How Do I Take Time Off as a Small Business Owner?

Originally aired Tuesday, March 24, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.

Short answer: Get your calendar out and block your time off for the whole year now, before clients fill it. Start with the weeks when clients are checked out anyway, like holiday weeks and the end of December. You only need your own permission, and most clients won't notice you rescheduled a meeting.

Today I asked you to get your calendar out, and we planned the rest of the year together, month by month. When you run your own business, the one thing you're promised is control of your time. You only need your own permission to take it. Clients rarely notice you moved a meeting, and a trip on the calendar gets you working harder beforehand. I also did a live demo of Claude's new computer use feature and warned against signing annual software deals right now. In the news, Iran talks, gas near $4, and a mail-in voting case. The Idea Slam covered getting clients without constantly selling, and saying no without losing the client.

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

• Open your calendar today and block time off for the rest of the year before clients or meetings claim those days.
• Take time off when your clients are checked out anyway, like holiday weeks and the last two weeks of December.
• Put time off on your calendar as an all-day busy event so booking tools show you as unavailable.
• Turn sales into service by starting conversations with people who have a problem you can solve, then showing how you'd fix it.
• When a client asks for extra work, say you'd be glad to and offer to send a quote for the added scope.

Questions this episode answers

How do I take a vacation when I run my own business?

Plan it now and block it on your calendar. Pat walked through the year month by month, picking weeks around holidays when clients are slow anyway. Mark the days as busy so clients can't book them. Most clients won't notice you're gone if you move a meeting a week.

How do I get more clients without constantly selling?

You'll always need to ask for money, but you don't have to push. Treat sales as service. Keep meeting people, ask about their problems, and show how you'd solve the ones you can. That keeps conversations going without a hard sell.

How do I say no to a client without hurting the relationship?

If a client asks for something outside your skills, get on their side. Say you care too much to do it badly, and offer a referral. If they want more than they paid for, say yes and offer a quote for the extra work. A client worth keeping will understand either answer.

Should I sign annual contracts for AI and software tools?

Pat's advice at the time was no. AI tools are changing fast, and a tool that does things on your computer may replace some software you pay for. Keep plans monthly so you can switch.

Worth quoting

You really only need your own permission to take time off.

Pat Miller on Businessing

If no one notices you're gone, you can take unlimited time off.

Pat Miller on Businessing

You always have to be asking for money, but you don't always have to be selling people.

Pat Miller on Businessing

If telling your client no would torch the relationship, they're not a relationship you want to have in the first place.

Pat Miller on Businessing

On the show

• Idea Slam question: Two questions: how do I get more clients without being the person who's always selling, and how do I say no to a client without torching the relationship?

In this episode

• Iran talks, oil and gas near $4
• Supreme Court case on mail-in ballots
• How to take time off as an owner
• Blocking vacation on your calendar month by month
• Live demo: Claude computer use
• Why not to sign annual software deals now
• Idea Slam: getting clients without constantly selling
• Idea Slam: saying no without torching the relationship

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: Time and burnout answers from the Small Business Owners Community

Full transcript

And good morning. It is Tuesday, March 24th and we are. Businessing, this is Small Businesses' Daily Live Show. I'm your host, pat Miller, the Fridays off guy and the founder of the small business owners community. Really glad that you're here with us this morning. The chat is already popping. Good morning, Talmar.

Good morning, Rhonda. Thanks for tuning in. Theres is here as well, and when you log in, tell us that you're here in the chat. That way we can kind of have some fun together. I was thinking about this.

Most shows like mine, they do a lot of interviews and I don't do a lot of interviews. You know why? Because that would interrupt me talking to you.

It would interrupt our conversation. I mean, it's nice to have smart people come by and learn some stuff, but it's better if you and I can just have a conversation about what's really going on in business. And that's what this show is all about. What's on the show today sponsored by Gen Head. We're gonna check in on the news and gas prices are going crazy.

We have two idea slam questions that will tell you if your clients are adults or not. Both of the questions kind of revealed the, the true nature of your clients. Our story of the day is an important one. It addresses the one thing we are given as small business owners, which is our time. I'm gonna do, and this, this might be tough, but I'm gonna do an interactive vacation planning session with you.

I need you to get your calendar out, whatever platform your calendar's on, even if it's a written calendar, make sure that you get it out in the next few minutes because we are gonna have some fun planning out the rest of the year. And way to go. Theresa, thanks for following the assignment so you can get to free pub.

We appreciate it. The AI story of the day, and I hate to say it, it's about Claude again. I'm sorry. 'cause Claude dropped. The software update of the year yesterday.

Do you remember those of you that joined us yesterday? And your nice smelling and smart if you did? I played the WTF Claude video, which was incredible.

I laughed. I still laugh at that. Yesterday afternoon, Claude changed the game quite literally by releasing computer use for its co-work product. What the heck is that? How does it work?

I'm gonna attempt a demo on the show today, which is dangerous. Doris, good morning, by the way, Doris is smart. She would never do a demo on the show 'cause these sometimes don't work.

But I will fearlessly perform a demo on the show. And if it crashes and burns, you can enjoy some popcorn while you laugh at me. So when you're with us, pop into the chat, say hello, let us know that you're businessing right along with me. Let's get into the news headlines. The War on Iran has now gone into its 25th day and President Trump is making it sound like we've got negotiations going on.

