FIELD DIAGNOSTICS
Everything works.
It just leaks.
Field diagnostics for owner-operated businesses in Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane, and Okotoks: dealerships, distributors, trades, and contractors. We find where your operations are quietly losing time, money, and customers.
SCROLL
01 . THE PREMISE
Most business problems aren't strategy problems.
They're flow problems.
The leaks are small. Recurring. So familiar that nobody on your team notices them anymore.
SAMPLE OUTPUT
FILE: 0042
QUOTE TURNAROUND
3.4
days
INVENTORY TOUCHES
3.1
x
REPEAT STATUS CALLS
87
/wk
EST. ANNUAL LEAK
$184K
kk
FILE: 0073
ILLUSTRATIVE · NOT A REAL CLIENT
02 - THE SEVEN
Seven kinds of Leaks.
Most businesses have all of them.
A starting taxonomy. You'll recognize at least three before you reach the form.
L · 01
Information
leak
L · 02
Ownership
leak
L · 03
Process
leak
L · 04
System
leak
L · 05
Communication
leak
L · 06
Decision
leak
L · 07
Customer
leak
Each one has a definition, a set of tell-tale signs, and a typical root cause. The full catalog is available when you request a diagnostic.
04 - METHOD
We watch what actually happens.
Reports tell you what was supposed to happen. The floor tells you what actually happens. The gap between the two is where the leaks live.
01 - OBSERVE
Ride shotgun.
We embed across departments: at the desk, on the floor, beside the people doing the work. The interesting things happen when someone mutters "ugh, this again" and reaches for a sticky note.
02 - TRACE
Follow one transaction.
One full path (lead to cash, ticket to resolution) walked end to end. Every wait, handoff, and re-entry timed and noted.
03 - QUANTITY
Translate to dollars.
"Inefficient" gets nodded at and forgotten. "$47,000 a year in rework" tends to get remembered.
04 - REPORT
Top five. Ranked.
One short summary. Root cause, annual cost, effort to fix. What to do first, what can wait, what you can honestly handle yourselves.
IN PRACTICE
A few days on-site. A written report. A 30-minute walkthrough. That's it. No long contracts, no thousand-page deliverables, no surprise extensions.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Operational friction is rarely on anyone's dashboard. That's exactly why it's expensive.
20–30%
of revenue that growing businesses lose annually to operational friction and process waste.
IDC · PROCESS INEFFICIENCY RESEARCH
12%
of service business lost industry-wide by dealerships since 2018.
COX AUTOMOTIVE · 2025
78%
of customers buy from the first business to respond to their request.
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
04 - THE FOUNDER
Most people think the problem is the problem. I've never believed that.
The missed sale. The angry customer. The project that went over budget. The employee who quit. Long before SevenLeaks existed, I had a habit of standing in the wrong place: dealerships, warehouses, construction sites, service departments, offices, watching what happened between the official process and reality.
The whiteboard said one thing. The floor said another. A customer waited three days for a callback because nobody knew who owned the lead. A technician walked across the building four times because the information he needed lived in three different systems. A quote sat in an inbox while everyone assumed someone else was handling it.
Nothing was broken enough to trigger alarm bells. Together, those little leaks were costing tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of dollars every year. And what fascinated me was that nobody was lazy. Nobody was incompetent. Most teams were working incredibly hard. They were just working around problems that had become normal.
Over time, I realized I wasn't interested in marketing, software, construction, or any particular industry. I was interested in flow: how work moves, how information moves, how customers move through a business, and where that movement quietly gets stuck.
SevenLeaks was built around a simple belief: most businesses don't need another strategy session. They need someone willing to slow down, watch carefully, and ask uncomfortable questions about things everyone else has stopped noticing.
We follow the work. We find the leaks. We help fix the things that have been costing more than anyone realized.
Danny
FOUNDER · SEVENLEAKS
05 · WHO WE WORK WITH
Owner-operated businesses where work moves through hands.
Operational friction is rarely on anyone's dashboard. That's exactly why it's expensive.
DEDICATED PAGE · SOON →
I · 01
Automotive dealerships
Sales floor to F&I to service drive. Where the deal closes is rarely where the leak starts.
I · 02
Trades & contractors
Estimate to invoice. Quote turnaround, scheduling friction, and the chasm between office and field.
I · 03
B2B distributors
Lead to cash. Inventory touches, customer status calls, and the back-office work that customers never see.
I · 04
Construction operations
Bid to closeout. Where information stops moving between estimator, PM, foreman, and accounting.
06 · DIAGNOSTIC REQUEST
Five questions. No sales call.
We respond in writing within two business days. With a scope, or with an honest note about why we may not be the right fit.
If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you in writing, within two business days. That's the deal.
RESPONSE · < 48 HOURS
FORMAT · WRITTEN · OPTIONAL CALL
OBLIGATION · NONE
PREFER TO TALK?