Originally aired Wednesday, March 11, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.
Short answer: Usually not by itself. Before you blame gas prices or the economy, do the math. A 40-cent gas hike might cost a delivery business $8 to $20 a month. If that wipes out your profit, the business wasn't making money before. Check your prices, your offer and your prospecting first.
Today's lead story was a rant, and I'm not sorry. A CNN story painted small business owners as victims, using a meal delivery chef who blamed rising gas prices. I ran the numbers. His extra gas cost was maybe $8 to $20 a month, and he hadn't raised his prices in two years. I spent 22 years in broadcasting, and I know how a story gets assigned before anyone makes a call. Owners are some of the hardest working, smartest people I know. We need to hear from each other, because if you get your small business news from cable, you'll make bad decisions.
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
- When a cost goes up, work out the actual dollar change per month before you decide it's hurting your business.
- If you haven't raised your prices in two years while your costs went up, look at your prices before blaming the economy.
- When sales slow, check your package, your prospecting and your offer before you point to outside news.
- Get your read on the small business economy from other owners, not from one-off interviews in national news.
Questions this episode answers
Are rising gas prices hurting my small business?
Do the math before you decide. Pat worked out that a 40-cent gas increase for someone driving 100 miles a week is about $8 to $20 a month. If a cost that small erases your profit, the margin problem was there before gas went up.
Why isn't my small business making money even though I work hard?
Look at your own numbers first. The owner in the news story hadn't raised prices in two years while food costs climbed. Pat also pointed to weak packages, skipped prospecting, or an offer customers aren't asking for as common reasons sales stall.
Is the news accurate about how small businesses are doing?
Be careful with it. Pat, who spent 22 years in broadcasting, said many stories are assigned with the angle already picked, then reporters find owners who fit it. Talking with a real group of owners gives you a truer picture.
Worth quoting
If you are running a real company and an $8 expense increase makes it so you're not making any money. You weren't making any money before the conflict started, period.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Our incentive structure is such that we eat what we kill.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Maybe people aren't buying from you 'cause your package sucks. Maybe people aren't buying from you because you're not doing your prospecting the way that you should
Pat Miller on Businessing
If we get our input on what's going on with small business from CNN, you're not gonna get what you need.
Pat Miller on Businessing
In this episode
- Why the media gets small business wrong
- The CNN story about gas prices
- Doing the math on a gas price hike
- Not raising prices in two years
- Why owners need to talk to each other
Watch, listen and join
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- The Small Business Library (add it to your AI tool)
More on this topic: Money answers from the Small Business Owners Community
Transcript (shortened from the live show)
Our lead story today is a rant of all rants. It reminds me how important it is that we do this show because without this show, you could get bad information and I hate to be the guy that rails about the media, but damn it, there's a story out this morning that just.
Underscores to me that the media has zero idea on how to cover small business. Now, before I start bitching about this, I wanna let you know if we haven't met, I was a 22 year professional broadcaster. I've supervised newsrooms and I've sat in TV newsrooms during their assignment sessions. So I kind of know a little bit about how this works.
And when I saw this story this morning, it, I, I just, I had to talk about it. So when a new story is put out about small business, they will quickly say, whoa. The vast majority of jobs in the United States are created by small businesses. That's good 'cause it's true. There's like 33 million of us and 90 some odd, 90 plus percent of all the jobs are created by small business.
So great, you got that part great. But then if you listen to the story critically, you hear how they talk about small business. Every single time almost, well, every single time they start waving small business around as just we're this group of victims. We're, we're just, we're, you know, small business. They almost say it that way.
You know, the small business owners, we, we really need to support the. Mom and pop shops on Main Street, and you know, like, like we're uneducated, like we have no idea on how the world works. We need the holy guidance of the Fortune 500 and CNN to help us make a great small business. I, I, it makes me absolutely insane.
