SOS Discovery
What It Is
The SOS Discovery is a rapid diagnostic for founder-led SaaS businesses that surfaces hidden bottlenecks, maps operational risks, and delivers a clear roadmap to scale, sell, or step back.
Who It’s For
Founders who are:
Burning out but unsure why
Seeing symptoms (churn, delivery chaos, stalled growth) but don’t know the root cause
Debating whether to scale further or prepare for exit
Nervous about due diligence or investor scrutiny
What It Does
Surface the true root causes of bottlenecks, chaos, or burnout
Reveal risks hiding in plain sight (especially founder dependency)
Clarify whether the business is scale-ready, sell-ready, or stuck
Create a punchy, practical roadmap for what to fix first
Overview
Founder Lens
System Audit
Readiness
Debrief & Plan
Step-by-Step Breakdown
1. Founder Lens
This step frames everything. Before diving into systems and operations, we take a full-spectrum look at the founder, their identity, intent, and trajectory. It sets the tone and ensures we're aligning the business to what the founder actually wants, not just fixing symptoms.
We explore three key questions:
Who are they? (natural strengths, psychometrics, leadership style)
What are they? (their current role, their business model, their offers and ICP)
Where are they going? (vision, ambitions, and desired outcomes)
This creates alignment between the founder's personal drivers and the business structure. It’s the compass for all tactical and strategic changes to come.
Outcomes:
Deep understanding of the founder’s strengths, constraints, and leadership style
Clarity on role misalignment or overload
Alignment between personal goals and business model
A clear North Star for the rest of the engagement
1.1 Kick-off Questionnaire
Before any calls or audits, the founder completes a structured kick-off questionnaire. This captures the critical context: who they are, what the business looks like today, where they’re trying to go, and what’s currently getting in the way.
It’s designed to be fast but revealing. The questions cover personal role, team structure, current performance, goals, friction points, and a quick-read on operational readiness.
Format: Online form
Timing: Sent immediately after booking or onboarding
Time Required: ~15–20 mins to complete
Your role:
Review answers before the live session
Highlight contradictions (e.g. “Want to exit in 12 months” + “Doing all onboarding personally”)
Spot patterns across DRIVE-related questions
Outcome:
Get the founder’s voice and view of the business in their own words
Identify early clues about misalignment, bottlenecks, or burnout
Give the session a head start so we’re not starting from zero
1.2 Psychometrics (Wealth Dynamics)
In this step, we use the Wealth Dynamics profile to help the founder understand their natural strengths, decision-making style, and leadership edge. Unlike generic personality tests, Wealth Dynamics is specifically designed for entrepreneurs and business builders, making it a perfect fit for scale or sale conversations.
Each profile (e.g., Creator, Mechanic, Deal Maker, Supporter) brings a different kind of energy, focus, and risk. By knowing their type, the founder can stop fighting against their own nature and start designing a business that works with it.
What we aim to uncover:
Where the founder adds the most value (vision, deals, timing, systems, etc.)
What kinds of tasks and decisions create friction or burnout
How their profile aligns (or clashes) with their current role and goals
Format: Paid test + short explainer doc or video
Timing: Sent after questionnaire (optional but recommended)
Time Required: 10–15 mins for the test
Your role:
Help the founder interpret their profile in the context of their role
Use profile to explain friction points (“You’re a Creator trying to act like a Mechanic”)
Map delegation opportunities based on profile gaps
Outcomes:
Clearer founder self-awareness
Strategic delegation targets (what to offload and to whom)
Stronger alignment between founder energy and business model
1.3 Vision Clarity Canvas
The Vision Clarity Canvas is a structured tool that helps founders map their personal vision to the business they’ve built, and identify where the two are out of sync. It explores what the founder really wants, where the business is now, and what needs to shift to scale or exit cleanly.
It’s not just a reflective exercise, it feeds directly into the GRIT and DRIVE diagnostics to ensure we’re solving the right problems for the right reasons.
What it reveals:
Misalignments between personal goals and business direction
Operational pain points hiding under strategic confusion
Gaps in focus, clarity, and confidence
Format: Guided worksheet (fillable PDF, Notion, or Miro board)
Timing: Complete pre-call or live during session
Time Required: 20–30 mins (founder + facilitator)
Your role:
Prompt deep answers with light coaching
Reflect back key misalignments
Pull forward 1–2 priorities that tie into system work
Outcomes:
A concrete snapshot of founder–business alignment
Prioritised problem areas from the founder’s perspective
A shared source of truth that drives the rest of the Discovery process
1.4 Offer Map
The Offer Map is a visual diagnostic tool that helps us (and the founder) lay out all active offers and dissect them through a strategic lens. We look at what each offer promises, how it’s delivered, who it’s for, how profitable it is, and how reliant it is on the founder.
