Originally aired Wednesday, February 4, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.
Short answer: Before you start a business, know that you're in the sales business no matter what you make. Start as lean as you can and prove people will buy before spending big. Think hard before taking on a partner, because every choice becomes a negotiation. And get your household finances steady first, so a rough week at work doesn't break you at home.
A new survey says one in three Americans plan to start a business or side hustle this year. I love that, and I want them to make it. So I sat you down for a talk with Uncle Pat and shared four things I believe every new owner needs to hear. You're in the asking-for-money business. Start lean, like a farmers market table before a coffee shop. Think twice about a partner. And don't start broke. In the Idea Slam, I took two questions. When does the chaos get easier? And I'm behind on AI and scared of looking stupid, so where do I start? I closed by showing how an AI agent fixed my Google Business Profile.
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
- Decide now whether you're willing to ask people for money, because every business is a sales business first.
- Test your idea in the cheapest version you can, like a market table or food cart, before signing a lease or loan.
- If you lack experience in your field, go work in it for a while rather than bringing in a partner to fill the gap.
- Build an emergency fund and get to positive household cash flow before you quit your job to launch.
- Stop asking when running a business gets easier and ask what you can do today to make it easier.
Questions this episode answers
What should I know before starting a small business?
You're in the sales business no matter what you sell, so get comfortable asking for money. Start as lean as possible, think carefully before taking on a partner, and make sure your home finances are stable before you launch.
Should I start a business with a partner?
Think twice, especially if you're new. A partner can fill gaps, but every decision becomes a negotiation, from hours to hiring to the logo. If you lack experience, work in that industry for a while and try to start solo.
Does running a small business ever get easier?
No, but the hard part changes. Once you fix today's chaos with systems, a new challenge shows up, like leveling up in a video game. The better question is what you can do today to make things easier.
I'm behind on AI and afraid of looking stupid. Where do I start?
Pick one chatbot and start talking to it every day. Ask it what it could help you with right now. Waiting because you don't want to look stupid lets competitors pull further ahead, and you'll feel less lost the more you use it.
Worth quoting
You are in the sales business and your success will be directly proportional to the amount of effort you put into asking other people for money.
Pat Miller on Businessing
If you're not willing to go out and sell, stay employed by someone who is willing to go out and sell.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Don't start it with another person because as soon as you have someone else in the business, here's what happens. Every choice can quickly become a negotiation.
Pat Miller on Businessing
So bad news, it never gets easier. Good news, you keep on leveling up and at every level the challenges get harder, but the rewards get bigger
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Idea Slam question: Two listener questions: I'm making decent money but still drowning in chaos, so when does it get easier; and I'm behind on AI and scared of looking stupid, so where do I start?
In this episode
- Show open and the week's news
- Why your headline matters so much
- One in three Americans want to start a business
- Rule 1: You're in the sales business
- Rule 2: Start as lean as you can
- Rule 3: Think twice about a partner
- Rule 4: Don't start broke
- Idea Slam: when does it get easier, and where to start with AI
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: Keep going answers from the Small Business Owners Community
Full transcript
And good morning. It is Wednesday, February 4th, and we are Businessing. This is small Business's weekly show. I'm your host, pat Miller , founder of the Small Business Owners community. I'm so glad you could make it this morning. You look awesome. Do I look awesome? This is my new small business owner's zip up.
It's all comfy. There's something great about a new sweatshirt. It feels so good. Shout out. Angela Allen, small business owners community member made it for me. We're sponsored today by Gen Head and NG and we've got some great stuff on today's show. One in three Americans wanna start a business. That's fantastic.
According to the SB, a half of them will fail. I have four things that they need to know before they begin and I learned them the hard way. So we will share that during the show. Did you know we were this close to a manned space Moon mission? We were shooting people up into the sky to go to the moon. Did you know that?
Well, they averted tragedy yesterday and we will talk about that on the show today. And two idea slam questions. Yesterday we had Rebecca Bryan on the show who we were idea slamming. So Rebecca, great to see you this morning. Thanks. We're tuning in, but today we don't have a guest, WAMP Wamp, but we do have two questions that make a bunch of sense.
The first one is, I'm making good money. I still feel like I'm drowning in chaos every day. Does this get any easier you ever felt that way? We'll talk about that in the idea slab and you might have some great feedback. So fire up the chat. And the other question is, everyone says AI is essential, but I'm behind.
