Short answer: Write your goal with a number, how long you've worked on it, and what you've put into it. Then ask yourself honestly if you've given it your best or treated it as a side quest. If you've gone all in and nobody wants it, rethink. If not, take three small steps today.
Today I asked you to grab a pen and paper. You know the meme of the guy who stops digging just short of the diamonds? We wrote down our own diamond mine as a goal with a number. Then we added how long we've chased it, what we've put in, and whether we've given it our best. I shared mine, a thousand listeners an episode. Cheering you on no matter what would be malpractice, because sometimes nobody wants the thing. For the Idea Slam, a live word cloud asked what you're avoiding: sleep, boundaries, overwhelm, short-form video and taxes. News covered gas prices, the tax refund bump, and a startup paying people to vent at AI.
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
- Write your main goal at the top of a page and give it a number, so you'll know when you've reached it.
- Write down how long you've been working on the goal and what time, money and help you've put toward it.
- Ask yourself honestly whether you've given the goal your best effort or treated it like a side quest.
- Pick three five-minute tasks you can do today that move you closer to the goal, and do them.
- If you want more energy for the business, fix your sleep by setting a bedtime and working backward from your wake-up time.
Questions this episode answers
How do I know if I should give up on a business goal?
Get objective first. Write the goal with a number, how long you've worked on it, and the resources you've used, then judge your real effort. If you've gone all in for a long time and nobody wants it, it may be time to change course. If you haven't really tried, take small daily steps before you decide.
How do I set a business goal I can actually measure?
Attach a number to it. Pat changed 'I want the show to be a hit' to a real number: a thousand people per episode. A fuzzy goal can't be reached because you'll never know when you got there.
How do I stop feeling overwhelmed running my business?
Overwhelm usually comes from too many goals with the same priority in your head. Pick the one goal that matters most and take action on it first. Once that goal is clear, the rest of the list feels lighter.
Should my small business make short-form video?
If you make any content, yes. Pat said his short daily highlight clips get far more views than the full live show, because short videos are easier for people to watch.
Worth quoting
It's very common to say something as a priority and then not make it a priority
Pat Miller on Businessing
I would be committing businessing malpractice if I just cheered you on no matter what.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Sleep gets fixed by going to bed on time, and that's the only game that matters when it comes to sleep.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Boundaries are simply saying, no, no, I'm gonna choose myself or my company over you.
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Idea Slam question: A live word cloud asked viewers what they're avoiding in their business right now, and Pat answered the top replies: sleep, boundaries, overwhelm, short-form content and taxes.
In this episode
- Iran war, gas prices and a monster snowstorm
- Bigger tax refunds and a monthly-to-annual offer
- The diamond mine goal exercise
- When to keep going and when to rethink
- AI story: getting paid to vent at chatbots
- Idea Slam: what are you avoiding?
- Fixing sleep and setting boundaries
- Why short-form video matters
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)
Full transcript
let's talk about the news. And this Iran War is gonna be in the headlines for a long, long time. Day 12, gas prices are now up to $3 and 58 cents a gallon, and ships are being attacked in the strait of horror moves.
So that's not great. And a b, C News had a report with President Trump who called the gas price surge quote, a little glitch and we had to take this detour. Meanwhile, analysts are saying that gas prices could spike to $4 a gallon within a week, and that diesel prices could get up to $5 a gallon, which would not be great for the economy.
Okay, Nikki, thank you very much. And Steve, thank you very much. You can hear me. Appreciate that. How about a twist from the Iran War that I didn't expect?
The FBI is warning that Iranian drones are a threat to California. Now. This is something that has been done in Ukraine and now it could be a threat here in the United States.
So the FBI has revealed a memo saying that Iran allegedly plans to launch drones off of a ship like a container. The drones fly out of a container and boom, they're right there on the coast of the us. Their plan was to attack California and the, uh, Oscars. What? So the Academy Awards on Sunday, it's the 98th Annual Academy Awards.
