Originally aired Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.
Short answer: Start by knowing your monthly break-even number and the annual bills due in the next 60 days. Then drop domains you'll never use, stop carrying card balances and move repeat clients to bank transfers. Check your ad returns, cancel unused software and ask every provider for a better rate. Most of this takes an hour or less.
Today was all about finding money you're already wasting. Tom Goba of G2 Insurance explained why business insurance costs keep climbing. He shared what you can do about it, like raising deductibles and dropping coverage you don't need. Then I shared six ways to cut 10% from your expenses. They range from the domain names I keep hoarding to a phone call that saves me money every time. In the Idea Slam, a coach asked what to do about a client who keeps canceling. I also shared the voice-to-text tool that has saved me the most time. We opened by remembering the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who passed away that morning.
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
- Know what it costs to run your business each month and which annual bills are due in the next 60 days.
- Let go of domain names and software subscriptions you aren't using instead of letting them renew automatically.
- Move recurring clients to bank transfers so you keep the card processing fee.
- Block an hour to call each recurring provider and simply ask what they can do to lower your bill.
- Ask your insurance agent about higher deductibles and coverages you may not need to bring your premium down.
Questions this episode answers
How can a small business cut expenses quickly?
Go line by line through your bank and card statements. Drop unused domains and software, stop carrying card balances and move repeat clients to bank transfers. Then check your ad returns and call providers to ask for a better rate. Together these can add up to around 10%.
Why is business insurance getting more expensive?
Repair costs for buildings and vehicles have risen, and claims and lawsuits are more frequent. Very large jury awards also push insurers to spread the cost across every policyholder, even owners with no claims.
What insurance does a small business need first?
Usually general liability. It protects you if someone is hurt or property is damaged at your office or when you visit a client. Slip-and-fall claims are among the most common, even for owners who only rent a small space.
Should I enforce my cancellation policy with a client who keeps canceling?
Yes, if it's a pattern and not an emergency. Give one clear warning that cites your contract, then charge them the next time. If they get upset after that, it's okay to let them go.
Worth quoting
People will treat you the way that you allow them to treat you.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Life is way too short to coach people that don't value you and your time let them go.
Pat Miller on Businessing
If you could save 10% of your revenue. That is a lot of money that goes directly into your pocket. So it's not sexy, but it's real money.
Pat Miller on Businessing
You're literally calling them saying, hi, I wanna spend less. What can you do for me?
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Tom Goba, G2 Insurance: Independent insurance agent who explained why business insurance rates are rising and how owners can lower their premiums.
- Idea Slam question: Two questions: a coaching client keeps canceling sessions, so do I enforce my cancellation policy or let it slide; and what one tool saved you the most time?
In this episode
- Show open and news
- Why business insurance keeps going up
- How to lower your insurance premium
- The first insurance every business needs
- Six ways to cut 10% of your expenses
- Ads, software and calling your providers
- Idea Slam: the client who keeps canceling
- Idea Slam: the tool that saves the most time
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: Money answers from the Small Business Owners Community
Full transcript
And good morning. Get in here. It's Tuesday, February 17th and we. Our Businessing, this is Small Businesses' weekly show. I'm your host, pat Miller. Really glad that you're here today. We're sponsored by Gen Head and nng, and we got a lot to cover today and it's got a money theme, a lot of money stuff to talk about today.
So if you wanna make more money, sure, we all do. That's what today is gonna be about. Finding ways to save more cash and put a little more money in our pocket. On today's show, we'll go through the headlines and there's a real bummer of a headline to lead off. A major historical figure passed away this morning.
I'll give you the lowdown on that business insurance, which you have. Right, right.
It's at a record high. Why is it so damn expensive? We're bringing on our local insurance expert to tell us what's going on. Also, I'm gonna go through your expenses and together we're gonna try and save. 10% on your monthly expenses. I've got six different ways that you can cut your expenses and really not even feel it.
It's just a good focus. 30 minutes of finding money that you're wasting away. Two idea slam questions we will cover. The first one is, I've got a coaching client that keeps canceling sessions. How do I enforce my cancellation policy? Or because they're a client, do I just let it slide? If that's ever happened to you, we'll talk about that.