I don't know where to start, and I'm at this point, scared of looking stupid if I even try. Big question. We will definitely tackle that. So if you're with us, say good morning in the chat. We'd love to feature you on the air. Tell us who you are, what you do, and drop your link. Michael and Barbara and Rebecca.
I'm glad you're here, but you're not promoting yourself as our friend, precious William says, bless the mic. Tell us what you do and I'll include as many of you as we can. How about we start with checking on the news? So someone did unplug and replug in the government 'cause it's back on. Yay. The government shutdown is over.
President Trump signed a trillion with a TR $2 trillion spending package. So most of the government is gonna have money through September, so that's fantastic. But DHS only received a two week extension, so Congress is still arguing over ICE and DHS. So it's not over. It's kind of, it's overish. Is that a statement?
The government's open and it's overish. We'll keep an eye on it. Now, let's talk about this man's space mission to the moon. I like to think that I'm a pretty informed guy every single day I'm doing the show and getting ready to, to share with you what's important, and I completely missed that. We had a rocket and four astronauts in quarantine ready to be shot up into space.
So they could orbit the moon getting ready for another moon landing. So the one that was gonna go up was Artemis two, and the next one was going to be Artemis three. So Artemis two was gonna go up there and do some recon and test a whole bunch of stuff, and then Artemis three was going to land on the moon.
So they had these guys and gals quarantined ready to go up and, oops, hydrogen's leaking. Not a good thing. So they had to delay the launch yesterday. So that's what's pretty amazing. If you think about where we're at right now, we're gonna shoot people to the moon and it doesn't even make casual conversation. Think about that. We're turning sand into thought with AI and we're solving major diseases at a record clip. The whole Western world is thinking about these computer problems. Meanwhile, NASA's just doing NASA things, shooting people to the moon, and nobody even notices. I know that I'm gonna be super dialed in to that mission when it goes back up.
They're gonna try again in March, so that's pretty cool. Disney named a new CEO. Bob Iger is out, and Josh Demaro is in. He comes over from their theme parks division, which makes a whole lot of sense because when I tried to stream Disney this morning, it said that the price is now $163 a month. Makes sense.
There's one more thing I wanna share. The power of headlines. Now, this is something that's going on in the news and it actually makes sense for you. When you're making content on social media or LinkedIn or wherever you're doing it. Headlines are ridiculously powerful. That first thing that you say grabs them and people will interpret it.
Here's the headline. I want you to listen to the headline and tell me what you think. Jill Biden's ex-husband charged with murdering his wife. When I read that headline, did you immediately think, whoa, Joe Bur, Joe Biden murdered? Jill what? Jill Biden's ex-husband charged with murdering wife? No, that's not what happened.
But that headline is definitely a scroll stopper. Is it not? Jill Biden's ex-husband is charged with murdering his new wife after Jill. William Stevenson, he's 77 years old, who Jill Biden divorced before marrying Joe. He's been indicted for first degree murder in the death of his current wife, Linda Current is, I guess, doing a lot of work in that sentence 'cause Okay, that got dark quick, but the point is, headlines are powerful because all I read was the headline and for a good few seconds I thought, wait a minute, Joe.
No. So put a lot of effort into your headlines. 'cause it's oftentimes the only thing that anyone reads. Oh, there's one more thing we gotta share. Winter Olympics, we've been talking about it all week. The opening ceremony is tomorrow. Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli will perform and it will be our first time to get used to the time change.
So the opening ceremonies are gonna happen at 1:30 PM central time, but then it will stream in prime time. So you now have this game that we get to play where if you wanna avoid what happens in the Olympics, you now know how much lead time you have to avoid it. So one 30 is when it happens, it will start at 7:00 PM So get yourself ready for the shift.
Okay, today's lead story is another small business survey, and it comes to us courtesy of QuickBooks, and I'm gonna put it in the chat so you can get your hands on it if you wanna read it. But QuickBooks and Intuit did an entrepreneurship survey, so there's the link, I just dropped it into the chat. And here's the big old headline.
Entrepreneurship energy is at an all time high. One in three Americans plan to start a business or a side hustle in the next 12 months. That's a lot of people. 68% of those feel this real urgency to launch. Like, oh, not only do I have a side hustle, not only do I have a business, I gotta do it right now.
