Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Nearly half of businesses miss the target they set for themselves — and it's rarely because the team didn't try hard enough. Here's the three-number check that builds a 2027 target you can actually hit.
If you cancelled every meeting on your calendar for the next two weeks, would your business actually slow down — or would some of it speed up? Harvard Business Review's review of meeting research found that about 70% of meetings kept employees from completing the very work the meeting was supposedly about. That figure covers employees generally, not SME owners specifically, but anyone who has sat through a status update that could have been a two-line message knows exactly which category they're in.
After over 30 years running meetings at agencies and inside nine businesses of my own, I've never once seen a business get more done by having more meetings. I've seen plenty get more done by replacing a tangle of ad-hoc catch-ups with one deliberate rhythm.
The enemy here isn't meetings themselves — it's the meeting calendar that grew by accident. A weekly catch-up here, a one-off project update there, a client call that somehow became a standing Tuesday slot eighteen months ago and never got un-booked. Nobody sat down and designed this calendar; it accreted, one "let's just get something in the diary" at a time. By the time a business reaches ten or fifteen people, the owner can lose a third of their working week to meetings that were never actually redesigned once their original reason had passed.
Harnish's Rockefeller Habits sets out a cadence built for fast-growing companies. At SME scale, it collapses to four decisions:
"Specific to my business requirements and takes a systematic approach. Practical, specific, and pertinent to my business."
— Simon Keepa
Redesigning the calendar means telling someone whose standing meeting you're cancelling that it wasn't actually earning its slot — an uncomfortable conversation to have alone. It's a far easier conversation when an outside adviser is the one asking the question, "what is this meeting actually for, now?", because it reads as structural, not personal.
If you can't remember the last time you cancelled a recurring meeting rather than added one, that's worth a look before this year's plan runs out of road.
Monday, September 21, 2026
More leads won't fix a slow sales pipeline. Learn the sales velocity formula SME owners rarely calculate — and the one lever that moves revenue faster than any lead-gen campaign.
Monday, September 21, 2026
"It's faster if I do it myself" is quietly capping your business's growth. Learn the $200-an-Hour Test to see what your delegation debt is really costing you.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Anyone can get certified as a business coach in a weekend. Almost nobody has actually built what they're advising you to build. Here's the Scar Tissue Test to tell the difference.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Winning deals and building compounding growth are not the same thing. Learn the Compounding Growth Audit to see if your business is actually building an asset — or starting from zero every quarter.
Monday, September 21, 2026
16% of grocery households now have someone using a GLP-1 medication — and they're buying less across your category, not switching brands. Here's the three-step Appetite Audit for your range before Q4.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most SME owners compete by trying to be better than everyone else — and that's exactly why they're stuck. Here's the 3-step framework to become the only option instead.
Monday, September 21, 2026
You paid for a website and a rebrand — but your Google Business Profile is what's actually deciding who gets the call. Here's how to fix it this week.
Monday, September 21, 2026
The order you say things in a sales call matters more than the words. Here's the pricing sequence mistake quietly costing SME owners their margin.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Working longer feels responsible heading into Q4 — but the data says your output actually falls past a point. Here's how to find your real ceiling.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Time who talks in your next coaching session. If it's mostly your coach, you're getting a lecture — not the accountability that actually changes behaviour.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Chasing wholesale and DTC at once usually means neither gets funded properly. Here's the Channel Mix Audit to pick a primary channel and actually grow.
Monday, September 21, 2026
26% of small business owners plan to spend $0 on marketing this month — and it's capping their growth more than they realize. Here's the Marketing Floor framework to fix it.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most strategic plans are built on what founders assume customers buy — not what they actually say. Here's the one-week audit that closes the gap.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most SME marketing still targets a customer persona sketched out years ago. Here's how to find out who's actually buying — and fix the mismatch.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most SME sales proposals are built to impress, not to close. Here's the one-page format that gets buyers to yes faster.