Product Development · 2026

A lead-generation tool that deliberately collects no leads

A burnout self-check built on a clinically validated instrument: anonymous, no account, no tracking, and no email capture, on purpose.

Overview

The situation

Eric Mahleb coaches people through burnout. The people who most need to find him are, almost by definition, not in a state to research a coach. They are exhausted, and they are unsure whether what they are experiencing is serious enough to warrant help at all.

The usual answer is a quiz that flatters the reader into a consultation. That would work, and it would be the wrong thing to build for this audience.

The constraint that shaped everything

We used the Burnout Assessment Tool: 33 items across exhaustion, mental distance, cognitive impairment and emotional impairment. Using a validated instrument rather than inventing questions is what makes the result worth anything.

It also constrains you. You cannot reorder items, reword them into something friendlier, or drop the boring ones to improve completion. And the output has to be framed as a signal, not a diagnosis. The site says so explicitly, and calls itself a compass rather than a verdict.

The decision: no tracking, no account, no email

Someone answering 33 questions about their mental state is handing over the most sensitive category of data there is. So the tool collects none of it. No account, no analytics, no email capture, no funnel.

That has a real cost, and it is worth naming: there is no conversion tracking, no retargeting, no list. For a tool whose purpose is to bring people to a coaching practice, that is giving up the entire standard playbook.

It is the right trade anyway. A person who is not sure they are allowed to need help will not start a questionnaire that asks them to register first. Removing the account was not a privacy gesture. It was the thing that makes people finish.

What got built

One question per screen with a five-point scale, a visible progress indicator, and a result that reports a green, orange or red signal across the four BAT dimensions rather than a single score.

Three languages: German, English and French, because Berlin. Light and dark themes. About five minutes end to end.

Where it is

Live and free at theburnoutguide.com. The result page hands people a considered next step rather than a sales pitch, and whether they take it is up to them.