Originally aired Thursday, February 19, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.
Short answer: Set your rates by the price of the problem you solve, not by what you'd pay yourself. If your work saves or makes a client thousands, a fee that looks high to you is a bargain to them. Pick clients who have money, make sure you can deliver the result, then raise one price today.
Today I read a Wall Street Journal story about top lawyers charging thousands an hour, and it moved the goalposts in my head. So we talked about pricing a service business. Don't price out of your own pocketbook, tie your rate to the price of the problem you solve, and pick clients who can pay. Then I asked you to raise one rate today. We also covered a bill in Congress about credit card swipe fees, an odd Alzheimer's study, and the Olympics. The Idea Slam took two questions: a business coach whose cash flow dies every summer, and a great client who always pays late.
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
- Set your hourly or project rate by what the problem costs your client, not by what feels comfortable to say out loud.
- Stop pricing from your own pocketbook, because you aren't hiring yourself and you only need a handful of ideal clients to say yes.
- Choose to serve people who have money, like established owners, instead of brand new startups who can't afford your help.
- Pick one product or service and raise its price today, even by a small percentage, just to get the momentum going.
- Put payment terms and a late fee in every contract, and pause work for any client who keeps paying late.
Questions this episode answers
How do I decide what to charge for my services?
Charge based on the price of the problem you solve. If your coaching helps someone close a $15,000 sale or stop losing $10,000 a month, a $1,000 fee is an easy yes. Anchor on the value of the result, then ask if you can actually deliver it. If you can, raise your rates.
What if I wouldn't pay my own rate?
That doesn't matter, because you aren't your client. Pat's point was that you don't need 50 people to pay your price. You need about 10 ideal clients who see the value and can afford it.
How do I make money during my slow season as a coach?
Stop trying to sell what people don't want in that season. Save during your busy months, and use the slow months to build the business, like writing, upgrading systems, or creating courses. If you need income, offer a self-paced summer program clients can do on their own time.
How do I handle a client who always pays late?
They'll keep paying late until it costs them something. Have a contract with clear payment terms and a late fee, then tell them the fee applies and work stops until they're paid up. Moving clients to ACH payments can also help you get paid faster.
Worth quoting
Your rates are directly proportional to the price of the problem you're going to solve.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Just because you wouldn't pay it doesn't mean it shouldn't be paid.
Pat Miller on Businessing
If you're not charging enough, you will never get there, ever.
Pat Miller on Businessing
How do I get business in July? No one wants to hire me in July. Cool. Don't try and get hired in July. Do something different.
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Idea Slam question: A business coach asked how to keep cash coming in during a slow summer season, and a second owner asked how to handle a great client who always pays late.
In this episode
- Olympics and a surprising Alzheimer's study
- Credit card swipe fees and the Credit Card Competition Act
- How to price a service business
- Solve problems for people who have money
- Raise your rates today
- Idea Slam: surviving a slow summer season
- Idea Slam: clients who pay late
- The boneless wings lawsuit
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: Pricing answers from the Small Business Owners Community
Full transcript
And good morning. It's Thursday, February 19th, and we are. Businessing. This is small business's weekly show. I'm your host, pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community, and this show is made possible thanks to our friends at Gen Head and Enji. Thanks to both of you for being a part of what we're building here.
Before we get into the headlines, I got headlines to share. We're gonna make some money today. We're actually gonna do some work today. But before we get into all that, how are you? Like, how are things going?
Are you good? Are you good? I really appreciate you tuning into the show and being a part of what we're doing here because when you are building your small business all by yourself, it can feel like nobody understands what's going on.
And this show is gonna bring all of the solopreneurs together. We're gonna talk about the real stuff in the news and the real stuff in our business, and we're gonna have our idea slams and solve problems. And dare I say it, we're gonna have a little fun. So I raise my comically small coffee cup to you.
Let's get to the businessing, shall we? I gotta take a drink. Got to, right? Mm-hmm. Yes.
Third espresso of the day. Let's rock and roll. Good morning, Theresa, and good morning, Barbara. It's wonderful to see you. Wonderful to see you, Doris, as well.
Thanks for tuning in on today's show. Congress may do something that makes you an extra 3% right away, and it's not a tax cut, and it may actually happen.