And 57% of those are saying economic conditions. Even if they're not ideal. I'm gonna do this. I'm going to do this. If that is you, someone that wants to start a business, I lead a small business community for a living. I get to talk to brilliant entrepreneurs every day. I know what works and what doesn't work, and I'm building my own small business dream as well.
So let me just have you sit down here with Uncle Pat. Uncle Pat's gonna put his arm around you and we're just gonna have a little talk. Okay? I'm gonna share four things. That I believe in when it comes to starting a business. And maybe this will help you, maybe it won't, but I think it will. Rule number one, no matter what company you start, you are in the sales business.
So the question is, how do you feel about selling? When you open a business, you're not in the product creation business. You're not in the pretty website business, you're not in the social media getting attention business. You are in the asking for money business. You are in the sales business and your success will be directly proportional to the amount of effort you put into asking other people for money.
So an example, I've always wanted to open a dog walking business 'cause I love walking dogs. Cool. Technically, it's not about walking dogs at all. It's about asking people who have dogs, Hey, would you like me to walk your dog? It costs this much. This is a mindset. This is a way you have to think about it if you wanna be successful with the business that you're choosing to open.
If you're not willing to go out and sell, stay employed by someone who is willing to go out and sell. This is the number one sorting factor for everyone that wants to be a business owner. You can do it. Anyone can do it. You just have to get over the idea that you are in the asking for money business, which is cool, but it's definitely a mind shift.
Number two, I suggest you get into the business as lean as you possibly can. Now, the QuickBooks study says that you need $12,000 on average. To start up the business, but the people in the study estimated they needed about $28,000 to do it, right? Like that's what they thought. I, I need about $28,000 to start up after seeing a bunch of businesses launch.
And sadly, too many of them fail. I would tell you try and do it as lean as possible. Imagine you wanna open a coffee shop. I wanna open a coffee shop. I have this vision of the coolest coffee shop in the world. Okay. Cool. Don't start with a coffee shop at all. Start with a farmer's market table. See if it works.
See if people care. See if people like your coffee, and if they do, great. Expand. Maybe do a food cart on a busy corner or a food truck or sublease from another business that has some extra space. And if things are actually cooking and you're making money, hand over fist, awesome. Open a shop. I know that as you sit there right now, you're thinking, but I have this dream for this amazing coffee shop and it won't work if it's not perfect.
And I hate to be a buzzkill, but I'm trying to share you the truth here. I I'm not sharing how you can get to that cute little village coffee shop where people bring their dogs and sip $9 lattes and co-work all day, and you've created this beautiful third space and you have this vision. Everybody needs it.
I get it. I get it. When you are starting money on the whole, really isn't that hard to get, especially if you've got a business credit card like I do, you can get the resources that you need to get starting. It's not the debt that's the problem, it's the fact that you're full of ideas and full of energy without a validated business premise.
Because if you open that beautiful little coffee shop from day one, you get the $28,000, or if you get the $12,000 and you open this coffee shop, it's gonna feel a whole lot different when you swing open the doors and then you start checking your email and your credit card bills are due, or you gotta start paying on that loan, everything will feel a whole lot different if you've gotta sell a thousand lattes this week to make the budget.
So if you want your dream to come true, understand I am cheering for you. I absolutely want you to get there and you gotta put in the work, but I'm begging you if you can do it as lean as possible because it'll lower the stress, it'll lower the drama, and it will help you be successful faster. Rule three, and if you're just joining us, we're talking about the four things I would tell a first time business owner.
If they were just starting out, because there's a new study from QuickBooks that says, one in three Americans, Americans wanna start a business or side hustle this year. So I'm going through the four things that I would tell them. The third thing, and this is just my opinion, other people have different opinions on this, but this is my opinion.
Don't start with a partner. Don't start with a partner. If you're inexperienced in the vertical that you want to go into, you've never owned a co coffee shop before, go work in a coffee shop for a while and learn the ropes. But if you think that opening a business in an area that you don't know what you're doing and you'll bring in a partner to fill in the gap, it technically might work.
But there's a big downside that I don't think everyone talks about. Yes, you have more expertise to start your business, but you've lost all your autonomy. All of your decision making windows, all of your freedoms are out the door because at the beginning it'll be comfortable. Oh, hey, Michael and I are starting a business, which would be crazy fun, by the way, Michael, close caption.
