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.
You know the pattern. Three weeks where the phone won't stop and you're turning work away, then a fortnight where it goes completely quiet and you start wondering if you did something wrong. You didn't. You just don't have a marketing system — you have a marketing event, and events end. Nearly three in ten US small business owners now name unpredictable demand as one of their biggest stress drivers, right up there with rising costs (Xero's Emotional Tax Return 2026, as reported by CPA Practice Advisor). You can fix the pattern. It isn't about working harder in the busy weeks — it's about never letting the demand engine switch off in the quiet ones.
Here's the trap: when it goes quiet, most owners launch a campaign. A promotion, a flurry of posts, a discount email. It works, a little, then it ends, and the business is right back where it started — waiting for the next scare before it markets again. A campaign is a burst. What actually smooths the cycle is a system that runs every week whether you're busy or not, so new interest keeps arriving on a schedule instead of on a prayer.
Dave Chaffey's RACE framework, used widely in digital marketing practice, breaks the system into four parts that should all be running at once, not in sequence.
I worked with a bike park client running eleven separate revenue streams precisely so no single quiet patch could sink the business. One year they sold 730 season passes, with 300 returning customers, which left 430 new passes to sell in a ten-week window — six a day, on a schedule, not a hope. Their mechanic ran one simple reach-and-engage tactic on the side: fifty free bike checks offered to riders who'd never normally come in. Repairs went up, rentals went up, accidents went down — one small, scheduled, unglamorous activity, running every week regardless of how busy the park already was.
"Kevin doesn't just present — he electrifies the room and drives massive, real-world value! He drops game-changing insights and actionable shortcuts that show businesses exactly how to turn everyday customers into raving, loyal fans — and acquire new ones faster than ever thought possible."
— Gareth Bayliss, Sales Manager, The Icehouse
Most owners know a weekly rhythm beats a panic campaign. They still reach for the campaign, because it feels like doing something, right now, with your own two hands. Building the actual system — the scheduled reach activity, the standing follow-up rhythm, the engage sequence to past buyers — takes someone sitting beside you to get it running and keep it running past the first busy week that tempts you to drop it. That's the part a coach is genuinely useful for: not the idea, the discipline of it staying on.
This isn't for you if you'd rather keep running the occasional promotion and hoping for the best. It's for you if you're ready to build a system that runs whether you're thinking about it or not.
If your marketing only switches on when business goes quiet, that's exactly the pattern we fix first.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most SME content marketing generates activity, not revenue, because nothing in it points to a next step. Here's how to give every piece of content a job and build a path that actually converts.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most SME growth targets are last year's number plus a round figure nobody can defend. Here's how to build a target from capacity, market, and unit economics instead — one your team can actually plan against.
Friday, September 04, 2026
A new survey found 56% of small business owners hit a major cash flow crisis in their first three years, and 80% still face it yearly. The fix isn't a better bookkeeper — it's a rolling cash system.
Friday, September 04, 2026
88% of founders admit stress causes poor decisions, but only 19% have the delegation skills proven to fix it. Why the fix for founder burnout is a decision-rights system — not rest.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Launching new lines the moment your core product works feels like growth. The data says it's usually what causes the plateau.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Being the best operator built your business. Staying the best operator is now the ceiling on how big it can get.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Buying a new platform feels like progress. Usually it's avoidance — the process was broken before the software, and stays broken after.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Your top performer's secret isn't a better pitch — it's a question sequence that gets the prospect to close themselves.
Friday, September 04, 2026
You don't need a national ad budget to get cut-through — you need dominance in the community your customers already trust.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most strategy fails in translation, not ambition. Here's how to cascade a boardroom goal all the way down to a Monday task list.
Friday, September 04, 2026
56% of US shoppers have quit buying a brand over shrinkflation. Why quietly shrinking packs costs FMCG brands more than an honest price rise — and how to build a value-change system instead.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most FMCG brands that succeed regionally never make the jump to national shelf space. Here's what the brands that do scale nationally build before the big order arrives — capacity, standardisation, and sell-through data — and why the brands that don't fail fast once they win it.
Friday, September 04, 2026
The owners who get the most from coaching don't walk in with good news — they walk in with a real problem. Here's why the progress-report habit quietly wastes coaching sessions, and what to bring instead.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most productivity advice optimises the calendar you already have. The real fix is deciding what doesn't belong on it. Here's the 90/10 diagnostic for finding — and protecting — the small share of your week that actually drives growth.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most sales training focuses on the pitch and the close. The outcome is usually decided in the first five minutes. Here's the diagnostic-first opening sequence that changes conversion rates without changing your product or your price.