And the other question I've received, what's the one tool that added to your business this year that saved you the most time? So that will be covered this morning. Now if you're with us, drop into the chat and tell us, hello, I'm here and here's my business and I'm the best in the world, and here's my link and buy my stuff.
I'm telling you. Tell me all about who you are and what you do. So drop into the chat and let me know and we will feature you here on the air. So let's start with the news. We gotta get the big bummer outta the way 'cause this is kind of a bummer.
The bummer this morning is Jesse Jackson died. Reverend Jesse Jackson passed away age of 84, passed away this morning.
Uh, and what a life he lived. Protege of Martin Luther King Jr. One of the most influential civil rights leaders in American history. Founded the Rainbow po, uh, push Coalition. Ran for president twice in the eighties and helped pave the way for diverse leadership that came after him. A towering historical figure changed the world quite literally.
So rest in peace, Reverend Jackson. Sad story. To lead us off this morning, we're gonna talk about expenses and how we can save 10% in a little bit, but we're gonna start with the headline that I saw that I didn't quite understand. The headline was, business insurance rates are at an eight year high. Now everything's getting more expensive.
I get that. But I thought to myself, why are business expenses getting so high? Like how come insurance is going up, up, up, and will it ever stop? So when I find a story like that and I'm like, huh, I wonder if anyone knows the answer, I thought. Tom Goba from G two Insurance. He would know the answer. So let's see if Tom can come on the show and explain things to us.
Tom, good morning my friend. How are you today?
Good morning, pat. I'm doing fantastic. How about yourself?
I'm good. I'm glad you're here. And the news stories that business rates or expenses are at an. Eight year high. What is going on with business insurance? Why does it keep on going up?
Well, so it, I mean, hard to really kind of get it down to any real specific one item for anybody.
But, uh, as the, uh, overall for the industry, if we look at the repair costs specifically about property, we look at, you know, the repair costs for buildings, the repair costs for cars, um. All of those things, replacing materials, et cetera. All of those costs have taken a pretty significant increase in the last few years.
Um, you couple that on the insurance side with the frequency of claims, uh, that has increased a lot and those two things. And then, you know, those are working pretty, uh. Pretty hard to, to really increase all of those costs. And then every now and then we see some really severe situations that happen. So here in Milwaukee, the biggest one was August 10th.
Uh, you might remember there was a thousand year, uh, flood issue, uh, that happened. Those severity issues are also popping up. And so when we're looking at property, if somebody owns buildings, if somebody owns vehicles, uh, et cetera, that's what we're really seeing on the property side. Um, if we flip over to the liability side, liability, again, we're seeing more frequency for claims and lawsuits, which unfortunately just kind of seems to be the nature these days.
Everybody gets heard about something and decides to sue. Um. And then true.
And then the, the other thing that's really killing that on the liability side is we have these court cases. We have these, these major accidents that are happening, you know, trucking firms or something like that. And, and juries and, and attorneys are trying to push what are called nuclear verdicts.
And so, you know, an insurance company might say, Hey, we've got. $10 million of coverage on this trucking firm and the jury decides that, yeah, that's fine, but we're going to, uh, penalize you and say it's $50 million that you owe for these injuries. And we've seen these are coming through, nuclear verdicts are coming through in record numbers, um, which doesn't really hurt the insurance company.
'cause if they have $10 million of coverage, they're paying their 10 million. That's it. They're done. But. What are they gonna do then? They're not just gonna say, oh, well we paid 10 million. They're gonna turn around to you, to me, and say, well, we know you didn't have any claims, pat, but we had to pay out these things and we had to spread that risk.
'cause that's what insurance is. It's spreading the risk across everybody.
Across everyone that has a policy. And that would then raise our rates. Is that right?
Yep. Yep. Exactly. So one of the biggest things that, you know, we look at as an agency, whenever somebody comes to us, we say, okay, well who are you insured with right now?
I just got off the phone with Prospect. He's insured with Travelers. Traveler's, a very good company, very big company. They write all over the country, they write all sorts of stuff. Well. As far as I know, we haven't had a hurricane in Wisconsin in quite some time. So, um, do we want to necessarily be, you know, paying for that here in the Midwest?
Um, the Midwest had some really bad years, hailstorms and windstorms and you know, or should they be paying for that in the northeast? Right. So in our experience, the mutual insurance companies are the regional, smaller companies. Those are the ones that do a little bit better. Here in the Midwest, they have a little bit more of an advantage because they're not picking up some of those costs on the coasts, whether it's California or Florida, or all those sort of different things too.