An unexpected solution for Alzheimer's has popped up in a medical trial and it's, it's kind of funny. We'll talk about that. Not the Alzheimer's part that's deadly serious and tragic, but the solution is a little random and funny. So we'll have a laugh about that. We're gonna talk about why you charge, what you charge, and why the window is open right now to increase your rates.
So we're gonna do that as well. Let's, let's get these comments on screen. 'cause all these people are saying Good morning. I think this is wonderful. Good morning to Barbara and to Nikki, and two idea slam questions that we're gonna get on the air today. First one is, I'm a business coach and my slow season is coming.
Summer just kills my cashflow. What can I do? And the other question, how do you handle a consistent late pay client? You know the one. They're great to work with, but dang it, they don't like to pay on time.
So what do you do? Do you maintain the relationship or do you kind of get in their face about it? So if you're in the comments, if you're with us this morning, say Good morning.
We'd love to recognize you on the air as we begin to business together. So we'll check out the news. The Olympics are starting to get good. It's now not the time trials of the downhill and you don't know any of the people. Now it's getting to the hockey finals and the stars are coming out. The USA women are playing in a gold medal game today at noon for hockey at 1210, and Michaela Schiffrin was on TV last night being the goat winning her third career gold medal.
So the Olympics are starting to get good and we gotta pay attention to the Olympics too, because the Olympics are over on Sunday. Boo, it seems like they just started. I didn't watch as many, uh, Olympic games as I wanted to, so I'm just gonna Olympics max for the next couple of days and get as many as I can.
There was a surprising finding. The surprising finding is that existing drugs sometimes solve problems they're not intended for. You know how, uh, the GLP ones that people are taking for weight loss, those were, or originally, what was it? Diabetes. It was a diabetes drug, and they noticed that people were losing weight on it, and they discovered that it could be applied in a weight loss scenario.
So here's a drug that does one thing, but it actually does something else. Well, there's a new trial out that says, oh. There's an entire class of drugs that's helping protect your brain against Alzheimer's and dementia. Dementia runs in my family. So anytime that I hear something about dementia, I am all over it.
And this study came from the University of Exeter in the uk and it's a huge problem there. It's probably the same here. It's the dementia being the leading cause of death in the uk. So this is a serious issue. So they're looking into existing drugs because to create a new drug takes like 10 or 15 years.
But if there's an existing drug on the market that can kind of help, they start to apply it. So they did this big study and they first found that a shingles vaccine emerged as a great candidate and that the side effects would the, the good ones help protect your brain from Alzheimer's. So that's awesome.
Because your immune system is known to play a role in Alzheimer's showing up, and this vaccine interacts, and there's a whole immuno thing, I, that's not even a word, but you know what I'm talking about. It helps your immune system fight off the side, side effects that lead to potentially dementia and Alzheimer's, but the one that's getting the buzz.
And the reason why I'm talking about this is, and you know where I'm going with this. Oh yes, friends. They found that Viagra will help you stave off Alzheimer's. It protects the nerve cells and the buildup of tau, whatever that is. I guess it's a protein that a abnormally accumulates in the brains of people that get Alzheimer's and in mice studies, Viagra also improve thinking and memory and blood flow, and we know it.
Definitely it helps with the blood flow. So, um, honey, should we protect the brain tonight? What do you think? Yeah. Know what I'm saying?
Hey, protect the brain. You know the nogging? Hmm. Woo, honey. Wow.
Sure. Looks like the brain needs protecting. It's for health. It's science says, science says so. It's a man's dream and a woman's nightmare.
Nightmare. But a great way to protect your partner's brain. Is to make them more horny, I guess. Who knew? They're now looking for additional drugs that may help with, uh, dementia and Alzheimer's.
But as a guy of a certain age, you know, stop the count. Like this is good. Uh, we'll just, we'll start taking Viagra to protect by dementia long term.
Why not? I guess better, better laid than never, if you know what I'm saying. There's a bill in Congress to break up the credit card swipe fee nightmare. You know about that when a customer pays by credit card and yay, I got paid. Whoa. I just lost percentage points out of what I made simply because they own the credit card gateway.