They have beefed up their security big time alongside the uh, LAPD. They're working together, obviously, to protect the Academy Awards, but that's a real terrorism threat that I did not expect that container ships could just pop open a bunch of drones, and then, you know, Timothy Chalamet is ducking for cover.
I didn't anticipate that. So hopefully that doesn't happen. Weather news today. Forecasters say 2026 could be the hottest year on record. So they're calling for a potentially strong El Nino system. You've heard that El Nino and La Nina as the systems that go across the United States. They're saying there's a 62% chance of those systems coming across the us.
And when you have a strong El Nino, the weather can get really hot. With heavier rain in the south and drought conditions everywhere else. So when we sit here, you know, towards the end of winter and early spring, or whatever you wanna call it, we're thinking about the summer, we're thinking, oh, okay. Yeah, I can't wait till it's summer.
Oh wait, it's gonna be crazy hot. O, I don't know. But then we look at the forecast today and yeah, summer, I'll take hot because the forecast today. Is calling for a monster snowstorm over the upper Midwest this weekend. And when I say Monster, I mean Capital M Monster. The forecast that I saw today, I'm in Wisconsin.
The forecast that I saw today said that we could get feet plural, not foot, feet of snow on Sunday, like 24 33. Inches of snow. That's a lot of snow now. We probably won't. 'cause it always starts out as, oh my gosh, scary. And then it ends up not being scary. But either way I'm gonna the grocery store 'cause there is a 0% chance that I'm gonna go through that without beer.
There's, that's just not happening. That there is a whole amount of snow to beer ratio that you have to keep in your house when you live in Wisconsin. And if you're gonna get three feet of snow, yeah, we're gonna need two tree beers hanging out in the fridge. This weekend, so prepare yourself accordingly if you're in the path of that storm.
I predicted this new story a month ago, and hopefully if you listened, you're prepared. The tax refunds are coming in and the tax refunds are huge. The tax refunds are 20% bigger than last year. So your customers are walking around right now with extra cash in their pocket, and it's going to cascade from now and, you know, end of May or end of April, early May, at least they're projecting it's an extra $65 billion in the economy, or at least the consumers have to spend the average refund, $3,800.
Wow, that could be 4.1% in disposable income increase, so your people have more money than they had before. Now, a month ago on this show a month ago, we talked about this. I did a whole episode on what are you going to do to prepare when your clients have more money in their pocket? Did you prepare? If you did, you have messaging ready to go, you have new products ready to go, you have the opportunity to capture some of that extra income.
And one of the ideas that I shared that I think is pretty interesting and I'll, I'll share it again. The studies show that when people get a big lump sum like that, one of the things they like to do is pay off bills. The idea that I shared was if you charge by the month, offer them the chance to buy out the rest of the year to move from monthly to annual.
So you can say to them, Hey, we're normally a hundred dollars a month, but you could get the next 12 months for a thousand dollars and make this bill go away. You could pay off your bill. See what I mean? 'cause people will feel like they're, uh, driving down their monthly expenditure and obligation. By doing so, this is one idea, uh, and if you're looking for the full episode, it was inside the Fridays off newsletter, uh, and one of our early episodes here in the podcast feed and the YouTube channel as well.
Uh, so I did a whole segment on this, but if this is the first time you're hearing it, get ready. 'cause your clients are gonna have more money than they've had in a while, and it's all coming into their bank accounts real soon. Barbara Meyer, you poor thing. So Barbara, good morning. Barbara is a face painter.
She goes out and does face painting for kids at events and stuff, and she's got outdoor gigs this weekend. Hmm, I don't know about that. You better work on your, what is it? Elsa was the frozen chick. The the let it go frozen. You better work on your Elsa's. Because there's gonna be, there's gonna be a lot of snow flying around for you, Barbara and uh, Steve.