So
the concept of insurance, as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, is really. How much risk are you willing to tolerate? If you're willing to risk more? Maybe you don't have to spend as much. Is that fair? Is that a way we could call our insurance agent and say, man, the rates are killing me. How can I adjust my risk tolerance to maybe bring down my rates?
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so the first, the easiest thing to do, you look at a deductible, right? If you get a home, you've got a business, you got a building, you get a car. Historically, those deductibles have been pretty low. You know, I mean, we've still got clients that have $250 deductibles on their cars.
Not very common anymore. Most of the time we're seeing at least 500, maybe a oh. Um, or if you own a building, we're seeing those deductibles go from a thousand. You can go to 2,500, you can go to 5,000, and yeah, what is your risk tolerance? How much are you willing to, to take on yourself and essentially get a reduction in the premium?
The other thing is, well, if there are certain things that maybe you look at and go, okay, you know, I only handle a little bit of cash. My insurance policy includes coverage for that, but do I need that? Or should I just be a little bit smarter about that and make sure it goes to the bank on a daily basis, or gets deposited or, or gets kept in a safe or a lockbox or whatever, something along, you know, those lines to help essentially transfer the risk to yourself and your processes to make sure that you're doing the, the right thing to avoid those issues.
I know this varies by industry, so you really can't answer it for everyone, but. I want you to talk to the person that's walking around right now running a business without any insurance at all. Can you please tell them that they need to get this insurance and what would be the first thing that they need to get?
So generally speaking, the first thing is almost always general liability. If you're out, you're meeting with a client, you're meeting with prospects, they're coming to your office or something like that. If you rent an office, um. It general liability is gonna protect you from those lawsuits. The somebody got injured, somebody tripped and fell, um, uh, somebody, you know, somehow some property was damaged when you were visiting somebody's office.
Mm-hmm.
Weird situations, and trust me, we could, we could do your whole show on Tom's weird situations that I've experienced. Um, and you know, we just had a couple recently, slip and falls were probably the most common thing that we see and uh, I've got two of 'em going right now. One who owns the building, one who just rents a little space in the office.
They both got letters from attorneys about slip and falls and so that is the type of thing that you're looking, they're going, well, it's not gonna happen to me. It's not a concern. Yeah, maybe. But when you get that letter from an attorney. It's, that's gonna open your eyes and it's, that is not a, uh, that is not a good feeling to open that letter and say, Hey, you need to contact your insurance company, especially if you don't have insurance.
I can't imagine answering your phone. I would imagine a a week doesn't go by without a call like that. I didn't do anything. I wasn't involved yet. I'm sued and I'm screwed. I would imagine that call comes in all the time.
We, yeah, we get a lot of those. Um, and then, uh, we get to have the conversation. The second part of that conversation is, well wait a second, why am I responsible for this and why is my insurance company dealing with this?
Mm-hmm. It shouldn't they be fighting it? Shouldn't they be doing that? And at the end of the day, part of the, going back to some of those claims costs, insurance companies understand that for them, they have to sort out and say, well, is it cheaper to simply pay someone off and be done with it? Or do we need to go through and actually get an attorney and fight it, which is gonna be the most cost effective way for us to handle it.
And unfortunately that's the, you know, a lot of attorneys and a lot of people know that, you know that they say, well, look, I can claim that something happened and maybe I'll get a couple thousand dollars for doing nothing. And that's, it's a terrible thing to say, but that's unfortunately what happens a lot in our society.
And so yeah, ultimately the cost to protect yourself from those sort of things is, is generally speaking pretty inexpensive. Mm-hmm. Especially if you're just a, a solopreneur, maybe have like one employee or something. Um, yeah. Your, you know, your cost is not gonna be that much. It has gone up over the last few years, but it's still a, a much lower cost than having to go hire the attorney yourself and sort out those details on your own.
The theme for today's show is finding expense and cutting expenses, and I'm gonna share a bunch of those options here in just a second. But when this new story crossed, I'm like, I gotta get Tom on the show because one, what the hell? And two, what can we do about it? I would imagine even they're, if they're with someone else, they could hit the website that's on the screen and at least have a conversation with you to see if you can do better.
