It is the most common question in business, and it is almost useless.
Ask ten owners "how are things going" and you will get ten answers that cannot be compared to each other. One says "great" because they just landed a big customer, while quietly wondering how they will make payroll in March. One says "slow" because revenue is flat, even though they just solved a manufacturing problem that had them stuck for two years. One says "fine," which tells you nothing at all.
We ran into this constantly. Someone would come in and say they needed help growing, and "growing" turned out to mean six completely different things depending on who was sitting across the table. A founder with a working prototype and no customers has almost nothing in common with a shop owner who has plenty of customers and no systems. Both are real problems. Neither is the same problem.
So we stopped guessing. Now we measure four things.
Why four scales and not one score
There is no single number that describes a business. A company can be genuinely excellent at one thing and dangerously behind on another, and if you average those together you get a number that hides exactly the information you needed.
So instead of one score, we use four separate readiness scales. Together they show what you have already proven, where the real gap is, and the specific milestone that unlocks your next stage.
Technology Readiness, TRL, 1 to 9
How proven your product or technology is. Is it a concept on paper, a working prototype, or something running reliably in customers' hands?
The bottom of the scale is an idea and some sketches. The top is a product operating in the real world, under real conditions, without you standing next to it. Most companies land somewhere in the messy middle: it works in the shop, it works when you are the one running it, and it has never been stress tested by a stranger.
What this score tells us is whether your next dollar belongs in R and D or in the market.
Manufacturing Readiness, MRL, 1 to 9
How ready you are to actually make and deliver your product. Have you figured out suppliers, quality, process, cost, and volume?
This is the scale people forget exists. It is the difference between building 1 and building 1,000 without breaking your margins or your promises. Plenty of founders have a product that genuinely works and no answer for what happens when someone orders a thousand of them. That is not a technology problem. It is a manufacturing problem, and it needs a different kind of help.
Commercial Readiness, CRL, 1 to 9
How proven your market is. Do you have customers, pricing, and a sales motion that repeats without you in every deal?
High technology readiness with low commercial readiness is a common trap for founders. You end up with something impressive that nobody has committed to buying. It feels like progress because the product keeps getting better, but the risk you have not retired is the one that matters most.
Stage of Growth, Churchill, 1 to 5
The classic five stages of small business: existence, survival, success, take off, and maturity.
This one is not about the product at all. It is about the business around the product. Cash, team, and how much still runs through the owner's head. A company can have strong technology and still be one person doing everything, and the support that helps in that situation looks nothing like the support that helps a profitable company with twelve employees deciding whether to expand.
Why we keep them separate
Because the combinations are where the useful information lives.
High TRL and low MRL means you have a product you cannot build at volume. The work ahead is suppliers and process, not more engineering.
High TRL and low CRL means you have built something nobody has committed to buying. The work ahead is customers, not features.
Strong Churchill and low TRL means you have a healthy operating business whose next growth probably comes from a new offering. The work ahead is development, not another sales hire.
Low across the board is completely normal. Everybody starts there. It just means the first milestone is small and specific rather than ambitious and vague.
If we averaged these into one score, every one of those situations would look identical. That is the whole reason there are four.
How it works in practice
When you fill out our intake form, you are answering questions that feed these scales. Where you are today, how your product gets made, how many paying customers you have, how much still depends on the owner, what your cash flow looks like.
You get scores. We look at the same scores you do, which means the conversation starts from a shared picture instead of twenty minutes of catching up.
From there the scores point somewhere. They are the same map we use to match founders and owners to coaches, programs, and capital. Our Milestone Maps lay the whole thing out visually, so you can see where you sit, what the next stop is, and what it takes to get there.
That is really the point of all of it. "How's the business going?" becomes something you can actually answer, and "we need help growing" becomes a specific next step.
That is a much better conversation to have.
Curious where you land?
Fill out our intake form and you will get your four readiness scores, plus a conversation with someone on our team about what they mean for you.