Good morning friend. Thank you for the heads up about the sound, and I have no idea why that happened. We're gonna blame LinkedIn, although LinkedIn just probably heard me blame them. Uh, and now we've been banned. Okay, whatever. Let's do today's lead story. This is only as good as your effort to play along.
I want you to give me five minutes 'cause it's in your best interest. I want to give you a little bit of a pep talk and a little bit of a reframe on the big goals or the singular goal you're trying to have come true right now. So you need a pen and a paper. Pen and a paper. We've all got that. Go get that.
And the inspiration this morning is the meme you've seen a thousand times. You've seen this meme a thousand times, haven't you? The guy in the bottom, he's been digging, digging, digging, digging, digging, and he stops just short of the diamonds. You've seen that meme and it's a great reminder that oftentimes we will work and work and work and work and then just get frustrated or bored or something else.
Shiny will come along. We'll get distracted. We'll stop right before the Diamond Mind. Have you ever had that happen? I've literally had that happen.
Not a Diamond Mind, I wish, but there are things that I gave up on that I wish I didn't give up on. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to. Get out the piece of paper and at the top I want you to write down what is your diamond mind, what is the goal that you're working on right now?
Just whatever, however you wanna express it. Just express it top of the page goal. And, and I'll share the one that I'm working on right now too, so we can kind of do this together. But I, I want you to play along here. Top of the page.
What's your goal? Write it down. Mine. Thousand listeners per episode to this show.
That's my goal. That'll be my first metric of, Hey, we might be on the right track if we're doing this show, and we can get a thousand people an episode to listen to it. Okay? Put that at the top. Now that you've written it down, I want you to look at it and say, oh, is that fuzzy or is that measurable? So if I had written at the top of my page, I want Businessing to be a success.
I want Businessing to be a hit. That's nice and that is a goal, but that's fuzzy and it's unattainable. You'll never know if you've reached it if it's not objective. So I have to change the goal from lots of people listening to listening businessing to a thousand people per episode. So review the goal that you have at the top of the page.
My goal was this, no. Now my goal has a number. It's something I can measure. Once you have something that you can measure, now we've got something we can work with. So review your goal and make sure it actually has a number attached. Now the next thing I wanna do, so we've got a, we've got a goal, got a number, and I really hope you're playing along here 'cause we really can work on something good for you here.
You've got a goal. You've got a number. The next thing I want you to write down is how long have you been pursuing that goal? Has it been a week? Has it been a month?
Has it been a year? How long have you been at it? For me, I've been doing this show for, I don't even think two months yet. We maybe have done 25 episodes.
Even doing them every day. We're still maybe 30 episodes in, and my diamond mine is a thousand people a show watching it. So I would write down, I've been working on this for two months, and I want you to write down, how long have you been working on this diamond mine? Why are we doing that? I'm also trying to get your commitment to this goal to be objective.
Because what will happen is that if we have a fuzzy goal, with a fuzzy recollection for how long we've been working on it, it's really easy to get frustrated because when we're working on a goal, it gets tiring and it can get boring and it can get frustrating. But if we're not objective about what the goal is with a number and we're not aware of how long we've been working on it, it can feel.
It's a lot longer than it has been. And my fatal flaw, one of my many, many, believe me, many fatal flaws. So I get kind of impatient. Maybe you do too. I get really impatient.
What do you mean 10,000 people? Don't watch this show every day. I'm gonna quit. I do that kind of stuff all the time. So you have.
An objective goal at the top.
Now you have an objective measure of how long that you've been working on this. Now we've got those two things. Third thing, now we're going through layers, right? The third layer is I want you to write down anything that comes to mind as far as resources that you've put into the goal. Have you taken some of your VA's time and put it towards the goal?
Have you bought ads and pointed it towards the goal? Have you done a series of calls with your best clients, inviting them to participate in whatever the goal might be? Want you to write down and just madman style. Just write down any resources you've thrown at the goal, things you've moved from one objective to another.See what we're doing here. Again, we're looking for clarity.