And how bad is it? Right now there's basically Visa and MasterCard running a duopoly. And they decide, they just decide what the sweep swipe fees are. You don't get to negotiate, you don't get to shop around 'cause those fees are two to 4%. And you know, too bad you wanna take a credit card. Too bad. That's what you have to pay.
And last year those swipe fees alone added up to $187 billion nationwide. That's. That's not a rounding error. That is a boatload of money. And as a small business owner, wouldn't it be nice to have 3% more back into your payroll or, or, or p and l? Of course. Here's the other thing, 3% to a ginormous company is not a big deal.
3% to you and me. That's a, that's a real impact. Put this in perspective, let's say you bill $200,000 a year, you're paying two to $4,000 a year just to have the privilege of getting a credit card, like having them pay via credit card. So we could be using that money in a whole bunch of other places. And there are, and you know this, some places, especially restaurants that are cash only, a good restaurant might be single digits of margin.
And if they can get an extra two or three digits of margin, 'cause you have to pay by cash. Tough tomatoes. I need that extra two or 3%. It could be the difference between them staying open or not, but there is hope on the horizon, and that's why I'm bringing it up this morning. There is a bipartisan bill that's going through Congress right now, and the important part of this is it's a bipartisan bill called the Credit Card Competition Act.
Both sides have supporters because if only one side has supporters, you know it's really gonna have a hard time. So the concept is the banks would have to let you choose from more than just Visa and MasterCard. You'd get access to other secure and stabilize network. Like, you know, Stripe would get involved and Square would get involved and they wouldn't have to run on these other networks.
And what happens? What always happens? When there's competition, the prices go down. We know that that's a market force. So if they open it up to competition, we're certainly going to pay less. So think about how much you're paying in those swipe fees and keep an eye on your bill. And remember you heard it here first.
There may be relief on the horizon. Don't know if it's gonna pass. 'cause who knows if anything is gonna pass right now, I, I mean. Congress could say, we're gonna pass a bill that says out loud, ice cream is great. And the other side would say, oh, do you hate cakes?
What I, I like ice cream. Oh, gelato hater. I get it.
I mean, that's how it is right now with everything. So I have no hope that it's actually going to go through, but if it did, it would be good for us. And that's why I wanted to bring it up. Lead story. Today I want to talk about pricing a service business, and we see Doris and Theresa and Nikki and others that are here, service business owners.
We need to talk about that because I read a story today that kind of moved the goalposts in my head about how much we should be charging, especially if you are a service provider like Theresa's, a graphic designer, or if you're a coach or you're a consultant, you just get to make up what your hourly fees are.
You don't have any hard materials most of the time, and you just have to put a dollar amount on what the value is of your counsel and guidance and coaching and mentoring, and what is that worth? It's worth what I say it is, and the answer to the question that you should be using is what is it's worth?
It's worth what people are willing to pay for. As long as the number is so high, I can say it with a straight face, like if it's $10,000 an hour, you can't really say that with a straight face, but you could say $500 an hour. If you could say that with a straight face and someone will say, yes, guess what, you're a $500 an hour consultant.
In my head, I've always tried to anchor that in my head. This is just inside my, you know, solar powered head. How did I anchor and how do I anchor my rates? Because many of us think that hourly rate should be something everyone is comfortable paying. It should be something I'm comfortable offering. Okay, fine.
I get that. But when you think about what you're comfortable saying, you may reach for 1 99 or 200 or 400, and I've gotten to the point at times where I felt uncomfortable saying what I wanted to get paid because, well, I can't charge that much because that's what lawyers charge. That's where the story comes in.
There's a Wall Street Journal story out today that shares the tippy top lawyers, the best of the best are now charging $3,400 an hour. Whoa, whoa. That is good work. If you can get it $3,400 an hour. When I started coaching and consulting people back in 2018, I always thought 400 or $500 an hour, which I charge people for one-on-one consulting.
I always thought that was kind of unachievable because it's like, well, you know, that's, I mean lawyer money. Do you know what I mean? Is that making sense to you? Like it's anchored to who you know is expensive per hour and then you think, oh, that can't be me. And back then I always thought I can't be $500 an hour.
