Originally aired Monday, February 16, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.
Short answer: SEO isn't dead. It's changing, and it matters more now that people search on social media and AI chatbots too. Those tools still rely on SEO to understand what you do, who you serve and where. You can do the basics yourself with free keyword tools and a simple checklist.
Today my guest was Tayler Cusick Hollman, founder of Enji, and she answered a question every owner asks. Is SEO dead? Her answer was no. She walked us through free keyword tools, where keywords belong on your site, and why your blog is the heartbeat of your website. Before that, I shared a study on how much financial stress costs owners each year, with some very funny would-you-rather answers. In the Idea Slam, a dog grooming owner's best employee said she's leaving to open her own shop. My advice was to let her go, protect your business, and always be training and recruiting. I closed with a Valentine's story about having a partner who gets you.
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
- Make sure you can log into your own website yourself, because you should always control it.
- List the words and questions your ideal customers might type to find you, even the odd ones.
- Check search volume for those phrases with free tools like Ubersuggest, Google Trends and Google Search Console.
- Put your keywords in page headlines, body copy, page URLs, page titles and page descriptions.
- Cross-train so at least two people besides you know every job, and keep recruiting even when you're fully staffed.
Questions this episode answers
Is SEO dead for small businesses?
No. It's changing, and it matters more now. People search on social media and AI chatbots as well as Google. Those tools still use SEO to understand what you do, who you serve and where you do it.
Where should I put keywords on my website?
Put them in your page headlines, work them naturally into your copy, and use them in the end of each page's URL. Also add them to each page's title and description. Most website builders have fields for these.
Do small businesses still need to blog for SEO?
Yes. A blog shows Google that a real person cares about your site, even if you only post once a quarter. It also lets you answer specific customer questions that wouldn't fit on your main pages.
Should I try to keep an employee who says they're leaving?
Usually no. By the time they tell you, they've already thought it through. A sudden raise just makes them wonder why you didn't offer it before. Let them go well, and if they're starting a competing business, talk to your attorney right away.
Worth quoting
It's only a matter of time until every single employee in your company leaves.
Pat Miller on Businessing
trust me, everyone is replaceable. You'll be able to live without them.
Pat Miller on Businessing
If you sat down right now and said, who knows how to do this thing, if the answer is only one person, you've got a problem.
Pat Miller on Businessing
You spend time on your SEO and the robots can find you faster. That's one more view that you don't have to pay for or hope that you get from organic social media.
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Tayler Cusick Hollman, Enji: Founder of the AI marketing tool Enji, who explained why SEO still matters and how owners can do the basics themselves.
- Idea Slam question: A dog grooming business owner's best employee is leaving to start her own shop: try to keep her or let her go gracefully?
In this episode
- Show open
- Valentine's spending and the pet gift stat
- Owners lose a month a year to financial stress
- Is SEO dead? With Tayler Cusick Hollman
- Finding your keywords with free tools
- Where to put keywords on your website
- Why your blog still matters
- Idea Slam: my best employee is leaving
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: Getting clients answers from the Small Business Owners Community
Full transcript
And good morning. It is Monday, February 16th, and we are businessing. And we're businessing on my favorite holiday of the year. I, I'm a big President's Day guy. Really aren't, aren't you? Oh, you're not. No, nobody is. It's President's Day. It's an absolute rager of a holiday. No, it's like the least important holiday of the year, but we do get the day off.
But if you own your own business, do you get the day off? I don't think so. We are here to get things done and to get things done together. This is Small Business' weekly show. I'm your host, pat Miller, founder of the small business owners community. We are sponsored this morning by our friends at Gen Head and Angie.
Thanks to both of them for making it happen on today's show. We've got some good stuff. Speaking of Enji, we have a guest today. We have a guest. Taylor Cusick Holman, founder of Enji is coming on to teach us about SEO because is SEO dead or do we have to do it differently? She's the one that knows and she's gonna teach us later on in the show.
We'll also go through the news. Small business owners lose a month each year thanks to financial stress. We'll talk about that. I'm very proud to say that Simon Cowell has gotten word of Fridays off and Heath's now. Yes, that Simon Cowell is now a part of the Fridays off family. So we'll talk about that and one idea slam question today, but it is a good one for those of you that have employees.
The question, an employee just told me they're going to leave. Do I try to keep them or do I let them go gracefully? If you've ever employed people, you know how dangerous that can be. And make sure that you say good morning in the chat, because we want to see you and we want to talk about your business and make sure that we are, um, having a good time together because that's part of the fun, because when we're watching the show together, we can talk with one another, make jokes, sarcastic remarks, questions, comments, and sarcastic remarks, as I like to say, always available in the chat.
So I would love to see you in the chat with us today. Let's start with our news, shall we? This past weekend was Valentine's Day. How'd it go? Was it good? Did you have a nice Valentine's Day? The retailers certainly loved Valentine's Day. The restaurateurs loved Valentine's Day. They loved it so much because it broke all kinds of records according to the National Retail Federation.
They said we spent $29.1 billion this past weekend on Valentine's Day. Now that's a lot of billions to tell someone that I love you 'cause I can just open the door and scream down the hall. Hey abs, love you. $0, no $29.1 billion to tell the husbands and wives in the country that we love one another. And it's kind of nice.
You do something nice for one another. It's just kind of romantic. It's, I get it. Believe me, I'm not that dumb of a husband. I get it. The average spouse or partner spent $200 on Valentine's Day. But wait, there's more. And it's something that challenges everyone's perception of the economy. Now think about this.
The study showed 35% of us bought a gift for our pet. Just gonna let that sit there for a second. I want you to think about how awful some people pretend the economy is right now, depending on who you're listening to or where you look, the sky is falling and everything sucks and the economy is trash.
However, 35% of us bought a gift for a dog that doesn't know what Valentine's Day is, can't even eat the chocolate. We still spent $2.1 billion on our pets. So when, and it will happen this week when your networking with someone and when someone says, but, but, but the economy, I'd be doing better. But the eco come on.