But hey, Michael and I are starting a business. This would be great. And you have someone with you and you have someone to bounce ideas with, and you are not alone. That's cool. Get a dog. Don't start it with another person because as soon as you have someone else in the business, here's what happens. Every choice can quickly become a negotiation. So go back to the coffee shop. You know what, uh, we've got people standing outside at 5:00 AM so why don't we open early on Sundays? Hey, partner, are you okay with that? Gotta get their opinion. Boy, I was reviewing the inventory and no one's buying the beans that we're getting from Guatemala, but they love the Colombian.
Let's order some more Colombian. Is that okay with you? Partner? Hey, we need to hire a better person to be at the register, but we're not paying them enough. I think we should raise how much we're paying. You get the point, updating your logos, what you say and do on social, what your website looks like, what the color of the soap in the men's room is.
All of that can be in negotiation with a partner. You lose all of your decision making autonomy, and what I'm telling you is that as a small business owner, stuff comes up every single day. Something that was a good idea yesterday may be completely invalidated the very next day, and you've gotta move right now.
And if you've got someone in the business now, you've got someone who you need to ask permission from. You may get lucky, you might find the greatest partner in the world, someone that's willing to take on some risk. Maybe they fill in some expertise you don't have, but you could also get very unlucky.
Now you have a complicated working, legal and financial relationship with someone. You are not related to my recommendation, especially if you've never done this before. Try and do it solo. It'll be a lot easier. And the last one, and this one's a little bit personal, so maybe this is the Uncle Pat part of it, all this, this is me talking to you 'cause I want you to be successful if you wanna open a small business this year.
Don't do it broke. You may need startup funds and that's totally fine, but please don't start a small business if your family finances are hurting. Now, I'm not saying you have to be wealthy to open a small business. Actually, quite the contrary. I just want you to be on stable footing. I don't want you to have credit card bills to the moon, and I don't want you to have a big negative cash flow every month.
If you have to take a part-time job to save up some money, drive DoorDash. I don't care what it is, but save up a little bit of an emergency fund slash your family spending a little bit so you have a positive cash flow every month. Do whatever you have to do to be as solid as possible at home so the business doesn't make it worse because it will.
It will. So here's what happens when you have a business. You get little care packages. Do you remember Harry Potter? Like the, the owls would show up and drop things. Remember that? That's kinda like what it is in a business. Like the owls come and they drop things on you every single day, and they're little financial packages and sometimes, oh, they're good ones.
Oh, look what I got. And sometimes they're, oh, they're not good. In an average day, you could get a big client, you could lose a big client, a competitor could open a customer's tastes may change, and the thing that you built your business on is totally out of style. Now your supplier could be hit with a tariff and your supply expense goes up 35%.
A hot new TikTok trend lands, and your customers are saying you need to do everything differently. Your business insurance is due. You have to pay the lawyer for all of that LLC stuff. It's tax time. Your website software renewal is up, the bathroom is leaking, all your supplies are ruined, and your best employee, no calls, no shows, and now you have to work in the coffee shop seven days a week.
And oh, by the way, the owl just delivered that. That damn printer's broken again. That's Tuesday. All of that could be in one day. And if that's your Tuesday and your financial life is on fire in the business and you come home to a pile of bills, and this is the most important part, listen to me clearly if you come home to a pile of bills and a stressed out partner because your FI family finances weren't set before you went off on this new business adventure.
You could really be in a bad place because rightfully, rightfully, your partner would say, Hey, remember that steady paycheck you used to have? That was pretty great, and you won't have much of a defense for that because you know what? The steady paycheck will start to sound pretty darn good. It's reality.
There is nothing better for the country than having a huge wave of entrepreneurialism. I love it and I love small business owners, and man, I want you to win. I would do anything to help you to win. That's what the small business owners community is all about. We are here to help connect you and help you win and grow.
But I'm sharing these four things because. All of these words are true. I've seen people live all of these experiences, and before you sign a big old loan and spend months of fancy website building and fling open your doors and realize your target market does not care, and you and your partner don't agree on anything, and now you're lying at the bottom of the swimming pool with a big old debt loan that you've gotta pay on, you could end up in a bad place.
