Sunday, November 01, 2026
Four well-known ways to get help growing your business, compared on who each suits, what is publicly known about cost, and the seven questions to ask before you sign. Checked 1 November 2026.
You said yes again. Another enquiry that doesn't quite fit, another client who'll argue the quote, another project that'll eat your weekend for a margin that barely covers the diesel. You know this one won't be easy. You take it anyway, because turning down revenue feels like turning down the business itself.
Here's the question worth asking before you chase one more customer: do you actually know who you're trying to win? Not "anyone who'll pay" — the specific, nameable kind of customer your business is built to serve brilliantly. Most SME owners can't answer that in one sentence, and it's costing them more than the client who argues the quote.
In over 30 years working inside global agencies and founding nine companies of my own, the pattern repeats: businesses that try to be right for everyone end up being unforgettable to no one.
Growth advice usually starts and ends with volume — more leads, more enquiries, more yeses. Nobody tells you that saying yes to the wrong customer is a decision, made over and over, that quietly sets your strategy for you. Every client you accept who isn't a genuine fit teaches your business, your pricing and your team that this is the kind of work you do. You don't drift into being the business that attracts difficult, low-margin, energy-draining customers. You choose it, one enquiry at a time, by never choosing anything at all.
A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin, who led Procter and Gamble's turnaround, built their strategy process around one deceptively simple question that comes before any other: where will you play? Not every market, not every customer — the specific arena you can genuinely win in. Only once that's decided does "how to win" matter. Most SME strategic plans skip straight to tactics — ads, offers, hustle — without ever properly answering the first question.
I watched this choice change everything for a high-end jeweller I worked with. Her mission was deliberately audacious: Rihanna wearing one of her designs to the Met Gala. It sounds like vanity until you see what it actually did — it told her, instantly, which commissions were worth her time and which weren't. Within the year, Cardi B and Stephanie Seymour wore her pieces in Paris. That didn't happen because she said yes to more customers. It happened because she got brutally clear on which ones she was playing to win with.
"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
Almost every owner I coach already knows, somewhere, which customers drain them. What stops them acting on it isn't ignorance — it's fear that saying no will leave a hole in the revenue nobody fills. That fear is solvable, but not by thinking harder about it alone. It's solved by building the pipeline and the pricing that make "no" safe to say, which is exactly the work a coach does alongside an owner, not instead of them.
This isn't for you if turning down revenue, even the bad kind, still feels impossible today. That's fine — it usually takes one real win with the right customer before "no" stops feeling like a loss.
If your calendar is full of customers who drain you instead of the ones who'd grow you, that's the first thing we fix.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Five lessons from McDonald's own history that a 20-person US business can copy, plus where systems stop and growth questions begin.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Different industries hit different growth constraints. Find the Simple-Growth page written for your type of business, plus two free resources on loyalty and exit planning.
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.