Monday, November 09, 2026
The Icehouse publishes a price, dates and a turnover range for its Owner Operator Programme. Here is what that buys, who it suits, when one-to-one coaching fits better, and how co-funding may apply.
You will spend the next few weeks writing an ambitious plan for next year. By late January, most of it will be dead — not because the plan was wrong, but because nobody built the weekly system that was supposed to keep it alive. This is the January Cliff, and it claims more good strategies than bad competitors ever do.
The pattern is remarkably consistent. Q4 planning happens with real energy — a day off-site, a whiteboard full of good ideas, genuine enthusiasm. Then the business heads into the year-end rush, the January reset, the first fires of a new year, and the plan quietly slides off the calendar. By February, nobody can quite remember what the "one big priority" was supposed to be.
The named enemy is not laziness or a lack of commitment. It is the absence of a weekly mechanism that forces the plan back into view before it has a chance to be forgotten. A plan reviewed once a quarter, or worse, once a year, will always lose to the urgency of whatever email arrived this morning.
This is a fifteen-minute ritual, done every single week without exception, that keeps the plan alive between the big planning sessions.
1. Name the one thing — Every Monday, write down the single action, this week, that moves the quarter's priority forward. Not five things. One.
2. Check last week's one thing — Before naming this week's action, be honest about whether last week's got done. If it did not, ask why before adding anything new to the list.
3. Protect the block — Put a non-negotiable 90-minute slot in the calendar for that one action, before the week fills up with everyone else's priorities.
Fifteen minutes a week is the entire cost of keeping a strategy alive. It is also the fifteen minutes almost nobody actually protects.
"Kevin had a no-nonsense approach and tackled the issues head on. Accountability was the key."
— Ashley Berrysmith, Icehouse Coaching Programme
Owners do not abandon the plan because they stop caring about it. They abandon it because nobody outside their own head is checking whether last week's "one thing" actually happened. Self-accountability has a short half-life once the operational noise of running a business kicks back in — and by the time an owner notices the plan has drifted, months of the year are already gone.
There is also a quieter reason: reviewing a plan weekly means confronting, every seven days, whether you actually did what you said you would do. That is an uncomfortable habit to build alone, which is exactly why most owners let it slide the first time a genuinely busy week gets in the way — and then never pick it back up.
This is precisely the mechanism a good coach provides — not motivation, but a fixed weekly checkpoint that makes drifting off the plan uncomfortable enough that it stops happening.
The owners who close this tab and do nothing will still be re-explaining this year's plan in February next year. The ones who build the weekly checkpoint won't be.
...and you become the owner whose plan is still alive in February.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
Flat revenue usually has one cause, not five. Five checks, each with one number, help you find which link is holding your business back before you hire, advertise or discount.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
Before you chase new customers, count how often the ones you have buy. Three numbers, one worked example from Kevin's Know Your Numbers training, and a 30-day test.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
BNI's referral network generated over 4 million referrals in a single quarter, and its model rests on depth over breadth. Here is the Dream 100 method SME owners can use to make referrals a system, not a hope.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
A group programme and one-on-one coaching solve different problems. Here is who each suits, what The Icehouse publishes, and six questions that settle it.
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.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
A rival undercutting you doesn't mean 'grow harder' is the answer. Igor Ansoff's growth matrix shows SME owners the four real routes, and how to pick one on purpose.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
Still at the kitchen table at 9pm telling yourself this is temporary? The isolation of owning a business is common, measurable, and fixable — here's how.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
Still polishing a plan that's been 80% finished for three months? Toyota's Lean ECRS method and Kevin's own 'ship at 70%' rule, for recovering perfectionists.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
Busy one month, silent the next, and no idea which deals were ever real? Neil Rackham's SPIN questions surface the truth weeks before a quiet month does.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
Revenue's climbing and the bank balance still isn't. The real fix usually isn't your price — it's that your marketing never said who you're actually for.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
You're doing the books, the invoicing and the tax, and strategy always loses the fight for your time. Here's the one-hour weekly habit that gets it back, no forty-page plan required.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
Most owners do not lack ideas. They lack a weekly rhythm that turns a plan into action. A five-question check, who Making It Happen ($297) suits, who should skip it, and the real next step. Checked 5 November 2026.
Thursday, November 05, 2026
Vistage puts you in a group of 12 to 16 owners with a Chair. 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 5 November 2026.
Wednesday, November 04, 2026
Rocket Lab began in New Zealand and is now headquartered in Long Beach, California. Three source-linked lessons in outside thinking for US business owners, plus a five-question blind-spot test.
Wednesday, November 04, 2026
Only 39.7% of small businesses actually grew revenue last year, Federal Reserve data shows. If growth feels like the fix for your cash, team or time problems, the numbers say otherwise.