How Do I Know If I’m Cut Out to Own a Business?

Originally aired Wednesday, February 11, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.

Short answer: Ask yourself if you're getting what you want out of life from this business. Check if you can see a path to enough money, if your clients fulfill you, and if you can find enough of them. If the idea of quitting sounds good and you don't love the work, it's okay to walk away.

Today I started with the AI news I've been waiting for. The agent tool I use every day came to Windows. Now everyone can have an AI that does the work instead of just answering. I also walked through a viral post from an AI executive warning that anyone who works on a screen is at risk. In the Idea Slam I took two questions. Some days I want to quit, so how do I know if I'm cut out for this? And how do I take a vacation while chasing a big deadline? I closed with a question about hobbies. Do you still have anything you love as much as working?

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

• Wanting to quit on a bad day is normal for owners, so separate a bad week from a bad business.
• Check whether you can see a realistic path to the income you need from this business.
• Notice whether the clients you attract are fun to work with and let you do your best work.
• Put your vacation on the calendar first, because a fixed date forces the low priorities to fall away.
• Pick one hobby you've put away and make time for it, so work isn't the only thing you love.

Questions this episode answers

How do I know if I'm cut out to be a small business owner?

Ask if you're getting what you want out of life from the business. Then check the money, your clients and whether you love the work. If quitting sounds like a relief and you don't love it, it may not be for you, and that's okay.

Is it normal to want to quit your small business?

Yes. Most owners feel like quitting a couple of times a week and keep going anyway. The question is whether the business itself is the problem or you're just in a hard stretch.

How can a busy business owner take a vacation?

Schedule it. Once the date is on the calendar, low priorities drop away and the important work gets done before you leave. Work expands to fill the time you give it, so a firm date shrinks it back down.

What is the difference between an AI chatbot and an AI agent?

A chatbot gives you answers that you copy and use yourself. An agent does the work for you. It can read your files, connect to your apps, create documents and organize folders on its own.

Worth quoting

quitting your business is fine, provided your business is the problem.

Pat Miller on Businessing

In summary, a chat bot gives you answers, and an agent does the work.

Pat Miller on Businessing

You've got to schedule it, and once it's scheduled, then all of the other priorities will come into play.

Pat Miller on Businessing

How much of your time is spent working because you love it? And how much of your time is spent working because you don't have anything else that you love as much as working?

Pat Miller on Businessing

On the show

• Idea Slam question: Two questions: some days I want to quit, so how do I know if I'm cut out for this; and how do I take a vacation while working toward a big deadline?

In this episode

• Show open and overnight news
• Strong jobs report and what it means for sales
• AI chatbots vs AI agents
• The viral AI post: if you work on a screen, you're at risk
• Digital twins for small business
• Idea Slam: how do I know if I'm cut out for this?
• Idea Slam: taking a vacation under a deadline
• Do you still have hobbies?

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

And good morning. It's Wednesday, February 11th, and we're businessing. Great to see you. This is Small Business' weekly show. I'm your host, pat Miller, founder of these small business owners community. We're sponsored this morning by Gen Head and our friends at ENG G lots to talk about today, and we gotta talk about AI and AI agents because there's gigantic news for everyone.

The thing that I've been waiting on finally happened. We'll share this big news for your productivity and your business in the show today, plus. Some AI doism that we can dine on, which is always, you know, scary, but then kind of performative and fun. So we'll do a little bit of both in today's show. There is a wild story that happened overnight that's already been resolved.

The airspace in El Paso, Texas was shut down overnight and then reopened, uh, what the heck? We will talk about that as well. And the jobs report was released for January. It's looking good. The economy feels good. That's always good for business. The Olympics are getting good, uh, including we kind of kicked the Canadian's butt and I think we can kind of celebrate that, can't we?

I think we can. And two ideas slam questions today. One, how do I know if I'm cut out for this? How do I know if I should be a small business owner? Because some days I just feel like quitting. The other question follows up on a conversation we had yesterday at our SBOC Madison Meetup. I'm working towards a goal, but as I work towards the goal, I'm burning out big time.

So how do I get this goal that's gonna take all of my effort, but also not crash at the same time? Tough question. I'll tackle it in the Idea Slam as you're joining the show. This is a team sport, so tell us that you're businessing along with me. Drop your business name and your links and the comments.

I'd love to feature you on the show and say good morning as we get this going. So we'll start with the news. If you are like me, you got up super early this morning. Now I wish I could say it's because I have this like amazing habit of getting up early. No. Ivy, the golden retriever got me up three 30.

