Originally aired Monday, March 30, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.
Short answer: Write down the one thing that has to go right to keep the lights on. Then list everything else you do and pick one item to de-emphasize. You can quit it, delegate it, automate it or just do it less often. If circling it hurts a little, you probably picked the right one. Start each day by checking on the main thing.
Today I talked about focus, which I'll admit is my Achilles heel. OpenAI had just shut down Sora, its AI video tool, even with a big Disney deal on the table, because it was costing too much and pulling them off their main business. That got me thinking about the shiny objects in our own businesses. I walked through a short pen-and-paper exercise to find your one main thing and pick one thing to do less of. For the AI story, I shared Google's free AI training for small business owners. In the Idea Slam, a question from Reddit: with all this technology change, where does an independent small business even fit? My answer is to get closer to your clients.
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 down the one thing that has to be true in your business to keep the lights on, and make it big.
- List everything else you do, then pick one item to quit, delegate, automate or do less often.
- If circling a task hurts because it's your baby, that's a good sign you picked the right one.
- Start each workday by asking how you're doing on your main thing before you look at anything else.
- If most of your work happens on a screen, find ways to get closer to clients in person and emotionally.
Questions this episode answers
How do I stop chasing shiny objects in my business?
Name the one thing that keeps your lights on, then list everything else you do. Pick one item from that second list and de-emphasize it. Everything on that list is competing with your main thing for time, attention and energy.
How do I cut back on work without quitting it completely?
Do it less often. Move a daily task to weekly, weekly to twice a month, or monthly to quarterly. You can also delegate it or hand it to technology.
Where does a small business fit now that AI is changing everything?
Nobody knows where it lands in five years, and anyone who says they do is guessing or selling something. Right now, a focused owner with a computer, a credit card and a little risk can deliver a huge amount of value. Longer term, the safest place is close to your clients, in person and emotionally.
Will AI replace my small business if I work on a computer all day?
Work done only on a screen is most at risk. Your value lasts when you get close to clients, ask the right questions and hear what they aren't saying. A graphic designer's value was never drawing straight lines. It's turning a client's vision into something real.
Worth quoting
What if it's as simple as just doing fewer things and ignoring the shiny objects that can distract you from the big mission?
Pat Miller on Businessing
You'll know you've picked a good one. If it hurts when you circle it or you start telling yourself stories like, I need to keep doing this thing because someday it'll be really big.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Strategy is important. Positioning is important, but execution and focus will take you from good to great.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Make your bets by getting close to your clients and becoming irreplaceable, emotionally, physically, and understanding who they are as people and what they need.
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Idea Slam question: With the changes in the marketplace and the growth of technology, where does an independent small business even fit?
In this episode
- News: Iran, Tiger Woods, Final Four, Artemis II, a sweetener study
- Why focus is so hard for owners
- What OpenAI shutting down Sora teaches about focus
- Exercise: find your one thing and cut one more
- AI story: Google's free AI training for small businesses
- Idea Slam: where does a small business fit with AI?
- Tweet of the day
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's Monday, March 30th, and we are Businessing. This is the show dedicated to you, the builder. The dreamer, the entrepreneur that's working hard to make the mortgage and build a business that works for you and your family. I'm here every single day, so you know you never walk alone. I'm your host, pat Miller, the Fridays off guy founder of the Small Business Owners community, and I'm really excited that you're here with us today.
I, you know, I mean business today because I have my Caesar's Palace coffee mug fired up and ready. To kick off our work week, sponsored this morning by our friends at Gen Head on today's show. We're gonna check in on the news because the news ising, I've got one idea slam question today, but it's a good one. Has to do with how are we doing right now as a small business owner with all of this technology, uh, disruption and what's life gonna be like in a few months?
