Originally aired Monday, January 26, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.
Short answer: Build a month of marketing around what people do with a refund. Invite past customers back, and offer current customers an annual plan so they can pay off one bill for the year. Pitch your bucket-list product as practically paid for. Keep the same core message and just change the angle.
Today I gave you a February marketing theme. A big wave of tax refunds is coming, so I shared three ways to talk about your business while your customers have extra cash. Then I ran a rapid-fire Idea Slam with four questions from owners. How do I get ready for the next emergency after a big winter storm? I'm behind on AI, so where do I start? How do I get reviews without annoying people? And what do I do when a lead who was ready to book starts ghosting me? I closed with why I want rooms where owners talk to other owners. At a recent chamber event, most people in the room didn't own a business.
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
- Pick one monthly theme for your social posts so you have a fresh angle on the same core message.
- Send past customers a come-back offer while they have refund money, and offer current customers a prepaid annual plan.
- Build a cash reserve and create a digital version of what you sell so an emergency doesn't shut you down.
- Start with AI today by picking one tool, talking to it daily, and narrating your workflows into step-by-step SOPs.
- When a ready lead goes quiet, switch to a text, a short video or a short audio message, and keep following up.
Questions this episode answers
How can my small business get customers to spend their tax refund?
Match your offer to what people do with a refund. Invite past customers back, and offer current customers an annual plan so they can pay off one bill for the year. Pitch your splurge-worthy product as a bucket-list item that's practically free. Run it as one theme for the month.
How do I prepare my small business for an emergency?
Get ready for whatever comes next, not just the current storm. Keep cash set aside for operating costs, and create a digital product you can sell if you can't open. Book work out ahead so you have a runway, and make sure you're properly insured.
What should a small business owner do when a client stops responding?
Don't take it personally, because people have things going on. Check whether they're quiet with everyone, then change how you reach out with a text, a short video or a short audio message. Most of all, don't stop following up. Put it on your to-do list and keep checking back.
Where should a small business owner start with AI?
Pick one tool today and talk to it every day so you learn what it can and can't do. At the same time, start writing SOPs by narrating how you do each task out loud. Then have the AI turn it into step-by-step instructions you can hand off later.
Worth quoting
I want you to look for a thousand ways to say the same thing.
Pat Miller on Businessing
So the better question is not how do I get ready for Fern? It's how do I get ready for whatever might be next?
Pat Miller on Businessing
capture the review as close to the Oh wow. Moment of your service as possible.
Pat Miller on Businessing
I can't tell you how many deals I have closed by simply putting it on my to-do list.
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Idea Slam question: Four rapid-fire listener questions: preparing for emergencies, where to start with AI, getting reviews without annoying customers, and what to do when a ready lead ghosts you.
In this episode
- Show open, Super Bowl and winter storm news
- February marketing theme: tax refund season
- How to prepare your business for emergencies
- Behind on AI? Where to start
- How to get reviews without annoying customers
- What to do when a lead ghosts you
- Why owners need rooms with other owners
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: Getting clients answers from the Small Business Owners Community
Full transcript
And good morning Monday, January 26th and we are Businessing. This is Small Businesses weekly show. I'm your host, pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community. So glad that you tuned in this morning. And this show is sponsored by Jen Head and Enji. Of course, now. I had a great weekend.
Do you have a great weekend? Did you do anything? I did very little because it was negative, negative, a zillion here in Wisconsin, so I just played with my computer and played Call of Duty and watched football and did a big fat nothing, and it was fabulous. On today's show, we're gonna talk about February's business theme for your, uh, business.
Like what are you gonna talk about on social media? Because there's a big piece of news that just dropped and it's something you need to pay attention to because a record windfall is coming for your clients. So when you can. You need to get your February social in order. I've got the idea for you. We're also idea slamming.
Today. I've got rapid fire questions. As I started this show, I've had people sharing questions with me. They haven't quite. Must up the courage to come on the show so we can talk about their biggest project or latest innovation in their business. But I do have ideas to slam style questions that we're gonna hit on today, on the show, and I'm gonna knock 'em out one after another.
And of course we can take yours if you wanna drop them in the chat. I also have just, just a, just a little bit. Of a rant that I need to go on. I went to a business networking event last week and it was great, but I, I'll explain it wasn't what I wanted it to be. So we'll get to that before the end of the show and something new.