Thank you. Ivy. Tried to go back to sleep. Wasn't happening. Crawled outta bed at 4:00 AM opened the Twitter and what do you mean? The airspace over El Paso, Texas is completely closed for the next 10 days. Like, is this a nightmare? Am I dreaming? What do you mean? Turns out there was a national security threat.

Overnight and they closed all the airspace over El Paso, the first such closure of a US city since nine 11, a major US city since nine 11. So I was on monitoring the situation alert like what the heck is going on? Start using the Twitter refresh button to try and stay up to date. And it was so early, none of the networks had anything on it yet 'cause it was, you know, 4:00 AM Eastern time, 5:00 AM eastern time.

When I started paying attention to this. So I start monitoring it on Twitter and no one really knew what was going on By 8:00 AM I got on the treadmill and I'm still watching this thing and then blink all of a sudden. Oh yeah, it's fine. We reopen the airspace. Nothing to see here. Flights may continue.

So we went from no one can fly over El Paso for the next 10 days to, Nope, we're good. Whoa. Whoa, that, that's like that. That is, that's a journey we went on. Emergency no one can fly to. We're good in three hours. So the story that's out right now is that the authorities say, well, some Mexican cartels flew drones into the US airspace.

We shut down the airspace and took care of it. Okay, well good, I guess, but it seemed really harsh. Freaked me out for sure. So I've been up since 4:00 AM without caffeine, which is alive. Had a bunch of caffeine, but I got up at 4:00 AM bright-eyed because whoa, there's something going on. And that's what happened over overnight, hopefully while you were sleeping.

Let's see who we have here. Nikki's here with us again this morning, Nikki, it's lovely to see you as well. And speaking of sleeping in no judgment Abby, good to see you this morning. Glad that you're businessing along with us. We've got great economic news meeting us this morning. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its January jobs report and the economy added a stronger than expected 130,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate dropped only by a 10th of a point, but it went down to 4.3%.

Awesome and awesome. What seems to be important here is how many jobs were added over what they expected. Those poor economists never get it right. The story is always, Ooh. It came in under expectations. Oh, it surpassed expectations. You never hear it say, the economists nailed it. Do you ever hear that?

I've No. I don't think I've ever heard that. It's always the economists who are like wrong all the time, and that's what makes the story because the economists said We're expecting about 75,000 jobs in January, and the number was boink, 130,000 jobs, quite the spread. It's the strongest month of employment gains since December of 24, not two months ago, 14 months ago, the strongest month of adding jobs to the economy, which is great.

So the good news is if people feel good about spending money, we are happy to take their money because we are businessing. So good economic news is good for all of us. Barbara, great to see you. Thanks for joining us here today. So don't forget, if you're watching the show, tell us that you are, and I'd love to showcase you and your business on the air.

We kicked some Canadian butt overnight, well, not overnight. Yesterday we kicked some Canadian butt. The women's hockey team took it to Canada. Five to nothing. Five, five. Now I'm not a big hockey guy, but I know that five to nothing, that is a beat down. And that would be especially painful as a Canadian, because that's their national pastime.

That would be like beating the US in plastic surgery or something like that. Hey, wait a minute. We're that's, that's our thing. You can't beat us at that. So, sorry. Canada, we love your Tim Hortons and we love that you love. Hockey, but we're just better at it than you are. So I say this on behalf of all Americans. Suck it. Okay. Other things happening at the Olympics. Madison Shock and Evan Bates are skating for the ice dancing gold today. Good luck to them. Chloe Kim is out in the half pine half pipe making her debut. So the highlights are going all around the internet and Jordan STOs is skating for the men's 1000 meter speed skating goal Gold.

So that's all happening at the Olympics as we watch it, either in real time this afternoon with having it on in the background or watching the NBC replays at night, which is what we're doing here in the Miller household as well. Okay, let's move on to our lead story. I gotta talk about ai because the AI topic is changing so quickly.

I feel like I have to chronicle what's happening just to keep you up to speed because we are going from, it's pretty cool to, I can't believe it did that, to, oh my gosh, we're in trouble. That's how fast it's moving. And this morning I have a little bit of everything. I wanna do an AI explanation to make sure that you are up to speed on what is going on, because there's a big change from chatbots to agents.