We're gonna cover that in the idea Slam. Our story of the day is a straight up conversation about focus and discipline. And I hate focus and discipline. It. To me, it's taking medicine. I hate it. I hate it. I like coming up with stuff and doing things and trying stuff, and I love all that. And I hate effing focus. Focus starts with an F for a reason, by the way, but it's really important and it's really something we need to spend more time talking about it.
So we're gonna do it today. Our AI story of the day is more free eye tra free AI training, and it's a reminder that Google is the sleeping giant. They are the company that is really gonna lean into AI and they may end up winning the race. So we'll talk about what ai, uh, training Google has released for you today when you're with us, just like Nikki.
Good morning, businessing friends. Thank you for tuning in, Nikki and Stephanie, good morning. It's great to see you as well. Make sure you say hello in the chat and we will, uh, chat with you while we do our thing. How about we start the show? We're in the news today, and the news is, well, it's kind of interesting. This Iran thing is getting hairy. We're 30 days into it now, and the US and Israel's military are, they're doing their thing. They're still bombing stuff. The strait of war is still complicated, but President Trump came out yesterday and said Iran has agreed to most of the 15 point demands that he is conveyed through Pakistan.
He is making it sound like we're close to a peace deal. Foreign ministers from four countries are meeting in Islamabad to try and end this thing. Houthis Rebels have fired missiles at Israel for the first time during the war. So it's not really deescalating, it's kind of doing the opposite. It's kind of doing de escalating right now. And the USS Tripoli has arrived in the region with 3,500 Marines that you know, are just pumped
up to go in and. Do what Marines do. Thank goodness for them. The crude oil price, which is what I've been monitoring, is now over a hundred dollars a barrel. Earlier this morning I was checking on it $102 a barrel, which means we're up 50% since January. It depends on who you believe. Do you believe the administration that says, yeah, peace close. Just hang out for a sec. We're gonna have peace. Or do you believe what some of the news media are saying, which is Noah Iran is waiting for the invasion. This is just getting started. I really hope. It's not that I don't, I don't wanna see a big conflict.
I want this to be settled the right way, but I want it to be settled. Really would love to move on with our life. Let's see who's here this morning. Tim, good morning. Great to see you. Michael is in the house. Thanks for joining us friends. Uh, and yes, Stephanie is with us this morning as well. Stephanie, great to see you. Oh, and Leanne's here. Good morning Leanne. Thanks for tuning in. We're supposed to be getting, getting ready for the Master's tournament. Master's tournament is two weeks
from yesterday as Masters Sunday. But instead, golf was in the headlines for a totally not great reason over the weekend because Tiger Woods was arrested Friday after a rollover crash in his home of Jupiter Island, Florida. He flipped his Range Rover after clipping a truck and rolled over. He climbed out the passenger window. Cops show up, give him a breath. Breathalyzer. He blows triple zeros. I've not been drinking oer. The cops were suspicious. So they said, Hey, you probably should take a urine test. And he refused. So he got charged with A DUI.
Anyway, the rumor, which sounds likely is that he was on painkillers or some other type of opioid or something else. And I'm not alleging that that's just what the rumor is. Uh, but for some reason they arrested him. This is his fourth high profile car accident. His second DUI arrest. He was released from jail before midnight and the story had been all spring, that Tiger was on the comeback trail.
Tiger was gonna play in the US senior open. He registered for it. And would he be able to be competitive this summer? Who knows? After all of this, frankly, after all of this, I just hope he's doing okay. 'cause in my generation, tiger was. The man, everybody wanted to cheer for Tiger and and root for him, so hopefully he's doing okay. Morning Lisa. Thanks for tuning in. Appreciate you. Final four is all set after a wild Yukon Duke game. Duke was beating in Yukon up by 19. Yukon comes all the way back, hits a buzzer beater at the end, 73, 72, and now the final four is all set. It's gonna play on Saturday Yukon against Illinois, Arizona against Michigan.
