Friday, November 13, 2026
62% of US owners have skipped or cut their own pay this year (Bluevine, 2026). Profit First, and Kevin's own lesson about hiring his own coach, show owners how to pay themselves first, not last.
Last updated 15 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: New Zealand.
This is a story about an owner who wants to grow the business in the right direction — but who's been circling the same big decision for months, because every option looks equally risky and nobody's ever shown them a way to compare them properly. New market? New product? Double down on what's already working? You've turned it over in your head a hundred times, usually around 11pm, and you're no closer to an answer than you were back in July. That's not weak leadership. It's trying to choose between four genuinely different directions using the same gut feel that got you this far — when gut feel was never built for a decision this size.
Every growth decision gets flattened into one feeling: "this is scary, so I'll wait." But a new market, a new product and squeezing more out of your existing customers aren't the same gamble wearing different outfits — they carry different risk, different timelines, and different demands on you personally. Treat them as interchangeable and you'll either freeze on all four, or default to whichever feels most familiar, which is rarely the one that actually fits where the business is right now. Months disappear this way, nothing written down, no real comparison ever made.
Igor Ansoff's Ansoff Matrix splits growth into four distinct routes instead of one vague feeling of risk — and most stuck decisions turn out to be a muddle of two or three of these at once, which is exactly why they feel impossible to weigh up.
Kevin worked on 60+ global brands at DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi & Saatchi, and the lesson that stuck hardest came not from a campaign but from watching how McDonald's actually grew. Not by chasing every opportunity in every market at once — each move was deliberate and sequenced: get the system right where you already are, prove it, then take that exact system somewhere new. The brands chasing everything everywhere at once quietly disappeared within a few years. The ones who picked a route and proved it first were the ones still standing decades later.
"…it was the most notes I have ever taken from any speaker."
Steve Holloway
Founder, Between Two Beers Podcast
Naming four routes doesn't remove the fear — it just gives the fear somewhere to go. Most owners still default to whichever option feels familiar, because familiar feels safer even when the evidence points elsewhere. This isn't for you if you've already mapped your real options against actual numbers and are confidently backing one — some owners genuinely have, and it shows in how calmly they talk about what's next. It's for the owner running the same four scenarios through their head since before winter, nothing written down, nobody outside the business weighing in.
Pick a lane with your eyes open, even an imperfect one, and you'll move further in a week than another six months of turning it over alone ever will.
A strategy tool from Igor Ansoff that splits business growth into four distinct routes — market penetration, market development, product development and diversification — each carrying a different level of risk, so an owner can compare options properly instead of weighing them as one vague gamble.
Usually market penetration — selling more to the customers you already have. It's the lowest-risk route, the fastest to test, and often the one that's been overlooked simply because it feels too ordinary to count as real growth.
Not always, but it's the highest-risk route and rarely the right place to start. It tends to work best once a business has already proven one of the other three routes and has real evidence, not just enthusiasm, behind the next move.
If you've been stuck on the same decision since before winter, that's the conversation worth having first.
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.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
A new Gartner survey finds most B2B buyers would rather research and decide without ever speaking to a salesperson. If your marketing cannot carry the whole sale alone, here is the tool that fixes it.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
New Gallup data shows only 11 percent of SME owners with staff have a detailed written plan, and most of the rest will try to write next year's in December. Here is the three-date fix to do this week instead.
Monday, October 12, 2026
EOS or Scaling Up? A fair, source-linked comparison for US owners, a five-point checklist to choose, and the growth questions neither operating system answers.