I was thinking about this. This show is going to be daily and it's for you, someone that owns a small business now think about how you meet new people. You meet new people. The best way when you're referred to someone, oh, this is my friend Pat and he does this. When you give that warm introduction, someone will believe you a lot faster.
So I was sitting here this morning thinking, huh, how can I grow the Businessing podcast? I thought, haha. I know I will ask you to like subscribe and share, but that's kind of a. Big ask, right? Hey, can you share the show with your network? So I thought, okay, share air, they rhyme. If you share the show, I will air mail you a surprise gift.
Now they say do unscalable things until you literally can't do them anymore. So I don't know if you are going to share the show or how many people will share the show, but I do have some fun gifts that I can send out. And if you like, subscribe and share the show with your network, I would be happy to send you an air mail gift.
It's uh, it's a fun little way we can grow the show. So take the time, share it with your network, and that way we can all be businessing together also. When you join the show, drop into the chat and tell us that you're here. Share your business link, because I'll select someone from the business links that are shared to be our small business spotlight sponsor of the show today.
So a little bit of self-promotion could be in it for you. If you drop in, say hello and share your business link. Good morning, Abby and Rebecca. Thank you for joining us. Okay, let's start by checking in on the news. I was really grumpy pants yesterday because I'm a diehard Chicago Bears football fan, and they weren't playing in the NFC Championship yesterday.
So as disappointed as I was, I still paid attention to a pretty good game. The Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots, they're gonna face off in Super Bowl lx. I don't, I don't remember. Is that 60 lx? I think it's 60. February 8th is the game at Levi's Stadium. And if. You don't have a team in the game.
Uh, good morning Barbara. You just have it as a food event. So I am going to eat like crazy for the Super Bowl, so already fire up your best appetizers and let's get ready for a football game that's not bears, but the Super Bowl is coming. Speaking of the Super Bowl, if you watched the game yesterday, either game yesterday.
You did see that commercial where the guy comes on, it's a very somber commercial, and he basically says, you can't judge me because of my weight. You can't judge me because of my body choices. I've been trying to lose weight my whole life, and it's kind of been mysterious because no one really knows what they're promoting.
Like that's one of the conversations going around right now. Like I see the guy and I can empathize with the guy, but why are they running this commercial? I'm convinced that that commercial will end up being a Super Bowl payoff of some kind that we'll see the guy. During the Super Bowl in an after kind of picture, 'cause it's being paid for by Eli Lilly, I think is a drug company, so it's probably going to be something like, here's the guy you saw, and then at the Super Bowl it'll be him on some GLP one and he is lost a bunch of weight.
I, I'm just convinced that's what it's going to be. So if you saw that commercial and you wondered what the heck is going on there, I think that is what is going on there. So keep your eyes open for that. Pass the buffalo dip because seriously, I'm gonna eat like crazy during the Super Bowl. The other thing that happened over the weekend is Winter Storm Fern.
Now hold on a second. Did you know that they named Winter Storms? I didn't know that they name winter storms and the news has been talking about it constantly. 2000 mile winter storm, over a million customers without power. Power. Some people died, 11,000 flights canceled. I heard that it was the worst day of cancellations since C 24 states declared emergencies.
Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas got hit the hardest and. There was snow in Central Park. They got 10 inches of snow in New York City, which is just, I don't know, that just seems so charming that New York City got snow. But while all of that is going on from my little edge of the world, I thought, wait a minute.
If we're gonna name winter storms, they are missing a huge opportunity. I think the National Weather Service could have a contest for every major storm. That major storm can be named by the internet. Can you imagine the names they would come up with? It would be the greatest thing. Okay, internet, this is winter storm.
What? And you know, they would go off on that. And how much more entertaining would it be if it was Winter storm, FAFO or something? Wouldn't that be way more fun? That'd be way more fun. Winter Storm Fern, I don't even know if this is a Fern, but Fern.
No, we can do better than that. So. Come on, let's go. Alright, small business spotlight. Who are we going to select today? How about we showcase? Doris Jones. Doris Jones, thank you for tuning in. It's lovely to see you. Uh, also thanks to Rebecca and Barbara for sharing their links, uh, in the chat this morning.
But there is our good friend Doris, look her up on LinkedIn, look at her link and, uh, know all about what she does. Her link is in the chat. It's a way that we can showcase the people that tune in and they, uh, have fun with us. So, Doris, thanks for tuning in. I really appreciate it. Let's talk about the lead story today.
