35 practical guides
Decisions owners actually have to make
Start with the decision in front of you. Each guide gives you a framework, a worked scenario, and a skill test that practices the same judgment.
Put the framework to work
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Explore every quiz and scenario setHiring
Choose the right role, test the evidence, and make the handoff work.
Resource Allocation · 5 min
When to Hire Your First Employee
Hire when the business is refusing revenue or your week is full of repeat work someone else could own. Price the fully loaded cost against what those hours are worth, and hire the constraint, not the comfort task.
People & Delegation · 5 min
When to Hire Your First Operations Manager
Hire an operations manager when recurring coordination and decisions have become a real constraint, the business can fund the role, and you are ready to transfer authority. Do not hire someone to absorb an undefined collection of tasks while every meaningful decision still returns to you.
People & Delegation · 5 min
How to Write a Hiring Scorecard
Write the hiring scorecard before interviewing. Define the outcomes the person must own, the capabilities needed to deliver them, and the evidence that would demonstrate those capabilities. Score each candidate against the same standard before discussing who feels like the best fit.
Resource Allocation · 5 min
How to Decide Between Hiring and Outsourcing
Hire when recurring work and decision ownership justify a durable internal role. Outsource when a defined outcome can be specified, accepted, and coordinated without building the capability inside. Compare total cost and operating risk, including the time your own team must spend managing either option.
People & Delegation · 5 min
How to Onboard a New Manager Without Keeping All the Decisions
Onboard a manager by transferring context, then decisions, then accountability for a bounded operating outcome. Make the authority explicit to the team. Review evidence and exceptions with the manager rather than continuing to direct everyone around them.
Finance
Turn margins, collections, and cash timing into concrete operating choices.
Financial Judgment · 5 min
How to Price a Service Business
Price from the hours you can actually sell and the pay the business has to cover, then check that number against what buyers pay and what the job is worth to them. If nearly everyone says yes, the price is a discount.
Financial Judgment · 5 min
How to Improve Cash Flow in a Small Business
Profit and cash are different clocks. Collect faster, take deposits on work that ties up materials, and time what you owe. Build a 13-week view of cash in and out before you cut anything that brings the next dollar in.
Strategy · 5 min
Should I Raise Prices
Raise prices when your costs moved, you are turning work away, or almost every qualified buyer says yes. Announce the change with a date, decide who keeps the old price and for how long, and watch close rate and margin rather than the loudest complaint.
Resource Allocation · 5 min
How to Allocate a Limited Budget
Compare the real options on return, how fast cash comes back, and what happens if you are wrong. Fund the constraint first. Money already spent is not a reason to spend more. Keep a buffer so one bet cannot stop payroll.
Financial Judgment · 5 min
What to Do When Cash Runway Drops Below Six Months
Treat six months as a prompt to investigate, not a universal shutdown rule. Reconcile available cash, forecast receipts and payments by week, and identify the earliest cash shortfall under plausible scenarios. Then choose actions by their timing, reliability, reversibility, and effect on the business's ability to earn.
Financial Judgment · 5 min
How to Build a 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast
Start with reconciled usable cash, then show receipts and payments in the week the money is expected to move. Roll each closing balance into the next opening balance. Label uncertain assumptions and compare the forecast with actual bank movements every week before extending the horizon.
Financial Judgment · 5 min
How to Handle a Customer Who Pays Late
First establish why the payment is late and whether the invoice is valid and approved. Assign a collection owner, obtain a dated commitment, and decide separately whether to keep extending credit. Escalate based on evidence and your agreed terms rather than treating every delay as either harmless or hostile.
Financial Judgment · 5 min
How to Decide Whether to Drop an Unprofitable Customer
Calculate the contribution and operating burden of serving the customer, then compare realistic alternatives: change scope, improve the workflow, reprice, or exit. Distinguish costs that disappear from allocated overhead that remains, and account for contract obligations and the time needed to replace the revenue.
Ops cadence
Find constraints, plan capacity, and run a review that produces decisions.
Bottleneck Detection · 5 min
How to Find the Bottleneck in Your Business
The bottleneck is the step where work piles up and waits, not the person who looks busiest. Measure how much each step finishes and how long work sits in front of it. Make that step better before you add people or tools anywhere else.
Prioritization · 5 min
How to Prioritize as a Business Owner
Separate what is loud from what moves revenue, margin, cash, or risk. Rank the real items by impact, then by how much effort they take. When you add something, name what you will stop. Do that review once a week.
Operations · 5 min
How to Create SOPs and Systemize Your Business
Systemize the work that pulls you back in most often. Record yourself doing it, turn that into a short page, and have someone else run the page while you watch. Assign an owner and a review date, or the document becomes folklore.
Operations · 5 min
How to Scale Operations Without Losing Quality
Growth keeps its quality when the work is the same on purpose, someone checks it at each handoff, and you watch rework and lateness before customers complain. Automate only after the steps stop changing. More volume through a messy step makes a bigger mess.