'cause that's what lawyers get. Well now we know the best lawyers are getting mega gaos $3,400 an hour. So if now we don't have an upper cap. Based on what the hourly fees are because it has been anchored so high. Now
the most expensive hourly rate you can find is pretty darn high. So now that kind of makes me feel a little more comfortable raising my pricing. There's two other things I want to add to the mix. One of the biggest lessons I learned about hourly pricing a long time ago is don't price out of your own pocketbook.
Let's go back to Theresa, for example. She's doing graphic design. She may say $500 an hour, I would never charge, or I would never pay $500 an hour for a graphic designer. That's ridiculous. Cool.
You're not hiring yourself. You're hiring your ideal client. Yeah, but I can't get 50 people to pay that. You don't need 50 people to pay that.
You need 10 people to pay that 10 ideal clients to pay that. Just because you wouldn't pay it doesn't mean it shouldn't be paid. The second lesson that I learned is to understand why they would pay that. What is the value of the transformation that you would provide If you're coaching and you're consulting is priced at $500 an hour, let's just say, and you're coaching and consulting someone that helps them make a $15,000 sale.
Would they pay a thousand dollars for you to teach them how to make a $15,000 sale? Absolutely. If they're losing $10,000 a month and you could come in and save them $10,000 a month by paying a thousand dollars in consulting fee, would they do that? Absolutely. When we set our rates, now listen to me.
This is, I'm gonna tap on the glass again. Tap, tap, tap. I'm talking to you when you set your rates. Your rates are directly proportional to the price of the problem you're going to solve. I have a friend, you may know this friend, this friend does inventory planning and sales consulting and, and, and operations controls for giant companies, fortune 500 companies like multimillion dollar companies, and he'll come in and save them a million dollars because he knows what he's doing and they don't.
He'll charge them $25,000 or $50,000. Uh, what do they pay? That? Absolutely, he's got a wait list. Why?
Because he's saving them millions. The value of his transformation is so high. So if you anchor your pricing on the value of your transformation, can you actually deliver those results? And if the answer is yes, raise your rates.
The last piece of the puzzle is something that I heard Alex Hormoze say on Twitter. He's great. Great follow on Twitter, just banger after banger. And he had a tweet that I thought was awesome and he said The fastest way to make money as a small business owner is to solve problems for people who have money.
I'm gonna say that again 'cause I want this to land. The fastest way to make money as a small business owner is to solve problems for people who have money. So many people that I run into, especially when they're just starting their business, they start and who are you going to serve? The default, well, you know, I wanna help people that are just starting out.
They really need me and I, I really want to help small business owners find their way. And that's a great story because you're finding your way as well. The only problem is those people don't have any money. They don't have, they, they have no money. No money. $0. Why are you helping them?
Why we get to choose who we serve. What if you helped established medium-sized business owners or big old business owners that live on the Gold Coast? We get to pick who we serve if all things are equal. Solve problems for people who have money and solve problems that cost people lots of money. Both of those things will help you redefine how much you're charging per hour.
And as I say all the time, a small business owner can do anything, can serve anyone, can solve any problem we get to pick. That's the blessing and the curse. And if you can deliver the transformation for people who can afford to pay you what you'd like to make, you're gonna make what you wanna make. Go back to Theresa Graphic Designer.
Instead of selling a $500 startup package for your new business, where I'll make you a name tag and I'll make you a business card and I'll do a graphic for your landing page. And yes, that business is there, but those people have no money. Instead, do a business rebranding package. Are you growing so qui so quickly, you've outgrown your launch phase.
Are you ready to double your rates and move into a new stratosphere, but you don't look like it? I specialize in making you look like a million bucks so you can make a million bucks. Do you see the difference there? The need is exactly the same because if someone launched and they were doing it all by themselves and then they got successful and then they hit a perceptual roadblock because it looks like Ms.
Paint and it looks like their nephew made their graphics. There comes a point where you gotta walk the walk and look like you should to be in the right room. And as a graphic designer, Theresa gets to choose who do I want to help? My friends that are just starting, or the people that need me to make extra bucks.
And if you can help someone sell a $25,000 monthly annual, and it costs them five grand to look like they deserve it, they'd pay it in a heartbeat. They'd pay it in a heartbeat. This is a huge part of the Fridays off theory. By the way, you know me, Friday's off guy. I'm not working tomorrow. This is my last day of the week.