35% of us bought dogs, Valentine's Day gifts and cats and ferrets and all the other animals that we keep. So the economy's doing just fine. And see, there's Ivy asking where her Valentine's Day gift is. And we didn't get you one sweetheart. Sorry about that. But I still, daddy still loves you. I guess I gotta go get something now.
Ah, speaking of money, small business owners lose 33 work days a year thanks to tax and financial stress. Did you do your taxes yet? Have you gone through the pile? Yeah, Abby and I went through the pile this weekend. Very romantic for Valentine's Day. Oh honey, what can I do for you? I'll do anything you want.
What do you want, baby? Ooh, let's do our taxes nice and slow. A bunch of morons. That's what we did. Valentine's Day, that's hashtag old for you. But yeah, we did our taxes this weekend. But there's a new study out by a company called Zero, you know, zero, uh, XERO. And they did the emotional tax return report for 2026.
And they said that the year-round emotional burden for small business owners is gigantic. They said 70% of us identify financial management as a stressor. Basically the managing and the doing of the money of the business. But what's fun about the study, and I gotta give them credit for this, and we need to remember this in case you ever decide to do a study, because it, they made it really talkable.
So props to zero for doing this. This is really smart. If I would've just thrown facts and figures at you, it would've been, oh, hey, okay, fine. Uh, people don't like doing their taxes. Move on.com. No. They did something really brilliant. They made the numbers come to life, so listen to what they did. Yes, we get stressed and yes, we lose a month of our life each year to worrying about money, but they asked respondents, this is so good.
I just want, I, I just want to, ah, this is, I wanna remember this. I'm going slow on purpose because we need to remember this so brilliant. Instead of just saying, how much do you hate your taxes? They asked all of the respondents, what would you rather do? Would you rather do your taxes or would you rather do something else?
And that is a brilliant question because when you think about it, when you think about it, you give someone an example that's visceral. You give 'em an example that they can feel. They're gonna remember how much they hate their taxes. So listen to what they said. They said, would you rather do your taxes or have food poisoning?
Isn't that a brilliant framing? God, it's so good. And 8% of people said, I'd rather have food poisoning than do my taxes. Would you rather do your taxes or lick a public transit poll? Just thinking about it makes me wanna hurl. Yet, 8% of the people said they would rather lick a public transit poll. Good morning, Steve.
Great to see you Bill than do your taxes. Would you rather do your taxes or get a root canal? 13% of the people poll said they'd rather get a root canal. Would you rather do your taxes or listen to your least favorite song on repeat for eight hours? That's just outta curiosity. You're watching the show.
13% of the people said they'd rather listen to their least favorite song on repeat for eight hours straight. But I ask you, what is your least favorite song? Do you know that? Like, do you know? I know mine. I know mine. 'cause it's a joke that Abby and I have. Every time it comes on, someone's gonna die if I don't get away from that song.
It's just, it's the song that makes me absolutely crazy. What's your least favorite song? Eight hours. It's a long time For The Conga by Gloria Estefan.
I think I'd rather do my taxes. And then there was one more that I thought was really good and this was the most frequently answered. I'd rather do this than taxes. Would you rather do your taxes or go back to high school for a week? 17% of people said they'd rather go back to high school for a week than do their taxes.
Those are terrifying stats. Good morning Michael. Great to see you. 17% said they'd rather go back to high school. I would not wanna go back to high school because now that I'm an adult, I'm 6 4, 200 pounds. Alright? So I'm pretty big dude. But when I was in high school, I was six four, a hundred and fifty pounds.
I was not a big dude. I was. I was this, I was this. Hey everybody, let's go play on the golf team. Dork, dork, dork, dork. Oh boy. There's a band competition this weekend. Dork, dork, dork. Oh man. A speech contest. Yay. That was me. This was me in high school. This was me. So, needless to say, uh, I didn't do well in high school.
It was not fun. So I think, again, I'd rather do my taxes than go back to high school. So, as I mentioned, Abby and I really got it on this weekend, which if you took that out of context would be really weird. But we really got it on this weekend. We went through the stack of receipts and papers for our taxes because you gotta give the stuff to the accountant so they can do the stuff, so you can get the taxes done.
Absolute nightmare. And as we were doing it, I had a thought, here's the thought, here's the deep thought about doing your taxes. If you've done them already this year or you've ever done them, did you have the thought? I just looked at Abby and said, do you think that we're suckers that no one else goes through all of this crap that we're counting?
We had Walgreens receipts for prescriptions for $2 and 89 cents. We had like six of them, 2 89, 2 we're counting. 2 89 Walmart or Walgreens medicine receipts. People in front of my house can't pick up their bag of dog poop and take it to the trash can. But we're looking like this at, oh, wait a minute, 45 cents.
Like, come on. I'm just convinced that we are, in fact, Abby and I fund the entire federal government that literally no one else pays taxes in the entire country. We are the only ones that pay taxes in the entire country. 'cause we're that big of a sucker. Did you ever feel that way? You had to have felt that way.
Please tell me I'm not alone. So we had that entire experience. So what did we learn? We waste a bunch of time worrying about money that's a drag. We learned that we'd rather lick polls in subways and we'd rather go back to high school than do our taxes. And we learned that Abby and I fund the entire federal government that was in the news today.
One other thing that's in the news today that I think is just spectacular. Simon Cowell. Do you remember Simon Cowell? And I'm gonna say this and Abby will probably get mad. Simon Cowell was on American Idol back when it was good. Okay, I'm gonna duck. Why was it good? Because he actually told people that they were bad and they would show people who were bad and it had some drama.
Now it's not like that, but back when American Idol was great, Simon Cowell was the nasty judge and he was nasty to people and everyone remembered him. You probably remember Simon Cowell. Well, I'm excited to say that Simon Cowell is now on Team Fridays off and between now and the end of the year, there are gonna be a lot of stories like this one.