So if you want help. Join the small business owners community. We're here for you. It's nineteen bucks a month. Everyone that's gonna open a business can afford it. If you need help, that's what the idea Slam is here for. Come on the show and let's riff on your business plan and talk about what's important and the big decisions that you have to make to make your business work.
That's why we're here, and we speak from experience. And just so you know, I'm cheering for you. I definitely want you to win, so hopefully this helps. The idea Slam is coming up in just a little bit and we've got some good questions on the idea Slam today. Uh, we're gonna talk about the AI problem 'cause if you haven't been keeping up with AI and now you feel behind and you might feel kinda stupid about jumping in now, don't be.
And we will talk in on that topic. Also, a question that I got, I'm making decent money, but I still feel like I'm drowning in chaos every day. When does this whole small business thing get easier? Common question. We'll tackle it in just one minute. Businessing is sponsored by our friends at Gen Head Scale Systems, not chaos.
They're built for early stage businesses, gen head systems. They work for founders and solopreneurs and small teams who need real momentum, not another complex tool. It takes forever to run in a full-time operator. Nobody's got that time. We want a streamlined, practical piece of software we can act on the day it's installed.
That replaces like 10 different systems. Instead of logging into the CRM and dragging it over to your funnel machine, and where do you text people and how do you do email workflows and they're disconnected all over the place. Gen Head is gonna centralize all of that. It's one clear operating system, less chaos, clearer data, better execution.
Learn more@genhead.com. That's gen head.com. Idea slam time. This of course, is my favorite time of the show, and this is your opportunity to come on the air and tell us what's working in your business. I wanna hear what your biggest challenge is or what your biggest opportunity is. And then together, myself and the folks in the chat, we will all work together to make it better.
My job is to push you to think just a little bit bigger and to give you that perspective that maybe you don't have when you're building your business all by yourself. Because everybody that's building a business has a big decision they need to make today. And if you're by yourself trying to figure it out, you might not make the right one.
It's free to come on. It's also a little bit of publicity and some fun. So come on the idea Slam just like Rebecca did yesterday, and we will build your business together. First question today, I'm making decent money, but I still feel like drowning in chaos. When does this get easier? I have some good news.
The good news is it doesn't get easier. Surprise. It doesn't get easier, but the good news is. The hard in building a small business will change. So the stuff that feels like overwhelming and impossible right now will change. You will move into new layers of hard. So right now you're drowning in chaos and you're smart, and you've got resources around you.
You're gonna fix the situation, and you'll have a hard couple of months working through that process. That's totally fine. Then you'll find out what's causing that tension, and then you'll put the systems and processes in place and things will calm down, and that's great. But then what happens next?
That's only your current situation. So soon you might be dealing with a new competitor that makes your life hard, or supplier problems that make your life hard or your pipeline's drying up that makes your life hard. Who knows? We know that something hard is gonna happen all the time. And I heard someone say that entrepreneurship is kind of like a video game, and I love that explanation because I love video games, and as you play the video game, we just continue to level up what we do now on level one feels impossible until you figure out how to do the thing and you punch Mike Tyson in the right way, and then you move up to the next level.
That's kind of what it feels like. So if you played video games before, you kind of know how running a business is, it just stays hard. But at every level, you go up the hard changes a little bit. So don't get discouraged by things being difficult, but do think about what do I have to do to make this easier?
Because it really should be rephrased. When does it get easier? Should really be, what must I do today to make it easier? If you can objectively call out what's making things suck right now, you can fix 'em and then move up to a new boss on the new level and take on the next part of your business growth.
So bad news, it never gets easier. Good news, you keep on leveling up and at every level the challenges get harder, but the rewards get bigger and you get closer and closer to your small business dream. So that's how I'd answer that question. Second idea slam question today, everyone says AI is essential for now, but I don't know where to start and at this point I'm scared of looking stupid.
So what should I do? So this is almost part two of the last question that I answered. I'll just be real with you and, and say I have a fatal flaw as an entrepreneur. I can't tell you how much money I've lost. Because I wasn't willing to look stupid and start following best practices, what I stubbornly failed to perceive.
Is that millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of entrepreneurs have figured this out long before I showed up and long before you showed up. And there are some tried and true ways that can point us in the right direction to figure out a problem that we're facing.
