Thursday, November 12, 2026
Regional chambers now run business training, some with the Icehouse, and many carry Regional Business Partner funding. Here is what a Hamilton programme and a Nelson workshop actually offered, who each suits, and when a coach by video call is the better fit.
Last updated 13 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: United States.
You posted again this week. You boosted it, you tagged it, you even paid for the ad. A few likes, maybe a comment from someone who was never going to buy. You want your marketing to pull in customers who actually want what you sell, without you having to shout louder every week. What you've actually built is a message aimed at "anyone," which is why it lands with almost no one — including, most expensively, the people who drain your time and never convert.
A 2026 industry report from COSMarketing Agency found small businesses in the US are wasting up to 40 cents of every marketing dollar on leads that were never a fit in the first place (COSMarketing Agency, 2026). That's not a budget problem. It's a targeting problem wearing a budget costume. When you market to "anyone who might want this," you spend real money attracting the half of your inquiries who were always going to be slow to pay, hard to please, or gone after one job — and you never free up the time or money to go looking for the customers who actually make the business worth running.
Marketer Russell Brunson's Hook, Story, Offer framework — built out as a Value Ladder — starts from a single, specific buyer rather than a broad audience, then stacks offers from a small first step up to the real relationship. In plain terms:
Kevin saw this done properly with the physiotherapy brand PhysioAction and with Ellis Co, a facilities and solutions business. Neither started with a slogan. Kevin had them sit down with real customers and ask, plainly, why they'd actually chosen and stayed. The positioning that came out the other side wasn't written in a boardroom — it was lifted almost word for word from the customers who already loved the business. It worked precisely because it wasn't written for everyone; it was written for people who sounded exactly like the ones already in the room.
Try it this week: pull up your five best customers from the last twelve months and write down, in their words if you can, why they picked you. That sentence — not a brainstorm, not a rebrand — is your new hook.
"Kevin has some amazing ideas around marketing, things we would have never thought of ourselves. He also helped us through the process of getting into supermarkets. He has gone above and beyond what he needed to!"
Amy Nixon
Icehouse Coaching Programme
Narrowing the message feels like turning away business, so most owners widen it instead and hope volume covers the gap. This isn't for you if you're genuinely running a true commodity business where nobody cares who they buy from — a handful of categories work that way. For everyone else, the fix isn't a bigger audience. It's a sharper one, built from the customers you'd clone if you could.
A sequence of offers, from a small first step to the full relationship, built around one specific buyer rather than a broad audience — a structure popularised by marketer Russell Brunson.
It feels riskier but usually isn't — a broad message is already failing to convert most of the audience it reaches; a narrow one converts far more of a smaller, better-fit group.
From your own best customers. Ask five of them, in their words, why they chose and stayed with you, and use that language directly.
If you can't name your five best customers by face, that's the exercise we start with.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME owners are fixing the wrong problem. Here's the 3-step method that finds the one constraint actually holding your growth back, before you spend another dollar.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
A third of US small business owners say they don't know whether they have the tools — AI included — to grow next year. That's not a confidence problem, it's a visibility one, and it's fixable in an afternoon.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Confidence up a quarter, down the next, tariffs easing then tightening — waiting for certainty is its own decision, and usually the wrong one. Here's a simple way to keep deciding well when the ground keeps moving.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
There's one role almost every SME owner has avoided filling for a year or more — while quietly doing it themselves instead. Here's the Who Not How framework, and the three-step test that makes the hire obvious.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
They nodded, asked great questions, said it's exactly what they need — then disappeared. Here's why warmth isn't a buying signal, and the three-message sequence that gets stalled deals talking again.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME marketing describes the product and targets a demographic — and both miss why people actually buy. Here's the Jobs To Be Done framework, and how to find the job your business is really being hired to do.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Nearly half of businesses miss the target they set for themselves — and it's rarely because the team didn't try hard enough. Here's the three-number check that builds a 2027 target you can actually hit.
Monday, October 26, 2026
ActionCOACH, an EOS Implementer or an independent coach? A fair, source-linked guide for US owners, with a six-question test to match the help to your biggest constraint.
Monday, October 26, 2026
Gallup's 2026 global workplace data shows manager engagement is collapsing faster than everyone else's. Here's the research-backed 3-step fix for SME owners wearing the manager hat too.
Monday, October 26, 2026
Only about a third of seasonal businesses hold enough cash to cover their leanest months before the slow season hits. Here's the ten-minute reserve check before this year's peak trade.
Monday, October 26, 2026
A well-known coaching ROI study found a $7.90 return per $1 spent. Here's an honest look at where that number comes from, and what actually transfers to an SME owner.
Monday, October 26, 2026
Only around 20% of companies complete 80% of their strategic goals, and fewer than half of employees know what's expected of them. Here's how OKRs fix that at SME scale.
Monday, October 26, 2026
Bain research shows winning a new customer can cost up to 25 times more than keeping one you already have. Here's the CLV/CAC discipline that flips where your sales effort goes.
Monday, October 26, 2026
A 2026 Gartner survey found SMEs put just 12% of marketing spend into brand-building, against the 60% long-term research recommends. Here's what that costs you eighteen months from now.
Monday, October 26, 2026
Fewer than 5% of employees understand their company's strategy well enough to act on it. Here's the one-page scorecard that fixes it, reviewed in 15 minutes a week.