It’s not just a pricing or product exercise, it’s about understanding which offers scale, which leak margin, and which are secretly burning out the team or the founder.
What it reveals:
Low-leverage, high-effort offers that should be cut
Founder bottlenecks hidden in delivery or onboarding
Pricing misalignment or profit leaks
Opportunities to focus, streamline, or scale
Format: Prebuilt template
Timing: Filled during or after call — co-created with the founder
Time Required: 30 mins (you drive it, they answer)
Your role:
Ask clarifying questions around effort, margin, founder involvement
Score each offer across scalability, margin, chaos
Summarise risks and immediate wins
Outcomes:
Visual snapshot of all active offers with clear problem areas
Recommendations on what to double down on, redesign, or retire
Clarity on how current offers support (or block) scale and exit goals
1.5 Ideal Customer Profile
The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) section is where we zero in on the real target audience, not the broad market, but the specific customer the business should be built around.
We work with the founder to define who they love serving, who gets the best results, and who aligns with their pricing and delivery model. We also identify mismatches: customers who are draining, unprofitable, or creating delivery chaos.
What it reveals:
Who the business is truly built for (not just who’s paying today)
Customer segments that drive profit vs those that create pain
Where the marketing, sales, and ops may be misaligned
Format: Interview-style Q&A or structured doc
Timing: Done live, post-Offer Map (they often go hand in hand)
Time Required: 15–20 mins
Your role:
Challenge broad definitions (“SaaS founders” → which kind? what stage? what pain?”)
Identify misfit customers that need to be dropped
Align ICP to most profitable offers
Outcomes:
A clear, actionable Ideal Customer Profile
ICP-to-offer fit (are they selling the right thing to the right person?)
Stronger positioning and prioritisation of growth efforts
2. System Audit
This step is about pressure-testing the internal engine of the business, the systems, tools, and processes that actually drive delivery, growth, and consistency.
Using a master list of DRIVE systems (Delivery, Rhythm, Internal, Visibility, External), we audit both the visible workflows and the hidden friction points across core business functions. We’re not just checking boxes, we’re asking: can this scale? can this survive due diligence? can this run without the founder?
What we’re looking for:
Gaps in delivery consistency or handoffs
Hidden founder dependencies
Team misalignment or rhythm breakdowns
Systems that are fragile, undocumented, or duct-taped together
Outcomes:
A mapped audit of operational strengths and weaknesses
Identified bottlenecks and risk zones across the DRIVE framework
Clear priority areas to fix, streamline, or delegate
Delivery
1. Ask the Founder:
“Who owns each of these areas right now — or is it still you?”
This takes 10–15 mins max in a live call or async doc.
2. Spot the Gaps
You're looking for:
🎯 Areas with no owner
🚨 Areas still owned by the founder
⚠️ Single points of failure (e.g. “Only Jess knows how onboarding works”)
This tells you where the business is fragile and where you’ll need to dig deeper.
3. Book Interviews or Request Looms
Once you’ve mapped the owners, you can:
Schedule short calls with relevant people (20–30 mins max)
Or ask them to send a Loom walking through their system (even better for async)
🧠 Why This Matters
You avoid wasting time with junior staff or surface-level info
You quickly expose founder bottlenecks and ownership gaps
You collect richer insights without burning hours
The DRIVE Systems
🚚 D = Delivery Systems
How you consistently deliver your product, service, or promise to customers.
These are the systems that control:
Customer onboarding
Fulfilment workflows
Support and customer success
Team handoffs
SLAs and delivery playbooks
💥 Weak delivery systems = churn, refunds, and founder firefighting.
🔄 R = Rhythm Systems
How your team stays aligned, accountable, and in sync, day to day and week to week.
These include:
Meeting cadence
Comms channels (Slack, email, huddles)
Planning cycles (weekly, monthly, quarterly)
Scoreboards and team rituals
Leadership habits (1:1s, retros, standups)
💥 Weak rhythm = misalignment, siloed teams, and poor execution.
🏗️ I = Internal Systems
Your core infrastructure, the back-office tech, tools, and playbooks that keep things moving behind the scenes.
This includes:
SOPs and documentation
Project/task management
Automations and integrations
Role clarity and org structure
Compliance/security standards
💥 Weak internal systems = chaos, rework, and massive founder dependency.
👁️ V = Visibility Systems
How you track performance, spot issues early, and make decisions based on data, not gut feel.
