Build it in order, one written page at a time.
This course takes a business from the first decision to the annual review in the order its parts depend on each other: market, offer, price, customers, money, routines and people. Each module ends in a written document, a number to record and a rule for when to stop, and it says plainly how sure anyone is that each tool works. It finishes with a 30-question exam and an instant certificate.
What you'll be able to do.
Written as demonstrable outcomes, the way the AQF frames them. On completing this course you will be able to:
- CLO1Diagnose the stage a business has reached and commit to it in writing, with a stop-loss in money and time.
- CLO2Map a market and build an offer in which every claim and limit has evidence behind it.
- CLO3Set a price from what buyers already pay, and record the legal and money obligations to answer before taking money.
- CLO4Select one lawful channel, run an honest sale and prepare a real negotiation on one page.
- CLO5Design a customer's first 30 days and exit, calculate earned and cash ratios, and write rules that protect prepaid money.
- CLO6Plan a working week, hand over a job, prepare a hard conversation and review the business once a year.
Who it's for: A founder before launch, or the owner of a running business who needs to know what comes next. You need no prior study and no business yet, because every task has a no-business-yet version, and no stage's waiting time is a condition of finishing. The course stands alone, and it sits beside Successful Business Patterns and Successful Business Psychology, which cover why these tools work or fail.
Ten modules, one stage of the business at a time.
Each module states its learning outcomes, teaches the content, says where the idea stops working, and sets an Apply it task. Everything in the exam is covered here.
Module 1Find Your Stage and Decide
- LO1.1Identify the first stage a business cannot pass, using the Stage Diagnostic.
- LO1.2Write a Commitment Page with a stop-loss in money and time.
- LO1.3Sort advice by evidence and cost, and set up a one-change test in a Test Log.
Core content
Start with the Question Check. Owners keep asking the same 19 questions, from "Whose advice do I believe?" to "The books say profit. Where did the money go?". Find the one costing you most this month. This is triage: it scores nothing and nobody has tested it. All of this course is general information, not legal, financial, medical or psychological advice. The examples follow Nadia's pool service, Elena's music school, Tony's fruit shop and Helen's fabrication shop. All are invented and their figures are illustrative and exclude GST, so an example shows a document in use and proves nothing.
Order matters. Most stalled businesses are doing reasonable things in the wrong order, such as advertising an offer nobody has priced. Each stage ends in a written document, a number and a stop rule, a condition written in advance that halts the stage. A gate is the pass or fail check that closes a stage: it shows the work is done and predicts nothing. The documents form your Owner's File. The sources behind this course agree on the opening stages, the rest is a teaching order with no test behind it, and gates and stop rules have no evidence behind them.
The Stage Diagnostic finds your place. Work through the stages in order and count a yes only if you could show the document, number or date today. Knowing it in your head is a no. Have you talked to people who do not buy from you? Do you know what each sale leaves after its direct cost? Mark a stage not applicable if it cannot reach you, and stop at your first no, even if the Question Check points elsewhere.
The Commitment Page says what you are choosing, what it will cost and when you would stop. Name the unpleasant work, as Mark Manson asks: "hard work" does not count and "saying the price to a neighbour and then staying quiet" does. Strike any reason that is not real, constructive and within your control. Say whether overheads are low, whether you watch cash ahead of profit, and who already pays for this: friends who say it sounds great are evidence of a good idea, and strangers already paying someone are evidence of a market. Then choose one rich vein, the customer, offer and place you will work, naming two real options you give up, a review date and a measure. These tools are anecdotal or weak.
The stop-loss is an amount of money and a calendar date, written in advance, whichever arrives first. Set the money at the most you could lose and still pay your way afterwards. Write who else pays if you are wrong and what you will do the day after. When a line is crossed, stop spending that day: going on takes a new page, read by the person who read the old one. Pick a reader who does not need you to succeed, and ask which line they believe least. Nadia first wrote "until it works", and her former workmate Col asked what that was in dollars. She ended with A$20,000 and 12 months. No source offers this tool. It comes from the book series behind this course, untested and cheap.
Sort what you are told. Every tool here carries a label. Well supported means arithmetic, reasoning that needs no study, or a large replicated body of work. Mixed means the direction holds while the size or reach is in doubt. Anecdotal or weak means experience or argument nobody has checked. Then comes a tag. Do means well supported, or cheap and safe enough to need no proof. Test means mixed, or weak with a real cost. Leave alone means retired, unlawful here or wrong for your conditions. Skipping is a proper result: Tony, on thin margins, tags most tools Leave alone. Where good advice collides, six questions help, each explained where it is used: repeat and exit, truth, margin and cash, who decides, control, and cost of being wrong. They are anecdotal or weak at best.
The Test Log holds anything tagged Test, as a one-change test: alter one thing, hold it for a set period, measure against a number set in advance, and write what you will do at each result before you begin. Change two things together and you cannot say which one mattered, which is well supported as reasoning. Nadia set five first services as her number, got four and bought the ute anyway, and four against five was too small a gap to mean anything. Set a number big enough to read.
Where it stops working
A page can fail in three ways. A Hollow Target is a goal borrowed from someone else, such as a second site because a consultant drew one, so if you cannot say why it is now yours, cross it out. Endless Planning feels like moving and carries no chance of being told no, so allow two drafts and hand the page to your reader. A Stop-Loss You Would Not Honour is a sum you cannot afford to lose, a date you have started explaining away or a line nobody else has seen, and if you move the line as you get close, you have crossed it. No page can stop you either: Nadia listed a shop of her own under what she was giving up and opened a counter in Year 3, and all the page did was make her change her mind on purpose. Stop rule: if you cannot name the unpleasant work, or cannot write a stop-loss you would honour, stop here and spend nothing on the next stage.
Module 2Field and Offer
- LO2.1Score a market on four tests and map the people who do not buy.
- LO2.2Draw a strategy canvas and fill an eliminate, reduce, raise and create grid, removals first.
- LO2.3Build an Offer Sheet whose every claim traces to a Constraint Evidence File, with a guarantee you would pay out on.