February is coming. What are we? Next week, not even. And if you do your social media like I do my social media, let me rephrase. I recommend that you do your social media with some themes. That way you have a little bit of a foothold where you know how you're going to talk about your business this month.
So if you're looking for a theme for your February social media, there is a big consumer opportunity for you. So if you're looking for ways to connect with your customers, you wanna say what you do, but you wanna have a fresh coat of paint on what you do. You can't just say the exact same thing over and over and over again.
You gotta try and hold their attention so you can get one step ahead on your planning. If you know what's happening and love it or hate it, you can thank. The big, beautiful bill for what's we're gonna talk about here today, because the tax landscape is going to change big time for a huge number of Americans.
Bank of America shared there's going to be 65 billion. You gotta say it that way, too. Billion. That's a lot of billion. That's a lot of money. $65 billion more. Will be out there in tax returns up 18% more than last year. A total of 135 billion is going to be returned. Okay, so what are you gonna do about it?
Well, this is a critical point. If you know what your audience is doing, you can capitalize on it, especially if you're a B2C business, so you know that your customers are gonna be getting a windfall. The IRS says the average return size is $3,400, and I don't know about you, but if me and Abby got a check for $3,400, that could really help out right now.
So I thought, how could you use the news that $3,400 is coming to every client you could meet? How could you use that in your social media in February? So I thought maybe you could do a return to your service. So this is a promotion that goes out to your past customers. You go into your CRM, you look up all the people that used to be members.
So I go and find all the people that used to be members of the small business owners community, fantastic organization, and I offer them a discount if they sign up by April 15th. And ask them to buy a year subscription because they have a big pile of money and $190 a year for the for the year is not that big of a pile of money.
If you're getting $3,400 back in the bottom line. So then you have an entire promotion that you can run for the month of February. So you are returning. As in tax return. And you're reinviting people that used to be members of your group, of your business, people that used to be at your gym, used to come to your chiropractic, uh, practice, healthy eating, whatever it might be, but return to your business.
Go after the people that have the money. Okay? That's one. The second thing is the number one behavior that people will do with their tax return is that they will pay off their bills. According to the study, that's the thing that people do first, they, they pay the mortgage, they pay down the credit card, whatever.
So the second theme is buy, buy bills. Go after the people that use your service and ask them to buy an annual plan. The thing is tired of getting a bill every month. Make one payment for the year, and that's one less bill you have to pay for the entire year. Get rid of your monthly bills, pay off your bills with that big old tax return you got never pay again until 27.
Things like that because what's the behavior? The customer's just got a big pile of money. They get a bill from you every month. Here's one bill that they can pay off and they're not firing you. They're not, not using you, they're just paying you in advance, which is also delicious. So buy buy bills, that's number two.
Here's the third one, free. If they have any money left over, they're gonna splurge. They're gonna buy a getaway, they're gonna check something off their bucket list, and you could position your product as a free trip or a free ride. You could use language like. Life is too short to keep dreaming of that destination or buying this piece of equipment or wanting to come to our restaurant for this really nice dinner.
You play on their fantasy their, you've been waiting for this, but now it's practically free 'cause you just got a big old tax return. You turn the return into a bucket list experience paid for by the IRS and depending on your political position, if your brand has a political position. Finally, Trump did something good.
He's paying for your thing if you are anti-Trump, uh, political business. Uh, but you could use that or you could just say, paid for by the URS, uh, IRS, or Thank you Uncle Sam, whatever it might be. But you can play on the people that are looking at your service or product and thinking, someday I'm gonna do that.
You could now position it as free. Thanks to the IRS. The way that I think about social media and the way I encourage you to do so, I want you to look for a thousand ways to say the same thing. Jack Butcher taught me that genius. If you can find your transformation, you know who you're talking to, you're always trying to slightly change the camera angle on the same thing.
You don't wanna be way over here one day and way over here the other day. You wanna come back through the same transformation for your clients and just find a fresh coat of paint, a different camera angle to talk about your product or your service. A fresh angle, theme it out by month, can give you something fun to play with something topical and something accurate.
This is gonna happen. You are going to get a tax return. Almost everybody's gonna get a tax return. This is an easy theme for the month of February. I encourage you to use it. The idea slam is coming up. And today we've got rapid fire questions that I've been receiving and I'll ask you to help me because remember, this is a meeting for small business owners and when we do the idea slam, it's not just me coming up with ideas.
