Readiness self-assessment (interactive)

The Business Readiness Check is a free, 25-statement self-assessment. It asks how ready your business is in six areas, each matched to the course that strengthens it:

• Idea and customers: do you know who you serve, and have real people shown they will pay?
• Business model and plan: do you know how the business makes money, and is your plan written down?
• Money: do you know your costs, price for profit and keep records?
• Registration and compliance: do you know your structure, your tax duties and how to protect customer information?
• Marketing and sales: can customers find you, and do you have a way to win new ones every week?
• Support and operations: do you have mentors, reliable suppliers and a plan for disruptions like load-shedding?

How to answer well

For each statement, choose Not yet, Started, Mostly or Yes. Answer for your business as it is today, not as you hope it will be next month. The check is only useful if it is honest, and nobody sees your answers but you: there is no sign-up, and the result is not linked to your name.

If a statement does not apply yet (for example, you have no staff), answer Not yet. That is not a failure; it tells you what is ahead.

What you get

When you finish you see:

1. A readiness level from Exploring to Ready to grow, based on your overall score.
2. A score for each area, so you can see your strongest and weakest parts at a glance.
3. The courses to start with, chosen from your two weakest areas.

You can email the result to yourself, and you can attach it to an application for the Haibo Business Incubator, which helps us place you in the right phase.

A South African example

Sipho runs a car wash in Mamelodi. He expected to score poorly on marketing because he has no website. Instead his marketing score was his best: regular customers, a WhatsApp broadcast list and a busy corner. His weakest area was money. He had never worked out what each wash really cost him in water, soap and staff time. The check pointed him to Money Matters (B4) before anything else.