What I’d Do Differently in My First Year of Business

Originally aired Wednesday, January 28, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.

Short answer: Spend your first year selling. You don't need a perfect logo, website and templates before you start. You need one paying client, so find a person with a problem you can solve and ask for the sale. Say yes to opportunities and figure them out, and keep asking how much of your week goes to selling.

Today I started with AI agents. I'm using them now, and I think they'll take a lot of the admin work off our plates this year. That's good news for work-life balance and a wake-up call for service businesses like VAs, copywriters and designers, so I talked about specializing. Then I shared the odd little habits that keep me working when there's no boss, like taking email off my phone. In the Idea Slam I answered two questions. What would I do differently in my first year? Go sell. And how do you find time for a great new idea? Validate it and sell one before you build it. I closed with an early result from syndicating my newsletter to LinkedIn.

Businessing is the weekly show where small business owners figure out what to do next, with a new episode every Monday. Hosted by Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community: owners only, nobody pitching, $19 a month.

Key takeaways

• If you're new, stop polishing logos and websites and go find one person with a problem you can solve.
• Look at your week and count the hours you spend selling, because if it isn't a lot, it isn't enough.
• Before building a new product, ask the people who have that problem whether they'd pay you to fix it.
• Sell your new idea to one client first, then build it while staying a step ahead of them.
• If you sell admin, writing or design work, pick an industry to specialize in before AI agents undercut general services.

Questions this episode answers

What should I focus on in my first year of business?

Selling. You can spend months on logos, websites and templates, but what you need is one paying client. Find someone with a problem you can solve, ask for the sale, and say yes to opportunities you can figure out.

How do I find time to work on a new business idea when I'm already busy?

Validate it and sell one before you build anything. Ask people who have the problem if they'd pay you to fix it, then sell it to one client. You'll always find time for paid work, and you only need to stay one step ahead of that client as you build.

Will AI agents hurt service businesses like virtual assistants and copywriters?

They could, so it's time to rethink what you offer. Specialize in one industry with special needs, like an admin who only serves financial advisors or a copywriter who focuses on healthcare. That's preparation, not panic.

Should I publish my email newsletter on LinkedIn too?

It's worth testing. Syndicating an existing newsletter to LinkedIn takes little work. On a creator account, LinkedIn can subscribe some of your followers automatically so they get a notification when you post.

Worth quoting

What you need is one paying client. That's it. You wanna be a business? Go sell something.

Pat Miller on Businessing

I don't care if you've been in business one day or 10 years, how much of your time is spent selling? And if the answer isn't a lot, that's not enough.

Pat Miller on Businessing

You never hear of people having a bad work life balance because they're taking too many pictures.

Pat Miller on Businessing

It's having the agents do work for you in a way that you want it done.

Pat Miller on Businessing

On the show

• Idea Slam question: Two listener questions: what would you do differently in your first year of business, and how do you find time to work on a great new idea?

In this episode

• Show open and the Fed rate decision
• Small business survey: customers and work-life balance
• AI agents are here: what it means for service businesses
• Quirky habits that keep owners working
• Idea Slam: what I'd do differently in year one
• Idea Slam: no time for a great new idea
• Syndicating your newsletter to LinkedIn

Watch, listen and join

• Watch this episode on YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Listen anywhere
• Small Business Owners Community
• The Small Business Library (add it to your AI tool)

More on this topic: Keep going answers from the Small Business Owners Community

Full transcript

Hey there. Good morning. It's January 26th. Eighth January 28th. I know what day it is, and we are Businessing. This is small Business's weekly show. I'm your host, pat Miller, founder of the small business owners community. Awesome to see you this morning sponsored by Gen Head and Enji because they're incredible and I'm glad you're here.

Drop into the chat and tell us who you are, what you do, put in a link to your business because in a moment we're gonna call somebody up on screen and give them a big, fat piece of publicity. It's called The Small Business Showcase, and I'd love to show off your epicness on the show today. Uh, this is like a four alarm fire.

The AI world is changing so fast. It's literally moving the ground under our feet, and you need to know what's going on, and you need to check in right now. We'll talk about that. I'll also look at the news headlines. We'll talk about your quirks as an entrepreneur, so we will hear what it takes to run your business as a person, because there's a trend that's going on right now.