He claimed 15 points of agreement after weekend talks, and that resulted in delayed strikes on Iranian energy sites. For the next, I think it's three and a half more days is left on this moratorium. Meanwhile, Toran says, wait a minute. We didn't have any talks. Okay, so what, what are we, are we not, if you're new to the show, you know that I'm tracking this, this entire war in conflict by the financial markets.

'cause they've got way more to lose than I do, and they've got money in the game. So oil is sitting at $91 a barrel as of like an hour ago when I was getting ready for it. The Dow Jones Industrial is up 60 points as of this morning, and gas prices are really starting to accelerate up to $3 and 96 cents a gallon on Sunday.

So as of Sunday, they're up to almost four bucks, up almost a dollar in the last month. That's, that's not good. That's not good. Let's get this thing done with, let's get gas prices back down. That way our customers have more disposable income. Unless you're a gas station owner, then maybe it's good business.

I don't even know how gas stations work. So if it's good business for you and you run a gas station, glad you're enjoying your, your profits. There could be changes in our elections. The Supreme Court and the people that follow the Supreme Court, they're betting that the Supreme Court is going to vote in a certain way.

That would change how mail-in voting works across the entire country. Right now, 14 states and Washington DC will count mail-in ballots if they arrive after election day, but they're postmarked before election day. Drop it in the mail on Sunday, elections on a Tuesday. It doesn't show up to the city hall until Wednesday.

I'll still count it. It's postmarked, but there's a lawsuit that went through in Mississippi and the justices are telegraphing. The people that follow the Supreme Court, they're telegraphing that they're probably going to side. With the team that doesn't want mail-in ballots to count after election day.

If they're not in hand on election day, they're not gonna get counted, and that could have a big impact in some of the states. The decision is expected in July, which conveniently yikes, is a few months before the midterms, as if the midterms weren't going to be crazy enough. That's another complication that could get stuck into all of this.

The rest of the stuff in the news is either sad or depressing or just not really consequential. But those are a few things that are going on that I just want you to know about. That's kind of how I pick these stories. This isn't, you know, Walter Cronkite, CBS evening news. This is just what do you need to know?

And then I put some extra stories down in the ticker so you can kind of keep up on things as well. Good morning, Nikki. Great to see you. Okay, let's do today's lead story. How do I take time off as a small business owner? Common question, because when you are running your own thing, it feels like there's no such thing as time off, constantly overwhelmed.

More work to do than ever. I'm not making as much money as I want, so how could I take downtime? Well, we need to reframe some of that, and on today's show, we're gonna talk about how important vacations are, and we're going to literally get our calendars out and block out the rest of the year. So if you don't have your calendar out, whip it out right now.

Where's Steve when we need him? Hey Steve. Whip it out. But now get your calendar out right now You need to, Barbara, great to see you. Good morning.

Okay. While you get your calendar out, I'm gonna talk about how important time is when you start a small business. The only thing you are promised is your time and how you choose to use it.

You're not promised how much money you're gonna make, you're not gonna promise, you're not promised how much your raw materials cost. You're not gonna be promised that you get healthcare. You're not gonna be promised that you'll get a long string of clients, but you're gonna be promised that you can, for the most part, have control of your calendar.

And I like to think about time as compensation because when you start your own small business, here's whose permission you need to take a day off the boss. End of list. Now, if Abby was here, it would've been smart. My wife, if I would've said the boss husbands, we know this, but you really only need your own permission to take time off.

It's important that I call that out because if you are working in corporate or used to work in corporate, that's not how you think. And you are trained. To take 10 working days off a year, maybe 12 if you've been there for a while, maybe 15. When you run your own small business, you can plan ahead and take off basically any day you want, provided you can produce your product or service for your clients.

It's a mindset shift. We have to think differently about our time off. The other thing about vacations, vacations are incredibly motivating. You've done this, you run a small business, you know, think about the last time you really disconnected or you went someplace special. Uh, Abby and I went to Spain last year around this time, and it was amazing.

And the amount of work that I got done in the 30 days leading up to Spain, oh my gosh, I got two months of work done. Just getting ready for the trip. 'cause I wanted to be prepared and I wanted the community to be all set and ready to go, but I was also excited, I was motivated. It's like, yeah, we're gonna sell a bunch of sponsorships and we're gonna do a thing, and when I get back from Spain, it's gonna be great.

We'll be so relaxed and I can go to Spain and just enjoy myself and all of that stuff was true. The other thing about travel, if I asked every one of you that's here and good morning everyone that's here, and I said, Hey, what does small business success mean to you? Almost every single person will say, I can work when I want and I can travel more.

That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. I can work when I want and I can travel more. With the ability to take off as much time as you wish, provided your clients and your services taken care of. You have the ability to take off as much time as you want. And the second part of this conversation is, well, if I took like four weeks off a year, um, now my clients would notice Baloney.

Baloney. They would not notice and they would not care. Let's say you're a coach and you're coaching, who are we coaching? We're coaching, we're coaching Telmar, Telmar. Uh, we normally meet on the second Tuesday of the month. I've got a conflict next Tuesday, so can we do it the following Tuesday? What do they say?

Sure. Like they don't even think. They don't even think. And if they ask, well, oh, cool. What do you have next Tuesday?