Core content
Market first. The Field Map opens with one line: who pays, where they are and the job they want done. Score it on Alex Hormozi's four market tests, yes or no, with what you have actually seen. Pain: are people already spending money or effort on this? Money: can they pay? Findable: can you say where they gather? Growth: is the group getting larger? No thresholds exist, so each score is your judgement, which makes the tests anecdotal or weak.
Talk to people who do not buy. W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne sort noncustomers into three tiers: soon-to-be, who buy the minimum and are ready to leave; refusing, who looked at your trade and rejected it; and unexplored, who never thought of it as theirs. Mark the biggest catchment, which need not be the nearest. Hold five conversations with nothing to sell, asking what they do now, what they tried and what would have to change before they paid. Five is the limit. Four of Nadia's five never mentioned money. One had lost a day waiting for a service and got a card of ticks nobody explained.
Canvas, then removal. List the factors your trade competes on, in customers' words, and score three rivals and yourself from zero to five. Each line is a value curve, so read the shape. Lines that match mean a crowded market, which they call a red ocean, and a high point that brings nothing back is over-delivery. Then fill the grid in order: eliminate, reduce, raise, create. Ask of each removal why it began and what it is for now, and put it to two customers. Every addition names the removal that pays for it. Nadia dropped bottles at the gate, and the minutes saved paid for a kept arrival time and a photo report. The canvas and grid are anecdotal or weak: well regarded, with anecdote behind their results.
Finish the map. Write a tagline, one true sentence a buyer could hold you to, and your conclusion. To pass you need real answers in eliminate and reduce, and a market that passes all four tests in your judgement. If a test fails, choose another market, or finish eliminate and reduce, write "stay and improve" and go on. Tony's market failed on pain and growth, so he wrote exactly that, and it counts as a pass.
Proof before promises. The Offer Sheet rests on a Constraint Evidence File: each real limit, today's number, where the proof sits, the date checked and the one sentence you may say. Robert Cialdini's smuggling test decides that sentence: a trigger is fine when it matches something real, and importing one the situation does not contain is smuggling. Nadia's first leaflet said ONLY 10 PLACES LEFT. Her partner Col asked, "Ten out of what?", and she crossed it out. As general information, not advice: claiming limited stock when it is not, or running a countdown that resets, is misleading or deceptive conduct under the Australian Consumer Law.
Build from obstacles. Write what the buyer wants in their words, list every obstacle and answer each in one line. Score each component high or low on value to the buyer and cost to deliver. High value and low cost stays. High value and high cost stays only if the result depends on it. Low value goes, even when cheap, because clutter lowers what the rest seems worth. Then check how soon the buyer sees something real and what they must still do. If the need recurs, offer the plan in the first sale, with the way out beside the way in. Bonuses are for healthy margins only. This is a useful heuristic, anecdotal or weak.
The guarantee moves risk from buyer to seller, and the evidence is mixed. The types are unconditional, conditional, implied and the anti-guarantee ("all sales final"), which you leave alone. A refund returns the full price after the delivery money has gone, so divide delivery cost by gross profit, the price less that cost, to see how many sales one pay-out swallows: a month of Nadia's care plan, A$79 over A$110, is about 0.7. Picture your least favourite customer, in your worst week, with a valid claim. If you would argue, fix delivery first. Then log sales and pay-outs: if refunds exceed the gross profit on the extra sales it brought, it is not working here. A committee tends to read past a guarantee, so take it off their version. As general information, consumer guarantees cannot be contracted out of, and yours adds to them.
Where it stops working
The map diagnoses and does not predict. A handsome curve says nothing about whether anyone will buy, and Nadia's strata work came from a tier she never spoke to. Watch for Raise-and-Create Only, where the grid fills with new things while eliminate stays empty, and Fieldwork as a Hiding Place, where five conversations become a survey. On the offer side, a Guarantee on a Bad Product adds a debt with every sale that delivery cannot pay, and Hormozi himself warns that it leads quickly to insolvency. Margins change the answer too: Tony keeps the trim rule and tags most of the rest Leave alone, and Helen's offer is a tender response, so she keeps the obstacle list and drops the rest. Stop rules: if the market fails a test, do not argue a no up to a yes. Any claim with no evidence comes off the sheet, and if you would not pay out on the guarantee, stop and fix delivery before selling.
Module 3Price and Floor
- LO3.1Build a price corridor and work out a target cost from a strategic price and a required margin.
- LO3.2Calculate gross profit and margin for every line, and design a price rise as a one-change test.
- LO3.3Build an Obligations Register and a Deferred Revenue Register, and decide which answers deserve a paid hour.
Core content
Price before cost. W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne set four pass or fail checks in strict order: utility, price, cost, adoption. Price comes before cost so that buyers tell you what you may spend on delivery. Write first what you will do if the idea fails. Utility is one sentence: the real reason a buyer would choose this over what they do now. No basis is given for the order, so this is anecdotal or weak, and an evening costs little.
The price corridor is the range buyers already pay for other ways of getting the same job done. List what looks nothing like yours and does the same job, add direct rivals, then add what serves the same end. Circle where most of the buying sits. With little protection from copying, go to the low end. Where delivery is scarce and sold on its outcome, go high. Then write one strategic price most of those buyers can reach, because a figure above the cluster needs a reason the buyer can see. Nadia listed pool-shop bottles, franchises at a shade over A$99, and the beach, which is free. Anyone with a ute can copy a first service, so she stayed a shade under, at A$99.
Cost and adoption. Gross profit is the sale price minus the direct cost of delivering that sale, and margin is gross profit as a share of the price: A$99 less A$70 leaves A$29, about 29 per cent. For a required margin, add a normal month's overheads, the pay you need and what you expect to spend winning customers, then divide by the sales you can really deliver in a month. Strategic price minus required margin is your target cost, the most you can spend delivering. That is arithmetic, well supported if your inputs are true. If you miss it, test a lever: streamline, partner or change the pricing model. Cutting quality is not a lever. Then talk to whoever must live with this price, before you spend.
Price every line. Give each line its own row: price, delivery cost, gross profit, margin and its job, because a blended margin can hide a weak line inside a strong one. Nadia's counter made about 25 per cent and her care plan about 58, and her accountant's single margin matched neither. Estimate cost to acquire, everything spent to win one new customer, and thirty-day gross profit, and mark both as estimates.
