Example report
This is a complete, fictional diagnostic for Nora Vance — a solo brand designer, four years in, working mostly from referrals. Yours is written from your own answers, in this exact format.
Sample · Business Diagnostic
A Diagnostic
Summary
Based on the Customers Are Like Fish framework · August 14, 2026
The Honest Diagnosis
You are not short on work — you are short on the right work, and that gap is a positioning problem, not a marketing one. Every client arrives through a warm introduction and then negotiates on price, which is what happens when the referrer can't explain why you specifically. Growth is capped by how many people happen to remember you this month.
Five-Dimension Assessment
Market Clarity
2/3You describe your market as "founders who care about design" — a taste, not a segment. It doesn't tell anyone whether they qualify.
Message & Offer
1/3Your one-liner ("I help brands look and feel like themselves") is beautiful and unrepeatable. Clients cannot pass it on, so referrals arrive unqualified.
Visibility & Conversion
2/3One channel — word of mouth — with no owned entry point. When referrals slow, nothing else generates a conversation.
Follow-up & Trust
2/3You send one follow-up after a proposal and let it go. There are no case studies on the site, so the trust burden sits entirely on the referrer.
Growth Systems
1/3Every project ends cleanly and then the pipeline resets to zero. Nothing you deliver creates the next inquiry.
Your Primary Constraint
Message & Offer
Market Clarity is fuzzy but workable — you know the kind of founder you do your best work for. The message is what's actually breaking: it can't survive being repeated by someone else, which is exactly what your only channel depends on. Fix the sentence and the referral engine you already have starts delivering pre-sold clients instead of price shoppers.
Your Prioritized Skill Sequence
Run First · Message & Offer
Master Your Message
Everything downstream is carried by other people's mouths. Make the line repeatable first.
Run Second · Market Clarity
Find Your Market
Tighten the segment so the new message has a specific person to land on.
Run Third · Growth Systems
Create Your Business Flywheel
Turn finished projects into the next inquiry instead of a cold restart.
Run Fourth · Follow-up & Trust
Build Your Referral Engine
Add case studies and a real cadence so proposals stop dying in silence.
Run Fifth · Visibility & Conversion
Increase Your Visibility
Only once the message converts is it worth paying to be found by more people.
Three Immediate Moves
- 01Rewrite your one-liner so a past client could say it out loud without you in the room. Test it on two of them this week.
- 02Pick the last three projects you'd happily repeat and write down what those clients had in common before they hired you.
- 03Add one sentence to your project wrap-up email that asks who else is facing the problem you just solved.
Now get yours.
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