I want you to come up with ideas as well in the chat. So here are the questions I'm gonna chew on here in just a minute. What should I do to be prepared for an emergency like the snowstorm that just went down? The second question I'm gonna tackle, I'm falling behind on ai, like I feel like I'm drowning.
Where should I start? And there are a lot of small business owners that know they should be using it more. But they just feel behind. And if that's you, we'll tackle that in a minute. Also, how can I get more reviews without annoying my customers? Key question, knowing how much Google indexes reviews super valuable for the context of your business, so something we will tackle as well.
That's coming up. With the idea, slam Businessing is sponsored today by Gen Head Scale Systems, not Chaos. It's built for early stage businesses. Gen Head systems are designed for founders, solopreneurs, and lean teams who need real momentum, not complex tools that require some full-time nerd. I mean, I'm a nerd, but I don't wanna be a nerd full time.
Everything inside Gen Head is streamlined, practical. It's always easy to act on immediately. This one system will replace 10 different systems that you've kind of connected in an odd way. So don't juggle the CRM and your automations and your content tools and your follow-ups and, and your texting gen head centralizes everything for one clear operating system, less chaos, clearer data, and better execution.
Get it@genhead.com. That is gen head. Com. So let's put up a little Gen Head graphic, which I forgot to do. Gen Head. Fantastic people. Thank you for being a sponsor of the show and thank you for being the producer of the show. Always appreciate my partnership with Gen Head. Let's do the idea Slam, shall we?
So the idea slam is your chance to come on the air. I want you to come on air and talk to me. About what's the biggest project you're working on in the business? Like what's the key thing that absolutely has to make it work for the rest of Q1 or 2026? And while we talk about that, myself and the folks in the chat, we're gonna talk about how can we make it better?
And there may be a problem or a snag that's holding you back. We can brainstorm on that a little bit as well. But one thing I like to do when people get on the idea slam, even if things are going great. I'm gonna push you. I'm gonna push you a little bit so you'll come on and say, yeah, in Q1, I want to do five sales.
Really? Five. Why five? And then we kind of work through it. And you realize you can have five sales done by the end of the month. So if your project is critical, if your business is, can't miss. Get on the schedule for the Idea Slam. We'll bring you on the show for a little bit of promotion and some collaboration in real time.
It's the Idea Slam. It's fun and it's a great way for you to get some exposure here on the show. Okay, here's how it works. When someone comes on, we'll ask them who they are and what they do, and we ask them, you know, what's the project they wanna get built? But for today, I'm just gonna field some of the questions that have been pouring in.
And one that I got over the weekend is how can I be better prepared for emergencies like the winter storm? So we knew that Winter storm Fern was coming for like a week or two weeks, but here's something that we all know. This month it's Fern. Next month it's a Verizon outage. The next month it's a conflict.
The next month, the dollar credit. Who knows? What we know is that there's going to be something almost all the time. So the better question is not how do I get ready for Fern? It's how do I get ready for whatever might be next? Here's a few thoughts. First thing is cash reserve. And, and if you're like me, you wanna have more cash reserve set aside, or maybe you're running a little bit lean right now, but every dollar that you have in cash reserve for your operating expenses is just another little piece of mind stowed away for a rainy day.
So if you take $10 a month to run your business, how comfortable would you feel if there was an emergency and you had $20 in the bank or $30 in the bank? You would feel safe and you would feel secure, and there are folks that are gonna tell you, ah, you should take all that money and deploy it and grow faster.
And that's cool. You can, but there is definitely a little bit of comfort that comes by having enough operating capital in the bank so you don't have to freak out. And when an emergency happens, you don't have to panic. The second thing you can do, and Ford is a good example of this. There were businesses in the middle of the country, eastern part of the country in Texas and Louisiana that couldn't operate.
People couldn't drive to come see them. People had to close, essentially. So another way you can get ready for the next big emergency is create a digital product. What do you offer as a transformation and what could you sell digitally? This is something that we all learned during COVID when they closed our businesses and we couldn't operate.
So think about your transformation and think about how you could productize that transformation, and what do you have for sale right now on your website that you could lean into when your business is closed? It could be a methodology. It could be a framework. It could be an on-demand class. It could be who knows what it is.