Yeah, Abby and I are going to Spain. What will they say? They will not say, Hm. They'll say, that's really awesome. Tell me about it.

No one will notice that you're gone. If no one notices you're gone, you can take unlimited time off.

Time is compensation. Then what's the last thing we need to do in order to go places and do things and live this amazing small business life that we're working so hard to make come true? We must protect it. And that's what we're gonna do this morning. Do you have your calendar out? I, I gave you plenty of warning.

You have your calendar out. You better because we're gonna talk about it. In fact, I'm gonna share a calendar just in case you don't have your calendar out. And I want to talk through. We're gonna go through month by month.

We're literally blocking this out. And if you're not doing it, I am judging you. I am.

I've got my glasses on my nose. I'm staring at you right now. Let's do that for effect.

I am judging you. Get your calendar out. Let's look at the month of March. March. There's really nothing going on.

It's the one month where it's pretty much a big nothing burger. Maybe you end up with some spring break action down here in the week of the 30th. If you do take it when we go into April, though Easter, almost everybody takes some time off about Easter.

But this is the classic holiday where if you are not proactive, spring break could just go by. You could work all around Easter when your clients aren't and you didn't take advantage of an opportunity to take a break. Easter Sunday is the fifth. Even if you're not going to Daytona or wherever you go on spring break.

Uh, take Friday the third off. Why? Because you can take Monday the sixth off. Why? Because you can.

Go into Google, make an appointment with yourself and it's just, you know, go away. That's the name of the count. That's it. And it's a busy all day appointment. And when you do that, you'll see on the calendar when it's time to book that you're busy that day and your clients will not be able to book on that day with, through all of the automated calendars that we'll we're using.

It'll just look like you're not available. No big whoop. Take the third off. Yes, we're discarding changes. Take some time off around that.

Alright. For Barbara and the bookkeepers that are in the house, yes. Tax day. Get some time off around there into May. There's one thing about this that I kind of touched on that I want to really expand on.

Not only can you take time off when you want, not only will no one care that you do, just like I was told when we had little babies rest when they rest. If your clients are not paying attention around Memorial Day, they're not looking for a website pitch the week of Memorial Day, 'cause they're already checked out.

You should be checked out. Nothing is more tone deaf than trying to get people's attention around Christmas and make a big deal, bro. I'm, I've got my peppermint mocha in hand. I don't wanna hear about your Facebook marketing pitch or whatever. Just go away, ho ho. Go away because it's Christmas. Memorial Day weekend is the first opportunity for that.

The entire planet is going to take Monday, the 27th or 25th off you need to take Monday the 25th off. And I would encourage you to take time off around either side. This is also a great week to take the full week off because we will really start businessing again on June 1st. So June 1st is really where things heat up.

So I would take that week as well, cruising through the rest of the year. Uh, Juneteenth has been more popular to take that day off 'cause it is a national holiday and many of our contacts and colleagues won't be working on the 19th, so might as well take it off for sure. Father's Day, the most important day of the year, absolutely take a week off to honor your father's because it is the only day on the calendar that matters.

Way more important than Mother's Day, he says, with Rich Sarcasm, 4th of July weekend. Okay, fourth of July's on a Saturday. Friday's also a holiday. Block out your time around there into August. So this is a big dead period after 4th of July into August. We don't have holidays to leverage. But remember, you don't need holidays to leverage.

You have unlimited PTO. Pat says so. PTO, I'm giving you permission to take time off. Take a week in the summer. Why?

Because it's the freaking summer. That's why. Throw your crap in the car and drive someplace. Go look at water. Go hit a golf ball.

Go to the mountains. Go to Dairy Queen. I don't care where you go.

Take a week in the summer right now. Block it off. Block it off. If you're not blocking off, you better be blocking off. Block it off September, back into Labor Day again.

No one's working this week. No one's working there. Block some time off around September the 15th through the night. 17th. That's the SBOC conference.

So you gotta get that blocked off for sure into October. Again, kind of slow in October. Bank holiday on the 12th for Columbus Day Halloween. Me, you could take some time around, off around there if you wish, but into November now, this is where it gets serious. All of this buildup has been to have a for real conversation with you about November and December.

In November and December. There are a few things that have to be true. Thanksgiving day and the day after are non-negotiable, provided you're not a retailer or an online uh, seller. If you are, obviously that's a huge weekend to sell stuff. You're an exception. But if you're working B2B stuff, if you're a B2B business, yeah, I always take the 25th off all the way until Monday.

It's a five day weekend. Why? 'cause it can be block it off right now and then into December. What do you want at the end of the year? It lines up really nice this year. Work till the 18th and take these two weeks off work till the 18th and then you come back. Because what you'll do, and this is so great.

You'll come back on naturally Monday, January 4th. So this is the perfect year to take all of these two weeks off.

Why did we go through all this stuff? I, we went through all this stuff because it's really important. Why else did we go through all this stuff? Because people don't do it. People don't do it. They don't block out their calendar in advance, and then they might have two meetings or one thing that you gotta go to that ruins an entire week of vacation.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Take your time off and block it because nobody cares that you go. And if you're proactive about it, you have a chance to really improve your quality of life. And that's what I want. Why are we doing all of this to live the most amazing life possible? We didn't start a small business just because we wanted to be extremely stressed, constantly overwhelmed, feeling like we're not good enough every day we get outta bed.