We're looking for clarity. Now you can look at your sheet and say, here's my diamond mind with a number. Here's how long I've been working on it. Here are the resources I've put towards it, and
the final one. And this is the one that really matters. If you and I sat here, no one else is listening, it's just, it's just you and me talking. And I said, have you been doing your best
or has this been kind of a side quest? You
get to answer that. It is very common in the people that I coach. I find it common in my business too, so I'm not calling you out. It's very common to say something as a priority and then not make it a priority to say something's an area of focus and just kind of, eh, yeah, that thing I'm working on, are you really working on it?
Have you given it enough time? Have you given it enough resources and have you given it your all? Were you hyper-focused on this diamond mine every single day? So with a goal that's objective and measurable and clear, and with a double check of the resources that you may or may not have put in. To double check on how hard you're really working on it.
We get to go back to the meme now. There we are on the meme, and the thing that doesn't get talked about on the meme too much is the dude on the top. The guy on the bottom is the heartbreaking one. He's so close to a goal and he gave up. But the guy at the top, he looks pretty focused. He's doing his thing.
You may think that this whole conversation was designed to tell you to keep working harder no matter what. Keep going. Not really. Conversation today is to get you clear. On what you're trying to get done, and then have an honest, objective review of how is it going, because here's what's possible. It's possible you have a clear goal.
It's possible you've been working on it for a year. It's possible you've dedicated a ton of resources to it, and it's possible that nobody wants what you're doing.
I would be committing businessing malpractice if I just cheered you on no matter what. Hey, no matter what, keep going. Well, what if it's keep going towards the wrong thing? What if it's keep going towards something nobody wants? That's not great.
You've got a roadmap. It's objective. You're either the guy on the top that's working on something that will pay off in your focus. You're the guy on the bottom and you quit or get distracted, right before it matters. We'll leave with action steps. You've got this objective goal. You do want it to come true.
What can I do? You can take action today, and I believe in small steps. In fact, the name of my company is Small Step Solutions. That's the parent company that runs all of this small step solutions, and I really believe in doing little things every single day because it adds up. So what are those small steps you can take today?
Think of three things, three, five minute tasks that you could take on today that will get you closer to your diamond mind. It could be LinkedIn posts, it could be calling previous clients. It could be waking up new partnerships. It could be asking to be a presenter at someone's upcoming event. It could be anything.
You know what they can be. But to say all the time that you're working towards a diamond mind, but you're not actually doing the work, you're not giving it your all. You are performing small business theater. You're lying to yourself, so hopefully you've got a nice, clear objective, and today you're going to take three steps towards it, and I would love to know what that is.
I would love to know what your diamond mind is, and if there's something I can help you with. Here's a secret. You now have on a piece of paper right here, you now have on a piece of paper what to call in to the idea slam about because if we're heading this way and something gets in the way of that diamond mine, that's when you would come on the show and you would say, I've got this issue and I can't get past it.
And my diamond mine is waiting. Please help, and myself and the folks in the chat, we would all help you as well. Very last bit with this piece of paper. Tape it to the wall or your monitor or someplace where you can see it. There's science that I didn't have time to pull before the show today, but there's science that says if you see your goal every single day, you're a lot more likely to make it come true.
I encourage you to do that, and for those of you that have been here with me so far on the Businessing journey. First of all, you can say you're a Businessing og, so Fist Pound to you. Thank you for joining the show so early, and I'm really, really, really grateful that you're here with us this early in the journey, but I wanna have a thousand people per show watch it.
And I was doing the math the other day. There's a difference between Live stream and people that watch it on YouTube and listen to it. On Apple Podcasts and Spotify, I think we're at like. 200 people a show that are watching it right now, which is not nothing, it's not where we want to be. I want, my very first goal is to get to a thousand people a show, but to get to 200 so far has been really great.