That's why I call myself the Fridays off guy. 'cause this is coming and this is a story that you could have come true for you. Imagine you only had to work four days this week. Oh wait, it's a holiday. So imagine every week was like a holiday and you only had to work four days a week. What would you do with that extra time?
How would your life change if you only had to work four days a week? I believe that now it's just a question of you deciding to do so. The technology is there for you to only work four days a week. So if you're working five days a week, it's a you problem, and I can teach you how to do it. And we should have an event where I teach that anyway.
I've been doing it since July of 2025 and it totally changed my life and my business, and you should do it too. But the story today is it's Simon Cowell famous jerk. A judge from American Idol is now working Monday through Thursday and taking every Friday off. And he got interviewed about it from Fortune Magazine or something like that.
It was so novel. Fortune Magazine ran a story about it, and in the story it goes on to share a lot of statistics about how dumb it is to work on Fridays. Now, Simon's quote was, uh, the first thing is take Fridays off. Don't work on Fridays because you don't have to. Thank you, Simon. I appreciate it. Then the studies came in and talked about how less productive we are on Fridays and how it could be a 20 to 35% drop in task completion compared to Monday or Tuesday, and no duh.
Don't we all know that we don't wanna work on Friday, but we do because it's a bad habit and now the technology has moved so far. If you're doing it now, it's just a choice. And all the cool kids, including Simon Cowell, are now working. Fridays off, not working. Wait, are taking Fridays off. That's what I meant.
We're all taking Fridays off and yes, Michael Simon, right? Can you believe it? Like we all know who he is, but he is not a celebrity and we don't like him, but we know who he is. Is there a word for that? I don't know if anyone knows Michael, you would know. There's gotta be a word for, we all know him, but we don't really like, whatever.
You get the point. Alright. We have idea Slam coming up in just a little bit, but we get to learn something today, which I'm really excited about. So we are gonna welcome on the show. Taylor Cusick Coleman Taylor is here today to teach us about SEL and let's say good morning tour now Taylor. Good morning.
How are you? Good
morning. Good morning. I'm wearing my SEOC red today.
I love it. It looks fantastic. It's almost a dead on match for the SBOC.
I know. I feel like every time that we collaborate on something, I need to show up in your brand colors.
Well,
so
I appreciate that. I, I am, am I wearing some engie purple?
Almost like we're getting close
maybe, right? Yeah, yeah. I'll, I'll ship you some like teal turquoise, uh, swag at some point.
Yeah, do that. 'cause I'm not the color person. We get to talk today about SEO and is it dead? So let's just start there. Is it dead? What are we doing with SEO right now?
It's absolutely not dead.
And honestly, a little bit of me dies inside every time I hear someone say, SEO is dead. And that small business owners don't need to pay attention to it because A, it's just not. And B, it's actually becoming more and more important in the age of artificial intelligence.
Ooh, okay. Go on. What do you mean?
Like I thought because I've been around, I remember when SEO started, hello. I remember the whole point with SEO was to get Google to drive you to the website, but now Google does the AI summaries and now Google is not driving as much traffic. And I can see where getting into the LLMs would be a big deal, but talk to us about how it's shifted and now it's kind of important to keep up with it.
Yeah, so SEO hasn't died. It's just, it's in this stage of metamorphosis where it's changing and. Humans now are searching in more places than just going to the Google search engine. They're using social media platforms, they're using the AI chatbots, and so all of those places, they still use the foundational practice of search engine optimization in order to understand all of the content that is on the internet.
And so that's really my very human description or definition of what SEO is. It's how you are organizing your content so that the search engines can understand what it is you do, where you do it, who you do it for, so that when the humans are out there looking for products or services, businesses, solutions like the ones that you provide, they actually understand those things about you and therefore can even have a chance at referring you to someone who's searching
for the people that have websites and brands out in the public.
Are they still trying? What are you seeing with clients and friends that you look at their websites? What's going on?
So there are people, there are plenty of people who are trying to optimize their websites and content for search, but there's so much misunderstanding around this concept that. I more often than I want am having a conversation with a business owner and they go, yeah, my website is optimized.
I paid a guy. It's always a guy. It could just be a human. Um, right. It's always a guy, but it could, you know, I will let you know when I come across someone that says, I paid a woman to optimize my website, and when I look at their websites, I can just, without even seeing the backend tell that it's not actually optimized.
And so there's just this, maybe it's a, it's not my responsibility sort of attitude or I can't do it, or I have no business doing it, sort of attitude around SEO that business owners have. And so I very often am seeing. People who think that their websites and their blogs are optimized for search, when in reality they are not.
Do we need a guy? Is this something Enji is great about? No. Powering us to do our stuff by ourselves? Is this another thing that we can just get started on without paying a guy to do?
Absolutely. You don't have to pay another human to do your SEO, which is the wonderful thing about it. Yes. That does require you educating yourself around what are the basics about this concept and how would you, as a non-expert, actually start to take steps, but anybody.
Is capable of doing at least the basics of SEO. It is not a technical thing. And quite honestly, if you are talking to a potential person or agency about hiring them for doing SEO and they are telling you that you cannot do any of it, that they are the keepers of all of the information and skillsets in order to do this.
That is a giant red flag. And you should do an about face and say, thank you so much for your time today.
Getting busy doing something is better than nothing. So let's get a little bit of an action plan building. What do we need to do? Where does it start? And what's like. Good SEO hygiene, like we can start this week doing these three or four things that will help us down the road to being more discovered.
Where should we start?
So you should start by asking yourself some questions. Those basic questions that I mentioned earlier, what is it that you want the search engines to understand that you do, who you do it for, and where you provide the service or where your product is based? And so the sort of cool but challenging part of SEO is that this is very much a place where psychology mixes with technology.
And so we are implementing our SEO. In a more technological fashion. But the way we come up with those SEO keywords and phrases and now questions is by thinking about what are my ideal customers and clients typing into a search engine mm-hmm. With the goal of finding someone like me. So step one is to just take some time and think about what are the combinations of letters and words and questions that someone might be using to find you.