And my fatal flaw is that I don't always like to listen to 'em. I always want to think about, oh, I wanna, I wanna do it my own way. So I try my own way and I look stupid and I don't do what works. I'm trying to get outta that habit. So this comes back to this question. I don't wanna look stupid and try AI look stupid.
Look really stupid. We gotta get into this because AI is absolutely here. All of your competitors are using it. If you think I'm exaggerating, you're wrong. The adoption rate for small businesses now, well over 90% and the way that we get our work done has completely changed. AI agents are here, and I'm gonna talk about what I'm doing with AI agents before the show closes.
'cause I have an opportunity to work with you, by the way. But the AI agents are here and I'm relying on my AI agent every single day. You will pry Claude out of my cold dead fingers. Like Claude is the most important employee in my business right now, and by mid-April. I'm gonna have probably 20 different AI employees.
I've got six right now, probably 20 different AI employees, completely revolutionizing the way that I do my thing, and it's going to change everything for you as well. So it's time to look stupid America, if you decide to wait on AI, because you don't wanna look stupid, you're gonna miss a big old opportunity. Your competitors are gonna get further ahead. You're gonna fall further behind. Then you're really gonna look stupid. 'cause then the stakes are gonna be really high. So what do we do? I don't like just to say stuff and not give you something to actually act on. What do you do? Start with a chat bot. Pick one.
I'm sure you're probably already using one. Gemini Chat, GPT, whatever it might be. Pick one I use Claude, and just start talking with it. Every single day, all the time. Think about what could Claude help me do right now as you experiment with your chat bot and as you think about how do I get further, faster using ai, you'll start feeling less and less dumb.
You'll start finding use cases, but I'll tell you right now, a day does not go by where this thing does not surprise me on what it can do. And something happened yesterday that I'll tell you in a little bit. It blew my mind what it did. Uh, I'll share that before the show is over. But what this is doing is changing everything.
So avoiding all of this technology is stupid. So I'm telling you right now, get out your chat bot, start talking with it, start experimenting with it, and try and keep up. If you're still lost. If you still aren't sure what to do, this would be a great idea. Slam question. So last time before I move on to the end of the show, snap the QR code, become a part of our idea, slam Fam, and we'd love to have you on the air.
Now, I shared that I'm doing some really amazing stuff with Claude Cowork. It did something yesterday. Did two things in the last week, A three really, that kind of melted my face. I'll tell you about that in just a second. So we're talking all about ai. We gotta talk about our sponsor, ENG g. Marketing is a must for small businesses, and Enji makes it easy even when things feel uncertain or busy or overwhelming.
What if you could get it all done with an AI powered piece of software that turns your message into a marketing engine? It takes your ideas and your differentiation and shares it with the world. Using AI powered marketing almost on autopilot. It'll help you tell your story at scale. It'll help you distribute across all of your platforms with a scheduling tool.
And if you're worried about your graphics, looking great, NG plugs right into Canva, as in right into Canva. It's a social media scheduler that is like no other. We've been using it here. Uh, and it's keeping things really up to date for us. Really happy with Enji here at the SBOC and the Businessing Show.
The other thing that I like about Enji, it was written and built by marketing experts. So they're not just giving you the software, they really believe in KPIs, key performance indicators, so you can do more of what works and less of what doesn't. NGS changed the way that we're doing it here and I asked them for a discount for Businessing viewers and they hooked us up.
If you're interesting, if you're interesting, if you're interesting, your marketing will be good if you are interested. That's what I meant to say. There's a 14 day risk free trial, so if you're thinking, huh, AI Content Marketing engine, that sounds pretty cool. Try it for two weeks and if you hate it, you can unsubscribe, which won't happen.
It's a 14 day risk free trial to finally make your marketing so much easier. Then they gave us a discount for the first two months if you sign up and then after the discount is over, it's only $29 a month. Make your social media headache. Go away. Use ng. It's awesome. ng.co/sbo and the link is in the chat as well.
Sbo uh, ng.com/sbo for the deal. NG solves the, I do my own marketing problem. Alright. I dunno, like you gotta turn your volume down or like, gotta lean in a little bit, but we gotta have a talk. We gonna have a talk. Is this another talk with Uncle Pat? God, that's gonna stick, isn't it? This is for real. So if you've been watching Businessing and some of you have been watching Businessing since we launched our daily live stream, I am absolutely fanatical right now about Claude Cowork, and I gotta tell you what I'm doing because it's changing everything for me.
