Thursday, October 29, 2026
A business with four equal customers loses 25% of revenue the day one leaves. Here's the customer-concentration math most SME owners never run, and three moves to fix it.
A customer searching for your kind of business is now almost as likely to ask an AI chatbot as to open Google. In the past year, 45% of US consumers used an AI tool to get a local business recommendation — up from just 6% the year before — and 31% went straight to ChatGPT for it, according to BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of over 1,000 US consumers. Separately, Pew Research's 2026 study of US adults found that searching for information is now the single most common reason people open an AI chatbot at all.
Most SME owners have noticed this shift exists. Very few have changed a single sentence on their website because of it. After over 30 years in brand and communications, from McDonald's media plans to nine businesses of my own, I can tell you the gap between noticing a shift and acting on it is exactly where the opportunity sits.
The obvious move, and the one most agencies will sell you first, is schema markup — the behind-the-scenes code that tells search engines what's on a page. It's worth having for other reasons, but as a lever for AI visibility specifically, the evidence doesn't support it. A 2026 Ahrefs study tracking close to 6,000 pages over eight months found that adding schema markup made no measurable difference to how often a page was cited in AI Overviews, Google's AI Mode, or ChatGPT — the differences were statistically indistinguishable from zero.
What actually gets an AI engine to quote you isn't the code behind your page. It's whether the words on it directly answer a real question, in one specific, speakable sentence. AI engines summarise what's genuinely useful to repeat — and polished, on-brand marketing copy is, ironically, one of the hardest things for a machine, or a human skimming in ten seconds, to lift and repeat.
"Kevin, you distilled business, marketing and sales strategy into powerful simple concepts and actions with real life stories of your start-up business and corporate life. You walk the talk with empathy and passion. Feedback has been off the charts. The energy in the room was palpable."
— Nikki, MahiTahi / The Colab
Here's the real obstacle: specific, plain-spoken answers feel unpolished to the person approving the copy. Owners are trained to want language that sounds impressive, not language a machine would find easy to repeat verbatim. The two instincts pull in opposite directions, and brand polish usually wins the argument in the room — which is exactly backwards for how buyers, human or AI, actually find you now.
This is where an outside, evidence-first view earns its keep: someone who'll tell you the schema markup your last agency sold you isn't the lever, and that the plainer, blunter version of your FAQ is the one that actually wins the next ten customers.
If you don't know what your website would say if an AI chatbot summarised it to a customer right now, that's worth finding out before you spend another dollar on ads.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
A business with four equal customers loses 25% of revenue the day one leaves. Here's the customer-concentration math most SME owners never run, and three moves to fix it.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
A lot of owners try the wrong format, see no shift, and decide coaching doesn't work for them. Here's what a peer room is actually good for, what 1:1 coaching is actually good for, and a 3-check way to pick.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
HBR's review of meeting research found about 70% of meetings kept employees from the work they were meant to enable. Here's Verne Harnish's meeting rhythm, sized for an SME before year-end.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Reps close 2.9x more deals at month-end and lose 11.4x more margin doing it, one major study found. Here's why the plan is the problem, not the rep, and three fixes.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
45% of US consumers used AI for a local business recommendation this year, up from 6% last year. Here's why schema markup won't fix your AI visibility, and what will.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Jim Collins found that companies which broke away from average performance could name, with brutal precision, what they could be best in the world at. Here's the three-circle test and the goal that pairs with it.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Big-brand positioning is a decision, not a budget. Five questions, a one-sentence position and a five-touchpoint audit you can run this week.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Which jobs should a US small business hand to AI first? Published US data, a five-check test and a 30-day plan to pick one job, track one number and keep the decisions that matter.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Most small business owners already believe AI works, but barely one in ten has invested in using it properly. Here is the simple ladder for turning casual AI use into real, compounding productivity gains.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Vet and allied health practices rarely have a clinical problem. Here is how to find the real constraint, keep patients returning and build a 90-day growth plan.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME owners are fixing the wrong problem. Here's the 3-step method that finds the one constraint actually holding your growth back, before you spend another dollar.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
A third of US small business owners say they don't know whether they have the tools — AI included — to grow next year. That's not a confidence problem, it's a visibility one, and it's fixable in an afternoon.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Confidence up a quarter, down the next, tariffs easing then tightening — waiting for certainty is its own decision, and usually the wrong one. Here's a simple way to keep deciding well when the ground keeps moving.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
There's one role almost every SME owner has avoided filling for a year or more — while quietly doing it themselves instead. Here's the Who Not How framework, and the three-step test that makes the hire obvious.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
They nodded, asked great questions, said it's exactly what they need — then disappeared. Here's why warmth isn't a buying signal, and the three-message sequence that gets stalled deals talking again.