And your comments in the chat, your feedback, uh, on the LinkedIn posts and your feedback just anecdotally is really helping me out. So thank you for your support of the show. I'm gonna share the AI story of the day, but if you're just joining us, I want you to have time to get in on what we're doing with the Idea Slam today.
So we're doing something different in the Idea Slam today, we're gonna do a word cloud, uh, and we're gonna do a word cloud that is asking you the question, what are you avoiding in your business right now? And we've got a ton of votes, which is really exciting. But what's the one thing you're avoiding in the business?
You can click either QR code or click the link that I just dropped into the chat. What's the one thing you're avoiding? And when I get the word cloud all done, we'll put it up on the screen and we'll have a conversation about it. And, and maybe once you see the word cloud, you can put in the chat what you want me to talk about.
We can definitely do that as well. But I wanna make sure everyone has a chance to play along. Click the QR code, click the app link, and let's, let's have some fun with this. I think it's gonna be a good time AI story of the day. If you ever get frustrated with ai, there is a new startup that will pay you really good money to be mean to ai because if you're like me, you've screamed at ai.
I just, I have, it's just infuriating sometimes when you know how to do this, bro, you did it yesterday. Do it now like you've done that. Uh, this startup is inviting people to come in and they'll pay you a hundred dollars an hour for a full eight hour day just to interact with the leading chatbots and be brutally honest with them about how frustrating they are.
Specifically, they're trying to get us or the people who are participating to get after the AI models and their memory failures when you're working with something and it just forgets. I've told you this a thousand times, you know this, you know this, those things, they want people to come in and do that, which is crazy.
So that, that's an opportunity if you're ever frustrated with AI and you want it to, uh, to work better. And they said in their job description, we're specifically looking for, and this is a quote we're specifically looking for. People who quote, have a history of being let down by technology. Hi. As a technology early adopter, uh, that happens to me all the time.
The next big thing sounds so good. I jump on it and it works, works, works, works, works, and then it doesn't, and it's just infuriating to me. So that, uh, that's an opportunity for you if you feel like venting. And what's funny. There's another story that's adjacent to this one very long thread that talks about how much money we're wasting and, and, and energy we're wasting by being nice to ai.
The major LLMs are now begging us to stop saying please, and thank you. We're being too nice. And the joke is, oh yeah, well, when the robot overlords come, they'll, they'll spare me if I'm nice to. Ha ha ha ha, ha. But it's almost an environmentalist position at this point that if we can just cut down the number of messages, like, oh, hey, thanks, Claude.
That's a really good answer. First of all, Claude, don't care. And secondly, we burned a tree or a dinosaur or whatever we're burning nowadays to make that happen. So it's almost an environmentalist position to be a jerk to ai. So if you believe in the planet, be a jerk that that should be a bumper sticker.
I think I just hatched a bumper sticker. Be a jerk. Save the planet. I think that sells, I think that sells more on that as AI continues to develop the word cloud. I can see the word cloud over here that we're gonna do in the AI slam, or in the idea slam, rather. It's, it's coming along, which is great. So I wanna give you just one more moment.
To dive in and share your word cloud answers here. Uh, 'cause this is gonna be a lot of fun. So we're gonna pick out some of the, uh, uh, things that you're avoiding in your business right now in the interactive word cloud, uh, in just a second. But first we're gonna talk about our fabulous friends and our sponsor.
Gen Gen has been sponsoring the show from the beginning, so thank you Gen Head for being a part of what we're trying to do. If you have not checked out Gen Head yet, they have the answer for you. If keeping all of your contacts and all of your marketing tools. All in one place feels super overwhelming.
Gen Head is built for solopreneurs and lean teams who want momentum and everything to be practical and easy and simple. It is a CRM that is on steroids. It replaces 10 different disconnected tools, puts them all in one place. So you never have to juggle from your CRM back to your media scheduler to where you've got your funnels listed to, how do I get paid?