Good morning, Wendy. There's a trend that's going on right now. That kind of reminds us that we're people who happen to have a business, and as we start talking about AI helping us do stuff, we have to remember that it's doing stuff on our behalf. So we kind of need to embrace all of the cool things that makes us us plus two idea slam questions today.

Someone asked me what would I do differently in year one of my business if I were to start all over again? I thought it was an awesome question and another question. I've got this really great idea, but I don't have any time to develop it. So how do I balance getting things done and developing new stuff?

What should I do? So we will talk about that in the idea slam segment later on in the show. Okay, let's get into the news headlines today, shall we? The Federal Reserve is meeting later on today, basically, uh, in two hours. Two hours, yeah. One o'clock central. And they'll announce if they're changing the lending rates.

Now, the expectation is that they're not gonna lower rates despite pressure from President Trump to do so. As small business owners, why in the world do we care? Right? Why do you care? Why should you be paying attention? Well, if the rates stay flat, there's no surprises. And if you've been doing this longer than five minutes, like I have.

No surprises is a good thing. We know that our borrowing costs aren't gonna go much, uh, go up. Our credit card bills aren't gonna be increased because our credit card rates aren't gonna get jacked. That's cool. But if you were looking to refinance some debt that you have or maybe borrow some money at maybe a lower rate, you gotta wait until next time they meet it, provided they don't move it.

But the suspicion is that they won't move it. The next time that they would meet is June. That means that the rates won't be going down on your credit card. And another way to think about this is, and this is like the optimist side of things. So let's be optimists. Should we be optimists today? Let's be optimists.

It's a sunny day. Let's be optimists. A way to interpret this is if they don't change the rate, it's a vote of confidence from the money nerds in the economy. I think the Fed would take that as a compliment, don't you think? Money nerds, the chief money nerds think that the economy's doing just fine and they don't need to fiddle with the system.

Uh, so Chairman Powell, if you take offense to the term money nerd, I meet it in the best light. Uh, he's supposed to be independent without oversight, but boy, Trump is leaning on him to lower those rates. We will find out at one o'clock what they decide to do. Okay, new overnight, things are getting a little weird in Minneapolis.

So Tom Holman, the border czar was sent there. He's met with the governor and the mayor and they're trying to smooth things over. And then last night at a town hall, representative Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unknown substance from someone that was sitting in the room. And the guy that did it was sitting right in the front row.

He just popped up and he like sprayed her with something. We don't know what it was. She finished the town hall speech. Things are continuing to get weird in Minnesota. I'm sharing not 'cause there's something for you to do about it. I just want you to know. So that is happening. New today. New this morning.

FreshBooks. You know the company FreshBooks. FreshBooks has dropped their state of small business survey. It was launched or released this morning, like at eight o'clock, and they surveyed 750 respondents. So I wanna share a few findings from what they found, and I'm gonna pull the curtain back on something that they found that will no longer be an issue before the end of 26, maybe even in the next six months.

So there's something that's currently a big deal that won't be a big deal very, very soon. So overall, the headline is, according to the Fresh Book survey, they surveyed 750 people according to the survey. Businesses are doing fine. 76% of those that surveyed said that they're happy with their current business situation despite the weirdness in the economy.

That's the big headline. So three quarters of us doing just fine. And don't you feel like that's kind of how it is? Some folks are having a hard go of it, but overall it just feels kind of, eh, fine. It's fine. It's kind of what it feels like to me. When asked, what is their biggest challenge, 47% said finding new customers is harder than ever.

Making it the top growth challenge, and this is the second year in the row in a row that that has been the top growth challenge. So that doesn't surprise me. As much as people complain about the economy and the inflation and tariffs, it just seems like we're all just kind of getting on with it and getting new customers.

That's not a surprise either. That is going to be the number one challenge till the end of time for small businesses. I mean, don't you think. If you ask a small business owner, what do you need? They're gonna say More customers. If you ask a dog, what does it want? Food. It's just, that's what small business owners say, I need more customers.

So those two things don't surprise me. The third thing doesn't surprise me, but this is the thing that's going to absolutely change in 26. So the survey said like, what's the game show? Family Feud survey. Said, survey said that flexibility. Work-life balance got harder in 25. Okay. Now, I don't know, it was like 47% said it got harder to have work-life balance in 2025.