They'll play on Saturday with the final, uh, week from tonight. And if any of the games and the Final Four or the National Championship are as good as that Yukon Duke game, we are definitely in for a treat. I'm excited to talk about a national US story that I think we can all agree with. I, I hope we can all agree with this story 'cause it seems like the type of story that everyone can say That's a good thing.
Are you ready? Can we just kind of lock arm in? Arm? Come on. Lock arms. Come on. Lock arms. Just, just think about America. Okay. Just yay. America. NASA's Artemis two is set to launch on Wednesday. On Wednesday 6:24 PM Eastern. Four astronauts are going around the moon and back. A 10 day trip. This is the first crude mission to be beyond low earth orbit since 1972.
Meaning first time they've like shot out from our orbit to go do space stuff in, what is that? 54 years. Unbelievable and exciting. And they're gonna go see the dark side of the Moon. Pink Floyd Best album ever. This is, uh, gonna be exciting because they're counting down to launch on Wednesday. They've run into no technical issues because it did have to get delayed once already and Wednesday will be the day they will be around the moon and back in, I think it said nine days.
So in early April, we can just cheer on a space mission, which just sounds the kind of like unity that we need right now. Very exciting. Then there's one downer story. If you're like me, you've been watching what you eat, trying to be all spelt for swimsuit season, and I've been eating less sugar and watching what I eat, and that means sometimes I'm using sugar substitutes. Some folks are doing keto diets or low carb diets or diet drinks. Trying to eat less
sugar because sugar's got a bunch of calories in it. There's new research that just dropped and I practice saying this supplement's name or this, this, uh, name and I hope I don't screw it up. Erythritol, I think that's right. Erythritol is a thing that's in some sweeteners that makes the sweetener sweet and new research says it can damage brain, blood vessel cells. That sounds bad. I'm no scientist. However, damaging your brain blood vessel cells sounds, no Gucci. It damages them in a really unique way too.
It abilities it, it reduces their ability to relax and it increases oxidative stress, which again, not a scientist, doesn't sound good. It's been marketed this whole time as safe as like this alternative for sugar for a long time. And we are using it all the time in a lot of foods and supplements that maybe you're not aware of. The big one, like the actual sprinkle into your stuff is truvia. Truvia has the erythritol, but the other one, two of them that have really broken through Halo top ice cream and Celsius energy drinks both have this erythritol in it. I don't know enough from the story and I've not seen the study myself, so I'm not saying don't take it.
I'm just saying that that study came out today. So keep your eyes open if you are, uh, using the erythritol. And I said it right every single time. I'm so proud of myself. I get a cookie. Which are all sugar free. So maybe I shouldn't, okay. Maybe I don't get a cookie. Good morning, Barbara. Great to see you. Lead Story today is all about focus. Strategy is great, but focus is what really matters. And I want to talk today about how hard focus can be for your business. I find that
in my life when I get expert advice, like someone that really knows what they're talking about and they give me truth. Boy, that can be really irritating. And when I was back in broadcasting, one of my longtime managers would make me crazy because his job was to keep me focused. And I'd come up with ideas all the time we've met. You know, I'm the idea guy. Things that sound really great. What if we could do this? And what if we could do this and Artemis would take it to the moon?
And what ha. And his goal was to keep me focused on my core objectives and responsibilities and artfully. He would do it, but he would do it all the time. And it made me crazy. It made me feel not valued, stifled. It crushed me. Now that I'm beyond working for this guy, he was right the whole time, so he was right. I'm not gonna say his name on the air. Love the guy, but I don't wanna give him the set. No, I'm just kidding. Wex, you were right there. I said it. You were wrong about cheering for the Packers, but you were right about trying to keep me focused. Just yesterday, I had a tough conversation with a coach that we all know, and he was challenging me on something that I'm doing, and I find over and over again, both in my previous life and current life that focuses my Achilles heel.