Is that the type of thing you do?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, you know, we will go through, we'll have the conversations and say, look, what are you doing? What's your exposure? What are you, what are you concerned about? Um, is there something that you need to ensure because a bank or a lender, somebody else is mandating it.
Okay, then great. We're obviously gonna have to satisfy their requirements. Mm-hmm. Um, but then from that point on, it's kind of looking at that and saying, well, what, what's the most cost effective way of doing it? Uh, you know, we have a dozen different companies that we work with 'cause we're an independent agent.
Right? And so we can go around and look at a whole bunch of options. Find a company that hopefully really likes what you do and. By doing that, they're going to have a little bit more competitive rate. You know? Or even if it's a situation where I say, look, I just, I don't have a market for you. I can't help you out because what you do is very unique and very different.
But here's some things that you might wanna look at. Change your deductibles. Maybe look at some of those limits and coverages that you have and talk about them. Are they included? Are they not included? Is that something you can remove? Um, and that applies to almost everybody. Uh, I just did a homeowners association down in Florida that they were paying for a whole bunch of extra things that they frankly didn't need.
Mm-hmm. Um, they've had a lot of claims, so they've seen a significant increase, uh, in their premium. And so they really needed to cut those things. And even though it's only cutting a couple hundred dollars here and a couple hundred dollars there. Those things add up and, and paying attention to 'em is, is, yeah, it's, you don't have to do it every single year, but definitely do it every couple years and, and have that conversation with your agent or yeah, find a new agent to have that conversation.
Well, I appreciate you coming on Tom from G two Insurance. Always great to talk with you and thanks for explaining it to us. Uh, I appreciate your time today.
Absolutely. Glad for glad to be here. Thanks for having me, pat.
It's my pleasure. Okay, so today's theme is all about finding ways to save money. And we're talking with Tom so we can, you know, have that first step be okay, how can we save money by paying less than our insurance?
So, uh, Tom, drop your contact information in the chat if you can. Uh, would love to share that with everyone. If you're just tuning in, today's theme is, what's the first thing you would cut to try and save 10%? Of your expenses. I wanna go through an exercise where I'm gonna share six things, six ways that you can cut back your business expenses to try and increase your cash flow.
Now, we didn't even talk about changing your insurance. That's just a bonus. So that's like a free space today. But I found myself yesterday going through my credit card, going through my bank statements, and I had this moment. I'm still paying for that. I'm still doing this, and I started keeping tabs on all the money I was wasting.
It's like, that's stupid. That's stupid. I mean, it's not any surprise that I'm doing stupid things, but as I started to make a stupid sheet and I was filling up the stupid sheet with all the stupid stuff I was doing, I'm like, okay, this has to be a topic on the show. So I've got six things that we're gonna cover on ways you can save money.
And before we even get there, let's start with the first realization. Do you know what it costs to run the business each month? Do you know that number? Do you have that that break even number? I gotta make this much money a month because my expenses are this much. You should know that I should be able to like push a button and you reflexively say $9,300 a month or whatever the number is. You should know what that is. And the second thing is. Do you know what annual payments are coming up in the next 60 days? Because one of the big killers of your expenses are gonna be those annual renewals that you don't see coming. We had Tom on the show talking about insurance. My insurance just renewed in December and I didn't withhold enough cash for it.
So there it went on the credit card. Like, oh, I wasn't planning ahead for my insurance renewal. So you kind of need to know what it takes to make the business go. You kind of wanna know what's coming up in the next 60 to 90 days. So before we get to the expense cutting options, that's just the world we should be living in if you want to pay attention to your money.
So once you have those two things, here's how we can start saving some cash. We can go line by line through what we're doing. So here's the first thing. Are you a domain collector? Hi, I'm Pat Miller and I have a domain collecting problem. If you opened my GoDaddy, you would see, you would see way too many domain names, way too many registered domain names.
I'm gonna use that someday though. What? Purple unicorn. That's a great business name. I'm gonna do it like, no, no. Today's the day to go to your name cheap or wherever your domains are registered, and just bless and release those business I ideas you're never gonna use. Just, just, just, just click the button and just don't auto renew it, because renewing a domain is not that expensive.