Then I'm gonna share the most viral X article that I've seen in a long time where an AI leader basically comes out and says, yeah, we're cooked, and then we're also going to talk about, um. How businesses are wondering whether or not this is a good decision and how digital twins are going to change everything for small business owners.

So we got a lot of ground to cover, but we need to start with all of us on the same page. The development that's going been going on, and the reason why I can't shut up about it is that age agentic behavior is going mainstream. And if you've been using AI as a chat bot, only, you're using it to write posts.

Uh, you're using it to ask questions, you need to understand the difference between an AI chat bot and an AI agent. So an AI chat bot like chat, GBT. You ask it questions, you then get the answer and you copy and paste that answer. So you can go do the work, write me a LinkedIn post. It does, you copy it and put it on LinkedIn.

It really can't go out proactively and see your files and your calendars and your apps. I mean, it can, but not really. It is a glorified Google search, but you still have to do a bunch of work to help it along. Now, an agent like Claude Cowork, which is the big development this morning that I'll share in a second, an agent, you ask it to do something and it goes and it does it.

You give it access to your files, it can go read your files, extrapolate the content context. It can read the documents and pull out and synthesize answers for you. It can connect to your apps in the background. It can control your browser. Create documents, organize folders. It's like an employee that does stuff when you are not looking.

In summary, a chat bot gives you answers, and an agent does the work. That's where we are. Right now with agents and the breaking news is I've been going on and on about Claude Cowork on Mac desktop. Mac users on their desktop could download Cloud Claude Cowork, and it's been fantastic. I've been using it for a couple of weeks, changed everything around here.

Yesterday they announced Claude Cowork is now available for Windows users as well. Everyone has access to Claude Co work now. I will give you the highest recommendation. I can go get it. Just go get it. Tell me to shut up. Go to get the Claude website. Spend the a hundred dollars on the max plan, download that app and start using it because it does stuff that you can't believe it will do.

Gimme an example. Hey, I will give you an example. Great idea. The other day I was working on the 2026. Conference for the small business owners community. Can't miss middle of September this year. You should come. And I'm like, I, I wanna make sure that I'm building it with everyone's feedback in mind, and I wanna make sure that I'm making the most of this opportunity to bring the community together.

So I gave it access to all of my docs and I said, okay, go read all of the feedback forms that we've received from the past three years. Look at our agenda from the past three years. Go out and find all the other conferences like mine and look at what I've got drafted right now for this year. Synthesize all that data and make recommendations for me based on user feedback, engagement, passion, the words they use, and it did all by itself.

Hey, your report is ready. I'd pay a consultant to do that. And it did it, and it was really good. I asked it something simple. Hey, go into my Google Drive and eliminate all the duplicates. Whoa. Did I have a lot of duplicates in there? And I don't use Adobe anymore 'cause it, oh, don't get me started on Adobe, but I don't use Adobe anymore.

Hey, go in and find all the dot PSD files that are choking my hard drive space. Oh, here's 500 of them. Would you like me to delete them? Hell yes. Where's the hell yes button? Hell yes. Adobe. Get out of my life. That is a rant for another day. Adobe is not happy, not happy with them, but that's the kind of stuff that this will go do, this age agentic behavior.

So it's done all of those kinds of things for me. It's super powerful and when you get one, your business will change. And this Windows announcement is huge. So if you need a hand setting it up or you want to ask some questions, I'm helping some people one-on-one do that. We can talk about that offline. How will this agentic behavior impact us moving forward? What does the world look like now? Seriously, sit back and and just, just have a moment. We're sitting around on couches, you and me, we're just kind of chilling. We're having one of those. What if kind of conversations, what does the world look like if labor, especially labor that can be automated or repetitive tasks?

Goes to zero. What if that labor continues to get cheaper and cheaper and you can start moving faster and faster? What does your job look like? What does your business, what does your day look like? Now, that is an out there question that I think in the back of our minds we should have been thinking about for the last two years.

But now that it's here, it's like, oh my God, I have to think about this right now. In the next 90 days, every single person watching this show will have an AI agent and an agent swarm working for them. I'll bet you, like I say, I'll bet you the dog treats next 90 days. We're all having agents, all of it, and it's gonna change your life.

So what should you be thinking about? Well, let's check in with someone who's in the AI industry. There's an article that was put up on X Twitter and it's gone nuclear 31 million views as of this morning. Matt Schirmer is the author. He's an investor and founder in ai, and he shares the opinion that I've actually shared on this show that I think we're in a moment that is as impactful as the 2020 pandemic.