Now I'm curious, does that resonate with you? Drop in the chat if that resonates with you. Does it feel harder to have work-life balance now than it did before or does it feel easier open to your opinions? Would love to showcase you here on the show. 'cause again, this is a conversation. You and me we're talking here.

Daily live meeting for small business owners like you. So I could just be sitting here talking to myself, but no, I wanna talk with you, which means you need to put an emphasis on commenting in the chat. I think this is the last year where work-life balance is really gonna be an issue because it's not gonna be long until we're not really worried about a lot of the to-dos in our business this month and this week.

Two different AI companies have launched for real AI agents that will absolutely do what you ask them to do, and they'll do the work autonomously. How do I know? I know because I'm using them and I know because it's blowing my brains apart. It is making me see spots how incredible this technology is.

This is the trend for 2026. I'm telling you right now, between now and the end of the year, this is the thing that you need to get on for sure, because soon all of the administrative stuff that keeps us busy, all of the ticky tack just, oh, I hate that part of the business soon. A lot of that stuff is gonna go away.

You don't hear from, uh, I'll use my wife Abby, as an example. She's a photographer, which means that she takes pictures, but then to be able to take pictures. She has an entire business to run invoices and websites and social media and follow ups and chasing leads and selling, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You never hear of people having a bad work life balance because they're taking too many pictures. That's what we love. If you do more of what you love, that's not a bad thing. But we're all gonna be able to work less on the stuff we hate and more on the stuff that we love. And I think a lot of you are gonna join the Fridays off family before the end of the year because your productivity is just going to explode, absolutely explode.

So we are gonna shift to being too busy. To what I think the new normal is gonna be. Now again, I need my tinfoil hat, conspiracy hat, which is downstairs. I should just bring it up here so you can see the hat that I'm talking about. But I, I actually have a hat that I put on when I'm being a conspiracy theorist.

But here's the conspiracy theory. Soon, 90 days, six months, maybe a year from now, this will flip from being a work life balance issue to. Almost an identity crisis for some small business owners because it won't be long till work-life balance is pretty much solved when you do what I started doing the last week.

I have a three minute meeting with my agent in the morning. Hey, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. Hey, can you chew on that stuff? I'm gonna go take a shower and start my day, and I come back and half of the busy work is done or nearly done, and I just need to cut and paste.

If you think that is Marty McFly futuristic stuff. I'm telling you it's not. I did it this morning. So the work that makes our company go, it's on its way to nearly zero. So I'm telling you, this spring, this summer, your time is gonna just, you're gonna have a lot more time. So it's no longer a question of when the AI agents get here.

They're here. They are here, right? Damn. Now I'm using them. I haven't named it yet. I need to name them. Gotta come up with a good name. It's like a pet, right? You gotta give your dog a good name. It's gotta be yell. That's the good dog test name. You can't name a dog if it's not a yell name. So I gotta name my AI agents.

Oh, we'll do that at another time. Uh, do you have an a for your, a name for your AI agent? Lemme know. I'd love to hear it. So the question will soon be, what am I gonna sell? Not how am I gonna get it all done? What am I gonna sell? And if you're still vibing with me, I, I, I'm sharing this information because I'm actually a little nervous, especially for service oriented businesses.

Your job right now is to be a virtual assistant or an admin, admin, assistant graphic designer, copywriter, customer service provider. It is go time. It doesn't mean you're gonna go out of business. It means you need to start rethinking what you do. If you're a coach or a consultant and you sell a bunch of teaching, you sell.

Here's my five ways to do the thing. It's go time. It is go time. We need to start thinking bigger about how you do it. I think what you should be thinking about right now is how you can specialize your services. So let's talk about the admin, for example. I love admins. They make our life easier. So instead of going outta business, maybe you specialize a little bit.

So now you're not the admin for everyone. You just move into financial advisors. Try and service that market because they have special needs. And if you're good at working with financial advisors, you're good with working other financial advisors. If you're a copywriter, maybe you specialize into healthcare or healthcare adjacent because of their unique legal risks or obligations.

If you're a graphic designer, begin specializing for graphic intensive industries that you could sell templates to. You could service at scale like maybe a realtor, car dealers, online sellers. I don't know. You're the expert. I'm not, but who needs a lot of graphics that's in a time starved industry, specialize in them.