Raise a price only as a one-change test. Change one line and hold everything else still. Count all that a lost customer would have brought: going from A$99 to A$109, Nadia could lose about a quarter of her customers on that line alone, but only about one in 12 across the window. Set a number you would believe, because a small count cannot show a small change: on about 30 customers, a fall to 28 tells you nothing. She got 20, a third fewer than usual, and went back to A$99. One spring cannot say why. That margin follows price is arithmetic. What your buyers do next is anecdotal or weak.
The money floor. Sort every payment by one sentence: money paid for something not yet delivered is held, and only money for something delivered is earned. The Deferred Revenue Register gives each deposit, term fee and prepaid plan a line on the day it lands, shows what is undelivered at sale price and at delivery cost, and comes down as you deliver. If you take no prepayment, write "None taken" and date it. Hold back at least what delivery will cost, in a second account. On day one of a term Elena holds A$52,800 and has earned none of it. This is accounting logic, well supported.
The Obligations Register turns each legal worry into a row: a question, who to ask, the date checked, the next check and an owner. As general information, not advice, expect rows for consumer guarantees and your terms, subscriptions, structure and registration, GST and BAS, PAYG withholding and superannuation if you employ, insurance, licences, privacy, workplace safety, unfair contract terms, directors' duties and any co-owner agreement. Check each against the regulator's current guidance. Then ask the cost of being wrong question: how cheaply can you be wrong, how fast will you find out, and who pays? Cheap, quick-to-fix answers can come from a regulator's website. Book a paid hour for answers that are expensive or slow to undo, such as your structure, a co-owner agreement or terms every customer will see. The register is the series' own form, anecdotal or weak, and cheap.
Where it stops working
Three habits undo the sheet. Cost-Plus by Habit starts from what the job costs, when your buyer usually sees what else they could do. The Discount Reflex cuts the price in a slow month, and 10 per cent off Nadia's first service takes about a third of its gross profit. Priced From Fear means the sheet says one number and your mouth says another. The floor fails too. A forum is a fine place to find a question and a poor place to close one, and a register nobody rereads protects nobody: Nadia wrote "before I ever do" beside prepayment, then launched an annual plan in Year 4 without opening the file and took A$226,800. Thin margins and tenders bend the method: Tony's sheet is one line, about A$7 of gross profit on a basket of about A$28, and Helen cannot run a one-change test. Stop rules: if the target cost cannot be reached inside the corridor, the idea fails, so rework the offer or drop the idea and do not shrink the margin to pass. Take no prepayment until the Deferred Revenue Register exists, and no money at all while a row is empty.
Module 4Find Customers, Lawfully
- LO4.1Work a warm list and count signals in place of contacts.
- LO4.2Apply the Australian check before any contact with a stranger.
- LO4.3Commit to one channel in a 100-Day Plan and judge it on cost to acquire against customer worth.
Core content
Start warm. List everyone whose contact details you hold, and strike any name you cannot be sure is yours to use: a number someone gave you is one thing, a former employer's customer file is another. Contact each person yourself, one at a time, with nothing to sell. Bring something first, or ask for advice you actually want. Go to the bottom of the list and expect it to end, because warm outreach starts a business and does not scale one. Alex Hormozi ranks this route above every other and shows no figures, so read the praise as opinion: anecdotal or weak, and cheap enough to do.
Count signals. A signal is something a person did: a reply, a click, a booking, an answer. A name on a list is close to worthless. Give signals their own column and report only that column to yourself. Nadia's perfect tracker of 100 ticks for 100 clips looked like progress, and it had brought one message about a green pool.
One small complete fix. If strangers cannot judge you by looking, build what Hormozi calls a lead magnet: a complete fix for a narrow problem that exposes a bigger one. It must work with nothing else bought, be narrow enough to be truly solved and bring the next problem into view. State a value you can trace to what you charge, and ask plainly whether you may contact the person afterwards. Elena's free one-tune lesson had adult beginners play one short piece within the hour, valued at A$24, one lesson's share of her A$240 term fee. The evidence is mixed, so run it as a test: do people who took it buy more often? Keen people take free things, so a good result tells you less than a flat one.
The Australian check. This is general information, not advice. Before you contact anyone who does not know you, ask three questions. Email and SMS: do you hold this person's consent? Unsolicited commercial email and SMS to people who have not consented is unlawful under the Spam Act, with civil penalties, and being helpful or personalised is no exemption. Calls: have you checked the number against the Do Not Call Register? Platforms: is this business-to-business contact somewhere the recipient has made themselves available? If you are unsure about someone on your warm list, treat them as cold. For current rules read the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and for what you may do with a list, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
The Lead Audit. Hormozi's Core Four sorts every way of reaching people by two things: do they know you already, and does the message go to one person or to many. That gives four boxes: personal contact, cold outreach that passed the check, content and paid advertising. Write what you run in each and last month's volume as a number, then what customers, employees, agencies and partners are doing for you. As logic this is well supported, but the grid only files what you do and predicts nothing.
Pick one channel from the audit and from where your buyer actually looks. Comfort is a poor guide: Nadia chose clips because they could not answer back. Referrals need a customer who can honestly vouch and a next buyer who resembles them. Paid advertising tests audience, then message, then destination. Content is the slowest and least predictable, and its evidence is mixed. An agency starts a channel, with a hand-back date written into the deal. The rest is one practitioner's judgement, anecdotal or weak, so each is a bounded test. Hormozi's rule of 100 is one daily commitment for 100 days with no verdict until the end, and he says the number is arbitrary. Multiply it out: A$100 a day is A$10,000, and 100 minutes a day is about 167 hours. If that breaks your stop-loss, run smaller.
The 100-Day Plan holds the channel, daily amount, total, judging date, passing number and what you will do at each result, plus a commitment: I will (behaviour) at (time) in (place), in an hour you truly control. Tying a plan to a time and place is well supported, though untested on a small firm's channel. Only your stop-loss or a failed Australian check may end a run early. A bad week is not on the list. On the date, compare cost to acquire, everything spent including your hours, divided by customers won, with customer worth, the gross profit a customer brings over the whole relationship. Nadia's low estimate, one year less losses, was about A$510 against A$120. That comparison is accounting, well supported. Views and followers settle nothing.