And I can see what I want to have come true so clearly that I sometimes lose sight of what's important to get there. The easy way to pay attention to this is just say shiny objects, something that you're doing, and then you see a shiny object and ooh, that would be fun. Why don't we go this way? No, no, no, no. Come back this way. Come this way. And the reason why I'm bringing this up this morning is that one of the biggest companies in the world. Had to make a very painful, very public focus decision. At the end of last
week, OpenAI, they made the decision, and this is gigantic, they closed down soa, soa. The AI video tool launched six months ago to wide acclaim, huge acclaim, and they killed it on Friday. Why did they kill it? It was burning approximately a million dollars a day in computing costs, and it had fewer than 500,000 users. So they were spending $2 per user per day, not sustainable, but they had a deal in place with Disney. Disney was gonna do a billion dollar partnership with soa. Wow. Sam Altman pulled the plug to refocus OpenAI away from Sora, and the rumor is he's doing it because Claude was eating their lunch on enterprise.
That's just behind the scenes. I dunno if that's true, but that's what was said. Sora comes out, everybody loves it, but it turned out to be too expensive and they had to quit it. They quit it so they could focus on their main business. Why is this instructive? I think it's instructive for us because there are things in our business that we do that get us a claim, get us noticed, things that we like to do, things that people love when we do them, but maybe they don't work for the business.
Maybe they don't drive the core business. They're cool and they're good ideas, but they're not really the business. So initial public acclaim is something they had to fight through. Kasa was a big deal when it launched. It also killed a major partnership with an ideal client if you're gonna launch a video product, Disney has the most intellectual property or the most valuable intellectual property out of almost anybody, and they had a billion dollar deal and they still
killed it. They needed this to happen 'cause they needed to stay competitive, so they killed this thing that had really worked initially for them. And this is a great reminder. On this show because when you look around YouTube, you listen to gurus, you listen to me. Sometimes we can get really excited about strategy coming up with insights that we think you're missing, things that you could be doing.
But what if it's as simple as just doing fewer things and ignoring the shiny objects that can distract you from the big mission? So I thought, 'cause I was thinking about this all morning. I was thinking about where am I distracted? Where could I spend more time? How could I focus myself better? And when I'm getting ready for the show and I'm stuck on thinking about something, that's the type of thing that I like to bring to the show.
'cause I think, well, if I'm thinking about it, maybe you could benefit from thinking about it as well. So grab a notebook, grab a pen. I'm gonna ask you a few questions. Let's walk through the things that were coming to me because there may be shiny objects that you're chasing and it's doing your business a disservice. So this is just gonna be a quick reset and hopefully it'll be helpful for you. You got a nice clean sheet of paper. Boy, it's pretty step one of all the things that you do every day, which. One is mission critical to ask that thing a different way? What's the one thing you have to do to keep the lights on?
What is the one thing that has to be true in order to make the mortgage one thing? Write it down. Big letters, you can draw around it. Hearts, arrows, whatever you want. The one thing that you need to do as a business owner that drives everything else, do you write it down? Okay, step two. Now let's write down everything else that feels really important and we don't need clean my email box and vacuum the office like none of that stuff.
Like what are the big things that you also do? And to give you time to write this down, I'll talk about mine. What's the one thing that has to happen in this business? For me to keep the lights on the conference in September has to be great. Has to be great. It's the biggest bet of the year we bring everybody together. And if the conference doesn't work, not only does that crush me financially, but all 200 people in the room believe that we're slipping. Conference has gotta work. That's my one thing. It's gotta be great. And then step two, what are all the other things that you're doing? Every other responsibility, task, product, everything else.
I think I've probably stalled long enough. And if you're watching this on replay, feel free to hit pause. Look at that list, that second list, that's where the opportunity lies. Find one thing on that second list that you could deemphasize. I'm not going to say quit because I'm literally not in your business. I do think you could de-emphasize at least one thing on that second list. All of those things on the second list are competing for resources, attention, energy, collaboration, attempts, pitches, social media space, email space. All of this stuff is competing with the one thing. So pick one thing on that second list and de-emphasize and how can you de-emphasize what the heck does that mean?