And that is, like I said, something that anybody can do. If you have, if you're a human here on planet Earth, um, you can do this exercise yourself.
If I determine I'm going to be a co-working place for small business owners in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, let's just pretend that's what I'm trying to build. I know who I'm trying to reach, but we don't have to find all of the keywords ourself.
So where can we turn to find the right keywords to use on our blog or wherever we're gonna put them?
Yeah, so there are a bunch of, actually, this is one of the places where there are free tools out there that can, especially if you're just getting started with this, are fantastic for you to use. The first one is Uber suggest, and it's spelled like the ride share app Uber with the word suggest at the tail end of it.
And so you can use that tool to start seeing what is the search volume, meaning how many people are looking for this combination of words, um, on a monthly basis. And so that will give you a good idea of is this something that a lot of people are searching for or is it something that not a lot of people are searching for and.
This is one of those, it depends situations where either either of those scenarios can, may, can mean that that is a good search term for you to use. But so Uber suggest is one of them. Google Trends is another one. If you want to really see what are people searching for right now on the internet. You can go and use Google Trends in order to do that kind of research.
Um, and then there. Google obviously has a lot of free things, but your Google search console, if you've not set that up for your business, that's another great way. That is how Google is actually tracking a lot of this information for you. And then your own Google Analytics account is another great place for you to see, hey, what does Google already drive traffic to me?
Right? Which, which page, which pages of my website are already on the, the good receiving end of Google's? Um, like, these are good p pieces of content and we're gonna send folks your way. So those are the four. Four or five, I can't count and speak at the same time. Those are the places that folks can use, um, to start doing their own SEO keyword research.
Now, if you're just joining us, we're talking about how to do SEO today, and we're trying to determine what is some good SEO hygiene. What can we do right now to try and get our sites to rank better and get in front of the people that we wanna reach for the product that we're trying to sell? And Taylor Cuson Coleman is our guest today.
She's the founder of Enji, which is a sponsor of the show. And we really appreciate all of her wisdom that she's sharing. And we've talked through who do we wanna reach, and then where can we go to find out what those keywords are that we need to put on our site? And before we go to how do we put them on the site, can you give us an example?
Let's say it's this co-working space. Some of these keywords or phrases may not be exactly what we would think of initially. Can you give an example of what a phrase might be that would be ranking high in search volume that we may not come up on our own unless we pull up one of these sites?
Yeah, I mean something like.
Where other than a coffee shop, can I work and not be at home?
Mm-hmm.
Right. I mean it is a similar, the end result is what you want, but it's a very strange combination of words that someone might use in order to try to find a coworking space for business owners in Milwaukee. Right. So I want you, when you're doing the initial exercise, to treat this as a no bad ideas exercise right there.
'cause, because there are none, since this is so tied to human psychology. So think of maybe the wackiest, most unlikely combinations of words that you think someone might use and whether you're using a spreadsheet or you're literally writing them down on a piece of paper that is your jumping off point to then go and start using some of those free tools that we talked about to see what the search volume is around those words.
So we find some hot keywords or phrases. Things are great. How do we get them on the page? That's something that really confuses me. So here are the five things that everyone's searching for, which is what I want be known for Now, what
the, now what is, if I'm may, stand on a tiny soap box for one. No, please.
Outta
a big old soapbox.
Get on a, get on a big old soapbox. I believe that every business owner needs to have full control over their websites. Backend meaning the platform that you built your website on. Mm-hmm. So if you today cannot log into your website to make changes, that is step one in all of this.
Because you are the business owner, you should control your website. I have seen it. Far more often than I really ever want. I don't want to ever hear this again that someone is locked out of their website because again, they paid a guy to build it for them. And now that person never shared the login credentials with them or didn't give them full admin access to it, and then that person has just disappeared from the planet.
So that is step number one. Please make sure that you have access to your website. And so once you have done a little bit of research and you're feeling pretty good about this experiment that you're going to do around, I'm going to optimize my website around these keywords. So there are, I want everyone to think of SEO and doing SEO as a checklist.
That's really all it is. You have your keywords and there are specific places on your website that they. Should live. And one of those places is in the headlines on any one of your pages. So headlines tend to be the larger pieces of copy, right? Larger font size. Oftentimes they're bold, they just look bigger when you are visually looking at them.
So that is one of the places that Google goes to to look for keywords, and that's essentially what this checklist is. So headlines is one of the places then just strategically peppered throughout the copy that you've used on any given webpage. So that's the, the sentences, the short paragraphs, um, those are additional places that you'd want to be using your keywords.
Then there are. Well, this is the big one. That is the flag to me when someone says, oh yeah, my website is optimized. And then I click off of their homepage onto any other page of their website because the what's called the tail end of your, your domain or your URL. So anything after www.smallbusinessownerscommunity.com/anything that falls after that, that's the tail end of your URL.
That is another really important place that Google is going to understand what is this page about? And so when you're about page just says about Google's, like about what? Right? Or services, okay, ser, what kinds of services, where are these services? So that's a really important place for you to include your SEO keywords.
And then the other two, which this is where we start to get into the more backend of your website, the page titles and descriptions. So these are the things like when you are on Google's website and you Google something, then the preview that you see of the title of the page that it's giving you and a short description, those are two additional places that are really smart for you to put your keyword.
And so th that's just like the basics of it all. Mm-hmm. But again, it's a pretty straightforward checklist. If you have access to your website, there are places for you to go, especially if you've built it on show it or Squarespace, or Shopify or Wix. There are very defined fields in the backend of your website for you to do this.
So unless you have a fully custom coded website. You, which no one really needs these days.
No.
You should be able to take at least some baby steps on your own toward optimizing your website for search.
Alright, rapid fire. 'cause I don't want to, uh, take up all of your day, but this has been great information.
