Sunday, November 08, 2026

Only finding out how last month went weeks later? An NBA team’s gamified sleep stats and the One Metric That Matters framework fix that this week.

You've known for months that your prices need to go up. Costs have crept, your margin's thinner than it was, and you've done the maths more than once. And you still haven't sent the email. You want to charge what the work is actually worth. What's stopping you isn't the maths — it's the fear that the moment you do, every one of your customers quietly walks to someone cheaper.

The Enemy Is ‘Price Is The Problem’

In the US Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey, employers with one to four staff expect the prices they pay to rise 54.7% of the time over the next six months — but only 33.4% expect to raise what they charge. That gap doesn't close itself. It closes when you stop treating price as the thing customers judge, and start treating value as the thing you've never actually spelled out.

The Value Equation

Alex Hormozi's Grand Slam Offer framework boils value down to one equation: value rises with the dream outcome and the likelihood you'll deliver it, and falls with the time and effort it costs the customer. Raise the top, shrink the bottom, and the price barely matters.

  • Name the dream outcome in the customer's words, not yours — what they actually wanted when they called.
  • Prove the likelihood with a guarantee, a result or a story that removes their doubt.
  • Strip out time and effort — anything you can make faster or easier is worth more than a discount ever was.

Early in his agency career, Kevin worked on a well-known food brand that plenty of people assumed was a commodity nobody would ever pay a premium for. The campaigns that actually worked weren't built on a cheaper jar. They were built on genuine insight into why people loved or loathed it so strongly — insight deep enough to justify standing out instead of blending in on price. The lesson transfers directly: the businesses that get away with charging properly are the ones who understood their customer's real want before they ever talked about the number.

Try this before you touch a single price list: call three of your best customers and ask them, in their own words, what changed for them after they bought from you — not what they bought, what actually got better. Write their answers down verbatim. That's your dream outcome, proven, in language you didn't invent. Most owners discover their own pitch has been undervaluing the result for years, talking about the service instead of the outcome it buys. Raise the price on the strength of that answer, not a guess about what the market will bear, and the conversation about money gets a lot shorter — because you're no longer the one who has to make the case for it.

“Kevin doesn't just present — he electrifies the room and drives massive, real-world value! He drops game-changing insights and actionable shortcuts that show businesses exactly how to turn everyday customers into raving, loyal fans — and acquire new ones faster than ever thought possible.”

— Gareth Bayliss, Sales Manager, The Icehouse

Why You Keep Putting It Off

The fear isn't irrational — some customers genuinely will leave over a few dollars. But those are rarely the customers carrying your margin, and losing the wrong ones at a higher price can leave you better off than keeping everyone at today's price. This isn't for you if your whole offer really is the cheapest option in the market — that's a real strategy, just a different one. For everyone else, the number you're scared of is smaller than the cost of staying where you are.

Key Takeaways

  • Write down the dream outcome your best customers are actually paying for, in their words.
  • Close the gap between what your costs are doing and what your prices are doing.
  • Expect a small number of price-only customers to leave — and do the maths on losing them.
  • Pick one service or product to reprice this month, not the whole list at once.

If you've been sitting on a price rise for months, that's a five-minute conversation, not a five-month decision.

Friday, September 04, 2026

88% of founders admit stress causes poor decisions, but only 19% have the delegation skills proven to fix it. Why the fix for founder burnout is a decision-rights system — not rest.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Launching new lines the moment your core product works feels like growth. The data says it's usually what causes the plateau.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Being the best operator built your business. Staying the best operator is now the ceiling on how big it can get.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Buying a new platform feels like progress. Usually it's avoidance — the process was broken before the software, and stays broken after.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Your top performer's secret isn't a better pitch — it's a question sequence that gets the prospect to close themselves.

Friday, September 04, 2026

You don't need a national ad budget to get cut-through — you need dominance in the community your customers already trust.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Most strategy fails in translation, not ambition. Here's how to cascade a boardroom goal all the way down to a Monday task list.

Friday, September 04, 2026

56% of US shoppers have quit buying a brand over shrinkflation. Why quietly shrinking packs costs FMCG brands more than an honest price rise — and how to build a value-change system instead.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Most FMCG brands that succeed regionally never make the jump to national shelf space. Here's what the brands that do scale nationally build before the big order arrives — capacity, standardisation, and sell-through data — and why the brands that don't fail fast once they win it.

Friday, September 04, 2026

The owners who get the most from coaching don't walk in with good news — they walk in with a real problem. Here's why the progress-report habit quietly wastes coaching sessions, and what to bring instead.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Most productivity advice optimises the calendar you already have. The real fix is deciding what doesn't belong on it. Here's the 90/10 diagnostic for finding — and protecting — the small share of your week that actually drives growth.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Most sales training focuses on the pitch and the close. The outcome is usually decided in the first five minutes. Here's the diagnostic-first opening sequence that changes conversion rates without changing your product or your price.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Most SME marketing leads with product specs. Buyers respond to stories. Here's the system for finding, capturing, and multiplying the customer stories you already have — with an FMCG-specific angle on letting the shelf and repeat-purchase data talk.

Friday, September 04, 2026

Most SME owners treat pricing as a set-and-forget cost calculation. Here's why price is actually the highest-leverage growth lever in your business — and the three-number method for testing whether you're underpriced.

Friday, September 04, 2026

A new study puts SME admin overload at $17,000 per employee a year — and finds AI tools alone aren't fixing it. Why systems have to come before software.