Friday, November 06, 2026
Revenue's up and the bank balance still isn't. Jim Collins's Hedgehog Concept shows SME owners why saying yes to everything is the real margin leak.
You’ve had the same decision sitting on your desk for weeks. Not a crisis, a choice. Which market to chase, which product line to cut, which client type to stop chasing. You keep telling yourself you’ll decide once the numbers are clearer. The numbers never get clearer. They just get later.
You’re not stuck because you’re lazy. You’re stuck because every option in front of you looks defensible, and picking one means admitting the others are dead. 68% of US small business owners say they delayed or avoided a major decision such as hiring or expansion in the past year, according to Bluevine’s 2026 survey of 781 owners, and the gap between money in and bills out is the single biggest reason they gave.
Here’s the villain nobody names: keep every option open. It feels responsible. It is actually one of the most expensive habits a growing SME can have, because trying to serve three markets, four customer types and five price points at once means your strategy funds nobody properly. A business that tries to be right for everyone ends up being compelling to no one.
I worked with a jewellery designer years ago who came to me wanting to grow, but her business was everything to everyone: weddings, gifts, corporate awards, repairs. We sat down and built one mission statement, deliberately too big to hedge on. She wanted Rihanna wearing her design to the Met Gala. It sounds absurd for a small studio. That’s the point — a mission that bold forces every decision underneath it. Within the year, Cardi B and Stephanie Seymour were wearing her pieces in Paris. Not because the mission was realistic on paper, but because it was specific enough to say no to everything that didn’t serve it.
That’s close to the Beachhead Market idea from Geoffrey Moore’s work on how new offers actually cross into the mainstream: pick one market segment you can dominate completely, win it so thoroughly that word of mouth does your marketing for you, then expand deliberately from that base. Most SME owners do the opposite — they spread thin across every segment that might say yes, and dominate none of them. Three steps to find your own beachhead this week:
“Kevin’s knowledge and intellect on all things business — no matter what industry it is — he just seems to find gems that you can focus on.”
— John Roberts, Co-owner & COO, Oragene
That’s the real job of a strategy session: not generating more options, but finding the one gem worth betting on. Here’s the execution gap: you already know you’re spread too thin. Most owners do. What stops them acting on it isn’t understanding — it’s that nobody is in the room holding them to the decision once the admin and the next urgent client call arrive. That’s the part a coach does that a framework on its own can’t: ask the uncomfortable follow-up question in week six, not just week one.
This isn’t for you if you’d rather keep every door open just in case — that’s a legitimate choice, but it isn’t a strategy. It is for you if you’re ready to pick one beachhead and go all in on it.
If the decision you’re avoiding is really “which one thing to go all in on,” that’s exactly where we start.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
SME websites and pitches default to telling their own story. The research says customers skim past most of it looking for themselves - here's the StoryBrand framework that fixes it.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most SME growth plans default to out-competing everyone else on the same crowded turf. Blue Ocean Strategy's own data says that's the lower-profit path - here's the four-question grid that finds the faster one.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most SME owners blame a lost customer on price. New 2026 research says it is almost always one unresolved issue instead. Here is the three-step audit to find your real loyalty leak.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Revenue is not the same as profit, and a small slice of your customer base may be quietly cancelling out your best accounts. Here is how to find out which ones.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The coaching industry has more than doubled since 2016 to over 232,000 coaches. With that many choices, here is the single question that tells you who is worth hiring.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
AI is saving small business owners 10 to 13 hours a week, and most have no idea what they gained. Here is the four-question method for pointing AI at the hours that matter.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
You nailed the pitch and the buyer loved it, then the deal went quiet. The reason is usually a meeting room you were never invited to. Here is how to sell to a buying committee you cannot see.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Customers don't buy products, they hire them to do a job. Here is the framework that explains why an inferior competitor keeps outselling you, and what to fix in your marketing today.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most SME owners have one growth plan: get more customers. There are actually four distinct ways to grow, and the cheapest one is usually sitting in your existing customer file.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Small business confidence just rose, but growth expectations are falling for almost everyone. New 2026 data reveals the one decision separating owners still growing from owners just waiting it out.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
A 1 percent price increase lifts operating profit by an average of 11 percent, McKinsey's Global 1200 research found, far more than an equivalent rise in volume. Here's how to raise prices without losing your best customers.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Some coaches build a business out of being needed forever. Here's the Graduation Test: three questions that reveal whether your coach is transferring real capability, or just keeping you on retainer.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most owners respond to a bottleneck by fixing something else entirely. Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints explains why that backfires, and documented case studies show a mean 69 percent lead-time reduction once the real constraint is found.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Roughly four in ten B2B purchase attempts end in no decision at all. It's rarely about price. Here's Alex Hormozi's Value Equation, in plain English, and why it explains almost every stalled deal in your pipeline.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
41 percent of consumers now always read reviews before choosing a business, and 31 percent won't use one rated under 4.5 stars. Here's the Review Velocity System that turns happy customers into a steady stream of five-star proof.