Thursday, October 22, 2026
Only 30 percent of business change efforts fully succeed. Here's the three-part diagnosis, borrowed from strategy academic Richard Rumelt, most owners skip before fixing anything.
A third of small business owners in a recent US survey said they genuinely don't know whether they have the tools — AI included — to grow their business next year. Not that they lack them. That they can't say either way. That's not a confidence problem. It's a visibility problem, and visibility problems are fixable in an afternoon, not a financial year.
Across the 200+ businesses Kevin has coached one-on-one, from seven-figure operators to companies turning over well into eight figures, the ones who stall almost never lack the tools. They lack an honest inventory of what they've already got, sitting half-used, versus what they're about to spend money chasing.
A US small business survey fielded in December 2025 and published by Thryv in January 2026 found 49% of owners named their ability to grow the business as their single biggest concern for the year ahead — more than tariffs, more than employment costs. The same survey found 37% had fallen short of their own 2025 expectations, and a striking 67% believed AI simply wouldn't affect their business in 2026 at all.
That last number is the one worth sitting with. Growth is the top worry, yet two in three owners have already written off the single fastest-moving productivity shift in a generation as irrelevant to them. "Not ready" and "not relevant to us" usually isn't caution — it's just not having looked closely enough to know either way.
Before you spend another dollar chasing growth, spend one afternoon on this instead:
"Kevin is a master of his craft... Participants don't just sit and listen; they leave buzzing with breakthrough ideas and simplified, highly effective growth strategies. Most importantly, Kevin leaves people profoundly inspired, fully equipped, and fiercely motivated to drive their businesses forward."
— Darilyn Kane, Coaching and Advisory Lead, The Icehouse
Owners are too close to their own tech stack and their own habits to see either clearly — the unused features feel invisible because they're not in the way, and the AI shortcut feels irrelevant because no one's shown them the specific task it would save them an hour on this week. That's a half-day's work with the right outside eye, not a strategic overhaul, and it usually surfaces more growth capacity than the next marketing campaign would.
You get Kevin's big-brand thinking applied to your business, so the next dollar goes where it counts.
Be the owner who knows exactly what you already have, and where your next growth dollar belongs.