Where it stops working
Channel Hopping gives a channel four or five tries and a verdict, until the drawer is full of things that almost worked. Contact Hoarding admires a list and never asks anyone on it anything. Cold email as the source describes it is a United States playbook, so it goes back through the Australian check. When a run fails, read back along the chain: no signals points at the audience or the channel, and signals with no sales point at the offer or at the sale itself. A pass can also be dull: Nadia's referrals cost about A$113 a customer against A$120 for advertising, and whether referred customers stay longer takes a full year of records to see. The plan does not fit everyone. Helen's sales cycles outrun 100 days, and Tony works his frontage and nothing else. Stop rule: if a full run ends with cost to acquire above customer worth, or with signals and no sales, the offer may be the fault, so go back to it before you start another channel or extend this one.
Module 5Sale and Deal
- LO5.1Run a six-move honest sale from a Sale Card whose every claim has evidence.
- LO5.2Test an upsell and match a downsell to the real objection.
- LO5.3Prepare a One Sheet and Concession Plan that start from your real door and walk-away.
Core content
The routine. Six moves, mostly from Mark McCormack, fit on one page. Ask before you tell: how or what questions on what has gone wrong, what they have tried and what they want to stop worrying about. Read how this buyer buys: detail, the summary, space or a lead. Give a true reason, a real "because" behind each recommendation. State real limits once, as information, in the voice you would use for a bus timetable. Put price, terms and how to leave on the table, then ask for the order in one plain sentence with a day in it. Then stop once sold: confirm the day, say your leaving line and go.
Why stopping matters. A woman told Nadia, "Put us down for the monthly." Nadia kept talking and in under two minutes handed her three doubts she had not been carrying, and the woman did not ring. So anything the buyer needs goes before the ask. A yes counts when it has a date or a payment on it. This is mostly one executive's experience from a 1984 book, so it is anecdotal or weak: do it in relationship sales and test it at a shop counter or in a tender.
The Sale Card holds your questions, reasons, limits, ask, leaving line, upsell, downsell and one line for a silent contact, for each kind of buyer. Every claim names its line in your evidence file and the date checked. With no real limit, the card says nothing about limits. As general information, a limit that is not real is misleading or deceptive conduct under the Australian Consumer Law. Cards go false with nobody lying: "the same technician every visit" came off Nadia's the week her roster could no longer back it. A committee's card is mostly crossed out. The question who decides asks whether you face one motivated person on a short cycle or a committee on an annual budget, and a closing deadline does worse with a committee, however true.
After the yes and the no. An upsell is a further offer at or just after the yes. Alex Hormozi's test: finish the sentence "This helps what you just bought because...". If you cannot, it stays off the card. A downsell is a smaller offer after a no, matched to the objection: a payment plan for affordability, a trial for risk, a smaller version for commitment. Keep it well short of the main offer, or it takes the main offer's buyers. Both rest on commercial practice with no figures, so the evidence is mixed. To a silent contact who has agreed to hear from you, send one question they can safely answer no.
Preparing a deal. A negotiation sets your costs and terms for years. Skip the page where being wrong costs little, as Tony does for a box of bananas. Under McCormack's four headings write their pressures, deadlines, alternatives and who they must satisfy, then turn each guess into a phone call. Test your door: what would you do the morning after a no? Ring that alternative, get a price and a date, and ask whether you would really go. If nothing exists, or you never would, write "none". Run Robert Greene's character check: how they treat those who can do nothing for them, and how they behaved when something went wrong. Collect instances, because first impressions are practised.
The One Sheet puts your door first, then your walk-away in one line and a specific goal. Add the deal as it looks from their chair, Chris Voss's feeling labels such as "It sounds like...", the worst they may think of you, said first, and how or what questions that include who else approves. Let them open unless you are the buyer and know the market at least as well. Make your offer and wait, because adding to it in the silence is negotiating against yourself. The Concession Plan lists what you could give, what it costs, what you want for it and the order. These tools rest on one career each, so they are anecdotal or weak.
Two deals. Tony's door was a worse shop, an old newsagency, but a real one. He traded rent paid automatically, which cost him nothing, for a rise in two steps. Helen's sheet said "none", because one contractor brought about 45 per cent of her revenue. So she asked how each invoice could be paid inside the 60 days its own terms stated. She won a named contact and a stated date, and the money still came near day 75. Hear the how said aloud and put it on one page the same day.
Where it stops working
In the sale, watch for Talking Past the Yes, a Rotated Reason That Is False and a Downsell Too Close to the Main Offer. In the deal, Love of the Deal softens your walk-away a little each night. Voss built his method where nobody could walk away or come back next year, and your supplier is usually the opposite, so the step to your world is argued and never shown. His Ackerman plan, a staged run of shrinking raises, is for one-off purchases only. The question repeat and exit asks whether you will deal with them again, whether they can leave and whether others will hear. Nadia ran the plan on a wholesaler's rep she sees every fortnight, and he smiled and asked who she had been reading. As general information, leases have their own law, so ask a solicitor before you sign one. Stop rules: any line you cannot evidence comes off the card. If you cannot write your walk-away in one line, or the character check fails, do not sign this week. That buys seven days, and as Helen found, they may change nothing.
Module 6The Customer's First Thirty Days
- LO6.1Plan an early win and check that delivery can back everything sold.
- LO6.2Record every default with its named beneficiary and its whole reason.
- LO6.3Walk every path both ways, then build a Cancellation Path and a Complaint Routine.
Core content
What customers actually meet. After the sale, customers stop hearing your pitch and start meeting arrangements you mostly never chose. The Promise Pack is five short pages that settle them: a First-Win Plan, a Default Register, a Sludge Log, a Cancellation Path and a Complaint Routine. Begin by writing one line for each of six buyer stages: purchase, delivery, use, supplements, maintenance and disposal, which for a service means leaving. A blank line means something happens out there that nobody designed.
