Last week, I got accused of doing an infomercial. Twice. I earned it. I told two clients to double their coaching investment to get back on a fast growth track. It was uncomfortable to say. It was also accurate.
Here’s the math. At the start of their programs, the investment in coaching sat around 2.15% to 2.75% of revenue. Fast growth, meaningful spend. A few years later, revenue went up, the investment did not. Now the ratio is 0.5% to 0.7%. The engine that created speed is being fed less than a third of what it used to get. You do not need a spreadsheet to know what happens next. Speed drops.
Replace “coaching” with “management training,” “marketing,” or “retooling,” and the logic holds.
In Guyana, where the economy is expanding and competition is intensifying, under-investing shows up quickly: slower execution, leaders stretched thin, missed tenders, late proposals, uneven customer experience, and “almost ready” projects that never become cash. Add our local factors like talent churn, FX friction, logistics to the regions and across to Suriname and Trinidad, new compliance requirements and the cost of delay snowballs.
A quick reality check using round numbers:
* At G$1B in annual revenue, 0.6% equals G$6M.
* At 2.5%, that is G$25M.
The G$19M gap is what funds a tighter strategy, weekly accountability, better managers, sharper marketing, and faster systems rollout. That gap is why fast becomes slow.
Working benchmarks I see across Guyanese and Caribbean firms:
* Scale-up mode: 2% to 3% of revenue into growth engines
* Steady growth: 1.5% to 2%
* Maintenance or harvest: 1% to 1.5% with tight focus
Fall far below those ranges and momentum fades, even in a booming market.
You control the throttle. If you want simple and fast, feed the parts of the business that create speed: leadership coaching, manager training, marketing, and process automation. If you prefer arduous and slow, starve them and let the math run its course. Either way, do not get mad at the math. It is just telling you the truth.
If you are leading a Guyanese or Caribbean company and the ratio has slipped, reach out. We will help you reset your growth budget, align it to your stage, and get your team moving at the pace this economy now demands.