Well, the one thing you can do is quit it all together. I don't need to do this anymore. But again, I'm not gonna recommend you do that 'cause we're not sitting down literally one-on-one. You could delegate it, you could automate it to technology, or most likely do it less frequently. You don't have to stop it all together, but you could do it once a week instead of every day, twice a month instead of every week, once a quarter, instead of every month annually, instead of every quarter.
You see what I mean? Just slow it down a little bit. It's not that it's not important, but it's not as important as the main thing, and you'll know you're getting someplace if the thing that you deemphasized hurts a little bit. Ooh, I don't, I don't wanna deemphasize this. This is my baby. This is my baby. Well, your baby isn't the first thing you listed.
It would be the first thing that you listed. If it was the most important thing. Instead, it's your baby that's giving your time and attention to that isn't paying the bills. You'll know you've picked a good one. If it hurts when you circle it or you start telling yourself stories like, I need to keep doing this thing because someday it'll be really big, or someday it'll make me a lot of money, or people really like it when I do that, who cares?
Those people aren't paying your bills. You are. Circle one thing and agree to de-emphasize it. Now for more clarity, I'm not against research and development. I'm not against long-term projects and some things will pay off in the long run, but sometimes they don't. And we have to remember to keep the main thing, the main thing. Because once you know the main thing, you get to prioritize it every day. You get up, you sit down, you open your ai. For me, it's clawed. You've got your coffee and you take stock of the main freaking thing. How are we doing today on the main thing? Hey Claude, how are we doing on the main thing? That should be the start of your day.
Every day, not, Hmm. Looks like I've got nine things I need to worry about today. Hey Claude. How is our poo poo platter of distraction? It's a big difference, especially when you're a solopreneur. We gotta wear a lot of hats. When you have your main objective of focus, we still have all of this other stuff that we need to worry about to make the main thing happen.
I'm working on the conference, that means I need to worry with sponsors and I do make the agenda and the website's gotta be done. Like there's plenty to do around the main thing. We get distracted. I get distracted and I'm talking to myself out loud and I hope I'm talking to you as well. And I hope, I really hope that you found something and that you played along with this.
And I'll tell you why. I mean, I. This is important, and when I bring up a topic like this and I invite you to play along, I hope you do. And I know that this show's about companionship and making you not feel alone and being here every day. That's mission one. Okay? That's important, but this is also important. And when I ask you to participate, I'm doing it for a reason because I'm trying to help you and maybe it's a lesson that I've learned the hard way that I'm trying to help you with, like it is today.
Or it's something that I'm seeing a lot of people do wrong, and I hope that they can move their business forward. Also, if you worked for a ruthless manager again, and WEX was not ruthless, he was a great dude, but if you were working for Bezos or Elon or one of these crazy tech people, they would only let you worry about the main thing. Everything else would be off your list. Ruthlessly eliminated. And that's why those are trillion dollar companies and I'm not. Strategy is important. Positioning is important, but execution and focus will take you from good to great. Find the one thing and
prioritize it. It's that important. Let's do our AI story of the day, shall we? Our AI story of the day is a really good one. Google, Google. Showing up in the AI game now. We talked last week about how Google is doing some stuff inside Gmail and making it easier and making Gemini more effective. But Google has now just released an entire suite of free AI training, which is surprising to me, but it kind of reminded me of who's in charge here.
This suite of training when you can find it inside your Google Workspace. And I'll look up the link and I'll, I'll share it here on this post at some point. It is a series of videos that are very easy to consume and it walks you through step-by-step how you can use all of these different Google products. And again, I said Google's the sleeping giant. And when they start putting things together like this, I didn't know that Google Vid existed. I didn't know you could use Notebook LM in that way. I didn't know that they had all of these other companies, which they do. And the reason why Google may win in the end, I said that earlier.