No, we wanted to take on this challenge so we could have a dream outcome, make more money than we've ever made. Take off time anytime we want, and travel more. Block your calendar. Make it possible if you sat there and didn't have your calendar out, okay, maybe you've already got the time blocked off high five to you.

You're, you're ahead of the class, you get an a plus. Uh, but I hope that this opened your eyes and it actually got some dates on the calendar. It's really important that you block this stuff off before someone comes in and takes all of those dates from you. Steve is with us this morning. Steve, good morning.

Good to see you, my friend. Uh, a couple other people checked in as well. Let's see who else is here. Well, if you're here, drop in the chat and tell me that you're here. 'cause I would love to say good morning to you as well. AI story of the day. Ooh, buddy.

It's a game changing release from Anthropic that happened yesterday and I'm really excited about it. So excited about it. I'm gonna try and do a demo on today's show. And when you do a live demo, it either works or it doesn't. So get your popcorn out and we'll see if it works or not. But before I tell you what, anthropic released and we do the live demo, I wanna share that I think.

We have entered a warning zone when it comes to AI and software, and I think we need to start changing our behavior immediately. The reason why is that Anthropics release yesterday of computer use, it's called computer use for Claude Cowork has changed everything. Pat, what does that mean in Cookie Monster language Computer use it means almost exactly what it sounds like.

Claude Cowork on my desktop right now can use my browser and my keyboard and my mouse. Just like a part-time employee can. It is no longer needing to have its computer. Talk to the. API or MCP of a website and have them talk in computer beeps and boops. It can now look at the Chrome browser, move the mouse, click on what it needs to do, fill in the boxes and do stuff, which, as you've heard me say forever, it's the last mile of ai.

We've had AI for a long time that would tell you what to do. Oh, you need to do this, you need to do this, and put this here and paste this here, and really helpful. But yesterday, Claude released the tool that does it. It just, it just, it does it,

and it's wild. It's absolutely wild. So we're gonna do a demo. We're gonna do a demo, and I'm gonna show you just a tiny little thing of what it can do. And before you get all freaked out, what do you mean it can control my screen? Oh my god, it can control my mouse. It asks for permission like every two feet.

So if you don't want it to send an email to your client, it won't. If you don't want it to browse your thing, it won't. It asks for permission the entire time and it feels a lot more like I'm talking with a part-time employee than it does with ai. And this is the moment that I've been waiting for. 'cause now it's just helpful software.

It's actually a doer of things. And I'll tell you the story of how I used it this morning while we have the demo working. Is that fair? Okay. So I've got the demo up here.

Okay, here we go. So, um. I am gonna talk with Claude now, so I'm streaming to Claude my voice using Whisper Flow. Fantastic piece of technology.

Claude, we're live on the air. I want you to research Rhonda nor Dyke's Company. Nordyke is spelled N-O-O-R-D-Y-K, and I would've typed that in if I was typing. I want you to research the Women's Financial Wellness Center. I want you to write a dossier on what she does. Then I want you to draft an outreach email to Rhonda to invite her to be a sponsor of the Small Business Owners community conference.

Then I want you to put it into my drafts in Gmail so I can make a few edits and send it right off to her. Pull her website up in Google Chrome so we can see what you're doing and describe what you're doing along the way. Okay, so that's what I asked it to do. And using whisper flow, it actually took in all that stuff.

And Rhonda, I had to spell your name. It's a beautiful name. I just had to spell it because it's, you know, maybe would've been misspelled. So let's see what Claude can do. Now while Claude is doing the thing, I will tell you what, uh, or should we narrate what Claude is doing? Let's narrate, let's do the Claude Play-by-play.

Is this the first AI play-by-play? Should I do it like a play-by-play guy? All right. Claude is up to bat and it's, no, I'm not gonna do that. Alright, so it's pulling up Rhonda's website in Chrome.

Nice looking website. Rhonda Financial Divorce Advocate. Look at that stuff. Oh, she's got a popup. Uh, the popup gets in the way.

I'm gonna close the popup. There it is. Now she's scanning the website. You can see it says Rhonda Nordic Financial Divorce Advocate. She's based in Brookfield, Wisconsin.

This is gold. It says, I can see her full story right on the screen. Here's the dossier. Rhonda Nordi, her name, her business or title or location, website, Instagram, Facebook, when it was founded, 2014.

What she does by the numbers, credentials, media, and speaking, because she's kind of a big deal signature system. Why She's a fit for the conference. She's a business owner in Brookfield, our Backyard. She built a company from scratch around the mission. She's expanded to multiple locations and her story is going from recovering passive communicator to CEO, running multi-locations.

It's exactly the kind of story SBOC members need to hear. Now, let me draft an email and put it in your Gmail, and that's it. It's done. Here's what just happened in real time. Pulled up her website, built a full research dossier, wrote a personalized outreach email, dropped it into Gmail, drafts, view the Gmail draft.

I don't know if this link is gonna work, if you're gonna be able to see it, so, oh, okay. I think you can. Okay. You can still see it. Great.

And there it is. Rhonda, pat Miller here. I run the small business owners community, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've been looking at what you're doing. Here's why I'm reaching out, not as a vendor behind the table.