How do I build a website? Where can I host my community? All of that can happen in one place. Inside Gen Head, we run my company on it and it's something you should check out as well. Gen head.com is the domain gen head.com, and their link is on the screen right now. Thank you to the Gen Head team for being such an awesome group to work with.
Okay, we're gonna do a fun idea slam. This is our chance to basically be real with one another. And talk about what's happening in our businesses. The original idea for the Idea Slam is we would bring guests on and talk about your goal at the top of the page or the thing that has you stuck in the business right now.
But the last few days we've been playing with some interactive word clouds and, and, and some. Questions that are asynchronous. So you could just ask right away while you're watching the show and I can address it in real time. So today I ask the question, what are you avoiding in the business right now?
And let's see if this is gonna come up. There it is. Check that out. Way to go, everybody. So what are you avoiding in the business right now? And if you wanna vote while we're on the screen, you can absolutely do that and we'll see the things come up. So we'll start, and I'm just gonna riff on some of these things and if there's something on the screen you really want me to address, put it in the chat and we'll talk about it.
But what are you avoiding in the business right now? And the big one is sleep. And that's haha. And that's, oh, I need more sleep and yeah, I don't sleep enough. But you know, my standpoint on building a small business. It is way more personal management, especially as solopreneurs, than it is business skill.
If you can show up every day ready to give your all and ready to be an outstanding uh, operator, you can do just about anything. And if you're not taking your sleep seriously, boy, you are really hamstringing your opportunity to build a business that matters. Why? When you think about all the output that's gonna happen, especially if you're a solopreneur, what if you could be 15 or 20% better every day simply because you're not running outta gas?
Or you could get to your desk fueled and ready to go in the morning rather than slugging coffee and looking at Facebook for the first hour. 'cause you gotta boot up. Sleep is incredibly important, and I promise you, if you take your sleep seriously, you will absolutely make more money because of it. Other ideas here?
Boundaries. Also, true boundaries are a part of running the business because it's the interpersonal decisions that guide what we do. And when you are the face of the business and you have poor boundaries, it's tough to run a business that matters because what really are boundaries? Boundaries is your ability to tell someone no.
You're gonna tell the fourth binge watch episode? No. At 11 o'clock you're gonna go to bed. You're gonna tell a client that's got scope creep going on. You're gonna tell them no. You're gonna tell yourself no. When you wanna buy technology or gear that you really don't need, you're gonna tell someone no that you don't wanna meet on Thursday for coffee.
You just need that time to get your stuff done. No, I know you would like to meet on Thursday, but we're not gonna, boundaries are huge. It's the operating system for the person that runs the business. So sleep is huge, boundaries are huge. So let's talk about how do we take action on them? So what are you avoiding was the question?
I'm avoiding sleep hygiene. Okay. Sleep gets fixed. Not. By getting up earlier, sleep gets fixed by going to bed on time, and that's the only game that matters when it comes to sleep. You wanna sleep better, you wanna have more energy to do your job, you gotta go to bed on time and that's the only game that there is.
So what can you do? Figure out how you get an extra hour's sleep. I dunno how many you, you get right now. If you get six or six and a half, see what would happen to your life. If you got seven or seven and a half, I'm sure you'll do a lot better. To do that, you just back up. If I want to get up at six in the morning, I gotta be in bed by 11.
All right? So what must you do to get to bed by 11? If you've been avoiding it, you've got between now and Monday morning or Sunday night to figure that out. How do you get to bed at 11 o'clock Sunday night no matter what? That's the action step from this conversation. As far as boundaries are concerned.
How can you have better boundaries? I think you gotta look through your to-do list, and you have to see what parts of the business are making you feel uncomfortable, because I find when my boundaries are getting violated, that's, that's the stuff that I'm avoiding. It's really what we're talking about here that I'm, I'm, I'm feeling like I'm compromising my mission by trying to make someone else happy, or I'm trying to prolong a client relationship that we really shouldn't prolong because they're being unreasonable.
