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.
Anyone can get certified as a business coach in a weekend course. Almost nobody has actually built nine companies, sat in boardrooms with McDonald's, Samsung, IBM and Nestlé, and lived through the specific, expensive mistakes that no course teaches. If you're asking what a business coach actually does, or whether a coach is worth the money, the honest answer starts with a question most SME owners never think to ask: has this person ever actually built what they're advising you to build?
The coaching industry has professionalised heavily over the past decade, and certification is now treated as the primary signal of quality. Certification proves someone understands a coaching framework. It proves nothing about whether they've made payroll in a bad month, navigated a supplier collapse, or turned around a business that was genuinely failing. The best predictor of useful advice isn't a qualification — it's scar tissue. A coach who has personally lost money on a bad hire will ask you sharper questions about your next hire than one who has only ever read about hiring mistakes.
Before engaging any coach, run them through three questions that certification alone can't answer.
1. What have you built, specifically? — Not “advised” or “consulted to.” Built, owned, and been personally on the hook for. Ask for the number of businesses and what happened to each one.
2. What's your worst mistake, in detail? — A coach with real scar tissue will answer this specifically and without flinching. One with only theory will pivot to a generic answer about “learning experiences.”
3. Would they take the advice themselves? — Ask what they'd do in your exact situation if it were their own money and their own team. The answer should sound like a decision, not a framework.
"Kevin D'Ambros-Smith presented on the Icehouse Owner Manager Programme and he was brilliant… it was the most notes I have ever taken from any speaker."
— Steve Holloway, Founder, Between Two Beers Podcast
Credentials are easy to verify from a website. Scar tissue requires a real conversation, and most SME owners are too polite, or too new to the coaching relationship, to ask a prospective coach hard personal questions about their failures before signing up. It feels rude. It isn't — it's due diligence, and it's exactly the kind of question a good coach will welcome, because they know the answer is their strongest credential, not their weakest.
Kevin works personally with a select group of SME owners to build the systems, clarity, and accountability that make growth inevitable — not accidental. 30 years and nine companies of scar tissue included.
...and you become the owner who gets advice from someone who has built what you are building.
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.
Sunday, October 25, 2026
A 2024 study found SME owners lose 22% of their working week to admin and compliance. Here's the task-level AI audit that claws the time back without hiring anyone.
Sunday, October 25, 2026
Seller-initiated deals close at nearly double the rate of buyer-initiated ones. Here's why proactive selling beats waiting for inbound, and how to shift the ratio.
Sunday, October 25, 2026
The best customer-acquisition channel most SME owners ignore isn't an ad platform — it's the audience someone else already spent years building. Here's how to borrow it properly.
Sunday, October 25, 2026
Most strategic plans don't fail in June — they fail the day they're signed off, while everyone still feels confident. Here's the one-page exercise that catches the fatal flaw first.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
79% of SME owners can't make a strategic plan stick, and it's not an ambition problem. Here's the one-page fix that turns an annual plan into a system you actually use every week.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
SMB customer acquisition cost rose 18.4 percent year on year in 2025. Here's Alex Hormozi's Value Equation, and why improving your offer beats outspending a rising ad market.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
A 2026 Bluehost study found 87 percent of small business owners now use AI daily, yet only 6 percent trust it with their brand voice. Here's exactly where a business coach still earns their fee.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Gallup found 55 percent of US business owners have no real plan for their business beyond themselves. Here's the two-week test that reveals how dependent your business really is on you.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
LinkedIn's 2026 research found 40 percent of B2B deals end in "no decision," not a loss to a rival. Here's how to build urgency into your sales process so your pipeline stops dying in silence.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Organic reach on Instagram fell roughly 14 percent year on year in 2026, and every platform is heading the same way. Here's the channel SME owners already own that no algorithm can throttle.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Up to 90 percent of strategies never get executed, and it's almost never the document's fault. Here's the team dysfunction actually behind it, and how to fix it before you rewrite the plan again.
Friday, October 23, 2026
Two-thirds of small business owners are raising prices in 2026. If you're in the third who won't, the real problem is probably your offer, not your price point.
Friday, October 23, 2026
Revenue was fine. Profitability growth wasn't, for the first time in a year and a half. Here's the one number to track through your own busy season so the same thing doesn't happen to you.
Friday, October 23, 2026
Just 25% of business owners have natural delegator talent. Here's the Clockwork test a good coach runs before any strategy conversation happens.