And the thing about the Fridays off theory is you don't have to work five days a week if you're bringing in enough revenue to cover your fifth day off. You don't have to work five days a week if you have enough revenue to get qualified help to help you to build out the technology and the agents that you need to run your business when you don't feel like it, you gotta have revenue coming in to solve these problems.
If you're not charging enough, you will never get there, ever. So here's where we're going. You knew where this is leading. I need you to raise your rates today. Today, today. Doesn't have to be a hundred percent raise. Doesn't have to be something ridiculous, but I kind of need you to raise your rates on anything.
Pick something. Raise it just a little bit just to symbolize that you heard me. This is, this is, this is you, this is, this is a requirement. Like you thought this was a happy little show talking about boner pills getting rid of your Alzheimer's, and it is, did I just say Bo? I just, I just said that, didn't I?
I regret that, but that's what we're talking about. This is a workshop. We're actually gonna make some damn money today. And Rebecca, Brian, don't feel targeted. I'm just cheering you on. But yes, Rebecca Brian, raise your rates. So we talked about this two weeks ago and I said, Hey, today's a great day to raise your rates, and I bet you didn't.
I'm jumping on the table now. I'm pointing at you. Raise your rates today. Pick one thing and raise it. Today.
I'm looking at you. It's a perfect day to raise your rates and I really want you to make some more money. So why not today? It's a good day to do it. And Theresa, thank you.
Brilliant. As usual. Wow.
Check is in the mail. Theresa, thank you very much and thank you for being our Guinea pig. I really appreciate that. And Michael, I did. I can't believe I said that.
I deeply regret saying, but I almost said it again and I can say anything I want. It's not like we're on broadcast, but come on. Have some class.
All right. Good morning, my uh, Steve Lynn. Good to see you friend Bagel in Businessing time. Hell yeah. Pass that bagel over here.
Alright, coming up we're gonna do the idea slam. Got two juicy questions that are going on today. I'm a business coach and summer is my slow season. It's killing my cash flow.
What should I do? And another question. How do you handle a client who consistently pays late? Oh, I hate those people. And you know who you are.
If you're a late payer, come on bro. How do you handle it? We'll talk about those in just a minute. And a big old high five to Barbara Meyer. I raised mine by a small percentage.
That's a start. That's momentum. Way to go, Barbara. Appreciate it. Idea Slam is on the other side of this. We're sponsored by Gen Head scale systems and not chaos. As we begin to grow, things get more complicated, and to keep it all straight, you need a bulletproof system that brings everything together.
It's designed for early stage entrepreneurs, founders, solopreneurs that are trying to keep everything together while we're growing. And what's beautiful about Gen Head is that. You don't need 10 different disconnected tools. You need one system that you don't need a full-time operator to run. It's streamlined and simple to use, and you can act on it immediately.
It brings in your CRMs, your automations, your social media scheduling, your outbound, uh, texting. It brings together your landing pages, your lead pages, your PDF. It, it does, it really does everything. It may make you brownies, although I haven't trained on that part of the software yet. It pretty much does everything to give you less chaos and clearer data and better execution.
It powers my business. It powers the small business owner's community, and I think you should check it out, gen head.com. It's gen head.com. Make sure to ask them about the Brownies because now I want brownies. How about the idea Slam Shall we? Idea Slam Today is right now two questions that we're gonna talk about, but don't forget the idea Slam is here for you.
If you click the QR code that's on the screen or you click the link that's in the chat, you can come on the show, be my guest, we'll talk about your business. We'll talk about raising your rates and how it's possible. And if that sounds too intimidating, I don't want to go on the show. That's cool. There's an anonymous question, submission form, where you can just say, Hey, here's something that's on my mind I need help with.
Don't use my name. Fine, no problem with that. Two ways to solve something that's holding you back or to accelerate something that you are working on. Scan the QR code, click the code, come on the air with me. Here's our first question today, I'm a business coach and my slow season is summer, and what happens is I do great all year and in the summer my cashflow just dies.
How do I generate enough income during my off months? Like, how do I keep things going in the summer without doing something completely new? Here's how you survive Summer. You survive summer by looking at this problem in a completely different way. Instead of thinking about how do I make money when my months are slow?