But creating a digital product that goes along with your physical product, very, very important. Another thing you could do is start booking out your work. Push deadlines, push agreements, and have a steady schedule of when people begin. So when someone books with you, they start next Monday and the next person that books starts the next Monday and the next person that books starts the next Monday.
Then you've got a runway, a business that's coming on. So if three or four days go by and you can't operate, you've already got agreements in place, in a timeline, in, in a cascading effect. Definitely something you could do. Another thing, insurance. There's some of you walking around right now that don't have business insurance.
I just gotta tell you, that's not, that's not a thing. If you're a consultant, you gotta have errors and omissions. If you bring people into a physical space, you have to be insured for slips and falls. If you take people's emails or data, you gotta have data insurance. Don't mess around with insurance. You gotta have insurance.
And back to the winter storm. Ice falls on your sidewalk. Someone falls, breaks their arm. They're gonna come after you for medical expenses. Get an insurance agent. Have them help you do not be underinsured. And you also have to realize the last thing, which is emergencies happen all the time. It may not be something as drastic as Fern, but there are things that we can't control that are gonna happen today, this week, next month.
You have to be ready for the unexpected, which also draws to attention how amazing it is that we get a chance to do this at all. If you made the month of January, feel good about that. Think of all the things that had to go right for you to make the month of January, all the volatility you had to fight through if you made your money in January.
You gotta feel good about that and you should feel good about that. So congratulations on, on your progress and always be thinking about what might be happening. Those are a few ways that you can be prepared when the next big thing comes your way. Good morning, pita. Great to see you. Thanks for tuning in.
Let's go to Idea Slam Question number two. Everyone says AI is happening and you need to adopt it right now, but I'm not techie and I've played with it, but where should I start? Common question and something you really need to be addressing. If you're not playing with AI yet, you are kind of falling behind.
So the first thing that I'd recommend is you gotta start talking to it today. Today, pick a platform. I don't know. Which one doesn't matter. Pick one. Gemini. If you're on Microsoft, start using theirs. Copilot chat, GBT. Easy to go. Clawed doing great. I don't care what it is, but pick, start talking to them.
You have to talk to chat GPT or your AI on a daily basis. And as you start to talk with them, you start to realize how important it is to have this digital assistant working with you. You kind of learn what it can do and what it can't do, and then when the systems get upgraded, you'll know how to maximize those opportunities.
The second thing is start establishing SOPs, standard operating procedures. This is something we can all do. Whether or not you're using AI on a daily basis, SOPs give you a step-by-step list of how you get something done in the business. So let's say Pita was my, uh, CEO. I could say to Pita, here's how you create the Businessing show.
You log in here, you click this button, you do this, you do this, you do this. It's literally a list of steps. You should start doing that now, and the way that I'm doing it is I am talking to myself all the time. I talk to myself all the time, but you should start narrating your workflow. So what I'll do is I've got a, a tool on my machine called Whisper Flow that is absolutely incredible.
I'm gonna put it in the chat because it's incredible Whisper Flow. It's a narration tool that controls your machine. I, I won't business without it. It's unbelievable. But you start narrating what you're doing. So I would say Open Restream, click the button, add the title, toggle the channels, create the logo.
Open, like you step by step, like you're talking a toddler through it. Then when you're done narrating it all, throw it into the AI tool and have it build a standard operating procedure for how to put the show on the air or how are to do whatever it is. And here's why this is so important, like I can't tell you how important this is.
2026 is the year where AI agents are gonna be a real thing. If you don't know what an AI agent is, just I'll use idiot language. Like me, it's the year of having robots do stuff for you. By March, maybe June, you're gonna have a team of robots working for you, and they're gonna do stuff that you cannot even fathom that they're able to do repetitively without you directing them.
And you will be behind if you don't have your SOPs worked out. You have to have your SOPs worked out. So today, I'm telling you, when you go and do whatever it is, like Barbara is asking, what AI do we use? Let's use Barbara as an example. So Barbara, how do you book a face painting session? Well, I open my email and I click on the last lead and I send them this email.
And then if I don't hear from them by this amount of time, I call them, you narrate all that stuff out. When the AI shows up and they can do it for you, cut, paste, boom. Done. I want a shirt that says that. Cut, paste. Boom. Done. It's that easy. So Barbara's asking me what AI do, do I use and why? It's interesting that you asked that question for two reasons.