But when you're a domain collector like I am, and every other week here comes a 20 or $30 charge, that a domain's been renewed. That stuff adds up. So number one, domain collectors unite. You got to go get through all the domains that you're hoarding. The second thing you should do, be honest with how much you're spending in interest rates that you're carrying on your credit card.
Look at your credit card statement and look at how much you're paying in interest rates, and then compare how much cash you have on hand. It's easy to carry a balance on your credit card, and then it rolls over and you get charged $80, $140, however much you have in your credit card, and then you're like, dang it, I had that money sitting in the account.
Why didn't I do the thing? It's really easy to not zero out your credit cards. Second way, get into your bank account, get into your credit cards. Don't carry balances if you don't have to, because well. It's stupid tax, as Dave Ramsey would say. It's just stupid tax. Another thing, and I haven't done this, this is the third way you can save money if you're just joining us.
We're trying to find 10% expense reductions from simple things you can do straight away. The third thing, take a deep breath and figure out how to set up your recurring clients on a CH deposits from your bank. Many of us, me included, have a coaching client. We send an invoice out from QuickBooks, and then they pay via credit card.
Well, QuickBooks takes a piece, and then the credit card takes a piece. Set them up through a CH and that's one less piece that's taking out. And if you don't know what Aach H is, they pay from their account in cash to your account in cash, and you don't have to pay the whatever. It's 3.5% on your credit card fee.
That doesn't sound like much, but think about how much you bill last year. If you save three point half percent on everything. Hell, we're trying to find 10. There's three and a half right there. It's a pain and you gotta go into the back end of the bank and there's all those zeroes of the number and it's like, ah, I don't wanna deal with that.
But when you think about, well hell, three and half percents, three and half percent, that's real money. That'll save you money over time. Number four, check into your advertising and evaluate your ad spend in campaigns. You set up the Facebook ad, you set up the Google ad, you let 'em cook. How critical are you of those things?
Are you optimizing them? Are you targeting them? Do you know what kind of return on ad spend you're getting? Or are you just doing it? So when asked, you can say, yeah, I'm running ads. They're not really working, but I'm running ads. If you're not paying attention to your ads, if you're not optimizing them, if you're not focused on return on ad spend and your customer acquisition cost, you're kind of lighting money on fire.
We're only trying to find 10% of your overall expense, and if you're leaking money because you're not paying attention to your ad spend, that's, that's a way that you can really waste some cash. The fifth way. Now, I mentioned earlier that I'm a domain addict. I'm also a software addict. If there's a new whizzbang tool, if there's a new.com that saves me two minutes, oh, I'm going to get it.
You don't even wanna know how big my annual software bill is. It's, I hate myself for it, in fact, and an interesting thing is happening now that I'm starting to play with Claude and Claude Bot Open Claw. The agent, now that I have an agent, I can train it to start doing some of the things that I'm paying a service to do now.
For example, I have a tool that sits into my Gmail and organizes my Gmail. I don't need to do that anymore. I can train up my claw bot, I can train up my AI agent to go in and organize my email. That's gonna be 50 bucks a month. I get back just by training the AI agent to do. So as number five, go through all the places you're spending on your software, and first of all, get rid of the stuff you're not really using.
Secondly, start thinking about if you can train an AI agent, and most likely you can to do what these software services are doing for you. The other thing, this just gives me a free space to tell you, do not ever sign an annual deal for AI software right now. When you're getting an AI tool, they're gonna say, save 30% by buying for the year.
Don't why AI is moving so fast. That annual will be totally outdated in 90 days. You need to make sure you're paying for the month, and yeah, it sucks that it's a little bit more, but you're not gonna be using the same software as a service tools in six months that you are right now. So go monthly, especially for AI tools.
The last one, the sixth and final way, we can try and get to 10%. And this is, this just works. Think about all the service providers you have at and t, Verizon for your cell phone. We just talked about your insurance carrier. Just call 'em, block out an hour on your calendar and call every recurring bill that you can and you call your Verizon person.
The customer service agent answers the phone, hi, I'm paying too much for my business line. What can you do about it? Literally say those words to them. I love my service, but it's really expensive and I need to cut some expenses. What's available as a promotional rate right now? What can you do for me?
Every single time I do this, I save money every single time, and it feels weird to do that. You're not. Going there and falsifying information. You're not calling them and saying, uh, like faking that you're mad or something. You're literally calling them saying, hi, I wanna spend less. What can you do for me?