Google may win in the end because they've got my email, they've got my calendar, they've got my drive, I'm on the Google Workspace. And at that root level to be the software that holds all the data, if you can figure out the age agentic behavior around it, how could they lose? There is a world where six months from now, Claude and OpenAI are looking in at Google because they're the root provider.
I, I don't know how it's going to go, but what I'm sharing this morning, this Google free training, it's really well done. That's two different pieces of free AI training that have come out in the last week. The first one was texting ready to 2 0 2 0 2. That's the Department of Labor's like introductory AI course. You literally text ready to 2 0 2 0 2, and it is a text-based AI course. It's really well done. It's, it's really well done as an introductory course, and then Google shows up with this detailed training that's free for small business owners. You just have to submit your EIN number to prove that you're actually a business and it will walk you through all of this detailed training on how to use the Google Suite better.
It's exciting to see this AI competency. Coming up very interesting. So if you don't know how to use ai, it's starting to become our own problem. We gotta take this up as a hobby and we gotta start using it. The idea SLAM's coming up. One question today, just one, but it's kind of a deep foer, so I, that's why I only went with one. With the changes in the marketplace and the growth of technology, where does an independent small business
fit? Put another way. What's gonna happen here? What, what the heck is going on? And where is this all going? Have you ever felt that way? I feel that way every single day. We're gonna talk about that in the idea Slam in just a few moments. Now, if you're with us this morning, drop into the chat and tell me good morning and bonus points if you put in your business website. 'cause we'd love to feature you on the air for being a part of the small business Daily Live meaning. Known as Businessing with Pat Miller. Let's talk about our sponsor this morning.
A big thank you to Gen Head. Gen Head is helping businesses like yours and mine scale their systems, not chaos, specifically built for early stage businesses. Gen head systems are for solopreneurs. Hey, that's me and founders. Hey. That's you and lean teams who need real momentum, not super complex tools that need a full-time operator to drive. Everything is streamlined, everything works together, and you're replacing all of
these different tools that you use with one really easy to use CRM with automations, content tools, follow up tools. It makes driving the business a heck of a lot easier. So check out Gen Head. They power my business. They can power your business as well. Gen head.com, that's gen head.com if you wanna run a business that's better connected and easier to use. Good morning, Theresa Wilmont. Great to see you. Thanks for tuning in. Awesome to see you this morning. Okay, let's talk about our idea Slam today. Now the idea Slam is your chance to have a problem solved live on the air.
But to be honest, not a lot of people take me up on it, which is kind of a bummer. I really enjoy doing this and the idea Slam signup is right up here on the air. Now, you could have a challenge or an opportunity and we could talk about it on the air and look at all these awesome people in the chat. They can help you as well. Because the reason why we do an idea slam is that you get the feedback that you need. 'cause we can't see our blind spots.
So when you bring up a challenge or an opportunity on the air, we can all jump in and help you get past what you're stuck on. So. Give us an idea, slam question. Will you click the QR code and let's participate? Good morning, Sean. Great to see you friend. QR or the idea slam question of the day rather, is kind of a deep foer. I think with the changes in the marketplace and the growth of technology, where does an independent small business even fit? This was a post on Reddit is where I got this one. And the Redditor was kind of just thinking existentially with all of this stuff and what's going on, what's gonna happen to us.
You ever thought that way? What's gonna happen to me? Will I have a job in a year, in two years, in five years? Do I have to hurry up and retire? Huh? Retire? What's it gonna look like? I have the answer. I know the answer, and the answer is, I don't know. That's the answer. Here's the other part of the answer. The marketplace doesn't know either technology. Doomers will tell you that all the jobs are gonna be eliminated and AI is gonna do all the meaningful work. Technology optimists will tell you that. Okay? Only the things that we don't wanna do are gonna get eliminated, and that's gonna award us unlimited leverage to do the stuff that we want to do.