Operations · 5 min
How to Run a Weekly Operating Review
Run the weekly operating review around exceptions, decisions, and commitments. Read routine updates beforehand. In the meeting, explain the gap between plan and actual, choose the next action, name its owner, and revisit last week's promises before adding new ones.
Operations · 5 min
How to Choose Business KPIs That Lead to Decisions
Choose a KPI only when a change in it would lead to a different action. Start with the outcome the business must protect, add a signal that gives you time to respond, and pair it with a guardrail that prevents the team from improving the number by damaging the business.
Operations · 4 min
How to Fix Missed Deadlines Without Adding More Chasing
Find where the promise breaks before asking people to work harder. Separate unreliable estimates, too much concurrent work, waiting for a dependency, and preventable rework. Then change the queue or decision rule that creates the delay, while giving affected customers a credible revised commitment.
Resource Allocation · 5 min
How to Plan Capacity Before Taking On More Work
Accept more work only after checking the step that limits delivery. Convert committed jobs into the capacity that step actually uses, reserve time for existing obligations and variability, and compare the contribution of the new work with the promises it might displace.
Strategy
Choose the market, offer, and next commitment with evidence and explicit tradeoffs.
Bottleneck Detection · 5 min
Why Is My Business Not Growing
A business stops growing at a specific step, not everywhere at once. Walk demand, conversion, capacity, delivery, retention, and your own calendar. Put one number on each branch, and work the branch that is actually stuck.
Sales & Marketing · 5 min
Why Are Sales Down
Break sales into traffic, conversion, order value, and purchase frequency. Compare each term with the period before the drop. Fix the term that moved. A story from one customer is a clue, not a diagnosis.
Sales & Marketing · 6 min
How to Get More Customers for a Small Business
Pick a channel that fits how your buyers already search, ask, or get referred. Wake up past customers and ask for referrals before you fund a new channel. Test one channel at a time, and keep it only if the customers are worth more than they cost.
Strategy · 5 min
How to Decide Whether to Expand to a New Location or Market
Expand when the current business is repeatable without you on site, someone else can run a day, and you can fund a slow start. Test a slice of the new place before you sign a long lease. Write the results that would make you stop.
Strategy · 5 min
How to Decide Which Product to Shut Down
Compare each product's future contribution and strategic role with the capacity and complexity it consumes. Ignore sunk development spending when choosing the next investment, while accounting for obligations and transition costs. Choose explicitly among focused repair, maintenance, sale or transfer where feasible, and shutdown.
Strategy · 5 min
How to Test a New Market Before Expanding
Test the riskiest assumption with the smallest credible offer you can deliver. Define the buyer, buying trigger, acquisition path, and delivery economics, then seek evidence stronger than interest. Set a decision gate before committing to a location, permanent team, or other difficult-to-reverse costs.
Prioritization · 5 min
How to Set Quarterly Business Priorities
Choose quarterly priorities by identifying the constraint on the business's next meaningful outcome. Select a small set of changes that fit actual capacity, name what will stop, and define observable finish conditions. Keep routine operating standards separate from the few improvement bets that need concentrated attention.
Sales & Marketing · 5 min
How to Decide Whether to Discount a Deal
Discount only when price is a verified obstacle and the revised deal still makes economic sense. Compare the contribution, capacity, precedent, and collection timing. If you lower the price, obtain a specific reciprocal change such as scope, term, payment timing, or volume you can actually deliver.
People
Move decisions to the right owner and make feedback and accountability useful.
People & Delegation · 6 min
What to Do When Your Best Employee Quits
Do not negotiate in the doorway. In the first 48 hours, protect the work: write down what only they hold, name a temporary owner for each piece, and book a real conversation for the next day.
People & Delegation · 5 min
How to Delegate as a Business Owner
Owners hoard tasks because the work feels faster in their own hands and because a bad handoff is public. Start with frequent, low-risk work you already understand, and give away the outcome with a clear limit instead of a running commentary.
People & Delegation · 5 min
How to Handle an Underperforming Manager
Define the specific management outcome that is missing, verify the authority and support the role actually has, and discuss the evidence directly. Agree on a bounded improvement plan with observable behaviors and review dates. If the gap persists, make a deliberate role decision using the applicable policies and advice.
People & Delegation · 5 min
How to Stop Every Decision Coming to the CEO
Remove the CEO approval queue by naming who decides, what limits apply, and when an exception must be escalated. Start with a repeated class of decisions, transfer the information and authority together, and stop rewarding people for bypassing the agreed owner.
Operations · 5 min
How to Resolve Conflict Between Sales and Operations
Treat recurring sales-versus-operations conflict as a problem in promises, capacity, incentives, or handoffs before treating it as a personality issue. Trace a few disputed jobs, define what can be sold under normal conditions, and create one visible process for exceptions that affect delivery or economics.
People & Delegation · 5 min
How to Run Effective One-on-One Meetings
Use a one-on-one to discuss work the person cannot resolve through routine reporting: blocked decisions, feedback, priorities, and development. Let them shape the agenda, make your own feedback specific, and leave with clear commitments. Keep status updates in a written channel when they do not need a conversation.