Think about how can I make more money when my months aren't slow. Because every business has seasonality. Well, almost every business has seasonality. Seasonality, meaning a steady flow of when things are hot and when things are cold. So say, uh, Steve's having a bagel. You're a bagel across the street from a high school, your bagel store.
Well, you'd have really strong seasonality because when school is in session and every parent is dropping off a kid, I bet your store would kill it. Then the summer when no one's dropping off their kids, you probably don't have as many bagels sold. That's just an example of what seasonality is. So if you have strong seasonality, like the person that sent in today's question, you may not be able to sell coaching when people are outside in 80 degree weather hitting golf balls.
So the question may be, instead of trying to get people to do something they're not going to do, and you have years of seasonality to prove it. It may be a combination of saving money in those off months and blowing out your business and saving for a rainy day in your prime months so you can shift gears.
And your business can actually change during the time when it's slow, because during that slow time, that doesn't mean you're not working. You just have to think differently about what you're doing. It's almost a, uh, what do they call professors, uh, sabbatical. You get three months off to work on the business.
You may have a few clients, but it's not as busy as it usually is. Do you see? We're kind of changing the camera angle on this problem. How do I get business in July? No one wants to hire me in July.
Cool. Don't try and get hired in July. Do something different. July might be the time when you're writing your book or you are doing business development and building relationships.
Or you are technically upgrading the entire business stack and your website and your, uh, AI agents and your workflows. You're repositioning, you're hiring Theresa to reposition your business and make it look like a million bucks. You could be building online classes, you could be perfecting your intellectual property.
You could be doing all those things, and you could even take a break yourself. The quote that I heard when we were raising babies, and I love this quote 'cause it applies to small business owners too. When you're raising kids, they say sleep. When they sleep, especially when they're young. You got an infant and you're just exhausted.
Anytime they sleep, you sleep well. It's not a bad idea. As a business owner, if your are resting, how about you rest? It's not a bad idea. If you're still insistent on, okay, pat, I hear you taking a break, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. That's not what I asked. How do I generate income during your off months?
All right, well go to where they are instead of trying to get them on Zoom to do one-on-one coaching. Maybe you do a summer school program with all of your coaching clients and the summer school program are recorded lectures that they can watch on their device. It's an online course they can do at their own pace.
It's something that they can do when they feel like it and ignore when they don't, something they can do on the beach or sitting at a layover in the airport or wherever they find extra time, but they're not on your schedule and they're not doing things in the summer that they don't wanna do in the summer.
That's what I would advise you to do, and seasonality is a real thing and we all have seasonality. It's also another reason why we should have a couple of months of operating expense saved up in the old OPEX category. Pretty darn important to have that. Second question, shall we? Second question. How do you handle a client who consistently pays late but they're otherwise great to work with?
Hmm. Hmm. I think on behalf of all the small business owners, I just wanna have a, have a little chat with you, Mr. Late Pay. Hello, Mr.
Late Pay. I'm not very happy with you right now, Mr. Late pay. You know better. In fact, you know what you're doing.
You're taking advantage of someone who really relies on you paying your invoices on time.
When Mr. Late Pay, you don't pay on time. You're really harming my ability to continue to provide you with the services that you expect to keep on advertising my business, dammit, to keep on putting food on the table and paying the mortgage. Don't be that guy, Mr. Late Pay because I see you gladly taking our services.
And then when that invoice comes, oops. I forgot bs, Mr. Late Pay, and I'm gonna call you on it. Do you know how we know you didn't forget? We can see how many times you looked at the invoice.
We can see it. And I know you're lying to me, Mr. Late pay drives me crazy. Oh, if you want a late pay, here's an idea.
Put it on your credit card. Why am I your bank?
Should I quit yelling at Mr. Late pay now? Ooh, Mr. Late pay. I do not wanna see you after school. I'm gonna, Hmm,
back to the question. Sorry, I had to get that out. I just, whew. Boy, that was visceral. This is another reason why you may want to pursue the a CH conversation that we had earlier this week. If you miss the show, we were talking about how important it's to try and get your clients to move over to a CH payment.
