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Module 01 — The Leak Method

Where your customers slip away

You'll leave with a clear picture of the six places customers slip away after they've already found you — and the order in which to fix them.

  • 3 min read + 10 min exercise
  • Lesson 1 of 3
  • Free · No sign-up

The problem

Getting attention is the expensive part. You pay for it with ads, posts, referrals and years of reputation. Yet most of the customers you lose aren't lost at the attention stage — they're lost after they've raised their hand.

An inquiry that waited too long. A quote nobody chased. A happy customer nobody asked back. None of these show up as a line in your accounts, so they stay invisible.

Why it matters

Fixing the wrong stage is the most common waste in a small business: new ads when the problem is follow-up, a new website when the problem is the first reply. Knowing your path tells you where effort actually pays — and this course follows it, stage by stage.

1 The path every customer walks

Whatever you sell, customers walk the same six steps. Each one has a typical leak.

  1. AttentionSomeone notices you.Leak: they can't tell what to do next.
  2. InquiryThey ask a question.Leak: it lands where nobody's watching.
  3. ConversationYou talk.Leak: a slow or vague first reply.
  4. Follow-upThey go quiet.Leak: nobody follows up.
  5. SaleThey decide.Leak: quotes that fade.
  6. ReturnThey could come back.Leak: nothing brings them back.

2 Why more tools don't fix it

The usual answer to a leak is a new app. It rarely works, for three reasons:

  • No order. You fix the leak that annoys you most, not the one that costs you most.
  • No owner. An automation nobody is responsible for breaks quietly — and nobody notices.
  • No number. Without a "before", you can't tell whether anything changed, so good fixes get abandoned and bad ones stay.

3 The method: Find, Fix, Prove

  1. FindMap your path, measure it, and pick the leak that touches the most customers.
  2. FixBuild one system at a time. By hand first, then automate what works.
  3. ProveWrite down a number before you start. Check it after 7 days and after 30.

The rest of this course follows exactly this order.

Example · illustrative

A two-person cleaning company

They run a few local ads and get around twenty inquiries a week. Messages arrive by phone, text and a website form. The owner replies in the evening, after jobs. Quotes go out by email and nobody chases them. Happy customers are never asked for a review.

Where they'd start: the first reply. It touches every single inquiry, so even a small improvement there reaches more people than any other fix.

Your exercise · about 10 minutes

Walk the path for your own work

Template · Path worksheet
ATTENTION — How do people find us?
...
INQUIRY — Where do questions arrive? Who watches each place?
...
CONVERSATION — Who replies, and how fast, usually?
...
FOLLOW-UP — What happens when someone goes quiet?
...
SALE — How are quotes sent? Who chases them?
...
RETURN — What brings a past customer back?
...
Biggest suspected leak:
Why I think so:

Most businesses don't have an attention problem. They have a leak problem after attention.

Your next action

Tonight, write one sentence for each of the six steps. Every lesson after this one builds on that map.