We'll get to do the work that makes our dreams come true. I don't know. We don't know the answer, but I think if we rephrase the question, we can get an answer for you, at least a temporary answer. Something that we can control. With the changes in the marketplace and the growth of technology, where does an independent small business fit right now? That's an answer we can tackle. Where's it going to fit in five years? Nobody knows. Bezos doesn't know anyone that tells you they know where this is going, is full of it, or trying to sell you something, period. So where do we fit right now? Where it fits right now is to control what you can control for your family and build a life that sounds almost impossible 10 years ago.
Right? Now you have the ability to get super focused. Haha ding. That's our word of the day, like Peewee Herman. When I say the word focused, everybody scream, focus. Ah. That's today's word of the day Focus. We have the ability right now to focus and deliver this incredible value and transformation for our clients, either B2B or B2C. We get a chance to do things that melt normal people's face. We can deliver so much value right now, and you have the ability to do it as a
solopreneur, maybe a contractor or two. We go back five years, 10 years. You may have needed an office, a physical location, a team of 20 people, a big multimillion dollar budget to do some of the stuff you can do right now with a computer, a credit card, and a focused task list with a sprinkle of risk in there. You gotta be able to take some risk too. That's the launch stack for many small businesses right now, computer credit card, task list that's focused and a little bit of risk. This is going to change, but that's where we are right now. If you're willing to do those things and you're willing to take a little bit of risk, we can create outrageous value at the moment.
Now looking forward. The entire small business marketplace is gonna change in the next 12 months. You've heard me say that a billion times. Well, this is 1,000,000,001, because where we're at right now isn't permanent. Where do we fit right now? Where we fit right now is with unlimited opportunity. Unlimited opportunity. The space from great idea to execution is now 45 minutes. I wanna do an amp. I wanna do a website. I want to do a calculator. I want to come up with a, a client analysis. I wanna come up with a business plan that I can present to an investor. All could be done by five o'clock. When we can move that fast, if we know exactly who we are for and exactly what we do, that's when we're off to the races.
Back to the beginning of the show, why focus is so freaking important. We have the chance to build something amazing and build it really quickly. Right now we can make money, have a great small business lifestyle, and we can see where this is all going. Where's it going? Zooming back out. I can guess. You wanna guess Nikki guessed. Nikki is the president of an AI company. She says, where are we going? It's probably gonna be a bit of both that AI does the stuff we don't wanna do and. Also, they may be doing more than we're comfortable with. Okay, that's fair. Where do I think it's going? I think our refuge as a small business owner or an entrepreneur will come with how close we can get to physical or emotional quadrants with our target audience.
If your business right now is primarily done on a screen, you are in danger. You are in danger if your job is using a screen. Let's take Theresa for example, Wilmot Designs. Brilliant graphic designer. She's done stuff for me. She's done stuff for my wife. She's really good at her job. A lot of her work is done on a screen. How will Theresa pivot? When we say pivot? We need to drink. How will Theresa pivot Theresa's value while being brilliant with colors and shapes and communication? Theresa will continue to be relevant to her clients as she gets closer to them in physical proximity and emotion, meaning I can't get my full
vision and and energy out. To an AI right now, but I can sit down with Theresa and she can ask me questions. She can hear what I'm not saying and she can look at what I'm doing and she can synthesize information and she can capture what I want, even when I can't say it. That's how Theresa's gonna stay relevant. She'll still do great graphic design. She might even be
AI assisted while she does it. Who cares? The value of a graphic designer has never been about drawing straight lines. The value of a graphic designer has been communicating a mission, communicating an idea, communicating what the, the, the visionary has, and making it real as we move forward. Drawing straight lines and making things real. That can happen with a credit card and an AI account, but being able to extract what we're thinking about, what we're not saying. That will be Theresa's job. You get to apply that to everything that you do, especially if you're working on a screen. How do you get to them closer?