These systems cover:
Dashboards and KPIs
Pipeline and revenue tracking
Team metrics and accountability
Customer health and retention scores
Investor/board reporting
💥 Weak visibility = blindspots, panic decisions, and poor investor confidence.
📣 E = External Systems
Your customer-facing growth engine, how you attract, convert, and retain users.
This includes:
Lead gen and acquisition channels (ads, SEO, outbound)
Nurture sequences and email flows
Sales process and CRM
Retention campaigns and renewal workflows
Brand presence (website, social, messaging)
💥 Weak external systems = inconsistent growth and no repeatable revenue engine.
3. Readiness Assessment
Once we’ve reviewed the systems, we zoom out and assess how prepared the business is for two possible futures: scaling or selling.
This step uses real-world criteria drawn from buyer checklists, investor questions, and scale-stage operating models. We look at the business through three lenses:
What breaks at 2x or 10x scale?
What risks kill valuation or delay due diligence?
What gaps prevent the founder from stepping out or moving forward?
We separate the analysis into Scale Readiness and Sale Readiness, because while they overlap, the risks, goals, and fixes are different.
Format: Internal work based on Steps 1 + 2
Timing: Before final session
Time Required: ~60 minutes to connect dots, not gather new info
Your role:
Combine founder goals (from Step 1) with system gaps (from Step 2)
Ask: “Can this business support their next move as is?”
Use their stated intent (scale, sell, or step back) to filter risk and opportunity
3.1 Scale Readiness
Can this business grow without grinding to a halt?
What we assess:
Operational constraints that block growth (people, process, platform)
Systems that rely too heavily on the founder
Gaps in delivery or onboarding capacity
Data visibility and performance tracking at scale
Outcome:
Clear map of what needs to change to grow efficiently and sustainably
3.2 Sale Readiness
Would a buyer pay a premium, or run?
What we assess:
Red flags for buyers or investors (founder dependency, churn, key-person risk)
Quality of documentation (SOPs, metrics, playbooks)
Exit blockers like messy delivery, poor visibility, or weak retention
How “ready” the founder actually is, emotionally and practically
Outcome:
Snapshot of current valuation risk
Priority list to de-risk and prepare for exit
4. Debrief & Plan
This is the final and most critical step, where we take everything uncovered so far and turn it into clarity, confidence, and a concrete next move.
Rather than overwhelm the founder with a huge report or checklist, we boil it down to what really matters:
Where are the biggest risks?
Where are the hidden wins?
What’s the smartest next move?
This is where you earn trust by cutting through the noise and telling the founder what needs to happen, and why.
Format: Internal work based on Steps 1 + 2
Timing: Before final session
Time Required: ~60 minutes to connect dots, not gather new info
Your role:
Combine founder goals (from Step 1) with system gaps (from Step 2)
Ask: “Can this business support their next move as is?”
Use their stated intent (scale, sell, or step back) to filter risk and opportunity
4.1 Present Findings in Plain English
We distil complex ops, systems, and strategic insights into language the founder actually understands and cares about. No jargon. No fluff. Just truth and priorities.
Outcome:
Founder clarity
Shared understanding of what's broken and why
4.2 Prioritise Top 3 Action Areas
We help them focus by identifying the top 3 shifts that will unlock scale or reduce risk, based on impact, urgency, and cost of delay.
Outcome:
A shortlist of actions they can actually take
Relief and focus
4.3 Connect Vision, Ops, and Valuation
We show how the business structure is helping or hurting their bigger goals. This turns tactical fixes into strategic moves.
Outcome:
Founder sees the value in fixing systems (not just hustling harder)
Buy-in for the next stage of support
4.4 Recommend Tactical Next Steps
We recommend the next step, whether it's FastTrack, GRIT, or something else. This makes it easy for them to say yes and move forward.
Outcome:
Clear bridge from diagnosis to implementation
Next step booked or agreed
4.5 Give the Founder Breathing Room
Ultimately, this is about giving the founder space, mentally and operationally. They should walk away feeling like someone finally “gets it” and there’s a way out.
Outcome:
Confidence
Control
A decision point: fix, scale, or sell
Format & Price
Discovery Diagnostic
Length: 1–3 days
Format: Deep-dive diagnostic + live debrief
Price: £1,250–£2,500 (depending on business size and complexity)
Why It Works
Because it surfaces the real bottlenecks, not just the obvious ones.
Because you don’t need a 50-page report, you need a decision.
Because we map your business like a buyer, not a coach.
Because it gives you clarity, leverage, and your next smart move.