The DTC Playbook
by Rob Ward, Quad Lock Co-Founder
Free Diagnostic · ~15 minutes

The DTC Health Check

A serious diagnostic for DTC and ecommerce founders. 97 questions across 30 areas of the business, calibrated to your revenue stage. Shows you where you're strong, where you're thin, and what to work on next.

Free · No subscription · No credit card
28
Areas
100+
Questions
8
Categories
15m
To Complete

What you get

Not a generic self-score. The Health Check asks different questions depending on whether you're pre-revenue, under $1M, scaling through $10M, or established. It's a real pre-read diagnostic of your business.

Scored report
Overall score plus a per-category breakdown. Weighted so the levers that actually move the business (growth, retention) carry appropriate weight.
Category recommendations
For each of the 8 categories, a written recommendation based on your actual score - what to prioritise, what to leave alone for now.
Stage-calibrated questions
The questions you see depend on your revenue stage. Pre-revenue gets different questions from $10M+. No wasted time on things that don't apply yet.

What it covers

30 areas across the lifecycle of a DTC brand - from product-market fit through to exit readiness. The same areas covered in depth in the full DTC Playbook.

Foundation
4 Areas
The Business
6 Areas
Growth
6 Areas
Brand
4 Areas
Retention
2 Areas
Scale
3 Areas
The Numbers
2 Areas
The Exit
1 Area

How it works

01
Sign up free
Register in under a minute. Free access to the whole playbook - no subscription.
02
Pick your stage
Pre-revenue, launch, growth, scale, or established. Questions adapt to match.
03
Answer honestly
97 questions across 30 areas. Five-point scales. ~15 minutes if you don't overthink it.
04
Get your report
Scored breakdown by category with specific recommendations and priority actions.
Why I built this
The signals most founders are missing.

At Quad Lock we grew from a bootstrapped Kickstarter to a global brand with millions of customers and a $500M exit to Thule. The mistakes I made along the way - and the corrections that mattered - became the framework behind the DTC Playbook.

The Health Check is the shortcut to the highest-leverage part of that framework: showing you where the weak spots are before they become the reason you stall. The questions are deliberately sharp. The answers are deliberately direct. If you run a DTC brand, spend 15 minutes on this before you decide what to do next quarter.

More than just a diagnostic

The Health Check is one part of the full DTC Playbook. Sign up and you also unlock:

30 full sections
The entire DTC Playbook - brand DNA, customer research, growth channels, finance, exit - written from the Quad Lock story and what I'd do today.
400+ checklist items
Every section ends in a practical checklist. Tick items as you act on them, track progress per-brand across your whole business.
8 working tools
Downloadable .xlsx tools - P&L template, pricing calculator, channel diversification framework, international market scorecard and more.

Ready to see where you stand?

Create a free account and take the Health Check. The whole thing takes 15 minutes and doesn't cost anything, now or later.

Free forever · No subscription · No credit card

Built for founders and their teams

From diagnostic to action

The DTC Health Check is the start, not the end. Once your scores come back, the full DTC Playbook gives you 30 sections of detail on every category you just scored. If Growth Channels came back amber, Section 13 on Meta Ads and Section 12 on Email & SMS are waiting. If your Exit score is thin, Section 28 on Valuation & Exit walks you through what buyers actually look for. The Health Check points you at the shortest path from where you are to where you want to be.

Every section ends with a practical checklist — 400+ action items in total. Work through them as you act on the playbook, tick them off, and your brand dashboard tracks your progress across every section and category over time. Retake the Health Check each quarter and watch the score shift. Most ecommerce founders operate without that feedback loop; the DTC Playbook is designed to give it to you.

Get your team on the same page

Founder instinct is valuable. Founder instinct that doesn't match the rest of the team is expensive. Invite your co-founders, CMO, CFO, and operations lead to the DTC Playbook. Each of them takes the Health Check independently, and their scores come together on one shared brand dashboard. Alignment isn't a meeting - it's what happens when everyone has looked at the same diagnostic.

Use the checklists to assign ownership across sections. Use the 8 built-in tools - pricing calculator, P&L template, international market scorecard, channel diversification framework and more - to make decisions together. The playbook, the Health Check, the checklists, the tools, and every additional team seat are free forever. No subscription, no upsell, no hidden limits on how many people you can add.