I have been a chat GPT truther from when it started in March of 2023. I was doing shows on chat, GBT, like I've been using it forever. I have to say, I think Claude has stolen my heart and I've heard people talking about Claude from Anthropic for a long, long time. I think over the weekend Claude and I had a, had a, a long relationship and Claude kind of kicks some butt.
So Claude is in the lead with me right now, but I use Gemini. I use Chachi BT, and I use Claude. Those are the three that I use. Third question for the idea Slam today. And again, remember, this will be me jamming with you on your business. If you log on and apply to come on the show. I want to help you with your business.
I want the people in the chat to brainstorm for your business. Fill out the link and let's collaborate in real time on the next big project that you're doing for your business. Third idea slam question, how do I get reviews without annoying my customers? Common question. Because if you're just spamming your customers saying, Hey, how you doing?
Can you tell me how great I was? And hey, how you doing? Like it can get kind of old. And if you're doing that. You have to ask at the right time, and you have to ask every time. So how can I ask every time and not be annoying, and what is the right time that I should be asking them? Good question. The right time to ask someone for a review is not at the end of the engagement because if you're like me, you've got.
Engagement. You gotta do this, you gotta do the invoice, you gotta do this. And oh, by the way, can you do a review? Oh, I forgot to ask you for a review. Let's think about it in a steakhouse. When would you ask someone that goes to a steakhouse for a review? You would ask someone for the review right at the end of their steakhouse meal.
How was your rib eye? Oh, best stake I ever had. That's when you want the review. You definitely don't want the review after the bill comes. So if I ran a steakhouse, I would say, um, have the waiter go out and say, how was your stake? It was great. Listen, we, we asked for reviews around here and, and here's what I would do.
Scan this QR code, give us a review. If you do, I'll bring you a free dessert. Now, the free dessert could be like some cookies and a scoop of ice cream. It would cost the restaurant 45 cents, but they would give you a five star review because of course your stake is amazing. You ask for the review right at the, oh wow, transformational moment.
So think about it. Back to Barbara. She runs a face painting company. When would Barbara ask for a review? Mom is standing there while kid is getting a cat drawn on their face. You show the kid the picture, the kid's just jumping around 'cause they're a cat. They're so happy. That's when you ask the mom for a review.
You don't send them an email afterwards. You don't send an email to the organi organizer. At the end of the event, you ask the organizer for a review and there's a line of 10 kids standing there because you are working for them. So capture the review as close to the Oh wow. Moment of your service as possible.
Here's the other part. You need to ask for a review every single time, and I, I had learned a tip and, and, and I wish I could credit the person that taught me this, but it's so good. Ask for a review in two different ways. First of all, always ask for a review. Secondly, ask for a review with specificity. So we would love for you to review our steakhouse.
Was it great? Did you love it? Or are there things we could do better? Have these two words linked. Was it great? Do you love it? Were there things we could do better? And here's the tip. And again, whoever came up with this is a genius. I love you. I wish I could credit you. It was great. I love it. Links to your Google Review page.
There are things you could do better is a hyperlink to your general manager's email. Not both. Going to Google. Now, is that deceptive? I don't care. Does it work? Hell yeah, it does because you don't wanna go to someone's Google page and see a bunch of one and a half star reviews. And if some, if, if something is wrong with your clients, you want your general manager to fix it.
Doesn't that make sense? So link to your Google page, link to your email. Make sure that the happy customers give you a review. And make sure that your dissatisfied customers are telling you why, so you can fix it. So reviews every time, and as close to your transformation as you can get it, you'll end up getting more reviews and they'll be worth reading.
Last rapid fire idea, slam question of the day. And again, this could be your business, this could be you, but you haven't signed up yet. Click the chat. I'd love to have you on the show. Okay, last one. My lead, this, this, this customer that I was for sure was gonna book, got all the way to the end of getting ready to book, and now they're ghosting me.
What should I do? I can't get their attention. They were all in and then they just went away. What should I do? Common question happens to everybody. So here's the first thing you should do. Don't take it personal. Everyone that's working with you, what's the line that they say? Everyone's fighting a silent struggle and you don't know what it is.
Everyone that's doing business with anyone has stuff going on. So just because they haven't bought your service, they haven't booked their headshot. That doesn't mean that they hate you and they're using someone else. It might be their basement flooded. It might be, uh, winter Storm Fern landed on Who knows.
They got stuff going on. So the first thing you should do is look at their activity, stalk them, go onto their Facebook, go onto their LinkedIn, go on to wherever you can find them and see are they ghosting everyone or are they just ghosting you? Because if they're ghosting, everyone, you definitely know it's not you.
