Thursday, October 29, 2026
Nearly half of SME owners say their business doesn't have a money problem — it has a time problem. Here's the 90-day Freedom Plan to fix it.
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, September 09, 2026
Most businesses plan for Q4 in January — after it's already over. The owners who consistently outperform their peers write their Q4 plan in September, while there's still time to act on what they find.
Wednesday, September 09, 2026
A new survey shows the average small business owner is running five jobs at once — and burning 200+ hours a year proving it. Here's the two-hat framework that gets your time back within 90 days.
Tuesday, September 08, 2026
New 2026 consumer data shows most shoppers are value-seekers, not bargain hunters — yet 95% still rate brand trust as important. Here's the six-point test your FMCG brand must pass to earn the sale without discounting.
Tuesday, September 08, 2026
New 2026 grocery data shows branded FMCG products are being promoted twice as often as private label — and still losing share and loyalty. Kevin D'Ambros-Smith on why discounting harder is the wrong fix, and what pricing architecture looks like instead.
Monday, September 07, 2026
A 2026 Fed survey of 6,525 small businesses found owner confidence at a 6-year low — while actual revenue, employment and profitability held steady. Why the gap, not the economy, is the real risk for SME and FMCG owners.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Burst campaigns reset to zero every time. Here's why a sustainable weekly cadence beats an intense one-month push, and how to protect it through the slow months.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most SME sales forecasts are built by adding up pipeline value — and it's almost always wrong. Here's how exit criteria, deal age, and weighted forecasting fix it.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most of what fills an owner's calendar isn't driving results. Here's how to run a structured 80/20 audit that identifies the real 20% — and what to do with the rest.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
One-on-one coaching diagnoses and designs strategy. A peer accountability group enforces it. Here's why the combination produces follow-through that neither achieves alone.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Organic growth isn't the only path. Here's how well-chosen SME acquisitions can compress years of growth into one transaction — and where most owners get the due diligence wrong.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most SME roadmaps fail from what they never remove, not what they add. Here's the three-question kill list to run before your next planning cycle — and why pruning, not adding, is what actually frees up growth capacity.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Paid social and search rent attention you don't own. Your email list is the one channel most SMEs already have permission to use — and almost never invest in properly. Here's how to turn it into a real asset.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most sales training focuses on the pitch and the close. The call is usually already lost in the first five minutes. Here's the agenda-set and diagnostic sequence that fixes it — at the team level, not just for one rep.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Delegation doesn't fail because your team can't do the work — it fails because nobody defined what "done" looked like before the task started. Here's the four-part handoff that fixes it.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Self-funded expansion runs out of capital and management bandwidth before it runs out of market opportunity. Here's the franchise-readiness test and how to compare licensing against scaling it yourself.