Keeping It Simple
The fastest, simplest ways to grow your business - no jargon, no fluff. Practical strategies that actually work for SME owners in the USA, New Zealand, and worldwide.
Monday, October 05, 2026
There is no single best business coach in the USA. Here are five criteria for choosing one, a fair look at the main formats, and why an outside perspective can change what you see in your own business.
You wrote the strategy. You ran the off-site, filled the whiteboard, built the slide deck. Then the quarter started, the inbox filled back up, and six months later that deck is still sitting unopened on a laptop. The usual explanation is that the strategy was wrong. It almost never is. The real problem is that there were too many right ideas on the page at once. A Strategy and PwC survey of 1,800 global executives found that 64 percent say they are juggling too many conflicting priorities right now — and a business with six strategic priorities does not have a strategy, it has a wish list with a deadline. Kevin D'Ambros-Smith has sat in strategy sessions at DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi and Saatchi, and has run over two hundred of them for SME owners since 2017, and the pattern repeats at every scale: more priorities, less progress.
The Strategy That's Actually a Wish List
Owners add initiatives because every one of them sounds valuable, and cutting one feels like leaving money on the table. So the plan grows to six, eight, ten "priorities" — and a team facing ten priorities cannot name the one thing that matters this quarter. Without that, people default to whatever is loudest in their inbox instead of whatever moves the business. The enemy here is not laziness or a weak team. It is a strategy document that was built by addition and never once edited by subtraction.
The Strategic Short List
This is the three-step method Kevin runs with Simple-Growth clients in their first strategy session, well before any new initiative gets greenlit.
- 1. The Cut — list every initiative currently in motion, then cut the list to three, maximum. Anything that doesn't move the needle this quarter gets parked, not abandoned.
- 2. The Kill — for every new priority added, name one existing thing the business will stop doing. No net-new without a net-less.
- 3. The One Number — attach a single, owned metric to the top priority, reviewed weekly by one named person, never a committee.
"He really got our vision from the beginning and has been a huge help in putting together a clearer plan and strategy for the next five years. Working with Kevin D'Ambros-Smith has given us the space to pause and reflect — on where we are now, where we want to be and how we get there."
— Gabby Kirk, Papier Hq
Why Owners Know This and Still Don't Do It
Most owners already sense they are spread too thin. They don't cut the list because every initiative on it has a reason, and nobody wants to be the one who kills the team's pet project. That is precisely where an outside perspective earns its keep. A coach with no emotional investment in any one of the six initiatives can ask the question the owner cannot ask themselves: which three of these, if they disappeared tomorrow, would the business barely notice? That one question, asked by someone who has built and sold nine companies rather than just studied them, is usually enough to get a plan down to a size a team can actually execute.
Quick Wins
- Write down every initiative currently under way, on one page, no editing yet.
- Circle the three that would move revenue, margin or capacity fastest this quarter.
- For everything left uncircled, write a parking date, not a death sentence — then stop talking about it until that date.
Key Takeaways
- Most strategies fail from addition, not ambition — 64 percent of executives report the same overload.
- Cap active priorities at three. A fourth priority is a decision to make the other three slower.
- Every new initiative needs a named initiative it replaces — growth by subtraction, not just addition.
- One owned metric, reviewed weekly by one named person, beats a scorecard nobody checks.
If your strategy document has more than three priorities on it, that document isn't the plan — it's the reason the plan isn't happening.
Kevin D’Ambros-Smith
Kevin is the founder of Simple-Growth and a business growth coach with experience at DDB, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has co-founded 9 companies, coached 200+ business owners one-on-one, and holds a 9.5/10 NPS. Every article on this blog reflects real-world experience - no theory, no fluff.
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Monday, October 05, 2026
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