Thursday, October 29, 2026
A lot of owners try the wrong format, see no shift, and decide coaching doesn't work for them. Here's what a peer room is actually good for, what 1:1 coaching is actually good for, and a 3-check way to pick.
Last updated 11 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: United States.
There's a decision you've been circling for months — a new market, a new hire, a new product line. You've thought about it in the shower, on the drive home, at 11pm when you should be asleep. You want to actually make it. What you've done instead is build a very detailed list of reasons it might go wrong, and used that list as a reason to do nothing at all.
Bluevine's 2026 US survey of small-business owners (781 owners, fielded 27 February to 9 March 2026) found 68% had delayed or avoided a major business decision, such as hiring, buying equipment or expanding, in the past 12 months. Bluevine ties the delays to financial stress: the pressure makes the risks feel too big to take. The enemy here isn't the decision itself. It's the habit of listing risks forever instead of ever turning the list into a move.
A SWOT list — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats — is where most owners stop. Management theorist Heinz Weihrich took it one step further with what he called TOWS: instead of just listing the four boxes, you pair them up and force out an actual action from each pairing.
Kevin worked on 60+ global brands at DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi & Saatchi, McDonald's among them, before founding or co-founding nine companies. The big-brand habit he brings to coaching is simple: make an important decision once, properly, rather than re-litigating it with fresh panic every time it comes up. Big-brand thinking, small-business clarity, applied to the exact decision you're circling right now.
Pick the decision you've been circling and give it a real deadline this week — not ‘soon’, an actual date on the calendar, the same way you'd commit to a client delivery. Run the TOWS pairing with one other person in the room, even if that's just a trusted friend over coffee, because the fourth box — what would actually sink you — is almost always smaller and less likely than it feels alone at 11pm. Owners who've made a big call this way tend to say the same thing afterwards: the decision itself took an afternoon. It was the circling beforehand, sometimes for months, that actually cost them the time and the sleep.
“You make success tangible.”
“Now have clarity of purpose and belief.”
“Make tripling the size of my business go from seeming impossible to really possible.”
Lina
Good Gravy
A risk list grows forever when there's no deadline and no one else in the room. Left alone with it, most owners just add another row. This isn't for you if the decision genuinely needs more information first — go get the information, that's sensible, not avoidance. It's for the decision where you already have what you need and you're circling anyway. That's the moment a second pair of eyes, and someone willing to hold a date against it, actually earns their keep.
Bluevine's 2026 survey of 781 US small-business owners found 68% had delayed or avoided a major business decision in the past 12 months, and linked the delays to financial stress.
TOWS pairs the four SWOT boxes (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) with each other, so each pairing produces an action instead of just a list. It was proposed by Heinz Weihrich.
If a specific missing fact would change your answer, go and get it. If you already have what you need and keep circling, set a date and decide.
No. A trusted second person and a firm date will do much of the work. A coach adds an outside view and holds you to the date.
Sources (read 11 November 2026, United States): Bluevine, Small Business Burnout Report (Centiment survey, 27 February to 9 March 2026). Last updated 11 November 2026.
If you've been circling the same decision for months, that's exactly the kind of thing a second opinion could unstick this week.