Sunday, October 25, 2026
Help to Grow: Management, a peer group like Vistage, or a business coach? An honest UK comparison, with best for and not ideal if for every option.
There's one hire almost every SME owner has been avoiding for at least a year. Not because the business doesn't need it — because the owner has quietly decided they can't afford it, right before spending another week doing the job themselves instead of running the business. A 2023 study of US founders found they spend 36% of their working week on admin tasks — invoicing, scheduling, data entry, research — almost none of which is the reason they started the business in the first place.
Across more than 200 businesses Kevin has coached one-on-one, the owners stuck at the same revenue three years running almost always have one thing in common: they're still personally doing the job they should have handed off twelve months ago.
That sentence is true in the moment and ruinous over a year. The same research found 25% of founders say it's faster to do a task themselves than to hand it off, 27% keep tasks because they enjoy them, and 17% say they have no one to delegate to. Every one of those reasons is real — and every one of them is also how an owner ends up running a job instead of owning a business.
The research, a 2023 Time Etc / Censuswide survey of 251 US founders, also found founders with strong delegation habits ran businesses averaging roughly a third more revenue than founders who held on to everything. Delegation isn't a nice-to-have. It's a growth lever with a number attached.
Strategic coach Dan Sullivan and psychologist Dr. Benjamin Hardy built a simple reframe around this exact trap: when you hit a task you don't want to do, stop asking "how do I do this?" and start asking "who could do this for me?" The first question keeps you the bottleneck forever, because there's always another "how" to learn. The second question treats your time as the scarce resource it actually is.
Here's how to put it to work this week, with an AI-era twist: before you hire a human "who," check whether a tool is already a good enough "who" for the lowest-value slice of the task.
"What we achieved in the last 3 months working with Kevin would have taken 2 years. Kevin's assistance has been very inspirational to our staff. We have achieved changes and changes of thought patterns it could have taken 2 years in normal trading conditions."
— Chris, Global Culture
Owners almost always price the hire against their wage, not their value. A $30-an-hour admin task feels expensive to outsource when you're staring at a quiet bank balance — right up until you calculate what your own hour is worth doing the one thing only you can do: sell, lead, or decide. That reframing rarely happens alone, in the middle of a busy week. It's exactly the kind of outside, unemotional maths a coach brings to the table.
You get Kevin's big-brand thinking applied to your business, so the next dollar goes where it counts.
Be the owner who finally hands off the job you've been holding for a year, and spends your week on the work only you can do.
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.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Twelve million American businesses worth nearly $10 trillion need new owners within a decade - and most of them, as currently run, cannot be sold. Here is the three-part test that tells you whether yours is one of them, and what to fix first.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Bain found a 5 percent lift in customer retention can boost profits 25 to 95 percent. Here's the Cohort Retention Audit that reveals whether your growth is real or just replacing lost customers.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Research shows much of the feedback we receive is too comfortable to change anything. Here's the Pushback Test that reveals whether your business coach genuinely challenges you or just agrees.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
APA-published research found task switching can cost up to 40 percent of productive time. Here's the Work-in-Progress Cap that stops SME owners starting everything and finishing nothing.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Gartner found B2B buyers now complete 80 percent of their journey before talking to a vendor. Here's the Pitch Refresh Audit that stops your sales team pitching to a buyer who already knows.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Nielsen found 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know over any advertising. Here's the Proof Asset Audit that puts your own customers' stories to work instead.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Most leadership teams spend less than an hour a month on strategy, and half spend none at all. Here is the protected-time system that fixes it, and why accountability is the missing ingredient.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
93% of small business owners expect growth this year — but 75% no longer trust their own bank to fund it. Here's the Cash Flow Runway Check to close the gap.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Most strategic plans die quietly by March — not from a bad plan, but from no system to keep it alive. Here's the 90-minute review that fixes it.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Nearly half of buyers already ask AI platforms to recommend a business like yours. Here's how to make sure you're the one they mention.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Most SME owners discount before the buyer even objects — and call it good negotiating. Here's the sequence that stops you giving margin away for free.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Your Q4 plan will likely be forgotten by February unless something forces it back into view every week. Here's the 15-minute ritual that keeps it alive.
Friday, September 25, 2026
The smartest owners often have the biggest blind spots, because nobody around them dares to point them out. Here's how to find yours before they cost you.