The First-Win Plan. The early win is the first visible result, arriving well before the full result. Find the earliest honest point and put a day on it. Nadia's is a photo water report on the customer's phone at the end of the first visit. If nothing honest can be shown early, say so at the sale and fake nothing. Then list every promise sold, who delivers it, on what day, and what happens in a week when they cannot. Anything you cannot back comes off the sale. These tools are unmeasured, anecdotal or weak, and they cost an hour.
The Default Register. A default, in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's word, is what happens if nobody acts: renewals, pre-ticked boxes, automatic charges, what staff do when a customer stays silent. Name who benefits from each. Reset any that serves only you to what this customer would pick if they stopped to think. Then run the publicity test: would you defend this in public? Write the whole reason, including the half you would rather not print. The evidence is mixed. The records concern pensions above all, where a default saves a worker's money for that worker, and a business default usually sends the customer's money to you. Expect small lifts.
Hard choices. A choice that is hard, infrequent, poor in feedback and weakly mapped deserves a sensible starting option. Translate numbers into lived terms: Nadia's annual A$1,890 now reads A$157.50 a visit against A$189 monthly. Send a short reminder before every charge and visit. Reminders do a little, consistently, in government programs, so that much is well supported, and you budget for no lift. A line about what other customers do is a test: Elena's true note that most families had re-enrolled moved nothing.
Walk it both ways. On your own phone, with your terms closed, walk in (enquiring, paying, booking, changing a card) and out (stopping, getting a refund, complaining, finding a person). You are hunting sludge, friction that stops people reaching what is good for them. Mark each step keep, fix or cut. Keep a step that protects the buyer, such as a check before a costly choice. Cut what serves only you. Then hand your phone to a stranger and say nothing. Removing sludge is well supported, in people using government programs, with no business trial. A stranger testing Nadia's annual plan spent 10 minutes looking for the way out. The only answer was "Ring me", and 120 customers had paid A$226,800 through that door.
The Cancellation Path. Cancellation parity has four rules: leaving uses the same channel as joining, takes no more steps, works at any hour and ends in a written confirmation of the last charge and any refund. Any conversation comes after the exit, never in front of it. On the series' reading, a genuine fixed term, clearly disclosed, chosen knowingly and priced as such, is the one exception, and you check the law first. The evidence is mixed, with no figure on what parity does to income, and it has a price: some people leave in an evening who might have drifted on for months. As general information, not advice, your exit rule sits on top of the consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law where they apply.
The Complaint Routine has six lines. Set a time limit for the first reply, by voice when a promise was broken. Say back what happened and what it cost them until they agree. Own your part before any explanation. Say what you will do and by when, then do it. Log the cause and fix it. Name who answers, by when and from where. In one wet week Nadia sent a man a careful account of the weather, and he never replied or renewed. A woman with the same story got a phone call, and she stayed. She might have stayed regardless, and the routine is the series' own synthesis, anecdotal or weak.
Where it stops working
Retention by Friction is the main failure: your losses fall because leaving got harder, and your plan count can no longer be read. A Nudge in Place of a Fix lays a warmer note over a service that is running late, so if customers are going because something is wrong, fix that first. A Lift Assumed and Not Tested writes a pension or government result into your budget, when the size is unknown until you count it here. Leave your customers' habits alone, because habit tools are written for your own routines. Never test a worse exit on a paying customer. Two results would count against these ideas here: customers with an early win stay and refer no better than those without one, or easier exit raises losses with no gain in sign-ups, referrals or complaints over a full renewal cycle. Some businesses need little of this, and Tony's register is one row: a bad peach swapped the next morning. Stop rule: if a stranger cannot leave as easily as they joined, stop new sign-ups on that path until they can.
Module 7The Thirty-Day Model and the Cash Rules
- LO7.1Calculate thirty-day gross profit, cost to acquire and the earned ratio from an offer sequence.
- LO7.2Calculate the cash ratio and state the customers' loan in dollars.
- LO7.3Write Cash Rules and test a prepaid offer with a Bad-Quarter Model.
Core content
Three documents. The Thirty-Day Model says whether you may spend into growth, the Bad-Quarter Model says what happens if you are wrong, and the Cash Rules protect the bad months. The sums adapt an exercise from Alex Hormozi. Do every line on gross profit, the sale price minus the direct cost of delivering that sale, and work per customer acquired, so an add-on taken by three in 10 counts at 30 per cent. Write your offer sequence: attraction, upsell, downsell and continuity, leaving out any you do not run. A plan you hope will run for years gets one month on the continuity line.
The earned ratio. Nadia's Years 2 and 3 give figures you can use. A first service, A$99 less A$70, leaves A$29. An equipment check, A$149 less A$40, taken by 30 per cent, adds A$32.70. A care plan, A$189 less A$79, taken by 40 per cent, adds A$44. She runs no downsell. Thirty-day gross profit is A$105.70. Cost to acquire is everything spent last month to win customers, divided by customers won: A$120. Divide the first by the second and her earned ratio is 0.88. This is arithmetic, well supported, though nobody has shown that running these sums changes a small business's result.
Reading it. Comfortably above one, on a figure you write yourself, you may spend into growth. Below one, pull a lever before adding advertising: pay less to win each customer, earn more inside the window or cut delivery cost. More advertising makes the window worse. A ratio below one measures funding need and no lifetime loss. For payback, divide the day-30 shortfall by what the next month earns, multiply by 30 and add that to day 30. Nadia was A$14.30 short and month two earned A$44, so payback came about 10 days later. Below one you pass only with a written reason: payback date, size of the gap and the money that covers it.
The cash ratio. Take cash collected in the window, subtract delivery cost in the window and divide by cost to acquire. Subtract earned gross profit from the cash figure, and the gap in dollars is the customers' loan. In Year 4 Nadia sold a A$1,890 annual plan, 12 monthly visits with two months free. Her earned ratio slipped to 0.84, her cash ratio rose to 3.0, and about A$260 per customer was borrowed. When the ratios split, spend on the earned one and treat the cash one as a measure of what you owe. If 30 days does not fit, use a term, a job or six months, and show the 30-day figure beside it. Elena's 1.6 over a term is 0.64 at day 30, and a consultant once showed her the 1.6 in week one as if already earned.
