Friday, November 06, 2026
If sales only happen when you are in the room, you own a job, not a system. Five parts and a five-day plan to build a sales process your team can run without you.
Revenue's up on last year. You should be celebrating. Instead you're staring at the bank balance wondering where it all went, because somewhere between saying yes to every job that came in the door, the margin quietly evaporated. More revenue was supposed to feel like more room to breathe. It feels like running faster for the same result.
Xero's 2026 research found rising costs are cited by 44% of US owners as a leading stress driver (Xero Emotional Tax Return, 2026). But rising costs are only half the story for a lot of owners. The other half is saying yes to everything, because nobody's ever written down, in one sentence, what this business is actually best at.
I've founded or co-founded nine companies, and the ones that grew their margin, not just their turnover, all had one thing in common: they knew exactly what they wouldn't do.
It feels risky to turn work away when revenue already feels tight. So owners say yes to the client outside their specialty, the rush job that blows the schedule, the discount to win the deal that was never going to be profitable anyway. Each yes feels harmless alone. Together, they're exactly why revenue climbs and margin doesn't.
Jim Collins studied what separated genuinely great companies from merely good ones, and found they could all answer one question with total clarity: where do three things overlap?
Where those three genuinely overlap is where this business should be saying yes. Everywhere else is where the margin is quietly leaking out.
"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
One of the businesses I founded, Sign60, was built around a single-sentence promise: a signpost up in 60 seconds. Not every kind of signage. Not every kind of install. One sharp overlap between what we could genuinely be fastest at, what actually made money, and what the team cared about doing well. We ran it against a 100-day action plan so the focus didn't drift back to "yes to everything" within a month of writing it down.
Writing the Hedgehog sentence is the easy part. Saying no to the next client who doesn't fit it, while the bank balance is still tight, takes a kind of nerve most owners don't have alone — because the downside of saying yes feels immediate, and the upside of saying no only shows up months later in the margin line. That gap is exactly where having someone outside the business, holding you to the sentence you wrote, earns its keep.
This isn't for you if you'd rather keep every type of job coming through the door than risk a quiet month while you refocus. It is for owners ready to trade some revenue for a business that's actually worth running.
More revenue was never the actual goal. A business that's good at one thing, and paid properly for it, is.
If you've never written down the one sentence this business should say yes to, that's the first thing we'd build together.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
HBR's review of meeting research found about 70% of meetings kept employees from the work they were meant to enable. Here's Verne Harnish's meeting rhythm, sized for an SME before year-end.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Reps close 2.9x more deals at month-end and lose 11.4x more margin doing it, one major study found. Here's why the plan is the problem, not the rep, and three fixes.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
45% of US consumers used AI for a local business recommendation this year, up from 6% last year. Here's why schema markup won't fix your AI visibility, and what will.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Jim Collins found that companies which broke away from average performance could name, with brutal precision, what they could be best in the world at. Here's the three-circle test and the goal that pairs with it.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Big-brand positioning is a decision, not a budget. Five questions, a one-sentence position and a five-touchpoint audit you can run this week.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Which jobs should a US small business hand to AI first? Published US data, a five-check test and a 30-day plan to pick one job, track one number and keep the decisions that matter.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Most small business owners already believe AI works, but barely one in ten has invested in using it properly. Here is the simple ladder for turning casual AI use into real, compounding productivity gains.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Vet and allied health practices rarely have a clinical problem. Here is how to find the real constraint, keep patients returning and build a 90-day growth plan.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME owners are fixing the wrong problem. Here's the 3-step method that finds the one constraint actually holding your growth back, before you spend another dollar.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
A third of US small business owners say they don't know whether they have the tools — AI included — to grow next year. That's not a confidence problem, it's a visibility one, and it's fixable in an afternoon.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Confidence up a quarter, down the next, tariffs easing then tightening — waiting for certainty is its own decision, and usually the wrong one. Here's a simple way to keep deciding well when the ground keeps moving.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
There's one role almost every SME owner has avoided filling for a year or more — while quietly doing it themselves instead. Here's the Who Not How framework, and the three-step test that makes the hire obvious.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
They nodded, asked great questions, said it's exactly what they need — then disappeared. Here's why warmth isn't a buying signal, and the three-message sequence that gets stalled deals talking again.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME marketing describes the product and targets a demographic — and both miss why people actually buy. Here's the Jobs To Be Done framework, and how to find the job your business is really being hired to do.
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.