The Teardown Checklist

Twelve things
to check before
you make anything

This is the audit I run on every brand before a single new asset gets made. It takes about ninety minutes and it will probably annoy you. Most brands don’t have a content problem — they have a problem finding what already worked and doing more of it.

Tick as you go — the page remembers where you got to on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere; there’s no form and no tracking on your answers. Print it if you’d rather work on paper.

The Inventory

What you already own

Check 01 The top three Open your last ninety days. Find the three pieces that actually moved — saves, shares, DMs, sales, people mentioning it unprompted. Not the three you’re proudest of. Good looks like you can say what those three have in common in one sentence. If your best performer surprised you, you aren’t reading your own data.

Check 02 The dead file Now find the three that did nothing. Write down how long each one took to make. Good looks like you can see the pattern in what dies, and it’s uncomfortable. Most brands keep repeating the dead ones, because those cost the most to make.

Check 03 The list Size, last send date, open rate, delivery rate — and whether you actually own it or it lives inside someone else’s platform. Good looks like mailed in the last thirty days, delivering above 90%. A list you haven’t mailed in a year isn’t an asset. It’s a liability with a bill attached.

Check 04 The mark Put your logo on three things: a sticker, a phone screen at arm’s length, and the side of a jar or box. Photograph all three. Good looks like readable and recognisable in all three, with no explanation. A mark that only works on a pitch deck isn’t an identity. It’s a picture.

The Math

7–11–4, run on you

Check 05 The hours If someone found you today and wanted to go deep, how much substance is actually there? Add up the real minutes — video, long captions, a site worth reading. Good looks like the number comes out in hours, not minutes. Most brands have forty minutes and think they have seven hours.

Check 06 The touchpoints How many separate times does one person realistically run into you in a month? Not impressions. One person. Good looks like a number heading toward eleven, on purpose. Reach counts strangers. Touchpoints count the same person twice.

Check 07 The places Count where you actually exist and post — not where you registered a handle in 2021. Good looks like four live places that feed each other. Instagram and a website is two. Two is not four.

The Journey

What happens after they notice

Check 08 The door Where does attention actually land, and what does that page ask someone for? Open your own bio link on a phone and look at it like a stranger. Good looks like one obvious exit, asking for an address before it asks for money. If your bio goes straight to a shop, you’re asking strangers to marry you.

Check 09 The first 48 Sign up to your own list with an address you don’t use. Write down exactly what arrives in the next two days. Good looks like something lands immediately, and it isn’t only a discount code. Silence in the first forty-eight hours is where most lists quietly die.

Check 10 The second order What specifically brings a first-time customer back? Name the trigger and the timing, not the hope. Good looks like you can point at the thing that does it, and roughly when it fires. A first order is a trial. The second one is the customer.

The Waste

What to cut

Check 11 The habit spend List everything you pay for monthly — tools, retainers, boosts, subscriptions. Mark anything you can’t tie to a specific result in the last ninety days. Good looks like nothing left unmarked. The waste is rarely the expensive thing. It’s the small stuff nobody ever cancels.

Check 12 The thing you’d defend If you could keep one thing — one post, one product, one photograph, one line — and burn the rest, what is it? Good looks like it’s already sitting in your top three from Check 01. If twelve and one don’t match, you’re making the wrong thing well.

What now

The list is the easy part

If you’ve worked through all twelve, you’re holding the raw material: a handful of things that demonstrably work, a pile that doesn’t, and a bill for some of it. That’s the twenty percent and the waste, separated.

The hard part is what the answers mean together — which of those three winners is repeatable versus lucky, what to build on them for the next ninety days, and what to kill first. That’s judgment, and it’s the part I get paid for.

The Dig is this checklist run properly, by me, on everything you’ve built — two weeks, $1,500, credited in full against the project if you go ahead. You get the twenty percent named and ranked with the reason each one works, the kill list, a 90-day plan built only on what survived, and a recorded walkthrough so it’s a conversation rather than a PDF nobody opens.

Book The Dig → Why dig before you build Get the next one by email