It gets away from that three to two to 4% credit card fee that I mentioned earlier. 'cause they're just sending cash from their account to yours. That is awesome. And you know you're gonna get paid right away. So that's one thing you could consider. But how do you handle the client that's always paying late and they're otherwise great to work with Mr.
Late Pay? So they won't stop paying late until you stop performing the service for them. Mr. Late Pay knows what they're doing. They absolutely know what they're doing. They might call it cashflow management or whatever it might be. And when they worked at the big building downtown, we always paid our invoices six months after receiving them.
Well, whatever. That's not how we're doing it now. And it's in your contract. Knock it off. If they feel like they can get away with 2, 3, 4 weeks late after it's due, they're gonna continue to do it 2, 3, 4 weeks late after it's due. So we talked about make sure you have a contract. Make sure you have a contract that shows where the payment terms are, make sure the contract has penalties if there's a late pay, because magical things happen when you send that client.
When you send Mr. Late pay, that invoice that says, Hey. Expletive deleted. Your payment is due in five days and if you are not paid up by then, there's a 10% fee. And I'm not doing anything else for you until you pay. 'cause you're behind that combination of no more soup for you. And here comes an added fee I'm gonna put on there.
Usually magically, oh, I forgot. No, no, you didn't. You opened it six times in the last two weeks. I saw it in QuickBooks. Don't gimme that.
Oh, great. Huh? Thanks for the money.
Oh, Theresa, yes. Keep yelling. You want me to keep yelling? I don't want to be the guy that yells all the time, but sometimes Mr. Late Pay needs to hear it.
And you know what? I'm doing it on your behalf. And if you are Mr. Late Pay, you know who you are. You're better than that.
Don't be that guy. Come on. It's like the third question this week about annoying clients.
Are we all just pissed at our clients right now? We've joked in the community for a long time, and I've said this a thousand times, running a small business would be awesome if it wasn't for the clients. Is that the truth? Sometimes? Like, wow, this is great doing what I'm doing, but ah, I gotta go to a client meeting.
Oh. Uh, some of them are more trouble than they're worth. So make sure you work with great clients. Make sure you've got a contract in advance, and don't tolerate Mr. Late Pay.
We know the game that they're playing. Before we get outta here, I've got a story that is so America, it's from a courtroom. It has something to do with fast food and it's a lawsuit that made me laugh.
It's a delicious story. It's so America. I'll tell you about it after this. We're sponsored by ENG G. Marketing for small businesses is a requirement and universally we kind of hate to do it, but ENG G makes it easy. Even when things are uncertain or things are busy, or things are hard, Eng G makes it easy.
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It's your marketing team pretty much on autopilot. Then they'll go through and look at all the KPIs. You know the key performance in indicators, index, key performance indicators, the stats, and they'll let you know what's working and what's not working so you can do more of what works and less of what doesn't.
NG has changed the game for small business marketing. And if it's something that you're doing all by yourself right now with spreadsheets and Google Docs and logging into all these other websites, bro, you are making it way too hard. Especially when NG's giving Businessing viewers a 14 day risk-free trial.
You don't believe me. Try it 14 days risk free. Then after you fall in love with it, 'cause you will. Where has this been all my life. The first two months, you'll get a big discount on the price, and then after that, it is a crushing $29 a month. It's not very much. This is ridiculously overpowered software for you.
If you need to market your small business owner, click the QR code that's on the screen or visit ng.co/sbo ng.co/sbo ng has finally solved. I do my own marketing problem. Final story of the day, and I always like to remind you the final story of my week because I'm off tomorrow, baby. The final story of the day is just so America, it's so America.
I, I can't think of a story that's more America than this. A buffalo wing lover filed a lawsuit. March of 2023, claiming violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act against Buffalo Wings. Why is he taking buffalo wings to court? Before I even tell you why, and before I even tell you what happened, just pause.
There's a guy that's suing Buffalo Wild Wings.
Okay. Why did he take them to court? He's taking them to court because Buffalo Wild Wings calls their wings, boneless wings instead of chicken nuggets.So you have regular wings, the wings that have bones in them, and then you have wings that don't have bones. He says, wait a minute. Those aren't wings.
That don't have bones. Those are chicken nuggets. This went to court. There was a trial. They argued about lawyers, $3,400 an hour, argued over chicken nuggets, and the judge ruled in Buffalo Wild Wings favor.