The Cash Rules. Every time prepaid money lands, work out what it will cost to deliver and move that sum the same day into a separate held account, released only as you deliver. Book prepaid income as deferred, a debt you owe in work, and move it to income as you deliver. Nadia's account is called Not ours: each annual plan puts in A$948, 12 visits at A$79. This is accounting logic, well supported. As general information: if you take money well ahead and the business fails, customers become unsecured creditors, and treating that money as profit is among the commoner routes to insolvency for a business that still looks healthy. If you run a company and the figures point that way, ask your accountant or a solicitor about directors' duties early.
The Bad-Quarter Model. Take your sums forward three months with new sales cut sharply. Start at half, a number with no study behind it, or your worst real quarter. Keep delivery and overheads in full, and carry a refund line if your terms refund unused months. If the held account does not cover the undelivered total at delivery cost, the prepaid offer does not launch. With no prepayment, the test is whether the bank stays above zero. Three months after Nadia took A$226,800, the visits still owed would cost A$85,320 to deliver and the bank held A$31,000.
The leak is the share of a recurring base lost each period. Multiply your plans by the monthly loss, divide by the share of new customers who take a plan and multiply by cost to acquire. Nadia's 200 plans at 3 per cent lose six, which at 40 per cent take-up means about 15 new customers, A$1,800 a month, to stand still. Enter it as a cost. Then write one line each month: earned ratio, cash ratio, undelivered total, money held back and cash at bank.
Where it stops working
Spending the Deposit treats money received as money earned. Running the ratio on revenue flatters it: Nadia's sequence reads about 1.8 on sale prices against 0.88 on gross profit. Advertising Below One answers a slow month with a bigger budget. The 30-day window suits high-margin, short-cycle services, and Hormozi's target of recovering about twice your cost to acquire is anecdotal or weak. Helen uses six months, because she is the lender: A$140,400 of a typical job goes out before she is paid, so her rules cap the unpaid jobs the bank can carry. Tony is paid at the till, so one line saying why he skips this is a complete result. A held account guards against one kind of failure only: Nadia's former workmate Ros ran the same playbook and went under through illness and one lost contract. Prepayment stays legitimate when made deliberately. Stop rule: with the earned ratio below one and no written reason, stop adding advertising. With the undelivered total at delivery cost above the money held back, stop spending prepaid money and stop selling prepayment.
Module 8Your Operating Week
- LO8.1Build a dropped-jobs list and rewrite each slipping job with a behaviour, a time and a place.
- LO8.2Arrange cues and steps, and repair a failing routine with a diagnostic and a two-minute version.
- LO8.3Ask who controls an hour before redesigning a block that keeps failing.
Core content
Your week is already a system. Unless you designed it, it was designed by whoever rang first. List last month's dropped jobs, anything that should have happened by a date and did not, and count the lines. Nadia reached 14: an invoice nine days late, three quotes never chased, figures promised and never written. The books were not on her list, because she had booked them for Thursday at 4pm. Everything on the list mattered more than reconciling a bank feed, and nothing on it had a day of the week.
Behaviour, time, place. If you do one thing here, rewrite each job that keeps slipping with three blanks filled: I will (behaviour) at (time) in (place). This is Peter Gollwitzer's implementation intention, and it works by settling the decision before the moment arrives. "Do the quotes" fills no blanks. "Ring every quote over a week old, Tuesday at 10am, at the counter" fills all three. The evidence is well supported: many experiments and meta-analyses find the effect substantial and reliable, though we know of no habit tool tested on small-business owners. Where a job has no natural hour, tie it to something dependable: after (this), I will (that).
Run the day from a list. Mark McCormack's routine is one executive's experience, anecdotal or weak, and it costs next to nothing. Keep one running written list on you all day. Mark the hardest item before you finish and start tomorrow on it. Book your blocks before the week begins, as repeating entries. Give calls a daily slot and clear it, even when the answer is no. Returning calls is a small reliability, a cheap act most people let go. If customers you answer promptly renew and refer no more than those you answer late, it is not earning its slot, so give the slot to something else.
Arrange the room. Put the cue in your way, such as the quote list on the chair, and clear rival cues by shutting the inbox. Count the steps between sitting down and starting, then cut them. Add steps in front of what you want less of. Changing the setting is well supported, chiefly by Wendy Wood's research on how habits attach to their surroundings. Reminders give a small lift, no more. For the block that keeps getting raided, bind yourself in advance: someone else answers the phone for that hour. That evidence is mixed and it spends someone else's time, so enter it in your Test Log.
Repair. Run a routine that has failed twice through James Clear's four laws as a diagnostic, in order, and fix the first no. Obvious: do I see it when it is due? Attractive: is there any pull towards it? Easy: can I start in under two minutes? Satisfying: does anything good happen today? The set is anecdotal or weak. So is his rule never to miss twice: write a two-minute version beside each line, and on the day after a miss do at least that. Nadia lost a Thursday to rain and entered one receipt in the ute on Friday. That keeps the routine alive and does not do the job. Repetitions matter more than days, so leave the 21-day habit claim alone. If your health or mood sits behind the failure, this page is no treatment, so talk to someone qualified.
Guard it and aim it. Say no early, in the hour the request arrives if you can, because McCormack names the yes you could not refuse as the commonest cause of overload. Give any meeting you call four ticks: a reason, an agenda, a finish time and the outcome you want. Hold one target, a single result with a number and a date that you could miss, and one system, the lines underneath. Keep a tracker that counts the job itself, such as "books good to last Wednesday". For slow routines, write a leading check: a small sign that should have moved by a date. Nadia looked for one booking from every four quotes rung and got near one in 10, so she changed the routine.
Reading the result. The Week Template is one page: a target, then each job with its behaviour, time, place or anchor, two-minute version and what the tracker counts. For this course, run it for one week. A lower count only suggests the page is in use. Nadia's dropped jobs went from 14 to six after four weeks, while autumn quietened her phone, so six proves little. Nobody has shown that a designed week makes a small business more money, and this course does not claim it.