So I know if you're watching this, especially when you're in one of those categories, I am not trying to scare you. I know this sounds like panic. I promise you it is not. This is preparation for what's happening. Because the defense we've had for the last two years, I gave my first talk on chat GPT in the spring of 2023, and we've been saying agents are coming, agents are coming, agents are coming, agents are here.

And the defense that we've had this whole time, and I've heard it a thousand times, especially from copywriters and people like that. Well, yeah, I mean. AI can write copy, but it sucks. I'm good at this. They suck. It used to be that way, but it's getting more and more not like that. And if I were you, I would not bet my future on it.

So again, I am not trying to scare you or be provocative. I'm telling you, for your own good, you need to start thinking about this stuff today. Not tomorrow. Today, because it's here and the world is shifting underneath our feet. I don't want you to be left behind. I want you to be here. I want you to build a thriving business.

I want you to join the Fridays off family, so you only work four days a week. I want you to win. That's why I'm sharing it. So hopefully you can get off your backside and start thinking about it. Wendy shares something really important about naming an AI or naming a dog. The best names are two syllables for yelling.

That's non-scientific, but it's true. You're absolutely right on that. Ivy, the dog, Ivy, I mean, she knows she's in trouble when I yell her name, but Ivy, the golden retriever dog. It's a perfect name. So yes, you have to have a two syllable name, uh, and then like the affectionate name you shorten to like. One syllable, like when you're being all cuddly with them.

Oh, ive, oh, ive, I love like, right, but IV means oof. Quit digging in the backyard. It's a good thing. You're cute. Or I would've punted you to Nebraska by now. IV two syllables. Thank you, Wendy, for the insight. Appreciate it. Our lead story today is about best practices and your quirky business habits. Have you seen this TikTok video?

There's a TikTok video that's blown up to the moon, and it's about a young woman who started the year with a little jar full of buttons, and inside the button, inside the jar, she put 365 buttons, and every day she's moving one button to another jar. It's her reminder that every day is an opportunity.

Okay. That's That's clever. Very cool. Well, the video went crazy and I think the reason why the video went crazy is I don't feel like explaining it. It only needs to make sense to me. That's what it said on the screen while she talked about why this little habit was so fun for her, and I'm like, you know what?

That's speaking to me today that it doesn't need to make sense to anybody else. It needs to make sense to me. So if we think about what we do for a living, we are building our own business. We have our own best practices. Now there are industry best practices that everybody follows. If you're a bookkeeper, if you do SEO, there's a right way and a wrong way.

You gotta do that stuff, you know, to the book. There's also an entire class of best practices for you and me as humans that happen to run a business. And we don't have to run the business like IBM, in fact, we're not, because when you got up this morning, you had to make a very tough choice. Do I feel like businessing today?

You don't have a boss. You had to decide. Do I feel like businessing today? Okay, so to get yourself to business, we start managing our personality and our habits to get through the day, to make sure that we can make money and move forward. And I say this all the time, we have to Jedi mind trick ourself.

That's my Jedi motion, Jedi mind trick ourself to get stuff done. So the question is, what do you do that is completely irrational? You wouldn't recommend to other people, but it works for you. You don't have to explain it, it just works for you. Maybe these are little quirky habits or these are little pieces of your day that get you to do stuff.

And I'll share a few of mine. If you've got one that you'd love to share, uh, drop it into the chat and I'd love to hear that. But for me. One of my quirky habits, which isn't quirky, but it's, it's very much a habit now, is I have a very strong structure to my day. I get up way too early, usually because Ivy, the dog is getting me up at five in the morning.

But I'll come in here to the office and I'll do all my deep work. Like I'll do it thinking I'll get ready for the show. What do I wanna say today? What does the community need? What am I building? Like all of that. Deep work. I'll do till about seven 30. Then I go to the gym, leave the house, go to the gym, and then I come back and start my day, finalize the show.

Do the show. So I have a very strong structure. It technically doesn't start my day until 10 o'clock, but that's the first thing that I do. The other thing that I do, and this is the Jedi Mind trick part, this is so stupid, but the kids got me an Nespresso machine. Where you get the little home espresso. I mean, good coffee is just mandatory.

