Nobody meets it yet. Including us.
The Standard is eleven domains and twelve Essential Elements, each with a gate you either pass or you don't. We wrote it. We also run a business. So we took the same free Score every founder takes, and answered it the way we ask you to — honestly. This is where Small Business Standard, LLC stands against its own Standard.
Domain by domain
- Clarity
- Innovation
- Finance
- Operations
- Technology
- Risk & Compliance
- Revenue
- Leadership
- Founder
- Strategy
- People & Culture
We are short where most founders are short: Revenue, Leadership, Founder. Selling that depends on the founder. Decisions that route through the founder. A business that doesn't yet run without the founder. By our own instrument, we are the founder we describe — and the plan to close each gap is written, dated, and run on the same rhythm we install for clients.
Why publish it
A standard that only ever grades other people isn't a standard; it's a sales pitch. Every business that meets The Standard will have started from a page like this one — a number, a verdict, a date. We are building this company to the Standard we wrote, in the order we tell everyone else to build: know what you are, prove the market wants it, make it profitable, protect it with cash, build the rhythm, document the systems, name who owns what, evolve the leader, then earn the right to scale. The score moves in that order, and the next one is published here on December 11.
How to read this if you're a founder
Your results will tell you the same thing ours told us: which of the eleven domains are at standard and which are not, by your own answers. The difference between a business that stalls and one that doesn't is not the score on the day you take it — it's whether the gaps have a date on them and someone holding the date. That is what a Standard Session is for. If you'd rather close them without us, the elements and their gates are published. Nothing here is hidden.