Sunday, November 08, 2026
Coaching is largely unregulated, so the vetting is yours to do. Here are 12 questions to ask any business coach in NZ before you sign, with what a good answer sounds like.
There's a particular kind of tired that has nothing to do with hours worked. It's the tired that shows up after a good month, not just a bad one — when the numbers were fine and you still lay there wondering if this is just what owning a business feels like, forever. If you've had that thought, you're in more company than it feels like at 1am: 40% of US small business owners have considered giving up their business altogether (Xero Emotional Tax Return 2026, US). That's not a small, private failure. It's close to half.
The villain isn't you, and it isn't the business either — it's the quiet rule that says admitting this out loud makes you less capable of running the thing. So owners carry it alone, performing "fine" at dinner, at the school gate, in the group chat, right up until it either passes or it doesn't.
What you'll miss, if it stays unsaid: not necessarily a dramatic collapse — just more of the same weight, carried solo, for longer than it needed to be. The version of this year where someone else was holding part of it with you.
Kim Scott's Radical Candor is usually taught as a management idea — care personally, challenge directly — but it works just as well pointed at yourself. Most owners are honest about everything except how they're actually doing. That's not toughness. It's just a habit nobody's interrupted yet.
Here's something I don't lead with often: having founded or co-founded nine companies and coached 200+ businesses one-on-one since 2017, I still hired my own coach through The Icehouse to accelerate my own growth. Not because I was failing — because having someone outside the business, with no stake in pretending it's fine, changes what you're willing to say out loud, and what you're willing to actually do about it once you've said it.
"Keeping me sane and focused during uncertain times."
— Rachel Williams
This isn't for you if you'd rather push through quietly and hope it passes on its own. It is for you if you're ready to say the true thing to someone who'll actually help you do something about it.
If any part of this sounds like your Tuesday, a conversation costs nothing and carries no obligation — that's exactly what the free call is for.
Friday, October 09, 2026
A new market, a new product line, a second location: most lose money the same way, by skipping the three numbers that would have told them how big the opportunity really was.
Friday, October 09, 2026
Most people picture coaching as a conversation. The sessions that actually move a business are a loop, repeated every week, until it becomes how the owner thinks.
Friday, October 09, 2026
A forty-item to-do list with none of the three that mattered finished is not a time management problem. It is a filter problem, and the Eisenhower Matrix is the filter.
Friday, October 09, 2026
A good salesperson gets four real conversations a day. A good presentation, given once, can reach four hundred. Here is why most SME sales teams never use it.
Friday, October 09, 2026
Customers do not leave because a competitor shouted louder. They leave because, in the exact moment they needed someone, your brand was not the one they thought of.
Friday, October 09, 2026
Most SME owners track one number: the bank balance. The businesses that compound track four, using Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard, and catch the problem before it ever reaches the bank account.
Thursday, October 08, 2026
Thursday, October 08, 2026
Nearly half of NZ SME owners plan to raise prices this year. Only 4 percent of companies have a value proposition clear enough to justify it.
Thursday, October 08, 2026
Revenue can climb for years while the actual value of the business barely moves. Here are the eight drivers that decide which one you are really building, and why owner independence usually matters most.
Thursday, October 08, 2026
If every session with your coach leaves you comfortable, that is the warning sign, not the proof it is working. Here is why direct feedback outperforms kind feedback, backed by Gallup's data.
Thursday, October 08, 2026
A global survey of over 10,000 workers found trusted employees nearly twice as productive as distrusted ones. If your calendar fixes keep failing, the real constraint may be trust, not time.
Thursday, October 08, 2026
Most sales conversations present cheapest to most expensive. New research found flipping that order lifted revenue by 10.8 percent, with no price changes at all. Here is how to use it.
Thursday, October 08, 2026
Most SME marketing budgets are weighted toward customers who already buy. The research says that is the smaller lever. Here is where brand growth actually comes from, and how to redirect your spend toward it.
Thursday, October 08, 2026
Most SME strategy problems are not thinking problems, they are seeing problems. Here is the one-page model that catches the two mistakes that quietly kill most growing businesses before they show up in the bank account.
Wednesday, October 07, 2026
Four pillars, one real constraint and a 90-day plan. Here is how the Simple-Growth System works, plus a 45-minute test you can run this week.