There's just nothing like having good coffee on hand. And to me that keeps me motivated because if I had crappy coffee, I wouldn't work at home. But with good coffee, you know. Okay. Another quirky behavior that I have. Are you getting the vibe here now? Are you understanding these, these little things that keep you going?

You don't have to explain it to anyone, it just helps you. I don't have an email account on my phone. I took Gmail. I'm a Gmail guy. I took Gmail off my phone. The only time I put Gmail on is when I'm traveling. Why? When you run a business, especially out of the house, if your email is one click away, what do you do?

You check it 80 times a day. I do. I did. Let's see if there's something new. Ooh, is there something new? Ooh, is there something new? Ooh, is there business in here? Ooh, let me press the slot machine and see if I can make some money. And I realized I'm always working. When I took Gmail off my phone for the first time ever as a solopreneur, I finally felt the out of office feeling.

I don't know what it was about email on my phone, but that turned out to be the trick. Taking email off my phone was the differentiator. The other thing is I have a couple more. God, I got a lot. I guess I'm quirkier than I thought. Uh, sparing no expense on my office setup. Do you remember working, like if you worked at corporate, do you remember working at corporate and you just had a crappy computer and your boss didn't care?

I can't tell you how many bad computers I worked on. Now looking back on it, I just sat there waiting for the computer to do things, or sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't, and sometimes I just couldn't do stuff till it was done messing around with it. Now that I'm doing my own thing, oh my gosh, this computer right over here, I'm telling you, is gonna cure cancer.

This thing is so powerful. Roger Hindle from Tech Labs is like, bro, that's kind of overkill. I'm like, good. Good. Make it lots of overkill. Make it more overkill. I want a super fast computer. I've got four different monitors here at Command Center. It's, it's what keeps me comfortable. But then the last one, and this might be the quirkiest one, and those of you that have been with me for a long time, you know, I don't even know how this started, but when we have an event and it goes well, I go to Taco Bell.

I don't know why. I think literally I go to Taco Bell because usually at an event I'm working too much and I don't eat. So by the time the event is done, I am so hangry. There's just, there's an itch that a bag full of Taco Bell can scratch that. Nothing else. Can you feel that? Like, yeah, I want that. I want that.

I want that. I want four of those. Need three of those. Need some fire sauce, need this, and you just get this sack. You come back to the house, you're like, oh, that event was awesome and yes, I need the thing. And you just, ah, ah, there's just something about it. I know that's so dumb, but that's one of the things that keeps me going.

Big ass bag of Taco Bell. And the other thing is a chocolate shake. Whenever I make a big sale or something good happens, I treat myself to a chocolate shake. It started when I was in radio, but, uh, that's what I do now. So all of this is to say that understanding. How you work and what it takes to your business to work is really, really important.

And it's gonna tie into the AI topic that we just talked about here in a second, Wendy is sharing. See Wendy's getting the A Grade today when stories. Wendy, please drop your link for when stories into the chat. You might as well get some publicity as well. I treat myself with Swedish fish, which is hard to say.

Swedish Fish when I get a new speaker for when stories. Amen, sister. So yeah, drop your name and your business link in the chat. I'd love to, uh, have everyone get to know you anyway, so here's why all of this stuff is important. If we can get in touch with how we work and what's important to us and what we like and what we don't like, as I just mentioned with the AI agents coming, it is going to be important because it's not just that agents will do work for you.

That's not it. It's having the agents do work for you in a way that you want it done. And the more we think about what we like and don't like and what we need and don't need and how we work, it's going to be a big piece of our success very, very soon because you're gonna tell the agent exactly what to do.

And if you tell the agent, Hey, I'm going to the gym, I'll be back in 90 minutes. It'll have it ready in 90 minutes. I'm going on the air at 11 o'clock. Uh, let's have this done by noon. It'll get it done way faster than that, but you start building this relationship with the people and the robots that are doing your work.

There you go, Wendy. Free publicity. Thank you so much. Congratulations on the Wind Story Success coming up. We're gonna do the idea slam. Now, here's the thing about the idea Slam. Can we talk about the idea Slam? The idea Slam is your opportunity to come on and talk about what's happening in the business.

Like what's the big project that you're working on? Everyone's got a big project, and when you're working on a big project or a big opportunity, there are things that are standing in the way that you need to accomplish or something that isn't going quite right or your most important product isn't really landing the way that you want.