You feel this, right? I'm not on the moon. Do you know what I'm saying? If you heard them say that, yes, John. I'm standing here at a local small business and boy, times are tough for small businesses. You talk to one coffee shop owner, bro, come on. Anyway, the story that triggered me CNN story this morning, interviews a food.
Delivery company like they do meals and deliver them to people like a Meals on Wheels kind of company. And the point of the story, what they wanted to have the story be, and this was predetermined before they talked to anybody, I can guarantee you that the point they wanted to make was that boy gas prices going up that is crushing small businesses.
Woo. Gas prices are really ruining these poor people that run their own business. That's what they wanted to say, and they talk to people until that point of view was confirmed. So they interview this chef running a small business, and he says, boy, you know, I, I drive a hundred miles a week delivering my food.
His direct quote was, the economy is killing me on food prices and gas prices are tough now too. It's kind of a double whammy. I'm just working as hard as ever, but I'm losing ground here now. Time out. You know that if that dude needed help, I'd hop in my car and drive there and help him immediately. I know you would do the same thing.
That's what this show is all about, about helping our small businesses work. It's what we're doing here. It's called Businessing for heaven's sakes. But anytime there's a small business owner not making money, we're gonna rally to help that person and CNN and the other. Um, the other media outlets are going to point to whatever the latest excuse is about how it's crushing small business.
But here's where I'm calling BS on this story. Big time. Bs, mega Bs, capital Bs, if you will. The Iran conflict is, or war, whatever you wanna call it, it's 11 days old and he drives a hundred miles a week. That's not nothing, but I ran it through the Whopper supercomputer, and even if he drove a hundred miles a week, four weeks a month, and gas prices went up 40 cents a gallon.
His vehicle probably gets 10 to 20 miles to the gallon, which means his month long increase in expenses is gonna be somewhere between eight to 20 bucks. Total. Total a month. Gas prices have nothing to do with this guy's margin right now. None.
None. Zero, none. If you are running a real company and an $8 expense increase makes it so you're not making any money.
You weren't making any money before the conflict started, period. Are gas prices going up, going to affect him? Absolutely. Do we want gas prices to go up? No.
But you're gonna stick a microphone in someone's face and blame gas prices. Eight to $20 worth of new expense for a month. And just, you know, oh my goodness.
This poor small business owner. Yeah. Poor small business owner. 'cause he was building a business that wasn't making any money to begin with.
It's so condescending. It's so insulting. It insults me. Am I crazy here? It insults me.
The, the CNN reporter would roll up and talk all about how, oh, well this is the difference between making it and not making it for small businesses. This 40 cent gas hike. And the reason why it insults me is one, this story was on assignment, so this is the inside baseball.
You need to know. This reporter didn't wake up someday and say, I wonder how small businesses are doing. No, they were assigned. Hey, go talk to some small business owners and see how gas prices are crushing their businesses. Go, go find somebody. So this was on a, this is an assignment and they weren't gonna come back and say, Nope, small businesses are cool.
No. They were gonna make a story that said gas prices are hurting small businesses. One, the reason why two, the reason why I get so torqued. About the media covering small businesses, like we're a bunch of just people that couldn't make it in corporate America. Well, we couldn't. We work out of our house.
You work out of your house. Oh, it's too bad you couldn't get a job at whatever. And the reason why it makes me so mad if we were all in real life, if we were at the SBOC conference, if you were talking to the actual members of the SBOC or other people in your business network. Do you know anybody that is as hardworking and gifted and smart and flexible as an entrepreneur or a small business owner?
Get the hell outta here. Okay, come on. Our incentive structure is such that we eat what we kill. That means if we don't sell enough meals on Wheels, there is no Meals on Wheels. There is no paycheck. There's no paid vacation, there's no company match, 401k, unless we make it, there's no retirement fund. We have to make it happen.
And when they go out and talk to whoever they talk to to get the confirmation of the story they're looking for, we just all get painted. We all get painted. As victims of the overall economy. And boy, if, if we don't get help from those, those politicians, we need to support our small business owners.