Where it stops working
Most of this module takes for granted that your time and your room are yours to arrange. The question control asks who controls the time, the room and the company, and it predicts that individual discipline tools fail on people who do not set their own hours. Nadia lost her quote calls at 2pm on Friday and again at 9am, because customers with weekend guests owned Friday, so she moved them to Tuesday and asked her partner Col to answer the phone. Tony's markets open at 4am, so he keeps a pocket list and one stacked phone call. A large contractor's site meetings ate Helen's estimating block, and a diary will not fix that. Tracker Worship chases the number: Nadia's count of calls made climbed while the same three customers stayed unanswered. The habit evidence concerns one person managing themselves, and none of it is shown to scale to teams, so do not hand this page around as a fix. Stop rule: if a block fails twice after one redesign, stop redesigning it and ask who really controls that time.
Module 9People
- LO9.1Choose the job to hand over by the queue behind it, and check the margin before hiring.
- LO9.2Write a dated Hand-Over List with a dip limit and a recovery date.
- LO9.3Prepare a Conversation Plan that checks the room before the person and stops for advice where employment could end.
Core content
Know what you are standing on. The sources stop at maxims: hire people better than you, expect worse work at first, believe the record over the interview. The steps joining them are the series' own synthesis, untested, so treat most of this as anecdotal or weak. Employment law comes from outside the sources, so everything legal here is general information, not advice. To choose a job to hand over, list what stops if you are away for a fortnight and circle the one with the longest queue behind it.
The Hire Brief. Divide the role's full yearly cost by your gross profit on a typical sale. That arithmetic gives the extra sales a year it must carry, and if you cannot see where they will come from, stop. Describe the job as what is true each week when done well, and add a line starting "stronger than me at". Ask finalists about a job that went badly and notice who gets the blame, then ring a referee above them and one below. Weigh that above the interview, since Robert Greene treats the first impression as the rehearsed part. Before any offer, ask the Fair Work Ombudsman about awards, contracts, and employee or contractor status.
The Hand-Over List. Sort the job into three columns: must (what you promised a customer or the law requires), they decide, and bring to me. Keep must short, because you police every line of it. Date four steps: With you, Checked, Numbers only and Gone, the four weeks in which you see only what they bring you. Measure your own work first for a baseline, then write the dip you will accept and a recovery date. On Nadia's hand-over to Jaz, call-backs reached the limit of four and a customer cancelled in week six. She stayed out because the list said week 10, and by week nine call-backs were back to two.
Routines and change. Give each repeating job a line in the Routine Register: its likely error, its default, the feedback at the job, who controls the hours and space, a named person and a review date. Before a change that lands on staff, use the Fair Process Checklist: engage them while the answer can still move the decision, explain the real reason, and set expectations. This is anecdotal or weak: Helen's fair-process bay grumbled less and its on-time figures barely differed. It is cheap, and that is the whole case for it.
Check the room before the person. A hard conversation needs one result a stranger could verify, with dated examples. "Four frames came back this quarter" passes and "Dave has stopped caring" fails. Go through the job line by line: hours, tools, training, information, load. On the question of control, who sets the time and the room, the answer for most staff is you. Split the page into what is yours and what may be theirs, and fix your share first. On three of Dave's four rework sheets, Helen found the drawing had reached him late. The check ends where the conduct belongs to the person: if tools, hours and training are fixed and the same fault returns, the room was not the answer. This order of enquiry is mixed, with no business result shown.
Write the words. The Conversation Plan holds the result, the room check, your share, your wording and a date this week. Run the defensiveness check, built from Robert Greene, on your opening: does it imply this person has no say, is stupid or shabby, or is a bad sort? A sentence about the weld usually passes, and one about the welder usually fails. Say your share first, put the work on the table, ask one how or what question and stop talking. Swap consolation for "What could you try next?". End on a next step in their words: who does what by when. This is decent practice, anecdotal or weak, with no claim about staff performance.
When a job could end. Before any of that, answer one question: could this conversation lead to ending employment? Anything but no means stop, and hold no talk about the job until you have taken advice. The series' ruling is law first. As general information, ask about minimum entitlements, unfair dismissal and general protections, starting with the Fair Work Ombudsman's small business guidance, then a qualified employment adviser. Feeling labels and accusation audits are Leave alone here. Nadia took the extra stops off Kev's round first, saw the fault return on his visits and not on Jaz's, answered yes and rang an adviser. Expect it to hurt when done properly.
Where it stops working
Hire in Your Own Image picks the candidate you enjoy most, who is often the one most like you. Nobody Does It Like Me keeps you as the checkpoint, so if a correction is not in the must column, keep it to yourself. Fair process has a limit too: where law, safety or an emergency has decided, explain and do not pretend to consult. In hard conversations, Another Month of Hoping ran for two years at Helen's on her Saturdays, Blaming the Person for the Room asks someone to fix what only you can change, and Speed Instead of Process acts on a bad afternoon and rings the adviser afterwards. If your business is meant to stay one person, keep only the Routine Register. Old, forgiving customers are the easy case for a hand-over, and the same paperwork did not save Kev's round. Stop rules: if the margin does not pay for the role, do not hire. If quality has not recovered by the date you set in advance, stop the hand-over and go back a step. If you are angry or frightened enough to say what you cannot take back, wait out the peak. If the conversation could lead to ending employment, stop until you have taken advice.
Module 10Review, Renew, Lose the Teacher
- LO10.1Redraw a canvas and sort each line of business as pioneer, migrator or settler.
- LO10.2Build a short scorecard that separates outcomes from proxies and feeds a decision.
- LO10.3Write an original pattern card with two evidence labels and a check that could prove it wrong.
Core content
Read your file as a stranger's pitch. A business is a bundle of claims that were true when someone last checked. Once a year, build an Annual Review Pack from as much of your file as exists. Redraw your canvas, the chart of your line against the trade's, and lay it over the last one. Sort each line of business: a settler's curve tracks the trade's, a migrator gives buyers more of what the trade already gives, and a pioneer has a shape of its own and a large following. Settlers can be profitable now, so read a page of them as a warning about growth. A tired name means stay and do it better. A converged curve means move, starting with a fresh eliminate, reduce, raise and create grid. These instruments diagnose, and nobody has shown they predict, so they are anecdotal or weak.