I wonder if the branding people get mad at the SEO people. And here's what I mean. You go to the landing page and you want it to be cozy little coffee shop with delicious pastries as the headline. But that's not, doesn't say Milwaukee Coworking right at the top are those two things at odds
they can be and.
I as someone who loves marketing and is a nerd, but also loves aesthetics, I understand the messy soup. Yeah. That is sometimes implementing SEO in a way that is pleasing to the eye. And so there are ways that you can finagle having your main keyword be in what Google understands as a an H one, a headline one, but visually have it not be the biggest text on.
Your, uh, your webpage. Yeah. Finagle. I don't, I don't know how to spell finagle. So
it's audio word
or, or, or is the one I'm like, don't even ask me to spell that. But, um, yeah. So there are ways that you can finagle these things, but in the end it is about creating a balance. And for some businesses, the aesthetics of their websites are more important to their ideal client than others.
Mm-hmm. And so it is just about making what you feel like are the right decisions for your business. And even though there are best practices with SEO that you can use as your foundation, it is okay to, you know, do little cheat codes, little hacks to make sure that you're feeling comfortable with how your website is presenting your business to the world.
One of the things I always like to do on the show when we talk about something, yes, education is awesome, and this has been great to learn about what's going on with SEO right now and what we should be doing, but I always wanna make sure that we're leaning into behavior and what we can do about it.
Okay? Now we know what must be done, what's a way that we can break it down and actually make some of these changes so we can go in and look at our header tags and go through the site and do the research. That's all really powerful. Should we all be blogging? Is this a place to put in a lot of these keywords?
Yes. I know, I, I, I know that like some people just became the melty face emoji when they said, yes, you should be blogging. I know. Wo I'm, I, I'm sorry. Not sorry to be the bear of bad news, but one of the things, or the way that I like to help people understand the importance of their blog is when you go through and you optimize your website, that you, the individual pages of your website are not things that you are updating all that frequently.
Right. Most people, maybe every six months, once a year, they're going in and they're making some small adjustments to pages of their website. Mm-hmm. But other than that, it's been built and then they're like, I can walk away from this for a while. Right. Now one of the things that Google wants to know is that there's a human that cares about the website that they're looking at.
And so I like to describe your blog as the heartbeat of your website from an SEO perspective. And so even if you are blogging once a quarter. Your website hasn't flatlined, at least right? There is some sort of pulse to your website or yes to your website that you are helping Google understand that there are humans on the other end of it, that care.
Mm-hmm. And so that's one of the reasons that blogging is important. The other one is, is there are very, very specific keywords and phrases and questions that might make so much sense for you to create content around, but don't quite make sense for you to put on a main page of your website. Yeah. And so that's where your blog becomes your best friend.
You can answer those really nuanced questions about coworking spaces in for business owners in Milwaukee that make absolute sense as a blog post, but would feel strange to try to force onto any other page of your website. So those are the two big reasons that. Business owners, um, I strongly encourage you to, uh, breathe some new life into your blog, dust it off.
And in the age of AI copywriters, quite honestly, there are very few excuses to not start implementing this marketing tactic.
I'm so glad you brought this up 'cause anyone would know. You would know. I remember when chat GPT came out and someone told a ghost story around the campfire saying, oh, you can't use, you can't use AI for your blogs because Google knows and it will penalize you.
Do you remember that? Is that, is that a thing?
You know, it's if you take bad AI written copy, yes, Google knows it's bad because Google has this EAT framework and you can go look up what the acronym means. It's EEAT. And one of the things that Google's really looking for and judging our content on is.
Factual this, right? Like, is this accurate information? And so it still is true that if you let an AI copywriter write something and you are not as the human reviewing it, checking it for, you know, accuracy, adding in your personal expertise to make it different, then Google's really not going to, or the search engines in general are not really going to pay attention to it.
And for the search engines to not pay attention to it is not a good thing for us as business owners. You know, it's not, it hasn't gone so far into the, like Google Dings your website, but it's not a value add. And so why as a business owner, would you do anything that's not a value add?
Now Steve asked for a demo of NG and we need to do this on the air someday, but I think what you were just talking about showcases one of NG's great use cases, which is the AI writer that's baked inside.
So we're gonna talk about how great you are on the air later on in the show. So we might as well do it right now. So tell us, how does NG solve this marketing problem? Because you help us say things in the way that we say things. So it sounds like we wrote it at scale and we schedule it. I mean, I love what your product does, so give us the pitch.
Yeah. So when we're talking about blogging specifically, basically we've created your own personal GPT. To speak in like sort of like really jargony terms, but when you create an NNG account and you're wanting to use it to help you write blogs, nng understands your business because it's gone and read your website and you've given it a bunch of information to really understand what it is you do, who you do it for, all that kind of stuff.
And so when you are in that point where you're wanting to make sure that the heartbeat of your blog is being consistent, that's really where NG shines is we are, for all intents and purposes, a really kick but content calendar that keeps you accountable for doing the things that you need to regularly be working through in order to keep your business visible online.
So whether that's with your blog or with your social media, or even now writing your email newsletters and your YouTube video descriptions, these are all ways that. You can plan out the content that you're going to be creating on behalf of your business and see it all on one calendar, and then use nng to help you actually do the first draft so that you're saving tons of time.
But one of our fan favorites, our community favorite features, is the blog repurposing tool, which is, I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty awesome. So once you, once you've written a blog, we have this quick little button that says, repurpose this blog post. And then you tell Ng, I want, I want this blog post to be repurposed for, let's say Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads, and I can pick how many posts I want.
And then you click go. And then Enji creates unique pieces of content based on that blog post. And so it's the easiest way to instantly get more strategic with the types of social media content that you're putting out there. And also it's really great because it helps. Let more humans know that you have this great blog post.
Mm-hmm. And get them to land on your website, which ultimately is what we're all trying to do. We're all trying to get people who are interested in what we do to land on our website to learn more, become paying customers or to inquire.
As you heard today, it was built by someone that really knows their marketing stuff.
