Doc Otis, the owl doctor who runs your business check-up, waving hello

Doc Otis will see you now.

đŸ©ș Free · 2 minutes · no signup required

When did your business last have a check-up?

Most owners lose 10+ hours a week to problems that modern tools solved years ago - they just never heard about them. Take the check-up, get your Business Health Score, and leave with a short, honest prescription: the two or three changes that would actually move the needle for your business.

Start your free check-up →

No email required to see your results.

You don't know what you don't know. That's the problem we fix.

Nobody wakes up thinking "I need a customer-data platform." They wake up thinking "I spent my whole Sunday on payroll again." And almost nobody wakes up thinking "when customers ask ChatGPT for a recommendation, I'm not the answer" - the biggest blindspot on this page, which is exactly why it sits first. The rest is organized the same way - by the problem, in your words. Find yours:

“How do I get ChatGPT, Grok and Claude to recommend my business?” A growing share of customers now ask an AI for recommendations - and most owners have never once checked what it answers. “I spend every Sunday night on payroll” Payroll by spreadsheet costs owners 3–5 hours per run, plus tax-penalty risk. “Leads come in - then go cold before we follow up” The average business responds to leads in 47 hours; buyers choose whoever answers first. “I’m drowning in PDFs, contracts, and forms” Document busywork quietly eats 3–5 hours a week: retyping, converting, chasing the final version. “We still print documents just to sign them” Print, sign, scan, email: the ritual costs 20+ minutes a document and stalls every deal waiting on ink. “I pay Adobe every month to edit maybe three PDFs” Acrobat Pro runs about $280 per person per year. Most small businesses use a tenth of it. “I answer the same ten customer questions every single day” Repetitive questions consume 30–40% of small-business support time; AI now answers them instantly. “Nobody can run the business when I’m away” If every process lives in the owner’s head, the owner owns a job, not a business. “I need a sales funnel but I can’t code” A funnel is a website with a job: turn a visitor into a buyer through one focused path. “I want to sell what I know - courses, community, coaching” Expertise is the highest-margin product you own; packaging it is now a solved problem. “Webinars sell for me - but I can’t run them live every week” Automated webinars deliver your best sales presentation on repeat, without you. “I know I should send a newsletter - but it never happens” Email is the only audience channel you own; consistency beats brilliance. “My website gets visitors - but no customers” Traffic without conversion is a landing-page problem, and it’s measurable. “I can’t tell which marketing actually brings customers” Attribution turns "I think the ads work" into "this ad produced that $2,400 job." “Paying vendor bills eats a whole afternoon every week” Manual bill-pay costs owners 2-4 hours weekly in logins, checks, and reconciliation. “I hire on gut feeling and hope for the best” One bad hire costs 30% of first-year salary; most small businesses never verify anything. “My calendar runs me, not the other way around” Owners lose focus time to meeting sprawl; the important work happens after 9pm. “I know we should post more - we never do” Inconsistent posting kills reach; batching one hour a month is the fix. “Everyone says do video - I hate being on camera” Video gets the reach, but the camera is the blocker; modern tools remove it. “I can talk about my business for hours - writing content takes forever” One recorded conversation can become a week of posts, clips, and emails. “Our proposals and decks look homemade next to competitors” Presentation polish changes close rates; design skills should not be the gate. “We run production on spreadsheets and prayer” Small manufacturers juggle stock, orders, and scheduling by hand; MRP fixes it without consultants. “We miss calls - and missed calls are missed jobs” Every unanswered ring is revenue; a modern phone system answers, routes, and follows up. “Team tasks live in texts, calls, and somebody's memory” Work assigned by text gets lost; one shared workspace ends the "I thought you had it." “Customers love us - referrals still feel like luck” Word of mouth works better with a system: asks, incentives, and shareable moments. “We spend on print, signs, and vehicles - and can't tell if any of it works” QR codes turned offline marketing into measurable marketing; most businesses still guess. “"The printer's broken" always lands on me” Internal requests interrupt whoever is nearest; a queue turns chaos into patterns. “We have a website - nobody finds it” Invisible sites share fixable causes: technical issues, thin pages, and zero local signals. “What happens if our website gets hacked?” Sites get attacked by robots, not rivals; a firewall and clean-up plan cost less than one incident. “Still running the business on a handshake and a personal bank account” No LLC means personal savings are exposed to every business risk; fixing it is now a checkout flow. “I desperately need help - I can't afford a full-time hire” The gap between drowning and hiring is covered by managed assistants and automation.