As someone whose story and expertise belongs on stage. I'd love 15 minutes to walk you through a war building. Talk to you soon. Now, could this be better? Yeah, it could be better.

But what happened? I think Rhonda might be a lead. Hey, Claude, get me 95% of the way there. There's one other thing that I did in Claude where I taught it how I speak.

I took the transcript of the show, every show I've done, and loaded it into Claude and I asked it to, um, learn how I speak. How I write and it has the greatest ability. So let's, should we do this? Is this okay? Do you mind, is this okay? Or is this incredibly boring? If this is incredibly boring, then throw a tomato at me.

But if this is like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it's doing this, which is the way that I look at it, uh, let's do this again. So now I'm gonna tell Claude that draft is okay, but you clearly didn't use my ghost writer skill load my ghost writer skill and rewrite the outreach to Rhonda in my voice. Okay? So let's see if it's smart enough to do this.

So I had it create this ghost writer skill because it's kind of scary how good it can get at sounding like me. It's really helped a lot. You are right. Let me load your voice engine. Thank you, Claude.

I appreciate it. So let's see what's gonna do here. So it's gonna update the Gmail draft. And it's beeping and it's booping.

Now, I'm only using this example because it's just the one that I thought of would be a cool live demo. Who's in the show today? And how can we do something with it? So here's what changed. No M dashes.

You're damn right. Never use an M dash contractions everywhere. Gotta I'm don't. 'cause that's how I speak.

Short paragraphs that build and land. Here's the new draft. Okay, open the new draft. Cool. Now let's see how much better it sounds like that, um, I gotta be honest with you, I was looking at what you've built in the Women's Financial Wellness Center, and I just kept nodding 17,000 hours, 565 clients, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I get that. That's exactly how the SBOC started. So here's why I'm reaching out. I'm putting together a sponsor lineup for the SBOC conference. It's a room full of small business owners, a lot of them women who built something from nothing and da, da, da.

Sounds a lot more like me. Well done, Claude. Thank you.

I wanna show you one thing it did for me, and I, I, this is like way under the hood, but I just want to give you one more example of what this thing did for me. So, if I go to my channel and we're live on the channel, groovy, inside the channel, oh, I wanna go to the studio, excuse me. And I hope this isn't boring.

Please just yell at me if this is boring. But it's, I'm so infatuated. I'm a c cla aholic. I called myself that yesterday. Claw aholic.

Uh, okay, there's all the stuff. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's go to the videos. Cool. Okay.

Inside here. If you've ever done anything in YouTube, you know there are a hundred thousand settings to upload a YouTube video.

You can put a video up there, but if you don't, do it the right way and unlock all the settings. It's going no place. It's like dead immediately. The challenge is I don't have the free time to know what the hell they're talking about. I don't know what all of the best practices are. So this morning I woke up at three 30 in the morning.

Now this is how I know and poor Abby Miller. This is how I know I'm obsessed with something. When I'm working on something, I can't sleep. I woke up this morning at three 30. I came in here and started playing with Claude. So I'm playing with Claude and I'm thinking, what can Claude do to help me grow the show?

And I landed on this. Hey, Claude, go into my YouTube videos and use every available toggle, switch, tag everything to help the show be more discoverable. It killed it. It came in and it rewrote my title. It rewrote the description, it added tags, it put it on a playlist. It, it did so many other things. I can't even describe what it did.

It maximized everything that it can do. And then I ask you to do the same thing for the podcast because the thing about the podcast, same thing when you have the podcast settings and you go in here, look at all these different settings. It's, this is just to get one freaking podcast on the air. I don't know how to do all that stuff.

But it did. And it did and, and this is the type of thing that I never would've known. It said, oh, guess what? Apple Podcasts really needs your transcript. Or it can't promote you correctly. How would I have ever known that? I like to think I know a thing or two about podcasting, but how in the hell would I know that?

So it helped me get the transcript on there. It said, oh, apple also likes it when you number your episodes and you have seasons. So we better do that. So it did that. And when I say it did that, I mean it did that. I watched on a screen as it went, boop, boop, boop, boop boop boop boop boop boop boop boop, boop boop.

I watched it do it.

So what does this mean, pat? This means couple things. It means we now have a digital employee quite literally, and until today I had a digital employee for about. 36 hours when I had open claw up and running. And those of you that know open claw or NEMO claw that now that NVIDIA's working on it, it was cool.

Little buggy had some security concerns. This not so much, this actually works. I was talking with this at the gym today as I was, you know, becoming even more buff, trying not to be fat actually. Uh, but I was at the gym on my phone, talking with the coworker on my desktop doing things, optimizing my LinkedIn profile, if you'd like to know.

And it was driving my computer while I was at the gym

to start this segment. I talked about the warning that we're in. The warning is every piece of AI software. Is trying to get to this point where their software will literally do the thing for you. And many of the AI services are sticking their toe into it saying, Hey, we can get MCP access, or, Hey, we can, we can now do these four or five features.

I don't know why you'd use it. I don't if Claude can see and use my screen and click the buttons and enter the forms and fields the way that I would if I was sitting here. I'm not sure why I would use it and I asked it. This is the other thing, the other thing I have scheduled tasks, like getting ready for the show every morning.

