the five areas that quietly sink founder-led agencies and teams. Answer straight, watch your risk meter move, and walk away with the exact things to fix first. No email, no gate.
Fifteen honest questions across the five areas that quietly sink founder-led agencies and teams. Answer straight, watch your risk meter move, and walk away with the exact things to fix first. No email, no gate.
Three steps to an honest read on your agency
No fluff. No email gate. Just fifteen straight questions and a clear picture of where your business is fragile — and what to fix first.
Answer fifteen questions
Three questions across each of the five areas that quietly sink founder-led agencies. Answer Yes, Sort of, or No — honestly, the way it really is on a bad week.
Watch your risk meter move
Every answer nudges the Save-Your-Agency meter in real time, from Founder Trap through to Solid Ground. You see your score build as you go — nothing is hidden behind a form.
Get your fix-first list
A risk rating, a breakdown by area, and a prioritised list of the exact things to fix first — ordered by how much they’re putting the business at risk. Ready in about five minutes.
The five areas that decide whether an agency scales or stalls
Most founders feel the strain in one place and miss where the real risk is stacking up. This checklist measures all five load-bearing areas at once — because agencies rarely fail for a single reason. They fail where two or three of these go soft at the same time.
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Delivery & Process DisciplineDoes client work ship on a predictable rhythm, or on adrenaline and last-minute scrambles?
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Founder Freedom & OwnershipDoes the business run the founder, or does the founder run the business?
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Revenue & Client ConcentrationIs the money diversified, recurring, and understood — or fragile and concentrated in one account?
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Team Health & RetentionAre your best people staying and growing, or quietly on their way out?
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Sales & Systems PredictabilityIs growth engineered and forecastable, or a matter of luck, referrals, and tribal knowledge?
Example result — your scores will vary
Four zones, from Founder Trap to Solid Ground
Your fifteen answers roll up into a single risk rating out of 30. Here’s what each zone means — and the mindset that gets you to the next one.
Founder Trap
The business depends on you holding it together by force, and most systems are missing. It’s exhausting and hard to sell. Fixable — but not by working more hours.
Danger Zone
Several load-bearing parts are fragile at once. This is where one lost client or one key departure cascades. The flagged actions are this quarter’s priorities, not someday ideas.
Watch Zone
No fires yet, but a few soft spots compound quietly if ignored. Tighten the flagged areas now, while it’s cheap — rather than during the crisis that makes it expensive.
Solid Ground
You’re running a real business, not a founder-shaped bottleneck. Protect what’s working and use the margin to make deliberate bets rather than reactive ones.
Built for founders who carry the business
Agency & studio founders
You’ve grown past the scrappy stage but the business still runs through you. This shows you which dependency to break first so growth stops depending on your energy.
Consultancies & service teams
Delivery is strong but revenue is lumpy and a couple of clients carry the month. Use this to see where the fragility really sits before it becomes a fire.
Operators & second-in-commands
You’re the one keeping the wheels on. This gives you a shared, honest language to put in front of the founder about what needs fixing — and in what order.
FAQ
Yes — completely. No email, no signup, no gate. You answer fifteen questions and see your full result on the page. Nothing is stored on our side; your answers stay in your own browser.
About five minutes. It's fifteen questions across five areas, three each, with a simple Yes / Sort of / No for each.
Each answer is worth 0–2 points toward a healthy business (some questions are reverse-scored, where "Yes" is actually the red flag). Fifteen questions give a score out of 30, which maps to one of four zones: Founder Trap, Danger, Watch, or Solid Ground.
No — it's directional. It's built from patterns across founder-led agencies and teams to show you where to look first, not to replace a proper review of your specific numbers.
Founders of agencies, studios, consultancies and service teams — plus the operators and second-in-commands who keep those businesses running.