So the most hated thing that we have to do in our business, which is telling our story. Thanks to Taylor, that's made easy. But another thing that I don't talk about enough, and I don't know if you mentioned very often, but I would be able, I'd love it if you would, Brett. Built it right? And like his experience is as big as it gets.
Can you just do like 10 seconds? 'cause the guy is like a genius.
He is a genius. He's one of those humans that's annoyingly smart and that's why I love him. Um, and I say I love him because he's also my husband. We're one of those strange couples that can work together. But, um, you know, prior to us launching nng, he ran the global AI team at Amazon Web Services.
And then his most recent corporate job, the one that he left when we decided to go all in on Nng, was he ran the generative AI team at Intuit. And so, not only has he been a. Technologist for decades. He really knows this whole AI space and how we can take something that's really big and super powerful and complicated and build it into our very simple to use and straightforward software so that business owners get the full benefit of this new technology without needing to become AI experts themselves.
Well, it's an impressive piece of software. They offer a 14 day free trial if you wanna check it out. The link is now in the chat for you to do so, uh, and then a discount for your first two months. It's a total hookup. Taylor, thanks for coming on the air today and for sharing a little bit about SEO so we can be just found a little bit easier than we are right now.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me, pat.
Always fun talking with Taylor from Enji and hopefully we all learn something today because what we're doing with SEO will help us be found easier and for free. You spend time on your SEO and the robots can find you faster. That's one more view that you don't have to pay for or hope that you get from organic social media.
So great, uh, behavior from Taylor that she shared there, so I really appreciate it and I really appreciate Angie's partnership on the show. Let's move on to the idea Slam. Now. This is your chance to come on the air or this is your chance to participate and get your biggest problem solved. Let me explain.
We have the opportunity for you to come on the air and collaborate with me in real time on the biggest challenge or opportunity in the business and the smart people watching the show in the chat, they weigh in with their challenge or their, uh, solutions and their ideas to make your problem go away as well.
It's one big nationwide brainstorm. Live without a net. But if you're thinking that sounds great, but I'm terrified to do that. Ha ha. That QR code that you now have on the screen offers a Dropbox. You can ask me your toughest question, tell me a little bit about the situation, and then I will solve it on the air and you can do it anonymously.
So if you've got something that you need some help with, but you really don't want to go out in front of the country and say, you know what? I have a problem that maybe you just are uncomfortable about that, I can understand that. So click the QR code and jump into line here 'cause I would love to solve your problem and have the folks in the chat jump on board as well so we can idea slam for free on behalf of your business.
So let's get to today's question, shall we? Today's question is a good one, and I'm going to put the idea slam link up in the top left corner so you can snap it anytime you want. But today's question is a good one. I run a dog grooming business and my best employee just told me she's leaving to start her own shop.
Do I keep her? Do I, do I try to save it or do I let her go gracefully or do I panic? What do I do? If you employ people, this is something you need to hear. It's only a matter of time until every single employee in your company leaves. Everyone. If they don't own it, eventually they're gonna leave. And I don't care how much they love you, I don't care how much they love the mission.
I don't care if you're related to them. Everybody is gonna leave the business if they don't own it at some point in the future. That's a problem. So. If you know that everyone is gonna leave, you need to plan on everyone leaving. And after managing people for over 20 years in the radio industry, I can tell you firsthand, if you are in this situation and someone comes to you and says they're gonna leave, let 'em go.
Please let them go. When that happens, and you have to let them go, it is a major pain in the butt. I mean a nightmare. Like you've got enough on your plate already and now you've gotta backfill a position. Awful. And you start thinking about, well, they're the person that does the thing and I'm the only one that knows how to do that thing, and now I've got more work on my plate.
We won't be able to go on without them. And you're gonna have all of these thoughts. Ah, you're gonna have all of these thoughts, but trust me, everyone is replaceable. You'll be able to live without them. It's one of those really cruel realizations that you have when you work for someone else. You decide, well, you know what?
I'll just leave and watch this place fall apart without me. And it never does. It never does, never does. Everyone is replaceable. So we're gonna have an emotional reaction when a key player comes in and says, I'm gonna leave. And you're trying to decide, do you throw money at them? Do you try and save them or do you let 'em go?
Let 'em go. So outside of the initial panic and stress that you'll have when they come in, now you've gotta go try and backfill them. So let's talk about the person themselves that's leaving, because independent of the stress that you're now feeling because they're leaving the person that's leaving you.
Didn't wake up one day and just say, you know what, pat, I don't wanna work for you. I mean, that happens sometimes, but in this situation they're saying, I've got another opportunity I'm gonna go pursue. And they arrived at that decision by rationalizing it to themselves, they're going to think of all the options and all the angles and do what they think is best for them and if it's going to work for someone else or going to start their own thing.
They've taken into account what the new pay is gonna be and what the new hours are gonna be and where the new location is and what the responsibilities are. Everything is already baked into that decision and they've decided that this new opportunity is gonna be better than the one that you provided to them.
So when they come in and say, I am gonna leave, and before you say, no, wait, before you even go there thinking that giving them a raise or giving them a promotion will will save them. If you do that, think about them for a second. They've already rationalized the grass is greener someplace else, and now their supervisor says, but wait, I'm gonna give you $10,000 more a year.
I'm gonna make you the manager. They're going to think, why didn't you do that already? That just confirms that they need to leave. If I'm worth $10,000 more and you didn't give it to me already, shows what you think and we don't think about stuff like that. And some employees will come to you and try to use that idea that you're gonna throw money at them.
Like let's say they're really critical to the business and they're like, I have a power play. They're gonna come in and say, I got another opportunity. Unless those people
don't fall for it. I will never forget this one time. When I was managing people in the radio business, I had someone that had their britches kind of big, you know, the, the big britches people, big britches. She was a big old Brit. And she really, you know, thought a lot about what she was doing for the company.
