Friday, November 06, 2026

Finding out how last month went three weeks too late isn't a discipline failure. It's an accountability gap, and one weekly email closes it.

You missed dinner again. Not because the business needed you to — because you were replying to a lukewarm enquiry from the one Facebook group you haven't given up on yet, on top of the ad you boosted, the cold emails you sent, and the networking breakfast you can't skip in case it's the one that pays off.

If you want to know why chasing leads is eating your evenings, here's the honest answer: you're working every channel a little instead of one channel properly, and "a little everywhere" is the most expensive way to sell anything.

I used to say yes to every opportunity that landed in front of me. It took me years to learn that saying yes to everyone else's request is how you guarantee you never get to your own.

"Spray And Pray" Isn't A Strategy. It's A Habit Dressed Up As Effort.

The villain here is the belief that more channels equals more sales. It feels productive — you're doing something on five fronts — but five half-tested channels usually convert worse than one properly tested one, because none of them gets the repetition, the budget or the attention it needs to actually work.

Leave it unfixed and the cost isn't just a thin pipeline. It's every evening and weekend you've handed over to "just checking" a channel that was never going to be the one, while the people who matter most to you get whatever energy is left over.

The Bullseye Channel Framework: Test Wide, Then Go All-In On One

Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares built the Bullseye Channel Framework to answer one question for founders drowning in options: of every possible way to find customers, which one is actually worth your full attention? Here's the SME version:

  • Brainstorm every channel that could plausibly reach your customer — referral, content, ads, partnerships, events, cold outreach. Write down all of them, even the unlikely ones.
  • Rank each one honestly on cost, reach and how fast you'd see a result — not on which one you enjoy most.
  • Run a cheap, two-week test on your top three only. Not five. Three.
  • Go all-in on whichever one actually produced a real conversation, and quietly drop the rest.

I block my own diary until midday Monday and mid-morning Tuesday every week, no exceptions, because the channel work and the thinking work only happen if they're protected before the week fills up with everyone else's urgent requests.

"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

Why "Just In Case" Beats "On Purpose" Every Single Time

The real obstacle isn't knowing which channel to test. It's that staying active on five channels feels safer than committing to one, even when the data says one is clearly working better. Fear of missing out quietly overrides the evidence sitting right in front of you.

A second pair of eyes — someone who isn't emotionally attached to the networking breakfast you've been attending for three years — is usually what it takes to make the call and hold you to it. This isn't for you if you want to keep every option open forever. It's for owners ready to pick one channel on purpose and protect the hours that come back.

You don't need to work harder at lead generation. You need to work one channel properly instead of five channels badly — and get your Tuesday nights back in the process.

Key Takeaways

  • List every possible lead channel before judging any of them.
  • Test only your top three, cheaply, for two weeks — not all of them, not forever.
  • Commit fully to the one channel the test actually proves, and drop the rest.
  • Protect fixed hours in your week for this work, before the urgent fires take them.

If your evenings disappear chasing leads on five channels at once, that's the first thing we fix.

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.

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Forrester research finds only 8 percent of B2B buyers name price as the biggest driver of their decision. Here is how to find out what a price objection is actually about, before you reach for a discount.

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

A new Gartner survey finds most B2B buyers would rather research and decide without ever speaking to a salesperson. If your marketing cannot carry the whole sale alone, here is the tool that fixes it.

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

New Gallup data shows only 11 percent of SME owners with staff have a detailed written plan, and most of the rest will try to write next year's in December. Here is the three-date fix to do this week instead.