So Matt shares what's happening now. This is how he summarizes everything. These new AI models, GPT 5.3, and Claude Opus 4.6. They crossed a big old threshold. They're behaving differently, and he talks about how, what I just described, you give it a task, you walk away for four hours and it comes back to all of this finished work and there's no corrections needed.

Okay? He talks about how AI is now starting to develop something that feels like taste and judgment because until now it's been, yeah, that's technically correct, but I gotta Z up a little bit. I dunno how you spell Zh. I'll just say it so I don't have to try and spell it, but I gotta make it me. You gotta do that less and less.

The other thing that it's doing is these tools are building themselves now. This is like Star Trek stuff, open AI confirmed. The GPT 5.3 was instrumental in creating itself. What Claude Cowork wrote itself, huh Anthropic, the Claude Parent Company predicts that 50% of entry level white collar jobs will be gone.

One to five years. So here's the chilling headline out of this doomerism that he's predict predicting, and this is the thing you need to understand, and this is why I'm so on this this morning. He said something along the lines of, if you work on a screen, you are at risk.

Is that where you produce your value on a screen? Is a screen important to what you do? Are you pushing bits and bytes around for people? I don't care what version of it is. I don't care if you're a bookkeeper or a lawyer or a graphic designer. I don't care what you do. Do you push pixels around on a screen?

If you are, you are at risk. Great, pat, that's awesome if you're saying reflexively, but yeah, but AI isn't that good. You have a lot of reason to believe that. From 2023 up until, eh, a couple months ago. It wasn't world beating. It was cool. It was promising it was fun, but was it changing everything? No, not really.

But if you're still stuck in that mode, you're kind of stuck in ancient history. Another thing that he shared in this article is if you're using the free version, it's really hard to be up to date on what's going on because he estimates the free version is a year behind the paid version as far as power is concerned.

The gap that's growing between the public perception and the reality that the insiders are seeing is starting to get dangerous. So he recommended in this article, and I'm sharing this article because everyone who's paying attention to AI has Reddit. It's been seen, like I say, 30 million times in the last 24 hours since it's been put out.

So this is what he recommends you should do about it. Pay for the $20 plan on Claude or chat GPT just to make sure you're using the best model. Not the freebie. Don't use it like Google, push it to do your actual work. Try it and ask it to do stuff that you think it can't do. Ask it to do hard things like things you're not sure if it can actually accomplish it.

And it may not be able to do it now, but in the next few months it will be. And one of the most compelling things he said is, was be the person that figures it out first. That competitive window won't stay open long. It was an interesting article because of who wrote it, an AI executive and an investor.

This is what they're seeing. So where is this all going? As you've heard me say, we're all gonna have agents in hand, and when you do the next 90 days, when you get your AI agent come back to the show and say, you know what, pat? Not only are you devastatingly handsome, you were right. AI agents are incredible and they are, and for our business, we have to start thinking about where are we being empathetic and where are we serving people in real time as humans?

'cause that's where the opportunity goes. And on top of agents, it gets even creepier because one of the trends that's exploding and another thing that we will have. We'll all have digital twins now, this is where it really gets wild. A digital twin is the concept of learning everything about you, your customers, and your competitors, so you can make decisions better and move faster and serve more people.

A digital twin of you will be able to talk, right, create videos, do almost everything that you can do in the real world, and then you can create a digital twin of your customer. That's powered with all of your customer's previous decisions, all of their expectations, all of the market research, all of the behaviors and clicks on your website, all of their research and buying behaviors and everything you need.

And so you can talk to that digital twin before launching a product because it's been trained to behave like your customers would. You can create a digital twin of your com competition that acts just like a real competitor. You can create digital twins of your salespeople. So now you're reaching out to two times, four times, eight times, a hundred times of the people that you are right now to generate more leads.

All of this is accelerating at a rate that's just, it's off the charts. And when I think about small business, we could have talked today about how to close more deals, or we could have talked today about perfecting your elevator pitch or. How to cut expenses or whatever. Those topics, while important, are pale in comparison to the importance of this topic.

And I'm talking about it so much 'cause it's changing my business literally in real time. And the development of Claude Cowork coming to Windows means everyone watching this now has the opportunity for an over the counter AI agent that even Normies like me, non-technical people. Can drive. So it's time to start offloading the busy work.

It's time to embrace the technology that's here, and it's really time to start doing it fast because things are changing for sure. Now, Nikki Lee is the president of Gen Head sponsor of the show, and she's up on what's going on with AI agents. And one of the things that they're doing at Gen Head, which is really interesting, is they're taking an open source.

