Thursday, November 05, 2026
An Auckland physiotherapy clinic wanted to stand apart from every other clinic. Here is the positioning, the work behind it, what we can and cannot say, and four steps to copy this month.
Here's a diagnostic you can run on your very next coaching session, whether it's with Kevin or anyone else: time who talks. If your coach is filling more than about 30 percent of the session, you are not being coached. You are being lectured — and the two produce very different results, no matter how smart the lecture is.
Good advice delivered at the wrong ratio doesn't stick. Professional coaching standards define the discipline specifically as a process that draws out the client's own thinking and accountability, not one that hands down expert answers — and the research behind adult learning backs this up: people act far more consistently on conclusions they reach themselves than on instructions they were simply given. A coach who spends the session talking is optimising for sounding impressive, not for the client actually changing behaviour on Monday morning.
The enemy isn't expertise — Kevin's 30+ years across nine companies and boardrooms from McDonald's to IBM is exactly why clients hire him. The enemy is expertise delivered as monologue instead of as sharp, well-placed questions that make the owner find their own answer and, critically, own it.
Run this on your next three sessions with any coach or advisor.
1. Time it, roughly — you don't need a stopwatch, just a gut sense of who spoke more across the session.
2. Check what the coach's talking actually was — questions that made you think, or statements that told you what to do? Both count as "coach talking," but only one builds your own judgment.
3. Watch what happens after the session — advice you were told to follow gets deprioritised the moment the week gets busy. Conclusions you reached yourself get acted on, because you own them.
“Specific to my business requirements and takes a systematic approach. Practical, specific, and pertinent to my business.”
— Simon Keepa, Icehouse Coaching Programme
Most owners can't self-diagnose this, because a genuinely knowledgeable coach who talks too much still sounds valuable in the room — the content is good, even when the format is wrong. The tell isn't how the session feels. It's what changes afterward. If you leave every session feeling impressed but three months later your Monday-morning behaviour hasn't shifted, the ratio is the problem, not the content.
This is precisely why accountability structure matters as much as expertise in choosing who you work with — a coach who asks "what did you actually do with what we discussed last time" is running a very different relationship to one who simply delivers a new lecture every session.
If your last coach did most of the talking and none of your behaviour changed afterward, that's exactly the gap Kevin's coaching is built to close for you.
...and you become the owner who leaves every session with your own answers and acts on them.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Everyone in your industry follows the same playbook. Here is why fresh eyes beat it, plus a one-hour exercise to borrow a proven idea from another industry this week.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Five lessons from McDonald's own history that a 20-person US business can copy, plus where systems stop and growth questions begin.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Different industries hit different growth constraints. Find the Simple-Growth page written for your type of business, plus two free resources on loyalty and exit planning.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Nearly a third of small business owners have never taken a full week off, and new 2026 data shows the ones working the longest hours are also the most likely to want out. Here is the three-question test for turning hours into real freedom.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Over half of SMEs entering a new market in one UK study hit real problems doing it. The Ansoff Matrix maps the three safer growth routes most owners skip past first.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
45 percent of business owners in one survey feel trapped running the business they built. Here's how the Theory of Constraints, pointed at the owner instead of the process, finds the real fix.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
UK SME owners spend six working days a month on admin and 3.6 days on growth, one survey found. Dan Sullivan's Who Not How habit flips which question you ask first.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Nearly half of SMEs in a 2026 survey had not raised prices since 2022. Here's the three-sentence script that makes the overdue price conversation simple instead of stressful.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
76 of 100 B2B brands in a 2026 study fell into a credible-but-indistinguishable Sameness Zone. Here's the four-word positioning test, the Onliness Statement, that pulls a business out of it.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Your revenue is up and your margin just fell anyway — here's the planning gap behind it. Four moves that put margin back on the same page as your growth target before next year's numbers are set.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
A practical playbook for NZ construction and building products owners: the market, the real growth constraints, how to price and win work, and a 90-day plan.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
53 percent of small business owners say nothing would change if AI vanished tomorrow, and that is not an adoption problem, it is an embedding problem. Here is the three-question test that shows which one your business actually is.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
New industry research finds most senior consumer goods leaders cannot say whether their last year of promotions actually made money. Here is the Revenue Growth Management discipline that fixes it before Christmas stock ships.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
New research shows 90 percent of small business owners are preoccupied with work outside normal hours. Michael Gerber's E-Myth explains why, and names the one shift that actually fixes it.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Workplace research puts the cost of refocusing after an interruption at around 23 minutes, and the average worker now fields well over 100 messages a day. Here is how to protect the hours that actually move your business.