At 21, Kate Osborne answered a newspaper advertisement in London asking whether she had a caring nature. The work involved looking after people nearing the end of their lives. One of them, a Swiss businessman she calls Mr Z, became her first mentor.
Osborne says caring for him during his final year changed how she thought about her own future. She wanted to travel, take chances, and reach the end of her life without regretting the things she had left undone.
Years later, that experience still helps explain the question behind her work with business owners: what kind of life is the company allowing its founder to lead?
Osborne, the founder of KOKO Matrix, works with leaders facing problems with team culture, accountability and the demands of growth. Her interest in those pressures developed through running businesses herself.
After studying psychology at the University of Queensland and travelling to 38 countries, she joined Flight Centre and became a shareholder of two stores. In her account, the September 11 attacks disrupted both the travel business and the financial plans she had built around it. She had to reconsider how she would reach her goals. Her tell-all keynote also describes navigating the Ansett collapse and SARS during her travel-industry career.
She subsequently moved into business coaching. Osborne describes being recruited into a franchise network with hundreds of male coaches and few women. The company wanted to broaden its appeal to female founders. For Osborne, the opportunity also offered the possibility of earning a full-time income while raising a family.
That ambition has remained part of her approach to advising other owners. Family commitments, health and time away from work influence what a founder can sustain, even when those concerns rarely appear in a business plan.
Giving Difficult Conversations a Structure
Osborne says she collaborated with clients and industry experts to develop the KOKO Matrix in 2011 to help growing businesses work through conflict by asking important questions in a deliberate sequence.
The company describes the framework as an eight-by-eight matrix covering 64 overlapping operational sectors and more than 360 business parameters. Its purpose is to give owners and their teams a structured way to examine the business and agree on action.
In practice, Osborne’s emphasis is on helping people discuss what is holding them back, understand individual strengths and establish clearer priorities. She draws on her psychology studies and uses soft skill workshops and profiling tools to tailor her approach to the people involved.
Accountability is another part of the work. Kate says clients value having someone who keeps progress moving while maintaining morale. Her ten-week workshop follows a similar progression, moving from diagnosis through leadership and communication issues to a strategic plan.
What That Work Looks Like for an Owner
Studio Pilates International offers a specific example of the pressures Osborne describes.
In a testimonial, founders Jade and Tanya Winter recall working 100-hour weeks while trying to meet demand. They describe operating in a shared space that flooded regularly and struggling to build a team aligned with their plans.
They credit Osborne with helping them introduce a leadership process, remain accountable, and work toward franchising and establishing a training school. Their account also mentions something more personal: having time to raise their son as the business expanded internationally.
For Osborne, the relationship between business performance and an owner’s life is central to the work.
She sees a similar leadership challenge emerging as founders introduce artificial intelligence. In her view, delegating repetitive tasks to AI creates a responsibility to help existing employees develop skills for more demanding work. Owners still have to decide how roles should change and communicate what they expect.
Her concern is what happens inside the team as those decisions take effect. New tools may change how work gets done, but people still need direction, responsibilities they understand and a way to raise problems.
The ambition Osborne described when she entered coaching remains a useful measure of her work today: a business that provides an income and leaves room for a family. For the founders she advises, defining that balance is part of deciding what growth should achieve.
