Monday, November 09, 2026
Making It Happen is a self-paced video masterclass on six implementation skills, priced at $297 with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Here is what is in it, who it suits, who should skip it, and how to use it in 30 days.
You made a call last Tuesday. Hired the extra pair of hands, held off on the ad spend, told a supplier you'd pay next week not this one. Reasonable calls, every one of them — based on numbers that, it turns out, were three weeks stale. By the time the real picture showed up, in a report you had to go looking for, the moment to act on it had already passed.
That's not a bookkeeping problem. It's a strategy problem wearing a bookkeeping disguise. Financial management is now a stressor for 70% of small business owners, and the average US owner loses 33 working days a year to tax and financial stress (Xero Emotional Tax Return 2026, US). Most of that isn't the tax bill itself — it's not knowing, in time to do anything about it.
Here's the villain, and it's not you: it's the idea that "the numbers" are something your accountant hands you once a quarter, like a report card. That belief is comfortable because it asks nothing of you between now and then. It's also why you keep finding out things three weeks after they'd have been useful — the client who's gone quiet, the week margin slipped, the month you were busier than ever and somehow worse off.
What you'll miss if that doesn't change: not a dramatic collapse, just a slow one. The decision you'd have made differently in week one, made in week four instead, after the damage is set. A year from now, the same conversation, the same surprise, the same "I wish I'd seen that sooner."
The fix corporate boards have used for decades — brought down to SME size — is OKRs: Objectives and Key Results, built by Andy Grove at Intel and popularised by John Doerr. Strip away the Silicon Valley language and it's genuinely simple: pick the one or two outcomes that actually matter this quarter, then name the two or three numbers that prove you're getting there — not forty metrics, two or three.
I had a coaching client running six physio clinics — plenty of data, none of it useful, because it all arrived in a pile at month-end. We cut it to one Monday morning email with two numbers: capacity against an 85% target, and income against forecast. That's it. Nothing else landed in that inbox. Within a few weeks the owner wasn't reacting to last month anymore — they were adjusting this week, while it still mattered.
"He really got our vision from the beginning and has been a huge help in putting together a clearer plan and strategy for the next five years. Working with Kevin D'Ambros-Smith has given us the space to pause and reflect — on where we are now, where we want to be and how we get there."
— Gabby Kirk, Papier Hq
Here's what nobody tells you about this: the hard part isn't choosing the two numbers. It's actually looking at them every single Monday, even the Mondays you'd rather not. That's the bit a lot of owners skip — not because the system's too complicated, but because an outside pair of eyes asking "did you look?" is worth more than any dashboard. That's most of what coaching actually is.
This isn't for you if you're happy finding out how the month went once it's already over, and happy carrying that forward unchanged. It is for you if you're ready to know on a Monday what you're currently finding out in week four.
If you're still finding out how last month went in week three of this one, that's the first thing we fix.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Nearly a third of small business owners have never taken a full week off, and new 2026 data shows the ones working the longest hours are also the most likely to want out. Here is the three-question test for turning hours into real freedom.
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.