Sunday, November 08, 2026
A free clinic, a $295 + GST mentor, half-funded training or a paid coach: which rung suits your business, and how to avoid paying for the same thing twice.
Saturday morning, and you're on the phone to the client who pays slowest, complains loudest, and changes the brief three times before every job. Meanwhile the client who actually keeps the business afloat hasn't heard from you in six weeks, because they never make a fuss — they just quietly pay on time and reorder. If that sounds familiar, you're not managing a customer base. You're managing whoever shouts.
The villain is a quiet one: the belief that all revenue is good revenue, so every customer earns the same attention, the same discount flexibility, the same Saturday phone call. It feels fair. It's also why some owners work flat out on turnover that barely moves the bank balance.
What you'll miss if this doesn't change: another year spent servicing the loudest half of your customer list, while the quiet, profitable half slowly drifts toward someone who does call them back.
I worked with a client who had 123 customers on the books. We sat down and actually graded them — not by gut feel, by revenue and margin, properly totted up. Eight customers. Just eight, out of 123. Those eight were worth $266,240 of the $630,220 the business turned over that year — well over 40% of revenue from under 7% of the customer list. Nobody had ever added it up before. The owner had been treating customer 9 and customer 119 as equally important, because on paper they looked the same: both "a customer."
"Kevin is an absolute powerhouse! He doubled our business's profits in the first month alone with lots more of his recommendations still to be rolled out."
— Curtis Hacon, Give A Sh!t
Here's the uncomfortable part: the clients draining your weekends are rarely your worst clients by revenue — they're just the ones who ask the most and pay the least in proportion to the noise they make. The fix isn't firing anyone in a dramatic way. It's simply knowing which eight to call first, and treating the discovery as data, not loyalty.
This isn't for you if you'd rather keep every customer exactly equal and keep working every Saturday to prove it. It is for you if you're ready to find out which eight customers are actually running your business.
If you've never actually graded your customer list, that's the one-hour exercise we'd start with.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Eighty-four percent of small business owners sacrifice health or relationships to their business, new 2026 data shows. Here is the Transferability Number test that shows why, and what to fix first.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You're about to have your busiest quarter of the year. If nobody's planned for it, your bank balance is about to go the wrong way at exactly the moment the business looks like it's winning.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Ask most owners what they do and they'll answer instantly. Ask them why their business exists, beyond making money, and watch the pause. That pause is costing you customers, hires and referrals.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Ask your team to name the business's single most important goal this quarter. Five different answers from five people means you have one problem, not twelve: nobody knows what the goal actually is.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You trained your team to build rapport and never push, and your best customer last quarter still went with the competitor who pushed them to rethink the brief. Here's why relationship-selling is the weakest profile in B2B sales.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You've boosted the posts, hired the agency, rewritten the website twice, and the phone still isn't ringing. Before you spend another dollar, ask whether a stranger could explain what makes you different in one sentence.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Your competitor just launched the move you'd been 'finalising' for six months. Here's the fifty-year-old decision framework that fixes the real problem: not your strategy, your decision speed.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
EOS, Scaling Up, Vistage, ActionCOACH or Simple-Growth? A fair comparison with best-for and not-ideal-if for each option, a fit matrix and a nine-question quiz.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
What does a business coach cost in New Zealand? Published monthly and hourly ranges, cheaper options, how RBPN co-funding can help, and a checklist for judging value.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
New 2026 global research shows trust alone only earns a brand 48 percent acceptance into new territory - relevance takes it to 71 percent. Here is the two-question test that finds the real gap before you spend on expansion.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The personal touch that built your reputation at ten staff quietly becomes the bottleneck that breaks it at thirty. Here is how to turn a habit into a system before it costs you.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most owners check star ratings and warm adjectives before hiring a coach. Here is the three-detail test that tells you whether a review is evidence or decoration.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The Christmas shutdown is about eleven weeks away. Here is the one-page-per-role handover document that decides whether you actually switch off this year.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The biggest sales research study ever run found the best reps ask, they don't tell. Here is the SPIN method, and the four questions that come before any pitch.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
No ad budget doesn't mean no reach. Here is the Dream 100 method for finding the audiences that already trust your exact customer, and earning your way in.