And she came in and she said, well, I've got another opportunity and it pays so much more, but I really love it here and I really wanna stay and I don't wanna go, but this other place is offering me all of this money and a better title. And was kind of looking at me waiting for me to throw the money in the title at her. So I paused and I said, you know, big old Brit, I really appreciate everything you've done for us. You're really talented at what you do, and I wish you well in your new opportunity. Just let 'em go. You could have heard a pin drop. Their face went, whew. They couldn't believe that they were invited to go take that other opportunity.
That's the way you handle it. Because if they get to the point where they're leaving for something else, they've already thought it all through. And if you try and save them, they'll think, why didn't you save me before? And it's gonna be a pain. It's gonna be a pain. People are a pain. I love people and I love having a team.
But they're an obligation. They're an obligation to take care of. They're an obligation to respect, but they're also doing something that you can't do, which is work double than what you're doing or triple and and, and growing the company and building your equity like they serve an important role. And having a team is a responsibility.
And with a responsibility comes hard work. If we can't save them, what can we do to be ready when this happens? 'cause it's gonna happen. Everybody's gonna leave. So what can we do? Two things instantly come to mind. The first thing is always, always, always, always train and cross train. If you sat down right now and said, who knows how to do this thing, if the answer is only one person, you've got a problem.
Every time you say this thing, you better have two people that know how to do that and they're not you because one of 'em is gonna leave. So you not only have to train people to what they do, cross train as much as you can because those people that you can pull in when someone leaves, man, those are the real MVPs. Big bridge left helpful. Harry, can you fill in for big bridge? No problem. Like that really, really will make your managing life a lot better. Outside of always training and cross training, the only other thing you can do is always be recruiting. Always, always. You never know when your MVP employee is gonna give you two weeks notice or no weeks notice, and your life is gonna get rocked.
So always be looking around, always be hiring, always be looking at resumes, always be looking at your competitors who you might be able to steal. Always have a line in the water knowing that you've got people standing by. Should your team, uh, get disorganized and, and have a problem? And then going back to this specific question, if you remember in the question, she said that this person came to her saying that they're going to leave and start their own dog shop.
When that happens, this is just me coaching you up a little bit. Get with your attorney right away. Right away and have the attorney get the language correct 'cause hashtag not attorney. Not an attorney. Hashtag not legal advice. Get your attorney on the phone and get the language correct. Tell them to their face and in writing that you wish them well, but your proprietary trade secrets and workflows and client lists are protected intellectual property, and you really hope that we're not gonna have to talk about this down the road.
Now, does that mean anything? No. They'll probably use what they learned working for you, but you do have to get that out there in front. And some employees just pretend, well, I'll just download the client list and I'll just work this list and say, Hey, I've got my own shop. No, I'll just use these vendor relationships.
And I know that you only pay $12, so I'll only pay $12. No, no. Copy and paste your workflows. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Walk out with a, a thumb drive full of all your intellectual property. Not a thing. If you are sitting there today and an employee comes in and says, I'm leaving and starting my own thing, the very first thing to do is cut off their pc.
Call your attorney. Immediately. I don't care if the president's waiting for you for lunch, cut off their PC and call your attorney and they don't get two weeks. You can pay 'em for two weeks. So you don't get in labor law trouble. I'm not saying that. But if they come in and say, I'm going to work for the competitor or I'm going to be a competitor.
Wow, I really appreciate you coming in. Uh, we're done here and I wish you luck with your new venture and I'll pay you for the next two weeks. But gimme your key card, gimme your phone, or whatever it is, and have a nice life. You don't need to be a jerk, but you do need to get them outta the company. 'cause as soon as the cat is out of the bag, they're gonna tell everybody else in your building as well.
And it would be the Jerry McGuire moment. Hey, who's coming with me? Nope, that's not happening in my shop. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No. So the idea slam question today, and the reason why there's only one on today's show is 'cause there are all of these things that are intertwined when one of your employees decides to leave.
We've got emotional stuff. We could make a really dumb decision 'cause we don't wanna go through the work of finding a replacement. Then we have their emotions, they've thought it through and why didn't you gimme a raise before? And then we've got going out and finding more people. 'cause we gotta get the work done.
And we have our own personal schedule getting totally destroyed if we don't have any backups. But then in this particular instance, we've got the competitive issue, we've got the legal side. And whenever you're dealing with people, always talk to an attorney. Always, always, always. Because you can get yourself sued in a hurry.
You can get sued for anything, but you can do something that feels like it's the right thing to do. That actually gets you in big legal hot water and it's just not worth it. So if you don't have a lawyer, hit me up. I know a few I can refer you to, but it's really important to have smart people in your corner, especially when you're dealing with the big britches people.
Thank you, Michael. The big britches people. We all know who they are. We've all had big britches people in our company. They got their britches. Big man, they gotta go. Sorry about that. So is that fun? Would you like to do that for your business? I'd love to do it on the air with you. And we have now the anonymous Dropbox.
So click the QR code and you can come on the air either in person or with your question, and myself and the folks in the chat, we can all answer the question on your behalf. Because here's the thing, running a small business is lonely and hard. And we say don't grow it alone. But there's an insight into don't grow it alone that I've kind of been leaning into lately.
It's rather expensive to grow your business by itself. Think of all the dumb mistakes you've made as an entrepreneur because you didn't have someone to give you a second opinion. You didn't have someone to look at something that you were convinced and point out something that you missed. We've all done it.
I do it all the time. And if I didn't have the SBOC and if I didn't have people around me that I could, uh, have help me through these situations, we would just trust our gut. And our gut is completely biased and our gut can get us in big trouble. So don't grow it alone is more than just a supportive community there to, to help you celebrate your wins and have someone to eat lunch with.