So I would go through your to-do list and I would have you look at what parts of your to-do list in your week are making you uncomfortable. That's where your boundaries are being trampled. So I would go in and take action on that. And boundaries are simply saying, no, no, I'm gonna choose myself or my company over you.
Let's see what else we've got Health. Health. I've been on a big health journey. I could go off on that forever. Overwhelm, which is probably prioritization. That's leading to overwhelm. Overwhelm happens when you've got too many goals that you're trying to serve at once, and you've got too many goals that all have the same priority in your head.
If you ask me, why do you feel overwhelmed? I would say I'm planning the conference, I'm doing my show, I'm doing this other podcast. I'm doing, I'm doing too many things. The yellow sheet that we did earlier in the episode where your, your objective is now laid out and you're gonna start taking action on it by focusing on one thing.
Even if you have all those other things to do, your overwhelm will start to go down because your diamond mind will start becoming clearer. Overwhelm is big. There's also some other word cloud here, word clouds here that are, you know, interpersonal, that really emotional laziness, boredom, regret. I could go into all those things for quite some time.
Let's talk about short form content. This will be the last one that we do for today, but awesome feedback everybody, unless there's something here that you wanna say. Pat, would you please cover this? Put that in the chat. I would love to address it, but short form content is something I think we need to call out.
Those of you that are doing short form content already know this. Those of you that are not doing short form content, you need to hear this. It, it's. It is almost non-negotiable at this point. If you're doing any sort of content, you also have to give snackable size content to what you're doing as far as this show is concerned.
It's an hour long, it's 45 minutes long, and only incredible people like you 'cause you're awesome. Tune in and watch the whole thing. I have way more viewers that watch the highlight of the day that I put out on YouTube, my live show on YouTube, but right now might get. 15 to 30 viewers or something like that.
But then I put out the short form content and those can easily spike to a hundred or more views in a day because that short form content is just so much easier for people to consume. So that is something that I want to encourage you to do if you're creating content. Please, please take advantage of that.
And Rebecca's here in the chat. Rebecca's saying, blushes. That's mine. I don't see blushes. I'm confused.
What are you avoiding in the business right now? Blushes. I don't know what that is, Rebecca, but I'd love to address it. Last thing, taxes. Don't avoid taxes.
And speaking of taxes, changing my single member LLC to an S Corp.
Holy Cats, boys and girls. Abby and I just went through that switched from an LLC to an S corp and this was our first year around the sun doing that. And the, uh, tax benefits were good. Good, good. Last year we paid buku bucks in taxes, extra taxes. This year we got a bunch back, so if you're considering an LLC.
To an S corp. Uh, I would definitely, um, definitely encourage you to look into it and if you're looking for someone to help you with that, uh, we used our friend Magnolia attacks, uh, Eugene Marshall at Magnolia Attacks. He crushed it for us. So thank you Eugene and Mona for your hard work. And Rebecca says, oh, short form content.
That was hers. Okay. Thank you, Rebecca. I'm sorry I didn't understand the blushes thing. I'm sure you were blushing.
Okay, I get it. Yeah. So, Rebecca, do your short form content. It is. Really, really important.
So thank you everyone for participating in the Live Idea Slam. I really like doing this. It's really fun to have the interactive feedback.
And I can do polls, I can do live idea slams. Like we could just have you put in a question and I'll answer it on the fly. Or of course you could come on the show as well. So if there are questions you want me to address, uh, or if you like that live feel to what we're doing, I think it's kinda fun. Let me know because I'm having a good time with it.
Okay. We're gonna hit a few more things before we get outta here. And the latest is the AI installation group. The AI installation group, I think. I think we have a few members signed up right now, which is really exciting. I got an email this morning from somebody, uh, that said, yeah, pat, I think we're in.