You come on the air. We talk about your big project, and then myself, along with the folks in the chat, we collaborate with one another about your big project. And I'll tell you, we will get more done for you than you think because feedback is a gift and perspective is everything. You know what to do, but you just can't see it because you're just too close to it right now.

So when you come on the idea Slam as my guest, we will collaborate on your business. You'll get a little bit of promotion, we'll solve your biggest problem and it costs you $0. So what the heck, because we don't have a guest today, I'm gonna answer two questions I've been getting recently. The two questions today, what's one thing you wish you did differently in your first year of business?

I've got answers and then the other one is, I've got a great idea, but no time to work on it. What should I do? I want you to think about those questions and we will collaborate them, collaborate on them in just a minute. Businessing is sponsored by Gen Head Scale Systems, not Chaos, built for early stage businesses, gen head systems.

They're designed for founders and solopreneurs just like you. Those that lead lean teams who need real momentum, not complex tools that require a full-time operator. Everything is streamlined, practical, and easy to act on immediately. This one system, gen suite will replace 10 disconnected tools. So instead of juggling your CRMs and automations and content and tools and follow ups and all these other things.

Gen head centralizes it all to one clear operating system, less chaos, clearer data, better execution. Get it now. Gen head.com. That's gen head.com. We use it here as well. It's a great piece of software. Thank you to Nikki and Pat and the team for being awesome. Let's talk about the idea Slam. It's time to go talk through those two different questions, and hopefully you're gonna be on the air real soon.

So click that link and get your time reserved for an upcoming episode. Here's the first question. What's one thing you wish you did differently? In your first year in business, so this is going to be a chance for you to answer that question as well. What's one thing that you can do different, you would've done differently if you were to go back and do it all over again?

Well, when I think back to what I did in year one, I had no idea what I was doing. I, I had no clue what I was gonna do, what I was gonna sell, how much it cost, nothing. I left as a executive at the radio station, started my own business and the very first paying job I had was to make sales calls. I was selling a soccer game to businesses, so this soccer organizer hired me to call local businesses to say, would you like to sponsor the soccer match?

And they gave me a list of 150 local businesses. My job was to call and it felt like hazing, like getting through that made me realize, okay, I really wanted to start my own business. Because a lot of you, when you started, remember this, I don't wanna sell. I don't wanna be a slimy salesperson. All of a sudden, two weeks went by and I didn't get a paycheck.

I was selling, hell yeah, I'm selling. So looking back, what would I do differently? I would've embraced sales more. The big thing I would've done differently, and this is the answer to the question, what would I have done differently? I would've said, yes faster. We did a brainstorm yesterday, an idea slam for ng.

In fact, Taylor, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. And during the idea Slam, the question that was on the table was all of this work that it takes to start a new business. When you think about starting a business, it's like a bottomless pit. I gotta set up Google my business. I have to have a website. I have to have all these different social media sites.

I have to have, my templates need to be perfect, my this, my that. Like we have a list of all this stuff. A bottomless pit of execution. And you can spend months messing around with all that crap. I did, I did. I had small step solutions. That's the name of my company, all figured out. Beautiful Logos, website, all of this strategy had all this stuff.

Looking back on it, you don't need any of that. What you need is one paying client. That's it. You wanna be a business? Go sell something. Go sell something. Go meet a person who has a problem you can solve and ask for their credit card. That's what I would've done differently if I were to start all over again.

And it's what I encourage you to do if you're sitting there drowning right now and a bunch of to-dos on your list to make things better. To to, to kind of optimize stuff you're hiding from selling. Stop it. Stop it when this show is over. Not until then, but when this show is over, can we just promise that you're gonna like go make a couple sales calls Because all of this other performative busyness, it's one of the big pieces of the Fridays off theory.

We can't take Fridays off 'cause we're too busy pretending that we're busy. No. If I were to start all over again, I would just go sell more stuff. And to you today, I don't care if you've been in business one day or 10 years, how much of your time is spent selling? And if the answer isn't a lot, that's not enough.

So I would encourage you to sell more things. I would've sold more stuff on day one, and I would also tell you to say yes and figure it out. So when people offer you an opportunity, even if it's outside your scope, just say yes. Say yes. Figure it out. Hey, could you do that? And if the answer is technically, I could say yes and figure it out.