Rerun the money and the page. Rerun your Thirty-Day Model, both ratios, your leak and your Bad-Quarter Model on real figures, which is arithmetic and well supported. Read your Default Register: what happened this year to people who did nothing, and who gained? Put the year's figures beside your stop-loss. Nadia's lapsed in Year 1, and for six years no written number told her when to stop.
The scorecard. Start with four numbers: cost to acquire, thirty-day gross profit, cash held against your undelivered total, and the leak, the share of recurring customers you lose. Write beside each the decision it feeds, and take off any number with no decision. Mark each outcome or proxy: plans sold is a proxy for customers kept, a distinction that is well supported as reasoning. Discount any test in your Test Log that ran a fortnight or began in your worst month. Of every number you call compounding, ask whether this period's output really became next period's input. If it stopped when you stopped spending, rename it. Rivals copied Nadia's water report, so she struck "compounds" from it.
Audit what you inherited. For each rule nobody questioned, ask why it began and what it is for now, because a shabby origin proves nothing. Name your failures and look for a shared cause. Sort every proposal on your desk, this course included, by how good the evidence is and what it costs. Where the person recommending it also sells it, they owe you more proof. These are anecdotal or weak. Of any success story, ask how many like it failed, which is sampling logic and well supported.
After a win. Robert Greene warns that people overreach just after a victory. Name one outside person, who gains nothing from either answer, to read your pack and say what they see. Write one harsh page: how you worked, whose ideas you borrowed, what you hoped, what you would keep. Then run Mark Manson's certainty check on your proudest belief: could I be wrong, what would that mean, and would being wrong leave a better or a worse problem? Finish with one thing you will stop, dated, and a calendar saying which document is reviewed when. No stop means no pass.
Your own pattern card. Write one pattern from your own business: its name, the force behind it (comparison, uncertainty, inertia, lag, repetition, limits or noise), context, problem, what pulls against it, therefore, shadow, reversal and what would count against it. Give it two labels, one for the mechanism and one for the business result, and keep the business result at mixed or lower unless it is arithmetic. Tony's card, The Buyer Who Turns Up, says a stallholder tends to keep the better fruit for the buyer who comes every week and pays within days. Both labels are anecdotal or weak, because one owner in an example is all that stands behind it. His check: once a month, buy a box from a stall that does not know you. If it is as good for the same money, the card is wrong.
Lose the teacher. This course's sources hold no controlled trial of any of this in a small business, the labels rest largely on one set of editors' judgement, and the six questions are untested. The series has nothing on selling a business, and it has an interest: its publisher offers this course, so hold every page to the seller's higher bar. Your file, Test Log, pattern card and outside person now know your business better than any course does. Keep the file, argue with it once a year, and put this course down. A learner who no longer needs it has succeeded. Across all three courses, one pattern from your own business with both labels is what finishing means.
Where it stops working
The Review as Defence argues that last year went well, so if no line in the pack embarrasses you, start again from the harsh page. Scorecard Creep grows to 20 numbers and none of them decides anything. All Adds, No Stops turns every finding into a project. The pack also has a ceiling. When a buyer's letter reached Nadia, it told her what she had and could not tell her what to do, and a refusal leaves no figures, so she wrote "unknown" against the second region she had turned down. If a letter like hers reaches you, this is general information only: ask your accountant and a solicitor what applies, and start at business.gov.au. Stop rule: if the review shows your stop-loss has been crossed, stop the review and deal with that decision first, and honour it, because you wrote the number when you could think straight.
How this course maps to AQF Level 4.
The Australian Qualifications Framework defines each level by three criteria: knowledge, skills, and application of knowledge and skills. This course's outcomes and exam are designed against the Level 4 criteria (the level of the Certificate IV), quoted below from the framework.
| AQF Level 4 criterion | The framework says... | How this course addresses it |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge | "Graduates at this level will have broad factual, technical and some theoretical knowledge of a specific area or a broad field of work and learning." | Modules 1, 3 and 7 build factual and some theoretical knowledge of how a small business is ordered and funded: stages and gates, evidence labels, gross profit and margin, held and earned money, and the Australian regimes an owner needs to ask about (CLO1, CLO3, CLO5). |
| Skills | "A broad range of cognitive, technical and communication skills to select and apply a range of methods, tools, materials and information to: complete routine and non-routine activities; provide and transmit solutions to a variety of predictable and sometimes unpredictable problems." | Modules 2, 4, 5 and 8 develop cognitive, technical and communication skills: selecting and applying methods such as the Field Map, the Australian check, the Sale Card, the One Sheet and the Week Template to routine and non-routine problems (CLO2, CLO4, CLO6). |
| Application of knowledge and skills | "Graduates at this level will apply knowledge and skills to demonstrate autonomy, judgement and limited responsibility in known or changing contexts and within established parameters." | Modules 6, 9 and 10 ask for autonomy and judgement within set limits: deciding what to keep or cut on a customer's path, when to stop and take advice, and what to stop in a business, while the exam tests which label, question or result settles a case (CLO5, CLO6). |
Criteria quoted from the AQF levels published at aqf.edu.au. The AQF also specifies volume of learning for qualification types (typically 0.5-2 years for a Certificate IV); at ~12 hours plus practice, this course aligns its outcome design to Level 4 descriptors but does not approach a qualification's volume of learning - one more reason it is not, and does not claim to be, an AQF qualification.
Plain-English status: this is a non-accredited course. Its certificate is a completion certificate issued by Course Contact, designed with reference to AQF Level 4 descriptors. It is not an AQF qualification (only ASQA/TEQSA-accredited providers can issue those), confers no licence, and Course Contact is not a registered training organisation. Want a Certificate IV in Entrepreneurship and New Business or a Diploma of Business? We'll match you with providers, free →
This course is the companion to the book Successful Business Implementation. It discusses ideas from published books in its own words and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any author or publisher named in it. The businesses in the examples are fictional. General information only, not legal, financial, medical or psychological advice.
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