Angle in addition to staying up on top of everything else that's happening. So she's talking about two other LLM models, Kim EK two, and deep seek four that's coming. And both of those models will be able to be driven in an open source manner and they're supposed to be great. Kim EK two's already out.

And people are going crazy about it and deep seek four is coming soon and is going to be a big deal. Then one more comment from Nikki, we should highlight NVIDIA's. CEO recently said that AI won't replace humans in the workforce, but humans that use AI will replace those that don't. I think that's true.

I think that's true, and I think it's also we have to think about what can we still do for people when our job in the past was to. Do things on a screen for people. Well, how can we help people in person? How can we have a higher touch, a luxury program? Whatever it might be. We gotta start talking about this.

It's really, really important. So go get Claude Cowork. If you don't have it yet, it's available to everybody. It is a game changer. The idea slam is coming up. Two great questions today. How do I know if I'm cut out for this? What if I just feel like quitting? What if this whole small business thing isn't for me?

I hear that sometimes, and normally when we ask that question, we're not doing so great, so we're gonna put our arm around that person and talk about, can I do this or not? The second question comes from our small business owners community meetup in Madison. Yesterday, I'm too busy to take a vacation, but I need a break because I've got a goal that I'm trying to hit and I gotta get it by a certain deadline, but I really need a vacation.

So how can I have both of those things come true? We'll talk about vacation strategy as a small business owner in the Idea Slam coming up. But first we talked a little bit about Gen Head. Let's talk more about gen head scale systems and not chaos built for early stage entrepreneurs and businesses. Gen head systems are designed for founders, solopreneurs and lean teams who need real momentum.

Not complex tools that require a full-time operator. Everything inside gen head is streamlined, practical, and you can act on it immediately. This one system will replace all of your disconnected tools. So instead of having a CRM over here, and your automations and lead funnels over here, and your social media posting over here and your follow ups over here, it's all put into one lean system that's easy to drive so you have less chaos and clearer data.

Plus Nikki and her team, they are really up to date on what's going on with ai. So if our previous conversation made you go, man, I need to get that in my business, you need to get ahold of Gen Head. The link is in the chat and the QR code is on the screen. Gen head.com, that's gen head.com. They're the sponsor of the show and they are our producers using a boatload of ai I might add.

So thank you Nikki and Jen Head for being a part of the show. I really appreciate it. Let's turn our attention to the idea Slam that the idea Slam is the chance for us to solve problems and capture opportunities in your business. This is the second opinion and the feedback from someone that's walked in your shoes.

Yesterday we had Paul Orlowski on the air, great conversation with Paul about is it possible to niche down too much? And I encouraged him to niche down further. So if you miss yesterday's show, you can catch it on YouTube or on our podcast feeds. But this is an opportunity to click the QR code and come on the air and share what you're working on.

What are you building? What do you need some feedback on, how can we make this mission critical thing go further and faster, or. Maybe you've got a challenge and something is standing in the way and you'd like to hear how the people in the chat or I might be able to help you get past that problem. So I'm gonna put on the screen the QR code up here in the corner for you to become an idea slam guest.

See it up there in the corner, right up here. So when you find inspiration during this segment, you wanna join us, click that QR code and you can schedule your time to come on the air and we will collaborate on your behalf. So let's get to the first question. How do I know if I'm cut out for this? Running this small business thing is kind of hard.

Some days I want to quit. How do I know that this is for me? Alright, we ask that question. When we're overwhelmed, we ask that question when things aren't going great. So I just want to recognize the fact that I see you struggling. I do wanna have a conversation where we can try and fix it, but I see the struggle and I feel for you.

Hopefully you're gonna get outta this rut soon, so I wanted to be a real human to you first. With that said, contrary to the talk your dad gave you when you wanted to quit T-Ball after the first practice, quitting your business is fine, provided your business is the problem. Let me explain the quote that I'm guided by.

It's written on the whiteboard. You can't see here up out of the shot. It's a quote from Naval who I just worship. He's amazing. The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life. So before we talk about fixing it, and before we go into all the details, are you getting what you want out of this small business life?

If the answer is no, we gotta go to work. If the answer is yes, but not right now, we'll get through the not right now part because building a business as a solopreneur is not like building a Fortune 500 company. In fact, especially in the early days, it's not much of a business challenge that you're fighting.