It helps me prepare by finding out what's in the news and, you know, writing the trans or the, the ticker that goes across the bottom and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, okay, you're really good at doing all these different scheduled tasks. I, I have a bunch that are running, and I said, now that you have computer use, and you can literally do them, once I approve the work, how much time will this save me?

And it computed all of the stuff that it could do that it's not yet doing. And it said yesterday, a conservative estimate, it's going to save me six hours a week of copying, pasting, bagging, tagging, putting things in all the places. I don't need to do it anymore. It can do it. Talmar is on the show today, and Talmar is screaming at the screen for good reason.

When you have a new team member, you cannot just let them run free. You cannot let them run with no guardrails. A hundred percent agree. Everything that Claude is doing for me right now, I'm signing off on, but there's a big difference between, here are the four LinkedIn posts about today's show. Would you like me to post them?

Then here are the four LinkedIn posts. You go make the posts. Big difference. Big difference. Thank you Telmar.

I, I, I, I was chan channeling my inner telmar. 'cause she helps people, uh, use and have team members that move companies forward. So you can't just let this thing run cold. You gotta make sure that the quality of work goes out.

Because even if Claude does it for you, people will still judge you based on the quality of the work. Where we stand today, I wouldn't sign an annual deal for any software anywhere ever, including Claude and Claude right now. I mean, Claude is my boy. Is it a guy? Claude's a guy, right? Yeah. Okay, sure.

Claude's, my boy. I, I still wouldn't sign an annual with Claude because this is a straight up arms race to have software get stuff done for you. And all of these other literally billion dollar companies are fighting for the same result, doing stuff for you on your machine. So do not sign an annual for any of them.

The other thing I would be very wary of additional software as a service tools. The example of YouTube is a perfect one. So I showed you, here's my YouTube page and here are all the buckets that need to be filled in. There's a service out there that I've used called Tube Buddy, fantastic piece of software searches, the SEO on, uh, YouTube and it helps you optimize your video.

So the algorithm likes it really valuable. Big thanks to the tube buddy. However, I said to Claude, Hey, I'm thinking about getting Tube buddy. How much of Tube, buddy, can you do it? Researched Tube buddy. And it said, I can do almost all of it. There's some things I can't do, but I can do almost all of it.

Probably 80% of the benefit. Well, there's another $30 a month I don't have to spend. I

was gonna play you the Claude video where Claude is, it's like the demo video, but I, I think you got it. If you're using chat GPT right now, I would consider switching. If you're using Gemini right now, I'd consider switching and maybe I'll switch out of Claude back to chat GPT when it went upset. But right now, boy, I'm telling you, it is melting my face.

And yes, Telmar, you are a voice in my head. It's a goal in life. And yes, Nikki, who runs Gen Head. AI baked right into gen head. This is still scratching the surface of what's coming and you are exactly right.

The phrase, and this is another T-shirt that I need, damnit. We need a T-shirt company. This is the worst it'll ever be.

I need a T-shirt that says that because Claude just melted my face. And in six months this will look like the Atari 2,600 video gamers. Shout out. Unbelievable. Is there anything else that we wanna share? I love all of the conversation here inside the chat. Thank you for weighing in and letting me know you're here.

Doris is sold. Okay. Awesome to hear. And let's see. Oh, Rebecca's here.

Styled with a twist. This is what I need. My YouTube videos often fall flat and I have no idea why. Why c Claude does. Claude onto your videos and let's see what happens.

Awesome. Thank you all for weighing in this morning in the chat and thanks for being here.

Uh, we're gonna get onto the idea slam in just a second idea Slam today. Two questions to let you know if your clients are jerks. What are the questions? How do I get more clients without being the person who constantly sells? And how do I say no to a client without torching the relationship? Hmm. We will talk about both of those after we talk about Nikki and our friends at Gen Head.

So this AI stuff sounds interesting, right? Wouldn't you like to have AI baked into your CRM? Hello Gen head Scale systems, not Chaos. Gen Head is built for early stage businesses, and Gen Head systems are perfect for solopreneurs and lean teams who need real momentum, not complex tools that require a full-time operator.

Everything is streamlined, practical. You can act on this stuff right out of the box. The cool thing about Gen Head is that it replaces 10 different systems. It'll take your CRM and your sales funnel, and your website and your social media scheduling, and it puts it all in one place. It's perfect for teams that want to grow and scale with less chaos, clearer data, and better execution.

That's what Nikki and her team at Gen Head do. Check them out@genhead.com. That's gen head.com. Thank you Nikki, for being a part of what we're doing here. I really, really appreciate you Time to move on to the Idea Slam and the Idea Slam. Today is all about our clients and before we get into the idea Slam questions, it's just a reminder that using the Idea Slam QR code gives me your challenge or opportunity.

I can weigh into it on the air right now. If you have a question, put it in the chat. I'll field it cold. Come on, give it to me. You, you wanna have some fun just while we're doing demos and stuff, you wanna have some fun? Give me your website. Give me your website, and I'll give you feedback about your website Live on air.

That could be fun, could be terrifying. Could be fun. So if you have a question or there's something you want me to review, put it into the chat and we can talk about it. Or if you wanna be more thoughtful about it, you can scan one of the QR codes and you can give me your toughest challenge or opportunity and we will talk about it on the air.

Okay, here are questions today. First one is, how do I get more clients without being the person who constantly sells? I think it's time that you sit down here next to Uncle Pat. Uncle Pat. We're gonna have a talk.