And every single time I swear, the customer service person's like, okay, let me see what we have. Oh, how would you like to save? 20%? Yes, please. At t for your landline, Verizon, for your cell phone, whatever it is. If an agent will pick up even a chat agent, they're all trained to retain their users. That sounds so obvious and so I don't know.
You just don't think about it, but it works. Trust me. As we're walking around building a business, we worry all the time about making more money. We gotta make more. I gotta drive the top line, and that's great. I love the idea that you're thinking about selling something. I love the idea that you're thinking about making more money.
God bless. However, sometimes we gotta just, you know, pull up the emergency break and say, where can I save some cash? If you could save 10% of your revenue. That is a lot of money that goes directly into your pocket. So it's not sexy, but it's real money. You could probably do all of those exercises in an hour or less, and then you'll have more cash coming in.
So I recommend you do it today. The idea Slam is coming up. Two questions on the idea Slam today and before we get to the idea Slam. Michael, great to see you this morning, friend. He's talking about canceling. All of our domains on GoDaddy. I'm afraid to drop it now. Someone else will take it when I'm ready.
Ah, yes. You've got that perfect domain. You don't wanna let go, and as soon as you want it, you've canceled it. I can totally relate with that. The funny thing is, Michael, is that there isn't a domain left on the internet. I have them all, every domain, I have them. So if you don't have it registered, like that's how bad it is.
My GoDaddy is, oh my gosh. It's horrible. Anyway, where was I? Idea slam. Here are the idea slam questions we have today. What is one tool that you've added to your software stack that saved you the most time? I got a good one for you. I got a good one for you. That's one of the two idea slam questions. And the other idea slam question is, I've got a coaching client that keeps on canceling.
Should I charge them like it says in the contract or should I save the relationship and just let it go? We'll talk about both in the idea Slam coming up in a minute. Businessing is sponsored by Gen Head now. This is software you shouldn't cancel 'cause they're great scale systems, not chaos. It's perfect for early stage businesses like solopreneurs, lean teams, and founders who need real momentum.
Not complex tools that you gotta have a full-time operator to drive. Nobody's got time for that. Everything is streamlined and practical and you can act on it immediately. Plus they have agents inside the software where you can like use real language, Hey, do the thing, and it goes beep boop. Okay? I dunno if it says beep, it doesn't say beep boop.
It should, Hey, gen head, have your bot say beep boop. 'cause that would make me very happy. Hey, gen head, do the thing. Beep boop. And it goes and it does it. What's cool about it is when you have this CRM, it pastes together like 10 different disconnected tools. So instead of your CRM here and your automation there, and your content tools here, and your funnels over here and your website builder there, it's all in one place.
It's all talking to one another, and it will soon have an agent that says Beep boop. Less chaos, clearer data, better execution. Learn more@genhead.com. That's gen head.com. They're the sponsor of the show. They power my business and they produce the show as well. Thank you to the team at Gen Head for making everything just a little bit easier when it comes to running my small business idea Slam time.
Now, here's what's fun about the Idea Slam. This is your opportunity to come on the show or submit a question. About something that's going on in your business, the QR code that's up here in the corner of the screen, snap that, and when you hit that webpage, you can either come on the air and talk with me live, share what's going on in the business, a big project that you're working on, and you want my feedback to make it bigger or a big problem that you have and you need my help to solve it.
Or you can fill out a form and ask a question anonymously. If you're not ready to come on Businessing with Pat Miller and say, I've got a problem or an opportunity, you can just ask me the question anonymously and I'll tackle it on the air. That way you can get what you need, even if you're a little bit intimidated to come on the air.
So it's easy. Just scan the QR code and I would love to help you out. First question, one of those anonymous applications.
I have a coaching client who keeps canceling our sessions. Do I enforce my cancellation policy or do I let it slide to save the relationship? Okay. I've been there. Let, I've literally been there.
I'll give you good news and bad news. I'll give you the good news First, good news is you have a cancellation policy, high five, which means you probably have a contract high five. Good for you. That's the good news, and as an aside. If you coach other people, if you take other people's money, have a contract, it'll outline who does what and when they pay and how it works.
It makes everything easier if things go sideways, have a freaking contract. So good for you for having one, and good for you for having a cancellation policy. Here's the bad news.
