Every plan to grow a small business is some combination of the same handful of moves. What separates owners who build value from owners who stay busy is knowing what each lever actually does to the two numbers that set a business's worth — earnings and the multiple buyers pay on them — and what each lever costs to pull.
Here are the seven levers, and how to rank them.
Reduce churn
Cutting customer churn is usually the cheapest growth there is, because it compounds: every customer you keep is one your marketing funnel doesn't have to replace, so the same funnel fills a bigger steady-state customer base. Cut monthly churn from 5% to 3% and the average customer sticks around two-thirds longer — revenue grows with zero new acquisition spend. Before spending another dollar on ads, ask whether that dollar would do more plugging the leak.
Raise prices
A price increase is the most direct lever: with costs unchanged, the extra revenue drops straight to the bottom line. The catch is the assumption baked in — pricing power. If a 5% increase would send customers to a competitor, you don't have it. If you haven't raised prices in three years and customers barely notice when you do, you probably do.
Increase marketing
More spend at your current customer acquisition cost (CAC) buys more customers — but only profitably if the unit economics already work. Scaling a funnel where each customer's lifetime value barely covers their acquisition cost just loses money faster. This lever is the right one only when the unit economics say scale.
Improve conversion
A better-converting funnel — clearer offer, faster follow-up, a cleaned-up website — is effectively a CAC cut: the same spend wins more customers. Lifts of 15–30% from basic funnel fixes are common, which makes this one of the highest-return levers for businesses that have never optimized.
Hire a manager
The strangest lever: paying a manager's salary cuts your earnings but can raise the business's value, because a business that runs without its owner shifts from SDE multiples to the higher EBITDA multiples investors pay — and it removes owner dependence, the biggest multiple killer on Main Street. The math is honest in both directions: below roughly $1M of SDE, the salary usually eats more than the multiple adds and the hire destroys value; near or above that line, it can add far more than it costs.
Build recurring revenue
Contracts and subscriptions make future earnings predictable, and buyers pay a premium multiple for predictability. Converting one-off customers to service agreements or memberships grows value twice — once through steadier revenue, again through the higher multiple applied to it.
Rank levers by value per dollar
Every lever has a lever cost — the annual cost to run it: the retention hire, the ad budget, the manager's salary, the software behind a subscription program. The right way to choose isn't instinct; it's value created per dollar of lever cost. A churn fix that costs $20K and adds $200K of value beats a marketing push that costs $100K to add the same.
The free Deal Analyzer models all of these levers against your own numbers — earnings, multiple, and cost side by side — and ranks them by estimated value created per dollar, so you can see whether your next move should be a hire, a price change, or a fix to the funnel you already have.
All figures are estimates for informational purposes only — not financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before making financial decisions.