They're the backbone of the economy. You're goddamn right, we are. So, cover us accurately, please. Later in the interview. This is where it gets better.
And again, knowing a little bit about what's going on here, this is where it gets better later in the interview. The Meals on Wheels guy comes out and says, well, I serve an elderly population and they're very price sensitive, and as a result, I haven't raised my prices in the last two years.Okay? Your job is to take food, prepare food, deliver food. We know that food businesses don't have a lot of margin to begin with, and we know that grocery prices have gone nuts in the last two years. So if your margin was 10 or 15% two years ago and you haven't raised your prices in two years, you weren't making money before the first drop bomb was dropped on Iran.
You weren't making money in general, and your target audience that you were serving is already price sensitive.
Just makes me crazy. Then the other stories, or the other people that they talk to in this story to make their case about how bad it is for small business owners, one of them was a trucking company that drives 1200 miles a day. Talk about an outer. The other one was like a delivery florist. So they basically picked out a bunch of small businesses that have to drive a lot to talk about how horrible it is for small businesses.
The gas prices have gone up 40 cents. Then there was one other nugget, oh God. One other nugget. I just, I got, I'm sorry, I'm just, I'm on the soap box. Come up on the soap box with me.
In the story they talked about, well. You know, times are hard, the financial challenges for small businesses, and, you know, those small businesses have to pass those costs on to customers. Uh, yes, of course. When's the last time you saw a story that said, boy, raw materials, and everything's getting more expensive.
So Microsoft has to pass the, they never say that. They never say that. The media's picture of what we do is, oh, the cupcakes are gonna be more expensive. Oh, that coffee shop's lattes gotta be $8 now instead of seven 50. That's their only point of reference.
It's selection bias and it's covering us in a way that's not fair to who you are, and it just makes me crazy. Let's close the topic with this. If prices keep going up, that's not good for anybody. If gas prices go up a dollar or even 70 cents or even stay at 40 cents, that's not good for any of us. 'cause our margin's going down.
I don't want our margin going to go down. I'm not defending the conflict in Iran. This is a media story and this is reflecting how they don't know how to cover small business owners. The headline of this story, just to, to, to make sure I'm crystal clear here. This is the headline and this is how you know the entire story was made up to begin with.
Quote, this is their headline. Iran War is squeezing US small businesses.
That's a dishonest headline. It's just a dishonest headline. It's been 10 days. And the reporter wanted to write that story. They wanted to have a story that said small businesses are being harmed because of the gas prices.
That's why we need this show. We need this show. Not for me to freak out on the media every day 'cause that's not what I want to do either.
But we need this show so we can talk to one another. And we can have an honest conversation about what's happening in your business. In my business, in Nikki's business, in Tyler's business, in Lisa's business, we have to like huddle around the fire here and talk with one another because if we get our input on what's going on with small business from CNN,
you're not gonna get what you need. You're going to end up making bad decisions because of it. Boy, prices are going crazy and everything's terrible, and you know, that's why people aren't buying from me. No, maybe people aren't buying from you 'cause your package sucks. Maybe people aren't buying from you because you're not doing your prospecting the way that you should, maybe because you're not offering something they're asking for.
No, no. It's the, it's the, it's the economy. That's what would happen if you're not talking to each other. If we're not looking at one another and solving our problems in real time, we could be left guessing And when we guessed with the available inputs that are out there, it is, it's not accurate. And it as someone who's on the planet to help you win, it makes me angry and it really makes me angry 'cause I know what's going on.
'cause I've seen the other side of this. It just pushed my buttons this morning. I'm like, what should I talk about today? Oh, hell no. I'm talking about that.
So rant mode over Tyler shares. This is a hot button issue for me. Get the population of small business owners, not the one-offs. Exactly. 90 days from now, we'll know a lot better what's going on with small business because we'll have 90 days of information.
But you're a stats guy. You know that.