Sunday, October 25, 2026
More people call themselves a business coach than ever before. Here's the one test that actually separates a coach who gets results from one who just talks.
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.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Opinions are easy to get. Follow-through is rare. Here's why accountability, not feedback, is the part of coaching that actually moves the needle.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Your team's biggest time drain probably isn't a lack of hustle — it's meetings that never needed to happen. Here's the test for which ones survive.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most SME owners know referrals are their best lead source and still leave them to chance. Here's how to build a repeatable system around the ask.
Friday, September 04, 2026
When marketing "isn't working," the real issue is almost always positioning, not budget or channel. Here's how to test your message before you scale the spend.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Tracking twenty metrics doesn't make you a better manager — it just spreads your attention too thin to act on any of them. Here's the three-number rule that actually works.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most SMEs plateau between $2M and $5M — not because of the market, but because the business still depends on one person. Here's what breaks the ceiling.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Good business coaching isn't a pep talk. It's mindset work paired with a documented system and real accountability.
Friday, September 04, 2026
A better to-do list won't fix a business that runs through one person. Here's how to build systems that work without you.
Friday, September 04, 2026
"Not right now" isn't "no" — but most SME sales processes treat it that way. Here's the follow-up system that recovers lost pipeline.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Spreading your marketing budget across five channels guarantees none of them work. Here's how to get real cut-through on any budget.
Friday, September 04, 2026
A five-year vision won't tell your team what to do Monday. Here's why a rolling 90-day roadmap drives more real growth than a long-range plan.
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
76% of small businesses now use AI, but only 14% have it built into daily operations. Here's why the gap exists — and what the businesses getting real value are doing differently.
Sunday, August 23, 2026
Private label now owns 52% of UK grocery sales. Here's why SME FMCG suppliers are losing range reviews — and the six-point system that fixes it.
Sunday, August 23, 2026
Strong growth can hide founder dependency, the risk that quietly caps SME value. Four warning signs and the systems fix, from Kevin D'Ambros-Smith.