Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Vet and allied health practices rarely have a clinical problem. Here is how to find the real constraint, keep patients returning and build a 90-day growth plan.
You took two days off last month. You spent one of them on your phone anyway, answering questions that, if you're honest, your team could have answered themselves — if they'd been allowed to. You know the feeling of walking back in on day three to a pile of decisions waiting, each one too small to justify having been bothered, and large enough, stacked together, that you wonder what you're actually paying people for. You can build a business that runs without you in the room. The fix isn't a better team. It's figuring out whose problem you've been quietly carrying.
In a 1974 Harvard Business Review article still taught today, William Oncken Jr. and Donald Wass described every unresolved problem as a monkey sitting on someone's back. The villain isn't your team's ability. It's the moment someone walks in with a problem and, without either of you quite noticing, the monkey jumps from their back to yours. You say, reasonably, leave it with me, I'll have a think — and congratulate yourself on being a supportive boss. What actually happened is you took on their work, and they walked out lighter while you walked around carrying one more thing nobody else can finish without you.
You don't fix this by working harder at saying yes faster. You fix it by changing what happens in the thirty seconds after someone brings you a problem.
I've had to learn this one the hard way myself. For years I struggled to say no — every yes to someone else's request was a yes to their goal and a no to mine, and I didn't notice how many monkeys I was collecting until my own week was full of other people's problems and none of my own priorities. These days I block my diary until midday Monday and mid-morning Tuesday, every week, for nothing but my own thinking. It's the single change that's protected more of my time than any productivity app ever has.
"Kevin had a no-nonsense approach and tackled the issues head on. Accountability was the key."
— Ashley Berrysmith, Icehouse Coaching Programme
Here's the real obstacle: handing a problem back feels, in the moment, like being unhelpful. It isn't. It's the only thing that actually builds a team capable of solving its own problems instead of forwarding them to you. Most owners know this. Almost none hold the line on day one of trying it, because the first time someone looks stuck, instinct says rescue them. That's exactly where an outside accountability partner earns their keep — not doing the thinking for you, but holding you to the handback when your instinct says take it back.
This isn't for you if being needed for every decision feels like proof you're essential. It's for you if you're ready to build a business that can run a Friday afternoon without a single call to you.
If you can't remember your last real day off, that's usually the first thing we fix together.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Winning deals teaches you what worked once. Losing deals, reviewed properly, reveals exactly where your sales process breaks — and keeps breaking until someone looks.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Big systems feel like progress but rarely fix productivity. The dozen small daily frictions nobody's bothered to remove are usually the real cost.
Monday, September 21, 2026
The cheapest coaching option is often the most expensive one once you count the year it fails to fix. Here's what a coaching engagement should actually deliver for the price.
Monday, September 21, 2026
The fastest way to grow isn't always a bigger ad budget — it's borrowing the trust a complementary business has already earned with your exact customer.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Dollar sales are up 0.8% but real unit demand fell 1.7% in the latest US retail data. If your revenue growth is just a price story, here's how to find out — and fix it.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most business plans are fiction the moment they're printed. Here's the 3-step Resource Alignment Audit that reveals the strategy you're actually running — and how to close the gap before it costs you another quarter.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most small business marketing budgets chase the customers who already love you. Category Entry Point Mapping shows why that caps your growth — and where the real customers are hiding.
Monday, September 21, 2026
More leads won't fix a slow sales pipeline. Learn the sales velocity formula SME owners rarely calculate — and the one lever that moves revenue faster than any lead-gen campaign.
Monday, September 21, 2026
"It's faster if I do it myself" is quietly capping your business's growth. Learn the $200-an-Hour Test to see what your delegation debt is really costing you.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Anyone can get certified as a business coach in a weekend. Almost nobody has actually built what they're advising you to build. Here's the Scar Tissue Test to tell the difference.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Winning deals and building compounding growth are not the same thing. Learn the Compounding Growth Audit to see if your business is actually building an asset — or starting from zero every quarter.
Monday, September 21, 2026
16% of grocery households now have someone using a GLP-1 medication — and they're buying less across your category, not switching brands. Here's the three-step Appetite Audit for your range before Q4.
Monday, September 21, 2026
Most SME owners compete by trying to be better than everyone else — and that's exactly why they're stuck. Here's the 3-step framework to become the only option instead.
Monday, September 21, 2026
You paid for a website and a rebrand — but your Google Business Profile is what's actually deciding who gets the call. Here's how to fix it this week.
Monday, September 21, 2026
The order you say things in a sales call matters more than the words. Here's the pricing sequence mistake quietly costing SME owners their margin.