The Prompt Pack · 4 of 5 · Secret 3 · Pull the right levers
The Ten Levers Analysis
The Ten Levers Analysis prices every move your business has. It runs a 1% or 1-day change through all 10 published levers plus the 2 hidden sub-levers, folds in what a price increase is worth, and ranks the results by annual dollars.
The prompt
Run this in the same thread as the earlier prompts. The Trust Gate from the
Setup applies.
We are pricing the moves.
There are 10 levers, with 2 hidden sub-levers inside them, published at
ultracfo.co/field-guide/ten-levers. Use those names and no others. Do not invent
an eleventh lever, and do not rename one to something that sounds better.
Profit, 5 levers:
1. Price
2. Volume
3. COGS / Cost of Sales, with Direct Labor hidden inside it
4. Overhead, with the Owner's Piggy Bank™ hidden inside it
5. Marketing
Cash, 5 levers:
6. AR, collect faster
7. Unearned Revenue
8. AP, pay strategically
9. Inventory
10. Debt / Equity
## What I need to give you
Ask for these one at a time, stopping between each. If I gave you one earlier in
this thread, use it and do not ask twice.
- Revenue, last 12 completed months
- COGS / Cost of Sales, same period
- Direct Labor, same period, salary only, production people only
- Overhead, same period
- Marketing spend, same period
- The Owner's Piggy Bank™ number, same period
- Average AR balance, or average days I wait to get paid
- Average AP balance, or average days I take to pay
- Average inventory balance, if the business holds inventory
- Customer deposits or prepayments currently held
- Total debt, with the monthly principal and interest
If a number is not available, say what the gap costs the ranking and continue
without it. Never substitute an industry average for a number I actually have.
## The sensitivity run
Move each lever by the smallest honest amount and print what it is worth per
year, in dollars. Show the formula before each answer.
- Price: up 1%
- Volume: up 1%
- COGS / Cost of Sales: down 1%
- Direct Labor, inside COGS: down 1%
- Overhead: down 1%
- Owner's Piggy Bank™, inside Overhead: down 1%, and also print what taking it
to zero would be worth, because it is one of the easier levers to move and the
effect shows up quickly. Print that number and stop there. Do not recommend
cutting it and do not treat it as the obvious first move. It is the owner's
money and the owner's call, and plenty of businesses exist precisely to fund
it.
- Marketing: down 1%, and say plainly that this lever is different. Marketing is
a trade of today's profit for tomorrow's potential revenue, so cutting it
always scores well on a table like this and can still be the wrong move.
- AR: 1 day faster
- Unearned Revenue: 1 more day of customer money held
- AP: 1 day slower
- Inventory: 1 day less held
- Debt / Equity: this one does not take a 1% move. Ask me what I could
realistically raise or restructure, use my number, and label it as mine.
For each move, say which of the 2 currencies it buys: profit, or cash. Some buy
both. Say which.
## The price flow-through
Price gets its own table, because it is the only lever with no cost attached.
Every dollar of a price increase that survives falls straight through. Run it at
3%, 5% and 10%, holding volume:
- The dollar profit change per year at each level
- What that is as a percentage change in net profit
- How much volume I could afford to lose before the increase is cancelled out
Then say the honest part: this arithmetic tells me what a price increase is
worth. It does not tell me whether my customers will pay it, and no spreadsheet
answers that.
Fold the 3 price rows into the main ranking as their own entries, so I can see a
5% price move sitting against a 1-day AR move on one list.
## The ranking
Rank every move you ran, biggest annual dollar impact first. Each row shows:
- The lever, by its published name
- The move
- The annual dollar impact
- Whether it buys profit, cash, or both
- Your confidence in the input underneath it: high, medium or low
Then pick the top 2 or 3 and say why those, and not the ones immediately below
them.
One exception to that. If the Owner's Piggy Bank™ ranks high, report the row and
leave the decision alone. Whether an owner reduces their own spending is not a
call an analysis gets to make for them.
## Valuation, only if I ask for it
If I give you a multiple I believe applies to a business like mine, multiply the
annualized profit change of the top moves by it and show the change in
enterprise value. Every time you print it, say that the multiple came from me.
Do not supply a multiple yourself, and do not treat one as a fact.
## Give me back
- The ranked table.
- The top 2 or 3 moves, named.
- One line each on what a move costs me that the table cannot show: time, risk,
or a relationship.
- Everything you estimated.
## Where you stop
You have told me what the moves are worth. You have not told me the order to
pull them in, how hard to pull, or what happens to the business while I do.
Sequencing depends on my margins, my clock and what my customers will bear, and
that is a reading of one specific business rather than a rule. Do not write an
implementation plan here. The next prompt turns whatever I choose into 30/60/90
day milestones.Where it stops: It prices the moves. The order you pull them in is a different question.
Every strategy you have ever been pitched is a combination of 10 moves
The funnel. The hiring plan. The price increase. The new product line. The collections push. Strip the language off any of them and what is left is some combination of the same 10 levers, and 5 of them fix profit while 5 fix cash.
Knowing that is useful the moment somebody walks into your office with a plan. You can ask which levers it pulls, what each pull costs, and whether the business has time to survive it.
Why it runs all 10 every time
Even the ones that are obviously small for your business. The ranking is only credible because nothing was filtered out before you saw it, and the whole insight arrives when a 1-day change in how fast you get paid shows up on the same list as a 5% price increase, in dollars, and one of them is 3 times the other.
Almost nobody guesses that ranking correctly for their own business. That is not a knock. It is why the table exists.
Price gets its own table
Because price is the only lever with nothing attached to it. A dollar of price that survives falls straight through to profit. No delivery cost, no headcount, no new system.
The prompt runs it at 3%, 5% and 10%, and it prints the number almost nobody asks for: how much volume you could afford to lose before the increase is cancelled out. It is usually a lot more than founders fear.
Then it says the honest part. This arithmetic tells you what a price increase is worth. It does not tell you whether your customers will pay it, and no spreadsheet has ever answered that question.
Two places it deliberately holds back
Marketing. A sensitivity table always rewards cutting it, because the cost comes off this year and the revenue it would have bought was next year's. That is exactly how growth gets killed in the name of discipline. The prompt carries the warning inside the table so the ranking cannot be read naively.
The Owner's Piggy Bank™. It prints what taking it to zero would be worth, because that is arithmetic and you are entitled to it. Then it stops and explicitly refuses to recommend the cut. Reaching for the owner's own spending by reflex is what a traditional accountant does. It is your money and your call, and plenty of businesses exist precisely to fund it.
What it will not do
It tells you what each move is worth. It will not tell you the order to pull them in, how hard to pull, or what happens to the business while you do. That depends on your margins, your clock, and what your customers will bear, and it is a reading of one specific business rather than a rule.
Runs on these published definitions
Next in the same thread
The 30/60/90 Close turns the thread into a plan. It ranks everything the earlier prompts found, drafts a 30/60/90 Day Action Plan across one quarter, and asks you which part you are not actually going to do.
This is only as good as the numbers you typed.
Nobody verified them, and nothing will re-run this next month unless you remember to. That is the honest limit of a prompt. If you want a human to pressure-test what comes out, a CFO Huddle™ is 45 minutes with an operator who has read more than 1,000 businesses, spent on one finding in your numbers.
Built from a book of more than 1,000 businesses. Published