They can continue to call their popular menu item boneless wings, even though they are quote, essentially chicken nuggets. And, and I think this is so ridiculous. There's more, this is a quote from the ruling as the Ohio Supreme Court recently put it, A diner reading boneless wings on a menu would no more believe the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones than the items believing that they were eating chicken wings.
Wait, I'm screwing this up. The point that he was making. I screwed. I so screwed it up. I'm so sorry.
What he was saying was, when someone's eating chicken boneless way, I'm so tired. I'm so sorry. All right. All right. Take two.
We'll edit that out in post. No, we won't. 'cause it's live. All right. Here's what the judge said.
The judge said, I'm hungry and now I'm thinking about boneless wings. Now the judge said. Boneless wings are cool 'cause people ordering boneless wings don't expect no bones. They expect a chicken nugget and that's fine. It's just like someone that ordered chicken fingers. They wouldn't expect that they're getting fingers.
Like that's literally in the ruling. He said, I, I'm gonna do a like it as boneless wings is to chicken nuggets. Like chicken fingers are to real fingers. No one expects that this. This is a lawsuit that happened.
So the final thought on all of this is, who's the guy that sued? Do you have time for that? Who has time for that?
Who wakes up and says, there is an injustice in the world and I'm going to fix it. Oh, really? Childhood cancer? No. Oh, homeless veterans, right?
No. Buffalo wings, dude. Uh, just thinking about that makes me glad you lost seriously. Just like Theresa said, oh my gosh, this is so dumb. I had them the other day.
Yes, let's go have some buffalo wings together, have a cold beer, and get on with the weekend.
I'm not done working today, however, because I am road tripping and I would love it if you would join us. Are you in the Fond Dulac middle of Wisconsin area? We're doing an in-person idea slam event in partnership with Envision Greater Fond LAC today. This is so cool 'cause Envision greater fond lac, terrific organization.
And they're doing a big event and the SBOC and I'm like the the person that's doing the speaking. We're gonna do a bunch of owner to owner networking, and then I'm gonna lead an idea slam for the members of Envision Greater Fond du Lac. And what's cool about it is they allowed me to invite you all as well.
You just gotta get a ticket on the QR code and join me this afternoon. So we're gonna be in Fond du Lac from four to six doing our thing, making connections in our networking, and then doing our idea Slam. Live without a net. And speaking of the idea slam, yesterday in the SBOC, we had a banger of an idea slam.
We had 10 or 12 people sitting around helping one another solve big problems. And the one that we solved yesterday, which I thought was really great, a person in the community sold their business and is now out coaching people and is trying to determine who do they want to coach. We help to reframe who they want to coach.
We talked to them about how much to charge and they left the meeting going, wow, that was right in front of me and I was making this way too complicated. That's the value of a second opinion, and that's what you get inside the small business owner's community. As we say in the group, don't grow it alone.
Don't grow it alone has always meant have friends around you and don't feel lonely and feel supported, but it's also. How many big decisions are you making all by yourself, and how many mistakes are you making and not realizing it, and what's the value of being able to turn to Doris or Theresa or some of the other members that are on the call today and say, Hey, have you ever done this before?
No, no, I've never done it that way. I've done it this way and this is how you're supposed to do it. Oh, that's the value. Of the small business owners community, it's only $19 to be a member. It's pretty much stupid insurance. This is like the way that you should be ing that businessing nowadays. Join the community now, $19 a month.
You could get the support as of today. Big thanks to Nng and Gen Head for making the show possible today and all this week. And again, I just want to thank you for tuning in. It has been so much fun. Bringing the show back on the air and your support and encouragement and comments and chat and messages and flowers and, uh, all the other things you've been, nobody's sent me flowers, but brownies.
That does sound good. You know, all the support I've gotten has been really encouraging, so I appreciate you tuning in and helping us spread the word about Businessing with, um, I just forgot my name, businessing with Pat Miller. I'm outta gas. Thank goodness it's Friday. I mean Thursday. 'cause I'm the Fridays off guy, founder of the small business owners community.
You know who I am. It's a pleasure talking with you. We will be back on the air Monday at 11:00 AM Central. I really hope that you'll join us. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll talk to you then. Take care.