We're gonna talk, okay, you seated? Okay. Uncle Pat Graham talk in the big picture. You're constantly selling.

If you want a business that works, you're never not selling. Sorry to break it to you. If you wanna make the mortgage, you wake up asking for money. You go to bed asking for money, it's like a dog. If a dog makes noise, it barks. If a small business owner says words, it's Pay me. If we don't do that, we don't make the mortgage because as a reminder, and those of you that have been it for a minute, you know, we eat what we kill, and if we're not out there hunting, we're not gonna be eating for long, but it's not as bad as it sounds.

You always have to be asking for money, but you don't always have to be selling people. You need to remember sales is service. So to make more money, you are in the growing your network business. And when you're networking with people, or maybe you've got a prospective client, all you're trying to do is to get as many conversations going as you can with people that have a problem you can solve.

That's it. Hey Steve, what's going on in the business? Oh, you know, I got all these things going on and I got this one problem that you can solve. Oh, really? Tell me about it.

And continue to define what that problem is and continue to share with them what you do to make that problem go away. That's it. And if you can do that consistently, you can illustrate how you can help people.

You're in a sales discussion, but you're not in a selling discussion. You're in a service discussion. That's what networking is about, knowing who you're meeting, knowing what they can do for you, and then when it's appropriate, show them how you can solve their problem. That's it. All you've gotta do is stay in the game of meeting people and turn your sales conversations into service conversations.

But if you got into this small business life thinking, I love doing everything but selling, start looking for a job. You might as well get out the want ads. Want ads? Holy cow. Am I a thousand years old?

Wow.

I must be a thousand years old because I can't even use a, it's been so long since I'd looked for Indeed. I, I can't even think of the appropriate, oh God, I'm sorry. I'm so old. Get out whatever it is you do to go get a job because I'm unemployable so I don't even know anymore. But start looking for a job if you're not gonna go sell because that's it.

Alright. Michael is here giving us some feedback. What do we have here Michael? I just joined. You just joined?

Ah, Michael just joined the community. Attaboy, not necessarily in my we budget right now, but I learned a lot here and honestly feel guilty lurking and not being a part of the SBOC. Now I've known Michael for a long time, uh, and we've been talking back and forth for a long time, and that is.

Incredible. Michael, welcome to the group. Everybody say, Michael, welcome. He's now a member of the SBOC. Way to go.

Question number two, how do you say no to a client without torching the relationship? And this is the tell on your clients. If telling your client no would torch the relationship, they're not a relationship you want to have in the first place.

'cause I don't know about you, I don't like to work with people I don't like. Is that wrong? Is that close-minded to not wanna work with people you don't like? We do get to choose our clients. And if that kind of sets the relationship off, then you're probably not in a good place to begin with. Now, if they're asking you to do something that you're not an expert at, here's what I do.

So let's say Michael hired me to do something and let's say he said, I want you to host my podcast. Cool, I think I can do a podcast. I've done those before and I want you to. Write my book.

No, no, no. My strategy for that, for the relationship. And everyone has a different strategy. So if you have a different strategy, weigh in. But my strategy for that is to immediately get on their side of the table and become their biggest champion. Michael, thank you for the invitation to host your podcast.

You know, I love working with you and I'm excited that you're gonna have a book written, but there's a problem. That ain't me. I care too much about you and your success too. Mangle your book. It's not my wheelhouse. The good news is I'm a member of the small business owner's community and I can refer you to someone.

Ha ha. I just said that 'cause it would be fun, but I could have a referral. I can go find someone for you if you would like. And when you do that, they go, oh, hey, he didn't just take my money and not care about the work that was done. That was very thoughtful. So you've shifted it from, I don't do that work, or I don't wanna do that work for you to, you know, you deserve better and you're now your customer's advocate.

So that's one way you can go about it. If for some reason people keeps on, they keep on taking from you, like they're asking for more work than they've paid for. Hey, pat, you, you host a weekly podcast, would it be great if you hosted two a week? And that's above and beyond what they've paid for. The way that I answer that is, you know what, Michael?

That sounds great. Yeah, I could absolutely go to two podcasts a week. Uh, we'd have to reserve some more time in the production calendar. And if you'd like, I could send you a quote. Aha.

It's a stop sign. Whoop stop sign. Put right up. You are great. I love doing this, but it's gonna cost more.

And now it's their choice.

And you've been very clear from the jump that that's outta bounds. That's not a part of what we've agreed to. And they've gotta add some more, um, coins to the meter, to to, to make this thing go forward. And if they are any sort of an empathetic or aware person, they'll know, oh yeah, I probably should have offered them more money to do that.

The thing about both of those answers, I'm not the right person. I can find someone or, Hey bro, that's gonna cost more money. This is how you'll know if your client is an adult. 'cause both of these are like adult conversations. If your client is even remotely an adult and someone that you wanna be around, they'll totally get it.

If your client is petty, not very experienced or a taker, it doesn't really matter what you say other than yes. And you'll know right away. They're not a client that you want to, uh, work with. Look at you. Come on Steve.

I know. Want ads and then coins in the meter. As soon as I said coins in the meter, I thought, dammit, I sound like a grandfather.

Now what am I doing? Touche. You're exactly right. Okay. And now Michael can make fun of me as well.