It's a lifestyle challenge, meaning you have to go through all of the iterations and all of the challenges. To understand, am I driven enough to do this? Am I obsessed enough to fight for this vision so fiercely that you'll keep going. When people tell you no for the umpteenth time, when your first 25 iterations of the company don't click, when you have a painful sacrifice to make, or the debt starts piling up and you have to sacrifice personally and professionally.

That's when you find out if you've got the fire. Because entrepreneurs, we are not normal. We are not normal. I heard it, said, God, I'm gonna mangle the quote. It was something like, we're able to hear no a thousand times and keep going. I forget what it is, but that's essentially what life is like when you're building your own thing, especially as a solopreneur.

So to answer your question, this life is not for everyone and that's okay. Your business is stressing you out so much and you're losing money and your health is suffering, and you have the option to go work for someone else. Again, I won't fault you for doing it and listen to who that's coming from. I'm the small business guy.

I do a weekly show on small business, I should say Never quit always. No, no. This is not easy, but it's worth it.

Now. Any entrepreneur that has the fire, listen to what I just said and, and can't even comprehend Quitting. What? What do you mean go work for someone else? Someone else. Have someone else tell, tell me what to do, what? I'm completely unemployable at this point, there's no chance I could go work for someone else.

So if you had that reaction, then you know this is for you. But if the concept of quitting did sound kind of good and you really don't like the idea of working as hard as you possibly can to make this work, then maybe it isn't for you. And that's a hundred percent okay. If we listen back to the question, some days I want to quit.

Well, hell yes. Some days I wanna quit too. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to throw this monitor into the ocean. That happens a couple of times a week to small business owners. We want to quit, but we don't. If you can find perspective between a bad lifestyle or a bad business situation, you'll be able to answer the question whether or not you should quit.

Here are a couple of checks just in case it's still a little bit fuzzy. Couple of questions to help you make this decision. Are you making enough money or do you see a world where you can make enough money? So maybe you're not where you wanna be, but you can see how you're gonna get there and you think you can, you're in good shape.

But if you're looking up saying, I need to make 20 grand more a month, and there's no prayer, no how, that might be a warning sign. Are the clients that you're attracting to work with you good to work with and fulfilling you emotionally? Are they fun? Are they exciting? Are they enabling you to do your best work?

That's a good warning sign. That's a good indicator that you're on the right path. But if the people that you're attracting are not vibing with what you're doing and, and you're not doing your best work, another warning sign. Another thing. Have you cracked the code on getting enough of those people into your funnel?

Are you finding enough potential clients to try and land? Is your message resonating? Then the last bit is, do you love it? Because I gotta tell you, I have dreams about this stuff. I think about this stuff while I'm watching tv. I think about this while I am on the treadmill. I listen to podcasts about it.

I read books about it. I don't read fiction 'cause I could read a book to make my business better. I'm obsessed with this. It doesn't mean you have to be like me, but you'll know that this is for you if that's how you are. So it's not a requirement to love this being an entrepreneur lifestyle, but if you do love it, it's kind of handy 'cause it's easier to keep going when things aren't working.

So if you can lead the lifestyle, if you can find joy in the journey and you can handle the massive risks that we have to take to make it all work, then yeah, you're probably an entrepreneur. Keep going. But if not, no harm, no foul. I'll make a referral and an introduction for you if I can go find a stable job with benefits because life.

Life As Naval said, the test of intelligence is to get what you want out of life. And if you're not getting what you want out of this small business lifestyle, move on because life is way too short. Way too short to be unhappy. Find what you need and move to it. Second idea slam question today comes in from what we talked about yesterday in Madison.

So the small business owners community met up at the American Family Dream Bank in Madison yesterday. Great group of entrepreneurs got together. We did an idea Slam Live and one of the folks that came, and I didn't ask for their permission to share it on the air, so I'll keep their name and their business out of it for a second.

But they run a membership business. They said we're opening another location and the location's gonna go live in July. And my job between now and July is to sell enough memberships and I'm going Great guns. I'm working as hard as I possibly can, but the challenge is I'm probably gonna burn out. I need to take a vacation.

How can I get some rest scheduled? So I want to talk about that. How do you schedule rest even when you're busy or you're under a deadline? We'll start by talking about time. Time is limited and deadlines are real. July 1st, I have to have this many members. That's a fact. I have this many days till July 1st.

