Wednesday, November 04, 2026
ActionCOACH offers a coaching network, the ABoS platform and two free weeks. Simple-Growth is one owner-run coach who finds your constraint first. Here is who each suits, what is public on cost, and six questions to ask. Checked 4 November 2026.
Three weeks ago you couldn't answer the phone fast enough. This week it's silent, and you're wondering if you did something wrong. You didn't. This is a story about an owner riding a sales cycle that feels completely out of his control — flat out, then quiet, then flat out again — with no idea which customers are actually worth chasing when the phone does ring.
If that's you, the problem isn't your pipeline. It's that you've never worked out what a sale is actually worth to your business, so every quiet month feels like a crisis instead of a math problem.
Unpredictable demand is one of the top-cited stress drivers for small business owners — named by 28% of US owners in Xero's Emotional Tax Return 2026, reported by CPA Practice Advisor. Most owners respond by chasing every lead equally hard in the quiet months, which burns the same effort on a customer worth $200 a year as one worth $20,000. That's the real villain here: treating every sale as interchangeable, when they never are.
The quiet months feel random because you're measuring the wrong thing. "Sales are down" is a feeling about the whole business. "I know exactly which ten customers I'd call first" is a plan — and it only exists once you've actually ranked them.
Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Acquisition Cost, used together, turn a feast-and-famine pipeline into a plannable number:
Kevin's own mountain bike park client ran on exactly this kind of math. Eleven revenue streams, 730 season passes to sell, 300 already locked in from returning customers, leaving 430 to sell in ten weeks — six sales a day, not a vague "sell more passes" target. The same clarity applied to a single mechanic's KPI: offer 50 customers a free bike check, and watch repairs and rentals climb while accidents fell. One number, tracked daily, beats a hopeful quarter.
"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
Most owners can feel that some customers are worth more than others. What stops them acting on it is that nobody has sat down with them and actually run the numbers — it stays a hunch instead of a daily target. That's the gap coaching closes: turning "it's quiet again" from a feeling into six sales a day, or whatever your own number turns out to be.
This isn't for you if you'd rather keep treating every lead the same and hope the quiet months sort themselves out. It's for owners ready to know exactly which customers are worth chasing before the phone even rings.
You can't control when the phone rings. You can control which customers you chase when it does. That's a number you could work out this week, not a strategy overhaul.
If you're still chasing every lead the same way, no matter what it's worth, that's the first thing we fix — before you spend another hour on the quiet months.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Up to 90 percent of strategies never get executed, and it's almost never the document's fault. Here's the team dysfunction actually behind it, and how to fix it before you rewrite the plan again.
Friday, October 23, 2026
Two-thirds of small business owners are raising prices in 2026. If you're in the third who won't, the real problem is probably your offer, not your price point.
Friday, October 23, 2026
Revenue was fine. Profitability growth wasn't, for the first time in a year and a half. Here's the one number to track through your own busy season so the same thing doesn't happen to you.
Friday, October 23, 2026
Just 25% of business owners have natural delegator talent. Here's the Clockwork test a good coach runs before any strategy conversation happens.
Friday, October 23, 2026
31.7% of small business owners have never taken a full week off. Here's the handover document that actually fixes it, and how AI turns a week of writing into an afternoon.
Friday, October 23, 2026
Four in ten small business owners say they discount often, and a third still report sales down anyway. Here's the SPIN Selling framework that gets you to full price without the price cut.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
When offers look alike, price is all that is left to compare. What New Zealand telecoms teach SME owners about escaping the price war.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Get more from the link that limits your growth before you spend a dollar on it. A 14-day, no-new-spend plan for SME owners.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Score eight links in your business from 1 to 5 and the weakest, earliest link is usually your constraint. A 20-minute self-check for SME owners.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Referrals just became small business owners' #1 source of new customers — up from 65% to 83% in a single year. Here's the Dream 100 system that turns word of mouth into a repeatable growth engine.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Roughly one in four founders report loneliness and isolation running their business. Here's what a coach actually does differently, and why the first session is rarely about strategy.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
NZ small business sales rose 8.6 percent this quarter, but growth ranged from 2.9 to 16.3 percent by industry. Here's the three-number check that tells you whether your growth is actually yours.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Only 30 percent of business change efforts fully succeed. Here's the three-part diagnosis, borrowed from strategy academic Richard Rumelt, most owners skip before fixing anything.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Close to six in ten of this year's US holiday shoppers are already buying, in October or year-round. Here are three sales moves to make this week before Black Friday arrives.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
77.6 percent of US consumers used AI to help with a purchase decision in the past six months. Here are three moves that make your small business visible when customers ask AI about you.