So here's the deal. I have a Mac, and on the Mac I downloaded the Clawed app. Inside the Clawed app, they have their chat, they have their code where it can help you build websites and stuff. But then they introduced another mode, which is called Cowork, and that's where AI agents, my minions, can go out and do stuff and it's unbelievable.
So I have this AI. Synced in with my Google Docs, synced in with my calendar and synced in with a bunch of other platforms that I use, and I can ask it to do things that it will do independently. It is this mixture of best practices, research analysis of what I'm doing, and then implementation. So I'll give you the example yesterday.
If you're like me, there are areas of your business that you know you need to get to, but you just, I just don't have time for that. I just don't have time for that. One of them that came up to me yesterday was my Google My Business page. If you have a business, you probably have a Google My Business page.
Having your Google My Business page on point is a big deal when it comes to SEO and optimization. And that's just one of those things that I just never made time for. I didn't ha, I didn't know how to do it and I didn't know how to make it great. So I went to Claude Cowork, said, Hey, uh, use the browser.
Navigate to my Google My Business page, do an analysis of what a great Google my business page should look like using best practices, compare it against what I have, and give me a detailed report. And after I see the detailed report, I'll tell you what to do next. So it goes out, it searches the web, it comes back with, okay, now I know what it takes to make a great Google My Business page.
Then it went, it opened a browser. It navigated to my Google My Business page. It analyzed what I had and it came back and it said, okay, uh, I know what the best practices are. I've seen what you're doing. And here are the changes that we, we need to make. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Okay, uh, which ones can you make?
And what do I have to do? Here are the things I can do. Here are the things you need to do. Alright, cool. Do it. It logged back in using my Google Chrome. Went to my Google my business page, changed a bunch of stuff. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And then it said, you need to upload some pictures. You need to do this, you need to do this.
So then I spent 30 minutes, you know, making the page great. And now it's done. It's done. I've been in business as small step solutions since 2018. The small business owners community has been open since June 1st, 2020. The small business owners community. Google my business page has been a little task sitting on my shoulder taking up bandwidth that entire time.
I knew it wasn't right, but I didn't know how to fix it. And before this, think about what it did. It went out and it found what's wrong. It then looked at what I'm doing, and then it had the context to compare the two. Then it went and did it. I,
I know I'm talking about this all the time, but I'm telling you, I'm telling you this is okay. You want another example? What other example should I use Google My Business page? I think I might have talked about the YouTube page, but if I didn't, let's talk about the YouTube page. Do you have a YouTube page for your business?
Yes. What does it look like? A garage sale. That's what mine looked like. It was just this depository of videos that I posted just old daily shows like this that I used to do, the annual radio show that I hosted events that were up there. There was no strategy, there was no keywords, there was, there was no nothing.
Nothing. Same thing. Yo Claude coworker, get out there and find out what a great YouTube page should look like. Tell me. What's working and what's not on my page. Give me a strategic action plan of what we should do and let's get rocking and rolling. Beep boop boop comes back, here's your report. Okay, cool.
And the report said, uh, should be focused around what you're working on right now. Personal brands are engaging way better than, uh, corporate brands right now. Um. You don't want stuff that's dated or out of date on there. Uh, and here's where I see your page could be fixed. We should switch it from SBOC to Pat Miller.
The Fridays off guy. We should put this description up there. We should put these keywords in there 'cause I hadn't put the right keywords in. We should hide all of these videos that are dated. We don't delete 'em, just make 'em unlisted. We should organize a playlist for the new show. We should do this. We should do this.
Uh, okay. How much of that can you do? I'm on it. I watched it, open my browser, go to my YouTube page. I'm just sitting here with my popcorn watching, just watching. You gotta be kidding me. I had hundreds of videos on that page. It unlisted all the ones that didn't make sense anymore. It hid all of my own shows that are out of date.
It helped me redefine the name of the um, channel, the description of the channel, got the keywords right, did all of this stuff. It's unbelievable my expertise. My job is to have a conversation with you. My job is to throw parties and communities and events for small business owners. My job is not to optimize a YouTube page.