Or you go onto their Facebook and you realize, oh, uh, one of their family members is in the hospital. Okay, I'm gonna give them some grace. So they're ghosting. You find out why. That's the first thing. Second thing is I love to change up the contact method. If I've been communicating with them via email, I love to send them a text.
The text response rate is so high. Text response rate, I think I saw it was over 90% or something ridiculous like that, or delivery rate. Everyone sees text marketing if they've opted in, text them. Another thing to do, send them a video. I'll often send videos to people, and when I send a video that says, oh, hey Rebecca, how are you?
Great to see you. And I was thinking about your business, yada, yada, yada. People reply saying, oh, I thought this was gonna be generic, and you really cut me a message. Or I thought this was gonna be ai, and it's clearly not. Video works. There's one that I think works better. Now, this is me being a conspiracy theorist, so just let me go with this.
I, I need my conspiracy theory hat. If you watch this show back in the day, I actually had a hat that I would put on when I would be a conspiracy theorist, but I think an audio message, if you keep it short, is even more powerful than a video message. Now, this might be me being a radio guy and believing in the power of radio, but there is an intimacy.
Of an audio message that you don't get with video. Like if you're listening to the audio podcast of this, which you can get on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon. By the way, shout out to those of you listening to the audio podcast, not watching the video podcast on YouTube. There is an intimacy of an audio podcast.
There's an intimacy to an audio message. 'cause I can say, I can say, Hey Rebecca. I wouldn't say it like this. Hey, Rebecca, but if I say, Rebecca, how are you? What's going on? I, I haven't heard from you. I was so excited to start working on your project and it, it seems like you've got some stuff going on.
I'll be here when you're ready, but I just wanted to reach out and say, I'm excited to work with you. Okay. Take care like that short. When you send something that short in an audio message, you hear every piece of inflection. It sounds really intimate, like it sounds very personal, and nobody does it. So change up the methodology.
Send 'em a text, send 'em a video. Send 'em an audio message. If it's a really big deal, send them snail mail. Snail mail actually works. Write them a letter. You'll be surprised at the engagement rate, but here's the biggest part of if someone is ghosting you, what you need to do to get the deal. Under no circumstances should you stop reaching out.
I can't tell you how many deals I have closed by simply putting it on my to-do list. I, I, I emailed this person. They didn't get back to me, and I put the date, I move it two weeks in advance, emailed the person again. They didn't get back to me. I move it two weeks in advance and I just keep. Going for the 2024 SBOC conference.
I wanna deal with square like square. I got it because I didn't stop emailing him. I emailed the square guy, I swear, for 90 days before he finally got back to me and said, oh, I'm so glad that you didn't stop emailing me. I've had you on my list. I've had other stuff going on. I had COVID, I had a thing, I had a flat tire, whatever.
I'm so glad you kept in touch. Do not stop emailing. Do not. That's the last thing. If someone's ghosting you, and then if they end up ghosting you for real, fine. Build your strong lead list. Have other people that you can go chase, and that way you can win more business. Rebecca's asking a question. Okay.
New business person question. How do you get a Google page? Well, this is the Google by Business, uh, page. So I would log onto Google and I would put into Google, Google My Business, and you can capture your business page right there, get it all set up, and then they will walk you through how to do reviews as well.
But it's a great piece of authority that goes into SEO and Google's results. Plus people actually look at them and they will make judgment calls based on. Your authority score based on the reviews. So go to Google, look for Google My Business and get yourself in there because it's really valuable to do that.
Okay. I found inspiration at a networking event. There's a good bad networking event. I found an inspiration at a networking event. If you gave yourself a title like I'm a Founder, or I'm A CEO, you can do way better. I'm gonna share the greatest title I've ever seen. And I'm gonna kind of rant about the event.
It was good, but we'll talk about it in a minute. Businessing is sponsored by Enji. Marketing is a must for small businesses, and Enji makes it easy, even when things feel uncertain or busy or overwhelming. You gotta tell your story. How do you get it all done? Enji, it's an AI powered marketing engine that learns all about your business and it makes the marketing so simple.
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You got to, because they've offered us a 14 day risk-free trial, and then your first two months at a discount. Now, usually you would say, here's the discount price, but I'm not gonna do that because I wanna share with you the ongoing price. Putting your marketing on autopilot for 29 bucks a month.