Now it's just you and me talking here. Everybody else don't listen. It's just you and me talking here. Okay? I say this 'cause I care about you. You're allowing someone to walk all over you. The way that the question was phrased was a coaching client. Keeps canceling sessions, keeps canceling sessions plural.
Sounds like they've done it more than once. I get it. That emergencies happen. Family situations come up. If someone is just consistently valuing their time over yours, that's something you can't let stand. When I have a contract with someone, I always over legislate. I've got big scary terms in there. I've got all of the rights and the protections.
I've got everything in there that I need. And in the contract it may say, if you don't reschedule within 72 hours of the appointment, you're gonna get charged, or whatever your rescheduling policy is. I like to have all that in there so then I can make exceptions if I need to. You've got a client who's just inconsiderate charge 'em.
You've got another client who has a family member in a serious medical situation, okay, their life is upside down. Now I can do what I need to do to give them latitude so they can take care of their business. One of the phrases that I absolutely love, and this is just something I wanna leave you with on this topic.
When it comes to contracts and even relationships in general, is that people will treat you the way that you allow them to treat you.
People will treat you the way that you allow them to treat you. Think about that. If someone cancels a meeting with you at the last minute, you never say anything about it. You never do anything about it, they will do it again. You can't let that stuff stand. You just can't. You can't. So what should you do if it's not a medical emergency?
If it's just someone being inconsiderate, you may say to them, this is your warning. If you cancel outside the 72 hour window, again, you're going to be charged. I have other clients that need me. I have other business that needs to be handled. It's in our contract to do so. I'm giving you a free pass this time.
Don't do it again. Or whatever your contract states, and then when it happens, put on your big girl pants and charge them. If that person gets upset 'cause they violated the contract and they've had a warning, let 'em go. Just let 'em go. Life is way too short to coach people that don't value you and your time let them go.
Now I have Disney's frozen stuck in my head. Idea slam question number two.
What is one tool that you've added to your, added to your business that saves you the most time? I got a good one for this. I got a good one for this. And if you're sitting here thinking, Claude, and I'm gonna go off about AI again.
No I'm not. Even though the answer is Claude, 'cause it's pretty freaking amazing. Got a different piece of software that you can start using today that blows my mind on a daily basis and it helps me go way faster than I've ever gone. It is a tool called Whisper Flow. In fact, I'm gonna put it in the chat so you can see this Whisper Flow, that's the name of the software.
Whisper Flow is a voice to text tool that sits on your computer. And whenever I need something, I press this little button on my keyboard and it goes bloop. And then I start ta. It actually sounds just like that, bloop. So I press the button, it goes bloop, and then I start talking. It's a voice to text transcription.
Now, those have been around forever. Why is this one special? This one is special is because everywhere your cursor can go on your machine. You can now transcribe to it. Google Docs, no problem. Facebook. Instant message, no problem. LinkedIn responding to comments. No problem. Small business owners, community chats, no problem.
You probably know this intuitively, but if you haven't seen the numbers, you can speak a hell of a lot faster than you can type. And I'm pretty good at typing, but I can talk obviously a lot faster. So by pressing the little bloop button I can get through so much more. So speed is an issue, but it's also higher quality, and here's why.
If you are responding to two reasons. Now, if something else came to me, there are two reasons why it's better. What are we fighting online right now? We are fighting an uphill battle about people knowing, is this you or is this ai? I mean, thanks for the message, but is this a bot? Like, did you really take the time to send me a message?
If you press the whisper flow button, you go, Hey, how you doing? It's so great to see you. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to talk to you. It comes out just like what you said, they'll probably have a good idea that you actually said that it's a way to be more authentic. That's number one. But number two is you can talk way faster than you can type way faster.
And when you do that, I find that I get to more of what I'm thinking and the passion of what I'm thinking about better. Another thing and another thing and oh, that reminds me. 'cause you just start flowing with whatever's on your mind. It's not a very expensive subscription. It's incredible. And you know me because I'm a radio guy and I like to talk for a living.
I love this thing. I just get to talk at my computer all day and I go super, super fast. So not only does it give me more productivity, 'cause I get through my tools faster. It helps me get better ideas out and it makes sure that my stuff sounds like me, not ai. It's just really fun to use. So whisper flow, it's on the screen.