My job is not. To opt, optimize a Google My Business page. It did both of those things just in the last week. I, I mean, I've got a list here. I got a list of stuff that it's been doing. 'cause I, every time it does something, I'm like, I can't believe that happened. I can't believe it did that. I'm telling you this for two reasons.
One, you are all gonna get software like this real soon. Barbara asked a great question. Is Claude a Mac only ai? No. Claude is open to anyone. However, Claude's Cowork is in the Mac app only currently. Meaning you have to be a Mac user to download the app, not surf their website. Download the app and you can start playing with it.
But it's pretty bananas. So I'm telling you that because you are all gonna get the software real soon, like. I dunno. I would bet by the end of March you'll all have one of these AI agents plugged into your business. But to get ready for it, I've learned a ton about how to train it, who you are, give it access to the right stuff, what not to do with it, and then how you can start thinking about having this AI agent on your team.
Tyler, great to see you pal, and yes, you need to learn more, which is interesting that you say that because I'm gonna tell you how you can learn more. My vision is that people need to get up to speed on this and people need to install it right now, and I'm gonna start leading people on this. I want a client, one client, one person I can work with so I can train on this technology because I wanna get people up to speed on this software so you too can experience what this is about.
Because in tech circles right now, like the super tech circles, I'm like. Lost Inside Tech Twitter at the moment and the repetitive conversation inside Tech Twitter right now is, oh, who's gonna share this with Main Street America? Because for the most part, tech Twitter, they think that we're all like not very smart on the whole, they, they don't have the highest opinion for Main Street America like us.
But you know what? They're tech people, so whatever. Be a tech person, it's cool. You don't know a lot of Main Street America folks, but they're ringing their hands saying, main Street America needs this. Who's going to teach them how to use these AI agents? I will. I'm doing it for two reasons. It's totally changed my business for the better, and I know it'll totally change yours.
And if my mission. Is to help small business owners win. This is the biggest opportunity we've seen in Forever. Forever. It's unbelievable. So if you're watching this and you're curious, I need a Mac user that wants to experiment with me on this. 'cause I think this is something I can do for quite a while to help people get the most out of AI agents, but I need my first client to participate with.
So, Tyler, come on bud. Let's work together. I know it can help you. Or if you're watching this, you want to get in touch with me, DM me on the platform that you're watching the show on. 'cause I wanna change your business. And this thing I'm telling you, I I, I can't stop using it. I haven't even played Call of Duty in the last couple of days 'cause I just sit in here and I play with my claw, which sounds dirtier than it is. I'll leave you with that. Okay, we're going to Madison, Wisconsin next week, which I'm super excited about. Our owners only meet up the small business owners community going to get together to do some high power networking and welcome new members to the community. So if you're within driving distance of Madison, Wisconsin, show up.
Meet all of the folks in the small business owners' community and join the community. It's a perfect time to get involved, to be a part of an in-person idea slam, which is a totally different animal, and it's so much fun. And someone in the community shared a perspective that I thought was really good. I said, what do you get outta the community?
And they said, you can get answers on the internet from anyone, but you never know if you can trust them. Inside the SBOC, if Tyler or Michael gives me an answer, I know them. So I can trust the answers better and I can get feedback from decisions from those that have actually made the same decisions that I'm making. So this is an actionable, supportive group of entrepreneurs that are all working together. So if you are interested in not growing it alone. You want to come hang out with us in Madison or just join our digital community today? The link is now on the screen. It's only $19 a month and as far as Madison is concerned, we're gonna get together and do the idea slam in our networking.
And from yesterday's show. We had three people join the community just from yesterday's show. Awesome. Akita and Jennifer and Steve. Welcome to the community. It's great to see you, so don't grow your business all by yourself. Join the SBOC and have expert guidance there with you. It's only $19 a month. The link is on the screen.
We'd love to have you be a part of what we're doing. So there you have it another day. Done Businessing with Pat Miller, sponsored by Gen Head and Angie produced by Gen Head. Thank you, gen Head. And if you can like and subscribe the show wherever you're watching. And if you share the show with your network.
I've got prizes. We're calling it share mail, so share the show and tell a friend about the show. I will mail you lavish gifts in the mail as a way to say thank you. It's the new daily habit for small business owners back on the air tomorrow at 11:00 AM Central. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community.
Thanks for tuning in and take care.