That is a fact. But motivations and priorities can shift time, can literally bend time. Einstein stuff. I, I swear I believe this to be true. When you have a very present deadline and you have a big goal and you're really excited about it, we start identifying all of this unused time, all of this mismanaged time, all the time that you give away to other people that aren't on the same priority as you are.

And when all of those things start popping up, they like pop out at you. It's like, why am I doing this? I've got the deadline. What about this? I've got the, you're locked in. When you get locked in, there's almost nothing that you can't do. So the owner yesterday was opening the second location and had to get all these memberships by JU July one, and they shared, I don't think I have time to be off, but the thing that governs this is Parkinson's law.

Tom, great to see you. Thanks for tuning in Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fill the time available to complete it. And that is the absolute truth. So if you have until July 1st to sell 75 memberships, it will take until July 1st to sell 75 memberships. If I said you need to sell 75 memberships by May 15th, I bet you'd find a way to do it.

And if the incentive is strong enough, that's where the time and space bending happens. The example I like to use is, Hey, guess what? Uh, who's here? Tom or Steve or Nikki or whomever? You, I've got two tickets, all expense paid to Hawaii. You leave tonight at five o'clock, but you can't get on that plane if you don't get everything done so you can leave the office for the next 10 days.

What do you think would happen? All of the low priorities would go away. All of your high priorities would surface. You'd have radical clarity on exactly what needs to be done. So you are in that TSA line by four o'clock or whatever time you get to the airport. That's a whole separate show. We've taken Parkinson's law of you've got the next 10 days to get all this stuff done and I've given you five hours and with the incentive of a vacation, you're gonna figure out a way to do it.

How do you get a vacation as an entrepreneur, when I'm so busy and I've got all these deadlines, simple schedule. It. Doesn't that sound stupid? I need to have a vacation. How do I get one? Put it on the calendar. When it goes on the calendar, that's when the time and space bending begins. I've got a vacation coming up in T minus, uh, is it 15, 16, 18 days?

Vegas baby. Don't even get me started on how much I love Vegas. Like I say, a separate show. My dad and brother-in-law, brother-in-law and I are going to Vegas and it is a party and I cannot wait. So I've got this big list of topics and and tasks that I have to get done. Do you think they'll get done? Hell yes.

They're gonna get done Vegas baby. So how do you take a vacation schedule it. You've got to schedule it, and once it's scheduled, then all of the other priorities will come into play. All of the low priorities will absolutely go away, and suddenly you'll be on the plane to Vegas or Hawaii and say, wow, I did really good.

Well, yeah, you had the incentive to do so. This also plays along with the Fridays off theory, by the way, because if you decide to take Fridays off magically, everything will get done Monday through Thursday. Because you've set a deadline and you have an incentive that's bigger than just your willpower, magic stuff.

So we talked about it yesterday in Madison to the entrepreneur that asked the question. Uh, but if they are watching today, I hope you scheduled your vacation. You promise that you would, uh, email me and let me know on the way. We are going to talk about a Fridays off thought of the day. I, I've got a deep thought about.

Fridays off that I wanna share. Uh, and it's about hobbies. How are your hobbies? Do you have hobbies? Did your hobbies go away? We'll talk about that after this from Enji. Enji, our other partner, sponsor of the show, they are the AI marketing engine for your small business. If you hate doing. Your own marketing, AI or eng rather makes it easy.

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Thank you to ENG for being a part of the show. Here's the Friday's off. Thought of the day. Hit me the other day when I was. Downstairs, I forget what I was doing, but I was down there doing some work of some kind and I walked by my golf bag and it was sad. It was sad 'cause I haven't played with it all winter.

It kind of looked at me like a golf bag does like play with me and I haven't. How much of your time is spent working because you love it? And how much of your time is spent working because you don't have anything else that you love as much as working?

I think that's a real issue for many of us, and I think it's an issue for me too. I love working more than doing almost anything else. And the Friday's off thought is, well, what if you had a whole day off each week to do whatever you want? What the heck would you do? I know you're a Type A, most likely you're a type A.

Every hobby quickly becomes a passion that we need to get better at. I do that all the time, but the bigger question is what are those hobbies anymore? Do you still have hobbies or do your hobbies go back into a closet? Or are they sitting in a basement? Did they go outta date? Are they purposely obscured so you don't get sucked back in?

Can you feel that? I can feel that. I can feel that there's so many things that I enjoy doing that I don't always let myself do, because if I do, I'll get sucked in. When you get to Fridays off and you have all of this extra free time, will there be anything waiting for you? Will you have a distraction?

