Monday, October 26, 2026
A well-known coaching ROI study found a $7.90 return per $1 spent. Here's an honest look at where that number comes from, and what actually transfers to an SME owner.
Every November, a familiar ritual starts in boardrooms and kitchen-table offices across New Zealand and the US: next year's number gets set. Usually it's last year's revenue plus a percentage that felt ambitious in the moment. A widely cited UK survey of business leaders found 44% had missed their own earnings target at some point, and almost half missed it in the very first quarter of the year. If that's been your pattern too, the problem almost certainly isn't effort — it's how the target got built in the first place.
After founding or co-founding nine companies and coaching more than 200 businesses one-on-one, Kevin has never once seen a team miss a target because they didn't try hard enough. He has seen plenty miss because the target was fiction from the day it was written down.
Here's the enemy: percentage-on-last-year planning. Take this year's revenue, add 15% or 20% because that number sounds motivating in a meeting, and call it the plan. It isn't a plan — it's an extrapolation, and extrapolations don't account for a market that's shifted, a team that's already at capacity, or an owner who's quietly run out of hours in the week.
A 2023 survey conducted by the revenue-intelligence firm Gong, reported in Startups Magazine (UK), found that more than half of business leaders said accurate forecasting mattered more because of economic uncertainty — yet most were still building those forecasts in a spreadsheet, dragging last year's line forward. The target wasn't wrong because people didn't work hard enough to hit it. It was wrong on the day it was set.
Before you write down a number for 2027, run it past three checks instead of one gut feel:
"I have grown my business 5x since working with Kevin. Everything Kevin told me to do was the complete opposite of what I had been doing. Working with Kevin has truly been a complete game changer."
— Richard, Chem Suppliers
Most owners already sense their target is soft. They build it the old way anyway, because the three checks above take an honest look at the business, and an honest look takes someone outside the business to run it properly. Inside your own head, the capacity ceiling always looks a little higher and the market always looks a little kinder than it really is. That's not a character flaw — it's just what happens when the person setting the target is the same person who has to live with the consequences of getting it wrong.
This is the exact gap a coach closes: someone in the room who has no incentive to flatter your forecast, and thirty years of watching which numbers hold up and which ones quietly unravel by March.
If your 2027 target is just last year's number with a percentage bolted on, Kevin will help you fix that first.
Be the owner who starts 2027 with a target built on real numbers, not a hopeful percentage.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
A 1 percent price increase lifts operating profit by an average of 11 percent, McKinsey's Global 1200 research found, far more than an equivalent rise in volume. Here's how to raise prices without losing your best customers.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Some coaches build a business out of being needed forever. Here's the Graduation Test: three questions that reveal whether your coach is transferring real capability, or just keeping you on retainer.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most owners respond to a bottleneck by fixing something else entirely. Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints explains why that backfires, and documented case studies show a mean 69 percent lead-time reduction once the real constraint is found.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Roughly four in ten B2B purchase attempts end in no decision at all. It's rarely about price. Here's Alex Hormozi's Value Equation, in plain English, and why it explains almost every stalled deal in your pipeline.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
41 percent of consumers now always read reviews before choosing a business, and 31 percent won't use one rated under 4.5 stars. Here's the Review Velocity System that turns happy customers into a steady stream of five-star proof.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
64 percent of executives say they're juggling too many conflicting priorities, and most SME strategies die from addition, not ambition. Here's the three-step Strategic Short List that turns six priorities into the one that actually moves the needle.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
A third of small business owners are absorbing this year's cost increases out of their own pocket instead of raising prices. Here's the three-step Margin Audit that turns that guess into a safe, thirty-day pricing test.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Before you approve the next hire, run the revenue-per-employee test. Some of the growth you are trying to buy with headcount is sitting in tasks AI can already take off the list.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Owner-dependent businesses sell for roughly half the multiple of businesses that run without them. Dan Sullivan's Who Not How question is the simplest fix most owners never try.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The tasks only one person in your business can do are a hidden cost waiting to land. Here is how to clear the backlog in an afternoon using a recorder instead of a blank page.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Chasing every lead in the run to year end is how you end up delivering the deals that cost you the most. Here is the Right-Fit Filter that catches a bad deal before you quote it.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Big brands never approve a campaign on gut feel alone. Here is the cheap, 48-hour pretest SME owners can run on any piece of marketing before a single dollar goes to media.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
There is no single best business coach in New Zealand, only the best fit for your stage and your problem. Here are six criteria, an honest map of the NZ options, and where Kevin D'Ambros-Smith fits.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most SME strategies are really just revenue wishlists with no diagnosis behind them. Here is the three-part test that separates a real strategy from a wish, and what to fix first if yours fails it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
94% of small businesses using AI across multiple functions have cut spending on marketing, data and bookkeeping, and they are more confident than ever. Here is the three-question audit to run before you cut judgment along with the invoice.