So those are the two things I would encourage you to do if you're starting over or if you're just new in the business, say yes and figure it out and go sell something. Second idea, slam question. See, we could be doing this for your business. We could have just solved your problem, but no, you're just watching.

Second question. So I have a great idea, but I have no time to work on it. How do I find the time to work on the next big thing? Okay, common question. If you have an idea that you think will be good for the business, you can find time instantly if you follow this formula. First step, validate the market demand.

So many of us build something that nobody wants. I can't tell you how many awesome ideas I've built that never sold, and it is so emotionally damaging. You got this great idea. It's so cool. You spend three weeks working on it, you reveal it to crickets. Nobody cares. Capital N, nobody cares. So if you're gonna sell something, go to the person that has that problem and say, Hey, if I could make this go away, would you pay me to do it?

Go have those conversations before you do anything, anything. Validate the idea. Do not make new products and features. If you don't know somebody wants it, step one, step two, sell one, sell one. You know people want it. Don't start developing it until you've sold one. Why? If you're so busy, you don't have time to work on this project.

I bet you could squeeze in time for a paying client. Like if I said to you, okay, take that new project to the side. That thing you're already selling. You've got a new client. Do you have space for them? Oh yeah, I've got space for a new client. Yazi. Then you've got time to develop something new if you're getting paid to develop it.

So what's the idea? Write out the idea what the transformation is. Get in front of a person who has that problem and say hi. Give me money. And when they do, then you go develop it. One of my favorite pieces of advice, and again, I wish I could remember who said it, 'cause they're a genius, it was not me, but my favorite piece of advice is you just need to be one step in front of your client.

If you're solving a problem, solve it. Solve it a week ahead of where the client is. You're, you're, you're doing what you said you were gonna do for them, but you don't need to build the whole thing out in advance. If the idea is validated and now you sold it to somebody, haha, now you're getting paid to develop it. That is the big difference between creating products that people want and finding time to develop something even when you're really busy. Because to be real, we all have time to take on more business, more money making business 'cause we will get rid of the things that don't make us money. Oh, uh, Bob, I really would like to have that lunch meeting that we put on the books just to have a get to know you one-on-one, but I've got this big opportunity that landed in my lap.

We're gonna have to reschedule. You will make those kinds of choices when this new project has a buyer. So get time. On your calendar by validating the idea and selling at least one person, and when you do, you're off to the races and suddenly you have enough time to get everything done because there never will be enough time to do all the things you'd like to do.

There is enough time to prioritize what's important and make those choices that make you more money. That's how you do it. Okay? So if you enjoyed that, this could have been for your business. We have a guest coming on Tuesday's show, which I'm really excited about, so we'll have a guest on Tuesday so we can show off what this idea Slam Live is all about.

If you wanna be brave and you want to come on the show. Click the link or scan the QR code, and you get to basically tell us what your issue is and then pick the day and time that works for you. We'll get you on the show and we'll collaborate on your business. The final story today is about the power of the LinkedIn newsletter.

Do you have a newsletter for your business? Do you syndicate it to LinkedIn? I didn't either until yesterday and OMG. We'll talk about it in a second. Businessing is sponsored by nng. Marketing is a must for small businesses. You know that nng makes it easy, even when things feel uncertain, busy, or overwhelming, you gotta tell your story.

So how do you get it all done? NNG is an AI powered marketing engine that learns all about your business, plugs into all of your tools, even Canva, and puts your marketing plan almost on autopilot. Imagine, have. Imagine having help. To tell your story at scale with your messaging, your brand colors, your voice all in there, plus a social media scheduler to make marketing work even when you sleep.

The best part is they believe in KPIs. Basically the stats to tell you what's working and what's not working. It'll save you time and it will make you money. Angie's changed the way that we market this show and the small business owners community. I absolutely love it. I ask them, okay. Can we hook up the viewers of Businessing with a bargain?

And they said, yeah, sure, no problem. So Businessing viewers get a 14 day risk-free trial. Meaning if you think, huh, this whole show has been about productivity and yeah, social media is a pain in my butt. Wait, there's an AI tool that can help me with that. Yes, there is. You can get it for 14 days risk free, and if you hate it, cancel it, but you won't hate it.