And I had a phone call last night with somebody like, I think I might do it too. So if you haven't heard about the AI installation group, as you've heard me on the air talking about the AI revolution that we are experiencing right now, you may wake up and say, oh man, I need to do that. How am I gonna learn what it takes to install AI into the business?
It's not chatbots, it's automation, and it's actually getting productivity out of all of this technology. 'cause every single day, more news comes. How do you know what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to? How do you hear what other business owners are actually doing? So you can borrow it and install it into your group and your business as well.
So I'm taking a leadership role here. I'm gonna start mastermind groups called the AI Installation Group Part education, part Action part Show and tell, and things that you need to keep moving. AI trends, letters so you know what to pay attention to and what not to on demand asynchronous communication.
Whenever you need me, I'm gonna be there. We're gonna put you into a team of others, so you're gonna have a set mastermind with you and some others, so you've got other people that you can message with and grow with as you're trying to figure out the next six months. Because the next six months, friends, I'm telling you, between now and the SBOC conference, life is going to change radically.
Our first meeting is a week. From Wednesday, the, uh, two weeks from yesterday. So the 25th is going to be the kickoff of the mastermind group. So if you want to make sure that you are taking advantage of all AI has to offer and you wanna start building a better business, scan the QR code or click the link that got dropped into the chat.
And you can join right now for the AI installation group. Super, super excited about this and to our new members that are coming in, can't wait. All right. Speaking of members, last thing that we have to share today before we hang up, uh, we have the sixth Annual Small Business Owners Community Conference that is going to be up in Brookfield, Wisconsin in September.
On Monday, I launched the SBOC conference wait list because we have a challenge and an opportunity. The opportunity is, the conference is awesome, two and a half days. Small business owners getting together, big keynote speakers on stage, talking about the things that you really need to learn. Money marketing, sales, positioning, branding, all the stuff that we need to figure out so we can build a great small business.
That's what's gonna be on the stage. And we've got an awesome keynote speaker. I'm not ready to re reveal yet, but I will here in a little bit, a couple of weeks. The conference, we've been doing it for five years and people love it. Okay, fine. The challenge is our ballroom will only hold 200 small businesses.
Now that the small business owner's community has crossed 160 members, we're starting to get a traffic jam going on, so we're gonna let the community buy their tickets, and then we're gonna let people that sign up on the wait list. Buy their tickets and then it's gonna go on sale to the general public.
As it stands right now, we have 110 tickets available to the conference in September. So between now and May, I'm gonna be talking about the conference wait list. That if you're not a community member, but you still wanna have an advantage, place in line to try and get a ticket. Join the wait list. Here's how the wait list works.
Name, email, end of list costs you nothing. Reserves your place in line so you can have a chance to get a ticket when they go on sale on May 13th. The conference is September 15th to the 17th, 2026, and it is the highlight of the year. If you like this show, if you like some of the stuff that we're doing, I guarantee that you're going to love the conference.
It's our, it's our, it's our meetup, the entire SBOC family. It comes together and, and you, you'll just have a fantastic time Learning, growing joint ventures, collaborations out the wazoo, and being surrounded by 200 others that understand what you do is so empowering. It's the best part of the year. So scan the QR code, get yourself on the wait list, and we would get you in line to get tickets before they go on sale.
And the community itself, we had two new members join yesterday. So welcome Brandon McLean from Georgia and Marion Haggard from Tucson, Arizona. Always great to welcome more small business owners to the journey. Today was fun. Today was fun.
And I'm done for the week. 'cause remember, hashtag Friday's off. So I hope that you were productive today.
I hope you take your goal that we worked on and you take those three action steps that we dreamed up today. Because if you are feeling stuck or bored or lazy, I'm looking at some of the other words that are on the word cloud. You gotta give yourself some actions to keep yourself moving towards that diamond mine that you're mining towards.
I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community. Thanks again for tuning in. I really appreciate you for being a part of what we're doing, and we'll talk to you right here Monday morning at 11:00 AM Take care.