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.
Owners ask me a version of the same question almost every week: should I get a coach, or just join a mastermind, a peer group, or a workshop? It's usually asked as if the two are interchangeable — different packaging around the same thing. They're not. They solve different problems, and picking the wrong one is why a lot of owners try one, don't see the shift they expected, and conclude "coaching doesn't work for me," when the real issue was the format, not the idea.
I run both: one-on-one coaching with individual owners, and group workshops and masterclasses for rooms of fifty, a hundred, more. After over 30 years in business, and 200+ businesses coached one-on-one across 30+ industries, here's exactly what each one is actually for.
A workshop or a peer group is built for three things: exposure to ideas you wouldn't have gone looking for yourself, the relief of hearing someone else describe your exact problem out loud, and energy — the kind that's hard to manufacture alone in your own head on a Tuesday afternoon. What it isn't built for is your specific business, with your specific numbers, your specific team, and your specific blind spot. A room of fifty owners can hand you forty-nine useful general ideas and zero accountability for whether you actually act on any of them next week.
One-on-one coaching does the opposite. It's slower by comparison — there's no instant hit of a room's energy — but it's built entirely around your business: your actual numbers, your actual team, the one constraint genuinely holding you back versus the three you think are. And it's built around accountability that follows you out of the room: someone who knows what you said you'd do by next Thursday, and asks.
"Kevin is a master of his craft. From creating and facilitating high-impact 'Grow Your Business in 1-Day' workshops to elite sessions for our flagship Owner Manager Programme — Kevin delivers excellence across the board. He is a powerhouse presenter and facilitator who brings an explosive blend of energy and expertise to every room he steps into. 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. He is the standard-setter!"
— Darilyn Kane, Coaching and Advisory Lead, The Icehouse
Here's the part most owners get wrong: they pick the format that feels less exposing, not the one their actual problem calls for. A room is easier to hide in. One-on-one coaching means someone is looking directly at your numbers and your excuses, with nowhere for either of you to look away. That discomfort is often exactly the signal that it's the right format.
Whichever format fits where you are, Simple-Growth runs both — and the first conversation is about working out which one actually solves your problem, not which one we'd rather sell you.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Your best quarter can hide the same problems as your worst one. Here is the five-step Success Audit SME owners use to pressure-test growth before it plateaus.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
You just gave someone a raise to keep them, and they left anyway. A new US survey shows a 21-point gap between what owners think keeps their team and what actually does.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Small Business Saturday falls just 27 days before Christmas this year, one of the shortest holiday windows in years. Here's the three-step margin check to run before Q4 locks in your pricing mistakes.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Acquiring a new customer costs five to seven times more than growing revenue from an existing one. Here is the share-of-wallet audit that finds it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Most coaches say yes to everyone who can pay them. Here is the real test for whether a business coach is actually right for your business.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
The average knowledge worker gets barely an hour of uninterrupted time a day. Here is the meeting-free day protocol that gives your team room to think.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
A verbal yes is not a closed deal, and more than 40 percent of B2B deals stall in the gap between agreement and signature. Here is how to close it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Ninety percent of blog content gets zero traffic from Google, and most SME blogs are no exception. Here is the content-market fit audit that fixes it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Most SME owners benchmark against competitors whose real numbers they can never see. Here is the same-quarter self-benchmark that actually predicts growth.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Organic growth is always category growth plus share change. Here is the Share-of-Growth Audit that shows whether your revenue chart is real outperformance or a rising tide.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Habit research shows real change takes an average of 66 days, not three weeks. Here is the Commitment Corridor for judging whether coaching is working before you quit right before it does.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Workers lose roughly ten hours a week to manual, repetitive tasks. Before your next hire, run the Automate-or-Hire Filter to find out if the role should exist at all.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Half your sales team hitting quota means the other half is being carried by one or two people whose method has never been written down. Here is how to fix that before someone resigns.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Seventy six percent of purchase decisions happen at the shelf, not in the weeks of advertising before it. Here is the Shelf Impact Audit for FMCG brands that have never actually tested their own packaging.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Your dashboard has too many numbers and no owner for most of them. Here is the Focus Metric Framework SME owners use to find the one number that actually drives growth this quarter.