Sunday, October 25, 2026
More people call themselves a business coach than ever before. Here's the one test that actually separates a coach who gets results from one who just talks.
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.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most SME marketing still targets a customer persona sketched out years ago. Here's how to find out who's actually buying — and fix the mismatch.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most SME sales proposals are built to impress, not to close. Here's the one-page format that gets buyers to yes faster.
Monday, September 21, 2026
If Sunday afternoon has become the least relaxing part of your weekend, it's a design problem, not a discipline one. Here's the fix.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most owners choose a coaching format by budget, not by stage. Here's the test that shows which format actually fits your business right now.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Private label deals look like free growth — until they quietly cost you margin, capacity, and control. Here's how to protect your brand before signing.
Monday, September 21, 2026
New global research says 68% of small business owners now choose stability over speed — and that's the smarter growth strategy. Here's the 3-step Depth Audit to grow without breaking what you've built.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Most growth strategies don't fail because the market changed — they fail because nobody tested the assumptions underneath them. Here's the four-question audit that catches the weak spot before it costs you a year.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Your website, socials, and sales team may all be telling a slightly different story. Consistent brands see up to 33% more revenue — here's the one-page Message Map that fixes the drift.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Sales closes the deal, then delivery loses the customer within a quarter. The one-page Handover Brief that carries the promise, the anxiety, and the customer's real definition of success forward.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Every interruption costs roughly 23 minutes of refocus time, not seconds. The Protected Block system that stops "always available" from quietly destroying your most productive hours.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Coaching doesn't feel like steady progress — it dips hard around week five before the real structural change lands. Here's the 90-day curve nobody warns owners about, and why it matters.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
The instincts that built your first million will cap your next five if you don't replace them. Greiner's Growth Model explains why — and the Stage Check that shows if you've already outgrown your playbook.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
A new NielsenIQ study found 58% of shoppers don't care if it's your brand or the store's own. Here's the 3-step test to see if your FMCG brand earns its price premium.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Chasing every dollar of revenue isn't a growth strategy — it's a collection plate. Here's the four-question filter Kevin uses with clients before any deal gets signed.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Most SMEs treat marketing spend like rent — fixed, tolerated, never questioned. Here's the 70-20-10 test-and-learn loop that turns it into compounding evidence instead.