Then they're gonna give viewers of the show two months for a discount. Now this is where I normally would say, and the discount is this, but I'm not going to, I'm gonna tell you the full price. Because the full price is so bananas you won't believe it. After the discount expires, it's only 29 bucks a month

to solve your social media problem. 29 bucks a month. It's ridiculous. Software. ng.co/sbo ng.co/sbo ng solves the, I do my own marketing problem. Check it out. I've heard a lot about LinkedIn newsletters and I have thought to myself, I'm not gonna do a LinkedIn newsletter. I've got my own newsletter, and if people want my newsletter.

Fridays off newsletter.com. If people want my own newsletter, they can go to my website and they can sponsor to beehive ba humbug. I'm not gonna do it. That's how I felt. That's, that was the narrative in my head. Yeah, I've heard about LinkedIn Loot newsletters not doing it, but I got a tip that they're really a thing.

So yesterday I spent a bunch of time tweaking my LinkedIn profile and I thought, what the heck? I'll start a LinkedIn newsletter. And all I did. I took the Fridays off newsletter and syndicated it to LinkedIn, copied the content, pasted it here, announced that I now have a LinkedIn newsletter, and I thought, I'm doing the work.

We will slowly build the audience. We'll see what happens, kind of what I thought. We'll see what happens. So I'm sitting here getting ready to do the show this morning. Beep boop beep, doing the show, blah, blah, blah. Check on LinkedIn. What's happening on LinkedIn, okay. Blah, blah, blah. Hey, I, I wonder if I got any subscribers to the newsletter yet, boy, like cartoon eyeballs.

I've got 344 subscribers already. What turns out if someone, if you're a creator account. You have the newsletter option and when you have a creator account, the people that are following you and have notifications turned on, I think it is. And people who interact a lot with your content, LinkedIn will auto subscribe them to your newsletter, which means when I post on the LinkedIn newsletter, all of those people are gonna get a bell notification.

Bing. Pat Miller said something smart. At least, I dunno if it says that, but I hope that's what you think when you get the notification. Bing smartness inbound. This is a thing. 344 people and it's not been 24 hours. Okay, that's interesting. So if you are a newsletter person and you are not syndicating to LinkedIn.

This is something that I'm gonna be watching and maybe it is a tip for you. Before we get outta here, I gotta remind you of the small business owners community. This is the place where owners of companies, owners only. We don't let in salespeople, we don't let in directors of ops, only the business owners are getting together to find the transformation they need from community.

What is that? Referrals, support, fast answers, celebration. People that understand the challenges you're going into, this is what the small business owners community is all about. Because if you go to your local networking event, you're not gonna find a bunch of owners. If you join this nationwide online community for entrepreneurs, you're gonna have the right people around you to collaborate and grow together.

This month we're talking about how movement creates momentum towards our 2026 resolutions. You've got something important in the business. What are you doing to make sure those strategies come true? Where are you going for a free legal. Accounting and technology support hotlines. What about the idea slam that we just did?

We're doing two of those a month inside the SBOC, and the best part is it's $19 a month, right? So for the price of a cup of coffee, 'cause I get mine fancy with an extra shot and the whip and all the stuff for the price of a cup of coffee. You can have the right people around you all the time in our 24 7 online community.

It's the small business owners community. Get it now. Small business community.com or at the link right there, small business community. Com. Thanks for businessing with me today. I'm Pat Miller. We're sponsored of course, by NNG and Gen Head. Thank you so much for tuning in and don't forget like and subscribe and share this show with your network.

If you do and let me know that you did, I will do a share mail. I will send you a gift in the mail. It's a surprise not telling you what it is. Not sure how long I can do this. The best way to get this show to grow is to be referred through Trusted Networks. So if you enjoyed it, share the show, tell 'em they should check it out, and we will send you a gift in the mail.

Now, this is the new Daily Habit for small business owners, and I'm so excited because this show goes to a Monday through Thursday daily schedule as of this Monday. So the next show will be Monday, February 2nd, and we will be on the air every single day, Monday through Thursday. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the small business owners community.

It was so fun hanging out with you today. I hope you enjoyed the show. We'll see you right here on Monday at 11:00 AM Central. Take care.