Seriously, Eng G is ridiculous. Click the link that's in the chat. ng.co/s boc ng.co/s boc. Try it out because Eng g solves the I do my own marketing problem. Thank you Enji, for being a part of the show. I appreciate it. I found the greatest title in the world over, uh, not over the weekend. It was Thursday night.
And if you're giving yourself a title like I'm the Chief Awesomeness Officer, or I'm the global head of rock and roll, like, okay, we see you giving yourself a title, but I'm sad to say that I've got you beat. So it was the local Chamber of Commerce awards night, and it was at the local zoo. So we went to the zoo and they brought out a zookeeper, and the zookeeper told these charming stories about how she takes care of.
Uh, the cows and how she, uh, brought out a porcupine. We could pet, like we literally pet a porcupine at the event. It was really cool and she was an awesome speaker and she shared her title. So if you think you've got a good title, you can do better. We had the chance to learn from Bridget Carpenter, assistant Curator for Farm and Otters.
Greatest title there is, so if you're giving yourself a make believe title, you can do better. You can do better. You need to be more like Bridget on a serious note at the chamber event, you know, I don't do a lot of in-person networking much anymore because I'm here doing this show and I'm leading a nationwide online community and it's only for small business owners.
And that's what struck me. This show, my events, the conference, the online community, it's where owners connect with other owners. The SBOC is different because this is a place where people understand what you're going through. They know what the last day of the month means when payroll isn't there, they know what it means when you have to make tough choices about putting money over here or putting money over here, or should I raise my rates, or I need to do something I don't know how to do, or I need to fire someone.
I've never done it before. That's where all of these conversations are happening. Because owners are getting together inside the SBOC and on this show, hopefully, and with our in-person events and our conference, and when I went to the networking event in person, it was lovely. I met beautiful, nice smelling, polite people.
It was great, but 90% of them were not business owners, sales managers, business development people. Marketing people, directors of ops, and they were awesome people, and it's good to have that in your network. But what's different about what we're doing here? What's different about the SBOC? It's where owners get a chance to talk to owners.
We curate it. If someone's a salesperson, I don't let them in the group. If you're a salesperson watching the show, I love you. I'm glad that you're here. But this show is for the entrepreneur. It's for the person taking the risk. We are businessing. That's what this is all about. That's why the SBOC is special.
I want to get people together on this show in our 24 7 community at our in-person events. I want owners to be in the room. You gotta be an owner to get in. So I just wanna show a minute of appreciation to everyone that's joined the community already. And if you're out there trying to business all by yourself, uh, why?
Why? Why are you out there trying to conquer the world solo when there's this community collaborating with one another in real time and it's $19 a month? Seriously? You're just putting business on hard mode. And what are we talking about this month? We're talking about how do we make our New Year's resolution stick?
We've got our legal tech and accounting hotlines. We've got our idea slams that are private for members happening all the time. And we've got real conversations where we're solving each other's problems because we understand each other's problems and we don't have salespeople crawling around the whole time.
So if sometimes you show up at networking and wonder, where are my people? They're not gonna be at the local Chamber of Commerce. Sorry, they're not. You can have a network there, and I love those people, but that's not your people. Your people understand what you're doing and your people are also taking the same risk you are.
That's why the SBOC is different. That's why I love leading it. That's why I do this show, and I appreciate you tuning in. Thanks for coming by today, by the way, sponsored by Gen Head and Enji, produced by the Gen Head team. And don't forget. If you like, subscribe and share this episode with someone, I'm going to, uh, start air, air mailing out some gifts.
So if you're enjoying what we're doing, tell somebody about it. 'cause the best way for this show to grow is no different than the best way to grow your network. Get a referral from someone you trust. So if you had fun today, share it with someone. 'cause I would love to have this show. Connect entrepreneurs all around the country and let's be honest.
World domination. That's really what we're going for, right? So share the show, get some air mail. It's a way that I can say thank you for spreading the word. This is the new daily habit for small business owners. Our daily live stream is going to kick in next Monday, so Monday the second. I'm gonna be on every day at 11:00 AM Central, Monday through Thursday.
So starting Monday the second, we'll be able to business together in real time every single day. For now, our next show is going to be Wednesday at 11:00 AM so the next one is Wednesday at 11. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community. I'm so glad that you tuned in today. I will see you right here on Wednesday.
Take care.