Will you have something that pulls you away from the business so you can go purposely enjoy it? I mentioned the naval quote earlier today. A test of intelligence is to get what you want out of life. And what I want out of life is I wanna make enough money to support the family and I wanna play a lot of golf 'cause it makes me happy.

What makes you happy? What hobby do you have that you no longer care for? And what do you love as much as working? And if the answer is nothing, whew.

You gotta think about that because many of us think, well, that's my someday reward when the business is working great and when I'm making great money, then I'll pick the golf clubs back up. Then I'll start doing crochet or journaling or scrapbooking or whatever it is that you love. But you know, as well as I do as an entrepreneur, that day is never gonna come because as we do well in business, we wanna do better in business.

So we kind of have to start, you know, force quitting working, uh, on Friday mornings so we can go pick up something that brings us joy. This is true. What hobby do you have that you've put away? Go find it. Go find it, start playing with it and watch the joy come back in your life. And speaking of joy, boy Daddy's gotta get to the golf simulator.

I'm gonna go and swing the first few swings in the golf simulator, and it's gonna smell like burning hair. Like I'm just not. Whew. I gotta loosen up a little bit. Gotta get ready for the golf season. Let's see. Rebecca Bryant, are you serious? I'm literally getting on a plane to Vegas in three hours and I magically got the house clean and ready for my father-in-law to come to watch the kids this morning.

It's true. See, give yourself a vacation and everything will get done. You're going to Vegas. Now I have questions. Where are you staying and what do you like to do while you're in Vegas? Because everyone has their own Vegas trip. I like to go to shows. I like to go to restaurants. I like to go to the pool.

I like to go shopping. I like to play blackjack. Everyone's got their own Vegas style, and I think if you learn what someone's Vegas style is, you get to really know a lot about them. I don't talk about, I mean I, people that are close to me in the SBOC, they know I love going to Vegas, but I'm damn near a tour guide.

I know every hotel, I know every route. I know every, everything there is. I love it. I love it. And for me, man, a long evening, a plane craps and having a cold one and just relaxing, that is something I love as much as doing the business. 'cause it lets me not think about doing the business. Rebecca, if you have time, share all about your Vegas style, uh, because I'd love to hear it.

The SBC is doing great. By the way. We got a new member today. Uh, earlier today. We had a member from Mississippi join, which is kind of exciting, and I think that brings us to 149 members. So if you're thinking about joining the SBOC, you could be number one 50, which would be kind of a big deal. Kind of a big deal for sure.

This is the owner's only group. That works together to solve problems and capture opportunities. And it's almost malpractice to run your business without it. I was thinking about this, how many big risks do you take on your business, and how many people who know do you ask first before you do? So I'm gonna blow up my website.

Okay. And I'm just gonna put it out there. No, no, no, no, no. Get some feedback first. I'm gonna change my whole pricing structure. Uh, okay. And I'm just gonna put it out the, no, don't email your clients yet. Ask other people that have made these mistakes before or done them before and can give you the feedback you need so you're making better decisions and moving faster.

This owner's only group is the support group for small business owners so we can make better decisions and work together. Small business owners, community members all around the country working to collaborate and grow together. And yeah, we make friends and yeah, we have fun, but we make money together.

If you wanna make more of it and you wanna make this small business lifestyle easier, click the QR code or visit small business community.com and you can become a member today and you could be number one 50. And we would celebrate that greatly. Here we go, Caesar's Rebecca's style. Eating, drinking, shopping.

We're not gambling people. Good for you. Spend all that money on goodies and have a good time eating. Oh, they got Joe's Crab Shack, or whatever. Joe's Crab at Caesar's Boy. I love that place. Awesome. We could talk about Vegas all day, but uh, we don't have time for that. We've got a job to do and we've got business to to handle.

So thanks for joining us today, businessing with Pat Miller. We'll be back tomorrow. Thursday at 11:00 AM sponsored by Gen Head and Angie, and a big thanks to the Gen Head team for doing the producing of the show. And remember, if you like and share this show with your network, I'm sending out share mail with a little gift inside to say thank you for doing so.

'cause I figure the best way to grow this show is through referrals. So tell someone that you're watching and having a good time and hopefully we can get a whole bunch of people to business with us. On a daily basis, this is the new daily habit for small business owners. Businessing with Pat Miller back on the air tomorrow.

Can't wait for that. Until then, go sell something. Talk to you tomorrow at 11:00 AM Take care.