Don't Grow It Alone is a vital second opinion on your business to share their experience and their perspective that you can't get otherwise. That's why the small Business owners community exists and that's why we do the Idea Slam as well. So I encourage you to make sure that you're either taking advantage of this or other people in your life that are willing to give you feedback because if you don't have feedback, you can do a lot of really dumb stuff. One more story to share before we get off the air. A realization that I had about how, I'm pretty sure I've got the perfect wife. Now I'm saying that after Valentine's Day, I'm not even kissing butt. I had a realization that I may have the perfect wife tell you that story in just a second. Businessing is sponsored by Gen Head Scale Systems, not chaos.
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Gen head.com. They power my business. They should be powering yours. It gets so much done all in one place. And they're also the producer of the show, so I'm getting to enjoy all of their technology working on our bi behalf as well. Final story of the day is about Valentine's Day. Do you have a nice Valentine's Day?
I hope you did. And I was reminded this weekend that I have the perfect wife. The perfect wife is a spouse and a person that you enjoy spending time with, and someone that you vibe with, and someone that you want to grow older with. I hope you all have that in your life, a spouse that you genuinely enjoy spending time with.
And this past weekend, Abby and I did what we do on Valentine's Day. We don't go out to a fancy five star dinner. We go out for wings and beer at Tompkins Best Wings in Milwaukee. Fight me if you disagree. It's our Valentine's Day date, wings and beer. And gentlemen, if you find a woman that goes out for wings and beers on Valentine's Day, marry her.
Just, just trust me on this. That's a good woman right there. And we had fun. We laughed and we enjoyed our food, and we had a drink and we just, we were out together as friends who happened to be married. We did our chores over the weekend. We did our taxes and didn't kill one another. It's a huge stress test.
We did all of this stuff this weekend, but that's not why I was reminded that I have the perfect spouse. I have the perfect spouse because last night it hit me that she just loves me for me and gives me the room to be my dorky, weird, curious self. Last night I spent, uh, five hours obsessing. Over installing my claw bot, open claw, my AI agent.
I'm all in on Claude, and I'm all in on AI agents. And I spent hours and hours and hours and hours trying to get this thing to work. And every once in a while I would come out and be like, oh my gosh, Abby, you did. And she'd like Uhhuh. Mm-hmm. Okay. And she'd go back to reading her book and then I'd come out like 90 minutes later, oh my God.
It did the thing. And then she'd go back and read, oh, that's nice honey. You know, she never burst my buzz bubble. She always asks all about it, knowing that she doesn't care at all inside. I know she's screaming you dork when you shut up about Claude. Like I, I know that that's what she's thinking. And I'll tell you how I know it in a second.
It's so nice to be supported when someone really gets you and knows that curiosity is my strongest drive and that I love doing stuff like this, and she just supports me. That's the perfect spouse. So, can I tell you an aside, okay. I'll tell you how I know this in a second. But for those of you that are interested in Open Claw, the coolest thing happened.
I can't even, I'm telling you, I'm so excited. The first words that Open Claw said back to me, I said, hello. The first words that this AI robot said to me back, greetings Professor Falcon. If you know, you know, it was the coolest. Okay. I'm sorry. I know, I know. I'm a geek. I know. But that was the coolest thing ever.
Okay. Anyway, so I'm going on and on about Claude. She's supporting me left and right. It's just, and I'm really appreciating it and I, it hit me. She doesn't care at all, but she cares that I care. And I thought I do that for her because my Claude is her. Taylor Swift.
Abby is a huge swifty, huge Swifty, loves her music, fascinated more by not her music, but her business sense. What a great entrepreneur she is now. Talented. She's, she's so smart. Look at what she did here. And a week does not go by without Abby going on and on and on about how amazing Taylor Swift is as an entrepreneur.
And she is. She's unbelievable. But as a 50 something dude, I don't have any interest in her music. No interest. I don't wanna see the movies, I don't wanna go to the concert. Uh, if it wasn't for her, I'd never wanna hear about Taylor Swift the rest of my life. Not 'cause she's not great. Good for you. Like Taylor Swift, she's like literally not in my world.
Whenever Abby's sharing it with me, I try and nod and smile and, and support her because that's what she's sharing and good for her. And as soon as I realize that, I'm like, oh my God. Claude is my Taylor Swift. She doesn't care at all, but she loves me enough to know that I care and she's supporting me and I love her enough to hear all about Taylor Swift and good for her.
So I share that entire story to ask you to reflect on your partner, whether a spouse or just a partner, maybe it's a really good friend. I hope you have someone in your life that will nod and smile and encourage you even though they don't care at all. Because we all need that in our life. We need someone that really gets us and we need someone that's got our back.
And uh, I do. And I'm the luckiest guy on the planet. So I hope you have that as well. Before we go, we've talked all about the small business owners community. It'd be a great day for you to check it out. Small business community.com, going up to Fond du Lac on Thursday and gonna host an idea slam for members in the Fond LAC area, which is kind of cool as well.
So if you're in the middle of the state between Milwaukee and Green Bay and you wanna meet up in person and do some idea slamming and some professional owner to owner networking, we'll be in fond LAC to do it. But right now our owners are collaborating@smallbusinesscommunity.com. Visit that website and log in so you can have people around you when it's time to make those big decisions.
It's a nationwide online community for entrepreneurs. It's $19 a month and it's at small business community.com. So thanks for tuning in to today's show. We went all over the place. We talked about Simon Cowell be coming. Fridays off. We learned from Taylor Cusick Coleman. Taylor, thank you for coming on the air.
I really appreciate it. Uh, we talked all about why Abby Rules. Hell, I could do a whole show on that. And I told you a little bit about Claude. Oh my God, it's the coolest thing ever. As soon as I get my Claude bot figured out, we're gonna have a show and tell on the show 'cause it's pretty fricking cool. So thanks to Gen Head and Enji for sponsoring the show today.
Thanks to the Gen Head team for producing it as well. Don't forget to like and subscribe and share the show with your network. I'm sending out share mail to those of you that share it with your network, with some goodies inside. It's the new daily habit for small business owners back on the air tomorrow at 11:00 AM Central.
I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you right here tomorrow at 11:00 AM Central. Take care.