Highly recommend it. If you wanna move faster and get higher quality content out on the planet, I would absolutely recommend that. So what's your question? What's something that you need solved in your business idea? Slam QR code right here. Snap it. And when you snap it, you can come on the show and we'll talk one-on-one just like we did with Tom.
Or you can send me a question anonymously and I'd be happy to answer it, uh, on the show and send you the results so you can get some help for your small business. I'm gonna talk about what's happening inside the small business owners community in just a second, because I realize I talk about the SBOC all the time, but I never really talk about specifically what we're doing in there.
You don't need another community. You need what a community does for you. And you may be surprised by some of the really cool stuff we're doing in the group. I'll catch you up on the group here in just a second. Today's show sponsored by our friends at Eng g. Love Enji, awesome piece of software for marketing your small business.
And Enji makes it easy. Even when things feel busy or overwhelming, you still gotta market the business. You still gotta go out there and tell your story. So, how in the heck do you get it all done? Enji kind of a cheat code. An AI powered marketing engine that learns all about your business, plugs into all of your tools, and almost puts your entire marketing plan on autopilot.
It will help you tell your story even when you don't feel like it, because of its AI writing that's happening, it learns all about you and your brand, and then it writes. Creates in your voice. It sounds like you. It also plugs into Canva, so if you hate making graphics, like if you know anyone that hates making freaking graphics, it plugs into Canva, so it makes life a lot easier.
Plus it has a social media scheduler and they're kind of obsessed with KPIs. So they know what content is working, so you can do more of it and one content isn't, so you can do less of it. NG's changed the way that we market the small business owners' community, and I asked them for a deal. They said, okay, 14 day free trial, a hundred percent risk free.
Snap the QR code, click the link, visit ng co slash sbo, and you can try it out for free. Then you'll get a discount for the first two months, and then after that, it's only $29 a month. The link is on the screen. It solves the I do my own marketing problem. Thank you to Enji and the team for making everything go.
Let's talk about the SBOC for a second. When we talk about the SBOC, this is the place where entrepreneurs are gathering, owners only are gathering in our group, and I talk about it all the time because this is a place where we're solving problems together and we're moving faster together. It makes business a lot easier, and I thought, why don't we talk about specifically what we're doing in the group so you can know what's going on.
This is community rally month, which means we are on a rampage of doing one-on-one introductions and referral partnership development. Everyone in the group right now has been challenged to reach out to someone they don't know yet and have a one-on-one with another community member. When you join the group, you can see our member directory and say, oh.
I book speakers for a living, and here's someone that does speaker websites or speaker marketing. That's someone I need to know. Everyone's doing one-on-ones and getting to know one another at this point. The other thing that's happening is we have some killer discussions going on right now. One of the discussions that's happening is a question of how do you keep all of your leads straight?
You're prospecting, which means you get to call people over and over and over again. How do you organize that? The backend? It's a simple question, but do you know exactly how it should be done? Wouldn't it be helpful to hear how other people do it? It's a fast pass to making more money. Another conversation that's happening is, what was it?
Oh, what was it? Introductions, referrals. We're doing reviews of each other's websites. We're having people put up their landing page or their sales page, and the entire community is looking at it and giving them feedback. Because when you create a sales page, it's obvious to you, but it's not obvious to your lead.
It's not obvious to your client. The community as a thread started where we put up a website and everyone offers their feedback. And it's changing people's businesses because they, they're getting the perspective that they need to help their, uh, business grow faster. QR codes on the screen, if you wanna check it out, it's $19 a month, and if you hate it, I'll refund you, but there's a 0% chance that'll happen because it's pretty awesome owners only.
Small business owners community, very, very proud of that group. Would love to have you be a part of what we're doing.
That's it for Businessing today. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community, and I'm the Friday off, Fridays off guy, do me a favor, would you, if you've watched the show, could you like and subscribe it?
I'd really appreciate it if you would and if you share it with someone. Uh, I'm sending out some share mail. I'm sending out a little tchotchke in the mail to say thank you for introducing me to your business network. So if you've got time to refer us out to your network, I would really appreciate it.
This is the Daily Habit for Small Business Owners. This is Businessing with Pat Biller back on the air tomorrow at 11:00 AM Central. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you then. Take care.