What a real Leak Check actually looks like

The Leak Check is the front door to Kindra. It's free, it's twenty minutes on the phone, and roughly half the people we do them for don't hire us afterwards — which is the point. You get the read either way.

Here's exactly what happens.

01The twenty minutes

Minutes 0–8 · The current shape

I ask you to walk me through the business as it is today. Not the pitch version — the real one. What's on your plate this week. What's leaking. What's fine. Where the last three months of pain has come from. I write it down, one page.

This isn't a scoping call. It's an audit. The prompts are things like:

• Which tools are you paying for that you'd cancel tomorrow if you could?
• What's the most-recent thing you forgot to do that cost the business money?
• If I gave you your Tuesday morning back, what would you actually spend it on?

Minutes 8–20 · The leak inventory

We go through your operations, one workflow at a time, and mark the leaks. A leak is anywhere:

• Money leaves because a follow-up didn't happen.
• Time is spent doing something a computer should do.
• A promise gets forgotten and a client feels it.
• Information exists but doesn't reach the person who needs it.

Most businesses have 8–14 leaks. We don't go hunting for all of them in half an hour — we go straight at the ones that cost the most, rank them by (money impact) × (ease of fix), and circle the top three.

Minutes 20–26 · The maths

For the top three, I run a rough back-of-the-envelope: what does this cost you today, what would it cost to build a fix, what's the realistic payback window.

Sometimes the maths says custom software. Sometimes the maths says turn on Xero's built-in reminders and don't spend anything with me. I'll say either honestly.

Minutes 26–30 · The map

You finish the call with the leaks ranked out loud and the top three named. If a custom build makes sense, you have a rough number and a rough timeline. If it doesn't, you have a specific list of free or cheap things to do on your own.

02What you're left with

No deck, no invoice, no follow-up sequence. By the end of the call you know:

• The current shape — what I heard back to you in plain English.
• The leak inventory — full list, ranked.
• The top three — what to fix, in what order.
• The recommendation — build / buy / DIY, with the maths.
• What we wouldn't build (this section is often the most-useful).
• Next steps — either a build proposal (if we're a fit) or a specific to-do list (if we're not).

It's yours to use. Take it to another agency, another developer, or the person who runs your ops. There's no NDA and no lock-in — that's deliberate.

03What we deliberately don't do

• No sales pitch. If we're not a fit, we say so.
• No AI-for-the-sake-of-it. Half the reports recommend cheaper non-AI answers.
• No fake urgency ('this offer expires…'). The offer is the same every week.
• No 'phase 2' bait. What we quote is what we build.
• No name-dropping. If a client wants to be referenced they'll say so, otherwise every case study is anonymised (see our case studies for the exception — my wife's business, disclosed upfront).

04Who asks for them

Roughly the mix we've seen:

• Owners with a specific pain that keeps costing them money (about 60%).
• Owners who want to know if they're 'ready for AI' (about 20% — see the readiness piece).
• Owners who've bought SaaS and want a second opinion on whether it's earning its keep (about 15%).
• Curious peers who want to see how we work (about 5%). All welcome.

05How to get one

There's an enquiry form on every page of this site — your name, your phone, and what's going wrong in your own words. Michael calls you back, usually the same day and always within one business day. Twenty minutes on the phone; if it's worth going further, he comes out and sees the job himself.