The best thing I ever did was to have the confidence to walk away from clients and prospects who did not see my worth.
It’s tough when there is money being offered but it never leaves you space for bigger and better.
Funnily enough, the clients that pay the premium prices also hang out in groups and refer each other. Imagine a high paying client referring other high paying client - bingo!
If you are not charging the highest in your sector, somebody else is.Are they really better than you, or just better at articulating the value on offer?

You are not failing because you lack ambition or ideas. In fact, the opposite is probably true. You have too many priorities competing for your attention and finances at the same time, meaning nothing is getting done quickly or effectively.

Businesses that fail to adopt mentoring are falling behind: experiencing slower growth, disengaged teams, and avoidable mistakes that impact both performance and profitability. This results in longer hours being worked, lower than expected profits and greater overwhelm all round. Mentoring is no longer a nice to have! It's a must have.

My Mum used to say, “Pointless having a dog and barking yourself." Most business owners tell themselves they’re “just detail-oriented.” Translation: you’re into everything - emails, decisions, systems, service levels, quote approvals, and more. If you are a control freak and you are not in control, then you are just a freak! Are you stuck in the detail because you can’t let go… or because your team are not stepping up? These are not the same problem and confusing them keeps you and your business stuck.

Let’s be honest. If sheer willpower were enough, every small business would scale. Every idea would execute. Every plan would land. But they don’t. Not because owners lack ambition but because they lack the friction from an accountability partner. No deadlines that matter. No one asking the hard questions. No consequences for drifting. That’s where accountability steps in. Done right, it’s not about hand-holding. It’s about sharpening the edges.

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times: “Why does my team not care as much as I do?”

The strongest business cultures are built on a delicate balance: psychological safety on one side and healthy fear on the other.

When leaders get this balance wrong, the cost is both financial and emotional.

Every quarter, I see a clear divide with business owners.
There are those who allow external factors to dictate their energy levels, focus and momentum, and there are those who choose to take ownership, review what is and is not working, and make decisive changes. Those are the leaders who continue to move forward.

After 30 years of experience, I’ve come to believe one thing: always trust your gut. That instinctive gut feeling is rarely accidental. More often than not, it is the voice of experience speaking before logic has fully caught up. Over decades of making decisions, facing challenges, and learning from both successes and mistakes, your mind develops an extraordinary ability to recognise patterns.  What is your gut telling you in your business right now and do the numbers back it up?

If everything relies on you, you are the system.  That’s not scalable, you’ve just created a very busy job. I was trapped working six days a week, revenue stalled and had lost my mojo.  My son said “You are always on your phone working, Dad!” and gave me that disappointed look. Ouch. The change happens when you stop seeing yourself as the hero and start acting like a business leader.

Businesses that win aren’t the ones that get it perfect from the start. They’re the ones that adapt quickly, learn continuously, and aren’t afraid to shift direction when needed.
In a fast-moving world, being flexible and adaptable isn’t a weakness, it’s your competitive edge.  Your flex.
Every one of my clients review their strategy monthly, and update their SWOT quarterly. This identifies the market opportunities, the new threats, and your internal capabilities.

Yesterday I ran a workshop with burnout specialist Rich Morley, and one of the biggest takeaways was that burnout isn’t just fatigue - it’s a physiological state change.
A lack of mojo, poor decision making and lack of leadership, resulting in poor sales, a disengaged team and bad service levels. Most people assume burnout simply means you’re tired and need a weekend off. Rich explained that in reality, burnout is a deeper disruption of the nervous system and brain caused by prolonged stress.

Done well, business mentoring is a strategic tool that helps capable business owners and leaders make better decisions, faster. A lot of the confusion comes from common myths about what mentoring involves. See them in detail in this blog.
In practice, effective business mentoring looks very different.

If you are not qualifying your leads properly, it is costing you more than you realise; Hours invested in meetings that were never going to convert, a misleadingly “healthy” pipeline that consistently under-delivers, inaccurate forecasting that damages confidence and decision-making and cash-flow, reduced marketing effort because you believe you already have enough in play. I speak with many sales leaders and business owners responsible for revenue, and there is one consistent issue. The pipeline is a fantasy.

If you’re not tracking the right KPIs properly, you’re not leading with clarity. You’re leading with optimism and blind hope.  Hope doesn’t scale a business. In fact, it usually does the opposite.  KPIs shouldn’t be something you glance at once a quarter at best. Or worse, something your accountant tells you about at the year-end meeting, explaining how (badly) you’ve done. 

As a business owner, there often comes a stage where growth feels tougher. Decisions matter more, risks increase, and the business begins to outgrow the way it’s been run so far. At that point, external support can be invaluable - but choosing the right isn’t always straightforward.

For the next two days, I sit down with eight business leaders focused on their growth.  They recognise the importance of taking a step back to cut through the noise and that growth doesn’t come from working more hours, it comes from choosing better options.

Leadership can feel isolating because the bigger the responsibility, the fewer people leaders feel able to speak to openly. Peer support removes that isolation by creating space for honest conversation, challenge and perspective.

Yep, I said it. Monthly retainers and long contracts that suit them. Vague promises of results. Endless “mindset work.” And after six or so months, many business owners I hear from are left asking the same question: "What did I actually get out of that?".

Running a business is lonely.  Nobody to talk to inside the business, nobody to talk to at home… so you analyse and over-think every single issue to the point it stifles action and stunts growth.  From my experience, business owners and members of the leadership team often carry the weight of decisions without a safe space to test ideas, challenge assumptions, or talk through uncertainty.

After everything that 2025 demanded from us, that pause was much needed. 
Reflection allows us to summarise and recognise what was delivered (if we ever have a moment thinking we’re getting nowhere) and what didn’t go so well.  But reflection alone doesn’t deliver results in 2026.