See every problem we cover →

đŸ€– When customers ask ChatGPT, are you the answer?

More than a third of consumers now start some searches with an AI tool instead of Google, and the answers name specific businesses. Most owners have never once checked what the engines say about them. There is a free scan that shows you - word for word, across ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude - and lists the sources each engine read to decide.

Run the free AI visibility scan → Why this is the blindspot →

What The AI Says is our own service - same team as The Biz Checkup, labeled as ours everywhere it appears. Full disclosure.

📄 Still paying Adobe prices for PDF work?

Documents are the busywork every business shares: contracts to edit, forms to fill, signatures to chase. We compared Adobe Acrobat against the modern alternatives - including what the free tools honestly cover.

Read the Adobe alternatives comparison →

How the check-up works

1

The examination

Five quick questions - what kind of business, where the hours actually go, what's driving you up the wall.

2

Your vitals

A Business Health Score out of 100, plus five vitals - cash flow, your time, customer response, marketing, operations - read from your answers.

3

The prescription

Two or three treatments ranked by impact, with plain-language reasons and the honest downsides. Never a 50-item list. Most fixes take a weekend, not a quarter.

The workhorses

Across hundreds of tool comparisons, these are the platforms we recommend most - because they replace whole categories of busywork:

What The AI Says See exactly what ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude say when customers ask about your kind of business - starting with a free scan. GoHighLevel One platform that replaces your CRM, funnels, email, SMS, booking, and follow-up. ClickFunnels The original drag-and-drop sales funnel builder - landing page to checkout to upsell, no code. Kartra (+ WebinarJam / EverWebinar) Pages, email, checkout, memberships, video hosting, and webinars in a single subscription. Systeme.io Funnels, email, courses, and affiliate management - with a genuinely free plan to start. Keap CRM plus automated follow-up built specifically for small service businesses. Kit The creator-grade email platform (formerly ConvertKit) - newsletters, automations, and paid subscriptions. Gusto Payroll, taxes, and benefits that run themselves - the end of payroll Sundays. Freshdesk Every customer email, chat, and call in one shared inbox with AI answering the easy ones. Freshservice An IT helpdesk for your own team - requests, assets, and approvals instead of hallway asks. Foxit Edit, convert, e-sign, and AI-summarize documents at a third of Adobe’s price. Pipedrive The pipeline-first CRM: every deal is a card you drag from stage to stage, and nothing sits without a next action.

Browse the full toolbox →

Common questions

What is The Biz Checkup?
The Biz Checkup, at thebizcheckup.com, is a free 2-minute diagnostic for small business owners. You answer five questions about where your week actually goes, and it prescribes the two or three modern tools that would save you the most time and money, with the honest downsides of each.
Is the checkup really free?
Yes. There is no account, no card and no email required. Your answers stay in your browser and are never sent to us.
How do you make money if it is free?
Some of the tools we recommend pay us a commission when a reader signs up. That is disclosed on every page. It never changes what we recommend - our published rule is that the best fit wins, even when the best fit pays us nothing.
Do you recommend tools that pay you nothing?
Regularly. Several prescriptions point at free tiers, at tools we earn nothing from, and at "stay where you are" when switching would not be worth the disruption. A recommendation you cannot trust is worth nothing to either of us.
Who is it for?
Owners and operators of small businesses anywhere, in any trade, who suspect they are doing work by hand that software should be doing, but do not know which of the thousands of tools to look at. No technical knowledge is needed.
We're paid a commission by some of the companies we recommend - that's how a free site stays free. It never changes the ranking: our published rule is best fit wins, even when the best fit pays us nothing. Read the full disclosure.