Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most SME growth plans default to out-competing everyone else on the same crowded turf. Blue Ocean Strategy's own data says that's the lower-profit path - here's the four-question grid that finds the faster one.
Every week Kevin gets some version of the same question from a founder comparing programmes: should I join a group coaching cohort or work with someone one-on-one? Most people answer it by budget, which is exactly backwards — the right answer depends on the stage your business is at, not what's left in the marketing line of your profit and loss statement. Get the format wrong and you can pay for the right advice in the wrong container and still barely move the needle. After running both formats himself, and referring clients into whichever one actually fits, Kevin's view is that the stage of your business predicts the right answer more reliably than almost anything else.
The assumption that group coaching and one-on-one coaching are simply different price points on the same product is where most owners go wrong. They're different tools solving different problems. Group coaching is powerful when the problem is common — pricing discipline, delegation, marketing fundamentals — because you learn as much from watching ten other owners solve it as from the material itself. One-on-one is powerful when the problem is specific to your business — a leadership team not functioning, a pivot decision, a founder conflict — because nobody else in a room of ten needs to hear the details of your cap table.
1. Name the problem — Write down the single biggest thing holding growth back right now. Be specific, not "everything."
2. Ask if it's common or unique — Would fifty other SME owners in different industries recognise this exact problem? If yes, it's likely a group-coaching problem. If it's specific to your team, your numbers, or your history, it needs one-on-one.
3. Check the stage, not just the topic — Pre-$1M businesses usually get more from group cohorts, where the fundamentals still apply broadly. Past the first team-led transition, most owners need the specificity one-on-one provides.
The businesses that get this wrong most often are the ones who join a group programme for a problem that was actually unique to them, and leave saying coaching "didn't work" — when the format, not the coaching, was the mismatch.
"You make success tangible. Help me go from a wish to reality. Now have clarity of purpose and belief. You made tripling the size of my business go from seeming impossible to really possible."
— Lina, Good Gravy
Budget conversations happen before stage conversations, almost every time — group coaching is priced lower, so it gets chosen by default, regardless of whether the problem actually fits it. The honest fix is a conversation before enrolment, not after three sessions of frustration: what's actually broken, and which format was built to fix it. A good coach will tell you when their own group programme isn't the right fit for your specific problem — that's a signal worth paying attention to, not a sales objection to push past.
If you're not sure which format fits where your business is right now, that's a five-minute conversation worth having before you enrol in anything.
...and you become the owner who chooses the coaching format that fits your stage, not just your budget.