How do you understand them emotionally? How do you ask the right questions? How do you inject humanity and proximity and maybe even a physical nature to what you're doing? It's what the SBOC is all about. The SBOC is all about connecting entrepreneurs. When you boil down this show, what is this show about? Connection. Connection. I haven't said anything this morning that you couldn't Google or AI couldn't email you every day at 7:00 AM you could've learned about the war with Iran. You could have learned about the. Supplement story that I shared. You could have maybe had some deep thought from some bloggers, whatever you could have gotten, all that stuff.
That's not what this show is. This show is you, me. Hi, how are you? Say hello in the chat. You are not alone. That's the show. And to earn that opportunity to connect with you, I wanna share information that I think you need to know. That's the show. I'm trying to get closer to you. All of this stuff could have been a LinkedIn post. I could have done all this stuff on LinkedIn, could have put up a post, could have put up a blog, could have written a book,
but I don't wanna do that. I wanna have connection, and I want us to grow together because real conversation, or we're doing this and you're in the chat, people are commenting on what you're commenting on. That's gonna become more and more rare. As we get inundated with communication that's synthetic, that is going like the, the chart, Theresa would draw us a chart and the red line's going, woo red line way up into the right. I want to create the spaces both daily in the email box every week with the Fridays off newsletter inside the online community where we're connecting people who are building their business conference in September.
All of that is about humanity. All of that is about companionship. That's what I think we have to do. It is an uncertain world for small business owners. Many of our colleagues are gonna go outta business. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. That's gonna happen. I, I wish that wasn't the case, and I'm not cheering for it. I'm actually trying to get in front of it by helping you stay open, trying to help myself stay open. To be honest, it's an uncertain time. It's time to make your bets. Make your bets by getting close to your clients and becoming irreplaceable, emotionally, physically, and understanding who they are as people and what they need.
It's really important. Right now. We're gonna get outta here with one tweet of the day. I got a tweet. That's just really good. I just saw it and I, I laughed. So we'll do the tweet of the day and then we'll wrap up today's show because that was kind of heavy. Let's have a laugh, shall we? So don't go outta business. Ha ha. Let's laugh, right? I was supposed to promote the AI installation group there, and I thought that was just a little bit tacky. Well, AI's gonna take all of our businesses join the AI installation group. That's, that's probably a little tacky, probably shouldn't do that. But it is available and we
start on February 9th. But I decided not to do that because I thought that would be tacky. Tweet of the day is a good one. Okay, let me hide myself so you can read it. Come on, hide camera. Thanks for ending the meeting four minutes early and giving me some time back. Now I can finally pursue my passions. If you ever have meetings with people, they always say that.
They always say that. Oh look, I'm gonna give you four minutes back. Uh, thanks, boss. Appreciate it. Oh, now my camera's off. What, uh, hell's bells? What did I do? I don't even know how to turn my camera back on. There it is. Is it Monday? It's Monday. We're all going out of business. Our cameras don't work life, man. There's one more thing I do wanna share. By the way, I'm really excited. I don't know if you've been paying attention to the scroll down below. We had three new members since our show on Thursday. That's really
exciting. So welcome to our new members and if this is resonating with you, that you need to be around other entrepreneurs. Small business community.com is where you join, uh, our online community. What was so cool about the three new members that joined, one was in California, one was in Tennessee, and one was here in Wisconsin. So it's always fun to see our online community, the small business owners, community growing and expanding.
Uh, and it's always fun to have a conversation with you every day. That's our deal. You're building your business. I'm here to walk with you every day. 11:00 AM central. Tune in, and let's Businessing together, sponsored by Gen Head, produced by Gen Head as well. Thanks to them for making all of this possible. I'm Pat Miller, the Fridays off guy founder of the Small Business Owners community. Thanks a lot for tuning in. I really appreciate it. Click like and subscribe that way. I'll pop up in your feed tomorrow at 11:00 AM when we're back on the air. Talk to you
then.