Yeah. Okay. I hear it. Alright, we're gonna get to our kicker story of the day and it's, we really a good one because today is an important anniversary. 40 years ago today, something magical happened and we will celebrate it appropriately in just a moment.

And before I tell you about the AI installation group. We have another person that deserves some shine today. Mr. Lynn Corazzi, who's in the chat big day for Lynn and my friend Andy Wines. Lynn's my friend as well, but Lynn and Andy, they've released their new book today. So Lynn, take over the propaganda, get it into the chat, put the link for the new book into the chat.

We wanna celebrate with you, tell people what the book is, drop the link so we can buy the book, and I'll share it on the screen in just a minute. But we wanna celebrate with you because here's the thing, if you've got the courage and the tenacity to write a book, I'm throwing a party for you because good for you to put all of your thoughts down on paper.

So congratulations, Lynn and Andy on getting your new book released today. Let's talk about the AI installation group. So I've shown you what's going on with Claude, and you may be thinking, okay, I get it now. The problem with the AI installation group and the problem with AI in your business is that the newest, latest studies say that we all understand how important this stuff is, but people don't know where to start.

And if that's what you're thinking, the AI revolution has begun and I don't know where to go. The AI installation group is where you need to go. We have our first meeting set in early May, and our initial group is gonna start rolling up their sleeves and getting down to work and unlocking the productivity and the automations in their business so they don't fall behind.

And that's why I'm hosting these groups. As you saw, I spent 20 minutes this morning demoing Claude for you. 'cause it's that important. You, you independent of this group Here, take the thing off the screen for a second. Listen to me independent of the group. Nothing else matters right now. This is the thing.

Between now and the end of the year that you need to be a part of. This is not optional. I'm telling you, this is the thing you need to be paying attention to. Okay? Back to the thing.

It's part education. It's part action. There's an AI idea slam baked in. I'm doing an AI trends letter that's specifically designed for people to know what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

I sent out the first episode this morning to all of the AI Mastermind members. Here's what you're gonna get with the trends letter, and here's what you can pay attention to, and then you'll get on-demand access to me when you get stuck, and Claude won't do the thing. The program is available to help you move faster, reduce expenses, create more revenue, and stay on top of the biggest thing.

This year, the six month program is set to kick off in early April. Scan the QR code. It's 3 25 a month for six months. I can't tell you how much Claude has already saved me money canceling software left and right. You wanna know a good one that Claude did for me. This is a thing Claude did for me. I uploaded my tax return to Claude and it found like two grand because it said, you know, if you put this much money in your 401k, the taxable income does the thing.

And sure enough, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And then more money came back like, I've paid for Claude. I paid for Claude all the time. It's amazing what it can do. Unbelievable.

Alright, Lynn, did you drop into the chat? Where is it? He didn't. Lynn must be gone. Oh no.

Lynn, we need the chat. We need the link.

Someone go find links. Uh, Lynn's link to the book. We need the link to the book because I wanna promote it here on the show. And now let's get to our celebration. 40 years ago today, 40 years ago, today was a very special day.

Day, 40 years ago, today the Breakfast Club served attention. God dang. Now I sound even older.

I, I wish I was talented enough to make all of these mistakes on purpose. No, I'm just old. I just, I need to,

the movie's 40 years old and I'm exci. Okay. Yeah, fine. I'm just gonna own it. It is the ultimate eighties movie.

Is it not? It captured the style of the teenagers. It was fun. The quintessential eighties director directed it the perfect time capsule 40 years ago today, breakfast Club. God, it's so hard being old man.

I'm telling you. I'm in good company. Thank you, Theresa. I'm glad to know and yes. Okay, Steve throwback.

Thursday or Tuesday? Throwback Tuesday. It is a throwback Tuesday for sure, and she, yes, we are now the generation living out our nostalgia. You're exactly right. For sure.

Okay, well Lynn is here. I know, but where is the link to Lynn's book?

Lynn, you're not understanding the assignment. How can someone buy your book? Drop the link into the chat? Seriously, and you're right, Michael. Rip for sure.

Total rip. Okay. Uh, we've had a lot of fun this morning. Thank you for coming along and playing with me. And as I think about doing the show, having this fun conversation with you, it's, I'm having so much fun and I hope you're enjoying the show.

As much as I'm enjoying doing it and having you in the chat and making this vibrant and just feeling like it's just you and me talking, that is what I want. There isn't a place for people like us to get together in real time every day. And I know you can't make it every day. You don't have to come every day, but I need you to know that this is happening every day.

So good day, bad day, we can share it, right? Lynn is saying it's there, but it's not showing up in the chat. So I'm just gonna trust that it's there, but it's not coming through to me here on the screen. Okay, so we'll just assume that. So if you're watching on YouTube, thank you for pasting it. I really, really appreciate it.

Yes. And Steve says if my QR code for the AI installation group leads to a fax number, we have a problem. Touche. I'm Pat Miller old, but still Devastatingly handsome, founder of the small business owners community and the AI installation group and the Fridays off guy. And I need to go take a nap 'cause now I'm spent Thank you to Gen Head for being our sponsor today.

Congratulations, Lynn and Andy on launching the book. And thank you for being a part of Business Inc. We'll see you right here tomorrow at 11:00 AM Central. Take care.